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." Hereupon 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.
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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 54: Cecconi, p. 324.]
[Footnote 55: The OEcumenical Council, p. 52.]
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 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, 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 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 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 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 56: Quarterly Review, No. 275, p. 293.]
[Footnote 57: Civiltá, Serie VI, vol. ix, p. 126.]
[Footnote 58: Civiltá, Serie VII. iv. 418.]
[Footnote 59: Cecconi, p. 133.]
[Footnote 60: Letter quoted in the Unitá Cattolica, March 10, 1870. Friedberg, pp. 118-121.]
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 61: Aktenstücke, pp. 257-67.]
[Footnote 62: Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. iv.]
[Footnote 63: Ce qui se Passe au Concile, p. 16.]
[Footnote 64: Serie VI. vol. x. p. 384.]
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 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 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 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?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 65: Acton, Zur. Ges., p. 14.]
[Footnote 66: This was first told me by a Roman tradesman, in presence, among others, of a very good-natured canon, who joined in the general laugh at my innocent surprise. This year (1875) an ex-officer of the Pope's service added, "Ay, but the priests bribed the artillerymen to steal half the charge of powder, and to turn the gun toward the Campagna, so that the report should scarcely be heard." Probably the last statement is a mere rumour, not representing any actual transaction, but indicating, really enough, the state of mind of the people as to what their masters were likely to do. I have heard it said that Sir James Hudson used to declare that when first appointed to Turin he could walk all round the city while it struck twelve o'clock.]
[Footnote 67: Rome pendant le Concile, vol. i. p. 35.]
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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." 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 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 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--including 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 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 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, 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 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.
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 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 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.
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?
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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 68: "I have no need to declare myself ready to repel and reject that which the Pope cannot do. He cannot do an act contrary to the Divine law."--Cardinal Manning, Vat. Dec., p. 41.]
[Footnote 69: Ultramontanism et la Société Moderne.]
[Footnote 70: Vol. i. p. 14.]
[Footnote 71: The principle here alluded to is elucidated in an instructive manner in Nazareth and its Lessons, by the Rev. G.S. Drew.]
[Footnote 72: VIII, i. 132.]
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--
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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 73: Centenary of St. Peter, p. 6.]
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 OEcumenical Council, uttered in the tones of Pius IX, instinct with personal and official hope, 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 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 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. 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 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]
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]
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]
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--
"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, 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 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 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, 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; 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 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"? 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, 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 74: Acton's Zur Geschichte, pp. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 75: Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 35.]
[Footnote 76: Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 33.]
[Footnote 77: Centenary of St. Peter, p. 5.]
[Footnote 78: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 587.]
[Footnote 79: Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 34.]
[Footnote 80: Centenary of St. Peter, pp. 12, 13.]
[Footnote 81: Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 36.]
[Footnote 82: Frond, i, p. 82.]
[Footnote 83: Eusebius' Life of Constantine, lib. ii. c. 5.]
[Footnote 84: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 23.]
[Footnote 85: Zur Geschichte, p. 4.]
[Footnote 86: Serie VI. vol. xi. p. 165.]
[Footnote 87: Ibid. p. 234.]
[Footnote 88: Centenary of St. Peter, pp. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 89: The Select Speeches of O'Connell. Edited by his son, 1862. P. 447.]
[Footnote 90: Life prefixed to the Lives of the Saints, vol. i. p. 14. Ed. of 1836.]
[Footnote 91: Centenary of St. Peter, p. 38.]
[Footnote 92: Ibid. p. 34.]
[Footnote 93: Centenary of St. Peter, p. 95.]
[Footnote 94: Vaticanism, p. 155.]
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 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 OEcumenical 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 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 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 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 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).
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?
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 oecumenical army. Every incident was described with vivid conception and boundless faith in the destiny of the 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--
"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.
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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 95: Cecconi, p. 62.]
[Footnote 96: An interesting account of this change is given in Sepp's stirring speech in the Bavarian Parliament on the Mering case, Deutschland und der Vatican, pp. 182-85.]
[Footnote 97: VII. iii. 559.]
[Footnote 98: Civiltá, VII. x. 161.]
[Footnote 99: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 22.]
[Footnote 100: Cecconi, pp. 370, 371.]
[Footnote 101: Cecconi, p. 122.]
[Footnote 102: Cecconi, p. 382.]
[Footnote 103: Cecconi, pp. 121-24.]
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.
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 OEcumenical 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 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.
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 OEcumenical 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 oecumenical, 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 OEcumenical 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. 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 OEcumenical 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 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, 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 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, 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 104: Acta, p. 6.]
[Footnote 105: Archbishop Manning gave reasons for looking upon the motive here assigned as "a transparent error."]
[Footnote 106: Serie VII. vol iii. p. 264.]
[Footnote 107: Serie VII. vol. iii. pp. 259, 260.]
[Footnote 108: Friedberg Aktenstücke, pp. 250-53.]
[Footnote 109: Neue Folge, Erstes Heft, pp. 72, 73.]
[Footnote 110: These productions are published by Friedrich--Tagebuch, p. 453 ff.]
[Footnote 111: The Centenary of St. Peter, and the General Council, p. 90.]
[Footnote 112: Civiltá, Serie VII. vol. v. p. 234.]
[Footnote 113: Technically, Berchmans seems to be only a beatified, not a saint.]
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 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 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 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, 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 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).
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 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).
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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 114: L'Espagne et la Liberté. Bibliothèque Universelle de Lausanne, 1876, p. 626.]
[Footnote 115: Ibid. p. 635.]
[Footnote 116: Civiltá Cattolica, VII, ii. p. 150 ff.]
[Footnote 117: Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 65.]
[Footnote 118: Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 56.]