The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pope, the Kings and the People, by William Arthur, Edited by W. Blair Neatby

THE POPE THE KINGS AND THE PEOPLE

"Take thou the tiara adorned with the triple crown, and know that thou art the Father of princes and of kings, and art the Governor of The world."—Coronation Service of the Pontiffs.

THE POPE THE KINGS AND THE PEOPLE

A History of the Movement to make the Pope Governor of the World by a Universal Reconstruction of Society from the Issue of the Syllabus to the Close of the Vatican Council

BY THE LATE

WILLIAM ARTHUR A.M

Author of "The Tongue of Fire" etc.

EDITED BY

W. BLAIR NEATBY M.A

Author of "The Programme of the Jesuits" etc.

LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1903

Butler & Tanner The Selwood Printing Works Frome and London

[Pg v]

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Though I am named as the Editor of the present edition of the late Rev. Wm. Arthur's The Pope, the Kings, and the People, it is right to say that, by a restriction of my own choosing—for the publishers were good enough to leave me a considerable discretion,—my editorial care has been limited to the work of abridgment.[1] It was clear from the first that in the short time at my disposal no attempt could be made to verify the multitude of Mr. Arthur's references and quotations, drawn as they were with a lavish hand from the contemporary literature of half Europe. Happily, all his readers must recognise how intelligent, laborious and scrupulous he has been. On the other hand, I had hoped to add a certain number of footnotes explanatory of allusions to events and circumstances that are much less fresh in the public memory to-day than they were twenty-six years ago. I should also greatly have liked to point out the extent, sometimes remarkable, to which Mr. Arthur's forecasts have been already verified. But I soon found that if I were to introduce fresh matter it must be at the expense of portions of the original edition that were not to be lightly discarded. I have therefore directed my efforts to adapting the book as far as possible to the requirements of the present time by the process of simple retrenchment.

[Pg vi]

This process I have carried out most scrupulously. Every word in the abridgment is Mr. Arthur's own, and in Mr. Arthur's order. I have not even allowed myself to supply insignificant connecting words, however convenient they might have been, or however plainly they might be implied in the original work. This rule has entailed extra labour, but the gain seems to me immense. Every reader of this abridgment may know that he is reading Mr. Arthur's ipsissima verba, and that he may safely quote them as such. Not one word is mine.

And here I may perhaps be allowed to express my opinion that Mr. Arthur's words deserve to be very widely read and quoted. It would be hard to find a book that would shed more light on many of the most urgent questions of to-day. As an annus mirabilis of history, 1870 may yet take its place with 1453 or 1789. It was the year in which the Jesuits signalized the triumphant consummation of a struggle, waged during more than three centuries, for the capture of the Papacy. It was the year in which the new Vaticanism was formally constituted, and in which it gave the world notice, plainly and ostentatiously, of the policy to which it held itself committed. It was also the year of the Franco-Prussian war, a mighty convulsion which was after all but an incident in the great drama of Vaticanism, as Mr. Arthur, amongst others, has clearly shown.

I have said elsewhere that "the Jesuits, who brought France to the verge of ruin in 1870, seemed on the very point of completing their work of destruction a year or two since; and [that] he would be a very bold man who would dare to say that the peril had passed even yet."[2] The writer who makes such a statement assumes a grave responsibility; but if any one wishes to know how abundantly the statement can be justified he has only to turn to Mr. Arthur's pages. Mr. Arthur demands[Pg vii] from us no confiding trustfulness. Even at some expense to the flow of his narrative, he wisely made his work a repertory of contemporary documents, either transcribed entire or quoted with great fulness. Without resort to ex parte representations of adversaries, we may thus learn from the Vatican's own organs that clerical education, which has so signally proved itself the bane of modern France, is the very groundwork of Vaticanism. And from the impressive picture of the remorse that embittered Montalembert's last hours as he looked back on the share he had taken long before in shaping the educational policy of his country, we may perhaps learn the great lesson of distinguishing between a false liberalism and the true.

Never more than in this instance is the history of the past the key to the present; and no man, unless his acquaintance with Vaticanism is of quite exceptional extent, can rise from the perusal of this book without feeling that he has obtained a momentous and far-reaching addition to his stock of religious and, perhaps even more, of political knowledge.

W. BLAIR NEATBY.

November, 1903.

[Pg ix]

PREFACE

The sources of the information contained in this work are, 1. Official documents; 2. Histories having the sanction of the Pope or of bishops; 3. Scholastic works of the present pontificate, and of recognized authority; 4. Periodicals and journals, avowed organs of the Vatican or of its policy, with books and pamphlets by bishops and other Ultramontane writers; 5. The writings of Liberal Catholics.

Of the official documents the greater part have been officially published. The list of authorities, and the references in each particular case, will sufficiently indicate where these are to be found. Besides these, the Documenta ad Illustrandum of Professor Friedrich are a store of documents of special value, both in themselves and as throwing light upon those officially published. They came into his hands as an official theologian at the Vatican Council, and he published them on his own responsibility. The Sammlung of Friedberg is a vast store, combining the documents of the Vatican with those of Courts, public bodies, and important individuals.

The official history of Cecconi, now Archbishop of Florence, though professedly that of the Vatican Council, is really occupied with the secret history of the five years preceding the Council. That very curious narrative throws a light back on the foregoing years, and a light forward upon the Council, by aid of which many things otherwise indistinct become well defined. I have waited in hope that a second volume would appear, but in vain. The eight superb folios of Victor Frond come out with an assurance, under the Pope's own hand, of being preserved by due oversight from error, and with a guarantee of divine patronage. They contain a life of the Pope,[Pg x] biographical notices of the Cardinals and prelates, a full account of ceremonies, authentic portraits of men and vestments, with pictures of "functions," and so contribute to enable one to set events in their frames, and to invest them with their colours. Except military annals, perhaps, no history ever had more colour than this portion of Papal history, and perhaps in no history whatever has the action been more deeply affected by the scenery. The Civiltá Cattolica fulfils the invaluable office of a serial history, in the pages of which official documents and the chronicle of events illustrate one another, and at the same time discussions often prepare the way both for documents and for events, and always follow and elucidate any that are of consequence. The same office is in a less degree also fulfilled by the Stimmen aus Maria Laach.

To appreciate the height of authority on which the Civiltá stands, the reader should bear in mind the fact that in 1866,[3] after it had already for sixteen years been recognized as the organ, at one and the same time, of the Pope himself and of the Company of Jesus to which its editors belonged, his Holiness in a brief and by a declared exercise of apostolic authority, formally erected in perpetuity the Jesuit Fathers who composed the editorial staff into a College of Writers, which college should be under the General of the Society of Jesus, but, it is added, so "as to Us and to Our successors shall seem most expedient." In this brief the Pontiff recorded, as to the past, the "exceeding gladness of soul" he had felt in witnessing the labour, erudition, zeal, and talent with which the Civiltá had "manfully protected and defended the supreme dignity, authority, power and rights" of the Apostolic See, and had "set forth and propagated the true doctrine." He also recorded the fact that all this had day by day more and more merited the "goodwill, esteem and praise," not only of the hierarchy, but of men of the greatest eminence, and of all the good. This, coming at a time when the expositions of the Encyclical and Syllabus given by the Civiltá had awakened among Liberal Catholics serious oppo[Pg xi]sition and even alarm, was decisive as to what was, at Rome, held to be the true doctrine, and as to who were held to be its real teachers. As to the future, the Pontiff, adopting the well known motto of the Company of Jesus, decreed that, for the greater glory of God, the writers should, as we have said, constitute in perpetuity a college possessing peculiar rights and privileges. As if formally to claim some share of this glory, the Jesuit editors of the Stimmen aus Maria Laach, when in 1869 commencing a new series, notified on their title-page the fact that they availed themselves of the labours of the Civiltá—a liberty which no Jesuit durst have taken without the highest sanction.

All the numbers of the Civiltá and of the Stimmen being under my hand, they have yielded a steady light by which to examine opinions relating to the movement of "reconstruction," whether those opinions were hostile or sympathetic. The Italian journal, the Unitá Cattolica, and the French one, the Univers, written with a consciousness of the highest favour on the one hand and of an overwhelming influence among the clergy on the other, comment upon the operative clauses of official documents—generally intelligible only to the initiated—in forms more popular than those of the two great magazines. But it is only by the still clearer comment of daily narratives and polemics that the elucidation becomes complete.

The Roman work of the Marchese Francesco Vitelleschi (Pomponio Leto) has now appeared in English—Eight Months at Rome (Murray). This is welcome, as enabling one to refer the English reader to his pages, of which even Ultramontanes in Rome do not impugn the accuracy. Quirinus is also happily in English. Professor Friedrich's Tagebuch ought to be, but is not. Those and smaller works by Liberal Catholics, compared with the sparkling volumes of M. Louis Veuillot and the Ultramontane serials and pamphlets, and with the Old Catholic writers in the Rheinischer Merkur, the Literaturblatt of Bonn, the Stimmen aus der Katholischen Kirche, and so forth, slowly bring home to our English understanding the strange principles and wonderful projects which at first we either fail to appre[Pg xii]hend, or else imagine that they cannot be seriously entertained.

On those principles and projects four distinct controversies have shed a steadily increasing light—the controversy on, 1. The Syllabus; 2. The Vatican Council; 3. The Old Catholic Movement; 4. The Falk Laws. The last two do not come within the scope of this work, but very much of the light by which we gradually come to understand the preceding stages of the movement, is due to the keen discussions to which these two controversies have given rise.

Having subscribed for the Civiltá Cattolica for years before the Syllabus appeared, I was not wholly unprepared for the controversy which followed. The Civiltá also enabled me to see how Liberal Catholics connected the Vatican Council with a movement in the past, dating from the Pope's restoration, and with a plan of vast changes for the future. While the hopes of the Ultramontanes seemed visionary, and the fears of the Liberal Catholics seemed exaggerated, it did nevertheless appear possible that great events might come out of a deliberate attempt, made by a large and organized force, to reconstruct the world. Soon after the close of the Franco-German war, a visit to Paris, Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, and other centres, supplied me with much material, casting light on the enterprise in which the Vatican Council was the legislative episode, and from which the Old Catholic movement was the recoil.

It was while engaged in studying such material that I threw off the translation of the discussion held in Rome on the question whether St. Peter had ever visited that city. Soon after broke out the controversy on the Falk Laws. Six weeks spent in a German country town, reading journals and pamphlets, and also in collecting, added to my light, and to the means of getting further light. In the course of the time employed upon the study of growing material was thrown off the review of the Pope's Speeches, under the title of The Modern Jove.

Though conscious that I had not yet the groundwork for a well connected account of the whole movement, I began to write, not with any intention of publishing for a long time,[Pg xiii] should I live, but under the feeling that, should I be called away, it would be right to leave behind me information which had not been gained without cost and labour. After a while appeared the official history of Cecconi. His authentic if incomplete disclosure of the secret proceedings of five years was a stem for many hitherto perplexing branches. A plan now began to shape itself, and I commenced to recast all I had done. Shortly afterwards came out the great work of Theiner, the Acta Genuina of the Council of Trent. This settled many points keenly debated between Catholic and Liberal Catholic, affecting the rights of kings, of bishops, of the divinity schools, of the lower clergy, of the laity, and affecting the relations of all these to the Pontiff.

While I was working with these additional helps appeared Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation. The great amount of knowledge it betrayed contrasted with one's previous idea of the state of information on the subject among our public men. The controversy which followed might have brought some temptation to haste, had it not also brought proof that it was even more necessary than I had supposed to beware of assuming that phrases, modes of conception, and projects, well understood in Italy or Germany, were at all understood here. Some of those who reviewed Mr. Gladstone took for strange what in all countries in the south or centre of Europe would have been taken as familiar, and for doubtful what in Rome or Munich was as clear as day. Accredited terms and phrases were treated as inventions; by some as inventions of genius, by others of animosity. It was often more than hinted that principles and designs habitually proclaimed at the Vatican were ascribed to priests only by opponents. Not unfrequently a gentleman would seem to think it more generous to attribute his Protestant ideas to Ultramontanes, than to take it for granted that they preferred their own. It was incredible how political questions pregnant with future controversies, perhaps with future wars, were evaded as theology!

The replies to Mr. Gladstone placed the ignorance of the English public on the subject in a different but a very impres[Pg xiv]sive light. It is often said abroad, by those who know us, that no nation in Europe is so liable as we are to treat gravely statements from priests or their advocates which any reasonable amount of information would render entertaining. The reviews of these replies showed a growing sense of the interests involved, but intensified one's feeling that the elements of clear understanding were wanting. Men did not know the terms, the facts, the publications, or the political doctrines of the movements under discussion. Had what has been written in our best journals during the last twenty years from Italy, or even during the last five from Rome and Berlin, been well read, it would have led to study, and in that case Dr. Newman and others would not have had so cheap a laugh at our ignorance of what is meant because of our false interpretation of what is said. While this controversy proceeded, a stay of nearly three months in Rome, employed in seeking material and information, added considerably to my stores, which were further increased by two subsequent visits to Munich and one to Bonn.

I have often been reminded of an incident which occurred in Rome. One of our celebrated scholars, hearing what I was engaged in, exclaimed "Oh, Theology!" Of course, he was fresh from home. Not many minutes before, a resident diplomatist, in whose house this took place, having heard me say "I began the study of this subject as a religious question, but—" smiled and said, "Yes, but—you find it is all politics, and the further you get into it the more purely political will you find it."

The controversy which had sprung up at home showed that a book written as this one had been begun would be frequently misunderstood. In that controversy it was often taken for granted that when an Ultramontane disclaims Temporal Power, he disclaims power over temporal things; and that when he writes Spiritual Power, he means only power over spiritual things; that when he writes Religious Liberty, he means freedom for every one to worship God according to his conscience; that when he writes the Divine Law, he means[Pg xv] only the Ten Commandments and the precepts of the Gospel; that when he writes the Kingdom of God, he means righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost; and that when he writes the Word of God, he simply means the Bible. One reasoning with false interpretations like these in his mind must reason in such a fog as Dr. Newman, in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk, cleverly depicts. Ambiguity similar to that now indicated prevails over the whole field of phraseology—theological, political, and educational. English Ultramontanes are doubtless in part responsible for these misapprehensions, but only in part. If their writings are studied, they will be seen to use such terms differently from their fellow-countrymen. But certainly the Papal Press of Rome, and even that of France, is not in any degree responsible for our illusions, but has, on the contrary, left us without excuse.

The consequence of all this is that in this book, where a mere allusion would have been made, a fact is now often related; where the sense of some particular utterance would have been condensed, that utterance is verbally recited; and where one sentence would have been culled out, more are given. Very often, where a statement of the principles of the Papal movement would have been accompanied only by a reference to a contemporary authority, that authority is made to speak for himself, and occasionally at some length. Terms and phrases, which might have been left to the chance of being understood, are either coupled with narratives or discussions, to bring out their sense, or else they are explained. When I do give explanations, let me not be trusted, but watched. Much will be found of the language both of Catholics and of Liberal Catholics, and with it the reader can confront my strange-looking explanations. In the end he will be able to do what, thank God, every Englishman is inclined to do—form an opinion for himself as to the real sense in which the speakers employed their own words.

It need not be said that this change of method rendered necessary a larger book than was at first planned. It was also unfavourable to the flow and unity of the narrative. Perhaps it compensated for that disadvantage by more fully showing the[Pg xvi] grounds on which statements are made, and by bringing the reader frequently, almost continuously, into communication with Italian, Frenchman or German, each expressing his own views, whether those of statesman or priest, of journalist or magistrate, of Catholic or of Liberal Catholic.

My thanks are due to many who have forwarded my researches. The kindness of Count Cadorna, then Italian Minister at our Court, procured for me valuable facilities in Rome. My true gratitude was deserved by the distinguished Minister of Education, Signor Bonghi, especially for his personal introduction of me to the great library of the Collegio Romano, not then open to the public. Our own Ambassador, Sir Augustus Paget, and the German Ambassador, Baron Keudell, both rendered me real service, with all possible courtesy. The Marchese Francesco Nobili-Vitelleschi, himself author of a history on which I must often draw, took pains to procure for me valuable material. Among many benefits received from our own countrymen, I must specify that derived from the vast information on all Italian matters possessed by Mr. Montgomery Stuart, and also that arising from the constant kindness of the Rev. H.J. Piggott. Those two gentlemen have kindly read on the spot certain sheets containing local observations. Two German scholars were constant and practical friends, Dr. Benrath and Dr. Richter.

In Munich the National Library, with its clear catalogue and good collection, contrasted with the great libraries of Rome. The kindness of Dr. Döllinger was great and eminently practical. He had kept all pamphlets, bearing on the subject, which had come into his hands. He not only gave me free access to this collection, but, where he had duplicates, presented me with them. Dr. Reusch, Professor of the University of Bonn, with a collection at least equal, though without duplicates, gave me similar facilities. The lists thus procured, and the energy of the German booksellers, enabled me to get almost everything contained in either collection, including Italian and Latin publications which I had in vain sought in Italy, and even French ones which I could not find in Paris.

[Pg xvii]

The weakness of my own eyesight has increased the obligation which, in any case, I should have felt to my two valued friends. Dr. Moulton and Dr. H.W. Williams, who have kindly read the proofs. Dr. Moulton also compared the translation of the speech of Darboy with the original, and suggested improvements. Dr. Karl Benrath, of Bonn, whose long residence in Rome and whose study of the subject lent to his judgment a special value, has laid me under great obligation by examining every sheet as it passed through the press.

The very frequent translations rendered necessary by the plan of letting men speak for themselves are as close as I knew how to make them. Even where marks of quotation are not used, and yet I profess to give the sense of some utterance, those who can go to the originals will find that the language, though condensed, is preserved, and, in any important matter, closely rendered.

Reversing the ordinary practice as to quotations, where the italics were in the original, I generally mention that it was so. It would have been tedious to say that they were my own in every case where they seemed necessary to direct attention to a phrase or a term having a meaning different from ours, or to one the full significance of which might easily escape notice.

Nothing but a conviction that the movement here traced is of an importance for which ordinary terms are not an adequate expression would have justified me, in my own view, in giving to the study of it years of a life now far advanced. If the authors of the movement are not deceived, the generations that will come up after I am no more will witness a struggle on the widest scale, and of very long duration, during which will disappear all that to us is known as modern liberties, all that to Rome is known as the Modern State, and at the close of which the ecclesiastical power will stand alone, presiding over the destinies of a reconstituted world. Not at all believing in the possibility of this issue, I do not disbelieve in the possibility of the struggle. To avert any such repetition of past horrors, to turn the war into a war of thought, a war with the sword of the writer and of the orator, instead of that of the zouave and[Pg xviii] the dragoon, is an object in attempting to serve which, however humbly, a good man might be content to die. Had I at any time during my preparations seen the same work undertaken by some one whose position or whose name would have commanded a degree of attention to which I have no claim, gladly should I have buried the fruit of my labour. Such as that fruit is, I now submit it to the public, in humble hope that the very absence of titles to consideration by which a work on the subject should have been recommended, will turn to a plea for more indulgence in weighing the only claims I have to put forth, those of hard work and honest intention.

May He who has given to our nation the blessings of free prayer, free preaching, free writing, free speech, and free assembly, with their wholesome fruit of equal laws, tempered power, and moderated liberty, grant that this humble labour may in some measure contribute to make those inestimable boons dearer than ever to the hearts of our people, and that it may contribute also to place them in a position more readily to foil every endeavour to snatch those boons or to steal them away from us and from mankind!

Clapham Common, 1877.

POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE

June 6, 1877

ON CARDINAL MANNING'S "TRUE STORY OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL"

Had not the time occupied in bringing out this work far exceeded my expectations, it would have appeared as early as the first portion of Cardinal Manning's "True Story of the Vatican Council," in the pages of the Nineteenth Century. As it is, I have been able to read the fourth paper, in which the Cardinal concludes his narrative of the Council itself, though he intimates an intention of hereafter adding comments on extraneous matters. I cannot but feel that, in more respects than one, the appearance of the True Story immediately before that of this book is an advantage. The general reader is thus supplied with means of checking many of my statements, and of estimating the value of my authorities. Although this advantage is limited to such ground as is common to the True Story and to my history, that ground is a portion of sufficient importance to afford some criterion for judging of the whole. One of my fears, arising from the way in which, both in recent controversies and in former ones, authorities have been dealt with before the English public, was that we might find it soberly intimated that Cecconi was not a writer of high credit, that the Civiltá Cattolica was a private magazine, that the Acta Genuina of Theiner was a publication brought out in an obscure place, and so on through the list. Now, however, the reliance placed by Cardinal Manning on authorities which supply essential features of my narrative, and the[Pg xx] importance unwillingly assigned by him to others frequently cited by me, will act as a restraint on those who might have made light of them.

Another considerable advantage is this. It almost seemed as if it would prejudice Englishmen against a writer to state what from time to time it was needful to intimate—how histories issued from official or semi-official sources systematically withheld information on the points of chief importance. Such points, so far as the Council was concerned, were the actual differences of opinion between prelate and prelate, the tenor of the debates, the arguments employed on one side or the other, the written memoranda of bishops on the questions disputed, their printed pamphlets, their speeches, their truly important petitions, recording complaints against the Rules of Procedure imposed upon them, and against the disabilities under which the Pope had placed them. Those petitions recorded, further, their personal disbelief in the new dogma, with the fact that they had always taught in opposition to it, and that they anticipated from its adoption grave perils of collision between Church and State. Other matters kept out of view comprised interesting facts credibly alleged and circumstantially detailed relating to personal acts of the Pope, to proceedings of the Curia and of the Presidents of the Council. Still more interesting, and of graver import, were the reasons assigned by Ministers of State and others, for regarding with more than ordinary jealousy the projected changes in the Papal system. It seemed even more invidious to note the practice of adopting, in order to cover all these suppressions of facts, and of alleged facts, an air of giving information by entering into details of ceremonies, enlarging on unimportant matters, telling, as if it was of great moment, how many meetings of this sort were held, how many of that, how many spoke, at what time this Decree was proposed, and how many votes were taken on another, without in all this allowing a word to transpire of what was said or thought. I am now relieved of all fear about those features of my narrative. Any one who has a relish for the curiosities of literature may match, and perhaps[Pg xxi] overmatch, what I have told of French priests and Italian Jesuits, by what an Englishman has done.

I had never, however, to accuse the Italian Jesuits of keeping out of sight the political, or, as they generally say, the social aspects of the movement, and of covering them up in theological disquisitions. They did, indeed, use wondrous theological phrases with political meanings, but any one who studied their writings soon penetrated that veil. They also invariably used theology as the motive power of all their politics. But from 1850, when the movement which has characterized the present pontificate began, to 1870, when it reached its legislative climax, they set forth prominently as their object the reconstruction of society, on the model of what, in their own dialect, they call the Christian civilization. They loudly proclaimed, as the elements of that Christian civilization, the revocation of constitutions, the abolition of modern liberties, especially those of the Press and of worship, with the subjection to canon law of civil law, and, above all, the subjection to the jurisdiction of the Pope of all nations and their rulers, whatever the title of those rulers might be. They justly conceived the ills they had to repair, as, having begun with the bad teaching of John Wyclif, in which his doctrine of "dominion" was the head and front of all his offending, and of that of every succeeding age. As he had striven for the emancipation of kings from the Pope, of legislatures from the ecclesiastical powers, and of the individual from the priest, so did they set themselves to bring back again the dominion of the priest over the individual, the dominion of the ecclesiastical authorities over lawgivers, and above all, the dominion of the Pope over kings. Of this the reader will meet with evidence from their own lips, at almost every stage of our narrative. Those Italian Jesuits did not expound the Syllabus, according to the new and naive notion of Cardinal Manning, as a code containing very little to which "any sincere believer in Christian revelation would, if he understood the Syllabus, object." The Italian Jesuits, ay, and even the German ones, on the contrary, made a boast of its diametrical opposition to every form of[Pg xxii] Liberalism, and in particular to Liberal Catholicism, of its efficacy as an instrument for overturning the Modern State, and of its solidity as the foundation-stone on which was to be reared the fabric of reconstructed society. In all their writings society was taken as meaning, not families, nor Churches, but nations, and each one of the nations was to form a province within a Church ruling over it and over all other nations in every one of their laws and public institutions.

In speaking of the idea that all believers in revelation would accept nearly all of the Syllabus, I have assumed that Cardinal Manning, writing for an English audience, uses the term "Christian revelation" in the English and not in the Papal sense. To a sincere believer in Christian revelation in the Papal sense, the Syllabus, if not in form, yet in substance, is an infallible and "irreformable" portion of that revelation. And so it would very simply come to pass that a sincere believer in Christian revelation would admit, not merely most of it, but all of it so far as it contains any teaching. And to such a believer the kingdoms of the world will never become the kingdom of God, and of His Christ, but by ceasing to be kingdoms at all in any independent and proper sense, and by merging into provinces under the Priest and King, or, as in phrases still more mystic they style him, the Shepherd-King of the Vatican.

Now a True Story of the Vatican Council, in which, to the apprehension of an ordinary reader, all these topics are kept out of view, though to an adept they are not wholly kept out, seems to me like a True Story of the civil war in the United States which should largely dwell upon State rights, forgetting all about slavery, or speaking of it only in an esoteric dialect.

The True Story affords us some foretaste of what history is to be after dogma has completed the conquest over it which has been promised. Had my narrative been written after its appearance, the topics totally ignored, and those virtually ignored, in the True Story, might easily have been thrown into stronger relief. As it is, however, the succession of events necessarily brings them again and again into view, and perhaps[Pg xxiii] the effect of the outline may be rendered more distinct to the English reader through the contrast with the True Story.

Of the prelates on this side of the Alps, Cardinal Manning was not the one from whom we should have expected that in an account of the five years preceding the Vatican Council, with a brief retrospect of the whole of the present pontificate, and a history of the Council itself, scarcely one clear utterance should be made as to the bearing of the movement on those governments, liberties and institutions which to the Vatican are very evil and to us are very dear. It was not so in 1867 and 1869. In both of those years the Cardinal indicated the political relations of the movement in words of warning which, if only echoes of those of the Jesuits in Rome, were perhaps more intelligible and vehement than those of any other prelate on this side of the Alps.

Statements of mine will frequently be found to conflict with statements made in the True Story. In most of those cases—I hope in all—the materials from known sources furnished to the general reader will suffice for a not unsatisfactory comparison, while the authorities indicated will enable the scholar to form a judgment. In very many of these cases statements of Cardinal Manning, made in previous works and virtually amounting to the same as the most material of those made in the True Story, will be found side by side with the statements of other authorities, with official documents, or with facts no longer disputable. Of these statements, one to which the Cardinal seems to attach much importance is his assertion that none of the prelates, or at most a number under five, disbelieved or denied the dogma of Papal infallibility, and that all their objections turned on questions of prudence. This is not a slip, nor a hasty assertion, and it is very far from being peculiar to Cardinal Manning. It is now the harmonious refrain of all that hierarchy of strange witnesses of which he has made himself a part. The point is one on which illustrations will occur again and again, in events, in words, and in those documents which, in spite of all precautions, have been gained to publicity.

[Pg xxiv]

Notwithstanding the method adopted in the True Story, the fact crops out at every turn that the modern strife of the Papacy is not to make men and women, as such, godly and peaceable, but to bring kings as kings, and legislatures as legislatures, and nations as nations, into subjection to the Pope. It crops out sufficiently, at least, to be obvious to all who know the difference, in the Cardinal's phraseology, between the two sets of terms employed to indicate those two distinct objects. For instance, what an excellent description of that Catholic Civilization which, in the great contest of the Vatican, is ever signalized as the goal, does the Cardinal give when, picturing the "public life and laws and living organization of Christendom" in the times when all these, according to his ideas, were "Christian," he says, "Princes and legislatures and society professed the Catholic faith, and were subject to the head of the Catholic Church." Cardinal Manning does not here use the word "society" in the domestic but in the political sense. He means, not families or social parties, but nations—as the Jesuit writers almost always do. Any one may, therefore, possess himself of a key to the true meaning of many pious phrases which occur in the following pages, if he will first of all clearly realize in his own thoughts just what it would involve for England; and for us were the conditions stated by the Cardinal fulfilled by our princes, our legislature, and our "society." One seeking to do this must realize the fact that the prince and the legislature not as individuals, and the "society" not in its separate members, but the prince as a prince, the legislature as a legislature, and the nation as a society, shall profess the Catholic faith. Ordinary Englishmen do not realize all that is meant by that formula. But beyond that, the prince as a prince, the legislature as a legislature, the nation as a society, are not only to believe in the Pope, but to be subject to him. What fulness of meaning that formula possesses will gradually open up to the reader as the narrative unfolds. He will often hear ecclesiastical politicians of the school to which Cardinal Manning belongs, talking in their native dialect, not modulating their voice to win the are of Protestants. This national[Pg xxv] profession of the faith, and this subjection of kings, lawgivers, and nations to the Pope, constitute in one word the Civiltá Cattolica (the Catholic civilization); or, in plain English, the Catholic civil system; or, in other terms, the true Catholic constitution, the reign of Christ over the world, to establish which in all nations the Vatican is to move heaven and earth.

In his first paper Cardinal Manning seeks to impress us with the belief that the raising of Papal infallibility to the rank of a dogma was not a chief object of the Pontiff, much less his only one, in convoking the Vatican Council. On that point the narrative will often incidentally present the expressions of prelates, official writers, and others, so that the reader will be able to form an opinion of his own. In his second paper the Cardinal shows that throughout the whole of the present pontificate the dogma has been kept in view as an essential object. Of that position illustrations will frequently occur. In the second paper, also, the Cardinal repeats his old allegation that it was Janus who invented "the fable of an acclamation." The course of the tale will tell whether it was or was not Janus who originated the talk of a design to get up an acclamation, and whether that talk was or was not a fable.

The Cardinal, while attempting to justify, though for the most part keeping out of sight, the disabilities imposed upon the bishops by the Pope, disabilities of which they loudly complained, glances at one out of many of the real ones. He says that the Commission which was empowered to say whether any proposal emanating from a bishop was worthy to be recommended to the Pope for consideration, without which recommendation it could not come before the Council, was "a representative commission." The fact is that it was a selection of prelates made by the Pope, who excluded from it all who had avowed themselves opponents of his infallibility, and included in it creatures of his own, who had nothing of the bishop but the orders and the pay which the favour of the Court had given to them.

The Cardinal, after ample time for correction, repeats his old declaration that in the Vatican Council "the liberty of speech[Pg xxvi] was as perfectly secured as in our Parliament." That assertion has the merit of being free from all ambiguity, and moreover is one on which plain men can judge. As I have told the story, the readers will over and over again meet with facts, equally free from ambiguity and equally patent to plain men, which will show whether the assertion is true or not.

On the great question of secrecy the Cardinal risks a statement which exceeds what Italian Jesuits, if writing for a periodical of the rank of the Nineteenth Century, would be likely to hazard. He says: "At the beginning of the Council of Trent this precaution (of secrecy) was omitted; wherefore, on February 17, 1562, the legates were compelled to impose the secret upon the bishops." The Cardinal would seem to imagine that there was at least a substantial agreement, if not an actual identity, between the acts by which silence was enjoined, and also between the extent of the silence demanded in Trent and at the Vatican; and that indeed from February 17, 1562, forwards, the Council of Trent was laid under a bond something like that by which the Vatican Council was from the beginning fettered. Was it so? Was there a substantial agreement in the two acts by which silence was enjoined? Was there a substantial agreement in the extent of silence imposed? Was there at Trent a formal decree? Was there an oath imposed on the officers? Was there an exclusion of the theologians from debates, and of the public from the debates of the theologians? Was there any vow required, any threat held out? And does even Cardinal Manning fancy that there was at Trent a new mortal sin made on purpose for the benefit of the bishops? Of all this there was nothing. The act of the legates was simply what it is described as having been by Massarellus, the Secretary of the Council, who says: "The Fathers were admonished not to divulge things proposed for examination, and in particular Decrees, before they were published in open session."[4]

The Cardinal is apparently also under an impression that the extent of silence imposed in the two cases was at least substantially the same. Was that so? Did the legates censure the[Pg xxvii] admission of laymen to hear the theologians argue? Did they censure the permission given to theologians who were not bishops even by the fiction of a see in partibus, to dispute in presence of the Council? Did they censure any remarks made out of doors on speeches, opinions or projects? Did they censure anything but the one indiscretion of circulating proposed Decrees, or other things proposed, while yet the formulae were, "so to speak, unshaped," but were in their inchoate condition made public as if they had been passed? Did the legates suggest that the duty of secrecy extended further than that of not publishing such tentative formulae, of not sending them out of the city, and of forbidding persons attached to the households of bishops to commit those indiscretions? At Trent there were faults and causes of complaint in no small number. But what Cardinal Manning calls "the secret" which would shut up every mouth as to all subjects proposed, as to all opinions expressed, as to all speeches made, as to all designs mooted—"the secret" which forbade men to print their own speeches, to read the official reports taken of them, to read those of their brother bishops, and other extravagances besides, of which the True Story has not one syllable to tell—that "secret," or any such, is not hinted at in the a monition of the legates at Trent. The extent of silence imposed at the Vatican would seem to have been as original as the mortal sin there invented.

Still further, the Cardinal would appear to be under an impression that the reason why at Trent certain inconvenient publications occurred was because that, at the outset, the strict precautions had been there omitted which at the Vatican were not only taken in time, but, with manifold forethought, were, before the time, as our story will tell, tied and bound by edict and by oath. As to disclosures, however, that occurred at the Vatican, which most Romans would tell any Englishman, except a priest or a convert, would be certain to occur, namely, that the "pontifical secret" would be dealt in as a thing to be sold. Did the precautions omitted at Trent, but adopted at the Vatican, prevent so much from transpiring as compelled[Pg xxviii] the Pope to loose from the bond four selected prelates, including the eminent author of the True Story, in order that they might disabuse the outside world? Did it prevent the famous canons which opened the eyes of Austrian and French statesmen from making a quick passage to Augsburg and to Printing House Square?—of which canons, by the way, as of most essential matters, the True Story tells not a word.

It would be very tempting to select for remark other assertions of the Cardinal, but this may suffice to do all that I here wish to do; that is, to set the reader upon intelligently watching and sifting statements of my own; for what is to be desired on this subject is that the public shall cease to be easily contented with what is said on one side or the other. My statements, like those of others, are sure to contain a fair proportion of mistakes, but when all these are winnowed away, there will remain a considerable peck of corn.

Not content with formally vouching, in his title, for his own truthfulness, the Cardinal formally impeaches that of others. Both of these proceedings would be perfectly natural in a priest in Rome, and especially in one attached to the Jesuit school. Had I foreseen the cautious beginning of such habits that was so soon to be made by high authority, certainly I should not have so far yielded to the repugnance one feels to put specimens of priestly imputations into our language—a language which had for ages, up to the date of the Tracts for the Times, been steadily acquiring an antipathy to all the arts of untruthfulness, and consequently to all the forms in which other languages habitually insinuate or openly allege it. But I cannot regret that my story purposely excludes full specimens, and only by force of frequent necessity admits morsels, of the style in which in Rome every shade of untruthfulness, from suppression and equivocation to the worst kinds of perjury and forgery, is on the one hand charged upon heretics, on Liberal Catholics, on statesmen, and is on the other hand in return, and with extreme good will, charged upon bishops, cardinals and popes.

The veracity of Pomponio Leto—that is, as all Italy knows,[Pg xxix] of the Marchese Francesco Vitelleschi, brother of the late Cardinal Vitelleschi—is openly impugned by Cardinal Manning. We already know, on more points than one, the opinion of Vitelleschi as to the eminent author of the True Story; and retaliation would have been natural had it only been fair. If Vitelleschi wrote English, and if he cared to compare his truthfulness with that of such a competitor, it would be interesting to hear him fairly fight out the question, Which of us two has, to the best of his power, tried just to tell what he knew, inventing nothing and concealing nothing? It does not seem at all certain that the Englishman would bear away from the Italian the palm of straightforwardness. The Cardinal is evidently not aware that certain alleged particulars of the famous Strossmayer scene, which he ascribes to Pomponio Leto, are not in his description of it either in the Italian or in the English version. From where the Cardinal gets them I do not know. But his picture of Schwarzenberg "carried fainting from the ambo to his seat," his idea that Pomponio professes on that day to have been outside the Council door and to have seen "the servants rushing," and his other idea that at the fourth session Pomponio professes to have been inside and consequently forgot that many of those who were outside could see through the great door which was wide open, are all alike. He certainly did not get any of them from Vitelleschi. As it is after stating these errors, that his Eminence cries, "Such melodramatic and mendacious stuff!" we must imagine how Vitelleschi will smile at this new display of certain qualities which did not escape his keen eye.

Professor Friedrich is slightingly spoken of by the Cardinal. Here again retaliation, if fair, would have been natural; for Cardinal Manning has already felt the steel of Friedrich. Judging from my own impression that under the slashes of Friedrich what the Cardinal had employed as if he took it for argument appeared perfectly helpless, I should expect that it the learned professor should think it worth while to try his strength on the sort of history, theology, and logic which the Cardinal thinks may pass in England, they would in his hands,[Pg xxx] at almost every debatable point, fly to pieces. As to veracity, however, Friedrich has already, on that score, as our story will show, crossed swords with more bishops than one; and whether on that or other matters, certainly he is not the man to turn his back on Cardinal Manning, whose measure he has long ago taken, as, even under the eyes of the Papal police, he did not fear to show.

Cardinal Manning occupies pages with imputations, and with quotations which he apparently thinks warrant the imputations. Does he, or do the witnesses he calls, disprove any of the specific facts alleged? Yes, he does disprove one. Vitelleschi, in describing the great session of the Council, said that Cardinal Corsi and other discontented Cardinals pulled down their red hats over their eyes. Now, Cardinal Manning properly says that on that occasion they had no hats of any colour, meaning that they wore the mitre. Therefore a real blot is hit. And it is curious how exactly this is the same kind of blot as the Jesuits of the Civiltá were able to hit in the early part of Vitelleschi's book, when, like the True Story, it first appeared in a periodical. They clearly convicted the author, then unknown even to them, of saying that in certain solemnities the robes were red, whereas in fact they were white. We must, however, do the Roman Jesuits the justice to say that from this tremendous error they did not attempt to prove that the writer was given to "mendacious stuff," though they did argue that he was wanting in reflection.

But it is a well-known fact that grave matters—very grave matters—were with sufficient particularity alleged against the Pope, against the Presidents, against the Rules of Procedure, against the authorized Press, against the favourites of the Court among the bishops, against the secret way in which "the Council was made beforehand," and above all against the political designs which were entertained; and, one must ask, with what single fact of all these is any manly attempt made to grapple by the Cardinal, or by the bishops whom he cites in his support? Besides these facts, of which some were amusing, some absurd, some discreditable, there were others[Pg xxxi] which for all good men except Papists, in the proper sense, were seriously alarming, and these were alleged by Catholic and Liberal Catholic, by men in opposition and by men in all places of authority up to the highest—by Vitelleschi, by Friedrich, by Veuillot, by Guérin, by Frond and his contributors, by Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, by Hefele, by Kenrick, by Darboy, by Rauscher, by Place, by Dupanloup, by the hundred and thirty bishops who signed the protest against even discussing infallibility, by the groups of bishops who signed that against the Rules of Procedure, by those who signed the solemn one against the new Rules, by those who petitioned for the A B C of deliberative freedom, by the scores who signed the historical petition of April 10, 1870, by those who protested against the unfair and arbitrary attempt of July 5, and by those fifty-five who, the day before the final session, placed in the hands of the Pope their protest, saying that if they voted in the public session they could only repeat, and that with stronger reasons, their previous vote—that is, of Non placet; a protest of which Cardinal Manning has taken a strangely inaccurate and misleading view. Such facts were alleged by La Liberté du Concile, by La Dernière Heure du Concile, by Mamiani, by Bonghi, by Beust, by Daru, by Arnim, by Acton, by Montalembert, by Döllinger; and still more by the Civiltá Cattolica, the Stimmen aus Maria Laach, the Univers, the Monde, and the Unitá Cattolica; and most of all were they embodied in the words and official manifestoes of Pope Pius IX. What one of these alarming or discreditable or equivocal facts is disposed of by the passages which Cardinal Manning in his need has cited? He cites Hefele to prove that people who were outside of the Council told falsehoods as to what passed inside. But with the wonted sequence of his logic, what he proves out of the mouth of Hefele is that people who were inside of the Council sold the secret, though in doing so they incurred the pains of mortal sin. The proof is quite as apposite as many of those relied upon by Cardinal Manning, and it is no wonder that such a habit of reasoning should have landed him where he is. He cites of all men Ketteler. Now supposing that Ketteler was[Pg xxxii] the person to invalidate serious testimony, what particular fact is disproved by the passage cited? The only one it affects to touch is the question as to whether, in substance, the anti-infallibilist doctrine of Döllinger was not also that of the majority of the German bishops. That question is not faced in front. Ketteler only raises a side issue. He denies that on some certain occasion, certain bishops had in a certain way made a statement to that effect. Cardinal Manning has not lived so long in Rome, and learned so much there, without knowing something of the value of such contradictions. But if he means—as, however reluctantly, one must take him to mean—to use Ketteler to prove to Englishmen that the majority of the German bishops were not, before July 1870, opposed to that as a doctrine which is now a dogma of their creed, then let Ketteler by all means stand on one side, but pamphlets, memoranda, speeches, petitions, votes, protests stand on the other. Ketteler is cited against Döllinger, and agreeably to the all but infallible felicity of the Cardinal's logic, about the most definite thing Ketteler says against the Provost is that Janus, for falsification of history, can hardly be compared to anything but the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Had the Cardinal cited the whole body of the German bishops, he might, indeed, with English Catholics have gained some show of authority; but how would it have been with the fellow-countrymen of those prelates? or with any who, like their fellow-countrymen, had, in the two Fulda manifestoes of 1869 and 1870, and in other words and deeds of those mitred diplomatists—words and deeds which cannot be erased—learned at what rate to prize statements signed by their episcopal crosses? There are in Europe few bodies of functionaries who stood in sorer need than did these German bishops of something to rehabilitate the credit of their Yea and Nay; not that even yet it seems to have fallen quite so low as that of their superiors of the Curia; at least, not quite so low in matters of purely personal reputation, when no official obligation exists to make a public impression which is contrary to the facts, and when dissimulation, if practised, arises from a habit[Pg xxxiii] partly professional, partly personal, and one sometimes indulged in as an exercise of cleverness. Cardinals hardly do prudently to raise on English soil questions about truthfulness; for the English public will not much longer be content to take information at haphazard or at second-hand, but will go to the fountains, and learn about things in Rome as things in Rome in reality have been.

LIST OF WORKS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO AS AUTHORITIES

The titles and editions being here given, the references in each particular instance will be no longer than is sufficient to identify the work.

Some works cited only once are not here entered, their titles being given at full in the body of the book. The few English writers quoted are not inserted here.

Acta et Decreta Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani. Romæ Impensis Paulini Lazzarini Typographi Concilii Vaticani: 1872.

Acta et Decreta Sacrosancti et Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani cum permissione Superiorum. Friburgi Brisgoviæ: Herder, 1871. Contains the Encyclical and Syllabus of December 8, 1864, and some other useful documents not published in the Roman edition; but does not contain its brief historical notes of the public sessions.

Acta Genuina SS. Œcumenici Concilii Tridentini, nunc primum integra edita ab Augustino Theiner. Zagrabiæ Croatiæ: 2 vols, small folio, 1874. Always referred to as Theiner.

Acta Sanctæ Sedis in Compendium Opportune Redacta. Romæ S.C. De Propaganda Fide. A volume has appeared annually since 1865.

Actes et Histoire du Concile Œcuménique de Rome, 1869, Publiés sous la direction de Victor Frond. Paris: Abel Pilou. 8 vols, large folio, with numerous illustrations. A brief of the Pope warrants to the Editor the "counsel and approbation of the Holy Apostolical See;" and also gives him the Apostolic Benediction "as a guarantee of the divine patronage." The references are always to Frond.

Acton, Lord—Zur Geschichte des Vaticanischen Conciles. München: 1871.—Sendschreiben an einen Deutschen Bischof des Vaticanischen Concils. Nördlingen: September, 1870.

Annuario Pontificio, 1870. Roma Tipografia della Rev. Cam. Apostolica.

Bibliothèque Universelle et Revue Suisse. Lausanne. Montalembert's L'Espagne et la Liberté is contained in Nos. 217-21, from January to May, 1876.

Ce Qui se Passe au Concile. Paris: 1870. Condemned by the Council.

Cecconi, Eugenio (now Archbishop of Florence)—Storia del Concilio Vaticano scritta sui documenti originali. Parte prima Antecedenti del Concilio, Vol. I. Roma: A Spese di Paulini Lazzarini, Tipografo del Concilio Vaticano, 1873. The official history of the secret proceedings of five years.

Civiltá Cattolica (La), Anno Vigesimottavo. Serie X. vol. i. Quaderno, 641. Firenze: 3 Marco, 1877. This is the title of the latest number. It has appeared fortnightly since the year 1850. It is quoted as Civiltá (e.g.) X. i. 5—the first numeral noting the series, the second the volume, the third the page.

Concile du Vatican, le, et le Mouvement Anti-infaillibiliste en Allemagne. 2 vols, octavo. Brussels: 1871.

Concile Œcuménique, le. Par Mgr. l'Evêque de Grenoble. Paris: 1869.

Dernière Heure du Concile. München: 1870. Condemned by the Council; said by Quirinus to be by a member of the Council, possessing "almost unique opportunities."

[Pg xxxvi]

Desanctis, L.—Roma Papale descritta in una serie di Lettere. Firenze: 1871.—Il Papa, osservazioni Dottrinali e Storiche. Firenze: 1864.

Deschamps, Archbishop of Malins (now Cardinal).—Réponse à Mgr. l'Evêque D'Orléans. Paris: 1870.

Documenta. See Friedrich.

Documenti (i) Citati nel Syllabus edito per ordine del Sommo Pontifico Pio Papa IX. Preceduti da Analoghe Avvertenze. Firenze: 1865. Like the French Recueil, contains the documents cited in the Syllabus, but with Italian notes, and without any translation.

Döllinger, D.—Erwägungen für die Bischöfe des Concilium's über die Frage der päpstlichen Unfehlbarkeit. München: October, 1869.—Die neue Geschäftsordnung des Concils und ihre theologische Bedeutung. Augsburg: 1870.—Erklärung an den Erzbischof von München-Freising. München: 1871.

Dupanloup—Lettre de Mgr., L'Evêque D'Orléans au clergé de son Diocése relativement à la définition de l'infaillibilité au prochain Concile. Paris: 1869. The original is reprinted with the English version of Vitelleschi. Eight Months at Rome.—Réponse de Mgr. L'Evêque D'Orléans à Mgr. Deschamps. Paris: Duniol, 1870.—Réponse de Mgr. L'Evêque D'Orléans à Mgr. Spalding, Archevêque de Baltimore, accompagne d'une lettre de plusieurs Archevêques et Evêques Américain à Mgr. l'Evêque d'Orléans. Naples: 1870.

Fessler, Dr. Joseph, Bishop of St. Pölten—Das letzte und das nächste allgemeine Concil. Freiburg-in-Brisgau: 1869.

Friedberg, Dr. Emil, Professor, Leipsic—Sammlung der Aktenstücke zum ersten Vaticanischen Concil. Tübingen: 1872. Always quoted as Friedberg.

Friedrich, Dr. J., Professor, Munich—Tagebuch während des Vaticanischen Concils geführt. Zweite vermehrte Auflage. Nördlingen: 1873.—Documenta ad Illustrandum Concilium Vaticanum, anni 1870. Both the first and second Abtheilung are of Nördlingen, 1871. Quoted as Documenta.—Der Mechanismus der Vaticanischen Religion. Bonn: 1876.

Fromman, Theodor—Geschichte und Kritik des Vaticanischen Concils. Gotha: 1872. A Protestant writer, therefore scarcely ever cited.

Frond, Victor—Actes et Histoire, etc. 8 vols. fol. See "Actes," etc.

Gury, P. Joanne Petro—Compendium Theologiæ Moralis, S.I. editio in Germania Quarta. Ratisbon: 1868.—Casus Conscientiæ in Præcipuas Quæstiones Theologiæ Moralis editio in Germania prima. Ratisbon: 1865.

Guérin, Mgr. Paul, Chamberlain to Pius IX.—Concile Œcuménique du Vatican son Histoire ses décisions en Latin et en Francais. Professes to give all the documents, but gives only a portion even of those officially published. Bar-le-Duc: 1871. 2nd ed.

Gregorovius, Ferdinand.—Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Miltelalter vom V. bis zum XVI. Jahrhundeyt. Zweite Auflage: 1869. 8 vols, octavo.

Hefele, Carolus Josephus Episcopus Rottenburgensis—Causa Honorii Papæ. Neapoli: 1870.

Hergenröther, Dr. Joseph, Professor, Würzburg—Katholische Kirche und Christlicher Staat in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung und in Bezichung auf die Fragen der Gegenwart. Freiburg-in-Brisgau: 1873.—Kritik der v. Döllingerschen Erklärung vom 28 Marz d.I. Freiburg-in-Brisgau: 1871.

Holtgreven, Anton, Königl. Preuss. Kreisrichter—Das Verhältniss Zwischen Staat und Kirche. Berlin: 1875.

Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis in America—Concio Petri Ricardi Kenrick, Archiepiscopi S. Ludovici in Statibus Fœderatis Americæ Septentrionalis in Concilio Vaticano Habenda at non Habita. Neapoli: 1870. This invaluable pamphlet is reprinted with Friedrich's Documenta, and is always cited as there found, the pamphlet itself being within the reach of but very few.

[Pg xxxvii]

Ketteler, von, Wilhelm Emmanuel Freiherr, Bishop of Mainz—Das Allgemeine Concil und seine Bedeutung für unsere Zeit. Mainz: 1869.—Die Unwahrheiten der Römischen Briefe vom Concil in der Allgemeinen Zeitung. Mainz: 1870. Several other pamphlets by Bishop von Ketteler not referred to are of value.

Langen, Dr. Joseph, Professor, Bonn—Das Vaticanische Dogma in seinem Verhältniss zum Neuen Testament, etc. Bonn: 1873.

Liverani, Monsignor Francesco, Prelato Domestico e Protonotorio dell Santa Sede.—Il Papato, L'Impero e Il Regno D'Italia. Firenze: 1861.

Maret, Mgr. H.L.C., Bishop of Sura, Dean of the Theological Faculty of Paris—Le Concile Générale et la Paix Religieuse. 2 vols, octavo. Paris 1869.

Martin, Conrad, Bishop of Paderborn.—Omnium Concilii Vaticani Quæ ad doctrinam et Disciplinam pertinent Documentorum Collectio. Paderbornæ: 1873. A very incomplete collection, but very useful.—Katechismus des Römisch-Katolischen Kirchenrechts. Zweite Auflage: 1874.

Menzel, Professor—Ueber das Subject der Kirchlichen Unfehlbarkeit (als Manuscript gedruckt). Braunsberg: 1870.

Menzel, Wolfgang—Geschichte der neuesten Jesuitenumtriebe in Deutschland. Stuttgart: 1873.—Die Wichtigsten Weltbegebenheiten vom Prager Frieden bis zum Kriege mit Frankreich (1866-70). 2 vols. Stuttgart: 1871.

Michaud, L'Abbé—De la Falsification des Catéchismes Francais. Paris, 1872. Many other works of Michaud, not cited, are of great value.

Michelis, Dr. F., Professor, Braunsberg.—Kurze Geschichte des Vaticanischen Concils. Constanz: 1875.—Der Neue Fuldaer Hirtenbrief in seinem Verhältniss zur Wahrheit. Braunsberg: 1870.—Der häretische Charakter der Infallibilitä Islehre. Eine Katholische Antwort auf die Römische Excommunication, 1872.

Observationes Quædam de Infallibilitatis Ecclesiæ Subjecto. Vindobonæ: 1870. Cardinal Rauscher (see Friedberg, 1111). Also published in Naples, without name of printer or publisher.

Phillips, George—Kirchenrecht. 7 vols, octavo. Regensburg: 1855-72.

Pope Pius IX—Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pius IX Pronunziati in Vaticano ai fedeli di Roma e dell' Orbe; raccolti e pubblicati dal P. Don Pasquale de Franciscis. Roma: 1872; and the second volume, 1873. It is to be regretted that these curious and instructive volumes are not translated into English.

Recueil des Allocutions Consistoriales Encycliques et Autres Lettres Apostolique des Souverains Pontifs Clement XII, Benoit XIV, Pie VI, Pie VII, Léon XII, Grégoire XVI, et Pie IX, citées dans l'Encyclique et le Syllabus du 8 Décembre, 1864. Octavo, p. 580. Paris: 1865. Every document cited in the Syllabus is given at full, with a French translation.

Reform der Römischen Kirche an Haupt and Gliedern. Leipsig: 1869.

Reinkens, Dr. Joseph Hubert. Bishop—Revolution und Kirche Beantwortung einer Tagesfrage mit Rücksight auf die gegenwärtige Tendenz und Praxis der Römischen Curie. Bonn: 1876.—Ueber päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit. München: 1870.

Rheinischer Merkur. Erscheint jeden Samstag. Köln. A weekly journal, organ of the old Catholics. Now published in Munich as the Deutscher Merkur.

Sambin, Le R.P. de la Compagnie de Jesus—Histoire du Concile Œcuménique et Général du Vatican. Lyon: 1871.

Schrader, P. Clemens, S.I.—Pius IX als Papst und als Kœnig. Wien: 1865—Der Papst und die Modernen Ideen. Wien: 1865.

Sepp, Professor Abgeordneter—Deutschland und der Vatikan. München: 1872.

Soglia—Septimii M. Vecchiotti, Institutiones Canonicæ ex operibus Joannis Card. Soglia excerptæ et ad usum seminariorum accommodatæ. Editio decimasexta ad meliorem formam redacta et additamentis focupleta. In[Pg xxxviii] 3 vols, octavo. Turin: 1875. Sold at Milan, Venice, Naples, and Romæ apud Tipographiam de Propaganda Fide.

Stimmen aus der Katholischen Kirche München. A series of pamphlets containing writings of Döllinger, Friedrich, Huber, Schmitz, Reinkens, Liano, and others—of great value.

Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Katholische Bläter—Freiburg-in-Brisgau. The first number appeared in 1865, after the publication of the Syllabus; the Neue Folge, commenced in 1869, has on the title "Unter Benützung Römischer Mittheilungen und der Arbeiten der Civiltá."

Summi Pontificis Infallibilitate Personali (de). Naples: 1870. Friedberg (p. 111 says that this tract was distributed by Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg, but written by the Cistercian Franz Salesius Mayer.)

Tarquini, Camillo E., Societate Jesu (Cardinal)—Juris Ecclesiastici Publici Institutiones. Editio quarta. Roma S.C. de Propaganda Fide. 1875.

Theologisches Literaturblatt. Erscheint alle 14 Toge. Bonn, herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. F.H. Reusch. A fortnightly publication, of great value to all who wish to understand the literature of the modern phases of Romanism, and also of the old Catholic movement.

Unitá Cattolica, edited by Don Margotti, appears daily in Turin. Holds in Italy a position similar to that of the Univers in France.

Univers, edited by M. Louis Veuillot, appears daily, Paris. Veuillot is a layman.

Veuillot, Louis—Rome pendant le Concile. 2 vols, octavo. Paris: 1872. Contains important matter dating from 1867.

Vitelleschi, Marchese Francesco—Otto Mesi a Roma durante il Concilio Vaticano per Pomponio Leto. Firenze: 1873. An English translation has now appeared entitled Eight Months at Rome, by Pomponio Leto. Always referred to as Vitelleschi. The real authorship of the work is no secret in Rome, nor is it treated as such.

[Pg xxxix]

CONTENTS

[Pg 1]

BOOK I

FROM THE ISSUE OF THE SYLLABUS TO ITS SOLEMN CONFIRMATION
(December 1864 to June 1867)

CHAPTER I

The First Secret Command to commence Preparations for a General Council, December 6, 1864—Meeting of Congregation—All but Cardinals sent out—Secret Order—Events of the 8th—Solemn Anniversary—A historical coup de soleil.

On December 6, 1864, Pope Pius IX held in the Vatican a memorable meeting of the Congregation of Rites. That body consists of some eighteen or twenty cardinals, with a few prelates and a number of consulters. It holds a prominent place among the congregations, or boards as they would be called at our Court, which, taken collectively, may be said to constitute the Roman Curia. It determines not only questions touching the canonization of saints, and the patron saints of towns and countries, but also questions touching relics, rubrics, and the title of sacred images to worship. The all-important matters of robes, adornments, and precedence, are said by different authorities to be regulated by it, and by the smaller Congregation of Ceremonies. The pontifical masters of the ceremonies have a seat at both boards.

The day in question fell within three months after the signing of the convention of September, by which the new kingdom of Italy had succeeded in binding Napoleon III to withdraw his troops from the Papal States, at the close of 1866. It was, therefore, at a moment when thoughts were forcibly directed to the contingencies which might arise to the Papacy[Pg 2] should it be left alone with Italians. It was, moreover, only two days before the occurrence of an incident which has already grown into an event, and was designed to mark a new era in society at large. To that era the proceedings of the six years which we are about to trace were to form the introductory stage, up to a grand inauguration both legislative and ceremonial.

We have no information as to the business for which the meeting we speak of had been convened. It was, however, opened as usual by the reading of a prayer. After the prayer, the Pontiff commanded all who were not members of the Sacred College to withdraw, and leave him alone with the Cardinals. The excluded dignitaries interchanged conjectures as to what might be the cause of this unusual proceeding, and hoped that on their readmission they should be informed. But the Pope did not condescend to their curiosity; they found that the Congregation only went on with the regular business, and when events cleared up the doubt it proved that not one of them had guessed the truth.

In the short but eventful interval, Pius IX had formally communicated to the Cardinals his own persuasion, long cherished, and now quickened to the point of irrepressible action, that the remedy for the evils of the time would be found only in a General Council. He commanded them to study the expediency of convoking one, and to send to him in writing their opinions upon that question.

The above incident is the first related in the sumptuous volume of Cecconi, written by command of the Pope, who, after it appeared, conferred on the author the archbishopric of Florence. That volume exclusively narrates the secret proceedings of the five years which intervened between this meeting and the opening of the Vatican Council. But, while telling us what took place on December 6, the Court historian passes in dead silence over the eighth. On that day, however, the Vatican launched manifestoes which had been for years in preparation, and which have been mentioned every day since. These summed up all the past policy of Pius IX, and formed a[Pg 3] basis for the future government of the world. They furnished to the Vatican Council, still five years distant, the kernel of its decrees, both those passed and those only presented. They are, in fact, printed with the Freiburg edition of its Acta as preparatory documents.

December is to Pius IX, as it is to the Bonapartes, a month of solemn anniversaries. On the eighth of that month, ten years previously to the time of which we are writing, surrounded by two hundred bishops, he proclaimed the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary as a doctrine of the Church. In his own imagination, this act formed an epoch of glory, to the lustre of which three distinct triumphs contributed. In the first place, a darling bye-belief was lifted from the humble posture of pious opinion, to that of a dogma binding on all, who must admit changes into their creed with every change of Rome. In the second place, a new and mighty advance in the power of the Papacy was achieved, for a formal addition to the creed was made without the sanction of a General Council. Those bishops who attended manifestly acted, not as members of a co-ordinate branch of a legislature, but as councillors of an autocrat. The absent were placed under the necessity of accepting the fait accompli, or of attempting to undo it in the face of the Pontiff, the Curia, and the majority of the prelates. "Gallicanism," said the Civiltá Cattolica, "was, in fact, bruised under the heel of the Immaculate, when Pius IX., by his own authority, laid down the definition."[5] Thirdly, an impression of the personal inspiration of Pius IX was conveyed, with embellishments, so as to prepare the way for the recognition of his infallibility.

When he was in the act of proclaiming the new dogma, the beams of the sun streamed gloriously upon him; the fact being that his throne was so fixed that this must take place if the sun shone at the time. Nevertheless, the visible rays were hailed as evidence of the light which makes manifest things not seen. The Pope sought, in the great fresco of Podesti, to popularize[Pg 4] and perpetuate his own conception of this event, which is called, in French guide-books to the Vatican, the coup de soleil historique. That picture, filling an entire side of a chamber, near to the renowned frescoes of Raffaele, represents the Virgin looking down from celestial glory upon Pius IX, and, by the hand of an angel, who holds a cross, pouring a stream of supernal light on his enraptured eye. Hence may the faithful gather that this is the light by which he reveals the truth to men.

[Pg 5]

CHAPTER II

The Encyclical Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864—Causes of Ruin of Modern Society: rejection of the "force" of the Church—Religious Equality—Pretensions of Civil Law and of Parents to Control Education—Laws of Mortmain—Remedies—Restoration of the Authority of the Church—Connecting Links between Encyclical and Syllabus—Retrospect of Evidences that all Society was in Ruins—The Movement for Reconstruction.

The tenth anniversary of the auspicious day of "The Immaculate" being now at hand, Pius IX had, as we have seen, chosen its fore-eve for setting in motion the preparations for his General Council. He reserved for the day itself the great deed of publishing the Encyclical Quanta Cura and its accompanying Syllabus of Errors. It is said that the inception of those documents dates back to a point not very long subsequent to the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, and that the first Special Congregation named to prepare them spent more than five years without agreeing, after which it was dissolved by his Holiness, and a second named, which completed the task.

The keynote of the Encyclical is that of an alarm, in the martial sense; not a panic cry, accompanied by a throwing away of arms, but a note of danger, with a call to take them up.

The cause assigned for alarm is the ruinous condition of society—that word being used in its political, not its domestic sense. The very bases of society were shaken by evil principles, which had spread on all sides and raised a "horrible tempest." Before proceeding to the errors to be now condemned, the Pontiff is careful to connect with them those other "principal errors of our sad times" which he had already condemned in previous encyclicals, allocutions, and letters apostolic. He thus lays the logical foundation for the collection of them in[Pg 6] the Syllabus. He first reminds the bishops how he had stirred them up to war against these errors, and how he had also commanded the children of the Church to abhor and shun them. Secondly, he enumerates certain additional errors, condemns them in turn, and commands his sons to shun them likewise. Condemnations pronounced in this formal manner are judicial and sovereign. The Pontiff does not speak as a mere teacher, but as the supreme tribunal of the Church. The judgments pronounced are not for the guidance of individuals merely, but are a rule for every officer of the Church. Every such sentence fixes the state of the law.

After many generalities, the first token of ruin in modern society particularized is the design manifested to check and set aside the salutary force[6] which ought always to be exercised by the Church, not only over individuals, but also over nations, both "peoples" and sovereigns. The second token of ruin is the prevalence of the error that the State may treat various religions on a footing of equality—the error that liberty of worship is in fact a personal right of every man, and that the citizen is entitled to make a free profession of his belief, orally or by the press, without fear of either civil or ecclesiastical power. This is condemned as being the "liberty of damnation." The next token of ruin is hostility to the religious orders, which were established by their founders only by the inspiration of God. Another token of ruin is the belief that all the rights of parents over their children arise out of civil law, especially the claim to control their education. The Pope would seem to think that this notion is the ground for denying the right of priests to take the control of education out of the hand of parents, or the ground for claiming the protection of civil law for the natural and Scriptural right of the parent against the alleged right of the priest. Such denial of the right of the priest is dilated upon as a further token of ruin. The existence[Pg 7] of laws of mortmain is an additional token. After these civil and ecclesiastical matters, one theological point is adduced, with formal yet fervent language, as if it were some new plague, broken out in our own times—the denial of the divinity of our blessed Lord. This seems to be the only question in theology proper directly raised in the document. The errors now signalized are all condemned, and formally added to those previously condemned.

Just as the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, before undertaking the campaign that led to the Crimean war, found his sick man and pointed out his symptoms, so had Pius IX done. In the former case, the sick man was only one wide-spread but despotic empire. In the latter, it included everything that could be called, in the dialect of the Vatican, the Modern State.

Proceeding from his enumeration of the evils which mark the ruin of contemporary society to the remedies by which it is to be repaired, his Holiness once more wraps up much of what he may mean in generalities. When he does come to particulars, the hierarchy are directed to teach that kingdoms rest on the foundations of the faith; that kingly power is bestowed, not only for the government of the world, but still more for the protection of the Church; that nothing can be more glorious for rulers than to permit the Catholic Church to govern according to her own laws (i.e. canon law), not allowing any one to impede her free action, and not setting the regal will above that of the priests of Christ. Here is touched the great question in government. The Modern State had not only emancipated the throne from the supreme tribunal of the Church, that is, the Pope, but it had also emancipated the civil courts from the external tribunal of the Church, that is, the ecclesiastical court. The latter as well as the former evil must be redressed. To such prescriptions for the healing of society is added a proclamation of indulgences, and then follows an exhortation to pray both to God and to the Blessed Virgin, "who has destroyed all heresies throughout the world"—whatever that may mean in history, theology, or rhetoric. "She is gentle and full [Pg 8]of mercy; ... and standing at the right hand of her only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as queen, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety, there is nothing which she cannot obtain from Him."

This curious document was a necessary introduction to the Syllabus. The external connecting link between the two was formed by a covering letter of Cardinal Antonelli conveying the Syllabus to the hierarchy by direct command of the Pope, "that they might have all the errors and the pernicious doctrines which have been condemned by him under their eyes."[7] The internal link lay in the title of the Syllabus, which recited the language of the Encyclical referring to the antecedent judgments of the Pontiff. It is not a syllabus of errors in general, nor of errors merely disapproved and abhorred by Pius IX in particular, nor of errors rebuked and denounced by him only in sermons, speeches, or briefs; but a syllabus of The Principal Errors of our Times, set forth by him in Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic.

Before proceeding to consider the Syllabus as the new foundation laid for the reconstruction of society after its ruin, we may for a moment glance at the facts which might seem to prove to observers, looking from the Vatican, that it had been reduced to a ruinous condition.

Coming to the throne in 1846, Pius IX inherited the sovereignty of States which had long been in a condition of chronic disaffection. The state of things is described as follows by Monsignor Liverani, a learned but seemingly disappointed prelate, who wrote hoping to redeem the glory of the Papacy by the re-establishment of a Holy Roman Empire with an Italian head, after the example of that interval between the line of Charlemagne and that of Otho, when Guido of Spoleto, his brilliant son Lambert, and Berengarius wore the imperial title. "The people," says Liverani, "have spoken for forty years, groaning, agitating, shaking off the yoke by frequent revolutions, accompanied by crimes and continuous misfortunes, by slaughters, wars, bombardments, banishments, and desolations."[8]

[Pg 9]

Nevertheless, prelates from the north, coming to pay their homage to the new Pontiff, on reaching the last spurs of the Alps, might embrace in the glance of their mind all thence to Ætna, and say, Happy land! the throne of his Holiness in the centre, the faithful Bourbon on the south, the Hapsburg on the north, with Tuscany under a branch of the Hapsburgs, and Piedmont under the House of Savoy—what a spectacle of Catholic power! Holy land! not a heretic temple; not one teacher but in communion with Peter: blessed scene of Catholic unity!

A poor representative of the oft-extirpated Waldenses might say in silence—for such words durst not then disturb the Catholic unity of Italian air—You forget a few teachers in the valleys behind you, who never left the word of God to turn lords either of the earth or of the faith. Before you there is not a pulpit with the Bible, nor a man who ever drinks the cup of Christ, excepting priests alone; not a temple with God's commandments on its walls, but many a decalogue altered by the authority of a man who, making the law of God reformable, claims that his own shall be irreformable!

Beyond the limits of the Pope's temporal dominions soon arose commotions which spread over the principal seats of his spiritual power. In Switzerland the Jesuits provoked the war of the Sonderbund, and were foiled. Beyond the Atlantic a considerable portion of Mexico passed into the hands of the Protestant United States. Portugal was plagued with revolt. A famine thinned and dispersed the Roman Catholic population of Ireland. France drove away her good king. The Emperor of Austria was compelled to abdicate, and the empire was not saved from dismemberment without aid from Russia. The King of Bavaria also had to lay down his crown. The sovereigns of Tuscany and Naples were compelled to fly; as was, alas! the Pontiff himself. Spain and her Queen were seldom heard of, except for an insurrection or a scandal. Only two Roman Catholic countries were thriving—Belgium, with a Protestant king, and a constitution which the Church had solemnly and vehemently condemned; and Piedmont, which, worse than[Pg 10] Hannibal, had opened the passes of the Alps to religious liberty.

This was the first sweep of the hurricane. During its prevalence, those portions of the world which lay without the Papal circle enjoyed as much rest as was to be looked for beside such troubled waters. Both schismatical Russia and heretical England were stable and expanding. Prussia was for a time seriously disturbed, but, nevertheless, was manifestly advancing to the first place in Germany. Holland, Denmark, and Sweden held on their way; and the United States were growing apace.

From his exile the Pope called on the Catholic powers for armed aid. Austria crushed and held the Emilia. Spain took Fuimicino and the cities on the Tyrrhenian shore. Naples conquered Frosinone and the south up to Palestrina, but was driven back at Velletri by Garibaldi. Finally, France declared herself ready to terminate the war; and, after failing for weeks before the slight defences of Rome, ultimately took the city.[9]

Indebted for a welcome restoration to the unwelcome hand of a Bonaparte, Pius IX, on re-entering his States, found himself permanently dependent for possession of the capital on the sword of France, and for that of the provinces on the sword of Austria. Under their protection he enjoyed some years of struggling sovereignty. This could hardly be called a restoration of the temporal power, for a power is not really restored till it can again stand alone. Instead of being an opponent of the Jesuits, a Liberal, and a Reformer, as he had been, the Pope was now transformed into a violent reactionary, and had fallen entirely under the influence of the Jesuits. His admirers proudly point to his acts from that time forward as evidence that they have been uniformly aimed at one end. That end, viewed on its negative side, they call combating the Revolution,[Pg 11] and, viewed on its positive side, the reconstruction of society. In the introduction to his Speeches, his peculiar mission is said to be that of reconstruction. This reconstruction was to begin with the restoration of ideas, and was to proceed to the restoration of facts.

It is this movement that we are about to trace. First, we shall take a brief retrospect from the time of its inception at Gaeta up to the appearance of the Syllabus, which, as the ostensible ground-plan of a cosmopolitan code, was meant to be the charter of reconstruction. We shall then, from that stage onward, as far as our materials enable us, detail the progressive steps of the movement up to the end of the Vatican Council, which was meant to complete the constituent arrangements of the new theocratic monarchy. We shall see unfolding a movement for dominion as distinctive as was that of Leo III when he linked the fortunes of the Papacy to those of a new Western Empire; as distinctive as was the movement of Hildebrand when from political dependence he lifted up the Papacy to unheard-of domination; as distinctive as was the movement of the Popes after the Reformation, when through war and the Inquisition they restored in several countries of Europe their spiritual ascendancy. We shall witness the rise of a curious and powerful literature—scholastic, serial, and popular—which has steadily swollen in volume, and now acts with ever accelerating force on the religious antipathies of many nations, pointing to future wars on a scale unheard of, fixing the aim of those wars, and hinting at the disappearance of all existing institutions but the Church. We shall see a well-sustained endeavour, in the name of freedom of instruction, to take all schools and universities out of the hands of parents and of States, and to put them into the hands of priests. We shall see such rights in matters ecclesiastical as in the Church of Rome had still survived to the laity, the priests, and the bishops, gradually suppressed in action till the way was prepared for their abolition in law. We shall see the subordination of the civil law to the canon law, and the subjection of the civil magistrate to the "ecclesiastical magistrate" insisted upon as the essence of social order. We shall[Pg 12] see all the inherited rights of kings and rulers, within their own dominions, to put limits upon the action of the Pope of Rome, first impugned, then contested, then defied, and finally, as far as the Church could do it, legislated out of existence. We shall see all kings and rulers challenged to accept the Pontiff as their head, and even as their judge in all matters involving moral responsibility. We shall find it taught and taught again that all Catholic countries have two rulers—the universal and the national one, the universal one superior, the national one subordinate; and that every citizen of those countries is more the subject of the Pope than of his prince. We shall see the relation between the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities as existing within the Papal States solemnly and repeatedly declared to be the normal relation of those two orders of authority, and to be the only example of their proper relative position extant in all the earth. We shall see the Papal States earnestly held up as the model for the new theocracy in the entire world.

Further, we shall see, for five successive years, secret proceedings of the Court of Rome sufficiently laid open by official divulgence to enable us to note the slow, sure steps devised for depriving kings of all their rights in self-defence against the Pope; for depriving bishops of all their powers of checking or restraining the Pope; for depriving theologians of any voice in the councils of the Church; and for depriving the parochial clergy of their individual and collective franchises. We shall at almost every turn hear modern laws and constitutions—liberty of worship, liberty of the press, liberty of meeting, with representative legislatures and responsible governments—denounced as the curse of mankind in all the varying accents of a strange dialect, or a dialect happily strange to us. We shall witness the preaching of a new crusade, on a cosmopolitan scale, with considerable art, making the bearing of arms for St. Peter to appear, pre-eminently, the life of the Cross, and dying in arms for St. Peter to appear as the martyr's end, the fairest of deaths, and the most enviable. We shall see how the most jealous and obstinate oligarchy in the world were led on from[Pg 13] step to step of subjugation till they were made the instruments of reducing their collective body, when in Council assembled, from a co-ordinate branch of a legislature to a mere privy council to the Bishop of Rome, and of reducing the members of their body, when dispersed, from the position of real diocesan bishops to that of prefects of the Bishop of Rome.

Still further, we shall see evolved under our eyes the process by which opinions are elevated into doctrines, and doctrines are erected into irreformable dogma. We shall see how the bishops, while dispersed, were induced, in order to facilitate the making of a new dogma, to discredit their acknowledged standard of belief, tradition, substituting for it the general consent of the Church; and how, when the passing of the dogma was secured, the assembled bishops were induced to disavow the consent of the Church as unnecessary. We shall see ecclesiastical magnates prostrate and petitioning the Bishop of Rome for the elementary liberties of a legislature, and petitioning in vain. We shall see how such magnates in secret petitions represented the principles about to be erected into dogma as contrary to their traditional belief and constant teaching, as fraught with peril to the State, and as certain to bring discredit on the loyalty of any sincere believer in such dogma; and how the same magnates afterwards in public documents affirmed the opposite in all these respects. We shall see how renowned champions of the Papacy complained late in life that they had been used for its glory and deceived as to its principles. Finally, we shall see set in motion an immense apparatus of means for effecting, in a course of ages, the complete social, political, and ecclesiastical reconstruction of all society, which reconstruction will culminate only when the spiritual and the temporal powers meeting as in an apex in the Vicar of Christ, he shall be by all men regarded as not only High Priest, but as King of kings and Lord of lords; when, all authority and dominion, all principality and power, being put under him, there shall in the whole earth exist only, as we should express it, one master and all men slaves, or, as he would express it, one fold and one shepherd.

[Pg 14]

CHAPTER III

Foundation of a Literature of Reconstruction, Serial and Scholastic—The Civiltá Cattolica: its Views on Education and on Church and State—Tarquini's Political Principles of Pope and King—Measures Preparatory to the Syllabus.

With the year 1850 was commenced a magazine, at the instance of the Jesuits, and under their direction, bearing the title Catholic Civilization (Civiltá Cattolica), in opposition to modern civilization. We may here say that the daily organ of the same complexion bears the title of Catholic Unity (Unitá Cattolica), in opposition to Italian unity. Above one hundred volumes of the Civiltá have been published; and it must ever be named in connexion with Pius IX as the intimate organ of his policy, and the most complete store of his published records. Perhaps its place in the history of literature is unique. Considering the number of books, serials, and journals, in different languages, of which it is the inspiring force, and considering the modifications it has already succeeded in bringing about in the ideas and even in the organization of the whole Catholic society, they can scarcely be charged with vain boasting who call it the most influential organ in the world. The Jesuit Fathers forming its editorial staff reside close to the Pope's palace, and work under his immediate direction. Dr. Friedrich, during the Vatican Council, told some bishops that if they would understand the Council, they must study it with the Civiltá in their hands. For our part, before reading that remark we had applied the same principle to the entire movement.

The leading idea of the Civiltá is expressed, says the article on the programme, in its title. Catholic Civilization is flag, device, and profession of faith.[10] The substance is civilization,[Pg 15] the quality Catholic. Civilization is not polish, but organization in community, under rule. Civilization, after the Catholic ideal, had continued steadily to grow up to the fifteenth century, but was broken in the sixteenth by Lutheranism; was again enfeebled in the seventeenth by Jansenism; yet again was it undermined in the eighteenth by Voltairianism, and now in the nineteenth it is lacerated by Socialism. The evil has actually entered Italy, and even heterodoxy itself threatens to invade the Peninsula. Heresy is, in fact, likely to become connected with that aspiration after national unity by which the people are misled. Almost everything having been overhauled in heterodox spirit, almost everything must be reconstituted from the foundation.[11] These words express the mission of the new periodical, and of the restored Papacy. They are the original announcement of a policy ever since pursued without flagging.

To reconstitute society according to the Catholic ideal is the single object set forth. "On the brink of social dissolution," the one necessity felt, pressed, reiterated, is that of re-establishing on the Catholic ideal the notion of civilization—that is of the civil system; and of leading back the movement of civilization to that Catholic ideal from which it had been departing for three centuries.[12]

The essential point in this fabric is "the idea of authority." But the idea of authority cannot be restored except by quickening it, and reinforcing it by the Catholic conception. When the divine authority was shaken, men would no longer hear of the human (i.e. when the Papacy was rejected, civil government fell into contempt). The Catholic ideal is idly reproached with absolutism. But, among Catholics, pure monarchy, if not limited by certain conventional checks, is tempered by a higher law, not abstract, but practical, active, and operative. Absolutism in the sense of despotism is the creation of Protestantism and Voltairianism, and if it may sit on the throne of a king, it is more frequently found in constitutional chambers or democratic assemblies.[13] Therefore the one sufficing remedy[Pg 16] is the restoration in ruler and subject of the notion of authority according to the Catholic ideal. For this the new organ calls for a salutary conspiracy, a holy crusade;[14] two phrases that mean all that has since taken place, and all that has yet to come.

The very first article of the Civiltá, after that upon the programme, is on education: "the question which holds all the future destinies of the European nations struggling within its ballot-boxes." With this appreciation of its theme, it takes ground which has since become familiar to Europe, and enunciates principles which have now frequently been reproduced in our own discussions; so that a slight sketch of its reasoning will not be without interest to English readers. The interest is increased by the fact that its aims have steadily gained ground in France. In England, some of them, if not recognized as principles, have been, to a considerable extent, practically embodied, as undetected principles are apt to be.

Beginning with the theme of Freedom of Instruction, it denounces the tyranny and monopoly of the University of France. Had not the spirit of Catholicism, it says, broken the chain, it would soon have become unlawful for one man to tell another the right road, unless he had a bachelor's degree, for doing so was a sort of instruction. The line properly limiting freedom of instruction it finds in the line which divides the truth from falsehood. They who demand liberty of instruction do so in order to teach the truth. But in excluding the teaching of lies, it may be even "necessary to protect children betrayed by the barbarous apathy of their parents."

The writer then asks, But who is to determine what is the lie? Governments? "Until a government can show itself infallible, it must renounce all pretensions to regulate instruction and opinion." The pretension on its part to do so is tyrannical, because interference here is trespassing on the sanctuary, where the truth alone bears rule.

The position that it belongs to a government to fix the limits of freedom of opinion is denounced as having originated[Pg 17] in the Reformation, as being Protestant, and, further, as being destitute of foundation. The Church is the moderator of instruction, precisely because she is the infallible moderator of opinions in all that relates to the moral order. Consequently there is in existence a competent, effectual, and revered tribunal. Then follow taunts at journals which complain of communal authorities for giving up their educational rights to the clergy. These are succeeded by jeers at such statesmen as doubt if the liberty of communal authorities extends so far as to give them the right of surrendering their liberty.

The objection is then faced, that liberty may be as justly claimed by the non-Catholic as by the Catholic. Of course, replies the Civiltá, the only case in which that question can become a practical one for Catholics is where they form the majority. Is it to be supposed that a majority shall be bound, for the sake of a minority "to pass a law opening all the pits of hell for its fellow-citizens?... With Catholics the liberty of dissidents cannot be a natural right."

The position taken by statesmen, that the Church is not infallible in politics and economy, and that therefore these subjects must be under the control of the State, is first laughed at. It reminds the writer of a musketeer who should say to his general, "I see that your artillery is of no avail against these Alps; let us open upon them with our rifles." After this comes the principle. The assertion that politics and economy ought to be under the control of the State rests on one or other of three errors: (1) Politics and economy do not belong to the moral sciences; or, (2) The moral sciences are not subject to moral laws; or, (3) The Church is not the authentic exponent of moral law. The first of these errors is refuted by every university in Europe, in all of which politics and economy are classed among the moral sciences. The second is a contradiction in terms. The third is a heresy in every Catholic ear.

It will help to a clear understanding of many expressions which must occur hereafter, if the reader, at this stage, will set before his mind's eye the scope of the three principles here asserted. Phillips, a modern lay doctor, quoted by the[Pg 18] humblest polemic and the mighty Civiltá, in his seven volumes on ecclesiastical law (Kirchenrecht), discusses the relations of Church and State at great length. He shows that the Church is supreme and the State subordinate, in all things that come under the divine laws. Holtgreven, a Catholic judge, and an opponent of the Falk laws, explains this clearly: "To the divine laws, in this sense, belong, not only the ten commandments, but also the canons of the Church, as the Council of Trent shows. The things subject to the divine laws include all such worldly things as are connected with morality."[15]

This much is conceded by the Civiltá, that, if danger to the public interests should arise from false teaching of any material science, the government may interfere, as it would in a case of adulteration of food. The Church is not infallible in material instruction.

The article, it will be seen, claims the right to take the teaching of the child out of the hand of the parent, and that of the subject out of the hand of the State.[16] The latter may mix itself up in the matter as to material things, not as to moral. Royal supremacy, in university, college, seminary, or primary school, must not be allowed. It has the twofold evil of setting the authority and responsibility of the parent for his child above that of the priest, and of setting the local authority of the national ruler above the all-embracing authority of the universal one. The State is not only welcome to appear in school, but ought to appear in its subordinate capacity, finding money, secular status, and instruction in material things. But in all that part of schooling which may be called education in the higher sense, of a father, a Christian, or a king, the State is not to have a word to say.

It would seem difficult to ask a community to do an action involving a more serious disregard of moral considerations than to find money and power for schools and colleges, and not have a word to say as to the principles taught in them. We are far from ascribing such a disregard of moral considerations to a devout Ultramontane. On the contrary, he is persuaded[Pg 19] that the State, in committing its money and authority to the Church, takes not only the highest human guarantee, but a truly divine one, for the protection of every moral interest. The motto of the article is a sentence intimating that, all over Europe, the question of the future must be the establishment of universities canonically instituted.[17]

In order to the restoration of ideas now undertaken, as preparing the way for the restoration of facts, it was a practical necessity to establish an invariable association between the two ideas of the only Judge of true and false, the only Arbiter of right and wrong, and the one holy Roman Church. This association could not be established so well by any arrangement as by making each school an arena on which every day the authority of both the parent and the State should be—not pranced upon, not even trampled upon, but serenely and devoutly walked over, by what M. Veuillot calls the crushing sandals of the monk.

Another article in the first volume of the Civiltá gives such expression to the principles which underlie the whole struggle ever since conducted, that some account of it will do more to put the reader in possession of certain of those principles than formal explanations. It is on the central question of the relations of Church and State; or, as the Civiltá puts it, of the separation of Church and State—a phrase which, like almost every other, has a different meaning in its pages from what it has with us. The following headings give an idea of the drift of the article: "6. The nation is a part of the Church." "7. The part ought to be subordinate to the whole." "8. Because the Church has authority." "9. The authority of jurisdiction."[18]

I believe in the holy Catholic Church, in the Apostles' Creed, is thus interpreted: "I believe that every Catholic individual and nation forms a part of the Catholic society, and that only by virtue of its being a part does it partake of the benefit of the whole, through being subordinated to the laws of the whole."

[Pg 20]

On the point of jurisdiction, the writer first unearths "the serpent," which is the notion that the Church may judge about sins, virtues, doctrines, rites, and such-like, but must not touch temporal jurisdiction. This serpent he proceeds to kill. First, he solemnly appeals to the faith of the reader. "Do you believe that the Church is infallible in dogmatic Bulls, at least, unless they are formally rejected by the episcopate?" After this, he resorts to pleasantry: "Come close to me, and I will tell it in your ear. The Bull of John XXII condemned John Gianduno and Marsilius of Padua as heretics, because they denied to the Church the right of punishing by corporal pains, and it declared that she could inflict pains even unto death.[19] But I tell you this in secret, solely that you may know what is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which you profess—doctrine put in practice through very many centuries, down to the last Council (Trent), which fulminated I know not how many penalties, and material ones, even against counts, marquises, princes, and emperors. Woe to us if they should hear us!" Thus jauntily did those who had only just been reinstated by foreign arms treat the neo-Catholic doctrine, or, as it has since been called, the Liberal Catholic one. "I tell you plainly," adds the writer, "that if the Church cannot rule her sons, even in material things, the Church is lost; at least, the Catholic Church. She might survive as that invisible Church which was discovered by Luther among the ruins of the middle ages, and, reconstructed as the amphitherium and palæotherium, were discovered in the geological strata, and reconstructed by Cuvier."

Addressing kings, the writer solemnly counsels them to bring[Pg 21] forth all their codes, and pass them under a careful examination. But the light by which such examination is to be conducted must be that "of pure Catholicism, to which all other legislation must be subordinated. Restore every article of your code, according to the articles of your creed, not only in what relates to the duties of subjects, but also in what would seem to diminish the rights of rulers. And that the Catholic influence, which modifies codes, may shine in all its fulness, let it not be ministers or legists, but bishops and the Pontiff, who shall minutely search into your legislation for every anti-Catholic element."

The theocratic Papal polity might have been almost intentionally framed to contrast with the first principles of the Mosaic theocratic polity. The latter, put in one word, seems to be this: God as the general Father is the great right-holder, and He identifies the rights of every creature with His own, identifying at the same time their welfare with His own glory. Therefore He leaves no creature to the care of a Vicar, no province to any departmental divinity. Every act done for the benefit of our fellow-creatures He reckons as a tribute to Himself. Every infringement of their rights He treats as an offence against Himself. Every man was taught to see, not an abstract principle, but a great Father standing beside the gleaning widow, the supperless hireling, the pauper forced to pawn, and having no second coat—was taught to hear this common Father saying for these to happier neighbours, "I am the Lord." Every man tempted to lie, cheat, steal, oppress, seduce, or strike, saw the same great Father rising up against him, and saying, "I am the Lord."

It was of the essence of this theocracy that all who held authority did so by and under a written law in the vulgar tongue. Of this law every father in his own house was made the guardian, and in it he was the responsible instructor of his children. Every prophet professing that he bore a fresh message was to be brought to the test of this written law. Those who were to apply the test were the men of the whole community. Every one who claimed to bear a special commission was bound[Pg 22] first to conform to the law, and secondly, to show signs of special divine power. It was a theocracy of direct divine government, not of government by a Vicar; a theocracy of written law, not of arbitrary will styling itself authority; a theocracy of private judgment, not of a veda shut up from the low caste, to be read and interpreted only by the twice-born Brahman. Finally, it was a theocracy in which whatever came from God became its own witness by benefits to God's children not to be mistaken, and obvious to all.

The statement made in the Civiltá as to the guidance under which the reactionary policy in Austria was devised, gives light upon the duties then engrossing nuncios and confessors at the various Courts where Papal influence was powerful. All that appeared to the world was, that at every one of those Courts a cold current of reaction set in and ran strong. The Jesuits took it for a tide, and the bark of St. Peter was to sail cheerily over all the shoals. But the Liberal Catholics were proportionably disquieted as to the prospects of the Church. The first days of Pius IX had fired them with hope that Rome might yet be fit to face three things of which she was shy—the Bible, History, and Freedom. But the advent of the Jesuits to power caused serious forebodings, which soon began to be realized. To quote the memorable words of Montalembert, "Who could have thought that the clergy, after crying out for liberty in Belgium, would turn round as they did in 1852, till we found them beating down all our liberties and privileges—in fact, all our ideas—as held in times preceding Napoleon III?"[20]

We now find that at the time when the Pontiff was using his clergy to help kings in taking away constitutional rights from their subjects, he was himself preparing to take from the kings what they indeed looked upon as rights, but what he regarded in the light of constitutional concessions, infringing the higher rights of their divinely appointed suzerain. When the Italian government took possession of the Collegio Romano, it was found that the Jesuits had left in the great library of the[Pg 23] establishment little belonging to the present pontificate. One pamphlet is of some significance. A manuscript note on the title-page proudly tells how his Holiness wished to have it circulated as widely as possible. It also adds that on February 1, 1853, when the fathers of the Collegio Romano stood before his Holiness, he singled out the author, Father Camillo Tarquini, in presence of the other Jesuits and of the Court, and addressed him thus: "Father Tarquini, I am delighted; bravo! well done! I confirm it, and confirm it with all my heart."[21] This was an early foretoken of the purple in which Tarquini died. He is the writer to whom Cardinal Manning appeals, as softening the doctrine of Bellarmine and Suarez to a temper fitter for our times. The pamphlet signalized by this display of favour aims at proving the wickedness of kings in subjecting the bulls, briefs, or any acts whatever of the Pope, to a placet, exequatur, or other form of royal assent, before recognizing them as having the force of law in their States. This is one form of the error of regalism.

The power of the Pontiff, argues Father Tarquini, is this—What he binds on earth is bound in heaven. But if the king, stepping in, says, To bind implies the force of law, and your acts shall not acquire the force of law without my placet, how then? Why, the Pontiff becomes the one really bound. The king refuses to allow the pontifical judgments to take effect of themselves. It is not with him "said on earth and done in heaven." His placet must intervene.

It is competent, indeed, he admits to the Pontiff, to grant a right of placet; but such a right, founded on the grace of a Pope, cannot be confounded with one inherent in the crown. We quote the following in full:—"You say that the placet is[Pg 24] a real right, demanded by justice, and essential to political government. The Church condemns it by a series of judgments, perhaps without parallel in her history, extending from her foundation down to Pius IX. She expressly defines it, with Leo X, Clement VII, Clement XI, and Benedict XIV, as opposed to all justice, as indecent, absurd, rash, scandalous, as insufferable depravity, and worthy of eternal pain. Therefore she punishes it with the greatest of penalties, the anathema.

"In this matter there is no middle course. You must either lay aside the mask of Catholicism, which no longer becomes you, and boldly avow that the Church has defined good as evil, justice as injustice, an inherent right of the crown as an absurdity and a wrong, and done so in a judgment perpetuated from her foundation to our own day; or you must, on the other hand, confess that you are in an error not to be tolerated."

Thus it seems that what with a Christian minister would only be a claim to announce the belief and the moral precepts which he found in the Holy Scriptures, becomes with the Roman Pontiff a claim to put his decree on any matter which he deems conducive to the good of "the Church" into the form of law, and to set it up without, or in spite of, but anyhow above, the national law, be it republican, royal, or imperial. This boundless pretension—for boundless it is—will often be found gently expressed as the right of the Pontiff to communicate with the faithful.

The writer then asks what, from his point of view, would seem to be a natural question. Would kings like the Pope to demand that his placet should be required before their laws came into force?[22] He replies that some of them have so far unlearned "Christian doctrine as to say that, in case the Pope did so, he would usurp sovereign rights in their States." But such a proposition is heretical, pronounced to be so by the Holy Office in 1654, with the approbation of Innocent X.[23] By virtue[Pg 25] of this, even our children know that the Church presided over and governed by the Vicar of Christ is a kingdom which has the ends of the earth for its bounds. Therefore it belongs to the Vicar of Christ to make laws in all parts of the world for her welfare and for her government.

Liberal Catholics trembled for the consequences to Church and State of Jesuit Court confessors and far-aiming but short-seeing plans. They knew that the devout Jesuit calls upon all to regard the Papal government as the model for the whole world; and that if statesmen and jurists could be replaced by Jesuits at the various Courts, a combination of plan and an unity of action might be secured everywhere for a great movement to establish the dominion of Christ in a higher degree than the Thirty Years' War did in Austria and Bohemia.

There is a point illustrated in this pamphlet which seems to enter into the English head more slowly than any other. We mean the conscientious view of a true Ultramontane as to what constitutes religious liberty, or violates it. Englishmen sometimes not only transfer their own views on this subject to Ultramontanes, but betray the feeling that they are generous in doing so. It is never generous, or even just, to ascribe views to a man which he religiously condemns. If the Englishman will clearly set before his mind the first postulate of the Ultramontane, that God has appointed a vicar upon earth, to whom He has committed all power, surely he will see that religious liberty must principally consist in the freedom of that vicar to do all which he conceives it to be in his province to do, and in the freedom of those who receive his commands to carry them out, exactly according to his intentions. If any king or nation limits his freedom to act and command, "the Pope becomes the one really bound." The Englishman may say that, on this principle, no guarantee is left for any liberty but that of the[Pg 26] Pontiff, or of those who represent authority derived from him. But that is precisely what the Ultramontane does not believe.

On the contrary, he holds that the highest guarantee for all legitimate liberty lies in the complete freedom of the Pontiff. No liberty can be legitimate that consists in exemption, or assumed exemption, from divine authority. And further, the authority of the Vicar of God, being exercised under unfailing guidance, is not liable to commit violations of any right.

We thus see begun the movement for the restoration of ideas, as preparatory to the restoration of facts. Ranke has traced the course of the "ecclesiastical restoration," which was rendered necessary by the damage inflicted on Rome by the Reformation, without being careful to mark the principles or to track the processes by which "restoration" was effected in Bohemia, Austria, Spain, Italy, and France. That restoration, however, had been real and momentous. A second restoration had taken place after the wreck of the French Revolution, when the Papacy had been smitten by its own sons. It was the pride of the clergy to cite the fact that the rulers of England and Prussia had co-operated in that restoration, as proof that the Papal throne was even in Protestant eyes the central point of order. Now a third restoration was to be effected—one which would do all that had been left undone by the other two. The Pope's throne was not only to be reared up again in Rome, but was to be gradually elevated to a spiritual supremacy equal to the highest claimed in former Bulls, and to a temporal supremacy as complete as when Hildebrand triumphed at Canossa.

The first of these restorations had been fought out with the weapons of the Inquisition and the war-plots of the Jesuits. The second had been fought out with the weapons of the Liberal Catholics, borrowed from the Reformation and the Modern State. When the Jesuits had pushed, not too far, but untimely far, they were for the day disowned; not, however, as inimical to the Church, but as hateful to the nations, and as, therefore, lowering the credit of the Church with the outside world. Now had come the moment when the Liberal Catholics,[Pg 27] having done their work, were in turn to be disowned; but on other grounds. They were to be cast out as children of the world, infected with principles subversive of the "kingdom of God," of that polity in which the priest of God is the king of men, and the affairs of an erring race are unerringly guided by consecrated hands.

[Pg 28]

CHAPTER IV

Measures preparatory to the Syllabus—Changes in Italy since 1846—Progress of Adverse Events—A Commination of Liberties—A Second Assembly of Bishops without Parliamentary Functions—The Curse on Italy—Origin of the phrase "A Free Church in a Free State"—Projected Universal Monarchy.

Being notoriously deficient in theological training, Pius IX was not unnaturally seized with a desire to reduce the rebel nations by raising contested doctrines to the rank of dogmas. When the reactionary movement in politics had attained its full momentum, he called an assembly of bishops, whose splendour, surrounding his throne, might restore to it some of the departed prestige. At the same time, summoning the bishops for consultation and for ceremonial purposes, but not at all for parliamentary ones, would be a secure step of progress in the absorption of the power of the collective episcopate into the Papacy. In the midst of two hundred prelates, as we have already seen, he proclaimed the Immaculate Conception, in 1854. As a display of absolute authority in the highest realm, that of dogma, this act did more to advance the proper ideas than an immensity of writing. We have already quoted the assertion that it crushed Gallicanism. But ideas were only stepping-stones to facts. Professor Michelis asserts that even during the gathering of 1854 an attempt was made in some large assembly of bishops to induce them to proclaim Papal infallibility as a Catholic dogma.[24]

The prelates, who, on their way to Rome in 1846, had looked with joy on the spectacle of unity, now found that spectacle slightly blemished. One heretic temple stood in Turin—a proof that after all the extirpations of the Waldenses,[Pg 29] a root had still lurked in the ground. This temple had no images, and had the Bible in mother-tongue. It bore outside, in words that any cowherd might read, if he could read at all, a verse of Jeremiah: "Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." And this was not only suffered, but done by the House of Savoy!

As the prelates went south, whispers might reach some of them that in Tuscany the police, now and then, discovered secret bands of Bible-readers, somewhat as in old times the Lollards were unearthed in England. The historical name of Guicciardini was implicated in the offence, and a number of vulgar people. Even at Rome, Luigi Desanctis, parish priest of St. Maria Maddalena, had abandoned as fair prospects as erudition, character, and favour could well give to an ecclesiastic. He had quietly withstood flattering and influential efforts to bring him back. First he had sheltered under the British flag; but, finding that the flag of Savoy really shed upon Italian soil the all but inconceivable right of freedom to worship God, he had taken refuge under it. He was now devoting his clear, keen, learned pen to teaching Italy the religion of Christ as he found it in the New Testament. Even in writing for Italians he found it needful to say that it was only by living in Rome, and by knowing Pope, Cardinals, and Curia, that they could come to a clear understanding of the religion of the city. The great cause of this difficulty he found in the three separate circles of doctrine in which that religion was wont to be taught, which he called (1) the official, (2) the theological, (3) the real.[25] The official doctrine was that for use with heretics, the doctrine presented by Bossuet and Wiseman; the theological doctrine was for use with men of culture; the real doctrine was for practical use among the people. The eloquent Barnabite, Gavazzi was now thundering against the Papacy. Nay, even the threshold of the Inquisition had been crossed by the force of Protestant unity. A priest, avowing heresy, who once[Pg 30] had held good preferment, had been seized after the French took the city. At the urgent instance of the Evangelical Alliance, General Baraguay d'Hilliers put on such hard pressure that even in sacred Rome a renegade priest walked out of the palace of the Holy Office a ransomed man.

The confidence that the Virgin would reward her new exaltation by corresponding exaltation of him who had procured it, was often expressed in language picturesque and ardent. But scarcely had the incense of the fresh offering cleared away when premonitory symptoms appeared of the storm rising again. Meantime, many Catholics became anxious when they found the Pope's favourite organ treating even such writers as Bellarmine, Suarez, and St. Thomas Aquinas, as too much inclined to Liberalism. Liverani, in referring to articles of this kind, says that Bellarmine had been "the author of the Night of St. Bartholomew," and he thinks that Italian Catholics in the nineteenth century might be allowed to be Liberals up to the standard of Bellarmine and Suarez.

In 1855, Piedmont, sending a force to the Crimea, took her place beside France and England. The next year, at the Congress of Paris, Cavour lifted up his voice among the representatives of Europe, and protested against foreign occupation in Italy. Mexico abolished the external tribunal of the Church, the ecclesiastical court; abolished tithes, offered protection to all of either sex who might choose to forsake their convents, and declared its resolution not to submit its acts to the supreme authority of the Apostolic See. Other nations of South America met the aggressive ecclesiastical movement by asserting the supremacy of civil law, even in matters directly ecclesiastical.[26] Three years later, the same hand which upheld the Pope in Rome took Lombardy from Austria, and gave it to Piedmont, in exchange for Savoy and Nice. Tuscany, Parma, and Modena banished their dukes; the Romagna cast off the Papal yoke; and all these,[Pg 31] uniting themselves to Piedmont, formed the kingdom of Italy.

These events were met, on the part of the Vatican, by more stringent denunciations of modern liberties. In the Civiltá these were inveighed against under the name of the principles of 1789. Liverani says (p. 160) that the Civiltá, in a Catechism of Liberty, hardly left a man the use of air and water. The article so alluded to gives what the writer of it calls a Litany, which ought to be repeated with the refrain, Good Lord, deliver us.[27]

"Liberty of conscience is a perverse opinion diffused by fraudulent endeavours of infidels.

"It is a corrupt fountain, a folly, a poisonous error.

"It is an injury to the Church and the State, vaunted with shameless impudence as becoming to religion.

"It is the liberty of error and the death of the soul.

"It is the abyss, the smoke whereof darkens the sun, and the locusts out of which lay waste the earth.

"The liberty of the press is an evil liberty, never sufficiently execrated or abhorred.

"It is an extravagance of doctrines, and a portentous monstrosity of errors, at which we are horrified."

It would be incorrect to suppose that these principles exclude all possibility of toleration in fact, though not by right. Toleration may be allowed, but never on principle; never but as the means of avoiding a greater evil. If more harm to the cause of religion would result, in any given country, from intolerance, than from toleration, the latter becomes lawful to the prince of the country. Otherwise it cannot be so. Even this qualified admission of a mere de facto toleration of heretics was not left uncontested. Priests of the Appolonare in Rome about this time, publicly maintained the thesis that "it will never be possible to imagine reasons which should induce a Catholic prince to grant liberty of worship to heretics." They maintained other theses, to the effect that unlimited freedom of worship, and civil rights, granted to heretics, laid the prince open to suspicion of heresy, apostasy, or atheism.[28][Pg 32] This doctrine, cries Liverani, would require the Catholic king of Saxony, with two millions of Protestant subjects, and fifty thousand Catholics, to exterminate the former by means of the latter. It is, he says, putting this alternative—the creed or the stake. Yet this debate was held in presence of the Pope's vicar, Cardinal Patrizi, and was noticed with commendation by the Civiltá.

Montalembert proposed that the voting in the Romagna on the question of annexation to Italy should take place under the eye of French troops. Liverani, a native of the Romagna, prelate as he was, replied, "If the French army left, without being replaced by a strong force to guard the lives of the clergy, at the end of a week all the priests and friars would be exterminated, so wild and savage is the public indignation against the government of these last years" (p. 46).

On March 26, 1860, in the famous and terrible Letters Apostolic Cum Catholica, all the actors and abettors of the territorial changes were placed under the greater excommunication. The Pope[29] expressly decreed that no hand but his own, or that of his successors, should have the power of releasing any one of the countless offenders from the ban, except in the article of death. He proceeds on what seems the fair principle that the dominion of the Pontiff, though in its own nature temporal, takes on a spiritual character because of its spiritual design, as giving to the Head of the whole Church a position independent of any one nation. Therefore, robbing him of it becomes a spiritual offence. If he is the representative of God upon earth, it is hard to see how rebellion against him can fail of being a spiritual offence. If he is not the representative of God upon earth, he has altogether misconceived his own position, and, like any other ruler, may be judged by his merits, not by his pretensions.

Before the publication of the Pope's speeches we were exposed to manifold interpretations of the spiritual import of this anathema. It was even possible that we might find[Pg 33] letters in the Times assuring us that the Church never curses. But on June 23, 1871, Pius IX uttered language which put his view of the spiritual import of his own action beyond cavil. He had the words afterwards reprinted, with the explanation that the allusion to Peter referred to the death of Ananias and Sapphira. "True," said the Pontiff, "I cannot, like St. Peter, hurl certain thunders which turn bodies to ashes; nevertheless, I can hurl thunders which turn souls to ashes. And I have done it by excommunicating all those who perpetrated the sacrilegious spoliation, or had a hand in it."[30]

But if to the spiritual eye of Pio Nono his curse had strewn Italy with the ashes of millions of blasted souls, his Bulls were, in a temporal point of view, as powerless as his dogmas. In the autumn of 1860, the Pontiff saw Umbria and the Marches wrested from him by the new kingdom, to which also the whole of the Neapolitan territory was added by Garibaldi. After this, Europe grew impatient of the French occupation of Italy, and that last stay of his temporal power became painfully insecure.

The Parliament in Turin proclaimed that Rome was the capital of Italy; and now we have to note the birth of one of those phrases which, becoming watchwards, grow into appreciable forces in history. Cavour, in a speech, alluding to Montalembert, said great authorities had shown that liberty might turn to the profit even of the Church. Montalembert addressed to him a reply, in October, 1860, in which he made use of the words, "A free Church in a free State." Five months later, when the Turin Parliament set up the claim to Rome, Cavour used the same phrase. Montalembert, with literary jealousy, publicly claimed it: "You have done me the unexpected honour of using the formula I employed in writing to you a few months ago." And, doubly to secure his patent right, as late as August, 1863, in a Catholic Congress at Malines, he declared that it was by the example of Belgium that he had been taught a formula that had now become[Pg 34] famous, "which has been stolen from us by a great offender." He printed his address under the title, "A Free Church in a Free State."[31]

The French father of the phrase lived to write what showed that he had employed it without having defined its terms in his own mind. Had its Italian foster-father, who repeated it in death, lived to govern with it, he would have learned, in the school of action, to select some one of the many interpretations which it invites, or else to discard it as a formula, applicable, indeed, to a Church proper, and a State proper, but incapable of application to a mixed institution like Romanism, which, however much of a Church, is still more of a State.

The loss of Rome, to which political symptoms now pointed as impending, was a calamity to be warded off by all the weapons of the Papacy, sacred and profane. A great assembly of prelates was projected, to surpass in splendour even that of 1854. It was to be equally well guarded against any parliamentary character. In June, 1862, three hundred bishops from all parts of the world were actually collected around their chief. The ceremonies during this assembly displayed a gorgeous pomp, which even Rome, accustomed since the days of the Emperors to government by spectacle, was fain to recognize as an effort, and a success in its kind, worthy of the historical stake in dispute. The ostensible object was the canonization of certain Japanese martyrs; but the real anxiety of the moment was so absorbing that the new constellation in the heavens seemed to rise only to rule and decide questions pending as to boundary lines on the earth.

In these turbulent and pitiless times, said the Pope, when the Church is pierced with so many wounds; when her rights, liberties, and doctrines are so miserably violated, especially in Italy, "we urgently desire to have new patrons in the presence of God," by whose prevailing prayers the Church, buffeted with such a horrible tempest, as well as civil society, may[Pg 35] obtain the much-longed-for repose.[32] The aid of the new patrons was that to which faith and hope pathetically turned, in the concluding prayer put up on Whit-Sunday by the Pontiff: "Regard Thy Church, now afflicted with such calamities: take not away Thy mercy from us; but for the sake of these Thy saints, and through their merits, cause Thy Church," etc., etc.[33]

Besides the influence to be exerted by the exalted Japanese on behalf of the temporal sovereignty, valuable results might attend a solemn declaration from the episcopate of the whole world. This would at all events silence priests who had dared to think amiss, and would affect not only the calculations of statesmen, but also the complexion of public opinion. The faith of Romanists in a display is, to all who have been trained not to take an impression for a reason, absolutely incomprehensible. Lamartine, in relating the perplexities of Mirabeau when the gusts of the Revolution had begun to appal even him, exactly pictures what is the outcome of their sensuous training. "He would save the monarchy by a royal proclamation and a ceremony to make the king popular."

A declaration was made by the assembled bishops with all possible gravity and force. The language chosen by Pope and prelates was the strongest to be found. They were not content with pledging themselves to the temporal dominion as a good, useful, helpful, or urgently desirable thing. Staking the future for the present, as well as the spiritual for the temporal, they declared that it was "necessary" in order to the exercise of the full pontifical authority over the whole Church. If this is so, there has been no proper exercise of authority over the whole Church since 1870, nor can there be any till the Pope again finds some few hundred thousand of Italians calling him king. If it is not so, the collective[Pg 36] hierarchy, and the Pope with them, erred in setting forth a doctrine, touching the Head of the Church, for the guidance of all mankind. The Pope himself not only said that the temporal power was necessary, but that it had been given by a matchless counsel of Providence. The reason he gives for its necessity is the stock one, that the Pope may not be a dependent of any prince, as if he had not been the helpless dependent of Napoleon III. The bishops, forgetting both this dependence and the sanguinary measures by which the temporal power was upheld, actually used such words as "noble, tranquil, and genial liberty."[34]

Besides their testimony to the necessity of the temporal power, the bishops put on record words well adapted to prepare the way for the dogma of Papal infallibility—words often afterwards recalled to those of them who opposed that dogma in 1870. "Thou art to us the teacher of sound doctrine, thou the centre of unity, thou the quenchless light of the nations, set up by divine wisdom. Thou art the rock, and the foundation of the Church herself, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. When thou speakest, we hear Peter; when thou dost decree, we yield obedience to Christ."[35]

But the new saints of 1862 did not turn the tide any more than the "Immaculate" of 1854 had done. Italy held together, though Cavour was gone. The effort of the two Catholic emperors to secure Mexico for the Church, by placing a monarch of approved principles on the throne, ended in a tragic failure. The grief felt everywhere at the fate of Maximilian of Hapsburg was intensified for Pius IX, because, as it is expressed by Professor Massi, the promises made to the Pope[Pg 37] by Maximilian, when he came to Rome before taking the reins of empire, "were to remain void."[36] Finally, in 1864, the Convention of September brought home to the Pope the fact that, unless the Virgin should work a miracle for him, he was to be abandoned by the foreign auxiliaries whose presence he hated, but the terror of whom was the only shade in which he could rest. Perhaps he remembered how soon after the foreign Emperor had held the Pope's bridle, the Italian Lambert called him "My Lord," as he would have done to any other baron, and drove him to hard straits.

It was in this position of affairs that the seers of the Vatican beheld all human institutions as if reduced by a cataclysm to a dark and roaring chaos. And on their principles chaos it was. Not only had kings and lawgivers withdrawn themselves from under the authority of the supreme tribunal, not only had civil courts been withdrawn from under the authority of the external tribunal, but almost all governments had ceased to enforce by law the attendance of their subjects on the internal tribunal of the Church which they thus degraded to the level of a voluntary confessional. In each of the three circles of all-embracing authority, therefore, order was now disrupted, and chaos had broken in. The seer could see but one remedy. Society must be reconstructed, and that upon the basis of one world-wide monarchy.

It is but slowly that minds accustomed to judge by ordinary standards learn to attach a precise meaning to such expressions as the above, in the language of the Vatican. Even after having learned how definite is the meaning, we do not soon begin to associate ideas of deliberate plan and serious expectation, with what would seem to be only dreams of the cloister. We therefore give a few clear sentences from Il Genio Cattolico, a publication praised by the authoritative Unitá Cattolica.[37] It describes the true ideal of the Papacy as being "an immense variety of languages, traditions, legislations, letters, com[Pg 38]merce, institutions, and alliances, under the moral and pacific empire of a single Father, who, with the sceptre of the word, upholds the equilibrium of the world. The Papacy is not, as German jurists call it, a State within the State, but is a cosmopolitan authority, the moderator of all States, the supreme and universal standard of law and justice. It is a world-wide monarchy, from which all other monarchies that would call themselves Christian derive life, order, and equilibrium."

Coupling this distinct conception of the appointed place of the Papacy in the human commonwealth with the equally distinct conviction that modern society is in ruins, the writer proceeds: "What is the remedy? The recognition of a common father, who shall teach subjects to obey as sons, and sovereigns to rule as fathers; a supreme judge, to declare and give sanctions to the rights of the one and the other. Without this, how can the want of balance in the conflicting forces be redressed?"

With views thus radical and all-comprehending did the Court of Pius IX proceed to build up, after a very ancient ideal, an empire over all peoples, nations, and languages, the test of which should be acceptance of the religious symbol set up by the autocrat. In the projected reconstruction the ultimate end, the restoration of facts, would always include these cardinal points. Every man and every woman in Christendom, and, by a due extension of "the kingdom of God," every man and every woman living, must be bound by law to appear, at the least annually, in the internal tribunal of the Church, the confessional. In order to this, every civil magistrate must be set in obvious and in practical subordination to the ecclesiastical magistrate or bishop, by the subjection of the civil court to the external tribunal of the Church, the ecclesiastical court. In order to this, every king or lawgiver must be set also in obvious and in practical subordination to the supreme tribunal of the church, the Pope, by a restored state of international law, giving to the Pontiff, or, to speak accurately, recognizing in the Pontiff what God had given to him, full power to deliver sentence as supreme[Pg 39] judge upon the rights of all kings, and upon the merits of every law.

We for the sake of clearness, say three tribunals, though technically they are only two, the Pope being in both supreme. Whether the subject enters by the foro externo or by the foro interno, by the ecclesiastical court or by the confessional, both in the ultimate instance conduct him to the one bar, that of the Judge of judges. The supreme tribunal is he, in all causes not purely material, in all causes whereinto enters any moral or religious consideration. Protestants would seem generally to imagine that the ecclesiastical court is a higher tribunal than the confessional. Not so. When a conflict arises between the sentence of the external tribunal and that of the internal, the suitor at the bar of God's kingdom is bound by the judgment of the internal tribunal![38]

In Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, where the only symbol of any tribunal is a rickety chair standing on an earthen floor full of holes, the priest of God has no sooner put on robe and stole than "the tribunal" is as truly constituted as when in the palace of Charles V sat Domenico Soto with the imperial penitent kneeling before him, and said, "So far you have confessed the sins of Charles, now[Pg 40] confess those of the Emperor." In that tribunal has the peasant bride to learn, and has the Queen to learn, that not the husband is the head of the woman, but the priest of God. In that tribunal has the shoeless Connaught child and has the imperial prince to learn that not the parents are the head of the children, but the priest of God. In that tribunal has the debtor and has the creditor, the executor and the legatee to learn that not the law of the civil bench obliges, but the law pronounced by the priest of God. In that tribunal have all these to learn that not even the law which falls from the ecclesiastical judge in the external tribunal is to be taken, but that which in the internal tribunal, in holy secrecy, between the conscience alone and the judge alone, falls with full force of binding and of loosing from the lips of the priest of God. So in the other, the external tribunal, has every citizen to learn, and every public servant, that not the magistrate is the head of the town, and not the chief magistrate is the head of the city, but that the bishop is head of both one and the other, for he is the head of the priests of God. Finally, at the supreme bar have the princes, the governors and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to learn that not the president, not the grand duke, not the king, not the emperor, is the head of the nation, but the thrice-crowned King of kings, the Great High Priest of God.

This kingdom, it is held, with some stretching of the facts, did in the Ages of Faith prevail, and it is to be restored.

The restoration of facts could not be effected without a foregoing restoration of the idea of Hildebrand. Constantine had founded a State Church. Leo III, with Charlemagne, had founded what Mr. Bryce accurately describes as a Catholic State, with the Pope as spiritual and the Emperor as temporal head. Cardinal Manning points out that in this Mr. Bryce makes the holy Roman Empire a two-headed monster.[39] Nevertheless Mr. Bryce gives the true human history, though doubtless Cardinal Manning, following Boniface VIII, gives[Pg 41] the correct Papal doctrine. According to that doctrine, the dualism of a double-headed State amounted to a sort of Manicheism. History, which is guilty of tainting many with one heresy or another, must bear the fault of Mr. Bryce's Manicheism. But Hildebrand would abolish all dualism. The whole world must have one head. Constantine's idea of a State Church had its merit of unity, but it was unity by perversion of rights. The true idea was that of a Church State, embracing the whole world, and placing all mankind as one fold under one shepherd. This true idea was to be restored.

We shall in its place, be taught how we err in calling power over temporal affairs temporal power. More accurately, does Cardinal Manning speak of "the supreme judicial power of the Church in temporal things."[40] He speaks of "the indirect spiritual power of the Church over the temporal State,"[41] thus showing the error of the notion that spiritual power means only power over spiritual affairs. He speaks of "the Christian jurisprudence in which the Roman Pontiff was recognized as the Supreme Judge of Princes and People, with a twofold coercion, spiritual by his own authority, and temporal by the secular arm."[42]

The turn of phraseology in the last sentence is probably not undesigned. Had it been employed by a Protestant, Ultramontanes, if writing in Italy, would have cried out, Ignorance and inaccuracy! Does the Cardinal mean that the authority whereby the Pope through the secular arm applies temporal coercion is not his own authority? No, assuredly. Yet he leaves us in a position to slip into some such idea. In such coercion as that of which he speaks it is not that the secular power acts of its own authority, but that it acts with its own arm, but with the Pope's authority. The interesting doctrine of the Brahman as sprung from the Creator's head, and the King-caste as sprung from his arm, reappears in the Papal system, in which the priest anointed on the head and the prince anointed on the arm symbolize respectively the authority[Pg 42] that gives law and the force that carries it out.[43] But Cardinal Manning's definition of Christian jurisprudence as that wherein the Pope is recognized as supreme Judge of Prince and People is not only strict, but it also explains a whole set of terms—Christian government, Christian law, Christian order, Christian civilization, and so forth.

It was obvious that to effect in Europe such a restoration as these claims implied, a lengthened preparation of ideas must go before the restoration of facts; and that restoration of ideas it was which we now see undertaken.

[Pg 43]

CHAPTER V

The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864—Character of the Propositions condemned—Disabilities of the State—Powers of the Church.

To ordinary readers the Syllabus would rather appear to be a destructive instrument than a constructive one. Its authorized expounders, however, with remarkable unanimity, treat it as the foundation for the enduring fabric of reconstructed society. Its form accounts for the first impression on the part of the outside world. It is a series of condemned propositions, drawn from official and authoritative utterances of Pius IX—a syllabus or collection of errors, condemned in judgments pronounced by him as supreme judge of Christendom. These, taken collectively, form a politico-ecclesiastical system.

The eighty propositions range over most subjects. As all stand under the head of condemned errors, each proposition is, logically, to be read with the prefix, "We reprove and condemn the following proposition." Some of these sentences express the beliefs of infidels, and some those of all Christians but Romanists; some the crudest notions of socialists, and some the fundamental principles of free States, or the maxims of all thriving communities; some the crotchets of obscure theorists in philosophy and ethics, and some the postulates of all free science. These heterogeneous beliefs and disbeliefs are strung together and delivered over, before the universe, to eternal anathema.

Passing from abstract to concrete, embodiments of evil are condemned, whether the body is a Church, a Bible Society, a Freemasons' lodge, a pack of communists, or even such clan[Pg 44]destine gangs as were known in Christendom only to the territory of the Pope and his favourite Italian princes.

Perhaps the eventual importance of this manifesto was, at the time, exaggerated at the Vatican, and is exaggerated even yet. "In this century," says the Genio Cattolico, already quoted, "rises up the sublime and gigantic figure of Pius IX, another Hildebrand. He is charged by divine Providence with the erection in our day of a new edifice upon the débris of the religious and political revolution, as in former times Gregory VII was commissioned to reconstruct a similar edifice upon the scattered remains of tyranny. Gregory had his Dicta; Pius IX has his Syllabus."

The Civiltá Cattolica has never ceased to glorify the Syllabus. A periodical, expressly devoted to expounding and commending it to the Germans, and making it the basis of a new social condition in that country, was commenced at a Jesuit monastery near Bonn, under the title of Stimmen aus Maria Laach. Catholic journals spoke of the universal scope and pregnant consequences of the Syllabus in terms at which men of the world were more inclined to smile than to take warning. The views taken of the document by learned Catholics not of the Ultramontane school are briefly put by Michelis: "Constitutional freedom, equality before the law, liberty of the Press, all the foundations of modern civilization, were all at once pronounced to be hostile to the Catholic faith."[44] Hints were not wanting that it might introduce a conflict which would rage through centuries, and perhaps leave nothing standing but the Church. Still, for the time, politicians were rather annoyed than alarmed, and perhaps no Protestant statesman thought the matter serious enough to feel even annoyance.

Protestant statesmen were still somewhat in the state of mind expressed by Ranke: "What is there that can now make the history of the Papacy interesting and important to us? Not its peculiar relation to us, which can no longer affect us in any material point; nor the anxiety or dread which it can inspire.[Pg 45] The times in which we had anything to fear are over; we are conscious of our perfect security. The papacy can inspire us with no other interest than what arises from its historical development and its former influence." This prognostic, the shortsightedness of which the Germans have been painfully taught, obviously sprang out of a confusion of ideas, expressed immediately afterwards, where Ranke identifies changing professions and claims diplomatically presented with fixed maxims, with objects and claims founded on cherished dogma, and felt to be inalienable. As to the Papacy, Ranke says, "Complete metamorphoses have taken place in its maxims, objects, and claims."[45]

In contrast with the indifference founded on this supposed change was the view of the Civiltá in surveying the events of 1864. The year had been, according to it, one marked by that silent preparation of ideas which brings around great events. To the unobserving this preparation was unseen; but the process was going on and the issue certain. Casting a glance around the world, the Civiltá showed that everywhere what it calls the revolution, what we call representative government, was becoming ruinous, and the old Catholic ideal of government regaining its place in the mind of the thoughtful. In Belgium, it had come to that pass that an important paper declared that the tyranny of a majority was worse than that of an autocrat. By a manifest Providence, that immense Babylon the United States, founded on the principles of the revolution, was broken up and undone. The new Mexican empire had all the more promise of stability, as it would retain, at least in part, Catholic principles.

This historical article proceeded to say that the greatest merit of the past year lay—

[Pg 46]

In the highly important pontifical documents with which it had been so solemnly closed. The Encyclical of his Holiness Pius IX of December 8, and the Syllabus accompanying it, speak clearly enough of themselves, and need not our comments. Those exceedingly grave utterances of pontifical wisdom and fortitude are already perused in every tongue spoken by Catholics, that is, by the civilized world. Nor do Catholics alone read them; even Liberals do so too. And already we begin to hear a distant echo of the fear and wrath felt by the Liberals. They, who themselves change moment by moment, cannot understand that the Church should never change, in her principles or in her doctrine. They, who would conciliate everything—and, when they can do no more, conciliate fact with law—by the stupid word fait accompli, cannot be at peace, because the Church will not be reconciled to impiety and absurdity. They do not believe with divine faith in the potency of the pontifical word; but they do believe by an instinct of terror, as the devils also believe and tremble. Hence the stream of filth now vainly flowing against those documents from the Italian and foreign journals. The Liberals tremble at this warning, and cannot restrain their vexation, because so many hypocritical efforts to mask their Liberalism under Catholicism are at last brought to nought. They are now compelled to lay aside the mask more and more. No longer can they deceive the simple. They must now declare themselves open enemies of the Church and of her definitions.[46]

Though the Syllabus is not even in profession a proclamation of the glory of Christ, or of the Christian verities, or of the mission of the Church to turn sinners from their sins to God, but is formally a charter of ecclesiastical dominion over civil society, the first fourteen of its eighty propositions are named as if drawn from the domain of philosophy and theology. They, however, lay the doctrinal basis for the political claims that follow.

The fifth proposition illustrates the difficulty of judging of the practice of the Church of Rome by her theory, or vice versa. She condemns the following: "That divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continuous and indefinite progress, which corresponds to the progress of human reason." Persons not of her own communion would say that, except for the last clause, this might express the ground on which the[Pg 47] fabric of Roman doctrine, properly so called, is built. Believing too much almost always springs from believing too little. He who believes enough about one God does not want assistant divinities. He who believes enough about one Mediator does not want to multiply the number. He who believes enough about one revelation does not want new revelations. Both the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican keep up the theory of only developing revelation. Practically their proceedings are pervaded with this principle, "That divine revelation is subject to continuous and indefinite progress." The popular effect of this is that new quasi-revelations are of frequent occurrence.[47]

It is, however, at the fifteenth proposition that the framers of the Syllabus emerge into their natural element. In it the opinion condemned is that every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which he may esteem true, following the light of reason. This, with the few other propositions under the head of Indifferentism and Latitudinarianism, prepare the way for a section, in which communism, clandestine societies, and Bible societies are bound into one bundle. This again introduces the two great sections, that on the Church, and that on the State. These together comprise thirty-seven propositions. A section on ethics and one on marriage follow. Marriage is treated not at all in respect to the morals of wedded life, or to the sanctities of the connubial and parental relation, but in respect to those questions which affect ecclesiastical authority and its relation to the civil. The concluding sections treat of the temporal sovereignty, and of modern Liberalism.

Who would look for Liberalism under the improbable heading of Naturalism? yet both the Civiltá and the Stimmen, proceeding on lines laid down by Bishop Pie of Poictiers, elaborately showed how the fundamental heresy of all those condemned was Naturalism, because, viewed in the light of the[Pg 48] Encyclical, all those errors converged in the "denial of the supernatural character of the Church."

Under the section treating of the Church, the first proposition affirms the important principle as to the Church being a perfect society. Yet this is put into a sentence containing explicitly or implicitly a number of propositions, some negative, some affirmative, and nearly all of great ambiguity. The error condemned is, "The Church is not a true and perfect society completely free, nor is she invested with rights proper to herself and permanent, conferred by her divine Founder; but it belongs to the civil power to define the rights of the Church, and the limits within which those rights are to be exercised" (prop. 19). This, be it remembered, is the proposition condemned. Keeping in view the ambiguity of the several predicates, the following points are to be noted—1. The Church is a perfect society. 2. The Church is completely free. 3. The Church has the direct authority of Christ for her rights. 4. The State cannot define the rights of the Church. 5. The State cannot even limit the exercise of those rights.

The broad denial of the right of the State to define or limit the rights of the Church, without distinction, is meant to cover, and, to Vaticanists, does cover, the right of the Church to define the limits of her own authority as to its domain and as to its exercise, and consequently the right to define the limits of the authority of the State, both as to its sphere and its exercise.

Yet, what is, at first sight, simpler to superficial readers than denying the right of the State to define the rights of a Church? It is a right of a Church to believe, to pray, to worship, and to preach. Is the State to define such rights? It is a right claimed by one Church to pray any day to "new patrons," whom, as Moses said, "Thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers"; yet is the State to assume the function of defining such rights? But one Church also claims the right of employing mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries to force a few millions of men of a fine race, in a fine country, to submit to her chief pastor as their king. She also claims the right to set her priests,[Pg 49] in any country, before the princes of the nation; and the right, not merely to ask for an alteration of the law of the land, but to declare it void—the right even to tell subjects when and where they may lawfully break law.[48] Now, both classes of claims are covered by the one word "rights," and the State is confidently warned off from a fort, or from the pamphlet of a seditious bishop, as if that ground was lawful Church ground; indeed, as if it was holy, like the shrines of faith and worship sanctified by our Lord and His apostles.

Father Bucceroni may be taken as fairly conveying the whole effect of the Syllabus on the relations of the State to the Church, when he says that "Catholic civil society is bound to yield to the Church, even in temporal affairs, if the advancement of a spiritual end calls for it"; and "religion should be so positively protected that the judgments of the Church should never be obstructed."

In resenting the prohibition of Napoleon III to promulgate the Syllabus in France, the Civiltá spoke thus of the error which misled politicians—

It proceeds from the belief that it is the civil authority which permits the Church to exercise within its territory her jurisdiction over the faithful. Nothing is more false. The faithful, wherever found, are subject to the Church by the will of Christ, and not by the will of the State. They must necessarily be governed by two authorities, by the civil and the ecclesiastical, each freely acting within its proper circle; yet the first in subordination to the second, as the interests of the body are subordinate to those of the soul. The Christian people, to whatever nation they belong, be they Italians, Germans, or French, if subjects of the Emperor as to things temporal, are also subjects of the Pope as to things spiritual, and more of the Pope than of the Emperor.

Laughing at M. Langlais, who in the French Courts argued[Pg 50] that the Pope in treating of the very foundations of political institutions had gone beyond his proper sphere, that of faith and morals, the Civiltá said—

According to our weak way of thinking, the legitimate argument would have run thus: The Pope has a right to give a decision only within the moral order: the Pope has given a decision as to such and such propositions; therefore those propositions belong to the moral order.[49]

In reading the following abstract it is to be remembered that we aim not at giving a complete but a summary view of the effect of the Syllabus on the relations of Church and State, and that we do not necessarily disapprove of each separate claim specified. Of course neither the disabilities of the State nor the powers of the Church here indicated are embodied in the existing institutions of any country. They are only the disabilities on the one part, and the powers on the other, which would be embodied in the institutions of every country did the tribunal of the Pope acquire the supremacy which it claims. We need hardly remind careful readers that denying a proposition does not necessarily mean asserting its contrary. But it does at least imply asserting its contradictory. Schrader indeed says that it is the contradictory of the condemned proposition that is to be maintained. But his own counter-propositions do not adhere to that rule. What they assert is sometimes the contrary of the condemned proposition. To explain these technical terms—One asserts that all Englishmen are shopkeepers. You deny it. That denial does not pledge you to assert that no Englishman is a shopkeeper; which proposition is the contrary of the other. But it does pledge you at least to assert that some Englishmen are not shopkeepers; which proposition is the contradictory. Two contraries may be both false; of two contradictories one must be false and the other true.

[Pg 51]

SUMMARY OF POINTS ASSUMED IN THE SYLLABUS AS TO THE DISABILITIES OF THE STATE, AND THE RIGHTS AND POWERS OF THE CHURCH
Disabilities of the State

(N.B.—The numbers attached to the respective propositions indicate the Articles of the Syllabus in which they are contained.)

The State has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true. (15.)

It has not the right to define the rights of the Church, nor to define the limits within which she is to exercise those rights. (19.)

It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall require the permission of the civil power in order to the exercise of its authority. (20.)

It has not the right to treat as an excess of power, or as usurping the rights of princes, anything that the Roman Pontiffs or Œcumenical Councils have done. (23.)

It has not the right to deny to the Church the use of force, or to deny to her the possession of either a direct or an indirect temporal power. (24.)

It has not the right to revoke any temporal power found in the possession of bishops as if it had been granted to them by the State. (25.)

It has not the right to exclude the Pontiff or clergy from all dominion over temporal affairs. (27.)

It has not the right to prevent bishops from publishing the Letters Apostolic of the Pope, without its sanction. (28.)

It has not the right of treating the immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons as if it were a privilege arising out of civil law. (30.)

It has not the right, without consent of the Pope, of abolishing ecclesiastical courts for temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, to which the clergy are parties. (31.)

It has not the right of abolishing the personal immunity of the clergy and students for the priesthood from military service.[50] (32.)

It has not the right to adopt the conclusions of a National Church Council, unless confirmed by the Pope. (36.)

It has not the right of establishing a National Church separate from the Pope. (37.)

[Pg 52]

It has not the right of asserting itself to be the fountain of all rights; or of asserting a jurisdiction not limited by any other jurisdiction, say that of the Pope. (39.) N.B.—The absence of any distinction between legal rights, of which the State alone is the fountain, and natural rights, of which the laws that create legal rights are but the recognition, is characteristic and pervasive.

It has not the right even of an indirect or negative power over "religious affairs." (41.)

It has not the right of exequatur, nor yet that of allowing an appeal from an ecclesiastical court to a civil one. (41.)

It has not the right of asserting the supremacy of its own laws when they come into conflict with ecclesiastical law. (42.)

It has not the right of rescinding or annulling concordats or grants of immunity agreed upon by the Pope, without his consent. (43.)

It has not the right to interfere in "matters pertaining to" religion, morals, or spiritual government. (44.)

It has not the right to judge any instruction which may be issued by pastors of the Church for the guidance of consciences. (44.)

It has not the right to the entire direction of public schools. (45.)

It has not the right of requiring that the plan of studies in clerical seminaries shall be submitted to it. (46.)

It has not the right to present bishops, or to depose them, or to found sees. (50, 51.)

It has not the right to interfere with the taking of monastic vows by its subjects of either sex, or to fix any limit to the age at which it may be done. (52.)

It has not the right to assist subjects who wish to abandon monasteries or convents. (53.)

It has not the right to abolish monasteries or convents. (53.)

It has not the right of determining questions of jurisdiction as between itself and the ecclesiastical authority. (54.)

It has not the right to separate itself from the Church. (55.)

It has not the right to provide for the study of philosophy, or moral science, or civil law eluding the ecclesiastical authority (57). N.B.—Moral science includes politics and economy.

It has not the right to proclaim or to observe the principle of non-intervention. (62.)

It has not the right to declare the marriage contract separable from the sacrament of marriage. (66.)

It has not the right to sanction divorce in any case. (67.)

It has not the right to prevent the Church from setting up impediments which invalidate marriage. It has no right to set up such[Pg 53] impediments itself. It has no right to abolish such impediments already existing. (67.)

It has not the right to uphold any marriage solemnized otherwise than according to the form prescribed by the Council of Trent, even if solemnized according to a form sanctioned by the civil law. (71.)

It has not the right to recognize any marriage between Christians as valid, unless the Sacrament is included. (73.)

It has not the right to declare that matrimonial causes, or those arising out of betrothals, belong by their nature to the civil jurisdiction. (74.)

Rights and Powers of the Church

N.B.—In many cases, the propositions under this head show the powers of the Church directly corresponding to the disabilities of the State expressed under the previous head.

She has the right to interfere with the study of philosophy, and it is not her duty to tolerate errors in it, or to leave it to correct itself. (11.)

She has the right to require the State not to leave every man free to profess his own religion. (15.)

She has the right to be perfectly free. She has the right to define her own rights, and to define the limits within which they are to be exercised. (19.)

She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or consent of the State. (20.)

She has the right to bind Catholic teachers and authors, even in matters additional to those which may have been decreed as articles of belief binding on all. (22.)

She has the right of requiring it to be believed by all that no Pope ever exceeded the bounds of his power; also that no Œcumenical Council ever did so, and further, that neither the one nor the other ever usurped the rights of princes. (23.)

She has the right to employ force. (24.)

She has the right to maintain that whatever temporal power is found in the hands of a bishop, is not beyond what is inherent in his office, and has not come from the State, and therefore is not liable to be resumed by it. (25.)

She has the right to claim dominion in temporal things for the clergy and the Pope. (27.)

She has the right to make bishops promulge the Pope's decrees without consent of their rulers. (28.)

She has the right to require it to be believed of all, that the[Pg 54] immunity of the Church, and of ecclesiastical persons, did not arise out of civil law. (30.)

She has the right to require that temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, to which clergymen are parties, should be tried by ecclesiastical tribunals. (31.)

She has the right to alter the conclusions of a National Church Council, and to reject the claim of the Government of the country to have the matter decided in the terms adopted by such National Council. (36.)

She has the right to prevent the foundation of any National Church, not subject to the authority of the Roman Pontiff. (37.)

She has the right to reject any claim on the part of the State to either a direct and positive or an indirect and negative power in religious affairs, and more especially when the State is ruled by an unbelieving prince. (41.)

She has the right to reject the claim of the State to exercise a power of exequatur, or to allow appeals from ecclesiastical to civil tribunals. (41.)

She has the right to exclude the civil power from all interference in "matters which appertain to" religion, morals, and spiritual government. Hence she has the right of excluding it from pronouncing any judgment on instructions which may be issued by any pastor of the Church for the guidance of conscience. (44.)

She has the right to deprive the civil authority of the entire government of public schools. (45.)

She has the right to refuse to show the plan of study in clerical seminaries to civil authorities. (46.)

She has the right to fix the age for taking monastic vows both for men and women, irrespective of the civil authority. (52.)

She has the right to uphold the laws of religious orders against the civil authority; the right to deprive the latter of power to aid any who, after having taken vows, should seek to escape from monasteries or nunneries; and the right to prevent it from taking the houses, churches, or funds of religious orders under secular management. (53.)

She has the right of holding kings and princes in subjection to her jurisdiction, and of denying that their authority is superior to her own in determining questions of jurisdiction. (54.)

She has the right of perpetuating the union of Church and State. (55.)

She has the right of subjecting the study of philosophy, moral science, and civil law, to ecclesiastical authority. (56.)

She has the right of enjoining a policy of intervention. (62.)

[Pg 55]

She has the right to require the sacrament of marriage as essential to every contract of marriage. (62.)

She has the right to deprive the civil authority of power to sanction divorce in any case. (67.)

She has the right to enact impediments which invalidate marriage, the right to prevent the State from doing so, also the right to prevent it from annulling such impediments when existing. (68.)

She has the right to require all to receive the Canons of Trent as of dogmatical authority, namely, those Canons which anathematize such as deny her the power of setting up impediments which invalidate marriage. (70.)

She has the right of treating all marriages which are not solemnized according to the form of the Council of Trent as invalid, even those solemnized according to a form prescribed by the civil law. (71.)

She has the right of annulling all marriages among Christians solemnized only by civil contract. (73.)

She has the right of judging all matrimonial causes, and those arising out of betrothals, in ecclesiastical courts. (74.)

She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all others. (77.)

She has the right to prevent the State from granting the public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating into it. (78.)

She has the power of requiring the State not to permit free expression of opinion. (79.)

The importance of questions affecting marriage and betrothal is threefold. (1) Immense revenues accrue to the Court and bureaucracy of Rome from the system of dispensations for marrying within the degrees forbidden in any one of the three separate scales of consanguinity, affinity, or spiritual affinity, i.e., affinity contracted by sponsorship at baptism or confirmation. (2) The grant, every five years, of a Quinquennial Faculty to the bishop to issue such dispensations as affect those distant degrees within which dispensations do not pay a tax, or to the poor who cannot pay, holds the bishop in perpetual dependence on the Curia. (3) The whole system of impediments and dispensations subserves the end of extending the control of the priesthood over domestic life through the reluctance felt in families at the time of a marriage, as at that of a death, to cause scandal by a difference with "the clergy."

[Pg 56]

Phillips says (ii. 639) that in modern times the union of Church and State is frequently compared to wedlock—not an inapt figure, but one calling for care lest it be taken in a wrong sense. "That would be the case if in this union the female partner was taken for the Church, and the male partner for the State. If we employ this simile, we must think of the relative positions as just reversed." This seems reasonable. The legal position of a married woman, a feme covert, would appear not ill to correspond with that of a State bound to the husband, who calls himself a mother.

[Pg 57]

CHAPTER VI

The Secret Memoranda of the Cardinals, February 1865.

The Cardinals who, in the beginning of December, were commanded to prepare notes on the expediency of holding a Council, did not hurry, but by the beginning of February fifteen such notes were in the hands of the Pope. Their Eminences discussed the subject under four heads: 1. The present condition of the world; 2. The desirableness or otherwise of resorting to the ultimate remedy of a General Council; 3. The difficulties in the way of holding one, and the means of overcoming them; 4. The subjects of which a Council might treat.

The most eminent consulters, or, as our historian loves to call them, the purpled (i porporati), showed how the present age was remarkable for progress in invention. This formed its favourable side. But then such progress served only temporal ends. The "Christian government of the world," as it existed in former ages, had given place to a system based on the principle that society, as such, had nothing to do with God. The points in the sad spectacle of this "social apostasy," which most distressed the Cardinals, were as follows—Education was withdrawn from the supreme vigilance of the Catholic Church, and consequently ran into manifold errors; the doctrines of naturalism, rationalism, and various forms of pantheism prevailed, from which sprang socialism and communism.

Coming to political affairs, some of the writers mourned over the prevalence of revolutionary principles in general, some over freedom of worship and of the Press in particular, and some over the tyranny of the State, which controlled education and charitable institutions—thus appropriating[Pg 58] to itself all the social forces. Some, again, lamented the violation of the rights of the Church in regard to laws affecting marriage, to those on the holding of land, to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, to the religious orders, and similar topics.

The practice of magnetism, clairvoyance, and spiritualism is deplored by their Eminences as one great plague and shame of our epoch. Freemasonry, viewed "in its true aspect," not as a benevolent association, but as an institution having for its ultimate aim the erection of a pretended church universal of humanity on the ruins of all religion, is said by several of the consulters to be the arm which carries the modern theories into practice, and therefore is viewed as one of the most potent enemies of the Church.

The next point noted is the influence exerted even upon Catholic teaching by the Reformation and by rationalism. It is shown that in philosophy, as taught in some countries, the ancient system of the schools had been set aside, and, as all sciences are affected by philosophy, it not unfrequently occurred that authors and professors attacked the pure doctrines of the faith. Some of them even evinced a disposition to regard Rome as being ignorant of the relations of Catholic science to heretical and rationalistic science, or, at least, as not appreciating the necessities arising out of such relations. Nay, they even displayed some unreadiness in submitting to her authority.

On the second point, that of the desirableness of holding a Council, nearly all the Cardinals were agreed. "In the present confusion of principles and systems, the whole episcopate assembled in Council, pointing out the way of eternal salvation to nations and sovereigns, and also the true relation between the natural order and the supernatural order, with the rights and duties of governors and governed, would be a luminous beacon scattering the darkness that covers the world. Perhaps in the presence of such a spectacle, heretical and schismatical societies would lay aside old prejudices, and would be drawn to a reunion."

However, the unanimity of the Cardinals was not complete.[Pg 59] One advised that the calling of a General Council should be reserved for times when some great difference within the Church demanded a settlement. A second thought that the delicacy of some of the points to be handled, and the want of that external support which the Church formerly possessed, outweighed any prospect of advantage. A third could not pronounce between advantages and disadvantages, but gladly left the decision with the Sovereign Pontiff, whom God always assisted with special light.

Cecconi's statement as to the general agreement of the Cardinals appears to clash with that made by persons in Rome, who ought to be well informed, and who affirm that, at first nearly all the Cardinals were opposed to the Pope's desire, and only yielded to his ungovernable longing to have his own infallibility proclaimed. Lord Acton says the Cardinals gave their counsel against the project, and that the Pope proceeded heedless of their opposition.[51] Both statements may be correct; for even if the Cardinals had opposed the project when informally talked about, they might yield when the official initiative taken by their wilful sovereign convinced them that it was to be. One of the counsellors of Ali, the fourth caliph, when rebuked by Abdullah Abbas for giving bad advice in contradiction to good, previously given and rejected, replied, "When a person, either through folly or obstinacy, is found to reject counsels which are obviously salutary, he must expect to receive counsels of a complexion precisely the reverse."

On the third point, namely, that of the difficulties in the way of holding a Council, the Cardinals held that great prudence would be required. The decrees of the Council would be received with indifference by the ungodly and the worldly, or would be made the pretext for new trespasses against the Church. Then, as to governments, would they permit the bishops to attend? Would they not prohibit the execution in their territories of decrees not conformed to the interests of those who held the power of the sword? Again, what would be the use of new canons if the civil power would not further[Pg 60] the execution of them, or would even thwart it? And besides all this, the political horizon was clouded, and the Council might be interrupted. So far for external difficulties.

As to internal ones, points noted were, the long absence of the bishops from their flocks, the risk of dissensions in the Council, and of consequent scandal—a risk which appeared the greater as the thorny character of some of the questions to be treated was considered. The Cardinals also felt that there was some danger that a desire might arise on the part of the bishops to extend their own privileges, already too great, so much so as even to be hurtful to the practical uniformity of ecclesiastical government, as well as to the firmness of ecclesiastical discipline, and to the union of the bishops with the head of the Church.

On the most important point of all, the subjects with which the Council should deal, the summary of the notes given by Cecconi is so meagre as to suggest the idea either that the views of their Eminences must have been crude, or that they did not care to put on paper such views as were matured; always supposing that the summary really represents the whole of the contents. After a few generalities, the first particular subject named for condemnation is the liberty of the Press, after which are named civil marriages, impediments to marriage, mixed marriages, and such like, with questions of ecclesiastical property, and the observance of fasts and feasts.

Only two of the Cardinals mentioned the subject of Papal infallibility. A third named Gallicanism and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty. Only one mentioned the Syllabus.

The omission to name the Syllabus in this instance is one of a series of acts of reticence in respect of that document which are at least curious. It is not mentioned in the Encyclical which accompanied it. It is not mentioned by the official historian at the time of its issue; and when, as we shall hereafter see, the Pope solemnly confirmed it in the presence of five hundred bishops, the act was not mentioned by the Court organs. Further, the Syllabus was not mentioned even in the very document by which the collective hierarchy expressed their[Pg 61] solemn adhesion to it. Nor was the adhesion to it by letter of the prelates then absent mentioned till, as our tale will show, all this was brought out by the friction of events.

Points in these notes to be borne in mind, as throwing light on the future of our history, are, that those who desired a Council hoped it would be a short one, and were of opinion that the powers of bishops were too great; and that the relations of the supernatural order and the natural order must be regulated, i.e. reduced to rule. These two commonwealths, commonly called the Church and State, had hitherto adjusted their relations, at least wherever Rome represented the supernatural order, by the rough method of trials of strength and skill. The object of reducing their relations to rule would be to restore that harmony of action which, according to the Curia, formerly existed in happy ages, but had been lost in the changes of time. Naturally, this desired harmony could only be restored by each abiding, according to rule, in its own place—the lower under the higher, and the higher above the lower.

[Pg 62]

CHAPTER VII

A Secret Commission to prepare for the Council, March 1865—First Summons—Points determined—Reasons why Princes are not consulted—Plan for the Future Council.

In March, 1865, Cardinals Patrizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzari, and Caterini were appointed a secret commission to make preparations for the proposed Council. It was in the deepening grey of an evening in Lent that the red coaches drove down the Via della Scrofa carrying those Cardinals to their first meeting, in the palace of the Vicariate. Rome did not know that this represented the first move in the preparation of one of those world-representing displays which had some part in bringing on her ancient decay, and a greater one in gilding it over: displays which, while changing in the accidents of form, have retained the essential character of a sense-subduing pageant, and retained also the purpose of binding the city to an autocrat. The significance of the display now contemplated was to consist in showing both Quirites and Italians that the world bowed down to the tiara, and so to bind Rome to the Pope for ever.

At this first meeting of the Commission, Giannelli read a memorandum intimating his belief that France, Italy, and Portugal would prohibit their bishops from attending a Council,—more particularly Italy; but as Germany, England, America, Spain, and others, would not do so, a considerable number would be able to assemble. This indicates a consciousness that political distrust of Rome was felt most strongly in Roman Catholic countries.

After hearing this memorandum the Cardinals proceeded to consider the following questions, and gave to each the answer indicated—

[Pg 63]

1. Is the summoning of an Œcumenical Council under the circumstances necessary, and opportune?

Affirmed.

2. Should Catholic princes be previously consulted?

Negatived. Nevertheless, when the Bull of Convocation has been issued, it would be well and becoming for the Holy See to adopt suitable procedures with the princes.

3. Should the Sacred College be consulted before the issuing of the Bull of Convocation, and if so, how?

Affirmed; but in the manner to be determined by the Most Holy—or, in common speech, in such manner as the Pope may please.[52]

4. Should a Special Congregation be appointed to direct affairs relating to the Council?

Affirmed.

5. Should the Directing Congregation, after the publication of the Bull, consult some bishops in different countries as to the subjects proper to be treated, both in doctrine and discipline, regard being had to the variety of countries?

Affirmed.

The reason which led the Cardinals to negative the idea of consulting the Catholic princes is supposed by Cecconi to have been a fear lest obstacles to the holding of a Council might be raised, and also lest the proceeding might be interpreted as a recognition of the supremacy of the State (p. 29).

On the 13th of March these resolutions of the Commission were reported to the Pope, by whom they were approved with one slight modification. Instead of a consultation of certain select bishops after the convocation of the Council, he appointed that it should take place before.

The first step in carrying out these resolutions was the appointment of a Directing Congregation, which was composed of the Cardinals of the Commission, with a few others, the number eventually being nine. That body was in existence two years and a half before the hierarchy generally received an intimation, in a Secret Consistory, of the intention to hold a Council.

[Pg 64]

At the meeting of the Directing Congregation on March 19, the sketch of a plan for the labours of the Council was presented by one of its members, not named. He proposed that the work should be divided into four branches, and that each should be assigned to a different committee.

1. Doctrine, to be committed to the Inquisition, presided over by a Cardinal of the Inquisition, the committee to be enlarged by the addition of some members not attached to the Holy Office. This committee could be subdivided into sections.

2. Ecclesiastical-Political Affairs, to be committed to the Congregation for ecclesiastical affairs, enlarged by consulters and others.

3. Missions and Oriental Churches, to be committed to the Propaganda and the Congregation of Oriental Rites.

4. Discipline, to be committed to the congregation for bishops and regulars, with the addition of consulters, canonists, and theologians.

Each committee was to be presided over by a Cardinal, and all were to report to the Directing Congregation, with which should rest the ultimate authority.[53]

[Pg 65]

CHAPTER VIII

Memoranda of Thirty-six chosen Bishops, consulted under Bond of Strictest Secrecy, April to August, 1865—Doctrine of Church and State—Antagonism of History and the Embryo Dogma—Nuncios admitted to the Secret—And Oriental Bishops.

On April 10 his Holiness sanctioned a letter to thirty-six select bishops of different countries, intimating under the most binding secrecy his intention of holding a Council in the Holy City, at some time yet undetermined, and requesting them to communicate their views as to the subjects proper to be treated.[54]

In August, nearly all the answers had arrived. Out of the thirty-six, only three bishops cast doubts on the wisdom of the project; all the others were rejoiced.

The letters of the thirty-six, according to Cecconi, expressed views on the present condition of society coinciding with those of the purpled in Rome. The thirty-six generally remarked on the absence of any special heresies. When we come to particulars, the subjects which our author finds specified are: the right of the Church to hold land; her independence of the State; her right to control education; her right to judge what promotes and what hinders religion. Among other matters noted, the chief are: the obligation of the faithful to adhere to the decisions of the Church, and in particular to those of the Holy See, and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, with "similar points."

After Cecconi has apparently concluded his summary of the suggestions of the thirty-six, a sentence is slipped in, saying, that among the verities which ought to be propounded by the Council, some mentioned Papal infallibility—"a doctrine admitted in all Catholic schools, with a few exceptions." Here[Pg 66]upon departing from his general rule, and adopting marks of quotation, he gives the words of one particular bishop, without naming him. These bear directly on the point most agitated before and during the Council. Such English readers as know much of the controversy, will probably risk a guess as to the author, and it may be that persons in Munich will hardly stop at guessing, but will say they know. It plainly was no Bavarian, not even a German, neither of whom would fall into such an expression as "Munich in Bavaria." "At present there are but few who impugn this prerogative of the Roman Pontiff; and they do so, not from a theological point of view, but the better to assert and maintain the freedom of science. It would seem that a school of theologians has sprung up with this object, at Munich, in Bavaria, in whose writings the principal aim is to lower the Holy See, its authority and its mode of government, by the aid of historical dissertations, and to bring it into contempt, and above all to combat the infallibility of Peter teaching ex cathedrâ."

This language intimates that the science for which especially freedom was claimed at Munich was history, which wants no other freedom than that of learning the truth and telling it, that of detecting lies and forgeries and exposing them. Even the Court historian feels the significance of this announcement of the mutual antipathy existing between history and the embryo dogma.

Among the "isms" designated for anathema by the chosen thirty-six, those which have any bearing on divinity proper could be named by most ordinary readers. One "ism" to be condemned is regalism, or the doctrine that the king is supreme in his own country; another is liberty of conscience and of the Press; and of course the bishops no more forget magnetism, somnambulism, and freemasonry, than their purpled superiors of the Curia.

Two points brought out under the head of discipline, are, the mobilization of the clergy, and the educational rights of the Church; strong condemnation being levelled against mixed schools.

[Pg 67]

After the secret preparations in Rome had been continued for nearly twelve months, the circle of confidential advisers was further extended. On November 17, 1865, the Cardinal President of the Directing Congregation communicated the intention of his Holiness to the nuncios in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, and Brussels; and requested them to name canonists and theologians of sound principles, exemplary life, and distinguished learning who might be called up to Rome to serve on the preparatory committees.

The next extension of the circle was to the Oriental bishops, who were consulted by Cardinal Barnabò, the Prefect of the Propaganda. They hailed the prospect of a Council, hoping that it might at length remove barriers which held the East in separation from Rome. Of these barriers they name both ancient and modern instances. Among the former the worst appears to be "national spirit," and among the latter we find Protestantism and the everlasting Freemasons. "Nationalism" is a trial to the Papal Church in the west as well as in the east. Cardinal Manning, in the Pastoral issued just before the Council met, said—

The definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff, speaking ex cathedrâ, is needed to exclude from the minds of Catholics the exaggerated spirit of national independence and pride, which has, in these last centuries, so profoundly afflicted the Church. If there be anything which a Catholic Englishman ought to know, it is the subtle, stealthy influence by which the national spirit invades and assimilates the Church to itself; and the bitter fruits of heresy and schism which that assimilation legitimately bears.[55]

The clearest instance of the national spirit invading and assimilating the Church to itself occurred in decaying Rome. The military and absolutist spirit of the empire supplanted in the ministry and organization of the Church the original spirit of humility and brotherhood. The spirit of the national pomps supplanted the primitive superiority to sensation and display. The spirit of the governing classes set up side by side with the simple code of Christ a new code, meant avowedly to[Pg 68] restore the old Roman domination of law, under the form of a spiritual empire. The spirit of that domination claimed to impose upon other churches the will of the Church of the capital and did not scruple to call her the mother-church, and to support her claims with lie and forgery oft repeated. But after the Pope, conspiring with the minister of the Frankish king, and rising with him against their two sovereigns, had erected himself into a petty prince, the national spirit of the empire began to narrow down to the municipal one of aboriginal Rome. Ever since that time the municipal spirit has increasingly become the spirit of the Papacy. Whatever that power has effected, it has never been able to make itself a nation. Aiming at a universal empire, the spirit of its rule has become more and more close, local, bureaucratic as that of any wee Italian republic of the middle ages. Men must not only act and move, but must also think and speak, according to rules excogitated by certain guilds within the Aurelian walls.

There is a curious but striking contrast between this professedly supernatural institution and one which scarcely claimed a regular place among natural institutions. Coming up amid the decline and corruption of an empire older, richer, and more populous than had been the empire of Rome, the East India Company, in a couple of generations, made a nation out of some hundreds of States among which had raged yearly conflicts. That nation still contains many thrones, but within its circle, and in spite of their jealousies, no less than two hundred and forty millions of men, a family immensely greater than Rome ever cursed with war or blessed with law, now live in peace and freedom such as were unknown to the ages which had aforetime passed over their country. On the plains around the presidential cities of India, where a century ago Mahratta, Moslem, and Rajpoot were wont to ravage, now reigns peace at seed-time and peace at harvest. Security sits and sings on every tree, and Industry, building her nest in every bush, sends out broods that, free from fear, busily cover the land. What a contrast with the endless whirl of war which in what are called the Ages of Faith—ages when the spells of the chief[Pg 69] priest in Rome had power over semi-barbarous chiefs—ever eddied on the plain around Rome, a glorious plain, growing waste and more and more waste, while kings came, now to be crowned, now to put a Pope in prison, and while Italians and foreigners rose and sank by turn in the alternating surges—foreigners, however, most frequently coming into the fight at the call of a self-asserting but mongrel and parasitical government, which claimed to be the heaven-sent superior, not only of commercial corporations like the East-India Company, but also of the very kings and emperors whom it played off against one another, and on whom it had always to rely. A national spirit indeed! Such a national spirit as we see in reformed countries, and as was once in an inferior degree seen in the Gallican nation, is large, tolerant, and magnanimous compared with the tight, pretentious municipal spirit unconsciously depicted by Liverani when he enumerates the small men from small towns, puffed up with the name of cities, who, in the Curia, swelled themselves out with notions of world-commanding importance—notions rendered possible only by their own helpless narrowness.

[Pg 70]

CHAPTER IX

Interruption of Preparations for Fourteen Months, through the consequences of Sadowa—The French evacuate Rome—Alleged Double Dealing of Napoleon III—Civiltá on St. Bartholomew's—Change of Plan—Instead of a Council a Great Display—Serious Complaints of Liberal Catholics.

It was on May 24, 1866, that the Directing Congregation held its third meeting, Monsignor Nina acting as secretary in the absence of Giannelli, who was indisposed. But, soon afterwards, dark clouds enveloped the Vatican, and ere the Congregation could again meet fourteen months had passed away.

On July 3, 1866, a shell burst at Sadowa which struck in three different directions, and in each case the blow was heavy. Austria fell from the primacy of Germany, and from her place among Italian States. Italy, acquiring Venice, entered into full possession of herself, Rome alone excepted. The disjointed members of Germany moved to union under Prussia, like bone coming to its bone.

These were deplorable reversals of Papal policy, unfriendly both to the temporal dominion at home and to the spiritual dominion abroad. By the instrumentality of France and Austria it had been possible, for ages, to keep Italy and Germany parcelled into small States, easily played off against one another, inimical to great national organizations or high national sentiment, and glad of an alliance with a small State possessing an organization by which it could interfere almost everywhere, and in almost everything. The long-continued success of the policy directed to this end seemed to stamp it as almost miraculous. Had Germany united under the Hapsburgs, ready to keep Italy disunited, it would have mattered less to Rome. But her uniting under the Hohenzollerns, and[Pg 71] aiding Italy to become one, was doubly dangerous. Reconstruction as going on in Italy and Germany must be met by reconstruction on a universal scale.

On November 4, 1866, the people of Venetia carried their suffrages to the feet of King Victor Emmanuel, while Austria and France sullenly acquiesced. The king said, "Italy is made if not completed"—a hint which the Vatican both understood and resented. Five weeks later, at four o'clock on the morning of December 11, Mr. Gladstone, whose name had already left a beneficent mark on the history of Italy, was watching by the gaslight from a window in Rome as the French troops wound round the corner of a street, and he felt that the seed of great events lay in that evacuation![56] That day the flag of red, white, and blue which for seventeen years had cast a light on the Vatican and a shadow on the Tiber, was lowered at St. Angelo. The Pope felt that it would soon be succeeded by the red, white, and green. So that as if by a historical parody on the old furor of the circus, the rage of parties in Rome was once more lashed up by the blue and the green respectively.

"Do not deceive yourselves," said the Pope to General Montebello, when he presented himself to take leave; "the revolution will come hither: it has proclaimed it: you have heard it, you have understood it and seen it."

The Civiltá Cattolica, alluding to the "soporifics" administered at this irritating moment by French journalists and diplomatists, asked whether France would hold the same language to Italy, now menacing the Pope, as she had held to Austria and Spain when preparing to assist him, namely, that "any departure from the principle of non-intervention would involve a war with France." She had not so spoken to Italy, and would not do so, for had not Billault said, "It is not possible to turn French bayonets against Italy." This being the case, France might hold her peace and not tease the respectable public with soporifics.[57]

When Napoleon III, in the discourse from the throne,[Pg 72] alluding to the fear of Rome being taken from the Pope, said that Europe would not permit an event which would throw confusion into the Catholic world, the Civiltá bitterly exposed his double dealing. Some would take this language as a pledge to uphold the temporal power, but others would see that it was only a shuffling of the responsibility off the shoulders of France on to those of Europe. Had he said France will not stand it? No, but that Europe will not allow it.

It would be about this time that Viscount Poli and Arthur Guillemin, a lieutenant of zouaves and a zealous crusader, sitting over a cup of coffee, saw five gentlemen enter the coffeehouse who were not Romans, but superintendents of a railway then being constructed. One of them laid on the table a nosegay, so arranged that the colours formed "the cockade of a king hostile to the Pontiff"—doubtless red and white camellias, forming, with their green leaves, the colours of Italy. Guillemin, who was in uniform, heard remarks which showed that the gentlemen knew what the flowers signified. He rose, seized the nosegay, dashed it to the ground, and trampled it to pieces. Then, as the others grumbled, he drew out his revolver, laid it by his side, and went on sipping his coffee, and chatting with the Viscount.[58]

The Civiltá was at this time publishing a series of articles on the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, sometimes calling it "the slaughter" and sometimes "the executions of Paris"; and calculating that there might have been some two thousand Protestants put to death in the capital, and, say, eight thousand in all France!

Among his other crimes, Bismarck stayed the preparations for the Council by the campaign of Sadowa. The most reverend Court historian evidently has no sense of any need for giving the world other reasons for the total interruption of those preparations than the political troubles. Yet one who learned Christianity at the feet of Christ would not readily see why the studies of holy men in the mysteries of divine revelation should depend upon a battle in Bohemia, or on the flitting of a French[Pg 73] garrison. Surely, divines might go on searching into naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, somnambulism, and freemasonry, whether Germany was uniting or splitting up again. Nevertheless, studies in regalism and Caesarism in the regular subordination of the natural order to the supernatural, and in the best measures for replacing the political system of Europe on the divine basis, or, as we should say, for subordinating civil and restoring ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were liable to be influenced by the flights of the eagles. And the augurs who were tracing the lines for the foundations of the reconstruction, found in the movements of the eagles of Prussia and France omens that counselled delay.

According to the original design, the Council was to be opened on the day observed as the eighteenth centennial anniversary of St. Peter's martyrdom. But, owing to these sad interruptions, when 1867 approached the secret preparations were not sufficiently advanced. Such, at least, is the only reason given by Cecconi why the Council was postponed.

The Pope, however, was resolved to cover St. Peter's day with glory. So his own thrice sacred anniversary, that of "the Immaculate," and of the Syllabus, was once more signalized by the issue of letters to the bishops of the whole world, citing them to Rome for the 29th of the ensuing June. They were not only to celebrate the centenary of Peter's martyrdom, but to take part in the canonization of some twenty additional saints, and also to attend certain consistories. The second name upon the list of the "new patrons in the presence of God" about to be created was that of Peter de Arbues, "Spanish inquisitor and martyr,"[59] of whose canonization we shall hear again. This invitation was dated three days before the French evacuated Rome. As trusty bayonets were failing, additional celestial powers were to be called into the firmament.

All this time the Liberal Catholics were becoming increasingly uneasy at the prospect of the dangers on which the Church was drifting. They had hoped to see her first embrace and then dominate modern culture and liberties. This was a dream[Pg 74] of O'Connell, of Lammenais, and of Gioberti. At this aimed the erudite and steadfast German Catholics. But every new utterance of the Court, whether in official document or inspired organ, showed that it was determined upon dragging the Church in an opposite direction. According to the policy to which it had fully committed itself, the Church was to conquer, not by adopting the modern age, but by restoring the middle ages. The dominion of the Pontiff over the whole earth as spiritual despot and temporal suzerain was the ideal to which everything must give way. Montalembert, who had been flattered by the opening career of Pius IX, as sailors say they are flattered by what they call foxy weather, expresses himself as follows: "I began as early as 1852 to wrestle against the detestable political and religious aberrations summed up in contemporary Ultramontanism." He showed that when in 1847 he defended the Jesuits of the Sonderbund against Thiers, as he did with equal eloquence and want of foresight, he did not utter one word of the modern doctrines, and that for a good reason, because, he says, "No one had thought of setting them up when I entered on public life." Indeed, he affirms that, in 1847, Gallicanism was dead, but that it had been revived through the encouragement given to extreme pretensions during the pontificate of Pius IX. He then quotes an important letter addressed to himself, in 1863, by Sibour, at that time Archbishop of Paris—

The new Ultramontane school is conducting us to a twofold idolatry—idolatry of the temporal power and idolatry of the spiritual power. When you, like myself, made a splendid profession of Ultramontanism, you did not understand things in this fashion. We defended the independence of the spiritual power against the usurpations and pretensions of the temporal power; but we respected the constitution of the State and the constitution of the Church. We did not sweep away every intermediate power, or every gradation of order, nor yet every legitimate resistance, nor all individuality and spontaneity. The Pope and the Emperor were not then—the former the whole Church, the latter the whole State.

Montalembert goes on to say that the old Ultramontanes had recognized the right of the Pope, in a great crisis, to rise above[Pg 75] all rules; but they did not confound the exception with the rule. These cares and apprehensions were for the time concealed, and were only brought to light by the anguish of that moment when the final leap downward was about to place a gulf that could never be re-crossed between Rome and all things free and equal. But when the expression did come, it bore with it the record of previous irritations.

"The Ultramontane bishops," said Montalembert,[60] "have pushed everything to the extreme, and have argued to the utmost against all liberties, those of the State as well as those of the Church."

"If such a system was not of a nature to compromise the gravest interests of religion, in the present, but much more in the future, we might content ourselves with despising it; but when one has the presentiment of the ills which are being prepared for us, it is difficult to be silent and resigned."

[Pg 76]

CHAPTER X

Reprimand of Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, for disputing the Ordinary and Immediate Jurisdiction of the Pope in his Diocese—Sent in 1864, Published in 1869.

Within a twelvemonth of the issue of the Syllabus, letters of significance were passing between Paris and Rome. One of those letters throws light on the steps taken to grind down any bishop who dared to assert, as bishops used to do, some authority for their own office, independent of the direct and universal meddling of Rome. That some prelates were still tempted to this offence we have seen hinted by the Cardinal consulters, in the original notes upon the question of holding a Council.

One of the most considerable figures in the hierarchy was Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, to whose name a historical death has given tragic immortality. When the preparations for the issue of the Syllabus must have been far advanced, in 1864, he had drawn upon himself letters of censure from Rome. To these he had replied both publicly in the senate, and privately, in a manner which showed that some remnants of old French doctrines yet survived the modern influence in primary schools and episcopal seminaries. And wherever any sense of the ancient office of a bishop did survive, there was constant irritation in the condition of dependence to which the system of quinquennial faculties reduced the men who, bearing the old name, held the modern post under the bureaux in Rome. Only a few weeks before the Magna Charta of reconstruction was promulged, on October 26, 1864, a letter was addressed to Darboy which fills no less than ten octavo pages of small type in the documents of Friedberg.[61] Besides its solid value as[Pg 77] instruction, this epistle has the interest of a sharp lecture. Furthermore, its very language coloured the most important of the Vatican decrees.

The quarrel arises on the old subject of the "exemption" of the regulars from episcopal control, and the direct action of the Curia in a diocese, over the head of a bishop and under his feet. Readers of Church history will be tempted to think lightly of the Pope's candour when he speaks of Darboy's complaint as a new one, but however this suspicion may touch those who furnished the materials for the letter, it does not attach to the Pope personally, for he is not usually supposed to read history, though he often sets it to rights.

If inaccurate in his facts, Pius IX is orthodox in his policy, for just as bishops must be independent of the government of the country, so must the regulars be independent of the bishops, that power to set wheels in motion may be carried from the engine-house in Rome into the midst of a nation by two perfectly independent shafts. When the Church is a national one, a bishop has some stake in the country, though slight compared with his stake at the Vatican; and he must, at all events, keep up relations with the authorities. The former circumstance brings temptations to a "national spirit"—one of the standing evils cried down by the Curia. The latter circumstance may make it convenient that the bishop should not always know what is really the course of action being prepared. In both points of view the regulars can be utilized. Darius took care to have three separate powers in each province, all directly dependent on the Imperial Court alone.[62] And from his days highly organized Asiatic governments have had, besides the apparently omnipotent lieutenants, confidential agents in every province, depending directly on the metropolitan authorities.

The Pontiff commences his letter by reminding his venerable brother that he made professions of devotion to the Holy See on his elevation to that of Paris. Then he tells him that certain of his letters replying to animadversions of the Pope, show him[Pg 78] to hold views opposed to the divine primacy of the Roman Pontiff over the whole Church. Darboy had asserted that the power of the Pope, in a diocese other than his own, was not ordinary and immediate, but such as should be interposed only as a last resource, in cases of manifest necessity. He had represented the intervention of the Pope, by the exercise of ordinary and immediate jurisdiction, as turning a diocese into a mission, and a bishop into a vicar apostolic. Moreover, he had said, in the French senate, that when such intervention took place at the private instance of individuals, it rendered the administration of the diocese all but impossible; and he had added that regulars, Nuncio, and Curia all aimed at bringing about such intervention as an ordinary thing, and that he would resist it and call upon the bishops and people to do so. He had even spoken of submitting letters apostolic to the government, and of having recourse to the lay power; nay, he had gone so far as to mention the Organic articles, though he could not be ignorant of how the Holy See had always protested against them.

The Pope could scarcely believe that his venerable brother had uttered such things, and was moved with wonder and anguish at finding him avowing the condemned opinions of Febronius, which a bishop ought to abhor. In denying the "immediate and ordinary" jurisdiction of the Pope, he had denied the decree of the fourth Lateran Council. The words "feed My lambs, feed My sheep" mean that believers all and singular are to be subject to Peter and his successors, as to the Lord Christ Himself, whose vicar upon earth the Roman Pontiff truly is. Every Catholic would reply to the charge as to a diocese being turned into a mission, and a bishop into a vicar apostolic, by saying that it was as false as it would be to say that prefects, judges, or provincial magistrates were not ordinary magistrates, because a direct, immediate, and ordinary power was held by the king or emperor.

St. Thomas Aquinas, continues the letter, had said "the Pope has a plenitude of pontifical power, as a king in his kingdom, but bishops are received into a share of the solicitude, like[Pg 79] judges set over particular cities." As a Catholic bishop, Darboy ought to know that all had a right to appeal to Rome, none to appeal from her. Such a complaint as that the interference of Rome rendered the administration of a diocese almost impossible had never been made either in past ages or in the present one. When Darboy spoke of appealing to bishops and people, he ought to have known that the same had been done by Febronius, and that it was an offence against the divine Author of the constitution of the Church.

The Archbishop had not been informed against, proceeded the Pope, by the regulars, but, from other quarters the fact came before his Holiness that the Archbishop had exercised the right of visitation over them, on which he had been admonished, and of this admonition he had been pleased to speak, in the senate, as of a sentence delivered without the cause having been heard. It was hardly to be believed! The Archbishop knew the Decretals, and knew how, in all ages, the Popes had written in the same manner to bishops when they became aware of something in their sees which was not quite right.

As it was a question of the visitation of regulars, it must be remembered that the right of exemption had long been enjoyed by the Jesuits and Franciscans in Paris, and that the Apostolic See had exercised its own special or "privative" jurisdiction. Darboy had alleged that, by the law of the Council of Trent, regulars could not have canonical existence in any diocese without consent of the bishop, which consent had never been received by the monks in question. But, having been long on the ground, they had acquired a prescriptive right, by virtual, if not by express, consent of successive bishops. And as to the fact that the civil law forbade them to possess land, of what use were such laws in ecclesiastical administration? In these most turbulent and miserable times of noxious, odious rebellion, civil law might even deny to bishops their civil standing.

The Pontiff cannot dissemble his extreme surprise and annoyance that his venerable brother had attended the funeral of Marshal Magnan, the Grand Orient of the Freemasons, and had given the solemn absolution while the insignia of freemasonry[Pg 80] were on the bier, and brethren of the condemned sect wearing its orders were present. The sect aimed at corrupting all minds and manners; at destroying every idea of honesty, virtue, truth, and justice; at diffusing monstrous opinions and abominable vices, fostering detestable crimes, and undermining all legitimate authority; yea, at overturning the Catholic Church and civil society, and at expelling God from heaven.

His Holiness cannot pass over the fact that it has come to his ears that an opinion has been expressed to the effect that acts of the Holy See do not compel obedience unless the civil government has given authority to carry them out. This opinion is pernicious, erroneous, and injurious to the authority of the Holy See and to the interests of the faithful. Furthermore, the Pope's venerable brother had incorrectly asserted in his speech that Benedict XIV in his Concordat with the King of Sardinia had agreed that the royal sanction should be required before pontifical acts were carried into execution; and that according to the instructions annexed to the Concordat, they were to be submitted to the senate, except when they dealt with matters of dogma or morals; which false assertion the venerable brother would not have made had he weighed the words of the instructions. The letter concludes with protestations of the Pope's affection for his venerable brother and his flock.

This epistle, after being long held in reserve, was launched into publicity at a time when Darboy's influence was threatening to be inconvenient in the Council, and when the French government had requested a cardinal's hat for him.[63]

It is, perhaps, not superfluous to remark that the terms "plenitude of power" as denoting the prerogative of the Pope, and "received to a share of the solicitude," as denoting the origin and nature of the bishop's authority, are not merely happy phrases, but scientific terms fitted to express the Papal theory of the Church constitution as opposed to the Episcopal theory. The Episcopal theory, holding that the office of all bishops is of divine institution, regards the Pope, not as the source of episcopal authority, but as supreme and ultimate[Pg 81] arbiter. According to the Papal theory, the authority of the bishop is an emanation from that of the Pope, who, as monarch, unlimited by any co-ordinate authority, retains in his own hands not only extraordinary but ordinary, not only ultimate but immediate jurisdiction over every subject within the bounds assigned to a bishop. The latter is a prefect, not only liable to be discharged or imprisoned, but liable while retained in office to have any matter taken out of his hands and settled contrary to his views. This is the theory which, like a scourge of not small cords, is employed to flog Darboy, while the incongruous epithet "venerable brother," dangles at the handle—a vestige of a past age and an exploded theory. An emperor does not call his prefect "venerable brother."

A portion of the letter which will well repay study is that indicating the attitude of the Curia to all authority not immediately within its own hands, even if in the hands of its "prefects." Against any such authority it will receive the reports of its private agents, and treat those reports as having the status of a legal appeal. It will act, if need be, without hearing the accused, and maintain that none shall appeal from it, though all may appeal to it. This is the case even with the episcopal authority; what, then, is the case with the civil? It is swept aside as an unclean thing; "of what use are such laws in ecclesiastical affairs?" If Archbishop Darboy, strong in his character, strong in his see—the largest in the Roman Catholic world—and strong in his influence at the Tuileries, is thus treated when complained of by the Jesuits, what must be the case with small prelates who venture to provoke their power?

As to the Freemasons, one is tempted to wish to be in their secret, for then one would possess a rough test of Papal infallibility. If they do not aim at overturning all government, and expelling God from heaven, infallibility does not carry far.

The time for the great assembly was now approaching, and, meanwhile, the Papal organs were enlivened by the prospect of a war between France and Prussia, on the question of Luxembourg. When this hope was deferred the readers of the[Pg 82] Civiltá[64] were informed that nevertheless every possible preparation for war was being pushed forward by the French on the largest scale, and with greatly improved arms.

On the 9th of May, 1867, the deputies Angeloni and Crotti were called up in the Italian Parliament to take the oaths and their seats. Angeloni did so; but Crotti, a well-known member of the Ultramontane aristocracy, after pronouncing the words, "I swear to be faithful to the king and constitution," added, "saving always divine and ecclesiastical laws." This formula was at once recognized as being that which had been published in Rome by the Penetenzieria, with the declaration that the repetition of it was the only condition on which Catholics could accept seats in the Italian chambers. Called upon to take the oath in the form prescribed by the law of the land, Count Crotti stood firm by the higher law of the Penetenzieria, and the Chamber disowning his salvis legibus divinis et ecclesiasticis, refused to admit him.

[Pg 83]

CHAPTER XI

Great Gathering in Rome, June 1867—Impressions and Anticipations—Improvements in the City—Louis Veuillot on the Great Future.

The whole earth had been moved in the hope of not only exhibiting a pageant outshining former ones, but also of carrying the dogma of Papal infallibility by an ecclesiastical coup d'état, or, as it is called, by acclamation, without the delays of a discussion.[65] Had this been accomplished, the legislative form of a General Council would have been rendered futile for the time to come, or at the most, would have been but a grander method of working the institution of "consultative despotism," to adopt the strict definition of Montalembert. The invitation had been enthusiastically responded to. The spectacle of the Papacy menaced with the loss of Rome was touching, and the belief was cherished that a great demonstration of the interest felt by the Catholic world on its behalf would contribute to ward off the peril. Besides these motives, another in full activity was the ever powerful one, especially powerful with Romanists, the desire to see a pageant; and this sight was to surpass all the former displays of Rome.

The city put on its best, the churches were newly embellished, the streets decked in festive array. Bishops came from all the ends of the earth, till the thoroughfares were mottled with the toilets of five hundred. Priests crowded in till, it is said, twelve thousand breathed the sacred air of the city, every one of them proud to tread that spot of our unruly earth, where the priest was king of men.

Besides the clergy, came such multitudes of pilgrims that, according to Cecconi, the population of the city was almost[Pg 84] doubled. The Romans saw their familiar rite, the worship of the statue of St. Peter—l'adorazione della statua di San Pietro—performed on a prodigious scale. In modern as in ancient Rome, adoration has its degrees; all worship does not imply the ascription of supreme, but only of celestial, honours. No Pontiff in the days of the Republic ever pretended that Quirinus was creator of the world and father of eternity. He was the protecting divinity of Rome, but with very limited powers in comparison with Peter, carrying no sceptre equal to the keys.

Such of the visitors as had seen the city in former times, if not too much pre-occupied with the sanctity of the place to observe such matters, would find several improvements. Side pavements had been allowed in the main streets. Gaslight had, after long and painful efforts, been admitted.

Railways had entered the walls. The personal liberality of the Pope had effected several improvements, both in public works and charitable institutions. The French had done a great deal for the cleansing of the streets, although the filth of some of them, and the indecency of some of the bye ones, were still beyond belief to any one from England. The Pope's army, which as late as 1860 was an odd-looking array, was now a sightly and active force, composed mainly of foreigners, in large part French. And, finally, it had become possible to tell the time of day.

Formerly, midday had been one of the mysteries of Rome. It seemed as if the right of private judgment, banished from the churches, had taken refuge in the steeples, for each particular clock went off at some mysterious impulse, and struck twelve at the noon of its own. Thus for good part of an hour, they do say often longer, the air continued thrilling with the tidings that it was just noon of day. Naughty Romans ascribe the change to General Baraguay d'Hilliers, while in command of the French garrison. Having vainly endeavoured to get a standard of time established, he presumed, with French audacity, to carry the case by appeal from the sacristy to the sun. Placing a gun on Fort St. Angelo, with a burning-glass upon[Pg 85] it, he stole the tidings from another world which were not to be got from the temples at hand.[66]

One of the most powerful of the pilgrims was M. Louis Veuillot, who as editor of the Univers had for very many years done much to second in literature the work done in schools, of reviving antipathies and superstitions which were in danger of dying out in France. His notes of this visit form part of his two octavos. As soon as he reaches the foot of the Alps, at Susa, he begins to scold Italy and the Italians, takes every opportunity of doing so, and goes out of the country scolding worse than when he came in.

But if Italy and the Italians were exceedingly evil in the eyes of M. Veuillot, he found compensation in the perfect loveliness of Rome and the Romans. The very cabmen are loudly praised, and the cabs carry "ideas;" the Press, especially the Civiltá, is of course far above the French level. But the Pope was the grandest spectacle of all. As he entered the Basilica, preceded by a train of five hundred prelates, it made an impression of power greater than if four millions of men had defiled past, armed with the most perfect artillery.[67]

Naturally, however, the imagination of M. Veuillot was most fired with the prospect of that historical future which was about to open on the human species. Darkness still covers the chaos after the cataclysm, but the breaking of the light draws nigh. The news of a projected Council has reached the ears of M. Veuillot. His first word is, "Rome is officially taking the[Pg 86] reins of the world into her hand." Other expressions scattered up and down his animated pages are as follows—

The day that the Council is convoked the counter-revolution will commence.... Pius IX will open his mouth, and the great word, Let there be light, will proceed out of his lips.... It will be a solemn date in history; it will witness the laying of the immovable stone of Re-construction.... At the voice of the Pontiff the bowels of the earth will be moved, to give birth to the new civilization of the Cross.... Here is the great reservoir whence the future will pour out and overflow the human race.... These days in Rome are a revelation of the state of the world, and the starting point of a renovation.... The pilgrimage of Catholic Europe to Rome in 1867 will have consequences of which the Moniteur [alluding to remarks in that journal] will be informed hereafter, and of which the world will become aware when the Moniteur would wish them to be unheard of.... For centuries Rome has not seen the Pope in such splendour, nor has he so manifestly appeared in his character as head of the human race.

M. Veuillot is of course one of those who look on the modern liberty of the press as a great curse. We may insert here what came to hand long after these pages were written, as an illustration of the kind of Press that is to be quenched. The Times of January 26, 1876, in the letter of its Paris correspondent, gives a morsel from the Univers, in the style of M. Veuillot. The Times had said something about an interview of the Marquis of Ripon, as a new convert, with the Pope. The Univers devotes to that article "a column and a half of invectives," and thus winds up: "The Times is now the giant of the Press, and prospers in both hemispheres. But the day will come when the two worlds will want no more of its agony column, or of its bad literature; and its last compositor, inactive before his immense poison machine, suddenly idle, will wait in vain for copy which will never come." Will the compositor look out of the top window in Queen Victoria Street to see if Macaulay's New Zealander has arrived on London Bridge?

[Pg 87]

CHAPTER XII

The Political Lesson of the Gathering, namely, All are called upon to recognize in the Papal States the Model State of the World—Survey of those States.

"Opportuneness of the Centenary of St. Peter for reviving the True Idea of the Political Order among States," is the heading of an article in the Civiltá Cattolica for 1867. The first words are, "He who comes to Rome finds St. Peter become a king"; a proposition of which we should modify the predicate, saying, He who comes to Rome finds a king, professing to be St. Peter. "He (i.e. Peter) has joined the tiara of the Pontiff to the crown of the Prince." Why did not the writer say the "tiara of the Apostle"? That would be too great an offence against antiquity. It is the tiara of the Pontiff, as if Peter had taken over that office from Nero.

However, these are but the introductory notes. The writer proceeds to expound the political effects of baptism. Christianity has not changed the civil power as to its substance, but as to its relations, by making a change in the subject of power. That subject is no longer mere man, but man made Christian by baptism. This doctrine—which frequently reappears as the theological basis of reconstruction—is more fully stated by M. Veuillot: "They will not deny that the true human race is baptized humanity.... It is, then, baptism which constitutes humanity, and all that has not been introduced into the Church by baptism is, in reality, only a sort of raw material, which as yet awaits the breath of life" (p. cxii.). In order to prevent any conflict between baptized man and the law of the Church, the civil power must be subject to the Church. Suarez is quoted to the effect that as a man would not be rightly constituted unless the body were subject to the soul, neither would the Church be rightly established unless the temporal power were[Pg 88] subject to the spiritual. And hence, the political conclusion is firmly drawn: "The idea of such a subordination is realized in the pontifical government. Because, owing to the peculiar character of him who here holds the temporal power, it cannot rebel against the spiritual power, civil law can never here set itself against evangelical law, nor is any political act possible which should offend against morals."

The last affirmation will appear boldest to those who best know what political acts have been done in the Roman States, and in the present reign. No one of these acts could offend against Christian morals! for the all-sufficing reason that Peter had become the king, and Peter does no wrong. Thus we find infallibility, as received in the court creed, covering measures of taxation and police, as well as lotteries and monopolies—an abuse of the doctrine made still more obvious by what follows, in which the infallibility of the Government is grounded on its immaculate conception, and consequently perfect nature. Since in the Pontifical States "the laws must be sanctioned by him who holds the place of God on earth, him whom God has given to us for guide and teacher, they can never be in conflict with the divine will.[68] The infallible Depositary of evangelical interests can never sacrifice them to earthly ones. Though in such a government the two powers [spiritual and temporal] are distinct in form, they are in complete harmony and duly co-ordinated one with the other, presenting to lay States the perfect example of the Christian civil power."

It is granted that lay States can never equal this example, but they ought to imitate it. By their very conception they can never be free from the original taint, owing to which it becomes possible for "the temporal power to rebel against the spiritual power." Not only is it possible, but, by their nature, they are predisposed to that sin of sins. But all rulers of lay States are to know that in becoming subjects of the Church the subjects of civil power have been changed, though the substance of civil[Pg 89] power has not been changed. We do not stay to inquire what may be the substance of civil power, after its subjects have been lifted above obedience to it by another human power, higher than itself in all things wherein the two may come into collision.

In conclusion, the faithful are told that the centenary of St. Peter, by bringing together people from all parts of the world, will give to them the opportunity of beholding "a State in which peace, morality, and justice reign. It is like an oasis amid the desolation of the desert; and it is so because the political order is in full harmony with evangelical law."

The approaching pilgrims, in comparing the oasis into which they were about to enter, with the deserts from which they had emerged, would be able to judge by the experience of centuries as to whether, where Peter reigns, the lifting up of the subject above lay government into the supernatural order had led to the elevation of the laity to supernatural goodness, or to the lowering of the clergy to the level of political officials.

Two writers, as dissimilar as Addison and Edgar Quinet, had, in some degree, anticipated the comparison here challenged, each speaking from a point of view suited to his own day and mode of thinking. The Englishman remarks how great is the difference between Roman Catholic populations where they touch upon reformed countries and where they are under the unbroken influence of the Papacy. Ignorance, superstition, and crime gradually deepen till the Alps and the Pyrenees are passed, when all these become strikingly worse.

The Frenchman says that there was only one model country in Europe. This was correct; for France had never cast out the influence of the Reformation, or made away with all the Protestants; and had, moreover, been the hotbed of what Quinet calls the philosophers. Italy, again, had always been a stronghold of the so-called philosophers, although all the Protestants had been consumed. In Spain, however, as he points out, the Inquisition had really fulfilled its mission; both Protestants and philosophers having been annihilated, schools and letters having been reduced to order, and the whole nation having been made to move for more than two hundred years[Pg 90] on the Papal lines. The consequence was the total ruin of religion in the country.[69]

The comparison to which strangers were challenged by the Curia had the great advantage of being a comparison of good, not of evil. If the Papal States are to lay States as the oasis to the desert, proof actually lies before us of something more than human superiority—of something amounting to a higher dispensation. If the Papal States are but moderately superior to others, proof of any higher dispensation fails; but proof of human superiority remains. If they are only equal to lay States even proof of human superiority fails. If they are inferior, proof fails both of divine commission and of human superiority, and proof arises of the presence of greater human fault.

The only true book of Positive Philosophy yet (we do not say of Positive Science) is the blessed old Books of books. It brings everything to the test of fruits. It puts the extraordinary man to the test before ordinary men. He who refuses the ordained appeal to the Word, and to fruits, and to the verdict of every man's conscience, writes his own description as a false prophet.

We shall not, therefore, set out to compare evil, but good. We shall not inquire if there are more waste acres in the Papal States, more filthy huts, more wretched villages, more mean little towns called cities, more blighted prospects, talents thrown to waste, and families brought to decay, more liars, thieves, drunkards, blasphemers, and libertines, more depraved homes, more guilty conspiracies, more strikers, robbers, and assassins, more beggars in the streets, more idlers and extortioners in office, more wretches in prison, and more dead men in graves dug by the law, than, say, in our own far from immaculate or infallible England. We shall only look for the opposite of all these, and more of it—so much more as would furnish proof of a special dispensation of God's loving-kindness to men.

In one particular, such of the pilgrims as had heard of the desolation of the Roman Campagna would feel surprise, somewhat similar to that often felt by travellers in the Desert of[Pg 91] Sinai. The latter, expecting to find extended plains of burning sand—a Sahara—find a country like another, only that it has no vegetation. So when pilgrims on the Campagna found green plains basking under a lovely sky, they would wonder how men could call it waste. Only by degrees would they realize the fact that there were no farm-houses, no labourers' cottages, no hamlets. In Arabia vegetation has failed, and with it animal existence. This region is a degree less desert: the herb enjoys life and supports the beast; only man has failed.

A trained observer seeing the plain forsaken and the villages in military positions on the heights, would at once say, as he would in Syria: The land has not learned what rest is! It has not yet experienced, for any continuance, that lot of conscious security in which the family suffices to itself, the lonely house is safe, and the village needs neither wall nor steep. The valleys of Tuscany or Piedmont tell a better tale of law and government.

When, at wide intervals, an inn or what is called a Tenuia occurs, perhaps it is announced by a few fine children, ill-clad and begging. The house has an expression of fear. The windows are few and small, and the yard, instead of a fence or low wall, is defended by a high one. There are no stack yards, no farm store and treasure spreading securely and ornamentally around as if conscious of strong, benign protectors. There is no grass-plot, no gravelled or flagged walk, no flower-bed before the door, no flower pot in the window, no garden. The house has never blossomed into the home. It is, after all these ages, but a shelter from weather and violence.

Entering, you find dirt to a degree neither easy to believe nor pleasant to describe, which grows worse and worse the longer and more minutely you observe. The furniture consists of a few stools, a rough table or bench, with a sack or two of straw for a bed. The few utensils, whether of earthenware or metal, are, like the stools and bench, poor in quality, rude in form, and ill-kept. Scarcely ever is there against the walls a print or photograph, an engraved sheet, a clock or plaster bust. You look in vain for book, periodical, or journal. The idea of[Pg 92] children's picture-books, or of a cottage library, is out of the question; and the Bible is not to be seen. If there be a picture of the Madonna or the patron saint, it is, in point of art, far below the pictures which often light up the cottage of our humblest labourer. If there is a book, it is a wretched dream-book teaching how to succeed in the lottery. No polished chest of drawers, no white dresser, no fire range bearing witness of taste and "elbow-grease," no pretty crockery, no easy-chair. You may perhaps see a man asleep on the bare bench and another on the floor.

As you let the picture print itself, with all its inevitable comments, upon your mind, it calls up comparisons with what you have seen in the unlettered countries of the world—not with the homes that grow up around a family Bible. Here the arts which bring Art home to the multitude have found no entrance. Engraving, printing, carving, ornamental work in metal, wood, or pottery, gardening, or artistic husbandry, are graces that have not crossed this dirty threshold. The aesthetics, which have had some part in the government of the country have never developed the blessed aesthetic of home.

Physically, you find a race of great capacity. The frame, if wanting the compactness of the French and the solidity of the English, is large and shapely; such as after a few well-fed and well-housed generations would probably be one of the finest in the world. There is a certain sluggishness, which is generally called laziness. Perhaps it is not so much laziness as a lack of that physical elasticity which comes with successive generations of hopeful effort and good condition, but sinks away under hopelessness, or the effects of poor food and bad air. The natural intelligence is quick, and the manners generally polite, often winning. The pleasant word and the obliging act are both ready. But when did these carters and labourers wash? Was anything ever done to cleanse these garments, partly of goatskin with the hair attached and partly of heavy cloth? We do not call raids now and then to keep vermin under, an effort at really cleansing. And the heads of the women and children! Whatever the prevalent aesthetics have accomplished, they have[Pg 93] never awakened the sacred aesthetic of the human person, which is not to be confounded with the lower aesthetic of dress.

Turning towards the villages, the observer is again reminded of Syria, where he may have been led on by the prospect of a beautiful city set on a hill, and found a squalid village. Self-defending construction, as in the case of the lone house on the plain, reappears here. No outlying cottages before the village, no detached ones within it, no gardens or orchards behind. The backs of the houses form a continuous high wall, pierced with small windows, constituting an irregular but not despicable work of defence. Again you find the absence of any bit of green, or of flower-beds before the house, or of flowers in the window. The gardens of Nottingham alone would put those of all the Papal States to shame, excepting such as are attached to palaces.

Before entering the houses one feels as if it would be unfair to compare them with those of English villages in our more cultured and sunny counties. But we may take a Yorkshire manufacturing village, near collieries. There the ground is dirty with coal slack; the air dirty with coal smoke and heavy with damp vapours; the houses are of the colour of baked mud, called brick; the sky is low, and more brown than grey. Nature and art seem to have combined to make the house dirty. Here, on the contrary, the ground is as dry as a board, the air bright, the walls of warm-coloured stone, the sky lofty, luminous and blue. Nature has done everything to suggest cleanliness, and also to reward it with such brilliant effect as we can only see in the brightest moments which summer lights up within our English homes. And as to manufacture, its grimy fingers have never touched the place.

Yet under the unfavourable conditions you find tidy women, with tidy children, by tidy firesides. The floor, seats, tables, drawers, dresser, walls, all show that the domestic arts of ornament, in however humble a style, are represented. The cottage child sits with its book on its knee, and you are not afraid to look into the corners. The Bible and hymn-book are probably upon the shelf; and if you do not know that the[Pg 94] scene of the cotter's Saturday night is actually enacted there, you feel that it might be.

Under the favourable circumstances, on the other hand, floor, stairs, wall, furniture, utensils, and the persons of the women and children are kept in such a style that one of the women from the Yorkshire cottage would not like to pass a night in the place. And you must not look into the corners. Any stray picture which may be on the walls, only serves to remind you, by contrast, of the wonderful development of illustrative art in England, Germany, and America, and of its penetrating influence in the homes of the remote and poor. Here, sometimes, you may find, even in the village church, prints and dolls, the former of which in England would be considered poor, and the latter tawdry in the village shop. Yet in the same church there may be some real work of art, which has for generations had every opportunity of forming the public taste.

The land in these Papal States, like the people, is nobly capable; but our present inquiries turn, not upon the future, but upon proof of immaculate and infallible government, for the last thousand years or more.

Fixing, then, our attention on the works of man, we find cause repeatedly to wish that we had some measure for exactly determining how much progress has been made, amid these lovely scenes, by the human mind since it passed from under the dominion of Pagan Romanism into that of Papal Romanism. At present we have not the means of accurately settling this question, and perhaps we never shall have, though honest research may yet sufficiently elucidate it for a practical judgment. So long as Christianity worked by its legitimate forces, those of the Spirit alone, with its legitimate instrument, the Word alone, it cast out the cruel and obscene spirits of paganism, silently, but not slowly. In individuals and in families real Christians were made. This continued so long as the ministers of Christ ministered like their Master, reading the Word of God, and preaching it, but no more thinking of performing "functions," like the heathen, than He did; so long as they had neither place nor name in the posts graded and[Pg 95] rewarded by human powers; so long as they enjoyed no consideration but what was won through wisdom, goodness, and spiritual fruitfulness; so long as their whole inheritance was not a profession, but a calling, which renounced the world, not by cutting God's holiest human ties, but by abandoning, for life, every hope of title, pomp, or power. So long as this spirit reigned, and whenever it again reappeared, they could point to numbers, whom they found vile but left created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works.

But from the time when Christianity became a public power, the courtier, the priest, and the crowd began to flow into the Church, and carried part of their heathenism in with them. When the device of the Emperors was parodied—and as they had assumed the office of Pontiff to confirm the civil dictatorship, the Roman Bishop assumed the temporal supremacy to confirm the spiritual dictatorship—all the three paganizing forces of statecraft, priestcraft, and popular superstition came more vigorously into play; with the result stated by Gregorovius: "So that Church which arose out of the union of Christianity with the Roman Empire, drew from the latter the system of centralization, and the stores of ancient language and education; but the people utterly corrupted, could not yield her the living material for the development of the Christian ideal. On the contrary, it was just they who in early times defaced Christianity, and permeated the Church, scarcely yet established in the Empire, with the old heathenism."[70] It was, however, on the new system of conversion that the people could not yield the material for developing Christianity. On the old one they had done so. When the Church waits for converts till the Spirit of God brings her penitents, she will always find material (often raw and foul, but capable) for doing all her work.

But we find the first step in an inquiry as to the progress which has been accomplished challenged by the Vatican philosophy, which decries modern improvements like the railway, telegraph, steam engine, and so on, as "material progress."[Pg 96] When we ordinary mortals say "mental progress" we mean a progress of mind; but when the Pope says "material progress," does he mean a progress of matter? No; then what does he mean? Perhaps to suggest some such idea as the progressive ascendancy of matter over mind; but if so, it is unfortunate for him, as a philosopher, that the inventions he despises represent the advancing ascendancy of mind over matter. And very unhappy is it for mankind that all his influence goes to employ matter in colour, form, and movement, to make man a creature of sensation, and to stay the operation of reason and of faith, exchanging reason for sentiment and faith for sight.

Suppose that an observer before passing from the valley of the Sacco into that of the Anio looks at a historical place like Palestrina, situated on one of the noblest heights of the land; a point whence Pyrrhus and Hannibal, in succession, looked with the longing of warriors across the Campagna to the distant Rome; and whence the Temple of Fortune, emulating Egyptian proportions, and overspreading a whole hillside, dominated the plain, and held forth its lights to the far off sea. This city has a Cardinal Bishop, and a palace of the great Papal-princely family of the Barberini, and yet is what a homely Englishman would call a nasty village. If such a one had to pick his steps up the alleys that serve for streets, in the afternoon, when the issue of the cow-houses is flowing down them, he would rather be at home. The people are civil and apparently industrious, but the energy of the children goes out in begging. The decay and dirt which conquer all, furnish to an English eye a plain instance of material progress—matter gaining upon mind. The palace is neither kept up nor abandoned as a ruin, but, as if to set the town an example of thriftless filth, it is used partly for an aesthetic exhibition, containing as it does one wonderful mosaic, with frescoes and portraits of the Pope and Cardinals of the family, and is partly given up to—matter. Just as confidently as a skilled observer would conclude that Middlesbrough or Cincinnati bore witness against any claim to great antiquity, would he conclude that Palestrina bore witness[Pg 97] against any claim to supernaturally good government. How much lower was the place when it was heathen?

From the ridge between the two valleys, by Civitella, the stranger has one of those prospects of which no previous travel blunts the charm, and no subsequent travel blunts the memory. Here he finds well-made men ploughing, and women with busts worthy of Sabine mothers carrying stones. Looking at the plough, he finds it only a few degrees stronger and better than that used by the ordinary Hindu ryot. It is very far behind the improved ones to be seen in northern Italy, and would be a real curiosity to Bedfordshire or Lincolnshire ploughmen.

If the observation of implements is extended to those of the handicrafts, it confirms the impression of want of taste made by those of agriculture. But tools are not things to make a show, and the noble aesthetic of labour has not been fostered. Labour is not part of the supernatural order, only of the natural; it serves but temporal ends. And who made the natural? And who dares to teach man, created in the image of God, that the daily duty appointed to him—duty to himself, his family, his country, and his race—serves but temporal ends? If neglected, are only temporal ends frustrated? When our Father sends us what fills our hearts with food and gladness, is He working nought but temporal ends? For what is helpful to sanctification commend us even to the stones on the head of the female hodman, rather than to the beads at the waist of the novice nun! Albeit the former is a coarse toil not to be seen without a blush by man born of a woman, yet is it a real lift at the load of life—a load natural and therefore divine; whereas the other is neither work nor play, not tending either to lift the load of life or to cheer on the labour of lifting it, but tending only to weaken all the powers by rendering the mind a slave of charms. Least of all is it spiritual or supernatural. It is simply manipulation applied by the master with sensational skill, and in the subject suspending thought on sensational routine.

How far do the villages of the thrice beautiful Sabina exceed[Pg 98] those of our Lake District or of Wales in that poetic property of all villages, "innocence"? The last thing we should do is to set up our own as a standard. But if you hear the friars talk of the villagers, and the villagers of the friars and police, the townsfolk of the countryfolk, the doctor of his practice, and the priest of the refractory, you will hear mention made, with incidental ease, of crimes which, if committed in the Lake Districts of England, or in the tourists' haunts in Wales, would fill the journals for weeks. And how often here does scandal name the priest before all others!

Do the towns in Papal territory contrast with those in "lay States" as the oasis does with the desert? Suppose the observer to stand before Subiaco, seated amid Sabine peaks in the smiling valley of the Anio—a favourite haunt of artists, and worthy of their favour. A marble arch marks the entrance to the town; a summer palace of the Pope crowns it. A little way off stands the sacred cave where Benedict first taught. That is the Lupercal of Roman monasticism. There arose the institution which became the one grand public institution of Papal Italy—arose out of purposes not only pure, but lofty, though upon plans departing from those both of Moses and of Christ. These made the love of God in the individual a spiritual force to leaven the family, and made the family the basis of all institutions. The monasticism of the further east made spiritual life a dainty too delicate for the fireside. The Christian system made each new convert a moral agent acting within the social fabric. When Christians adopted the Oriental system, each new convert was abstracted from the social fabric, was taught to turn his or her back on the family, and to call being in the family being in the world, and renouncing the family renouncing the world. Out of a life of three-and-thirty years spent among men, our Lord has left us scarcely another trace of thirty of those years than this, that He spent them in the family.[71] This convent of Benedict still preserves its celebrated gardens, boasted of as a beauty for the whole earth—in[Pg 99]cluding the bed of roses, the lineal descendants of those which were transformed from thorns by miracle.

On the principles of Christianity, if this place has for ages enjoyed a spiritual government free from religious error, and a temporal one free from moral fault, and has, in addition, been blessed with the presence of the representative of God upon earth, we shall without fail find it a scene of enlightenment, righteousness, and bliss. It must in these respects be far before places where frail human nature has been in the hands of churches liable to err, and of governments which commit faults every day. If, on the other hand, they who have here been stewards of the unrighteous mammon have employed it ill, who will entrust to them the true riches, who will give to them the keeping of his soul?

At the entrance of the city, on a morning in May, the sound of chanting floats down the street, and a procession of clergy moves along, passes under the marble arch, and proceeds to a church in the suburbs. Then the priests bless the fields to secure good crops, as is done by the priests in India.

The streets of the city paraded by this procession are not beautiful, and had they been steeped for a few years in a smoky, moist Lancashire atmosphere they would be exceedingly ugly. They are not clean but dirty, below the condition of any country town in the Protestant parts of Ireland. They are not busy, but have a listless air, as if people had little to do and not much heart in doing it. The signs of enterprise and of improvement which in towns under good governments silently tell the tale, are not to be seen—signs which already, in 1867, might be traced in most of the towns of the New Italy. The well-dressed portion of the people is small, and the proportion of those poorly but tidily dressed extremely small. A gala costume even of the poor is fine, for whatever is for effect is studiously done. Many men and women, evidently not in abject poverty, but capable of dressing up for a state occasion, are not tidy, but badly the reverse. The number of ragged adults is great, and that of ragged children very great; it is hard to estimate that of the beggars, for even young women employed and not very miserably dressed, will take advantage of a[Pg 100] passing stranger to seek a penny; and as to the children, begging appears to be a recognized branch of street life.

A young gentleman from Rome, tall and handsome, on the point of getting into a carriage with his companions, anxiously inquires if the road to Palestrina is safe. Have there not been attacks of brigands lately? The fact is not denied, though he is assured that all will be well. In any talk about quarrelling, the use of the knife—that is, the dagger-knife—is alluded to as a common incident. When any occurrence illustrates the amount of confidence felt by the people in the honesty or truthfulness of one another, it seems generally low on the first point and almost nil upon the second.

If the working classes show no sign of having been blessed with a government better than that of all mankind, does any sign of it appear among the trading classes? Beginning at the upper strata of finance and commerce, a merely English eye would look in vain for tokens of their existence. Coming down to the shops, perhaps an episcopal city in the "oasis" would so impress Roman Catholic shopkeepers from Thurles or Tuam that they would think a comparison profane. Their evil lot has been cast in a lamentable portion of the "desert," the misdeeds of whose rulers, and the wrongs of whose pastors and people, have often made the hearts of the devout in Italy to bleed. Protestant shopkeepers of Munster and Connaught would not be so awestruck but that they could make a comparison. They would not find under the fairer sky, and the theocratic rule, what they would take for symptoms of divine superiority. The shopkeepers of Enniskillen and Portadown, not blessed even with a heretic bishop, would smile at the comparison.

As to the professional classes, they are nearly absorbed in the clergy; for this is a state in which the only way to "found a family" is to begin by taking vows of celibacy, and the only way to bequeath coronets is to begin by renouncing the world. The one unworldly profession counts, among its prizes, a triple crown, scores of princedoms, ministries of state, of finance, and even of war, embassies, exceeding many palaces, honours[Pg 101] surpassing those of nobility, gorgeous uniforms, lofty titles, revenues of enormous amount, with powers and dignities bearing a double value—one measurable by the standards of the world, and one immeasurable in the eyes of the faithful. The bulk of the land has passed into the possession either of corporations of clergy or of families founded by priests successful in their profession.

The Mosaic economy is generally taken to be more carnal than the Christian; but Moses, leaving Egypt, where the king and the priests were the only landowners, enacted that the priests should not hold land, and though married men, should have only a house and "a cow's grass." Here, on the contrary, the priest, though renouncing the world in some spiritual sense, comes a hundredfold more into possession of it in a material one. If mind shows its dominion over land and sea, over adamant and wind, over time and space, the feat is labelled for contempt as "material progress." If ministers of the Gospel become immersed in the management of manors, provinces, taxes, lotteries, and even of brigades, the fall is certificated for reverence as "spiritual" ascendancy. In Israel the royal tribe was one "of which no man gave attendance at the altar," and the priestly tribe one of which none came to the throne. Here the priest is king, and the temporal prince kisses his foot. A favourite image is that of the mystic David, pastor and king in one. Here is the cure of political naturalism.

The clergy of the Pontifical States included the two widest extremes of professional life to be found in Christendom—that of show and dressiness beyond what our courtiers or soldiers display, and that of personal meanness and social degradation to which no professional class among us approaches. Society seemed to avenge itself for the humiliations it had to suffer from the court priest, by the contempt with which it treated the clown priest. We once asked an advocate if all the priests did not read the Unitá Cattolica, and we give his reply, not as describing what priests are, but as showing what men of education may say of them—"All?" said the Dottore; "well,[Pg 102] nearly all that can read." "But you do not mean to say that there are priests who cannot read?" "Well, not precisely; but there are many that could not read a journal intelligently, so as to enjoy it."

The co-existence of fear with hatred of a dominant priesthood may be observed in any country where priests have been the governing class, and perhaps, after the Pontifical States, may be best observed in India. The Brahmans, however, have not in the popular eye so direct a command over the lot of the departed as Rome has secured for her own priests, nor have they any such pecuniary profit out of the faith of the survivors. On the other hand, no class of Brahmans sinks so far below the average of respectability, among their countrymen, as do the lower clergy of the Roman and Neapolitan States.

But the contempt of the Italians for the priesthood is no more thorough than is their reverence. The man who will not introduce a certain priest to his daughters, will pay him to save the soul of his mother out of the pains of purgatory. To the Monsignore Don Juan, to use a term of Gregorovius, he will manifest profound respect, while in his heart he scorns him. To the not worse but less successful priest he will manifest contempt and spend some wit upon his vices, and yet, in his heart, will fear his occult power over the souls of his departed kindred.

The worldly professions have no such lot as the sacred one. Except the show corps for inglorious pomp around the sovereign, the military sphere for Romans is narrow, foreigners taking the lead. Letters are no profession. The civil service is principally in the hands of the priests. The law exists, and there are men with the titles of advocates and judges. But if we drew any idea of the status and "chances" belonging to such titles, from England, it would be altogether misleading.

Chief Justice Whiteside has shown how wide the difference is, and he spoke of the great city. In the little one of which we now speak, two English gentlemen, who could not find room in the inn, were directed to the house of an advocate, who played my host with assiduity and good humour, and charged[Pg 103] four francs each for dinner, bed, candles, and service. The doctors seem most like men with a professional standing; and if they keep from politics, they have a fair chance of leading a quiet life in obscure usefulness.

Yet is the whole world called to take this state of things as the model of the subordination of the layman to the priest. "The idea of that subordination," we are told, "is realized in the Papal government." The ideal! This absorption, then, of the State into the so-called Church, this suppression of king, nobles, and people under the priest, is not an abnormal and monstrous lusus ecclesiae, but is the ideal of the new "political order." Any one can understand it—the king merged in the prince-bishop or else a vassal of the priest; the noble the retainer and jewelled ornament of the priest; the people the helots of the priest. That is the model. Here is realized for us the ideal of the one fold and one shepherd.

The English labourer knows that his son may, like James Cook, walk the quarter-deck, or, like Robert Stephenson, sit in the legislature. The Roman noble knows that the utmost his son, if not a priest, can rise to is to wear pearls and stars at the court of a priest, and kiss his foot when he makes a great show.

The kindly monk who, at Subiaco, shows a stranger over the Sacred Cave of Benedict, glories in far-famed gardens, which any peasant from Appenzell could tell him might be equalled in some private houses in such a village as Heiden. Fame sometimes draws out the dying notes of her trumpet unaccountably long. The monk is careful to enlist your admiration for several meritorious works in painting and sculpture, but to Protestants one gem is shown only by request. It is a portrait of the devil painted on the wall, in dark passages, and not visible except when a light is flashed upon it. This done, it appears for a moment, or longer, as the operator pleases, through one opening, fitted with real iron gratings, athwart of which the demon glares out of the gloom upon the spectator. Such a picture is capable of being put to uses that would meet the strongest views of those who call for something to strike the senses, and through them to affect the feelings.

[Pg 104]

As long ago as the days of the man of the land of Uz, the monotheistic way of depicting a spiritual presence was, "I could not discern the form thereof"; and, surely, even in that remote time, the aesthetic was higher than that of the Sacred Cave.

Following the smiling valley from Subiaco to Tivoli, one would, in 1867, probably see youths in the uniform of the zouaves, lounging on a bank, near one or both of the towns. Foreign mercenaries! would the Italians say. Foreign, certainly, and some of them mercenaries; but some, even in the dress of a private, would unmistakably show the gentleman—no mercenary, but a crusader who, in answer to the cry raised after Castelfidardo, has come from afar to fight for St. Peter, to "die for religion."

Even in this mountain valley the villages still keep to the heights. Where is the squire and his generous hall?—no room here for his magisterial office or commanding influence! Where is the farmstead, full and cozy, warm nest of fruitful brood sure to store a land with golden eggs? When the squire was quenched under the mitre of the abbot, the farmer was smothered in the cowl of the friar. Where are the parsonages and manses, homes where thought-culture is generally at the maximum, and external show often at the minimum, Christian families rooted in nature, blessed by divine ordinance, where woman is doing what the Mother of our Lord was doing at the head of her house—families holier a hundred times than the "religious" family, artificially substituted for nature and gospel? If from the list of bright names written up in England since the Reformation were blotted all that were first inscribed in the family Bible of parsonage or manse, that list would be more shortened than most men would imagine.

From the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, with its grandiose, ill-kept gardens, the prospect across the Campagna, when the distant city and its unique dome are limned against the sunset sky, is one of rare enchantment. Suppose that on these Sabine or on the Alban Hills you ask some intelligent inhabitant if[Pg 105] these are not the Delectable Mountains, the summits of the true Celestial Empire, where no act of moral wrong has been done by the authorities for, say, the last ten hundred years. Perhaps you might hear such a statement as we once heard. It was from a gentleman in the pay of the government; but he knew that he had not to speak either to a priest or to that denationalized creature which Romans soon detect under the English form, a convertito. The statement may not have been correct. But it was such as under our unblessed lay government is never heard. It was such as under a good government could never be invented. Such a statement, professing to be made from a man's own knowledge, one never heard in Europe, except in Naples under the last two kings; but one might hear such in Egypt, and one could easily hear such, many years ago, in the Mysore, from old men talking of the times of Hyder Ali.

The desolation of the Campagna is the true and terrible material progress. Here physical impediments to health and life have conquered, not being encountered by moral and mental force. What natural riches are here! If England has wealth in its coal, how much has Italy in its sunshine? How much has that saved in the last thousand years in clothes, bedding, and fuel? How much in the wear and tear of buildings, and of implements? How much has it given in ripening what we can never ripen, and in ripening quickly and perfectly what we can ripen but slowly and in part? How much has it both saved and given in diminishing the physical temptation to intemperance? This soil, this sun, and in addition the tribute of nations, poured out here for ages in all the endless forms of Peter's gain—where is all that wealth gone? Here we are amid the riches of nature, to which successive centuries have brought riches of tribute, and yet are we wrapped around by silence, vacuity, and fear. Sleep not here! whispers every friendly voice. Wealth of matter, poverty of man! The Papal government is sometimes accused of bringing the malaria. No; it only let it come and let it stay. Like many who will not believe in invisible mind, it would not believe in invisible[Pg 106] matter. The miasma was the hand of God, and was not to be fought against.

The Papal government is also accused of bringing all the foreign hordes who wasted this once glorious plain. It did not always bring them. It only brought them so often that had it been done by any faction in the heart of a country not being priests, mankind would have sunk the memory of the faction under eternal disgrace. Now, the sickly Campagna labourer, the thing like a Fijian hut which to him is home, and the buffalo, seem a meet monument to the memory of Saracen and Lombard destroying, and of Cardinals plundering, till only the grass was left. Who would have the heart to ask himself, Is this the proof that the oasis of priests amid the desert of lay States, is a garden planted of the Lord?

Roughly speaking, Rome is about the size of Dublin. All the Catholic world sighs over the woes and desolations inflicted on Ireland by Protestant cruelty. Where has Rome set up a suburb like Kingstown, Dalkey, or Bray? Where sown a tract of country with rich smiling homes like those which spangle the emerald from Dublin to the Wicklow hills? Where in the oasis could a bishop on returning to Belfast point to a creation of wealth and beauty made in Papal times equal to Holywood, or the Antrim shore? And could his colleague of Cork dare to make the people who look on the lone banks of the stream from Rome to the sea mourn for those who hang their harps by the "pleasant waters" that flow within sound of the bells of Shandon? Had the Roman Curia reigned there, the vale would now be insecure; a wretched village or two, with skeletons and clouts by way of relics in tawdry churches, would crown the heights; instead of villas, mansions, and cots, a monastery or two walled up to heaven would hold the best points on the hills, inviting artists, but perhaps ill rewarding them, while nursing idlers within and beggars without. And had Rome less reigned at Cork than she has done, a scene many degrees livelier and richer than that which now surrounds the fair city would have noted the response of intelligent industry to the boons of a very bountiful Providence.

[Pg 107]

Inside the capital of the oasis!—capital of a region where for a thousand years, at the very least, no act morally wrong has been done by authority, true bower of a peerless Eden! Let no Englishman say that these pretensions are not to be treated seriously. We should all have said so thirty years ago. But now men from any nation in Europe, some blaming us, some vaunting over our return, will tell us that of late years more has been done to accredit these pretensions by a portion of the English clergy than by any educated class in Europe, and that more to adorn and sanction these pretensions has been done by a portion of the English aristocracy than by any privileged class in Europe. This is one instance more of the fact that not interests but principles are the safeguards of mankind.

Is the city, then, morally the perfection of beauty? Is it so rich in the Christian graces as to accredit the claim to be the central seat of an infallible power, the one spot on earth where it is directly touched by a divine authority? The priest at once tells you how holy the city is: there are eight basilicas, more than four hundred churches, and more than two hundred convents. Yes, but perhaps the "religious family" fabricated by teaching woman that her holy place is not the family which God founded, and in which every man has his own wife and every woman her own husband, may not in operation have proved a better thing than the Christian family. Poor creatures put into an artificial family where duties ordained by God are made void, and ties set by Him as strings in the harp of nature to make holy melody, are rudely unstrung—a "family" in which many of the things called good works are neither virtues nor graces, but vain repetitions of fantastic forms—a family where the obedience called for is not obedience to any natural authority or to any divine law, but to arbitrary will; communities of poor creatures such as these, we say, may not in the long run have proved centres of holiness. When we ask if the city is holy, we mean nothing about basilicas, or churches, or convents; but we mean, are the people like Jesus Christ, like a people prepared as a fit population for a sinless heaven?

[Pg 108]

We shall in reply give nothing but a statement on one side from the Civiltá, and one on the other from the prelate Liverani, so that neither heretic nor foreigner, nay, not even a layman, shall disturb the testimony. The Civiltá,[72] after the occupation of the city by Italy, showed that one of its characteristics had been the perfect subordination of all civil arrangements to evangelical law. Christ reigns, Christ governs. This motto had in Rome a worthy and complete application. Not only individuals, but the family, the city, laws, policy, all social institutions, felt the salutary influence. In the metropolis of Christianity, marriage, education, instruction, the administration of justice and charity, public and private manners, had to be regulated by Christian laws and evangelical principles:—

Such to a nicety was Rome. It was called the holy city, that is, the city more than any other consecrated to God and forming the expression of the kingdom of God upon earth. And the effect of this Christian order was seen in the very virtues of the civil population. The Roman people was not second to any other in piety towards God, and in propriety of conduct; and not only so, but it seemed the most dignified, the gravest, and the furthest removed from vulgarity and tumult.

The prelate on the other hand says—and we begin at the Vatican (p. 87):—

Thus came it to pass that at the Court of Rome, that is, the house of the lieutenant of Him of whom it is written, "The evil shall not dwell with Thee, neither shall the unjust remain within Thy sight," turned into a sink of scandal and a sewer of every foul iniquity (p. 87).... It was always to me a mystery how the Roman clergy, rich in gold and lands till most of the Agro Latino is in their hands, with their splendid temples and sumptuous ceremonies, with their retainers diffused among all classes, with control of the charities, the pulpit, the confessional, the confraternities—how it is that with all these elements of power in their hands I hear from one end of Rome to the other the cry, Death to the priests! (p. 87).... The particulars hitherto related disclose [in the Court] an iniquity only too deeply rooted, and even turned into blood and nature; they disclose sores both inveterate and envenomed, hard to cure and hard to eradicate. It was this that made Clement VIII[Pg 109] say to Bellarmine, "I have not strength to contend with such a flood of bad habits; pray to God to release me soon, and to shelter me in His glory." Also the brave Marcellus II was accustomed to repeat a sentence of Onofrio, which I do not wish to copy (133).

As to the people, we shall give but one word. Liverani, remarking on objections raised against modern Italian rule by the "good Press," because certain houses existed in the cities, says:—

It reminds me of a pleasantry of the old rector of the parish of St. Angelo in Pescheria, who one day said to me that when he took charge of the parish he found one house bad and one not so, turn and turn about; but he soon found that they were all alike. This editor is ingenuous and innocent as if he wrote in a land of angels, instead of in the place where not long ago a prelate-judge abused his office to the point of using violence with arms in his hands against the sister and daughter of the convicts, so that he was prosecuted before the Vicar and before the Holy Office, and removed from the bench; but after a few years, the good nature of the prince being overcome by powerful intercession, he was reinstated in another judicial office.

We shall not go further into this subject than to add that one of the bitter reproaches cast upon the Italian senate by the Unitá was that when the most noted and most respected living man in Italian literature and politics, Mamiani, said, speaking on the conscription, that at all events the morals of the barrack-room were better than the morals of the convent, the senate received the statement with loud applause.

However correct or incorrect may be the views of the several witnesses from whom we have heard a word, there can be no hesitation in pronouncing that any attempt to show evidence of divine superiority utterly fails—so utterly as to be more than ridiculous. But if there is not divine superiority, there must have been false pretensions. The one or the other is inevitable. If the States of the Church have not for the last thousand years been ruled by the representative of God, they have been ruled by one who was himself deceived and a deceiver of others.

[Pg 110]

CHAPTER XIII

Solemn Confirmation of the Syllabus by the Pope before the assembled Hierarchy, and their Acquiescence, June 17, 1867.

The twenty-first anniversary of the accession of Pius IX occurred shortly before the day for which the great assembly of 1867 was convened. As the Court historian omits all mention of the Syllabus when first issued, so does he also omit to say a word of its definite confirmation by the Pontiff on June 17, 1867, and of its formal acceptance by the episcopate. We are indebted for the details in this case to an author who published before the events of 1870. Important as the transaction was, we cannot find that at the time any of the ordinary organs of the Vatican notified it to the world. Many of the learned disputants in the controversies which were soon to arise took ground which showed that they were unaware of this decisive event.

It was Archbishop Manning who related how Mass was celebrated in the Sistine Chapel, and how the Pope retired, at its close, to robe in the Pauline Chapel. Here the Cardinal Vicar, Patrizi, followed by the whole of the Sacred College and the bishops, presented an address of congratulation, concluding with hopes for many years of additional life to Pius IX, that he might behold the peace of the Church, and her triumph.

As recorded by the Archbishop, the terms employed by his Holiness in reply were of historical importance.[73] It will be remarked that the watchwords, deprecated by the Pope, are not those of heretics, but of statesmen—Unity and Progress; and no Italian or German could doubt what were the unity and progress decried—

[Pg 111]

I accept your good wishes from my heart, but I remit their verification to the hands of God. We are in a moment of great crisis. If we look only to the aspect of human events, there is no hope; but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxicated with dreams of unity and progress, but neither is possible without justice. Unity and progress based on pride and egotism are illusions. God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations; and I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in what is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society, and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. That act I now confirm in your presence, and I lay it again before you as the rule of your teaching. To you, venerable brethren, as bishops of the Church, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. When the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness, they had a pillar of fire to guide them in the night, and a cloud to shield them from the heat by day. You are the pillar and the cloud to the people of God.

Here the bishops learned, with the full weight of pontifical authority, that the Syllabus was "the rule of their teaching." Some explained the Syllabus as affecting discipline, and therefore liable to alteration. The Civiltá and the Slimmen had always asserted that it was purely doctrinal, and therefore above all change. In pronouncing it the "rule of teaching" the Pope settled that vital point. Some, again, had been tempted to think that the Syllabus might be laid up, like an ancestral weapon; they were undeceived, and given to know that it must be tested in war. Such were placed in the dilemma of having to offer resistance to the sovereign thus surrounded, or of having to observe a silence which must ever after carry the effect of consent. Even if they did not feel with the Pope, that the foundations of universal society were crumbling in unprecedented decay, they did keenly feel with him that the foundations of his own temporal power were crumbling. Every doubter held his peace, and the Pope's act became virtually what, as we shall see, in a few days it became formally,—the act of the whole episcopate.

The Pope is not fortunate in quoting Scripture, often showing[Pg 112] that he takes glosses for the text. He imagines that the "cloud by day" was not a pillar before the host, but an extended field of clouds overshadowing the wide-spread multitudes and not merely the tabernacle.

[Pg 113]

BOOK II

FROM THE FIRST PUBLIC INTIMATION OF A COUNCIL TO THE EVE OF THE OPENING
(June 1867 to December 1869)

CHAPTER I

First Public Intimation of the intention to hold a Council, June 26 to July 1, 1867—Consistory—Acquiescence in the Syllabus of the assembled Bishops—The Canonized Inquisitor—Questions and Returns preparatory to Greater Centralization—Manning on the Ceremonies—O'Connell on the Papist Doctrines—The Doctrine of Direct and Indirect Power.

June 26, 1867, was the day of the Secret Consistory, to which not less than five hundred bishops from all regions of the earth lent their splendours. The Pope in his allocution deplored the evils which had overtaken the Church, and, as he supposed, in equal measure had overtaken all society. And now, at length, did he reveal his intention of convoking such an assembly as had not been witnessed for three hundred years. He had firm hope that from a General Council the light of catholic truth would shine forth and scatter the darkness which enveloped the minds of men; and that the Church, like the battle-array of an unconquered host, discomfiting her enemies, rolling back their onset, and triumphing over them, would spread abroad over the earth the dominion of Christ.

Though journalists and bishops at the time bravely reproduced this martial figure, the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 13), writing after the battles of 1870, makes the Pope say that the Church would gain her fairest triumphs by converting her enemies.

The very name of an Œcumenical Council, uttered in the tones of Pius IX, instinct with personal and official hope,[Pg 114] caused among the assembled prelates a movement of effusive joy. They felt that such a council would prove a "marvellous source of unity, sanctification, and peace." On July 1, assembling in the great hall over the portico of St. Peter's, with all possible accessories of form, they presented to his Holiness what they called a Salutation. This had been drawn up by Archbishop Haynald of Colocza, assisted by Bishop Dupanloup, Archbishop Manning, and others. It had been proposed to proclaim Papal infallibility in the document itself; but this set the French prelates up in arms.[74] Though stopping short of that goal, the bishops go far in their approaches to it.

"May the unmeasured benefits assured to society by the Roman Pontificate," say the bishops, "be, by this deed of Thy providence, once more displayed to the world, and may the world be convinced of the powers of the Church, and of her mission as the mother of civil humanity!" They were persuaded that a Council would have the effect of showing that everything tending to consolidate the foundation of a community, and to give it permanence, is fortified and consecrated by the example of authority, and of the obedience due thereto, presented in the divine institution of the Pontificate. Princes and peoples would not, "in the face of such a display, allow the highest sanction of all authority, the august rights of the Pope, to be trampled upon with impunity, but would see him secured in the enjoyment both of the liberty of power and the power of liberty."[75]

The words in which the bishops confirm their testimony of 1862, to the "necessity," of the temporal power are few and firm. They then proceed to cover the space between that time and the present. "With grateful feelings do we recall, and with fullest assent do we commend, the things done by Thee subsequent to that time, for the salvation of the faithful and the glory of the Church." This is a waymark showing that the old doctrine still ruled the practice of the Court, though long banished from its theory. The acquiescence of the bishops[Pg 115] was practically necessary to give the ultimate sanction to the acts of the Pope.

Then comes the solemn adhesion of the assembled hierarchy to the condemnations collected together in the Syllabus—"Believing Peter to have spoken by the lips of Pius the things which have been spoken, confirmed, and pronounced by Thee, for the safe keeping of the deposit, we also declare, confirm, and announce; and we reject with one heart and voice those things which Thou hast adjudged to be reprobated and rejected, as being contrary to divine faith, the salvation of souls, or the good of human society."[76]

So it was done. The Pope had called for the express submission of the episcopate to his own acts, hitherto variously understood and discussed, and they had given it in round terms. Dr. Manning, in characterizing their document as "The Address or Response, in which they united themselves in heart and mind to their supreme Head,"[77] might well speak of "the gravity and moral grandeur of that act," for with him vastness always seems to prove grandeur, and an act of vast moral consequence this surely was. We shall hereafter see the fact tardily come to light that absent prelates were called upon to give in their adhesion by letter, and did so.

On either the Papal or the Episcopal theory, the Syllabus had now the status of Church law, and had become to all the clergy "the rule of your teaching." On the Papal theory, because it was the formal act of the Pontiff for the teaching and ruling of the whole Church; and on the Episcopal theory, because the collective hierarchy had not only tacitly acquiesced but openly accepted it.

Yet it is worthy of special remark that the Syllabus is not mentioned in this Salutation. More than two years later, however, the Civiltá said, "There is no doubt that the prelates had the Encyclical and Syllabus in view, since in these two documents are contained all the things which the Pope has spoken, confirmed, announced, and reproved in matters[Pg 116] of doctrine."[78] And even as early as one year from the time, we shall find that the double authority of the Bishop of Rome, and of all other bishops, was declared to be outraged by Darboy when he practically disowned the Syllabus.

The next point touched by the prelates was one lying near to the heart of the Pope. They had been moved with joy on beholding the loyal faith, love, and reverence of the Roman people for their most indulgent prince. "Happy people and truly wise"—Felicem populum ac vere sapientem.[79] So, whoever had doubted as to the Model State, it was not the five hundred. Were they sincerely ready to make the people of their respective nations "truly wise" by bringing them to look on that government as the model?

The bishops evidently knew that they were initiating a movement which would test the combative qualities of both Pope and prelates. Every discerning man among them must have felt what Archbishop Manning expressed, "This event may be taken, I believe, to be the opening of a new period, and to contain a future which may reach over centuries."[80]

Under anticipations so serious do these old men, addressing a very old one, thus conclude—

Courage, most Blessed Father! Guide the bark of the Church with a firm hand, as has been Thy wont, certain of gaining the port. The Mother of divine grace, whom Thou hast saluted with fairest titles of honour, will defend Thy course, by the aid of her intercession; she will be to Thee the star of the sea.... Thou wilt have the celestial choirs of the saints favouring Thee; those whose glory Thou hast, with diligence and apostolic toil, sought out, and also hast proclaimed to the exulting world, both aforetime and in these recent days. May the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul stand by Thee!... At the helm now held by Thee once stood Peter. He will intercede with the Lord that the bark which, by the aid of his prayers, has for eighteen centuries traversed the deep sea of human life, may under Thy command enter the celestial haven, all sail set, and laden with richest spoil of souls immortal.[81]

It is to be remarked that in this passage Peter is not honoured, like his successor, with capitals to all his pronouns.[Pg 117] Again, he and Paul are coupled together as if they might have been somewhat on a level. Perhaps in both points the bishops made an unconscious concession to history, but in the state of things now initiated, such jots and tittles were to become symptomatic.

One allusion in the Address, which would pass with a smile in England, had great significance for the mind of Pius IX. It is that made to his claim to peculiar aid from the Blessed Virgin, because of the higher exaltation which he had procured for her, and also to his claim upon new saints whose titles he had made out. In the case of the Japanese saints, we have already seen how practical were his views. He was fighting for the territory of his predecessors, and, finding that he had not hosts enough on earth, he reversed the ordinary process of binding on earth and leaving it to be ratified in heaven, and now bound in heaven, by creating "new patrons in the presence of God," leaving it to be ratified on earth by a corresponding increase of forces.

The vision of these new heavenly auxiliaries dazzled the imagination. Even the professor of history in the university speaks of the awful moment when the Pope raised them to their thrones as "the sublime rite, during which heaven and earth hung upon the lips of the Pope."[82] The expressions of confidence in these new-made powers, as champions in the thickening struggle for that patrimony which, though costing so much blood, forgery, and intrigue, so much dependency on foreign arms, so much slaughter of Italians, had been retained through evil report and good report, irresistibly remind one of Licinius when menaced by the advance of Constantine, under the auspices of one God only. Licinius feels the advantage he has in the numbers of gods on whom he can rely.

"This present day," he, as reported by Eusebius, says, "will either declare us conquerors, and so most justly demonstrate our gods to be the saviours and true assistants, or else, if this one God of Constantine's, who comes from I know not whence, shall get the better of our gods, which are many, and at present do exceed in[Pg 118] number, nobody in future will be in doubt which God he ought to worship, but will betake himself to the more powerful God, and attribute to Him the rewards of victory. And if this strange God, who is now a ridicule to us, shall appear to be the victor, it will behove us also to acknowledge and adore Him, and to bid a long farewell to those to whom we light tapers in vain. But if our gods shall get the better—which no person can entertain a doubt of—after the victory obtained in this place we will proceed to bring a war upon those impious contemners of the gods."[83]

Even if this does not describe what Licinius really said, it does represent the view of the early Christian, as to the heathen mode of thought, putting confidence in a multiplicity of celestial patrons, in the lighting of tapers and such like.

The name of Arbues, the Spanish Inquisitor, has been mentioned as being second on the list of those now to be canonized. Professor Sepp, of Munich, long known as a Catholic theologian and Oriental traveller, says in his Deutschland und der Vatican (p. 52)—

Nothing was more calculated to degrade the Church, and render her unpopular, or to bring a flush of shame to the cheek of every Catholic, than this revival of the most disagreeable recollections of history. Had Arbues contended against the burning of heretics, we should have welcomed him, in the name of God, as a saint. But history gives us no information about the man except that he discharged the odious office of a Torquemada, and that the long-persecuted Jews brought him to an untimely end. The most that can be said for him is that he died for the idea of the Inquisition; and for that he is to be set up on our altars.

Many another Liberal Catholic blushed with Sepp. Baron Weichs, in Vienna, cried, "A single example will show you the difference between the spirit which reigns here and that which reigns on the banks of the Tiber. While here we speak of abolishing the penalty of death, there they canonize an Inquisitor, covered over with the blood of the victims whom he had immolated because they worshipped God in their own way." The Civiltá exclaims, "And men of this sort are to be reputed Catholics, and to make laws for Catholics. O tempora! O mores!"[84]

[Pg 119]

The Cardinals of the Holy Office had drawn up a list of questions on points of Church discipline, which was delivered to the bishops while in Rome, and afterwards sent to many, probably to all, of those who were absent. Lord Acton points out that these questions do not touch the depths of existing wants.[85] And Michelis seems to look upon them as a blind, to cover the real point at which the Council was to aim. They are, however, clearly framed to elicit facts bearing on uniformity of discipline, and especially on points of administration in mixed questions—that is, questions wherein both civil and ecclesiastical authority are concerned; for instance, schools, mixed marriages, civil marriages, domestic relations, and the like. The returns which the answers would supply would be of great value in the study of plans for reconstruction, and would seem to be of more practical importance than Lord Acton imagines, for the purpose of governing a mobilized clergy through bishops turned into prefects, by orders from one bureau, and of impressing through them a uniform movement on both institutions and families, in matters affecting national law.

The five hundred bishops soon dispersed to the four corners of the earth, carrying into their respective spheres enthusiastic descriptions of the beautiful, the grand, the splendid, the superb, the glorious, the unutterably majestic ceremonies which they had just witnessed, and no less enthusiastic hope of "the greatest event of the age," when the princes of the Church should assemble around her head to overawe her enemies and build her up anew. We do not use the epithet "divine," but it is perhaps right to say that the Civiltá described the appearing of the Pope "upon the portative throne, in all the majesty of his divine rank ... the Pope-king, the supreme representative of the two-fold authority which rules the nations in the name of God."[86] It of course celebrates the "standards which represented the glory of the Princes of the Apostles," and does not forget the "twenty thousand wax candles."[87]

[Pg 120]

Archbishop Manning reminded his clergy that in the solemn adherence of the bishops to those acts of the Pontiff, they did not confirm those acts as if needing confirmation, or accept them as if needing acceptance, or imply that they had been "of imperfect and only inchoate authority until their acceptance should confirm them." ... "They did not add certainty to what was already infallible."[88] The infallibility, he contended, belonged to all the approbations and condemnations alike—not, as some "blindly say," by virtue derived from canons, councils, or ecclesiastical institutions, "but from the direct grant of our Lord Jesus Christ, before as yet a canon was made or a council assembled." This is a somewhat crude statement of the doctrine which all the Irish and French Catholics we ever knew in our younger days resented, when ascribed to themselves by Protestants. They called it the doctrine of the "Papists," and contended that Protestants wronged all such Roman Catholics as were not Papists, by calling them so, indiscriminately. What we call "temporal authority," what the Jesuits have taught Rome to call "spiritual authority over temporal affairs," was one point, and the infallibility of the Pope was a second point, on which the Papist was at issue with the Liberal Catholic. In this sense Montalembert and O'Connell were not Papists. The latter says—

I am sincerely a Catholic, but I am not a Papist. I deny the doctrine that the Pope has any temporal authority directly or indirectly in Ireland. We have all denied that authority on oath, and we would die to resist it. He cannot, therefore, be any party to the Act of Parliament we solicit, nor shall any Act of Parliament regulate our faith and conscience. In spiritual matters too the authority of the Pope is limited: he cannot, although his conclave of Cardinals were to join him, vary our religion either in doctrine or essential discipline in any respect. Even in non-essential discipline the Pope cannot vary it without the assent of the Irish Catholic bishops. Why, to this hour the discipline of the General Council of Trent is not received in this diocese.[89]

[Pg 121]

The utterances of Archbishop Manning, though sweet to the ears of those who had the dispensing of the purple in Rome, were, nevertheless, hard on those who, as children, had learned that such doctrine was no part of their creed. In his day Alban Butler had proudly said, "But Mr. Bower never found the infallibility of the Pope in our creed, and knows very well that no such article is proposed [propounded] by the Church, or required of any one."[90]

Dr. Manning went on to declare that he had received the Syllabus at the first "as a part of the supreme and infallible teaching of the Church."[91] In this he proved how far he went before most prelates of experience on this side of the Alps and Pyrenees, although he coolly credits them, every one, with having done likewise.[92]

Just as the episcopate had been committed in 1862 to the temporal power, so was it committed in 1867 to the Syllabus. Whether a bishop believed that his assent had any constitutional effect or not was now a matter of comparative indifference, for his future action was bound; and the Syllabus was to prescribe the decrees and direct the deliberations of the future Council—in fact, to be its basis and its guide.

The language of Manning was treated by many Catholics as the menaces of a zealot; but the zealot knew that he spoke for the Pope and the Jesuits. During the conflict now on the point of breaking out, many honest men fought against the supposed design that the Syllabus should receive "doctrinal authority" from the Council, while in the mind of those in whose hands lay their future faith, the Council was under the doctrinal authority of the Syllabus. The Council might contribute to administration by turning the propositions into canons or constitutions, but could not add to their authority.

The anticipation of Archbishop Manning as to the political effect of the doctrinal change then impending was clearly recorded, and in terms never to be forgotten—

[Pg 122]

"Civil governments, so long as their Catholic subjects can be dealt with in detail, are strong and often oppressive. When they have to deal with the Church throughout the world, the minority becomes a majority, and subjects, in all matters spiritual, become free. We are approaching a time when civil governments must deal with the Church as a whole, and with its head as supreme; and a General Council which makes itself felt in every civilized nation will powerfully awaken civil rulers to the consciousness that the Church is not a school of opinion, nor a mere religion, but a spiritual kingdom, having its own legislature, tribunals, and executive."[93]

Some seven years after sounding this note, preparatory to a powerful awakening of civil rulers, the Archbishop, having seen some beginning of the results of that policy to which he was helping to hurry on his Church, could say, "I must add that they who are rekindling the old fires of religious discord in such an equal and tempered commonwealth as ours, seem to me to be serving neither God nor their country."[94]

The language of O'Connell, as above quoted, was not employed loosely. He spoke as a Catholic, and as a lawyer; but, above all, as a politician. Had his declaration with regard to the spiritual power been less explicit, that upon the temporal power might, though not without violence, have been open to an Ultramontane interpretation. It might have been said that he only meant that the Pope had no authority in Ireland, which either directly or indirectly sprang from a temporal origin; for, in the language of the Ultramontanes, temporal authority does not mean authority over temporal affairs, but authority of temporal origin. His statement on the spiritual authority however, precludes any such interpretation. Even the spiritual authority he declares to be limited, both in doctrine and in discipline: it cannot "vary" doctrine, and cannot even vary the essential points of discipline, without the consent of the Irish bishops. If spoken to-day, this reserve in favour of the bishops would involve nationalism; and O'Connell's denial of the Pope's infallibility, without the consent of the bishops, would be heresy. Archbishop Manning, with a great many others, sought to prove, before the Council sat,[Pg 123] that the latter position was proximate to heresy. So O'Connell and Montalembert must always lie under the brand of having lived and died as proximate heretics. The elect champion of the Pope's faith to-day may, if he refuses to change, be the butt of his anathema to-morrow.

NOTE
DR. NEWMAN ON THE SYLLABUS

It was eight years after the Syllabus had been formally confirmed by the Pope, and after its ratification by the collective hierarchy had been officially communicated to the Papal clergy in England by Archbishop Manning, that Dr. Newman treated of it in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk, in reply to the "Expostulation" of Mr. Gladstone. The assertions in that reply are among the most unaccountable known to the history of our literature. Still, such as they are, they have been made in a pamphlet bearing the name of an English duke on its title-page, and that of an English gentleman at its end. Moreover, they were received by our Press—and the fact is known throughout Europe—with perfect gravity.

Dr. Newman (p. 78) asks and answers an important question as follows—

"Who gathered the propositions out of these Papal documents, and put them together in one? We do not know." After no more than three sentences he adds: "The Pope has had the errors, which at one time or other he therein condemned, brought together into one, and that for the use of the bishops." On the next page he asks: "Who is its author? Some select theologian or high official, doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli himself? No, surely; anyhow, it is not the Pope." First he tells us that we do not know who put it together, then that the Pope has done it, or has had it done. Again, in the same manner, he first tells us that it is not Cardinal Antonelli's, and then more than once calls it Cardinal Antonelli's (p. 91), as if his authorship of the document was an established point on which arguments might be grounded. Dr. Newman in this manner procures for himself a double set of premises, which he employs throughout, with frequent shifting. His argument now assumes the affirmative, namely, that the Syllabus is the work of the Pope; and now it assumes the negative, that the Syllabus is not the work of the Pope; and this is what the English Press with, so far as we know, unanimity agrees to call logical.

"But," asserts Dr. Newman, "the Syllabus makes no claim to[Pg 124] be acknowledged as the word of the Pope" (p. 80). The very heading of the Syllabus sets up the claim to be accounted the word of the Pope; ay, and his word in official, public, and teaching acts. The heading is, "The Syllabus of the Principal Errors of our Time set forth in Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic, by our most holy lord, Pope Pius IX." This claim is not incidental, but formal and capital, incapable of being either overlooked or put aside. No man's judgments are here introduced but those of Pope Pius IX, and of his judgments not one here recited is less official than are Letters Apostolic.

"The Syllabus, then," further asserts Dr. Newman, "has no dogmatic force. It addresses us not in its separate portions, but as a whole" (p. 81). The affirmative is true, the Syllabus addresses us as a whole. The negative is not true, namely, that the Syllabus does not address us in its separate portions.

Does Dr. Newman mean that there is a single one of the eighty propositions which does not bear the Papal brand, "error"? It is very wide of the mark—no man in England better knows how wide of it—to talk about different brands, some more and some less damnatory, such as "heretical," "false," "impious," or the like.

"There is not a single word in the Encyclical to show that the Pope in it is alluding to the Syllabus" (p. 82). This is said to refute an allegation of Mr. Gladstone, which Dr. Newman calls "marvellously unfair." That allegation is, that the Encyclical virtually, though not expressly, includes the whole of the errors condemned. It will be seen by any one who refers to our own remarks upon the Encyclical (pp. 5-7), that had Mr. Gladstone read it as we do, he would not have written what he did. He would have written instead of it something to this effect, that the Encyclical includes the whole of these condemnations, not by reciting them, but by clearly expressed reference. What he did say, instead of being unfair, comes short of what is required by the evidence contained in the documents. The reference in the one to the other is formal. "In pursuance of our apostolic ministry, and walking in the illustrious footsteps of our predecessor, we have lifted up our voice, and in several published Encyclical Consistorial Allocutions, and other Letters Apostolic, we have condemned the errors of our sad times." This language proves that Mr. Gladstone in saying that the whole of the Pope's condemnations were virtually though not expressly included in the Encyclical, was within the limits of the evidence. They are expressly referred to, and those additional ones contained in the Encyclical itself are linked on to[Pg 125] the previous ones as a complement, making them a whole. In itself the point is of no consequence whatever, but Dr. Newman has chosen to make it important, and for his theory it may have some importance.

"All we know," says Dr. Newman, "is that by the Pope's command this collection of errors is sent by his Foreign Minister to the bishops" (p. 78). That is not all we know. We also know that the Foreign Minister did not, by the Pope's command, send it as the work of Cardinal Antonelli. We know that he did send it as the work of Pope Pius IX. We know that he recited in one and the same note, once for all, the language common to the two documents. 1. As regards what is condemned—"the principal errors of our times." 2. As to who it was that condemned them—the Pope. 3. As to the official acts in which he did condemn them, namely, Allocutions, and so on.

The next assertion we have to note is made in a strong interrogative form. "How can a list of errors be a series of pontifical declarations?" (p. 84). We reply, how can it be otherwise? What does an error mean in the language of such a document? It means errors declared to be such by the Pontiff; a list of such "errors," therefore, is simply a list of pontifical declarations. Dr. Newman knows as well as he knows his own name, that every clause of the Syllabus is a pontifical declaration that the words there written express an error.

Alluding to the forty-second of the condemned propositions, namely, that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, Dr. Newman says this is a universal, and the Pope does but deny a universal. A universal may be denied in two ways. First by its contradictory, which may amount only to saying in popular language that the rule is not without exceptions. But there is another way of denying a universal, namely, by its contrary; that is, asserting that the rule is just the contrary of what some one has stated.

Now if Dr. Newman believes that when the Pope denies that, in case of conflict, the civil law should prevail, the Pope means no more than that there are exceptions to that rule, he believes what is in flat contradiction to the whole tenor of the Pope's language, and that of his organs year by year—language cast in forms as forcible as the case admits of. If he does not mean that, his repeated statement about denying universals is, in a technical sense, incorrect, and, in a popular sense, misleading.

Dr. Newman's treatment of the Sentence (24) which condemns those who say that the Church has not the right to employ force,[Pg 126] is very instructive. First, he says (p. 89), "Employing force is not the Pope's phrase, but Professor Nuytz's." And what then? Is this phrase, "It is an error to say the Church has not a right to employ force" Professor Nuytz's or the Pope's? Next Dr. Newman says that what the Pope means is, "It is an error to say with Professor Nuytz that what he calls employing force is not allowable to the Church." And what then? What does Professor Nuytz call force but force? Schrader translates it "outward force." Dr. Newman does not venture so far as to translate it "spiritual coercion." The whole sentence is about temporal power and the use of force—Vis inferendae—potestatem temporalem; it never glances at spiritual censures in the popular sense.

At the next step, Dr. Newman professes to "set down what the received doctrine of the Church is on ecclesiastical punishments" (p. 89). Does he do so, or make any straightforward attempt to do it? Not by any means. "Ecclesiastical punishments" is a term of wide extension, embracing great varieties of penalty, from the deposition of an Emperor to the paltry penance of a nun. In all this range of inflictions, the single point touched by Dr. Newman is that of corporal punishment. The selection of this one point proves that he was perfectly aware that both Nuytz and the Pope meant force when they said force; and this fact reduces the talk about Nuytz's sense of that term to what it is.

But having selected corporal punishment as the whole of ecclesiastical punishment, how does Dr. Newman set down the received doctrine regarding it? By quoting a passage which, under the appearance of surrendering something, really claims something additional, according to a common usage with Papal writers (p. 89). Cardinal Soglia, as quoted by Dr. Newman, makes a merit of giving up on behalf of the Church "the corporal sword by which the body is destroyed, or blood is shed." This, however, the Church formerly never claimed to hold in her hand, but only in her power and at her beck, in the hand of the temporal ruler. But, in giving up the corporal sword, Soglia is not contented to claim for the Church in her own hand what the bull Unam Sanctam claims; that is, the spiritual sword. He does of course claim that, but he further claims that the same hand should have and hold also the corporal instalments "of lighter punishments," such as imprisonment, flogging, and beating with sticks—anything "short of effusion of blood." The last penalty is the stroke of the corporal sword, and is left to the temporal arm. The Church did not in past time claim two swords in her own hand, the spiritual one and the corporal. She only claimed a spiritual sword according to Boniface VIII;[Pg 127] and according to Dr. Newman she claims also a cat, a cudgel, and a rack.

Neither in what he writes, nor in what he quotes, on this subject does Dr. Newman allow even an allusion to appear to the question whether the corporal sword is or is not in the power of the Church. He cannot be unaware that untrained Englishmen, in reading the statement of his authority to the effect that the corporal sword is by some writers withdrawn from the Church, would suppose that they taught that it is not in her power. Dr. Newman knows that such an impression upon their minds would be a false one. He knows that Cardinal Soglia does not give any hint that the corporal sword is a weapon which the Church may not employ. Dr. Newman himself does not give any such hint. To ordinary readers, indeed, he seems to resent the assertion that she may employ it; but even in seeming to resent it he does not venture to affirm that she may not do so. Much less does he say, in plain English, that such is the received doctrine. He engages us in chat about flogging and thrashing, and forgets all about where his Church keeps her corporal sword—the only one we care about. Not that we like even the instruments of flogging and thrashing, much less the instruments of other corporal pains which fall short of the "effusion of blood."

Dr. Newman, at one time, says that the Syllabus does not address us in its separate portions; and at another, shows that every one of its portions refers to an original document, in which that portion is to be found. These documents, he admits, are authoritative; but the Syllabus, which culls out the really authoritative parts of them, is not authoritative. We can hardly credit Dr. Newman with making a distinction of the following sort: that one is to feel bound by the Pope's judgments when they lie buried in a clumsy document, and not feel bound by them when they have been culled out by himself, and put simply before us. If Dr. Newman feels free to teach in opposition to any one of the eighty sentences as read from the Syllabus, though bound to teach according to it when read in the original document, what he has written on the subject may have some kind of serious meaning for himself, though incomprehensible to other people.

One other point we would notice. "When we turn to these documents which are authoritative," says Dr. Newman, "we find the Syllabus cannot even be called an echo of the apostolic voice." We certainly do not profess to find that it is so. It is an echo of a voice very unlike an apostolic one. But Dr. Newman means the Pope's voice. Of that voice the words in the Syllabus are not an[Pg 128] echo, because they are its own words. Dr. Newman says that, as uttered in the Syllabus, they are not an exact reproduction of the words of the Pope; meaning by that, as found in the original documents. The words in the Syllabus are the exact words of the Pope used on a second occasion, and sometimes slightly varied from those he originally did use.

Dr. Newman has a passage in his own history which is not to be forgotten, and which ought to have made it difficult for him to stand on points about a variation of language made by a Pope, objecting that it impairs the authority of solemn documents.

There was a moment in the life of Dr. Newman when he still retained the freedom of a Christian man to teach the Catholic faith, ancient, strong and true. But he was on the point of parting with it—in the very act of swearing away that blessed birthright of his soul. He had already recited the form of sound words called the Nicene Creed, and had come to the point where the plunge must be made from the rock of Scripture, on which it builds, into the quicksands of tradition. In the modern form of oath which, at that dark moment, he was venturing to take upon his conscience, the first sentences, after parting from the language of the Catholic Church, the first that are the work of Rome, shift to another foundation from that laid under the old, scriptural, abiding verities. The true and noble old words, "the life of the world to come," built on the living Rock, are immediately succeeded by such preparation for modern inventions as the following: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and the other practices and statutes of the said Church. I do also admit the Holy Scripture according to that sense which holy Mother Church has held and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge as to the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scripture; nor shall I ever receive or interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."

This new thing in a creed was said by the Pope to have been ordained by the Council of Trent. If Dr. Newman had taken the trouble to see how far the terms to which he had to swear were an "echo" of those of the Council, he would have found that there was a discrepancy, considerable in words, but, in practice, monstrous. The Council decreed that no one should interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. That decree was confirmed by the Pope. It had thus acquired all the warrant of infallibility, and the most solemn guarantee for being irreformable that Rome had it in her power to give. This decree was "of faith." How long did it continue to be "of faith"?[Pg 129] Only until the Pope prepared his Bull, collecting the dogmatic decrees into a novel creed. Then it was altered. The men who, henceforth, were to be the priests of Rome found themselves called upon to take oath, not as the Council willed it and worded it, that they would never interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, but that they would never interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. This was another will and another wording altogether. The latter amounts to little less than an oath that they would never interpret it at all, except on very few points.

To make the scope of this alteration clearer, let us suppose the case of Dr. Newman himself, while yet in the enjoyment of that ministry of the English Church which he afterwards threw away. Had he then been required not to preach anything contrary to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he might have felt tolerably free. But had he been required never to preach anything except according to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he would have felt—Why, I can hardly preach at all. Yet this vast change is made in a creed while its articles are passing through the process of being culled from the original documents, and presented in a collected form. In this form it was imposed by oath upon the consciences of men for ever. One and the same Papal hand signed its infallible certainty and irreformable permanency in one shape, in a little time afterwards altered its tenor, destroyed its certainty, reformed its scope, and then signed its infallibility and its irreformable permanency in the new shape. And an Englishman who swallows this camel in the creed stands between us and the light, straining out a gnat that he says has got into the Syllabus.

But what is the real teaching, as to the use of physical force, of Cardinal Soglia, who is soberly put forward by Dr. Newman before the English public as justifying him in crying out against Mr. Gladstone for accusing the Church of claiming the right to use force? Page 216: "The Church, exercising her power in the external tribunal, has been long accustomed to chastise offenders even with prison, exile, confinement in monasteries, whipping or flagellation, with fine, and other similar penalties; which, inasmuch as they affect the body, are commonly called corporeal." Page 219: "We affirm that in the inherent authority of the Church, by which she can coerce offenders with salutary penalties, is certainly contained the right of awarding such temporal penalties as consist in fine, exile, prison, whipping, and other things of the same kind." Page 222: "If a case occurs in which severer punishment appears necessary, the ecclesiastical judge may not himself resort to it,[Pg 130] but he is to hand over the delinquent to the secular power to be punished according to its will. Besides, it is evident that the crime of heresy itself was brought under the cognizance of the ecclesiastical tribunals up to the point when the heretics, being convicted, and found obstinate, were first punished by ecclesiastical censures, and afterwards, being subjected by the lay power to capital penalty, were exterminated." Page 222: "The Church never pronounced a sentence of blood. Even the Inquisition smote heretics with the spiritual sword, and prison, but the lay princes subjected them to the last capital penalty." Page 217: "Perhingius believes that the Church does possess the right of inflicting capital punishment, but that she is not accustomed to exercise it, or to carry it out by ecclesiastical ministers and judges, but through lay ones, and by means of the temporal power, because the latter is more becoming, and more appropriate to the claims of the Church." What follows would, by internal evidence, seem to be added by Vecchiotti, but no intimation is given to that effect. Page 217: "He [Cardinal Tarquini] held that there is no kind of penalty with which the Church may not in her own right punish offenders; and thus temporal goods, reputation, rights of office and of heritage, and life itself, are subject to the ecclesiastical power. Otherwise the Church could not compel disobedient rebels, or avenge herself for their crimes, nor could she cut off rotten and noxious members from the body." Soglia, or rather his continuator, speaking of the moderns, Tarquini and "other doctors," and their doctrine of physical force, says (p. 217), "They derive it from the character and constitution of the Church herself, or from the nature of a perfect society and its end. Hence, just as in a perfect civil society the right of execution jus necis belongs to the lay power for the good of the commonwealth and of the citizens, so do they assert that none can deny that by stronger reason the same right resides in the ecclesiastical power for the spiritual good of the faithful."

[Pg 131]

CHAPTER II

Six Secret Commissions preparing—Interrupted by Garibaldi—A Code for the Relations of the Church and Civil Society—Special Sitting with Pope and Antonelli to decide on the Case of Princes—Tales of the Crusaders—English Martyrs—Children on the Altar—Autumn of 1867 to June 1868.

While in the provinces the bishops were kindling enthusiasm for the coming assembly, and for the movement of reconstruction in general, in Rome six Commissions were at work, under the Directing Congregation, making secret preparations for the Council. Each of these Commissions had of course a Cardinal at its head. The first, that for Theology, was under Cardinal Bilio, a monk, and a native of Piedmont, only forty years of age, and but lately raised to the purple.[95] Rightly or wrongly, as Vitelleschi says, he is credited with the principal share in the preparation of the Syllabus. Others, however, are named for the same honour. We ourselves heard a member of the original Congregation for the preparation of the Syllabus assert that it was Passaglia who first suggested it. Passaglia was a great Jesuit theologian, who lost position by declaring against the temporal power. The second Commission, for Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs, was under Cardinal Reisach, a man of sixty-five, an accomplished Bavarian, but so denationalized in manner and spirit, that his countrymen sometimes accused him of affecting to have almost forgotten German. For some years he left Rome to hold high place in his native country. As Archbishop of Munich he did much to supplant the old national faith by the Vatican one, and to unsettle the previously existing relations of Church and State. Under his eye the popular catechism of Canisius was changed. The answer, "The Pope by himself is not[Pg 132] infallible," had done good service for centuries; but now it had to make way for a new one; and eventually the whole book was transformed by the French Jesuit Deharbe.[96]

The Commission next in importance was that on Ceremonies. If the theological one had to formulate the principles on which the world was to be governed, and the ecclesiastico-political one had to draft the rules and frame the executive machinery by which those principles were to be carried out, the Commission on ceremonies had to devise the scenic effects with which the movement should, to use a frequent expression of Roman, French, and even of German Catholic writers, be put upon the stage—the mise en scène.

Oriental Affairs, the Religious Orders, and Ecclesiastical Discipline, were the subjects committed to the other three Commissions.

A seventh, of which the official history makes no mention, was, according to Vitelleschi (p. 26), an object of great public attention. It was for Biblical matters, and the revision of the Index. Its President was Cardinal de Luca. But it inclined to a more liberal procedure in regard to the Index, gave offence, and after a few meetings, was discontinued. The official organs, as the same author says, buried it in oblivion, though its labours were of great public interest.

The renewed preparations had not proceeded long before they were once more interrupted by political events. From August to December the Directing Congregation could hold no meeting. General Dumont had been sent back to Rome, by Napoleon III, to inspect and harangue those French soldiers who now formed a principal part of the so-called Pontifical, or Œcumenical army. The national Italian party was excited by his presence and his speech. France forced them to feel that foreign occupation was discontinued only in name. Garibaldi, supported only by feeble forces, moved upon Rome with the reckless valour which had succeeded in Sicily. The[Pg 133] movements of the Italian Government to restrain him were altogether inefficacious. The efficiency and zeal of the little army of "Crusaders" had been utterly underrated by the Italians. The Dutch, English, Swiss, German, and French youths who fought for the Crown of martyrdom were a different material from the soldiers of Ferdinand or from those of the old Papal corps. They faced great odds, and did right daring deeds. But they were too few. The ready French were once more called in. On November 3 they secured for Pius IX another respite by the battle of Mentana; but the Pope's own historian does not even name the French. For all that is said by Cecconi, not a foreign mercenary might have been in the Pontiff's pay, not a foreign regiment might have been sent to his relief. Indeed the word "foreigner," as applied to any baptized person bearing arms for the Pontiff, is offensive language—another fruit of this degenerate age. In opposition to certain "ill-advised" Catholics, who thought it a pity to have recourse to foreign arms, the Civiltá cries: "Foreigners?—the word is a great and odious lie! At Solferino the French were foreigners; at Mentana they were in their father's house."[97] So does the one belief that the Pope is the appointed lord of the world change the lights that fall on every national movement. We only saw the fact that at Solferino the French killed Teuton invaders of Italy, and that at Mentana they were the invaders who killed Italians. We shall find French mothers of "martyred" counts calling him for whom they fell, "our King."

When the lance of Garibaldi was thus, for the second time, shivered against the shield of France, who would have said that when next lifted it would be in her defence, after the armies that had for twenty years upheld the temporal power had gone into captivity?

The martial value of the religious motives and principles which animated the Crusaders, as contrasted with the Garibaldians, became a favourite theme for sacred pens. The Crusaders showed by their bearing that they were "conscious[Pg 134] of serving the majesty of the God of battles." They lost no passing opportunity of renewing their strength at the altar.

The proud lads, in full equipment of war, bowed the knee before the altar, offered up their lives to God, and consecrated their bayonets to St. Peter; or hastily receiving the Sacrament, they arose with joy and seized their pieces, which had been laid down by the rails of the sacred table. Happy he who with his eyes beheld such elevation of thought, such constancy of purpose, such sanctity of Christian war march triumphantly through the Roman territory.[98]

On October 8, the correspondent of the Times at Berlin stated that Napoleon III had bound himself to leave Victor Emmanuel free as to Rome, provided the latter would help him in case of war with Prussia. Earlier than this, in the month of September, the Austrian bishops found themselves menaced with an abolition of the Concordat, and had to make a formal appeal to the Emperor against such a step.

"We have at this time of day," said Baron Weichs, "to decide whether we shall be an independent State, or whether, as in Japan, we shall have two sovereigns; the one, subordinate, residing at the Burg in Vienna; the other, the omnipotent Master, having his throne in Rome, at the Vatican, or, more properly speaking, at the Jesuit establishment."

The Revue des deux Mondes had spoken of these words as wise, even as very wise, and the Civiltá replied, "To us they seem to be nothing but buffoonery."[99]

In November, Napoleon III proposed that the European Powers should meet in a Congress, to decide upon some solution of the Roman question. After this proposal had failed, his Minister, M. Rouher, pronounced, in the Assembly, his celebrated "Never!"—the French would never permit Rome to be occupied by the Italians. This exclamation is often printed by the "good Press" in the largest capitals.

A fortnight after the day of Mentana the activity of the Commissions was resumed, and invitations were sent out to the theologians already selected in different countries, to come to Rome and enter on their labours. The Nuncio at Munich had[Pg 135] not recommended any one from the renowned faculty of that city, but had sought his men at Würzburg. England was represented by Monsignor Weathers, and the United States by Monsignor Corcoran. On October 2, Cardinal Caterini wrote to Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham, instructing him, in the Pope's name, to invite "the priest John Newman." Three weeks later the bishop replied, enclosing Dr. Newman's answer, which, however, is not printed. According to the bishop, Dr. Newman said that a journey to Rome would be perilous to his life, and though deeply touched with the kindness of the Holy Father, he believed that the latter would not desire him to come at the risk of his life, especially as nothing would be advanced by his presence in an august solemnity of such moment, unskilled as he was in matters of the sort.[100]

The language of Dr. Newman, as reported in this correspondence, shows that he had but faint light on the part which mere divines were to play in the Council. Probably he was misled by history into supposing that their part would be public and considerable. His place, had he gone, would have been upon an unseen commission; his share probably anything but an important one; and, as likely as not, his opinion might have been asked only in writing, and upon a question of Oriental affairs, instead of upon theology, as was that of his famous fellow oratorian Theiner. Of the very few German scholars invited to Rome who were not of the Jesuit school, one was Haneberg, who, according to Michelis, was so little consulted that he was soon back in Munich, to avoid idling away his time.

In March the Pope intimated his intention of issuing in June the Bull of Convocation; and then the purpled had to consider who should be summoned. The most serious doubt arose as to those useful fictions called bishops in partibus. They have much of what goes to make a bishop—the orders, robes, title, and consequence, everything but the office. Their want of this is delicately expressed by Cecconi—they have no determinate flock; which in lay language means no flock at[Pg 136] all. The number of these Court followers have been so increased that Sepp illustrates the case by that of a government creating a batch of peers to carry some measure.

But such peers do not depend for their living on the men who want their votes. Even the Cardinals had not the courage to assert that creatures like these had a right to sit in the Council. They did raise the question of right, and left it formally unanswered; but their next question was, Is it expedient to invite them? They boldly affirmed that it was expedient.

In May 1868, it was decided that the only proceeding to be observed with respect to Catholic princes was that of communicating a copy of the Bull of Convocation to each Court. But should the princes be invited to attend? This question "was much debated among the purpled consulters, and was negatived."[101]

The decision thus taken was logical, for no one is a Catholic prince "as such" who does not place the law of his land under canon law; or, in proper language, who does not maintain "harmonious laws," recognizing politics as lying in the domain of morals, and therefore as being under the spiritual authority. When the controversy on the Syllabus began, the Civiltá had enjoyed a triumphant laugh at M. Langlais, a distinguished French advocate. M. Langlais had argued that the Encyclical would not have transgressed its proper boundary had it treated only of faith and morals, but that having touched the foundations of political institutions, it had transgressed that boundary. The Civiltá cried—

There exist then, according to M. Langlais, foundations of political institutions outside of the circle of morals! outside, consequently, of the circle of manners; or maybe, outside of the circle of human actions.... His argument assumes that the political order cannot be at the same time moral, or at least founded in the moral order, and assumes further that it must be separate from it, else he could not say that the Pope, simply by entering upon the political order, had gone out of the moral order (VI. i. 652-53).

[Pg 137]

It is not said that Antonelli in particular took alarm. But it is said that fears arose lest the "novelty" resolved upon should prove perilous; therefore the subject had to be reconsidered in the presence of the Secretary of State. The danger that might follow the brusque exclusion of princes was so felt that the former decision was on the point of being reversed. This shows Antonelli's ascendant. But his colleagues had a resource. Only six days before the date fixed for publishing the Bull, a special summons, not from Giannelli, but from Antonelli himself, called together the Commission at a quarter past eight o'clock in the evening, to a meeting to be held "in presence of the Most Holy" (coram sanctissimo)—i.e. before the Pope.[102]

Before the Most Holy! Thus are we placed in presence of the Eleven, and the kings are on their trial. The Nine are joined by the two men so dissimilar and so indissoluble, Pius IX and Antonelli, in whom, as an official biographer puts it, he early discerned "the man of God," appointed as his succour and stay in his divine office. At the head of the Eleven sits the portly, good-looking Pope, the beau-ideal of an important squire in a remote place—full of will, spirit, and self-confidence, with more art in governing than he has got credit for, at least in that domineering and deluding which avails with priests. He would be as hilarious as a squire who never put to death anything more precious than a pheasant, and never cursed even a gamekeeper with any intention that his curse should be bound in heaven.

Pius IX would now feel all the weight of his office. He was sitting as supreme Judge, to decide upon the claims of the kings of the earth. Were they worthy or were they not worthy to be received into the Council which was to lay "the corner-stone of reconstruction," the Council in which the prerogatives rightfully claimed by his predecessors of blessed memory, but from which the Church, slow of heart to believe, had hitherto withheld her former sanction, were at last to be openly acknowledged in his person?

[Pg 138]

No one could doubt what view Pius IX would take. The kings were clearly guilty. They had consented to the voice of their people against the voice of the Church. They had abolished harmonious laws. The internal tribunal was reduced to a voluntary confessional; the external tribunal, in most places, was removed, and everywhere subordinated. Even as to the Supreme Tribunal, who hearkened to the words, "Know that thou art the Father of princes and of kings, and the Governor of the world?"

When the call for Trent went forth, the only doubtful crowns were two lying away between civilization and Cimmerian night in England and Sweden. Now on every hand the word was, There are no Catholic princes. That old English crown was now represented by two monsters of power, the British Empire and the United States. Two other monsters had come up, Prussia and Russia. Spain was fallen, Poland was extinct, Italy was hostile, Austria was enfeebled, France was strong but not sound—there were no Catholic States. The social system was indeed in ruins. It was only by clearing away that the foundations for reconstruction could be properly laid; but clearing away was attended with danger. The princes were not to be invited, but they were to be allowed to claim admission. The Bull was then and there altered in this sense.[103]

Meanwhile symptoms of the coming conflict began to appear. Catholics of all classes looked forward to great events for the Church and the nations. Those who did not share the hopes of the hidden Council, or who recoiled from the dogmas likely to be decreed, felt anxious. The Press began to pour out pamphlets and reprints, enabling all to read up on the question of Councils.

"The Crusaders of St. Peter" was the title of historical tales now regularly appearing in the Civiltá, which continued for years. The object was to make the blood of Mentana the seed of a great œcumenical army. Every incident was described with vivid conception and boundless faith in the destiny of the[Pg 139] Papacy, with faith too in the duty of all to rear up sons for the Crusade, and faith that those who fell escaped purgatorial pains and found direct entrance among the beatified.

The following are passages scattered here and there—

It was a sight to rejoice the angels in heaven, that of these brave men laying down the carabine to perform the little office of the Virgin, and then turning from the little office of the Virgin to take up the carabine.... On the march fatigue was lightened by reciting the prayer which had so often conquered the foes of the Church, the rosary.... The masters of war know that on the field of battle the last army to deserve ridicule is an army fresh from confession and communion.... A young gentlewoman gave birth to her first-born. "How long it will be," she said, "ere he can carry a musket! But Pius IX can do anything. He can make a zouave even now of my Eugenio." Melted by such faith, the Pope wrote a benediction on a paper "consecrated to him" by the infant. The venerated word was placed in the domestic sanctum, and in return for it "the zouave at the breast will do a soldier's service." Some weeks later, on receiving from him a first oblation, the Pope again wrote a word for "his soldier in swaddling clothes." The family were overjoyed at being permitted within five months to kiss two Papal autographs. The mother wrote, "Eugenio was asleep. I ran to put the Papal benediction on his head and forehead. He immediately broke out in a smile, and to me he looked like an angel. I could not restrain my tears. He still slept, but bounded for joy as long as I kept the blessed letters on his little head.... Should the avengers of Mentana try their hand, the zouave will lisp his first word crying Viva Maria!"

Arthur Guillemin said to his crusaders as he led them to the attack at Monte Libretti, fresh from absolution, "You are all in the grace of God; do not count them, they will fall into our hands." They marched into battle, some with the rosary round their neck, some with the Carmelite scapular on their breast, and some with the cord of St. Francis round the loins, just like that model of a crusader St. Louis. The young Count de Quélen, who fell heroically at Monte Libretti, had just received a letter from his mother. "If thou art to die, my good Urban, die like a hero, like a soldier of God." After his death she writes to a friend in Rome—

[Pg 140]

"My beloved son is dead—died for his God. Oh what a comfort is that thought amid this desolation! He fell like the brave, defending the Church and our venerated Pontiff. Was it not a signal favour granted to him by that Lord who is so good that He put it into his heart to shed every drop of his blood for Him, and by this very means to bring him to paradise, where Urban henceforth—yes, I dare believe it—enjoys the vision of his God, and is beatified for all eternity, with beatitude unmixed?" [Thus it was plain that having fallen in battle he had, as the writer of the story says, "seized the palm of martyrdom, as he, following St. Louis, called it," and so had escaped the pains of purgatory.] "If," continues the mother to her friend, "you go to a reception of our holy and venerated Pontiff and King, assure him, I pray you, that I am happy that my son has shed his blood for him."

When the body arrived at Quimper, two hundred priests and a crowd uncounted from the surrounding Breton villages came, "rather to venerate than to pray for the departed." The houses were draped in black, the black was decked with the French and the Papal flags; on the coffin lay his sword, twined with laurels and crowned with vermilion. The bishop pronounced the panegyric "magnifying him as a martyr for religion." Mrs. Stone, a volunteer sister of charity, went from Rome to Nerola to visit the wounded prisoners in the hands of the Garibaldians, and especially Alfred Collingridge. The dying crusader said, "The Lord has given me the favour I asked—to die for the Holy Father. Oh, yes, may God accept of my death and my blood for the triumph of Holy Church and for the conversion of England!" He complained that his rosary had been taken away, and Mrs. Stone supplied him with her own. Alfred Collingridge, from Oxford, "was the first of the English who laid down his life in the Crusade of St. Peter." The writer prays, "May this first English blood shed on Roman soil rise up before God, and descend again in a dew of mercy on the land of Britain!" Of Alfred's countrymen were present, his own brother George, two Watts-Russells, David Shee, and Oswald Cary, "all soldiers of St. Peter" (VII. v. 155 ff.). The father hearing from George of the death of Alfred, had only one regret, that he could not himself step into his vacant place.

[Pg 141]

When Arthur Guillemin fell he was unhappily consigned to a grave in common with Garibaldians; because it "was not then possible to separate in the grave the friends of God from His enemies." Six months later, Fathers Wilde and Gerlache, with others, piously sought the body of the martyr to restore it to his native Aire-sur-la-Lys, by express desire of Pius IX. Canon Druot had come to Rome to claim it in the name of the family, the country, and the Church of Guillemin's birth. The seekers of the relic included an O'Reilly, a Le Dieu, a Bach, a Loonen, and a Mimmi. "You will find him," said a peasant, "with a Garibaldian at his feet." The first object recognized was a Carmelite scapular. "It is like mine," cried an officer; "two both alike were given to him and me by the Countess Macchi!" Soon was seen the end of the cord of St. Francis, worn by the deceased in imitation of St. Louis of France. As the corpse was borne off to Rome, the people pressed around and cried Evviva!—Long life to him! This cry "strange around a bier," expressed a "profound sense of the marvellous," and threw "a glittering light upon the idea formed by Christians of those who fall fighting in the modern crusade." At Rome, in the great Church of St. Louis of France, the bier was surrounded by ambassadors, prelates, and officers, including the Minister of War. At home, the "precious deposit" was received in an illuminated chapel, decorated, not with symbols of death, but of glory. "The crowd of pilgrims from the whole of northern France" thronged the town. The bier was adorned with symbols of victory, the work of Roman artists. The coffin was borne by the youth of the town, emulous by changes to come under the coveted burden. A party of pontifical zouaves in uniform attended. From the corners of the hearse rose trophies of the pontifical flag "garlanded with triumphal laurel." While yet the corpse lay in the illuminated chapel, a new-born nephew of Arthur was borne in by the mother, who "piously laid him upon the coffin, as used the ancient Christians to lay their little ones on the sepulchres of the martyrs. A thrill of reverence went through the assembly." During the funeral[Pg 142] procession, the eyes of the multitude "were fixed with devout curiosity on a piece of his uniform spread out upon the bier, in which was seen the rent made by the wound" (VII. iv. 415).

Aire-sur-la-Lys is not very far from our own shores, beyond Calais.

[Pg 143]

CHAPTER III

Bull of Convocation—Doctrine of the Sword—The Crusade of St. Peter—Incidents—Mission to the Orientals, and Overtures to Protestants in different Countries—June 1868 to December 1868-69.

It was on St. Peter's Day, June 29, 1868, that the Bull of Convocation was issued. According to the Pope's promise, the Council was to meet on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1869.

The language of the Bull was diplomatically vague as to the objects of the assembly, but awfully explicit as to the authority by which it was convened. Not in an obiter dictum, but in legislative language jointed to bear the strain of ages, a claim is set up, as Sepp points out, to exercise the authority of the whole Trinity, and, indeed, we may add, whatever further authority Peter and Paul can lend. "Confiding in and supported by the authority of Almighty God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, which we also exercise upon earth."[104] It ought to be remembered that M. Veuillot writes down the date of this Bull as the day on which the middle ages died. The indication of objects, though vague to us, sufficed for the initiated. Ce qui se Passe au Concile says (p. 9)—

The Pope repeatedly intimates that the Church has the right "to redress the errors which turn civil society upside down, ... to preserve the nations from bad books and pernicious journals, and from those teachers of iniquity and error to whom the unhappy youth are confided whose education is withdrawn from the clergy; ... to defend justice, ... to assure the progress and solidity of the human sciences." This somewhat confounds things spiritual and temporal; but those political allusions drowned in the usual digressions of Pontifical documents, passed unobserved.

[Pg 144]

If they passed unobserved in Roman Catholic countries, where journalists did know a little of the modes of pontifical speech, how much more in countries like England and America, where at that time it was considered unintelligent to speak or write upon the subject from knowledge, the proper thing being a serene superiority to study, and a judicious expression of opinions caught in the air.

To obviate the objection that the assembly would be only a synod of the Western Church, and not an Œcumenical Council, the Bull was followed by Letters Apostolic addressed to all prelates of the Oriental Churches not holding communion with Rome.[105] Until the Vatican Council these were regarded only as schismatics, not as heretics. Therefore the Pope invited them to come, and by submitting to the See of Rome to complete the union. This invitation was dated September 8; and on the 13th of that month a "paternal letter" went forth, to Protestants and other non-Catholics. All these, from Anglican Ritualists down to the smallest sects, were grouped together, not being called to take any part in the Council, but to seize the occasion of joining the Pope's Church by renouncing their heresies and submitting to his authority.

Although the approach of the Council excited little attention in Protestant countries, it began to be discussed in Roman Catholic ones with an interest which rapidly warmed to excitement. The tremendous significance attached by Ultramontane authorities to the Bull, especially to the non-invitation of princes, and to the coming struggle with the Modern State, was enough to rouse Catholics who did not sympathize with the aims indicated. The Civiltá put the alternative as between the end of the world or its salvation by the Council. "Either, in the inscrutable designs of God, human society is destined to perish, and we are close upon the supreme cataclysm of the last day, or the salvation of the world is to be looked for from the Council and from nothing else."[106] Language like this[Pg 145] is not to be smiled at when it goes to the heart of perhaps half a million of ecclesiastics, each one of whom transmits the impression through a wide circle. The following passage in the same article may be laid to heart. A good part of it is quoted by Janus, with the remark that it needs but a step further to declare the Pontiff an incarnation of God.

The Pope is not a power among men to be venerated like another. But he is a power altogether divine. He is the propounder and teacher of the law of the Lord in the whole universe; he is the supreme leader of the nations to guide them in the way of eternal salvation; he is the common father and universal guardian of the whole human species in the name of God.... The treasures of revelation, the treasures of truth, the treasures of righteousness, the treasures of supernatural graces upon earth, have been deposited by God in the hands of one man, who is the sole dispenser and keeper of them. The life-giving work of the divine incarnation, work of wisdom, of love, of mercy, is ceaselessly continued in the ceaseless action of one man, thereto ordained by Providence. This man is the Pope. This is evidently implied in his designation itself—The Vicar of Christ. For if he holds the place of Christ upon earth, that means that he continues the work of Christ in the world, and is in respect of us what Christ would be were He here below, Himself visibly governing the Church.... It is, then, no wonder if the Pope, in his language, shows that the care of the whole world is his, and if, forgetting his own peril, he thinks only of that of the faithful nations. He sees aberrations of mind, passions of the heart, overflowing vices; he sees new wants, new aspirations; and holding out to the nations a helping hand, with the tranquillity of one securely seated on the throne given him by God, he says to them, Draw nigh to me, and I will trace out for you the way of truth and charity which alone can lead to the desired happiness.[107]

Such divines as held that the proper work of a General Council was to heal schisms or combat heresies, remarked on the absence of both. Such as were unwilling to see the Church straining after temporal power, and placing herself in antagonism to freedom and light, could ill conceal their anxiety. But the Jesuits everywhere hailed the dawning of a wonderful day.

[Pg 146]

On Saturday, October 17, 1868, the Abbé Testa, accompanied by three other priests, went to the palace of the Patriarch of Constantinople, bearing the Pope's letter to the Oriental bishops. The Vicar-General received the four Latin priests, and introduced them to his Holiness the Patriarch, whose hand they kissed. The Patriarch, on his part, embraced them, and expressed his pleasure at seeing them. The Abbé Testa then drew a richly adorned little book from his pocket and offered it to the Patriarch, while one of his brethren told his Holiness, in Greek, that they had come to invite him to attend the Œcumenical Council, and begged him to receive the letter of invitation.

His Holiness motioned to the Abbé Testa to lay the little book down near him, and said, "Had not the Giornale di Roma published the letter whereby his Holiness summons us to Rome to a Council, which he calls œcumenical, and had we not thus learned the object and contents of the letter, and also the principles of his Holiness, we should have received a communication from the Patriarch of old Rome with the utmost pleasure, in hope of finding some change in his mode of thinking. As, however, this invitation is in the journals, and as his Holiness has proclaimed views in direct opposition to the principles of the orthodox Churches of the East, we declare to you, Reverend Fathers, with grief and at the same time with sincerity, that we cannot receive either such an invitation or such a letter, which only assert principles opposed to the spirit of the Gospel and to the declarations of the Œcumenical Councils and of the Holy Fathers."

The Patriarch proceeded to refer to the Pope's former advances, and delicately hinted that when they had objected that he held principles which were to be regretted, his reply showed that he was so much pained that it was better not to put him to grief a second time. "In short, we look for the true settlement of the question to history. Ten centuries ago there was one Church, confessing the same faith in East and West, in old Rome and new Rome. Let us go back for that period, and let us see who has added and taken away.[Pg 147] Let us suppress innovations, if such there are, and then shall we imperceptibly find ourselves at that point of Catholic orthodoxy from which Rome was pleased gradually to diverge in the earlier centuries, ever widening the gulf of separation more and more by new dogmas and definitions which depart from the holy traditions."

The Abbé Testa asked what principles his Holiness spoke of.

"Without entering into minute points," replied the Patriarch, "we can never admit that wherever the Church of our Saviour extends upon earth any Chief Bishop exists in the midst of her except our Lord, or that there is a Patriarch who is infallible whenever he speaks ex cathedrâ, who is exalted above the Œcumenical Councils, to which alone infallibility attaches, seeing that they always held to holy scripture and apostolic tradition."

The Abbé referred to the Council of Florence, and received a full and courteous answer. The Patriarch at last said, "If you would see that union realized which we all desire, place yourselves on the ground of history and of the General Councils; or, if that is too hard upon you, let us all pray to God for peace to the world and prosperity and union to the Church. For the moment, we declare, with pain, that this invitation is fruitless and this circular of no effect."

The four Latins urged that prayer alone did not suffice; if one was sick we not only prayed but employed means of cure. "When the sickness is spiritual," replied the Patriarch, "the Lord alone knows who is the sick man, how he suffers, what is the root of the malady, and what the real cure. I say again there is urgent necessity for ceaseless prayer to the Lord of the whole earth, that He may guide all to conclusions well pleasing to God."

The Patriarch then directed the Vicar-General to hand back the little book, and the four abbés took their leave, accompanied to the stair by the Vicar-General.[108]

Speaking of this interview, the Stimmen aus Maria Laach said, "Neither by his words nor his deeds did the Patriarch[Pg 148] manifest polish, theological science, or ecclesiastical education."[109]

The invitation was rejected by the Metropolitan of Ephesus, and the Bishops of Varna and Thessalonica. The Metropolitan of Chalcedon wrote upon it Epistrephete—"Be converted"—and returned it. The Patriarch of Antioch sent the letter back, and his ten bishops did the same. So also the orthodox Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem and his bishops (Friedberg, p. 70). The Bishop of Thessalonica assigned four reasons, the last of which called forth a laboured reply from the Jesuits of Laach. "The Pope is a king," said the Oriental, "and wields the sword, which is contrary to the gospel." The reply was that the existence of the small but heroic army of the Pope was not due so much to any will of his as to the nature of his office as chief shepherd of the universal Church. The army and the temporal power, "without which this office cannot exist," were manifestly necessary. But then the "schismatical bishop" asks if bearing the sword is not contrary to the gospel. No; for in the very words of the gospel Christ allowed the apostles to bear two swords.

Having reached this practical point in the teaching of Boniface VIII, the writer goes on to show that Peter was not told to cast his sword away, but only to put it up into the sheath; which clearly meant that he was to bear it. If he was reproved for using it, that was because, though he had asked permission to do so, he had not yet received it; for, in fact, at that point of time, the supreme power promised to Peter had not been actually bestowed upon him. But seeing that he was told to keep the sword, are we to suppose that when he did become ruler, he and his successors for all time were to keep it hanging at their sides, as a useless weight? Certainly not; "he beareth not the sword in vain." The writer would probably have called any one an infidel who expected a literal fulfilment of the words "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

In reviewing the reception given in the East to the Bull,[Pg 149] consolation was drawn from the fact that the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople had raised the brief to his forehead. But the Catholikos of the same Church in the See of Etschmiazin rejected it with decision. The ill-success of these overtures displeased the "good Press." Pius IX had been flattered into the belief that he had in great measure "restored" the ascendancy of the Pontiff over the East. Even Archbishop Manning had said enough in print to show that he came back from Rome in 1867 with some such idea, and prelates of more experience had done the same.

Representations as to the readiness of Protestants to submit, had led to the letter to Protestants. Bishop Martin of Paderborn had strong hopes of those in Germany, and set store by some odd letters, said to be from Protestant clergymen, which, however, seem to be either spurious, or from men not likely to lead anybody.[110] Archbishop Manning, after several sentences coloured by a pontifical imagination, had said, "The Council of Trent fixed the epoch after which Protestantism never spread. The next General Council will probably date the period of its dissolution."[111]

Between the date of the Bull of Convocation and that of the invitation to the Orientals, the Pope performed two journeys to the Alban Hills, which were celebrated by Court journalists. At Rocca di Papa, where Hannibal is said to have pitched his tents, the little army of his Holiness was, after modern usage, encamped. The Pontiff went on purpose across the Campagna and up the hills, passed through the ranks of his defenders, and himself celebrated Mass for their benefit. When his next birthday was celebrated, the zouaves made a special display in the Piazza of St. Peter's, of which the Civiltá gives a long but lively description. The last formation mentioned is to us new in military evolutions. The zouaves "formed so as to make the letters composing the august name Pius IX."[112]

Ever since 1860 the preaching of "taking up the cross," of[Pg 150] the glory of "dying for religion," and of the pure, bright martyrdom of falling on the field for St. Peter, had been rather heavy work. Now the gleam of victory at Mentana lighted up the future. Vistas long and luminous led the eye of the fighting sons of Loyola away to other scenes, where John VIII as Admiral, or John X as General, or Pius V rejoicing over Lepanto, with other martial glories of the Papacy, paled before what the Virgin and St. Michael were about to bring to pass. Loud and ringing sounded forth to the faithful the call to the crusade of St. Peter. The youth of the Catholic world were assured that not the fall of Richmond nor the capture of Sebastopol, not Solferino nor Sadowa, had moved human society as did the tidings from Mentana. Stories true and often very touching were mixed with fables and with ecstasies.

The tales were those of youths from the noblest houses and from the lowliest cots. The young Duke de Blacas "dedicated his sword to the tomb of St. Peter, as his forefathers dedicated theirs to the tomb of Christ." In his death youths are to see the martyr palm for which it is noble to pant, and mothers are to see a privilege which they might well seek in prayer. Peter Jong, a poor Dutch lad, only son of his mother, a widow, who gave him up rejoicing as if God had granted her great grace, fell, it is said, after having slain fourteen Italians. He receives this tribute: "For St. Peter he inflicted many just deaths; for St. Peter he worthily met his own." It is told how the King of Holland keeps Jong's photograph in his portfolio, and shows it to other intending crusaders as an encouragement. Another Dutch youth writes: "Mamma, blessed is he who sheds the last drop of his blood. The martyrs of all the centuries descend to meet him and to conduct him to heaven." This, though Protestants may not know it, is spiritual warfare! for "to defend the Church of Christ is a spiritual object." One proof constantly alleged that bayonet and ball used for St. Peter are to re-establish truth and righteousness is, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

The young Duke de Blacas, not having been in action, seemed in dying to think that he should not escape purgatory. Care,[Pg 151] however, is taken, in a studiously written biography of a Goldoni who also died before battle, to show that in point of martyrdom, as to the old crusaders, no difference was made by St. Bernard and St. Catherine of Siena between those who died in battle and those who died in the service. Also, that no difference had been made between these two classes of the crusaders of St. Peter by Pius IX. He had comforted a father who regretted that his son had not fallen in battle, by telling him that he had "the supreme" consolation, because the son had died in the service of the Holy See. And he had, in his solemn Allocution, compared both classes alike to the martyred Maccabees. The father of Goldoni, pictured as a devout and humane physician, is represented as often putting up the prayer for his only son, "Oh that God would inspire him to take up the cross!" Young Goldoni was a diligent reader of the Unitá Cattolica and the Civiltá, from which "sources of religious and of pure intellectual culture he drew a generous and daring spirit." Though he died unhappily before battle, his biographer sees him seated among the celestial martyrs, between the Duke de Blacas and the Count Zileri de Verme, with whom do rejoice and glory others who died at a distance from the fight. When Goldoni received his "call" to the crusade, he started in haste. "It seemed as if the Spirit of God carried him." The Archbishop of Modena specially blessed "our young crusader." He then received the Sacrament, and so "heart to heart with Jesus Christ consecrated his life to Holy Church." Moreover, in parting, "the young cavalier of Jesus Christ put upon his bosom, as if a breastplate, an image of Mary." The night before leaving home he, "in the manner of the old crusaders," knelt at his father's knee and asked his blessing. While the father "shed upon him the holy water and the prayer," Antonio burst into weeping.

Arrived in Rome, Goldoni sought a Jesuit to "govern his soul." The Jesuit made allusion to the dangers of his new life. "I have made up my mind to be a martyr for the Holy See," replied Goldoni. "The Holy Father has declared the temporal power necessary to the spiritual. Therefore, fighting and dying[Pg 152] for the temporal power, I should indirectly be a martyr for our holy religion." The Jesuit was overcome at hearing these generous sentiments from a youth so superior. Two days after, the Jesuit and Goldoni met "in the tribunal of penitence."

Goldoni soon caught a fever, and in the hospital often confessed. On the Feast of St. John Berchmans[113] he declared that he had obtained from the saint the grace to be with him in Paradise on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin. He reiterated that he should on the day of the Assumption go to heaven to see the Madonna and St. John Berchmans. His good father, called from Modena, arrived in time to bless and pray for his departing Antonio. At the last moment he left him, for it would seem that those around thought that the presence of the earthly father would come between him and the heavenly Father. So he lay, with his lustrous eyes fixed on heaven, as if, says the chaplain, "he was awaiting the appearance of his John Berchmans, who was to present him at the throne of the great Virgin." At seven o'clock on the morning of the Assumption he passed away.

[Pg 153]

CHAPTER IV

Princes, Ministers, and their Confessors—Montalembert's part in the Revival—His Posthumous Work on Spain—Indignation against the New Assumptions—Debate of Clergy in Paris on the Lawfulness of Absolving a Liberal Prince or Minister—Wrath at Rome—True Doctrines taught to Darboy and his Clergy.

In proportion as this Popery of physical force came into view, did the mental stress of Catholics who had put their faith in finer forces increase.

Chateaubriand, who played a brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the great French Revolution, especially in that phase of the movement which aimed at linking together, in the imagination, Rome and ideas and hopes now dear to mankind, left a work, at his death, which he called Memoirs from Beyond the Grave—Memoires d'outre Tombe. Montalembert, who played a still more brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the Revolution of 1830, also left behind him a work, to appear after his death. In that work we can trace the pains of a representative mind, showing what must have been those of multitudes at the time of which we now write.

Montalembert saw, in "the absolutist politics, the retrospective fanaticism, the embittered hostility to all modern ideas and institutions, flaunted everywhere by the religious press,"[114] not only a blot on the cause, which had been his life-passion—a passion of feminine flame but of masculine vigour—but also a personal wound. It made his past look like a well-played hypocrisy. He had enthusiastically and victoriously argued for Catholicism under plea of liberty. "I neither can nor will," he cries, "keep silence, as to the monstrous articles published this very year (1868) by the Civiltá Cattolica against liberty in[Pg 154] general, and precisely against those Liberal Catholics who, like me, have had the naïveté in the Parliamentary tribune to assert the rights of the Jesuits, and cause them to triumph in the name of liberty."[115]

On the second anniversary of that mysterious Thursday in February 1848, when King Louis Philippe, of the Tuileries, suddenly changed into Mr. Smith in a street cab on the way to exile, Montalembert and Thiers pleaded in the National Assembly for "freedom of instruction" on behalf of the Jesuits. "It was only," says our orator, "in the name of liberty, of modern constitutions, of modern liberty, of the liberty of conscience, of the Press, and of the tribune, that we made the claim." He adds that the victory was won only by Thiers brandishing the text of the Republican constitution in the face of the furious Mountain, a constitution proclaiming equal freedom of worship and association to all. The italics are his own—

"We were all wrong, it is clear. In sound theology M. Renan alone was right—he and the like of him who maintained that Catholicism, and above all, the Jesuits, were absolutely incompatible with liberty. Only—we ought to have been told it then. It was then, and not now, that they ought to have taught us that liberty was a plague, instead of taking advantage of it, and that by our help, in order, twenty years later, to come insulting and repudiating both it and us, at one and the same time.

I have long passed the age of disappointments and passionate emotions, but I declare on reading these bare-faced palinodes I have reddened to the white of my eyes, and shivered to the ends of my nails. I am no longer child enough to complain of the inconsistencies of men in general, or of Jesuits in particular, but I loudly say that this tone of the puppy and the pedant (ce ton de faquin et de pédagogue), employed towards old defenders, all of whom are not dead, and in respect of old struggles, which may be renewed to-morrow, does not become either monks or reputable men. It may be perfectly orthodox. In matters of theology I am no judge, but I think I am a judge in a matter of honour and decency; and I declare it is perfectly indecent."

We give but one more extract from this unconscious palinode of the high-souled Montalembert, who could not even then see[Pg 155] that the Liberal Catholicism of his ideal was a generous phantasy, irreconcilable with the Popery of Rome, as much so as was his beloved parliamentary system in politics with the Second Empire. No more could he see that Pope and Jesuit were true to themselves in urging their old and fixed principles, and had been equally true to themselves in using instruments like him so long as they struck or stayed their hand at "the beck of the priest," and in disowning them so soon as they set up to keep a conscience for themselves, "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up." He and his friend Lacordaire carried to Rome the large ideas of a great people, and bathed the quaint figures of the Curia, and the quaint objects of the city, in the tropical light of their own genius, just as Lamartine had done with the withered remnants of the East. After such pictures as Montalembert had drawn in his books, and his speeches, of his ideal Catholic Church, it must have been mortifying to have, in age and sickness, to write as follows—

"Certainly, a strange way has been invented of serving religion, of making the modern world accept, comprehend, and love it. One might say that they treat the Church like one of those wild beasts that are carried about in menageries. Look at her, they seem to say, and understand what she means, and what is her real nature! To-day, she is in a cage, tamed and broken in, by force of circumstances. She can do no harm for the present; but understand that she has paws and tusks, and if ever she is let loose you will be made to know it" (p. 641).

As he wrote this sad passage, in all probability there would rise before his imagination one of the most memorable scenes in the life of any orator. When glorifying the return of the Pope to Rome, restored by French force, and deprecating any attempt at a conflict with the Church, he said that from any such conflict only dishonour could result, as to a strong man would result dishonour from a combat with a woman. And then, turning upon his audience, he said, "The Church is more than a woman; the Church is a mother," with a gush and a power which produced such a scene as perhaps has hardly ever[Pg 156] been witnessed in any parliamentary assembly. And both ideals were quite sincere. The Church of Montalembert's imagination was a mother; the Church of the Civiltá Cattolica is a dam, holding to her young while they continue in sheer dependence, treating them as strangers when they can take care of themselves. His Church is the dream of an exceptional few, the Church of the Civiltá is the strong reality.

The articles which called forth this protestation of Montalembert, were among the most curious even of the Civiltá. They dealt with France—Paris and Darboy. On February 5, 1868, the Archbishop of Paris held a conference of his clergy in the Church of Saint Rocque, and there argued the following case of conscience. By some exceptional feat of the worst of all evil genii, Publicity, the discussion, and its result, were reported in the Patrie; and this indiscretion caused the world for once to gain a real peep into the consultations in the judges' chambers, behind the internal tribunal.

"A man engaged in politics," says the case of conscience, "declares to his confessor that he has no intention of renouncing the doctrines which prevail among modern nations, the principal points of which are, liberty of worship, liberty of the Press, and the action of the State in mixed affairs. The confessor asks if he is to grant absolution to a penitent in this state of mind, or to deny it."—Civiltá, VII. ii. 151.

The reasoning ascribed to the supposed penitent is the following—

You, as my confessor, have not the right to lay on me as you would on a private man, the duty of devoting a certain day, and of adopting certain means for the conversion of this or that person. Doubtless, I ought, by word and example, to lay myself out for the conversion and edification of my neighbour; but it rests with me as a free agent to select the means and to discern the opportunity. In like manner, you cannot order me as politician, legislator, or prince, to take, this very day, this or that measure, against blasphemy for example, or Sunday labour, or the licence of the Press. Lay it upon me to attend to the propagation of righteousness and truth; but leave it to me to judge of the opportunity, and to choose the means. And, I pray you, consider the grounds of my opinions. In the first place, whenever we speak or act,[Pg 157] we have on one side the truth and right, which certainly ought to be respected; but on the other side we have fitness and opportunity, of which also we must take account, if we would speak to good purpose. Now, in this respect, I know better than any other what I can do, and what I cannot, in my family, or in a political assembly, or in the nation. In the next place, perhaps you do not see the absurdity which would follow the opposite opinion. It would follow that you had the right to decide and regulate all my actions, because into every one of them morality may enter; and every one of them may be connected with religion. You would be able to dictate my will, to tell me what vote I ought to give, to determine whether I am to declare peace or war. Mere trifles, you say. But what, in that case, would temporal power be, but a passive instrument of the spiritual power, and a mere machine? These are the reasons why I stand to my old notions on this point, and have no thought of changing them for others.

In this case, as thus put, and in the ensuing discussion, we see the confessor of a king or minister preparing to meet his "penitent." In the language of Montalembert, we see the feeling of a politician in facing the "tribunal," under an Ultramontane confessor; and in the papers of the Civiltá we see the glaring eye of Rome searching out every movement of the one and the other.

The case being thus stated, both as to its substance and as to the reasoning of the supposed penitent, the discussion began. Abbé Michaud, of the Madeleine, maintained that the confessor ought to grant absolution. Abbé G——, a Dominican, maintained that he ought not to do so. Archbishop Darboy now and then interfered, to moderate the opposition of the latter. The Abbé Falcimagne interrupted the Archbishop, declaring that he would deny the absolution, for the supposed penitent was unworthy of it. Finally, the Abbé Hamon, Curé of Saint Sulpice, read out four conclusions, which were fully accepted by the Archbishop, and which allowed the confessor to grant the absolution. The Opinion Nationale and other journals said that this conclusion showed to how little the condemnations of the Syllabus amounted.

Both the conclusion and the grounds on which it was rested gave huge offence at Rome. The Civiltá was not content with[Pg 158] less than five long articles, making ninety octavo pages. It is in these that the things are set forth which fired the embers of Montalembert's true love of liberty, and damped his dying hope of ever seeing his ideal Catholicism and actual Popery seated on the same throne. We need not quote the passages which are echoed in his indignant repudiation; but we give a few others, which show that, strongly as we have seen him put the case, he was not guilty of any injustice. The Abbé Michaud said that the liberty condemned was not moderate liberty, but unbounded liberty.[116] The Civiltá took it for granted that he could not have been sincere.

"Similar to liberty of worship, is that worst of liberties, never sufficiently execrated or abhorred—liberty of the Press, which some dare to invoke and promote with so much clamour." It continues—"In respect of religion and the Press, it is idle to distinguish between two sorts of liberty, one wise and the other unbridled, as the Abbé did. In such matters, all liberty is a delirium and a pestilence. There is no healthy man's delirium; all delirium is that of a sick man. There is no praiseworthy and harmless plague; every plague is deadly.... Hence, it is never a decent thing to introduce such liberty into a civil community. It is only permissible to tolerate it in certain cases, in the same way that a pest is tolerated" (p. 160).

The Abbé Michaud had said that, in mixed questions, the State interfered by the same right as the Church! Such an utterance savoured of our bad times. It was infected with the idea of the independence of the civil power in regard to the ecclesiastical. This idea was born with Protestantism; but it has been received by some Catholics, sincere, it is true, though not discerning.

It is true that the temporal prince is invested with supreme power and authority, in his order; but from this it follows only that he is not subject to any other earthly power. It does not follow that his authority, sovereign in its order, cannot be subject and is not subject to another authority of a more perfect order; that is, the spiritual.... It is necessary that whoever holds power, even sovereign, for temporal rule shall be regulated by the Roman Pontiff (pp. 161-63).

[Pg 159]

So far for the independence of the State. Now as to its right of intervention in mixed questions, and above all, as to the defining of limits between the two powers—

The State ought first to learn, from the Church, what are mixed questions, that it may not take spiritual matters for mixed ones, confounding both the one and the other with those which are called temporal ones. Each separate kind of corn must be tied up into a separate sheaf. The State ought to arrange with the Church every time it puts a hand to what is temporal in these mixed matters, in order that it may not violate what is spiritual.

The Civiltá quotes M. Renan, where he shows how the Syllabus has proved his assertion of 1848. "The Syllabus is a luminous demonstration of the proposition I maintained, that Catholicism and liberty are two things incompatible." The Civiltá adds that, in order to know this fact, M. Renan did not need to be a profound theologian, but only needed to read the works of any author sincerely Catholic. It points out that the Liberal Catholics fancy that the Popes, in condemning liberty of worship and of the Press, only spoke of part of the subject, that is, of some sorts of liberty; and that it was, therefore, some liberty, not all, that they called madness, poison, and pestilence. But the Popes, asserts the Civiltá, on the contrary, thought that all liberty of worship and of the Press bore those characters (p. 314).

The Abbé Falcimagne insisted (p. 316) that the supposed penitent should be at once treated as a sick man, and as being not of sound reason—

He comes to submit himself to my tribunal, and at the same time rejects my authority. To see how far I can yield to his spiritual infirmity I must see how far the authority of the confessor over the penitent extends. On this point, I shall cite the words of Domenico Soto, who, after hearing the confession of Charles V, said, "So far, you have confessed the sins of Charles; now confess those of the Emperor." Soto at least thought that the actions of his penitent, although they belonged to the political order, nevertheless came within the cognizance of his tribunal. Our patient is of a diametrically opposite opinion. He will not recognize in me the right of judging him in what touches doctrine and morals[Pg 160] indirectly. But I hold that, as confessor, I have a right to judge my penitent, be he a legislator, or even a prelate of the Church, in things pertaining to dogmas and morals, and to prohibit what is contrary to either, whether directly or indirectly. So I can command him to cease from holding presumptuous tenets.

The Archbishop then asked the Abbé Falcimagne, requesting him to give a direct answer, if he had a right to order his penitent to leave a hundred thousand francs in his will to be distributed among the poor. To this the Abbé Falcimagne made no reply. He said the point now was to know whether the penitent, who would not renounce his modern ideas as to liberty, was or was not guilty of presumption, temerarius. "Guilty of presumption," replied the Archbishop, "is that confessor who lays his hands on temporal things, assessing what he has no right to assess." "But," retorted Falcimagne, "I have the right to judge my penitent as to his disposition; and if he comes to me, and says that he wishes to maintain his principles, and declares that I have not a right to judge him, I tell him that his pretensions are illegitimate; that his reason is disordered by modern principles; and that, if he will not renounce those principles, I cannot absolve him."

The Civiltá thinks that, at this point, they came to the heart of the matter. On one side they began to allege that the confessor could not require his penitent to renounce his opinions unless they were heretical, or were opinions condemned by the Church. A very false doctrine! exclaims the oracle; for, in addition to heretical opinions, a true Catholic must renounce many others—those, for instance, which are proximate to heresy; those which are presumptuous, scandalous, and all indeed that are offensive to pious ears. The teaching power of our Church is not merely infallible, and not only does it define with infallibility when defining articles of faith, but also when defining any truth, scientific or practical, political or historical, which is connected, in any manner whatever, with dogma and morals; and whoever would be a sincere Catholic must conform not only in respectful silence, but with interior assent of the intellect (p. 318).

[Pg 161]

The Civiltá proceeds to quote the opinions of the "good journals" of Italy, laying stress on the point that the opinions held by the supposed penitent could not be probable opinions—being in fact those which were already condemned in the Syllabus. It proceeds with great vigour to maintain that the Syllabus was the decree, not only of the Pope, but also of the five hundred bishops who had adhered to it last year (1867). Of these, the Civiltá correctly says that Darboy himself was one. It next contributes an important item of information, which completes the evidence of the perfect and formal ecclesiastical authority of all the condemnations of the Syllabus, on either theory of the constitution of the Church, the Papal or the Episcopal. After the address of the five hundred bishops present in Rome, all the absent ones, asserts the Civiltá, sent in their adhesion by letter, which they hastened to forward to this Roman chair, where, with the living Pontiff, resides the "spirit of truth" (p. 324). Hence it draws the inference, which is a just conclusion, if we may say so, in the face of a hundred English writers who, following an old tradition, when reviewing what Dr. Newman put upon paper on this subject, called it logical.

"This penitent (says the great organ of the Vatican), openly opposes the teaching power of the Church, whether that teaching power is considered as being exercised by the Bishop of Rome alone, or as being exercised by him in conjunction with all the bishops of Christendom. That teaching power has pronounced in the one mode and in the other, and has proscribed those opinions. In both ways has it condemned opinions, not imaginary or belonging to bygone times, but opinions which to-day, and under our eye, are pertinaciously maintained and reduced to practice" (p. 324).

Returning with intense earnestness to this point, it says (p. 543)—

The universal Bishop has spoken alone, and further, he has spoken conjointly with the bishops of the particular Churches. To contradict after this, is in effect to separate oneself from the whole of the pastors, and from him who is supreme among them all.

This is not enough. Some pages later, hesitation, on this[Pg 162] question so vital to practical government, is again censured, in replying to the plea that the supposed penitent might be worthy of absolution on the ground of invincible ignorance—

We shall never tell him that ignorance consists in this, namely, that after he has read the Encyclical and the Syllabus, and re-read them, he could not understand that the modern opinions, which he retained, have been truly condemned, or that they have been condemned rightfully. This is not ignorance. It is an error and a pertinacity proper to a man not far removed from heresy. In this case, we once more repeat, confession is not the thing wanted. The first elements of the faith, and of the Catholic profession, have to be set straight in this man's head (p. 547).

It would almost seem as if Montalembert was personally pointed at in the two later articles. It is not a little curious to learn here that his bosom friend, Lacordaire, long the charm of the French pulpit, was called to Rome in 1850 to answer for his doctrine. The points on which he had to set himself right with Rome were anything but, in our sense, religious ones: (1) The coercive power of the Church; (2) The origin of sovereignty; and (3) The temporal power of the Pope. He did set himself right. Father Jandel, the General of the Dominicans, exulting over his answer on the question touching the coercive power, says, "It avenges his memory from the suspicion of complicity with certain opinions which some Catholics would fain shelter under the authority of his name."[117] Avenges his memory! It proves that whatever Lacordaire believed, he submitted to write as his own the doctrine of Rome, that the Church has power to "employ external force," and to inflict bodily pains. And so France sees the memory of her Bossuet held up to reproach, and the memory of her Lacordaire yoked by the Dominican General to his beloved Inquisition. She sees her Montalembert driven from public life, assailed, yea, reviled, while living, preparatory to being insulted when dead.

Any one acquainted with the high spirit and immense emotional force of Montalembert, can imagine his reddening and shivering at finding the following among the citations from[Pg 163] Renan to prove that the sceptic understood the doctrine of "Catholicism" better than its professed friends in France—

The remedy applied by the Church of Rome to the liberty of worship and liberty of thought is the Inquisition. The Councils have established and approved the Inquisition, the Fathers and bishops have counselled and practised it. The Inquisition is the logical outgrowth of the whole orthodox system, and the quintessence of the spirit of the Church.[118]

Strongly as our sympathies are with Montalembert and Darboy, we feel that, so long as the Jesuits have to prove that persecution is the doctrine and has been the practice of the Church, they have it all their own way against the Liberal Catholics, till they creep up to the early ages.

[Pg 164]

CHAPTER V

What is to be the Work of the Council—Fears caused by Grandiose Projects—Reform of the Church in Head and Members—Statesmen evince Concern.

Curiosity as to what the particular work of the Council was to be grew all the more rapidly, because no authoritative indication of it was given. Were the Jesuit tenets of Papal authority and Papal infallibility to be raised into dogmas? Was the Pope to make another offering to the Virgin by proclaiming as an article of faith, that her body had been carried to heaven? By the repetition of such questions, tens of millions partially awoke to the consciousness that they belonged to a religion which knew not what might be its standard of faith next year, much less did it know to what particular tenets it might be committed.

Then, as to the position of the bishops, were they to be only councillors, or also judges? If the latter, they would first hear the doctors, as did their predecessors at Trent; would next deliberate, and finally would formulate decrees, which decrees without alteration, would be confirmed by the Pontiff. But if the bishops were no longer judges of the faith, but simply councillors of the one judge, their place would be to argue points, as the doctors had done at Trent, while the decree should be that of the Pope, and they would merely assent.

Again, as to the composition of the Council, were the bishops in partibus to be members? Was Darboy, whose diocese counted two millions of souls, to be balanced by some Court creature with a title from Sardis or Ecbatana? or was Schwarzenberg, with Bohemia at his back, to be balanced by an instrument of the Curia, who, independently of his patrons, had not a month's bread to call his own? Were those who repre[Pg 165]sented ancient and numerous churches, and who were as far free agents as men under Rome can be, to be voted against, man for man, by vicars apostolic, without churches, or with only new and ignorant ones—men depending on the Propaganda even for their travelling expenses and board?

Finally, as to the mode of procedure, were the bishops, as they did at Trent, to agree upon their own rules of procedure, to evolve by mutual consultation the questions demanding solution, and to discuss them till all were ready to vote? Or could there be truth in the suspicion that everything was being cut and dried beforehand, and that the Court would impose ready-made rules of procedure, and allow no one but itself to introduce any subject for discussion?

As to the burning question of moral unanimity, would projected formulae be passed from hand to hand, as was done at Trent, examined in meetings of groups, retouched, and, if need be, remoulded till a form was arrived at in which all but two or three acquiesced? Or was it possible that formulae for new articles in a creed prepared behind the backs of the bishops would be imposed on millions and for ever, by a majority made up with the help of the bishops in partibus?

All this time, the nine determined men forming the secret Directing Congregation, were coolly looking at the same questions, and, step by step, as we shall see, when events bring out the secret plans, were settling those questions in the sense most dreaded, and going to lengths not, we believe, suggested in any of the anticipatory expressions of fear.

Earnest theologians who had not been converted by the infallibilist propaganda of recent years, were thrown into consternation. Some bishops, able administrators, saw no essential difference between Papal infallibility as a doctrine taught in many of the schools, and believed by great numbers if rejected by others perhaps greater, and the same opinion as an article of faith. In such a view, the men of thought saw the superficial glance of "practical men," as they call themselves, who never discover anything but by feeling it, and who live by acting out to-day what others thought out in time gone by.

[Pg 166]

Little difference! thought the men of foresight. We are going to be compelled to alter our catechisms and creed in the face of the Protestants; going to be compelled to teach the opposite of what we have always taught; going to part with immemorial safeguards against altering the conditions of salvation, or further narrowing the terms of membership in the Church—to part with the necessity before every such change of the open and formal process of a General Council! The proposed dogma is unlike any now in the creed, in the all-important point of being self-multiplying. If it is adopted, we shall be liable to have eternal obligations laid upon our souls, without a week's warning.

Beside fears like these, others perhaps more general were those of quiet Catholics wishing to live in peace and serve their respective nations loyally, who being conscious that even now they were liable to suspicion of a divided allegiance, feared that if the Jesuit tenets became the creed, their political relations would be less comfortable, and their prospects of office not so good. "At the Vatican," says Ce qui se Passe au Concile, speaking of the mystery and the uneasiness of this moment; "At the Vatican they spoke in low tones of grandiose projects that were to transform the world, and by exalting Pius IX were to confound the enemies of the Church." It was those grandiose projects which made good citizens fear for their own future political standing.

Even feelings of this sort, as represented by Holtgreven, ought to touch us, being those of silent millions awaiting in the dark the sentence of their lords in Council. He says—

When we left the gymnasium, soon after the year 1860, there was no pupil who could say that, even by hint, he had been taught there that the Pope was infallible by himself, and without the consent of the Church. The answer 128 in Martin's Handbook of Religion is still too fresh in the memory of all; an answer which affirms that the grace of infallibility belongs only to the collective body of bishops, as successors of the Apostles.... Persons in office and out of it, clergy, laity, and exalted Church dignitaries, agreed that the pretensions of the Pope to power over kings and nations, in matters of allegiance and such like, were not part of[Pg 167] their religion, but arose out of the state of the civil laws in the middle ages.... Thus does the Catholic teacher teach in his lectures on Church history, thus does the student learn; and this view, which captivates the youth, putting his German heart at rest, and rejoicing it, still gives him repose and removes every scruple when, as a man, he lifts up the hand to swear allegiance to the laws of the fatherland.[119]

Those of the French clergy whose education had been carried beyond the usual round of Latin, logic, and manners, began to manifest misgivings as to the effect of the impending change on men of enlarged culture. It was in March, 1869, that the Unitá published the Pope's famous letter to the Archbishop of Paris, described in a former chapter. The Paris correspondent of that journal, commenting upon it, calls the dignitary who, in the eye of the world, would be his metropolitan and ordinary, "a pretty fellow"—bel soggetto—whom no one would any longer look upon as a candidate for the rank of Cardinal. In the same letter he says that war against Prussia must break out, whether the occasion be the Belgian railways, or complaints that Prussia violates the treaty of Prague.

Fears as to coming changes, in their effect on men of culture, were felt still more deeply in Germany, where the general education of the clergy was higher than elsewhere. Both the German clergy and the nobler of the French were unprepared for what they began, in secret, to call Pius-cult, as it appeared in the language employed by the favoured organs. One word in the prayer for the Pope, recommended by the Unitá, on March 12, grated not on Protestant ears only. The Ave Maria was for a week to be followed by these petitions: "Eternal Father, defend Pius IX! Eternal Word, assist Pius IX! Holy Spirit, glorify Pius IX!"

Perhaps none of the publications now flowing from the Press excited greater attention than one which was announced as being from the pen of one of the best known of the Austrian clergy. It was entitled The Reform of the Romish Church in Head and Members. Not only does this author oppose the[Pg 168] attempt to restore laws enforcing unity of creed, but he actually does so on principle, as well as on the ground of expediency. The longing of Rome for the subjection of the States of the world, and for power again to employ the arm of the State in her service, is, he contends, a delusion which will lead only to her overthrow. Moreover, he lays down the startling principle that the Church has nothing to ask but liberty to act in her own sphere like any private society. This last position is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary theories. He holds that anything granted to the Church by the State beyond what is given to any other private society is an evil, and also that every case, in the past, wherein Church and State have joined hands in order to help one another to gain their respective ends, has turned out ill for both of them. In modern times his ideal of the normal relation of Church and State is that existing in America, which he imagines works favourably for Romanism.

The author of Reform in Head and Members looks on the system of lower seminaries for boys and higher ones for young men, in which the future clergy pass their youth separated from all society, leading an unreal life, pursuing narrow studies and without knowledge of men, or the possibility of acquiring any breadth of mind, as producing only a race of priests unfit to lead an educated age. He declares that in France, Italy, and Spain the system of close seminaries has destroyed theological science among Catholics. He manifests the ordinary contempt of German scholars for the showy and wordy pupils of the Roman seminaries, and contends that Catholic theology does not bear any comparison, as to talent and learning, with Protestant theology in any country except Germany, where the priests have to study at the universities. He further believes that the lamentable moral condition of the Romish clergy is not a little to be ascribed to the seclusion and unreality in which their youth is passed (p. 161).

The young priests in whose hands the guidance of the people is to be placed, squander the fair and precious years of youth in enclosures shut off from the world, and out of them do they go forth into life without experience of men or of the world. Then does[Pg 169] the world, with all its charms, allurements, delights, and seductions, rush in upon those narrow, inexperienced young clergymen; and alas! only too many of them sink in a sea which to them is new, strange, and untried.

He demands a thorough reform of this system, insisting that the contempt shown by all respectable Italians for the priesthood is not to be accounted for except on the ground of this wretched system and of its wretched moral and religious results.

Another demand boldly made by this Austrian priest is for the abolition of the vows of celibacy, so far as they are either perpetual or obligatory. He would admit of vows that were both voluntary and temporary. The corrupting effects of celibacy evidently leave him no hope that it is capable of being rendered consistent with tolerable morality. He treats this institution as purely local and Romish, regarding its imposition upon the Catholic Church as a great public evil, impossible to be justified. At page 117 he says, "Upon the law of the Romish Church fall back all those moral abominations, beyond measure and beyond number, which have arisen out of it, and which will stain the Church as long as that law remains in force." When the writer approaches the subject of bureaucratic centralization, the Catholic rises against the Romanism which has fastened itself on the Churches of other nations. This system of centralization as carried out by the Curia is much too narrow legitimately to claim the name of national. Our author wants to see an end of the system. He wonders what may be the annual revenue paid into Rome from all quarters of the globe for indults, dispensations, indulgencies, remissions of sins, and the fees gained by all the inventions for what he calls selling poor parchment and bad writing very dear. He does not, like many writers when they touch this subject, break out into a passion against the huckstering of their religion, but manifests a cold contempt, feeling that the system is low and hollow.

The modern contrivance for making a bishop a tenant on a short lease is calmly exposed. Formerly, as the author points[Pg 170] out, a bishop used to rule his own diocese; now he is no more than a delegate. He is allowed to distribute such dispensations for the smaller sins against Church law as do not pay any money tax, but his power to do this, as also his power to perform several other of the acts essential to his office, is no longer conveyed to him with the office itself. On the contrary, for that power he is dependent upon a lease, never given for more than five years, called the Quinquennial Faculties. If at the expiration of one of these terms the Faculties are not renewed, he becomes a mere lay figure in his chair, and would be at once exposed to his clergy and people as under disgrace. By this means is he kept a perpetual pensioner on the favour of the Curia, and in addition to the periodical expiration of the ordinary lease, he is a tenant at will, liable any day to have his Faculties withdrawn by the Holy Father.

The centralizing of the government of the Church in the See of Rome, to effect which it was necessary to destroy the rights of metropolitans and to curtail the jurisdiction of bishops, is a state of things so unjustifiable and ruinous, that the well-being of the Church urgently demands its removal. This absorption of all the powers and rights of Church government is not to be justified either by pleading the necessity of preserving the unity of the Church, or by pleading the supreme hierarchical power, which belongs to the See of Rome. The very necessity of manifesting unity presupposes a number of persons entrusted with independent functions of government; and if the incumbent of the highest power of the Church strips the subordinate functionaries of all authority, he makes himself the sole seat of power in the Church.

This writer would restore worship in the mother tongue.

Statesmen began to feel concern, at least such as did not belong to the class finely laughed at by M. Veuillot, who do not think it necessary to inform themselves on "the small affairs of the Catholic Church," although speaking, legislating, and perhaps writing on matters of which those affairs form a considerable element.

Naturally such fears were sooner and more seriously felt by Roman Catholic statesmen than by Protestant ones. Though[Pg 171] Von Lutz, Minister of Worship in Bavaria, spoke after the event, he tersely expressed the apprehensions felt at this time—

"The Church lays down the principle that the Pope is Prince of princes, and Lord Paramount (Oberherr) of all States. Do you think it possible that States will put up with that? That the State will quietly stand by while the bishop orders the parish priest to preach against the law of the land, and while he deposes him if he will not comply? Or must the State itself drive the parish priest out of his home for refusing to misuse the pulpit, against the State?"[120]

Bishop Fessler, of St. Pölten,[121] in a lengthy manifesto, gave a clear intimation that the infallibility of the Pope would probably be defined by the Council. This set many Catholics in Germany on preparing to combat the intention announced, and set still more on saying that as Fessler had been the first to face the German public with this intimation, his fortune was made at Rome.

Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans, put forth his best literary power in what was called, by the Constitutionnel, an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between the Council and the principles of 1789.[122] He urged that they greatly erred who looked upon the approaching Council as a menace against modern society, or as a declaration of war with progress. On the contrary, freedom, fraternity and progress, so far as they were true and good, had nothing to fear from this "senate of humanity."

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mainz, declared that the forthcoming Council was the greatest event of our age[123]—

At least (added this doughty pupil of the Jesuits), in the work of reconstruction; for as to destruction, certainly, there have been greater events. As God provided for the Church and the world in the century of the so-called Reformation, by means of the Council of Trent, so has He in our century, which, still sadder to say, is the century of Revolution, the century of demolition and universal destruction, inspired the High Pontiff with the supreme remedy, the convocation of the Vatican Council. The work of destruction[Pg 172] is manifestly hasting to its end. It is time to commence the work of reconstruction, on the ancient foundation laid by Christ once for all. This is precisely the work to which the Council is called.

These words we quote from the Civiltá, to which the whole document seemed highly laudable.[124] But its translation is strong. Ketteler did not use the term "reconstruction" for his German audience, but "construction." He did not say that God had inspired the Pontiff, but that the Spirit of God again assembled the General Council, the highest Court of Judgment for the Truth on earth. This last form of words had the merit of which our English tongue has within the last few years presented some examples of all but incredible skill—the merit of suggesting to a Protestant an idea that would not awaken his political fears, and yet of representing to the Jesuits of the Civiltá the true doctrine. The Pope himself began to take part in the controversy now gradually rising. The Abbé Belet had translated into French the work of the Jesuit Father Weninger, published in New York. The Pope wrote a brief to thank him, taking occasion at the same time harshly to censure the great Bossuet, as a bishop who, in order to flatter the civil power, contradicted his own proper opinions, and contradicted the original doctrine of the Church.[125]

Pleasant to the military palate of Pius IX were the words of brave Colonel Allet, in a soldierly order of the day, issued in December, to his zouaves. After recounting in terse, strong terms, their services against the Garibaldians, he says—

Soldiers! all is not over. Great dangers still threaten the Church. Remember that in your regiment you stand, not merely as soldiers marching side by side; you also represent a principle before the world, the principle of the voluntary and disinterested defence of the Holy See. You are the nucleus around which will unite in the hour of danger the prayers, the succours, and the hopes of the Catholic world. Be, then, true soldiers of God. You have not merely duties, you have even a mission, and you will not fulfil it without union, discipline, moral conduct, and military instruction. A third battalion is formed. Your swelling ranks assure to you a[Pg 173] larger part in future struggles. We shall march together to the cry of "Long Live Pius IX!"

Funereal solemnities on behalf of the fallen are proudly recorded as having been celebrated in France, England, Germany, etc.

To these military consolations were added such as a crown and a nation once great could now bestow. Queen Isabella strongly recommended from the throne, and her Cortes almost unanimously voted, that the forces of the nation, acting in alliance with the Emperor of the French, should be ready to defend the Holy See.[126] What was more important, the King of Prussia, in reply to Ledochowsky, spoke clearly in support of the temporal power. It was also told with satisfaction how, at banquets, both at Malines and Namur, the health of the Pope was drunk before that of the King of Belgium, and how pleasantly the Nuncio gave the health of the local and subordinate sovereign after that of his master, as the Lord Paramount, had received its meed.[127]

It is not easy for us, whose faith has always rested on the fixed standard of God's Word, to enter into all the feelings of suspense which are to be read between the lines of a lecture by Professor Menzel, then of Braunsberg, now of Bonn, printed for private circulation among his former pupils.[128] He is teaching them the doctrine of Church infallibility, but not, as he had hitherto done, in the twofold confidence of persuasion and personal security. Persuasion abides, reinforced by fresh study and animated by assault. But security is gone. The consciousness that he may never more be allowed to teach this doctrine weighs upon all he utters. Before another session, should his own faith not change, that of his chair probably will. The Church which he had served, as permitting the membership of those who denied the infallibility of the Pope, had been catholic enough for him. But now, after pausing since the[Pg 174] Reformation, she had actively resumed the process of narrowing the terms of membership by dogmatizing new shibboleths. One had been already added in his own day. Another now hung overhead, still more momentous, because it not only altered the doctrine of the Church, but altered the standard of doctrine, and was moreover self-propagating—a seed bearing fruit after its kind.

"This complete subversion of the old Catholic principle, everywhere, always, and by all," cries the poor Professor, "has found its most doughty champions in the Jesuits of the Civiltá Cattolica, with their branch at Maria Laach, and in the Archbishops of Malines and Westminster, Deschamps and Manning."[129] In the struggling argument of the Teacher of this year, we cannot help hearing, by anticipation, the sighs of the excommunicated of next year; excommunicated for holding fast what he had always taught, with the sanction of the Church, and from one of her chairs! And as the iron enters into his soul, he evidently feels it hard that an English hand should be one of the foremost in driving it home.

Professors looked from the chair on their classes not knowing what they might have to teach a twelvemonth hence. Preachers looked from the pulpit on their congregations weighted with the same uncertainty. Editors wrote that the Catholic faith was thus and thus, feeling that, perhaps, soon they must write the reverse, or else drop the pen. Heads of families were perplexed as to what they should say to their children, if compelled to believe what they and their fathers had always resented as a false accusation against their religion. Jurists wondered if they must either break with their clergy or begin a campaign for reinstating canon law over civil. Kings whose forefathers had compelled nations, by the sword, to wear the yoke of Rome, chafed to think that their religion was to be "changed over their heads." But all this time the silent arbiters of the Catholic's destiny were patiently framing the decrees. Men moved and combined to prevent new fetters from being forged for their souls next year; but link was being[Pg 175] already noiselessly added to link, by old, cool, and resolute masters. The Emperor set to defend the Gallican liberties for the millions of France, and the Emperor set to uphold the Josephine safeguards for the millions of Austria, had no access to the subterranean forge Antra Ætnaca where chains and thunderbolts were on the anvil, away from the ears of men. Turnus had not less power over the island cave where the arms by which he was to fall were being tempered. But, on the other hand, the Vulcan of the Syllabus had more than one Venus at the Court of each potentate, wooing in his interests, and pleading for his will. The truth, however, was to dawn upon their subjects from behind gorgeous clouds of their beloved pomps and ceremonies.

[Pg 176]

CHAPTER VI

Agitation in Bavaria and Germany—The Golden Rose—Fall of Isabella—The King of Bavaria obtains the Opinion of the Faculties—Döllinger—Schwarzenberg's Remonstrance.

The proximity of Bavaria to Italy on the one hand, and to Protestant Germany and Switzerland on the other, had assisted in giving to the schools of Munich a juster appreciation of the effect to be expected in the world at large, from new additions to the dogmatic burden which Catholics must carry. For a considerable time a conflict had been silently growing up between the theology of the German schools and that in recent years imported direct from Rome by the new type of priests there trained. The catechisms—even those prepared by the early Jesuits—had been gradually altered, till first the denial of Papal infallibility disappeared, and secondly the statement of Church infallibility was so obscured as to prepare the way for further change.

Jesuit establishments had been springing up in defiance of the law. The Ultramontane Press had raged against the unity of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, writing so as to lead foreigners to believe that France had only to invade Germany and she would find the Catholics on her side. A littérateur named Fischer being arrested at Landeck in June, 1868, a letter was found from Count Platen, saying, "A league of the small states with France, for the common end of breaking the power of Prussia, is the duty of all."[130]

The feelings of the educated classes generally resented such attempts with indignation. We have seen how Sepp spoke of the canonization of Arbues. The painter Kaulbach executed a picture of an auto da fe celebrated under the eye of this new[Pg 177] celestial patron. A priest preached against the sale of the engravings; and Kaulbach wrote a letter, which was printed in the Cologne Gazette, hailing such reproach as an honour, and appending a sketch of the Roman twins drinking in the milk of the she-wolf. Of his Romulus and Remus, one wore the crown of imperial France, and the other the tiara.[131]

German writers assert that Napoleon III induced Queen Isabella of Spain, in the spring of 1868, to pledge herself to send into Italy forty thousand men to protect the Pope, in case he should be obliged to withdraw his troops by entering on a war with Prussia. Other authorities say that it was to be in case of a war with Italy. At all events, the most select favour the Pontiff had to confer on the worthiest lady of his Church, the golden rose, was sent to her most Catholic Majesty. This distinction placed Isabella on a level with the Queen of Naples and the Empress Eugènie, the only two lambs in all his fold hitherto held worthy by Pius IX of this pontifical seal of stainless whiteness. But to the daughter of Queen Christina the golden rose proved to be the last rose of her summer. In September 1868 this elect lady, after outliving more insurrections than any sovereign in Christendom, was compelled to flee. An expression fell from the Catholique of Brussels on the news that the crown of Isabella was threatened, which throws light on the Ultramontane dialect: "Spain will be lost to Catholicism, lost to the cause of order in Europe, and the last Christian government will have disappeared from the Old World."[132] This drew from Montalembert the remark: "To wish modern society, or any Christian born in that society and destined to live in it, to esteem the condition of Spain under Isabella II more highly than that of England under Victoria, and to wish this in the name of the Catholic Church, in the name of the party of order in Europe, is to impute to that party and to that Church the saddest of responsibilities, and the most menacing."[133]

[Pg 178]

But all Catholic political personages were not as good Papists as Queen Isabella.

Montalembert, full of thoughts suggested by the questions rising in the Church, saw in her fall but an incident of the decay of Spain, which, again, was but the most striking example of the condition of most Roman Catholic countries. He wrote what, as we have seen, appeared only after his death. Confessing that the reign of Isabella had lasted "too long," he traced the ruin of the country to "despotism, spiritual and temporal, absolute monarchy, and the Inquisition." After showing that both municipal and parliamentary liberties had been well developed in Spain in the days when she struggled, rose, and took the lead, he dates the beginning of her fall from the combination of Church and State, under Charles V, to work unitedly in quenching civil and religious liberty. Though no advocate of the separation of Church and State, he says, "A thousand times better the fullest separation with all its excesses, than the absorption of the State by the Church, or of the Church by the State." No better expression could have been chosen than the former of these phrases to designate the effect of the Jesuit polity of Church and State just about to be adopted by Rome.

He takes the social and political effects of the Inquisition to have been disastrous—"That monstrous institution ceased to act only when it had no more to do, when it had substituted emptiness, death, and nothingness for the life, the force, and the glory of the first nation of the middle ages, the one which we may justly call the pearl of the Catholic world." Aiming a two-edged thrust at Bonapartist legislatures, and at the character of the coming Council, he says that the "ill-omened" Charles V was the inventor "of consultative despotism," or representative absolutism, of which the Napoleons are wrongly accused of being the originators. For one who had spent his life in battling for the Papacy, but always with the hope of reconciling it to liberty, it was bitter, when death was in view, to write: "There is not in the history of the world a second example of a great country so ruined, so broken down, so[Pg 179] fallen, without foreign conquest or civil war having materially contributed to the result, but by the sole effect of institutions of which it was the prey."[134]

Had the Prime Minister of Bavaria at the juncture in question been a Protestant, he would have been slower in seeing the political bearings of what was taking place. One of the three brothers of Prince Hohenlohe was a cardinal, and otherwise his means of information had been good. Besides, though Bavaria had often served the Papal cause to the hurt of Germany, it had never, like Prussia, given up its placet and other guards of the royal supremacy. The Prime Minister submitted questions for the formal opinion of the two Faculties of Theology and Law, in the University of Munich, as to the effect which the definition of Papal infallibility as a dogma would have upon the relations of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

The Faculty of Theology, in its reply, after referring to the work of Schrader, and quoting some of his propositions, says—

Should these or similar conclusions be adopted (i.e. the conclusion of the Syllabus against freedom of religion, of the Press, etc.), it would lead to great confusion. The counter principles are so established, both in the theory and practice of all European constitutions, that anything contrary to religious equality and freedom of opinion can scarcely again obtain a footing. Were it laid upon Catholics, as a duty of conscience, to repudiate those principles, undeniably collision between their civil and ecclesiastical obligations would result, and in certain circumstances consequences would ensue, burdensome and hurtful both to the individual members of a national Church and to the collective body.[135]

The statesmen had asked the divines what was meant by speaking ex cathedrâ. The Faculty replied that among those who asserted the doctrine of Papal infallibility, there were some twenty theories on the subject, none of them authoritative or generally received, and all arbitrary; "because here it is impossible to frame a theory from Scripture and tradition."[136]

The Faculty of Law said—

[Pg 180]

Should the propositions of the Syllabus and the Papal infallibility be made dogmas, the relations between State and Church hitherto subsisting would be altered in their very principles, and nearly all the legislation fixing the legal position of the Catholic Church in Bavaria would be called in question.[137]

The chief of the Theological Faculty was Dr. Döllinger, whose aged but erect head was to every scholar in the University a crown of glory. The professors were proud of him, and of their attainments made under his eye. In common with the scholars of other Catholic seats of learning in Germany, they habitually manifested contempt for the Doctores Romani, the imported pupils of the Jesuits from the Collegium Germanicum or other seminaries in Rome—a feeling which they extended to the great bulk of the men of the Curia.

Döllinger had been a firm Tridentine Romanist, devoutly bearing the burden of the new dogmas which the Council of Trent bound up and laid upon men's shoulders. But being profoundly versed in antiquity, he was not disposed for more accretions of the same sort, and he had long been detested by the Jesuits, as standing in the old paths and resisting their innovations. Superstitions newly carried over the Alps did not thrive under his eye. As a historian he had not feared to narrate and censure the enormities of Popes.

While these agitations were arising in the provinces, the secret preparations in Rome were being pushed forward. The fact became known that the six Commissions were at work. The names of those serving upon them no sooner transpired than a cry arose that only favourites of the Jesuits were appointed. So few names from Germany appeared that offence was given, even in a national point of view. This feeling increased when it appeared that celebrities of whom the Catholic faculties were proud had been passed over, and that inferior men, known only for devotion to the Curia, had been selected. These feelings were partly theological, partly personal, and yet more strongly[Pg 181] patriotic. The Germans knew that a double peril for the Fatherland lurked in the anti-unionist policy of Rome—peril of disruption from within, and of invasion from France.

Dissatisfaction must have run tolerably high when Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg wrote to Cardinal Antonelli, formally remonstrating as to the selection made. The fact, he submitted, that all those selected belonged to one well-defined theological school, was in itself open to objection. As to the reputation of the favourites, he said, "I have had fears lest their qualifications should not prove equal to their weighty responsibilities." He names Munich, Bonn, and Tübingen, as Universities where fit men were to be found as well as at Würzburg, and goes so far as to mention names, among them that of Döllinger.

This letter was politely answered by Antonelli, after a couple of months. He said that Döllinger would have been invited only that his Holiness had learned that he would not accept the duty.[138]

One of the theologians at whom the innuendo of Cardinal Schwarzenberg was aimed was Hergenröther. Yet Archbishop Manning wrote to Macmillan's Magazine, and, after speaking of the men of Munich as if they were of little more account in the esteem of students than in that of ecclesiastical courtiers, told us that if we wanted to learn anything of the true relation of Catholics to national law, we must not go to them, but must study Hergenröther.[139]

[Pg 182]

CHAPTER VII

Intention of proposing the Dogma of Infallibility intimated—Bavarian Note to the Cabinets, February to April, 1869—Arnim and Bismarck.

It was in February, 1869, that the fears and hopes which had long been more or less distinctly directed to a given point, were both quickened by fresh light. The Civiltá Cattolica, in the letter of its French correspondent, published suggestions that the Council should sit for but a short time, that it should proclaim the doctrines of the Syllabus, and that the infallibility of the Pope should be adopted by acclamation. It was at once alleged that the finger of Pius himself gave this sign. The suggestions thus made explain what the Cardinals consulted in the first instance meant when they hoped that the Council would not last so long as some might think. They had in 1854 induced the bishops to acclaim a new dogma, and in 1867 to accept the Syllabus without demur, and surely they could get any portions of that document which it was necessary, for greater clearness, to formulate into decrees, passed in the same delightful way; and this would be still more desirable for the dogma of infallibility. Archbishop Manning treated the idea of an intended acclamation as a pleasantry; but he charged the ventilation of it on a wrong time and on a wrong publication. "Janus first announced the discovery of the plot."[140] It may have been Janus who first clearly indicated a certain English prelate as the man chosen by the party of acclamation to give the signal. But he was long behind the first to announce the plot. The laity generally were offended and alarmed, at least those north of the Alps, and many bishops who were ready to vote for the Curia did not feel flattered at[Pg 183] having the whole world informed that they were not wanted in Rome as judges of the faith, but as adornments of a grand pageant. The translation or assumption of the body of the Virgin was also suggested in the same article, as a doctrine which it was desirable to make into a dogma.

As time wore on, the excitement became more intense. In France, the action of the government, as in most things under the Second Empire, was ambiguous. It seemed to dread the impending innovations, and every now and then what appeared to the world as a menace was half uttered. Yet it was plain that the Curia was not disturbed. Nothing can be more tranquil than the letters in the Civiltá from its French correspondent. There is an apparent sense of solid support, such as no gusts of the popular winds will seriously shake. M. de Banneville, the acceptable representative of France in Rome, continued in his post. When the question of the presence of princes in the Council was to be faced, Cardinal Antonelli had the comfort of treating it with this trusty friend. It was comparatively easy to convey to him the intimation which, in a few words, represented, as M. Veuillot had showed, a radical revolution in Church and State. There were no more Catholic States. The term "Catholic arms" continued to be applied, by official writers, to those of France and the other countries which had reconquered the lost States of the Pope. But arms are perhaps, like gold and silver to the Brahmans, substances which never contract pollution. The monarchs were outside the door. Even France, whose flag at Civitá Vecchia was the only protection of the temporal power, was told that she was no longer a Catholic State—she, the eldest daughter of the Church; she whom the Pope, in parting with General Failly, had for love of her chassepots—the "prodigious chassepots," as they were called—blessed as the "most Christian nation!" The Curia knew that the hold of the Pope on the priests and schools was stronger than that of the Bonapartes on army and nation; and they were rearing up their champions, while the Empire was wearing out its own.

The same number of the Civiltá which records the death of[Pg 184] Antonelli states the case in the following terms. The Pontiff could not invite powers "of which one, like Italy, was in open hostility to the Church; of which another had, like Austria, of her own motion, torn up the Concordat; and another had, like France, a turncoat and a perfidious traitor to the Holy See upon the throne."

The Ultramontane priests enjoyed this disfranchisement of kings; but they were not yet all prepared to find that the Order of Priests was also to be disfranchised. Not a man of them was to be allowed to plead in presence of the Council. The Cardinals, in their close and still Commissions, were preparing to put, not only laymen, but priests and bishops too, more on the footing of a marching army than ever before.

On April 9, 1869, Prince Hohenlohe addressed a circular to the European Cabinets in the name of Bavaria. It was not to be believed, he said, that the Council would confine itself to purely theological questions, of which, in fact, none were pressing for solution. The only dogmatic point that Rome wished the Council to decide was that of Papal infallibility, for which the Jesuits in Germany and elsewhere were agitating. "This question," added the Prince, "reaches far beyond the domain of religion, and is in its nature highly political; for the power of the Pope in temporal things over all princes and nations, even such as are in separation from Rome, would be defined, and elevated into an article of faith."

The smooth reply of the German Jesuit organ was that something of the kind had been said before in the Augsburg Gazette. But the circle of Church authority would remain the same, whether the organ of that authority should be the Pope singly, or the Pope in conjunction with the bishops; just as the powers of a national government would be the same in extent, whether in the hands of a monarch or of a republican executive.

This is characteristic. The discussion was not about any proposal to enlarge or contract the theoretic circle of Church power, but about a proposal to declare that the Pope alone, without the bishops, was the depositary of that power. If the theory of Rome was correct, no extension of the circle of[Pg 185] power was possible, but the depositary of power was now to be changed.

If, among ourselves, it was proposed to give the power of life and death to the Crown, without judge or jury, we might be told that the power of life and death was the same whether exercised by royal warrant or through the traditionary courts. The circle of power would not be extended.

The Bavarian note did not elicit a practical response from other Cabinets. The reply of Austria was, perhaps, influenced by the fact that Count Beust, then Prime Minister, was a Protestant. His despatch bears marks either of non-appreciation of the import of terms and acts, proceeding from the Vatican, such as would be natural in one not trained to watch them, or of a desire to evade the gravity of the question. He thought it best to wait and to be on his guard.[141] On behalf of Prussia, Bismarck also took up an attitude of observation, but with more insight into the reasons for the suggestion of Prince Hohenlohe. The Italian Government had expressed itself in favour of common action, but practically let things take their course. England naturally declined to interfere. As to France, she thought herself protected by the Concordat against all eventualities—another proof that her statesmen handled affairs without mastering ideas. Perhaps not one of them had read what Rome had lately been teaching as the true doctrine of Concordats.

The Unitá Cattolica (June 23), however, put this tranquil attitude of France in a different light—

Hohenlohe is sold to Prussia, and torments the Catholics of Bavaria to push them to throw themselves into the arms of Prussia, where Catholicism enjoys the utmost liberty, thanks to the fox-like policy of Bismarck. This is known in Paris, and hence Napoleon is said to have looked darkly on the perfidious proposals of the Bavarian Minister.

[Pg 186]

CHAPTER VIII

Indulgences—Excitement—The Two Brothers Dufournel—Senestrey's Speech—Hopes of the Ruin of Germany—What the Council will do—Absurdity of Constitutional Kings—The True Saviour of Society—Lay Address from Coblenz—Montalembert adheres to it—Religious Liberty does not answer—Importance of keeping Catholic Children apart from the Nation—War on Liberal Catholics—Flags of all Nations doing Homage to that of the Pope.

On April 11, 1869, was issued another of those Bulls proclaiming indulgences on which the world has almost ceased to look as one of the forces of history. Nevertheless each of them is a monument to an authority obeyed by disciplined millions, as holding executive power both in this world and the other. Once more were long Latin sentences filled out to tell the faithful that he who had power to bind and to loose proclaimed to them, on the occasion of the Council, full remission of their sins, and indulgence, on condition of their visiting certain basilicas, and saying certain prayers.[142] "This pardon," says the Archbishop of Florence, "was to extend not only till the opening of the Council, but through the whole of its continuance."[143] Millions were thus put under the necessity of imbibing the conviction, that sin against our neighbour and our God admits of being cancelled in such a way, or else of seeming to believe what they did not believe, or of bowing and not asking themselves whether they believed it or not.

About this time was inaugurated, with great display of dignitaries, military and spiritual, a monument to two brothers Dufournel, who lie in S. Lorenzo. The monument bears all the emblems of martyrdom which the art of the catacombs can supply. Instead of the usual request to pray for the repose of[Pg 187] the soul, into which Romanism fell from Christianity, stands the word of the early Christians, "They rest"—here applied because martyrdom had merited what grace was no longer believed to give. Emmanuel Dufournel, on meeting the Garibaldians, shouted to his men, "Here, lads, is the spot to die; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, forward!" When expiring, he said, "I am pleased to see my blood flow from fourteen wounds for the glory of Holy Church." The people of Valentano, where he died, said to his men, "Let us kiss the bier; we do not come to pray for his soul, but to commend ourselves to him" (VII. vi. 547). "Such"—adds the reverend writer—"such is the Christian instinct which distinguishes between combatants in any other cause, however just, and the heroes of the Christian religion." To develop instincts of this sort, it is impossible to conceive writing more skilfully adapted. And these are the men who, at every breath, call the Italians Mussulmans!

The other brother, Diodato Dufournel—young, handsome, polished, rich—soon after the death of Alfred, met Father Gerlache at daylight entering St. Peter's: "I go to say a mass for our dead on the Apostle's tomb." "I go too," replied the Captain, and they entered the crypt. The priest asked the zouave what had caused his strange absorption in prayer. "Father, I was praying to the Virgin for the favour of dying for Holy Church." Ten days afterwards he fell mortally wounded during the Garibaldian disturbance in Rome. When the white-headed father arrived, it was too late to see either son alive, but he was instantly received by the Pope. The sovereign tried to fasten on his breast the order of the Piano, but was blinded by his tears. Maria, the sister of Diodato and Emmanuel, came between the two weeping old men, and, guiding the hand of the Pope, fastened the decoration on the breast of her father. The writer concludes by representing the ladies of the house hereafter as pointing out to their little ones the glove, the sword, the fatal ball, and other relics, the victor palm and the exulting angels, and saying, "Their souls are in paradise, lovely and resplendent, and are interceding for us. Children, kneel[Pg 188] down and pray to God that none of our family may degenerate from the example of Diodato and Emmanuel Dufournel!"

Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, known as a pupil of the Jesuits and an ardent Ultramontane, made a speech at Schwandorf, which has not yet been forgotten in Bavaria, and was soon heard of in other parts of Germany. He said—

We Ultramontanes cannot yield. The antagonism can have no issue but in war and revolution. A peaceable settlement is not possible. Who makes your temporal laws? We observe them only because a force stands behind which compels us. True laws come from God only. Princes themselves reign by the grace of God, and when they have no longer a mind to do so, I shall be the first to overturn the throne.[144]

To the Germans, who were just rising to a consciousness of their unity, the threats of breaking them up again were cruel, especially when coming from within. "The foreigner," said Sepp, "has always counted on the internal splits in the German oak, to drive in his wedge, and rend us to pieces."

The scorn with which talk of recognizing Italy was treated at this proud moment, may be judged from the words of the Unitá for January 27, in an article headed, Dying with Italy or Living with the Pope. The Marquis de Moustier, it remarks, having promised to study a modus vivendi, proposed by Menabrea, was seized by mortal illness. In a similar way Morny, Wallewsky, Petri, and Billault were struck with death, by urgent study of means for making revolution live side by side with the Pope.

Parliamentary government, hateful everywhere, was viewed as monstrous in Italy. The Civiltá cannot "accurately study" the proceedings in Florence, because of "the ineffable weariness, the disgust, the disdain with which the mind is seized, on reading those speeches, often vulgar, and running over with sophism and effrontery."[145] It proceeds to say that the famous boons of 1789, liberty of worship, liberty of meeting, liberty of the Press, and liberty of instruction, led in practice "to the triumph[Pg 189] of irreligion, to the tyranny of the State, to unbridled licence in handling through the Press the most sacred and inviolable rights, and to the barbarizing of the young by more infamous ignorance." Yet, at the same time, it records with satisfaction efforts of its own friends to obtain liberty of instruction, after their ideal; that is, the State giving up to the priest the control of what is taught to its subjects with its own money.

The Civiltá gloried in the disappearance of the Liberal Catholic priests, utterly extinguished, as it held, by the Syllabus and by the prospect of the Council. There might still linger some slight remnant of Liberal Catholics among the laity. But Catholics in Italy were now to be noted for their hope, their joy, and their perfect withdrawal from political life. They were no more to be found seeking situations from the government, but were all ardently drawing close to Pius IX. Since he uttered the "prophetic word," Let us wait upon events, above all since the Council was summoned, they had betaken themselves to pious works and to waiting on the hand of the Almighty.[146]

In the same publications which struggled against unity of nations, the loss of another unity was bitterly deplored. "Catholic unity" in Spain, hitherto existing by law, alas! exclaims the Stimmen, exists in fact no longer. By religious unity is meant the state of things which forbids men to worship God except under direction of the Pope. Massimo D'Azeglio exclaimed as to Italy, Religious unity is the only unity we have left. We should say, No wonder!

The attempt to place the unity of Christians not in faith in Christ and manifestation of His spirit, but in subjection to one human being, has had just the same results as had the attempt to place the unity of mankind in obedience to one sovereign, treating all who did not yield as enemies. Human unity is larger and nobler than one throne will ever shadow, and so is Christian unity. The lust of uniformity that erected the Inquisition, fettered the Press, sentenced free opinion and free speech to death, reformed the Decalogue, and laid bonds upon the Bible, has never given a nation rest, and has only been an[Pg 190] endless source of division and scepticism. Azeglio, in the same breath in which he speaks of this "unity," calls Italy "the ancient land of doubt," where even at the time of the Reformation people thought little of Rome and nothing of Geneva. And the Stimmen says that those Spaniards who had broken down "religious unity" were "not Protestants but sceptics."[147] So that in both Italy and Spain the result of that uniformity which is no unity, was scepticism in religion and decay in politics.

To the race the bond of unity lies in a common Father, and to the Church in a common Lord. In the one case and in the other the maintenance of unity consists not in putting down variations, but in treating them with brotherly regard.

Very great political significance was lent by all the Papal Press to festivities in honour of the Pope's fiftieth year of priesthood. The demonstrations of devotion to him at this moment were fervent and grand, and the supplies of money laid at his feet were immense. Great care was taken by the Civiltá to ridicule the idea of the Opinione that these manifestations had nothing to do with politics. On the contrary, cried the leaders of the "good Press," humanity, bewildered and almost in despair, was hastening to the feet of the only deliverer. All society needed a saviour, as every rational creature knew. "The Pontiff is now almost alone in the world, the representative of truth, justice, and good sense." And hence, the poor world, swimming in error, fraud and absurdity—"the world sees in Pius IX a true master, a true judge, a true sovereign, and it cleaves to him as the bulwark of society." The Syllabus suffices to prove that the Pope alone declares the truth: "the Syllabus which burst like a thunderbolt out of a serene sky, both illuminated and blasted." The nations seem to be saying, To whom should we go, but to the Supreme Pastor of the Christian flock?—thou hast the words of eternal life. Pius IX, by rejecting the counsels of the prudent, "now has become morally the strongest support of order in the[Pg 191] world, so that those who have fallen, and those who wish not to follow them, lean upon him." And not only so, but the

new queen of the world, Public Opinion, is now altogether in favour of the Roman Pontiff, and protects and saves him, almost of herself alone, against every violence and every intrigue, so that it now may almost be said that all those in the world who are not with Pius IX from love are with him by force (VII. vi. pp. 310-11).

The writer then goes on to argue that the people can never understand how one and the same person can have two consciences, one as a constitutional king and the other as a man. This, however, is a necessary condition of a constitutional king, but it is not the case in the Pontifical States, where nobody would ever suppose such a condition of things possible.

The Pope has only one conscience, and neither majority nor universality of votes and suffrages would ever lead him to sanction that which is contrary to morality, to justice, to equity, and to the well understood interests of his subjects and of the flock. The Pope can say with truth, "Although all, not I"; and on this account the eyes and the hearts of all in the world who hate fictions and impostures, and who love truth and rectitude, are turned to the Pope thus reigning and governing (p. 312).

We make no attempt to inquire how many consciences a Pope may have. The Civiltá contends that he cannot have more than one. We have heard Romans contend that one is above the number. Liverani (p. 140), alluding with much personal respect to Father Mignardi, the Jesuit confessor of Cardinal Antonelli, who, though not Pope, had much to do with the perfect model of government above commended, evidently thinks that a director of Antonelli's conscience held a sinecure. He asserts that no one knew that his Eminence had a conscience till April 2, 1860, when he declared the fact in a despatch to Count Cavour! And this is the language of a prelate!

The more distant prelates were already bidding their flocks farewell. The Bishop of Montreal, in doing so, cited the example of the valorous Canadian youths, who had enrolled[Pg 192] themselves among the zouaves to defend the Pope at the cost of their blood, exhorting his clergy with similar courage to contend against the errors pointed out by the Pope.[148] From Jerusalem five priests wrote to announce that they would commence a concert of prayer, on the slopes of Calvary: 1. For the happy result of the Council; 2. For the union of the Oriental schismatics; 3. For the conversion of erring priests. At the same time that it announces this fact, the Civiltá, quoting from the Tablet, says that in Russia, "under the appearance of external unity, there is great division of religious sects"; and that there is some desire for union with Rome.[149]

In June 1869 the Catholics of Coblentz presented an address to the Bishop of Trêves, protesting against the innovations proposed by the Civiltá Cattolica, and suggesting reforms in a spirit contrary to that of the Syllabus. Great interest was excited by the warm adhesion of Count Montalembert to the address. His services, both to the spiritual and temporal power, had been conspicuous. He was now in the grip of a mortal disease. France will always respect his piety and his genius, but she will increasingly have cause to deplore the direction of his influence, as the slow but sure results of priestly power in education develop themselves.

"Twice within the last few weeks," he writes, "have I touched the brink of the grave." So he feels that he may speak of this world as one whose personal interest in it is as nought.

Speaking of the address, he says: "I cannot express how much I have been moved and charmed by that glorious manifesto, flowing from the reason and conscience of Catholics.... At last I seemed to hear a manly and a Christian tone, amid the declamations and adulations wherewith we are deafened." He would have signed "every line" of it, but he felt somewhat humbled that it did not proceed from French Catholics, with whose antecedents it would have harmonized, as well as with those convictions which made them, in the early[Pg 193] part of this century, the champions of religious liberty on the Continent.[150]

It was hard for the Jesuits to own that Montalembert stood in their path, to be pitilessly struck down. For the present they tried to reason. Like him, many, especially in Belgium, had imbibed the conviction that civil and religious liberty were good in themselves, and might be made to work favourably for the Church, which they thought incurred great danger by setting herself in opposition to both, and by using her spiritual engines for the overthrow of constitutional government. Such men argued that the perfect liberty existing in England, the United States, and Belgium had many advantages for the Church.

To reasoning of this sort the Stimmen aus Maria Laach replied by first of all uttering encomiums on religious liberty, and also on those excellent Catholics who favoured it, thinking it might prove best for the Church. But though this view of the case had its noble aspects, there was another side to it. Experience proved that under such a system the losses of the Church were deplorable. Not to speak of Europe, the case of the United States would suffice. As much as thirty years ago, Bishop England, of Charleston, had said that whereas the Catholics ought to have six millions of the population, they really had less than two. And this terrible loss was aggravated at the present day, for considering the enormous immigration of Catholics and the addition of Mexican territory in the meantime, they ought now to number fifteen millions; but in fact they did not dare to claim more than six. A good authority had showed that the Church lost more souls in the State of Wisconsin in a single year, than she gained in the whole Union. The loss among the children of the Irish was greater than among those of the Germans. This the writer attributes to "the pestiferous air" of non-denominational schools, and complains that the system prevailing in America deprives children of a well-ordered and continuous Catholic education,[Pg 194] such as would protect them, among other dangers, from the necessity of learning English.[151]

This anxiety to keep up the German tongue in America illustrates the cry raised in the German Press against that tongue being put out of the schools, both in Posen and in the Tyrol. "Liberty of instruction" had been so used that whole districts, once speaking German, had been educated into the use of Polish in the one case, and of Italian in the other. In both these countries the same reason which in America made it desirable for Rome to keep up German, turned the other way. In America, the German tongue would enclose a people, in the heart of the country, walled off and apart from the nation. In the other cases, that tongue would be a channel connecting the people with the ebb and flow of the national mind. Even a comparatively small population, kept well in hand, inaccessible to the common thought, and ready to obey every touch of the leaders, may be made a formidable political power. Had Wales been in the hand of Rome![152]

Among the causes of chagrin to Montalembert would be a recent article in the Civiltá, directed against the Liberal Catholics by name, and plainly meant to thwart any influence with which they might have hoped to approach the Council. A pamphlet being taken as a text, the positions of the Liberal Catholics are stated, as—1. That modern nations deserve more liberty than ancient ones; 2. That liberty of worship should be conceded, as now inevitable; 3. That "the distinction between Church and State" is not now to be got rid of, and has its advantages; 4. That Catholics ought to avail themselves of all liberties. On the first point it is replied that modern society has made only material progress, but gone back in faith and morals, and therefore deserves not more liberty than ancient society, but less. On the second point, resenting an allusion of the Liberal Catholic to the fact that Pius IX had himself granted a constitution at the opening of his reign, the[Pg 195] Civiltá alleges, first, that it was conceded in circumstances of imperious necessity; and, secondly, that it was free from the essential faults which would deservedly brand it as Liberal—"it lacked the criminal principles of liberty of worship, of the Press, and of meeting." Moreover, it issued in the exile of the Prince, "which seems to be the inevitable result of modern constitutions." So the Pontiff was obliged to revoke it, and to condemn it to oblivion.

The Liberal Catholic writer had quoted passages, even from Jesuits, to prove that it was lawful for princes, in given circumstances, to tolerate liberty of worship. Certainly, replies the Civiltá, it is lawful to tolerate it, if imperious circumstances render it necessary in order to avoid a greater evil. But that is one thing, and admitting liberty of worship as a principle is another. "What meaning have the words of the present Pontiff when he declares that liberty of conscience and of worship is madness, and the pest of the nations?" What did he mean when he condemned President Comonfort for admitting religious liberty into Mexico? Did Gregory XVI and Pius IX talk to the middle ages? Did they tell the present generation what was suitable or not suitable for the middle ages? Catholics may not be able to change the state of things where liberty of worship already exists, but it is in their power to prevent its entrance where it does not, and to demonstrate its criminality, and its moral and social balefulness. As to Catholics availing themselves of all liberties, that idea is no patent of Liberal Catholics. Of course Catholics avail themselves of all liberties of which they can make use. But to take part in the elections of a kingdom like that of Italy, formed by iniquity, and binding up in itself a perpetual sacrilege, is impossible. The words of the Bull which hurled an excommunication against king and people, are paraded, and the unfortunate Liberal Catholic is reminded that those words apply to adherents of the spoliation.[153]

A London correspondent of the Civiltá told how the journals had at first affected to ignore the Council, but now began to speak of it. The Anglo-Catholic party were discussing projects[Pg 196] of union, and he gives an account of a meeting for that purpose, not naming time or place, but making the Rev. Edward Urquhart prominent. It is said, he adds, that one bishop will go to the Council; and the Ritualists think that many of their party will do so. There is much cause for hope. Some persons of high station have publicly said that they would submit to the Council, and many say so privately. They do not feel safe in Anglicanism.

The prelate who replaced the Bishop of Montreal in his absence, delivered an address, from which the Civiltá repeats these words, that Pius IX had a mission, and his mission was to recall, to confirm, and to defend in the world, the law of the "Most High," the essential principle of authority, and thus to "save at once both the Church and Society."[154] But as a while ago we heard of toasts in which the Pope, as universal king, was put before the national king, so now on British ground is held up to admiration the trophy of banners in the Church of St. Sulpice as the fairest tribute of "New France," as Canada is called. The flags of all the societies in Montreal, and also those of all nations, were gathered together "in homage to the standard of Pius IX, to express the obedience of the Catholic nations to the supreme authority."[155]

[Pg 197]

CHAPTER IX

Publication of Janus—Hotter Controversy—Bishop Maret's Book—Père Hyacinthe—the Saviour of Society again—Dress—True Doctrine of Concordats not Contracts but Papal Laws—Every Catholic State has Two Heads—Four National Governments Condemned in One Day—What a Free Church means—Fulda Manifesto—Meeting of Catholic Notables in Berlin—Political Agitation in Bavaria and Austria—Stumpf's Critique of the Jesuit Schemes.

Little more than three months remained before the opening of the Council, when the intellectual movement respecting it received a new impulse. A book under the title of The Pope and the Council, by Janus, issued from the German press; and conjecture at once ascribed the principle authorship to no less a person than Döllinger, although it was assumed that he had availed himself of aid. The profound impression made by this work may be accounted for, partly by the excitement in the midst of which it appeared, and partly by its own force. It combined a minute knowledge of the inner history of the Church, with comprehensive views of the questions, both doctrinal and constitutional, which were now raised.

After a few clear passages from modern utterances of authority. Janus strikes the keynote rather higher than he is prepared to sustain it—"So they find themselves under a delusion, who believed that in the Church, the spirit of the Bible, and of old Christianity, had got the upper hand of that spirit of the middle ages according to which she was a penal establishment, able to send men to prison, to the gallows, or to the stake."

Beginning with the Magna Charta which Innocent III condemned, while he excommunicated the Barons, Janus cites case after case in which the establishment of free institutions, and especially of freedom of worship, brought down the solemn condemnation of the Pope. The case of Austria in 1868 is the[Pg 198] latest. With the quietness of scientific knowledge, he states what at the time would have required from an English writer arguments and proofs in detail, namely, the simple but most important fact that the oft-quoted word of the Apostle, "We must obey God rather than men," means, in the Jesuit sense, We must obey the Pope as the representative of God upon earth, and the infallible interpreter of the Divine will, rather than any civil superior, or any law of the State (p. 33).

The tone of Janus is calm and scholarly, without being cold; and the acuteness of his analysis is such as is found only where clear intellectual insight is united to trained habits of weighing language with reference to possible interpretations by such casuists as are formed by the Curia and the Jesuits.

He clearly proved that the Church was on the eve of one of the greatest constitutional changes ever effected in any commonwealth. If, in the past, the forged Decretals of the pseudo-Isidore had facilitated inroads upon the constitution of the Church, how much more would an authentic article of the creed, containing in itself the power of making any number of other articles, and assuming as its basis the unlimited authority of the Pope, pave the way to far-reaching civil and ecclesiastical encroachments! When Archbishop Manning said of Janus that by some it was "regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious book of the day" (Priv. Pet., iii. p. 114), he greatly moderated the tone of his Continental friends. Most bad things that could be said against a book, or its writers, were said in very bad language. The Archbishop himself could not let it pass without twice calling it "infamous," and that in a pastoral.

The excitement in Germany now reached a point at which the bishops began to be alarmed. The "good Press" undertook to extenuate the importance of the changes dreaded, and threw doubts on the probability of their being adopted. The perplexity became greater when, in France, appeared a book in two volumes from the pen of Monsignor Maret, said by some to be the most learned prelate in the country, and who, at all events, was Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne.[Pg 199] He combated the proposed innovations with French tact and skill, raising a voice, if not for the old Gallican doctrines as a whole, at least for some remains both of them and of the liberties with which are identified the names of the most renowned Churchmen in France since the Reformation.[156] The book made a profound but passing impression. It was called Religious Peace and the General Council; but the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 47) styles it a brand increasing the conflagration. The question raised was that between a constitutional but oligarchical government and a personal one for the Church. Maret holds that in her constitution a check upon the monarch was provided by the "aristocracy," that is, the bishops (vol. ii, p. 107). The democracy is formed by the priests and the laity. But we may point out that this is very loose language. Democracy means a people with power, not a populace excluded from all functions of government. The people in the Papal Church are absolutely stripped of all part in government. They are a mere populace. The clergy are disfranchised officials. That Church is a society with a populace, but without a democracy. Before the Vatican Council, it had a constitutional aristocracy. Since then, the bishops are nobles without any but delegated power. Maret clearly states the familiar fact, that in the earlier centuries both clergy and laity took part in the election of bishops. But when he comes to speak of the part taken by kings in their election, the facts glide out of sight, as noiselessly as writers of his school generally say that they are wont to do in the hands of a Jesuit. A reader might imagine that kings first got the idea of a right in the election of bishops by some grant of the Church; whereas even the Bishops of Rome were for a long time elected on imperial or royal order, coming from Greek or Goth, from Arian or orthodox prince, as the case might be.

[Pg 200]

Maret quotes Cardinal de la Luzerne as saying that a General Council, in which the order of priests was not represented, would be illegitimate though not invalid (vol. i. p. 125); and gives it as the general opinion of theologians that their presence was necessary. He also admits that the presence of laymen in the Councils is attested by a large number of documents.

Von Schulte reviewed this work in the Literaturblat of Bonn (v. pp. 2 and 54). Looking at it in a popular sense, Schulte thought it was a book to mark an epoch. It was likely to produce a great effect among the clergy, little among the laity. Time has not justified this anticipation. The fact is, all the younger clergy had been educated out of French ideas and sympathies, and such of the young laity too as had been brought up by priests. Men were but beginning to find how the Christian Brothers, and convent schools, and episcopal seminaries had changed France.

The Civiltá, in reply, objects even to Maret's formula, the Pope with the bishops superior to himself alone. Such an objection implies that in Council all the bishops add to the Pope nothing at all. So many mitres without any heads in them would add at least as much. We believe, indeed, that great thinkers have doubted whether a judge with his wig is not superior to the same judge without his wig. But the Pope with all the bishops is not superior to the Pope without any bishop! The Jesuit writer says that he thinks he expresses the mind of Maret with exactness when he puts it thus, The supreme power resides in the Pope together with the bishops; in the Pope as supreme, whose strict duty it is nevertheless, to obey; in the bishops as subordinate, who, nevertheless, have the right to command (Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 257 ff.).

The choicest auditories of Paris had often crowded noble Notre Dame, quaffing with delight the sparkling eloquence of the Carmelite preacher Hyacinthe. Now the ear of the country was thrilled for a moment, by a cry from that eloquent voice. "By an abrupt change," he wrote to the General of his order on September 20, 1869, "for which I blame not your own feelings, but a party in Rome, you now accuse what you did[Pg 201] encourage, and blame what you did approve, commanding me to hold a language, or to preserve a silence, which would not represent my conscience."

Placed in this difficulty, he must forsake General, order, and convent. He continues: "My profound conviction is, that if France in particular, and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause is, not assuredly Catholicism itself, but the manner in which it has been understood and practised for a long time."[157]

St. Peter's Day, always a great day in Rome, was, of course, of surpassing importance in the year of the Council. The Civiltá celebrated it in an article very like one of the Pope's Speeches. This article yields an example of a dualism in the government of the universe which must glide in as the unconscious but inevitable complement of the doctrine into which Papal writers fall, in explaining away what to others seems the blight of Providence on whatever they rule according to their own principles. They begin by separating the God of Providence from the God of grace. They end by turning the bounties of Providence into the bribes of the evil one. It will be seen that in what follows national prosperity comes from the devil. The increase of our fields, the blessing in our basket and our store, are in reality a curse. This, though unseen to the poor Pope who teaches such things, presents a true and a very hurtful form of Manicheism. It is another proof that they who readily forge and hurl bad names are not safe from the errors which those names when correctly used denote.

In June the Curia had to set up a strong resistance to the movement originated in Austria for the abrogation of the Concordat. That instrument, which had formed the diplomatic triumph of Cardinal Rauscher and had crowned the professional reputation of Schulte, had legally restored to the Papal Church much of what it calls its liberties; but the clergy complained that they never practically got all that was promised upon paper; In the Frond biographies of the Cardinals, that of Rauscher[Pg 202] describes the condition of the Church in Austria, under the Josephine laws, as deplorable! Instead of leaving her, like Protestant Prussia, to manage her own affairs, without having defined either what "manage" or "her own" meant, Austria, knowing how Rome interprets, had taken a different course. There was left, according to our authority, no canon law, but only such legislation as was imbued with Febronianism and Caesarism. Bulls, briefs, rescripts, and even the pastorals of bishops were subject to the royal placet. Marriage was withdrawn from under the control of the Church. The State pushed into everything, "and the Catholic Church had none of the liberties claimed by the tolerance of the age for all religions." Rauscher had succeeded in getting these grievances redressed, but now the national spirit was rising against his work. His Concordat bound Austria to concede to the Church "all rights and privileges to which by the divine order and by canon law she is entitled." Probably the Emperor but imperfectly comprehended what that implied. Rauscher comprehended it. He was as honest a man as any Papal priest is likely to be. He was the adviser of the Emperor, and his sworn personal friend. Any one may tell what such friends do for princes who will only master what Rauscher managed to bind his sovereign to. The minister, Von Hasner, put the plea for the abrogation of the Concordat on ground exceedingly offensive to the Pope and those around him. When the Concordat was contracted, said Hasner, Rome was an independent State. Now, it has ceased to be so, and is sustained only by foreign arms. The reply from the Vatican was: So long as the Pope is sustained by Christian arms, he can never be sustained by those of foreigners. The reply of the politician would have been that in 1855, when the Concordat was concluded, the Papal State was as much dependent upon foreign arms as in 1867, the only difference being that at the former time the arms holding a great portion of it were those of Austria.

On the anniversary of the Pope's accession, his speech, addressed to the Sacred College, contained the following passage: "The two societies of which the world consists," said his[Pg 203] Holiness, are, first, the Tower of Pride, i.e. Babel; secondly, the society whose prototype is seen "in the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, where Peter, the Apostles, and thousands of the faithful of different nations, heard one and the same language and understood it." Those who wish to form a clear idea of what these two organs of two hostile societies are—the Babel tongue and the Pentecostal tongue—must just keep their eyes open as we go on. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 130.)

The Pope, on June 25, calling governments before "his tribunal," and sitting in judgment, pronounced censure on the governments of Italy, Austria, Spain, and Russia. Italy was discussing a law to subject students even for the priesthood to the conscription. Austria was miserably wronging and injuring the Church. Spain was doing likewise, or worse. And Russia was persecuting the Polish bishops and sending them into exile. The high spirits of the Court at this moment appear in the comments on these sentences. We give a few specimens from the Civiltá (VII. vii. p. 135, etc.)—

From no other lips could those words burst forth, save from those of him who is set by God as ruler of His Church, with divine power, above all human powers.... Only the Pope can thus menace, reprove, and instruct, because he only is set in a region above all human greatness between heaven and earth.... When science gloried in being Catholic, and authority in being derived from God, both were, when they spoke, echoes of the word of the Pope. But science and authority have become unchristianized. The Pope has remained what he was—the herald, the oracle of the Lord.

The article proceeded to show that the Pope had menaced in the same breath one republic, Spain; two constitutional monarchies, Italy and Austria; and one absolute monarchy, Russia. This could not be done unless the Pope was king. Then follows a specimen of history as it flourishes under Pius IX. The Roman Emperors used to imprison the Popes, in order to reign in Rome; and Constantine, not wishing to imprison the Pope, abandoned Rome. But a king not Pope, and a Pope not king, never were able to live here together, and never will be able to do so. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 131 ff.)

[Pg 204]

Great attention was awakened by the prominence given by the Civiltá (p. 210) to a publication of Bishop Plantier, of Nimes. It was "splendid and profound." Plantier spoke of the suggestion that the two doctrines of Papal infallibility and the assumption of the Virgin should be defined by acclamation. He alleged that such a mode of definition could be conveniently and infallibly adopted, and asked if the Council should adopt it, what would be the harm? He ridiculed the idea that the assistance of the Holy Spirit would be given to a decision by vote and not to one by acclamation. The appearance of this in the Civiltá, after all that had passed, quickened the fears of the anti-infallibilists and also of the anti-opportunists lest the Pope should be determined to carry through the definition by acclamation.

Early in September the bishops of Germany met at Fulda, and issued a collective pastoral. They solemnly deprecated the rumours spread abroad as to the intentions of the Council. The bishops went on to asseverate that the Council would never define any new doctrine which was not contained in holy writ or in tradition, but would define only principles which were written "on all your hearts by faith and conscience" (Friedberg, p. 276). The Catholics of Germany took this solemn language in its apparent meaning; and the persuasion that their bishops would stand fast, and that the Curia would not ride roughshod over such a body, tranquillized most men. Only ecclesiastics appear to have suspected that the assurance might amount to little more than carefully dovetailed words.

The German bishops, in giving the assurance that nothing but what the faithful believed would be defined, probably hoped that the fact of their having to give such an assurance would weigh at Rome, as a hindrance to the plans in contemplation. If so, they only furnished one more proof of the truth which we in England have been told by Dr. Newman, that no pledge from Catholics is of any value to which Rome is not a party.[158]

If the German bishops read as little as Dr. Friedrich says they do, they perhaps do not read the Unitá Cattolica. There[Pg 205] is no doubt that it, at least, speaks language agreeable in the highest quarters. In its number for the preceding 1st of May, it commented on the same assurance as having been flung before the French people. "If the Council," says this real echo, "should only define what all believe, the Council would be useless, for in points which all believe all are agreed." To say, it proceeds, that an Œcumenical Council should express what all the faithful think, is to confound the Teaching Church with the Learning Church. "The pen falls from our hands, and we have not courage to contend against such nonsense."

After having put this assurance before their nation, certain of the bishops felt it necessary to address a private appeal to the Pope, drawn up by Dinkel, Bishop of Augsburg, representing the great danger to the Church in Germany which the proposed alterations would involve, and praying him to abandon "the far-reaching projects which were ascribed to him."[159] A similar appeal was sent to his Holiness by the prelates of Hungary, in which country a notable commencement had been made in restoring the laity to a part in the management of Church affairs.[160]

In June 1869 a remarkable meeting of Catholic notables was held in Berlin; with an account of which Sepp opens his book. The chair was filled by Peter Reichensperger, since noted for his Ultramontane zeal, and Herr Windhorst, now the Ultramontane leader in the Reichstag, was present, with even Dr. Jörg, of Bavaria, whose allusion, in the winter of 1874, to the attempt of Kullman on the life of Bismarck called forth a remarkable speech from that statesman. These gentlemen, thinking, or professing to think, that their bishops would defeat what the Curia had planned, adopted an address expressive of confidence in them, and of their hope that the threatened collision between the Church and their governments and nation might be averted.

Sepp himself went to Prague to present the document to Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg. The latter read it slowly, thought it over, and said, "It is far too weak. With Rome[Pg 206] you must hold very different language from that." In further conversation Sepp said to the Cardinal, "You have in Prague the first canonist in Germany (Schulte), the man who drafted the Austrian Concordat, and surely he can be employed in similar work for the Council." The reply was: "You have in Munich the greatest Catholic theologian in Germany, and the gentlemen in Rome will not hear of his being invited" (Sepp, p. 4).

Large numbers of priests had been returned to the Bavarian Parliament, all burning with zeal against Prussia, and against union under it. In 1868 the clerical agitation had gone so far that, in November of that year, President Badhauser, when closing the Landsrath, addressed the members in unwonted language—

When the government of the country and its organs, the chamber which represents the people, and the new laws, are daily held up to suspicion, mockery, and contempt, when the peasantry are excited against the townspeople, and when men, throwing off all patriotic shame, feed themselves with hopes of foreign intervention, threatening our German warriors with the chassepots, then must every honourable man condemn such proceedings; for the venom daily instilled will, in time, poison the honest country people, as occurrences in Upper Bavaria already show.[161]

Secret associations for Ultramontane objects were formed even among children. Those of the clergy who would have warned the authorities were still kept still by secret terrorism. The meeting of the Council and the necessity of overthrowing Prince Hohenlohe were closely connected with this turmoil. And the Liberals plainly said, "The whole Catholic world is to be fanaticized, to enable the great Catholic powers, after crushing Prussia, as they hope to do, to carry out a grand reaction."[162]

The Vaterland went so far, when Napoleon III took his last plébiscite, as to tell its readers that a French intervention in Germany would soon follow, that it was eagerly looked for, and that all would join France to break the hated yoke of Prussia. Morally, Prussia was already at an end, but it was for France[Pg 207] to put an end to her physically. "Who can tell if we shall have any North German Confederation, Zollverein, or Prussian monarchy in 1871?"[163] Similar hopes of great events often pointed to the year of the Council, or the year after. The Civiltá did not scruple to tell Napoleon III that he owed the new plébiscite to Mentana. So far from concealing the Pope's direct action in a question affecting the stability of a throne, his confidential writers exaggerated his influence.

In Austria a struggle had set in against the supernatural order. Laws on civil marriage, education, and registry of baptism were passed by the legislature, and tardily assented to by the Emperor. The Bishop of Linz issued a manifesto saying that he would not acknowledge the new illegitimate laws—of course under the plea of obeying God rather than man. Turning on the Emperor, he said that he had pledged his faith to the Concordat as a man and as a kaiser. Other prelates, in milder language, set Papal above Austrian law. Finally, as we have already seen, on June 22, 1868, the Pope himself laid the new laws under his condemnation.

A Catholic meeting against the school law was being held in the church at Schlanders, and while the curate was making a speech Count Manzano, the local authority, declared the meeting closed. Cries of "Down with him! kill him!" were raised. He was thrown to the ground, beaten on the breast, and barely escaped to the barracks of the gensdarmes.

When the Council was closely approaching, great excitement broke out in Austria against the religious orders. The spark which kindled the blaze was the discovery of a nun confined in the Carmelite convent of Cracow. She had been kept in one cell for twenty years, with incredible privations and in bestial filth. The rage of the public forced the government to go as far as some show of action. Orders were issued for the inspection of convents. Sentences of bishops condemning priests to confinement in ecclesiastical prisons were declared invalid unless the culprit voluntarily consented. The bishops were also required to give in lists of the voluntary prisoners.

[Pg 208]

These measures were resented as an "insult to the episcopate." The Bishop of Brünn won himself an honourable mention in the Civiltá by a circular in which he repelled the pretensions of the government, refused the list required, and told the superiors of monasteries to pay no heed to the orders. While this second government was set up, beside that of the country, the voice of Rome cheered it on in taking the upper hand. The same voice railed against the constitutional ministers, the parliament, and the laws.

The combative Bishop of Linz, in a great meeting, said that he did not cast any doubt on the religious feeling of the Emperor, but he was now nothing more than a constitutional sovereign. Instead, therefore, of merely saying that they had confidence in the Emperor, they must come to his aid. This was repeated in Rome, with the explanation that it had been said that the bishop in this appeal for aid to the Emperor was only uttering the sentiments of his Majesty as expressed to the bishop. Thus were bishops commended by the organ of the Papal Court for breaking the laws of their country, and credited with influencing the mind of the sovereign in a sense hostile to the constitution.[164]

The Ultramontane party had frequently, during the year (1868) been encouraged by correspondents in Paris to expect a war of France against Prussia. On March 10, the Unitá contained a letter expressing fears that Austria and Italy might agree to remain neutral, but quoting a passage from the Volksbote in favour of French invasion of Germany. On April 23 it was said that for a year past the Emperor had allowed no opportunity of rousing the war spirit to pass. A week later a crusading significance was given to the approaching anniversary of Joan of Arc. It was announced that more than twelve archbishops and bishops would attend—among them Cardinal Bonnechose—and that the Empress would grace the scene. On May 1 the fact that the appearance in Paris of Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, was officially said to have no connection with political prospects, was noted for[Pg 209] a smile. On the 13th the display at the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, with a great array of prelates, was described as "one of the noblest ever connected with war and religion, well adapted to excite a nation which aims at uniting the cross with the sword." On June 19 it was said that the mission of General Fleury to Florence was with reason taken as a sign of approaching war.

Yet, while the Emperor of the French was looked to as leader against the foe whom the Church had marked out for the first victim, every sign of discord in France, every outbreak or disorder was eagerly paraded as proof of the anarchy to which all countries must come under any régime but that of the Church. At the same time every crime, riot, or difficulty in Italy was magnified and dwelt upon with the same moral. "Let the Chamber invoke the authority of the Council, and proclaim its canons as the laws of the State," was the demand of the Unitá eight months before the Council met (March 21). Another saying was, There are three Italys—the Italy of Pius IX, which prays; the Italy of Mazzini, which conspires; the Italy of Menabrea, which trembles (March 27). Menabrea was then Premier. Again—

The Council is drawing near, and Babylon is trembling, hell is blaspheming, and before long the world will hear the infallible word of truth and righteousness. Hallelujah!... The revolution which for nine years has been bent on marching to Rome is disgraced, senseless, divided. The traitors are betrayed, the robbers plundered, and the rebels plotted against by rebellion. Hallelujah! (March 28).

The Unitá found that the threefold opposition of governments, rationalists, and heretics showed itself most strongly in May, the month of Mary, which only means that the Immaculate has set her heel on the three heads of the Hydra. Here the mention of governments as one head of the Hydra is no slip of the pen, that is, governments which dwelt in Babylon, as we have just read, or in the tower of Babel, as it is more frequently expressed. Three days later (May 23) the Unitá cries, "It is time for Catholics to be up in defence of the Council. It is the only[Pg 210] plank of safety for shipwrecked society." The Memoriale Diplomatique says that "governments are less and less disposed to interfere in religious questions, unless their rights are infringed; but such reserve is war against the Council, which being infallible cannot infringe any right." The italics here are our own; and would that we could print the words on the mind of every rising man in England. That would save vast waste of words.

The courage of the Civiltá was stimulated by the French elections in the summer, and its hatred of United Italy boiled over. The ever faithful Univers had given the watchword to the electors. "The temporal power, and liberty of higher instruction!" In the cry "liberty of higher instruction," we have the popular side of the original call of the Civiltá for universities all over Europe, canonically instituted. One hundred and twenty deputies were pledged to the program, and the French electors ought to be proclaimed as having deserved well of Catholicism. "The illustrious Louis Veuillot," as the Civiltá styles him, had shown that what the Voltairians wanted was the separation of Church and State, from which would follow the decay of Christian worship to such a point that it might be feasible to annihilate it.

Noble, Catholic, chivalrous France is contrasted, by the Civiltá, with vile Italy. The latter, in a serious catalogue of crimes, is said to have "reduced the bishops to the extreme of poverty, has at its own caprice impeded the divine word, and showed more than sixty dioceses widowed of their pastors." The French voters had said, "We go to the urn as the delegates of the universal suffrage of Christendom." "The monstrous edifice of Italian unity must crumble," says this Romanist, who was no Roman. It is founded on the ruins of the temporal power of the Pontiff, which cannot perish. (VII. vi. 611 ff.)

The plea of the Liberal Catholics for freedom of conscience became more and more offensive to the Catholics. The Fathers of Laach, in censuring the address of the laymen of Coblentz, went so far as to say that the treatment of the Jews in Rome "showed no want of humanity or civil tolerance." These edu[Pg 211]cated laymen well knew that the proper condition of heretics, according to the same principles, ought to be much worse than that of the Ghetto Jews. The latter, not being baptized, were theoretically not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, but the others, as Bellarmine shows, though not of the Church, belonged to the Church. Stumpf, writing in the Bonn Literaturblatt, did not content himself with questioning the intolerant doctrine of the Jesuits; he directly attacked it. He took an important step further—one, indeed, which seems like a new life in the Roman Catholic intellect. He told the Jesuits plainly that their exclusive principle of one fold rendered religious freedom and unity impossible. Here he touched the distinction between the grand and the huge, which Romanists carefully keep out of sight, and which the sincerest advocates of liberty in their ranks had hitherto overlooked. They took for a grand conception of the unity of Christians, as consisting in submission to one human head. That conception is narrow and illusory. It fails of grandeur by monstrous disproportion. Stumpf goes on to declare that the absolute dominion of the Church over the State, although the favourite doctrine as he admits, in Rome, is in contradiction to the fundamental principle of Christianity. He would no longer be content, as a Liberal Catholic, to plead for freedom of conscience merely as a compromise. He says, We now represent a principle. The theocratic principle menaces society, and that principle will never be satisfied till the acknowledgment of civil rights is made to depend upon the profession of the Catholic faith. He adds that a promise to compromise till we had the power would content no one, because the modern world has learned that nothing is settled till the principle is settled. He says, We are determined to have the Church a Church, and the State a State. But this a postulate which demands, as its condition, individual freedom. According to him it was Christ that introduced among men the idea of independence, and that of a limit existing to the power of the State, by distinguishing His own kingdom of love and grace from that of law and compulsion. "When the Church authorities," says Stumpf, "do[Pg 212] admonish the rulers of the State, their first counsel should be to consider it their highest duty to protect freedom of conscience. They ought to warn them, before any other kind of unrighteousness against the use of force, for or against any form of religion which is not inconsistent with the maintenance of moral law"; and he adds, what we shall emphasize, "privation of civil equality is an employment of force." Such, he says, was the counsel given by the early Christian teachers; and though later teachers reversed it, their course is not to be justified before the law of Christ.

The end of the State, as viewed by Stumpf, is much loftier than that assigned to it in the Papal theory. In the great collection of families called by men a State, he does not see a body politic without a moral mission, existing, according to the ruinous theology of Rome, only for temporal ends—a body politic which would be unworthy of God or man. According to Stumpf, the end of the State is the maintenance of general moral order. This theory does not bind the families of a country acting in their collective capacity, to prescribe the creed and cult of individuals. No more does it bind them, on the other hand, to resign all moral aims, leaving every moral question to be decided for them without any appeal to the common conscience, to fruits or to the Bible, by a power which would strip the State of every moral quality, and would also prescribe the creed and cult of all. The theory of Stumpf holds that the collective authority of the nation, in the affairs common to all the families of that nation, is called to regulate action so far as action affects the common good, but does not hold that it is called to regulate belief. Claiming for the Church the full right of asserting and urging moral principles, Stumpf, with great solemnity, claims for the legislator freedom to frame law according to his own conscience, and to his belief in what tends to the maintenance and the perfecting of moral order. This he has to do without the direction of any ecclesiastic, but knowing that he must give account to God. No omnipotent word of Church authorities can or shall deter us from this work. Then he interjects, Would it not be pleasant to have to consult the theologians[Pg 213] of the Civiltá and the Stimmen? The Jesuits, he alleges, had no conception of any exercise of moral power upon one another but in the way of commanding and obeying. The Church in the middle ages, by her influence in secular affairs secularized herself, and lost her moral influence, which was never recovered to Christianity till the States had done what the Jesuits call apostatizing from Christ, and so opened the way for a return of true moral Christian influence. The early Church, he truly and nobly points out, was able, in the face of the omnipotent heathen authorities, to pervade society with her true moral influences; and he contends that nothing can give back to the Church her position as the first force in culture, but the recognition of the independence of the State.

One very curious part of this grave and forceful essay is the protest of the layman against the twisting of Scripture by the Jesuits. He puts together a number of the texts upon which they ring the changes, making them prove their own ideas by the simple process of putting those ideas into them, and reiterating them again and again. The first of the texts which he quotes is, "Teach all nations." He, apparently, is not aware that this is now as handy a weapon with those theologians as "obey God rather than man." In their lips "teach" means "make laws," and "all nations" means, not every creature, but, collectively, all States. Therefore the words "teach all nations" are, in the lips of the Jesuits, a commission to the Pope to give laws to all countries, or, in highflown language, "to exercise the supreme magisterial office." The Jesuits had saucily told the laymen of Coblentz to ask the nearest theologian for an explanation of the relations between the natural order and the supernatural. But this particular layman gave them as good as they brought. When men write as he does, they have begun to be Catholics, have ceased to be Papists, and are, however unconsciously, in process of ceasing to be Romanists.

The Allocution of June 22, in which the constitution and new laws of Austria were condemned, had proved as distasteful to Liberal Catholics as it had been agreeable to the Jesuits.[Pg 214] "The Curialistic notion," says the author of Reform in Head and Members, "that the law of the Church must be the inviolable rule for all laws and statutes, and for all and every kind of activity in the life of the State, runs through it like a black thread. The Austrian Magna Charta of civil, political, religious and scientific freedom was called a sacrilegious law. Moreover, the Pope," he proceeds to say, "had declared that these laws themselves, together with all that should arise out of them, are and ever will be invalid and of no effect.... Every enlightened person among the Catholics of Germany and France concealed himself in silence and in mourning at this rude opposition of Rome to the public law of the entire Western world." Count Beust, in a despatch dated about ten days after the Allocution was delivered, said that "the Holy See had extended its animadversions to subjects 'which we by no means can allow to be under its authority.'" We shall hereafter see how clearly and completely Count Beust had now grasped the question as between the Papacy and the life of nations.

[Pg 215]

CHAPTER X

Conflicting Manifestoes by Bishops—Attacks on Bossuet—Darboy—Dupanloup combats Infallibility—His relations with Dr. Pusey—Deschamps replies—Manning's Manifesto—Retort of Friedrich—Discordant Episcopal Witnesses.

In November 1869 the Bishop of Versailles, writing of Bossuet, said that the fame of the Eagle of Meaux was from day to day declining (Friedberg, p. 81). This was but a symptom of the new war against nationalism. Professor Ceccucci, though writing for a French audience, did not scruple to say, "If Bossuet escaped excommunication, he owed it to the benign and paternal indulgence of the Holy See" (Frond, iv. p. 112). Bishop Dupanloup soon took occasion to show that Innocent XI sent Bossuet two briefs congratulating him on having written in a manner calculated to win back heretics and increase the propagating power of the Church.[165] If the Church, even before infallibility had been proclaimed, began to be so conscious of its narrowness that it could hardly contain Bossuet, what will it be when a few centuries more have passed over it?

As the opening of the Council drew nearer, feeling grew warmer in political and religious circles. Archbishop Darboy sketched the impending dangers in a pastoral—

"You have been told that articles of faith which hitherto you have not been bound to believe, are to be imposed upon you; that points affecting civil society and the relations of Church and State are to be treated in a spirit opposed to the laws and usages of the age; that a certain vote is to be carried by acclamation; that the bishops will not be free, and that the minority, even if eloquent, will be treated as an opposition, and will soon be put down by the majority.... It must be owned that much has been done to spread these alarms by writers taking different sides."[166]

Bishop Dupanloup, when about leaving home for the Council,[Pg 216] published a memorable letter. He seemed to regard the desire of the French clergy for centralization as the origin of the cry for a dogma. The change, however, from a national to a Papal spirit was natural. Was it likely that youths from the schools of the Christian Brothers, passed through an episcopal seminary, would comprehend the national spirit and episcopal convictions of Darboy or even of Dupanloup?[167] The lower education of the country had been just long enough in the hands of Rome to begin to bear fruit. Dupanloup meant no ill to France when he succeeded in binding Louis Philippe to Gregory XVI, by inducing him to give the priests their way in schools, in return for forbearance in baptizing the Comte de Paris, as the son of a mixed marriage, and of a mother who refused to abjure her Protestantism. But he then did one of the most hurtful deeds to France, and to the future of European peace, that man could have done.

This letter, cries Sambin, gave an episcopal head to the revolt; ... the objection was pointed against the opportuneness of defining the dogma of infallibility, but it was hardly possible to be deceived—the principle of infallibility itself seemed to be attacked.... The acts of the sovereign Pontiff were presented in a light so far from the truth, that a feeling of profound astonishment passed through the ranks of pastors and people. They were grieved to see the paling away of the triple halo which had hitherto hovered around the author's brow (Sambin, p. 49).

This was published in France in 1872, after Dupanloup had "submitted," and rendered new and conspicuous service to the Papacy. As Dupanloup's pamphlet will be hard to find hereafter, and as it is a representative document, we may give a general idea of the argument it presents.

[Pg 217]

For two years, says Dupanloup, thousands of printed papers have been circulated in the streets, containing a vow to believe in the personal infallibility of the Pope. Agents have got them signed by persons who did not understand the first word of the question.

He contrasts the confidence and freedom of speech granted to the Civiltá and the Univers with the secrecy observed toward bishops. Naming Manning and Deschamps as the leaders in the agitation for the new dogma, he adds, "I say new, because for eighteen hundred years the faithful have not, on pain of ceasing to be Catholics, been bound to believe it." Alluding to the freedom which, it was said, the bishops would have in the Council, he asks what freedom was left to them even now, when any who expressed an unwelcome opinion were denounced in the papers, beforehand, as schismatics or heretics.... "After having taught for eighteen hundred and seventy years, the Church is now to come and ask in a Council, Who has the right of teaching with infallibility?... When the oak is twenty centuries old, digging to find the parent acorn under the roots is the way to shake the tree."

The Bishop proceeds, with tact and great earnestness, to plead for the necessity of moral unanimity in defining new dogmas. He relates a fact of interest, and one very closely affecting the person of Pius IX. We have seen that, in 1864, the Pope formally initiated official preparations for the Council; that he had long before 1867 decided important questions as to its constitution and procedure; that he had set commissions to work, consulted bishops in different countries, and ordered nuncios to select theologians; and that it was only political perplexity which prevented the assembly of 1867 from being the General Council.

Yet Bishop Dupanloup, whether then aware of these facts or not, makes the following statement—

I well remember, and more bishops than one who were present in Rome in 1867 can recall, the fact that one of the most serious anxieties of Pius IX, before deciding on holding the Vatican Council, was, lest questions should arise calculated to provoke stormy[Pg 218] discussions, and divisions in the episcopate. But the Pope remembered the sagacious conduct of the Council of Trent and of Pius IV, and proceeded, in the hope that it would not be forgotten at the future Council.

One of Dupanloup's solemn sayings is, "I have read and read again the catechism of the Council of Trent, on purpose to find if it spoke Yes or No about the infallibility of the Pope; I have ascertained that it does not say a word about it."

Again, he states that in 1867 one hundred and eighty-eight Anglican ministers wrote to the Pope asking for the basis of a union. In his reply, the Pope spoke of the authority of the Church and the supremacy of the Pope, but he did not speak of his infallibility. Yet journalists, screening themselves behind his name, tried to shut the mouths of bishops by attacks full of violence and gall. This was meant for M. Veuillot, who was not slow to reply.

As to Greeks and Protestants, Dupanloup points out that what is proposed amounts to telling them, "A ditch now separates us; we are going to make it an abyss.... Two years ago. Dr. Pusey said to me in Orleans, 'There are eight thousand of us in England, daily praying for a union.'" ... When Pitt thought of relaxing laws against Catholics in England and Ireland, he asked several learned bodies what was the real doctrine of the Roman Church on the power of the Pope. "I have under my eyes the replies of the Universities of Paris, Douay, Louvain, Alcala, Salamanca, and Valladolid." They all "answer expressly that neither the Pope nor the Cardinals, nor yet any body or individual in the Roman Church, hold from Jesus Christ any civil authority over England, any power to release the subjects of his Britannic Majesty from their oath of fidelity." Such doctrine was calculated to reassure Pitt, as against the contrary doctrine, professed in celebrated Bulls by more Popes than one. But what if the Pope be declared infallible?

As to Catholic governments, their standing jealousy of the ecclesiastical power would be increased. Had not Boniface[Pg 219] VIII taught that the temporal sword also belonged to Peter, and that the spiritual power had a right to institute and judge the temporal? Had not Paul III released all the subjects of Henry VIII from their oath of allegiance, offered England to any one who would conquer it, and given all the goods of the dissident English, real and personal, to the conqueror? Was not that Bull a great misfortune to Christendom? "I am sad—and who would not be sad?—in recalling these great and painful historical facts; but they force us to it—those whose levity and rashness have stirred these burning questions." After the dogma shall have been proclaimed, he contends that from the point of view occupied by governments, "all civil and political rights, like all religious belief, will be in the hand of a single man." The journals which claim to be purest in their Romanism "treat the doctrine, so strongly held by the Catholic sovereigns, as well as others, that each of the two powers is independent in its own sphere, as tainted with atheism."

The following passage in the Bishop's argument suffices to show that there may be more senses of the statement that Catholics do not owe any divided allegiance, than plain English folk ever dreamed of in their philosophy—

We lately read, as quoted with praise in a French paper, the following, which compares those to the Manicheans who deny that the two swords are in the same hand: "Are there two sources of authority and power, two supreme ends for the members of the same society, two different objects in the intention of the Being who orders all and two distinct destinies in one and the same man, who is both member of a Church and of a State? Who does not see the absurdity of such a system? It is the dualism of the Manicheans if not atheism."

We ought to interject the remark that "the two swords in the same hand" is not strict but popular language. The two are in the same power, but only one is in the spiritual hand. Again, the taunt of Manicheism frequently falls from Jesuit pens. Boniface VIII set the example of calling people something like Manicheans, if they believed in any supreme power in princes on a level with that of the Pope.

Coming to the crucial question, What is speaking ex cathedrâ?[Pg 220] Bishop Dupanloup shows that the diversity of doctrine on this point is almost endless, and perplexing beyond belief. The lay Professor of Theology in the seminary of the Archdiocese of Westminster, Dr. Ward, formerly an Anglican minister, goes beyond the great majority. They hold that a condition necessary to an infallible utterance is that the Pope shall address the whole Church, but Dr. Ward thinks that this is not necessary. The majority think that the intention of binding the belief of the faithful must be clearly expressed, but Dr. Ward again thinks that it need not be so. Phillips, the German doctor, holds that the Pope need not consult a Council, the Roman Church, the Cardinals, or any one; nor is it necessary that he should maturely deliberate or carefully study the matter by the light of God's written word and of tradition, or even that he should put up a prayer to God before pronouncing sentence. "Without any one of these conditions," says the Bishop, "his decision would not be less valid, authentic, or obligatory on the whole Church, than if he had observed every condition dictated by faith, piety, and good sense." He adds the words of Phillips, that the definition ex cathedrâ may be verbal or written and with or without anathema, but must be given by him to all believing Christians as Vicar of Jesus Christ, in the name of the Apostles Peter and Paul, or in virtue of the authority of the Holy See, or in other similar terms. The Church, he says, according to Phillips, has no right to fix any condition or restriction whatever.

Citing the cases of Popes Stephen VI, Honorius, and Pascal II, Dupanloup shows that heavy facts obstruct the historical path to the new dogma.

He proceeds to point out that the difference between the universal infallibilists and the dogmatical infallibilists is very grave. The former argue that the dogma, if adopted in the sense of the latter, would involve a peril. A Pope infallible in some cases and fallible in others is, they think, a contradiction. If, as a private teacher, the Pope should err in doctrine, might he not impose his error on the Church? If this is not possible, you have either a Pope who thinks one thing and defines another, or[Pg 221] a perpetual miracle! And why distinguish, ask the universal infallibilists, when Christ has not distinguished? "That thy faith fail not"—that means the faith of Peter in every sense, personal and pastoral. These theologians contend that a Pope could not, even if he would, fall into an error, public or private.

As to the effect of the change on the episcopate, Dupanloup contends that Councils will be rendered superfluous. Hitherto, the bishops have been judges of the faith, real judges, though in union with the Pope—co-judges, as was said by Benedict XIV. But if the proposed change is made, their judgment before or after will be of little account; as Monsignor Manning has said, the Pope can determine "without the episcopate, and independently of it." The bishops, he proceeds, are now Doctors, not mere echoes. With the Pope they constitute the Teaching Church. After the change they will not be a voice, only an echo.

Drawing a glowing picture of the services of the French bishops to the Papacy, he says—

"Ah! I dare to affirm that so much devotion to Rome and to the Catholic world gives to the Church of France the right to be trusted, to be heard." He adds, anticipating his arrival in Rome, "I shall no sooner touch the sacred ground, no sooner kiss the tomb of the Apostles, than I shall feel myself in peace, out of the battle, in the midst of an assembly presided over by a father and composed of brethren. There the noises will all die away, the rash interferences will cease, the indiscretions will disappear, the winds and waves will be calmed down."

The statement, frequently repeated, that Bishop Dupanloup in this letter admitted the doctrine, and contested only the opportuneness of defining it, is incorrect. This was pointed out at the time by Dr. Reusch, of Bonn, in the Literaturblatt. Dupanloup once or twice says that he will not touch the question of its truth, one way or the other. He never, directly or indirectly, indicates belief in it. Many of his arguments more than indirectly oppose the very substance of the doctrine. He plainly feels that it is unscriptural, uncatholic, and unwise; but he knows that it is and has long been gospel in Rome.

[Pg 222]

Bishop Dupanloup was replied to by Archbishop Deschamps, of Malines. Monsignor Deschamps was following the straight path to the purple. He roundly lectured Dupanloup. "Why should not that trouble me which rejoices the enemies of the faith and of the Church?" "You have committed an error, Monsignor," he says, repeatedly. He correctly states that Dupanloup has not confined himself to the question of opportuneness. "You have handled the principal question, ... your fears have disturbed your vision."[168] Dupanloup prepared a rejoinder to Deschamps, but was prevented from publishing it by circumstances which taught him that in leaving France for Rome he had not passed from disturbance to tranquillity, but from regulated conflict to all-triumphant violence, compelling inaction, unless action was on its own side. In Rome, where any movement of an ecclesiastic is often accounted for by the prospect of some ribbon, robe, or perquisite, it was freely said that Napoleon had promised Dupanloup the archbishopric of Lyons if he would head the Gallicans. An English paper repeated this Roman scandal, fathering it on well informed circles. Certain circles are always well informed as to the motives of men who oppose them.

The pastoral from the banks of the Thames forms a contrast to that from the banks of the Loire. True, Archbishop Manning no longer speaks of the extinction of Protestantism, or the restoration of the Pope's dominion over the East, as probable effects of the Council. He even shows some dawning consciousness that the war which he had announced in 1867 with a light heart, would not be carried through so lightly. In the earlier part of his treatise he more than once coolly speaks of the bishops as being unanimous in the belief of Papal infallibility! Before the conclusion, Bishop Maret's work extorts the admission that he must now call that doctrine Ultramontane, which two years before, he had asserted to be Catholic. He none the less eagerly presses for the carrying out of the programme. The Church is far too large. She permits differences of belief, which are not only unseemly, but[Pg 223] dangerous. After an outbreak of questioning thought and conflicting will, such as had been occasioned by a simple demand for only one or two new dogmas, tighter and tighter binding up seems to Dr. Manning to be not merely becoming, but even necessary.

While panting for additional fetters for his own Church, he speaks of Protestants as sighing for something beyond insular narrowness. In fact, it would seem as if he had no perception of the difference between a big sect and a large creed, or of the possible harmony between a local organization and a universal brotherhood. There is no insular narrowness, much less Pontine-Marsh narrowness, in the definition of a Church given by the English Church, whereby she marks her relation to all other Churches. That definition is large, catholic, and scriptural. It leaves the English Churchman free from any obligation to unchurch other Christians, and therefore he may rest and be thankful, when others feel bound, by the narrowness of their sect, to unchurch him. The Church of Christ was catholic when she could number only one hundred and thirty adherents in the whole world. She will never become more catholic than she was then. No sect can increase its catholicity by adding millions of ignorant and bigoted people, and calling them Christians.

Dr. Manning resented, as a sort of rebellion, objections taken against multiplying terms of membership, and adding new conditions of salvation. To him every increase of narrowness seemed an increase of unity. If there are men in the English Church sighing in a similar way for bonds and anathemas which, thank God! our island does not forge, they are not the men inspired by the catholic creed of their own Church, but men infected by the municipal creed of the Popes.

Like Dupanloup, Archbishop Manning made an attack and provoked a retort. He denounced the historical school of theologians in Germany, and especially in Munich, and was pitilessly cut up by Friedrich, in the Literaturblatt. The Archbishop, like Auguste Comte, had reached a point in the development of theory when it was necessary that it should[Pg 224] conquer history. Preparatory to the attack on the Catholic Faculty of Munich, he writes in mother English matter like the following (p. 10): "The day is past for appeals to antiquity. If Christianity and the Christian Scriptures are to be maintained in controversy against sceptical criticism, the unbroken, world-wide witness of the Catholic Church must be invoked."

A number of equally exposed positions are taken up in face of the Liberal Catholic scholars, and that with all the contempt which official power often feels for reasoning power—

"They who, under the pretensions of historical criticism, deny the witness of the Catholic Church to be the maximum of evidence, even in a historical sense, likewise ruin the foundation of moral certainty in respect to Christianity altogether" (p. 125). "No historical certainty can be called science except only by courtesy. It is time that the pretensions of 'historical science' and 'scientific historians' be reduced to their proper sphere and limits. And this the Council will do, not by contention or anathema, but by the words 'It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us'" (id.).

However confused in his ideas of catholicity and of historical authority the Archbishop had become, the struggle he had done something to occasion and to exasperate already began to awake him to the difference between an ordinary addition to the creed and that change of base which he was moving heaven and earth to procure—

There is a difference, also, between a definition of the infallibility of the Pope and that of any other Christian doctrine. In the latter case the authority of the Church may be sufficient to overcome any doubt. In the former it is this very authority, the principle and foundation of all certainty in faith, which is in question (p. 31).

These portentous words tell where Dr. Manning had placed himself—in pupilage to a power which, having left the divine "fountain of all certainty in faith," was disputing as to what cistern, of all the cisterns it had hewn out, was the one into which the true spring overflowed. Where will the dogma be found to conquer the history made by the Archbishop's own hand when he wrote those words—history proving that after he had been for years flourishing before Anglicans his Papal Society as affording absolute certainty in faith, he himself[Pg 225] declared her to be in the throes of a combat as to "the principle and fountain of all certainty in faith"? Where will a dogma be found to conquer the history made at the moment when his Papal Society, in accordance with his wishes, adopted an unchangeable decree, which, if true, proves that for all the time of her existence, she had not only been fallible, but had indeed failed, and that right grievously—failed as to the doctrine of her head, by withholding from him the recognition of his attributes and rights? If from the beginning the Popes were infallible, the Church, which never consented to recognize them as such till 1870, had up to that year failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in opposition to her head. If they were not from the beginning infallible, she in 1870 failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in conjunction with her head. The decree of 1870 fixes her in the fork, and out of it she cannot wrestle: if the decree was true she had been in a fault of faith up to that day; if it was not true, she committed that day a fault in faith.

Archbishop Manning did not fail to hold out once more a warning to the governments. For some months past the tone of the Vatican Press had been that of men who felt that they now held the internal peace of many a nation at their mercy; being able to menace almost any government with serious unrest, and some with overthrow. The habit of insinuating such threats seems to be native to the bad air which Dr. Newman truly speaks of as hanging around the foot of the Pope's rock.[169] But the following is too close a copy of those revolutionary vaticinations for the banks of the Thames—

The Catholic Church now stands alone, as in the beginning, in its divine isolation and power. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth." There is an abyss before you, into which thrones, and rights, and laws, and liberties may sink together. You have to choose between the Revolution and the Church of God. As you choose, so will your lot be. The General Council gives to the world one more witness for the truths, laws, and sanctities which include all that is pure, noble, just, venerable upon earth. It will be an evil day for any State in Europe[Pg 226] if it engage in conflict with the Church of God. No weapon formed against it ever yet has prospered (p. 130).

The last words might be enough to account for Cardinal Manning's dislike of history. They flatly contradict it, and it flatly contradicts them; for by the Church of God is here meant the Church of the Pope. The weapons which have most prospered from the days of the Reformation to this day are those that have been turned against the Pope. The nations that have most prospered have been those that have declared him a pretender; and in these nations the reigns that have been distinguished for prosperity have been the most decidedly Protestant. England was long ago put to the choice between the Reformation and the Church of the Pope, and happily chose the good part, and as she chose, so, ever blessed be the God of nations, has been our lot. We will repeat the choice of our fathers, and the lot of our children shall be better and better. And they will have to pity, even more than we are called to pity, those who, having rejected reformation, have placed themselves under a continual terror and a liability to a periodical outburst of revolution.

Friedrich, in the Literaturblatt (v. p. 164), replied to the attack on the historical theologians of Munich. He said that the abuses of the middle ages had crept in through the total neglect of history. On the other hand, Protestant theology had risen up and had matured as a strictly historical theology. Baronius had attempted to win this weapon back to the service of Rome, and the Munich scholars had followed in his steps. If archives and original works were to be wrested out of their hands, it meant nothing more nor less than laying down their arms in the presence of their antagonists. Friedrich would not allow the ambiguous expression "the witness of the Church" to cover anything more than her infallible utterances.

He said that the Archbishop had a false idea of the way in which a Council should proceed, because he seemed to think that the Church might speak without first using all human means to ascertain the truth. If he thought so, he was under a delusion of which a careful study of the history of the Councils[Pg 227] might cure him. The statement of Manning, "I have already said," that the proofs of Papal infallibility outweighed those of the infallibility of the Church without the Pope, provoked the remark that as the Archbishop had adduced only his own authority, "I have already said," we might still doubt the infallibility of the proofs until he had produced his credentials as one inspired. Friedrich says that while blaming others for attempting to influence the Council, Manning himself tried to impose his authority upon it, in such a manner that it might be fancied that the Council was not to utter the words of the Holy Ghost, but those of the Archbishop of Westminster. Thus he indignantly flings back in the face of the prelate the assertion that it was an attempt to interfere with the freedom of the Council when the Theological Faculty of Munich gave an opinion to the king of the country in answer to questions put by him. The Archbishop, he protests, has no title to deprive theologians of their calling, or of their right to investigate historical evidences or to give their views, so long as the Church has not spoken.

He reminds the Archbishop that, severe as he is against those who do not go as far as himself, even he does not go far enough, for his allies now begin to require people to say, that the Church may define dogmas without having any support in the Bible and tradition, and that indeed when nothing but apocryphal documents are in favour of the definition. And, moreover, that the authority of a General Council (as distinguished from that of the Pope) is only human authority. These innovations, says the sturdy German, we abhor; and then he leaves the Englishman to the care of his Jesuit allies with these words: "If what everybody here says" (he writes in Rome) "is true, that the Archbishop, at every opportunity, declares we have only one school to fear, the historical school, I grant to him and grant to his allies that they have the light of history to fear."

With various feelings the bishops now set forth to bear witness as to the faith of their respective Churches. This was the most dignified of the professed duties of a bishop in Councils[Pg 228] as they used to be. It had some show of a foundation so long as the rule of "apostolic" tradition was adhered to. Of course, however, that became antiquated. So "ecclesiastical" tradition was set up side by side with apostolic, as what was so called had been set up side by side with the Word of God.

Darboy set out, from his diocese of two millions of souls, to bear witness that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was not the faith, and never had been, on the banks of the Seine. Manning set out to testify that it was the faith and the tradition on the banks of the Thames. Clifford set out from Clifton to declare that it was not the faith on the Avon. Deschamps went to prove that it was the faith in Malines. Dupanloup went to prove that it was not, and never had been, the faith in Orleans. Cullen left Dublin to demonstrate that it was, and ever had been, the true faith of Ireland. MacHale left Connaught, bracing up his fourscore years, to go and bear witness that it was not the faith he had learned, no, nor any of his coevals. Spalding embarked from Baltimore to testify that it was the ancient faith in America. Kenrick set forth from St. Louis to protest that this was the reverse of the truth, and to prove that he had never been taught it in Maynooth, and even to tell of the first time when the doctrine was broached within the walls of that college. Rauscher left Vienna and Schwarzenberg Prague; Haynald left Hungary and Strossmayer Croatia; Von Scherr left Munich, Melchers Cologne, and Förster Breslau, to testify that the faith and tradition of their Churches had not ignored, but had withstood, the new doctrine. They had to add that the conscience of the people was so set against it that it was as much as the authority of the Church was worth to attempt to impose it upon them. Von Ketteler left Mainz to testify loudly, but with so uncertain a sound that no ordinary man could "know what was piped or harped."

On the other hand, the bishops of Spain, Italy, and South America almost unanimously sallied forth to testify that in their Churches the new dogma was an old doctrine.

Their testimony was reinforced by some from more ancient sees. Hassun set out from New Rome, as the Orientals call[Pg 229] Constantinople, to bear witness, as Patriarch of Cilicia, that the City of Paul, and the Churches planted by him, had always held the faith and tradition of Papal infallibility. Valerga turned his back on the Mount of Olives, on Sion, and on Bethlehem, to give evidence, in the sight of God and man, that the Church of Jerusalem had always held the faith, and conserved the tradition, that the Roman Pontiff was infallible and his decrees irreformable.

Darboy, in his farewell pastoral, said to the Catholics of Paris, "In these matters, bishops are witnesses who prove, not authors who invent."

Had the contest lain between these two forces, the weight of talent, character, and supporting Churches would have decided it in favour of the status quo. But bishops sailed from Jaffna in Ceylon, and Jaro in the Philippines, from India, China, and Siam, from Swan River and New Caledonia, to swamp with their traditions those of Bishops from Churches which might pretend to have a tradition. The fact that theirs could not set up any such claim was one objection urged against their votes, another being that they were dependent on the Propaganda. With these came also a number of Oriental bishops, in the same financial position, of whom Vitelleschi says that they brought the finest wardrobes and the steadiest votes. In aid of these a thick growth of bishops in partibus sprang out of the well-warmed conserves of Court patronage.

Roughly stated, the result was, that out of Italy and Spain old and educated Churches, when represented by prelates trained in their own bosom, generally declared in opposition to the new dogma. Where they did otherwise, they were often represented by prelates trained in Rome, and, like Cullen and Manning, specially selected to imbue the National Church with the municipal theology of Rome, and, in case of need, to impose it upon the clergy. Those from really ancient cities, like Jerusalem, who supported the Curia, were dependents of the Propaganda. With these came the occupants of sees created by Pius IX, most of which, from Westminster to Oceania, were represented by witnesses in favour of infallibility.

[Pg 230]

Many of the bishops had for travelling companion a small pamphlet. It was called Considerations (Erwägungen?), and put the case against Papal infallibility in a form and compass seldom equalled, in any composition, for clearness, depth, fulness, and compression. It was no secret that the author was Döllinger, but he had not chosen to put his name on the title.

In this manner was prepared for the world a drama of many scenes, which has left permanently in the eye of history four great spectacles—(1) How an ancient aristocracy, claiming to be the senate of humanity, was made the instrument of destroying its own legislative rights; (2) How masters of ceremony, habituated to employ it for both political and religious ends, were made its victims, ceremony being brought into operation to carry away surreptitiously their constitutional forms, and with them their legal privileges; (3) How they who had declared "ecclesiastical" tradition to be as good a foundation for doctrine as the Word of God, went through the process of building on the sand; (4) How a Head of the human species, a King of kings and Lord of lords, was erected by priests, and humiliated by Providence.

[Pg 231]

CHAPTER XI

Diplomatic Feeling and Fencing in Rome, November 1869—Cross Policies on Separation of Church and State—Ollivier, Favre, De Banneville—Doctrines of French Statesmen ridiculed at Rome—Specimens of the Utterances approved at Court—Forecasts of War between France and Prussia—Growing Strength of the Movement in France for Universities Canonically Instituted.

Those who arrived in the autumn months in Rome, perhaps with the hope of preventing the dreaded proposals from being brought forward, or with the intention, if they could not succeed in that, of organizing an opposition to them, found to their surprise that the tone of the Curia was very gentle. The Cardinals and Monsignori, for their part, really did not care about infallibility. Indeed, the subject might have been passed over in silence had not such false rumours as to the designs of Rome been set afloat. Lord Acton names Cardinals Antonelli, Berardi, and De Luca, and also Bishop Fessler, the Secretary of the Council, as declaring that the utterances of the Civiltá were not to be relied upon, and that if the idea of proposing infallibility had been entertained, it was given up. He also quotes a letter written home by a bishop, afterwards known among the Opposition, saying that there was no ground for the idea that in Rome they meant to make infallibility a dogma. That seemed to be an imagination, spread abroad with no good design. Still, after the agitation which had taken place the Council could hardly pass the matter over in silence. The Holy See would not curb the zeal of the bishops if they resolved to give effect to their persuasion, but would not itself take the initiative. But if anything was done, it would be some moderate measure, that would satisfy all, and give no pretext of a party triumph.

Lord Acton further says, what is confirmed from many quarters, that Cardinal Antonelli feared that the Pope was about to bring upon himself difficulties similar to those which beset the earlier years of his pontificate. Some treat Antonelli's apparent[Pg 232] coldness as a ruse. But, Englishman-like, Lord Acton takes the hypothesis that requires least dissimulation, crediting the foresight of Antonelli with real apprehensions.

Lord Acton expresses a belief that there might have been some idea of finding a substitute for infallibility in the suppression of freedom of faith and conscience; with the expectation that the most prominent hindrance to the new dogma would be removed so soon as the Inquisition should be recognized as having one and the same legal position with Catholicism itself. He thinks that a great step in that direction would have been taken if the proposition of the Syllabus had been confirmed which condemns the assertion that the Pontiffs and Councils had ever transgressed the bounds of their power, or usurped the rights of princes. As to usurping the rights of princes, a writer like Lord Acton is at a disadvantage, compared with one like Professor Ceccucci, who wrote the history of General Councils, for the voluminous work of Frond. Ceccucci settles the point with an ease of which Lord Acton has no idea. The Church "never did usurp political power; that possessed by her has always been the most legitimate on earth" (Frond, vol. iv. p. 358).

But one point stated by Lord Acton is that infallibility had been looked upon as a means to an end; and this is the kernel of the matter. Just as, logically, the doctrine of infallible judgment was developed out of that of unlimited power, so, practically, unlimited power must be exercised by an infallible judge. Admit that God has given all power upon earth to one man, and surely you will not deny that, in mercy to His creatures, He will make that man infallible. Admit, on the other hand, that the judgment which bids the secular arm smite this and shield that is infallible, and surely you will own that the secular arm should obey. Liberal Catholics were, not unnaturally, incensed at the writing in the Civiltá at a moment when those in power might have been expected to set an example of moderation. The Freemasons were told that the reason why they dreaded the Council was that they would be condemned, and that no respectable persons would[Pg 233] join them after that. And the Liberal Catholics were told that their reasons for dreading the Council were much the same. They professed similar principles with those of the Masons, which were sometimes called Principles of '89, sometimes Principles of Modern Society, or Toleration, or Liberty of Conscience and the Press, or Modern Constitutions, or the Rights of Science, or the Boons of Progress, or Liberalism. No wonder that men who had championed the Church of Rome as the Catholic Church, should tremble when they saw her sinking into a sect so strait as to put all these principles under ban (Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 285).

On November 9 the Pope received the Marquis of Banneville, newly returned to his post as ambassador of France. After many signs of vacillation, the Emperor had finally decided not to ask for the admission of an ambassador. This policy met the views both of the Papal party and of those who desired the entire separation of the Church and the State. The latter had adopted the notion that they took a step towards separation by leaving the Church, while still an establishment of the State, to legislate for the nation over the head of the State. As early as July 10, 1868, M. Emile Ollivier, in the Corps Législatif, dwelling on the fact that the Pope, in his Bull, did not name the Emperor, and that he held all those addressed in it bound by it simply through its being posted up in Rome, said: It is declared that, by the simple fact of its being issued in Rome, every bishop in France is bound and must betake himself to Rome, on pain of disobedience. The Emperor or the civil power is not thought of. It is the gravest act accomplished since 1789. It is the separation of Church and State, proclaimed, for the fist time, by the Pope himself.

On April 9, 1869, Ollivier again raised the subject, protesting that the abstention of the government from the Council amounted to an abrogation of the organic articles of the Concordat. Jules Favre said that it was the separation of Church and State, and as such he gratefully accepted it. These consequences were denied by the minister, M. Baroche, who asserted, "After the Council, the rights of France will remain entire."

[Pg 234]

This boast passed in France, but not so at the Vatican. The Unitá Cattolica for April 14 showed that the usual ambiguity of the Bonaparte policy marked the replies of the ministers on this critical occasion. The bishops were to go to the Council with "their conscience in full liberty," and yet "after the Council the rights of France were to remain entire." "What," asks the Unitá, "does that mean? Does France want to be free either to relieve or to oppose what the Council will define? After having permitted her bishops to take part in an assembly which every Catholic must believe to be infallible, does Napoleon III mean to hold himself free to prosecute them if they preach the doctrines defined, and enforce the discipline enjoined by the Council?"

This straightforward question shows that M. Picard hit nearer to the point than either Ollivier or Favre; for he cried, "It means a Church free in a State not free."[170] Even that is not quite the truth; which strictly is, A State not free in a Church which is free; for the State is part, and the Church whole; or, to recall the image from the early pages of the Civiltá, the State is the leg and the Church the man. We have seen it roundly asserted by the Civiltá that the Church free means canon law free. That being so, for any man to speak of the State being free, in any modern sense, is trifling. In its expositions of the Syllabus the Civiltá had laid down the true doctrine as follows: The first condition of an efficient alliance of the laws of the State with the laws of the Church, is the application in every case wherein spiritual penalties are insufficient of the means of coercion whereof the State disposes. The voice of the pastor has not always efficacy sufficient to drive away the rapacious wolves from the fold of Christ. Therefore does it appertain to the prince invested with the authority of the sword to arm himself with its force, in order to repel and put to flight all the enemies of the Church (VI. ii. 137). Refusing to stand in this position is, in the esoteric sense, separating the State from the Church. To a conscientious Ultramontane it is absurd to say that a State in this manner[Pg 235] subject to the Church is not free, as it would be to say that a body ruled by its informing mind is not free. That is the figure of speech which recurs at every turn of discourse on the subject.

After it had been determined to ratify the policy censured by Picard, De Banneville had his interview. Most writers describe him as a willing tool of the Curia, and as doing all he could to lead France in the way which it might trace out for her. Lord Acton regards him as honestly hoping to compose a difference between the Italian and German schools of theology, by the moderating weight of French influence.[171] Banneville's despatch, on the occasion now in question, would rather seem to countenance the former opinion than the latter.[172] But the Pope in the interview did not say a word indicating his personal opinion as to the questions to be decided. He did, however, say that all must be left to the wisdom of the Fathers—as if all had not been prepared, and doubly prepared. He further said that the rash conjectures of hasty spirits—in manifest allusion to the Civiltá—were to be regretted, as also the premature discussion of questions which would have been better reserved to the Council itself.

It is not probable that this deceived M. de Banneville as to the past, for he well knew how the Pope had encouraged the "premature discussions"; but he might take it as the covering of a retreat from a position found to be too advanced. But a wary man might have felt that perhaps the retreat was only a feint.

The despatch of M. de Banneville shows that Pius IX, like every Italian, knows how to keep his own counsel. Even his renowned saying, I am tradition—La tradizione son io—is no more than what M. Veuillot had said in proving that the Pope could not be an innovator—"Peter can no more be an innovator than the Holy Spirit, which reveals tradition to him."[173]

The tranquillity of the Curia on this occasion was that of perfected preparation. The dissimulation would not provoke a remark from a Roman. The effect of both was to prevent the anti-infallibilists from organizing any opposition.

[Pg 236]

Some examples of the points kept before readers arriving at the Holy City at this particular time may be of permanent interest. The Canadian Bishop of St. Hyacinthe was quoted as writing, "Sublime assembly, in which the eye of faith contemplates with wonder, poor and simple mortals who, sitting as judges, do not hesitate to impose the responsibility of their decisions and judgments on the Holy Spirit, because they know and believe that they form together with Him one tribunal." The emphases are given as we find them.[174]

A Latin pamphlet on the crisis, by a layman, was ridiculed, and one point, which seemed most comical to the reviewer, was that the author proposed two such queer anathemas; first, if any one offends against charity, let him be anathema; secondly, if any one begins war, let him be anathema.

The Archbishop of Lima, being ninety-four years of age, was unable to come in person, but sent his pastoral staff as a present to the Pope. It was of pure Peruvian gold, and of the value of two thousand pounds.

From the thrice-blessed Republic of Ecuador came the Archbishop of Quito, presenting a chalice of gold, rich with precious pearls. He bore valuable gifts in addition. That "illustrious Catholic," the President, Garcia Moreno, had, on a public occasion, been presenting prizes to students, when they joyfully laid down their medals to send them as an offering to the Holy Father. On seeing this, the President took from his breast a medal of rare value, all studded with gems, which had been presented to him by the government for distinguished services to the country. This he added to the tribute of the youths, and the Archbishop had the joy of laying the united oblation at the feet of the Pontiff.[175]

From Venezuela the Archbishop brought more than three thousand pounds in money. His people had also laden him with their valuables, ladies having taken off earrings, bracelets,[Pg 237] necklaces, and rings to send, as tokens of their devotion to the impoverished Pope.

Had our English journalists devoutly pondered the elaborate description given at this cheerful juncture of a bell designed by a priest, and presented for the use of the Presidents in the Council, they would not have wasted so much criticism as they did on the rhetoric of a speech reported in the Daily News, in 1875, as having been made by the Pope, censuring Mr. Gladstone. His Holiness spoke of that gentleman as a viper attacking the bark of St. Peter, or something of that sort. Now the bell in question was described as being symbolic, within and without. The clapper of it was the ship of Peter, round the hull of which was coiled a serpent attempting to board the vessel, but it was finally precipitated with its head down, and the three-forked tongue shooting out.

The doubt of our men of letters as to whether the Pope could use a metaphor describing a snake attacking a bark, illustrates, in general, what Cardinal Manning said of those gentlemen on the particular occasion of the Council—"When English Protestants undertake to write of an Œcumenical Council of the Catholic Church, nothing less than a miracle can preserve them from making themselves ridiculous."[176] It would require a miracle to prevent any one from making himself ridiculous who should criticize the Speeches of Pius IX, assuming that his metaphors must have been subject to some rule.[177]

We find the revolution called by the Civiltá "the executioner of the Church"; and it is said that the Pontiff in his distress is rendered more and more like Christ upon the Cross, whom he[Pg 238] represents, and with whom he can repeat, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (Id. p. 514).

The Word of God is shown to be the source of human redemption, and then the following applications are made of this principle—[178]

"The State indeed must be civilized and modernized by separating it from the living Word in the Church, that it may die.... The laws must be civilized and modernized by putting them in opposition to the laws of the Word, that they may be laws of death.... Some would wish the Word to reconcile Himself with Satan.... Schools must be civilized and modernized by separating them from the schools of the Word, that they may be schools of death. Wedlock must be civilized and modernized by separating it from the consecration of the Word, that it may be the wedlock of death. Public speech must be modernized and civilized by separating it from the influence of the Word, that it may be the speech of death. Everything, in fine, must perish, since everything must be secularized, or torn away from that God who upholdeth all things by the Word of His power.... The modern revolution, inspired by Satan, would find that all its weapons directed against the Vatican were destined to have no other effect than that of multiplying the victories of the Word of God, who reigns there in the humble person of His Vicar" (pp. 522-26).

The Court, if we may judge by its organs, was deeply affected at the want of faith displayed by many Catholics, who expressed fears lest the Council should define anything that it ought not to define. Did they not know that the Holy Ghost would preserve it unerring? Why then all this solicitude? Could they not trust a body so guided to go right, without their advices and warnings? They treated it "as an ordinary human assembly." This sounded like mockery to those who had any idea of how much Rome had done in employing art and man's device to prevent the Council from going wrong and to forestall all possible impulses in any direction not predetermined. Had they only known of the long labour and the jealous precautions which we shall see gradually coming to light, the retorts they did make would have been much more indignant.

[Pg 239]

CHAPTER XII

Mustering, and Preparatory Stimuli—Pope's Hospitality—Alleged Political Intent—Friedrich's First Notes—The Nations cited to Judgment—New War of the Rosary—Tarquini's Doctrine of the Sword—A New Guardian of the Capitol—November and December, 1869.

While the chiefs of the Curia and the leading prelates were testing their diplomatic skill, and the former were, on that field, meekly winning the prizes, the rank and file of the hierarchy were flocking in from all the winds of heaven. The Roman nobles in many cases gave up their palaces to the Fathers of the Council. With his habitual personal liberality, the Pope freely offered hospitality to all who would accept it. This simple act, natural to his station, and still more to his disposition, was smiled at as a good bid for votes. About three hundred bishops made themselves, in whole or in part, dependent for their daily expenses on the bounty of the man upon whose exaltation they were to decide. The Civiltá, as if to emphasize their dependence, told how they were lodged, supported, and assisted by him in all the necessaries of life. Hence the mocking name of the "Pope's boarders," which greeted any manifestations of opinion on their part. It is said that his expenses for the entertainment of the bishops amounted to one hundred pounds per day.

A case of history repeating itself is suggested by these allegations as to the diplomatic value of the Pope's hospitality. Dr. Karl Benrath has restored to his place among Italian worthies one of the most picturesque figures of the many-hued life of that nation in the sixteenth century. This was Frà Bernardino Ochino, the all-eloquent General of the Capuchins, whom the blot of the Inquisition had covered from[Pg 240] the common eye for three centuries. Ochino, who became a guest of Cranmer and a prebendary of Canterbury, wrote on the banks of the Thames, among other works, one called The Tragedy. Conceiving of the Papacy exactly as all modern Italian Protestants do, as the anti-Christ, and the masterpiece of Satan, he traces the rise of this dread power. Besides supernatural sources of ascendancy, he alleges the fact that in early ages the Bishops of Rome entertained bishops out of the provinces when they fled to the capital from persecution, or came from other causes, and thus the Roman prelates acquired great influence over the others. Their object then was "Primacy," out of which infallibility was in our day to come. Ochino puts into the mouth of the secretary to the Emperor, after he has discovered the Pope's yearnings, the following words: "O Lord God, that there can be so much ambition in the heart of a man! it is no marvel that he entertains in so friendly a manner all strangers who come to Rome."

Besides bishops came a mixed multitude—the devout Catholic, the keen politician, the commonplace tourist from every country, the gay sightseer, the American politician, the artist, the charlatan, the Indian civilian on furlough, and the learned official theologian. Few, but intent, came a new class of spectators—Italian Protestants, watching with eyes as open to all priestly arts as men of the sixteenth century, but with a readiness to affiliate each part of a Roman show on its Pagan original, much beyond what was even then common among our countrymen.

The Count Henri de Riancey, beholding the hierarchy pressing to the sacred walls, exclaims—

Open then thy gates, metropolis of the world; open thine everlasting gates, that the Queen of glory may come in! And who is this Queen of glory? It is the Church.... Make way, then, for the angels of the Churches, spoken of by St. John. Make way for the divine hierarchy, the ranks of which are moving, with order, force, and holiness, terrible as an army with banners (Frond, vol. i. p. 9).

One of the theologians has published a diary (Tagebuch),[Pg 241] which will always remain one of the original sources of information on the Council. Its accuracy, like that of the Letters of Quirinus, has been assailed, and with not dissimilar result. Strong general assertions and weak proof, except on such minor points as show that the substance is unassailable, leave its accuracy but slightly impeached, and its truthfulness not at all discredited. The author states things which, by our standard, would be held private; but however that may be by the standard of his own country, the things, when once published, take their place among the materials of history.

Dr. Friedrich, a professor of Munich, was appointed theologian for the Council to Cardinal Hohenlohe. He began his diary before leaving home. He found that it was vain to seek in the palace of Archbishop Von Scherr for such works in the original as a set of the Fathers, or a collection of the Acts of the Councils. The Reverend Secretary said, "You know little of bishops if you think that those people study anything." This gentleman, who was to be the Archbishop's theologian at the Council, himself read only pamphlets. When Friedrich was on the railway platform, observing the two Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg, taking their departure for the Council, the confidential servant of the latter came up to the Professor and said, "You are not surely coming to Rome as a spy?" Answering not the man but the master, he replied: "Let bishops take care that they do not betray the Church, for just as they are bound to speak to the best of their knowledge and conscience, so am I as a theologian."

Thus Friedrich evidently expected to have to speak, as it would seem that Newman also did. He did not know how the secret plans had put aside all such possibilities. But if surprises awaited him as to the new part reserved for the doctors, there were surprises for the bishops also.

Friedrich remarked that, as he travelled farther south, less and less respect was shown to the clergy, till in Italy the difference, as compared with Germany, became painful. At Trent, a scholar warned him to beware of poison, and said[Pg 242] that it was well that Döllinger had not gone to Rome, as he would never have returned.

The theologian, full of the lore of Munich, standing in the quaint Alpine city, on the Adige, with the image in his mind of the doctors who, three hundred years ago, there disputed before the bishops and before the world, would naturally form an exalted idea of the work awaiting him in the grander assembly on the banks of the Tiber. The church of St. Maria Maggiore would swell, in his anticipation, into St. Peter's; the listening prelates to a threefold or fourfold array. The struggle itself was to be much more concentrated, turning on one vital point. It was not now merely a question as to what was to be taught, but as to who was the divine teacher. It was not a dispute about one doctrine or more, but about the very fountain of doctrine. It was not any question between the Church and her enemies, but one between the Church and her head. It was to be decided whether the oracle was the whole Church, or the Pope without the Church. The dispute was awkward. Raising it showed Protestants that Rome, while claiming infallibility, had not yet settled where it lay.

After a narrow escape of being murdered on the railway near Terni, Friedrich reached the Holy City. Such was the throng, already, that he had to pay ten francs for the use of a room for a while in the afternoon, before going to his home in the Palazzo Valentini with Cardinal Hohenlohe. That palace stands in the Piazza of the Twelve Apostles, full of reminiscences of days when Alberich and his descendants ruled the city, and held the Popes, sometimes in prison, but always in subjection to the chiefs springing from Theodora and Marozia.

On November 28, a discourse was delivered in St. Peter's, by Father Raimondo Bianchi, Procurator-General of the Dominicans, which was thought sufficiently important to be printed with the Freiburg edition of the Acta (p. 130). If good preaching lies in saying much and suggesting more, in the least time, this sermon is perfection; for it occupies less than four octavo pages. A note which we have already heard delicately touched by Archbishop Manning, a note at that time[Pg 243] as often sounded as any in the episcopal scale, was given forth with full power: "Be wise, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth."[179]

On December 4, the Dominicans appeared again. The Pope, departing from the usual course, had appointed Father Jandel as their general; some say selecting him that he might amend the theology of the order, the members of which were known to be weak Immaculatists, and suspected of not being sound Infallibilists. Father Jandel now broke out in a circular, which twenty years ago we should have smiled at as at new gri-gri, but which now seems to be more like to the red cross of the Muster. We shall presently see how scientifically Tarquini had demonstrated that the right of directly wielding the temporal sword did, in spite of all denials, belong to the Pope and a General Council, and we have already seen with what fascination popular pens were surrounding the life and death of the "soldier of the Cross."

"We hasten," exclaims Jandel, "to announce to you the joyful tidings, and we make speed to convey to you the pontifical brief which grants new indulgences for the recitation of the rosary during the whole continuance of the Vatican Council." The brief thus heralded looks as if the inspiration of St. Peter Arbues, "first inquisitor of the kingdom of Aragon," was beginning to operate. The Pontiff informs the faithful that St. Dominic, armed with this rosary, as with an invincible sword, crushed the infamous heresy of the Albigenses. Therefore, in the present crisis, equipped with the same armour, and with the authority of the Vatican Council, they will be enabled to "overthrow and extirpate the manifold monsters of error that prowl around." To invite all to arm themselves[Pg 244] with this holy weapon, special indulgences are granted to those who will daily recite ten rosaries, so long as the Council lasts. We believe a rosary consists of one Paternoster, ten Ave Marias, and one Gloria; so that each week seven hundred prayers to the Virgin, seventy to God, with seventy doxologies, would have to be repeated. The Pope strongly expresses his simple faith in the efficacy of this expedient.[180]

All who know what has been going on in Europe of late years know that the time for smiling at rosaries is past. A charm or a chupattie ceases to be a trifle when it becomes the symbol connecting devotion with deeds of blood. At a time when millions upon millions of children are in the hands of those who, with gentle manners and profoundly conscientious views, instil antipathies which time can scarcely extract, charms become formidable when to such antipathies they are the symbols of—as the Civiltá puts it—a pure conscience, a sublime cause, and an immortal hope.

The significance of these demonstrations was greatest for those who had watched the doctrines which were being elaborated by the Jesuits and diffused both through periodicals and such scholastic books as that of Tarquini. The doctrine of Boniface VIII, that the material sword was not in the hand of the priest, but only at his beck, was being replaced by a higher one. Boniface accused those of Manichean dualism who did not confess that both swords were in his power. But it proved that he had himself leaned too much towards dualism, for he denied the material sword to the priest's own hand. This doctrine would no longer do. Cardinal Tarquini, who, it must not be forgotten, is set before us by Cardinal Manning as the modern example of teaching milder than that of Bellarmine and Suarez, goes beyond the theology of former times, and claims the direct right of the sword, even in war, for the hand of the Pope and a Council, though still denying it to inferior ecclesiastical authorities.

[Pg 245]

I admit, says Tarquini (p. 39), that the Church is a spiritual society as to its end; I deny that it is so as to its substance—that is, as to the members composing it, since they are not mere spirits but men. I admit that it ought to use spiritual means—that is, means which are adapted to the attainment of the spiritual end. I deny that it should use only means which are spiritual in themselves and in their nature. Every one who is not a simpleton knows that men (in whom soul is joined with body) are to be moved, corrected, and coerced; hence they cannot be led to an end, even a spiritual one, by purely spiritual means. But the matter, quality, and proportion of the means is to be determined by the requirements of the end.

As to the words of our Lord, that His disciples shall not exercise lordship as the kings of the Gentiles do, he admits that they bind the Church to shun dominion so far as that means a spirit of ambition whereby any one might subject others to himself for his own glory or advantage; but he denies that they require her to shun dominion in so far as it means the office of ruling, and that of administering means contributing to the attainment of her end.

He labours to meet the objection against the use of force by the Church, drawn from her own doctrine, that men are to be called to her bosom freely and without compulsion. He asserts that liberty here means freedom from intrinsic necessity, but not from extrinsic necessity, or coaction. This coaction or compulsion does not prevent either merit, or the attainment of the spiritual end; indeed, when applied by the Church, greatly promotes them. He admits that compulsion is not to be used towards infidels—that is, unbaptized persons—but denies that it is not to be used towards baptized persons.

As to the objection founded on 2 Tim. iv. 2-5, that "the weapons of the Church are altogether confined to exhortations and tears," he simply says, I deny it. Then he argues that the words of St. Paul in this place rather weaken than support those who oppose the use of force; because the terms he employs are both general and sharp: reprove, rebuke, be instant in season and out of season. All means which necessity may call for are included. He admits that longsuffering[Pg 246] and doctrine are to be employed, if necessity demands no harsher means; but denies that they are to be employed exclusively. He demands that the character of the times in which these texts were written shall not be forgotten, namely, times in which the Church, being under the unfriendly government of the heathen, was not able to put forth the fulness of her power. But it cannot be proved by any arguments that this right (jus gladii) may not be immediately exercised by the supreme magistracy of the Church, if necessity call for it; for the contrary indeed may be demonstrated from natural law, since the Church is a Perfect Society; and no passage can be cited from positive divine law in which it is really prohibited, for Matthew xxvi. 52 is quite inapplicable, where Christ says to Peter, then a private man, "Put up again thy sword into its place"; and 2 Cor. x. 4, where Paul, declaring the might of his own power, says, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal (that is, are not fragile or futile), but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds."

The fact that the meaning of carnal weapons is coolly assumed to be fragile or futile ones, is not to be overlooked. It would naturally follow that the chassepots at Mentana, which were neither fragile nor futile, were not carnal weapons. Of course Tarquini would have said that though in their proper nature carnal, when serving a purely spiritual end they took on a spiritual character. But we cannot forget that the "strongholds" which the weapons of Paul were mighty to pull down were "imaginations," and the captives they led bound were "thoughts." That is a sphere in which the proper weapon is not either shot or fetter, but the word and the works of men whom God makes wise to teach and holy to charm. There is one symbol which the Vatican never sees, that of the true and only Head of the Church, with no sword in His hand, much less two, but one sharp sword with two edges proceeding out of His mouth. That alone is the weapon that is not carnal but mighty through God.

We now begin to see the grounds cropping out on which Mr. Bryce's doctrine of two heads to the Catholic State, one[Pg 247] civil and one spiritual, was condemned. The days of dualism and Manicheism in any form were numbered.

With their complaints that the Jesuits, both in the confessionals and in their text-books, corrupted Catholic morality, the Liberal Catholics mingled loud and bitter complaints that they sought to make the people superstitious and to keep them ignorant. It was often alleged that even their schools, or those under their virtual if not ostensible control, were themselves preserves of ignorance and superstition, keeping the scholars from an education, according to their capacity, for one "suited to their position," and at the same time preparing them to receive all kinds of fables and "lying wonders,"—a term not infrequently quoted by Liberal Catholics. Those fables and wonders would open a field so large, and one lying on a level so low, that we have not cared even to glance at them. As found in local clerical papers, or books of what is called "devotions," they are so gross that a writer could hardly repeat them without incurring loss, not only in the respect of others, but in self-respect. Liberal Catholics, however, know that they are a real power in Jesuit hands, one of the powers in the future war against science, the Press, and free government, and through these, against Protestantism. One specimen of the higher order we may give, from which some opinion may be formed of those vented in small places, by ignorant men, through low publications.

We speak of the great Civiltá,[181] of the "metropolis of the Christian world," and of a deliverance of the Capitol itself. The plan of the Garibaldians, insists the Civiltá, in October 1867, was to seize the Capitol and to ring the great bell, at the sound of which all over Rome their hordes were to rise. But Anna Maria Taigi, who had died thirty years before, in the odour of sanctity, had seen prophetic visions of Rome wasted with fire and sword, and dreadful with heaps of unburied corpses, breeding dire pestilence. Some thought that 1849 might have been the fulfilment of the vision; others that it was the attempt of 1867. But by the special "devo[Pg 248]tion" to this saintly woman, such dread event was to be averted. On the evening when all felt that the shock was coming, but no one saw whence or how, a priest of ninety years old, "well known to all in Rome," said to another, "I feel assured that the venerable Anna Maria will defend the city; and her image must at once be carried to the Capitol, for that is the point they will aim at; the Capitol once saved, Rome belongs to the Pope." The other priest objected that the hour was late and the streets unsafe. The old man insisted, reassured him, blessed him, and sent him away with the image, charging him to place it on the highest point. As the priest, bearing the image, reached the steps of the Capitol, a friend from a window, perceiving him, earnestly warned him to go home. Trembling, yet resolute, he pressed up the hill. All was silent as a desert. Having reached the utmost height under the bell-tower, he was fixing up the image, when he heard people move, and a door opened. A woman appeared. "I came," said he, "solely for the purpose of setting up an image." It would appear that it was a picture, for he had brought wafers with him to fasten it. Carlotta (for that was the woman's name) looked at the image, and cried, "Why, that is the venerable Anna Maria Taigi; I also practise devotion to her." The priest withdrew in silence and in haste. Meanwhile a priest from Bologna went in to visit the nonagenarian devotee of Anna Maria. "Don Pedro," cried the old man, "the Venerable has taken possession of the Capitol in the name of the Pope, and she will defend it from the Garibaldians." The attempt on the Capitol was almost immediately made and failed. Those who remember the tale of the Capitol when Brennus was the Garibaldi will be tempted to ask how great is the present elevation of faith above that of the days of the sacred geese.

[Pg 249]

CHAPTER XIII

Great Ceremony of Executive Spectacle, called a Pro-Synodal Congregation, to forestall Attempts at Self-Organization on the part of the Council—The Scene—The Allocution—Officers appointed by Royal Proclamation—Oath of Secrecy—Papers Distributed—How the Nine had foreseen and forestalled all Questions of Self-organization—The Assembly made into a Conclave, not a General Council—Cecconi's Apology for the Rules.

The event now to be described was called a Pro-Synodal Congregation. Being designed to give parliamentary effect to secret decisions of the Court, it was in reality a Ceremony of Executive Spectacle. Such a description seems obscure, but the official name is misleading. Congregation is the word used in Councils for deliberative sittings, in which measures are proposed and debated, in contrast to Sessions, which mean only grand public solemnities, where decrees already voted are formally adopted. Therefore the word Congregation would suggest deliberation and some sort of consultative participation, by the bishops, in the proceedings.

This prelude to the Council was not a vain show, but had been contrived by the best diplomatic and artistic skill of the Curia. After the Directing Congregation had spent nine months in elaborating rules of procedure to bind the bishops neck and foot, the Nine began to see that, should the Council meet before it was organized, it might fall into the temptation to organize itself. Some one skilled in parliamentary forms might move to elect officers, and to have, as in former times, open discussion, in order to hear questions of theology argued by the doctors, before they, the judges, began to frame their sentence. Some one might even suggest that they should agree upon their own rules of procedure. Now, all these points had been irrevocably settled beforehand against the episcopate by its superiors, and any attempt to discuss them might cause[Pg 250] the greatest confusion. If some spirit, perhaps like Darboy, as is gravely said, "excessively enamoured of liberty," should once stir such questions, the records of Trent were there to show that it might cause trouble to settle them. Therefore the Nine were disquieted. Such possibilities must be forestalled.

Moreover it had been resolved that, to take time by the forelock, the all-important Rules should be printed in advance, and should, before any possible self-action of the Council, be distributed during the grand public ceremonial of opening. Doubtless, when first adopted, this resolution seemed not only satisfactory, but far-seeing. It was not till as late as the month of August that some one pair of eyes among the Nine caught sight of the fact that, the opening ceremony being legally a Session of the Council, some "advanced spirit" might take advantage of that circumstance to assert that the Rules, being issued in a sitting of the Council, were an act of the Council, and therefore were liable to revision by it. That would never do. Therefore, at two sittings, on August 16 and 22, the former resolution was rescinded, and the ingenious expedient was devised of the Ceremony of Executive Spectacle now to be described. The Rules could be issued as part of the ceremony, and thereby would every pretext for declaring them an act of the Council be forestalled.

The Sixtine Chapel, connected in the imagination of the Fathers with all the glories and sanctities of their Church, was specially fitted up for the event. From every region under heaven gathered prelates richly attired, each feeling the splendour of the scene, and consciously augmenting it. Their susceptibilities of spectacle were vividly awake. As boys, those susceptibilities had been trained and forced. As men, they had themselves trained and forced the same susceptibilities in others. Now, in old age, they came to have the art of government by spectacle practised upon themselves; practised by masters to whom their consciences, sympathies, and imaginations taught them to look up. Under [Pg 251]the skilled touch of those masters were they now about to let drop, without a word, and for the most part unconsciously, privileges of their order, which had been guarded by their predecessors as carefully as they would themselves guard their episcopal rings. The place, the men, the scene, the coming displays, and the dawning future, big with events, were, for the moment, all in all to them. It was the historic eve of the day of days; and deep feeling fluttered under their silk and brocade and gold.

Before their eyes spread the wonderful painting of Michael Angelo, in which, according to M. Frond he "reproduced" the scene of the last judgement. It is a monument to the power of genius, even when driven to work on what the true aesthetic of the painter told him should be left to the imaging of the spirit, and should not be attempted by the pencil. There, again, stood the vacant throne, waiting for him who, when he first ascended it, had, as the reader will remember, these words solemnly impressed upon his ear, in the house and by the ministers of God: "Know that thou art Father of princes and of kings, and art Governor of the World." The Cardinal Priests and Cardinal Bishops were on the right of the throne, the Cardinal Deacons on the left. Near it stood Patriarchs, Primates, and Archbishops, in regular gradation, and after them in regular gradation came Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Orders. Every brilliant figure in that throng was standing, except the Cardinals. Through a door, preceded by his household, was see entering the form of him who holds the place of God upon earth. The Sacred College stood up, all clad in violet, with rochette, mantelleta, and mozzetta. Then all cast themselves down upon their knees. The Pontiff, blessing his prostrate vassals, moved to the throne, seated himself, and, with beaming visage looked paternally down on the rulers of docile millions—rulers[Pg 252] whose many-tinted splendour was but the effluence of his own majesty.

Now, in his hale, ringing voice, the Pope read an allocution. It expressed much affection for his venerable brethren, and solicitude for the success of their approaching deliberations. To those who had come up full of confidence in the moderation of the Curia, all that they heard was reassuring. To those who had been troubled with fears of hazardous innovation, the bearing and words of the initiated had been soothing, and so was all that now fell from the throne. Still, the few who really studied would look in vain for light on the questions which had been agitated. Those who had such questions in their minds did not know that from December to the middle of October the Nine had been engaged in answering them, and had already taken care that every seam through which any constitutional liberties might leak in should be tightly caulked.[182] Nor did they know that they were to-day gathered together for the very purpose of having many of these questions laid so deep that they should never rise again. Had they known the whole plan, was there one of them man enough to defeat it? Mighty against civil authority, were they not weak as water against a higher and more domineering priest?

Even the few would hardly have time to realize the fact that the paternal and cordial allocution gave no light upon practical matters, when lo! Cardinal Antonelli on the right of the throne, and Cardinal Grassellini on the left! And, presently, Cardinal Clarelli, the Secretary of Briefs, comes forth and proclaims—

Our Most Holy Lord Pius IX, Pope, for the good ordering of things to be done in this Council, as more largely contained in the Letters Apostolic to be forthwith distributed, hath elected and named Presidents of the General Congregations, to preside over the same in his name and with his authority, the Most Reverend Lords Cardinals Charles de Reisach, Bishop of the Sabina, Antony de Luca, Joseph Andrew Bizzarri, Aloysius Bilio, and Hannibal Capalti (Acta, p. 30).

[Pg 253]

This was immediately followed by the proclamation of the name of Bishop Fessler as Secretary, and the names of other high officials. Upon this announcement the Pope solemnly gave the pontifical benediction. Without the Council, and before the Council, he had bound on earth the question of presidents, of secretary, of officers, and of rules. But his first deed was not bound in heaven. Reisach, proclaimed by him as chief president of the Council, was never to behold it.

As the Fathers took their seats, the master of the ceremonies led in Prince Orsini in the insignia of Prince-in-Waiting. The temporal prince kissed the sacred foot, and then took his place on the steps of the throne.

Now a long line of dignitaries was presented, and going down on the ground, formed a crescent of beautiful kneeling figures before the sovereign. Two Cardinal Deacons brought out the volume of the Holy Gospels, and, standing close to the Pontiff, held it above his knees. Monsignor Jacobini then read out as follows—

We, elected by your Holiness officers of the General Vatican Council, promise and swear upon the Holy Gospels, faithfully to discharge the duties required of us respectively, and moreover not to divulge or disclose to any one outside of the bosom of the said Council, any of the matters proposed for examination in the said Council, nor yet the discussions, nor the speeches of individuals, but on all these, as also upon other matters committed to us, to observe inviolable secrecy.[183]

Thereupon, each one rising in turn, and advancing in front of the priest-king, laid his right hand upon the book, held by the two Princes of the Church, and then said: "I, N.N., promise, vow, and swear, according to the tenor of the words just read. So help me God and these God's Holy Gospels!" He then kissed the book and the sacred foot.[184]

About the middle of the long succession rose John Baptist de Dominicis Tosti, and stood to take the oath as one of the[Pg 254] promoters of the Council. Suppose that a voice had at that moment cried: "Some two years hence, this de Dominicis Tosti and Prince Chigi shall sit side by side with two ministers of the Reformed Faith, as joint presidents over a public discussion, in this city, on the question whether Peter ever visited Rome, between Catholic priests on the one side, and Evangelical ministers on the other." What an anathema would have burst from the disgusted prelates! No such shadow of an impossible shade dimmed the brilliancy of the scene.

While under the various charms of that scene, the beauty of the colours, the perfection of the postures, and the grace of the men, few would remark that the form of oath, binding, as it did, to strict secrecy on the very subjects discussed, and even on speeches, turned their forthcoming assembly from a General Council into a Roman conclave. A few indeed might see, but the overwhelming majority would not see, that several points which Councils had settled for themselves, even when they met under Emperors, were now being splendidly settled for them beforehand—in their presence, indeed, but without their co-operation, and scarcely with their consciousness. How could they think of such commonplace affairs in a moment like that? What with the glorious garments of the Sacred College, the stars and ribbons of Prince Orsini, the beauty of the enthroned Priest-King, the crescent of kneeling dignitaries before him, and the touching symbol of the temporal prince kissing the priestly foot and reverently waiting at the priestly throne, there was enough to dazzle men less under the spell of robes. True, the temporal prince was here but a pale reminiscence of better days—of those days which some of them had called to the mind of the people since the gathering of 1867; days when kings, ere they received the crown, lay prostrate before the altar, and swore on their knees to administer canon law; days when they had, moreover, to take both sword and sceptre from the hands of the bishop.[185] Still, this tem[Pg 255]poral prince served to assert rights which had never been renounced, and was a comforting token of brighter times after the Council.

No sooner was the swearing of the officers over, than the Pope took his departure. Then came the master of the ceremonies, and distributed some papers to the Fathers.[186]

They proved to be the Allocution just delivered, the Program of Ceremonies for the opening of the Council, and another document, Letters Apostolic—longer, and seemingly duller, than the Program. But this, too, was distributed by the master of ceremonies. At Courts where government by spectacle is preferred to government by reason, ceremonies enclose a wide area. What was the right of proposition, or the right of definition, or the right of public discussion, or the right of printing, or the right of meeting, in comparison with the proper places, forms, and postures? Did not Article 136 direct that the sacred pallium was to be taken off the Holy Father by the Cardinal Deacon, and to be delivered over to the Sub-Deacon Apostolic? Did not Article 39 direct that the Sub-Deacon Apostolic, accompanied by two judges of the High Court of the Signet, should bear the slippers to the throne; and Article 40 direct that the Pontiff should put them on?[187] Probably for one bishop who after retiring looked first into the fateful Rules, ninety would look into the Program.

It was two days after the issue of these documents that Professor Friedrich arrived in Rome. He found the Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg and the Bishop of Augsburg with the Program in their hands, and also the Rules of Procedure. They were full of confidence that the Curia did not intend to propose anything dangerous. But Friedrich wanted to learn what were the subjects to be proposed, on which point the bishops knew nothing. The members of Commissions had all been bound by oath to conceal, even from their own diocesans, what was prepared for them to vote. It was[Pg 256] to be presented to them with this alternative: Vote it, or become marked men!

On reaching the Palazzo Valentini, Friedrich found that all that was known by Cardinal Hohenlohe as to the subjects which he would have to vote upon amounted to this—a few days previously Cardinal de Angelis had asserted that nothing would be done beyond condemning the principles of 1789. This proves that the purple, at least of Cardinal Hohenlohe, was kept as far aloof from the secrets of the Nine as the black of Friedrich. Quirinus says (p. 77) that the most distinguished theologian in Rome, Cardinal Guidi, was not only kept in perfect ignorance of all that was being prepared, but was never admitted to an audience with the Pope after he had expressed to him his own views. Another notability is said by the same author to have been also out of the circle of the trusted, and many writers share this view; this was Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits. Words ascribed to him by Quirinus are these: "To recover two fractions of the States of the Church they are pricking on to a war against the world; but they will lose all."

Friedrich found that the decision of constitutional points of vital importance was to be wrapped up in a gay gauze of ceremonies. The very form to be given to the Decrees was slipped in among the items of the pageant. The conciliar formula used at Trent was replaced by that of Papal Bulls. The collective hierarchy were not to be permitted to say, It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us; nor to say, This Holy Council ordains and decrees. The name of the Pope alone was to appear as decreeing, and the only words in the decree indicating the existence of any Council were "The Holy Council approving." Matters like this, affecting not only the framework of the Church, but the seat of dogmatic authority, were settled without a note of preparation, in a program of ceremonies, among directions about faldstools, incense, and the Pope's slippers. It was as if the Lord Chamberlain, when the Queen was about to open a new Parliament, should put out a program of precedence,[Pg 257] costumes, and ceremonies, foisting in a few clauses indicating that Her Majesty would promulge a statute or two, with the approbation of the assembled Lords and Commons. It would be no trifle if he did so of his own motion, but would become tremendously serious if it had been done with full cognizance of the monarch.[188]

No wonder that the keen-eyed Professor was driven from the Program to the Rules of Procedure. But the fact that the other was the document first read, even by him—a man in whom the decorative element is evidently too feeble for a useful priest, and the critical element too strong—indicates the direction which the studies of gentlemen like his archbishops and bishops would take; gentlemen, who knowing that they had been jealously kept in the dark respecting what they were to be called to vote upon as the faith of their Church for ever, were nevertheless satisfied, by a few bows and smiles, that it was to be something of no importance.

Friedrich was deeply moved by what he found in the Rules, coupled with what he considered the ignorance of the bishops.

Every adept, he cries, must see that virtually the form here used in propounding decrees contains Papal infallibility. It is the Pope, and he alone, that defines and decides. Infallibility is even now attributed to him, and not to the Council, and then, seeing that this formula is to be acted upon in the first session (or public ceremony), it is the Pope who formulates the decree without having taken even the advice of the Council, and without any discussion on its part. It is not so much as known what are to be the subjects of the Decrees which the Council will adopt; and yet Decrees containing definitions are announced for the 8th. What can this[Pg 258] mean? Are we really to have Papal infallibility carried by acclamation, as the Civiltá suggested, or shall we only have a Decree, as they had at Trent, declaring the Council open, and regulating the mode of life of its members? Who can tell? For my own part I am uncommonly disquieted (p. 10).

This disquietude of Friedrich represented the first shock of collision against sunk fences, which had cost the Nine long labour. According to their faithful historian, the "most arduous and thorny of their tasks was that of settling the procedure."

It was admitted by the Nine that, even in the fifth Lateran Council, the question was put to the Fathers, whether the Rules drawn up were acceptable. It was also feared that the bishops might be offended if the Pope settled the Rules without hearing their opinion. But, on the other side, there were three arguments: first, the danger of "interminable" discussions; secondly, the danger of "some spirit excessively enamoured of liberty, and of too advanced opinions"; and, thirdly, the history of former Councils (p. 148). So in June it was finally determined that the Council should not be permitted to have a word to say to its own rules and forms of procedure. And in August, as we have seen, the perfect plan of forestalling all attempts to say a word upon them was contrived.

One possible objection was brought under attention, by the history of previous Councils, namely, that there might be a danger of the Pope restraining the rightful liberty of the bishops. This idea, however, was dispersed by the light logic which passes at Court. "It would be no less a folly than an insult to think that a pontifical law could aim at lessening the liberty of the Council" (p. 147). In this happy sentence the now mitred historian refines on the words of M. Veuillot, who was content to say that all would be free because the Pope would be free.

The consultations of the Nine must have been serious upon the critical point of denying to the Council the right of introducing proposals. The course finally decided upon called for[Pg 259] boldness in the deed, combined with art in the drapery. It was first settled that the right of proposition belonged to the Pope alone. Then it was argued that if this right was granted to the bishops, "it would turn the Council itself into a constitutional assembly"—which was just what, with all their faults, the earlier Councils had been, and even that of Trent, in an inferior degree.

The serious question of excluding all members of the Church but those constituting the Council had to be faced. Cecconi cannot conceal that at Trent the entrance to the Council Hall, during the discussions of the Doctors, was free. Massarellus, the indefatigable secretary of that Council, in his minute of those present at the first session, gives more names of laymen than of archbishops. The insertion of their names means more than that they were in the building—they had seats of honour.[189] The number of the order of priests present at that first sitting far exceeded that of the bishops. True, they had no vote; but they had a most important office, that of discussing points of doctrine, in the presence of the bishops, before the latter themselves began to do so. They were the Bar, the prelates, the Bench. Massarellus himself, secretary from the beginning, was only a doctor, till the Council reached the days of Pius IV, who made him a bishop.[190]

All the dragooning of the middle ages had not taught men that it was right for millions to sit outside in the dark, while a few priests consulted, and determined how their creeds, catechisms, ordination vows, marriage obligations, parental rights, and national duties were to be altered. The vast changes consummated at Trent had not yet done their work in reducing the human mind to servility. The Bible had not been shackled by a General Council. The Press had not been scientifically gagged. Authors and booksellers had not[Pg 260] felt the scourge of the Index. Schools and colleges had not been shut up against discussion and free inquiry, in any such degree as was then introduced. Consequently the Western Catholic of that day, though in a sense Roman, was by no means that passive creature of priestly authority into which three centuries of the sway of the Tridentine Decrees, administered by a monarch never checked by a public legislature, have moulded the modern layman.

At Trent the people were present to hear what was said. At the Vatican their political position and religious belief were both to be decided upon by decrees not reformable, like all that men do; but irreformable, as if God had made them. Yet the presence of the people was looked upon as "the interference of persons from without," and this, it was felt, would be "a deplorable inconvenience," notably aggravated by the temper of the times because of the enormous diffusion of the Press. The journals could not be prevented from writing about the Council; but means were sought to keep the subjects under discussion from the knowledge of the "democracy," as Maret calls priests and people. They should learn the tenor of Decrees adopted only when they were ratified (Cecconi, p. 253). To this end, three points were resolved upon: first, the General Congregations (that is, the deliberative sittings) should be altogether private; secondly, the public Sessions (that is, the grand solemnities for adopting and promulgating Decrees already framed and voted) should be open only in the liturgical part, the legislative part being strictly close; thirdly, all the Fathers and officers should be bound to the deepest silence (p. 254).

We are far from saying that the bishops of the time before Trent would have accepted a Roman conclave like this, in lieu of a General Council of the Catholic Church; but if they had done so, the laity of that time, from Emperor to burgher, would not have suffered it. The laity then did not represent the offspring of ten generations successively confined in the Tridentine cribs. Their rights, though roughly defined, were readily asserted, and sturdily maintained.

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The Directing Congregation, having now existed for nearly five years, had preordained all that was to come to pass in the Council. It had held fifty-nine formal meetings, very many of which were devoted to the Rules of Procedure. Beyond the purpled Nine, not a soul was ever admitted, save only Monsignor Giannelli, their secretary. Five of the Nine were the destined Presidents of the Council. So that, of the whole College of Cardinals, only four besides the Presidents were in the secrets of this body. Just at a few of the last meetings, Bishop Fessler, the secretary of the Council, was called in. It is not needful to say that the Directing Congregation was in constant official communication with the Pontiff.[191]

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CHAPTER XIV

The Eve of the Council—Rejoicings—Rome the Universal Fatherland—Veuillot's Joy—Processions—Symbolic Sunbeams—the Joybells—The Vision of St. Ambrose—The Disfranchisement of Kings.

The Civiltá described how, in beholding prelates daily arrive, the joy of Rome rose higher and higher; joy resembling but surpassing that of the great events of 1854, 1862, and 1867. Not only prelates came, but champions of the sword, the pen, and the tribune, ready to face the world in the cause of the Pope-King. Count Henri de Riancey begs pardon of Rome for indulging, at such a moment, in a word for France. Yet his heart does not turn to France, except on account of what she has done for the Pope.

Let Rome, the fatherland of all fatherlands, permit to us this flash of patriotism. It is France which has the honour of guarding the last fragments of the pontifical dominions ... She has loved righteousness; and that is the reason why she is anointed with the oil of gladness above her fellows (Frond, vol. i. p. xix.).

Poor France! that love of righteousness, which had made her slay so many Italians to keep up the temporal power, was not to avert from her, "in the year of the Council," a baptism other than that of the oil of gladness.

Ordinary Christians would not catch the reference in the above quotation. To them, "loving righteousness," especially when connected with the person of the Messiah, is not identified with, but in holy opposition to, the idea of setting Christian ministers in rank before secular princes, and in power above kings. But "He loved righteousness and hated iniquity" stands upon the tomb of Hildebrand, who sought to establish the "dominion of Christ," the "kingdom of God," the "reign of righteousness," or as many similar expressions as you please, by subjecting all the kings of the earth to the Priest of God. Pius IX is frequently spoken of as the founder of the lordship[Pg 263] of the Pope over the whole earth in the future, as Hildebrand was the founder of his lordship over it in the past. Therefore the sweetness felt by a good Ultramontane in connecting the two together.

I am bewildered with joy, cried M. Veuillot. I try to depict that joy, to swim in life. There is an unspeakable gladness in men's souls. People feel an aurora. I picked up a number of journals, and was going to answer a lively article against myself, in the Gazette de France; but the author has no idea how all his eloquence falls short of a man who, in one and the same day, has seen Pius IX, Rome, and the Sun.

Pius IX had not admitted M. Veuillot to kiss the sacred foot for merely literary service. The devoted advocate laid at the feet he kissed three thousand pounds in money, collected, through his paper, for the expenses of the Council. M. Veuillot scolds M. Taine grandly, for having made some comparison between Rome and Paris—Paris, stretching from the field of Pantin on one side, to the Follies Belleville on the other; and Rome, which has no limits but those of the world, and does not accept those—Paris, which gives birth to M. Rochefort; and Rome, which directs the nineteenth Œcumenical Council! Had M. Taine seen Rome yesterday, full of processions of all colours, and bishops of all countries, he would have said it was more lovely than Paris.

The processions of all colours were no fancy stroke. Nine days of solemn service in honour of the approaching anniversary of the Immaculate, and at the same time of the Council, gave an opportunity of showing to strangers all the confraternities of Rome. They marched to the various basilicas, especially to St. Peter's; the ostensible object being to worship the sacred relics which, with uncommon magnificence, were exposed to their veneration.

The clergy of all lands saw and were seen with wonder and delight. "When therefore," said Eusebius, speaking of Nicaea, "the Emperor's order was brought into all the provinces, persons set out as if for some goal, and ran with all imaginable alacrity, for the hope of good things drew them, and the[Pg 264] participation of peace, and lastly a new miracle, to wit, the sight of so great an Emperor."[192] Dr. Friedrich does not express himself so prettily as Eusebius on the appearance of the assembled clergy. The Asiatic cries, "And one city received them all, as it were some vast garland of priests, made up of a variety of beautiful flowers." The Bavarian says, "The clergy of every country have sent a strong contingent, from the proud monsignore to the dirtiest village priest."

The importance of sunny weather for public events, great everywhere, is perhaps exaggerated in Rome. Pius IX is believed to be peculiarly susceptible to sunbeams. Three of his most memorable days are, by his adorers, connected with a sunburst which shone for him especially. Professor Massi relates how, on the day of his taking "possession," the apostolic cortège followed the "brilliant carriage" of the new Pope from the Via Sacra up the Coelian Hill, the Cardinals being mounted on "steeds richly adorned"—doubtless worthy to be compared with those Sicilian steeds which bore Gregory the Great, of whose stud Gregorovius soberly says, "We scarcely doubt but that Pindar would have thought the apostolic horses worthy of an ode."[193] The day was overcast—which omen had a damping effect—but just as the new Pope approached the Lateran, a glorious rainbow spanned the east, gladdening all with the certainty of a reign of peace. In like manner, Professor Massi tells of that proud April evening when the Pontiff, after a long exile, once more looked down upon the earth from his own Olympus. The clerical writers do not exactly call it heaven, but content themselves with speaking of the figure of the Pope so exalted, as "standing between earth and heaven," or as a spectacle which reminds us of the Divinity (Frond, p. 16). The secularizing of sacred terms, till we come down to "apostolic cortèges" and "apostolic horses," and the materializing of spiritual terms, till "the kingdom of Christ," sometimes means the temporal power, is a process which must go on until the heaven of the[Pg 265] materialized imagination will be levelled to the height of the noblest dome, and to the beauties of the best decorator. The peerless piazza of St. Peter's was, on the day in question, filled with French uniforms. At the foot of the great staircase rose a platform covered with purple, and decked with flying banners. The heavens, all day covered with clouds, suddenly turned azure, and the setting sun poured his beams on the dome of Michael Angelo, on the cross of the Obelisk, and on the statues which adorn the Colonnade, just as Pius IX "raised his paternal hand to bless the arms which had avenged his throne." The third day on which the sun shone expressly for Pius IX has been already mentioned, that of the Immaculate Conception.

It was not only, as some say, the nuns, but also priests and littérateurs who took it as both indispensable and certain that St. Peter's should be bathed in the brightest gold the skies could send on the day which was to unite three glories—the anniversary of the Immaculate, the opening of the General Council, and the probable acclamation of Pius IX as infallible.

On December 7, when the midday gun was fired from St. Angelo's, a peal of joybells rang out from more than four hundred churches. From the distant Coelian came the deep note of the Lateran, floating over Coliseum and Capitol; from the Esquiline came that of Santa Maria Maggiore, floating over the Quirinal. These two met the boom of St. Peter's swinging across the Tiber, and, blending with it, formed, in that sea of sound, a rolling base for the billows, on whose crests every variety of bell-note clashed and sparkled. Far beyond the gates, the lone and beautiful St. Paul's lifted up its voice, as if bidding the untilled plains to tell the unfrequented shore that there was joy in the cloister capital.

Hints from Jesuit pens lead us to see some of the Order standing on the Janiculum, by S. Pietro in Montorio, drinking in the view of the renowned panorama, while the impressions of years would be brought to a focus by the sensations of a moment. Every thrill would be taken either for a proof or a promise. Things done by the Order were being glorified,[Pg 266] things to be done were being assured by the voice of many churches. Before memory would rise the figures of Hildebrand, Dominic, Ignatius, illuminated by the imagination of the past. Before hope would rise the figure of the new Hildebrand, with his now unlimited sceptre, and new Loyolas and Dominics, illuminated by the imagination of the future. Other German Henrys would be seen standing in penance, other English Johns signing away their supremacy: and surely if at Ingolstadt the Order had trained a Ferdinand II, another could now be trained, and the Virgin and St. Ignatius would not fail to raise up a more successful Tilly, and a more faithful Wallenstein. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth," would seem ringing with articulate speech from the tongue of every bell.

As the Ave Maria sounded in the sunset, the guns of S. Angelo saluted the happy eve. The Pope rode in state to the Church of the Twelve Apostles, and the crowd lined the entire way. The Jesuit writers heard enthusiastic cheers at every point. Some partial illuminations were attempted, but the weather was unfavourable. This, however, damped not the spirits of any one, for there was to be a glorious illumination on the morrow, when the rain was bound to cease. M. Veuillot, buoyant as were his spirits, admitted that, with all his love for Rome, he could not deny that it rains there in winter. But hope was exulting, enthusiasm unbounded. The preparation of ideas had, it was thought, done its work; the restoration of facts was now not far off. The Civiltá asks, Did ever Council meet under such a Pope, with his graces and his virtues, his rich experience, his burden of palms won in incessant victories over the enemies of Christ; the restorer of the hierarchy in two nations, the founder of many dioceses; the conqueror of the fallacies, hypocrisies, and fraudulence of the politicasters of our day, the glorifier of the Virgin, who "sensibly" covers him with her mantle, and takes delight in twining roses with the thorns whereof the tiara that crowns him is altogether composed?[194] The words of a French layman[Pg 267] equal those of the Italian Jesuit. It is again the Count Henri de Riancey who cries, "The Father of the Fathers, Sovereign Pontiff of the Bishops, refuge of the bishops; he is the Universal Patriarch, the Prefect of the house of God, the Guardian of the vineyard of the Lord. He it is who confirms the faith of Christians; he is Abraham in his patriarchate, Melchisedek in order, Moses in authority, Samuel in jurisdiction, Peter in power, Christ in unction" (Frond, i. p. xxx.).

It was St. Ambrose's day. M. Veuillot, in imagination, saw the saint "appear on the threshold on which the eyes of the human species are fixed, full of hope," But M. Veuillot seldom meets with a saint, dead or living, but a political end soon appears. This was, he cries, a felicitous rencounter. What made it so? When Ambrose had become bishop, he excommunicated the Emperor Theodosius for the crime of inhumanity. His image in this act is to M. Veuillot evidently the prototype of Pius IX leaving the kings out of the Council. But it is one thing to refuse the Communion, which was open for the humblest believer, to the greatest potentate alive, because his word has wantonly handed his subjects over to death; and it is another thing to refuse to all believers in existence a place, even as hearers, in the chamber where new laws binding them and their children for ever are to be decreed.

The scene at Milan, and that at St. Peter's, similar to the ardent Ultramontane, would strike us rather by contrast. On the former threshold we see a Christian pastor guarding the Lord's Table. On the latter, a king, and an aspirant after universal political supremacy, guarding the secret of his own counsels. Outside the Milan threshold we see one sinner in purple, while the common Christians are free to approach. Outside the Vatican are all members of Churches whom the king in purple and scarlet acknowledges as members of his own Church. The people are disfranchised with the princes at their head. The priests had long been losing their franchise in the election of their bishops. More recently they had been losing their freehold in their parishes. When the Jesuits obtained possession of Pius IX, the parish priest had a life[Pg 268] interest in his parish subject to good behaviour. But this formed too much of a tie to the nation. The parochial clergy had to be mobilized. So, gradually, they had been put into berths only by temporary appointment, and held the place ad nutum, at the nod of the bishop. They had been glad that the sword in the hand of the king should not be in his power, but at the nod of the priest. It was scarcely so pleasant that the parish, in the hand of the priest, should be at the nod of the bishop. The making of it so had already to a large extent been accomplished. It was now to be completed; but those tyrannous kings might attempt to check the move by what they would call protecting the lower clergy, what the Vatican would call destroying the liberty of the Church.

The whole spirit of the Jesuit Press at this period indicated that the Modern State had so wearied out the Vatican that the only chance for kings to make their peace with it would lie in separating their cause from that of parliaments and constitutions. If they meant to be tolerated long after the Council, they must not only reign but govern—govern Catholic States under the Syllabus. A ruler by divine right—which among the baptized means one instituted by the Pope and corrected by him—is the essence of the matter. "The Pope and the People!" is the last exclamation of M. Veuillot, on the eve of the day when the nations were to come to judgment—on the eve of the day when the salutary conspiracy recommended by the Civiltá with its first breath was to hold its crowning conclave, when the holy Crusade, heralded with the same breath, was to receive both its legal warrant and its world-wide impulse. A triumphal arch was to mark the completion of a stage of toil and the entrance upon a stage of transformation. "The Pope and the People. I believe that these words are invisibly written on the door of this Vatican Council, which door forms the entrance to a new world; rather is it a triumphal arch erected on the rediscovered highway of the human race."[195]

That triumphal arch and that rediscovered way of the[Pg 269] human species which, to M. Veuillot, made the entrance to the Vatican Council sublime, invested it, to the eyes of Liberal Catholics, with clouds of doubtful omen. The triumph vaunted was real and even stupendous, but it was a triumph over the principles in the name of which Liberal Catholics had fought and won the battles of the Church. The rediscovered way was no other than the broad road of clerical dominion over spiritual and temporal things which, in the ages before the Reformation, had led the Church down to a degree of corruption now denied by none—a broad road, which had since then been swept and mended, but to which had in the meantime been added the countless sidepaths of Jesuit morals. If all those sidepaths should by authority be opened for the winding and the straying of human guile and passion, what would the Catholic nations come to? Studious Liberal Catholics were aware of the two sides of the Jesuit system of morals, whereof Protestants generally were cognizant only of one. These knew, indeed, that a lawful end renders the means to it lawful; but Liberal Catholics knew that it was also taught that an unlawful end did not infect with guilt the means by which it had been reached, provided only that in themselves those means consisted of acts not necessarily unlawful. Thus on both sides—that of seeking a lawful end by unlawful means, and that of employing lawful means for an unlawful end—was the gate made wider, the road broader, and the way more smooth for guile to creep or passion to roll downward, but attended all along by the comforts of absolution, and sprinkled with holy water.[196]

And as to the new world to which the Council was to be an entrance, Liberal Catholics had seen the Pope's special college of writers, in the Civiltá, dwell upon the act whereby Alexander VI drew a line from pole to pole, and gave to Spain all regions that should be discovered to the west of it, and to[Pg 270] Portugal all those that should be discovered to the east of it; and contend that the Pope, in saying of those regions, I give, concede, and assign them to this king and to that, acted simply as the Vicar of Christ; nay, that by that act the autonomy of the Indians was not in the least offended; and that, moreover, what in the jargon of infidel and of heretics was called the pretensions of Rome, was nothing else but the exercise of a clear and sublime right, resorted to by the Pope in seeking a solid protection, in new countries, for the autonomy of nations and of individuals, when otherwise, to the offence of religion, it might have been violated by barbarians.[197] But was this supreme power to dispose by sentence of the lot of nations, even though unknown, without in so doing offending in the least against their rights, to be exalted into eternal dogma? If so, and if mankind would endure it, well might the door of the Council be regarded as the entrance to a new world. But whether future ages will reckon it as the entrance to a new world or not, we are about to see that it was indeed the entrance to an arena on which was to be witnessed a process of revolution from above and a struggle of priest with priest,—a process as instructive, a struggle as curious, as any that our age has produced, among its many transformations of polity and redistributions of power.

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BOOK III

FROM THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY

CHAPTER I

The First Session, December 8, 1869, or Opening Ceremony—Mustering—Robing—The Procession—The Anthem and Mass—The Sermon—The Act of Obedience—The Allocution—The Incensing—Passing Decrees—The Te Deum—Appreciations of various Witnesses.

At dawn, on Wednesday, December 8, 1869, the guns of Fort St. Angelo saluted the long looked for day, while from the other side of the Tiber those of the Aventine replied. The bellowing of these beasts of war awoke the city to witness a Council of the ministers of peace. As the sounds reached the ear of peasant, monk, and nun, already plodding in the dark from places outside the walls, the sky was low, and pouring down a truly Roman rain. Unlike towns round which smiling homes are sown broadcast outside of the bounds, Rome, when approached by most of the routes, first shows the city walls, and not till a good while later does it show the beginning of habitations. The poor suburbs which lie outside a few of the gates are less dreary than the space inside, where lonely roads, shut in by blank walls, lead amidst crumbling mementoes of rulers of the world, and marks of the actual reign of drones not able to master ordinary difficulties. Every now and then comes a church, or one of the two hundred and more convents and nunneries which sanctify the place. But scarcely any of these have an outline such as to yield, in twilight, the effect of either Gothic spires or Moorish minarets, or even of good Grecian colonnades.

Many a cowled figure struggled under the drenching rain along these desolate ways. One would pass the spot where[Pg 272] Peter was arrested by his Master, when the Fisherman uttered the famous "Lord, whither goest Thou?" and was turned back to Rome to die. Another would pass by the vale of Egeria and he might well wonder if Numa ever had to seek inspiration there in such dismal gloom. Crossing the open ground about the Lateran, some of the monks might think of the terrible morn when Totila, in mercy, halted his troops inside the gates, sending the clang of his trumpets through the dark, all over the city, to give the wretched Romans the chance of flight.

Other monks coming from St. Agnese, and entering by the Porta Pia, would reflect upon the adornment of that gate by the Holy Father, and upon its happy name which links it both with Pius IX and with its own founder. Its founder, Pius IV, signed the Creed of the Council of Trent, and Pius IX was to sign the new Creed of the Council of the Vatican. This beautiful coincidence would, with the monks, make the gate an emblem of the Church, against which the gates of hell should never prevail. If they only happened to recollect that its old name Nomentana marked it as the Mentana Gate, the encouraging impression would rise almost to the brightness of a revelation. The day, only two years before, when the conquering crusaders marched in, and the welkin rang with shouts of "Long live Pius IX!" "Long live the zouaves!" "Long live the Crusaders!" "Long live Catholic France!" would return to memory as the pledge of mightier Mentanas. Had an invisible hand drawn aside the veil, and shown them that gate, some nine months later, admitting the Italian troops, followed by the dog Pio drawing a little cart full of Bibles; and then shown, still later, the residence of a British Ambassador to the King of Italy inside the gate, and on the outside the residence of Garibaldi, the monks would have vowed by all the saints, old and new, that the vision came from a lying spirit.

Some, again, crossing the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge, would, in spite of the blinding rain, see the figure of Constantine victoriously dominating the heights, and that of Maxentius[Pg 273] being hurled into the stream. A while afterwards, when passing near the Broken Wall, where St. Peter himself had kept watch, and with his own hand had blinded and routed the Goths, they would feel that now when his successor was to be at last duly exalted, the Apostle would surely keep the city more jealously than before; and if there was need of a Belisarius to crush the Italian barbarians, the Lord would raise him up at the intercession of Peter.

As they came further inwards, the crowds of the city were already in motion. Down from the Coelian and Esquiline were they pouring past the Coliseum, reflecting men delighting in the thought that all high things which exalt themselves against the Church would fall into her power just as the Coliseum had done; for the "high things" of the Romanized imagination are naturally material ones. The Arch of Titus, darkly outlined in the morning grey, would be the prophetic pledge that the Jews, however stubborn, would yield to the Pontiff at last. But where was the golden candlestick—where the temple vessels? After Genseric carried them off, had they ever returned? The ruinous Palatine would symbolize woes coming to modern Caesars, as sure as those which had crushed the ancient ones. Indeed, it is not impossible that some would see visions like those seen by monks of yore, who beheld the soul of the great Theodoric dragged into the crater of Stromboli.

From the Aventine, where Peter resided with Priscilla and Aquila, and which is now little but a site for monastic establishments, many would come, passing by the place where once stood the Circus Maximus. The thoughtful would there have in their eye the grand spectacles of Pagan Rome. It was by a spectacle that Romulus allured the Sabines to unity by violence; and it was by a spectacle that Pius IX was now wooing the world to wedlock with the Papacy—ready, if only able, to take short measures with the coy. But what were the shows of the old rude times to this? What if three hundred thousand pairs of eyes did gleam together on the spectacles which, with bread, made up the earthly all of the[Pg 274] Roman plebs? They never had looked upon such an array of holy bishops, from the whole earth, as would be seen to-day. The colours for which they went mad, their idolized blues and greens, were but few, and ill-combined, compared with the colours now about to be displayed. The ancient cry, "Bread and Spectacles!" was indeed still kept alive by Roman authorities, but was to-day to be satisfied in a Christian style glorious beyond Pagan example.

Along the Via Sacra few foreigners would appear, but from the Capitoline Germans would set out. It is natural to think of some student, fresh from the pages of Gregorovius, his imagination vividly setting face to face the ancient Rome and the actual. He would think of the exclamation, "Renowned, queenly, immeasurable Rome, a sea of beauty surpassing all power of speech!" Where were the glory and the beauty now? Inside the churches and palaces indeed were masses of decoration and artistic stores of wealth, but the city viewed, on that dismal December morning, as a city, was poor and ill-kept. The glory which once compelled men at this central point to call her Golden Rome was departed. What now represented the Temple of Jupiter—its pillars on gilded bases with gilded capitals, its gates of gilded bronze, and its roof of tiles of gilded brass? There stands the Church of the Aracoeli; Jupiter is succeeded by the Bambino, a doll, carved by St. Luke, which is driven in a stately carriage round the city to the beds of the dying.

Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman, certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of Wycliffe in the sea?

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A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so. Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients, and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea of a world-empire originated with the Romans—nay, no more than did the idea of the Trojan War.

Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against riderless[Pg 276] mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses, goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.

Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and tongues into religious and political submission to one human head. Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in the words of Joseph de Maistre, that the Pantheon had been devoted to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority. But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize St. Peter Arbues, red with[Pg 277] the blood of thousands of the seed of Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces. He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome for Frond's history—[198]

It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable. Nevertheless, there are many gods, in heaven and in earth. There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (hommes divinisés). The gods of Christianity are the saints. Around God are assembled all the gods, to serve Him in the place and order assigned to them.

The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it, as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that "saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious, which was no doubt the original idea.[199]

[Pg 278]

By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and signs of impotence.

In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general, not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and cabmen.[201]

The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds. They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering under their[Pg 279] umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory, thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico. At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs, with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green, embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff, formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and if a prince—we presume by birth—followed by a third. Then came the nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts, and ribbons like streamers among the stars—stars that dazzle Romans far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles, always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls, and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety. Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack,[Pg 280] the convent, the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village festival, spangled the thickening crowd.

The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions, even the correspondent of the Stimmen aus Maria Laach alluded to the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the Times; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes." In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest, as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of zouaves and one of the line.

The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain," says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language, containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb, girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman would have been[Pg 281] surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet. Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True, he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest, but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship, as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii. 8-10).

There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ! In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen[Pg 282] do we require, for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father, dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the access of sons!

He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father, and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under their own power.

The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder and abler brethren of the priests.

Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the pro[Pg 283]miscuous crowd; for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too, with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, he says, by the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the Univers what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"—a fact which he states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells, appear more luminous to him.

Correspondents of the Civiltá published on the spot, of the Stimmen published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East, were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle, and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.

Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers, striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that, somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they had too much ground to fear.

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On the other hand, the Jesuits were quietly exulting in the knowledge that the days of the Liberal Catholics were numbered. "Weighed and found wanting" were words often upon their lips at that time.

The feeling of the Protestants, of all classes, was chiefly that of curiosity. Such of them as believed that Rome yet retained enough of the Christian element to be capable of reform wished that the Jesuits might fail. Those, on the other hand, who believed that at Trent Rome had written upon herself the doom irreformable, thought that the only thing now before her was to go down deeper into her own errors, and to make herself formally what she long had been virtually, the religion simply of the fait accompli, a system in which each error once committed must enter into the blood, and even form abnormal bone. Perhaps the words "judicial blindness" were never so often quietly uttered by charitable men as then, and during the months ensuing.

The tomb of Peter shared with his statue in the honours of the morn. In the ray of its lamps knelt many a figure of "fair women and brave men." The men hoped to rise braver for the coming struggle. The words of the Pontiff were vividly in the memories of the devout—words uttered to five hundred bishops. "We never doubted that a mysterious force and salutary virtue emanated from the tomb where repose the ashes of Peter, as a perpetual object of religious veneration to the world; a force which inspires the pastors of the Lord's flock with bold enterprises, noble spirit, and magnanimous sentiment."[203] Pius IX would hardly have seen the force of an inquiry, should any one have dared to make it, whether there was any known case in which one of the Apostles had in Jerusalem sent even the most ignorant of Christians to the tomb of the proto-martyr, ay, or to the tomb of tombs, in order there to seek some blessing that could not be found by going into his own closet, and praying to his Father who seeth in secret.

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The Civiltá, however, gave a more intelligent turn to this Papal suggestion—

It is to be hoped (it said) that this Council, announced on the centenary of St. Peter, convoked by a Bull dated on the day of St. Peter, and assembled round the wonderful tomb of St. Peter, will be par excellence the Council of St. Peter. That means the most obsequious to the prerogatives of Peter, whose divine authority, the centre and foundation of all social authority, is at the same time that which is most combated by the spirit of the world, according to the words of the Saviour, "The whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John v. 19).

While the people waited, the bishops were robing in the Julian corridor, and the patriarchs in one of the adjoining apartments. Over the grand portico of St. Peter's is a hall, well known on Holy Thursday as the place where the twelve apostles celebrate the Supper—the hall in which the five hundred presented their salutation in 1867. This had been converted into a chapel, by the erection of an altar. Here assembled the members of the procession. Each prelate, on completing his costume, made for the hall, but was not permitted to have any attendant. It being the Day of the Immaculate Conception, the colour of the vestments was white; a rule, however, which did not bind the Orientals. The cardinals were robing in a room apart. Each of them having done so, entered the hall followed by his train-bearer. Bishops, prelates, and cardinals waited while the Pope robed. This he did in the Pauline Chapel, attended by three cardinals, two bishops, the sub-deacon apostolic, two protonotaries, and a few minor officials. They adorned him with amice and with alb, with girdle and with stole. Then did the cardinal-priest in waiting bring the censer, and the Pope put the incense on. Then did they further array him in the "formal," the pluvial, and the precious mitre. At about half-past nine o'clock, Pius IX, in all the glory of gems and garments, entered the hall, where between seven and eight hundred bishops stood before the altar, awaiting their royal head. He did not wear either the tiara or the usual golden mitre, but a special precious mitre[Pg 286] made for the occasion, "This" says, Vitelleschi (p. 3), "was to indicate a certain equality with the other bishops, which, however, is confined to these little accessories of the ceremonial." The white pluvial was fastened on his breast by an enamelled clasp, about which clerical writers are particular. The clasp was set with jewels in the form of a dove, with outstretched wings, surrounded by a halo of rays, and representing the Holy Ghost. The Pope passed among the Fathers holding out his fingers, in the usual manner, on this side and on that, giving them what is grotesquely called the pontifical benediction. Then kneeling at the faldstool he took off his mitre and prayed. Two cardinals, approaching the kneeling Pontiff, placed a book before his eyes. He looked upon it, lifted up his aged but resounding voice, and sang—

Creator Spirit, come!

This strain was taken up by the choir, and the first verse was sung, all kneeling. The Pontiff then rose, put on his mitre, and was seated in his portative throne.

The portative throne is a contrivance for exhibiting a dignitary to the gaze of a multitude, which does not remind one of anything to be seen elsewhere in Europe, but does strongly remind one of the way in which a great Guru is carried in India. It is a gorgeous litter, on which is placed a gorgeous chair, under a gorgeous canopy, called a Baldachino. In the chair is seated the Pontiff. Men robed in crimson bear the litter; others bear the canopy on long gilded decorated poles, and beside it others bear gigantic fans of peacocks' feathers.

Even in a secular procession, more serious than an election triumph, this sort of chairing would be of doubtful taste; but in a religious act, above all an act done in the house of God, it would be impossible, except where the aesthetic of faith had expired, and the aesthetic of thought had long surrendered to the aesthetic of sensation. As the Pontiff was set on high a shot fired from St. Angelo told the waiting multitude that the procession was formed.

We have said that the clergy of the city lined the whole[Pg 287] course of the procession on either side. This extended from the door of the hall, through some of the apartments of the Vatican, down the celebrated Royal Staircase, through the magnificent portico of St. Peter's, up the nave to the statue of the Apostle, then to the altar at his grave, and finally, to the right of that altar, into the hall of the Council. As the head of the procession emerged from the hall, the manifold costumes of the clergy formed the skirting of the lofty walls, in the apartments through which it slowly swept. The most noticeable of these was the Royal Hall, Sala Regia, where frescoes, suggestive of more swords than one, appealed, by Papal memories, to Papal hopes. There was Gregory VII giving absolution to the penitent emperor Henry IV. There was the attack upon Tunis in 1553, there the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, the League against the Turks, and Barbarosas receiving the benediction of the Pope in the Piazza of St. Mark. From the Royal Hall descends the Royal Staircase Scala Regia. All down its two flights the reverent clergy lined the way, as the "Church Princes" swept by. In the lower flight the Ionic capitals of the colonnade gracefully lengthened out the perspective, while the stately march of mitres glanced between the shafts. With a supreme sense of the importance of the act did the train pass down the noble stair; each prelate no less sustaining the dignity of the moment because just then the eye of the outer world beheld them not. In the view of a real Vaticanist a great procession is a good in itself, and a very high good, apart from its uses; or, perhaps more properly, it is felt that its effectiveness for use wholly depends upon the sense of discipline in its members.

Finally the foot of the stair was reached. The portative throne passed the statue of Constantine, the first who ever drew sword for the Church. It swept round and faced the statue of Charlemagne, the first upon whose head the Church ever set imperial crown. Each stood at an end of the magnificent vista formed by the portico—grand watchers at the door of the Pontiff, ever telling that the kings whom his Church wants are not merely nursing fathers but champions in fight. As[Pg 288] the sight of their uplifted monarch burst upon the people, and that of the people upon their king, the heavy guns from the Aventine were firing alternately with those of St. Angelo, while all the bells were trying to exceed the joypeal of the preceding day. Before his Holiness reached this point, the procession had already entered the nave in slow and gorgeous order.

In front came chamberlains, chaplains, and officials of sixteen ascending grades. After these came the Fathers of the Council,—first the generals of orders, next mitred abbots, and then followed bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, in succession of still ascending rank, every man in appropriate splendour. The Orientals outshone their western brethren even more than usual; for the robes of the Latins, being confined to the white of the day, were at a disadvantage beside the eastern coats of many colours. The Senator, as the incumbent is called of a quaint old office under the Papal government, which we might call that of honorary mayor of Rome, marched between the prelates and the throne in golden robe of rich variety. He was accompanied by the conservators, whom we might call something like honorary councilmen, and also by the commandants of the three orders of guards—the noble, the Palatine, and the Swiss. Finally, sitting aloft, with the fans and the bearers, and the poles and the canopy, came the Pontiff. The moving throne was followed by a lengthened rear procession, formed of sundry officials, and closing with the priests, who had for some time been practising shorthand, in order to act as reporters.

The faithful from east and west gazed with enraptured eyes. Many were proud to recognize their own bishops; some still prouder to see their own gifts in robe or gem shining among the adornments of the day. Any Hindu present, looking at priest and soldier, might have exclaimed in the words of the Bhagavad Gita: "Many a wondrous sight, many a heavenly ornament, many an upraised weapon; adorned with celestial robes and chaplets; anointed with heavenly essence, covered with every marvellous thing."[204]

[Pg 289]

From early morn, "the holiest," to use the term of one of the priestly descriptions, had been exhibited upon the altar; but out of tenderness to the throng had been veiled till the procession approached. As it entered the temple, every member of it uncovered to "the holiest." Those who were not members of the Council, after reaching the high altar, defiled to the left. The Fathers of the Council approaching the altar, each in his turn bent the knee before the Host; and then turning to the right, beheld the front of the Council Hall erected between two of the piers which sustain the great dome of Michael Angelo. Over the door was a picture, professing to represent the Eternal Father. The door was kept by the military figures of the Knights of Malta and the noble guards. Each prelate, in turn, entered the hall, bowed to the cross erected upon the altar, and was shown to the place assigned to him, according to his rank and seniority; for care was taken that the bishops should not group themselves either according to nation or according to opinion. There, standing and bareheaded, they awaited the Holy Father (Frond, vii. p. 98).

After the procession had been for some time moving up the nave, a whisper, "The cross, the cross," passed from lip to lip. The cross was borne immediately in front of the Fathers of the Council. Priest told priest of its choice beauty and immense costliness. Designed in the Gothic of the thirteenth century, and rich with gems, it represented Christ, not in His passion, but crowned, as conquering Lord, in glory. Among the expressions of delight, the proudest was, "It is a present to the Pope from the English convert, the Marquis of Bute."

The Pope did not, on this occasion, as he usually does, pass up the whole of the nave on his portative throne—a process which guide-books describe as representing the Lord of Glory entering Paradise. He now alighted at the entrance of the basilica, and, with deliberate step and thrice radiant smiles, his head alone mitred while all others were uncovered in presence of the "holiest," he marched among soldiers, priests, and subjects, a sovereign in excelsis. Before him went his hundreds of lieutenants, in attire which would have dazzled[Pg 290] ancient Pontifex, Flamen, and Augur. Every one of them was prepared to contend with princes in his cause, to set his name before that of their king, and to claim, in their respective countries, a supreme sway for his sceptre. Not a few of them had endured prosecution or prison to uphold his law against that of their country, and no note of the lyres that sounded the praises of the day was sweeter than that which commemorated the name of any martyr-bishop, hero of the kingdom of God, against the naturalism of the age.

The Cardinals had not followed the bishops into the hall. They now stood near the high altar. Two bishops were at the faldstool, with book and candle. At the altar itself stood the officiating Cardinal, with a priest, a deacon and sub-deacon, a master of the ceremonies, five acolytes bearing candles, and three clerks of the chapel. On arriving at the altar the Pontiff bowed upon the faldstool. Then the last strophe of the Veni Creator was exquisitely sung by the choir. To use the words of a priest, written, not for Spaniards or Brazilians, but for Germans: "Every member of the historical procession cast himself upon his knees before our God and Saviour in the form of bread, before whom all kings bow."[205]

After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"—Protector Noster Aspice Deus—and for some time he continued reciting prayers in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (Guérin, p. 76).

The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right, entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for some time.

As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial—the Cardinals Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers[Pg 291] deserved half of the ill that was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts, Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching Christ" (p. 55).

The German Jesuit who wrote for the Stimmen said, "The bloodless offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the invisible Head of the Church be present in form of bread. Opposite sits His representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (Neue Folge, vi. p. 162).

This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning, when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India, first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence—

Lo, God is here, let us adore!

At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty with all who take an impression for a reason. The[Pg 292] program is in the Acta, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for each minutest move.

The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands; he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (Acta, pp. 204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction, during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer, with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council, and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people. Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The Pontiff recites Quam dilecta, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers trimmed with gold lace. The[Pg 293] Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers. Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle; after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed that this was imposing, impressive, divine.

This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne, rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of history[Pg 294] had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on which its first beams were beginning to strike—came forward lordly figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each, with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says, "What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma, looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw signs of happy days returning.

The Jesuits said, "Surely those non-Catholics who witnessed this action must have perceived that Catholicity, like unity, is found only where Christ lives, speaks, and reigns—in Peter; that is, in the Roman Church, of which Pius IX is now Peter." But we may quietly ask, Could even those writers fancy Peter, at the only Apostolic Council, seated upon a throne somewhere on Mount Zion, while John, James, and Paul came up in the presence of the assembled Church and kissed his knee, and Philip, Barnabas, and others knelt and kissed his foot? Far as the aesthetics of those Jesuits had descended, by a long materializing process, they must surely have read enough of the Holy Scriptures to feel that the scene enacted in St. Peter's, though a fine edition of a Durbar, was a sad fall from an Apostolic Council. You promise the pupils of Plato a higher wisdom than they ever knew in the Academy, and they find[Pg 295] for wisdom the gewgaws of Freemasons. Such a scene was bad in manners, bad in politics, and bad in religion. In manners, it tended to make men servile in a lower position and arrogant in a higher; in politics, it tended to make them either slaves or despots; in religion, it tended to make them either unbelieving or superstitious. Is it part of the penalty of Rome that barbaric forms should linger at its Court, when the spirit of Christianity has banished them from the Courts of Christian kings? Our own monarch, at the head of her two hundred and eighty millions, is too good a Christian to make her subject Rajahs, as a spectacle for her commons and her troops, come and fall down and kiss her foot. The words which commanded the followers of Christ not to exercise over one another the kind of lordship which the kings of the Gentiles exercised over them were, with pompous action, publicly trampled upon in this scene of "the obedience," and that both in the spirit and in the letter. He who complacently sat and acted out that scene in the house of God for an hour and a quarter, might better claim to represent many known in the history of ambition, than the lowly Lord of Peter.

Up to this time only sixty-seven articles of the program had been performed. Thirty more were exhausted by postures, manipulations, and devotions. The officiating cardinal-priest then came forward, bearing the reeking censer. He waved it before the enthroned priest, around whom swelled up the clouds till subject eyes looked up to him through a sacred haze, and till he looked down on his subject creatures from a sky of fragrant mist. This ceremony fulfilled, all took their seats with their mitres on, and the Pontiff, rising, delivered his allocution. It overflowed with joy and hope. It clearly pointed out the enemy to be destroyed. "A conspiracy of the wicked, mighty by combination, rich in resources, fortified with institutions, and using liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." Obviously this enemy was not a theological but a political one. Vitelleschi, who naturally heard with Italian ears, says that the language, though using a cloak, was plain enough to show what enemy was meant.

[Pg 296]

As the Pontiff drew to the close of his allocution, he, with a burst of feeling, put up two invocations, one to the Holy Spirit, the other to the Blessed Virgin. After this, with contagious intensity of emotion, he threw up both hands to heaven. At a bound, the whole assembly stood up. Then he poured forth the final invocation with the fullest resonance of his wonderful tones—tones which might have served in chanting from Gerizim to Ebal. He invoked angels and archangels, Peter, Paul, and all the saints, more particularly those whose ashes were venerated on that spot. This speech from the apostolic throne, exclaims Monsignor Guérin, beginning with the liveliest joy, afterwards expressing divine agonies, concluded with firm and tranquil confidence!

Now followed another round of ceremonies, at the close of which the master of the ceremonies proclaimed, "Let those who are not members of the Council withdraw." The royal and noble spectators left the scene; the doors were closed. The Knights of Malta and the noble guard stood sentry between the faithful, who were to receive the creed as it might be shaped, and the Fathers, who were to decide for them what their creed should be. What would take place before those doors should be opened again? Persistent rumour had said that the extreme party meant to attempt an acclamation. Therefore many believed it possible that in one brief sitting the basis of infallibility might be shifted from that of an infallible Church to that of an infallible man.

Other rumours asserted that some French prelates had let it be known that if any attempt at getting up an acclamation should be made, they would leave the Council. But what might take place behind those charmed walls, who could tell? All that could be said with certainty was that now, for the first time in the history of man, one hundred and seventy millions, perhaps two hundred millions, were standing idle spectators of the process of altering their creed. They had not a single representative; not one channel of expression, not one possible resort in appeal. What used to be a general council was now a conclave; sitting behind a guard of armed[Pg 297] men. King and priest, councillor of state and doctor of divinity, were equally shut out. The Catholic multitude appeared indifferent. The few who were not indifferent were powerless. They had all been parties to narrowing the idea of the Church to that of the clergy. That idea was now, without the consent of any one being asked, formally narrowed from that of the clergy to that of the bishops and Court prelates. It might further be narrowed from that of the Episcopate to that of the Pope. It appears to us not very easy to call men fanatics who have done so much with mankind, when they propose and expect to do still more!

The point at which we now stand in the program of the day is the 109th Article, which is the first of several prescribing a ceremony with a substance. Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop Valenziani of Fabriano, approached the throne. The Secretary handed a document to the Pontiff. The Pope handed the document to Valenziani, who thereupon, ascending the pulpit, turned towards the throne, made a profound obeisance, took off his mitre, and read out as follows—"Pius, the Bishop-Servant of the Servants of God, with the approbation of the Holy Council." Having now pronounced the title of the decree, he again put on his mitre, seated himself, and proceeded to read the substance of the Decree. This consisted of one sentence, declaring the Council opened. In that ill-constructed hall few heard what was read; and many were wicked enough to hint that, if ill-constructed, the hall was not ill-contrived. Once more laying aside the mitre, Bishop Valenziani rose and asked, "Is the Decree now read agreed to?" The bishops were seated in their mitres, the abbots standing bareheaded. There was no formal vote. Those who understood what was said, cried Placet, and others repeated the cry. No one dissented. This result was communicated to the sovereign, and he from the throne proclaimed—"The Decree now read is agreed to by the Fathers, none dissenting; and we decree, enact, and sanction it, as read."

These forms were exactly repeated, and a second Decree was passed. Like the first, it consisted of a single sentence, which[Pg 298] fixed the next public session for January 6. The two Promoters of the Council, as they were called, now advancing, first knelt on the lowest step of the throne, and then addressed the notaries, saying, "We pray you, Protonotaries here present, to draw up an authentic document, recording all and singular the acts done in this public session of the all-holy Œcumenical Vatican Council." The senior protonotary then appealing to the Majordomo and the High Chamberlain, who stood on the right hand of the throne, said, "We shall draw it up, ye being witnesses" (Frond, vii. p. 119).

The constitutional crisis had come and gone, and very few were aware of it. Those who had thought of the program as anything more than the order of a pageant, must have observed that the signification of those acts amounted to no less than putting aside the conciliar form of Decree, and adopting in its stead that of the Papal Bulls. We have already seen that Friedrich, as a Church historian, saw this at a glance. It need not be said that the ancient Councils, representing the whole Church, spoke in their own name, themselves decreeing and enacting. As to the only Council "over" which Pontiff Peter I "presided," it would not do to cite it as an example.[207] As late as Trent, every Decree bore upon the face of it the words, "This holy Council enacts and decrees." All the statutes of the Council of Trent, without alteration of a word, were immediately confirmed by the Pope, he having beforehand promised, in writing, to do so. The formula then used was, of course, liable to the interpretation that it indicated the superiority of the Council to the Pope. That interpretation had been actually put upon it by schools in the Church, at one time, including whole nations.

The Decrees now passed had never been before the Council for deliberation, but were handed from the throne ready made. The Pope, according to the formula, did not merely sanction, but decreed, enacted, and sanctioned—that is, he took the part of both parliament and crown.

[Pg 299]

The Council is only mentioned as "approving" of this absorption of its own powers into those of its head. The part thus allowed to this so-called Œcumenical Council, this Senate of Humanity, in framing Decrees, is less than the part allowed to the College of Cardinals in the framing of Bulls. Take, for instance, the Bull of Convocation. It expressly says that, in issuing it, the Pope acts not only with the consent of the Cardinals, but by their counsel.

This expresses more than "with the approbation." All, therefore, that the collective episcopate did for the College of Cardinals was somewhat to curtail its relative legislative importance. Alone, both its counsel and consent were recognized. When united with all the bishops, only its consent. This looked like telling the bishops that their counsel was superfluous. In the Bull history conquered dogma. The counsel and consent of the Cardinals was the memento of the historical fact that the Bishop of Rome originally spoke with authority only when he spoke as the mouthpiece of the local clergy. In the Decree dogma conquered history. The Bishop of Rome alone was to appear as speaking with authority, and all other bishops were to appear only as approving, but neither as counselling nor confirming; as for the clergy, they were no longer of the Teaching Church. The substance of the Decrees passed was perfectly innocent. They had, moreover, the advantage of exactly copying the acts done in the first session at Trent, while destroying the forms there employed. In the Acta of that Council two resolutions, declaring the Council opened, and fixing the day for the second public session, were entered as constituent acts, before the heading given to Decrees of the constituted body began to be used. The two constituent resolutions were not even headed by the name of the Council, while the name of the Pope does not occur in the heading of any of the Decrees, much less does it stand as the sole legislative authority.

At Trent it was not a private member of the Council, like Bishop Valenziani, but the first presiding legate, Cardinal De Monte, who read out the draft of a resolution, in the form[Pg 300] of a question declaring the Council opened. To this question the Fathers "all with one consent answered, Placet." The second resolution was put in the same form. Both, as we have intimated, were entered without the heading of Decrees, and stand as the acts of a body organizing itself, but not as legislative acts of that body when organized. Every subsequent Decree is a real legislative act, and therefore bears the formal heading, "The All-Holy Council of Trent, in the Holy Ghost lawfully assembled ... ordains and decrees."[208]

The formula adopted in the Vatican Council had the advantage of determining, once for all, what that Council was to be, namely, a secret consistory of bishops, to give an approval to Papal Constitutions. Its Presidents were Cardinals, an office unknown to the Christian Church—princes simply of the Court of Rome, though most of them bear the orders of priest. Of the members of the Council a vast number, though called bishops, were really no more than mitred equerries and chamberlains. In the means it took to deprive the diocesan bishops of their inherited powers in Council, the Curia knew its men. Brought up in the sentiment that an effective "function" is the sublimest stroke of civil or ecclesiastical government, it would have been a revolt against all their instincts to disturb a pageant so unrivalled as the one in which they that day had the felicity of bearing a part. The Curia placed them in this dilemma: Either they must rise up amidst that blaze of splendour and resist the act of the sovereign at whose feet they had just bowed, or they must learn at a later stage, if they should then challenge the Rules of Procedure, that the moment for objection was past. The success of the Curia was complete. The general drew out his men for a review, and turned the Thermopylæ of the opposition without having ever seen a Spartan. Those who had come up resolved to oppose changes in their creed soon found that the one pass that might[Pg 301] have been held against overwhelming odds was already in the enemy's rear. The Nine had not spent nearly ten months on the Rules of Procedure for nothing.

When this brief episode in the drama of the day had passed over, the doors were thrown open, and the spectators who had been excluded resumed their places. Many of the priests outside would feel disappointed that they had not heard the hall resound with the voices of an acclamation. That would have told that Papal infallibility was adopted without discussion. Friedrich lets it appear that he felt relieved at the opening of the doors before there had been any exulting sound, and doubtless many shared his feeling.

Rumours, persistently kept up, declared that Archbishop Manning would propose the dogma, and that the majority, breaking out into acclamation, would bear down all opposition. If such a design was ever entertained, it had been thought—some say it had been found—that it would prove wiser not to proceed so hastily. The passing of two Decrees in the form of Papal Constitutions was enough to carry "the forms of the house," while the issuing of the Rules of Procedure as a Bull, before the Council was opened, had taken away every pretext for alleging that they were open to revision by the Council itself, as being its own acts.

Archbishop Manning, on his return to England, in a pastoral, treated the rumour of an intended acclamation as if it was only laughable. A reason which he assigns for this is that Rome had had enough of acclamations, seeing that many who acclaimed infallibility in 1867 had openly turned against it. The rumours, however, were too consistent, and too well supported by the hints of the Civiltá and by the plain words of Monsignor Plantier and others, to be prudently dismissed with a smile—at least, anywhere but in England. They were not what Dr. Manning represents them, rumours of an acclamation without a definition, but of a definition carried by acclamation, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception. On the other hand, Archbishop Manning's thrust at those who had in 1867 signed language that might seem to mean everything[Pg 302] included in infallibility, without themselves intending to express that doctrine, is natural in one who had not wholly unlearned the Protestant worth of words. Nevertheless, of all grounds on which the prefects of the Pope should begin to trip one another up, the ground to be selected by preference is scarcely that of finesse in the interpretations they put on what they say. As to the part assigned to Dr. Manning personally, it is possible that the rumour represented no more than the fact that both they who hoped for an acclamation, and they who feared it, mentioned the name which occurred to them as that of the most likely instrument of such a procedure, and both happened to pronounce the same name. As if to justify this instinctive selection of both parties, Dr. Manning, on his return home, said that if the Council "had defined the infallibility at its outset, it would not have been an hour too soon; and perhaps it would have averted many a scandal we now deplore."[209]

A Roman noble thus notes the zeal of Dr. Manning—

No one is so devoted as a convert. Having himself erred for half his lifetime did not restrain him from becoming the most ardent champion of infallibility. This circumstance raised a presumption of a deficiency, on his part, in that traditional ecclesiastical spirit which is never fully acquired but by being early grounded and by long continued usage—a presumption which was justified by his excessive and intemperate restlessness. This seemed a cause sufficient to lessen his authority with the Conservative portion of the ecclesiastical world, which judges with more calmness and serenity.[210]—(Vitelleschi, p. 35.)

The real work of the day was now done. It was time to sing the Te Deum. The Pontiff sounded the first note, and was followed by the Fathers of the Council, by the choir, by the thousands outside in the Basilica. The strain was caught up in nave and aisles, in every chapel and every gallery; it mounted aloft into vaults and dome, till all who were beneath the gorgeous roof thrilled under that returning swell[Pg 303] of exulting sound; and many felt as if the world was falling, overwhelmed with harmony, at the feet of Pio Nono.

The eighteen articles of the program still remaining contained little beyond unrobing, re-robing, and dissolving.

The people had been for seven hours in the Cathedral. It still rained in torrents. The clerical organs said the providential rain had prevented mobs in different places from making hostile demonstrations. During the time spent in the Cathedral, the people had not heard—except so far as some of them could make out the Latin—a sentence of the Word of God or of the words of man. The seven hours of the twenty thousand had been spent in an intermitting gaze. All went away, not only praising the pageant of the day, but extolling it. Friedrich quotes a diplomatist who said it was "superb." The correspondent of the Times said: "It has been my fortune to see many pageants in Rome, but none of them equalled, in majestic solemnity, the scene presented by the procession of bishops from all countries in the world."[211] Monsignor Guérin cried: "It offered the most majestic and enchanting spectacle which it was ever given to mortals to behold here below." M. Veuillot said that bishops were there from the rising to the setting of the sun—men who would invade regions as yet closed against them—the light-bearers and the God-bearers.[212] These old men, he added, would overthrow darkness and death, and the day would break (vol. i. p. 12). Vitelleschi remarked that there was indeed a bishop from Chaldea and one from Chicago, but the former did not represent a Catholic Chaldea, nor the latter a Catholic Chicago. Even, he added, in countries called Catholic, what proportion of the population are really of their flocks? He might have further added, And if their teaching is true, what proportion of their flocks are really Catholics?—for they teach that a doubt on any single article of faith propounded by their Church, or a doubt on one of her interpretations of a text of Scripture, taints one with heresy. How many Italians[Pg 304] were, on the day of the opening of the Council, free from that taint?

We are reminded of an Englishman whose name, when he was only thirty years of age, gained for him distinguished attention at the Vatican. His Protestantism was much influenced by his early study of the corruptions of Christianity at the centre of them. Had John Milton witnessed that pageant we know exactly what he would have said. First he would have shown that when the filial spirit of Christianity had been lost, the servile spirit of Paganism supervened. When men ceased to come to God as children to a father, they sought circuitous access through upper servants. Then followed what he describes in a sentence with a strong flavour of the Phædrus—

They began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God Himself, into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamin's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul, by this means of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity.... They knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloaking their servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.—Of Reformation in England, first book.

A writer in the Stimmen thought that if those who were separated from the Church had only been present they might[Pg 305] have been won back. It would be an easy way to settle the merits of a religion, if it could be done by the simple experiment of what body had the grandest building for a display, or the greatest number of richly dressed men to perform. We do not presume to say whether Peter ever did visit Rome or not; but, supposing that he did, the question between him and the sovereign Pontiff of the day, as to the value of their respective religions, would soon have been settled in favour of Nero, if it had gone by buildings, statues, robes, and retinues. Probably the poor itinerant preacher was so conscious that, as Milton would say, his religion "to the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion," that he would not have challenged comparison with the purpled Pontiff on that ground. Any writer who could imagine that the tendency of a "function" performed in the manner of the one we have described is to convince Protestants that the Church of Rome has in her forms much likeness left to the Church of Christ, must be unaware of the first elements of a comparison. When we search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so, the estrangement of the Papacy from the Christianity of Christ, and its affinity to the Romanism of the Pagan Pontiffs, become more and more impressive.

The feeling in St. Peter's did not permit guards to be dispensed with. It transpired that extreme precaution had been taken to prevent the Basilica from being blown up. At the time, the general impression appeared to be that some of the National party had played upon the fears of the priests, hoaxing them with hints of such a design. But after what occurred in Paris during the reign of the Commune, one can hardly think it impossible that some of the violent and ignorant may have entertained wild plans. In 1867, a startling example of what might be done had been shown in the blowing up of a barrack of the zouaves. When populations which have long been governed by spectacle, set out for a political sensation, they sometimes go dreadful lengths to find a stirring one.

The city was to have been grandly illuminated, but the[Pg 306] drenching rain would have mocked all effort to keep in the tender life of the lamps. Let us hope, said the clerical writers, that the blue sky of Rome will smile on the close of the Council, and that then the eternal city will glow brighter even than Ephesus in 431 (Stimmen, N.F., p. 166).

In addition to human helps to faith, it was announced that divine helps had been vouchsafed. On this ever-memorable day the bones of the martyrs at Concordia had distilled water, which in that part of Venetia was a recognized presage of a joyful future. This is announced in the organ of that Court which was soberly undertaking to inaugurate a new era for all the societies of men (Civiltá, VII. ix. 104).

The same periodical in the very next sentence gave samples of fanatical English Protestants. Citing the Pall Mall Gazette, it told how a series of meetings had been held in Freemasons' Hall, at the suggestion of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné, to pray for the Council. It went on to say that the Chairman, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird, had told how similar meetings for prayer were to be held all over the world, and even among the Protestants of Italy. It quoted two of the petitions said to have been offered up. Canon Auriol prayed that all the machinations of Rome might be turned to confusion, and Dr. Cumming that the day of her imagined triumph might prove to be that of her prophesied ruin.

It was much pleasanter work to tell of the Anti-Council of the Freethinkers at Naples. Praying Protestants are to be hated and extinguished. But vaunting infidels are to the Jesuits what fires are to insurance offices—their apparent foes, but their only real supports. That assembly spent a couple of days in vague and sometimes vast talk. It abused the Pope, and the Jesuits say it blasphemed God. It proposed to find a code of morals without religion, those flowers without any stems which are the holy grail of such knights errant. Finally, it attacked the French Emperor and the Italian monarchy, and was dissolved by the police. Demonstrations of a somewhat similar kind were attempted in a few other cities of Italy. In France, on the contrary, the following cities[Pg 307] were illuminated, and were lauded not only in their local clerical journals, but in the great Civiltá: Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Saint-Etienne, Laval, Moulins, Nismes, Auch, "and others." Even in Paris many convents illuminated their facades. (Guérin, p. 78.)

At Vienna a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and officials composing the Catholic Societies, and numbering, it is said, four thousand, was held to celebrate the day. The only Italian city specified as having made any favourable demonstration was Brescia; and the account amounted to no more than that of an attendance of some Society of young men at Mass, and of the sending of a promise of adhesion to the Council.

[Pg 308]

CHAPTER II

First Proceedings—Unimportant Committees and All-Important Commissions—No Council if Pope dies—Theologians discover their Disfranchisement—Father Ambrose—Parties and Party Tactics—Were the Bishops Free Legislators?—Plans of Reconstruction—Plan of the German Bishops—Segesser's Plan—New Bull of Excommunications.

The day following the wonderful Wednesday, of which the proceedings filled up the last chapter, was not too much for rest, and probably, indeed, was too little for the bishops to tell how effective the function had been. On the Friday, however, they had again to meet for the first General Congregation, or deliberative sitting. This was presided over by the Cardinals appointed, whereas the Pope in person presided over the Public Sessions, or solemnities, for formally promulging Decrees. Cardinal De Reisach, Chief President, was not in his chair, but upon his death-bed. As we have seen, he had superintended the drawing up (it is believed that with his own hand he had drawn up) the first code of laws to regulate the relations of the Church to civil society; but his code has never met the public eye.

From this first General Congregation, writes Friedrich, even the theologians were shut out.

The occupation of the day for nearly eight hundred bishops was to elect two committees of five each: one to examine applications for leave of absence; and the other to settle contests as to precedence, and similar matters, which contests at Trent often proved to be serious, indeed ere now the streets of Rome have witnessed bloodshed arising out of disputes of this sort between bishops. The members of these committees were called respectively Judges of Excuses and Judges of Complaints and Disputes. The mode of election was[Pg 309] simple; every one wrote five names on a card. It proved that Fallibilists must not expect the smallest share of office. Cardinal De Luca took the chief place, and opened the Congregation with a few simple sentences. These were translated by interpreters for the Orientals who did not understand Latin. The prelate who on this occasion celebrated Mass at the opening of the sitting was the Bishop of Osimo, afterwards Cardinal Vitelleschi, to whom some have ascribed the authorship of the work of his brother, which we often quote.[213]

The real business of the day, too important to be left to the episcopate, had been done without them. It consisted in appointing the Commission of Proposals. Twelve Cardinals, twelve archbishops, and two bishops were announced as the men whom the Pontiff had put in charge of the rights of their brethren. Prelates with titles from Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and Sardis; one from Chili and one from Baltimore; one from Spain, one from Westminster, two Italians, and a few others, were empowered to say whether the men who ruled the sees of Paris, Lyons, Munich, Cologne, and Milan, and those of Hungary and Portugal, were or were not to be recommended to the Pope for permission to bring forward any proposal. The Commission could not grant them leave to do so, but it could report to the Pontiff, who alone could determine.

As some seven hundred and fifty bishops found all their hopes of proposing anything placed at the discretion of these twenty-six men, it was not for them to reason why: it was for them simply to read in the names now announced the record of past services and the fate of future suggestions.[214] They had not stayed the proceedings when they found that the Pro-synodal Congregation had been used to fasten upon them an edict which took away their right of self-organization, and it was now hopeless to attempt to recover that right. The three youngest archbishops on the list were Giannelli, Manning, and Deschamps; the secretary of the Nine, and[Pg 310] the two hottest Infallibilists—all three on the way to the purple, which they have since received at one and the same time.

But the sensation of the day, perhaps brought about at this moment to divert attention from the painful inroad just made upon episcopal rights, was a Bull determining the course to be taken should the death of the Pontiff occur during the Council. This edict determined that the bishops must not, in that case, elect a successor or transact any business, but that the Council must be held as suspended till another Pope should be duly elected by the Cardinals alone, and till it should be again called together by him. Pius IX ordained that this law should endure for ever, as the rule in all similar cases. This measure made the Council an appendage to the person of the Pope, not capable of sustaining its existence without him, and consequently having no imaginable power over him. It also made it inferior to the College of Cardinals—an abnormal body, composed of "creatures" of the crown, without any pretence to a constitutional place in the Christian Church—"Princes," and some of them, like Antonelli, not even priests. "Pivots," as their name imports, true "pivots"[215] of the Court, which has turned a religion into a school of costume, policy, and arms, they have, we repeat, as Cardinals, neither name nor place, neither order nor office, in the known constitution of the Catholic Church. When men who held that bishops were successors of the Apostles allowed the right of all the bishops in the world to choose their own head to be confiscated by an edict in favour of these Court officers, they were not likely afterwards to be strong supports of any true authority, only of that arbitrary will which finds all the sanction of its acts in itself. The Cardinals may well denounce nationalism, since to uphold their pretensions the mitres of all nations must bow to the hat of a prince in the suite of one little king. It would be unreasonable to think less of a man for wearing a scarlet hat and scarlet stockings,[Pg 311] if his position in life calls him to it; almost as unreasonable as to think more of him for it. But to put a prince into that grotesque Court dress, and then turn him, by virtue of his Court position, into a titular bishop, or archbishop, and to expect his irregular office to be recommended by his incongruous attire, is a proof of the unlimited faith of the Curia in costume.

The experience of the day taught two lessons. First, the hall proved to be utterly unfit for deliberation, as every architect or public speaker must have known that it would prove, though about twenty-four thousand pounds had been spent in adapting a space within the Cathedral. But the second lesson of the day's experience was of a different kind. It had become plain that Fallibilists and Infallibilists were to be parted off from one another by a hard official line, and that no distinction would be made between Fallibilists and Inopportunists. The Curia, instead of showing any fear of the minority, was evidently resolved on letting it be known that Rome was not the place to form an opposition. The Rules had in fact already disposed of the minority.

We have intimated that possibly theologians came up to the Council with no more knowledge of what awaited them than the bishops. This was at least the case with Friedrich. On the Monday after the opening ceremony, accompanied by Kagarer, theologian to his Grace of Munich, he waited on the Secretary of the Council. I knew, says the Professor, that at Trent every theologian was not entitled only, but bound, to take part in the labours of the Council, by preparing papers and publicly discussing questions. But, he adds, "we were undeceived with a witness." The Secretary told them that the duty of theologians in connexion with the Council was "nothing." They were only to give information or advice to their respective bishops, as it might be asked for.

The decision thus announced to the doctors had been taken eleven months previously. The Nine, at their meetings of January 24 and 31, (Cecconi, p. 205) had determined that[Pg 312] there should be no congregation of inferior theologians, as the doctors were called, in opposition to the bishops, the superior theologians. The open discussions which had given light to the people on the one side and to the prelates on the other were thus quenched. The people were no more to have any means of ascertaining what was being done with their creed, nor even, when something had been done, were they to have means of ascertaining what were the processes by which the new dogmas had been established. All that they were now to learn was to be the fait accompli, henceforth to become the standard of faith for all and in all. The order of priests was to be shorn of its last vestige of representation in the Councils of the Church. The bishops, on the other hand, were not to be allowed to know what could be said for or against a proposed dogma, before they were called upon to close it up for ever. This one turn of the screw wrung even from Cecconi a mild but distinct expression of doubt. He feels (p. 205) that "the Fathers generally lost a mighty assistance in the discharge of their high office." He ventures to quote Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of Trent, whose language shows that the old Jesuits had broad views compared with those now ruling. Pallavicino's words remind us of the cry of poor Monsignor Liverani: "We might be allowed to be Liberals up to the mark of Bellarmine"—

Many of the bishops were learned in the science of theology, but the most eminent, as is the case in all sciences, were the private theologians, since they had not been diverted by public cares from regular study, without which eminent prudence is often acquired, but not eminent erudition.

But Pius IX had no intention of allowing bishops to satisfy their consciences by hearing all that could be said on both sides before they gave a judgment.

It would be hard to find a neater specimen of the terms in which the abolition of a venerable franchise may be couched than in the words of Cecconi. He lets us know that on the 4th of July, 1869, the Nine resolved to "confer on the theo[Pg 313]logians of bishops the right of being eligible to be called to serve the committees of the Council." It would be only in keeping with a system of quotation regularly practised if this statement of Cecconi should be, hereafter, used to prove that the theologians at the Vatican Council did not suffer any curtailment of their rights, but received an increase of them. But exclusion from the right of pleading before "my lords" was not all the degradation awaiting the unfortunate doctors. Bishop Fessler told them that they were free to give information or advice each to his own bishop, but, adds Friedrich, only to him. We wonder what man was not free to give private advice if asked for it. They were not to be allowed to attend meetings of the bishops; not even to meet among themselves to consult in common upon questions affecting the Council.[216] Friedrich was not the most to be pitied of the theologians. Father Ambrose, a Carmelite, had been brought up from Germany by his general, a Spaniard. At the first interview the general told him that the all-important question was that of Papal infallibility. Father Ambrose declared himself a Fallibilist, and produced a work which he had prepared on the subject. He at once lost his post; and the general wished to send him off to Malta. Cardinal Hohenlohe pleaded for his restoration, but in vain. The general feared that the order would be utterly put to shame if in addition to the scandal of the Cracow nun, and that of Father Hyacinthe's defection, a theologian of the Order brought up to the Council should be known as a Fallibilist. The poor man had even to go to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and to beg of him to give him back a copy of his little work which he had presented to his Eminence. This the Cardinal refused to do, saying that even if the general had ordered it, he had nothing to say to a Cardinal. Ambrose was permitted to return to Würzburg, and before he started a prelate said to him, "I should rejoice if any one recalled me or sent me home. We bishops have been ordered here to the Council without being told what we were to deliberate upon, and[Pg 314] now that I know it, I could gladly turn my back upon the Council and Rome."

Another minute touch of Friedrich at this moment shows how he heard a devoted Roman adherent of the Papacy say that an officer had sent him twenty scudi (about four pounds) as an offering to Peter's Pence; but he had returned the money, telling his friend he would do better to spend it on his family. "His conscience had dictated this course," for he knew how Peter's Pence were spent.

The correspondent of the Stimmen must have been under the triumphal influence of the opening, when he informed his German readers that wonderful unanimity reigned, and that what might be called the Opposition was daily shrinking up into nothing, and would soon reward only microscopical research.[217] The Unitá Cattolica of January 1 alleged that the Français, in using the expression, "A fraction of malcontents," might possibly be right, if it meant an almost impalpable fraction; but if it meant anything more, it was false. The alleged discontent, it went on to say, was spoken of as if it related to the Commission of Proposals appointed by the Pope. Some were said to wish that the Council itself should have had the selection of a committee. It was false; no one complained. It could not be disputed that the Pontiff, having the right to convoke, rule, and guide the Council, had also the right to determine what questions should be submitted to it. Pius IX had, indeed, himself confirmed this in the Bull by which he settled the Rules of Procedure. This is not conscious but unconscious irony. It reflects the course of the Papacy, displaying its administrative force and its logical infirmity in one word. A right is first desired, then secretly assumed, next insinuated in indirect forms, and finally embodied in an act assuming it as already ascertained; after which, this very act is taken as proof that it was previously established. When the Nine met, they confessed that it was questionable if the right existed to lay down rules for a General Council of the Catholic Church by a sub-[Pg 315]committee of the Cardinals. But they assumed the right as unchallenged, embodied the assumption in an edict, and now turned to that edict as proof of the pre-existing right. A few days later, the correspondent of the Stimmen again said that, while the intelligence furnished to the ordinary journals was absurd, one thing might be relied upon, namely, that what was called an Opposition was daily diminishing.[218]

Another Jesuit, writing after the Council, did not confirm these statements of the inspired organs, but followed the profane journals, whose intelligence was at the time decried—

Behold, says Sambin, two camps face to face! On one side, Rome and her Sovereign Pontiff, surrounded by a vast majority of the bishops, displaying the banner of the Church as set up by her divine Redeemer. On the other side, an uncertain number of men belonging to all ranks of the hierarchy, seduced by illusory appearances or frightened by the danger of attacking modern ideas in front—men who fancy that the Church ought to parley with the notions of the age.[219]

The orthodox view on this point was expressed by the Civiltá in its first number after the Council was opened. "The Press and public meetings are the two mainsprings by which the spirit of the age, or Masonry, or, to give things their proper names, Satan, moves public opinion for his own ends."[220] At that moment Satan was busy not only with the Italian and German Press, but with the Standard, Saturday Review, and other English papers.

Another aspect of the Council was exhibited, not in the secular newspapers, but in the clerical periodicals. Eight days after the opening session, the Stimmen was informed how, on an afternoon as mild as summer, the grounds of the Villa Borghese were enlivened by a review in honour of the Fathers of the Council. The troops were much commended, not omitting the Squadriglieri, whom the Italians profanely charged with having been recruited from the brigands but whom the Jesuits described as excellent Catholics. The Civiltá was really edified by this display. In the military[Pg 316] review, it says—and we repeat word for word—the profane spectacle was dominated by the thought of the new crusaders defiling before so many bishops, spectators and a spectacle no longer witnessed at a military review. It was well and truly said that this review looked like a function in St. Peters'.[221]

A few days later, the faithful, whose supply of news never related to either doctrine or discipline, were edified by an account of a performance in a military casino, in honour of the Austrian and Swiss bishops. It is inferred that the Pope's foreign troops must be highly educated, because the beautiful scenery had been entirely painted by the soldiers. The curtain represented St. Michael the Archangel overcoming the first great rebel. The first great rebel, by some wonderful prolepsis, was clad in a red shirt, and wore the features of Garibaldi. No writers so well know as the Jesuits how to make fun of Garibaldi's bit of ritualism, with his red shirt and poncho. A German war-song of the middle ages, addressed to St. Michael, was sung with loud applause, and sung encore. Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg, the Archbishops of Salsburg and Cologne, the Bishop of Mainz, and the Prussian Military Bishop, with a retinue of counts and one prince, hallowed and graced the performance.[222]

In spite of these diversions, and the protests and assertions of perfect unanimity made by the clerical writers, the indications which had for some time been making themselves ob[Pg 317]scurely felt of a Court party and an Opposition party, had at last emerged into painful consciousness on both sides. The idea of a sovereign above any party was too lofty for the place. One party, as we have seen stated by Sambin, was Rome and her Pontiff, while the other was an opposition, not against the opinions of Infallibilists, or the plans of a Cabinet, but against the Sovereign. Both sides had been very reluctant to acknowledge the reality of such antagonism, even long after its existence began to be tolerably evident. The Curia had nursed the hope, as we shall see, of all but unanimous adhesion to its preconcerted plans. It reckoned on the ascendant of the Pope when in presence, on that of the Sacred College, on the sympathy of numbers, the witcheries of ceremony, the baits of promotion, and, if need should arise, on wholesome fear.

On the other hand, even the prelates who most feared what was about to be done, disliked the idea of being in opposition, not only to the Curia, but to the Pontiff, and that on a personal question. They flattered themselves, moreover, that the good feeling of the Pope would lead him to moderate his prompters, and would not allow him to expose bishops to difficulties with their flocks and their governments, which they clearly foresaw. The men hoped that the general would modify his plans, and would win the campaign by strategy, without forcing them against stone walls.

Even before the opening, a painful feeling, according to Friedrich, had seized upon some of the bishops, when studying the Rules of Procedure. Fessler, he states, had told Dinkel, of Augsburg, that some dogmatic Decrees would be forthcoming on the opening day. Yet not a hint had been given as to what these Decrees might be; and such secrecy on matters so solemn was taken ill.[223] So far as the Curia was preparing a counter revolution, it acted only like any other political body in keeping its plans hidden. But it was a different matter to make secret preparations for effecting changes in a creed that men had taught until they were grey-[Pg 318]headed, and then to expect them to face the alternative of either accepting the change or ruining their official prospects.

Scarcely had the opening session passed, when an address was signed by fourteen French prelates and the powerful Croatian Bishop Strossmayer, representing to the Pope in humble yet clear terms the danger of any restraint on the liberty of the Council. They did not rise in their places and move that the Council itself should frame its Rules of Procedure; they did not even move to accept the Rules laid before it in the Bull Multiplices Inter, with certain specified amendments. Nothing short of this would have asserted the freedom of their Assembly. On the contrary, like all men trained under absolutism, they did not know how to maintain their inherited rights against encroachment and at the same time to abide loyal and true; but submitted, grumbling at their wrongs, and groping for some opening in the wall which shut them in. Had they attempted to bring forward such a motion as we have supposed, it would soon have been seen whether the assertions were or were not true which were made by English and American bishops about the Council being as free as the Senates of their own nations. Any one attempting to make such a proposal would have been informed that in the Pro-Synodal Congregation the Rules had been issued as a Papal Bull, and that in the first session the forms therein prescribed had been acted upon; so that those Rules, not being an act of the Council, but of the Pope, were not subject to revision by the Council; and, furthermore, that the Council had already practically adopted them. In fine, the prelates stood to some ideal Council in some such relation as we stand in to the Parliament; we cannot propose a motion, but we can send in a petition. Yet our petition would go to the House itself, not to the Cabinet. It would be named in the hearing of the House, and noted on its records. The petition of the poor bishops could not be presented in the Assembly, no trace of it is in the Acta; its only open way was to the steps of the throne. It was never answered, never mentioned in the official documents,[Pg 319] and the faithful who sought information in the accredited organs that rang with charges of misrepresentation against worldly ones, never received a hint of any such transaction.

"Unless the thoroughness of examination and the perfect freedom of discussion are as clear as day," say the fifteen prelates, it is to be feared that the effect will be to lower religion in public esteem and to aggravate the troubles of the Church.[224] The first point on which the petitioners fastened was the right of proposition. Yet, simple as this right was, they had not the courage to claim it. Perhaps even they were deceived, as Quirinus and many other writers evidently were,[225] at the first glance, by the way in which the denial of that right was veiled over in the Rules of Procedure. The mode of putting it is one often employed in the documents of the Roman Court. When some serious restriction is to be announced, you may find at first a sentence or paragraph which conveys an impression of something different, perhaps opposite to what is to be the conclusion. Indeed, practised Liberal Catholics sometimes write as if with them it was a tacit canon of interpretation that when in Jesuit teaching you find a principle affirmed in the opening of a paragraph, that is the principle which is to be rendered nugatory by qualifications ere you reach the close; and when you find a principle disclaimed, that is the principle which, under veils and covers, is to be set up.

In the Rules of Procedure the section on proposals did not say that no Bishop should be permitted to propose anything in the Council, which was the thing meant. To plainly say what was meant, would be to copy the Tower of Babel, the wicked modern Parliament. The section said that though the right of bringing forward proposals belonged to the Pope alone, he wished the bishops freely to exercise it. This sufficed to set many writing good news home. They did not wait to weigh the following words. These showed that the right[Pg 320] of proposition, handsomely announced to the Fathers of the Council, was just the right which everybody in the world possessed, that, namely, of forwarding a suggestion to the Pope. Curiously enough, even that common right was granted here only in a circuitous way, for the Pope himself named a Commission to receive propositions from the bishops, to consider them, and to report to him. If, after such report, he should wish any of them to come before the Council, he would send them forward. Most of the bishops, being unused to Parliamentary forms, began only by slow degrees to realize the fact that thus they had no right of proposition whatever. It was a good while before they became aware that they were simply in the position of private people. Anybody in Rome, or in Calcutta, could forward a suggestion to the Pope without going to a Royal Commission.

The address of the fifteen bishops requests that authors of proposals shall be admitted to a hearing before the Commission, and also that the latter shall be required to assign reasons when it reports against any proposal. But the bishops do not even ask leave to put their suggestions upon the books. That would, at least, have given members the right of letting their fellow members know what they wished to see done. The idea of entering a notice of motion would of course have been in that atmosphere not liberty but licence. They do, however, venture to suggest that some members of the Commission might be elected by the Council. They also point out that secrecy cannot be really maintained. The address, as we have said, was not even answered.

Hergenröther, the writer on whose authority Cardinal Manning requires us to rely, devotes some strength to this question. He begins by affirming that in Trent there was no fixed order. His proof for that assertion is that there is no written Code of Procedure, the record showing only the course actually followed from time to time. He also asserts that the bishops in the Vatican Council had perfect liberty of proposition. He moreover informs those who learn from such as he, that in all great assemblies the right of the[Pg 321] President includes that of proposition, at least so far as to give him the decision, as to the order in which the proposals are taken.[226] Hergenröther, moreover, affirms that Friedrich wished to deny the right of proposition to the Pope—a blunder arising from not distinguishing between a right and an exclusive right. The Directing Congregation made a distinction as singular as was this failure to distinguish on the part of Hergenröther. It held that the Pope had the direct right of proposition, and the bishops the indirect right. But the fact was that they had no right of proposing to the Council whatever. They had no right beyond that of making a suggestion to the Pope, which, we repeat, anybody in the world could do; the only difference being that the one suggestion went before a Royal Commission, while the other did not.

The Directing Congregation had been first of all inclined to let the Fathers choose a committee of their own, but finally determined that the Pope himself should appoint a commission. This was an arrangement open to objections which even they did not wholly fail to see; but the Court historian finds a perfect answer by saying that if a good proposal should rest unheeded the author of it would have the satisfaction of having done his duty, and he must trust to divine Providence, which would never fail the Church.[227] Clouds of words were raised about this simple matter. The Catholics made solemn asseverations that the bishops had as perfect liberty of proposition as the members of any public body. The Liberal Catholics protested that they had not. They were cried down as slanderers.

Hefele, a learned German, gave confused and even contradictory advice as a consulter; first contending that the bishops should have a right of proposition, and then suggest[Pg 322]ing the very arrangements finally adopted. Sanguineti, a Roman consulter, plainly stated what was to be aimed at, namely, that the Pope alone should have the right of public proposition, leaving to the bishops what he calls the right of private proposition; as the directing Congregation calls it, of indirect proposition, or, as we call it, of suggestion.[228]

The result, then, was that the bishops could not bring in any substantive motion, could not move for a subject to be taken into consideration, could not put a notice of motion on the books, could not move an amendment on what the President proposed, could not move the previous question, could not move to decline taking the matter into consideration, could not move to postpone it. All that they could do was to speak to what the President proposed, to send suggested amendments before a committee, and finally to vote Yea or Nay upon the question, in the form into which that committee ultimately put it. No minutes of proceedings were printed, or even read day by day. No knowledge was allowed[Pg 323] to speakers even of the reports taken of their own speeches; no sight of the reported speeches of others.

Notwithstanding all this, bishop after bishop returned from the Council to denounce in pastorals those who had said that they had not the liberty of proposition. Even our English tongue had to make itself the vehicle of such statements for two mighty nations. Bishop bore witness to bishop, and they were true and all men were liars. Archbishop Manning told how bishops "of the freest country in the world" had said truly, "The liberty of our Congress is not greater than the liberty of the Council."[229] We fear that American bishops might have quoted similar declarations from English ones. It is for members of Congress and of Parliament to judge.

La Liberté du Concile is a tract which, Friedrich says, if not written by Darboy, was inspired by him.[230] Only fifty copies were printed during the Council, for distribution exclusively among the Cardinals, and with the strictest injunctions of secrecy. The whole is given in the Documenta ad Illustrandum.[231] It is introduced by an article from the Moniteur of the 14th February, 1870. One of its earliest sentences compresses the secret history of Cecconi into a few words. "The first unhappy thought, and that from which the Council now suffers, was the wish, so to speak, to make the Council beforehand, and to make it without the bishops." It is right to mention that M. Veuillot says that this writer recounts ill, reasons worse, and draws inferences worst of all.[232]

For two years, complains this writer, the bishops had been refused any programme. They had not been afforded any possibility of studying questions about to be raised, or of preparing themselves to discuss them.[233] It would seem that the writer did not know that the preparations had extended over five years instead of two. He says that the Council had not made its Rules of Procedure; the Pope had imposed them.[Pg 324] It had not chosen one of its officers, not even a scrutineer; the Pope had selected them all beforehand. The reason for the restraints imposed on the liberty of the bishops was stated by M. Veuillot as being to take away the liberty of evil, which the writer considers an insult to the bishops. We may remark that this is a principle which, had it been acted upon by the great government above us all, would have precluded every question as to the origin of evil. This tract affirms that the Commission for Proposals was composed exclusively of declared partisans of the Court. That statement is not quite accurate. Rauscher was a mighty instrument of the Curia in its ordinary aggressions on the civil power, but too sensible to approve of its present projects. Cardinal Corsi also, though at last he voted with the majority, was all along reputed as averse to the definition of infallibility. The next complaint is that the Committees for the important subjects of Dogma, Discipline, the Religious Orders, and Oriental affairs, are permanent, chosen once for all, and chosen by a strictly party vote, excluding every Fallibilist. Thus, is it urged, only ninety-six bishops out of nearly eight hundred would ever know anything of those real deliberations which principally determine the results of the Council. These Committees would have to decide upon all alterations to be made in Drafts of Decrees after the first Drafts had been discussed by the bishops generally. They would have the sole responsibility of bringing them forward in the definitive shape in which they must be voted upon, Yea or Nay. Thus, he repeats, seven hundred out of eight hundred are absolutely excluded from a share, at any time whatever, in the most important operations of the Council. The indignation of the author would not have been lessened had he known that this particular point had been carefully weighed by the Nine. They at first resolved to allow the Council to elect, as had been done at Trent, committees for each particular matter as it arose. It was, however, subsequently foreseen that this regulation might open the way to the election of men who were not safe. After a discussion, a man who had displayed[Pg 325] ability in treating the matter in hand might be elected on the committee for that reason alone! If, on the other hand, committees were chosen once for all, it would be easy to secure the exclusion of wrong names in that one election, and no opportunity of changing them would ever arise.[234]

The writer of La Liberté du Concile proceeds to say that a number of bishops urgently requested the Pope, in order to ensure a wise selection of these all-controlling committees, to direct that the Fathers should be divided into groups, and should in these discuss pending questions separately, on the plan adopted in the Bureaux of the French and Italian Chambers. Thus the Fathers, who for the most part were perfect strangers to one another, would in a little time learn who were the capable men, and would be in a position to make a proper selection. This appeal, probably the one we have already mentioned, was not even answered.

The lords of wide dioceses, accustomed to rule their clergy with military authority and to face statesmen with considerable pretensions, were now reduced to struggle for very small liberties. They attempted to form themselves into groups, by nation or by language. So far as the French were concerned, this arrangement failed. Each of their two Cardinals, De Bonnechose and Matthieu, received a group in his own house. Cardinal De Bonnechose would not consent that all the French bishops should meet together. Even when they divided, he went for advice to Antonelli, who intimated that they ought not to meet in larger groups than fifteen or twenty. The effect of all this was, that when the time for making arrangements for the election of the committees came, they had no concert among themselves; and the writer states that after that election, the annoyances confronting Cardinal Matthieu were so great, that he felt obliged for a time to leave Rome. Hereupon the bishops who had previously met at his house resolved to go to that of Cardinal De Bonnechose, who had, for once, to receive them; but he again[Pg 326] consulted Antonelli, and declared that this first general meeting should also be the last.

The bishops desired to select the best men of their own nation to be nominated as members of the permanent committees. The Curia, however, had provided for all that. The "ticket" of Cardinal De Angelis, as it would be called in America, was the counter move. The German and Hungarian bishops had shown more cohesion than the French. They met together, and made a selection of the principal men from their own number; but that resulted in nothing. The Curia had selected those whom it preferred, setting aside the men who stood high with their fellow-countrymen, and putting forward those who with them would have had no chance. An official list was prepared bearing the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Of course the bishops in partibus, the missionary bishops, and all the mere dependents of the Court, voted for the official list; and thus the whole of the four permanent committees were composed, as the secret preparatory commission had been, exclusively of the nominees of the Curia. The Jesuit Press gloried over this result. M. Veuillot said that the Committee on Faith was an echo of the great commission appointed by the Pope. Sambin recorded the triumph, with satisfaction, for permanent history. The result showed that the Court could count on about 550 votes.[235] De Angelis was appointed to the vacant post of Chief President, in room of Reisach. Cardinal Schwarzenberg was not on any committee, Hohenlohe was out of the question. Even the Archbishop of Cologne was only on a petty committee for granting leave of absence. But Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, the author of the throne-upsetting speech, was on the all-important committee for dogma.

This manœuvre excited strong indignation amongst all shades of the marked men. They found themselves shut off from such a part in deliberations as would have been granted by any worldly cabinet to an honourable Opposition. Then, the mode of securing the result by the expedients of a political[Pg 327] election caused bitter recollections of frequent admonitions, given both verbally and in the Press, not to reason about the Council as an ordinary human assembly, but to evince a worthy confidence in the all-guiding power of the Holy Ghost. The Rheinischer Merkur remarked that the Romans had a saying, that at the beginning of a conclave the devil reigns, then the world carries all before it, and only at the last does the Holy Ghost turn both out and regulate things according to His own will. This genuine specimen of Roman mockery is applied to the Council by the Merkur saying that as yet the third stage had certainly not set in.[236] The selection, said the Merkur, of committees was one-sided and narrow-minded. The Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Orleans saw themselves thrown aside, and nominal bishops put in the places they ought to have occupied. The German bishops, who had strongly confided in the moderation of the Curia, found that no amount of trimming would avail; nothing short of a sound profession on the question of infallibility. Vitelleschi says that the clearest, most sincere and disinterested opposition was that of the German bishops. They knew what they meant, and also knew that they expressed the collective sense of their people; besides, they always acted with moderation. He ascribes this moderation to two causes, namely, the fact that they consciously did express the views of their people, and that they were, more or less, influenced by Protestant modes of thinking. We confess that we see little proof that any German bishops but the Curialistic ones were clear. We should rather have said that they were at sea. As to the moderation, however, Vitelleschi adds that no such moderating influence of Protestant opinion appeared in the case of the English prelates. "Several bishops, with Manning at their head, more Catholic than the Pope, are noted for their Ultramontanism" (p. 45). He adds, that even the Irish bishops were less uniformly Infallibilists than the English. Of the Belgians, he says that some naturally took the more liberal direction. De Mérode, well known in[Pg 328] Rome as a Court prelate, placeman, and speculator, like Dupanloup, had been a champion of the temporal power, but now proved to be an anti-infallibilist. Et tu, Brute, fili mi! exclaims the Roman. As to the Spaniards, Vitelleschi says that they had been trained in the school of Torquemada; and if they were content with being only Ultramontanes, that was something gained. These are the divines of whom Quirinus says that if ordered by the Pope to vote that there were four persons in the Trinity, they would do it. Vitelleschi remarks that the prelates of the United States were simpler than their brethren, and less practised in ecclesiastical politics. Their want of any political importance at home, he believes, had predisposed them to warmer sympathy with Curialistic views than might have been expected from them. Nevertheless, it proved in time that, under the forms of ecclesiastical discipline, the spirit of citizens of a free country did now and then make its appearance among them. Another of his remarks is, that, with the exception of Portugal, most of the bishops from small countries were in the interest of the Curia. Speaking of Mermillod, from Geneva, Quirinus says that he "rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma." Of course the Italian bishops, with very few exceptions, were Infallibilists, and those from South America were all upon the same side. The bulk of the Opposition bishops were German, Hungarian, and French, reinforced by some of the older ones from Ireland, a few of the English, a good many of the North American, and only about twenty of the entire body of the Italian.

The various groups had now everything to stimulate them to put their proposals into shape. Those of the Curia were in shape already. They naturally took the old direction of conforming the creed to innovations in practice. At Trent this was done with many innovations, which must either fall into discredit or be lifted above dispute. In this way was the demand for a reform of the Church to raise her to the level of the creed, met by a determination to bring down the creed to the level of the Church. The two movements were[Pg 329] confronted. Reformation, on the one side, renovating the condition of the Church; and Conformity, on the other side, adulterating the creed. Both together resulted in the wide separation which has been witnessed ever since. The necessity now pressing sprang from different causes. No party had arisen to challenge the primacy of the Pope, even in the form of all but unlimited monarchy, into which, under cover of the gentle word "primacy," it had been monstrously developed. On the contrary, indeed, of late years the faithful had shown increasing submissiveness, proportioned to the dangers surrounding the Pope. But the Papacy itself was moving for constitutional powers which demanded a new dogmatic basis.

In comparison with the magnificence of the scheme of one fold and one shepherd, the notions of the German bishops, as disclosed by Friedrich, are an illustration of how administrators putter when immense issues press for solution. While the architects were designing a new coliseum, the joiners and stone-cutters were great upon cusps and corbels. In answer to the seventeen questions issued in Rome at the centenary of St. Peter, the German bishops had deliberated at Fulda for five days. Marriage, as a mine yielding richly to the local authorities in fees, and to the Curia in dispensation taxes, and also as a means of power over females, and over the education of children, was naturally one of the main points. Another point included the offences for which parish priests should be liable to deposition. On this the bishops advised the addition of two offences to the list—notorious fornication and open concubinage.

Hints were thrown out about abolishing all benefices, as they were said to be feudal. The clergy could not be fully mobilized but by the abolition of permanent appointments. The whole effect of the questions was to bring out the existence in Germany of too great toleration of intercourse with Protestants; intercourse to a degree not consistent with the militant footing on which things were to be put. This applied to christenings, weddings, burials, and other events of life, where the milk of human kindness sometimes will[Pg 330] overflow, and men will forget that they belong to a society which scarcely regards those who are not of it as morally entitled to existence. The bishops naturally desired that the number of causae majores, or reserved cases, should be curtailed, as that would increase their own freedom and power. They also expressed a wish that censures should not be enforced against Catholic judges who found themselves obliged to pronounce sentences adverse to the canon law. This they advised in order to avoid the exclusion of Catholics from the judicial bench. They moreover suggested that unreasonably contracting debts and habitual drunkenness should be added to the list of causes warranting the removal of a priest. They did touch a few minute points of a properly religious kind, connected with the forgiveness of sins, ordination, and other questions.

Friedrich remarks that these ideas tended to the omnipotence of the bishops by sacrificing the parish priests. This object, however, was a natural complement of the sacrifice of the bishops to the Curia. If the bishop is himself an absolute dependent on the Court, all his subordinates must be left to his mercy. The Curia knew how to lure on the bishops to the forfeiting of their own franchises, by using their love of power against the franchises of the priests.

Friedrich gravely says that the movableness of the parish priests would not cure the moral evils complained of. It is not by outward correction that a man becomes morally better, but by the ennobling of the inner man, which, alas! is so little aimed at among the clergy. When a French bishop can say in the Senate, "My clergy are a regiment; they are bound to march, and they do march," he only shows how the Christian spirit has evaporated from among the hierarchy. A few weeks before Friedrich left home he had conversed with Döllinger upon the seventeen questions, and he says that they were the only points respecting the Council on which they did converse together. What the aged provost said, observes Friedrich, will always remain in my memory. "On one occasion, Windischmann remarked in my presence[Pg 331] and that of others, 'If I was compelled to answer according to the contents of the ordinary's book, whether celibacy should be abolished or not, I should have to speak unconditionally for its abolition.'"

We have seen, in a previous chapter, that some of the lower clergy had indicated plans of considerable range, but they pointed in a direction in which Rome was incapable of going. Great attention was attracted by a project, appearing with the name of a learned layman in Switzerland, Dr. Segesser.[237] His charter had no less than twelve points, which are well worth a moment's notice.

1. He held that the Church, in having, for the first time in her history, declined to invite the co-operation of governments with the Council, must now declare for the separation of Church and State.

2. The Council must be a Reform Council in the fullest sense of the word.

3. It must certify the freedom of its members to the world.

4. It must be declared that all who believe in the redeeming work of Christ belong to the Christian communion.

5. No dogma must be added unless urgently called for, not only by theologians, but by the faithful.

6. The primacy being divine, but the Papacy being only a joint product of Roman jurisprudence and theology, the dogma of the pontifical infallibility of the Pope, which would lead back to theocratic ideas, would set the Church and State on a war of mutual annihilation. Therefore it is the absolute duty of the Church to declare herself completely released from the theocratic ideas of the great Popes of the middle ages.

7. The question of infallibility must not be passed over in silence, but must be solemnly declared to be in opposition to the right idea of the constitution of the Church.

8. In mixed questions, such as those of the Church and State, laymen should have some voice.

9. The temporal power must be treated as a local Roman[Pg 332] institution, and not confounded with the affairs of the universal Church.

10. Freedom of teaching, of organization, and of worship, and equality with all other communions, must be proclaimed; and the Church would do well if she gave up all claim to the immunity of her property, and placed it entirely under the control of the common law.

11. The Index to be given up.

12. We give this in full: "The Christian State was a great ideal, but a yet greater is a State of Christians. To attain to the last the Church must not domineer, but must possess freedom, and give it."

The language of this Liberal Catholic, brought up among German Protestants on the one hand and Swiss ones on the other, would sound altogether alien to the ears of the Cardinals, and would only deepen their painful impression of the evil influences of Protestant teaching upon the children of the Church. Enough occurred at the Council to show that, even among the bishops, there were one or two who would have dared to propose some of the points in Dr. Segesser's scheme, had the members of the Council been permitted to make proposals.

[Pg 333]

CHAPTER III

Further Party Manœuvres—Election of Permanent Committees—Bull of Excommunications—Various Opinions of it—Position of Antonelli—No serious Discussion desired—Perplexities of the Bishops—Reisach's Code suppressed—It may reappear—Attitude of Governments.

Authors differ as to the actors in an incident which marked the second General Congregation, on December 14. Quirinus and Fromman say that Darboy and Strossmayer (Friedrich says that Dupanloup and Strossmayer) attempted to speak on the Rules of Procedure, but were stopped by Cardinal De Luca, on the ground that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. The official writers at the time said not a word of the incident, nor is it named in the Acta Sanctae Sedis, nor in Frond.

Thus the bishops had now ascertained their position, but too late. Quirinus naturally says that had the assembly been, in some measure, prepared for the Rules, there would have been opposition; but good care had been taken that the assembly should not be prepared, and should not have any chance of offering opposition. The first gleam of hope, adds this author, excited by the announcement that the bishops would be allowed to propose measures, had speedily vanished. Lord Acton says (p. 63): "The bishops felt themselves in an entangled position. Some began to speak of going home. Some complained that the Rules foreclosed questions involving divine rights, and said that they felt bound to put even the existence of the Council to stake."

The election of the Permanent Committee on Dogma was the great work of the day. Archbishop Kenrick's Latin note[238] states that lithographed lists were distributed some days[Pg 334] before the election, with the inscription, To the honour of Mary, conceived Immaculate; and that these lists were recommended by the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Four hundred of the votes sent in gave the list entire. It was by these tactics that every Fallibilist, without exception, was excluded from the committees. But Canon Pelletier, who wrote what in Frond passes for the history of the Council and is a good history of the ceremonies and the dresses, declares that the election proved the perfect freedom of the Fathers, for though all the names on the official list were chosen, they were not brought in according to the order in which they stood on that list. The French prelates of the minority were especially incensed, both against their leaders and against those whose superior tactics had frustrated their unskilful attempts to unite. Every Frenchman felt that all who represented the traditions and the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church in France were now, in Rome, placed under a species of ostracism. The Fathers left this exciting sitting with another Bull in their hands. Again Letters Apostolic to the present! The Acta Sanctae Sedis affirm that the work of preparing this Bull could not be got through in time to send it to the Fathers before the Council. Its title was gentle. It was a Bull to Limit the Censures of the Church. Quirinus mentions a mission undertaken by Cardinal Pitra, a Frenchman, with the intention of bringing the prelates of his own country into accord with the Curia. This he followed up by a similar attempt with the German bishops. Pitra began by describing Dupanloup to the latter as "a mischievous teacher of error," but he was stopped, and told that the Germans agreed with Dupanloup.

A favourite topic of conversation now was the chance of disorganizing the Opposition. The first checks appeared to have had the effect of consolidating it, but the resources of the Court were generally assumed to be efficacious. Over and over again was it asserted that the hope of a robe of some distinguishing hue, or of a title on the list of domestic prelates of the Pope, would win over almost any bishop, an[Pg 335] assertion which proved not to be correct.[239] Quirinus, in common with German writers generally, speaks of the honour of being on that list as one that ought to be coveted rather by menials than by dignitaries; and Italians may often be heard saying much the same thing. Again, faculties enabling a bishop to give absolution, or dispensations, in certain reserved cases, yield to him both power and fees. "Nine bishops out of ten want favours"—an assertion of Quirinus—seems bold, but it was written in Rome.

The Bull professing to limit the censures of the Church, was found to be another case of a winning title to a dreadful document. The censures with which it dealt were only a portion out of Rome's store, those, namely, under which one falls by the very act of committing the offence, without any need of trial or sentence. They are called offences Latae Sententiae, or judged already. He that confesses to one such act is, ipso facto, excommunicate, or, in the less heinous cases "suspended." The Bull, as we have said, professed to limit the number of these cases; many of which represent multitudes in all Roman Catholic countries, who must either shun the confessional, knowing that in that tribunal they are judged already, or must go to it to find themselves pronounced outside of the kingdom of grace, and incapable of restoration except by special powers granted from Rome, which always imply special fees.

It was freely said, This is a re-issue of the Bull In Coena Domini, the terrible syllabus of excommunications, at one time annually published; a custom which had ceased since the days of Clement XIV. This cessation was often cited as indicating greater mildness in the spirit of the Roman Court. In the new Bull Apostolicae Sedis these excommunications reappeared. They were under different heads. Three classes were reserved to bishops, so that no ordinary priest could release from them. Twenty-nine classes were reserved[Pg 336] to the Pontiff, so that no bishop could release from them. Four classes were not reserved to any one.[240] Some bishops declared that they found excommunications here of which they had never been aware up to that moment. Vitelleschi said that if some found in old books were omitted, the Bull re-enacted all of the penal code of the Church that was in force. According as men looked at this document, from a fiscal, hierarchical, or monarchical point of view, their appreciation of it varied. Beyond excommunicating all heretics and heretical books, with the readers, abettors, and so forth, it dealt with few matters which any true theologian would not gladly banish from his bounds, as trespassers.

The hierarchical aspect of the Bull was striking. More than one of its sections pronounced excommunication upon the sin of appealing from any act of the Pope to a future General Council. This was the mortal blow to the doctrine that a Council could judge, and even depose, the Pope, as Councils had done. Being issued in the face of a General Council actually sitting, no alternative remained but that of conflict between the Council and the Pope, or else final abandonment of this once vigorous doctrine. The defiant crowings of the Gallican cock were for ever hushed by this one grip in the claws of the Vatican eagle. This Bull, as compared with the action of the Council of Constance, which deposed two Popes and itself elected one, served to measure the decline of the episcopal and the growth of the pontifical power in the Church. Many of the bishops were old enough to have maintained the doctrine that the Council was above the Pope, against Protestants, who innocently accused all Roman Catholics of being Papists. If any one of them thought of standing by the old flag, what was he to do? To put a notice of motion on the books? That was not permitted. To send a suggestion to the Twenty-six? It might as well go into his own wastepaper basket as into theirs. To speak upon the point? That[Pg 337] would be out of order, for bishops were to speak only on matters proposed, and nothing was to be proposed but what the Pope proposed. Moreover, even if in speeches irrelevant matter should be allowed, such matter as that now contemplated would be at once pronounced rebellion. It would be an attempt to discuss what the Holy Father had already decreed. Thus the question of the relative judicial powers of the single Bishop of Rome, and of all the other bishops of the world collectively, was settled by an arbitrary sentence, uttered in the face of all the bishops assembled in conclave; and their assembly, though called a General Council, had no liberty to canvass the decision!

It was a hard dilemma for a man to be placed in who had a sense either of human rights or of a divine office to defend. But the hand of power was over the bishops. No man who opposed even embryo Decrees could ever reasonably hope for a hat; and he who should venture to attack a Bull actually issued must expect to see his mitre reduced to an empty dignity by the withdrawal of his faculties. So the bishops saw a Bull which "thrust the souls entrusted to them by thousands out of the Church"; and what could they do? "The more excommunications, the more perplexed and tormented consciences," cries Quirinus—reminding us of what might often be heard in the old times from thoughtful men in Rome. The whole effort of the priests, they would say, is to keep the conscience in agony, or at least in unrest; for this drives people to the confessor, and hence no end of gains.

A diplomatist regarded the political aspects of the Bull as serious.[241] Excommunicating men for an appeal to a General Council was, as he took it, both the forerunner and the application of the dogma of infallibility. Excommunicating all who should punish bishops, or higher officers of the Church, without making an exception for any breach whatever of law, and, moreover, excommunicating any who, directly or indirectly, should obstruct the execution of Papal mandates, were not only blows but stabs at all civil authority. The[Pg 338] diplomatist argued that the way in which the Pope abolished privileges granted by his predecessors was a poor pledge of the value of any engagements into which the Papacy might enter. The diplomatist ought to have known that the immunity of the clergy from lay jurisdiction was an essential part of the restoration to be accomplished. He ought also to have known that "the free communication" of the Pope with the faithful, or his right to promulge in all countries his decrees as their highest law, was equally essential. The excommunication, not only of heretics, but of all who should harbour or defend them, ay, or should even read their books, led Vitelleschi to raise a question for young theologians, whether the Pope has not excommunicated himself and his own government, seeing he had done more than harbour heretics in an inn, by allowing them a church outside the Porta del Popolo.

The Bull, said some, is only one of a series of measures to be framed, assuming the infallibility of preceding Popes. The dispute as to Bulls which taught any dogma in theology or morals must for ever end. The very points which Liberal Catholics had alleged to be without binding force must be beyond appeal bound on earth, and of course ratified in heaven. A little circumstance not without significance was the fact that, in publishing this document, the Civiltá did not, as it usually does with official documents, furnish a translation of the Latin; and the Stimmen, for Germany, followed the example.

In Germany or other Protestant countries an unfavourable impression might be taken of the means to be resorted to for restoring Papal ascendancy when, in the terrible category of offences judged already, without power to remit the sentence being reserved to any one, even to the Vicar of God, were found the following deeds, which many Christians would do with as cool a sense of duty as that with which under slavelaws they would have befriended a fugitive slave: "Injuring or intimidating Inquisitors, informers, witnesses, or other ministers of the Holy Office; tearing up or burning the papers[Pg 339] of its sacred tribunal; or giving to any of the aforesaid aid, counsel, or favour." If the day ever comes for attempting to put this law in force on the now happy soil of England, blessed among her sons or daughters will that one be who first has grace to endure the torments of the Holy Office rather than not break the wicked law!

The fiscal bearing of the Bull would be the one first to strike and most to occupy the Romans. Among men of the different orders, it would occasion many a chat over questions of sin, sacraments, crime, communion, dispensation, remission, and redemption from purgatory, and of the fees flowing from each respectively. Quirinus represents the Jesuits as beholding both the present and the future in rosy hues. The bishops would not be able to give absolution in the reserved cases, but the Jesuits, in very many of them, would have plenary power. Hence the bishops and the parochial clergy would suffer both in fees and influence, while the confessionals of their powerful rivals would be thronged. "So, each of those multiplied excommunications is worth its weight in gold to the Order, and helps to build colleges and professed houses."[242] Against the complaints which greeted the Bull, the Civiltá alleged that it contained nothing new, and above all that it had been posted up in the customary places in Rome, and was therefore already the law of the Church universal. It was, on the other hand, boldly alleged that there were many new cases of suspension, interdict, or excommunication. Cardinal Antonelli, however, said that there were three hundred excommunications which were not included in the Bull. Lord Acton (p. 70) quotes a passage from the organ of the Archbishop of Cologne, which shows that a good many more will have to be added before all actions are placed under perfect control. The Bull, it is said, does not prohibit "the works of Jews, since Jews are not heretics; nor does it prohibit heretical pamphlets and journals, for these are not books; nor is the hearing of heretical books when read aloud forbidden, since hearing is not reading."

[Pg 340]

Some doubt hangs round the feeling of Cardinal Antonelli as to the Council. It was often asserted that he had been opposed to it from the first, and was still decidedly so. This seems very probable. A worldly-wise man, capable of amassing a colossal fortune amid the ruins of a petty State, was hardly likely to believe that the à priori fabric of Tarquini and the other Jesuits, and the hot-headed schemes of the Pope, were solid enough to bear what was to be built upon them, or would lead to anything but defeat of the Papacy, and misery to the nations. But in contradiction to this view, Quirinus says that Antonelli was too good a statesman and financier not to see the gain that would flow from the new dogma in power and revenue. The new dogma would doubtless enormously increase the power of the Curia within the Church and over all her organizations. It would thus increase the facility of bringing pressure to bear on a government by threats of disaffection and agitation; but it would at the same time arouse all statesmen, and eventually all intelligent men, except real disciples, against this sacerdotal empire. The most likely explanation of any zeal Antonelli may have shown for the new order of things would perhaps be that while retaining his own view of the risks about to be run, he knew that what was to be was to be, and determined to make the best of it.

Papers immediately preceding the Bull in the pages of the Civiltá[243] seemed to indicate steadiness in the purpose either to bend the States or to break them. One article rang the changes on the old theme of the royal placet or exequatur, "the crime whereby ecclesiastical judgments are submitted to lay examination." "The Church," it adds, "is not a foreign power, and hence concludes that the State has no right of precaution jus cavendi, in respect of her." The internal power on which the Curia counts, in any country, being that of threatening political agitation, the denial to the State of all right of precaution is essential to the full application of the principle of the Pope's "free communication" with all his[Pg 341] subjects. A physical impediment to the promulging of a Bull was, in old times, not more a precaution than is, in our day, the principle that the law of the land is supreme. Just as the physical impediment was unlawful, so is the legislative one; both stay the free course of "the divine word." The old dukes, kings, and emperors, knowing that in the popular conscience the law of the Pope ranked above all civil law, put a check upon the promulgation of his Bulls. We say, Promulge what you please, but the law of the land is the only law in the land. "Here is the ground on which the future battle is to be fought out."

Just between this article and the catalogue of excommunications came a discussion on unfulfilled prophecy. The Jesuit Father, Soprano, had, by comments on the prophecies of Balaam, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, clearly proved (according to his reviewer) that the city of Rome was destined of God to be in perpetuity the centre of the Catholic Church. The war against the kingdom of Christ was to fail, because "she" could not lose her empire. But certain points as to the issue of the war now raging between the innovators and the kingdom of Christ, were open to inquiry—"What dynasties will survive, what forms of government will prevail, what end will such and such kingdoms come to? Finally, we may ask whether the Holy City, the mount of God, the capital of the Catholic world, Rome, may for a time fall under the power of sinners and parricides, to be outraged by fire and sword, and defaced with crimes." But, on the other hand, as to Rome being the stable domicile of catholicity, we might doubt of that only if the mount which cannot be moved could be levelled with the ground.

This expositor is true to the old interpretation that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is Rome, but that was the Pagan Rome, which "fell with the victory of Constantine." It will be observed that he takes the possibility of a temporary fall of the sacred Rome into the hand of the enemy as but an episode in a war that is to continue through a long series of years.

[Pg 342]

Since 1870, such forecasts as the above, when uttered, have not the same triumphant tone. Nevertheless, they are now as clearly expressed as ever. But at the time of which we speak, if the bishops only read what was written for their learning they could not doubt as to the kind of service which was expected of them in the future. Friedrich intimates that they did not read it, when he relates that, in trying to enlighten one of them, he told him that the only way to understand the Council was to study it with the Civiltá Cattolica in one's hand. But some of them showed a solicitude that could not be explained on any ground short of a perception of the dangers on which the Pope was running the hierarchy. They evidently did not take the view either of those who thought that the Pope, erected into a vice-God, was about to become the real as well as the titular governor of the world, or the view of those who looked on such dreams as matter to laugh at. The calculations which produced the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War, were dreams; but could the Church afford the indemnity which mankind would exact for the miseries of such another struggle?

December 16 marked the second failure in the organization of the Council. The first was the irremediable one of the absence of Cardinal Reisach, and now, before serious discussion had begun, the third General Congregation had to be postponed from the 16th to the 20th,[244] because nobody could be heard in the hall. So six days passed without a sitting. Debates were actually to take place—a thing which had neither been desired nor expected. The hall was a good place for spectacle, but a bad place for a parliament. In vain do bishops frown and editors sneer at the writers who said that the Curia had not expected much discussion. Cecconi comes to the support of the "liars," as in official indignation they were called who told just what there was to tell (p. 180)—

It was a deeply-rooted belief of the Directing Congregation that but rarely would anything have to be referred to the com[Pg 343]mittees of the Council, because the Directing Congregation so well knew how profound had been the attention given by the Preparatory Commissions, that it seemed extremely difficult to believe that the Drafts so prepared should not be received with general favour by the Fathers.

This, in fact, is the excuse put forward by the Nine for not having given the bishops a word to say to the Drafts of Decrees before they were confronted with them, as being already in a form to be voted upon. The practice at Trent had been to state the question as a question. Then it was first discussed by the doctors in the presence of the bishops, who after that appointed a small committee of their own number to put resolutions into shape. The Council proceeded to discuss the Drafts so prepared, amending and again amending them, until they were in a form on which (if the subject was doctrine) almost every one could agree.

It was now, however, coolly assumed that so complete had been the work of the secret commissions that the bishops would not raise any difficulties.

Great variety of opinion, say the Nine, would probably be rare, seeing that the matters to be treated would be already prepared, with great accuracy, by the special Commission, formed by his Holiness, in conjunction with the Directing Congregation (Cecconi, p. 180).

Cecconi repeats that the great confidence felt in the excellence of the work of the theologians had generated in the majority of the members of the Directing Congregation this conviction. He is candid enough to give the reason for bringing the Drafts ready made into full assembly, which was to prevent them from being exposed to the influences which a restricted number of prelates might exert. That amounts to saying that the able men whom a free assembly would have chosen to consider and digest its forms of resolution, were not to be allowed any chance of unitedly studying the forms prepared in secret for them. The Court would bring its own plans, with all their details and complex notes, before the full assembly, which could never thoroughly sift them, and in which the majority was assured.

[Pg 344]

While in almost everything else the rejection of parliamentary forms was commended, as becoming an assembly which had to contend against both the principles and results of parliamentary government, the practice of our own Houses in bringing in Bills ready drawn was pleaded in favour of the course taken in preparing extended drafts of dogmatic decrees. But our Parliament has never yet been called together to vote that laws are as good if issued by the Crown, without the advice of Lords and Commons, as with it. Nor has it ever been asked to pass a measure which neither it nor any succeeding Parliament could recall. Our Parliament is never asked to discuss a Bill without first having the right to say whether it shall or shall not be brought in. It never finds a Bill before it which, if it pleases, it may not refer to a special committee. Any member can move the rejection or the postponement of the whole, can move the omission or amendment of any part, and can take the sense of the House. None of these things could be done at the Vatican Council. The bishops could make Latin speeches in a row, first on the Draft as a whole, and then, in a second row, on the parts. But only twenty-four of their number could ever put a hand to the amending of the proposed statute. With those twenty-four were associated irresponsible persons, non-members. As that mixed body finally shaped the propositions, must the Fathers vote upon them, with a Yea or Nay that sealed the creed of their churches for ever.

It was not wonderful that the Curia should believe in the perfection of the Roman theology, since they took their own government for perfect, and the capital for a model city of the saints. The German estimate of the Court theology is indicated by Quirinus when he says that "though the Pope had four hundred theologians, theology is now rare, very rare, in Rome." He goes on to assert that if one should say that ability to read the Greek Testament and the Greek Fathers in the original was a necessary qualification of a theologian, "he would be ridiculed." As to the divinity even of the bishops, the evidence of Quirinus is little more flatter[Pg 345]ing than that of Friedrich; but the discussions yet to come will show that men of real power were not wanting.

The first Scheme or Draft of Decrees on dogma now appeared. It was nothing less than a book of one hundred and forty quarto pages, containing eighteen chapters and fifty-four paragraphs. Frond makes it folio and of 131 pages.

The Rheinischer Merkur quotes a Catholic journal which in admiration of this masterpiece says that when adopted by the Council it would form a text-book. Yet this mass of divinity, any phrase, almost any word of which might affect the vital truths of religion, was put before the bishops with only a few days to study it, and they were expected to vote it as an irreformable creed, to be ready for promulgation, as bound on earth and bound in heaven, on January 6, the day decreed in the first session! Friedrich, looking at this bulky pamphlet, cries, All through we have the language of the schools; any one familiar with the Jesuit writings sees at once by whom it has been prepared.

Graf W., a Roman prelate, paid Friedrich a visit arrayed in all his vestments and decorations. Surprised at such a display by a stranger, Friedrich asked himself, Does he want to make an impression upon me, or to excite a longing for similar clothes? The conversation turned upon infallibility, and the Count Monsignore said that it would be carried through; for when the Curia had committed itself to anything, it was not to be balked. Friedrich, saying that for his part he had nothing to do but to speak according to his conscience, and that as a priest he knew well what must be his course when once the point was decided, went on to state that, not having his eye on a canonry or a bishopric, and being happy in his independent position as a professor in the university, he felt free. This surprised the Curialist, but Friedrich in turn was still more surprised when the man in soft raiment and living in kings' houses said that it was otherwise with him. He belonged to the Roman prelacy, and if he meant to continue in it, he must do what he was bid.

The German doctor was struck by hearing people assure[Pg 346] him that life was tolerably safe in Rome if you were sure of your cook, your doctor, and your chemist (p. 30).

The German bishops had not, like the French, asked permission to meet among themselves, but their place of meeting had been cared for. Monsignor Nardi, a slashing writer, and a conspicuous member of the Curia, spared no pains to secure them for his own house. Cardinal Hohenlohe offered his for the purpose, but he scarcely received a civil answer. Even German bishops said as much as that they should compromise themselves by being identified with him. They began to feel their position very delicate. As they were assembled on December 22, with Cardinal Schwarzenberg in the chair, they were joined for the first time by three favourites of the Curia—Senestrey, Martin, and Leonrod. But when Senestrey found that they were discussing the propriety of petitioning the Pope for a relaxation of the Rules, he remembered that business required his presence elsewhere. We may be ready to smile at men, holding professedly the position of members of a Council, who durst not rise in their places and insist on having liberty to propose what their consciences dictated; and who, when refused that liberty, instead of declining to take part in the mock Council, went into a caucus, and drew up a petition to the autocrat who had snatched away their rights.

But their position was very difficult. If they attempted in their places to speak on the matter, the fatal sentence fell upon them that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. What then could they do but decline to take part in the Council? This would be coming into direct collision with the Pope. The moral education of their lives had aimed at fixing in their own minds, and they, in their action upon others, had aimed at fixing in their minds, one conviction—that the crime exceeding and comprehending all others was to break with the Pope. They were so placed as to have no alternative but either "disobedience" or the surrender of their individual and collective rights. They seem, indeed, to have thought that it was rather a spirited proceeding to send in a petition.

[Pg 347]

Archbishop Haynald of Hungary proposed that they should request the Pope to divide the Fathers into eight national groups. This was suggested with some idea of counter-balancing the fictitious majority made up by titular bishops and vicars apostolic. Had one nation been allowed to balance another, the effect no doubt would have been considerable; but how these venerable men could imagine that this scheme had any chance with the Pope, we cannot tell. The bishops in partibus, and the missionary bishops, being mostly Italians, would have been well nigh lost in such an arrangement. The Curia well knew that it had been tried at Constance, and was not to be caught.

What Friedrich heard of the opinions of the prelates as to the Draft Decrees, was unfavourable. Cardinal Rauscher was reported to have said that he would allow the paper to be read in his seminaries as the work of a student, but that to propose it to a German Council was too bad (p. 35). Many of the bishops said that its condemnations were untimely, and that it was unworthy of the dignity of a General Council. It was said to be the work of the Jesuit Fathers Schrader and Franzelin; but instead of the latter, Kleutgen was often named. The Dominicans spoke slightingly of it. The Bishop of Ascoli, a Carmelite, said he had only patience to get through half of it, and then he threw it away. Strossmayer said to Friedrich, Why must the Council at this time of day pronounce condemnations as to squabbles heard of only in the schools, and worn out even there? (p. 37). Kagerer told Friedrich that the bishops had agreed not to tell their theologians what passed at their private meetings; on which Friedrich remarks that the bishops were right, for the chaplains and secretaries by whom they were served could not be properly described as theologians. He then gave a sigh for Hefele. Meanwhile, he said, it was hard to listen to the talk of men, like Kagerer, who had come up without preparation, who were not furnished with books, and who drove a trade in theology by guesswork.

Monsignor Nardi's hospitality to the German bishops had[Pg 348] not a smooth course. After having met at his house for the greater part of December, when they alighted one night in the Piazza Campitelli, they found the servant of Cardinal Schwarzenberg posted there to send them back again. The Cardinal had received from Nardi a request to be relieved of their further presence, giving so short notice that there was no means of meeting the case but that of setting the servant to turn the bishops away from the door. Thenceforth they found a German host, Cardinal Rauscher.[245]

The General Congregation of December 20, after learning the names chosen for the Permanent Committee on Faith, had been occupied with the election of the Permanent Committee on Discipline; but as the Acta contain no records of any transactions of the Congregations, beyond the bare lists of the committees elected by them, the strictly official means of ascertaining what passed are all but nil. The Acta Sanctae Sedis may be fairly considered as official in a looser sense; and it is strange how the brief but clear occasional notes of particulars which they contain, almost invariably confirm the profane writers in statements denied, or apparently denied, at the time by faithful ones. Deputations, including among others Strossmayer, went hither and thither in search of a hall to meet in. Quirinus thought that the one in the Vatican by the Sistine Chapel would not be of good omen, on account of the picture of St. Bartholomew's massacre. Had any real wish existed to find a place in which seven hundred gentlemen might sit and speak, it could easily have been done; but the wholesome exhalations from the tomb of St. Peter would not have been so potent anywhere else, even in Rome, as in the Vatican. One-third of the space in the hall was now curtained off. The debates were to open on December 28, that is, after twenty days had been lost.

News of the death of Cardinal Reisach destroyed the hope that his influence might prevent the Germans from standing with the Opposition. The preparations for a code regulating civil and ecclesiastical relations, on which he had spent years,[Pg 349] were not to see the light. It had already been resolved not to present to the Council the Drafts prepared by his Commission on Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs. Cecconi (p. 266) thinks that probably the absence of the Cardinal "contributed to the shipwreck" of his proposals. The subject was "thorny"; and again, it was not decorous to make inoperative laws, or expedient to make combative ones. It would seem that the supreme cause of the shipwreck was the practical consideration that nowadays civil governments, "which form an essential element in such matters," oppose ecclesiastical laws, instead of taking charge of their execution. The official historian, however, is of opinion that the failure of this first attempt to indite a code of ecclesiastico-political law is not final. A time, he thinks, may come when it can be renewed, with hope of success—a declaration full of instruction as to the future. The time for renewing the attempt to prepare such a code will, according to the Archbishop of Florence,

arrive when this rapid and ceaseless movement, political and social, going on under our eyes, and making us daily spectators of great and often of unlooked-for events, shall have reached its ultimate period, to which will certainly succeed (unless the last days succeed) an entirely new era in the history of the human species. When that day comes, I know not what portion of the old institutions will remain standing; but sure I am that one of them will have survived, though peradventure externally bruised and lacerated. She alone will be mistress of the field that day, and the princes (if indeed the sound of that name will still be heard), but certainly the nations, having then, after long and cruel experience, made up their minds that out of her there is no well-being, either in this life or beyond the tomb, will demand from her the laws of tranquil repose, together with the earnest of eternal happiness (p. 301).

This language is the more significant as having been written since the war in 1870, and even since the outbreak in Germany of imperial resistance to the movement for priestly domination. With regard to princes, it seems to breathe the threat which was screeched out by the Jesuit organs in 1869 and 1870, that if they were not to sink in the coming struggle, they must make peace with the Church.

[Pg 350]

As to the nations and the laws of the Church, it adroitly represents the nations, not as submitting to receive the law at her dictation, but as demanding from her the laws which give repose. The ever-recurring alternative of submission or disturbance, if not destruction, is smoothly but gravely put. Still, the historian seems as if he wrote thus rather by official duty than by personal impulse. But, like all the "inspired" writers, he takes it for granted that the Church holds the "repose" of nations in her power. Cardinals count on the effect of thorns planted in the pillows of statesmen. They know how to teach principles that form a people within the nation ready to obey a foreign word of command, and they know how and when to give the word. They always—so say men in Italy—know how to find an Ahithophel, and how a Delilah!

Fears were often expressed lest an attempt should be made on December 28 to carry Papal infallibility by acclamation. The bishops, however, seem to have had backbone enough to determine upon a formal protest should this occur. Friedrich tells how those dignitaries who make little of denouncing the laws of their respective countries were very anxious in Rome to find some mode of giving expression to their complaints and desires without printing, which in the Model State they durst not do.

He also states that on the day before the opening of the discussion the Pope was greatly depressed. It may have been a diplomatic depression. What bishop could be so heartless as to make speeches that would weigh on the spirit of the Holy Father, and in fact to call in question Draft Decrees prepared by his authority and proposed in his name? What bishop, by obstructing their adoption, could occasion a risk that the day fixed by Decree for the second session should arrive without any Decree being ready? One of Friedrich's statements, which, before Cecconi published, seemed the most improbable of all, was that Cardinal Bilio, the President of the Preparatory Commission on Dogma, had reckoned on the Draft being carried with scarcely any discussion. Much as we knew of the displacement of the idea of conviction by that[Pg 351] of submission, this statement seemed too monstrous. But the Archbishop of Florence appears unconscious of anything strange in the case. If Italian novelists and journalists, with whom the indifference of the national mind to religion is a favourite idea, had combined to give an illustration of that indifference, they could hardly have invented anything so expressive. A Cardinal taking it for granted that seven hundred bishops could hastily adopt for ever as doctrine binding upon themselves, their successors, and their Churches, a considerable work, every single phrase of which any serious man would weigh before he accepted it for his own creed, but would weigh ten times more carefully before he imposed it upon others—before he took it upon his soul to curse all who did not accept it, and to declare them cut off from the kingdom of God! Yet it is plain that not only Bilio, but the Curia generally, expected the passing of the Draft as almost a matter of course. In their minds the idea of submission to the Papal authority had first displaced, and then completely replaced, the idea of religious conviction.

The first Vatican Decree passed after the Council had been declared open, fixed the feast of Epiphany (January 6) as the day of the second session, in the expectation that this Draft, or a portion of it, would by that time have been adopted. But, like the first Vatican appointment, the first Vatican Decree had been not ratified in heaven. The Civiltá said (VII. ix. 227), "As the discussion on the Draft proposed is not terminated, no Decrees will be published in the second session." The Acta Sanctae Sedis curtly wrote, "No Decree was published because none was ready."[246]

Meantime the relative attitudes of the Council and of the Catholic governments had become more clearly defined. Following France, and rejecting the view of Bavaria and Portugal, the governments had determined not to interfere. Portugal had sent to her minister his credentials as ambassador to the Council, but finding that he should be alone, Count Lavradio did not present them. France, which for the last ten[Pg 352] years had been abused by the Papal organs, was now loudly praised. Even M. Veuillot said that she was more liberal and more Christian than the other nations, for her bayonets were at Civitá Vecchia to restrain the violence of the Italians, and God would not forget it to her. True, French statesmen every now and then did show some apprehension as to what might come to pass if every child in France should learn in his catechism that the Pope was infallible, and if most of them should grow up under teachers who would gently show how the Modern State rebelled against the divine constitution of the world as implied in that fundamental truth, for the government of the nations. It was even said that Darboy plainly declared that should infallibility be proclaimed, the French troops would no longer remain in the Papal States. However that might have been, all that fell from the inspired pens was pervaded with quiet reliance on France. It seemed as if the writers believed that, just then, events depended more on one Spanish lady, in the Tuileries, than on all the Frenchmen in Paris and the departments.

It cannot be said that the compliance with the wishes of the Curia shown by politicians, was repaid by a milder attitude. The new Bull, technically called Apostolicae Sedis, popularly called the new In Coena Domini, was menacing. The grave Civiltá (VII. ix. 134) said—

Whom would the people obey? God and the Church, or the State?... As it is evident that the Church assembled in Council can only repeat, and that more strongly than ever, that as between God and men, as between the Church and the State, obedience is to be rendered to God and the Church instead of to man and the State, and as it is evident that in Catholic and civilized countries, in spite of all the efforts of sects, respect for the Church endures, and increases, while all respect for States and governments diminishes, it is clear that the Liberals, who are dominant almost everywhere, tremble at the Council, which is bound to proclaim more loudly than ever, We must obey God rather than men.

Even the little review at the Villa Borghese set M. Veuillot reflecting on the restoration of that "Christian order" which[Pg 353] consists in the due submission of the natural to the supernatural order—

If we only think that the Council has to re-establish the Christian order without restoring the ancient aristocracy, irremediably fallen, and has to replace the social laws in a position where property and liberty shall be freed from the grasp of democracy, which is no more than an administrative aristocracy, we shall conclude that the task is not a trifle, and that the seed to be sown is not of a kind to ripen in a day.

In most Papal countries, indeed, the ancient aristocracy has fallen, and, much as priests like titles and stars in their train, they like broad acres still better, and legislative power even better still. Even when barons held lands in fief under prince-bishops and abbots, they were frequently tempted to insubordination. And in the Model State, the career open to a lord was as nearly as possible that which in our chaotic state is open to a lady. So, the aristocracy were not to be restored. But in the new Christian order both freedom and property were to be taken out of the hands of the democracy. This had been well done in the states of the Church, and partly done elsewhere, in the middle ages. In the formula, "The Pope and the People," people does not, we repeat, mean democracy, but subject populace, with a ruling priesthood and nobody to come between priest and mob. Matters would be greatly simplified if both an aristocracy and an administrative democracy were removed out of the way. But, true to the far-aiming plans of the school, M. Veuillot was thinking of the seed-time, knowing that the harvest was as yet far off. When the prize is no less than the supremacy of the world, a year may well be counted for a day.

M. Veuillot, alluding to those profane creatures the correspondents of worldly newspapers, said he had had to do with government spies, but Press spies made him respect the former. The Press spies detested respectable men, seeming to think that they spoiled the profession, and prevented it from enjoying all the hatred and contempt it merited (i. 33). M. Veuillot could afford to assume this attitude. The Univers[Pg 354] was sanctified by the Pope's blessing, and certified by his brief. This high-caste scribe had not, however, said a word about the device by which the election of committees had been carried, though he gloried in the choice of men. He had not mentioned the electoral tickets, nor alluded to the prohibition of collective meetings of the French bishops, nor to the petition sent in by some of their number for a few morsels of liberty. He had, however, told the faithful that none of the bishops had any desire to be put on the committees, and that a prelate from South America, on finding himself elected, wept and said, "What do you mean? I am not fit. I know nothing." Writing on January 20, after the division of parties had become clearly defined, M. Veuillot said that should an Opposition group be formed, as some feared would be the case, it would only be small, and would be rather outside of the Council than in it. "Outside," said a bishop to me yesterday, "there is some room for the spirit of man; inside there will be no room for anything but the Spirit of God; and though unanimity is by no means necessary, it will nevertheless seldom fail." It was, at this time, still hoped that the "pontifical secret" would leave no chink by which the tenor of the debates could leak out. "How," exclaims M. Veuillot, "will this assembly be able to distribute its incalculable labours, and carry them to an end? Immense questions arise on all sides. It is the human species that has to be set in march. Nature feels its infirmity." Still, it will prove, he asserts, that the Council can more easily make decrees for centuries, than modern governments can make constitutions to last a few months.

An address to the Holy Father, from the Society of Catholic Italian youth having its headquarters in Bologna, declared that in answer to the infernal fury of the enemies of the sacred Council, they protested their resolution to obey its Decrees as the holy gospel, as the decrees of God Himself, and to defend its disciplinary acts as the acts of God Himself. In conclusion, they call the Pope, among other titles, the living Peter, the infallible mouth of the Church and of Christ Him[Pg 355]self, the Vicar of God, "whose word for us and the Catholic universe is the truth of God which endureth for ever."[247] A strong force of equally well-trained youths in every country would do something to give substance to the dream of universal empire, by a Crusade of St. Peter.

To say that the Civiltá and the Unitá Cattolica contradicted nearly all the facts reported by the journals of Europe, would be a tame statement of the case. They not only gave the lie, but did so with all sorts of aggravating epithets. The Italian papers were most belied, because they, feeling no respect for the men of the Curia, did not care to put on any, but tore off false covers relentlessly, and even with mockery. According to an ordinary Italian saying, respect for the Curia begins outside the walls of Rome, and increases in proportion to distance. Still, the French, German, and English papers, though more respectful—the last, in comparison, deferential—were denounced as lying and lying again. This went smoothly till the lie-givers descended to particulars. Even then it answered, to some extent, till time brought facts to the test. Now, it is sad to look at these contradictions, and compare them with documents registered in the same pages, or with facts which even there are no longer disputed. Any one who wants a lesson in the art of giving the lie may go to an article in the Civiltá (VII. ix. p. 327), and succeeding ones. After studying them an Englishman would be more charitable to Romans when they say that if the Jesuits contradict a thing well, they begin to think it must be true. But he would discover that, under an apparent contradiction, there is often preserved a possibility of saying that there was no real one. A statement has been made containing one main fact, which was perfectly true, but with two or three accidental appendages, some one of which was not true, and the whole is treated as false. For instance, the whole tale of Nardi dismissing the German prelates is to appearance ridiculed, because one journal says that Nardi had made a secret door, at which he played the eavesdropper. Of course it was an[Pg 356] Italian journal—La Nazione—which thought that a probable action for a monsignore of the Curia.

The Nuova Antologia, a review of high standing in Italy, published articles on the Council, which formed the basis of Vitelleschi's book. The Civiltá assigned them to Salvatore de Renzi, spoke of them as being not more inaccurate than others, and after general charges came to particulars. The author's "want of reflection" appeared in his supposing that though abbots and generals of orders both had seats, only the former had votes. Moreover, he had said that in the sessions the Fathers always wore the read pluvial and mitre; whereas in the first two sessions they had worn the white ones, and the statement as to the mitre was falsissimo, as false as could be, for in Rome, and in the presence of the Pope, they always wore one of white silk or cloth. When all Catholics were in serious excitement, when they knew that hands were laid on their creed to alter it for them and their children, it was such matters as the above which weighed upon the minds of the Jesuits, and justified outcry against men who strove to get and give some little information.

The first article of professed intelligence in the Civiltá after the Council had really got to work, spoke of giving only the external news, which was what all the "good Press" professed to give. What it gave was indeed external. A person turning to these official pages in hope of learning what he would have to believe by-and-by, found paragraphs about "clothes" (VII. ix. 99). "We have told our readers of the vestments worn by the Fathers in the public session. They will be pleased to have a translation of the notice appointing the ceremony to be observed in the Congregations"—the ceremony meaning the ceremonial garments. The men who were undertaking to change for the priests and people the conditions of their membership in the Church, to revolutionize their relations with their neighbours and even with their nations, were yet persuaded that while all this was going on, priests and people must be thinking of how the gowns of the Fates were dyed, and not of what threads they were spinning. So,[Pg 357] with conscientious exactness, the faithful were informed that the Most Reverend and Most Eminent Lords the Cardinals would wear the red and violet mozzetta and mantelletta over the rochet; and the Most Reverend Patriarchs the violet mozzetta and rochet, etc., etc., etc.

A touching incident of private life came to soften the feelings of the Fathers on the eve of the struggle. The son of De Maistre, the champion of the pen, and the daughter of Lamoricière, the champion of the sword, had, four months previously, been married. "Two such fair names," exclaims M. Veuillot—yes, two stately figures, bending in vain to stay a falling oak. The young wife was smitten with death, and the widow of the hero could only reach Rome in time to close her daughter's eyes. The whole city united in sorrowing over the mingled tears of the houses of De Maistre and Lamoricière. Noble Lamoricière! During the four dreadful days of June, 1848, in Paris, his chivalrous sword formed a shield behind which thousands sat in safety. None who were of the number, as we were, can ever without gratitude think of him, or of the stainless Cavaignac.

[Pg 358]

CHAPTER IV

First open Collisions of Opinion—Pending Debate—Fear of an Acclamation—Rauscher opens—Kenrick—Tizzani—General discontent with the Draft—Vacant Hats—Speaking by Rank—Strossmayer—No permission to read the Reports, even of their own Speeches—Conflicting Views—Petitions to Pope from Bishops—Homage of Science—Theism.

The moment had come at last when it was to be seen whether the parliamentary proceedings of a discussion suspended in the Catholic society for three hundred years, was actually to be revived; or whether the bishops, justifying the confidence in their gravity and wisdom which the Curia would fain have cherished, would now set the world an example of magnifying authority, by adopting the all-comprehensive dogma of Papal infallibility by acclamation, without running the risk of any debate. That once done, minor points would settle themselves, whether in the Council or out of it. The fears of a scheme to organize an acclamation were strong, not to say feverish. Cardinal Schwarzenberg wrote, "In case a demonstration is attempted for an acclamation, a formal counter demonstration is already provided for."[248] Before the commencement of the sitting, Cardinal De Luca, now Senior President, gave an assurance that no acclamation would be attempted; adding, however, that he could only give the pledge for that one sitting. Strossmayer, relating this fact the next day, in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe, added that, should it be attempted hereafter, the bishops of the minority would put in a protest, in the name of Christ, of the Church, of their rights, of their people, and of sound reason.[249]

[Pg 359]

Lord Acton's picture of the scene before the sitting is more distinct than that of the other writers. It is Darboy whom he describes as demanding an assurance that there would be no acclamation. When the promise for the first sitting was coupled with a statement that there could be no guarantee for the future, he said a hundred bishops were resolved, in case that proceeding was resorted to, that they would leave Rome, and "carry the Council away in their shoes."[250]

The uncertainty which had hung over everything but dress was so great that some prelates had prepared their votes, thinking that, owing to the determination to have some Decree ready for promulgation at Epiphany, a division would be pressed on that day.[251]

In print, the tribune, or desk, prepared for the Council, is a laudable specimen of Roman art. To look at, it is what we must call a commonplace pulpit. It was carried from place to place—more than one writer says, carried all round the hall—to try to find a spot in which it would be possible for a speaker to be heard. When the desk was at last fixed, two priests, as reporters, took their place in front of it.[252] Cardinal Rauscher, Archbishop of Vienna, was the first who ascended. Behind him he saw his own achievement—that Concordat by which he had secured for Rome the abolition in Austria of the Josephine Laws. Before him lay the Draft of Decrees, for the most part, as it was believed, the handiwork of Schrader, whom he had himself installed as a professor in the University of Vienna, and who was doubtless a fit man to make it what it was—a dogmatic reflection of the earliest portions of the Syllabus. The sagacity of Rauscher told him that the success of these proposed Decrees would be the doom of the Concordat. Hence, he rose, not to support the theology of his nominee, but to save his own diplomatic achievement.

So the discussion opened with a brilliant address, as Friedrich calls it, delivered in the round, rough Latin pronunciation of the Germans. Darboy soon left the hall, saying that it was undignified to sit professedly listening to speeches[Pg 360] which one could not make out. What with the mocking of the echoes and what with the pronunciation foreign to all but Germans, none could understand but the few in whose favour combined all the advantages of keen ears, a good position, and some familiarity with German intonation.

All that we know of the discourse of Cardinal Rauscher has become known in spite of the silence of every official organ; and it amounts to no more than the fact that he opposed the Draft Decrees with firmness and ability. The strict Church régime assured by his Concordat to Austria had not been followed by the halcyon days which such a régime was said to guarantee. Loud complaints were made that the moral statistics of Vienna, previously very bad, had, under the new law of marriage, become worse. However that might be, there was no doubt that under the Concordat Austria had undergone both Solferino and Sadowa. If, after all this, new fetters were to be forged, Rauscher was well aware that the chain would snap.

After Cardinals, Archbishops! So the Irish-Latin of Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, succeeded to the German-Latin of Rauscher. The voice from the Mississippi joined that from the Danube in making light of the theological performance of Rome. The next who followed was Tizzani, nominally Archbishop of Nisibis, really Chaplain-General of the Papal army. A blind old man, he did not mount the desk, but, speaking from his place, he was the first who gave forth the Latin in the clear, full pronunciation, which must be nearer to the natural one than the others. He said that the Draft was words, words, and nothing but words. Three other Italians followed on the same side. It was still the turn of the Archbishops; and Connolly, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, closed the discussion of the day. There are two versions of his concluding innuendo. One is, that the Draft was to be honourably interred; and the other, that it was not to be amended but erased. Cum honore esse sepeliendum ... non esse reformandum censeo sed delendum. Fourteen names had been entered, but when seven had spoken, it was one o'clock, and the weary work of attempt[Pg 361]ing to hear was brought to an end. The old men had been already four hours in the hall.

The Giornale di Roma and the Civiltá gave the names of the speakers, but not a syllable of information as to what they said. The same course was taken by all the "good Press." It professed to give information only of the exterior of the Council. Even the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, in its Latin veil, does not utter a hint of what view any speaker took. It does, indeed, say that no one replied to observations for, against, or beside the proposals of the Decree, thus confirming the common remark that there was no real debate.[253] Among all the charges of lying, shameless lying, lurid lying, and so on, brought against the lay Press, we do not remember any attempt to contradict the particulars circulated as to this day's proceedings, unless indeed it be Cardinal Manning's general treatment of all that had been said respecting an intention to get up an acclamation, as ridiculous rumours.

Cardinal Bilio, as President of the Commission on Dogma, from which the Draft had emanated, would naturally be, as Friedrich says he was, downcast; and we may well believe the same witness, that the Cardinals generally were disconcerted. On the other hand, Cardinal Schwarzenberg said, "It has gone excellently"; and Archbishop Scherr, of Munich, thought that it was as if one had heard "the rushing of the wings of the Holy Ghost"—one of the expressions in which that sacred name was often lightly taken during the Council, and which, from hints found elsewhere, seems to have fallen on this occasion also from other lips. Strossmayer was by no means so elated, knowing that the Curia was in a position to hold its own.

This discussion raised the spirits of the minority, and filled them for a while with illusory hopes. It seemed as if the one liberty left, that of making Latin speeches, might turn to great account. Meanwhile, according to Lord Acton, speculation ran on the possible effects of fifteen vacant hats, which were supposed to have the power of doing wonders, and which[Pg 362] the genuine Romans would certainly expect to turn episcopal heads in whatever direction they might happen to be held. Darboy said, "I have not a cold in the head: I do not want a hat."

Quirinus points out the bearing of such multiplication of anathemas as was aimed at in the Draft on the ascendancy of the Jesuits. These anathemas would supply abundant matter for accusation, and so enable the Jesuits to keep men belonging to other orders in constant fear of being charged with heresy. This would tend to make other theologians dependent upon their order. He adds, moreover, that if the Draft Decrees should be passed, scarcely any professors of Old Testament exegesis would escape the charge of heresy.

Two days later the debate was resumed. The archbishops were still in possession; but after one more of them had spoken came the turn of the bishops. Rank carried it against the rule that in council all are equal. Athanasius the deacon, and Constantine the layman, were both outside the door. And outside the door were also the "presbyters" who alone at Nicæa represented Rome. Unity had come to mean a sharp separation of the Church into the Teaching Church and the Learning Church. The Teaching Church consisted of the Pope and bishops; the Learning Church consisted of priests and people.

Those who desired to speak entered their names at least one day beforehand; and of those so entered Cardinals spoke first, Patriarchs next, then Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals, according to their grade.

The first bishop who rose was Strossmayer. As he had before attempted to speak upon the Rules, so did he now attack the heading of the Decree, namely, the formula "Pius IX., with the approbation of the Council," instead of the Tridentine formula, "This Sacred Council decrees." He was called to order by Cardinal De Luca. That point, he ruled, was not to be discussed, for it had been settled in the Rules of Procedure, and also in the form used in the opening session. No one supported Strossmayer in his objection, and, in point of form, the President was doubtless right. The bishops had allowed their birth[Pg 363]right to be taken away, and it was now too late to reclaim it. True, if they had been united, they might have alleged that the taking of it away had been done both violently and stealthily; but still, it had been done before their eyes.

Strossmayer's speech gave to modern Rome a sensation strange to her, though familiar to ancient Rome—the feeling caused by the echoes of impassioned reasoning in favour of freedom. And this time it was freedom commended by the voice of a bishop! The degree of freedom advocated was, indeed, only such as anywhere else would have been a minimum. The reports given of the eloquence of the speaker were exciting, and it would appear that even those of opponents were often laudatory. Lord Acton gives the following passage—

What do we gain by condemning what has been already condemned? What end is promoted by proscribing errors which we know to have been already proscribed? The false doctrines of sophists have vanished like ashes before the wind. They have corrupted many, I confess, and infected the spirit of the age. But can we believe that the contagion of corruption would not have taken effect had errors of this sort been smitten down with anathema, by Decree? We have no means given to us beyond cries and prayers to God, whereby to defend and conserve the Catholic religion, but those of Catholic science in complete agreement with the faith. The heretics assiduously cultivate science unfriendly to the faith, and therefore true science friendly to it should be cultivated among Catholics, and advanced by every effort. Let us stop the mouth of opponents, who cease not falsely to impute to us that the Catholic Church represses science, and restrains all free thought, so that within her bounds neither science nor any liberty of intellect can flourish or exist. Further, it has to be shown, and that both by words and deeds, that in the Catholic Church there exist true liberty for the nations, true progress, true light, and true prosperity.[254]

This proposal to fight thought only with thought, and to allow institutions to be tested by their fruits, was well fitted for any soil where the Bible was the statute-book, but was untenable ground in Rome. The excitement was great.

Ketteler embraced Strossmayer as he came down. Senestrey,[Pg 364] on the other hand, stated that he had said things for which he must have been called to order in any assembly. Dinkle said he had spoken on his own account, and showed no inclination to share risks with him.

The first French prelate who came to the desk was Ginoulhiac, of Grenoble, who also spoke against the Draft. What he then said we know not. What he had just previously published under his own hand we do know. Resisting the idea of an acclamation, he said—

To insist upon dispensing with previous examination, because of the immense importance of the question, or because the subject of the question was that which in the Church is greatest, would be not merely to depart from the practice of all ages, but it would also be to commit a most serious error, and to awaken in all grave minds just suspicions of the decision which might be arrived at. In past times nothing was so feared as the appearance of not devoting to important decisions sufficient time, and of not giving sufficient satisfaction even to the minds of the prejudiced (p. 43).

Speaking of the liberty essential to a real Council, he had said (p. 46)—

Little does it matter whether the liberty of deliberation and of vote be violated in one way or another, whether by fear or by guile, whether the violence exerted is physical or moral; so soon as liberty is gravely hampered, the Church no longer recognizes herself as truly represented.

Friedrich tells how Strossmayer, the day before, had said that he would write out his speech and send it in; for the reporters were so unskilful that their manuscripts were of little use. But we do not see how he could do more than guess what their reports were. At the same time (it was in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe), he said that now, since he had been in Rome, he could understand how both the Reformation and the Greek Schism had originated. It was in his view a real crime for the Pope to claim to be the successor of Christ instead of the successor of Peter; the way in which bishops were driven was, he added, inconceivable, when one remembered that it was they that kept up the dignity of the Pope, and prepared the minds of the people to acknowledge it.

[Pg 365]

A prelate of different views was he to whom Friedrich had said that, in order to understand the events of the Council, one must read the Civiltá, further adding that had he been Prince Hohenlohe in Bavaria, he would have answered the Civiltá by expelling the Jesuits from Regensburg. "They are innocent people," said the Bishop. "Individually," replied the Professor, "they may be innocent people, but they represent an order which propagates doctrine dangerous to the State." He tells also how it was found that the French, German, Austro-Hungarian, and American bishops had an International Committee of three; but that the Pope, regarding this as savouring of Nationalism, and of a revolutionary spirit, forbade it. Lord Acton (p. 52) mentions another prohibition scarcely less significant, namely, that the printed Rules of Procedure of the Council of Trent were, with the utmost strictness, withheld from the members of the Vatican Council. These rules, and the real minutes of that Council, had at that time never been published, and only saw the light in 1874, by the private efforts of Theiner. Of course, the Decrees and Canons had long been before the world. Among the many denials we do not remember any attempt to deny this specific allegation. An argument could be easily constructed, on the principle now accepted, to prove that it was no interference with liberty to deprive the bishops of the physical possibility of informing themselves of the extent of rights which they had inherited from their predecessors at the latest General Council.

Lord Acton says that one effect of the determination to keep the discussions secret was that it led the bishops to express themselves more strongly than they would have done had they expected their words to be read at home and conned over by Protestants. At the same time, much leaked out. All agree that the inhabitants of Rome took little interest in the discussions, while, in the religious aspect of the question, the Italians generally took scarcely any; and this indifference reacted on the interest they might have taken in its political aspects. They committed the error of despising their enemy. Knowing the men and their communications, they allowed[Pg 366] their own estimate of the worth of priests to affect their calculation as to their influence.

There is a well accredited story of Lord Acton going to Florence, full of the burning questions which were to affect the future of every Roman Catholic. Dining with a relation in the very centre of the political circle, and meeting several members of the Cabinet, he naturally expected to find them taking some interest in the cosmopolitan politics then under treatment by the Senate of Humanity, the Supreme Legislature of the Human Species. But the Italians were buried in some passing question of grist, or the like, and had no ear for the principles which were to shape the future of nations. They saw little in the proceedings more than that the Pundits of an expiring caste were passing resolutions to adjourn the nineteenth century and to conserve the eleventh.

German and English Catholics were not capable of thus treating principles as husks. Whether Fallibilists or Infallibilists, they knew that the destiny of that Society, which both agreed to call "The Church," was now at stake, and that, at least, the repose of nations, if not their destiny, was also implicated. The Liberal Catholics, holding that the attempt to restore a theocracy would only lead to wars, and that humanity would avenge itself on the Papacy for again fomenting bloodshed, hoped that somehow God would save the Church from the blindness of the Curia. The Catholics, on the other hand, equally aiming at ultimate peace, and even regaling their imaginations with a vision of millennial repose, so soon as all nations should have accepted the Vicegerent of God as the representative of Christ Himself, were in the meantime profoundly convinced that the only way to obtain that repose was through the very conflict from which their faint-hearted brethren shrank.

The Infallibilists could not harbour the idea of the Church failing in the struggle. That was to them like supposing that the gates of hell should prevail. To the Liberal Catholics the Jesuits were conspiring against humanity and all its franchises. To the Jesuits, on the other hand, the Liberal Catholics seemed[Pg 367] to be risking the loss of such an opportunity as might never recur, of putting the Church in a position to constrain governments to accept the principles by which alone nations could be saved. Therefore did they look upon any shrinking from the struggle as indicating worldly fear rather than foreseeing care for the Church. If Liberal Catholics looked upon the Jesuits as conspiring against humanity, the Jesuits looked upon the Liberal Catholics as agitators against divine authority. No wonder that in such a state of feeling, what Lord Acton describes took place, "The word-war of the hall was always fought over and over again outside, with the addition of anecdotes, epigrams, and inventions."

It was on Sunday, January 2, that two petitions were sent in to the Pope. The first was signed by forty-three prelates, headed by Cardinals Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, and the Primate of Hungary.[255] This was no Bill of Rights, not containing even a challenge of that exercise of prerogative which it sought partially to relax. The privileges for which two princes and forty-one magnates petitioned, "prostrate at thy feet," were—

(1) That the Fathers might be distributed into, say, six groups, in which Draft Decrees could be considered in the principal living languages before being brought on for discussion in Latin, in the General Congregation. (2) That speeches delivered in the General Congregation might be printed for the exclusive use of the members of the Council, and under the same bond of secrecy as that under which the Draft Decrees were communicated to them. (3) That the Draft Decrees on faith and discipline might all as soon as possible be laid in a connected form before the Fathers, and should not any longer be presented, as hitherto, piecemeal. (4) That the Fathers, after having in the vernacular meetings considered the Draft Decrees, might be allowed to send a couple of delegates from each group to the committee to represent their views. (5) That the Fathers might be allowed to print, in addition to speeches delivered in the General Congregation, writings in which questions could be treated more thoroughly; these however to be printed subject to the same bond of secrecy as the Draft Decrees. (6) "Prostrate at thy feet, we crave the apostolic benediction for ourselves and the faithful committed to us."

[Pg 368]

We do not know that even the last of the six things here prayed for was granted, for the petition never received an answer. These dignitaries clearly state to their royal master the grounds on which they petitioned for some of the elementary rights of human creatures. They say that Decrees cannot be really sifted by speaking a dead language in an assembly of seven hundred persons from all parts of the world, unless, first, in companies speaking living languages, the Fathers have had the opportunity of examining their contents. And further, that however well acquainted with Latin all might be, there were many prelates who did not speak it. Moreover, the petitioners, admitting that the Council Hall was admirable as being so near the tomb of St. Peter, state that in the first General Congregation, though some of the speakers had excellent voices, not one of them could make himself heard by all. Even since changes had been effected, the greater part of the members could not hear all the speakers. Another of their points is this: Although men well worthy of confidence—viri fide dignissimi—had assured them that the reports of the speeches should be distributed to the Fathers in print, so that they might read what they had not been able to hear, "in this hope we have been disappointed."

They appeal thus to their master, "Most Blessed Father, by thine excelling wisdom, wilt thou perceive that, as the Fathers can neither hear what is spoken, nor read it, proper consultation is not possible."[256] They go on to urge that even if the discussions were held in a place where men with the weakest voices could be heard, it would still be desirable that the members should be in a position to look over what had been advanced in successive sittings. "Matters of weightiest moment," they add, "are being treated, and frequently the addition, omission, or change of a single word may adulterate the sense." If, say they, the Fathers had the opportunity of explaining their views in writing, they could lay many things before their fellow members which could not be brought into speeches. As to obtaining an understanding of the proposals, they urged that,[Pg 369] in questions of doctrine, one thing so connects itself with another, and discipline is so much affected by doctrine, that they are not in any position to give a judgment on Draft Decrees, obviously forming but part of a scheme, while as yet other parts of it are kept from their knowledge. The relation between the unknown parts and the parts before them is an element in any judgment to be formed.

The second petition, dated on the same Sunday,[257] was signed by twenty-six prelates, including several of those who had signed the other, and a few additional ones, such as Kenrick of St. Louis. Cardinal Rauscher did not sign it, but Cardinal Schwarzenberg did. It set out by indirectly asserting more in principle than the other; but it ended by asking less in practice. It seemed both to assume the right of proposition on the part of the prelates, and to imply that the taking of it away would deserve blame; but it had not the courage to say that it had been taken away. Those are not wanting, say the petitioners, who interpret the Rules as not recognizing the right of the Fathers to propose in the Council what they may think conducive to the public good, but as conceding it only exceptionally and as a matter of grace. This may be a diplomatic way of indicating what the Rules said without confessing the fact that they did say it. But what they did say was too plain for any such finesse. The prayer of the petition is confined to two points: that some members of the Commission on Proposals should be elected by the Committee, and that the authors of proposals should have access to the committees, and thus have some part in the treatment of the particular matter in which they were interested.

These petitions say more than all the assertions of the much contradicted Liberal Catholics about the want of freedom in the Council, and the want of the old spirit of bishops in the men who composed it. According to Friedberg, the first of the two was drawn up by Cardinal Rauscher (xli.). No name of an English, Irish, or Colonial prelate is attached to either petition. Nearly all the names are those of Germans and Hungarians,[Pg 370] the only American one being that of Kenrick. His signature proves that the English-speaking group knew of the petitions, and the absence of all other names belonging to that group would seem to indicate that members of the hierarchy from America, the British Isles, and our Colonies did not approve of bishops of their Church being entrusted with such extensive liberties as those for which their brethren petitioned. It is pretty certain that the American archbishop who signed this petition was not one of the prelates who told the Archbishop of Westminster that their Congress was not freer than the Council. Do senators and members of the House prostrate themselves at the feet of the President, petitioning for leave to meet in a place where they can hear and be heard, for leave to read reports of one another's speeches, and for leave to print memoranda—for leave even to elect a few members of a committee which decides what may and what may not be recommended to the President, to be proposed should he approve of it? If they do not, we must only believe that America sends some citizens to Europe whose information as to the institutions of their country is not to be relied upon. Did Ginoulhiac, whose observations on the necessity of perfect freedom in a Council we have lately seen, consider legislators free who had to petition for such things? Outside of the number of Cardinals resident in Rome, could even a Cardinal have been found beforehand to assert that liberty would not be gravely hampered, in any legislative assembly, whenever those who were called legislators were compelled to indite petitions such as we have described? We doubt if even a resident Cardinal would beforehand have dared in terms to deny that when, in a professed Council, liberty is gravely hampered, the Church does not recognize herself as represented. Now, it is easy to turn the point of all such arguments. Peter the Infallible has only to say what rights James and John, Thomas and Paul shall enjoy, and in exercising them they possess all the freedom that God has been pleased to grant to them.

The allusion in the petition to the ease with which the sense of a speech may be altered seems like a remark of Strossmayer,[Pg 371] quoted by Friedrich, that reports which were under no check but that of the Curia, and which even the speakers themselves were not allowed to inspect, could not be of any use. To this Friedrich adds, How much would the weight of the remark have been increased after an incident on July 9, "when the majority of the Council, and a committee of the Council, did not scruple formally to deceive the minority."

The prayer of the petitioners for a sight of the whole scheme, as prepared, before they should be called upon to erect part of it into irreformable Decrees, was doubtless caused in part by the obvious relation between the Drafts already brought to light and the Syllabus. That compendium was not mentioned any more than it had been in many other public instruments, but the first Draft fitted to its first sections, just as the Encyclical which accompanied its issue had done to the whole document. Notwithstanding its authority, its form made it of doubtful interpretation, and these Decrees aimed at giving statutory form to its sentences. An Index Schematum, or List of Drafts, had come to light,[258] which let the bishops see that what had hitherto been produced was but the first instalment of projected legislation covering all the ground occupied by the Syllabus. The first Draft treated only the philosophical and theological portion of the subjects; but how were the principles enunciated to be applied, when the sections on Church and State should be arrived at? The somewhat obscure teaching in the Draft on the elevation of man into the supernatural order, would, to mere politicians, look like theological nebulae, and, to mere theologians, like ill-digested divinity. To men versed in the esoteric dialect, it was clearly intended to prepare the way for the doctrine of the elevation of man by baptism above the control of civil law, in all that affects his loyalty to the supernatural order of the Church, whose Decrees had, by that regeneration, become his supreme statutes, her courts his supreme tribunals, and her priests his supreme magistrates. It was the dogmatizing of the principle which has already passed under our eye, that in baptism the subjects of the civil[Pg 372] power are changed. Another principle now habitually underlies that one, namely, that man by redemption through Christ is raised above the government of the natural order, and placed under that of Christ, through His Vicar. The studious among the Liberal Catholics knew that under the name of Naturalism their principles were condemned.

On the Monday following the day of the petitions, when the Congregation opened, after the prayers had been read, Cardinal De Luca rang the bell, and solemnly addressed the Fathers. Here, for once, we are able to give the very words that sounded in that hall of concealment, and this time not from an unofficial publication of official documents. It is the Acta Sanctae Sedis that now actually give us a speech. But it is a speech about the dead. The Cardinal is not so confident as to their happiness as were the writers of the Crusaders of St. Peter respecting that of those who fell in the Crusade. But he presents the two forms of the Papal worship of and for the dead, which differs from both the Chinese and the Brahminical. We see the two sides of it—the patronage of the living by the dead, and the patronage of the dead by the living. The Cardinal said—

Most Reverend Fathers,—It is known to you that since the opening of the Œcumenical Vatican Council four Fathers have passed away by a death precious in the sight of the Lord, namely, the Most Eminent Charles Augustus de Reisach, Bishop of the Sabina and First President of the General Congregations; the Most Eminent Francis Pentini, Deacon of St. Mary in Portico; the Most Reverend Anthony Manastyrski, Bishop of Przémysl of the Latin rite; and the Most Reverend Bernardin Frascolla, Bishop of Foggia. The Christian virtues and the shining merits towards the holy Church of God and this Apostolic See, wherewith they were most largely adorned, inspire us with a sure and pleasant hope that their souls already enjoy rest eternal in the embrace of the Lord, and that in the presence of God they patronize our labours by their intercession. Since, however, human frailty is such that they may even now stand in need of our suffrages, let us not neglect earnestly to commend them to the divine mercy.

After this De Luca announced that in place of Reisach had been appointed Cardinal De Angelis. Thus one who, just before[Pg 373] the Council opened, knew, or professed to know, so little that he told Cardinal Hohenlohe that nothing was to be done beyond condemning the principles of 1789, but who had served the Curia by the device of an election ticket, took the first seat, in which elevation the Opposition saw the reward of service in the elections. Next was announced the appointment by the Pope of Cardinal Bilio as President of the Committee on Faith, and that of Cardinal Caterini as President of the Committee on Discipline. The committees were not allowed to choose their own chairmen, nor yet was the Council allowed to name the chairmen of its committees.[259] The next day, after Mass had been celebrated by Archbishop Manning, again had Cardinal De Luca to announce a death. It was that of the Bishop of Panama, a Dominican. The statement as to his sufferings here is plain. But as to his happiness hereafter, the full confidence felt in the case of the Crusaders, and the qualified confidence felt in the case of the two Cardinals, and of the two bishops whose deaths were reported with that of Cardinals, are both wanting. We have not here the "in peace" which in Rome, before priests learned to make a commerce of the dead, the poorest Christian wrote, it might be in the roughest scrawl, over the head of his wife or child; nor have we here the life and immortality whereof the light makes the happy believer "rejoice for a brother deceased." Eduardo Vasques was not a Crusader, and was not a Cardinal, and had not even the happiness of being reported dead in company with a Cardinal. He was but a bishop, and, without doubt, in the pains of purgatory; so De Luca just said that he had died last night, after great suffering, borne with exemplary patience. "Proper mortuary services will, as soon as possible, be performed. In the meantime, let us commend him to the mercy of God, both by the sacrifice of the Mass, and by other works of Christian charity."[260]

The day before the second session, a procession moved to the Vatican, of seventeen carriages, carrying seventeen deputations, each bearing an address, with signatures, in a richly bound[Pg 374] volume, for presentation to the Holy Father. These addresses conveyed that homage of science to the Pontiff the appeal for which has been already mentioned. The cultivators of science at the feet of Pius IX, and, The cultivators of science at the throne of the Holy Father, were the titles of articles in Catholic journals. The way was led by the deputation from the pontifical academy of the Immaculate, which had initiated this movement.

They were received in the Throne Room. A long address to the Pontiff was read. He sat, unmoved, to hear it. Then, "he lifted his eyes to heaven with an ineffable expression," and uttered a prayer that the sentiments conveyed in the address might spread among the multitudes of scientific men whose false science was ruining society. The Pope would quote Scripture, as he often tries to do; and his text was Captivantes intellectum vestrum in obsequium fidei—Taking your intellect captive to the obedience of the faith. Probably he was thinking of 2 Corinthians x. 5, "Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," where the Vulgate translates, "Every thought (νὁημα), every intellect." He then assured them that pride was the sin of the day, and that it was all a repetition of the original "I will not serve"—alluding to Satan's "Better reign in hell than serve in heaven." Cold men of science hearing this language from him who was striving to put all human honours, titles, and powers below his own, might think that some scientific test of his humility would not be amiss. The Pope rose, the savans knelt down, and he gave them the benediction.

Having then resumed his seat on the Throne, "Here I am," he said, familiarly; "here I am, to receive your gifts." There was a scientific test of their professions! The President of the Academy of the Immaculate advanced, presented his volume containing the address and signatures, and with it an elegant purse full of gold. The head of the next deputation followed, presented his volume and his purse of gold, and so on, until the seventeen had completed their offering. The Pope had a pleasant word for each. Then saying, "God grant that your[Pg 375] example may be followed by many," he closed the audience.[261] How different was it now from what it was when "science was the echo of the Pontiff," or even from what it was when Galileo had to face the Inquisition, and to argue with Bellarmine![262] At the latter moment, the two revolted tongues, German and English, with their smaller kinsmen, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, were unknown in the schools. Their libraries were yet to be. They had but lately received into them the source of their literary life—the Bible. But into them had the Bible come, not lapped in the languor of the cloister, but instinct with the life of a great revival.

Except a few northern schools, which had made themselves a name in the strife of the Reformation, all seats of learning on the Continent were on the side of the Pope. Now, how changed! Out of his own Model State, where were the universities canonically instituted? They had ceased to be. Meantime, the nations which at the Reformation were but emerging out of barbarism, had become learned in all the learning of the ancients and moderns. The two revolted tongues, German and English, had filled the world with a literature such as the Latin, even when Augurs and Pontiffs were called Cicero and Aurelius, had never known. The Portuguese, which had at one time promised to be the lingua franca of all the ports from Morocco to Japan, had given place, first, largely to the Dutch, then universally to the English. The Spanish and French, which had promised to divide between them North and South America, were sundered, and were both overshadowed by a dominating growth of English. That north-western tongue, cradled amid stern winds, was found by the Reformation as the rude but hardy dialect of some six or seven unlettered millions. Now it had become the wealthy and flexible, the noble and all-expressing speech of at least eighty millions. Thirty millions in Europe, with between forty and fifty millions[Pg 376] in America, called it, with a common family pride and a common family joy, their mother-tongue. In Australasia, a future Europe promised to call it her mother-tongue. In India it was teaching the pundit, in China the mandarin, in Japan the daimio, in Africa the Kaffir chief, the Negro freedman, and the merchant of the Nile. That single language had now more schools and colleges, more laboratories and institutes of research, more books and journals, more patronage and discussion of Art, than all the Papal languages put together. And as to the German, if the lack of equal liberty had reined the people in, while the effects of the Thirty Years' War, joined to those of the chronic splitting up into small States, had prevented their growth and expansion in a similar measure, they had, nevertheless, with huge and patient power, piled up a Titanic literature, and in many a movement in the higher march of intellect their banner led the van. Men of the Catholic schools of Germany so felt their own superiority to the science and literature of actual Rome, that the strokes of their contempt not unfrequently fell even on the reputed sages of the Curia, sometimes laid on in a fashion more scholastic than scholarly.

In the General Congregation of January 4, the Curia had the satisfaction of hearing, not only a diocesan bishop, but a German one, defend the Draft.[263] It was Bishop Martin, of Paderborn, to whose eminent qualities official writers bear loud testimony, though in the eyes of the Liberal Catholics he does not seem to be a prodigy. He blamed the manner in which the bishops had treated a document proposed by the Pontiff, which ought to have been handled with reverence, and rebuked such language as "to be erased." He desired the adoption of the Syllabus just as it stood. As the way to bring back the stray sheep to the Holy Father, he enjoined the recognition of his infallibility, which would reclaim Protestants. Both the expectation of Martin and Manning that the new dogma would facilitate the conversion of Protestants, and that of all the Ultramontane leaders that it would hasten the submission of governments to the Lord Paramount of the world, lose part[Pg 377] of their marvellousness when we find bishops like Bonjean proclaiming it as of great importance for the conversion of Hindus. Bishop David, of St. Brieuc, alluding to Martin's warning, said if he must not say that the Draft was to be erased, he would say that if it was dead let it rise again; but some bishop must breathe new life into it. Friedrich says that Cardinal Bilio was particularly hurt by this speech.

Bernardou, Archbishop of Sens, read a speech for Audu, the Patriarch of Babylon. The Chaldean solemnly pleaded against the levelling proceedings of Rome, maintained the ancient immunities of his Church, and ventured to throw out a warning against innovations, lest the Orientals should be altogether alienated. He afterwards received a message to repair to the Vatican, and to come unattended. About seven o'clock on that January night, the man of seventy-eight passed the Swiss guards, in their stripes and slashes of yellow, black, and red, with their halberds and their helmets, and while lonelily pacing the corridors, had time to remember how the house of the Inquisition stood over the way, and how utterly he was in the power of the King of the Vatican. It will be some time before what befell him comes to light.

Theiner, the celebrated Prefect of the Vatican Archives, had been long engaged, as was universally known, in preparing for publication the Acta of the Council of Trent. He had been arrested in this project. This was attributed to the instigation of the Jesuits. On January 4 Friedrich went to Theiner to beg permission to consult the Acta of Trent. "Theiner told me that he was now forbidden to let any one even see the Acta. All I could obtain from him was this—he showed me the piles of the copied documents in the distance" (p. 65). There is a picture for the days of an Œcumenical Council![264][Pg 378] The day following, another German on the banks of the Spree, was busy with the Council. To Bismarck the state of things so far was chaotic. "I should not think it wise," he says to Arnim, "for us to intermeddle in this misty chaos, where we do not yet see clearly enough to choose the right basis of operations." He sees that Rome may make aggressions, but rests in proud repose in the power of the nation to throw her back within her proper bounds. The continuance of peaceful relations is greatly to be desired, but it is not for the government to attempt to give a direction to the events of the Council. It can only cherish sympathy with the efforts of the German bishops, and, if they desire it, give them its support. Bismarck expressly declines to support by any diplomatic step the proposal for vote by nations. Such a step would involve a serious recognition of the pretensions of the Curia. We must, he says, hold ourselves aloof from the Council, and free to bring its conclusions to the bar of our laws. He, therefore, does not deem it wise to attempt a permanent united meeting of diplomatists, with a view to influence the Council. All that can be done is to encourage the German bishops, and to assure them that their rights will be maintained in their own country. But they must be made fully to understand that serious changes in the organization of the Church would compel the government to alter its relation to her, both in legislation and in administration.[265] Had Bismarck known all the plans of the five preceding years, and all the events that were to follow, it is doubtful if he could have taken a better course. And had his main object been to live at peace with Rome, and not merely to do the wisest thing for Germany, he could hardly have guarded more jealously against undue or premature interference.

[Pg 379]

CHAPTER V

The Second Public Session—Swearing a Creed never before known in a General Council—Really an Oath including Feudal Obedience.

The same tone of disappointment in which the Civiltá had said that as the discussion of the Draft was not concluded, no Decree would be promulged in the second session, pervaded the additional remark that the world would describe as a vain ceremony the recital of the creed with which it had been resolved to fill up the day. Writers of different shades, as if by concert, did describe it as a religious ceremony,—a mere ceremony, an empty ceremony, a vain ceremony, and a tedious ceremony.

So far from taking this session as a vain show, we take it for one of the most distinctive footmarks left in the deposits of history by the mammoth which we call the Papacy. Without contrivance of man—in contravention, indeed, of arrangements made with patient forethought—the Vatican Council was compelled, under guise of reciting a creed, to exhibit its bishops as if barons swearing allegiance to a prince in peril of losing his estates. The creed recited was one never before seen or heard of in any General Council. An apparent accident set the faith of the early Church, and the modern composite oath and creed, before the eye of history in a contrast sharper than any artist could have devised.

A cause similar to that which led to this day being employed in setting face to face the old creed and the new, had at Trent led to the act that formed the reverse of the medal. At Trent, on the day fixed for the third session, no Decree was ready for promulgation, just as none was ready at the Vatican on that fixed for the second.

Consequently, at Trent, after much reluctance, the Fathers,[Pg 380] rather than let the day appointed pass without a session, consented to fill up the time in doing what many of them felt would expose them to ridicule—in reciting the creed. Thus did they create an example which the Curia now followed. Two unforeseen accidents, linked together only by the association of precedent, led to the placing of the Catholic creed as it existed up to the Council of Trent, and the Romish creed as framed after Trent, side by side in a framework so impressive as to ensure the exhibition of the two in contrast to all ages.

At Trent the Fathers said that they would set forth as the firm and sole foundation, against which the gates of hell should not prevail, the creed used by the Roman Church, which was the principium, wherein "all who confessed Christ" of necessity concurred,—an expression which seems as if it was the last breath of catholicity on the lips of the Papal society. Another slight reminiscence of catholicity appears when it is said that the creed is given in the exact words in which it is read "in all churches,"—a terminology proper to apostolic pens, or to the lips of our glorified Lord, speaking to His servant John, when the word "churches" was the Christian vernacular, and "church" as a collective was rarely used, and only in the very largest sense possible.

Led by a way which they knew not, the Fathers at Trent set up a memorial of the faith of the Christian Churches as they found it in the creed. Led also by a way which they knew not, the Fathers at the Vatican set up an everlasting remembrance of what their predecessors at Trent had done with the faith.

The Cardinals arrived on the morning of the Epiphany, dressed in red; but they changed to the white proper to the day. Patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, abbots and generals of orders, were all in white, except the Orientals, who had never surrendered to the primacy of Rome on the sacred subject of vestments. The Pope entered the hall, as he had done at the first session, between Antonelli and Mertel.

After Mass, Dominicis-Tosti and Philip Ralli, the two Pro[Pg 381]moters of the Council; reverently drew nigh to the throne, and addressing the Pontiff, said:—

Inasmuch as, by ancient appointment of the Fathers, the sacred Councils of the Church have been wont to set the Confession of the Faith in the forefront of all their doings, as a buckler against every heresy, we, therefore, the Promoters of this Vatican Council, do humbly pray that profession of the Catholic faith in the form prescribed by thy predecessor of sacred memory, Pius IV, be made this day, in public session by all the Fathers of this Vatican Council.

The Pontiff replied, "We enjoin and command accordingly."

Then arose the sovereign from his throne, took off the sacred mitre, and, with loud and clear voice, recited for the first time in the history of man, as the belief of a General Council, the creed of Pius IV. Near the end of it, he came to the clause which swears obedience to the Roman Pontiff. This he omitted. The conclusion swears to maintain the faith just recited, and, as much as in the confessor lies, to enforce it "on all those committed to him." The Pope simply said to enforce it "upon all," and then he closed according to the regular form,—"I, Pius, promise, vow, and swear, so help me God, and these God's Holy Gospels."

Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop Valenziani, now came to the throne. The Pontiff handed to them the creed of Pius IV, just as he had handed his own Decrees at the first session. Valenziani, ascending the pulpit, recited it, in his own name and in that of all the Fathers. When he came to the portentous obedience clause, omitted by him who owes no account to man, tribunal, or nation, the bishop, read, "To the Roman Pontiff, successor of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience,"—as if it was an installation in a feudal order. No wonder that Canon Pelletier, writing in Frond (vol. vii. p. 170), should say that this act of homage, "in the circumstances of which all are aware, had an immense importance." Valenziani then concluded the form as the Pope had done, only, instead of enforcing obedience "upon all," it was "on all committed to him."

[Pg 382]

Patrizi, the Senior Cardinal present,[266] now rose, came to the throne, knelt, laid his hand on the volume of the Gospels, and lifting up his voice, said, "I, Constantine, Bishop of Porto and Rufina, promise, vow, and swear according to the form now read, so help me God, and these God's Holy Gospels"; and he kissed the book.

Then Cardinals and Patriarchs, one by one, after them Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Orders, in regular gradation of rank, first two and two, and, later, four and four,[267] came successively to the throne, and during the space of two hours, knelt down, laid the hand on the book, repeated the above words, each inserting his own name, kissed the book, and so swore allegiance to the King of the Vatican, under the form of a profession of the simple and loving faith of Christ. The two creeds, recited at Trent and in St. Peter's, are below, in parallel columns—the one representing what the Council of Trent found, and the other representing what it left. Future epochs will have to mark subsequent innovations. We put the clause forming the basis of the new dogmas in italics. The other italics are those given in Dr. Challoner's recension[268]:—

Among the seven hundred men who repeated this set of propositions, unknown to Holy Scripture, we may feel assured that there were not wanting some who as they approached the end of the old, thought, That was the faith as it was professed before Luther; and as they entered upon the new, thought Where was this religion before Luther?

What a contrast between the old and the new! If ever it was true, it is here true, that the old is better. Under the old creed, the conscience is not hampered by any question about the authority of traditions, either apostolic so-called, or such as were confessedly ecclesiastical. The conscience is not perplexed[Pg 387] with a fear of interpreting Holy Scripture differently from the unanimous opinion of the Fathers. It is not weighted with seven sacraments, not contracted with scruples about mere rites and modes of administration, not burdened by having to take for gospel every word which some past Council has said on some specified doctrine; not bewildered by a professed repetition ofttimes of the sacrifice once offered up forever, full, perfect, and sufficient; not materialized by transubstantiation of the substance of the bread and wine, not mystified by taking half a sacrament for a whole one, and by asserting that the deliberate evasion of Christ's sacramental command was a true performance of it; not secularized by the mercantile reckonings of purgatory; not let down from filial Christianity towards servile polytheism by the worship of saints, relics, and images; not demoralized by the traffic in indulgences; not narrowed by the domination of one municipal Church over all others; not cramped and degraded by identification with the sins and follies of one human head, much less by an allegiance to that head, as a lord of the faith and a sovereign of the conscience; not envenomed by anathematizing all who do not accept every article that we ourselves accept.

Trent diminished the comprehensiveness of the Papal Society by many new and some grotesque conditions. The present Pontiff has added others, and so far has the shrinking process been now carried that a reductio ad absurdum cannot be logically far off. Believing too much, which comes to believing too little, ends in believing nothing. All these successive submissions of conscience to "authority," of spiritual inquiry and private judgment to priestly dictation, end in the paralysis of the believing faculty. They render a man capable of nothing but submitting.

The ordinary oath of the Papal bishops has often been shown to be in substance the oath of a feudal vassal to his liege lord. It has but a flavour of any evangelical office or work of the soul-winning ministry of Christ. The Emperor Joseph II clearly saw that any man bound to the Pope by that oath could not be reckoned as the subject of any other prince, except by[Pg 388] one of those generous fictions which on behalf of the Pope, by way of exception, governments have admitted. But even that oath was not enough; the confession of faith in God must, for all the clergy, be turned into an oath of loyalty to the Bishop of Rome—an oath to a human head in a creed!

The process of taking the oath lasted, as we have said, two hours. The crowd was not great. The session did not raise enthusiasm in any one. Friedrich, who viewed the act of homage from the gallery for theologians, said that nothing could be more tedious. He did not feel flattered with his company in that gallery. Formerly, only doctors were known at Councils as theologians, and, as we have seen, they had real work to do. Now, he says, the chaplains and secretaries of bishops, and even the men who carry the red caps of the Cardinals, figure as theologians—"an edifying company." Even the Stimmen had only a few sentences for this session; and the Civiltá, though read principally by persons who may be supposed to have already seen the creed of Pius IV, filled up room by printing it at full. Quirinus wondered whether this "profusion of superfluous oaths was reconcilable with the scriptural prohibition of needless oaths." They had seven hundred and forty-seven oaths taken.

Only the genius of M. Veuillot sufficed, so far as we remember, to cheer the gloom of the day. It was the Epiphany, and in the portions of Scripture included in the offices of the day, he saw the interpretation of the ceremony. The royally robed potentates who bowed before the enthroned priest-king were the kings of the Gentiles prostrating themselves and worshipping the Church, presenting their gold, and frankincense and, myrrh. The words of Isaiah, "The nations shall come to Thy light, and the kings to the brightness of Thy rising," had the same grand meaning. So he cries (i. 79):—

Behold St. Peter's! The throne of the Pontiff and the Cardinal at the altar, and between throne and altar eight hundred bishops! Behold the prophecy and behold the fact!

M. Veuillot remarks that in the galleries were present[Pg 389] diplomatists and princes who had fallen; but the Church abides! In the crowd, he says, was an Italian "revolutionist, Signor Minghetti, once a subject and minister of the Pope. He bowed with propriety under the benediction of his Father and his master, who was betrayed by him; but he abides!" The fallen princes represented those who, having supported the Papacy, both temporal and spiritual, had been brought to ruin by its bad teaching and worse example. Signor Minghetti and his bow represented those who, rejecting the temporal Papacy, wished to conserve at least the show of the spiritual Papacy. It is for future time to tell whether they to whom he will bequeath the tangled undertaking, will take their place with ex-kings, ex-dukes, ex-princes, and so forth, in the gallery of failures, or whether they will take their place among the wise men who, rejecting the spiritual as worse than the temporal Papacy, and risking all to found States on the principles of the Word of God, have built up great and happy realms. Italy not does think a principle worth running any risk for. She thinks it practical to say to the Papacy, We have found thee unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, and therefore do we take it from thee, but we commit to thy trust the true riches.

The Acta Sanctæ Sedis say that no date was fixed for the next session. The confidence in the readiness of the Fathers to swallow a large pamphlet of creed in a few days was shaken. "No one," is it pensively added, "could foresee when Decrees would be in readiness, because many Fathers might probably be lengthy in their discourses."[269] The learned editor seems as if he would fain emulate the flight of M. Veuillot, but he soars with weighted wing. In a long apostrophe to Rome, he styles Pius IX "the captain who gloriously fills the place of thine ancient Caesars."[270] In one of his speeches made to Roman professors, Pius IX calls himself "the Cæsar[Pg 390] who now addresses you,[271] and to whom alone are obedience and fidelity due."

It is evident that the Curia left this session under the damping effects of a disappointment. It is also evident that some of the bishops felt that they had now performed two sessions, with a month between them, and that the only distinct impression left upon the mind was that they had been twice exhibited, before the whole world, at the feet of a man more richly robed than themselves, seated on a throne in the house of God, and calling himself Father of kings and princes, and Governor of the world. Canon Pelletier points out the great advantage which the Church had obtained by having the Creed of Pius IV "consecrated" in a General Council.

[Pg 391]

CHAPTER VI

Speech of the Pope against the Opposition—Future Policy set before France—Count Arnim's Views—Resumed Debate—Haynald—A New Mortal Sin—Count Daru and French Policy—Address calling for the New Dogma—Counter Petitions against the Principle as well as the Opportuneness.

On the Sunday following this disappointing session, the Pope received fifteen hundred persons in a public audience. Even the language of M. Veuillot does not exaggerate the effect of his speech upon that occasion. "What he said on the Council will loudly resound through the Catholic universe." What he said cut the bishops of the Opposition, and Liberal Catholics generally, to the heart. We quote from the version of M. Veuillot:—

Would-be wise men would have us treat certain questions charily, and not march against the ideas of the age, but I say that we must speak the truth, in order to establish liberty. We must never fear to proclaim the truth or to condemn error. I want to be free, and want the truth to be free. Pray then, weep, force the Holy Spirit, by your supplications, to support and enlighten the Fathers of the Council, that the truth may triumph and error may be condemned.

After his first version of the speech, M. Veuillot said that a word had been "unfortunately omitted." The Pope had said that those who opposed certain measures were

blind leaders of the blind. Well, if the leaders want not to lead any but the blind, and cannot see their game, the Church, preserving her own liberty, will know how to win without them or against them, the game which they obstinately set themselves to lose (i. pp. 86 and 100).

This was treated, not as a mere gust of temper, but as a calculated appeal through the press to the clergy, and to the[Pg 392] devout generally, against the bishops of the Opposition. Yet the longing of the Pope for his liberty was natural. He had always believed himself to be infallible. The Jesuits told him that the full recognition of that attribute, and the free use of it, were the only remedies for the misfortunes of the Papacy, and for the troubles of mankind. He read in the Civiltá how all nations were at this moment looking to him as the one saviour, capable of lifting them out of the Slough of Despond into which the Reformation first and the Revolution next had plunged them. He heard of faithful bishops, learned authors, able journalists, one after another, intimating in prophetic strains an era of glory to follow the recognition of his rights. All asked, how could the world do otherwise than stumble and fall so long as the divinely appointed guide was not recognized? All asserted that nothing could prevent the world from rising up, healed and created anew, when the Vicar of God, acknowledged by the Church, in the plentitude of this authority, should speak the word, Let there be light, at which chaos would flee away, and when he should follow it up with the supreme word to kings and nations alike, which all must learn to obey. Heretics would resist, but the faithful, under the banner of the Vicar of God, would certainly prevail. Nothing stood in the way of all this blessing and glory but a few bishops.

These bishops were represented as being partly calculating men, unwilling to get into trouble with their governments; partly cowards, who actually feared that the standard of his Holiness might fall in the struggle. Some were represented as jealous priests, paltering about the little prerogatives of their Sees, instead of merging all in the glories of the Holy See. If, in a matter so great, the Pope chafed at delay caused by such inconsiderable men, it was not more than might be expected from human nature so incensed, and so persuaded, even in the case of one less vehemently suspected of vanity and self-will than is Pius IX. He said that some thought that the Council was to set everything to rights, and some that it would accomplish nothing. "I am but a poor man, a poor feeble man, but I am Pope, Vicar of Jesus Christ, and head of the Catholic[Pg 393] Church, and I have assembled the Council, which will do its work."[272]

M. Veuillot also was becoming a little impatient. He apparently wanted to see the beginning of the "clearing away" of which he had spoken in 1867. The following passage, tracing out the policy that might save the Second Empire, is a specimen of skilled writing, clear to his clerical readers, dim to heedless Parisians. The new minister (Ollivier) must accept this program:—

To break with the Gallican, revolutionary, and Cæsarian prejudice (which are all one) by frankly recognizing the liberty of the Church; to assure all liberty by and through the assertion of this liberty, as mother and mistress; to prepare the accessions necessary to the honour and the conservation of peace; to permit men to be made against this perpetual plague of revolution which exudes only courtiers of the mob, or courtiers of Cæsar; this is the grand game he has to play. In the interest of the Emperor and the dynasty, I wish he may win it. Alas! during the last twenty years the game has been lost, more than once, by the fault of the chief player! But Providence is pleased to be obstinate, and to leave the game open, with favourable cards in the same hands (vol. i. p. 98).

In the gloaming of these January evenings, two men, might be seen walking somewhere between the Ripetta and the Via Condotti, and the tall figure of one of them was that of Count Harry von Arnim. A letter which he on one such occasion handed to the other was published, in 1874, by the Presse, of Vienna,[273] and bore the date of the day before the impatient speech of the Pope. To whom the letter was addressed is not stated. Alluding to the petition of the bishops, Count[Pg 394] Arnim says: "You see they are modest, and organization is as defective as courage." He feels the want of practical tact in the bishops. If they had meant to succeed in their opposition, they ought to have impugned the composition of the Council, and the Rules imposed upon it. Had they first of all rent the net which the Vatican and the Gesu [the Jesuit establishment] had cast over the wise but timid heads of the bishops, infallibility would have fallen through the meshes. The Count is not sure that the Curia will persevere with the dogma of infallibility; and does not see of what advantage it would be to them, when they can at any time call a Council and prescribe to it how and what it is to speak. Some of the Fathers feel as if they were in some sort the Pope's prisoners since they have entered on the course into which they had been drawn. They had allowed themselves to be led so far in a certain direction during the last twenty years, that it was only when they saw that it was to be turned to earnest, that they began to ask how they could make black white at home, and how the Catholic people would take it. That was the feeling that produced "Fulda." People belonging to the Curia say that the bishops need a couple of months in the air of Rome to inspire them with the grand conceptions of the place; and after that all will be of one mind. He cannot understand how the German Catholics are going to let five hundred Italians, and among them three hundred boarders of the Pope, dictate laws to them in spite of their own bishops. Under the pretence of Catholicity, exclusive Romish-Italian formulæ are imposed on the Catholic mind of all nations.

If Rome resented the obstinacy of the provincials, some of the provincials began to open their eyes at what they found in Rome. Friedrich quotes one well acquainted with the Curia, whose words may be matched out of Liverani. "The Cardinals," said this authority, "are red-stockinged ... not fit, with the exception of four or five, to be curates in a village church." Friedrich himself had begun to think that their principal function was "parading." But at that Court did not everything depend upon parading? Many of the Cardinals[Pg 395] might be no better men than the tongue of Rome (not a scrupulous one) made them, and no greater theologians than Liverani and Friedrich said that they were, but some of them assuredly had great abilities, and all had shown themselves to be blessed with the faculty of getting on, which is generally some qualification for ruling. Disgusted by the low appearance of the monks and their mendicity, Friedrich yet confessed that, in present circumstances, such swarms of them had an advantage, as keeping a certain sort of population out of mischief. How different the view of M. Veuillot! To him the monks were the ideal of Christ's benefit to mankind. Free from the world, from the care even of a name or a tomb, the world "must allow their crushing sandals to pass over the poisons which its pride has sown" (i. p. 223). It remains to be seen whether the plants springing from seeds that quickly fall from a free Bible, a free soul, a free pulpit, and a free press, will die crushed as poison plants under the sandals of the monk, or whether they will yet flourish like grass of the earth, and the fruit of them shall shake like Lebanon, when fakir and monk shall together be remembered among the things that fatally decay in the shade of a growth which, though at first the least of herbs, becomes afterwards the greatest of all trees.

In the street Friedrich met Graf A., doubtless one who then proudly filled a proud post, but who now unhappily lies under a heavy cloud. The Count told him that a petition in favour of bringing forward the question of infallibility, drawn up in Manning's sense was already signed by five hundred bishops. Another of Friedrich's touches is, that Janus always lay on Darboy's table, and Hergenröther's Anti-Janus on that of Ketteler. After calling the latter work very dishonest, he says "The upshot of this book is, that the Pope alone is invested with divine authority, and before this Baal of the Jesuits, the majority of the Council means to bow the knee. Will not that amount to decreeing the death of the Church? She may lay herself down crying, 'Jesuits, you have conquered me.'" As a specimen of what bishops even in Council assembled had come to, he quotes the memorable words of Hergenröther,[Pg 396] "The bishops have nothing to do but to set the conciliar seal to a work which the Jesuit Schrader has prepared."

"Happy bishops," cries the poor theologian, himself tormented by opinions, and unable to let others believe for him. "Happy bishops! you may give dinners, see works of art, take your siestas, parade in pluvial and mitre, for the Jesuit Father has taken care of all the rest; and, then, setting to the conciliar seal is not hard work! There is nothing to do but to say Placet, and all is over." Much depended on the interpretation men gave to their oath. Canon Pelletier (Frond, vii. p. 170) says, not unnaturally, that at the moment when the Fathers prostrated themselves at the feet of the Pope, the majority was formed. All who understood "obey" in the sense of the Court, would vote what the Pope told them to vote. But Ginoulhiac, of Grenoble, soon to be Primate of France, had taken care, beforehand, to protest against such an interpretation. Though expressing some fear in citing it, he did cite the language of Bellarmine, to the effect that so free must a Council be that the bishops, their oath notwithstanding, must not only say what they think, but must even proceed against the Pope should he be convicted of heresy.[274] Such language, in the mouth of Bellarmine, as contrasted with that of Deschamps, Manning, and the other zealots of infallibility, marks the progress made by the Papal claims in our day.

The General Congregations were resumed on January 8, when two new Drafts on discipline were distributed. The Congregation of the 10th was remarkable for striking speeches, and for an unforeseen turn of the debate. Haynald, Archbishop of Colocza, replied to the few who had defended the Draft, especially to Martin, and Räss of Strasburg. He charged them with having attempted to deprive the Fathers even of the liberty left to them by the Rules, for they had reproached them for discussing what was laid before them. Did not even the formula at the head of the Decree, for speaking on which Strossmayer had been called to order, say, "the Council approving"? which surely implied that it was open to[Pg 397] it to disapprove. Martin had said, We shall say "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us;" But, rejoined Haynald, though Martin may know that we are to say so, we do not know it. This speech was described as one of remarkable power, second in that respect only to the speech of Strossmayer. Cardinal Capalti, one of the Presidents, listened with outstretched neck, and both hands behind his ears; but so skilfully was the discourse constructed, that Haynald escaped being called to order. He was often applauded, especially at the conclusion. It is said that Cardinal Bilio, who was responsible for the Draft, being, for a Cardinal, strong in German, knew three words of it,—Deutsche (German), and freie Wissenschaft (free science). He leaned back, often repeating, with an inward shudder, Deutsche, freie Wissenschaft.

Bishop Maignan, of Chalons, who followed Haynald, did not mount the pulpit, but stood before the Presidents. His speech was also spoken of as having been very striking. He attacked the Draft, especially its phraseology. What, he asked, was meant by anima est forma corporis (the soul is the form of the body)? The Greek Bishop of Grosswardein defended the Draft, saying that at first he had doubts, but that the more he studied it the more he was satisfied. As he had previously said, in the meeting of German and Hungarian prelates, "I do not like many dogmas,"[275] when he next appeared among them some one said, "Greek faith is no faith," and he appeared among them no more. A Chaldean prelate, Kajat, speaking with a fine, clear voice, said, "It was scarcely becoming for a General Council to be occupied with matters so local as the opinions of this or that German professor"; and repeated the unwelcome words, "Free science," as Haynald and Maignan had done. The debate now seemed as if it might prove very[Pg 398] searching. The minority had strong, if ill-grounded, hopes, but a new proof of the way in which the Rules played with deliberation was now sprung upon them. If a free assembly can close a discussion when it deems it already ample, it can also continue it so long as the conscience of its members cries out for a hearing. After the speech of the Bishop of Grosswardein, up rose the President, and said that, in pursuance of power given in the Rules, of Withdrawing a Draft Decree when disputed, the Draft should now be withdrawn from the Council, and should be remitted to the Committee, to be moulded by it. What! could not the Council go on with its investigation? Had it not control over a proposition once laid before it? No; the Twenty-four, with the theologians of the Court, were now in sole possession of the proposed measure!

Had the Council been free to form itself into a committee, or to select one from among its own members after this discussion, doubtless some of the men who had shown that they were capable of sifting the clauses would have been put upon the committee, beside the few who had defended the Draft. But that was the very danger which the Nine had foreseen, and against which they had provided by a permanent committee, elected before the question was argued. This provision was effective for its end, reducing the part left to the bishops to that of making Latin speeches in rows, according to rank and seniority. One other liberty they had—the momentous one of saying Ay or No. Had not the Council been weighted with creatures of the Court, that single liberty might have sufficed to stay the great organic change necessary to the scheme of reconstruction. We do not know whether the sitting we have just described[276] is the one of which Quirinus stated that Cardinal Antonelli withdrew from it much disgusted, saying to a diplomatist that if the Council went on so it would never have done.

While, therefore, the Curia, disgusted with the bishops, had seen their perfect work torn to pieces day by day, now the bishops, astounded at the Curia, saw the future creed shut up[Pg 399] in secret even from them! In its absence, they began on the fourteenth to discuss discipline. That was a notable day. It witnessed the creation of a new mortal sin. The Acta do not contain the document by which this was done.[277] In Councils that were really general, a Christian bishop would have considered it a duty to tell his clergy and people what he said, and what he heard others say, about the faith of Christ. But on this day, Pope Pius IX turned this sacred duty of the bishop into a mortal sin. Secrecy, the genius of the Papacy, and publicity, the child of light, now closed for a life and death grapple. Any man of that assembly who should hereafter tell out of it what passed within it was to be guilty of mortal sin. The oath imposed before the opening upon the officers, and the injunctions of secrecy upon the bishops, had not availed. The step taken by the Pope was a loud acknowledgment that truth had leaked out. In a surly way this is admitted by the Acta Sanctæ Sedis. Shameless journals—effrontes ephemerides—had reported, as having been spoken and done in the Council, things partly true and partly false. "This had probably arisen from some one or another, who lightly held the pontifical secret, having given information, so taking upon himself to ignore the dignity of the Apostolic See in treating ecclesiastical questions."[278] Vitelleschi, Roman as he is, asks,—If the Council is a supreme assembly, who is entitled to impose this penalty of mortal sin? Men of the Curia, accustomed to the making of innocent acts into sins, and of sins into licensed actions, would not scruple to read such a document in the face of such an assembly. Such is their state of conscience, that, far from feeling any shame, probably they would enjoy the idea of the shame and confusion of conscience which they were inflicting on the bishops. But men brought up in England and America could sit there, while this new yoke was fastened upon them, and say not a word! The bishops were really to be pitied. They were entangled in the creed. Their oath had shut them in. There is[Pg 400] no hint of a protest having been raised by any one. To speak of these gentlemen in one aspect as citizens of free nations, and in another aspect as prefects of the Pope, is scarcely any longer accurate. It is but by a fiction of the frailest sort that men so tied and bound by the chain of the foreign potentate can be called citizens. We have seen that the Civiltá holds it as-beneath their dignity as ambassadors to the citizens elsewhere than in Rome. Still, professing to be citizens, they were to be pitied. And if they were to be pitied, still more was human society to be pitied that had to bear the influence of seven hundred masters of a multitude whose consciences had come to such a pass. "A bishop," says Quirinus, "who should show a theologian, whose advice he wanted, a passage from the schema under discussion, or who should repeat an expression used in one of the speeches, incurs everlasting damnation.... A Papal theologian whom I questioned on the subject appealed simply to the statement of Boniface VIII, that the Pope holds all rights in the shrine of his breast" (p. 164).

Count Daru, who now appears on the political stage in Paris, afforded some entertainment to Don Margotti, who is to Italy what M. Veuillot is to France, the leading Papal journalist, having, according to a saying of the Français, more power than all the bishops. According to Quirinus the redoubtable pair are "the two modern Fathers." Count Daru said, on January 11, that "our national maxims in matters of religion, the independence of the civil power, and liberty of conscience, cannot be menaced." This was child's play to Don Margotti. In his view, France needed the new Pope-Suzerain almost as much as Italy needed the restoration of the old Pope-King. Don Margotti[279] contends that the doctrine of modern parliaments is that they are themselves infallible. This he proves by a text from Emile Ollivier. That oracle on one occasion had said "We are justice!" but Don Margotti prefers an infallible Pope to an infallible people. Menabrea, Sella Minghetti, and such as they in Italy, according[Pg 401] to him, represented God, the State. Margotti, therefore, looks on the mot of Ollivier as

providential, for it proves the necessity of an infallible Pope The world absolutely needs a permanent and infallible authority; if the authority is not the Pope, up starts Ollivier, and ascribes it to himself. It is time that infallibility should be defined, that we may have no more such absurdities as Ollivier proclaiming "We are justice!" Oh, let the dogmatic definition of infallibility speedily sound from the heights of the Vatican, and free us from modern justice, which calls itself now Baroche, now Ollivier!

Freeing us from modern justice and from M. Emile Ollivier are two different matters, though it is natural for Don Margotti to hail as providential an opportunity of treating them as one. The assumption of infallibility by parliaments is rather a favourite notion of Jesuit writers. They seem to mean that any authority which will not acknowledge its subordination to the Vicar of God must claim to be itself infallible. Yet, we might deem our own Parliament wiser than the Pope and his Curia, and morally superior, and still not think them anything more than erring mortals, with infallibility some way off. An English member of Parliament, repeating the Jesuit oracles, says that our Parliament claims to be infallible.[280] It would seem that no assertion of the Jesuits is too ridiculous to be seriously repeated by their Oxford converts, though many are kept back, but for other reasons than their absurdity. The decree in which the Parliament does declare its acts irreformable would be a great curiosity. So would even such an expression as the following, quoted by Don Margotti (January 18) from the archbishops and bishops of the province of Vercelli:—

Most Blessed Father, now and always shall we be found, in obedience and reverence to your Holiness, approving, and disapproving, whatever you, from your apostolic chair, do approve and disapprove; from which chair Jesus Christ Himself speaks in the Holy Spirit to the bishops and people of the whole world.

The meeting of the Italian Parliament having been post[Pg 402]poned, to give time to a new ministry to prepare measures, Don Margotti, viewing the paralysis of the Parliament as a moral effect of the presence of the Council, said (January 22):—

The word of Rome imposes silence at Florence, and the Council of the Vatican does just as our Lord once did when He closed the mouth of the Sadducees. Gentlemen, you have talked enough. Now stand still, and hear the great word of God. Your day is past, the day of the powers of darkness; and now the days of the Lord will dawn, the days of truth and light.

The Address in favour of a definition of the dogma of infallibility had now become the talk of all. Vitelleschi (p. 85) states that it was carried round by the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Fathers of the Civiltá Cattolica, as the Jesuits are called who form the editorial college of the great magazine. A letter, inviting adhesions, and signed by several bishops, chiefly belonging to the class who had not any national ties, was circulated with the address. The signatures to that document itself were headed by the names of Manning, Spalding of Baltimore, and Senestry. What had been felt from the first was now openly declared on all hands, although the utterance of it had often been charged as a great sin upon the Liberal Catholics. We mean, that the object of the Council was the definition of Papal infallibility, and that all the rest was manœuvring. Brief as are the historical notes in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis they state that we may almost say that the whole Council was convened for the sake of the fourth session.[281]

Vitelleschi notes the fact that the citations given in the Address to prove that earlier Councils had propounded Papal infallibility, were not apposite. Quirinus says that the Address "bristles with falsehood." Veuillot, on the other hand, finds its arguments cogent,—indeed, unanswerable. Vitelleschi remarks that the writers speak with indifference or contempt of schisms which might arise from[Pg 403] the measures they demanded. Friedrich calls it a compound of untruth and slander. Veuillot urges that the contradictions to the doctrine had now reached such a head as rendered its definition absolutely necessary. Yet all this contradiction had arisen since the personal organ of the Pope gave the signal for an acclamation.

That liberty of the Church which existed nowhere else upon this sinful earth, except in Ecuador, did exist in Rome; and, therefore, all other liberties were secured; that is, the liberty of doing everything not forbidden by divine authority. But printing in Rome, except by licence, was forbidden by the authority that never can be in contradiction to evangelical law. The Address for making that authority into an infallible one was, however, circulated in print, without imprimatur of any sort. This sign was understood on all hands. It was not to be mistaken. The divine authority asked for signatures. The canvass for them was keen.

Vitelleschi relates that the promotors of the Address were charged with dragging a question forward prematurely, which in the natural course of things, would have come on for discussion when the prerogatives of the See of Rome should be considered. To defend themselves, they said that the step they had taken was sanctioned by the Cardinal Presidents. This "indiscretion," he proceeds to say, "exposed the Roman Curia to the reproach of itself begging for its own apotheosis, devoid of feelings of the simplest propriety." Even the clergy, he thinks, were disconcerted at this proceeding, except the Jesuits. These were urged on by a fatality to proclaim "the infallibility of Clement XIV, who abolished them, and that of Pius IX, who had almost done so too, while they must find a formula to interpret the judgment of the next Pope who shall abolish them once more."

This Roman noble accounts for the strange vehemence of Manning on the ground that he had been a Protestant:—

He had seen his own religion from within, and not from without; and had seen the Catholic religion from without, and not from[Pg 404] within. In Protestantism he had seen only the infinite internal divisions and subdivisions; and in Catholicism he had admired only the magnificent effect of its unity. He had not appreciated the good results produced by the former, through moderate liberty and the constant exercise of private reason and conscience; and he had not felt the dangers which, in the latter, flow from excessive authority. He is enamoured of authority, as much as the slave is of liberty. This want of equilibrium, and of a just Catholic feeling in his dealings respecting the Council, was charged against him, even by the most faithful and devoted of the clergy in Rome (p. 89; Eng. ver., 60).

A counter Address was sent in from German and Hungarian prelates; one from French, one from Italians, one from Americans, and one from Orientals. But these, not being in the interest of the Court could not be printed without a licence, and could not hope to obtain one. Even Cardinal Rauscher had failed to attain leave to print a short treatise on the Papal infallibility in Latin, and had to send it to Vienna.[282] So the Opposition had to dispense with type. Then, what were they to do with their Address, when complete? The course of their opponents was clear—they had only to send in theirs to the Commission on Proposals; and some, in their bitterness, said that that Commission had been formed for no other purpose than that of receiving and forwarding it. But these Opposition addresses did not propose anything to be done, but simply requested the Pope not to have a certain thing proposed. The bishops had no power to move in the House that the subject should not be considered, or to move that it should be deferred till the meeting of the next General Council. Care had been taken that they should not have "the negative right of proposition" any more than the positive. Then, what could they do? Nothing whatever, but what they had done already, namely, petition the Pope. Their former petition, indeed, had received no answer. Still, that was a request for the recalling of a fait accompli, or, at least, for its modification. This, on the other hand, was only[Pg 405] a request that a thing suggested should not be done. "Can any more singular relative position be imagined," says Vitelleschi,[283] "than that of a man who receives a number of people into his house, with a design of proclaiming his apotheosis, and at the same time receives from them a pressing supplication to renounce that honour?"

None of these various Addresses stated that the signers opposed the new dogma only on the ground of opportuneness. This ought to be carefully noted. The opposite is now almost always either asserted or assumed; but the documents have not perished.[284] Such a position was skilfully avoided. It is quite true that the only grounds, formally stated in all the Addresses but one, are grounds which might be concurred in by men who objected to making the opinion of Papal infallibility into a dogma, though they did not object to it as an opinion. But the German Address was clearly distinguished from the others. It plainly and forcibly demurred to the principle, though couching its objections in terms of great courtesy. After alluding to questions of opportuneness, the German and Hungarian bishops proceed:—

We cannot pass in silence over the fact that other grave difficulties exist, arising out of the dicta and the acts of the Fathers of the Church, out of genuine historical documents, and out of Catholic doctrine itself, which, unless they can be entirely removed, it would be impossible that the doctrine commended in the above named address should be propounded to the Christian people as being revealed of God. Our spirit recoils from the discussion of these difficulties; and, confiding in Thy benevolence, we implore that the necessity of such deliberations may not be imposed upon us.

This is signed by men who speak of themselves as "prostrate at thy feet." This passage, however, stood in the German Address alone. The others wished to get as many signatures as they could, and perhaps fancied that they gained ground with the Curia by omitting plain objections to the[Pg 406] principle. The American Address indicated the existence of differences on the point of principle, by alleging as its first reason against raising a discussion on infallibility, that such a discussion would "clearly show a want of union, and especially of unanimity among the bishops." The German, French, and Italian Addresses put forward another point, namely, that the dignitaries belonging as they did to the most important Catholic nations, and knowing the probable effects of the proposed measures, felt that those effects, even with the best men, would be damaging to the cause of the Church, and would supply unfriendly ones with occasion for new invasions of her rights.[285] The German address, as printed in the Documenta, has forty-six signatures, including two Cardinals and the Primate of Hungary; one American prelate Mrak, of Sault Sainte Marie, in Michigan, closed the list. The French Address has thirty-eight names, and among these are three Portuguese prelates and four Orientals. The Italian Address has seven names, the American twenty-seven—among which two Irish Sees, Kerry and Dromore, are represented, and a single English one, Clifton. The Oriental Address has seventeen.[286]

M. Veuillot, speaking of the Opposition Addresses as one whole, said that of all who had signed it, not two, perhaps not one, was opposed to infallibility in principle (i. p. 149). Later he had the candour to attack the bishops for having impugned not only the opportuneness of the definition, but the doctrine itself (i. p. 180). Archbishop Manning, however, even after the close of the Council, said, "I have never been able to hear of five bishops who denied the doctrine of Papal infallibility."[287] This particular statement is advanced as evidence of a general one, that the question raised among the bishops "was a question of prudence, policy, expediency;[Pg 407] not of doctrine or truth." A question not of doctrine or of truth! Forty-six prelates in a petition expressly directed against Dr. Manning's own Address had put the question as one not only of prudence, but of revealed truth, alleging against any attempt to define the dogma three classes of obstacles—those arising out of Catholic doctrine, out of the dicta and acts of the Fathers, and out of historical documents. Perhaps we ought, with the forty-six prelates, to say genuine historical documents. But Englishmen must be forgiven if in their limited intercourse with the Papacy they have not yet found it necessary to put labels on such words. The Donations of Constantine, and the Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore, are historical documents, and also genuine as specimens of forgeries.

The fate of the Opposition petition is wrapped in mystery. Who presented it? how was it received? what became of it? are questions to which the satisfactory answer must be left to time. Some asserted that the Pope refused to receive it. Quirinus says that he returned it (p. 174). M. Veuillot told how it was delivered at the Vatican by an ordinary messenger, and that a monsignore received it with ordinary papers. This public affront to two Cardinals and nearly a hundred and forty bishops was aggravated a few days later by the remark that it was not yet known whether the monsignore had ever thought well to deliver the Address. Still later it was said that the Pope being consulted as to what was to be done with it, said that it might go to the Commission on Proposals, he intending, personally, to ignore it (i. p. 202). At a yet later date, January 28, Friedrich learned that every one being afraid to present it. Cardinal Schwarzenberg sent it by his chamberlain, who delivered it to Monsignor Ricci, the Pope's chamberlain. The Pope was excessively angry, and ordered it to be sent to the Commission.

When M. Veuillot trumpeted forth this example of how to deal with cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, did he mean to suggest that other Courts might treat them with like neglect,—Courts to which these officials hold themselves[Pg 408] related as citizens only in an inferior order, an order which "obliges" them only when the higher order does not contravene? The documents in question bore the signatures of the Sees of Prague, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Mainz; those of Milan and Turin; those of Paris, Rheims, Orleans, and the principal Sees of Portugal; those of New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Halifax, and St. John; those of Kerry and Dromore, and of Clifton; and from ancient countries the signatures of Antioch, Babylon, Tyre, Sidon, and Seleucia. Not often in the history of manners have titles representing so many ancient claims and such considerable modern station been treated with equal discourtesy.

The Univers of January 30[288] said that when the minority thought that the majority were about to come to a decisive vote, they sent Bishop Freppel, or some one else, to propose conciliation; but when reassured, they began their opposition afresh. It further said that Cardinal Hohenlohe acted in Rome in the interests of his brother, the Minister, and that his theologian, Friedrich, who had been chosen by Döllinger, was the writer of the letters in the Augsburg Gazette; that Cardinal Hohenlohe, with Schwarzenberg and Haynald, had succeeded in making an impression at certain embassies; and that the Austrian ambassador put the petition against infallibility before bishops, and asked if they had signed it.

Not content with the far-reaching policy which aimed ultimately at a cosmopolitan counter-revolution, the party of movement desired to begin forthwith by a local counter-revolution. Italy was to be reconstituted as a confederation of four States—the Papal States, Naples, Tuscany, and Piedmont. This, cries Friedrich, is a new task for a Council,—a Council called to make a revolution![289] But the bishops knew more of the world than the Curia.

Party spirit now ran high. Those who had adopted the tactics of opposing infallibility only on the ground of opportuneness, while they really objected on principle, found that they had gained nothing in point of conciliation, and had lost[Pg 409] almost everything in point of moral power. How could ordinary consciences understand a man who admitted, or seemed to admit, that a doctrine, affecting the representative of God on earth, was true, and yet denied that it ought to be proclaimed? Compared with this position, that of the Pope was bold sensible and Christian. "We must never fear to proclaim the truth or to condemn error." Many, as well as Dupanloup, who first departed from the false line that he had seemed to mark out, found that they must object to the principle. Even if they had not previously studied the question at all, the glaring attempts now made to palm off admissions of primacy for assertions of infallibility opened their eyes. An ex-Anglican like Manning might easily accept that or grosser fallacies, but others had been taught to distinguish. The party of movement, on the other hand, raised a cry for action, which swelled higher at every sign of opposition. Their allegations are briefly expressed by Sambin (p. 105):—

Pontifical infallibility is the sign to be spoken against. If it is defined, the question is near to its settlement. The Catholic social Liberalism of France, and the scientific Liberalism of Germany, are indeed menaced. It is, therefore, a question of life or death for Liberalism, as for Gallicanism and Febronianism.

The opposition to "the divine prerogatives of the Pontiff," says this author,[290] "had now become so pronounced that it was necessary to act."[291] Saviours of society always come to that point on the eve of the coup d'état.

M. Veuillot, who had long endeavoured to smother the opposition by asserting that no opposition existed, now declared that the opposition was so grave that it made the proposed definition a necessity. Quirinus says that the Address in favour of infallibility owes its preponderance of signatures principally to the three hundred boarders and the South Americans, while the counter-address represents "the overwhelming predominance in numbers of souls, in intelligence,[Pg 410] and in national importance" (p. 173). One topic of constant complaint on the part of the Opposition was the disproportionate number of bishops to people in Italy as compared with other nations. For the seven hundred thousand people then in the Papal States there were sixty-two bishops, while for the twelve million Catholics of Germany there were fourteen. One million seven hundred thousand in the diocese of Breslau had but a single prelate, and he was not placed on any committee whatever. The nine millions of ignorant and superstitious people in Naples and Sicily had no less than sixty-eight bishops. On the other side of this question, M. Veuillot played off the name of London. If Paris and Vienna, Munich and Lyons, Milan and Turin, were on the wrong side, the Archbishop of London was on the right one.

Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, issued a project for a decree which, without formally defining the dogma of infallibility, should bind all to an interior assent to the infallibility of Papal decrees in faith or morals. He pointed out the evils attendant on a formal definition, and that in a manner which afterwards enlivened the controversy between Dupanloup, Deschamps, and himself. The work wherewith Deschamps regaled his Christmas Day was that of proposing no less than ten anathemas;[292] for if the Fathers could not propose things in Council, they could send a suggestion to the committee. Ten new anathemas dated expressly on the Nativity of our Lord by a Christian bishop! That day Reisach died.

[Pg 411]

CHAPTER VII

Matters of Discipline—Remarks of Friedrich on the Morals of the Clergy—Also on the War against Modern Constitutions—Morality of recent Jesuit Teaching—Darboy's Speech—Melcher's Speech—A Dinner Party of Fallibilists—One of Infallibilists—Gratry—Debate on the Morals of the Clergy.

The Draft Decrees on discipline now in the hands of the bishops affected their remaining rights. It had taken three hundred years to develop the practical effects of the legislation of Trent in curtailing those rights. Paolo Sarpi may say that the prelates entered Trent as bishops and left it as parsons; but it was long before new regulations had worn down old procedure so far that an Archbishop of Paris, for instance, could be treated in the manner in which we have seen Darboy treated. The bishops, however, now feared, says Vitelleschi, lest their office should be further mutilated.

According to Friedrich (p. 88), when, at one of the first meetings of the German and Hungarian prelates, Strossmayer said that the matter before them was the resignation of their collective rights and the centring of the whole in the hands of the Pope, he was ridiculed; but when he repeated that statement, on Saturday, January 8, it was received with universal assent. On the other hand, Roman ecclesiastics were alarmed at the pretensions of the bishops. Two Dominicans begged Cardinal Hohenlohe to use his influence to prevent the Germans from speaking as extravagantly as the French. "It is really frightful," they said; "what is to become of Rome? These bishops want spiritual decentralization." Friedrich now thinks that he begins to see what is the religious principle of the Roman clergy—domination, as a means of existence. The bearing of this remark on spiritual decentralization rests[Pg 412] on the fact that spiritual causes referred to Rome bring money to the bureaux, and the bureaucracy are the clergy.

The professional observations of Friedrich on the Drafts touching discipline give insight into certain interior aspects of Romanism, which affect not only its own condition, but, through it, affect all society. We therefore let him speak directly (p. 89 ff.)—

The first chapter on the Office of a Bishop closes so abruptly that only at the end is it said that bishops must be examples for the flock. It is, however, praiseworthy that they are told to take the lead of the faithful even in knowledge. Alas for this pious wish: It will be as it has been! Further on, the words "let ecclesiastical discipline be maintained" strike the eye, and that in respect of the mulieres subintroductæ, or γυναἱκες σονεἱσακτοι, in which character the parsonage cooks appear. This regulation is the most insulting imaginable; the most degrading for the parish priest, the most lowering and humiliating for the curates; altogether a dark spot in Church life. No regulation stands in such glaring contrast with Canons and Councils. It is a great offence against Christian morality, by which it is forbidden that any one should be placed in proximate occasion of sin; but in this manner the independence of a clergyman, and the placing of him in proximate occasion of sin, are connected together. The Fathers of the Council must themselves say whether this is or is not the greatest of cankers in the life of the clergy. They can tell whether it is necessary to direct the attention of the Council to this sore spot. One of the Fathers of the Council himself told me that he once spent a night in a parsonage where the rural dean (Dechant) and the cook were parents of both curates. It is said in the Draft, De vita et honestate clericorum: "If a clergyman, unmindful of his own dignity, is given to immodest defilements or to impure concubinage, or dares either in his house or elsewhere to have a woman of whom suspicion may be entertained, or to seek her company, let him be proceeded against, with the penalties prescribed by the sacred Canons, especially by the Council of Trent, and that without noise or the forms of a trial, only by simple inquiry into the truth of the facts." But what will this avail? Those directions have long existed, yet things go on as of old, and any such directions must necessarily be insufficient. Why is not the regulation of the ancient Church once more taken up, and carried through with a firm hand, according to which every woman, except nearest relations, was suspected, and was not to be admitted to the house of a clergyman? If our Church-princes of[Pg 413] to-day will not return to the old regulation, which indeed sufficed not to hinder all excesses, and if they are incapable of finding new and better ones, it would be preferable, at all events, and would involve less responsibility for them, if they allowed their clergy to marry outright rather than give them up to arrangements which place their reputation in so ambiguous a light. The fact that this subject had to be brought forward here in its regular place is sad enough, and should be taken as proof that we cannot go on in the present way. Has it not already come to this, in certain dioceses, that the bishops find themselves obliged to hush up, rather than to punish?

Further on, in the same chapter, it is said, "While they preach to the people due reverence and obedience towards the powers of this world, let them all with one mind and heart, taking counsel together and uniting their deliberations and strength, earnestly maintain the rights of the Church and of this Holy See, so that their common guard and defence may more perfectly assure the interests of the common cause; but let them admit of nothing which will lower the honour and dignity of their rank, and let them keep the admonitions of the Council of Trent on this point under their eye." These sentences are doubtless well meant; but, practically, will be without result. Nothing is gained by such general propositions. This being self-evident, nothing should be said in Decrees of a Council beyond the laying down of positive directions. The conclusion of the chapter is vague, but, perhaps, very dangerous. "We require princes and magistrates to cover and protect the sacred chief pastors (antistites) and ministers of the Church, and their most excellent work, with their powerful patronage and defence, that due honour, respect, and obedience may be paid by all to the ecclesiastical authority. Knowing that bishops promote not only the cause of the Church, but also that of their nations, and that above all the boldness and wickedness of men who perversely seek to mislead minds and corrupt manners may be restrained and constrained by them in the exercise of their pastoral office."

First of all, what is meant here by most excellent or highest work (optimum operant)? who are included in by all (ab omnibus)? Not only is honour to be paid to the spiritual authority by all, but obedience. According to the notes, by all includes princes and nations; that by the Council princes and nations may be moved to venerate the sacred pastors, and to render them obedience and reverence. Are we to understand that the unbelievers and misbelievers in a State are to pay obedience to the bishops? Does this wrap up the mediæval notion that heretics after all are under[Pg 414] the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, as Bishop Martin lately gave himself out as the bishop of the heretics in his diocese? Also that unbelievers have no moral right of existence, and so on? And what is meant by the concluding words? Do they imply that the bishops have a right of interfering with the freedom of the press, of belief, and of conscience as granted by modern constitutions? A General Council should speak clearly and definitely.[293]

But who would have believed that in the second chapter on the Residence of Bishops a condemnation of the constitutional usages of modern times should be attempted, even indirectly? It provides that bishops must not be absent from their sees more than two, or at the utmost three, months in a year, whether continuously or at intervals. Such absence cannot be allowed even for causes otherwise admitted as lawful—alias jure admissis—except by express permission of the Pope, or, in the United Greek Churches without the permission of the Patriarch. One is here compelled to ask, Could not those cases have been foreseen in which seats in Upper Houses are permanently connected with many bishoprics. Why this needless increase of requests for dispensation? But, according to the Civiltá Cattolica, it is only as compelled by existing circumstances that bishops can properly take part in the objectionable constitutional life. It is said in the notes that the necessity of an express apostolic permission is to be remembered as being even now required by the constitution of Boniface VIII—Sancta synodus—even if there exists one of the four grounds of absence admitted as legitimate by the Council of Trent in its twenty-third session. These four grounds were, visiting the thresholds of the apostles (i.e. Rome), attending provincial synods, attending a General Assembly in which ecclesiastics are wont to sit, or discharging an office or duty to the State connected with the Churches themselves. But (says the note) because the Decrees of Urban VIII contemplate assemblies of a kind which do not at present exist, mention of this as a just cause of absence was omitted in the Decree, in which also was omitted, for a similar reason, mention of discharging an office or duty to the State. Thus the Chambers which have taken the place of those ancient assemblies do not[Pg 415] exist for the Curia, or it feels bound to ignore them—quite in harmony with Jesuit fantasies. Should the session of the Chamber last more than three months, those Bavarian bishops who are members of the Reichsrath would require an express permission from the Pope to fulfil their duty to the State. They might receive from the Pope a prohibition against staying any longer at the Reichsrath and fulfilling their obligations as citizens. Very edifying for our governments and States! They, however, would know how to help themselves, and would simply withdraw such a seat from the bishop.

Friedrich then dwells on the new contrivance of centralization by which every metropolitan is ordered, before publishing the acts of a Provincial Synod, to send them to Rome. The Curia is not to give them any formal approbation, but to correct them, should anything seem to call for correction. After this they are to be issued as the acts of the Provincial Synod. To execute this feat of shaping provincial decrees within the chambers of the Curia, Pius IX had appointed a new Board or Congregation. Friedrich calls this a new censorship. That would appear to mean that whereas formerly only private authors required an imprimatur, now even the collective episcopate of a province requires one. It would, however, seem to involve more than a censorship, because the new matter inserted in Rome has to go before the world under the provincial names. Authors were not compelled to father the corrections of the censor. They could leave the work unpublished.

That sense of impending danger to the Church which, of late years, had weighed on many Catholics, arose not a little from the moral teaching of the Jesuits, whose influence, under the smile of the Pope, they saw gradually rising. Out of regard for the honour of the Church, many Roman Catholics suppressed the horror they felt at what they discovered in the books of the Jesuits. Only those who have read some books—those which reflect the modern phases of their moral teaching—can appreciate the weight that must have lain on the hearts of some good men when striving to uphold before their imagination the Church as the perfection of beauty. Among the[Pg 416] disciples of the Church of Rome are many who hold close to the Christian side of her theology, and seem to forget its Pagan side; many who avoid what is material in her cult, and, by aid of that same theology, cherish spiritual worship; many who turn to the noble morals of the Gospel, from the lower and ever deteriorating morals of the schools; and many to whom the secular spirit of the Papacy and the earthly empire aimed at by the Jesuits are repugnant.

Friedrich learned, in Rome, that those who confess to the Jesuits are not to be trusted. Any one who will read even one hundred pages out of the seven hundred of Gury's Casus Conscientiæ would not think of trusting—would only think of pitying any creature into whose head the principles of that bad book had been put. Friedrich evidently does not repeat any light talk when he says that he heard it stated, upon good authority, that the Jesuits in Rome were in the habit of employing women as lures to procure the overthrow of men who stood in their way, which women would then return to the Jesuit confessionals as penitent Magdalenes; and this, he adds, the Pope knows right well. When Vitelleschi speaks of the evils arising from severity against errors of the intellect, and indulgence to errors of the will, he means what we should describe as strictness as to Papal principles, and laxity as to moral practices.

According to Vitelleschi, Darboy had only to stretch out his hand to take a Cardinal's hat. The impression that this was the case, and the terms on which he was known to stand with the Curia, gave great interest to his first appearance in the desk, which took place on January 19. How gladly would the Curia have seen him stretch forth his hand in the direction where the hat hung; but no, he reached it out in that direction where he had only reproaches to gather.[294]

We are told that we are not to make long speeches, but I have a great deal to say. We are told again not to repeat what has been said by others; but at the same time we are kept shut up in this[Pg 417] Hall, where for the most part we cannot understand one another; we are not allowed to examine the stenographic reports of our speeches, and the only answer made to our representations is always the same, "The Pope wills it." I do not know, therefore, what has been said by the speakers who have preceded me.

He then went on to speak of the rights of the bishops, of their degradation by the Roman centralizing system, of "the caves wherein the Roman doctors have buried themselves from the light of day," etc. Two sayings are ascribed to him after this speech. The first, "Like Condé, I have thrown my marshal's baton into the midst of the enemy;" and the second, "This Hall is deaf, dumb, and blind." Hard as it was for the Curia to listen to Darboy, with his diocese of two millions of nominal Catholics, it is said that they were even more pained by the language of Melchers of Cologne, whose diocese counted one million, and from whom animadversions were not expected. The fear of the French troops forsaking Rome saved the Archbishop of Paris from the tinkling of the mystic bell; but it arrested the metropolitan of the Rhine Province.

Melchers strongly objected to the increase of centralization in Rome, and advocated decentralization. He declared that, as now employed, dispensations from Rome were not necessary. Cardinal De Luca interrupted him, and told him that he was not speaking to the point, and that he must send his proposals to the Commission. He replied that he had sent his proposals to Rome long ago, and had received no answer; and then proceeded with his speech. An attack on centralization and on dispensations, from such a prelate, was a practical matter in Rome, as much as in Manchester would be a movement to cut off all the customers in some great county.

On January 23 and 24, Cardinal Hohenlohe gave two dinner parties—the first to Fallibilists, and the second to Infallibilists. At the former, Hefele, who now reappears on the scene, no longer as theologian, but as Bishop of Rottenburg, complained that he had lost the important sitting of that morning through an order from Cardinal Antonelli to attend the baptism of a child of the ex-Duke of Parma, which eleven other prelates[Pg 418] who like him had apartments in the Quirinal were also obliged to attend, and at which six Cardinals gave their presence.

Archbishop Melchers of Cologne did not flatter Friedrich by telling him, what he already knew, that his Grace had forbidden his theological students to go to the faculty at Munich. His Grace, says Friedrich, did know the name of Döllinger, but not that of Reithmayer; and as to those of the younger professors, not the name of one. The Archbishop of Munich was not able to resist the temptation of telling Friedrich, as a good story, that when the bishops at Fulda, in the previous autumn, spoke of recommending Friedrich's Church History to the clergy, as a work which they ought to procure, his Grace of Cologne confessed that he did not know the name of the book. The pendant which the author archly hangs to this tale is, that when the copy of that work which he had presented to his Grace of Munich fell, after some years, again into his hands, it had never been opened.

Bishop Förster of Breslau mentioned how Ketteler was going to propose, in the meeting of German and Hungarian prelates, that they should disavow the letters in the Augsburg Gazette; but, said Förster, we stand too high, and besides, the letters contain too many truths. Some one at table threw out the idea that the best thing to be done would be to give the Drafts of Decrees to the bishops, and let them go home and study them for a year or two, and then return and discuss them. They had come to Rome without books. Points of the greatest gravity in doctrine and discipline were laid before them for decision, and, as every one knew, it was difficult to find help in the libraries of Rome. Even that of the Vatican was closed, not only upon every holy day, but also on all those days on which General Congregations were held. The bishops were not allowed to take either books or manuscripts out of the libraries; still more, both in the Vatican library and the Vatican archives, the order had been given that nothing bearing on the Council should be delivered to them. Their regret at this was lessened by the discovery that the libraries contained scarcely any modern theological works, especially German[Pg 419] ones. In his day, Addison remarked that books were not the attractions you went to see in an Italian library. But, of recent years, a real library of books, in addition to the old celebrated one of manuscripts, had been added at the Vatican. It was not catalogued, and was not open to the public. Some one in the company stated that it was now understood that theologians were to be brought into the Council in order to defend the Drafts of Decrees. So far as the Theologi Minores, or doctors, were concerned, Friedrich thought this improbable; and as to the higher theologians, or bishops, he wondered who they were to be. Can any one fancy, he said, such a man as Senestrey being treated as a theologian? At Trent, with the ideas then prevailing of what constituted a theologian, he would not have been dreamed of; but he passes in Rome as learned because he is a pupil and a favourite of the Jesuits; and by their standard, indeed, adds his countryman, he may even pass as holy, understanding so well as he does the principle that the end sanctifies the means.

As to what Friedrich next relates, we can only say that the ascertained fact for history, in her present stage, is that the following are things which a learned professor, with a position and character to take care of, deliberately publishes, things which the gravest men receive. Friedrich relates how when Senestrey was seeking the bishopric, King Maximilian II was in Rome, and often visited Theiner, whose fame all Germans prized. His rooms in the Vatican, off the Via dei Giardini Pontificali, well known to scholars, are often pointed out to visitors going up towards the sculpture gallery by the present circuitous approach. Here the royal visitor would chat with the learned Prefect of the Archives, and enjoy the landscape. At that time Theiner had no better friend than Senestrey, who, knowing that Theiner was in bad odour with the Jesuits, showed himself very hostile to them, so that even his experienced friend confessed to Friedrich that he had allowed himself to be deceived. This Roman tale is followed by a Bavarian one. A person well acquainted with official circles told Friedrich that Senestrey actually offered his services to the government, saying[Pg 420] that if appointed bishop, in case the other prelates ever entertained anything disagreeable to the government, he would give information and do everything to counterwork them. In January, 1872, Friedrich heard Senestrey named in a company where one was present who had been a companion of King Maximilian II on his journey to Rome, and who broke out saying—

Yes, that man talked so much in Rome to King Maximilian II and his suite against the Jesuits and against the misgovernment of Rome, that the King said, That is the right man! He must be the bishop!

No sooner was he in the bishopric than it proved that the king had lost his subject, the government its supporter, Theiner his friend, and that the whole of Senestrey belonged to the Jesuits.

The company of the second day, January 24, consisted of Infallibilists. Before dinner Friedrich was introduced to Senestrey, who looking at him, said roughly, "So you are Professor Friedrich," and turned his back. At table Ketteler broke out in loud denunciation of the letters of Quirinus. This Friedrich knew was meant for him, for although the bishop has since then laid the sin at the door of Lord Acton, he seems at that time to have suspected Friedrich. He blamed a statement that a certain piece of distinctive attire, not worn by any other bishop in the West, had been granted to Bishop Lavigerie of Algiers to adorn his shoulders, as a means of winning his vote; as if, said Ketteler, the whole episcopate was to be bought by a bit of dress! We do not remember that Quirinus said that they were all to be bought by it. Our impression is that he only said something to the effect that it was incredible how far that sort of thing did go with them. Considering their training and habits, with us the thing incredible would be that things of that sort should not go far with them. And their constant study is to make things of that sort go far with all mankind. But the sally of Ketteler was responded to by the Military Bishop of Prussia, Namszanowski, who might be supposed to be even more than others susceptible of colour[Pg 421] and decoration. He, evidently not being well read in Quirinus, missed the point of Ketteler's protest, and said, "Quite right, brother of Mainz. The same offer was made to me just at the outset, but I repelled such an imputation with contempt." This luckless reply probably made Friedrich think of his own visit from the much-vested Count Prelate W——. The eye of Ketteler flashed. Friedrich, who sat next to Namszanowski, hinted that he had missed the point of Bishop Ketteler, who ranted on—tobte weiter. When he had finished his tirade he looked Friedrich in the eye, as if to see whether he was not well abashed. "But I had no occasion to fear Ketteler, and looked him in the eye quite as sharply." Just after coffee the voice of Ketteler made the room ring,—"The chief advantage of the Council so far is, that the bishops learn to know one another, and to compare experience. For in his own diocese, of course, a bishop never hears the truth from his clergy, in consequence of his immeasurably higher jurisdiction." Friedrich, being the only priest present, said to Namszanowski, "Ketteler must lead a pretty regiment, when his clergy dare not tell him the truth. Any one who wants to hear the truth, and can bear to hear it, will hear it." He added that were it not for the impropriety of provoking a scene in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe, he would indignantly repel this insult to the whole of the lower clergy. None of the bishops intimated any dissent from the view of Ketteler, while Senestrey, and Leonrod of Eichstädt, simpered approbation. But here Friedrich inserts a note saying, Time has shown that Ketteler knew the lower clergy better than I did.

Just at this time came another token that the content or indifference with which the Roman Catholic world watched the impending change in its Church and creed was broken in exceptional cases. An accomplished French oratorian, a member of the Academy, Father Gratry, published a letter on January 18, which in almost any other country than France, coming from such a man on such a subject, at such a moment, would have caused, not a passing talk, but a profound impression. All the abuse was no longer for Döllinger and Monta[Pg 422]lembert. Father Gratry had a share allotted to him, sufficient to prove his importance. "Does God need your lies?" was a question he repeated with solemnity, as he dwelt on the false decretals and on the falsifications even of the breviary. His French clearness and point sent these reproaches home so as to be extremely cutting. It seemed as if accusing "the Church" of lying and forgery was a sin not to be forgiven. Few things were more discouraging for those who hoped that moral ground still remained for a reformation within the Church of Rome, than the perfect ease with which the benefits of the lying and the forgery were accepted, and the fury with which the crime of mentioning those incidents was denounced. "False decretals as much as you like," said Veuillot, "but the sense of the false decretals is the faith of the Church";[295] so, if God had not needed the lies the Church had assimilated them. Father Gratry, said the Civiltá, never tires of calling the school which teaches pontifical infallibility, a school of error. Does he know where that school has fixed its abode, and holds its chair? If he does not know, we shall tell him. "Its home is Rome, its chair is that of the Roman Pontiff, is that of St. Peter."[296] Father Hyacinth said, at a later time, "God never has need of lies, but lies often have need of God, and they are never so powerful as when they present themselves in His name."[297]

Still, the weight of wrath continued to fall upon the original offender. The Unitá Cattolica of January 25, in the letter of its Munich correspondent, called Döllinger a bag of wind and a whited sepulchre, and suggested that the Archbishop of Munich should prohibit theological students from attending his classes. The Unitá shows that Dr. Döllinger in his works "has always hidden a rebellious spirit under a learning which was often that of a charlatan."

In the General Congregation of the 21st, as the Cyprian Archbishop who said Mass used the Oriental rite, the Fathers would[Pg 423] have been unable to follow, but the Master of the Ceremonies, lifting up his voice, gave a signal for each important movement.[298] In the Congregation of the Monday, Strossmayer spoke for an hour and a quarter (Tagebuch, p. 133). He insisted that reform was called for, and reform from the Pope downwards, and moreover that the whole of the canon law should be reformed. On the following Tuesday, this last proposition was supported by the Bishop of Saluzzo. On the same day, a speaker not named regretted that the word "concubinage" should have been used, as it gave occasion to the world to say that celibacy was a failure. Friedrich, while vehemently sharing this regret, admits that no means were suggested for doing away with concubinage or immorality. The Curia, however, could not be blamed for the scandal caused by the discussion on this matter of discipline. No one of the official organs ever breathed a word on the subject. Monsignor Guérin, whose history, says the preface to the second edition, reproduces the Council entire, might never have heard of this subject, and the same is the case with Sambin. The Acta Sanctæ Sedis, even in Latin, are equally reserved. The title of the Draft Decree on the general subject of the life of the clergy is mentioned in Frond. Henceforth we cease to be able to check the statements of the unauthorized writers by those of the Acta Sanctæ Sedis as to the names of those who spoke on given days. That amount of information was no more afforded. One day the record was that five spoke, another seven, and so forth. Who the speakers were, what they spoke upon, what they said about it, were matters swallowed up in the pontifical secret.

On the same day, the challenge to the College of Cardinals to reform itself was taken up by Cardinal Di Pietro, who admitted that such a demand might have been reasonable at Trent, at which time the Cardinals held many pluralities, but at the present day it was groundless. The only reform now called for was a financial one, as the revenue of the Cardinals was not adequate. He told the Fathers that if they only knew all,[Pg 424] the Cardinals were not to be envied. This even Friedrich admits, saying that not once during the Council had the Pope summoned them to hear their opinions.

On January 27, Simor, Primate of Hungary, spoke on the life of the clergy, and recommended the "common life." Martin of Paderborn also advised that the cooks[299] should be superseded, and that "common life" should be resorted to. Martin had appealed to Cardinal Hohenlohe to support him in a proposal that Protestant clergymen who wanted to join the Church of Rome should have both marriage and the cup in the Lord's Supper conceded to them. Verot, Bishop of Savannah, spoke on the breviary. He urged revision, stating that he durst not, without subjecting himself to condemnation, say what was in the breviary from Augustine. Hereupon the bell of Cardinal De Angelis rang loudly, and Verot was told that the Fathers could not be spoken of in that manner. As we understand Verot, he had not found fault with the Fathers. The sons would not allow one another to say what the fathers had said. The American waited a moment, went on, and said the same thing of Gregory the Great. Now came a second call to order, and he was told that if he would not speak on another subject, he must leave the desk. So, after a few words more, he did leave it (Tagebuch, p. 138). The Prince Archbishop of Olmütz asked if the Primate of Hungary was ready to lead the "common life" with the canons of his chapter, adding that he should not object to lead it with his own chapter, but he feared that the canons of Olmütz would object. The following day, Melchers of Cologne supported the views of Verot as to the breviary. He censured the proposal to introduce lay brothers into the parsonages instead of the cooks. It would be better it the latter could be altogether got rid of; but as that was scarcely to be expected, it would be well to require that they should be fifty years of age, or at least forty. On January 31, Bishop Dinkel of Augsburg is said to have spoken[Pg 425] against concubinage in the strict sense, but allowing it to the clergy in a wider sense.[300]

Perhaps, as, about the middle of January, men in the Englisher Garten, or Park, of Munich, lifted their hats to the Provost as he took his afternoon walks, they might fancy that the spare figure was weighted with rather more than a scholar's gravity. Neither the passing carriages, nor the race of Isar rolling rapidly; neither the fine effects of the westering sun behind the steeples of the city, nor the pleasant view from the brow beyond the river, could fix the old man's well-lighted eye. That eye was then watching the process which was putting the faith and labour of seventy years to a cruel test. The Church he had toiled to rehabilitate before the intellect of the Fatherland, striving, by letters, to connect her more firmly with the past, and to equip her more nobly for the future, had been cast into the cauldron. The very basis of dogma was to be changed. A new standard was to be set up. The adoption of that standard would change the relation of the Church to the Bible and to the Fathers, to General Councils and to the Episcopate, to the people and the king, to letters and all lights, to liberties, constitutions, and every human hope. Principles which had been charged upon them by Protestants, and which they had resented, saying that the accusers confounded opinion with dogma, were now lifting their heads in a General Council. He had striven in silence to avert the evil without raising a conflict of persons or names. But now the Infallibilists felt their conscience oppressed by having to recognize him, and those like-minded with him, as Catholics. They could not enjoy the fulness of their own belief as long as the Church tolerated his creed. And the Infallibilists were the Pope, the Curia, the Jesuits, and the majority of the bishops, at least of the nominal ones. If there was yet a hope, it rested in the strong help which God often gives to the effort of one self-risking man. The moment was come either to run all hazards[Pg 426] and trust to that blessing, or to float down the stream like one of those winter leaves on the Isar.

It was on January 19, just when Gratry was issuing the first of his letters, and when Darboy threw his marshal's baton into the midst of the enemy, that in the quiet house in Von der Tann Street, the formidable name of Döllinger was signed to a protest against the Infallibilist Address. Through the Augsburg Gazette, this presently rang all over Germany, and a little later echoed in every corner of Europe. "One hundred and eighty millions of human beings are to be compelled by threats of exclusion from the Church, of privation of the sacraments, and of eternal damnation, to believe and profess what hitherto the Church has never believed or taught." So began an appeal destined to elicit proof that large numbers of educated Roman Catholics, under all their external quiet, were agitated; and that at the same time the masses, whatever little opinions they might have, were as to action completely under the dominion of the priests.[301]

It was now that Dupanloup wrote a letter to Deschamps, Archbishop of Malines. Two days after the opening session, Deschamps had published a reply to the famous pastoral of Dupanloup. It was at once inserted in the journals of Belgium, France, and Italy. Dupanloup, who had in France professed to expect in Rome profound tranquillity, found himself sharply attacked. He had warily reserved the merits of the question for argument in the secret ear of the Council, treating before the public only its accidents. But, cried Deschamps, you have pointed out the difficulties of a definition: how could you have the courage to do so?

When the brilliant Bishop of Orleans was ready for the press, he found that the press was in good keeping.

Father Spada [the censor] told me that an imprimatur was necessary, and at the same time said that such an imprimatur would be refused to me. Perhaps, Monsignor, you probably will think with me that, in these circumstances, all discussion between us is impos[Pg 427]sible; and you will feel it natural that I should preserve the silence befitting the position in which we are placed.[302]

The French thus saw their own prelates, under their own flag, deprived of the right to defend opinions identified with their national history. This fired Gratry, and added fresh bitters to the cup of the dying Montalembert.

Quirinus says (p. 201)—

The word "freedom" has nowhere so ill a sound as at Rome. Only one kind of freedom can be spoken of here—freedom of the Church; and, in their favourite and accustomed manner of speech, by the Church is intended the Pope; and by freedom, dominion over the State, according to the Decretals.

Some weeks later, Dupanloup did print his reply in Paris.[303] You, he said to Deschamps, ask how I could have the courage to point to the historical difficulties of a definition of infallibility; but, my dear Lord, I ask you, how you can have the courage to close your eyes to them? Repelling the idea of acclamation, and insisting on a thorough sifting of the matter, he says, and the emphases are his own—

The Church in an act so solemn, one which she never recalls, one which pledges her for ever, one which, under pain of anathema and of damnation eternal, is laid upon the faith of all souls for all ages, does not proceed inconsiderately, or without having elucidated all obscurities and difficulties (p. 8).... As to the truth of the doctrine, I reserve the discussion of that for the Council itself, in case the question is brought on (p. 9).... You belong not to that deplorable school of apologists who fancy that they are defending religion when they make history lie (p. 15).

He shows how even Spalding and his associates in their proposal for a method of establishing belief in infallibility different from an express definition, said that such a definition would

extend its effects to all past centuries, would revive all the disputes heretofore allayed, would afford to Protestant and to rationalistic science a new battle-field, and would open up to the enemies,[Pg 428] of the Church a discussion upon the whole field of history, and the whole of the collection of Papal Bulls (p. 14). Quoting Melchior Canus, he says: Peter has not need of your lies, or of your adulations.... To no one, my Lord, will it be agreeable in Rome, and amid the difficult circumstances wherein we stand, to engage in a discussion as to the common Father, in an investigation of the most delicate facts of history, and in a dissection of texts of Scripture before Europe and before the world which are observing us (p. 16).... The Fathers at Nicæa did not proceed by way of a summary discussion, much less by way of acclamation written or oral (p. 17).

A few other expressions of Dupanloup may be recited—

Far from putting an end to the discussions in the press, it will cause them to break out more terrible than ever.... If the difficulties, theological and historical, of a definition are such that simply exhibiting them as I did involves by inevitable consequence a grave attack on infallibility itself, how could you say that the difficulties are nothing?... You had the confident idea that nearly all the Fathers were with you, and were going enthusiastically to vote the definition off-hand (p. 18).... Certainly in the Church there must be an infallible doctrinal authority; but is it necessary that this authority should be the Pope alone? Would it not suffice if it was the authority of the Pope and the bishops united? (p. 20).... I asked why Pitt thought it well before taking a step towards Catholic emancipation to consult the most famous Catholic universities of Europe on the question of the pontifical power. You have deemed it well to answer not a word (p. 23).... In the ninth century we lost about one-half of the Church; in the sixteenth at least a third of the other half. At the present moment perhaps a half of what remains is more or less broken in upon (entamée). We have to reconquer.... Would you all at once, as several bishops from America said to me yesterday, change for the whole of the Catholic clergy who live in the midst of Protestant populations the entire ground of religious controversy? (p. 24).... In France, the Parliament, the Senate, the Legislative Corps, the Councils of State, the public officers, the bench, the bar, the young collegians, the army, the navy, commerce, finance, the arts, the liberal professions, the workmen of the cities, the electors in the country districts, the great mass of those who with us and elsewhere determine the course of affairs,—in a word, the nation, assuredly is not with you (p. 25).... Have you not heard the cry of the bishops of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and of so[Pg 429] many others? (p. 25).... Three centuries ago a wave passed over Germany, a wave over England, Holland, Switzerland; and at this hour the wave has not subsided, but is still encroaching on the shore (p. 26).... Brazil is sick, Mexico is sick, the old Spanish colonies proceed from revolution to revolution, and it is my mournful conviction that what you, my Lord, are preparing, will give to the Church in all those countries a new and terrible shaking (p. 26).... Some say the great evil of our day is that the principle of authority is laid low. Let us exalt it in the Church, and we shall save society.... To think that by proclaiming the infallibility of the Pope you will roll back the revolution is, to my view, one of those illusions which sometimes, in human societies, desperate parties make for themselves on the eve of a supreme crisis (p. 27).

His statement of the condition of things before he first wrote would appear to be meant to depict what existed in Rome as he was now writing—

No, it was not unanimity as to the question debated among us which reigned ere I spoke. It was on the one side violence, and on the other side astonishment, silent and downcast. If any voice was raised, speedily was it covered with clamours and insults (p. 31).

This reply called down from Veuillot many pages of taunts, gibes, and sneers.

Means of humiliating the bishops of the Opposition were found by the sovereign, which seem new in both kingly and parliamentary warfare. Priests wrote against them, and the Pope sent to those priests for publication letters of approval, containing sharp cuts at the unfortunate prelates. To the Jesuit Ramière, the Pope said that he had set Maret "in contradiction with himself, so that you have constrained him to demolish the edifice with his own hands" (Friedberg, p. 490). The Vicar-General of Nimes had written against Dupanloup, and forth comes an epistle of Pius IX praising him for his elegant refutation of the empty sophisms which had caused a disturbance of minds deplored by all (Friedberg, p. 488).

Continental Catholic writers generally put Dr. Pusey as one of the most important promoters of the Church of Rome. Yet they were aware that he did not belong to it. In his second[Pg 430] pamphlet Dupanloup spoke with feeling of the value of the Ritualistic party, both in England and America, as pointing to Rome. Ce Qui se Passe au Concile says (p. iii., troisième éd.),—"In England Dr. Pusey, the originator of the Ritualistic movement, which has led so many persons, eminent for intellect to the Catholic religion—Pusey, whose loyal sincerity no one ever suspected," had written that nothing would be more fatal to the prospect of reunion than a declaration of Papal infallibility. This was not likely to make much impression upon the Curia. They knew that what for England was called reunion, for Rome was called submission; which Manning told them would be facilitated by definition; and Manning served them so punctiliously that they were fain to believe him. Moreover, what Desanctis in that remarkable book Roma Papale, had many years previously described as the plan of the Curia for operations in England, would be little affected by a doctrine or two more or less. His account, in one word, was that they would mission England through the senses, leaving doctrines and arguments in the background. It was a question of spectacle, not of reason or Scripture. And love of spectacle was adorned with the name of aesthetics, and sensible Englishmen were to be led captive by the power of clothes. In this point of view, one who promoted the use of the chosen means might better serve the end from the very fact that he did not himself aim so low.

[Pg 431]

CHAPTER VIII

Church and State—Draft of Decrees with Canons—Gains Publicity—Principles involved—Views of Liberal Catholics—The Papal View of the Means of Resistance possessed by Governments.

"Informers against the Church," was, in a word, the name now hurled against the Augsburg Gazette and the Times. "Conspirators against human society" was the retort of the general press of Europe upon the Curia. The secret labour of five years was ruthlessly exposed by two unconsecrated offenders. How the "breach of the pontifical secret" had occurred, of which Cardinal Antonelli complained in despatch after despatch, may perhaps be known some other day. What we now know is that publicity took possession of the results, though secrecy had presided over all the processes. Even the bond of mortal sin had proved too weak for what Curran might have called the irresistible genius of universal illumination. The decrees, canons, and anathemas proposed on the subject of Church and State were now before the world.

On January 21, the Schema, or Draft of Decrees on the Church, was distributed to the bishops. Hefele told how a diplomatist laughingly boasted that he had received one at the same time.[304] This Draft was to that on faith what the application is to the sermon. It laid down principles in fifteen chapters, and reduced them to operative shape in twenty-one canons. Vitelleschi says (p. 85)—

Now, on summing up these Canons, what do they amount to? Sole religion, the Catholic; sole head, the Pope, "who has full and supreme power"; his laws superior to those of the State, on which he exercises his judgment "concerning the lawful and the unlawful," and disposes of permissions and punishments. Dante has imagined[Pg 432] an Emperor and a Pope, who between them shall direct the world; but if the idea of these Canons were fully carried out with regard to civil society, there would remain the Pope only.

This object, the Pope only, which rests in the logical view of Vitelleschi, as the result of his examination of the Canons, is the same object which long previously stood before the illuminated vision of M. Veuillot, whose means of reaching conclusions were not so circuitous. The Pope only is the object which Archbishop Cecconi even now sets out as the paramount figure of the future, albeit with no extatic confidence. And the Pope only is precisely that crowning beauty in the image of the world-empire which Cardinal Manning reproached Mr. Bryce with missing in his conception of the Catholic universe. Mr. Bryce, like Dante, was a dualist. Dualism, however, was to be done away with, except in the wholesome form of light and darkness, the two opposed forces. All the labour and the silence of the recent years had been employed in preparing an inauguration which vulgar eye was not to disturb till the King should burst forth in his plenitude of supreme authority with unerring judgment, so arrayed that all the tribes of Israel would hail the mystic David the one King-shepherd and Shepherd-king of a world at last unified.

The description of the effect of these canons given by Quirinus (p. 203) was not so elegant as that of Vitelleschi. He wrote for Germans menaced with a change; while the Romans to whom the Marchese spoke, had for ages been themselves delivered from dualism, and could see in the new measures only an effort to extend to all the human race that perfect Catholic unity, religious and political, of which their States had been the sole blameless example. They well knew who was the spiritual David, the one shepherd of the one fold,—shepherd with sling as well as pipe, shepherd with sword as well as crook,—on whose future reign over one kingdom the eye of the Jesuit, gazing through the glass of Ezekiel, dwelt with rapture, expounding: "I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be[Pg 433] divided into two kingdoms any more at all.... And David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd."[305]

Quirinus, writing as one to whom this unity had been perhaps gorgeous in the distance, but who saw it now in a new aspect, cried: "These transparent Decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: the Christian world consists simply of masters and slaves. The masters are the Italians, the Pope, and his Court; and the slaves are all bishops (including the Italians themselves), all priests, and all the laity." Whether Quirinus had studied Tarquini's à priori system of the Perfect Society, we do not know; but any one referring to our analysis of it will see how closely it corresponds with the following, in which Quirinus sums up the doctrine of these Draft Decrees—

Three main ideas run through the Schema, and are formulated into dogmatic Decrees guarded with anathemas. Firstly, to the Pope belongs absolute dominion over the whole Church, whether dispersed or assembled in Council. Secondly, the Pope's temporal sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be maintained as pertaining to dogma. Thirdly, Church and State are immutably connected; but in the sense that the Church's laws always hold good before and against the civil law, and therefore every Papal ordinance that is opposed to the constitution and law of the land, binds the faithful, under pain of mortal sin, to disobey the constitution and law of their country (p. 204).

One incidental notice of the Draft by Quirinus is, "regulating all relations between Church and State, and restoring the Papal supremacy over the bodies and souls of men" (p. 209).

The Rheinischer Merkur (p. 22) quotes the Ultramontane Hausblätter as asserting that the twenty-one Canons had all been long recognised as part of the Catholic faith. No, says the Merkur, some of them were repudiated as calumnious by the Catholic bishops of England and Ireland in 1826. On the same page it says:

We do not want a centralized power of a theocratic complexion, claiming the right of interfering at will, and disturbing our political[Pg 434] and social relations, and of reducing princes to vassals—a centralized power claiming that its Decrees shall bind the conscience as divine.... We do not want this apparatus of coercion for the Church—contumaces salubribus pœnis coercendi—for compelling the contumacious by wholesome penalties;—we know what that means!... We do not want under-satraps armed with whips; we do not want despotism, which, as well as heresy, is one of the gates of hell. Ready to render to God what is God's, we also wish to render to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and we count it a precious birthright to be reckoned as good subjects by our lawful sovereigns; but just on this account do we regard Drafts of Decrees, the execution of which would cause us to appear as enemies of public safety and of dynastic order, in the light of attacks on our civil existence, and as calculated to bring us into the same position as that in which our fellow Catholics in the Russian Empire groan.

What would these Liberal Catholics have said had Reisach's Drafts not been "shipwrecked"? The twenty-one Canons place the affairs of this world so much at the discretion of the Pontiff, that proposals which alarmed the same men who brought these forward, must have been startling. In principle, they could hardly have claimed more than is claimed here; but possibly they contained formulæ for the application of principle, which might have attracted the attention even of those politicians who think it wise and practical to ignore principles. In nothing is Rome stronger than in her consciousness that when once she has succeeded in getting a principle recognized, she can afford to temporize as to its application, and for a while to temporize as to its application, and for a while to compromise as to details. As the preparations of Reisach had been kept back, and the Canons which carried the principles were presented, so we shall find that the Canons were eventually sacrificed, as too much entering into detail, in order to carry what embraced all.

The Decrees in question were clearly intended as a vehicle to carry over the doctrines of the Syllabus respecting Church and State from the domain of ideas into that of facts. The Chapters would furnish text for professors and preachers. The Canons would bind the conscience of every Catholic, on pain of anathema. Nothing further could be wanting than execu[Pg 435]tive contrivances, such as probably the Drafts of Reisach were intended to provide.

The following is an abridged view of the substance and effect of the twenty-one Canons (Documenta, ii. p. 101):—

1. If any man say that the religion of Christ is not made manifest in a society, let him be anathema.

2. If any man say that the Church has no certain and immutable form, let him be anathema.

3. If any man say that she is not external and visible, let him be anathema.

4. If any man say that she is not one body, let him be anathema.

5. If any man say that she is not a society necessary to the obtaining of eternal salvation, let him be anathema.

6. If any man say that her intolerance in the condemnation of all sects is not divinely commanded, or that such sects ought to be tolerated, let him be anathema.

7. If any man say that she may err in doctrine, depart from her original institution, or cease to exist, let him be anathema.

8. If any man say that she is not a final dispensation, let him be anathema.

9. If any man say that her infallibility extends only to things contained in revelation, let him be anathema.

10. If any man say that she is not a Perfect Society, but an association (collegium) which may be subjected to secular rule, let him be anathema.

11. If any man say that bishops have not by divine appointment a proper power of ruling, which they are freely to exercise, let him be anathema.

12. If any man say that the power of the Church lies only in counsel or persuasion, but not in legal commands, in coercion and compulsion by external jurisdiction, and in wholesome pains, let him be anathema.

13. If any man say that the true Church, out of which none can be saved, is any other than the Roman, let him be anathema.

14. If any man say that Peter was not prince of the apostles and head of the whole Church, or that he received only a primacy of honour and not of jurisdiction, let him be anathema.

15. If any man say that he had not successors, or that the Roman Pontiff was not his successor in the primacy, let him be anathema.

16. If any man say that the Roman Pontiff has only a right of supervision or direction over the Universal Church, and not a full and supreme power of jurisdiction, or that his power over the[Pg 436] Churches, taken separately, is not immediate and ordinary, let him be anathema.

17. If any man say that the power of the Church is not compatible with that of supreme civil power, let him be anathema.

18. If any man say that the power necessary to rule civil society is not from God, let him be anathema.

19. If any man say that all rights among men and all authority are derived from the State, let him be anathema.

20. If any man say that the supreme rule of conscience lies in the law of the State, or in public opinion, and that the judicial power of the Church does not extend to pronouncing them legitimate or illegitimate, or that by civil law that can become legitimate which by divine law is illegitimate, let him be anathema.

21. If any man say that the laws of the Church have not binding force unless confirmed by the civil power, and that it is competent to the civil power to judge or decree in causes where religion is implicated, let him be anathema.

The logical succession of ideas was manifest. The first five Canons established the principle that the Christian Church is a society which has Form, Visibility, Unity, and is necessary to salvation. The next series pronounced this Church to be Intolerant (6), Infallible (7), Final as a dispensation (8), Infallible in matters not contained in revelation (9), a Perfect Society not subject to the civil power (10), ruling by bishops (11) and possessing legislative, judicial, and compulsory power (12), because none can be saved out of her (13). The fourteenth Canon, and the two following ones, establish the unlimited dominion of the Pope over all bishops; while the eleventh establishes the ruling power of bishops, but leaves the sphere of it undefined, not even saying that it is over the Church. And this undefined ruling power of bishops is placed between the independence of the Church in relation to the civil power on the one hand, and her own compulsory power and the absolute authority of the Pope over the bishops on the other.

The seventeenth Canon affirms that the power of the Church is compatible with civil authority,—which without a doubt it is, so long as the civil authority abides within the limits traced for it by the Church. That authority may also, in the sense of Rome, be, in its order, supreme,—that is, not subject to any[Pg 437] other civil authority, but always subject to the Pope, who is an authority of a higher order than the civil. The eighteenth Canon bases all civil authority on divine right. This is capable of more than one interpretation. First, it may mean that all existing authority is to be viewed as from God, whether it originated in conquest, prescription, or vote; or, secondly, it may mean that no civil authority is legitimate which has not divine sanction; and as among the baptized that sanction cannot be received except through the Pope, the consequence of such an interpretation would be obvious. The nineteenth Canon deliberately confounds natural and legal rights, as if the laws that create and protect legal rights were not themselves the outgrowth of natural rights. In the same way it confounds natural authority and legal authority. The twentieth seems to put civil law and mere public opinion on the same level, and places both one and the other under the judgment of the Church, and that as to their legitimacy or illegitimacy. Judgment, of course, does not mean criticism, instruction, remonstrance, or warning. It means what the word would mean anywhere, in such solemn legislative language, namely, judicial sentence. Legitimacy or illegitimacy, again, does not mean wisdom or folly, goodness or badness, but means what it says. Divine law includes Church law, and what it forbids no civil law can warrant. Therefore the power claimed in this fundamental proposition is that with which we are already acquainted in the literature of the movement for reconstruction, that, namely, of declaring what laws of a particular State are or are not legitimate; every such State being considered as a province of the universal theocratic monarchy.

Perhaps no principle embodied in these Canons lies so deep under the whole movement against free government in religious and civil society as the principle that confounds civil rights with natural ones, and, by denying that the State is the source of all rights, covers the denial of the fact that it is the source of legal rights. As to legal rights, we, sitting free and thankful amid our books, our friends, and our blessings, no more know of any source of such rights except that benign ordinance of our[Pg 438] Father in heaven, the civil law, than did the teacher of Plato, when by law deprived of his natural rights, he sat in his cell while the deadly cup was being prepared.[306] No, the State is not the author of rights, but it is the guardian of them. Practically all our natural rights are but a common for any beast to trample and to browse upon till the State surrounds them with the sacred fence of law; then do they turn into garden sward, and well-watched flowers and fruits exceeding fair. But these principles, which strip the State of all moral mission, which empty law of all moral character, which rob society itself, and all the institutions of society, of any aim moral and eternal, of any but a temporary, material end, and which transfer all that is noble to the priesthood alone, cover one of the darkest attempts that art could direct against all the foundations of public life. The moral mission of the State is written on every page of the Bible, and the political mission of Christian priests not on a single one.

The State in renouncing for itself the right to dictate to men their faith and worship, does not empty itself of a moral character, but, on the contrary, takes the highest possible moral ground. In that renunciation it does not disavow the faith and fear of God, but, on the contrary, avows its persuasion that the rights which affect the conscience of His creatures are so sacred as not to be sufficiently guarded except in His hand alone. Of shallow pretexts for oppression, none was ever shallower than the assumption that because society as such says that it dares not to come between God and the soul, therefore does it say that as society it has nothing to do with God.

The Court was evidently not disposed to leave politicians under any delusion. The Civiltá wrote on the politicasters and the Council,[307] as if to make statesmen feel that they had either to submit or else to bear the brunt of the revolutionary forces, from below and from above. A principal object of the Council, says the article, had avowedly been "the restoration of peace in the orders, even the political ones, of Christendom."[Pg 439] Confessing that statesmen, or politicasters, as it called them, evinced anxiety, the Civiltá named measures to which they might be tempted to resort. These were threefold—first, making new preventive laws; secondly, restoring obsolete ones; thirdly, separating the Church and the State. By preventive laws must be understood any legal bar set up to impede the Pope in any exercise of his legislative, judicial, or coercive power in a given realm. Preventive laws, old or new, it pronounces to be weapons which would infallibly "burst or break in the hands of governments, if they attempted to use them."

The method by which this result would be brought about is indicated in a way which shows how divine law can loose what civil law binds.

There are two cases in which a subordinate is not obliged to obey a superior; the first, when a contrary precept exists of greater authority; the second, when the superior gives commands in things in respect of which the subordinate is not placed under him.... An inferior authority is not to be disobeyed when a superior one prohibits. Now, the authority of the Church, assembled in Council, is superior to the authority of the State.... It is superior in the sense in which the reasoning faculty in man is superior to the sentient and vegetative faculties.... Since the ecclesiastical authority is superior to the civil in such wise that, in matters affecting both, the acts of the civil must be subject to those of the ecclesiastical, it is manifest that if a collision arose between the definitions of the Œcumenical Council and the laws of the State, the latter would cease, by that fact alone, to have any binding force whatever.

The same conclusion may be deduced from the words in which the divine Founder of the Church gave authority to His disciples to teach His doctrine to all nations. All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go and teach all nations. From the fact that, in virtue of His divine generation, the Father had conferred on Him all power, celestial and terrestrial, Christ argued thus, Therefore, go ye and teach all nations my doctrine; and thus He clearly demonstrated that His Church was invested by Him with such a right of teaching that it would never be lawful for any power to offer to her opposition. Therefore, should the State require obedience to laws contrary to the definitions of the Council, it would do so without a true legal right. And if, notwithstanding, it employed force to procure obedience, it would fall into tyranny,[Pg 440] odious to the conscience and ruinous to itself.... By no means does the authority of governments extend to commanding what the Œcumenical Council may prohibit, or to prohibiting what it may command; and if governments should arrogate to themselves the right of doing so, in vain would they presume upon being able to oblige Catholics subject to submit; and should they have recourse to force, they would plunge themselves into tyranny which would not long serve the interests of those who displayed it.

The principles are very simple and firmly fixed. While submission to legitimate authority is a duty, resistance to "tyranny" is a right. Any authority used in contravention of the decrees of the Church ceases to be legitimate, runs into tyranny, and is to be disobeyed. Hence the duty of obedience to civil rulers is taught in the term "due obedience," and only the Pope can judge when obedience ceases to be due; but it is judged already that due it never can be, in any possible case, wherein the civil law contravenes the directions of the ecclesiastical authority. How States which profess to accept the corporation which insists on these principles as a true and worthy teacher, or which look on it as anything but an erring and dangerous caste, are to escape dissolution, it is not easy to see.

It is not hard to call the hopes of victory in the impending struggle monkish dreams, nor easy to dispel the show of probability in the following argument. Hundreds of examples in the past, where persistent ecclesiastical agitation triumphed over political instability, would rise up to the memory of well read Jesuits, as making their calculations seem like those of positive philosophers, and the hopes of journalists and members of Parliament like those of enthusiasts, in the sense of men who look for ends without using means.

"What would such laws come to in case they were enacted? They would come to be laws of no validity and no effect in what touches belief: of no validity because essentially null as to binding force; of no effect because unable to prevent Catholics from a full adhesion of mind and heart to the dogmatic definitions of the Church. And as to external acts and matters of discipline, such laws would become a dead letter, or a criminal oppression. A dead letter if the governments did not feel that they had nerve to[Pg 441] put forth the strong hand and enforce the execution of them, in which case the laws would become a ridiculous comedy. Or a criminal oppression if, feeling themselves possessed of force, they should employ it to execute laws tyrannical, as being opposed to public liberty, public religion, and public faith."

As to separating the Church from the State, the Civiltá proudly quotes the Monde of Paris:—

The Catholics have number and force on their side ... before apostatising the French government would think twice ... the government surely would not give the signal for its own fall, and for a long revolution.

The separation of Church and State is here spoken of evidently in the ordinary sense; but the charge of having already separated the State from the Church was one frequently brought against the government of France, when the language employed was that of the initiated. In that language the Draft of Decrees now under consideration described separation of the State from the Church as the denial of the right or duty of the State to coerce by the appointed penalties, except so far as may be demanded in the interests of public peace, those who violate the Catholic religion.[308]

[Pg 442]

CHAPTER IX

The Courts of Vienna and Paris manifest anxiety—Disturbances in Paris—Daru's Letters—Beust moves—His Despatches—His Passage of Arms with Antonelli—Daru's Despatch and Antonelli's Reply—Daru's Rejoinder—Beust lays down the Course which Austria will follow—Arnim's Despatch—The Unitá on the Situation—Veuillot on the Situation—Satisfaction of the Ultramontanes.

The fire of small arms from the press only irritated the Curia; but presently the sound of heavy guns began to be heard, and ended in a boom, first from the Burg and next from the Tuileries. The two Emperors who, with the Pope, held a share in the sovereignty of Austria and France respectively, began to be aware of the fact that they might find themselves left by their senior partner exactly in the legal position which we have seen Phillips describe as that of the State in relation to the Church—the position in law of a married woman as compared with her husband. It will be remembered that, according to the doctrine of the Civiltá, every Catholic State must have two kings. It will further be remembered that all the Pope's subjects are bound to observe his law before that of the nation. If, therefore, the universal ruler could promulge what laws he pleased, and all these laws were to take the foreway of any competing laws of the State, it was plain that of the two kings in each State, the local one was at the mercy of the universal one.

On January 18, the very day on which Gratry dated his famous letter, and on which, probably, Döllinger penned his protest dated one day later, Count Daru wrote a letter, of which the press got hold: "They cannot be so blind," said the Foreign Minister of France, "as to suppose that it would be possible for us to keep our troops there a day after infallibility was proclaimed." He hoped that the Holy Father would yield to the[Pg 443] counsel of the most illustrious of the French bishops. A fortnight later (Feb. 5), in a second letter, he expressed fears that the majority would take advantage of its powers, and said that he had caused Cardinal Antonelli to be apprised of the truth through M. de Banneville; but he adds: "It is clear that everything may be thrown into uncertainty by the conduct of the Italian, Spanish, and missionary bishops, who seem to live in a world apart." He again speaks of the impossibility of keeping up a French garrison, and declares that the Propaganda seems to take no account of the Concordat, and that perhaps violence may be done to the pact which unites France with Rome. The revolutionary party, he affirms, is not only conspiring, but actually moving, and Rome must be blind to put weapons in their hands by breaking the force of the Conservatives, and compelling rebellion by the Syllabus.

This language betrays the weakness of statesmen who rely on Rome, as if it was a Conservative agency, but it would cause little anxiety to the Curia. They had forty thousand drilled men in France holding important places under the State. At this very time the movements of the revolutionary party in Paris were dwelt upon by Don Margotti in the tone of an enthusiastic bone-setter, who, hearing of accidents, felt sure that he must be called in. On February 11 the Unitá Cattolica said that—

"Bonaparte had cause to fear barricades in Paris. He and his minister had been setting up barricades against the Council, and so the revolutionists were setting up barricades against him. The Church always conquered the barricades of Gallicanism, but Bonaparte may not conquer those of Paris. Some morning we may find that he has fled. The Emperor would have set his house in order in a better manner, if, instead of launching into the parliamentary system, he had declared from the day the Council was announced that he would submit himself and France in everything and for everything to its decision...."

The very next day it is added—

"The troubles in Paris are a vengeance of divine justice on Napoleon for his misconduct in Italy. Had he not prevented the Pope from[Pg 444] sending his cousin, Count Pepoli of Bologna, to the galleys, he would not have had to imprison Rochefort."

If the same men who thus detested Napoleon threatened the Italians with French arms, it was simply from the belief that the Papacy had a stronger hold upon France than the empire. After saying (February 8) that modern society is to the Church what the world was to Christ, and that the first Syllabus against the world was compiled by Christ, Don Margotti says on the next day to the Italians—

You will not go to Rome, because France will always oppose you; and she does so because, if she did not, the world would. If the free-thinkers do not believe in miracles, let them see one in this—that Rome will never be taken from the Pope. Even a government with Rochefort at its head would defend the temporal dominion of the Pope-king.

There is a solemn passage in Vitelleschi where he speaks of the frequency with which governments find that they have to face some revolutionary movement at one and at the same time as that in which the claims of the Church are being pressed upon them. He does not pronounce that the two facts are in individual cases connected, but he does say that the frequent recurrence of the two simultaneously is "an organic phenomenon worthy of the deepest attention" (p. 235). Rechtbaur in Vienna said, "They threaten revolution if the State does not renounce its rights"; and a couple of days after it had quoted this remark, the Unitá Cattolica said—

Diocletian left a long tail behind him. His tail consists of those politicians who protest against the Syllabus as a declaration of war against modern society. Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich, Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome. Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of revolution—all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council.... The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome.

[Pg 445]

The letters of Count Daru, quoted above, caused inquiry in Rome. Quirinus asserted that the only existing copy of them was in the hands of the English government. It was known that Lord Acton was a near relation of the English Minister for Foreign Affairs. Putting this and that together, the Curia was inclined to say that Quirinus must be Lord Acton; and it is confidently affirmed that Monsignor Randi, whose spiritual duties were those of Director of Police, was taken into consultation with the Pope as to whether it would or would not be expedient to banish the suspected English nobleman.[309] The Unitá tried to make capital against Dupanloup out of these letters. It could not believe that the Bishop of Orleans would write to Daru and tell him what passed in the Council (March 8).

The anxiety felt at Courts in Catholic nations had now penetrated the mind of Count Beust. On February 10 he penned a remarkable despatch, in which he recited his pacific intentions and his innocent hopes, as indicated in his treatment of the Council hitherto, and especially in his rejection of the overtures of Bavaria. He was now, however, obliged to confess that, in Rome, there was a manifest determination not to acknowledge, nay, more, not to tolerate, that liberty which Austria claimed for the State in civil legislation. He now confesses to "alarm," and affirms that the Decrees of the Church "would dig an impassable gulf between the laws of the Church and those which govern the greater part of modern societies." He plainly declares that Austria would reserve to herself the right of interdicting the publication of any Act infringing the majesty of the law, and that every person who should disregard such prohibition must bear the legal consequences. This despatch was followed by one to Berlin,[310] pointing out how delicate had been the position of Austria in the present transaction. The empire was passing through an internal transformation. Hence arose a special necessity of maintaining the supremacy of law, and a corresponding expediency of avoiding internal conflict. In addition to reasons[Pg 446] of State for not identifying his policy with that of the minority of the bishops of the Council, Count Beust alleged that those prelates found that any interference on the part of governments turned to an embarrassment for themselves, because they were accused of being the instruments of the political rulers, and he felt that it was not the bishops but the Cabinets that must defend the rights of States. A third despatch was directed to Munich.[311] In this, Count Beust intimated that Prince Hohenlohe might naturally think that it would have been better had the Count in time seen the force of his recommendations. Parrying this objection, he strongly urged united action, and stated that Austria was now ready to co-operate in a matter that evidently affected the common interests of all governments. The effect of all this was a formal visit of Count Trauttmansdorff, the Austrian ambassador, to Cardinal Antonelli. According to the report of the Count, the Cardinal had really nothing to say beyond the most commonplace evasions. The Decrees were still subject to discussion, and, on the other hand, interdicting the publication of Decrees in a certain country did not deprive them of their validity. Besides, he could not see how prohibiting the publication of the laws of the Church could be consistent with the policy which consisted in giving liberty to the publication of anything. Moreover, all the world knew that, while Rome affirmed principles, she would be very reasonable and gentle in the application of them, and none need to take the least alarm. Count Trauttmansdorff expresses his satisfaction with the attitude of the German bishops, but thinks that Austria has lost her influence by her recent changes of policy, and especially by her attacks upon the Concordat. He expects, on the contrary, great effect from the exercise of French influence.

The reply of Count Beust to this despatch was prompt and clear. True, he said, Decrees of the Church retain their validity though rejected by the government; but this was the very circumstance that showed the gravity of the position. It would become a serious matter, both for the Church and[Pg 447] for Catholic governments, if laws which were valid for the one, were repudiated by the other. Again, as to the Cardinal's remark that refusing the Church liberty to promulge her laws was scarcely consistent with professions of giving liberty to publish anything, Count Beust thought that this remark could hardly be serious. "Respect for the law is the basis of all liberty," said the Count, "and liberty which passes that boundary, becomes licence." But this arrow would fall blunted from a conscience covered by the buckler of the Vatican. Any Vaticanist would simply say, Respect for a higher law is not disregard of law; and whenever Rome has spoken, her word is the higher law, respect for which is the real basis of order.

The reply of Antonelli to the despatch of Beust is a singular document. He is so generally credited with ability as a diplomatist that one would fear to say, even if one thought, that it is anything but an able paper, whether viewed in an intellectual or a diplomatic aspect. He states that the remonstrances of Beust were expressed in "not very delicate terms," and in weaker and much less courteous forms puts forward the arguments which we shall presently find employed in his reply to Daru. So far from accepting the reproach of want of delicacy, Beust instantly and formally repelled it, and said that the Pope's Nuncio, when appealed to, could hardly find an expression in his despatch on which to attempt to sustain the allegation of the Cardinal. He demanded a copy of the despatch, and, as soon as he had obtained it, instructed the ambassador at Rome to thank Antonelli for granting it, and to tell him that he had immediately laid it before the Emperor.[312] Whether the Emperor thought the despatch respectful to a power such as his we cannot say.

The day after that on which Count Trauttmansdorff reported his interview with Cardinal Antonelli, Count Daru, in Paris, despatched an important document to the Vatican. According to an analysis of it, contained in the reply of Antonelli,[313] the Count summed up the effect of the Canons in two propositions.[Pg 448] First, the infallibility of the Church extends, not only to the deposit of faith, but also to all that is necessary to its preservation. Secondly, the Church is a divine and perfect society, and exercises its powers in two tribunals, the interior and the exterior. She is absolute in the domain of legislation, judicial procedure, and coercive force; and moreover exercises her power with full liberty, and in independence of any civil power whatever. The Count points out that the claims of the Church are now extended to authority over history, philosophy, and science, and involve an absolute subordination to the authority of the Church of the very principles of a national constitution, the rights and duties of governments, with the political rights and duties of citizens, both electoral and municipal. They are extended even to everything included in judicature and in legislation, in respect both of persons and things; to the rules of public administration, to the rights and duties of corporations, and in general to all the rights of the State, not excepting the right of conquest, and that of peace and war. Is it to be imagined, asks Count Daru, that princes will bow their sovereignty before the supremacy of the Court of Rome? Considering the protection granted by France to the Holy See for twenty years past, she has special duties before the world, and he, therefore, claims that projects of laws which are to be laid before the Council shall be communicated to the French government, and that time shall be allowed to forward the observations that may be deemed desirable before they are pressed for decision.

The reply of Antonelli to Daru has been generally looked upon as one of the ablest specimens of his skill. Unless at the moment the greatest daring was the greatest skill, we must think the impression of skill is made chiefly on the minds of those who have not carefully studied the Vatican dialect. It would seem that Count Daru, or his advisers, were perfectly aware of the meaning of the document; and to any one who was so, a more absolute statement of Papal suzerainty can scarcely be conceived. The technical term "direct" plays an important part in the various assertions. The Cardinal[Pg 449] does not deny the extension of the Papal authority to any one of the matters pointed out by Daru. He never denies that that authority is absolute, but always takes care to couple with the world "absolute" the word "direct"—it is not "direct and absolute"; and the real meaning of much of the despatch would be brought out by the simple question, which any ecclesiastical adviser of the French Foreign Office who was true to the government would ask, Is it indirect and absolute? Moreover, the blank statement that the kingly power depends upon the priestly, is, in the form in which Antonelli puts it, an extension even of the ordinary Jesuit doctrine, which couples the dependence of the kingly power upon the priestly with several qualifications, practically not amounting to much, but theoretically necessary to be kept in view, because they enable men to seem to deny what they mean to maintain. Commencing by a complimentary paragraph as to the protection of France and the gratitude of the Pope, Antonelli goes on to express great surprise that the Canons should cause so much uneasiness. They only expressed the maxims and fundamental principles of the Church, published in all forms, taught in the schools, maintained for ages, and often approved of even by civil governments. The Church, continues Antonelli, never claims to exercise a "direct and absolute" power over the political rights of the State. Having received the mission to lead men, whether as individuals or as constituted into societies, to a supernatural end, the Church had received the corresponding authority to judge the morality of all acts interior or exterior, in respect of their conformity to laws natural and divine. "As no action, whether commanded by a supreme power or freely performed by a person, can be divested of a quality of morality or justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, though directly turning upon the morality of actions, indirectly extends to all matters with which morality is connected." But this is not the same as direct interference in political affairs, which, by the order established by God, and by the teaching indeed of the Church, belong to the temporal power without any dependence on any authority. The subordination[Pg 450] of the civil power to the religious one is in the sense[314] of the superiority of the priesthood. Hence the authority of sovereignty depends on that of priesthood, as human things depend on divine, and temporal on spiritual. And if temporal felicity, which is the end of civil power, is subordinate to eternal felicity, which is the spiritual end of the priesthood, it follows that to attain the end towards which God would have them respectively tend, the one power is subordinate to the other; and thus, as between them, there exists in one of the two a subordination of functions as there exists a subordination of ends.

Therefore, proceeds the despatch, if infallibility does extend to all that is necessary to conserve the faith, no prejudice will, on that account, arise to science, history, or politics. Of course (we may interject) the reasoning is, that any subordination arising from a divinely-appointed order cannot be the cause of prejudice, but only of advantage. Infallibility, he proceeds, has been exercised in times past, and princes have had no occasion to disquiet themselves. If the Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the exercise of the rights of the two powers. The Church does not exercise, in virtue of her authority, "a direct and absolute" interference in the principles and constitutions, in the forms of civil power, in the political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the other matters enumerated in the despatch of the minister.

Almost the only thing not clear in the remarkable State paper in which Daru replied to this despatch,[315] is the way in which he understood the last remarks we have quoted from the[Pg 451] Cardinal. He speaks of them as being important, but in what sense? As showing a wish to allay the impressions made by the Draft of Decrees, which is all the Cardinal really professes? or as containing any statement properly calculated to allay those apprehensions? Count Daru had evidently not read hastily, and had not been without clear-headed interpreters. He could not, for a moment, think that Antonelli had said that the Church had no authority to interfere in political matters, when he really had said no more than that she did not exercise a "direct and absolute" interference, by virtue of her authority. No more could Count Daru suppose that saying that she did not do so was a promise that she would not do so, although, even had such a promise been made, couched in the terms employed by Antonelli, the word "direct" would have deprived it of any practical value. Every other portion of Count Daru's Memorandum must have made the Pope, to whom it was submitted, feel that the Minister of France understood the intentions of the Vatican.

The more one examines the doctrine of this document, the more impossible does it become to overlook the fact that, in the main, it amounts to the complete subordination of civil power to the religious society.... Unless we refuse to words their true and natural meaning, we cannot escape the conviction that the Draft Decree on the Church has, for its object and end, the re-establishment, in the entire world, of doctrines which would place civil society under the empire of the clergy.... Under the formidable sanction of the anathema, the infallibility and authority of the Church are to be extended, not only to truths handed down by revelation, but to all things that may appear necessary for preserving the deposit of tradition. In other words, her infallibility and authority have no other limits than those which the Church may herself assign to them; and all principles of civil order, politics, and science, fall, directly or indirectly, within their range. It is on this almost boundless field that the Church is to exert the right of pronouncing decisions and promulgating laws, binding the conscience of the faithful, independently of any confirmation on the part of the political authority, and even in direct opposition to laws emanating from it. It is on this domain, the bounds of which, it appears, the Church alone may fix, that the Canons[Pg 452] ascribe to her a complete power, which is at once legislative, judicial, and coercive, and is to be put forth in the external tribunal as well as in the internal,—a power the exercise of which the Church may assure by material penalties, and Christian princes and governments would be bound to lend their assistance by chastising all who should attempt to withdraw themselves from under her authority.

No wonder that Count Daru draws the inference that "governments would retain no power, and civil society would retain no liberty, but the power and the liberty which it might please the Church to leave to them." The dearest rights of States, their political constitution, their legislation on property, on the family, and on instruction, "might any day be called in question by the ecclesiastical authority." Moreover, it is now proposed that to all this shall be added Papal infallibility. "That is to say, after having concentrated all political and religious powers in the hand of the Church, they will concentrate all the power of the Church in the hand of her head."

As to the artifice, that only principles were to be carried, but that the application of them would not be enforced, Daru says, No such statement suffices to reassure us. What, he asks, Are people in the forty thousand parishes of France to be taught that they are free to do that which they are not free to believe? He will not even treat this representation as grave. He gives the Church credit for intending a serious work, and, therefore, when once she has inscribed a maxim among the immutable truths, she will try to bring it into practice. The Pontiff has not assembled the bishops of the whole world to promulgate sterile laws.

Antonelli had alleged that the principles in dispute were not new. That, replied Count Daru, he knew too well, but kings and nations had never accepted those principles, and the attempt to establish them had always, even in the middle ages, caused bloody conflict. He concluded by declaring that if the propositions were adopted, they would have the inevitable consequence of bringing about grievous troubles.

The French government declared its intention of demanding that a special ambassador should be admitted to the Council.[Pg 453] This Don Margotti hailed, first as a victory of the Council, and then as one of the most splendid victories of Pius IX. The ground of this professed exultation was that abstinence from the Council meant the separation of Church and State. "The Lord be praised, who is preparing greater triumphs for His spouse!" France trembles for her revolution and her Gallicanism.[316] So can voice and face be changed in a moment.

Beust, in further despatches, declined any proposal for sending ambassadors to the Council, on the ground that governments would, by such an act, make themselves, in some sort, parties to its proceedings. He had laid down and firmly adhered to the principle of abiding within the line of purely political action. That principle, he declared, fully covered the two steps of interdicting all publications exciting to contempt of the law, and punishing all persons guilty of any contempt of it.[317] But he instructed Count Trauttmansdorff to support the French with all cordiality, in the demand that matters touching political interests, which were submitted to the Council, should be communicated to France before being enacted. But, on the part of the State, he could not take up theological arguments or plead the interests of the Catholic Church. He would take his stand on the interests of the State only, and tell the Court of Rome that, if it provoked a conflict, Austria would not give way to its decisions. For similar reasons, he must abstain from identifying the government with the bishops of the minority. Approving and sympathizing with their position, he nevertheless felt that they might come to change their ground, and accept what the government could not accept.

The French government applied, also, to the North German Confederation to support its representatives. Bismarck was deliberate but firm. On April 23,[318] Arnim sent in a despatch, cordially supporting the claims put forward by Daru. He said, that the Decrees, so far from being any vague menace[Pg 454] for the future, were rather calculated to revive, and surround with a new dogmatic sanction, certain pontifical Decrees sufficiently known, and constantly combated by civil society in every age, and of every nation. An earnest wish to shun a collision pervaded the despatch.

The impression made upon the Curia by these appeals may perhaps be better gathered from Don Margotti and M. Veuillot than from Antonelli's despatches. On March 3 the Unitá Cattolica says, France and Austria have really remonstrated against the proposed definition of infallibility. They are afraid of the doctrine of Christ. If they would only adopt the Council and its doctrine, it would restore even their finances. "Do make an experiment. You have tried a thousand constitutions in France and Austria: why should you disdain to try the true Catholic constitution?" Let those two countries faithfully proclaim the doctrine, accept and spread it among the people, "and in less than a year you will confess that it is a great salvation for the French and Austrian empires." This is followed by a letter from a professor of theology on the opportuneness of defining the dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope. He contends first that it would—

give a blow to Liberalism, which is the doctrine of human infallibility; for representative assemblies claim a true infallibility, because the decrees of such assemblies are not reformable by the Church; but if a single man alone is declared infallible, they all, whether individually or collectively, become fallible, and must receive from him their rules in jurisprudence and legislation, and every institution or ordinance declared by the Pontiff not to be good is, without appeal, rejected as false and corrupt. Liberalism, wherever it prevails, converts rulers into tyrants and subjects into slaves! The spectacle of seven hundred bishops giving up all to the Pope will restore the idea of legitimate authority.

Anticipating the final struggle against the Church, he says, "It is of the utmost importance that the Church bind up her people in the firmest unity; for the battle will be sore, and she will escape only by divine intervention." On March 4, the Unitá says that the Council is assailed by traitors. The devil[Pg 455] always has a foot in good things, but he has two in the Council. Satan entered into the deputies of Italy, then into the body of Prince Hohenlohe, then he passed on to Döllinger, to Père Hyacinth, and to Père Gratry. The devil had entered into the cabinets of Beust and Daru, and into the palace at Munich, where Döllinger had been admitted to the same honours as formerly had been granted to Lola Montez.

M. Veuillot[319] imagines a conversation between a Catholic and a Liberal Catholic, of which the following is a condensation. It shows the kind of information which was granted, and the kind of argument which was welcome, to the forty thousand educated men on whom largely depends the fate of all French governments which attempt to govern through them:—

The governments are displeased.—— Why?—— Because!—-- What of that?—— You offend common sense. The cause is the dogma of infallibility.—— But the Holy Spirit?—— It was not the Holy Spirit that signed the petition for infallibility.—— Did He sign the other?—— The other is inspired by the highest wisdom.—— So be it. Both call upon the Holy Spirit and He will come.—— He will not come.——Why?—— The Rules of the Council are bad, the Hall is defective, discussion is impossible, the Council is not free.—— What? the Fathers can read, study, pray, speak, and the Council is not free!—-- No, discussion is physically impossible, and it is from the shock of discussion that light breaks out just as from the concussion of flints.—— The Council has no need of that kind of light which fires powder.—— The governments are up against infallibility.—— Let them come down.—— They'll make you come down yourself.—— Allow me, if you speak to me, upon my word of honour, I am not the Council; and if you speak to the Council, it will answer, as it always has done to good advisers of your sort.

I fear God, dear Abner.

After this comes what with M. Veuillot's readers passes for argument, In the present state of law in regard to religious liberty, governments have nothing to do with infallibility but to study the new situation which it will create, and to con[Pg 456]form their conduct to it, as liberty requires of them. Either they will voluntarily respect liberty, or they will encounter its defenders and sustain the combat. The governments ought to know that Catholics mean not to give up anything of their right, and of the fulness of their life. As to the Church, continues M. Veuillot, she manages her affairs as it suits her. She looks beyond governments, beyond generations. She sows for the future, she constructs for centuries. Although she desires not to put governments to inconvenience, it must be allowed that her compassion and her complaisance towards these foreigners must have their limits. She bears the heavy burden of freedom of worship, and she takes the light advantages of it.

Further on we find the same sinister reference to disturbances as in Don Margotti (p. 246):—

A letter is talked of from one of our ministers, who, it would appear, says that the difficulty of the government is not in Paris but in Rome. While this letter of the statesman is being read in Rome, barricades are springing up under his feet in Paris, and barricades are difficulties.... The head of the Church is always a great statesman, and ends by solving the difficulty. When statesmen will go to school to the Pope they will do marvels; but the world must not look for that just yet.

It is well known, says M. Veuillot, returning to the sore point of the hints thrown out by Daru about withdrawing the troops, that if Daru withdraws the French sentinel from the door of the Council, many sentinels would be withdrawn from other doors in France (vol. i. p. 328). No wonder that Italians speak of the Univers and the Rappel as kindred, if hostile. Rochefort and Veuillot are the two poles of the same violent hatred of ordered liberties and moderated power.

[Pg 457]

CHAPTER X

Personal Attack on Dupanloup—Attempts at a Compromise—Impossibility of now retreating—Daru Resigns—Ollivier's Policy—Feeling that the Proceedings must be Shortened—The Episode of the Patriarch of Babylon—Proposal for a New Catechism—Michaud on Changes in Catechism—The Rules revised—An Archbishop stopped—Protest of One Hundred Bishops—Movement of Sympathy with Döllinger—The Pope's Chat—Pope and M. de Falloux—Internal Struggle with Friedrich.

The Villa Grazioli was one of the houses angrily pointed at by the zealots of infallibility. There resided Dupanloup, too much courted for the pride of those who thought that any man in Rome who opposed the Curia ought to be ostracised. We do not remember any public hint given to the police to watch the villa, such as the Unitá Cattolica broadly gave as to the Palazzo Valentini, the residence of Cardinal Hohenlohe (February 26). But the amiabilities of the "good press" were not denied to the Villa Grazioli. Bishop Wicart, of Laval, wrote to his local organ, insisting that every word of his letter should be printed, and saying that the talk about Monseigneur Dupanloup in the diocese of Laval must be put an end to. "I declare, before God, and in readiness to appear at His judgment-seat, that I had rather die—fall dead on the spot—than follow the Bishop of Orleans in the course he is now taking."[320]

It was not to this attack exclusively that Dupanloup referred in a letter to the chapter of his cathedral:—

The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for the true interests of religion and of the Papacy.[321]

[Pg 458]

Ebullitions like this were but a sample of the increasing irritation on both sides. The majority naturally wanted to have done with the strife, the result of which was already certain. Vitelleschi says that the Curia desired that the Council should be merely a great ceremony for the solemn fulfilment of a pre-arranged program (p. 76). They bitterly accused the minority of egging on the governments to oppose the Council, to menace the Church, to insult the Holy Father, or even to dictate to the Holy Ghost. Every objection to the new dogma was denounced as rebellion against the Pontiff, hostility to the Council, disloyalty to Peter, and so forth. Documents such as those of Beust and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right. At the moment when Rome was "officially taking the affairs of the world in hand," it was insufferable for people representing provinces such as Austria or France, to attempt to control the Mistress of the world. Strictly speaking, Beust and Daru did not represent those two provinces any more than Menabrea represented Italy. They represented only the carnal and inordinate jealousy of the supernatural order entertained by the natural order in those provinces. They must be made to learn the meaning of the commission, "Teach all nations."

The members of the minority, trained by Rome to rush to statesmen and importune them for everything that could serve the Church, now that they believed her to be drifting to a terrible peril, did as they had been accustomed to do. Personally they were stung by hard words, not only from the Pope, but from all officials down to small diocesan editors, emulous of Don Margotti and M. Veuillot. Even priests in their own dioceses were set against them. As a party, the minority were irritated by restraint, suspicion, manœuvres, affronts, offers, and even by espionage. Their one solace was, they felt, a vain one. They could indeed speak, but they could not really debate. Their one refuge was vainer still. They could draw up petitions, but they might as well address them to Julius Cæsar for any answer that was ever vouchsafed. The air was full of complaints of long speeches. Some proposed that no more should be read, some that no more should be delivered in any[Pg 459] form; but that they should be written, printed, and distributed among the Fathers. Some combined the two propositions, suggesting that only they should deliver speeches who could do so extempore, and that the others should print theirs for those who liked to read them. The Unitá Cattolica hailed the proposal to have no more speeches; it would shorten the Council.

Others, again, tried to form a third party, on the basis of some compromise which would satisfy the Court by giving it in substance all the concentration of power it wanted, and yet would save the minority from the difficulty of accepting Papal infallibility in express terms. Bishop Vitelleschi was named in connexion with this attempt. They who made it did not fully realize either the political or the theological bearing of the points at issue. The whole conduct of future operations must depend on the ability of the central authority to act at any moment and in any place, without the remotest fear of hesitation or delay on the part of the instruments; above all, without any possibility of that old bugbear, an appeal to a General Council, being raised up again.

The pretensions which Pius IX had set up under the veil of secrecy now began, through publicity, to drag Rome on to her doom. She would not have dared, at first, to face governments with her present claims. She had silently spread them in her schools, had excited her fancy with the echoes of them coming back mysteriously from provincial synods and from episcopal thrones, had shaped them into formulæ, one part of which her fears had cast away, and another part of which publicity had put to shame. Some now asked her to stop when the coach was at full swing down hill! The attempt to do so would be attended with extreme danger. She would lose, not only the new authority at which she had been grasping, but also a considerable part of the old authority, out of which that was to have been developed.

The Canons which had been the occasion of the protest from governments could indeed well be spared, if the supreme authority and infallible judgement of the sovereign were proclaimed but without that the Canons would be paper laws[Pg 460] in the hand of a discredited administration The Syllabus, cried M. Veuillot, had lighted a torch, five years beforehand, by which to study the objects of the Council (vol. i. p. 55). The Curia had studied the objects during the five years by that light. For it retreat on the main point was now an absolute impossibility. Had France really withdrawn her troops, the Curia could have broken up the Council under the justification of physical fear, and so would have escaped the dilemma by an intervention of Providence. But it was not to be. And we may as well here slightly anticipate our narrative, in order to complete the incident of the French note. Daru was one of the ministers who resigned on finding out that the Emperor's professions of setting up a responsible ministry were such as to remind one of the mot attributed to Dupin, at the very height Napoleon's power: "It is really too bad: one cannot now believe even the opposite of what he says."

It was reported in Rome that, within twenty-four hours, two telegrams had arrived from Paris. The first read: "Decidedly Daru will not have infallibility. He announces that there will be a rupture." The second read: "Daru retires. Ollivier replaces him. The Council free." If it is true, cried M. Veuillot, it is glorious for M. Ollivier (vol. i. p. 462). The despatch of Ollivier, on taking over the office of Foreign Affairs from Daru, would have been thought straightforward if proceeding from any Court but such a one as that of the Tuileries then was. After stating that the Emperor had not sent an ambassador to the Council, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with its proceedings, but that recently, when warned by the rumours in Europe of dangers menacing the cause of religion, he had for a moment stepped out of his reserve and offered counsel, Ollivier proceeds:—

The Holy Father has not seen it right to listen to our counsels, nor to accept our observations. We do not insist, and we resume our attitude of reserve and expectation.

You will not seek or accept, henceforth, any conversation, either with the Pope or with Cardinal Antonelli, on the affairs of the Council.

[Pg 461]

You will confine yourself to gaining information, and keeping yourself acquainted with facts, with the sentiments which have prepared them, and with the impressions which have followed them.[322]

So terminated an incident that caused, for a time, a considerable flutter, and seems to have offered to the Curia the only fair escape from the dilemma into which it had got. It was now felt that the legislation necessary to put the new constitution into working order, must be pressed into as small a space of time as possible. The restoration of ideas had not advanced satisfactorily since the meeting of the Council and the restoration of facts had made no progress at all. The voluminous Drafts had already brought Court theology into contempt.

Friedrich had spent an evening and morning in writing to Lord Acton on the Papal system as developed in the Draft Decree on the Church, and in expressing his fears that the bishops would not see through it, when a piece of news reached him, which though at ordinary times it would scarcely have been talked of in Rome, just then caused some excitement (p. 143). It was, as he relates, to the effect that Audu, Patriarch of Babylon, after having spoken in opposition to the Curia, had, as we have seen (page 107 of this edition), been sent for at night by the Pope, who allowed no witness of the interview but Valerga, the so-called Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, however, as Vitelleschi says, was, previous to his elevation, simply a Roman ecclesiastic. Valerga acted as interpreter. The Pope raged, commanded the weak old man to resign his patriarchate, forced a pen into his hand, and ceased not storming till it was done. Then, to give practical effect to the resignation, two bishops, not chosen by Audu, were appointed, and he must consecrate them.[323] Such was the tale. Friedrich took it as a sample of infallibility in practice even before the Council had sanctioned it in theory. In itself, the story would seem very improbable in London, but not at all so in Constantinople or Rome. In the latter city the reputa[Pg 462]tion of Pius IX is high for fits of rage, in which his best friends are treated like lackeys. Liverani, who over and over again calls him an angel, tells nevertheless several stories of conduct to those about him which, if they could be told of an English squire, would not get him the name of angel from his stewards and bailiffs. Even the all but adoring editor of the Speeches gives a specimen which evidently hammered a deep dint into his Neapolitan sensibilities. If the tales are true, the rage passes away, giving place to habitual jocoseness.

Vitelleschi says that an alternative was set before the Chaldean Patriarch—either he must submit to the Pope's authority as to certain appointments, or resign. Being reduced to this extremity by his imperious brother, the poor old man did resign, and the event "created a great sensation." To the Roman nobleman the scene presented no improbability. He does not even hint that it is a rare specimen of the tranquil waters which lie behind St. Peter's Rock. The noise made by the rumours forced even so great a person as M. Veuillot to take notice of them. His usual style of contradiction is very striking, and perhaps instructive. He will spend, it may be, pages in making somebody, who has said something, look extremely ridiculous; but, at the end, you wonder what he has contradicted. On the present occasion, however, M. Veuillot did stoop to particulars. First, he says that the Patriarch had himself chosen two bishops, but after the Pope had approved of them, he refused to consecrate them. This is in direct contradiction of a statement, on the other side, that the Propaganda had chosen the two bishops in question and that the Patriarch refused to consecrate them. The latter version gives a clear cause of dispute, whereas that of M. Veuillot leaves the resistance of the Patriarch, as he himself says, inexplicable. But as to what took place, his account is this:—

The Pope called the Patriarch into his cabinet, and told him to consecrate the two suffragans in twenty-four hours, or to sign his resignation. The Patriarch asked for a delay of three days, then of two days. The Pope was inflexible; he required that the[Pg 463] Patriarch should forthwith sign the engagement to obey. The Patriarch took a pen, and began to write; but he stopped, saying that the pen would not go. The Pope presented him with a penknife. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who acted as interpreter, mended the pen. The Chaldean Patriarch resisted no further. He wrote the engagement to consecrate the two bishops, or to abdicate in twenty-four hours, and pushed his precision so far as to affix the date—half-past seven in the evening. The next morning he performed the consecration.

M. Veuillot vehemently denies that the Pope was in a rage, or that he broke pens with his fist, or that he played the part of a tyrant. He seems to take it for granted that good Catholics ought to be edified with his own account of this rehearsal of a scene in the forthcoming drama of "ordinary and immediate jurisdiction" in all dioceses of the world.

We have hinted that Vitelleschi expresses no feeling of improbability as to the tale of the Chaldean Patriarch. On the contrary, he immediately follows it up by alluding to rumours of proceedings contemplated by the Propaganda against certain bishops under its jurisdiction, who had manifested a want of docility in seconding its projects (p. 82). These rumours, he says, revived uncomfortable recollections of the Inquisition, adding that events of this nature are of common occurrence, and might happen a thousand times without attracting much notice. But the moment was exceptional.

The interest of the General Congregations, from the time when the movement for the definition of infallibility declared itself, centred in that impending question, and but faintly, and intermittently, swayed towards any other. The particular matter now on hand was a proposal to do away with the diocesan Catechisms throughout the world, and to adopt a uniform one for all. Outside the Church of Rome this would probably have seemed a natural point of uniformity, but, inside of it, the determination of the municipal coterie to drive roughshod over all that was homely or ancient, all that was national or local, roused the spirit of opposition. It was clearly felt that taking away from the bishops the right[Pg 464] of approving their own Catechisms was a further blow at their authority. For many years past the Jesuits had been altering Catechisms, and so gradually naturalizing the doctrine of infallibility on soil hostile to it, especially through schools conducted by nuns.[324] They had made the Catechism a great financial success. A new one for the whole world would be an estate for the Curia.

The book of the Abbé Michaud, De la Falsification du Catéchism, is a curious study. He expresses the sum of his researches by saying that Catholicism has been replaced by Popery. The old Paris Catechism did not use the expression "the Roman Church." It always said, "the Catholic Church"; and in some Catechisms, in France, the word "Roman" first came in as late as 1839, and that only in a profession of faith at the end: "I acknowledge the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church." Noting the progressive change in definitions of the Church, Michaud gives examples, showing that the earliest do not even mention the Pope, and that the latest speak of nothing but the Pope (p. 23). The early Catechisms call Christ the Foundation of the Church; succeeding ones give this title to the Confession of St. Peter; next to the Apostles, then to Peter, and, finally, to the Pope; and some recent ones even say that the Church is founded on the Papacy (p. 34). The designation the "Head of the Church," is gradually withdrawn from Christ, to be bestowed upon the Pope. One Catechism, as early as 1756, said that the visible Head of the Church, being subordinate to the Invisible one, made only one Head with Him. On the question of the seat of authority in the Church, a precisely similar process has taken place; and infallibility has followed in the same track. Formerly, says the Abbé it was believed that the Pope had no authority or infallibility but through the Church. Now, it is declared that the Church has no authority or infallibility but through the Pope. We may remark that the terms of the Vatican Decrees do not go so far as the last assertion. The framers meant to do so,[Pg 465] but their logic failed them, and they have left a dualism full of future perplexity. The Abbé shows that the Catechisms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many down to the year 1843, always speak of the infallibility of the Church. Later, the term, "the infallibility of the Teaching Church," is introduced. That means, of the Pope and the bishops. Michaud does not quote any with this terminology earlier than 1786. But that could not suffice for the Romanists. The Abbé says that, at the present time they teach, not only that the Pope is infallible, but that he is the source of infallibility. "As the Church was replaced by the Teaching Church, the Teaching Church has been replaced by the Pope." A religious and political system shifting in this fashion does not well bear even that kind of check which is afforded by the existence of different Catechisms in neighbouring dioceses. It was not quite so easy to teach at Rouen that the Pope singly is infallible, when at Paris the Catechism said that the Church was infallible, and at Cologne it said plainly that the Pope was not infallible. And the fact of this tendency to change doctrine downward, and further downward, was a reason for a feeling against one Catechism stronger than could be understood in any community with a fixed rule of faith.

The changes made in the application to the Church of the word "believe," are equally curious. The old form of words as to believing in one Catholic Church was first changed into believing in the Teaching Church. Then "respect and obedience to the Pope" began to be inserted, from the end of the seventeenth century onward. In 1819 an Arras Catechism claimed "sovereign respect"; but so far there is no mention of belief in decisions of the Pope. It was in 1834 that the Catechisms of Avignon and Amiens prepared for the transition from "respect" to "belief," by teaching the necessity of inviolable attachment to all that the Pope teaches. The consummation so prepared for was not far off The St. Brieuc Catechism of 1835, and that of the Abbé Guillois of 1851, taught that it is necessary and Catholic to believe in the Pope as well as in the Church.

[Pg 466]

The transition from "belief" to "the faith" is very easy. Originally, the dépôt of the faith, which the Church had to guard, and to which no man could add, and from which no man could take away, was called The Doctrine of Christ. Then it began to be called The Doctrine of the Apostles; later, The Doctrine of the Successors of the Apostles; and, after that, The Doctrine of the Prince of the Successors of the Apostles; and, finally, of course, The Doctrine of the Pope (p. 76). The new and uniform shorter Catechism (De Parvo Catechismo) was to be modelled on that of Bellarmine, others being consulted. No hint was given as to how it was to be prepared, and the bishops raised many doubts. Should it not be submitted to the Council? Or, if that was not done, surely it would not be made obligatory, but only recommended. Others would have twelve bishops elected by the Council itself to prepare it. Some wished that, when prepared, three years should be given for the bishops to examine and test it; and then that only after having been approved by them should it be made binding. None of these guards against centralization found any favour.

The complaints about the Rules, and the desire of the majority for something to expedite business, were to produce some effect at last. When between two and three months had passed without a single one of the much-prepared Drafts being homologated, as the Scotch would say, by the Council, it was time to do something. The plan of shaping Rules for the Council without the bishops was resorted to once more. New Rules were given out as an edict, just as the original ones had been, and were headed A Decree, as if the Council itself had framed them. To allow the conclave to make rules for itself, or to amend those imposed upon it, would have been a dangerous approximation to ancient conciliar forms. It had become even clearer than had been foreseen, that a free Council would be a less docile instrument than the sort of Secret Consistory which had been so cleverly devised.

The statement of Vitelleschi, that the Rules provided for the printing of the speeches and their distribution among the[Pg 467] Fathers, is not correct; and his further statement, that they gave the Presidents the right of cutting short any speaker, is inexact. All they give is the ordinary right of calling a speaker back to the question, ad propositam quæstionem ipsum revocare.[325] But it is a different question, whether the Presidents did not take this as containing the power of cutting a speaker short. Immediately after its promulgation, Haynald made a quotation to prove that a Pope had, at the time when the Breviary was being revised, expressed an opinion contrary to that now held by the majority, and the President immediately requested him, says Vitelleschi, to come down from the pulpit. That certainly is much more than calling him back to the question. Friedrich relates this scene as one in which signs of impatience, given both by voice and feet, were general among the majority, even Cardinals making demonstrations. So Cardinal Capalti seized the bell and called the speaker to the question. The Archbishop insisted that it was the duty of the majority to hear him; but Capalti told him that they evidently would not hear him, and he must stop.[326]

La Liberté du Concile adds an important particular.[327] Haynald had been attacked by a Belgian bishop for an opinion expressed by him in a speech. He immediately asked leave to reply; and, in order to observe the Rules to the letter, he went to the bureau of the Presidents, and requested leave to speak on a personal point—the false interpretation put upon his speech. Leave was refused, but the Presidents told him that he could take the opportunity of explaining when he should speak in another debate. He waited for weeks. On the day now in question, before commencing to speak, he told the President that, after his speech, he meant to reply to the attack which had long before been made upon him. He was authorized to do so. But no sooner had he begun to present his personal defence, than the majority interrupted him with violent clamour. Instead of enforcing respect for the dignity[Pg 468] of the Council and the liberty of speech, one of the Presidents cried to the speaker, "You see that they will not hear you." And when Haynald represented that he had been authorized to defend himself, "Hold your peace and come down" (Taceas et descendas), cried Cardinal Capalti, who thus took the place of Cardinal De Angelis, the Senior President.

It was on February 22 that the new Rules were delivered, and on March 1 more than one hundred prelates, of all nations, sent in a solemn protest to the Presiding Cardinals. This was all they could do, short of leaving the Council. They begin by pointing out that the new Rules professed to preserve the liberty due to bishops of the Catholic Church; but that, in most respects, it seemed as if their liberty was diminished by them, and even exposed to abolition.[328] The Rules said that, when new Drafts of Decrees were distributed, the Fathers were to send in their remarks and suggestions in writing, and the Presidents would allow a suitable time for so doing. The petitioners represent that this might do for ordinary matters, but when grave questions of dogma were to be discussed, the time allowed should be very ample, and the wishes of those who wanted an extension of it should be met.

The Rules said that, after the committee had considered such remarks and suggestions as might have been sent in, they should present the Draft to the Council amended, and with it a summary report containing a mention of the remarks and suggestions which had been made. The hundred bishops say that a mention is not enough. That would leave the committee free to omit what it pleased. The remarks and suggestions ought to be given at full, else the committee would become the entire Council, and, in most things, the only judge.[329] Moreover, the reasons assigned by authors of remarks and suggestions should also be given. They request, further, that authors of suggestions should have the right of ex[Pg 469]plaining them, and, if need be, of defending them before the committee. The idea of a right of reply, which the original Rules had completely ignored, had been, after a fashion, introduced into the new ones. That is, the members of the committee were to have the right of reply, either at once or on a later day, to any one speaker, or to a number of them. The hundred bishops do not challenge this immense power granted to the committee, but they demand that the speaker so replied to shall have his right of rejoinder.

The hundred strongly reclaim against a provision for closing a discussion by a rising and sitting vote. This, they say, is a mode of voting unknown in Councils, and is liable to haste, to error, and to the contagion of momentary feeling. It might be quite allowable in parliamentary proceedings, where a thing done this year may be undone the next. But it is not admissible in a case where the matters in hand are so awful and irrevocable as Decrees, which once adopted are never to be amended or discussed again. They demand that no question should be closed so long as any one who had not spoken claimed his right to do so as a witness and a judge of the faith. They demand also that speakers should be heard alternately, one for and one against any proposal under consideration; and, moreover, in matters affecting the faith, that no discussion should be closed so long as fifty Fathers objected. They strongly urge that, in a General Council, neither precedent nor propriety requires that many Decrees rashly adopted shall be preferred to a few thoroughly sifted.

They then come to the solemn point, as to how many votes suffice to make a dogma? The new Rules did not require a majority of two-thirds, as many political constitutions provide in a case of importance. They left the decision open to a simple majority. This the hundred bishops treat as a total and astounding novelty. In General Councils, moral unanimity in matters of dogma had been the rule. It was a rule accepted, and avowedly acted upon, at Trent, by Pius IV. No other rule would be consistent with the principle of Vincent of Lerins, "What has been believed always, everywhere, and[Pg 470] by all." Catholic dogmas being formed by consent of the Churches, it followed that they could not be defined in a Council except by the consent, morally unanimous, of the bishops who represent those Churches. They assert that this condition is the pivot on which the whole Council turns. This condition, they proceed to say, seems to be the more urgent in the Vatican Council, because so many Fathers were admitted to vote, as to whom it was not clear whether they held their title to do so by ecclesiastical or by divine right.

Thus indicating the fact that, first, a majority had been made up largely of men who represented nothing, and that now that majority was to be used to change, not only the dogmas of the Church, but the very source and criterion of dogma, they proceed to a sorrowful declaration, that unless the point as to the numbers voting was conceded, their consciences would be burdened with an intolerable weight. They should have fears that the œcumenical character of the Council would be called in question; that a handle would be given to enemies for attacks on the Holy See and on the Council; and that thus the authority of the Council would be undermined among the Christian people, as though it had been lacking in truth and liberty; and in these troublous times that would be a calamity so great that a worse could not be imagined.[330]

"Thus," cries La Liberté du Concile, "you have a hundred bishops who say, Oppression is couched in these Rules. We have liberty indeed, but liberty restrained, garrotted; which can be choked whenever they like. Imo etiam tolli posse videatur. They say more. They say that these Rules contain a grave menace, a flagrant violation of Catholic tradition, an intolerable oppression of their conscience, pregnant with the greatest perils for the future, capable of striking the Council to the heart and of inducing incalculable misfortunes. That is said by one hundred bishops."

The foundation formed by such a rule of faith as the consent of the Churches seemed solid as long as streams were shut off,[Pg 471] but now that the waters were rising the bishops began to feel symptoms of a shaking. They did not, however, yet know that one rush from a sluice, to be suddenly opened by the Pope himself, was, ere they rose, to bear that sand clean away, and to drop them down on to a rotten rock of Roman infallibility. Even the consent of the Church was to be dispensed with.

In the meantime, learned bodies in Germany had hastened to support Döllinger. Public addresses came to him from the universities of Bonn, Prague, and Breslau, and from colleges in other places, bearing the best names of German Catholics in letters and science. The towns, emulating the colleges, joined in the movement; Cologne, Kempten, Freiburg-in-Brisgau, and other places sending in addresses. Munich voted to the venerable scholar an honorary citizenship, which he modestly declined. It was evident that the German people would have followed in large numbers in the movement thus begun, but the bishops who, in Rome seemed to be earnest in opposing the Curia, suppressed all attempts to discourage it on the part of their clergy or people. They had woven a tangled web at Fulda, and were getting deeper and deeper into its meshes. On the other side, the Pope, the Curia, and the Infallibilist bishops did everything possible to bring pressure to bear upon the bishops of the Opposition, both from the clergy and from the people. As with Hildebrand, so now, all authority which did not move at the beck of "Peter," was overturned or overmatched by raising subordinates at the call of the higher power. Döllinger had said, in reply to an address, that he had done no more than maintain views in which, as to the substance, he was at one with the majority of the German prelates. This was in Rome skilfully turned into a reason for demands upon those prelates. Signor Aloysi, evidently by commission of the Pope, proposed to the Archbishop of Munich to disavow Döllinger, and to procure a collective disavowal from the German bishops. This the Archbishop declined to do.

It is hardly fair to conclude that the German bishops made a show of opposition merely to be able to say to the people,[Pg 472] We resisted till the word was spoken, as you did; but now that it is spoken, we submit, and so must you. In addition to calculations of this kind there was probably a consciousness that a mortal struggle was rising between Rome and all the religion, freedom and light in the outside world, and that it would go hard with Rome. The only possible counterpoise to their fear of the Pope would have been a movement on the part of governments to separate the Church from the State. But the politicians were as little prepared for that as the bishops were for schism. So, both the one and the other, however involuntarily, concurred in helping Rome on towards the catastrophe. Ketteler proposed that the German bishops should disavow Döllinger, but could not carry his point.[331] He disavowed him on his own account. Senestrey forbade theological students of his diocese to attend the classes of Döllinger; but Scherr, Archbishop of Munich, refused to do even this. The press, however, made amends for the slackness of the Ordinary. M. Veuillot told how Döllinger's father had said that the devil of a boy had two heads and no heart, and how, in his Cathedral stall, he did not know how to handle his breviary, and sometimes read, instead of it, proofs of his books. Quirinus might, indeed, say, "It is no longer possible to conceal by any periphrasis the fact that the spirit the Opposition has to combat is no other than the spirit of lying" (p. 260). But the writers of the Curia charged upon all Opposition writers, not only hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, but especially lying, with the loving and making of lies.

The Pope, whose jokes and outbursts alternately supplied gossip, is reported by Friedrich as saying that Döllinger was a heretic, or very near it, and that Günther was much more respectable, as he had been quiet for a long time (dead). Some one observing to him that Döllinger was a harmless old man, he replied, Pretty kind of old man that receives addresses from every quarter. He made no secret that he took the Opposition bishops generally for "softheads," but thought they must have some one behind them. He knew[Pg 473] who nodded approval while Strossmayer spoke, and who pressed his hand when he came down. He said that Cardinal Schwarzenberg played the part of the sub-deacon in the manger; that is, the part of the ass in the scene of the Nativity. Schwarzenberg, he said, had been the only person who declared that the definition of the Immaculate Conception would draw bad consequences after it. But "the definition took place on a morning when the sun shone so wonderfully that I recognized in it the confirmation of my design." Much more chat of the same quality is given.

Friedrich has one short paragraph to the effect that it was confidently asserted that Veuillot had a seat behind the scenes in the Council Hall. A man deeply initiated in the secrets of the Council did not deny it (p. 165). If this was the case, it would be curious to compare it with M. Veuillot's account of his being on the Pincio, instead of in the Cathedral, on the opening day. That meditation in the rain seemed rather eccentric.

The Pope had arranged for an exhibition of Catholic art, and opened it in person with a speech. The passage which made the greatest impression was that in which he alluded to a recent saying of M. de Falloux, a zealous French Catholic politician, and the actual author of the Education Bill which embodied Montalembert's policy, to the effect that the Church had never had her '89, and she needed one. The Pope declared, "I say that is blasphemy." There were many versions of the utterance, but M. Veuillot, evidently by authority, stuck to this one. M. de Falloux, after a considerable time, wrote to Bishop Freppel, saying that he had not used the phrase alleged. Bishop Freppel told the Pope that M. de Falloux wrote that he had not used it. The Pope replied that if M. de Falloux had not used it, he had not condemned M. de Falloux. There the tale is left by Veuillot (i. p. 360).[332]

[Pg 474]

A case like this indicates the struggles between old opinion and the new light of unforeseen circumstances, through which many must, at this time, have been passing. In the case of Hyacinth and Gratry, the struggle had come to the surface; in that of Döllinger, it put on the solemnity of age; in that of Montalembert, the awe of death. From the oratory at Birmingham to the chambers of the Quirinal, from under the roof of the Vatican to lone stations in some mission wild, were men moaning with a conscience-ache. The coming on of an eclipse could hardly be more awful to a meditative Magus than the advancing shadow of heresy on the Church herself to one who had believed her infallible. The dread images of doubt and uncertainty not only haunted, but threatened many a brave spirit. If the infallibility of the Church was to be reduced to the level of that of the Popes, in the doctrines and morals they had solemnly taught; to the level, for instance, of Pius IX and his Syllabus—alas, alas for the great ideas of the past! And was it so clear that it had been innocent to lay those under anathema who, looking away from man to Christ, from Councils to the Bible, had meekly said, The only infallible guide over life's broad sea is not the church steeples, but the stars.

The veil is partly lifted off from one such struggle. Friedrich's stay in Rome had been harassing. Suspected of being the correspondent of the Augsburg Gazette, he had been denounced in the papers, treated rudely by bishops, jeered at by the Pope, reported as being banished, and dogged by police spies even in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe. All this would intensify his perception of the moral corruption of the city, of which many a priest before him had spoken, from Luther to Liverani, or Lammenais. It would also give a keener edge to the theological debates which were going on in his own mind. After an interval of five days in his diary, he writes, under date of February 25 (p. 195)—

At last I must once more take up the pen. If the last few days have been important for the history of the Council, still more important have they been for my own life-history. A mental[Pg 475] struggle within me has reached its close, one which was hard to undergo, and which shook my entire mental and physical being. Now all stands clear before my eyes. I know the end toward which I am to steer. The Lord has once more led me a stage further in my life-path. It was truly a melancholy thought for me when, finding for a moment a point of rest in the midst of this struggle, I looked back upon my peculiar course. From that decision to become a Jesuit, onwards to this journey to Rome, an unseen hand has so perceptibly led me, almost always without design of mine, that even here, in the midst of the new storms, I have been able to take fresh courage. I stand here in Rome only through the unseen guidance of the Lord; for it was not I that ever took a step to come here; indeed, all was done without me. But I see clearly that even that dispensation was to purify my views and intentions, and to lead me on towards the sole prescribed end of my life.

At one time, how much was Rome for me! How did I, in a sense, worship all that came from it! Now I see that here reign not only the most horrid ignorance, but, still more, pride, lies, and sin. Henceforth my life has its task marked out for two ends. Henceforth it is devoted to the struggle against the Curia (not primacy), and to that against the Jesuits. If I fall in it, I shall believe that the Lord has so willed, and that there can be, and that there is, a martyrdom for Christ, and for His Church, among the faithful. If I have had to learn here that the Curialists and the Jesuits are enemies not less furious than the heathen, I shall openly show the world that they do not scruple to devise the death of their enemies. The Univers may erroneously write, "The scandal in Rome is great," because I am here and am betraying the secrets of Rome; but one may say with full right, "The scandal in Christendom is great."

The bishops of the minority still declared their determination to resist every attempt to concentrate infallibility in the Pope; but Darboy said to a diplomatist, What use is it to send in protests that never receive an answer?[333] The last protest, however, contained the grave matter in which a hundred bishops pledged themselves to language casting doubt upon the œcumenicity of the Council. Of no use for its immediate purpose, that document will always be of real use in judging of the value of much that has been said by its signers since[Pg 476] the Council. Prominent Infallibilists intimated that the dogma would not be so defined as to declare the opposite opinion a heresy. Yes, says Friedrich, they would leave it as Trent left the Immaculate Conception—in such a position that some day, when the sun shines fair upon a Pope, it may be promulged as a dogma. Then he adds, what many may have heard stated in Rome, It is strongly asserted that the very reason why the Council Hall has been placed where it stands, is that there at a certain hour the sunbeams fall upon the Papal throne (p. 219).

Vitelleschi says that the visitors to the Exhibition of Church Art did not generally exceed the number of the gendarmes, and expresses an opinion that the real Christian arts are better represented in such international exhibitions as might be seen elsewhere. Anything less like Christianity than many of the objects which in Rome are called objects of Christian art, is hard to conceive, or anything more fitted to turn men into triflers, if once they give themselves up to such baubles as the great concern of life, either social or religious. In this exhibition, Friedrich was struck with a statue of the Pope defining the Immaculate Conception, and with pictures of the same event, "with the inevitable sunbeams." He was also arrested by a group of the Risen Christ, with Pius standing before Him in a flowing pluvial. He says that when one looks at the humble figure of our Lord, and then at the self-conscious Pius, one is inclined to surmise that the latter is thinking, "I am not only what Thou art, but much more. I command all; Thou didst serve all" (p. 220). Quirinus quotes, without translating it, a saying of an Italian noble, which might have suggested the very thought: "Other Popes believed that they were Vicars of Christ; but this Pope believes that our Lord is his Vicar in heaven" (p. 326). These are the things which the worshippers of Pius IX call blasphemy, while most Italians smile if you doubt their legitimacy. Friedrich tells how the auditor of Cardinal Hohenlohe, an ecclesiastic, expressed the horror that had been caused in Rome by Friedrich's articles on Manning in the Literaturblatt. He added that Hohenlohe[Pg 477] would have been a great Cardinal but for two blunders, that of visiting Cardinal Andrea when he returned to Rome, and that of bringing Professor Friedrich to the Council (p. 220).

The ministry of Prince Hohenlohe, in Bavaria, had fallen under the hostile influences of the Church party. On the other hand, the recent action of France and Austria had shown that possibly the Curia, if not prompt, might meet with more formidable checks than any that could arise from Bavaria. As to France, the Curia would seem, rightly or wrongly, to have felt that if Napoleon dared them to the worst, they could shake him out of his place, if not as easily, yet as surely as the bearers of the Pope's portative throne could upset a Pontiff. Daru's demands were officially made known by the reluctant, indeed the all but recalcitrant M. de Banneville, no earlier than March 1. At this very time Dupanloup was drawing up, and the French bishops were preparing to sign, the protest against the new Rules. The adhesion of the German and Hungarian bishops to this protest was to be foreseen. The Curia, therefore, took the decision to face both Bonapartes and bishops, and to throw down the gauntlet.

The meetings of General Congregations had been suspended to give the Fathers time for study. On the evening of March 7 a short notice was sent round to their houses, saying that an additional chapter, to be called the Eleventh, would be inserted in the Draft of Decrees on the Church. This new chapter was simply that declaration of Papal infallibility which had been asked for by the famous Address. So the die was cast. All uncertainty as to the designs of the Curia was at an end. Not only was the dogma to be defined, but all who should deny it were to be excluded from the unity of the Church. Quirinus says that the Pope gave his sanction to this critical act under great personal excitement. For four-and-twenty years had he sought the crown of infallibility, believing himself to be wrongfully deprived of it by the error and unbelief of mankind. In 1848, when Count Mamiani, after ceasing to be the Prime Minister of the new Pontiff, met his friends in Florence, he said, "It is utterly impossible to act as the constitutional[Pg 478] minister of a Pope who is stark mad on the subject of his own personal infallibility."[334]

The bishops found that they had only ten days allowed them to send in their written comments upon the fundamental change now impending in the constitution of the Church, in their creed, and in their standard of faith. Vitelleschi remarks that the brevity of the time given will remain as a testimony to the pressure exercised, and will lower the impression of the wisdom of men who hurried the Church through such a transformation.[335] The Civiltá states that the time was afterwards extended by a week.[336] If it was proposed to give to Orders of the Queen in Council all the scope and effect of Acts of Parliament, our Lords and Commons would expect at least one week beyond ten days' notice before meeting the Court party in the lists, and more particularly if the right of moving that the Bill should be read that day six months had been for ever snatched away from them.

A visit of the ex-Grand Duke of Tuscany, or, as the Civiltá takes care to call him, the Grand Duke, is formally recorded, as if to show the proper relations between princes and the Pontiff. On his arrival, the Grand Duke was waited upon by the majordomo and chamberlain of the Pope; and next day by Antonelli, as Secretary of State. The day following, the Grand Duke "went to the apostolic palace to do homage to the Holy Father." This is the true language of vassalage. To make it plainer, the Pope, on the same day, "admitted the Archduke Charles of Tuscany to an audience."[337] It was, however, not encouraging for the projectors of "a new world" that the only princes who came with suitable reverence to the door which formed the entrance to it were princes who represented a world that had waxed old, had decayed, and indeed had vanished away.

[Pg 479]

BOOK IV

FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY TO THE SUSPENSION OF THE COUNCIL

CHAPTER I

Joy of Don Margotti—New Feelers for an Acclamation—Suggested Model of the Scene—Its Political Import—A Pause—Case of the Jesuit Kleutgen—Schwarzenberg out of Favour—Politics of Poland—Döllinger on the New Rules—Last Protest of Montalembert—His Death—Consequent Proceedings in Rome.

"The Vicar of Jesus Christ for ever" was the title of the article in which Don Margotti announced the fact that the Pope had sent in the proposal of infallibility. Ollivier, said Don Margotti, once stated that he loved strong powers with confidence in themselves, and as the Pope always wished to be loved by ministers of Napoleon III, he had showed them that he was strong.[338] "It is a great spectacle, but it will be a still greater one when infallibility is proclaimed, and the Syllabus is proclaimed, in spite of the opposition of governments, of revolutions, and of all hell."

But the speedy closing of the question, now formally opened, was indispensable. The suggestion of an acclamation on the day of Mary in December had proved vain; but the day of Joseph was now approaching. The term allowed for sending in written observations on the Draft would expire on March 17, and the Unitá, in its number of the 11th, put up the following prayer: "O Blessed St. Joseph, grant us the grace that on the 18th of March may be discussed, and on the 19th, the day of thy Festival, may be proclaimed, the most pleasant and[Pg 480] most wise doctrine of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ." The correspondent of the Unitá from Rome said, "We hope for the definition on the 19th, St. Joseph's Day"; and its correspondent at Paris stated that no doubt existed that the dogma would be proclaimed on that day. Two days before the one so anticipated, the Unitá published suggestive accounts of the scenes in 1854, when the Immaculate Conception was acclaimed. It quoted Canon Audisio, a well-known writer, and one sometimes called a Liberal Catholic. Just after the noontide bell, when the two hundred bishops had knelt to repeat the Angelus, as soon as they resumed their seats, a cry speedily broke out from among them, Petre, doce nos: confirma fratres tuos: (Peter, teach us! strengthen thy brethren!) The teaching desired was a definition of the Immaculate Conception. The whole assembly wept. "It was a weeping so cordial and sublime that you cannot imagine it, and pen cannot describe it."

After this hint, as to what the scene—always a chief point—on the 19th should be, the principles of polity involved in the scene are indicated; for in Rome all acting is for the purpose of ruling. Some prelates, said the Araldo di Lucca, as quoted by the Unitá, had thought that the Bull announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception should make mention of the assembly of the bishops; but a prelate from France, rising in the spirit of Athanasius, said, "No; the episcopate should not decide, but only the chief Pontiff; he alone must speak." He went on to argue that, by showing obedience to the Pontiff, they would secure the obedience of the people, and strengthen the principle of authority. The Unitá significantly adds, "It appears to us, and it will appear to all, that not only the dogma of the Immaculate was defined on that memorable sitting of the 24th of November, 1854, but also that of Papal infallibility."

While the party of movement was full of hope, the minority were in dismay. Their chosen ground of inopportuneness had been cut from under their feet. The Pope and five hundred bishops had decided that the question was opportune. They[Pg 481] now felt that if the dogma should be suddenly defined, they must either submit or be outside of the Church. The new Rules permitted the discussion to be closed at the will of the majority. It was notorious that any discussion whatever, on a point so immediately affecting the authority of the Pope, not only in the Church, but also in the world, was hateful to every right-minded Curialist, and, in fact, that as taking place hard by the tomb of St. Peter, such a discussion was regarded as a thing all but intolerable. The suggestions in the Unitá from Rome, Paris, and Turin had not been put out without high sanction. Was it possible that, on St. Joseph's Day, all would be ended by an irresistible acclamation?

Some think that so deep a feeling was now produced in the minority, and that so clear did they make it that they would not acquiesce in an acclamation, that they impressed the Vatican for a time. Friedrich repeats, on the authority of one who was intimate with the Pope, a saying of the latter, "The Jesuits have set me on this road, and now I shall go on in it, and they must bear the responsibility." The personal position of members of the minority became more and more trying, owing to the increasingly active part taken by the Pontiff in the discussion. A second brief to the Jesuit Ramière[339] followed the one which ridiculed Maret, commending another publication of the same author, in which, alluding to the possibility that some now opposing the infallibility of the Pope would secede from the Church, Ramière said, "These form the secret enemy who impedes our march, and, in driving him from our ranks, the sacred army will obtain the most precious guarantee of its future success."[340] Friedrich adds, what agrees with much that is said, or hinted, by other Liberal Catholics, strange as it sounds in our ears, "Any one who knows the Jesuits can explain the closing words of the pamphlet, 'Then, truly will the Council have realized the most ardent desire of the Saviour, and established the conditions on which this divine Master makes the submission of the entire world to the yoke of the faith depend.'"

[Pg 482]

"That is," explains Friedrich, "the yoke of the Society of Jesus; for even under the name Jesus, 'we are only to understand the Society of Jesu.' At the Festival of St. Ignatius Loyola, priests must repeat the words, with great emphasis, 'At the name of Jesu every knee shall bow.' The former Confessor of the Pope, now replaced by a Jesuit, always felt scandalized by this, on the eve of the Festival, and earnestly wished to have those words removed from the Mass for Loyola's Day."

Archbishop Cardoni, being asked what had become of the Draft Decrees on Faith, said that the committee first examined them, after which Deschamps, Pie, and Martin, as a sub-committee, partly prepared a revised form, and finally the recasting of them was completed by Kleutgen, the Jesuit. What, it was asked, the Kleutgen who was condemned by the Inquisition? Yes, replied the Archbishop faintly. This Kleutgen had been a German political refugee, but joined the Jesuits, and became confessor to a nunnery. One of the nuns, a German princess, was dying. Her relations, through interest with the Pope, succeeded in procuring her release. It proved to be a case of poisoning. The Inquisitors took proceedings, and Kleutgen was somehow incriminated. The convent was closed, the nuns were dispersed into other establishments, and the confessor was sentenced to prison for six years. The imprisonment was changed into reclusion in one of the Jesuit houses, in a delightful neighbourhood near Rome. Kleutgen found means to regain favour, and was now remoulding the faith for the benefit of reconstituted society.[341]

Cardoni told how he, an Archbishop, had been received the preceding day by the Pope before Schwarzenberg, a Cardinal and a prince, and it was added that Schwarzenberg had been obliged to wait a fortnight for his audience, whereas a Cardinal was entitled to have one after two days. Cardinal De Angelis alleged that the Pope had seen Schwarzenberg behind the Vatican smoking a cigar, with a "small hat" on his head. To this the Germans replied that it was well known that Schwarzenberg did not smoke.[342] We cannot state what[Pg 483] would be the penalty for a Cardinal convicted of wearing a small hat, but they are a class of "creatures" whose eternal salvation may, by the will of their lord, be declared to depend on matters the connexion of which with the Christian religion it takes a Pontiff to find out. Sixtus V decreed the penalty of excommunication against any Cardinal who should open a letter bearing the plain address "Cardinal," without the title "Most Illustrious and Most Reverend." They were to burn such letters. (Frond, ii., p. xiii.)

Archbishop Ledochowski, whose name has frequently been heard of since the Council, had been made Primate of Poland by the Pope. This office, in olden time, carried with it the regency of the country, in the interregnum between the death of one king and the election of another. As primate, the Archbishop put on the colours of a Cardinal. Count L—— told Friedrich that Ledochowski had said that he was right glad that he had so early joined the Infallibilists, for Rome was certain to carry through what she had taken in hand, and therefore the bishops of the Opposition would gradually come over to the right side, and would cut a poor figure at the last. Count L—— expressed himself as indignant at this morality. But, said Friedrich, scarcely had the Count ended, when I read in the Univers that Ledochowski was mentioned for promotion as a Cardinal. We may here, as illustrating the bearing of titles and colours on very serious affairs, interject a statement of what happened later.[343] Ledochowski, after the Council, at once took up a new position. When the German bishops next met at Fulda, he would not join them. As Primate of Poland, he said, he belonged to the tomb of St. Adelbert rather than to that of St. Boniface. He would no longer admit Germans to his seminary for priests. In places where preaching had existed alternately in German and Polish, he suppressed the German. His organ, the Tyotnick, related how, during the Council, the Pope had given him the title of Primate of Poland, but denied that he used the political powers attached to the title. Nevertheless, the Catholic Calendar for[Pg 484] 1872, published in Thorn, placed the name of Ledochowski in the list of reigning princes, as Primate of Poland and representative of the King of Poland. So that, if the powers attached to the title were not used, the reasons were not far to seek.[344]

While early converts were joyful, Ketteler continued to be mysterious. In a meeting of German prelates he declared that, though all his life he had worked for infallibility, he could not do so now. This Draft Decree was a crime. But what was to be done? Send in another protest? All cried out at once, No! no! they have treated us like domestics, and not even given us an answer.[345]

On February 27 Don Margotti had said that even a Protestant or a Mohammedan, a Schismatic or a Jew, would see from the new Rules that no assembly could be freer. Döllinger, on the other hand, had published a letter on the new Rules. He took the ground indicated in the protest of the one hundred bishops. In matters of faith, as he contended, the Rules shifted the source of authority from tradition to majority. This he showed to be a direct departure from the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The days which some had fixed upon for the triumph of an acclamation were passed in excitement of a different kind. A letter appeared in the Gazette de France and the Times, from Montalembert, addressed to some gentleman who had challenged his present opposition as inconsistent with his former championship of the Church. The dying man then delivered his last public utterance. He protested that, in his early days,[Pg 485] the pretensions now put forth were unheard of. In language already cited he described the incredible change of the clergy after 1850, and their present shortsighted prostration before the idol they had set up. He showed that in his speech of 1847 there was not a word of the doctrine of Papal infallibility. He might have indicated also the still more celebrated speech on the restoration of Pius IX. He quoted that remarkable letter of Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, in which he depicted the difference between the old Ultramontanism and the new. Montalembert then declared that his whole regret was that illness prevented him from descending into the arena to join Dupanloup and Gratry, to contend on his own ground, that of history and of social consequences. "Then should I merit—and it is my sole remaining ambition—a share in the litanies of insult daily launched against my illustrious friends by a portion, too numerous, of the clergy—that poor clergy which is preparing for itself so sad a destiny, and which formerly I loved, defended, and honoured, as no one in modern France had done." The Unitá cried, "Better for Montalembert had he died a year ago; better indeed had he never been born."[346] While these words were ringing in the ears of all, came a telegram announcing that Montalembert was no more. That evening the Pope had one of those audiences in which he delights; a kind of public meeting, with three hundred persons present. Of course every one expected that the little member which in the days of Pius IX has done much to make the Pope an entertainment for Italians, would not be able to keep off the exciting topic. "A Catholic has just died," said his Holiness, "who rendered services to the Church. He wrote a letter which I have read. I know not what he said at the moment of death; but I know one thing—that man had a great enemy, pride. He was a Liberal Catholic—that is to say, a half-Catholic.... Yes, Liberal Catholics are half-Catholics."[347]

[Pg 486]

About the time when the Pope was thus speaking of him whose eloquence had been worth regiments to him, Father Combalot was crying from the pulpit of Notre Dame Della Valle—

"Satan has entered into Judas! There are men who were Christians, and who on the brink of the grave become enemies of the Pope, and speak of torrents of adulation, and accuse us of erecting him into an idol. To speak so is Satanic work. There are three academicians who do it" [Montalembert, Gratry, and Dupanloup].[348]

Archbishop De Mérode, brother-in-law of Montalembert, and almoner to the Pope, arranged that a High Mass should be celebrated in the Aracœli on the height of the Capitoline, that is, the church of the Roman municipality, in which Montalembert was entitled to the honour of such a solemnity because of the dignity of Roman citizen which had been conferred upon him for his distinguished services to the Church. On the 16th a notice was circulated, announcing the intended Mass, in publishing which the Univers stated that it was known that there would be no oration—a record which spoiled subsequent fables. Late that evening, in the great church of the French, a preacher dwelt upon the memory of Montalembert, inviting the audience to the solemn service at the Capitoline the next morning. At the same time the rooms of Archbishop Darboy were crowded. French prelates related what remarks they had written on the proposal for infallibility. Each one beheld in his own a great and heroic act. Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims, had employed a quotation from Bessarion against the curial system, and expected to be called Jansenist, Gallican, Febronian, and such like. Friedrich, we suspect, was making prelates understand that if once they allowed themselves to recommence deliberation under the new Rules, all hope of successful opposition would be idle, and hinting his belief that[Pg 487] under such Rules the Council had no proper œcumenicity. Suddenly news came from Mérode. Something was wrong. It proved that the High Mass for Montalembert had been forbidden by the Pontiff. What! the departed spirit of the foremost Frenchman in the chivalry of the Church to be insulted on the Capitoline by the Pope in person! Among all those Frenchmen, many were old enough to remember the most brilliant of Montalembert's sallies, and all were old enough to have witnessed the public disgust when a Court chamberlain turned him out at the election of 1857, half of the clergy voting against him, and the other half staying at home. But this beat all. A Cardinal present could not restrain the confession, "Now I am well ashamed of being a Roman Cardinal."[349]

The announcement was too late to reach all, and when the hour for the service came, some twenty bishops and many French notables assembled. Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits, had come from the neighbouring Gesù, thinking, doubtless, of the splendid services to the Order which had been rendered by the confiding genius of the man for whose soul he was now to pray. Even Louis Veuillot came, trying to forget the irritations of recent years, perhaps hoping in part to make reparation for ingratitude and insolence, and unable now to see the opponent, seeing only as in old days the "son of the Crusaders," facing, provoking, and dominating a hostile Parliament, with his head back and his blue eye flashing, till at some turning-point in his theme the fountains of a great deep broke up, the deep of his mighty emotions, and then gushed out a flood which carried all before it. When they reached the steps of the Aracœli, an official, who was one of the subordinates of Mérode, cried out in a French phrase which he had learned on purpose, that they must go away, that the Mass was forbidden. It is evident that they were all overcome with mortification, not to use stronger language. Even M. Veuillot pushed by and said, "It can do no harm to repeat some paternosters for him."[350]

[Pg 488]

Quirinus says that probably it was De Banneville who represented to the Pope the serious effects that would be produced in France by this proceeding. So, on the evening of the 17th, instead of arranging for the acclamation of infallibility, the Pope was making the small amends of sending a private message to have a Mass celebrated, on the following morning, on behalf of a certain deceased Charles, in the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina. No public notice whatever was given of this service. The bishops were all shut up in a General Congregation. The Pope went privately, without any suite, sat hidden in a latticed "tribune," and then had it announced to the world that he had personally attended a Mass on behalf of Montalembert. When the exceedingly painful feeling he had caused began to appear, an attempt was made to turn the occasion to account by throwing the blame on Dupanloup. It was declared that it had been announced that he would deliver an oration, and indeed that the proposed function had been got up by him as a party demonstration. This gave Dupanloup the opportunity of writing[351]:—

This is an outrage at once upon the Holy Father, Monsignor De Mérode, the bishops, and myself. This entire tale, Sir, is false from the first word to the last. I did not appoint the service. I was not to officiate. I have had nothing whatever to do in distributing cards of invitation. Whatever may have been my profound and inviolable affection for M. De Montalembert, it belonged to the members of his family present in Rome, Monsignor De Mérode and the Count De Mérode, and not to me, to arrange the details of this religious ceremony. It is within my knowledge that in doing so they conformed to all the laws and formalities usual in Rome in similar cases.

The last statement was made to upset one of the excuses, that proper leave had not been asked for the service. So those false stories, at least, were stayed.

[Pg 489]

As the news spread in succession from place to place, the imaginations of Liberal Catholics all over Europe would restlessly wander up and down the Capitoline, seeing on that historical slope the signal given for their eternal disgrace in the Holy City. It was given too by an arrow shot from the Pontiff's own bow, and aimed at the shade of Montalembert. We do not profess to know what injury the imagination of such men might picture as having been done to the spirit that was gone, but those Christians who believe in a God who, not even in this world, much less in the great hereafter, trusts any child of man, though the least of all the little ones, to a Vicar—those who believe in a sacrifice which no man can repeat, prohibit, or buy, when they heard what had occurred, saw the spirit pass into the true temple, and outfly all the arrows of death. Oh, how benign is that light of immortality which shows us the spirits of the departed resting in the hands of their Father, altogether above dependence on the malice or the compassion, on the liberality or the avarice, on the devotion or the unbelief of living men; and which, with the same blessed beam, shows us the living protected from all possible malice, raised into independence of all possible goodwill of the dead, by a near and solicitous paternal Watcher. All the traffic of the markets of Purgatory, a traffic as low and demoralizing as any traffic can be, scarcely exposes the system which has sprung up around that invention so much as one broil like that which the traffickers raised around the soul of Montalembert—no, not around his soul, that was beyond their reach, only around his memory.

[Pg 490]

CHAPTER II

Threat of American Prelates—Acclamation again fails—New Protest—Decrees on Dogma—Ingenious connexion of Creation with the Curia—Serious Allegations of Unfair and Irregular Proceedings of the Officials—Fears at the Opening of the New Session—The Three Devotions of Rome—More Hatred of Constitutions—Noisy Sitting; Strossmayer put down—The Pope's Comments—He compares the Opposition to Pilate and to the Freemasons—He is reconciled to Mérode—The Idea of Charlemagne—Secret Change of a Formula before the Vote.

"That took effect," wrote Quirinus, for once, in noting a step of members of the minority. The step so spoken of was a simple one. Four American prelates sent in a declaration that if any attempt was made to carry infallibility by acclamation, as had been suggested, they would leave the Council, go home, and publish their reasons for so doing.

Whether this proceeding alone, or this together with other indications, influenced the majority, certain it is that when the General Congregations were resumed, on March 18, there was no acclamation. St. Joseph did not avail more for his day than the Immaculate had done for hers. All that we hear of any attempt to provoke an acclamation is the statement of Vitelleschi that one prelate tried to get infallibility carried "by chance," but received countenance only from very few. The minority gave in their protest against the new Rules to the Presiding Cardinals. We need not say that neither then nor at any later time did they receive an answer. The business now placed before the Fathers was the Draft of Decrees on Dogma as revised. The eighteen chapters had, under the hands of the committee, the sub-committee, and Kleutgen, shrunk to four. Even as they now stood, the chapters had to undergo considerable alteration before taking the shape[Pg 491] in which they appear upon the Acta. As they stand there, they are not at first sight capable of interesting the theologian for their theology, or the politician for their bearing on politics. At the time, they led many to wonder why grave men should have spent years in formulating rudimentary principles, and that not very successfully. The alleged reason was that everything being wrong in the ideas of the age, the Church must commence by asserting the existence of a God, and the fact that He had created the world. An attempt was made to throw some dignity about this proceeding by quoting a prophecy of some saint, to the effect that an age would come when a General Council would have to do this. On the other hand, as Vitelleschi shows, Roman wit said that really, after sitting four months and a half, the Vatican Council would vote almost unanimously that God created the world. Friedrich, however, saw that the Curial system was insinuated in these Decrees, but it took a theologian to discern it, and one who was not a mere theologian. Yet when it was pointed out there could be no doubt of the fact. The simple headings, "God, the Creator of the World," "Revelation," "Faith," and "Faith and Reason," would to Protestant eyes seem very unlikely to cover any such purpose. Nevertheless, they are made to serve the purpose of laying a foundation for the dominion of the Church, over all science and knowledge, for the dominion of the Pope, ay, even that of the Roman Congregations, over the Church, and for the lifting of men out of civil control into the higher sphere of Christian liberty, or, as the world would call it, for placing them under the dominion of ecclesiastical law. The process by which this is done is simple, and had been clearly indicated in the officious expositions of those judgments of the Syllabus which condemned "naturalism." First, God, as a personal Being, exists, has created the world, and rules it. Secondly, He gives a revelation by which man is raised above natural knowledge and perfection to a higher knowledge and perfection. Thirdly, this revelation is a deposit committed to the Church, which holds in charge the Word of God, written and traditional; and[Pg 492] all things are to be believed which she propounds as divinely revealed, whether they are propounded by solemn judgment, or by the ordinary teaching authority. Hence, naturally, all science must be held subject to this faith, and therefore subject to this Church; and all things condemned in the Decrees of the Holy See are to be held as anathema, even though not specified in the present Decrees.

The four chapters containing these principles would not fix the attention of any student if he took them up in a village of the Campagna or of Connaught as the work of the priest of the parish. He would be tempted to doubt whether the worthy man who faced Atheism and Pantheism with these weapons had ever really met with them face to face in either their ancient or modern forms. He might even be tempted to think that the intellectual life of the author had been passed within walls, and that so far as concerns the books and the minds which really sway contemporary thought in either of the directions indicated, he had scarcely ever felt their grip. But when we look at this document as the work of a great society, on the preparation of which had been employed the leisure of years by a few, and then the united counsels of a large yet elect number, it certainly does not exalt our idea of human gifts. But it is not well to let the critical contempt which German scholars especially have displayed for the Drafts while under discussion, and for the Decrees when ultimately framed, blind us to the practical success of this late but adroit creed. For the purpose of laying a colourable theological basis under a municipal arrangement for governing mind and knowledge, belief and morals, laws and institutions all over the world, by a college of Augurs called Christian priests, it was not a mere superfluity of the professors, as many seemed to think. Sambin, Guérin, and other writers, not to mention prelates in abundance, struck a note, which is now taken up in colleges, seminaries, and schools. These compact chapters, being once exalted to the level of the Word of God, formed a short and easy method for connecting the Creator and the creation of the world with the last edict of the Vatican.

[Pg 493]

One of the startling statements in the secret memorandum, La Liberté du Concile, touches this Decree. A conclusion to it was proposed which to many appeared to include infallibility. This was strongly opposed. The committee withdrew it, saying that it would be reserved to the end of the final chapter on Faith. This step was applauded. The next day, or the next but one, however, the reporter announced that the vote upon it would be taken then and there. Eighty-three, in voting, demanded modifications; which, according to the Rules, compelled a consideration by the committee of the amendments they proposed. The committee finally resolved, with one dissentient, to substitute a new wording which would satisfy all. But when the moment came to vote, before the reporter mounted the pulpit, a communication was put into his hands. This attracted the attention of the Fathers. He mounted the pulpit, but did not report what the committee had adopted! He did report what it had set aside! The vote was instantly called for—no one could speak, the Rules did not allow it. The majority did its duty; and the wording, surreptitiously reported, was made "of Faith."[352]

Strong and circumstantial confirmation of this incredible statement is given in Kenrick's unspoken speech.[353] Incidentally he says, "The reporter, while we wondered what was the matter, suddenly recommended this conclusion, which had been first submitted and then withdrawn." This he says only on his way to tell Archbishop Manning that if the sense put by him upon this famous conclusion was the true one, the reporter was either himself deceived or had, knowingly, deceived the bishops. Deceiver or deceived, his declaration had won many votes. To get the clause passed, the reporter said it taught no doctrine, and was only a conclusion to round off the chapters. But when once passed, Manning cited it as concluding the question of infallibility, and making it improper for the bishops to discuss that question any longer.[354][Pg 494] Kenrick confesses that at the time he feared a trap. The writer of La Liberté du Concile declares that if the liberty of the Council was doubtful, this incident proved the liberty of the committees to be more doubtful still.

The sitting was opened with evident anxiety on both sides. The minority feared the threatened attempt at acclamation; the majority feared that the minority would formally refuse to enter on deliberation under the new Rules. When, however, instead of action, the paper protest was given in, and the reporter for the committee, Simor, Primate of Hungary, had mounted the pulpit, and things had resumed their course, the majority were evidently relieved. They knew that the minority had now committed themselves to the new Rules; and that, however they might recalcitrate hereafter, they would no more be able to shake off the meshes of the net than they had been in the past to shake off those of the old Rules. Five speakers had inscribed their names. They were supporters of the committee. It proved that the acoustics of the Hall had really been improved by a boarded partition which had been substituted for the curtain. When three had spoken the bell of the President rang, and the speaker then in possession was stopped. The Pope was descending to view the sacred relics, and the Fathers had to break up to form a procession in his train. Not one of them had been called to swell that train in the morning when he went, not to see and to be seen, but to the mass for "a certain Charles." At the close of this anxious sitting Bishop Pie congratulated Cardinal Bilio, "It has gone off well." So it had; the minority were now fairly enclosed in the net.

M. Veuillot cries, "There are three great devotions in Rome:[Pg 495] the Holy Sacrament, the Holy Virgin, and the Pope. Rome is the city of the Real Presence, and the city of the Mother of God, and the city of the Vicar of Jesus Christ."[355] That saying sheds a clear light on the effect of materializing and localizing the idea of the divine presence by such notions as that of transubstantiation. The show of constitutional reforms just then being made in Paris by Napoleon III, contrasting as it did with what was being done in Rome, naturally disgusted M. Veuillot. He said that the title of Emperor now seemed grotesque. It was sad to witness the crown turned into a curiosity of the museum, or an accessory of the theatre. This was his idea of a constitutional crown. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the tiara remained to us. Happily it was more solid than the crown. Pius IX., he said, would bequeath it to his successor more brilliant and more indestructible. Scandal of the world! kingdoms everywhere and no kings! Here is a king, but no kingdom! Let Liberals come to the Vatican and attempt to take liberties with the constitution. Let even universal suffrage attempt it; let it try to make any change here in which the guardian of the constitution does not concur.[356]

The noisy sitting of March 22 has had its echoes all over the world. The contradictions given by inspired writers to the uninspired ones appear to be even less definite than usual. We may content ourselves with giving that of Cardinal Manning as the sum of them all:—

Having from my earliest remembrance been a witness of public assemblies of all kinds, and especially of those among ourselves, which for gravity and dignity are supposed to exceed all others, I am able and bound to say that I have never seen such calmness, self-respect, mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control, as in the eighty-nine sessions of the Vatican Council. In a period of nine months the Cardinal President was compelled to recall the speakers to order perhaps twelve or fourteen times. In any other assembly they would have been inexorably recalled to the question sevenfold oftener and sooner. Nothing could exceed the consideration and respect with which this duty was discharged. Occasionally[Pg 496] murmurs of dissent were audible; now and then a comment may have been made aloud. In a very few instances, and those happily of an exceptional kind, expressions of strong disapproval and of exhausted patience at length escaped. But the descriptions of violence, outcries, menace, denunciation, and even of personal collisions, with which certain newspapers deceived the world, I can affirm to be calumnious falsehoods, fabricated to bring the Council into odium and contempt.[357]

La Liberté du Concile confirms that portion of this statement which says that the speakers were often allowed to deliver irrelevant matter, when, in other assemblies, they would have been called back to the question. It says that no bishop of the majority could be named who was ever interrupted, although some of them strayed from the question so far that, in the first stages of the proceedings, they rushed into the question of infallibility.[358]

The first speaker in the celebrated sitting of March 22, was Schwarzenberg. He was not favourable to the Curia, their proceedings, or their plans. He had not felt an impression in the Congregations as if a Council was being held. At last the terrible bell was heard. It was faint, but it was certainly sounding. What! a Cardinal rung down?—and Schwarzenberg, with his princely rank, his historical name, his age, and his majestic presence! Even among the Cardinals, it is said, there was a slight murmur—a greater one among the bishops. But Schwarzenberg himself heard bravos for the President.[359] But the stately old man held his own.[360] After two other prelates had succeeded to the precarious honour in which the Prince Cardinal had been challenged, Strossmayer mounted the pulpit.

He attacked the statement contained in the Draft Decrees, that Protestantism was the source of the several forms of unbelief specified in that Draft. Strossmayer showed that the worst revolutions and the worst outbursts of infidelity had not been in Protestant countries, and that Catholics had not[Pg 497] produced better refutations of atheism, pantheism, and materialism than had Protestants, while all were indebted to such men as Leibnitz and Guizot. The Senior President, Cardinal De Angelis, cried, "This is not a place to praise the Protestants"; and having got so far in Latin, he declined into some other tongue.[361] No, says Quirinus, it was not the place, being within some few hundred paces of the Inquisition. The excitement had now become great. Strossmayer proceeded, amid partial clapping of hands and general murmurs of disapproval, to demand how they meant to apply the principles embodied in the new Rules, of making a dogma by a majority. When he cried "That alone can be imposed on the faithful which has in its favour a moral unanimity of bishops," up rose Cardinal Capalti, rang the bell, and, in a voice anything but courteous, as Vitelleschi says, ordered the speaker to stop. Strossmayer replied that he was tired of being called to order, and of being thwarted at every point; that such proceedings were incompatible with freedom of debate, and that he protested.[362] Then burst out an uproar that alarmed all who were outside in the church. Strossmayer stood, lifted up his hands, and thrice cried solemnly, "I protest! I protest! I protest!" Some one shouted, "You protest against us, and we protest against you." As the Archbishops of Rheims afterwards related, one of the majority stood up and shouted to Strossmayer, "We all condemn thee!" Bishop Place, of Marseilles, cried, "I do not condemn thee." Some one called Strossmayer a cursed heretic. Some shook their fists, some crowded round the pulpit, some cried "Pius IX. for ever!" some cried, "The Cardinal Legates for ever!" and others, as Vitelleschi adds, made noises equally serious and serene. La Liberté du Concile speaks of the unheard of violence, of the cries which rang through the basilica outside, and of the menaces of a large number who rushed to the tribunal and surrounded it.[363] Friedrich speaks of clenched fists, and of fears lest the prelates should tear one another's hair.

[Pg 498]

The people in the church interpreted the commotion each man according to his own mind. Some—and that wild interpretation is laid to the door of the English—thought the Garibaldians had attacked the Fathers; some, that the long looked for dogma had at last sprung, full armed, out of the head of the assembly, and that all the uproar was caused by alarm at the portent. These raised cries of "Long live the Infallible Pope!" The crowd pressed round the door of the Hall, and there was danger of a tumult in the church. The servants of the bishops tried to enter the Council Chamber, fearing that their masters were being harmed in the disturbance. But the gendarme, whom Vitelleschi calls the most effective instrument of every sort of infallibility, cleared off the throng, resisted only by the servants, who clung to the door in the hope of rescuing their masters.

An American bishop said, with some patriotic pride, "Now I know of an assembly rougher than our own Congress."[364] Archbishop Landriot, of Rheims, said he was quite in despair.[365] Even Ketteler said, "It is too bad, the way they handle us here. I do not know how we shall go back to our dioceses and exist there."[366] Namszanowski, the Prussian military bishop, said to Friedrich that he had told an Italian prelate, "Things are more respectably done with us in a meeting of shoemakers, than here in the Council." Going on to express his impression that the only hope for the Church was in the fall of the temporal power, and the assumption of control over patronage and Church affairs by a temporal government, which would get rid of the excessive number of clergy, he continued, "The most humiliating thing for us German bishops is, that here we are forced to learn that it is the Freemason and Liberal papers that are correct, and that our Catholic ones, if we must call them Catholic, lie, lie."

The Pontiff soon made his voice heard as to the scene of this loud resounding Tuesday. On the following Friday he had the missionary bishops, numbering a hundred, assembled in[Pg 499] the Sala Regia. There the pictures of St. Bartholomew, of Barbarossa, and of the League against the Turks, had time to suggest hopes of future triumph before the Pontiff made his appearance. No sooner had he done so, than all fell on their knees. He had gathered them for a practical purpose. The Dorcases of the Church had been making, not coats and aprons for the widows, but raiment rich and rare for the prelates, and costly attire for altars and images. It was to distribute these goodly garments that his Holiness had now convoked them, but, of course, the great thing was the speech. Pointing clearly to the Opposition, he said, "We are surrounded by great difficulties, for some, like Pilate when terrified by the Jews, are afraid to do right. They fear the revolution. Though knowing the truth, they sacrifice all to Cæsar, even the rights of the Holy See, and their attachment to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Wretches! what a fault they commit! The warfare of bishops," he went on to say, "is to defend the truth with the Vicar of Christ. My children, do not forsake me. Attach yourselves to me. Be with me. Unite yourselves to the Vicar of Jesus Christ."

We follow the version of M. Veuillot (vol. i. p. 372). Vitelleschi reports one of the Pope's expressions as "Be united to me, and not with the revolution" (p. 129), and asks, Who could have imagined that the good bishops who had been all their lives fighting the revolution should now be accused of revolution? He adds, "Rulers who endeavour to degrade Strossmayer to the level of a Rochefort, not unfrequently reverse the intended result, and raise a Rochefort to the height of a Strossmayer" (p. 130).

"And you, my dear Orientals," said the Pope, "I have ornaments also for you, but not enough of them. I give you what I have." Then he tried to calm their fears, excited by recent collisions. He concluded by the supreme disclosure, "We have in the Council the organs of the Liberal party, whose word of command is to gain time by opposing everything, and to wear out the patience of the majority." The allusion of the Pope was understood. Bitter, indeed, was it for the[Pg 500] bishops of the minority to find themselves thus stigmatized before all men by the sovereign. But the effect was practical. The day following, ten Orientals announced their adhesion to the denunciation of Gratry by the Archbishop of Strasburg. Presently, forty-three missionary bishops published their concurrence in the profound discovery of Bonjean, of Ceylon, that the dogma of infallibility would conduce to the conversion of Buddhists, Brahmans, Protestants, and other difficult religionists of the East.[367]

As the Pope went to St. Cross of Jerusalem for the Agnus Dei, M. Veuillot heard cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!" and said that this was a reply to the objections raised about the heresy of Pope Honorius. Hefele had unpleasantly brought this heresy into notice in a Latin pamphlet, which he had been obliged to print at Naples. Of inopportune things, few had been more inopportune of late than the appearance in Paris of a new edition of the Liber Diurnus, by Rozière. This ancient monument, with its simple formula? and infallible evidence, enabled every one to lay his finger on the fact that for centuries Popes had on oath abjured the heresy of Pope Honorius. But M. Veuillot heard an answer to all this in the cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!"

But of all that the Pope passed on his route to Holy Cross, that which most excited the imagination of M. Veuillot was the Holy Stair and the triclinium, where Charlemagne received the sword kneeling. Charlemagne, he says, ruled only long enough to indicate the place and form which he wished to give to his throne; but now, after a thousand years, his conception is one of the victorious apparitions.

When the world merits to re-enter on the path of unity, God will raise up a man, or a people, which will be Charlemagne. This Charlemagne, man or nation, will be seen here, at the Lateran, kneeling before the Pope, returned from dungeons or from exile; and the Pope will take the sceptre of the world off the altar, and put it into his hands.[368]

[Pg 501]

M. Veuillot knows better than he here seems to know. Charlemagne's conception was that of Constantine over again—a State Church; and over a State Church Charlemagne reigned. The conception of Hildebrand, now to be acted out, was that of a Church State, for which any Charlemagne might conquer, but over which no second head should reign. Unity, as M. Veuillot well knew, was now to comprehend not only one fold, but also one shepherd. No more dualism! no more two-headed monsters! We had come to the dispensation of the spiritual David, Shepherd and King in one. It is, however, clear that the vision revealed to M. Veuillot, as in 1867, still disclosed a struggle to come before the victory; for his Pope, on taking his place as disposing of the sceptre of the world, comes back from dungeons or from exile. Moreover, Veuillot still smothers the poor kings in ambiguity. The new and final Charlemagne is to be a man or a nation.

The sittings which followed the stormy one were remarkably still; and it is said that Haynald and Whelan from Wheeling were allowed to say very strong things without interruption. It might be supposed that a short chapter on God the Creator of the World, could hardly give rise to a discussion on the Curial system; but when Rome set out to speak about the Creator, she first of all made mention of herself. The opening words of the chapter were, "The Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church." To this form exception was taken. One proposed that the word "Roman" should be omitted, which was, of course, offensive to the Curia, the municipal spirit always forcing into view the shibboleth, quite unconscious that it marred the show of universality. Indeed, it is asserted by many that the extreme Curialists wanted the words "Roman Church" alone, without Catholic. Others proposed that the word "Catholic" should stand before "Roman," or at least that a comma should be inserted between the two. It is a singular fact that a vote of the Council was actually taken on this question of the comma. On this great question of the comma the committee for once did not tell the majority how to vote. La Liberté du Concile thinks that the majority voted[Pg 502] for the comma. The numbers, however, were not reported in that sitting; and when the next one was opened, and all waited to hear on which side was the majority, lo! the reporter gets up, and, contrary to all rule, usage, and decency, quietly sets aside the vote as if it had never taken place; does not, indeed, mention it! He simply says that the committee has rejected the comma! Now the majority, knowing how it ought to vote, did its duty faithfully. So even about a tittle, in the literal sense, the writer of La Liberté du Concile was highly incensed, contending that the rights of deliberation were ridden over roughshod. Finally, the phrase came out as "The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church." Friedrich thinks that this phraseology compromises the claim to represent the Universal Church, and must be taken as only professing to represent the Roman Patriarchate.

Meantime the minority held anxious deliberations. They doubted whether they should not require a positive promise that no Decree touching faith should be carried by a majority, and whether if this was denied they should not refuse to take part in voting. They finally resolved that they would reserve their opposition, as completely as possible, for the all-important question of infallibility. They hoped by this means to secure the double end of showing a conciliatory disposition in everything in which they could give way with a good conscience, and of preventing a precedent from being established for carrying articles of faith by majorities. The last piece of strategy seemed specious. It, however, obviously laboured under the infirmity that they were all the time giving strength to the Rules which established the principle of majorities.

The preamble to the revised Draft of Decrees on Dogma contained not only the passage about Protestantism which Strossmayer had criticized, but also a clause suggested by the Bishop of Moulins, which virtually contained the doctrine of infallibility. This was strongly resisted by the minority, but all attempts to get it withdrawn had proved vain. In the sitting of the 26th, the order and method of voting, which was now for the first time to be put in practice, was fully read out.[Pg 503] But before the vote was taken, a paper was sent in to the Presiding Cardinals, said to proceed from Bishop Clifford of Clifton. The Presidents left the Hall, and on their return to the surprise of all, the preamble, instead of being put to the vote, was withdrawn. When it reappeared, the objectionable passage about infallibility was removed, and the phrase as to Protestantism was moderated; and so the impending collision was averted. But the way of doing this showed that majority and minority were equally far from possessing the guarantees of legislative freedom. What would a powerful majority in our Parliament say if, after the clauses in a Bill had been settled in Committee, the Ministers should retire and decide on altering them, and without a word present them in a new form to the House for the final vote when no one could speak?

[Pg 504]

CHAPTER III

Important Secret Petition of Rauscher and others—Clear Statement of Political Bearings of the Question—A Formal Demand that the Question whether Power over Kings and Nations was given to Peter shall be argued—Complaints of Manning—Dr. Newman's Letter—The Civiltá exorcises Newman—Veuillot's Gibes at him—Conflicts with the Orientals—Armenians in Rome attacked by the Police—Priests arrested—Broil in the Streets—Convent placed under Interdict—Third Session—Forms—Decrees unanimously adopted—Their Extensive Practical Effects.

The dangers opening in the future defined themselves more and more clearly to the eyes of the bishops as the import of the constitutional changes now in progress was more fully apprehended. Reflection, conversation, and reading had done much since they came to Rome to clear their views. Even if they read as little of Church history, or of the current Curial literature, as is intimated in the oft-repeated laments of Friedrich, and in the less frequent but equally strong hints of Quirinus and others, they must surely have read something of the Unitá if not of the Civiltá, or at least of the sprightly Univers. Any one of the three, in spite of that pious style of mystery which Vitelleschi speaks of, would soon have made a very dull bishop indeed conscious that the world was going to be transformed.

The sagacious Rauscher put the forecast of the time into the form of a petition, dated April 10, which states the case of the future position of Roman Catholic citizens more strongly than some statements of it in our country, which have been treated as the invention either of Mr. Gladstone, or at best of Lord Acton, or of some other Liberal Catholic.[369] The petition is headed as being from several prelates of France, Austria,[Pg 505] Hungary, Italy, England, Ireland, and America. The editor of the Documenta says that Germany should have been added. Among the prelates from that country who signed it he specifies the Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg, the Bishops of Augsburg, Trêves, Ermland, Breslau, Rottenburg, Maintz, Osnabrück, and the Prussian Military Bishop. According to this statement, the name of Ketteler was to this document. When the German bishops met again at Fulda, after the Council, they put forth the very interpretation of the Bull Unam Sanctam which is here solemnly treated as both false and absurd. Of course they were confronted with their own words. Friedrich says, in a note (p. 349), that Ketteler in the Reichstag, and in the well-known Germania No. 146, for 1872, asserted that no German bishop had signed the petition, and that, therefore, the word "Germany" was not found in the superscription:—

But all this is vain lying and cheating, such as we are well accustomed to in the Ultramontane press and its episcopal inspirers. In No. 242 of the Germania Ketteler himself owns that two German bishops, not Prussian, signed it. In reference to this, a theologian, deeply initiated in the secrets of the minority, writes to me under date June 20, 1871, that there are many Germans among the signatories.

Rauscher, and those who signed with him, alleged that the point about to be decided bore directly on the instruction to be given to the people, and on the relations of civil society to Catholic teaching. Disclaiming any thought of accusing the Popes of the middle ages of ambition, or of having disturbed civil society, and asserting their belief that what the Pontiffs then did was done by virtue of an existing state of international law, they go on to say that those Popes held that our Lord had committed two swords to the successors of Peter; one, spiritual, which they themselves wielded; the other material, which princes and soldiers ought to wield at their command. Then dealing with the attempt to represent this Bull as requiring only that all shall acknowledge the Pope as the head of the Church, they declare that gloss to be irreconcilable with love of[Pg 506] the truth on the part of any one who is acquainted with the circumstances as between Boniface VIII and Philip le Bel; and that, moreover, it is a mode of treating the subject which puts weapons into the hands of the enemies of the Church to calumniate her. They add, "Popes, down to the seventeenth century, taught that power over temporal things was committed to them by God, and they condemn the opposite opinion." Mark, they do not say temporal authority, but power over temporal things. With them temporal authority is authority of temporal origin.

Now follows a historical statement of great importance. "We, with nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world, propound another doctrine to the Christian people as to the relation of the ecclesiastical power to the civil." They then make the stock comparison of the heavens and the earth, as indicating the relative dignity of the spiritual and temporal power, and say that each is supreme in its own sphere. The ambiguous phrase "supreme in its own sphere," means, in Ultramontane language, as we have seen, only that the temporal prince is not subject to any other temporal power. But these bishops evidently meant at the time to be clear of ambiguities. They added an explanation of immense significance—"Neither power in its office is dependent upon the other." This is a formal and total denial of what the Civiltá had long been preaching, of what Phillips and Tarquini and all the accredited modern writers taught. The utmost they ever admit is, that in its nature, and in its origin, temporal power is, or may be, independent of the spiritual. But in office all impersonated authorities must be dependent on the impersonated authority of the Vicar of God. The next stroke of the petitioners was still bolder. Admitting that princes, as members of the Church, are subordinate to her discipline, they affirm that she does not in any way hold a power of deposing them, or of releasing their subjects from their allegiance. Still more incisive was the stroke that followed, for it was aimed at the whole principle of Papal authority over the State. They declared that the power of judging things, which[Pg 507] the Popes of the middle ages had exercised, came to them by a certain state of public law; and that, as the public institutions and even the private circumstances which then existed had changed, the power itself has with the foundation of it passed away. This was the language which might be used before the Bull Unam Sanctam had received the stamp of infallibility. It was language in which the claims founded on the text "Teach all nations," or "I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms," are met with a downright denial. The fact that the Popes had at one time acted as supreme judges was accounted for by a state of political relations, not by a divine right, just, we may say, as the fact would have been accounted for that the kings of Persia were appealed to as arbiters by Greeks. Still further, the change which had taken place was not only admitted, but it was held to have annulled the former relation between the power of the Papacy and civil society. A careful consideration of the positions thus stated, and a comparison of them with matter in the Curial writings of the present pontificate with which we are already familiar, afford some measure of the distance separating the Ultramontanes north of the Alps, of the old type, like Rauscher among the clergy and Montalembert among the laity, from the new school formed by the development of the Jesuits into what had now become the Catholic party. We do not say that the old Ultramontanes did not give the Pope authority irreconcilable with Holy Scripture, and power dangerous to civil society. All we can say is that the authority and power which they did give to him was bounded by a frontier tolerably defined, and therefore capable of being defended.

The remark of the Pope, carried away from the Vatican by numbers of bishops and not a few laymen, and repeated in every form of gossip printed or spoken, to the effect that the bishops of the Opposition were only time-servers and Court ecclesiastics, is, in Rauscher's petition, repelled with dignity and force. Their opinions, as just stated, they declare are not new but ancient. They were those of all the Fathers, and of[Pg 508] all the Pontiffs down to Gregory VII. They believed them to be the true doctrines of the Catholic Church; for God forbid that, under stress of the times, they should adulterate revealed truth. But they must point out the dangers which would arise to the Church from a Decree irreconcilable with the doctrines that they have hitherto taught. No one, they affirm, can help seeing that it is impossible to reform (they do not say reconstruct) society according to the rule laid down in the Bull Unam Sanctam. But any right which God has indeed given, and any obligation corresponding to such right, is incapable of being destroyed by the vicissitudes of human institutions and opinions. If then the Roman Pontiff had received the power of the two swords, as it is asserted in the Bull Ex Apostolatus Officio, he would, by divine right, hold plenary power over nations and kings; and it would not be allowable for the Church to conceal this from the faithful. But if this was the real form of Christianity as an institution, little would it avail for Catholics to assert that, as to the power of the Holy See over temporal things, that power would be restrained within the bounds of theory, and that it was of no importance in relation to actual affairs and events, seeing that Pius IX was far from thinking of deposing civil rulers.

This last statement was directly aimed at Antonelli's habitual mode of putting the case in conversation with diplomatists, and also as we have seen in his despatches. But our prelates contend that, in reply to such assertions,

"opponents would scornfully say, We do not fear the sentences of the Pontiffs; but after many and various dissimulations, it has become evident at last that"—(the italics are our own)—"every Catholic, whose actions are ruled by the faith he professes, is a born enemy of the State, since he finds himself bound in conscience to contribute, as far as in him lies, to the subjection of all nations and kings to the Roman Pontiff".

On these solemn grounds they formally demand that the question whether our Lord did or did not commit power over kings and nations to Peter and to his successors shall be directly proposed to the Council and examined in every[Pg 509] aspect. In order that the Fathers may not be called without adequate preparation to decide a question the consequences of which must profoundly affect the relations of the Church and civil society, they demand further that this point shall be brought on for discussion before that infallibility. Their petition was not addressed to the Pontiff in person, but to the Presiding Cardinals.

No efforts made since, or which may be made hereafter, can erase this record of the views of the bishops at the time in question. Their conduct since the Council proves that for themselves, as individuals, conviction is lost in submission. For the dogma has conquered history. With the German bishops submission passed beyond silence, and proceeded as far as deliberately certifying to the public as ancient views and sincere ones the very views which they had secretly shown to be innovations and pretences, alien to ancient teaching and to their own belief. God's two priceless jewels, conscience and conviction, are here sent to the bottom of the stagnant pool of submission to a human king. It is by contemplating such a course of conduct in men with a position to hold in the eye of the sun, that we learn the force of such words as those of Vitelleschi, when he says that the frequent collision in Catholic countries between a man's civil conscience and his ecclesiastical one is the reason why so often there is no conscience at all. And men such as these German bishops are the moral guides of millions! and out of millions so guided States have to be built up, and men have to be fitted for the judgment of Him who requireth truth in the inward parts! And Vitelleschi evidently thinks that, in a moral point of view, the German bishops were the best!

Gossip in Rome spoke of Dr. Manning as burning with impatience at the delays which had been interposed in the way of the forthcoming dogma. Baron Arnim told Freidrich how it was said that the Archbishop prophesied that the governments would be annihilated for their resistance to it.[370] Quirinus speaks of the Archbishop as expecting a wonderful dispensation[Pg 510] of the Holy Ghost to follow the promulgation of the dogma, and to smooth the way of the Church in her regeneration of the nations. Whatever may have been the amount of correctness in these details, the fact remains that at that moment a mind which had attracted notice to itself as urging Englishmen to Rome for unity, was bitterly complained of by Liberal Catholics as being the very genius of contraction and division, urging their Church either to beat them down or to cast them out—to make herself too narrow for them, and to tell them that they should be endured only on new conditions.

At the same time a cry came from our own shores. It was the voice of one who had made himself conspicuous by alluring Englishmen towards Rome for certainty, and on whose spirit the shadow of a new and dark uncertainty was now settling down—uncertainty as to the future source of doctrinal truth; uncertainty as to the doctrinal authority of existing documents; uncertainty, in fine, as to what had been, and as to what was to be, the oracle; uncertainty as to the future work of God. At the same moment when Dr. Manning was accused by Roman Catholics of violating the old terms of unity, Dr. Newman was turned into a warning to Protestants as a victim of uncertainty. When describing how he and his party fared when first, after shifting from the rock of Holy Scripture, they settled on another foundation, which they called Anglicanism or the Via Media, Dr. Newman had said:—

There they found a haven of rest; thence they looked out on the troubled surge of human opinion and upon the crazy vessels which were labouring without chart or compass upon it. Judge, then, of their dismay when, according to the Arabian tale, on their striking their anchor into the supposed soil, lighting their fires on it, and fixing in it the poles of their tents, suddenly the island began to move, to heave, to splash, to frisk to and fro, to dive, and at the last to swim away, spouting out inhospitable jets of water upon the credulous mariners who had made it their home.[371]

We can hardly doubt that some English parson who in his youth had for a moment felt attracted by the notion of unity[Pg 511] and certainty, by the charm of vestments, processions, and banners, thanked God on the morning after he had read the following letter, when he looked at the family Bible, that he had not left the solid ground and set up a tent on what Dr. Newman and his Anglicans told people was solid ground, but which proved to be the sporting and frisking monster that he himself described. Ay, and perhaps some Cornish miner, as he went down into his darkness, happy in his Saviour—a Saviour who seemed to come nearer to him as day and man, as home and the fair sky, went farther away—so happy that he hummed—

In darkest shades, if Thou appear,
My dawning is begun:
Thou art my soul's bright morning star,
And Thou my rising sun—

perhaps this miner put up a prayer for the poor gentleman in Birmingham who was in such uncertainty about what might be his creed by next Christmas, and yet knew no better than to beg of Augustine and Ambrose to prevail upon the Almighty not to let His Church tell out all the truth about the Vicar whom the gentleman fancied that He had set over her, but to cause her to practise reserve, or to speak in non-natural senses.

To avoid contamination by impure authorities we shall follow only the Civiltá in its narrative of the Newman incident.[372] The Standard stated that Dr. Newman, in a letter to his bishop, then absent in Rome, had called the promoters of infallibility an insolent and aggressive faction, and had prayed to God to avert from His Church the threatening danger. The Weekly Register declared itself authorized by a personal friend of Dr. Newman to give the most absolute denial to this deliberate fiction. Dr. Newman himself wrote to the Standard to deny that he had written to his bishop and called the promoters of infallibility an insolent and aggressive faction. Yet, after Dr. Newman's method, there were words and words about it. Soon appeared in the Standard a second letter from him, confessing that he had been informed from London that several copies of his letter existed in that city, containing the[Pg 512] affirmation which he had denied. He now said that, before sending his contradiction, he had looked at the notes of the letter to his bishop, and had not found the words "insolent and aggressive faction." But he confessed that since learning that several people in London had those words in their possession, he had looked again and found them. He added that by the faction he did not mean that large number of bishops who had declared in favour of infallibility, nor yet the Jesuits. He meant a collection of persons of different countries, ranks, and conditions in the Church.

The Civiltá was careful to remark that Dr. Newman had not withdrawn his offensive words. Others no less remarked that he had never confessed to a single point in his own statement till compelled to do so. He had published a contradiction which to ordinary Englishmen would seem to carry an almost complete denial of the whole allegation. But the Standard on April 7 published the following letter, showing that not only the substance of the allegation was correct, but also its details:—

Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a Council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans (such as the Civiltá, [the Armonia], the Univers, and the Tablet) little else than fear and dismay. When we are all at rest, and have no doubts, and—at least practically, not to say doctrinally—hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there is thunder in the clearest sky, and we are told to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how. No impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work of an Œumenical Council?

As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts.

What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were[Pg 513] treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to "make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful"? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil?

I assure you, my lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet—one day determining "to give up all theology as a bad job," and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable, at another tempted to "believe all the worst which a book like Janus says," others doubting about "the capacity possessed by bishops drawn from all corners of the earth to judge what is fitting for European society," and then, again, angry with the Holy See for listening to "the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists, and converts."

Then, again, think of the store of pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us in one way M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then again the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who themselves perhaps—at least their leaders—may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.

With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity.

If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined, then is it God's will to throw back "the times and moments" of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable providence.

You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think you will allow me to express to you feelings which, for the most part, I keep to myself....