Chapter I
The First Session, December 8, 1869, or Opening Ceremony--Mustering--Robing--The Procession--The Anthem and Mass--The Sermon--The Act of Obedience--The Allocution--The Incensing--Passing Decrees--The Te Deum--Appreciations of various Witnesses.
At dawn, on Wednesday, December 8, 1869, the guns of Fort St. Angelo saluted the long looked for day, while from the other side of the Tiber those of the Aventine replied. The bellowing of these beasts of war awoke the city to witness a Council of the ministers of peace. As the sounds reached the ear of peasant, monk, and nun, already plodding in the dark from places outside the walls, the sky was low, and pouring down a truly Roman rain. Unlike towns round which smiling homes are sown broadcast outside of the bounds, Rome, when approached by most of the routes, first shows the city walls, and not till a good while later does it show the beginning of habitations. The poor suburbs which lie outside a few of the gates are less dreary than the space inside, where lonely roads, shut in by blank walls, lead amidst crumbling mementoes of rulers of the world, and marks of the actual reign of drones not able to master ordinary difficulties. Every now and then comes a church, or one of the two hundred and more convents and nunneries which sanctify the place. But scarcely any of these have an outline such as to yield, in twilight, the effect of either Gothic spires or Moorish minarets, or even of good Grecian colonnades.
Many a cowled figure struggled under the drenching rain along these desolate ways. One would pass the spot where Peter was arrested by his Master, when the Fisherman uttered the famous "Lord, whither goest Thou?" and was turned back to Rome to die. Another would pass by the vale of Egeria and he might well wonder if Numa ever had to seek inspiration there in such dismal gloom. Crossing the open ground about the Lateran, some of the monks might think of the terrible morn when Totila, in mercy, halted his troops inside the gates, sending the clang of his trumpets through the dark, all over the city, to give the wretched Romans the chance of flight.
Other monks coming from St. Agnese, and entering by the Porta Pia, would reflect upon the adornment of that gate by the Holy Father, and upon its happy name which links it both with Pius IX and with its own founder. Its founder, Pius IV, signed the Creed of the Council of Trent, and Pius IX was to sign the new Creed of the Council of the Vatican. This beautiful coincidence would, with the monks, make the gate an emblem of the Church, against which the gates of hell should never prevail. If they only happened to recollect that its old name Nomentana marked it as the Mentana Gate, the encouraging impression would rise almost to the brightness of a revelation. The day, only two years before, when the conquering crusaders marched in, and the welkin rang with shouts of "Long live Pius IX!" "Long live the zouaves!" "Long live the Crusaders!" "Long live Catholic France!" would return to memory as the pledge of mightier Mentanas. Had an invisible hand drawn aside the veil, and shown them that gate, some nine months later, admitting the Italian troops, followed by the dog Pio drawing a little cart full of Bibles; and then shown, still later, the residence of a British Ambassador to the King of Italy inside the gate, and on the outside the residence of Garibaldi, the monks would have vowed by all the saints, old and new, that the vision came from a lying spirit.
Some, again, crossing the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge, would, in spite of the blinding rain, see the figure of Constantine victoriously dominating the heights, and that of Maxentius being hurled into the stream. A while afterwards, when passing near the Broken Wall, where St. Peter himself had kept watch, and with his own hand had blinded and routed the Goths, they would feel that now when his successor was to be at last duly exalted, the Apostle would surely keep the city more jealously than before; and if there was need of a Belisarius to crush the Italian barbarians, the Lord would raise him up at the intercession of Peter.
As they came further inwards, the crowds of the city were already in motion. Down from the Coelian and Esquiline were they pouring past the Coliseum, reflecting men delighting in the thought that all high things which exalt themselves against the Church would fall into her power just as the Coliseum had done; for the "high things" of the Romanized imagination are naturally material ones. The Arch of Titus, darkly outlined in the morning grey, would be the prophetic pledge that the Jews, however stubborn, would yield to the Pontiff at last. But where was the golden candlestick--where the temple vessels? After Genseric carried them off, had they ever returned? The ruinous Palatine would symbolize woes coming to modern Caesars, as sure as those which had crushed the ancient ones. Indeed, it is not impossible that some would see visions like those seen by monks of yore, who beheld the soul of the great Theodoric dragged into the crater of Stromboli.
From the Aventine, where Peter resided with Priscilla and Aquila, and which is now little but a site for monastic establishments, many would come, passing by the place where once stood the Circus Maximus. The thoughtful would there have in their eye the grand spectacles of Pagan Rome. It was by a spectacle that Romulus allured the Sabines to unity by violence; and it was by a spectacle that Pius IX was now wooing the world to wedlock with the Papacy--ready, if only able, to take short measures with the coy. But what were the shows of the old rude times to this? What if three hundred thousand pairs of eyes did gleam together on the spectacles which, with bread, made up the earthly all of the Roman plebs? They never had looked upon such an array of holy bishops, from the whole earth, as would be seen to-day. The colours for which they went mad, their idolized blues and greens, were but few, and ill-combined, compared with the colours now about to be displayed. The ancient cry, "Bread and Spectacles!" was indeed still kept alive by Roman authorities, but was to-day to be satisfied in a Christian style glorious beyond Pagan example.
Along the Via Sacra few foreigners would appear, but from the Capitoline Germans would set out. It is natural to think of some student, fresh from the pages of Gregorovius, his imagination vividly setting face to face the ancient Rome and the actual. He would think of the exclamation, "Renowned, queenly, immeasurable Rome, a sea of beauty surpassing all power of speech!" Where were the glory and the beauty now? Inside the churches and palaces indeed were masses of decoration and artistic stores of wealth, but the city viewed, on that dismal December morning, as a city, was poor and ill-kept. The glory which once compelled men at this central point to call her Golden Rome was departed. What now represented the Temple of Jupiter--its pillars on gilded bases with gilded capitals, its gates of gilded bronze, and its roof of tiles of gilded brass? There stands the Church of the Aracoeli; Jupiter is succeeded by the Bambino, a doll, carved by St. Luke, which is driven in a stately carriage round the city to the beds of the dying.
Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman, certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of Wycliffe in the sea?
A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so. Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients, and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea of a world-empire originated with the Romans--nay, no more than did the idea of the Trojan War.
Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against riderless mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses, goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.
Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and tongues into religious and political submission to one human head. Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in the words of Joseph de Maistre, that the Pantheon had been devoted to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority. But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize St. Peter Arbues, red with the blood of thousands of the seed of Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces. He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome for Frond's history--[198]
It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable. Nevertheless, there are many gods, in heaven and in earth. There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (hommes divinisés). The gods of Christianity are the saints. Around God are assembled ALL THE GODS, to serve Him in the place and order assigned to them.
The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it, as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that "saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious, which was no doubt the original idea.[199]
By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and signs of impotence.
In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general, not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and cabmen.[201]
The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds. They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering under their umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory, thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico. At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs, with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green, embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff, formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and if a prince--we presume by birth--followed by a third. Then came the nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts, and ribbons like streamers among the stars--stars that dazzle Romans far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles, always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls, and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety. Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack, the convent, the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village festival, spangled the thickening crowd.
The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions, even the correspondent of the Stimmen aus Maria Laach alluded to the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the Times; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes." In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest, as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of zouaves and one of the line.
The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain," says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language, containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb, girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman would have been surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet. Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True, he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest, but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship, as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii. 8-10).
There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ! In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen do we require, for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father, dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the access of sons!
He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father, and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under their own power.
The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder and abler brethren of the priests.
Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the promiscuous crowd; for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too, with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, he says, by the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the Univers what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"--a fact which he states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells, appear more luminous to him.
Correspondents of the Civiltá published on the spot, of the Stimmen published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East, were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle, and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.
Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers, striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that, somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they had too much ground to fear.
On the other hand, the Jesuits were quietly exulting in the knowledge that the days of the Liberal Catholics were numbered. "Weighed and found wanting" were words often upon their lips at that time.
The feeling of the Protestants, of all classes, was chiefly that of curiosity. Such of them as believed that Rome yet retained enough of the Christian element to be capable of reform wished that the Jesuits might fail. Those, on the other hand, who believed that at Trent Rome had written upon herself the doom irreformable, thought that the only thing now before her was to go down deeper into her own errors, and to make herself formally what she long had been virtually, the religion simply of the fait accompli, a system in which each error once committed must enter into the blood, and even form abnormal bone. Perhaps the words "judicial blindness" were never so often quietly uttered by charitable men as then, and during the months ensuing.
The tomb of Peter shared with his statue in the honours of the morn. In the ray of its lamps knelt many a figure of "fair women and brave men." The men hoped to rise braver for the coming struggle. The words of the Pontiff were vividly in the memories of the devout--words uttered to five hundred bishops. "We never doubted that a mysterious force and salutary virtue emanated from the tomb where repose the ashes of Peter, as a perpetual object of religious veneration to the world; a force which inspires the pastors of the Lord's flock with bold enterprises, noble spirit, and magnanimous sentiment."[203] Pius IX would hardly have seen the force of an inquiry, should any one have dared to make it, whether there was any known case in which one of the Apostles had in Jerusalem sent even the most ignorant of Christians to the tomb of the proto-martyr, ay, or to the tomb of tombs, in order there to seek some blessing that could not be found by going into his own closet, and praying to his Father who seeth in secret.
The Civiltá, however, gave a more intelligent turn to this Papal suggestion--
It is to be hoped (it said) that this Council, announced on the centenary of St. Peter, convoked by a Bull dated on the day of St. Peter, and assembled round the wonderful tomb of St. Peter, will be par excellence the Council of St. Peter. That means the most obsequious to the prerogatives of Peter, whose divine authority, the centre and foundation of all social authority, is at the same time that which is most combated by the spirit of the world, according to the words of the Saviour, "The whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John v. 19).
While the people waited, the bishops were robing in the Julian corridor, and the patriarchs in one of the adjoining apartments. Over the grand portico of St. Peter's is a hall, well known on Holy Thursday as the place where the twelve apostles celebrate the Supper--the hall in which the five hundred presented their salutation in 1867. This had been converted into a chapel, by the erection of an altar. Here assembled the members of the procession. Each prelate, on completing his costume, made for the hall, but was not permitted to have any attendant. It being the Day of the Immaculate Conception, the colour of the vestments was white; a rule, however, which did not bind the Orientals. The cardinals were robing in a room apart. Each of them having done so, entered the hall followed by his train-bearer. Bishops, prelates, and cardinals waited while the Pope robed. This he did in the Pauline Chapel, attended by three cardinals, two bishops, the sub-deacon apostolic, two protonotaries, and a few minor officials. They adorned him with amice and with alb, with girdle and with stole. Then did the cardinal-priest in waiting bring the censer, and the Pope put the incense on. Then did they further array him in the "formal," the pluvial, and the precious mitre. At about half-past nine o'clock, Pius IX, in all the glory of gems and garments, entered the hall, where between seven and eight hundred bishops stood before the altar, awaiting their royal head. He did not wear either the tiara or the usual golden mitre, but a special precious mitre made for the occasion, "This" says, Vitelleschi (p. 3), "was to indicate a certain equality with the other bishops, which, however, is confined to these little accessories of the ceremonial." The white pluvial was fastened on his breast by an enamelled clasp, about which clerical writers are particular. The clasp was set with jewels in the form of a dove, with outstretched wings, surrounded by a halo of rays, and representing the Holy Ghost. The Pope passed among the Fathers holding out his fingers, in the usual manner, on this side and on that, giving them what is grotesquely called the pontifical benediction. Then kneeling at the faldstool he took off his mitre and prayed. Two cardinals, approaching the kneeling Pontiff, placed a book before his eyes. He looked upon it, lifted up his aged but resounding voice, and sang--
Creator Spirit, come!
This strain was taken up by the choir, and the first verse was sung, all kneeling. The Pontiff then rose, put on his mitre, and was seated in his portative throne.
The portative throne is a contrivance for exhibiting a dignitary to the gaze of a multitude, which does not remind one of anything to be seen elsewhere in Europe, but does strongly remind one of the way in which a great Guru is carried in India. It is a gorgeous litter, on which is placed a gorgeous chair, under a gorgeous canopy, called a Baldachino. In the chair is seated the Pontiff. Men robed in crimson bear the litter; others bear the canopy on long gilded decorated poles, and beside it others bear gigantic fans of peacocks' feathers.
Even in a secular procession, more serious than an election triumph, this sort of chairing would be of doubtful taste; but in a religious act, above all an act done in the house of God, it would be impossible, except where the aesthetic of faith had expired, and the aesthetic of thought had long surrendered to the aesthetic of sensation. As the Pontiff was set on high a shot fired from St. Angelo told the waiting multitude that the procession was formed.
We have said that the clergy of the city lined the whole course of the procession on either side. This extended from the door of the hall, through some of the apartments of the Vatican, down the celebrated Royal Staircase, through the magnificent portico of St. Peter's, up the nave to the statue of the Apostle, then to the altar at his grave, and finally, to the right of that altar, into the hall of the Council. As the head of the procession emerged from the hall, the manifold costumes of the clergy formed the skirting of the lofty walls, in the apartments through which it slowly swept. The most noticeable of these was the Royal Hall, Sala Regia, where frescoes, suggestive of more swords than one, appealed, by Papal memories, to Papal hopes. There was Gregory VII giving absolution to the penitent emperor Henry IV. There was the attack upon Tunis in 1553, there the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, the League against the Turks, and Barbarosas receiving the benediction of the Pope in the Piazza of St. Mark. From the Royal Hall descends the Royal Staircase Scala Regia. All down its two flights the reverent clergy lined the way, as the "Church Princes" swept by. In the lower flight the Ionic capitals of the colonnade gracefully lengthened out the perspective, while the stately march of mitres glanced between the shafts. With a supreme sense of the importance of the act did the train pass down the noble stair; each prelate no less sustaining the dignity of the moment because just then the eye of the outer world beheld them not. In the view of a real Vaticanist a great procession is a good in itself, and a very high good, apart from its uses; or, perhaps more properly, it is felt that its effectiveness for use wholly depends upon the sense of discipline in its members.
Finally the foot of the stair was reached. The portative throne passed the statue of Constantine, the first who ever drew sword for the Church. It swept round and faced the statue of Charlemagne, the first upon whose head the Church ever set imperial crown. Each stood at an end of the magnificent vista formed by the portico--grand watchers at the door of the Pontiff, ever telling that the kings whom his Church wants are not merely nursing fathers but champions in fight. As the sight of their uplifted monarch burst upon the people, and that of the people upon their king, the heavy guns from the Aventine were firing alternately with those of St. Angelo, while all the bells were trying to exceed the joypeal of the preceding day. Before his Holiness reached this point, the procession had already entered the nave in slow and gorgeous order.
In front came chamberlains, chaplains, and officials of sixteen ascending grades. After these came the Fathers of the Council,--first the generals of orders, next mitred abbots, and then followed bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, in succession of still ascending rank, every man in appropriate splendour. The Orientals outshone their western brethren even more than usual; for the robes of the Latins, being confined to the white of the day, were at a disadvantage beside the eastern coats of many colours. The Senator, as the incumbent is called of a quaint old office under the Papal government, which we might call that of honorary mayor of Rome, marched between the prelates and the throne in golden robe of rich variety. He was accompanied by the conservators, whom we might call something like honorary councilmen, and also by the commandants of the three orders of guards--the noble, the Palatine, and the Swiss. Finally, sitting aloft, with the fans and the bearers, and the poles and the canopy, came the Pontiff. The moving throne was followed by a lengthened rear procession, formed of sundry officials, and closing with the priests, who had for some time been practising shorthand, in order to act as reporters.
The faithful from east and west gazed with enraptured eyes. Many were proud to recognize their own bishops; some still prouder to see their own gifts in robe or gem shining among the adornments of the day. Any Hindu present, looking at priest and soldier, might have exclaimed in the words of the Bhagavad Gita: "Many a wondrous sight, many a heavenly ornament, many an upraised weapon; adorned with celestial robes and chaplets; anointed with heavenly essence, covered with every marvellous thing."[204]
From early morn, "the holiest," to use the term of one of the priestly descriptions, had been exhibited upon the altar; but out of tenderness to the throng had been veiled till the procession approached. As it entered the temple, every member of it uncovered to "the holiest." Those who were not members of the Council, after reaching the high altar, defiled to the left. The Fathers of the Council approaching the altar, each in his turn bent the knee before the Host; and then turning to the right, beheld the front of the Council Hall erected between two of the piers which sustain the great dome of Michael Angelo. Over the door was a picture, professing to represent the Eternal Father. The door was kept by the military figures of the Knights of Malta and the noble guards. Each prelate, in turn, entered the hall, bowed to the cross erected upon the altar, and was shown to the place assigned to him, according to his rank and seniority; for care was taken that the bishops should not group themselves either according to nation or according to opinion. There, standing and bareheaded, they awaited the Holy Father (Frond, vii. p. 98).
After the procession had been for some time moving up the nave, a whisper, "The cross, the cross," passed from lip to lip. The cross was borne immediately in front of the Fathers of the Council. Priest told priest of its choice beauty and immense costliness. Designed in the Gothic of the thirteenth century, and rich with gems, it represented Christ, not in His passion, but crowned, as conquering Lord, in glory. Among the expressions of delight, the proudest was, "It is a present to the Pope from the English convert, the Marquis of Bute."
The Pope did not, on this occasion, as he usually does, pass up the whole of the nave on his portative throne--a process which guide-books describe as representing the Lord of Glory entering Paradise. He now alighted at the entrance of the basilica, and, with deliberate step and thrice radiant smiles, his head alone mitred while all others were uncovered in presence of the "holiest," he marched among soldiers, priests, and subjects, a sovereign in excelsis. Before him went his hundreds of lieutenants, in attire which would have dazzled ancient Pontifex, Flamen, and Augur. Every one of them was prepared to contend with princes in his cause, to set his name before that of their king, and to claim, in their respective countries, a supreme sway for his sceptre. Not a few of them had endured prosecution or prison to uphold his law against that of their country, and no note of the lyres that sounded the praises of the day was sweeter than that which commemorated the name of any martyr-bishop, hero of the kingdom of God, against the naturalism of the age.
The Cardinals had not followed the bishops into the hall. They now stood near the high altar. Two bishops were at the faldstool, with book and candle. At the altar itself stood the officiating Cardinal, with a priest, a deacon and sub-deacon, a master of the ceremonies, five acolytes bearing candles, and three clerks of the chapel. On arriving at the altar the Pontiff bowed upon the faldstool. Then the last strophe of the Veni Creator was exquisitely sung by the choir. To use the words of a priest, written, not for Spaniards or Brazilians, but for Germans: "Every member of the historical procession cast himself upon his knees before our God and Saviour in the form of bread, before whom all kings bow."[205]
After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"--Protector Noster Aspice Deus--and for some time he continued reciting prayers in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (Guérin, p. 76).
The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right, entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for some time.
As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial--the Cardinals Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers deserved half of the ill that was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts, Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching Christ" (p. 55).
The German Jesuit who wrote for the Stimmen said, "The bloodless offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the invisible Head of the Church be present in form of bread. Opposite sits His representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (Neue Folge, vi. p. 162).
This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning, when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India, first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence--
Lo, God is here, let us adore!
At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty with all who take an impression for a reason. The program is in the Acta, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for each minutest move.
The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands; he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (Acta, pp. 204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction, during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer, with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council, and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people. Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The Pontiff recites Quam dilecta, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers trimmed with gold lace. The Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers. Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle; after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed that this was imposing, impressive, divine.
This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne, rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of history had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on which its first beams were beginning to strike--came forward lordly figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each, with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says, "What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma, looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw signs of happy days returning.
The Jesuits said, "Surely those non-Catholics who witnessed this action must have perceived that Catholicity, like unity, is found only where Christ lives, speaks, and reigns--in Peter; that is, in the Roman Church, of which Pius IX is now Peter." But we may quietly ask, Could even those writers fancy Peter, at the only Apostolic Council, seated upon a throne somewhere on Mount Zion, while John, James, and Paul came up in the presence of the assembled Church and kissed his knee, and Philip, Barnabas, and others knelt and kissed his foot? Far as the aesthetics of those Jesuits had descended, by a long materializing process, they must surely have read enough of the Holy Scriptures to feel that the scene enacted in St. Peter's, though a fine edition of a Durbar, was a sad fall from an Apostolic Council. You promise the pupils of Plato a higher wisdom than they ever knew in the Academy, and they find for wisdom the gewgaws of Freemasons. Such a scene was bad in manners, bad in politics, and bad in religion. In manners, it tended to make men servile in a lower position and arrogant in a higher; in politics, it tended to make them either slaves or despots; in religion, it tended to make them either unbelieving or superstitious. Is it part of the penalty of Rome that barbaric forms should linger at its Court, when the spirit of Christianity has banished them from the Courts of Christian kings? Our own monarch, at the head of her two hundred and eighty millions, is too good a Christian to make her subject Rajahs, as a spectacle for her commons and her troops, come and fall down and kiss her foot. The words which commanded the followers of Christ not to exercise over one another the kind of lordship which the kings of the Gentiles exercised over them were, with pompous action, publicly trampled upon in this scene of "the obedience," and that both in the spirit and in the letter. He who complacently sat and acted out that scene in the house of God for an hour and a quarter, might better claim to represent many known in the history of ambition, than the lowly Lord of Peter.
Up to this time only sixty-seven articles of the program had been performed. Thirty more were exhausted by postures, manipulations, and devotions. The officiating cardinal-priest then came forward, bearing the reeking censer. He waved it before the enthroned priest, around whom swelled up the clouds till subject eyes looked up to him through a sacred haze, and till he looked down on his subject creatures from a sky of fragrant mist. This ceremony fulfilled, all took their seats with their mitres on, and the Pontiff, rising, delivered his allocution. It overflowed with joy and hope. It clearly pointed out the enemy to be destroyed. "A conspiracy of the wicked, mighty by combination, rich in resources, fortified with institutions, and using liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." Obviously this enemy was not a theological but a political one. Vitelleschi, who naturally heard with Italian ears, says that the language, though using a cloak, was plain enough to show what enemy was meant.
As the Pontiff drew to the close of his allocution, he, with a burst of feeling, put up two invocations, one to the Holy Spirit, the other to the Blessed Virgin. After this, with contagious intensity of emotion, he threw up both hands to heaven. At a bound, the whole assembly stood up. Then he poured forth the final invocation with the fullest resonance of his wonderful tones--tones which might have served in chanting from Gerizim to Ebal. He invoked angels and archangels, Peter, Paul, and all the saints, more particularly those whose ashes were venerated on that spot. This speech from the apostolic throne, exclaims Monsignor Guérin, beginning with the liveliest joy, afterwards expressing divine agonies, concluded with firm and tranquil confidence!
Now followed another round of ceremonies, at the close of which the master of the ceremonies proclaimed, "Let those who are not members of the Council withdraw." The royal and noble spectators left the scene; the doors were closed. The Knights of Malta and the noble guard stood sentry between the faithful, who were to receive the creed as it might be shaped, and the Fathers, who were to decide for them what their creed should be. What would take place before those doors should be opened again? Persistent rumour had said that the extreme party meant to attempt an acclamation. Therefore many believed it possible that in one brief sitting the basis of infallibility might be shifted from that of an infallible Church to that of an infallible man.
Other rumours asserted that some French prelates had let it be known that if any attempt at getting up an acclamation should be made, they would leave the Council. But what might take place behind those charmed walls, who could tell? All that could be said with certainty was that now, for the first time in the history of man, one hundred and seventy millions, perhaps two hundred millions, were standing idle spectators of the process of altering their creed. They had not a single representative; not one channel of expression, not one possible resort in appeal. What used to be a general council was now a conclave; sitting behind a guard of armed men. King and priest, councillor of state and doctor of divinity, were equally shut out. The Catholic multitude appeared indifferent. The few who were not indifferent were powerless. They had all been parties to narrowing the idea of the Church to that of the clergy. That idea was now, without the consent of any one being asked, formally narrowed from that of the clergy to that of the bishops and Court prelates. It might further be narrowed from that of the Episcopate to that of the Pope. It appears to us not very easy to call men fanatics who have done so much with mankind, when they propose and expect to do still more!
The point at which we now stand in the program of the day is the 109th Article, which is the first of several prescribing a ceremony with a substance. Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop Valenziani of Fabriano, approached the throne. The Secretary handed a document to the Pontiff. The Pope handed the document to Valenziani, who thereupon, ascending the pulpit, turned towards the throne, made a profound obeisance, took off his mitre, and read out as follows--"Pius, the Bishop-Servant of the Servants of God, with the approbation of the Holy Council." Having now pronounced the title of the decree, he again put on his mitre, seated himself, and proceeded to read the substance of the Decree. This consisted of one sentence, declaring the Council opened. In that ill-constructed hall few heard what was read; and many were wicked enough to hint that, if ill-constructed, the hall was not ill-contrived. Once more laying aside the mitre, Bishop Valenziani rose and asked, "Is the Decree now read agreed to?" The bishops were seated in their mitres, the abbots standing bareheaded. There was no formal vote. Those who understood what was said, cried Placet, and others repeated the cry. No one dissented. This result was communicated to the sovereign, and he from the throne proclaimed--"The Decree now read is agreed to by the Fathers, none dissenting; and we decree, enact, and sanction it, as read."
These forms were exactly repeated, and a second Decree was passed. Like the first, it consisted of a single sentence, which fixed the next public session for January 6. The two Promoters of the Council, as they were called, now advancing, first knelt on the lowest step of the throne, and then addressed the notaries, saying, "We pray you, Protonotaries here present, to draw up an authentic document, recording all and singular the acts done in this public session of the all-holy OEcumenical Vatican Council." The senior protonotary then appealing to the Majordomo and the High Chamberlain, who stood on the right hand of the throne, said, "We shall draw it up, ye being witnesses" (Frond, vii. p. 119).
The constitutional crisis had come and gone, and very few were aware of it. Those who had thought of the program as anything more than the order of a pageant, must have observed that the signification of those acts amounted to no less than putting aside the conciliar form of Decree, and adopting in its stead that of the Papal Bulls. We have already seen that Friedrich, as a Church historian, saw this at a glance. It need not be said that the ancient Councils, representing the whole Church, spoke in their own name, themselves decreeing and enacting. As to the only Council "over" which Pontiff Peter I "presided," it would not do to cite it as an example.[207] As late as Trent, every Decree bore upon the face of it the words, "This holy Council enacts and decrees." All the statutes of the Council of Trent, without alteration of a word, were immediately confirmed by the Pope, he having beforehand promised, in writing, to do so. The formula then used was, of course, liable to the interpretation that it indicated the superiority of the Council to the Pope. That interpretation had been actually put upon it by schools in the Church, at one time, including whole nations.
The Decrees now passed had never been before the Council for deliberation, but were handed from the throne ready made. The Pope, according to the formula, did not merely sanction, but decreed, enacted, and sanctioned--that is, he took the part of both parliament and crown.
The Council is only mentioned as "approving" of this absorption of its own powers into those of its head. The part thus allowed to this so-called OEcumenical Council, this Senate of Humanity, in framing Decrees, is less than the part allowed to the College of Cardinals in the framing of Bulls. Take, for instance, the Bull of Convocation. It expressly says that, in issuing it, the Pope acts not only with the consent of the Cardinals, but by their counsel.
This expresses more than "with the approbation." All, therefore, that the collective episcopate did for the College of Cardinals was somewhat to curtail its relative legislative importance. Alone, both its counsel and consent were recognized. When united with all the bishops, only its consent. This looked like telling the bishops that their counsel was superfluous. In the Bull history conquered dogma. The counsel and consent of the Cardinals was the memento of the historical fact that the Bishop of Rome originally spoke with authority only when he spoke as the mouthpiece of the local clergy. In the Decree dogma conquered history. The Bishop of Rome alone was to appear as speaking with authority, and all other bishops were to appear only as approving, but neither as counselling nor confirming; as for the clergy, they were no longer of the Teaching Church. The substance of the Decrees passed was perfectly innocent. They had, moreover, the advantage of exactly copying the acts done in the first session at Trent, while destroying the forms there employed. In the Acta of that Council two resolutions, declaring the Council opened, and fixing the day for the second public session, were entered as constituent acts, before the heading given to Decrees of the constituted body began to be used. The two constituent resolutions were not even headed by the name of the Council, while the name of the Pope does not occur in the heading of any of the Decrees, much less does it stand as the sole legislative authority.
At Trent it was not a private member of the Council, like Bishop Valenziani, but the first presiding legate, Cardinal De Monte, who read out the draft of a resolution, in the form of a question declaring the Council opened. To this question the Fathers "all with one consent answered, Placet." The second resolution was put in the same form. Both, as we have intimated, were entered without the heading of Decrees, and stand as the acts of a body organizing itself, but not as legislative acts of that body when organized. Every subsequent Decree is a real legislative act, and therefore bears the formal heading, "The All-Holy Council of Trent, in the Holy Ghost lawfully assembled ... ordains and decrees."[208]
The formula adopted in the Vatican Council had the advantage of determining, once for all, what that Council was to be, namely, a secret consistory of bishops, to give an approval to Papal Constitutions. Its Presidents were Cardinals, an office unknown to the Christian Church--princes simply of the Court of Rome, though most of them bear the orders of priest. Of the members of the Council a vast number, though called bishops, were really no more than mitred equerries and chamberlains. In the means it took to deprive the diocesan bishops of their inherited powers in Council, the Curia knew its men. Brought up in the sentiment that an effective "function" is the sublimest stroke of civil or ecclesiastical government, it would have been a revolt against all their instincts to disturb a pageant so unrivalled as the one in which they that day had the felicity of bearing a part. The Curia placed them in this dilemma: Either they must rise up amidst that blaze of splendour and resist the act of the sovereign at whose feet they had just bowed, or they must learn at a later stage, if they should then challenge the Rules of Procedure, that the moment for objection was past. The success of the Curia was complete. The general drew out his men for a review, and turned the Thermopylæ of the opposition without having ever seen a Spartan. Those who had come up resolved to oppose changes in their creed soon found that the one pass that might have been held against overwhelming odds was already in the enemy's rear. The Nine had not spent nearly ten months on the Rules of Procedure for nothing.
When this brief episode in the drama of the day had passed over, the doors were thrown open, and the spectators who had been excluded resumed their places. Many of the priests outside would feel disappointed that they had not heard the hall resound with the voices of an acclamation. That would have told that Papal infallibility was adopted without discussion. Friedrich lets it appear that he felt relieved at the opening of the doors before there had been any exulting sound, and doubtless many shared his feeling.
Rumours, persistently kept up, declared that Archbishop Manning would propose the dogma, and that the majority, breaking out into acclamation, would bear down all opposition. If such a design was ever entertained, it had been thought--some say it had been found--that it would prove wiser not to proceed so hastily. The passing of two Decrees in the form of Papal Constitutions was enough to carry "the forms of the house," while the issuing of the Rules of Procedure as a Bull, before the Council was opened, had taken away every pretext for alleging that they were open to revision by the Council itself, as being its own acts.
Archbishop Manning, on his return to England, in a pastoral, treated the rumour of an intended acclamation as if it was only laughable. A reason which he assigns for this is that Rome had had enough of acclamations, seeing that many who acclaimed infallibility in 1867 had openly turned against it. The rumours, however, were too consistent, and too well supported by the hints of the Civiltá and by the plain words of Monsignor Plantier and others, to be prudently dismissed with a smile--at least, anywhere but in England. They were not what Dr. Manning represents them, rumours of an acclamation without a definition, but of a definition carried by acclamation, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception. On the other hand, Archbishop Manning's thrust at those who had in 1867 signed language that might seem to mean everything included in infallibility, without themselves intending to express that doctrine, is natural in one who had not wholly unlearned the Protestant worth of words. Nevertheless, of all grounds on which the prefects of the Pope should begin to trip one another up, the ground to be selected by preference is scarcely that of finesse in the interpretations they put on what they say. As to the part assigned to Dr. Manning personally, it is possible that the rumour represented no more than the fact that both they who hoped for an acclamation, and they who feared it, mentioned the name which occurred to them as that of the most likely instrument of such a procedure, and both happened to pronounce the same name. As if to justify this instinctive selection of both parties, Dr. Manning, on his return home, said that if the Council "had defined the infallibility at its outset, it would not have been an hour too soon; and perhaps it would have averted many a scandal we now deplore."[209]
A Roman noble thus notes the zeal of Dr. Manning--
No one is so devoted as a convert. Having himself erred for half his lifetime did not restrain him from becoming the most ardent champion of infallibility. This circumstance raised a presumption of a deficiency, on his part, in that traditional ecclesiastical spirit which is never fully acquired but by being early grounded and by long continued usage--a presumption which was justified by his excessive and intemperate restlessness. This seemed a cause sufficient to lessen his authority with the Conservative portion of the ecclesiastical world, which judges with more calmness and serenity.[210]--(Vitelleschi, p. 35.)
The real work of the day was now done. It was time to sing the Te Deum. The Pontiff sounded the first note, and was followed by the Fathers of the Council, by the choir, by the thousands outside in the Basilica. The strain was caught up in nave and aisles, in every chapel and every gallery; it mounted aloft into vaults and dome, till all who were beneath the gorgeous roof thrilled under that returning swell of exulting sound; and many felt as if the world was falling, overwhelmed with harmony, at the feet of Pio Nono.
The eighteen articles of the program still remaining contained little beyond unrobing, re-robing, and dissolving.
The people had been for seven hours in the Cathedral. It still rained in torrents. The clerical organs said the providential rain had prevented mobs in different places from making hostile demonstrations. During the time spent in the Cathedral, the people had not heard--except so far as some of them could make out the Latin--a sentence of the Word of God or of the words of man. The seven hours of the twenty thousand had been spent in an intermitting gaze. All went away, not only praising the pageant of the day, but extolling it. Friedrich quotes a diplomatist who said it was "superb." The correspondent of the Times said: "It has been my fortune to see many pageants in Rome, but none of them equalled, in majestic solemnity, the scene presented by the procession of bishops from all countries in the world."[211] Monsignor Guérin cried: "It offered the most majestic and enchanting spectacle which it was ever given to mortals to behold here below." M. Veuillot said that bishops were there from the rising to the setting of the sun--men who would invade regions as yet closed against them--the light-bearers and the God-bearers.[212] These old men, he added, would overthrow darkness and death, and the day would break (vol. i. p. 12). Vitelleschi remarked that there was indeed a bishop from Chaldea and one from Chicago, but the former did not represent a Catholic Chaldea, nor the latter a Catholic Chicago. Even, he added, in countries called Catholic, what proportion of the population are really of their flocks? He might have further added, And if their teaching is true, what proportion of their flocks are really Catholics?--for they teach that a doubt on any single article of faith propounded by their Church, or a doubt on one of her interpretations of a text of Scripture, taints one with heresy. How many Italians were, on the day of the opening of the Council, free from that taint?
We are reminded of an Englishman whose name, when he was only thirty years of age, gained for him distinguished attention at the Vatican. His Protestantism was much influenced by his early study of the corruptions of Christianity at the centre of them. Had John Milton witnessed that pageant we know exactly what he would have said. First he would have shown that when the filial spirit of Christianity had been lost, the servile spirit of Paganism supervened. When men ceased to come to God as children to a father, they sought circuitous access through upper servants. Then followed what he describes in a sentence with a strong flavour of the Phædrus--
They began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God Himself, into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamin's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul, by this means of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity.... They knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloaking their servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.--Of Reformation in England, first book.
A writer in the Stimmen thought that if those who were separated from the Church had only been present they might have been won back. It would be an easy way to settle the merits of a religion, if it could be done by the simple experiment of what body had the grandest building for a display, or the greatest number of richly dressed men to perform. We do not presume to say whether Peter ever did visit Rome or not; but, supposing that he did, the question between him and the sovereign Pontiff of the day, as to the value of their respective religions, would soon have been settled in favour of Nero, if it had gone by buildings, statues, robes, and retinues. Probably the poor itinerant preacher was so conscious that, as Milton would say, his religion "to the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion," that he would not have challenged comparison with the purpled Pontiff on that ground. Any writer who could imagine that the tendency of a "function" performed in the manner of the one we have described is to convince Protestants that the Church of Rome has in her forms much likeness left to the Church of Christ, must be unaware of the first elements of a comparison. When we search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so, the estrangement of the Papacy from the Christianity of Christ, and its affinity to the Romanism of the Pagan Pontiffs, become more and more impressive.
The feeling in St. Peter's did not permit guards to be dispensed with. It transpired that extreme precaution had been taken to prevent the Basilica from being blown up. At the time, the general impression appeared to be that some of the National party had played upon the fears of the priests, hoaxing them with hints of such a design. But after what occurred in Paris during the reign of the Commune, one can hardly think it impossible that some of the violent and ignorant may have entertained wild plans. In 1867, a startling example of what might be done had been shown in the blowing up of a barrack of the zouaves. When populations which have long been governed by spectacle, set out for a political sensation, they sometimes go dreadful lengths to find a stirring one.
The city was to have been grandly illuminated, but the drenching rain would have mocked all effort to keep in the tender life of the lamps. Let us hope, said the clerical writers, that the blue sky of Rome will smile on the close of the Council, and that then the eternal city will glow brighter even than Ephesus in 431 (Stimmen, N.F., p. 166).
In addition to human helps to faith, it was announced that divine helps had been vouchsafed. On this ever-memorable day the bones of the martyrs at Concordia had distilled water, which in that part of Venetia was a recognized presage of a joyful future. This is announced in the organ of that Court which was soberly undertaking to inaugurate a new era for all the societies of men (Civiltá, VII. ix. 104).
The same periodical in the very next sentence gave samples of fanatical English Protestants. Citing the Pall Mall Gazette, it told how a series of meetings had been held in Freemasons' Hall, at the suggestion of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné, to pray for the Council. It went on to say that the Chairman, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird, had told how similar meetings for prayer were to be held all over the world, and even among the Protestants of Italy. It quoted two of the petitions said to have been offered up. Canon Auriol prayed that all the machinations of Rome might be turned to confusion, and Dr. Cumming that the day of her imagined triumph might prove to be that of her prophesied ruin.
It was much pleasanter work to tell of the Anti-Council of the Freethinkers at Naples. Praying Protestants are to be hated and extinguished. But vaunting infidels are to the Jesuits what fires are to insurance offices--their apparent foes, but their only real supports. That assembly spent a couple of days in vague and sometimes vast talk. It abused the Pope, and the Jesuits say it blasphemed God. It proposed to find a code of morals without religion, those flowers without any stems which are the holy grail of such knights errant. Finally, it attacked the French Emperor and the Italian monarchy, and was dissolved by the police. Demonstrations of a somewhat similar kind were attempted in a few other cities of Italy. In France, on the contrary, the following cities were illuminated, and were lauded not only in their local clerical journals, but in the great Civiltá: Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Saint-Etienne, Laval, Moulins, Nismes, Auch, "and others." Even in Paris many convents illuminated their facades. (Guérin, p. 78.)
At Vienna a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and officials composing the Catholic Societies, and numbering, it is said, four thousand, was held to celebrate the day. The only Italian city specified as having made any favourable demonstration was Brescia; and the account amounted to no more than that of an attendance of some Society of young men at Mass, and of the sending of a promise of adhesion to the Council.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 198: Frond, iii., p. 254. M. Fisquet is author of the work Gallia Christiana, in fifty volumes.]
[Footnote 199: The Hindu Bhagavad Gita thus represents the distinction between God and the gods. "I behold, O God! within Thy heart the dews (gods) assembled, and every specific tribe of beings. I see Brahma (the creator, only a god) sitting on his lotus throne, all the Reeshees, and heavenly Ooragas.... I see Thee without beginning, without middle, and without end.... The space between the heavens and the earth is possessed by Thee alone, and every point around.... Of the celestial bands, some fly to Thee for refuge; whilst some, afraid with joined hands sing forth Thy praise. The Maharshees holy bands hail Thee"; and then follows an enumeration of various orders of celestials, who "all stand gazing on Thee, all alike amazed."(a)
(a: Wilkins' translation, Garrett's ed., pp. 34, 55.)
While thus Hinduism long anticipated either Pagan or Papal Romanism, in a system of inferior worship to inferior powers, it more logically attached inferior paradises to such worship. "Those who worship the Devatas (gods) go unto the Devatas; those who worship the Patriarchs go unto the Patriarchs; the servants of the spirits go to the spirits; and they who worship me go unto me."(b) That is sensible as a polity, if fallen as a religion. But it may be doubtful whether those who worship the Inquisitors would like to go to the Inquisitors.
(b: Ibid., p. 46.)]
[Footnote 200: Dr. Philip, author of _The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show_.]
[Footnote 201: See Liverani at full.]
[Footnote 202: Chap. x. 8, 0.]
[Footnote 203: Allocution of June 26, 1867.]
[Footnote 204: Wilkins' translation, Garrett's triglot edition, Bangalore, p. 53.]
[Footnote 205: Stimmen, Neue Folge, vi. p. 116.]
[Footnote 206: Frond, iii, p. 10.]
[Footnote 207: In the list of Popes, the name Peter is repeated only in the case of one, and he was an anti-pope.]
[Footnote 208: The form of the opening resolutions and of the Decrees is found in any edition of the Canons and Decrees of the Council; the full account of the proceedings, taken down at the time by Massarellus, the Secretary of the Council, in Theiner's Acta Genuina, vol. i. 28, 29.]
[Footnote 209: Priv. Petri, Part III. p. 36.]
[Footnote 210: This version, made before the publication of the English translation, differs from it only in immaterial points. (See Eight Months, p, 22.)]
[Footnote 211: Times, Dec. 14, 1869.]
[Footnote 212: "Les portes-lumiéres et les portes-Dieu."]
Chapter II
First Proceedings--Unimportant Committees and All-Important Commissions--No Council if Pope dies--Theologians discover their Disfranchisement--Father Ambrose--Parties and Party Tactics--Were the Bishops Free Legislators?--Plans of Reconstruction--Plan of the German Bishops--Segesser's Plan--New Bull of Excommunications.
The day following the wonderful Wednesday, of which the proceedings filled up the last chapter, was not too much for rest, and probably, indeed, was too little for the bishops to tell how effective the function had been. On the Friday, however, they had again to meet for the first General Congregation, or deliberative sitting. This was presided over by the Cardinals appointed, whereas the Pope in person presided over the Public Sessions, or solemnities, for formally promulging Decrees. Cardinal De Reisach, Chief President, was not in his chair, but upon his death-bed. As we have seen, he had superintended the drawing up (it is believed that with his own hand he had drawn up) the first code of laws to regulate the relations of the Church to civil society; but his code has never met the public eye.
From this first General Congregation, writes Friedrich, even the theologians were shut out.
The occupation of the day for nearly eight hundred bishops was to elect two committees of five each: one to examine applications for leave of absence; and the other to settle contests as to precedence, and similar matters, which contests at Trent often proved to be serious, indeed ere now the streets of Rome have witnessed bloodshed arising out of disputes of this sort between bishops. The members of these committees were called respectively Judges of Excuses and Judges of Complaints and Disputes. The mode of election was simple; every one wrote five names on a card. It proved that Fallibilists must not expect the smallest share of office. Cardinal De Luca took the chief place, and opened the Congregation with a few simple sentences. These were translated by interpreters for the Orientals who did not understand Latin. The prelate who on this occasion celebrated Mass at the opening of the sitting was the Bishop of Osimo, afterwards Cardinal Vitelleschi, to whom some have ascribed the authorship of the work of his brother, which we often quote.[213]
The real business of the day, too important to be left to the episcopate, had been done without them. It consisted in appointing the Commission of Proposals. Twelve Cardinals, twelve archbishops, and two bishops were announced as the men whom the Pontiff had put in charge of the rights of their brethren. Prelates with titles from Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and Sardis; one from Chili and one from Baltimore; one from Spain, one from Westminster, two Italians, and a few others, were empowered to say whether the men who ruled the sees of Paris, Lyons, Munich, Cologne, and Milan, and those of Hungary and Portugal, were or were not to be recommended to the Pope for permission to bring forward any proposal. The Commission could not grant them leave to do so, but it could report to the Pontiff, who alone could determine.
As some seven hundred and fifty bishops found all their hopes of proposing anything placed at the discretion of these twenty-six men, it was not for them to reason why: it was for them simply to read in the names now announced the record of past services and the fate of future suggestions.[214] They had not stayed the proceedings when they found that the Pro-synodal Congregation had been used to fasten upon them an edict which took away their right of self-organization, and it was now hopeless to attempt to recover that right. The three youngest archbishops on the list were Giannelli, Manning, and Deschamps; the secretary of the Nine, and the two hottest Infallibilists--all three on the way to the purple, which they have since received at one and the same time.
But the sensation of the day, perhaps brought about at this moment to divert attention from the painful inroad just made upon episcopal rights, was a Bull determining the course to be taken should the death of the Pontiff occur during the Council. This edict determined that the bishops must not, in that case, elect a successor or transact any business, but that the Council must be held as suspended till another Pope should be duly elected by the Cardinals alone, and till it should be again called together by him. Pius IX ordained that this law should endure for ever, as the rule in all similar cases. This measure made the Council an appendage to the person of the Pope, not capable of sustaining its existence without him, and consequently having no imaginable power over him. It also made it inferior to the College of Cardinals--an abnormal body, composed of "creatures" of the crown, without any pretence to a constitutional place in the Christian Church--"Princes," and some of them, like Antonelli, not even priests. "Pivots," as their name imports, true "pivots"[215] of the Court, which has turned a religion into a school of costume, policy, and arms, they have, we repeat, as Cardinals, neither name nor place, neither order nor office, in the known constitution of the Catholic Church. When men who held that bishops were successors of the Apostles allowed the right of all the bishops in the world to choose their own head to be confiscated by an edict in favour of these Court officers, they were not likely afterwards to be strong supports of any true authority, only of that arbitrary will which finds all the sanction of its acts in itself. The Cardinals may well denounce nationalism, since to uphold their pretensions the mitres of all nations must bow to the hat of a prince in the suite of one little king. It would be unreasonable to think less of a man for wearing a scarlet hat and scarlet stockings, if his position in life calls him to it; almost as unreasonable as to think more of him for it. But to put a prince into that grotesque Court dress, and then turn him, by virtue of his Court position, into a titular bishop, or archbishop, and to expect his irregular office to be recommended by his incongruous attire, is a proof of the unlimited faith of the Curia in costume.
The experience of the day taught two lessons. First, the hall proved to be utterly unfit for deliberation, as every architect or public speaker must have known that it would prove, though about twenty-four thousand pounds had been spent in adapting a space within the Cathedral. But the second lesson of the day's experience was of a different kind. It had become plain that Fallibilists and Infallibilists were to be parted off from one another by a hard official line, and that no distinction would be made between Fallibilists and Inopportunists. The Curia, instead of showing any fear of the minority, was evidently resolved on letting it be known that Rome was not the place to form an opposition. The Rules had in fact already disposed of the minority.
We have intimated that possibly theologians came up to the Council with no more knowledge of what awaited them than the bishops. This was at least the case with Friedrich. On the Monday after the opening ceremony, accompanied by Kagarer, theologian to his Grace of Munich, he waited on the Secretary of the Council. I knew, says the Professor, that at Trent every theologian was not entitled only, but bound, to take part in the labours of the Council, by preparing papers and publicly discussing questions. But, he adds, "we were undeceived with a witness." The Secretary told them that the duty of theologians in connexion with the Council was "nothing." They were only to give information or advice to their respective bishops, as it might be asked for.
The decision thus announced to the doctors had been taken eleven months previously. The Nine, at their meetings of January 24 and 31, (Cecconi, p. 205) had determined that there should be no congregation of inferior theologians, as the doctors were called, in opposition to the bishops, the superior theologians. The open discussions which had given light to the people on the one side and to the prelates on the other were thus quenched. The people were no more to have any means of ascertaining what was being done with their creed, nor even, when something had been done, were they to have means of ascertaining what were the processes by which the new dogmas had been established. All that they were now to learn was to be the fait accompli, henceforth to become the standard of faith for all and in all. The order of priests was to be shorn of its last vestige of representation in the Councils of the Church. The bishops, on the other hand, were not to be allowed to know what could be said for or against a proposed dogma, before they were called upon to close it up for ever. This one turn of the screw wrung even from Cecconi a mild but distinct expression of doubt. He feels (p. 205) that "the Fathers generally lost a mighty assistance in the discharge of their high office." He ventures to quote Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of Trent, whose language shows that the old Jesuits had broad views compared with those now ruling. Pallavicino's words remind us of the cry of poor Monsignor Liverani: "We might be allowed to be Liberals up to the mark of Bellarmine"--
Many of the bishops were learned in the science of theology, but the most eminent, as is the case in all sciences, were the private theologians, since they had not been diverted by public cares from regular study, without which eminent prudence is often acquired, but not eminent erudition.
But Pius IX had no intention of allowing bishops to satisfy their consciences by hearing all that could be said on both sides before they gave a judgment.
It would be hard to find a neater specimen of the terms in which the abolition of a venerable franchise may be couched than in the words of Cecconi. He lets us know that on the 4th of July, 1869, the Nine resolved to "confer on the theologians of bishops the right of being eligible to be called to serve the committees of the Council." It would be only in keeping with a system of quotation regularly practised if this statement of Cecconi should be, hereafter, used to prove that the theologians at the Vatican Council did not suffer any curtailment of their rights, but received an increase of them. But exclusion from the right of pleading before "my lords" was not all the degradation awaiting the unfortunate doctors. Bishop Fessler told them that they were free to give information or advice each to his own bishop, but, adds Friedrich, only to him. We wonder what man was not free to give private advice if asked for it. They were not to be allowed to attend meetings of the bishops; not even to meet among themselves to consult in common upon questions affecting the Council.[216] Friedrich was not the most to be pitied of the theologians. Father Ambrose, a Carmelite, had been brought up from Germany by his general, a Spaniard. At the first interview the general told him that the all-important question was that of Papal infallibility. Father Ambrose declared himself a Fallibilist, and produced a work which he had prepared on the subject. He at once lost his post; and the general wished to send him off to Malta. Cardinal Hohenlohe pleaded for his restoration, but in vain. The general feared that the order would be utterly put to shame if in addition to the scandal of the Cracow nun, and that of Father Hyacinthe's defection, a theologian of the Order brought up to the Council should be known as a Fallibilist. The poor man had even to go to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and to beg of him to give him back a copy of his little work which he had presented to his Eminence. This the Cardinal refused to do, saying that even if the general had ordered it, he had nothing to say to a Cardinal. Ambrose was permitted to return to Würzburg, and before he started a prelate said to him, "I should rejoice if any one recalled me or sent me home. We bishops have been ordered here to the Council without being told what we were to deliberate upon, and now that I know it, I could gladly turn my back upon the Council and Rome."
Another minute touch of Friedrich at this moment shows how he heard a devoted Roman adherent of the Papacy say that an officer had sent him twenty scudi (about four pounds) as an offering to Peter's Pence; but he had returned the money, telling his friend he would do better to spend it on his family. "His conscience had dictated this course," for he knew how Peter's Pence were spent.
The correspondent of the Stimmen must have been under the triumphal influence of the opening, when he informed his German readers that wonderful unanimity reigned, and that what might be called the Opposition was daily shrinking up into nothing, and would soon reward only microscopical research.[217] The Unitá Cattolica of January 1 alleged that the Français, in using the expression, "A fraction of malcontents," might possibly be right, if it meant an almost impalpable fraction; but if it meant anything more, it was false. The alleged discontent, it went on to say, was spoken of as if it related to the Commission of Proposals appointed by the Pope. Some were said to wish that the Council itself should have had the selection of a committee. It was false; no one complained. It could not be disputed that the Pontiff, having the right to convoke, rule, and guide the Council, had also the right to determine what questions should be submitted to it. Pius IX had, indeed, himself confirmed this in the Bull by which he settled the Rules of Procedure. This is not conscious but unconscious irony. It reflects the course of the Papacy, displaying its administrative force and its logical infirmity in one word. A right is first desired, then secretly assumed, next insinuated in indirect forms, and finally embodied in an act assuming it as already ascertained; after which, this very act is taken as proof that it was previously established. When the Nine met, they confessed that it was questionable if the right existed to lay down rules for a General Council of the Catholic Church by a sub-committee of the Cardinals. But they assumed the right as unchallenged, embodied the assumption in an edict, and now turned to that edict as proof of the pre-existing right. A few days later, the correspondent of the Stimmen again said that, while the intelligence furnished to the ordinary journals was absurd, one thing might be relied upon, namely, that what was called an Opposition was daily diminishing.[218]
Another Jesuit, writing after the Council, did not confirm these statements of the inspired organs, but followed the profane journals, whose intelligence was at the time decried--
Behold, says Sambin, two camps face to face! On one side, Rome and her Sovereign Pontiff, surrounded by a vast majority of the bishops, displaying the banner of the Church as set up by her divine Redeemer. On the other side, an uncertain number of men belonging to all ranks of the hierarchy, seduced by illusory appearances or frightened by the danger of attacking modern ideas in front--men who fancy that the Church ought to parley with the notions of the age.[219]
The orthodox view on this point was expressed by the Civiltá in its first number after the Council was opened. "The Press and public meetings are the two mainsprings by which the spirit of the age, or Masonry, or, to give things their proper names, Satan, moves public opinion for his own ends."[220] At that moment Satan was busy not only with the Italian and German Press, but with the Standard, Saturday Review, and other English papers.
Another aspect of the Council was exhibited, not in the secular newspapers, but in the clerical periodicals. Eight days after the opening session, the Stimmen was informed how, on an afternoon as mild as summer, the grounds of the Villa Borghese were enlivened by a review in honour of the Fathers of the Council. The troops were much commended, not omitting the Squadriglieri, whom the Italians profanely charged with having been recruited from the brigands but whom the Jesuits described as excellent Catholics. The Civiltá was really edified by this display. In the military review, it says--and we repeat word for word--the profane spectacle was dominated by the thought of the new crusaders defiling before so many bishops, spectators and a spectacle no longer witnessed at a military review. It was well and truly said that this review looked like a function in St. Peters'.[221]
A few days later, the faithful, whose supply of news never related to either doctrine or discipline, were edified by an account of a performance in a military casino, in honour of the Austrian and Swiss bishops. It is inferred that the Pope's foreign troops must be highly educated, because the beautiful scenery had been entirely painted by the soldiers. The curtain represented St. Michael the Archangel overcoming the first great rebel. The first great rebel, by some wonderful prolepsis, was clad in a red shirt, and wore the features of Garibaldi. No writers so well know as the Jesuits how to make fun of Garibaldi's bit of ritualism, with his red shirt and poncho. A German war-song of the middle ages, addressed to St. Michael, was sung with loud applause, and sung encore. Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg, the Archbishops of Salsburg and Cologne, the Bishop of Mainz, and the Prussian Military Bishop, with a retinue of counts and one prince, hallowed and graced the performance.[222]
In spite of these diversions, and the protests and assertions of perfect unanimity made by the clerical writers, the indications which had for some time been making themselves obscurely felt of a Court party and an Opposition party, had at last emerged into painful consciousness on both sides. The idea of a sovereign above any party was too lofty for the place. One party, as we have seen stated by Sambin, was Rome and her Pontiff, while the other was an opposition, not against the opinions of Infallibilists, or the plans of a Cabinet, but against the Sovereign. Both sides had been very reluctant to acknowledge the reality of such antagonism, even long after its existence began to be tolerably evident. The Curia had nursed the hope, as we shall see, of all but unanimous adhesion to its preconcerted plans. It reckoned on the ascendant of the Pope when in presence, on that of the Sacred College, on the sympathy of numbers, the witcheries of ceremony, the baits of promotion, and, if need should arise, on wholesome fear.
On the other hand, even the prelates who most feared what was about to be done, disliked the idea of being in opposition, not only to the Curia, but to the Pontiff, and that on a personal question. They flattered themselves, moreover, that the good feeling of the Pope would lead him to moderate his prompters, and would not allow him to expose bishops to difficulties with their flocks and their governments, which they clearly foresaw. The men hoped that the general would modify his plans, and would win the campaign by strategy, without forcing them against stone walls.
Even before the opening, a painful feeling, according to Friedrich, had seized upon some of the bishops, when studying the Rules of Procedure. Fessler, he states, had told Dinkel, of Augsburg, that some dogmatic Decrees would be forthcoming on the opening day. Yet not a hint had been given as to what these Decrees might be; and such secrecy on matters so solemn was taken ill.[223] So far as the Curia was preparing a counter revolution, it acted only like any other political body in keeping its plans hidden. But it was a different matter to make secret preparations for effecting changes in a creed that men had taught until they were grey-headed, and then to expect them to face the alternative of either accepting the change or ruining their official prospects.
Scarcely had the opening session passed, when an address was signed by fourteen French prelates and the powerful Croatian Bishop Strossmayer, representing to the Pope in humble yet clear terms the danger of any restraint on the liberty of the Council. They did not rise in their places and move that the Council itself should frame its Rules of Procedure; they did not even move to accept the Rules laid before it in the Bull Multiplices Inter, with certain specified amendments. Nothing short of this would have asserted the freedom of their Assembly. On the contrary, like all men trained under absolutism, they did not know how to maintain their inherited rights against encroachment and at the same time to abide loyal and true; but submitted, grumbling at their wrongs, and groping for some opening in the wall which shut them in. Had they attempted to bring forward such a motion as we have supposed, it would soon have been seen whether the assertions were or were not true which were made by English and American bishops about the Council being as free as the Senates of their own nations. Any one attempting to make such a proposal would have been informed that in the Pro-Synodal Congregation the Rules had been issued as a Papal Bull, and that in the first session the forms therein prescribed had been acted upon; so that those Rules, not being an act of the Council, but of the Pope, were not subject to revision by the Council; and, furthermore, that the Council had already practically adopted them. In fine, the prelates stood to some ideal Council in some such relation as we stand in to the Parliament; we cannot propose a motion, but we can send in a petition. Yet our petition would go to the House itself, not to the Cabinet. It would be named in the hearing of the House, and noted on its records. The petition of the poor bishops could not be presented in the Assembly, no trace of it is in the Acta; its only open way was to the steps of the throne. It was never answered, never mentioned in the official documents, and the faithful who sought information in the accredited organs that rang with charges of misrepresentation against worldly ones, never received a hint of any such transaction.
"Unless the thoroughness of examination and the perfect freedom of discussion are as clear as day," say the fifteen prelates, it is to be feared that the effect will be to lower religion in public esteem and to aggravate the troubles of the Church.[224] The first point on which the petitioners fastened was the right of proposition. Yet, simple as this right was, they had not the courage to claim it. Perhaps even they were deceived, as Quirinus and many other writers evidently were,[225] at the first glance, by the way in which the denial of that right was veiled over in the Rules of Procedure. The mode of putting it is one often employed in the documents of the Roman Court. When some serious restriction is to be announced, you may find at first a sentence or paragraph which conveys an impression of something different, perhaps opposite to what is to be the conclusion. Indeed, practised Liberal Catholics sometimes write as if with them it was a tacit canon of interpretation that when in Jesuit teaching you find a principle affirmed in the opening of a paragraph, that is the principle which is to be rendered nugatory by qualifications ere you reach the close; and when you find a principle disclaimed, that is the principle which, under veils and covers, is to be set up.
In the Rules of Procedure the section on proposals did not say that no Bishop should be permitted to propose anything in the Council, which was the thing meant. To plainly say what was meant, would be to copy the Tower of Babel, the wicked modern Parliament. The section said that though the right of bringing forward proposals belonged to the Pope alone, he wished the bishops freely to exercise it. This sufficed to set many writing good news home. They did not wait to weigh the following words. These showed that the right of proposition, handsomely announced to the Fathers of the Council, was just the right which everybody in the world possessed, that, namely, of forwarding a suggestion to the Pope. Curiously enough, even that common right was granted here only in a circuitous way, for the Pope himself named a Commission to receive propositions from the bishops, to consider them, and to report to him. If, after such report, he should wish any of them to come before the Council, he would send them forward. Most of the bishops, being unused to Parliamentary forms, began only by slow degrees to realize the fact that thus they had no right of proposition whatever. It was a good while before they became aware that they were simply in the position of private people. Anybody in Rome, or in Calcutta, could forward a suggestion to the Pope without going to a Royal Commission.
The address of the fifteen bishops requests that authors of proposals shall be admitted to a hearing before the Commission, and also that the latter shall be required to assign reasons when it reports against any proposal. But the bishops do not even ask leave to put their suggestions upon the books. That would, at least, have given members the right of letting their fellow members know what they wished to see done. The idea of entering a notice of motion would of course have been in that atmosphere not liberty but licence. They do, however, venture to suggest that some members of the Commission might be elected by the Council. They also point out that secrecy cannot be really maintained. The address, as we have said, was not even answered.
Hergenröther, the writer on whose authority Cardinal Manning requires us to rely, devotes some strength to this question. He begins by affirming that in Trent there was no fixed order. His proof for that assertion is that there is no written Code of Procedure, the record showing only the course actually followed from time to time. He also asserts that the bishops in the Vatican Council had perfect liberty of proposition. He moreover informs those who learn from such as he, that in all great assemblies the right of the President includes that of proposition, at least so far as to give him the decision, as to the order in which the proposals are taken.[226] Hergenröther, moreover, affirms that Friedrich wished to deny the right of proposition to the Pope--a blunder arising from not distinguishing between a right and an exclusive right. The Directing Congregation made a distinction as singular as was this failure to distinguish on the part of Hergenröther. It held that the Pope had the direct right of proposition, and the bishops the indirect right. But the fact was that they had no right of proposing to the Council whatever. They had no right beyond that of making a suggestion to the Pope, which, we repeat, anybody in the world could do; the only difference being that the one suggestion went before a Royal Commission, while the other did not.
The Directing Congregation had been first of all inclined to let the Fathers choose a committee of their own, but finally determined that the Pope himself should appoint a commission. This was an arrangement open to objections which even they did not wholly fail to see; but the Court historian finds a perfect answer by saying that if a good proposal should rest unheeded the author of it would have the satisfaction of having done his duty, and he must trust to divine Providence, which would never fail the Church.[227] Clouds of words were raised about this simple matter. The Catholics made solemn asseverations that the bishops had as perfect liberty of proposition as the members of any public body. The Liberal Catholics protested that they had not. They were cried down as slanderers.
Hefele, a learned German, gave confused and even contradictory advice as a consulter; first contending that the bishops should have a right of proposition, and then suggesting the very arrangements finally adopted. Sanguineti, a Roman consulter, plainly stated what was to be aimed at, namely, that the Pope alone should have the right of public proposition, leaving to the bishops what he calls the right of private proposition; as the directing Congregation calls it, of indirect proposition, or, as we call it, of suggestion.[228]
The result, then, was that the bishops could not bring in any substantive motion, could not move for a subject to be taken into consideration, could not put a notice of motion on the books, could not move an amendment on what the President proposed, could not move the previous question, could not move to decline taking the matter into consideration, could not move to postpone it. All that they could do was to speak to what the President proposed, to send suggested amendments before a committee, and finally to vote Yea or Nay upon the question, in the form into which that committee ultimately put it. No minutes of proceedings were printed, or even read day by day. No knowledge was allowed to speakers even of the reports taken of their own speeches; no sight of the reported speeches of others.
Notwithstanding all this, bishop after bishop returned from the Council to denounce in pastorals those who had said that they had not the liberty of proposition. Even our English tongue had to make itself the vehicle of such statements for two mighty nations. Bishop bore witness to bishop, and they were true and all men were liars. Archbishop Manning told how bishops "of the freest country in the world" had said truly, "The liberty of our Congress is not greater than the liberty of the Council."[229] We fear that American bishops might have quoted similar declarations from English ones. It is for members of Congress and of Parliament to judge.
La Liberté du Concile is a tract which, Friedrich says, if not written by Darboy, was inspired by him.[230] Only fifty copies were printed during the Council, for distribution exclusively among the Cardinals, and with the strictest injunctions of secrecy. The whole is given in the Documenta ad Illustrandum.[231] It is introduced by an article from the Moniteur of the 14th February, 1870. One of its earliest sentences compresses the secret history of Cecconi into a few words. "The first unhappy thought, and that from which the Council now suffers, was the wish, so to speak, to make the Council beforehand, and to make it without the bishops." It is right to mention that M. Veuillot says that this writer recounts ill, reasons worse, and draws inferences worst of all.[232]
For two years, complains this writer, the bishops had been refused any programme. They had not been afforded any possibility of studying questions about to be raised, or of preparing themselves to discuss them.[233] It would seem that the writer did not know that the preparations had extended over five years instead of two. He says that the Council had not made its Rules of Procedure; the Pope had imposed them. It had not chosen one of its officers, not even a scrutineer; the Pope had selected them all beforehand. The reason for the restraints imposed on the liberty of the bishops was stated by M. Veuillot as being to take away the liberty of evil, which the writer considers an insult to the bishops. We may remark that this is a principle which, had it been acted upon by the great government above us all, would have precluded every question as to the origin of evil. This tract affirms that the Commission for Proposals was composed exclusively of declared partisans of the Court. That statement is not quite accurate. Rauscher was a mighty instrument of the Curia in its ordinary aggressions on the civil power, but too sensible to approve of its present projects. Cardinal Corsi also, though at last he voted with the majority, was all along reputed as averse to the definition of infallibility. The next complaint is that the Committees for the important subjects of Dogma, Discipline, the Religious Orders, and Oriental affairs, are permanent, chosen once for all, and chosen by a strictly party vote, excluding every Fallibilist. Thus, is it urged, only ninety-six bishops out of nearly eight hundred would ever know anything of those real deliberations which principally determine the results of the Council. These Committees would have to decide upon all alterations to be made in Drafts of Decrees after the first Drafts had been discussed by the bishops generally. They would have the sole responsibility of bringing them forward in the definitive shape in which they must be voted upon, Yea or Nay. Thus, he repeats, seven hundred out of eight hundred are absolutely excluded from a share, at any time whatever, in the most important operations of the Council. The indignation of the author would not have been lessened had he known that this particular point had been carefully weighed by the Nine. They at first resolved to allow the Council to elect, as had been done at Trent, committees for each particular matter as it arose. It was, however, subsequently foreseen that this regulation might open the way to the election of men who were not safe. After a discussion, a man who had displayed ability in treating the matter in hand might be elected on the committee for that reason alone! If, on the other hand, committees were chosen once for all, it would be easy to secure the exclusion of wrong names in that one election, and no opportunity of changing them would ever arise.[234]
The writer of La Liberté du Concile proceeds to say that a number of bishops urgently requested the Pope, in order to ensure a wise selection of these all-controlling committees, to direct that the Fathers should be divided into groups, and should in these discuss pending questions separately, on the plan adopted in the Bureaux of the French and Italian Chambers. Thus the Fathers, who for the most part were perfect strangers to one another, would in a little time learn who were the capable men, and would be in a position to make a proper selection. This appeal, probably the one we have already mentioned, was not even answered.
The lords of wide dioceses, accustomed to rule their clergy with military authority and to face statesmen with considerable pretensions, were now reduced to struggle for very small liberties. They attempted to form themselves into groups, by nation or by language. So far as the French were concerned, this arrangement failed. Each of their two Cardinals, De Bonnechose and Matthieu, received a group in his own house. Cardinal De Bonnechose would not consent that all the French bishops should meet together. Even when they divided, he went for advice to Antonelli, who intimated that they ought not to meet in larger groups than fifteen or twenty. The effect of all this was, that when the time for making arrangements for the election of the committees came, they had no concert among themselves; and the writer states that after that election, the annoyances confronting Cardinal Matthieu were so great, that he felt obliged for a time to leave Rome. Hereupon the bishops who had previously met at his house resolved to go to that of Cardinal De Bonnechose, who had, for once, to receive them; but he again consulted Antonelli, and declared that this first general meeting should also be the last.
The bishops desired to select the best men of their own nation to be nominated as members of the permanent committees. The Curia, however, had provided for all that. The "ticket" of Cardinal De Angelis, as it would be called in America, was the counter move. The German and Hungarian bishops had shown more cohesion than the French. They met together, and made a selection of the principal men from their own number; but that resulted in nothing. The Curia had selected those whom it preferred, setting aside the men who stood high with their fellow-countrymen, and putting forward those who with them would have had no chance. An official list was prepared bearing the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Of course the bishops in partibus, the missionary bishops, and all the mere dependents of the Court, voted for the official list; and thus the whole of the four permanent committees were composed, as the secret preparatory commission had been, exclusively of the nominees of the Curia. The Jesuit Press gloried over this result. M. Veuillot said that the Committee on Faith was an echo of the great commission appointed by the Pope. Sambin recorded the triumph, with satisfaction, for permanent history. The result showed that the Court could count on about 550 votes.[235] De Angelis was appointed to the vacant post of Chief President, in room of Reisach. Cardinal Schwarzenberg was not on any committee, Hohenlohe was out of the question. Even the Archbishop of Cologne was only on a petty committee for granting leave of absence. But Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, the author of the throne-upsetting speech, was on the all-important committee for dogma.
This manoeuvre excited strong indignation amongst all shades of the marked men. They found themselves shut off from such a part in deliberations as would have been granted by any worldly cabinet to an honourable Opposition. Then, the mode of securing the result by the expedients of a political election caused bitter recollections of frequent admonitions, given both verbally and in the Press, not to reason about the Council as an ordinary human assembly, but to evince a worthy confidence in the all-guiding power of the Holy Ghost. The Rheinischer Merkur remarked that the Romans had a saying, that at the beginning of a conclave the devil reigns, then the world carries all before it, and only at the last does the Holy Ghost turn both out and regulate things according to His own will. This genuine specimen of Roman mockery is applied to the Council by the Merkur saying that as yet the third stage had certainly not set in.[236] The selection, said the Merkur, of committees was one-sided and narrow-minded. The Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Orleans saw themselves thrown aside, and nominal bishops put in the places they ought to have occupied. The German bishops, who had strongly confided in the moderation of the Curia, found that no amount of trimming would avail; nothing short of a sound profession on the question of infallibility. Vitelleschi says that the clearest, most sincere and disinterested opposition was that of the German bishops. They knew what they meant, and also knew that they expressed the collective sense of their people; besides, they always acted with moderation. He ascribes this moderation to two causes, namely, the fact that they consciously did express the views of their people, and that they were, more or less, influenced by Protestant modes of thinking. We confess that we see little proof that any German bishops but the Curialistic ones were clear. We should rather have said that they were at sea. As to the moderation, however, Vitelleschi adds that no such moderating influence of Protestant opinion appeared in the case of the English prelates. "Several bishops, with Manning at their head, more Catholic than the Pope, are noted for their Ultramontanism" (p. 45). He adds, that even the Irish bishops were less uniformly Infallibilists than the English. Of the Belgians, he says that some naturally took the more liberal direction. De Mérode, well known in Rome as a Court prelate, placeman, and speculator, like Dupanloup, had been a champion of the temporal power, but now proved to be an anti-infallibilist. Et tu, Brute, fili mi! exclaims the Roman. As to the Spaniards, Vitelleschi says that they had been trained in the school of Torquemada; and if they were content with being only Ultramontanes, that was something gained. These are the divines of whom Quirinus says that if ordered by the Pope to vote that there were four persons in the Trinity, they would do it. Vitelleschi remarks that the prelates of the United States were simpler than their brethren, and less practised in ecclesiastical politics. Their want of any political importance at home, he believes, had predisposed them to warmer sympathy with Curialistic views than might have been expected from them. Nevertheless, it proved in time that, under the forms of ecclesiastical discipline, the spirit of citizens of a free country did now and then make its appearance among them. Another of his remarks is, that, with the exception of Portugal, most of the bishops from small countries were in the interest of the Curia. Speaking of Mermillod, from Geneva, Quirinus says that he "rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma." Of course the Italian bishops, with very few exceptions, were Infallibilists, and those from South America were all upon the same side. The bulk of the Opposition bishops were German, Hungarian, and French, reinforced by some of the older ones from Ireland, a few of the English, a good many of the North American, and only about twenty of the entire body of the Italian.
The various groups had now everything to stimulate them to put their proposals into shape. Those of the Curia were in shape already. They naturally took the old direction of conforming the creed to innovations in practice. At Trent this was done with many innovations, which must either fall into discredit or be lifted above dispute. In this way was the demand for a reform of the Church to raise her to the level of the creed, met by a determination to bring down the creed to the level of the Church. The two movements were confronted. Reformation, on the one side, renovating the condition of the Church; and Conformity, on the other side, adulterating the creed. Both together resulted in the wide separation which has been witnessed ever since. The necessity now pressing sprang from different causes. No party had arisen to challenge the primacy of the Pope, even in the form of all but unlimited monarchy, into which, under cover of the gentle word "primacy," it had been monstrously developed. On the contrary, indeed, of late years the faithful had shown increasing submissiveness, proportioned to the dangers surrounding the Pope. But the Papacy itself was moving for constitutional powers which demanded a new dogmatic basis.
In comparison with the magnificence of the scheme of one fold and one shepherd, the notions of the German bishops, as disclosed by Friedrich, are an illustration of how administrators putter when immense issues press for solution. While the architects were designing a new coliseum, the joiners and stone-cutters were great upon cusps and corbels. In answer to the seventeen questions issued in Rome at the centenary of St. Peter, the German bishops had deliberated at Fulda for five days. Marriage, as a mine yielding richly to the local authorities in fees, and to the Curia in dispensation taxes, and also as a means of power over females, and over the education of children, was naturally one of the main points. Another point included the offences for which parish priests should be liable to deposition. On this the bishops advised the addition of two offences to the list--notorious fornication and open concubinage.
Hints were thrown out about abolishing all benefices, as they were said to be feudal. The clergy could not be fully mobilized but by the abolition of permanent appointments. The whole effect of the questions was to bring out the existence in Germany of too great toleration of intercourse with Protestants; intercourse to a degree not consistent with the militant footing on which things were to be put. This applied to christenings, weddings, burials, and other events of life, where the milk of human kindness sometimes will overflow, and men will forget that they belong to a society which scarcely regards those who are not of it as morally entitled to existence. The bishops naturally desired that the number of causae majores, or reserved cases, should be curtailed, as that would increase their own freedom and power. They also expressed a wish that censures should not be enforced against Catholic judges who found themselves obliged to pronounce sentences adverse to the canon law. This they advised in order to avoid the exclusion of Catholics from the judicial bench. They moreover suggested that unreasonably contracting debts and habitual drunkenness should be added to the list of causes warranting the removal of a priest. They did touch a few minute points of a properly religious kind, connected with the forgiveness of sins, ordination, and other questions.
Friedrich remarks that these ideas tended to the omnipotence of the bishops by sacrificing the parish priests. This object, however, was a natural complement of the sacrifice of the bishops to the Curia. If the bishop is himself an absolute dependent on the Court, all his subordinates must be left to his mercy. The Curia knew how to lure on the bishops to the forfeiting of their own franchises, by using their love of power against the franchises of the priests.
Friedrich gravely says that the movableness of the parish priests would not cure the moral evils complained of. It is not by outward correction that a man becomes morally better, but by the ennobling of the inner man, which, alas! is so little aimed at among the clergy. When a French bishop can say in the Senate, "My clergy are a regiment; they are bound to march, and they do march," he only shows how the Christian spirit has evaporated from among the hierarchy. A few weeks before Friedrich left home he had conversed with Döllinger upon the seventeen questions, and he says that they were the only points respecting the Council on which they did converse together. What the aged provost said, observes Friedrich, will always remain in my memory. "On one occasion, Windischmann remarked in my presence and that of others, 'If I was compelled to answer according to the contents of the ordinary's book, whether celibacy should be abolished or not, I should have to speak unconditionally for its abolition.'"
We have seen, in a previous chapter, that some of the lower clergy had indicated plans of considerable range, but they pointed in a direction in which Rome was incapable of going. Great attention was attracted by a project, appearing with the name of a learned layman in Switzerland, Dr. Segesser.[237] His charter had no less than twelve points, which are well worth a moment's notice.
1. He held that the Church, in having, for the first time in her history, declined to invite the co-operation of governments with the Council, must now declare for the separation of Church and State.
2. The Council must be a Reform Council in the fullest sense of the word.
3. It must certify the freedom of its members to the world.
4. It must be declared that all who believe in the redeeming work of Christ belong to the Christian communion.
5. No dogma must be added unless urgently called for, not only by theologians, but by the faithful.
6. The primacy being divine, but the Papacy being only a joint product of Roman jurisprudence and theology, the dogma of the pontifical infallibility of the Pope, which would lead back to theocratic ideas, would set the Church and State on a war of mutual annihilation. Therefore it is the absolute duty of the Church to declare herself completely released from the theocratic ideas of the great Popes of the middle ages.
7. The question of infallibility must not be passed over in silence, but must be solemnly declared to be in opposition to the right idea of the constitution of the Church.
8. In mixed questions, such as those of the Church and State, laymen should have some voice.
9. The temporal power must be treated as a local Roman institution, and not confounded with the affairs of the universal Church.
10. Freedom of teaching, of organization, and of worship, and equality with all other communions, must be proclaimed; and the Church would do well if she gave up all claim to the immunity of her property, and placed it entirely under the control of the common law.
11. The Index to be given up.
12. We give this in full: "The Christian State was a great ideal, but a yet greater is a State of Christians. To attain to the last the Church must not domineer, but must possess freedom, and give it."
The language of this Liberal Catholic, brought up among German Protestants on the one hand and Swiss ones on the other, would sound altogether alien to the ears of the Cardinals, and would only deepen their painful impression of the evil influences of Protestant teaching upon the children of the Church. Enough occurred at the Council to show that, even among the bishops, there were one or two who would have dared to propose some of the points in Dr. Segesser's scheme, had the members of the Council been permitted to make proposals.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 213: Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. v. p. 279.]
[Footnote 214: Ibid. p. 18.]
[Footnote 215: The popular explanation "hinge" is quite correct; the ancient hinge was a pivot inserted in a mortise, on which the door turned.]
[Footnote 216: Compare Quirinus, 86, and Tagebuch, 25.]
[Footnote 217: Stimmen, N.F., vi. p. 170.]
[Footnote 218: Id., p. 172.]
[Footnote 219: Sambin, p. 41.]
[Footnote 220: VII. ix. 6.]
[Footnote 221: Civiltá, VII. ix. 103.]
[Footnote 222: The first number of the Civiltá for 1876 (p. 104) contains an account of an audience in which the Pope made a speech to pilgrims from Brittany. Among other things, calling to mind how, on the day of Pentecost, the mockers said that the disciples were full of new wine, he went on to say that there were not wanting leaders of the revolution shameless enough to call by such names as a gang of topers the "respectable and truly Christian youths who, forsaking domestic comfort, came to expose themselves even to blood in defence of this holy see." Liverani, as Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, lamented his good opportunity, as living near barracks, of estimating the Christian virtues of the "OEcumenical Army." He says very hard things of them; and as to drunkenness makes no scruple of describing the Irish members of the force, in particular, as being not unmindful of home traditions that are no rule of faith, and a bad rule of practice.]
[Footnote 223: Tagebuch, pp. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 224: Documenta ad Ill., Ab. II, p. 380. The exact date is not given, but only as "before the 10th of December."]
[Footnote 225: See Quirinus, p. 62.]
[Footnote 226: The statement of this writer is no worse than that of many bishops made in pastorals. It is this: Den Bischöfen war vollständig ein Propositionsrecht zugestanden, welches nur der Controle der dafür be stimmten Deputation unterlag, ähnlich wie das auch zu Trient geschehen war.--Katholische Kirche und Christlicher Staat, p. 50.]
[Footnote 227: Cecconi, p. 162.]
[Footnote 228: Cecconi, p. 160. Hefele, when recommending that the bishops should have the right of proposition, quotes what occurred at the Council of Trent, when the Archbishop of Capaccio-Vallo, on May 10, 1546, repelled the claim of the Legate, Cardinal De Monte, to the exclusive right of proposition. The Archbishop cried, "What am I to do if anything occurs to me which ought to be proposed in this holy Council?" To this De Monte replied, that if either his Grace or any other prelate wished to propose anything, they must submit it to the Legates, who would bring it forward, if they thought well. But should the latter unjustly, or without cause, refuse to bring it forward, then the author, whoever he was, should himself do so. But Hefele does not point to the fact that De Monte made this concession only after being driven to it by force of opposition. Earlier in the very same day, he had asserted the exclusive right of the Legates to propose, and had been confronted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Trent with the plump declaration that he did not want to take the right of proposition from the Legates, but he thought he also might propose what seemed to him right. Then the Legate and the Cardinal, who had been for some time engaged in a passage of arms, apologised to one another. That, however, did not prevent De Monte from again attempting to establish the claim of the chair to the exclusive right of proposition, by once more asserting it. It was on this second attempt that the Archbishop of Capaccio-Vallo reclaimed, and then the Legate had, with ill grace, to give way. (See Acta Genuina, vol. i. pp. 100, 101.)]
[Footnote 229: Priv. Pet., Part III. p. 32.]
[Footnote 230: Doc. ad Ill. ii. p. vi.]
[Footnote 231: I. 129.]
[Footnote 232: I. p. 275.]
[Footnote 233: This complaint is ably put in the Rheinischer Merkur, first number.]
[Footnote 234: Cecconi, pp. 181, 182.]
[Footnote 235: Acton, 68.]
[Footnote 236: Vol. I. p. 2.]
[Footnote 237: Reviewed in the Literaturblatt, vol. v. p. 157.]
Chapter III
Further Party Manoeuvres--Election of Permanent Committees--Bull of Excommunications--Various Opinions of it--Position of Antonelli--No serious Discussion desired--Perplexities of the Bishops--Reisach's Code suppressed--It may reappear--Attitude of Governments.
Authors differ as to the actors in an incident which marked the second General Congregation, on December 14. Quirinus and Fromman say that Darboy and Strossmayer (Friedrich says that Dupanloup and Strossmayer) attempted to speak on the Rules of Procedure, but were stopped by Cardinal De Luca, on the ground that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. The official writers at the time said not a word of the incident, nor is it named in the Acta Sanctae Sedis, nor in Frond.
Thus the bishops had now ascertained their position, but too late. Quirinus naturally says that had the assembly been, in some measure, prepared for the Rules, there would have been opposition; but good care had been taken that the assembly should not be prepared, and should not have any chance of offering opposition. The first gleam of hope, adds this author, excited by the announcement that the bishops would be allowed to propose measures, had speedily vanished. Lord Acton says (p. 63): "The bishops felt themselves in an entangled position. Some began to speak of going home. Some complained that the Rules foreclosed questions involving divine rights, and said that they felt bound to put even the existence of the Council to stake."
The election of the Permanent Committee on Dogma was the great work of the day. Archbishop Kenrick's Latin note[238] states that lithographed lists were distributed some days before the election, with the inscription, To the honour of Mary, conceived Immaculate; and that these lists were recommended by the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Four hundred of the votes sent in gave the list entire. It was by these tactics that every Fallibilist, without exception, was excluded from the committees. But Canon Pelletier, who wrote what in Frond passes for the history of the Council and is a good history of the ceremonies and the dresses, declares that the election proved the perfect freedom of the Fathers, for though all the names on the official list were chosen, they were not brought in according to the order in which they stood on that list. The French prelates of the minority were especially incensed, both against their leaders and against those whose superior tactics had frustrated their unskilful attempts to unite. Every Frenchman felt that all who represented the traditions and the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church in France were now, in Rome, placed under a species of ostracism. The Fathers left this exciting sitting with another Bull in their hands. Again Letters Apostolic to the present! The Acta Sanctae Sedis affirm that the work of preparing this Bull could not be got through in time to send it to the Fathers before the Council. Its title was gentle. It was a Bull to Limit the Censures of the Church. Quirinus mentions a mission undertaken by Cardinal Pitra, a Frenchman, with the intention of bringing the prelates of his own country into accord with the Curia. This he followed up by a similar attempt with the German bishops. Pitra began by describing Dupanloup to the latter as "a mischievous teacher of error," but he was stopped, and told that the Germans agreed with Dupanloup.
A favourite topic of conversation now was the chance of disorganizing the Opposition. The first checks appeared to have had the effect of consolidating it, but the resources of the Court were generally assumed to be efficacious. Over and over again was it asserted that the hope of a robe of some distinguishing hue, or of a title on the list of domestic prelates of the Pope, would win over almost any bishop, an assertion which proved not to be correct.[239] Quirinus, in common with German writers generally, speaks of the honour of being on that list as one that ought to be coveted rather by menials than by dignitaries; and Italians may often be heard saying much the same thing. Again, faculties enabling a bishop to give absolution, or dispensations, in certain reserved cases, yield to him both power and fees. "Nine bishops out of ten want favours"--an assertion of Quirinus--seems bold, but it was written in Rome.
The Bull professing to limit the censures of the Church, was found to be another case of a winning title to a dreadful document. The censures with which it dealt were only a portion out of Rome's store, those, namely, under which one falls by the very act of committing the offence, without any need of trial or sentence. They are called offences Latae Sententiae, or judged already. He that confesses to one such act is, ipso facto, excommunicate, or, in the less heinous cases "suspended." The Bull, as we have said, professed to limit the number of these cases; many of which represent multitudes in all Roman Catholic countries, who must either shun the confessional, knowing that in that tribunal they are judged already, or must go to it to find themselves pronounced outside of the kingdom of grace, and incapable of restoration except by special powers granted from Rome, which always imply special fees.
It was freely said, This is a re-issue of the Bull In Coena Domini, the terrible syllabus of excommunications, at one time annually published; a custom which had ceased since the days of Clement XIV. This cessation was often cited as indicating greater mildness in the spirit of the Roman Court. In the new Bull Apostolicae Sedis these excommunications reappeared. They were under different heads. Three classes were reserved to bishops, so that no ordinary priest could release from them. Twenty-nine classes were reserved to the Pontiff, so that no bishop could release from them. Four classes were not reserved to any one.[240] Some bishops declared that they found excommunications here of which they had never been aware up to that moment. Vitelleschi said that if some found in old books were omitted, the Bull re-enacted all of the penal code of the Church that was in force. According as men looked at this document, from a fiscal, hierarchical, or monarchical point of view, their appreciation of it varied. Beyond excommunicating all heretics and heretical books, with the readers, abettors, and so forth, it dealt with few matters which any true theologian would not gladly banish from his bounds, as trespassers.
The hierarchical aspect of the Bull was striking. More than one of its sections pronounced excommunication upon the sin of appealing from any act of the Pope to a future General Council. This was the mortal blow to the doctrine that a Council could judge, and even depose, the Pope, as Councils had done. Being issued in the face of a General Council actually sitting, no alternative remained but that of conflict between the Council and the Pope, or else final abandonment of this once vigorous doctrine. The defiant crowings of the Gallican cock were for ever hushed by this one grip in the claws of the Vatican eagle. This Bull, as compared with the action of the Council of Constance, which deposed two Popes and itself elected one, served to measure the decline of the episcopal and the growth of the pontifical power in the Church. Many of the bishops were old enough to have maintained the doctrine that the Council was above the Pope, against Protestants, who innocently accused all Roman Catholics of being Papists. If any one of them thought of standing by the old flag, what was he to do? To put a notice of motion on the books? That was not permitted. To send a suggestion to the Twenty-six? It might as well go into his own wastepaper basket as into theirs. To speak upon the point? That would be out of order, for bishops were to speak only on matters proposed, and nothing was to be proposed but what the Pope proposed. Moreover, even if in speeches irrelevant matter should be allowed, such matter as that now contemplated would be at once pronounced rebellion. It would be an attempt to discuss what the Holy Father had already decreed. Thus the question of the relative judicial powers of the single Bishop of Rome, and of all the other bishops of the world collectively, was settled by an arbitrary sentence, uttered in the face of all the bishops assembled in conclave; and their assembly, though called a General Council, had no liberty to canvass the decision!
It was a hard dilemma for a man to be placed in who had a sense either of human rights or of a divine office to defend. But the hand of power was over the bishops. No man who opposed even embryo Decrees could ever reasonably hope for a hat; and he who should venture to attack a Bull actually issued must expect to see his mitre reduced to an empty dignity by the withdrawal of his faculties. So the bishops saw a Bull which "thrust the souls entrusted to them by thousands out of the Church"; and what could they do? "The more excommunications, the more perplexed and tormented consciences," cries Quirinus--reminding us of what might often be heard in the old times from thoughtful men in Rome. The whole effort of the priests, they would say, is to keep the conscience in agony, or at least in unrest; for this drives people to the confessor, and hence no end of gains.
A diplomatist regarded the political aspects of the Bull as serious.[241] Excommunicating men for an appeal to a General Council was, as he took it, both the forerunner and the application of the dogma of infallibility. Excommunicating all who should punish bishops, or higher officers of the Church, without making an exception for any breach whatever of law, and, moreover, excommunicating any who, directly or indirectly, should obstruct the execution of Papal mandates, were not only blows but stabs at all civil authority. The diplomatist argued that the way in which the Pope abolished privileges granted by his predecessors was a poor pledge of the value of any engagements into which the Papacy might enter. The diplomatist ought to have known that the immunity of the clergy from lay jurisdiction was an essential part of the restoration to be accomplished. He ought also to have known that "the free communication" of the Pope with the faithful, or his right to promulge in all countries his decrees as their highest law, was equally essential. The excommunication, not only of heretics, but of all who should harbour or defend them, ay, or should even read their books, led Vitelleschi to raise a question for young theologians, whether the Pope has not excommunicated himself and his own government, seeing he had done more than harbour heretics in an inn, by allowing them a church outside the Porta del Popolo.
The Bull, said some, is only one of a series of measures to be framed, assuming the infallibility of preceding Popes. The dispute as to Bulls which taught any dogma in theology or morals must for ever end. The very points which Liberal Catholics had alleged to be without binding force must be beyond appeal bound on earth, and of course ratified in heaven. A little circumstance not without significance was the fact that, in publishing this document, the Civiltá did not, as it usually does with official documents, furnish a translation of the Latin; and the Stimmen, for Germany, followed the example.
In Germany or other Protestant countries an unfavourable impression might be taken of the means to be resorted to for restoring Papal ascendancy when, in the terrible category of offences judged already, without power to remit the sentence being reserved to any one, even to the Vicar of God, were found the following deeds, which many Christians would do with as cool a sense of duty as that with which under slavelaws they would have befriended a fugitive slave: "Injuring or intimidating Inquisitors, informers, witnesses, or other ministers of the Holy Office; tearing up or burning the papers of its sacred tribunal; or giving to any of the aforesaid aid, counsel, or favour." If the day ever comes for attempting to put this law in force on the now happy soil of England, blessed among her sons or daughters will that one be who first has grace to endure the torments of the Holy Office rather than not break the wicked law!
The fiscal bearing of the Bull would be the one first to strike and most to occupy the Romans. Among men of the different orders, it would occasion many a chat over questions of sin, sacraments, crime, communion, dispensation, remission, and redemption from purgatory, and of the fees flowing from each respectively. Quirinus represents the Jesuits as beholding both the present and the future in rosy hues. The bishops would not be able to give absolution in the reserved cases, but the Jesuits, in very many of them, would have plenary power. Hence the bishops and the parochial clergy would suffer both in fees and influence, while the confessionals of their powerful rivals would be thronged. "So, each of those multiplied excommunications is worth its weight in gold to the Order, and helps to build colleges and professed houses."[242] Against the complaints which greeted the Bull, the Civiltá alleged that it contained nothing new, and above all that it had been posted up in the customary places in Rome, and was therefore already the law of the Church universal. It was, on the other hand, boldly alleged that there were many new cases of suspension, interdict, or excommunication. Cardinal Antonelli, however, said that there were three hundred excommunications which were not included in the Bull. Lord Acton (p. 70) quotes a passage from the organ of the Archbishop of Cologne, which shows that a good many more will have to be added before all actions are placed under perfect control. The Bull, it is said, does not prohibit "the works of Jews, since Jews are not heretics; nor does it prohibit heretical pamphlets and journals, for these are not books; nor is the hearing of heretical books when read aloud forbidden, since hearing is not reading."
Some doubt hangs round the feeling of Cardinal Antonelli as to the Council. It was often asserted that he had been opposed to it from the first, and was still decidedly so. This seems very probable. A worldly-wise man, capable of amassing a colossal fortune amid the ruins of a petty State, was hardly likely to believe that the à priori fabric of Tarquini and the other Jesuits, and the hot-headed schemes of the Pope, were solid enough to bear what was to be built upon them, or would lead to anything but defeat of the Papacy, and misery to the nations. But in contradiction to this view, Quirinus says that Antonelli was too good a statesman and financier not to see the gain that would flow from the new dogma in power and revenue. The new dogma would doubtless enormously increase the power of the Curia within the Church and over all her organizations. It would thus increase the facility of bringing pressure to bear on a government by threats of disaffection and agitation; but it would at the same time arouse all statesmen, and eventually all intelligent men, except real disciples, against this sacerdotal empire. The most likely explanation of any zeal Antonelli may have shown for the new order of things would perhaps be that while retaining his own view of the risks about to be run, he knew that what was to be was to be, and determined to make the best of it.
Papers immediately preceding the Bull in the pages of the Civiltá[243] seemed to indicate steadiness in the purpose either to bend the States or to break them. One article rang the changes on the old theme of the royal placet or exequatur, "the crime whereby ecclesiastical judgments are submitted to lay examination." "The Church," it adds, "is not a foreign power, and hence concludes that the State has no right of precaution jus cavendi, in respect of her." The internal power on which the Curia counts, in any country, being that of threatening political agitation, the denial to the State of all right of precaution is essential to the full application of the principle of the Pope's "free communication" with all his subjects. A physical impediment to the promulging of a Bull was, in old times, not more a precaution than is, in our day, the principle that the law of the land is supreme. Just as the physical impediment was unlawful, so is the legislative one; both stay the free course of "the divine word." The old dukes, kings, and emperors, knowing that in the popular conscience the law of the Pope ranked above all civil law, put a check upon the promulgation of his Bulls. We say, Promulge what you please, but the law of the land is the only law in the land. "Here is the ground on which the future battle is to be fought out."
Just between this article and the catalogue of excommunications came a discussion on unfulfilled prophecy. The Jesuit Father, Soprano, had, by comments on the prophecies of Balaam, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, clearly proved (according to his reviewer) that the city of Rome was destined of God to be in perpetuity the centre of the Catholic Church. The war against the kingdom of Christ was to fail, because "she" could not lose her empire. But certain points as to the issue of the war now raging between the innovators and the kingdom of Christ, were open to inquiry--"What dynasties will survive, what forms of government will prevail, what end will such and such kingdoms come to? Finally, we may ask whether the Holy City, the mount of God, the capital of the Catholic world, Rome, may for a time fall under the power of sinners and parricides, to be outraged by fire and sword, and defaced with crimes." But, on the other hand, as to Rome being the stable domicile of catholicity, we might doubt of that only if the mount which cannot be moved could be levelled with the ground.
This expositor is true to the old interpretation that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is Rome, but that was the Pagan Rome, which "fell with the victory of Constantine." It will be observed that he takes the possibility of a temporary fall of the sacred Rome into the hand of the enemy as but an episode in a war that is to continue through a long series of years.
Since 1870, such forecasts as the above, when uttered, have not the same triumphant tone. Nevertheless, they are now as clearly expressed as ever. But at the time of which we speak, if the bishops only read what was written for their learning they could not doubt as to the kind of service which was expected of them in the future. Friedrich intimates that they did not read it, when he relates that, in trying to enlighten one of them, he told him that the only way to understand the Council was to study it with the Civiltá Cattolica in one's hand. But some of them showed a solicitude that could not be explained on any ground short of a perception of the dangers on which the Pope was running the hierarchy. They evidently did not take the view either of those who thought that the Pope, erected into a vice-God, was about to become the real as well as the titular governor of the world, or the view of those who looked on such dreams as matter to laugh at. The calculations which produced the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War, were dreams; but could the Church afford the indemnity which mankind would exact for the miseries of such another struggle?
December 16 marked the second failure in the organization of the Council. The first was the irremediable one of the absence of Cardinal Reisach, and now, before serious discussion had begun, the third General Congregation had to be postponed from the 16th to the 20th,[244] because nobody could be heard in the hall. So six days passed without a sitting. Debates were actually to take place--a thing which had neither been desired nor expected. The hall was a good place for spectacle, but a bad place for a parliament. In vain do bishops frown and editors sneer at the writers who said that the Curia had not expected much discussion. Cecconi comes to the support of the "liars," as in official indignation they were called who told just what there was to tell (p. 180)--
It was a deeply-rooted belief of the Directing Congregation that but rarely would anything have to be referred to the committees of the Council, because the Directing Congregation so well knew how profound had been the attention given by the Preparatory Commissions, that it seemed extremely difficult to believe that the Drafts so prepared should not be received with general favour by the Fathers.
This, in fact, is the excuse put forward by the Nine for not having given the bishops a word to say to the Drafts of Decrees before they were confronted with them, as being already in a form to be voted upon. The practice at Trent had been to state the question as a question. Then it was first discussed by the doctors in the presence of the bishops, who after that appointed a small committee of their own number to put resolutions into shape. The Council proceeded to discuss the Drafts so prepared, amending and again amending them, until they were in a form on which (if the subject was doctrine) almost every one could agree.
It was now, however, coolly assumed that so complete had been the work of the secret commissions that the bishops would not raise any difficulties.
Great variety of opinion, say the Nine, would probably be rare, seeing that the matters to be treated would be already prepared, with great accuracy, by the special Commission, formed by his Holiness, in conjunction with the Directing Congregation (Cecconi, p. 180).
Cecconi repeats that the great confidence felt in the excellence of the work of the theologians had generated in the majority of the members of the Directing Congregation this conviction. He is candid enough to give the reason for bringing the Drafts ready made into full assembly, which was to prevent them from being exposed to the influences which a restricted number of prelates might exert. That amounts to saying that the able men whom a free assembly would have chosen to consider and digest its forms of resolution, were not to be allowed any chance of unitedly studying the forms prepared in secret for them. The Court would bring its own plans, with all their details and complex notes, before the full assembly, which could never thoroughly sift them, and in which the majority was assured.
While in almost everything else the rejection of parliamentary forms was commended, as becoming an assembly which had to contend against both the principles and results of parliamentary government, the practice of our own Houses in bringing in Bills ready drawn was pleaded in favour of the course taken in preparing extended drafts of dogmatic decrees. But our Parliament has never yet been called together to vote that laws are as good if issued by the Crown, without the advice of Lords and Commons, as with it. Nor has it ever been asked to pass a measure which neither it nor any succeeding Parliament could recall. Our Parliament is never asked to discuss a Bill without first having the right to say whether it shall or shall not be brought in. It never finds a Bill before it which, if it pleases, it may not refer to a special committee. Any member can move the rejection or the postponement of the whole, can move the omission or amendment of any part, and can take the sense of the House. None of these things could be done at the Vatican Council. The bishops could make Latin speeches in a row, first on the Draft as a whole, and then, in a second row, on the parts. But only twenty-four of their number could ever put a hand to the amending of the proposed statute. With those twenty-four were associated irresponsible persons, non-members. As that mixed body finally shaped the propositions, must the Fathers vote upon them, with a Yea or Nay that sealed the creed of their churches for ever.
It was not wonderful that the Curia should believe in the perfection of the Roman theology, since they took their own government for perfect, and the capital for a model city of the saints. The German estimate of the Court theology is indicated by Quirinus when he says that "though the Pope had four hundred theologians, theology is now rare, very rare, in Rome." He goes on to assert that if one should say that ability to read the Greek Testament and the Greek Fathers in the original was a necessary qualification of a theologian, "he would be ridiculed." As to the divinity even of the bishops, the evidence of Quirinus is little more flattering than that of Friedrich; but the discussions yet to come will show that men of real power were not wanting.
The first Scheme or Draft of Decrees on dogma now appeared. It was nothing less than a book of one hundred and forty quarto pages, containing eighteen chapters and fifty-four paragraphs. Frond makes it folio and of 131 pages.
The Rheinischer Merkur quotes a Catholic journal which in admiration of this masterpiece says that when adopted by the Council it would form a text-book. Yet this mass of divinity, any phrase, almost any word of which might affect the vital truths of religion, was put before the bishops with only a few days to study it, and they were expected to vote it as an irreformable creed, to be ready for promulgation, as bound on earth and bound in heaven, on January 6, the day decreed in the first session! Friedrich, looking at this bulky pamphlet, cries, All through we have the language of the schools; any one familiar with the Jesuit writings sees at once by whom it has been prepared.
Graf W., a Roman prelate, paid Friedrich a visit arrayed in all his vestments and decorations. Surprised at such a display by a stranger, Friedrich asked himself, Does he want to make an impression upon me, or to excite a longing for similar clothes? The conversation turned upon infallibility, and the Count Monsignore said that it would be carried through; for when the Curia had committed itself to anything, it was not to be balked. Friedrich, saying that for his part he had nothing to do but to speak according to his conscience, and that as a priest he knew well what must be his course when once the point was decided, went on to state that, not having his eye on a canonry or a bishopric, and being happy in his independent position as a professor in the university, he felt free. This surprised the Curialist, but Friedrich in turn was still more surprised when the man in soft raiment and living in kings' houses said that it was otherwise with him. He belonged to the Roman prelacy, and if he meant to continue in it, he must do what he was bid.
The German doctor was struck by hearing people assure him that life was tolerably safe in Rome if you were sure of your cook, your doctor, and your chemist (p. 30).
The German bishops had not, like the French, asked permission to meet among themselves, but their place of meeting had been cared for. Monsignor Nardi, a slashing writer, and a conspicuous member of the Curia, spared no pains to secure them for his own house. Cardinal Hohenlohe offered his for the purpose, but he scarcely received a civil answer. Even German bishops said as much as that they should compromise themselves by being identified with him. They began to feel their position very delicate. As they were assembled on December 22, with Cardinal Schwarzenberg in the chair, they were joined for the first time by three favourites of the Curia--Senestrey, Martin, and Leonrod. But when Senestrey found that they were discussing the propriety of petitioning the Pope for a relaxation of the Rules, he remembered that business required his presence elsewhere. We may be ready to smile at men, holding professedly the position of members of a Council, who durst not rise in their places and insist on having liberty to propose what their consciences dictated; and who, when refused that liberty, instead of declining to take part in the mock Council, went into a caucus, and drew up a petition to the autocrat who had snatched away their rights.
But their position was very difficult. If they attempted in their places to speak on the matter, the fatal sentence fell upon them that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. What then could they do but decline to take part in the Council? This would be coming into direct collision with the Pope. The moral education of their lives had aimed at fixing in their own minds, and they, in their action upon others, had aimed at fixing in their minds, one conviction--that the crime exceeding and comprehending all others was to break with the Pope. They were so placed as to have no alternative but either "disobedience" or the surrender of their individual and collective rights. They seem, indeed, to have thought that it was rather a spirited proceeding to send in a petition.
Archbishop Haynald of Hungary proposed that they should request the Pope to divide the Fathers into eight national groups. This was suggested with some idea of counter-balancing the fictitious majority made up by titular bishops and vicars apostolic. Had one nation been allowed to balance another, the effect no doubt would have been considerable; but how these venerable men could imagine that this scheme had any chance with the Pope, we cannot tell. The bishops in partibus, and the missionary bishops, being mostly Italians, would have been well nigh lost in such an arrangement. The Curia well knew that it had been tried at Constance, and was not to be caught.
What Friedrich heard of the opinions of the prelates as to the Draft Decrees, was unfavourable. Cardinal Rauscher was reported to have said that he would allow the paper to be read in his seminaries as the work of a student, but that to propose it to a German Council was too bad (p. 35). Many of the bishops said that its condemnations were untimely, and that it was unworthy of the dignity of a General Council. It was said to be the work of the Jesuit Fathers Schrader and Franzelin; but instead of the latter, Kleutgen was often named. The Dominicans spoke slightingly of it. The Bishop of Ascoli, a Carmelite, said he had only patience to get through half of it, and then he threw it away. Strossmayer said to Friedrich, Why must the Council at this time of day pronounce condemnations as to squabbles heard of only in the schools, and worn out even there? (p. 37). Kagerer told Friedrich that the bishops had agreed not to tell their theologians what passed at their private meetings; on which Friedrich remarks that the bishops were right, for the chaplains and secretaries by whom they were served could not be properly described as theologians. He then gave a sigh for Hefele. Meanwhile, he said, it was hard to listen to the talk of men, like Kagerer, who had come up without preparation, who were not furnished with books, and who drove a trade in theology by guesswork.
Monsignor Nardi's hospitality to the German bishops had not a smooth course. After having met at his house for the greater part of December, when they alighted one night in the Piazza Campitelli, they found the servant of Cardinal Schwarzenberg posted there to send them back again. The Cardinal had received from Nardi a request to be relieved of their further presence, giving so short notice that there was no means of meeting the case but that of setting the servant to turn the bishops away from the door. Thenceforth they found a German host, Cardinal Rauscher.[245]
The General Congregation of December 20, after learning the names chosen for the Permanent Committee on Faith, had been occupied with the election of the Permanent Committee on Discipline; but as the Acta contain no records of any transactions of the Congregations, beyond the bare lists of the committees elected by them, the strictly official means of ascertaining what passed are all but nil. The Acta Sanctae Sedis may be fairly considered as official in a looser sense; and it is strange how the brief but clear occasional notes of particulars which they contain, almost invariably confirm the profane writers in statements denied, or apparently denied, at the time by faithful ones. Deputations, including among others Strossmayer, went hither and thither in search of a hall to meet in. Quirinus thought that the one in the Vatican by the Sistine Chapel would not be of good omen, on account of the picture of St. Bartholomew's massacre. Had any real wish existed to find a place in which seven hundred gentlemen might sit and speak, it could easily have been done; but the wholesome exhalations from the tomb of St. Peter would not have been so potent anywhere else, even in Rome, as in the Vatican. One-third of the space in the hall was now curtained off. The debates were to open on December 28, that is, after twenty days had been lost.
News of the death of Cardinal Reisach destroyed the hope that his influence might prevent the Germans from standing with the Opposition. The preparations for a code regulating civil and ecclesiastical relations, on which he had spent years, were not to see the light. It had already been resolved not to present to the Council the Drafts prepared by his Commission on Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs. Cecconi (p. 266) thinks that probably the absence of the Cardinal "contributed to the shipwreck" of his proposals. The subject was "thorny"; and again, it was not decorous to make inoperative laws, or expedient to make combative ones. It would seem that the supreme cause of the shipwreck was the practical consideration that nowadays civil governments, "which form an essential element in such matters," oppose ecclesiastical laws, instead of taking charge of their execution. The official historian, however, is of opinion that the failure of this first attempt to indite a code of ecclesiastico-political law is not final. A time, he thinks, may come when it can be renewed, with hope of success--a declaration full of instruction as to the future. The time for renewing the attempt to prepare such a code will, according to the Archbishop of Florence,
arrive when this rapid and ceaseless movement, political and social, going on under our eyes, and making us daily spectators of great and often of unlooked-for events, shall have reached its ultimate period, to which will certainly succeed (unless the last days succeed) an entirely new era in the history of the human species. When that day comes, I know not what portion of the old institutions will remain standing; but sure I am that one of them will have survived, though peradventure externally bruised and lacerated. She alone will be mistress of the field that day, and the princes (if indeed the sound of that name will still be heard), but certainly the nations, having then, after long and cruel experience, made up their minds that out of her there is no well-being, either in this life or beyond the tomb, will demand from her the laws of tranquil repose, together with the earnest of eternal happiness (p. 301).
This language is the more significant as having been written since the war in 1870, and even since the outbreak in Germany of imperial resistance to the movement for priestly domination. With regard to princes, it seems to breathe the threat which was screeched out by the Jesuit organs in 1869 and 1870, that if they were not to sink in the coming struggle, they must make peace with the Church.
As to the nations and the laws of the Church, it adroitly represents the nations, not as submitting to receive the law at her dictation, but as demanding from her the laws which give repose. The ever-recurring alternative of submission or disturbance, if not destruction, is smoothly but gravely put. Still, the historian seems as if he wrote thus rather by official duty than by personal impulse. But, like all the "inspired" writers, he takes it for granted that the Church holds the "repose" of nations in her power. Cardinals count on the effect of thorns planted in the pillows of statesmen. They know how to teach principles that form a people within the nation ready to obey a foreign word of command, and they know how and when to give the word. They always--so say men in Italy--know how to find an Ahithophel, and how a Delilah!
Fears were often expressed lest an attempt should be made on December 28 to carry Papal infallibility by acclamation. The bishops, however, seem to have had backbone enough to determine upon a formal protest should this occur. Friedrich tells how those dignitaries who make little of denouncing the laws of their respective countries were very anxious in Rome to find some mode of giving expression to their complaints and desires without printing, which in the Model State they durst not do.
He also states that on the day before the opening of the discussion the Pope was greatly depressed. It may have been a diplomatic depression. What bishop could be so heartless as to make speeches that would weigh on the spirit of the Holy Father, and in fact to call in question Draft Decrees prepared by his authority and proposed in his name? What bishop, by obstructing their adoption, could occasion a risk that the day fixed by Decree for the second session should arrive without any Decree being ready? One of Friedrich's statements, which, before Cecconi published, seemed the most improbable of all, was that Cardinal Bilio, the President of the Preparatory Commission on Dogma, had reckoned on the Draft being carried with scarcely any discussion. Much as we knew of the displacement of the idea of conviction by that of submission, this statement seemed too monstrous. But the Archbishop of Florence appears unconscious of anything strange in the case. If Italian novelists and journalists, with whom the indifference of the national mind to religion is a favourite idea, had combined to give an illustration of that indifference, they could hardly have invented anything so expressive. A Cardinal taking it for granted that seven hundred bishops could hastily adopt for ever as doctrine binding upon themselves, their successors, and their Churches, a considerable work, every single phrase of which any serious man would weigh before he accepted it for his own creed, but would weigh ten times more carefully before he imposed it upon others--before he took it upon his soul to curse all who did not accept it, and to declare them cut off from the kingdom of God! Yet it is plain that not only Bilio, but the Curia generally, expected the passing of the Draft as almost a matter of course. In their minds the idea of submission to the Papal authority had first displaced, and then completely replaced, the idea of religious conviction.
The first Vatican Decree passed after the Council had been declared open, fixed the feast of Epiphany (January 6) as the day of the second session, in the expectation that this Draft, or a portion of it, would by that time have been adopted. But, like the first Vatican appointment, the first Vatican Decree had been not ratified in heaven. The Civiltá said (VII. ix. 227), "As the discussion on the Draft proposed is not terminated, no Decrees will be published in the second session." The Acta Sanctae Sedis curtly wrote, "No Decree was published because none was ready."[246]
Meantime the relative attitudes of the Council and of the Catholic governments had become more clearly defined. Following France, and rejecting the view of Bavaria and Portugal, the governments had determined not to interfere. Portugal had sent to her minister his credentials as ambassador to the Council, but finding that he should be alone, Count Lavradio did not present them. France, which for the last ten years had been abused by the Papal organs, was now loudly praised. Even M. Veuillot said that she was more liberal and more Christian than the other nations, for her bayonets were at Civitá Vecchia to restrain the violence of the Italians, and God would not forget it to her. True, French statesmen every now and then did show some apprehension as to what might come to pass if every child in France should learn in his catechism that the Pope was infallible, and if most of them should grow up under teachers who would gently show how the Modern State rebelled against the divine constitution of the world as implied in that fundamental truth, for the government of the nations. It was even said that Darboy plainly declared that should infallibility be proclaimed, the French troops would no longer remain in the Papal States. However that might have been, all that fell from the inspired pens was pervaded with quiet reliance on France. It seemed as if the writers believed that, just then, events depended more on one Spanish lady, in the Tuileries, than on all the Frenchmen in Paris and the departments.
It cannot be said that the compliance with the wishes of the Curia shown by politicians, was repaid by a milder attitude. The new Bull, technically called Apostolicae Sedis, popularly called the new In Coena Domini, was menacing. The grave Civiltá (VII. ix. 134) said--
Whom would the people obey? God and the Church, or the State?... As it is evident that the Church assembled in Council can only repeat, and that more strongly than ever, that as between God and men, as between the Church and the State, obedience is to be rendered to God and the Church instead of to man and the State, and as it is evident that in Catholic and civilized countries, in spite of all the efforts of sects, respect for the Church endures, and increases, while all respect for States and governments diminishes, it is clear that the Liberals, who are dominant almost everywhere, tremble at the Council, which is bound to proclaim more loudly than ever, We must obey God rather than men.
Even the little review at the Villa Borghese set M. Veuillot reflecting on the restoration of that "Christian order" which consists in the due submission of the natural to the supernatural order--
If we only think that the Council has to re-establish the Christian order without restoring the ancient aristocracy, irremediably fallen, and has to replace the social laws in a position where property and liberty shall be freed from the grasp of democracy, which is no more than an administrative aristocracy, we shall conclude that the task is not a trifle, and that the seed to be sown is not of a kind to ripen in a day.
In most Papal countries, indeed, the ancient aristocracy has fallen, and, much as priests like titles and stars in their train, they like broad acres still better, and legislative power even better still. Even when barons held lands in fief under prince-bishops and abbots, they were frequently tempted to insubordination. And in the Model State, the career open to a lord was as nearly as possible that which in our chaotic state is open to a lady. So, the aristocracy were not to be restored. But in the new Christian order both freedom and property were to be taken out of the hands of the democracy. This had been well done in the states of the Church, and partly done elsewhere, in the middle ages. In the formula, "The Pope and the People," people does not, we repeat, mean democracy, but subject populace, with a ruling priesthood and nobody to come between priest and mob. Matters would be greatly simplified if both an aristocracy and an administrative democracy were removed out of the way. But, true to the far-aiming plans of the school, M. Veuillot was thinking of the seed-time, knowing that the harvest was as yet far off. When the prize is no less than the supremacy of the world, a year may well be counted for a day.
M. Veuillot, alluding to those profane creatures the correspondents of worldly newspapers, said he had had to do with government spies, but Press spies made him respect the former. The Press spies detested respectable men, seeming to think that they spoiled the profession, and prevented it from enjoying all the hatred and contempt it merited (i. 33). M. Veuillot could afford to assume this attitude. The Univers was sanctified by the Pope's blessing, and certified by his brief. This high-caste scribe had not, however, said a word about the device by which the election of committees had been carried, though he gloried in the choice of men. He had not mentioned the electoral tickets, nor alluded to the prohibition of collective meetings of the French bishops, nor to the petition sent in by some of their number for a few morsels of liberty. He had, however, told the faithful that none of the bishops had any desire to be put on the committees, and that a prelate from South America, on finding himself elected, wept and said, "What do you mean? I am not fit. I know nothing." Writing on January 20, after the division of parties had become clearly defined, M. Veuillot said that should an Opposition group be formed, as some feared would be the case, it would only be small, and would be rather outside of the Council than in it. "Outside," said a bishop to me yesterday, "there is some room for the spirit of man; inside there will be no room for anything but the Spirit of God; and though unanimity is by no means necessary, it will nevertheless seldom fail." It was, at this time, still hoped that the "pontifical secret" would leave no chink by which the tenor of the debates could leak out. "How," exclaims M. Veuillot, "will this assembly be able to distribute its incalculable labours, and carry them to an end? Immense questions arise on all sides. It is the human species that has to be set in march. Nature feels its infirmity." Still, it will prove, he asserts, that the Council can more easily make decrees for centuries, than modern governments can make constitutions to last a few months.
An address to the Holy Father, from the Society of Catholic Italian youth having its headquarters in Bologna, declared that in answer to the infernal fury of the enemies of the sacred Council, they protested their resolution to obey its Decrees as the holy gospel, as the decrees of God Himself, and to defend its disciplinary acts as the acts of God Himself. In conclusion, they call the Pope, among other titles, the living Peter, the infallible mouth of the Church and of Christ Himself, the Vicar of God, "whose word for us and the Catholic universe is the truth of God which endureth for ever."[247] A strong force of equally well-trained youths in every country would do something to give substance to the dream of universal empire, by a Crusade of St. Peter.
To say that the Civiltá and the Unitá Cattolica contradicted nearly all the facts reported by the journals of Europe, would be a tame statement of the case. They not only gave the lie, but did so with all sorts of aggravating epithets. The Italian papers were most belied, because they, feeling no respect for the men of the Curia, did not care to put on any, but tore off false covers relentlessly, and even with mockery. According to an ordinary Italian saying, respect for the Curia begins outside the walls of Rome, and increases in proportion to distance. Still, the French, German, and English papers, though more respectful--the last, in comparison, deferential--were denounced as lying and lying again. This went smoothly till the lie-givers descended to particulars. Even then it answered, to some extent, till time brought facts to the test. Now, it is sad to look at these contradictions, and compare them with documents registered in the same pages, or with facts which even there are no longer disputed. Any one who wants a lesson in the art of giving the lie may go to an article in the Civiltá (VII. ix. p. 327), and succeeding ones. After studying them an Englishman would be more charitable to Romans when they say that if the Jesuits contradict a thing well, they begin to think it must be true. But he would discover that, under an apparent contradiction, there is often preserved a possibility of saying that there was no real one. A statement has been made containing one main fact, which was perfectly true, but with two or three accidental appendages, some one of which was not true, and the whole is treated as false. For instance, the whole tale of Nardi dismissing the German prelates is to appearance ridiculed, because one journal says that Nardi had made a secret door, at which he played the eavesdropper. Of course it was an Italian journal--La Nazione--which thought that a probable action for a monsignore of the Curia.
The Nuova Antologia, a review of high standing in Italy, published articles on the Council, which formed the basis of Vitelleschi's book. The Civiltá assigned them to Salvatore de Renzi, spoke of them as being not more inaccurate than others, and after general charges came to particulars. The author's "want of reflection" appeared in his supposing that though abbots and generals of orders both had seats, only the former had votes. Moreover, he had said that in the sessions the Fathers always wore the read pluvial and mitre; whereas in the first two sessions they had worn the white ones, and the statement as to the mitre was falsissimo, as false as could be, for in Rome, and in the presence of the Pope, they always wore one of white silk or cloth. When all Catholics were in serious excitement, when they knew that hands were laid on their creed to alter it for them and their children, it was such matters as the above which weighed upon the minds of the Jesuits, and justified outcry against men who strove to get and give some little information.
The first article of professed intelligence in the Civiltá after the Council had really got to work, spoke of giving only the external news, which was what all the "good Press" professed to give. What it gave was indeed external. A person turning to these official pages in hope of learning what he would have to believe by-and-by, found paragraphs about "clothes" (VII. ix. 99). "We have told our readers of the vestments worn by the Fathers in the public session. They will be pleased to have a translation of the notice appointing the ceremony to be observed in the Congregations"--the ceremony meaning the ceremonial garments. The men who were undertaking to change for the priests and people the conditions of their membership in the Church, to revolutionize their relations with their neighbours and even with their nations, were yet persuaded that while all this was going on, priests and people must be thinking of how the gowns of the Fates were dyed, and not of what threads they were spinning. So, with conscientious exactness, the faithful were informed that the Most Reverend and Most Eminent Lords the Cardinals would wear the red and violet mozzetta and mantelletta over the rochet; and the Most Reverend Patriarchs the violet mozzetta and rochet, etc., etc., etc.
A touching incident of private life came to soften the feelings of the Fathers on the eve of the struggle. The son of De Maistre, the champion of the pen, and the daughter of Lamoricière, the champion of the sword, had, four months previously, been married. "Two such fair names," exclaims M. Veuillot--yes, two stately figures, bending in vain to stay a falling oak. The young wife was smitten with death, and the widow of the hero could only reach Rome in time to close her daughter's eyes. The whole city united in sorrowing over the mingled tears of the houses of De Maistre and Lamoricière. Noble Lamoricière! During the four dreadful days of June, 1848, in Paris, his chivalrous sword formed a shield behind which thousands sat in safety. None who were of the number, as we were, can ever without gratitude think of him, or of the stainless Cavaignac.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 238: Documenta ad Illustrandum, i. 245.]
[Footnote 239: Of those domestic prelates the Annuario Pontificio for 1870 gives above two hundred and thirty names; the list in 1875 is over four hundred, in the Gerarchia Cattolica e la Famiglia Pontificia.]
[Footnote 240: Though issued during the Council, this Bull is not, like the others, printed in the Acta. It is in the Freiburg edition, p. 77; and also in Acta Sanctae Sedis, v. p. 287.]
[Footnote 241: Tagebuch, p. 32.]
[Footnote 242: Quirinus, p. 106.]
[Footnote 243: VII. ix. p. 189.]
[Footnote 244: Tagebuch, p. 27]
[Footnote 245: Tagebuch, 47.]
[Footnote 246: V. 323]
[Footnote 247: Civiltá, VII. ix. 238.]
Chapter IV
First open Collisions of Opinion--Pending Debate--Fear of an Acclamation--Rauscher opens--Kenrick--Tizzani--General discontent with the Draft--Vacant Hats--Speaking by Rank--Strossmayer--No permission to read the Reports, even of their own Speeches--Conflicting Views--Petitions to Pope from Bishops--Homage of Science--Theism.
The moment had come at last when it was to be seen whether the parliamentary proceedings of a discussion suspended in the Catholic society for three hundred years, was actually to be revived; or whether the bishops, justifying the confidence in their gravity and wisdom which the Curia would fain have cherished, would now set the world an example of magnifying authority, by adopting the all-comprehensive dogma of Papal infallibility by acclamation, without running the risk of any debate. That once done, minor points would settle themselves, whether in the Council or out of it. The fears of a scheme to organize an acclamation were strong, not to say feverish. Cardinal Schwarzenberg wrote, "In case a demonstration is attempted for an acclamation, a formal counter demonstration is already provided for."[248] Before the commencement of the sitting, Cardinal De Luca, now Senior President, gave an assurance that no acclamation would be attempted; adding, however, that he could only give the pledge for that one sitting. Strossmayer, relating this fact the next day, in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe, added that, should it be attempted hereafter, the bishops of the minority would put in a protest, in the name of Christ, of the Church, of their rights, of their people, and of sound reason.[249]
Lord Acton's picture of the scene before the sitting is more distinct than that of the other writers. It is Darboy whom he describes as demanding an assurance that there would be no acclamation. When the promise for the first sitting was coupled with a statement that there could be no guarantee for the future, he said a hundred bishops were resolved, in case that proceeding was resorted to, that they would leave Rome, and "carry the Council away in their shoes."[250]
The uncertainty which had hung over everything but dress was so great that some prelates had prepared their votes, thinking that, owing to the determination to have some Decree ready for promulgation at Epiphany, a division would be pressed on that day.[251]
In print, the tribune, or desk, prepared for the Council, is a laudable specimen of Roman art. To look at, it is what we must call a commonplace pulpit. It was carried from place to place--more than one writer says, carried all round the hall--to try to find a spot in which it would be possible for a speaker to be heard. When the desk was at last fixed, two priests, as reporters, took their place in front of it.[252] Cardinal Rauscher, Archbishop of Vienna, was the first who ascended. Behind him he saw his own achievement--that Concordat by which he had secured for Rome the abolition in Austria of the Josephine Laws. Before him lay the Draft of Decrees, for the most part, as it was believed, the handiwork of Schrader, whom he had himself installed as a professor in the University of Vienna, and who was doubtless a fit man to make it what it was--a dogmatic reflection of the earliest portions of the Syllabus. The sagacity of Rauscher told him that the success of these proposed Decrees would be the doom of the Concordat. Hence, he rose, not to support the theology of his nominee, but to save his own diplomatic achievement.
So the discussion opened with a brilliant address, as Friedrich calls it, delivered in the round, rough Latin pronunciation of the Germans. Darboy soon left the hall, saying that it was undignified to sit professedly listening to speeches which one could not make out. What with the mocking of the echoes and what with the pronunciation foreign to all but Germans, none could understand but the few in whose favour combined all the advantages of keen ears, a good position, and some familiarity with German intonation.
All that we know of the discourse of Cardinal Rauscher has become known in spite of the silence of every official organ; and it amounts to no more than the fact that he opposed the Draft Decrees with firmness and ability. The strict Church régime assured by his Concordat to Austria had not been followed by the halcyon days which such a régime was said to guarantee. Loud complaints were made that the moral statistics of Vienna, previously very bad, had, under the new law of marriage, become worse. However that might be, there was no doubt that under the Concordat Austria had undergone both Solferino and Sadowa. If, after all this, new fetters were to be forged, Rauscher was well aware that the chain would snap.
After Cardinals, Archbishops! So the Irish-Latin of Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, succeeded to the German-Latin of Rauscher. The voice from the Mississippi joined that from the Danube in making light of the theological performance of Rome. The next who followed was Tizzani, nominally Archbishop of Nisibis, really Chaplain-General of the Papal army. A blind old man, he did not mount the desk, but, speaking from his place, he was the first who gave forth the Latin in the clear, full pronunciation, which must be nearer to the natural one than the others. He said that the Draft was words, words, and nothing but words. Three other Italians followed on the same side. It was still the turn of the Archbishops; and Connolly, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, closed the discussion of the day. There are two versions of his concluding innuendo. One is, that the Draft was to be honourably interred; and the other, that it was not to be amended but erased. Cum honore esse sepeliendum ... non esse reformandum censeo sed delendum. Fourteen names had been entered, but when seven had spoken, it was one o'clock, and the weary work of attempting to hear was brought to an end. The old men had been already four hours in the hall.
The Giornale di Roma and the Civiltá gave the names of the speakers, but not a syllable of information as to what they said. The same course was taken by all the "good Press." It professed to give information only of the exterior of the Council. Even the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, in its Latin veil, does not utter a hint of what view any speaker took. It does, indeed, say that no one replied to observations for, against, or beside the proposals of the Decree, thus confirming the common remark that there was no real debate.[253] Among all the charges of lying, shameless lying, lurid lying, and so on, brought against the lay Press, we do not remember any attempt to contradict the particulars circulated as to this day's proceedings, unless indeed it be Cardinal Manning's general treatment of all that had been said respecting an intention to get up an acclamation, as ridiculous rumours.
Cardinal Bilio, as President of the Commission on Dogma, from which the Draft had emanated, would naturally be, as Friedrich says he was, downcast; and we may well believe the same witness, that the Cardinals generally were disconcerted. On the other hand, Cardinal Schwarzenberg said, "It has gone excellently"; and Archbishop Scherr, of Munich, thought that it was as if one had heard "the rushing of the wings of the Holy Ghost"--one of the expressions in which that sacred name was often lightly taken during the Council, and which, from hints found elsewhere, seems to have fallen on this occasion also from other lips. Strossmayer was by no means so elated, knowing that the Curia was in a position to hold its own.
This discussion raised the spirits of the minority, and filled them for a while with illusory hopes. It seemed as if the one liberty left, that of making Latin speeches, might turn to great account. Meanwhile, according to Lord Acton, speculation ran on the possible effects of fifteen vacant hats, which were supposed to have the power of doing wonders, and which the genuine Romans would certainly expect to turn episcopal heads in whatever direction they might happen to be held. Darboy said, "I have not a cold in the head: I do not want a hat."
Quirinus points out the bearing of such multiplication of anathemas as was aimed at in the Draft on the ascendancy of the Jesuits. These anathemas would supply abundant matter for accusation, and so enable the Jesuits to keep men belonging to other orders in constant fear of being charged with heresy. This would tend to make other theologians dependent upon their order. He adds, moreover, that if the Draft Decrees should be passed, scarcely any professors of Old Testament exegesis would escape the charge of heresy.
Two days later the debate was resumed. The archbishops were still in possession; but after one more of them had spoken came the turn of the bishops. Rank carried it against the rule that in council all are equal. Athanasius the deacon, and Constantine the layman, were both outside the door. And outside the door were also the "presbyters" who alone at Nicæa represented Rome. Unity had come to mean a sharp separation of the Church into the Teaching Church and the Learning Church. The Teaching Church consisted of the Pope and bishops; the Learning Church consisted of priests and people.
Those who desired to speak entered their names at least one day beforehand; and of those so entered Cardinals spoke first, Patriarchs next, then Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals, according to their grade.
The first bishop who rose was Strossmayer. As he had before attempted to speak upon the Rules, so did he now attack the heading of the Decree, namely, the formula "Pius IX., with the approbation of the Council," instead of the Tridentine formula, "This Sacred Council decrees." He was called to order by Cardinal De Luca. That point, he ruled, was not to be discussed, for it had been settled in the Rules of Procedure, and also in the form used in the opening session. No one supported Strossmayer in his objection, and, in point of form, the President was doubtless right. The bishops had allowed their birthright to be taken away, and it was now too late to reclaim it. True, if they had been united, they might have alleged that the taking of it away had been done both violently and stealthily; but still, it had been done before their eyes.
Strossmayer's speech gave to modern Rome a sensation strange to her, though familiar to ancient Rome--the feeling caused by the echoes of impassioned reasoning in favour of freedom. And this time it was freedom commended by the voice of a bishop! The degree of freedom advocated was, indeed, only such as anywhere else would have been a minimum. The reports given of the eloquence of the speaker were exciting, and it would appear that even those of opponents were often laudatory. Lord Acton gives the following passage--
What do we gain by condemning what has been already condemned? What end is promoted by proscribing errors which we know to have been already proscribed? The false doctrines of sophists have vanished like ashes before the wind. They have corrupted many, I confess, and infected the spirit of the age. But can we believe that the contagion of corruption would not have taken effect had errors of this sort been smitten down with anathema, by Decree? We have no means given to us beyond cries and prayers to God, whereby to defend and conserve the Catholic religion, but those of Catholic science in complete agreement with the faith. The heretics assiduously cultivate science unfriendly to the faith, and therefore true science friendly to it should be cultivated among Catholics, and advanced by every effort. Let us stop the mouth of opponents, who cease not falsely to impute to us that the Catholic Church represses science, and restrains all free thought, so that within her bounds neither science nor any liberty of intellect can flourish or exist. Further, it has to be shown, and that both by words and deeds, that in the Catholic Church there exist true liberty for the nations, true progress, true light, and true prosperity.[254]
This proposal to fight thought only with thought, and to allow institutions to be tested by their fruits, was well fitted for any soil where the Bible was the statute-book, but was untenable ground in Rome. The excitement was great.
Ketteler embraced Strossmayer as he came down. Senestrey, on the other hand, stated that he had said things for which he must have been called to order in any assembly. Dinkle said he had spoken on his own account, and showed no inclination to share risks with him.
The first French prelate who came to the desk was Ginoulhiac, of Grenoble, who also spoke against the Draft. What he then said we know not. What he had just previously published under his own hand we do know. Resisting the idea of an acclamation, he said--
To insist upon dispensing with previous examination, because of the immense importance of the question, or because the subject of the question was that which in the Church is greatest, would be not merely to depart from the practice of all ages, but it would also be to commit a most serious error, and to awaken in all grave minds just suspicions of the decision which might be arrived at. In past times nothing was so feared as the appearance of not devoting to important decisions sufficient time, and of not giving sufficient satisfaction even to the minds of the prejudiced (p. 43).
Speaking of the liberty essential to a real Council, he had said (p. 46)--
Little does it matter whether the liberty of deliberation and of vote be violated in one way or another, whether by fear or by guile, whether the violence exerted is physical or moral; so soon as liberty is gravely hampered, the Church no longer recognizes herself as truly represented.
Friedrich tells how Strossmayer, the day before, had said that he would write out his speech and send it in; for the reporters were so unskilful that their manuscripts were of little use. But we do not see how he could do more than guess what their reports were. At the same time (it was in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe), he said that now, since he had been in Rome, he could understand how both the Reformation and the Greek Schism had originated. It was in his view a real crime for the Pope to claim to be the successor of Christ instead of the successor of Peter; the way in which bishops were driven was, he added, inconceivable, when one remembered that it was they that kept up the dignity of the Pope, and prepared the minds of the people to acknowledge it.
A prelate of different views was he to whom Friedrich had said that, in order to understand the events of the Council, one must read the Civiltá, further adding that had he been Prince Hohenlohe in Bavaria, he would have answered the Civiltá by expelling the Jesuits from Regensburg. "They are innocent people," said the Bishop. "Individually," replied the Professor, "they may be innocent people, but they represent an order which propagates doctrine dangerous to the State." He tells also how it was found that the French, German, Austro-Hungarian, and American bishops had an International Committee of three; but that the Pope, regarding this as savouring of Nationalism, and of a revolutionary spirit, forbade it. Lord Acton (p. 52) mentions another prohibition scarcely less significant, namely, that the printed Rules of Procedure of the Council of Trent were, with the utmost strictness, withheld from the members of the Vatican Council. These rules, and the real minutes of that Council, had at that time never been published, and only saw the light in 1874, by the private efforts of Theiner. Of course, the Decrees and Canons had long been before the world. Among the many denials we do not remember any attempt to deny this specific allegation. An argument could be easily constructed, on the principle now accepted, to prove that it was no interference with liberty to deprive the bishops of the physical possibility of informing themselves of the extent of rights which they had inherited from their predecessors at the latest General Council.
Lord Acton says that one effect of the determination to keep the discussions secret was that it led the bishops to express themselves more strongly than they would have done had they expected their words to be read at home and conned over by Protestants. At the same time, much leaked out. All agree that the inhabitants of Rome took little interest in the discussions, while, in the religious aspect of the question, the Italians generally took scarcely any; and this indifference reacted on the interest they might have taken in its political aspects. They committed the error of despising their enemy. Knowing the men and their communications, they allowed their own estimate of the worth of priests to affect their calculation as to their influence.
There is a well accredited story of Lord Acton going to Florence, full of the burning questions which were to affect the future of every Roman Catholic. Dining with a relation in the very centre of the political circle, and meeting several members of the Cabinet, he naturally expected to find them taking some interest in the cosmopolitan politics then under treatment by the Senate of Humanity, the Supreme Legislature of the Human Species. But the Italians were buried in some passing question of grist, or the like, and had no ear for the principles which were to shape the future of nations. They saw little in the proceedings more than that the Pundits of an expiring caste were passing resolutions to adjourn the nineteenth century and to conserve the eleventh.
German and English Catholics were not capable of thus treating principles as husks. Whether Fallibilists or Infallibilists, they knew that the destiny of that Society, which both agreed to call "The Church," was now at stake, and that, at least, the repose of nations, if not their destiny, was also implicated. The Liberal Catholics, holding that the attempt to restore a theocracy would only lead to wars, and that humanity would avenge itself on the Papacy for again fomenting bloodshed, hoped that somehow God would save the Church from the blindness of the Curia. The Catholics, on the other hand, equally aiming at ultimate peace, and even regaling their imaginations with a vision of millennial repose, so soon as all nations should have accepted the Vicegerent of God as the representative of Christ Himself, were in the meantime profoundly convinced that the only way to obtain that repose was through the very conflict from which their faint-hearted brethren shrank.
The Infallibilists could not harbour the idea of the Church failing in the struggle. That was to them like supposing that the gates of hell should prevail. To the Liberal Catholics the Jesuits were conspiring against humanity and all its franchises. To the Jesuits, on the other hand, the Liberal Catholics seemed to be risking the loss of such an opportunity as might never recur, of putting the Church in a position to constrain governments to accept the principles by which alone nations could be saved. Therefore did they look upon any shrinking from the struggle as indicating worldly fear rather than foreseeing care for the Church. If Liberal Catholics looked upon the Jesuits as conspiring against humanity, the Jesuits looked upon the Liberal Catholics as agitators against divine authority. No wonder that in such a state of feeling, what Lord Acton describes took place, "The word-war of the hall was always fought over and over again outside, with the addition of anecdotes, epigrams, and inventions."
It was on Sunday, January 2, that two petitions were sent in to the Pope. The first was signed by forty-three prelates, headed by Cardinals Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, and the Primate of Hungary.[255] This was no Bill of Rights, not containing even a challenge of that exercise of prerogative which it sought partially to relax. The privileges for which two princes and forty-one magnates petitioned, "prostrate at thy feet," were--
(1) That the Fathers might be distributed into, say, six groups, in which Draft Decrees could be considered in the principal living languages before being brought on for discussion in Latin, in the General Congregation. (2) That speeches delivered in the General Congregation might be printed for the exclusive use of the members of the Council, and under the same bond of secrecy as that under which the Draft Decrees were communicated to them. (3) That the Draft Decrees on faith and discipline might all as soon as possible be laid in a connected form before the Fathers, and should not any longer be presented, as hitherto, piecemeal. (4) That the Fathers, after having in the vernacular meetings considered the Draft Decrees, might be allowed to send a couple of delegates from each group to the committee to represent their views. (5) That the Fathers might be allowed to print, in addition to speeches delivered in the General Congregation, writings in which questions could be treated more thoroughly; these however to be printed subject to the same bond of secrecy as the Draft Decrees. (6) "Prostrate at thy feet, we crave the apostolic benediction for ourselves and the faithful committed to us."
We do not know that even the last of the six things here prayed for was granted, for the petition never received an answer. These dignitaries clearly state to their royal master the grounds on which they petitioned for some of the elementary rights of human creatures. They say that Decrees cannot be really sifted by speaking a dead language in an assembly of seven hundred persons from all parts of the world, unless, first, in companies speaking living languages, the Fathers have had the opportunity of examining their contents. And further, that however well acquainted with Latin all might be, there were many prelates who did not speak it. Moreover, the petitioners, admitting that the Council Hall was admirable as being so near the tomb of St. Peter, state that in the first General Congregation, though some of the speakers had excellent voices, not one of them could make himself heard by all. Even since changes had been effected, the greater part of the members could not hear all the speakers. Another of their points is this: Although men well worthy of confidence--viri fide dignissimi--had assured them that the reports of the speeches should be distributed to the Fathers in print, so that they might read what they had not been able to hear, "in this hope we have been disappointed."
They appeal thus to their master, "Most Blessed Father, by thine excelling wisdom, wilt thou perceive that, as the Fathers can neither hear what is spoken, nor read it, proper consultation is not possible."[256] They go on to urge that even if the discussions were held in a place where men with the weakest voices could be heard, it would still be desirable that the members should be in a position to look over what had been advanced in successive sittings. "Matters of weightiest moment," they add, "are being treated, and frequently the addition, omission, or change of a single word may adulterate the sense." If, say they, the Fathers had the opportunity of explaining their views in writing, they could lay many things before their fellow members which could not be brought into speeches. As to obtaining an understanding of the proposals, they urged that, in questions of doctrine, one thing so connects itself with another, and discipline is so much affected by doctrine, that they are not in any position to give a judgment on Draft Decrees, obviously forming but part of a scheme, while as yet other parts of it are kept from their knowledge. The relation between the unknown parts and the parts before them is an element in any judgment to be formed.
The second petition, dated on the same Sunday,[257] was signed by twenty-six prelates, including several of those who had signed the other, and a few additional ones, such as Kenrick of St. Louis. Cardinal Rauscher did not sign it, but Cardinal Schwarzenberg did. It set out by indirectly asserting more in principle than the other; but it ended by asking less in practice. It seemed both to assume the right of proposition on the part of the prelates, and to imply that the taking of it away would deserve blame; but it had not the courage to say that it had been taken away. Those are not wanting, say the petitioners, who interpret the Rules as not recognizing the right of the Fathers to propose in the Council what they may think conducive to the public good, but as conceding it only exceptionally and as a matter of grace. This may be a diplomatic way of indicating what the Rules said without confessing the fact that they did say it. But what they did say was too plain for any such finesse. The prayer of the petition is confined to two points: that some members of the Commission on Proposals should be elected by the Committee, and that the authors of proposals should have access to the committees, and thus have some part in the treatment of the particular matter in which they were interested.
These petitions say more than all the assertions of the much contradicted Liberal Catholics about the want of freedom in the Council, and the want of the old spirit of bishops in the men who composed it. According to Friedberg, the first of the two was drawn up by Cardinal Rauscher (xli.). No name of an English, Irish, or Colonial prelate is attached to either petition. Nearly all the names are those of Germans and Hungarians, the only American one being that of Kenrick. His signature proves that the English-speaking group knew of the petitions, and the absence of all other names belonging to that group would seem to indicate that members of the hierarchy from America, the British Isles, and our Colonies did not approve of bishops of their Church being entrusted with such extensive liberties as those for which their brethren petitioned. It is pretty certain that the American archbishop who signed this petition was not one of the prelates who told the Archbishop of Westminster that their Congress was not freer than the Council. Do senators and members of the House prostrate themselves at the feet of the President, petitioning for leave to meet in a place where they can hear and be heard, for leave to read reports of one another's speeches, and for leave to print memoranda--for leave even to elect a few members of a committee which decides what may and what may not be recommended to the President, to be proposed should he approve of it? If they do not, we must only believe that America sends some citizens to Europe whose information as to the institutions of their country is not to be relied upon. Did Ginoulhiac, whose observations on the necessity of perfect freedom in a Council we have lately seen, consider legislators free who had to petition for such things? Outside of the number of Cardinals resident in Rome, could even a Cardinal have been found beforehand to assert that liberty would not be gravely hampered, in any legislative assembly, whenever those who were called legislators were compelled to indite petitions such as we have described? We doubt if even a resident Cardinal would beforehand have dared in terms to deny that when, in a professed Council, liberty is gravely hampered, the Church does not recognize herself as represented. Now, it is easy to turn the point of all such arguments. Peter the Infallible has only to say what rights James and John, Thomas and Paul shall enjoy, and in exercising them they possess all the freedom that God has been pleased to grant to them.
The allusion in the petition to the ease with which the sense of a speech may be altered seems like a remark of Strossmayer, quoted by Friedrich, that reports which were under no check but that of the Curia, and which even the speakers themselves were not allowed to inspect, could not be of any use. To this Friedrich adds, How much would the weight of the remark have been increased after an incident on July 9, "when the majority of the Council, and a committee of the Council, did not scruple formally to deceive the minority."
The prayer of the petitioners for a sight of the whole scheme, as prepared, before they should be called upon to erect part of it into irreformable Decrees, was doubtless caused in part by the obvious relation between the Drafts already brought to light and the Syllabus. That compendium was not mentioned any more than it had been in many other public instruments, but the first Draft fitted to its first sections, just as the Encyclical which accompanied its issue had done to the whole document. Notwithstanding its authority, its form made it of doubtful interpretation, and these Decrees aimed at giving statutory form to its sentences. An Index Schematum, or List of Drafts, had come to light,[258] which let the bishops see that what had hitherto been produced was but the first instalment of projected legislation covering all the ground occupied by the Syllabus. The first Draft treated only the philosophical and theological portion of the subjects; but how were the principles enunciated to be applied, when the sections on Church and State should be arrived at? The somewhat obscure teaching in the Draft on the elevation of man into the supernatural order, would, to mere politicians, look like theological nebulae, and, to mere theologians, like ill-digested divinity. To men versed in the esoteric dialect, it was clearly intended to prepare the way for the doctrine of the elevation of man by baptism above the control of civil law, in all that affects his loyalty to the supernatural order of the Church, whose Decrees had, by that regeneration, become his supreme statutes, her courts his supreme tribunals, and her priests his supreme magistrates. It was the dogmatizing of the principle which has already passed under our eye, that in baptism the subjects of the civil power are changed. Another principle now habitually underlies that one, namely, that man by redemption through Christ is raised above the government of the natural order, and placed under that of Christ, through His Vicar. The studious among the Liberal Catholics knew that under the name of Naturalism their principles were condemned.
On the Monday following the day of the petitions, when the Congregation opened, after the prayers had been read, Cardinal De Luca rang the bell, and solemnly addressed the Fathers. Here, for once, we are able to give the very words that sounded in that hall of concealment, and this time not from an unofficial publication of official documents. It is the Acta Sanctae Sedis that now actually give us a speech. But it is a speech about the dead. The Cardinal is not so confident as to their happiness as were the writers of the Crusaders of St. Peter respecting that of those who fell in the Crusade. But he presents the two forms of the Papal worship of and for the dead, which differs from both the Chinese and the Brahminical. We see the two sides of it--the patronage of the living by the dead, and the patronage of the dead by the living. The Cardinal said--
MOST REVEREND FATHERS,--It is known to you that since the opening of the OEcumenical Vatican Council four Fathers have passed away by a death precious in the sight of the Lord, namely, the Most Eminent Charles Augustus de Reisach, Bishop of the Sabina and First President of the General Congregations; the Most Eminent Francis Pentini, Deacon of St. Mary in Portico; the Most Reverend Anthony Manastyrski, Bishop of Przémysl of the Latin rite; and the Most Reverend Bernardin Frascolla, Bishop of Foggia. The Christian virtues and the shining merits towards the holy Church of God and this Apostolic See, wherewith they were most largely adorned, inspire us with a sure and pleasant hope that their souls already enjoy rest eternal in the embrace of the Lord, and that in the presence of God they patronize our labours by their intercession. Since, however, human frailty is such that they may even now stand in need of our suffrages, let us not neglect earnestly to commend them to the divine mercy.
After this De Luca announced that in place of Reisach had been appointed Cardinal De Angelis. Thus one who, just before the Council opened, knew, or professed to know, so little that he told Cardinal Hohenlohe that nothing was to be done beyond condemning the principles of 1789, but who had served the Curia by the device of an election ticket, took the first seat, in which elevation the Opposition saw the reward of service in the elections. Next was announced the appointment by the Pope of Cardinal Bilio as President of the Committee on Faith, and that of Cardinal Caterini as President of the Committee on Discipline. The committees were not allowed to choose their own chairmen, nor yet was the Council allowed to name the chairmen of its committees.[259] The next day, after Mass had been celebrated by Archbishop Manning, again had Cardinal De Luca to announce a death. It was that of the Bishop of Panama, a Dominican. The statement as to his sufferings here is plain. But as to his happiness hereafter, the full confidence felt in the case of the Crusaders, and the qualified confidence felt in the case of the two Cardinals, and of the two bishops whose deaths were reported with that of Cardinals, are both wanting. We have not here the "in peace" which in Rome, before priests learned to make a commerce of the dead, the poorest Christian wrote, it might be in the roughest scrawl, over the head of his wife or child; nor have we here the life and immortality whereof the light makes the happy believer "rejoice for a brother deceased." Eduardo Vasques was not a Crusader, and was not a Cardinal, and had not even the happiness of being reported dead in company with a Cardinal. He was but a bishop, and, without doubt, in the pains of purgatory; so De Luca just said that he had died last night, after great suffering, borne with exemplary patience. "Proper mortuary services will, as soon as possible, be performed. In the meantime, let us commend him to the mercy of God, both by the sacrifice of the Mass, and by other works of Christian charity."[260]
The day before the second session, a procession moved to the Vatican, of seventeen carriages, carrying seventeen deputations, each bearing an address, with signatures, in a richly bound volume, for presentation to the Holy Father. These addresses conveyed that homage of science to the Pontiff the appeal for which has been already mentioned. The cultivators of science at the feet of Pius IX, and, The cultivators of science at the throne of the Holy Father, were the titles of articles in Catholic journals. The way was led by the deputation from the pontifical academy of the Immaculate, which had initiated this movement.
They were received in the Throne Room. A long address to the Pontiff was read. He sat, unmoved, to hear it. Then, "he lifted his eyes to heaven with an ineffable expression," and uttered a prayer that the sentiments conveyed in the address might spread among the multitudes of scientific men whose false science was ruining society. The Pope would quote Scripture, as he often tries to do; and his text was Captivantes intellectum vestrum in obsequium fidei--Taking your intellect captive to the obedience of the faith. Probably he was thinking of 2 Corinthians x. 5, "Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," where the Vulgate translates, "Every thought (νὁημα), every intellect." He then assured them that pride was the sin of the day, and that it was all a repetition of the original "I will not serve"--alluding to Satan's "Better reign in hell than serve in heaven." Cold men of science hearing this language from him who was striving to put all human honours, titles, and powers below his own, might think that some scientific test of his humility would not be amiss. The Pope rose, the savans knelt down, and he gave them the benediction.
Having then resumed his seat on the Throne, "Here I am," he said, familiarly; "here I am, to receive your gifts." There was a scientific test of their professions! The President of the Academy of the Immaculate advanced, presented his volume containing the address and signatures, and with it an elegant purse full of gold. The head of the next deputation followed, presented his volume and his purse of gold, and so on, until the seventeen had completed their offering. The Pope had a pleasant word for each. Then saying, "God grant that your example may be followed by many," he closed the audience.[261] How different was it now from what it was when "science was the echo of the Pontiff," or even from what it was when Galileo had to face the Inquisition, and to argue with Bellarmine![262] At the latter moment, the two revolted tongues, German and English, with their smaller kinsmen, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, were unknown in the schools. Their libraries were yet to be. They had but lately received into them the source of their literary life--the Bible. But into them had the Bible come, not lapped in the languor of the cloister, but instinct with the life of a great revival.
Except a few northern schools, which had made themselves a name in the strife of the Reformation, all seats of learning on the Continent were on the side of the Pope. Now, how changed! Out of his own Model State, where were the universities canonically instituted? They had ceased to be. Meantime, the nations which at the Reformation were but emerging out of barbarism, had become learned in all the learning of the ancients and moderns. The two revolted tongues, German and English, had filled the world with a literature such as the Latin, even when Augurs and Pontiffs were called Cicero and Aurelius, had never known. The Portuguese, which had at one time promised to be the lingua franca of all the ports from Morocco to Japan, had given place, first, largely to the Dutch, then universally to the English. The Spanish and French, which had promised to divide between them North and South America, were sundered, and were both overshadowed by a dominating growth of English. That north-western tongue, cradled amid stern winds, was found by the Reformation as the rude but hardy dialect of some six or seven unlettered millions. Now it had become the wealthy and flexible, the noble and all-expressing speech of at least eighty millions. Thirty millions in Europe, with between forty and fifty millions in America, called it, with a common family pride and a common family joy, their mother-tongue. In Australasia, a future Europe promised to call it her mother-tongue. In India it was teaching the pundit, in China the mandarin, in Japan the daimio, in Africa the Kaffir chief, the Negro freedman, and the merchant of the Nile. That single language had now more schools and colleges, more laboratories and institutes of research, more books and journals, more patronage and discussion of Art, than all the Papal languages put together. And as to the German, if the lack of equal liberty had reined the people in, while the effects of the Thirty Years' War, joined to those of the chronic splitting up into small States, had prevented their growth and expansion in a similar measure, they had, nevertheless, with huge and patient power, piled up a Titanic literature, and in many a movement in the higher march of intellect their banner led the van. Men of the Catholic schools of Germany so felt their own superiority to the science and literature of actual Rome, that the strokes of their contempt not unfrequently fell even on the reputed sages of the Curia, sometimes laid on in a fashion more scholastic than scholarly.
In the General Congregation of January 4, the Curia had the satisfaction of hearing, not only a diocesan bishop, but a German one, defend the Draft.[263] It was Bishop Martin, of Paderborn, to whose eminent qualities official writers bear loud testimony, though in the eyes of the Liberal Catholics he does not seem to be a prodigy. He blamed the manner in which the bishops had treated a document proposed by the Pontiff, which ought to have been handled with reverence, and rebuked such language as "to be erased." He desired the adoption of the Syllabus just as it stood. As the way to bring back the stray sheep to the Holy Father, he enjoined the recognition of his infallibility, which would reclaim Protestants. Both the expectation of Martin and Manning that the new dogma would facilitate the conversion of Protestants, and that of all the Ultramontane leaders that it would hasten the submission of governments to the Lord Paramount of the world, lose part of their marvellousness when we find bishops like Bonjean proclaiming it as of great importance for the conversion of Hindus. Bishop David, of St. Brieuc, alluding to Martin's warning, said if he must not say that the Draft was to be erased, he would say that if it was dead let it rise again; but some bishop must breathe new life into it. Friedrich says that Cardinal Bilio was particularly hurt by this speech.
Bernardou, Archbishop of Sens, read a speech for Audu, the Patriarch of Babylon. The Chaldean solemnly pleaded against the levelling proceedings of Rome, maintained the ancient immunities of his Church, and ventured to throw out a warning against innovations, lest the Orientals should be altogether alienated. He afterwards received a message to repair to the Vatican, and to come unattended. About seven o'clock on that January night, the man of seventy-eight passed the Swiss guards, in their stripes and slashes of yellow, black, and red, with their halberds and their helmets, and while lonelily pacing the corridors, had time to remember how the house of the Inquisition stood over the way, and how utterly he was in the power of the King of the Vatican. It will be some time before what befell him comes to light.
Theiner, the celebrated Prefect of the Vatican Archives, had been long engaged, as was universally known, in preparing for publication the Acta of the Council of Trent. He had been arrested in this project. This was attributed to the instigation of the Jesuits. On January 4 Friedrich went to Theiner to beg permission to consult the Acta of Trent. "Theiner told me that he was now forbidden to let any one even see the Acta. All I could obtain from him was this--he showed me the piles of the copied documents in the distance" (p. 65). There is a picture for the days of an OEcumenical Council![264] The day following, another German on the banks of the Spree, was busy with the Council. To Bismarck the state of things so far was chaotic. "I should not think it wise," he says to Arnim, "for us to intermeddle in this misty chaos, where we do not yet see clearly enough to choose the right basis of operations." He sees that Rome may make aggressions, but rests in proud repose in the power of the nation to throw her back within her proper bounds. The continuance of peaceful relations is greatly to be desired, but it is not for the government to attempt to give a direction to the events of the Council. It can only cherish sympathy with the efforts of the German bishops, and, if they desire it, give them its support. Bismarck expressly declines to support by any diplomatic step the proposal for vote by nations. Such a step would involve a serious recognition of the pretensions of the Curia. We must, he says, hold ourselves aloof from the Council, and free to bring its conclusions to the bar of our laws. He, therefore, does not deem it wise to attempt a permanent united meeting of diplomatists, with a view to influence the Council. All that can be done is to encourage the German bishops, and to assure them that their rights will be maintained in their own country. But they must be made fully to understand that serious changes in the organization of the Church would compel the government to alter its relation to her, both in legislation and in administration.[265] Had Bismarck known all the plans of the five preceding years, and all the events that were to follow, it is doubtful if he could have taken a better course. And had his main object been to live at peace with Rome, and not merely to do the wisest thing for Germany, he could hardly have guarded more jealously against undue or premature interference.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 248: Tagebuch, p. 44.]
[Footnote 249: Tagebuch, p. 45.]
[Footnote 250: Acton, p. 73.]
[Footnote 251: Tagebuch, p. 44.]
[Footnote 252: Acta Sanctæ Sedis, v. 316. i.]
[Footnote 253: Vol. v. p. 316.]
[Footnote 254: Acton, pp. 74, 75, both in German and Latin.]
[Footnote 255: Documenta, i. 247.]
[Footnote 256: "Consultationem sicut decet haberi non posse."]
[Footnote 257: Documenta, ii. 383; also Friedberg, 410-14.]
[Footnote 258: Friedberg, xlv.; Cecconi, 483-89; and Frond, vii. p. 263.]
[Footnote 259: Acta Sanctae Sedis. v. 317-18.]
[Footnote 260: Ibid. 319.]
[Footnote 261: Civiltá, VII. ix. 358-9.]
[Footnote 262: Valuable light has lately been thrown on the two trials of Galileo by Dr. Reusch, of Bonn; and Signor Berti, ex-Minister of Instruction in Italy, has published the original record of the trial. The last I have not seen.]
[Footnote 263: Tagebuch, p. 63.]
[Footnote 264: This tale of Friedrich may form a pendant to one of Theiner's own. He relates how, in seeking for Tridentine documents which ought to have been in the Vatican, but were not, and some of which were in the library of Lord Guildford, he proposed to make a journey all the way to England. His brother oratorian, Dr. Newman, applied to Lord Guildford requesting that Theiner might have access to them. This was refused. That nobleman could not see why the Prefect of the Vatican Archives should come so far to examine documents of which there must be abundance there! Poor Theiner had found poverty, not abundance. There had been removal, as well as concealment. His ill success in England did not prevent him from saying that the honour of first publishing the minutes of Paleotti was due to the Rev. Joseph Mendham, an Anglican presbyter,--"which, certainly, is not to our honour or glory" (vol. i. pp. vi. vii.).]
[Footnote 265: Cologne Gazette, April 1, 1874.]