Chapter VI
To the Close of the Special Debate on Infallibility, July 4--Proposal of the Minority to resist--They yield once more--Another Protest--Efforts to procure Unanimity--Hope of the Minority in Delay--Pope disregards the Heat--Disgrace of Theiner--Decree giving to Pope ordinary Jurisdiction everywhere--His Superiority to Law--Debate on Infallibility--Speech of Guidi--Great Emotion--Scene with the Pope--Close of the Debate--Present view of the Civiltá as to Politics--Specimens of the Official Histories--Exultation.
Any one who had observed the course of the minority in emergencies would have probably foretold that, under the new trial, they would feel indignant, would speak of doing something, and would end with a protest. So it proved. The very day of the forcible conclusion of the general debate, the French bishops met, and were favourable to some determined action.[425] But the next day, eighty congregated in the rooms of Cardinal Rauscher. The Hungarians, French, and Americans, with Strossmayer, Clifford, and Conolly, are named by Quirinus as recommending that the Fathers of the Opposition should cease to take any part in the Council, reserving themselves for the final vote, and should then give their Non placet. The Germans, however, always marplots, urged that the better course would be to adopt a protest, and continue to take part in the proceedings. This counsel prevailed. Rauscher drew up a form of protest, which was signed by some eighty prelates, and many of the bishops took a trip to Naples or elsewhere.
Among the things represented by Quirinus as having been said on this occasion, one was to the effect that in a Parliament speeches were of some use, for if they did not influence votes, they did enlighten public opinion; but in this Council, most of the hearers were, from their degree of culture, quite incapable of apprehending theological arguments, not to add that, in a moral point of view, many of them stood so low that even if convinced they would not act on their convictions. The ground taken in the protest is clear, namely, that the right of supporting their votes by a statement of reasons, is one which, by the very nature of a Council, belongs not only to some of its members, but to them all, and that such a right could not be taken away by any vote of a majority.[426]
The Hungarians now declared that they would take no further part in the debates. On the other hand, the Unitá Cattolica foretold how those who had written or spoken as Gallicans would be converted by a miracle of the Holy Ghost, even in the Council Hall; and as the Galileans had been constrained to speak in other tongues, so would the Gallicans be constrained to proclaim in that Hall before the astonished multitudes the doctrine they had gainsaid.
The absorbing care of the Curia and its instruments was now directed to the one end of constraining all to vote placet. The victory was no longer doubtful, but to procure unanimity was of great practical moment. The Pope himself was indefatigable. His admirers resented such epithets as "unscrupulous" when applied to his conduct. But they took good care not to grapple with the details of alleged facts which, if they could be credibly told about the conduct of one of our sovereigns in respect to his nobles or to Parliament, would be described in much stronger epithets than unscrupulous. His tongue was evermore scattering rebukes or blandishments, and enlivening the city with crackling sparks of gossip. There were but few bishops of note among the minority whose portraits, etched by the infallible acid, were not handed round the salons, lay and clerical. His letters were bitter and undignified. Quirinus quotes the words of a French bishop (p. 627): "There is no longer any scruple as to what is done to gain votes. It is a horror. There has never been anything like it in the Church." These words recall to us a scene in Rome. A remarkable head--one of those heads which bear on the brow a diploma of gifts and letters--was stooping in the light of a lamp by which pages had been penned that had been heard of beyond Italy. The stoop was pensive, and the thinker said, "I saw so much of what was done during that Council, that it has destroyed all my faith in anything that ever was done in the Church before."
It would seem as if, at the last, argument and appeal had begun to tell on some of those who were of a milder mood among the Curialists. It is said that even of the chosen three champions, Manning, Deschamps, and Pie, the last wished to find some formula less offensive than the one projected. Martin of Paderborn even proposed a note which contained a recognition of the teaching authority of bishops, though in an indirect way. On the other hand, the members of the Opposition tried to discover some turn of expression which would save the Church from the shame of being publicly disavowed by her wilful lord. Conolly spoke of proposing, as a formula which would still give her a recognised voice, words declaring the Pope infallible when he spoke, "as head of the Church teaching with him." Others again wished to reinstate the formula of St. Antoninus, of Florence, declaring the Pope infallible when he acts with the counsel of the universal Church.[427]
Men now began to realize the full effect of the proposed dogma, both in its executive and in its retrospective aspects. Many must have remembered how happy they had been in argument, or in diplomacy, when the ambiguous state of the case, as it had hitherto existed, enabled them to evade the charge that such and such were the principles of the Church. It was so convenient to be able to say No, they have never been sanctioned by a Council; they are only the words of a Papal Decree. Now, however, all these words were to have fresh life breathed into them, and whatever they contained affecting a general principle of belief, or practice, was to be taken for divine,--was, in fact, to rank as the word of God.
Delay now became the forlorn hope of the minority, and expedition the watchword of the majority. The minority were sure that the Pope would not be so cruel as to force them to continue in Rome during the summer heats. Hence, they thought that by delay they were certain of a prorogation before the fatal deed was done. They forgot the history of the Pope's prisons and executions. Perhaps they had never read it, or had used their fatal facility of calling an unpleasant statement a lie. Antonelli had generally carried away the chief part of the blame for the blood of the political victims. However, he seems completely to have escaped reproach for the broiling of the bishops. Whether the fierce language ascribed to the Pope was correct or not, nobody doubted its aptness.[428] When even the faithful M. Veuillot said, Since they have put the Council upon the gridiron, they shall broil (ii. p. 352), everyone treated him as only echoing the language of his idol. When once the heats had begun to tell, the feelings of majority and minority, as Vitelleschi points out, changed. Men from the north, accustomed to the bracing air and pure streams of Germany, could ill bear up against the miasma from the Roman marshes and the torrid heats that were withering the city and making even natives look pale. They therefore began to long for an escape, and not a few of them took their way homewards. They received not only ready but glad permission. Thus every day was diminishing the strength of the Opposition. The majority, on the other hand, consisting of Italians, South Americans, and Spaniards, were inured to the heats, if not to the malaria, and felt that the sun and the marshes were conspiring with them. Apollo had come to camp shooting over the heads of the natives, but laying low the men from beyond the sea.
There was now only one consideration that would make the Pope anxious for despatch, and that was the daily pressure upon his finances caused by supporting his three hundred boarders. This certainly had proved a useful ground of appeal for funds. The sums collected everywhere had been great. The Civiltá reproaches the Liberal Catholics with not sending money any more than they had sent men to fight for the Holy Father, and sets in contrast with their stinginess and want of military spirit the fact that the Univers alone had sent in more than nine thousand pounds (234,410 francs).[429] The Holy Father said, "They fear making the Pope infallible, but they do not fear making him fail."[430] But M. Veuillot, on the contrary, did not fear making him infallible, and did everything possible to prevent him from failing. Hence it was no wonder that he should have briefs to publish which would perform a service for the exchequer of the Univers similar to what the Univers performed for the exchequer of the author of the briefs. The words of the Pope spoken to the deputation of scientific men were representative words, "Here I am to receive your offerings."
Theiner, the celebrated Prefect of the Vatican archives, now fell publicly under displeasure. He had allowed Hefele and Strossmayer, and perhaps others, to see the order of procedure of the Council of Trent, and probably had in other ways shown leanings not acceptable to the Jesuits. He was ordered to give up his keys to Cardoni, who had been the first chosen secretly to prepare Drafts of Decrees on Infallibility before intentions were disclosed, and had kept his counsel well. The archives were actually closed against Theiner. It is said that the passage into them from his own rooms was walled up. The disgrace of Theiner, and the honour of Cardoni, sharply symbolized the favourite saying that the dogma must conquer history. Here again Antonelli escaped all reproach of a share in the blundering injustice. Cardoni was one singled out by name in a celebrated letter of Döllinger as having largely employed falsified authorities. But that charge, to us so revolting, is a familiar sound wherever the shadow of the Curia extends.[431] We ourselves once heard a member of the Congregation of the Index claim, unmindful of the presence of a Protestant, "You must never trust any edition of any work whatever that has passed through the hands of the Jesuits."
The exciting matters now remaining to be treated in the Council were the all-important particulars of those Drafts which had already been under a general review. The two chapters teaching the institution of the primacy in the person of Peter, and the transmission of that primacy through the Roman Pontiffs as his successors, were speedily disposed of. Had all the fathers attempted to answer the arguments of Desanctis on these points, arguments familiar to many Italians, they would not have found it light work. But the third chapter was one of immense importance. It defined the scope and nature of primacy, distending that term till it was made to cover absolute, immediate, and ordinary control in the whole domain of the Church--control over bishops and people, control over not only all matters ordinarily included under the expression "faith and morals," but over all things held to be necessary for the government or discipline of the Church. This last expression, as any one acquainted with the views of those in authority, even so far as they are recorded in our preceding pages, must know, covers almost every possible question that can arise. The words of Vitelleschi (p. 174) are well considered. He speaks of the "supreme jurisdiction, ordinary and universal, of the Pope over all Churches, singly and collectively, over pastors as well as flocks; from which doctrine it follows that bishops in exercising any jurisdiction or authority, only do so as official delegates of the Pope." Dr. Langen puts it thus: "Seeing that there can be only one bishop in a diocese, as soon as the Pope is declared to have ordinary jurisdiction in that diocese, he becomes its Ordinary, and the other person called a bishop is nothing more than his delegate and representative."[432] Men who cover a dominion of this sort under the pretext of primacy, and who advance a claim of primacy in order to deduce from it an absolute dictatorship, never do anything more sensible than when they decry reason and relegate Scripture to the tradition-heap; when they call for pictures instead of books, and processions and fireworks instead of a free press and free discussion. There was political philosophy in M. Veuillot's exclamation on witnessing the Easter rejoicings in Rome, especially the fireworks representing "the heavenly Jerusalem," that it was impossible not to respect a people for whom such entertainments were provided.
The first assertion in the Decree of ordinary and immediate jurisdiction over all Churches, oddly does not describe that jurisdiction as belonging to the Pope, but as belonging to the Roman Church (par. 2). No sooner, however, has principality been ascribed to the Roman Church than it is instantly transferred to the Pontiff, and is again instantly affirmed to be a truly episcopal power. This confusion, in such a document, would be amusing if the matter were not so serious. That a Church should be a bishop is certainly new; and that a truly episcopal power should reside in a Church which is not a bishop, is one of the many mysteries created by the Vatican Council. But that the source of the Pontiff's authority should in this very Decree be sought in the Church, is a proof how hard a task is theirs who determine to make dogma conquer history. In the very language of the Decree, history conquers the dogma.
If the document contains this one taint of dualism as between Church and Pope, it is clear of all reproach of dualism as between the Pope and Princes. The latter are legislated out of all rights that could possibly conflict with those of their Lord Paramount. Notwithstanding the slight dualism as between Pope and Church, the latter is also legislated out of all her ancient claims; but incidentally she appears in clauses which, if she was only infallible without the consent of the Pope, as he is infallible without her consent, might in time prove very awkward. He has only as much infallibility as she has: that is a clumsy admission just before the assertion that he is infallible without her consent. However, wherever the power resides, or springs from, it is a power over all pastors and all believers, and extends, as we have said, not only to faith and morals, but to all things which affect the government of the Church. Thus it includes every mixed question whatsoever, and all things of any kind which in the estimation of the Pope of Rome may relate to the interests of that kingdom of which he is the king. This power, moreover, is immediate, and as such can act without being legally restricted to any processes, any agencies, or any forms. Being ordinary, it can never be obliged to wait until the ordinary jurisdiction has been tried and failed. Being immediate, it can never be told that it must take this, that, or the other line of procedure. This language for ever settles the point which had been contested in the famous passage of letters with Darboy.
How it could be necessary to add another word after these affirmations we can hardly see. Even Councils, or the pastors collectively, had but one office assigned to them--the office of obeying. After this the abstract proclamation of Infallibility, or Irreformability, or Inerrancy, could add nothing to a power that was universal, ordinary, and immediate, and towards which the people or bishops, singly or collectively, stood in one relation only--that of subjects in presence of an authority which they were bound absolutely to obey. It naturally follows that it is in this obedience that Rome finds unity. That is, in fact, her ideal of unity. Christians are Churchmen, not by being Christians, but by obeying the Roman Pontiff. Under the Papacy a Christian is outside the family of God if he does not obey the Cæsar of the Church.
Absolute authority over bishops and people having been asserted, next comes the assertion of authority over princes. This is done in a paragraph in which only students would see anything of the kind. The fourth paragraph of the third chapter begins by speaking of the Pope's right to free communication with the pastors and flocks of the whole Church. What could appear more natural, or less dangerous? Had we not seen how much the communications of the Pope amount to, we should have taken that as a meek and harmless claim. But the close of the paragraph shows that what the Pope means is the right of giving to his own edicts the binding force of a higher law in every country, whether the government consents or does not consent. As primacy means dictatorship, so communication means promulging laws in regard to which no human being has the right of reply, inquiry, complaint, or appeal; has, we repeat, no office whatever except that of obedience. We have seen that "teach" in our Lord's commission to the apostles means so to give law to the nations that they can never be justified in resisting. No prince can have any title to exercise an exequatur, placet, or any other form of check upon an edict of the Pope. Every man who denies the validity of a Papal law, because it is prohibited by the government of the country, is solemnly condemned; he interrupts the communication between the authority of the Pontiff and the conscience of his subjects. Indeed, the condemnation extends to all who even say that his decrees may be lawfully impeded in their execution. The reason of this appears in the next paragraph. The Pope is there formally declared the Supreme Judge of the faithful. Therefore all may justly resort to his judgment in all matters subject to ecclesiastical inquiry, and none may appeal from his judgment, for there is no authority greater than his. Matters subject to ecclesiastical inquiry must always include all those wherein the interests of the Papacy are in anywise involved. Next, even the old appeal to a General Council is formally condemned. Yet even that condemnation is bungled. None may appeal from the judgment of the Pope to a General Council "as an authority superior to the Roman Pontiff." Then, will lawyers say, we can only appeal to a General Council as an authority equal to the Roman Pontiff.
If these fourth and fifth paragraphs of the third chapter of the Decree on Primacy were read by a dozen educated Englishmen unused to Roman Catholic interpretations of Papal laws, nearly all of them would put aside clause after clause as not being of importance. They would take the damnamus and reprobamus as so much sulphur, and let it pass. Far otherwise Vitelleschi. "From a practical point of view," he says, "the declarations of infallibility could add nothing to the weight of this paragraph" (p. 177). Vitelleschi looks upon the express declaration of infallibility, in the next chapter, as no more than "indulgence in the luxury of self-assertion, to which absolute principles are prone." Yet when Mr. Gladstone pointed out the true range of the authority here set up, many of our politicians treated him as a statesman who had strayed out of his domain into theology. Since then, specimens of minimizing interpretation have been put into our own tongue, as curious as any furnished by the history of finesse. If there be one Canon expressing a rule absolute that needs no exception to prove it, we have it in the words, Rome never minimises. She always interprets her own documents as a legatee interprets a will, that is, in her own favour.
On June 15 the Council disposed of all the matters that stood in the way of the great question. Seventy-five speakers had entered their names. Two speeches were actually made on that day by Cardinals Mathieu and Rauscher.[433] The latter said that he could never assent to the doctrine of the Draft without mortal sin. "We knew all that from your pamphlet," cried Deschamps, interrupting. "But you have never refuted it," replied the Austrian.[434] The following day was the grand procession of the Corpus Christi. If the "good press" was parsimonious in information regarding debates and decrees, it was profuse in description of the spectacles. On the 17th, Pius IX entered on the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate. This year, according to Roman tradition, is fatal to the Pontiffs, it being held that Peter reigned twenty-five years, and that none of his successors was to reign longer. Vitelleschi declares that the twenty-fifth year proved fatal to Pius IX, as well as to the rest, because in the course of it he ceased to be a mere mortal. This phrase from a Liberal Catholic will seem natural when set beside one of M. Veuillot, on the day on which Pius IX completed the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate: "We are reminded of the radiance of Jordan and of Tabor, of the thunders of the Temple, 'This is my beloved Son, hear ye him'" (vol. ii. p. 468). On the next page he says, "God has left us His priest, His angel, the sacred interpreter of His law, the anointed intercessor between Him and the world ... a second Peter, a second Moses on the threshold of a new world." It remains to be seen whether the twenty-fifth year of Pius IX was or was not that of the final fall of the temporal power. If the speeches on the doctrine and polity of the Church were concealed, the Pope's speech this day, in reply to the Sacred College, was blazed abroad. He divided the bishops into three classes--the ignorant, the time-serving, and the good. So flowed abroad fresh streams from that fountain which, all the time, was sending forth both sweet waters and bitter.
On June 18, the debate on the fourth chapter, that is, on infallibility, really began. It was a day of Cardinals. Pitra, Guidi, Bonnechose, and Cullen were the sole orators. Hitherto, what with the heat and what with the feeling that all was over, no interest had attached to the renewed debates after the violent close of the general discussion. But the torpor was suddenly shaken. A speech by a Roman, a Dominican and a Cardinal (Guidi), came upon the city, says Vitelleschi, like a sudden thunderclap in a cloudless sky. The Cardinal, like nearly all the members of the Sacred College, was a "creature" of Pius IX. According to Vitelleschi, he began his speech as a Cardinal should, but, according to Quirinus, he offended at the very first. Unhappily, in a matter of difference of this kind, the writers who enjoyed "the radiance of infallibility" give us no light. So we are left at the mercy of those whose assertions were all lies in general, but somehow, when attacked in detail, generally proved to be truths in particular. In the present case, we do not remember that even M. Veuillot attempts to impugn any of the facts stated. However Guidi may have begun, he affirmed that the doctrine of Papal infallibility, as contained in the proposed Decree, was unknown to the Church up to the close of the fourteenth century. Proofs of this doctrine were to be sought in vain in either Scripture or tradition. As a practical question, when had the Pope ever defined one dogma alone, and without the Church? An act, he continued, might be infallible, but a person never. Hitherto infallible acts had proceeded from the Church, either by counsel of the Church dispersed, or by a Council. Inquiry was indispensable to ascertain "what was believed everywhere, and whether all Churches were in agreement with the Roman Church." After such inquiry, the Pope sanctioned "finally," as St. Thomas says; and thus only could it be said that "all taught through the Pope." Quoting Bellarmine, and even the modern Jesuit Perrone, he showed that "the Popes had never acted by themselves alone in defining doctrine, or by themselves alone in condemning heresies." At these words, Spaccapietra, an Italian, but Bishop of Smyrna, led in a disturbance. One bishop cried "Scoundrel!" another cried "Brigand!" Vitelleschi even speaks of violent gestures (p. 189). Guidi said he had the right to be heard, and that no one had given the right of the Presidents to the bishops; but he added, "You will have the opportunity of saying Placet or Non placet." Hereupon, from all ranks of the Opposition burst out a cry of "Optime! optime!"--excellent! excellent! "Do you agree with us?" asked a bishop of Manning. "The Cardinal's head is bewildered," was the reply. On this, says Quirinus, a bishop could not refrain from saying to the powerful Archbishop of Westminster, "It is your own head, Monsignor, that is bewildered, and more than half Protestant." If this language was really used, we must doubt whether it was infallible.
Guidi went on to advocate a change in the wording of the Decree, to the effect that the Pope acted with the concurrence of the bishops, and that after having, at their request, occasioned by prevalent errors, made inquiry in other Churches, he acted with the consent of his brethren, or with that of a collective Council. He contended that this was the doctrine of St. Thomas; that the word "final" implied something to precede, and that "supreme teacher and judge" presupposed "other teachers and tribunals." He concluded by proposing two Canons, the first of which declared Papal Decrees or Constitutions to be entitled to cordial faith and reverence, and not to be reformable; but the second said, If any one shall say that, in issuing such Decrees, the Pope can act arbitrarily without the counsel of the bishops as testifying to the tradition of the Church, let him be anathema.[435] On finishing his discourse, he at once handed his manuscript to the secretaries.
Quirinus relates that Valerga audibly said, in reply to some question, "Guidi is misguided." But his neighbour replied that Guidi's speech contained nothing but the truth. "Yes," rejoined the Patriarch of Jerusalem, "but it is not always expedient to speak the truth." The excitement was great. Groups of prelates who had left the Hall might be seen standing about everywhere in earnest conversation, while within doors Bonnechose and Cullen were discoursing to a thin audience with absent minds. It was related that Guidi did not speak as a solitary individual, but represented fifteen bishops belonging to the Order of Dominicans. He had gathered them together in the central convent of the Minerva, where he himself resided. They had considered the question, and accepted the views which he had now presented to the Council. This was much against the feeling of Father Jandel, their general, who was perfectly free from any taint of the episcopal system, a thoroughly right-minded Papist. Guidi asked how the Cardinals had taken his speech, and Cardinal Mathieu replied, "With serious and silent approval."
Rumours were soon afloat in Rome as to what followed between Guidi and his royal master. What we now give is traced by Quirinus to the authority of the Pope himself, who is notoriously fond of telling the people with whom he chats how he has lectured this or that dignitary.[436]
The "creature" was summoned to the presence of his master soon after the sitting, and was greeted with the words, "You are my enemy. You are the coryphæus of my opponents. Ungrateful towards my person, you have propounded heretical doctrine." "My speech is in the hands of your Presidents, if your Holiness will read it and detect what is supposed to be heretical in it. I gave it at once to the Under-Secretary, that people might not be able to say that anything had been interpolated into it."[437] "You have given great offence to the majority of the Council. All five Presidents are against you, and are displeased." "Some material error may have escaped me, but certainly not a formal one. I have simply stated the doctrine of tradition, and of St. Thomas." "I am tradition. I will require you to make the profession of faith anew. La tradizione son' io, vi faro far nuovamente la professione di fide." "I am and remain subject to the authority of the Holy See, but I venture to discuss a question not yet made an article of faith. If your Holiness decides to be such in a Constitution, I certainly shall not dare to oppose it." "The value of your speech may be measured by those whom it has pleased. Who has been eager to testify to you his joy? That Bishop Strossmayer, who is my personal enemy, has embraced you. You are in collusion with him." "I do not know him, and have never before spoken to him." "It is clear you have spoken so as to please the world, the Liberals, the Revolution, and the government of Florence." "Holy Father, have the goodness to have my speech given to you."
It was said that the Pope stated afterwards that he had not sent for Guidi as a Cardinal, but as Brother Guidi, whom he had himself lifted out of the dust. The saying, "I am tradition," made an impression in Rome much like the celebrated one of the French monarch, "I am the State." It simply packed up and labelled the thought that had been more or less confusedly before the minds of all. Quirinus speaks of having often had the words "I am the Church" in his thoughts--l'Eglise c'est moi. We do not see that the Pope could have said anything more sensible or more exactly representing the theology and history which the favourite champions had put before the world. Quirinus very properly thinks that this formula fits well with the pregnant saying of Boniface VIII, "The Pope holds all rights locked up in his breast." Truths and rights go together. Tradition consists of truths, and the Pope is all truth. Rights are based upon the truths, and the Pope holds them all in his own breast. And if the poor old man himself at last uttered these sad words, it was only after the incense had smoked around him thousands and thousands of times, hiding the realities of heaven from him by clouds that were only fumes. For this others were responsible, at least in part. Under the influence of it, what wonder if his senses had become confused? Mankind will have reason to be thankful that one Pope lived long enough to be thoroughly overcome by the smoke of the sacrifices. The ordinary reason assigned in Rome for Popes being short-lived is, that it is necessary to prevent the effects of their power upon themselves.
The gravamen of Guidi's offence could not be removed by any subsequent submission. Seeing that the Canon he proposed had emerged into the light, the record could not be got out of the book of history that a Dominican, a divine of repute, a Cardinal in high credit, did up to that last hour of liberty hold that it was a heresy worthy of anathema to affirm the very doctrine which was soon to be part of "the faith." The record could not be prevented from going down to future ages that what was, on June 18, and under the dome of St. Peter's, liable to be called a heresy, was on July 18 under the same dome, promulged by the voice of the Pope as truth, and as binding on every human being who would be saved. Nor can craft ever blot out from the history of the eccentricities of intellect the instance offered by the fact that after this had been done, grave and learned men, even of advanced age and high office, went throughout the civilized world soberly affirming that the only reason why the dogma was then proclaimed, was that it had been clearly revealed by our Lord and His apostles, and had in every age been held as revealed truth by all Catholics, in all places.
Vitelleschi is not quite clear as to whether all the incidents reported of the interview between the Pope and the Cardinal were correct. To him that is of no importance; Roman-like, he did not want anything to illustrate the relation of the Pope to his courtiers or to the Church. A few such scenes, more or less, would to him make no difference whatever.
As if to prepare for the deeds directly tending to the restoration of facts when the Council should have completed the restoration of ideas, the tales of the Crusaders of St. Peter continued to appear side by side with the notices of the legislative proceedings in the successive numbers of the Civiltá. To us one episode comes near home. It was on an April day that a company leaving Rome bore across the Campagna, with all the solemnity of a relic of the saints, the heart of one whose body, in the Agro Verano, the cemetery of St. Lorenzo, slept close by the tombs of the ancient martyrs, and amid those of the martyrs of Mentana. As the party reached a point on the hill within a few steps of the village,--a point from which St. Peter's appeared in the distance,--they saw a block of white marble, surrounded by four little columns, hung round by an iron chain. "Here," cried some zouaves who were of the party,--"Here is the spot to which Julian pushed on, chasing the enemies of God with fire and sword, passing through a thousand bullets, of which one carried away his cap; and here he fell shot down at point blank." Above the marble block rose "the cross of Mentana," and on it was cut the inscription, "Here fell, fighting for the See of St. Peter, Julian Watts-Russell, pontifical zouave, a young Englishman of 17 years and 10 months old, the most youthful who fell on the field of victory, and the nearest to Mentana." In this "angelic sepulchre," as the courtly historian calls it, the solemn party deposited their holy relic. Around were grouped the villagers, with a few zouaves, among whom were Mr. Vansittart, who had come to take up the arms of his fallen friend, and Wilfred Watts-Russell, the brother and the fellow-crusader of Julian. The rites were celebrated by a venerable old man, yet, says the narrator, a new priest, who now, perhaps, for the first time performed the funeral service. It was the father of Julian and Wilfred. "As we returned," moralizes the zealous historian, "we felt that we had committed to the ground the seed of martyrs."[438]
After the Guidi incident the debate dragged on. The heats were growing worse and worse. At length, on July 2, the weary wheels seemed as if they would go no longer. The list of speakers still inscribed threatened very considerable detention. Hefele had entered his name among the earliest, and when he applied for his turn found he was somewhere "in the fifties," and when he next applied, that he was in "the seventies." Had the minority foreseen what was hidden behind clouds, but ready to thunder forth, they would perhaps have kept the debate open; and so the Papacy would have been saved from the last fatal step. Just now, by a strange coincidence, appeared in the Civiltá the tale describing the march of the newly landed French troops for Mentana in 1867, with their sisters of mercy. "O France!" cried the literary crusader, "may the angels of God who to a field of just but terrible vengeance accompanied that host, warring only for celestial charity, evermore protect the land of generous hearts."[439] But, not knowing what was so near at hand, the minority at last reached the point at which men are ready to say, We are fighting in vain, and therefore fighting without justification. They agreed among themselves that they might as well give up their right to speak, and let matters be brought to a crisis. On July 4, when the Council met, Schwarzenberg and others gave up their right. The formidable name of Darboy was called. No Darboy was there. So that instead of a final argument in opposition, there was his conspicuous example in favour of withdrawing. For a long time every one who had done so had received marks of approbation both from the Council and from the Presidents, and every expedient had been used to induce men to abridge the discussion. It was soon apparent that the leaders of the Opposition had adopted a common policy. One after another waived his right. A couple of inconsiderable men claimed their turn, but said little. The bulk of the men on both sides entered into the general movement, and to the relief of all, and the delight of the triumphant majority, Cardinal De Luca announced that the list of the speakers was exhausted, and that the debate was closed. So, as early as half-past nine o'clock, people saw the Fathers gliding down the cathedral and dispersing over the city. They wondered what had released them so early, and, as Vitelleschi says, little realized the importance of their decisions, either to the Church or to the world.
Dated on the very day on which the discussion closed, the Civiltá issued an article on the Decline of Liberalism, which shows how the political aspects of the legislation, now nearly completed, were kept in view.[440] A Catholic gale, says the writer, seems to be passing over the world, vivifying and gladdening society, corrupted and worm-eaten by Liberalism.
A single people, the Roman, finds itself, by the special providence of God, free from this universal Liberal domination; and this Roman people alone, still happily governed according to the laws of God, in contradiction to the great principles of modern society, enjoys the sweet fruits of true progress, and is the object of admiration and envy; for of it alone can it be said, Happy is the people whose God is the Lord. As a drunken slave used to be exhibited to the Spartans to inspire them with hatred of intemperance, so Providence in almost every part of Europe has allowed slaves drunk and mad with Liberalism, slaves of tyrants sprung out of the dung-hill, to be exhibited till Europe, now weary of Liberalism, could only look to Rome and to her civil and religious head, not merely the sole guardian and faithful depositary, but the infallible herald of the principles of universal religion and truth, civilization and prosperity, even natural and social, among nations as well as among individuals. We may say that from the first stage of the movement to the last, it is nations and not individuals that are kept in view.
In Bavaria, Belgium, and Portugal, the writer asserts, the Catholics are escaping from the trammels of the Masons. In Austria the same process is in preparation. In France they are more resolved than ever to sustain Rome. In Italy Liberalism is exhausted, despised, divided, and falling. "Even in Protestant and heterodox countries, Rome, with her civil and religious prince, stands in much higher credit than Italy and other Liberal governments apparently stronger."
Sneering at an allusion of the Journal des Débats to the vaunted hopes of the Catholics, accompanied by the remark that in spite of their absurdity it was nevertheless prudent to keep an eye on the clock which was to sound the return of the hour for great things the Civiltá says it will not deny that Liberalism has some "bad quarters of an hour" before it. It equally thinks that now it is neither imprudent nor rash "to hope, and that within a time not remote, for the victory of Rome and its Pontiff-king, so far as Italy is concerned, and for the victory of the social, civil, and religious principles which that king represents and preclaims."
The triumph over intellect it holds to be patent and ascertained, and therefore this hope of a triumph in facts is reasonable.
Providence, continues the soothsayer, cannot permit the Church to be long the victim of the devices of the gates of hell, particularly of those devices with which the States of the Church are now beset. After making allusion to hopes which had been entertained of the Pope's death, and asserting his florid health and his prospect of living many years, he proceeds: "The Pontiff lives and reigns in Rome more secure, more glorious, more influential, more beloved than his enemies." Not only is the fact that this potentate was defended by the arms of France entirely absent from the consciousness of the writer, but he indulges in jibes clearly addressed to the very Emperor who had restored the Pontiff and kept him up. "Sound Catholic principles now seem to politicians the only support of material order and of economical interests." The writer goes on to show that all the implements of Liberalism have been employed on behalf of the Papacy, and that with success--meetings, addresses, collections, votes, illuminations.
Writing with an expectation that before its words came under the eye of his readers (p. 174) they would have already learned that the great word had been spoken, and that Papal infallibility had taken its place among revealed truths, the writer proceeds to indicate the range of the new attribute:--
The Roman Pontiff is the Vicar of Christ. Therefore is he the continuator of the work of Christ in the world. He, standing in His stead, is the witness to the truth in the midst of us. Christ is the voice of the Father, and the Pontiff is the voice of Christ. The Father, in the fulness of time, spake unto us by His Son. The Son, after His return to the Father, continues to speak to us by His Vicar. Now, is it conceivable that a lie can ever be found in such a mouth, in such a word?--and if it could be found, would not the mission of Christ and the duration of His reign have vanished ipso facto? Affirming the infallibility of the Pontiff, therefore, means no less than affirming the duration of the reign of Christ upon earth.
Many who, on beginning to read this work, would have shrunk from interpreting language as to the Kingdom of Christ or the reign of Christ in the Jesuit sense, will by this time be prepared to see how a fallen faith which in effect brings down our Lord to the level of the Pope, must impress itself on the language of those who hold it. Any thoughtful man who will spend a few minutes in calmly setting out before his mind the ideas here shown to rule the mind of a Jesuit, will ever after attach a more definite meaning to the language of Ultramontanes when they speak of the Word of God, the Kingdom of God, the Christian civil system, or use any other terms, affecting the relative positions of the Pope and of the rest of the human race.
The writer of this article gratefully recognizes the surpassing zeal of France and her title to the first place among nations devoted to the Church. Those who form exceptions to the general devotion of France do not belong to her. The Opposition in the Council are called the new Arians, a clear analogy being discerned between denying to our Lord His divinity and denying to the Pope his place as the infallible representative of the Lord. The dogma, continues the Civiltá, would now come forth with the double advantage of an acclamation and a discussion. The famous petition for the definition, by a vast majority of the bishops, was indeed an acclamation, and to this had been added an ample discussion. It asserts that there never had been in the history of the world so full and exhaustive an examination of any question. The writer is unconscious of the fact that before changing a principle of law, or even a fiscal arrangement like a duty on corn, we slow English sometimes employ as many years as they had employed months in settling the source of all principles for ever. Not only so, but with us each new thread shot into the progressive web of the discussion is laid bare to every eye and to every magnifying glass that nature and art can lend. The Civiltá puts in even the word "ventilated" among the epithets denoting the unparalleled winnowing of this great question. Why, the Civiltá itself, during the progress of the discussion, readily told, indeed, who celebrated mass, who died, who received a title, a distinction, or a place, who got leave to stay away; but it did not even tell who spoke, much less anything about what was said. It gave not a word of information to the whole Catholic Church of what was proposed to be done with its creed, or of what the assembled bishops thought of the proposal. In the very same volume where these fine words are written, we have this specimen of the Civiltá's history, with which we connect one from Monsignor Guérin, as showing what free air will blow around the chairs of history in our colleges and around the tables of our editors when once dogma has achieved its Sedan (VII. xi. 237). "Our readers will be gratified"--a blundering English journalist would have commenced such a paragraph with apologies for not being able to tell his readers anything worth knowing, but the accomplished Jesuit begins with congratulating them on the amount of information he is about to give--"Our readers will be gratified to have under their eyes a view of how many spoke, or gave up the right of speaking, in the discussion on the 4th chapter,"--that is, on the great chapter containing the express statement of infallibility.
June 15, 1 Reporter and 2 Speakers. June 18, 3 Speakers. June 20, 1 Reporter and 4 Speakers. June 22, 7 Speakers. June 23, 5 Speakers. June 25, 6 Speakers and 2 gave up their right. June 28, 6 Speakers. June 30, 6 Speakers and 2 gave up their right. July 1, 6 Speakers. July 2, 9 Speakers and 14 gave up their right. July 4, 2 Speakers and 42 gave up their right.
The excellent Monsignor says (p. 113),--and it is for thoughtful men to spend a little time in forming a clear idea of what would be the condition of the world if its information on its supreme affairs was supplied in this fashion:--
There were General Congregations on the 8th of January, the 10th, the 14th, the 15th, the 18th, the 19th, the 21st, the 22nd, the 24th, the 25th, the 27th, the 31st, on the 3rd of February, the 4th, the 7th, the 8th, the 10th, the 14th, the 15th, the 18th, the 21st, the 22nd. An interruption of the General Congregations for a month; a resumption of the Congregation on the 18th of March, (thirtieth Congregation), the 22nd, the 23rd, the 25th, the 26th, the 28th, the 29th, the 30th, the 31st, the 1st of April, the 4th, the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, the 12th, the 19th.
We do not know why this instructive method of writing the most important of histories, that of the process of making laws for the whole world, is not continued through and through. Vestments and processions, bulls or Papal briefs, are not in the same manner hidden behind Arabic numerals. Any one may, at the British Museum, feast his own eyes on a specimen of such luminous history. The seventh volume of Frond is the History of the Council. The student will find it a folio in sumptuous Morocco, with gilt edges, and paper thicker than vellum. He will find it faultless and very full in matters of rank, precedence, forms and ceremonies; each cope and favour, each lappet, and each heave of the censer is well and duly noted. But as to questions respecting what men thought, said, proposed, deprecated, or took delight in, the poor student may open three leaves in succession and find both sides filled with mere numerals, names, and titles.[441] One grave historical error is confessed in the corrigenda. On a certain occasion even the pen guided by the "radiance of infallibility" slipped so far as to say that their Eminences the Cardinals were to be in black stockings. The correction shows that "black slippers" were the proper words.
It would for a time have seemed as if the glories once foretold to follow the dogma had considerably faded from the eyes of the seers during the wearying months of debate. Now, however, that the goal was in sight, the vistas reopened, and if translucent clouds rendered the distant view indistinct, they greatly enhanced its splendour. Still there was no weak expectation that the great results would be instantly attained. As centuries were required to bring the Anti-Papal movement in society to the present pass, so was it calculated that centuries would be required to bring the counter-movement to its full development.
It is not to be believed that an event so glorious, and one brought about by God with dispensations so singular, is to remain confined within itself. It will be prolific of prodigious effects in every social sphere for the salvation of the nations. God does not work by accident, or set in motion great means for small ends. We do not hesitate to affirm that just as the subversive negations of authority which prevailed at the Council of Basle indicated the principles of the great politico-religious revolution of modern times, so the reparative affirmation of all the privileges of the See of Peter now so solemnly made by the Vatican Council will indicate the principles of restoration in every public and private sphere of Christendom. Hence in the series of the centuries this of ours will be a day blest and magnified as that in which, thanks to the Council held under Pio Nono, the light again dawned on an oppressed world wrapped up in the darkness of the Revolution (pp. 178-9).
The writer does not overlook us non-Catholics. For us also the great event was pregnant with blessing, showing us, above all things, "the divine organization of the Church," and in it showing us the "remedy for the unbridled excesses of private judgment, the parent of that Babel confusion in which we are involved." Therefore,
to Mary, sweet Lady and Queen of this kingdom of Christ, be loving thanksgivings rendered, for after God to her favour do we trace the benefit obtained. Scarcely had we read in the Bull of Convocation that the Council would open its sittings on the day sacred to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, before we felt a firm and immovable hope of the definition of pontifical infallibility. It was fitting that the Pontiff who, amid the applause of the Christian world, had dogmatically asserted the highest prerogatives of her holiness, should himself behold the highest prerogatives of his apostolic ministry dogmatically affirmed (p. 180).
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 425: It seems that the Bishop of Orleans, and most of the French prelates in opposition, wished to make a solemn protest against the treatment they had met with; against the advantage taken of the hot season to weary them; against the want of fairness shown towards them by the Presidents all through the discussion; and, lastly, against the excesses, insults, and affronts of which the majority had been guilty with regard to them. Having made this protest, they proposed to leave Rome immediately.--Vitelleschi, p. 200.]
[Footnote 426: Quirinus, p. 624.]
[Footnote 427: We have avoided noting the charges of misquotation and falsification of authorities made on the one side and the other. It would be endless.]
[Footnote 428: Quirinus says that he should think it a sin to print it, but that the Romans freely credited and repeated it.]
[Footnote 429: Serie VII. xi. p. 94.]
[Footnote 430: Veuillot, ii. p. 389.]
[Footnote 431: Friedberg, 688; or a French translation in Le Concile du Vat. et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste, p. 212.]
[Footnote 432: Das Vatikanische Dogma, p. 5.]
[Footnote 433: Stimmen and Acta Sanctæ Sedis.]
[Footnote 434: Quirinus, p. 684.]
[Footnote 435: Friedberg, p. 144.]
[Footnote 436: Quirinus, p. 714.]
[Footnote 437: The Difficultés de la Situation says that Guidi replied, "Holy Father, I have spoken to-day what I taught for many years, in broad daylight, in your College of the Minerva, without any one ever having found my doctrine blameable. The orthodoxy of my teaching must have been certified to your Holiness when you selected me to go to Vienna to combat certain German doctors whose principles were shaking the foundations of the Catholic faith." Printed in French in the Appendix III. to Quirinus (p. 848).]
[Footnote 438: Civiltá, VII. xi. 424-5.]
[Footnote 439: VII. xi. 37.]
[Footnote 440: Civiltá, VII. xi. p. 129.]
[Footnote 441: E.g. pp. 224, 226, 228.]
Chapter VII
To the Eve of the Great Session, July 18--A Fresh Shock for the Opposition--Serious Trick of the Presidents and Committee--Outcry of the French Bishops--Proposal to Quit the Council--They send in another Protest--What is Protestantism?--Immediate War not foreseen--Contested Canon adopted--The Bishops threatened--Hasty Proceedings--Final Vote on the Dogma--Unexpected Firmness of the Minority--Effect of the Vote--Deputation to the Pope--His incredible Prevarication--Ketteler's Scene--Counter Deputation of Manning and Senestrey--Vast Changes in the Decrees made in a Moment--Petty Condemnations--The Minority flies.
It might have been thought that incidents of public interest had now terminated. On the very next day, however, after the close of the great discussion, occurred a collision which, had the opposition been morally capable of saving anything, would have given it the opportunity of saving the Roman Catholic Church from falling into the condition of a body without any constitution, except the "inner light" of one man. It opened their eyes, perhaps not more widely, but once more. It smote their feelings, excited a momentary effort at action, and ended in a protest drawn up by Bishop Dinkel.
One Sunday the Fathers were studying sixty-two amendments proposed on the second chapter of the great Decree. It seemed awful work to decide so many points affecting the faith on a single Monday morning! But behold, in the evening come in one hundred and twenty-two amendments on the fourth chapter, to be voted upon on the Tuesday!
The procedure was on this wise. Amendments suggested, after being in the hands of the Committee, were reported in print, and then put to the vote. The Sub-Secretary said, The committee oppose the amendment: let those who oppose it stand up. Or, The Committee accept the amendment: let those who accept it stand up. So by scores at a time were questions settled on which men had had no chance of reflecting. Only once, says La Liberté du Concile, did the Fathers succeed in obtaining from the Presidents a delay. It was on the very occasion just mentioned, when they showed that the only time permitted to them to read over the hundred and twenty-two amendments to be despatched on the Tuesday, would be what would be left of the Monday after they had despatched no less than sixty-two. They did obtain twenty-four hours' extension of the time. "You are convoked on purpose to vote," says the writer, who, be it remembered, printed only fifty copies, for Cardinals alone, "and you have not time to study not even to read it over again" (Doc. i. p. 175).
If ever an important act was passed by an assembly it was the Canon which closes the third chapter of the great Vatican Decree. Quirinus hardly exaggerates its importance when he speaks of it, if interpreted by the rules of Canon law, as handing over the bodies and souls of all men to one. On July 5, the Fathers had in print before them a formula for this Canon, and three proposed amendments. The Bishop of Rovigo, as reporter for the committee, broke all rule first by saying that amendments No. 70 and 71 should not be voted upon, as the committee had adopted No. 72, with a modification. It would appear that, utter as was the disregard here manifested even of the Pope's own Rules as well as of the rights of the proposers of the amendments and of those of the Council, this was allowed to pass. But soon even that broken-spirited Opposition was roused. It was plain to some that what the Bishop read as No. 72 was not what was in print as 72. The Presidents wanted to put what had been read, but then, according to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, arose Haynald and protested. Though the Council itself had no right to shape the amendments, the Rules required that all amendments should be put before it as they had been shaped by the committee, and it was for the Council to say Yea or Nay. Darboy also rose, and more fully entered his protest. The protest could not at the moment be brushed aside. Here was obviously a proposal differing from that of the committee, foisted in against all rule, and without notice. For once the prohibition against speaking to order had been defied. The Presidents, thrown into confusion, could not conceal the attempted trick; yet they durst not abandon the spurious Canon. They therefore said something about inadvertence, and withdrew it for the present, to be submitted to the committee, then to be printed and voted upon at another time.
The fact was that the difference between the two forms involved the whole question of jurisdiction between bishops and Pope. One form had been withdrawn by the committee, and an amendment had been accepted. The Pope was incensed. He ordered the third Canon to be altered back to the form which had been objected to, and even this was greatly strengthened. He never submitted the alteration to the committee, but sent it direct to the reporter to be then and there put to the vote instead of the Canon which stood on the printed Order of the Day. How great was the difference in the wording of what the Fathers had before them in print, and what was attempted to be palmed upon them, is obvious on reading the two--
THE CANON AS IT WAS IN THE CANON AS IT WAS READ PRINT AND ATTEMPTED TO BE PUT TO THE VOTE
If any shall say that the If any one shall say that the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff Roman Pontiff has only an is only an office of supervision office of supervision or and direction, and that his direction, but not plenary and supreme jurisdiction over the supreme power over the whole universal Church is not plenary, Church, both in things but only extraordinary and pertaining to faith and morals, mediate, let him be anathema. and also in those pertaining to the discipline and government of the Church dispersed through all the earth, or that he has only the chief portion but not the entire fulness of this supreme power, or that this his power is not ordinary and immediate, whether over the Churches all and singular, or over pastors and believers all and singular, let him be anathema.
Meditation on what was involved in these claims to all-absorbing power was not likely to relieve the bishops of the pain caused by the stealthy attempt upon their vote. What the Presiding Cardinals and the Bishop of Rovigo had tried to steal from them, was not trash. It was all that ancient bishops, even when acknowledging the primacy of Rome, would have fought for with at least ecclesiastical weapons. Of the Committee not a man spoke his scorn, and the steady majority was not shaken. The world accused it of conspiring against the rights and liberties of mankind. It might full as well have been accused of conspiring against the rights and liberties of bishops. If the official organs had often, during the Council, used such language as "lying" and so forth, they were quiet now, while words like "lying," "cheating," "deceiving," etc., flew freely about, and, if Quirinus be correct, were repeatedly used in the meetings of the bishops of the minority.
But if the majority was not disturbed, a note rang out from the French minority which might remind any one who has lived in their country through a revolution, of the Prend ton sac--Take thy sack!--the three sudden taps which at such a time make timid hearts in a house beat as if they had been hit by the drumstick.
"1. The hour of Providence has struck," cries this voice, with the true French ring. "The decisive moment for saving the Church has arrived. 2. By the additions made to the third Canon of the third chapter, the committee, de fide, has violated the Rules, which permit not the introduction of any amendment without discussion by the Council. 3. The addition surreptitiously made is of importance beyond calculation. It changes the constitution of the Church. It enacts the monarchy of the Pope pure, absolute, and indivisible. It carries the abolition of the judicial rights and the co-sovereignty of the bishops, and with it the affirmation and anticipatory definition of separate and personal infallibility. 4. Duty and honour permit us not to vote this Canon without discussion, as it contains an immense revolution. The discussion can and may last six months, for it affects the capital question, the very constitution of the sovereign power in the Church. 5. This discussion is impossible, because of the pressure of the season and the disposition of the majority. 6. One thing alone, worthy and honourable, remains to be done--to demand the immediate prorogation of the Council till the month of October, and to present a declaration, in which all the protests already sent in shall be enumerated, and the last violation of the Rules shall be set forth, as well as the contempt shown to the dignity and liberty of the bishops. At the same time, we must give notice of our intended departure, which can no longer be deferred. 7. By the departure, on such grounds, of a considerable number of bishops of all nations, the oecumenicity of the Council would be at an end, and all acts which it might subsequently adopt would be null in point of authority. 8. The courage and devotedness of the minority would produce an immense effect in the world. The Council would meet in the month of October in circumstances vastly more favourable. All the questions now only broached would be taken up again and treated with dignity and liberty. The Church would be saved, and the moral order of the world."[442]
Had this energetic advice been adopted, the Roman Catholic Church would for the time have been saved from the last step in a downward series; but whether the moral order of the world would have been the better is another question. Those who seek a moral order higher than could be given by the men who attempted to palm the new Canon upon the Council, may well be content to have the lines drawn and the forces defined. The Council has given to all men an opportunity of knowing, if they will, what are the morals of the Pope and his officers, and what is order in their vocabulary. The moral order of the world must now be secured either under the absolute dominion of the Pontiff, or, as it has been best secured before, over the remains of his pretensions.
But the bishops of the minority were not the men to give the Church a further chance of continuing that confusion of all moral order which resulted from her old ambiguities. They did now as they had done before--let her take her way, and sent in a protest stating the main facts of the deception and breach of Rules.[443] One can almost see the smiles of the men in power at the sight of one piece of paper more.
If ever there was a case to justify the hasty saying ascribed to Burke, that Protestantism is a mere negation, it was that of the Vatican minority always protesting and never maintaining its ground. Of course, every protest has its negative side, but that is the side turned towards him who is protested against. It always has its positive side; that is, the side of him who makes the protest. He asserts a right. Dr. Newman, in a moment of sound sense, said, "What is the very meaning of the word 'Protestantism,' but that there is a call to speak out?"[444] So, when in a day of mercy, nations, hearing from heaven a call to speak out, protested against the sins and follies of the Pontiff, their protest was indeed a mere negation to him whose pretensions were rolled back; but to those who made the protest good, it was a positive upholding of existing rights, a positive recovery of lapsed rights, a positive deliverance from great evils, and a positive entrance into possession of great and heritable good. They protested against the doctrinal authority of the Pontiff, and maintained the doctrinal authority of the Bible. They protested against the authority of ecclesiastical courts or Councils to fetter the press, the pulpit, or the private conscience. In doing so, they maintained a duty imposed, and a right given, by God. The negative result was to the Inquisition and the Curia. The positive result was to the Press, the Pulpit, the Civil Court, and the silent tribunal of the Soul, with its reinstated jury of accusing and excusing thoughts. They protested against indulgences, purgatory, and all the commerce of the mass, and maintained the free gift of God's unpurchaseable grace, the sovereignty of His judgment, the finished and all-perfect sacrifice of His Son. They protested against sensuous and idolatrous spectacle, and upheld scriptural worship; protested against colours, scents, and gorgeous dress, and upheld sound teaching, borrowing all its glory from spiritual elements, none from physical; they protested against priestly caste, and upheld a brotherhood, a royal nation of priests; they protested against progressive conformity to newly-invented superstitions, against the service of local and subordinate divinities, and at the same time upheld progressive conformity to the standard of our Lord and His apostles. They protested against the idea of one fold or one pen, but upheld that of one flock diversified in its members, various in its folds, but one in love to the common Lord and in likeness to the common Father.
When Darboy and Dupanloup, on July 4, gave up the attempt of averting the definition by delay, how little did they know that a couple of days later and the whole prospect of the Papacy would be changed. When the Pope on the morrow of that day followed up his victory by the additional blow which the surreptitious Canon dealt at the very semblance of liberty or rule in the Council, how little did he suspect that the visions of restoration long floating before his fancy were to give place to real scenes of fresh disaster. It was only on June 10 that Ollivier, in the Chamber of Deputies, gave confident assurances of peace, while on July 6, in the same Chamber, Gramont sounded an unmistakable blast of war. Even now, human foresight did not measure the rapidity with which events were to rush to a collision, and then to a catastrophe. Napoleon III had so often seemed bent on measuring himself with Prussia, and had so often drawn back, that it was not unreasonable to hope that, even after bellicose words, he might be prudent once more.
The next week following that day which placed in hazard the fortunes of the restorer of the Papacy and those of the Papacy itself, was spent in the Council in voting the chapters in their final shape. The Canon which had been brought surreptitiously forward on the fifth was produced in the regular manner on the thirteenth, and after all the outcry it was passed; "the most pregnant article," says Quirinus, "that had been laid before any Council for six hundred years." It was now voted by rising and sitting,--which is not to be wondered at when originally the Presidents had wanted it to be voted without being even known. We must not blame the minority for not now debating it. The Rules did not allow of this. It had been adopted by the committee and must be met with a Yea or Nay. How many voted against this pregnant act is uncertain. Some say fifty or sixty, some ninety or a hundred.[445] In that act every shred and tatter of the Gallican liberties, or any other liberties, except that of doing the Pope's will, passed from the Papal officers, whom, as Quirinus says, the Roman Chancery still calls bishops. The chapter to which this Canon was attached annulled all national rights whatever, whether Gallican, Josephine, or parliamentary, which might conflict with the supreme authority. Vitelleschi (p. 202) says that the Secretary of State appeared very uneasy as to the opinion of governments on this fresh declaration. The bishops naturally would have similar apprehensions, but as to them, fear cast out fear. They had good reason to believe in the gentleness of Liberal governments, and they had no reason to believe in the gentleness of the Pope. They trusted, says Vitelleschi, to the tolerance and freedom of thought which has everywhere triumphed in modern days. With the Papal government, on the other hand, they had neither tolerance nor freedom to trust to. They knew that if they dared to provoke it, the stroke of Pius IX would come down hot and heavy. The oath of a bishop to the Pope, which obviously aims more at feudal vassalage than at spiritual works, had made the Emperor Joseph II feel that men bound by it were not citizens in the sense of free men. "It does not accord with the fidelity or obedience due by a bishop, as a subject, to his sovereign.... A bishop who feels himself bound by that oath must become perjured."[446]
Many writers mention what is clearly stated in a letter of Hefele, under date of July 9:--[447]
The intention of the Pope is, in spite of the minority, to proceed at once to the publication of the new dogma, and forthwith to hand to every bishop two documents for his signature: (1) A profession of faith containing the article of infallibility; (2) A solemn declaration that the Council has been a free one. So you see into what a position we are brought, and that it does not depend on our own will whether we shall remain in our places or not. He that will not sign will instantly be placed under censure.
According to Vitelleschi, this threat terrified the poor bishops of the Opposition. If they refused to acknowledge the validity of the Council, nothing, as he says, was before them but to resign their Sees. If they meant to impugn the validity of the Council, Rome was not the place in which to do it, and, what is still more significant, they themselves "were not the men to do it."
It proved on the next day that the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the vacant crown of Spain, which had given to France the occasion for a quarrel, had been withdrawn. But it also appeared that Lord Lyons had to reproach the Duke De Gramont with a breach of promise, inasmuch as the Duke had authorized him to assure her Majesty's Government that if the withdrawal of the prince could only be procured the affair would be at an end. It was plain that the long-prophesied attack of France was resolved upon at last. What with the impatience of the majority for the fruits of their victory and the disgust and discouragement of the minority, the sufferings from the heat and the solicitude occasioned by approaching war, the assembly had ceased to be, in any serious sense of the word, deliberative. Amendments literally by the score were now produced and disposed of with a haste which was in shocking contrast with the gravity of the subjects. La Liberté du Concile says that on the all-important chapters on faith there were proposed two hundred and eighty-one amendments. The Fathers were called on to vote them by standing and sitting, and this was done in such haste that they had not even time to re-read them. The Under-Secretary did not read them out. He cried, "Number ten, number fifty, or number seventy-seven," as the case might be, "the committee rejects: those who are in favour of its rejection stand up." The solid majority stood up, and all was over. So in another case he cried out, "Number five or fifteen," adding "The committee accepts: those who are in favour of accepting stand up"; and the same result. "I do not vote," said one bishop, "because not only am I unable to form a conviction, but I am unable even to form a clear idea of what is the point" (Documenta, i. 174). And each minutest point was to be irreformably fixed! We had, says this writer, four hundred quarto pages on the subject of infallibility, including notes, remarks, and all, while only a few days were allowed to study it. So when the Draft Decrees on Faith were for the second time brought out new cast, with a preamble, four chapters, and eighteen canons, twenty-four hours were allowed to prepare to discuss them; and the preparation must be in Latin. Twenty-four hours for an accountable creature of God to prepare himself to say whether he would take a side for or against laying upon himself the obligation to pronounce eighteen curses more against his fellow creatures!
The hope had been flattered all along that no anathema would be attached to the dogma of infallibility. But at the very last Bishop Gasser, of Brixen, one of the keen Curialists, produced the formula enriched with an anathema against any one who should presume to contradict it. Quirinus says that Gasser was unwilling to be left behind by Manning, Deschamps, Dreux-Brézé, and the Spaniards. Finally the whole was submitted to the solemn decision on that very day on which the French Chamber, that had so long voted money for the forces to support the Papacy in Rome, voted five hundred and fifteen millions of francs to break up united Germany once more.
On the morning of July 13 the hour had come. Up to the last it had been asserted that no bishops but two or three would say Non placet. Every form of assurance had been spoken and printed that this would prove to be the case. The Virgin, the Saints, ay, and even the Holy Spirit, had been over and over again pledged to procure this result. At last, Ketteler and Landriot of Rheims made a clever attempt to bring it about by proposing to the Opposition, with which they had seemed to be at one, that they should all vote Placet juxta modum (content on certain conditions).[448] This would have enabled the Court to say that there were no votes of "non-content." The Archbishop of Milan said, "The only befitting course for us who are convinced of the falsehood of the doctrine is to say, No."[449] The Pope, it is said, told Darboy that not above ten would vote Non placet.[450] Certain it is that bets would have been freely taken in Rome the night before that not a dozen would do so. The devout were confident because the Virgin would order it otherwise, and the worldly were confident because they thought the bishops would not be unmindful of their own interests.
The Hall once more received its aged senators. Eighteen centuries called to them to remember what a Church Christ had set up; how pure in principle, how free in regulations, how plain in forms, how simple in organization, how far from pomp or dreams of domination, from cursing, or from use of physical force; how little of a body, how much of a spirit, was that real Church. It was a leaven moving by the force of an inward and self-propagating life to leaven the whole lump, in which for itself it only asked to lie hidden, and by its innate force to determine the quality of the meal, not stooping to design a mould for the shape of the loaves, on a model as irreformable as the patterns of a Hindu artisan. Many bishops had said that they had found themselves called together to gratify one self-asserting man of ordinary gifts, and less than ordinary acquirements, by giving him a diploma as the titular Lord of the world, which would have no practical effect except that of making him dictator of the Church, and bringing them and their people into collision with everything bright and noble, which he, in his infatuation, had set himself to put down. Many of them, at considerable risk to their own interests, were determined to register their solemn No! In spite of all hopes previously entertained, the feeling that the minority were resolved had spread among the majority. Quirinus tells how Deschamps, who had drafted a set of supererogatory anathemas, and had only withdrawn them in face of serious threats from Maret, and who was therefore known as having sought to place every man of the minority in the dilemma between giving an instant affirmative vote, or being immediately outside the Church by anathema, now approached the leaders of the Opposition. "With humble gestures and whining voice," he entreated them to do as Ketteler and Landriot, profesedly belonging to them, had proposed, namely, to vote "Content on certain conditions," and said that really there was a disposition on the part of the authorities to insert qualifications. "The trick was too bare-faced to succeed." Darboy called the attention of the three Cardinals to this attempt to divide the Opposition at the last, and the bishops said to the new Primate of Belgium, on whose head the gifted already saw the mitre kindling into the flame-colour of a hat, "It is unexampled impudence." We shall find hereafter, in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, what would appear to be an allusion to this scene.
The voting then began. It appeared that there were six hundred and one bishops present, showing that many of those who were in the city had stayed away. Antonelli was not there. Of course all the men belonging to Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter were for the Pope. So were nearly all those of the Neapolitan States, and the overwhelming majority from the other portions of Italy; Spain, South America, and the missionary bishops, might be said to be as one man. But to the surprise of every one, several of the Orientals, under the Propaganda as they were, and terrorized as they had been, had the heart to say No. Even poor old Audu, Patriarch of Chaldea, dared to say Non placet, knowing, from his experience by night in the Vatican, to what he might be exposed. Of course Ballerini and Valerga, and other Romans, whose Orientalism went no deeper than their vestments, were Roman still. When the important preliminary votes had been taken by rising and sitting, the Sub-Secretary ascended the pulpit. He called out name after name, each one replying by the words, Placet, Non placet, or Placet juxta modum; that is, Content, Not Content, or Conditionally Content. The vast majority said Placet; but the stateliest of Cardinals, Prince Schwarzenberg, said No. Milan said No; Paris, No; Munich, No; Vienna, No; Gran, the Primatial See of Hungary, No; Lyons, the Primatial See of France, No. In all, no less than eighty-eight living witnesses that day lifted up their testimony, and sent it on to all after-time, that, so far as they knew, the doctrine of Papal infallibility had not been, and was not then, the faith of the Churches which they represented. Nearly all these did represent Churches, many of them the oldest, the most educated, and the most numerous in the Papal world. Maret, who was a bishop in partibus, being among the minority, was like a bird in the wrong flock.
Strange to say, no less than seven Cardinals then present in Rome abstained from voting. The abstentions altogether numbered eighty. Poor Cardinal Guidi, who had been sadly belaboured for his fault, had been forbidden to receive visitors, and had been made miserable by all the arts which priests can practise, and to which priests are exposed, now voted Juxta modum; that is, conditionally content. The number who did the same were sixty-two. A false impression was spread among the Liberal Catholics that these were all adverse to the definition. Not so. Some of them did not think the formula now before them strong enough, and had notable additions to propose. The Contents were, 451; the Non-contents, 88; and the Conditional Contents, 62.[451] The Acta of the Council contain not a syllable of this sitting, any more than of all the others of the General Congregations.
The effect of this vote in Rome was immense. No class of men had counted upon it. Even ardent supporters of the minority had shown a want of any confidence that they would stand fast up to this point. The impression got abroad, for the moment, that not even Pius IX, little delicate as he was, would accept an apotheosis, as it was called, which had been publicly discredited by nearly all the bishops of great Sees, who were in any sense independent of the Bishop of Rome. "According to general belief, especially in Rome," says Vitelleschi (p. 206), "the Church never creates a dogma new in itself; but in defining a dogma, simply attests some belief which has been always and universally professed." The Romans saw that both the "always" and the "universally" were for ever disproved by the vote. They knew how speedily black could be made white, but they did not see how the device could this time succeed. There was the vote, saying what had been the belief of the bishops up to that hour. But probably the Romans soon corrected their first impression by their habitual estimate of Pius IX. They never accuse him of pride, although they always accuse him of vanity and vainglory. A case in which the common voice so sharply draws the distinction is exceedingly rare in public life. He is not above accepting anything that is agreeable. Quirinus will have it that he still declared that the vote of the Opposition would be reversed, and that these misguided men would be so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that they would publicly vote for the right.
From Munich a telegram was sent to Hefele bearing many names, among them that of Reithmayer, announcing universal "joyful sensation" at the vote, and calling for "immovable perseverance," otherwise "incalculable mischief."[452]
Nothing further now remained but the great solemnity for promulging the Decree, and gathering the fruits of nearly eight months' toil. Only five days' delay was taken--days of intense excitement, and of incidents striking at the time, and important for all time. The minority saw how their hopes that the Pope would recoil before a vote so solemn as that recorded had been vain. The war-horse was prancing outside the door of the Council, and the fighting sons of Loyola could already tell what tidings he would bring. Louis Napoleon might have doubts, but the Fathers of the Civiltá had none. "Everything is always directed and turned by Providence for the good and the triumph of the Church." (VII. xi. 379). The crisis, they knew, would give the Vicar of God an opportunity of intervening, with his newly certified authority and infallibility, as mediator. This office once accepted would easily be turned to that of supreme judge. So would his new reign be grandly commenced. The Monde, of Paris, said to be the organ of the Nuncio, already called the war a religious war against Protestantism. France had been assured in every form that she had only to attack Prussia, and all the Catholics of Southern Germany would join her. Without the miscalculation at the Tuileries caused by these statements, it is not probable that the French would have been hurled into the ditch of Sedan. Both the precepts and the prophecies of the reconstructionists failed. The cry, "The Church," raised by the Bavarian priests was not so strong as that of "The Fatherland," raised by the patriots. This fact was still unknown at the Vatican. Though the inflation manifest before the Council was somewhat reduced, too much remained.
The prospect was not so bright to the bishops. They had not been always cooped up within the walls of Rome. Hints of how thoughts were turning reached them from home. They knew that men of study and of wisdom were either hostile to the new Constitution, or painfully solicitous. Some of the bishops had deep personal convictions, which experience during the Council had intensified; convictions that the whole proceeding was neither more nor less than the adoption of a false doctrine to sanction a fatal policy, and that the error was so fundamental as to involve the acceptance of a purely human fountain of doctrine for all time to come. They met and debated whether they should vote in the open session. Only twenty, according to Archbishop Scherr, were in favour of this course, and these did not insist on their own views, lest they should divide the eighty-eight.
On the evening of July 15, about eight o'clock, a deputation entered the Vatican, composed of the Primates of France and Hungary, with the Archbishops of Paris and Munich, and the Bishops of Mainz and Dijon. They had to wait an hour--a time doubtless filled up with meditations more ecclesiastical than those which sometimes occupy the moments lost in the ante-rooms of the Vatican; rooms full of traditional tales of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and the sinful lusts of the flesh; such tales as good men, who had been forced to hear them, would not easily be forced to repeat.[453]
They were admitted about nine o'clock. They came from the minority to urge that the Pope should withdraw the additions made to the third canon of the third chapter, that canon the attempt to snatch an unconscious vote upon which had caused so profound an impression. They also wished the addition of a limiting clause to the definition of infallibility in the fourth chapter. Quirinus seems afraid to report the answer given by the Pope, and that for a reason which we suspect has often prevented English correspondents writing in Italy from telling true tales. They know that we judge of Popes and Cardinals by some such standard as that of our own public men, and that therefore to us the true tale would look like an invention. In the present case the answer was, "I shall do all I can, my dear sons; but I have not yet read the proposed Decree, and I do not know what it contains."[454] His Holiness requested to have the petition in writing. The spokesman, Darboy, replied, with French tact, that he would have it sent to His Holiness, and would take the liberty of forwarding at the same time the proposed Decree, which the Commission and the Presiding Cardinals had omitted to lay before his Holiness, though it wanted only two days of the public session, and thus had exposed him to the danger of promulging a Decree of which he was ignorant. Darboy not only did this, but also took care that others should know what the Pope had actually said. He wrote to the Committee on Faith, strongly censuring them for their neglect in not laying the proposed Decrees before the Pontiff!
It is curious to observe how all the Liberal Catholic writers who had come to Rome began by speaking of the Pope with the deference usual on this side of the Alps, but finally slipped into the habit of calling him "Pius." They evidently often had difficulty between their sense of the conventional respect due to a personage whom so many own as their head, and their feelings as honest men. The latter would have often prompted them to speak of Pius IX as Italians do, and not as Englishmen or Germans are wont to do.[455]
"Pius," continues Quirinus, added that if they would increase their eighty-eight votes to a hundred he would see what could be done. Only those who know the opinions entertained by that writer of the Pope's personal ignorance, and of his habit of speaking as if he knew everything, can appreciate the statement that his Holiness concluded by assuring the deputation that it was notorious that the whole Church had always taught the unconditional infallibility of the Popes.
Bishop Ketteler now threw himself on his knees before the Pontiff. For some time he remained in that position, entreating his sovereign to make some concession, and thus to restore peace and unity to the Church and to the Episcopate. This was the very scene to please one like Pius IX. And so the deputation left him with some hopes of concession--"full of the best hopes," said the Archbishop of Munich.[456]
Two men speedily sought to undo any impression that might have been made. Many a Roman Catholic has, in imagination, hovered over that scene, returning again and again to watch the figures of the agents of the Committee on Faith as they glided into the presence-chamber. Such Catholics in their imaginings have scowled at, ay, have cursed Senestrey the pupil of the Jesuit College Germanicum, and Manning the pupil of Oxford, as the instruments of the Jesuits going at this moment to harden the heart of the Pontiff, which some hoped had begun to relent. It is said that this remarkable pair urged that all was now ripe, that the majority were enthusiastic, and that moreover if the Pontiff made concessions he would be dishonoured in history as a second Honorius.[457] This "frightened the Pope," said Archbishop Von Scherr.
The hopes brought back by the deputation to the minority were speedily dispelled. In the course of the morning Cardinal Rauscher waited on his Holiness to thank him in the name of the minority for the gracious reception of their deputation. The shrewd Austrian pointed out to his royal master the effects which would flow from the definition as framed by the majority. "It is too late," said the Pope; "the formula is already distributed to the bishops and has been discussed. Besides, the public session is convened. It is now impossible to yield to the wishes of the minority."[458] On Friday night the Pope said that he had not seen the formula; on Saturday morning the Pope said that the formula was already distributed and discussed. And this formula was unchangeably to determine the fountain of doctrine, of ministerial authority, and of all power in a so-called Church. Friedrich, on writing down these words from the lips of his Archbishop, adds in a parenthesis, "One is ready to go crazed at the measureless frivolity with which the holiest questions are handled in Rome."
That same morning a Congregation was held to consider the suggestions made by those who had given conditional votes. Two Spaniards, according to Quirinus (p. 804), had made two propositions tending to complete the repudiation of the collective authority of the universal Church by the Bishop of Rome. The proposed Decree, as it stood, limited his definitions to "matters which the Holy See had held from ancient times in common with other Churches."[459]
This language, however vaguely, did recognize both antiquity and catholicity. The worthy Spaniard doubtless felt that the Vicar of God ought not to be limited by any such things; that he should be left free to define what he felt called to define. The committee had been of the same mind, and had adopted the proposal of the Spaniard that the above-quoted clause should be struck out. The Sub-Secretary cried, "The amendment proposed to 76 is accepted by the committee: those who are in favour of accepting it, stand up." Nearly all stood up. Ten or twelve stood up against it, and away went the antiquity and catholicity as expeditiously as any Cardinal could desire.[460]
The inner lights of the Pontiff were thus freed from any restraint arising out of ancient views, and the local creed of Rome was freed from any restraint arising out of a common Christianity as between that city and other Churches.
Now, however, came to pass a marvel, if anything could be marvellous there and then. The venerable men seated all around had spent their long lives in hearing and telling of one thing--the glory, the authority, the divinity of the Church, and the overwhelming conclusiveness of her consent. All who did not hear the Church were, according to them, lost. Even when, in preparing the way for the change of base which they had foreseen before leaving home, some of them had appeared to throw tradition altogether overboard, it was only in order to substitute for it the general consent of the Church. Which of us would have dared to tell devout Roman Catholics that their own bishops, when once in Rome under the terror of the Pontiff and the Jesuits, would disavow the consent of the Catholic Church, and say that without it the word of a single man was quite as good? They may now attempt to explain the words "not by consent of the Church," as meaning something small; or even to say that Popes ever and always formally disclaimed the necessity of her consent. The world must leave them to do so; but they know, as well as we do, that had we said that their bishops would of a sudden put words like these into the creed, they would have called us calumniators. Yet what came to pass?
That came to pass which had often been hinted as necessary by the zealots during the Council, but had always been looked upon as impossible by most men of the minority, although a few had openly said that in such a Council nothing was impossible. Another Spaniard, when he gave his conditional vote, had proposed that the words of the Decree which said, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves irreformable," should be amended so as to read, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by consent of the Church, irreformable." Vitelleschi says that no information was given as to the authority at whose suggestion these metamorphic words were approved by the committee, but approved by the committee they were. So, without any opportunity of debate, the Under Secretary cried, "The amendment under number 152, having been modified, is accepted by the committee"; and reading it, he added, "Let those who are in favour of accepting it stand up." The great majority stood up. "Let those who are against accepting it stand up." "About thirty" stood up.[461] Thus were those ancient men called upon in their episcopal robes to extinguish the light of that lamp to which they had ministered oil all the days of their lives. They obeyed like soldiers, and the old, old light of a catholic consent was quenched for ever. Many of the eighty-eight were absent, and knew not of this new, swift, and crowning victory of the guild over the hierarchy.
Done in a moment! the Romish bishops had effaced from their law, and from their rule of faith, the consent of the Catholic Church! Talk of revolutions, of hasty parliamentary votes, of the sudden impulse of a mob; but where in history is there an instance of breaking with a long and loud resounding past, in such haste, and so irrevocably; irrevocably, not by the ordinary law which entails the consequences of an act upon the future, but irrevocably by the form and intent of the action itself? We know, alas! what these bishops are capable of representing; but it is for the unborn to judge the men who did that act and then faced round, saying that they changed nothing. And these men are to teach the human species the art of conserving all that they have "inherited and proved"! The Church of the Popes had long ceased, in the eye of Protestants, to have a claim to catholicity. Now, however, in the eye of Liberal Catholics she explicitly rejected catholicity by statutory and irreformable law. They saw her contract herself to the sect of one man and his retainers, to a religion made up of faith in one man, his inner light, and his faits accomplis.
The slow but irresistible operation of principles had at last worked out its ultimate issue. Liberal Catholics were the first to see that the religion of the Pope had now really ceased to be Catholic, or even national, or indeed municipal--that it had in fact become only palatial. They at once named it the religion of the Vatican. They did not so soon admit that the principle of one city church--not the mother, and not a model--being the mistress of all others, and practically the fountain of their faith, contained in itself the germ of all that had now come to fruit.
The sitting which began with deeds so very solemn ended in another way. For once the poor Pope had been exposed to the plague of pamphlets in the Holy City. It is pathetic to read the wailing over the destiny that subjected so holy a being to this in addition to his other "martyrdoms," "Calvaries," "crucifixions," and such like words, to win a tear. Many of the vexatious writings were in Latin. Thus if they had the additional bitterness of being the work often of bishops, always of priests, they still had the veil of a dead language. Not a few, however, had been written in living tongues. Two of the latter, which cut dreadfully deep, were in French--What is going on in the Council? and The Last Hour of the Council. We are now to see how these are dealt with. It is announced by the First President that a certain protest will be distributed. So papers are handed round. During this process the Under-Secretary calls out, Let the Fathers take notice that the sitting is not over! Then from the pulpit, in the name of the Presidents, he reads a protest against false reports in general, and the two pamphlets in particular. They were stinking calumnies and shameful lies--putidissimæ calumniæ ... probosa mendacia. The Italians and Spaniards, who could not have read them, cried, "We condemn them." The minority cried, "We do not condemn them." The President called upon those who did condemn them to stand up. Sambin says that so few remained seated that, to avoid exposing them to humiliation, the contrary was not put. Among these men Friedrich names Rauscher and Schwarzenberg. Two copies of the condemnation had been handed to every one of the bishops. The President now read a request that each would return one of them signed with his own name. This trap, however, was not successful. Haynald said that if the Presidents would translate La Dernière Heure into Latin, he and the rest of the Hungarians would be able to see if it was as bad as their Eminences had said it was.[462] The Acta Sanctæ Sedis make no mention of any demur, but notes that many prelates said, "Willingly, with all my heart, yes, even to blood!" But why giving bad names to two pamphleteers should call forth such heroic resolutions is not obvious. Thus did an OEcumenical Council spend its last legislative moment in recording a condemnation of two pamphlets which obviously the bulk of those who gave sentence could not have read. The presentation to every man personally of the two papers, and the call to sign, coming from the chair, was a symptom not calculated to dissipate certain fears that had got abroad among the minority. It was reported that if they dared to give an adverse vote in the public session, two papers would be immediately presented to them, the one being a subscription to the dogma, the other being the resignation of their sees. If they did not sign the first, they must sign the second. They knew that in case they refused to sign both, they were within the walls of Rome. And suppose a bishop to have signed his resignation and then to find himself in the hands of the Papal police! And men liable even to the suspicion of such menaces were free "judges and legislators!"
So ended the last of the General Congregations, being the eighty-sixth since the beginning. It will be ever memorable--a monument of despatch and versatility. It renounced, as lights in doctrine, antiquity, catholicity, and the consent of the Church, and it denounced two French pamphlets, and gave to Ce Qui se Passe au Concile and La Dernière Heure du Concile an immortality in the formal Acts of that assembly denied to all the petitions, suggestions, deliberations, and votes of the whole hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in their fourscore and six anxious and pregnant sittings in General Congregation.
For awhile the protest against these pamphlets, of which the wording is named by Vitelleschi as a sample of the violent language common in the Roman bureaux at the time, is actually printed among the Acts of the Council, those Acts contain not a word of the votes, proposals, or discussions of the General Congregations; not a hint of all the protests put in by the minority, not a hint of the voting in the great Congregation on July 13, or, in fact, of anything that could give a knowledge of the processes, or of any other results than the lists of committees and the formulated Decrees. By processes we do not mean the ceremonial ones, for they are briefly described, but the legislative and deliberative ones, which are entirely omitted. The Bulls of the Pope and the Decrees of the Presidents as to procedure are printed; but no action of the bishops. When what has passed through the hands of the bishops becomes a Papal constitution, it of course appears. As to the historians, they indeed do give the voting on July 13; but we believe that not one of those who wrote by or under authority gives one of the documents of the protesting bishops, from the beginning of the Council to the end, or any indication of where they may be found. Vitelleschi tells how, on this same day, Cardinal Rauscher himself made a last desperate effort to impress the immovable Pope, and was received with scant courtesy.
That Saturday night a number of downcast old men, each with more or less of a retinue, took leave of Rome. Some went by the desolate way to Civitá Vecchia. On reaching that city, and beginning to breathe the free air of the sea, they might well wonder how long the red, white, and blue flag would warn away the red, white, and green; how long the eldest daughter of the Church would help the autocrat to impose his obscure tyranny on this threadbare patch of land,--a land whereof the natural lot was neither poverty nor dependence upon the foreigner. Some of them took the less desolate way towards the North. In the clear July night they passed by Monte Rotondo, with Mentana not far off. When would Garibaldi be heard of anew? Or would the next dash at Rome be left to Garibaldi? Spoleto, Terni, and other places lost in 1860, would suggest the question: Will Ireland and Belgium find men for new crusades, and if so, will they be more successful? The lamps of Perugia, high on the hill, would recall tales of slaughter under Pius IX. Perhaps the prelates had not heard them, or had said that they were all lies. All of the Frenchman, or of the German, in their hearts would be drawn in one direction; all of the Papist in another. The Frenchman would naturally say, He who has repaid the restoration of twenty years ago, and the support given since then, by deliberate insult of the greatest names of the Gallican dead, by coarse offences against every man of mark among the French living that dared to speak a dissentient word, and by the ostentatious abrogation of all the Gallican liberties, deserves not that the flag of France should longer shelter his policy. The German would naturally say, The attempt to undo the unity of the Fatherland, and once more to expose us through division to the incursions, the burnings, and the plunderings of the French, is no less than diabolical; and he that aims at breaking up Germany for the sake of weakening Italy, should be left to his deserts. But in such men, after all, the Frenchman or the German represented but the human instincts, not the drilled, trained thoughts, and the unchangeably moulded habits. The German, or the Frenchman, represented the boy, but the Papist represented the man. "The weakening of the individual will in the priest," of which Vitelleschi speaks, as one of the secrets of that mysterious zeal to-day for things which were esteemed untrue yesterday, is scarcely more striking than is the weakening of national sympathy, except when the interests of the Papacy are supposed to be connected with those of the nation.
We may close this chapter with one specimen more of the practical preaching for the establishment of the new moral order, of the real Christian civilization, which the scribes of the Court had kept under the eyes of all who sought, in their pages, for tidings of the great things which the Council was doing. Our last specimen was that of an English youth: this is that of a French one. Bravely fighting his gun at Monte Rotondo, fell young Bernard Quatrebarbes, the son of a Breton marquis, mortally wounded. When the victors of Mentana delivered the prisoners, no less than four cousins gathered around the pallet of the wounded Bernard. At Rome he was joined by his father, his sister, and other female relations. The day after his arrival in the city, his humble room in the hospital having been entered by Pius IX, "radiant with sovereign sweetness," as the writer expresses it, Bernard was naturally in ecstasy at such an august apparition. The Pope desiring to see the wound of his crusader, and making the sign of the cross over it, said, "God will bless thee, my friend, as I bless thee." The Marquis announced to his wife the departure of her boy in three words, "Bernard in Paradise." "Words," exclaims the author, unconsciously signalizing the fall of Rome from Christian hope--"Words worthy of the primitive Christians." Ay, but, thank God, primitive Christians before saying over their dead "in Paradise" instead of "in Purgatory," did not wait till one fell fighting for the royalty of a bishop! Over the fisher drowned with his nets, over the mother who died in childbirth, they rejoiced with the joy of hope eternal. It was for later, darker ages to drag them back again into a dim region where a crowd of intervening patrons and all manner of priestly spells came between them and the bosom of a Father, between them and the home where all the brothers meet.
Maria Sophia, ex-Queen of Naples, came so often to the bedside of the dying Bernard, that our narrator says she almost seemed to have taken up her abode in the hospital, and sometimes she was moved to tears. By that bedside also did her husband say to the Marquis, "How noble is your son!" To the Marquis also wrote another expectant exile, the Count of Chambord, saying that he admired "the short but bright career of Bernard, and his marvellous end." It was the Colonel of Bernard that told the father of his departure, and in these words: "I have another patron in heaven." But above all when the news was conveyed to the Pope, he said: "Bernard Quatrebarbes is a saint in heaven." At home in Brittany, while the corpse lay in the chapel of the château, the people flocked around the bier; but it was "more to invoke the departed than to pray for him." The new Hermit who preaches the new crusade thus concludes his memoir:--
The death of Bernard Quatrebarbes, who sacrificed to God youth, fortune, and pleasure, a tranquil life and the joys of home, in order to march in the defence of the truth, of virtue, of the Church, will awaken the drowsy soul of more than one young cavalier. Bernard is already a martyr, and he will be an apostle.[463]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 442: Friedberg, 145; Quirinus, 788.]
[Footnote 443: See Protest with signatures. Doc., ii. 400-403.]
[Footnote 444: Apologia, p. 327.]
[Footnote 445: Quirinus, p. 792. The Acta Sanctæ Sedis does not think it worth while to count;--"fifty or thereabouts," "quinquaginta circiter patribus dissentientibus" (vi. p. 31).]
[Footnote 446: Le Con. du Vat. et le Mouvement Anti-Infallibiliste, pp. 6-10.]
[Footnote 447: Friedrich, p. 405.]
[Footnote 448: Quirinus, p. 771.]
[Footnote 449: Ibid., p. 772.]
[Footnote 450: Ibid., p. 773.]
[Footnote 451: Civiltá, VII. xi. 362. Acta Sanctæ Sedis has the same numbers.]
[Footnote 452: Friedrich, 406.]
[Footnote 453: When, in 1860, writing Italy in Transition, I read, on the recommendation of an Italian gentleman, a book by a well-known writer professing to describe the interior life of the Vatican; but found it too low to allow me even to allude to it, much less to quote it. What was my surprise when, a year or so later, appeared the work of Liverani, to find this very book--which even now I do not care to name--cited with that of About and of others, as a work the substantial accuracy of which the learned Domestic Prelate and Protonotary of the Holy See could not deny.]
[Footnote 454: Quirinus, p. 801. This astounding assertion does not rest upon the sole authority of Quirinus. Friedrich, in reporting the sayings of the Archbishop of Munich to the Faculty of Theology in that city on his return, gives the same assertion as repeated by his Grace. It had been a favourite theory with official writers that Quirinus was Friedrich, but as the latter left Rome in May, and Quirinus continued to write to the last, that theory had dropped out of sight. It is a curious coincidence in the present case that nearly all the incidents of this interview, mentioned by Quirinus writing in Rome on July 19, were repeated by Archbishop Scherr in Munich to the Faculty two days later. The substantial agreement of the two accounts is quite as great as that in several other cases which have induced men like Hergenröther to argue that Friedrich and Quirinus were one. The agreement is such as would be found between two practised writers hearing an account from the same eyewitness, or from two or three eyewitnesses, and immediately writing down what they had heard. Friedrich, p. 408 ff.]
[Footnote 455: An instance of the effect of perfect knowledge of Rome by personal residence, on the style of expression and description, may be seen in Mr. T.A. Trollope's interesting book, The Papal Conclaves, as compared with the unreal and conventional forms kept up by Englishmen who know neither the language nor the spirit of the people. Some of the latter, ever since the days of the Tracts for the Times, provoke smiles, and have gradually been acquiring for our country a reputation very unlike the old reputation of England for strong common sense, love of reality, and contempt for shows and fables.]
[Footnote 456: Friedrich, p. 409.]
[Footnote 457: Quirinus, p. 803; also the words of Archbishop Scherr, as quoted in Tagebuch, p. 409.]
[Footnote 458: Related by Archbishop Scherr to the Theological Faculty at Munich. Friedrich, pp. 409, 410.]
[Footnote 459: Quirinus, p, 804. See the Draft in Doc. ad Illus., ii. pp. 317, 318,--"Quod antiquitus Apostolica Sedes et Romana cum cæteris tenet perseveranter ecclesia."]
[Footnote 460: Acta Sanctæ Sedis, p. 33.]
[Footnote 461: The Acta Sanctæ Sedis does not even profess to count exactly,--"about thirty" (triginta circiter).]
[Footnote 462: Quirinus, pp. 806-7.]
[Footnote 463: Civiltá, VII. ix. 542-48 and 664-70.]
VIII. Grief of M. Veuillot--Final Deputation and Protest
Sunday, July 17, was rather more of a fast than of a feast for M. Veuillot. He says, "War and oppositions are cruel clouds." Bad as were the rumours of war, those of "rebellion" among the bishops were still worse. It had evidently become known that the minority were not to be cowed into gracing the public solemnity with their compulsory Placet. It was even rumoured that the bishops would go into the open session and disturb the solemnity by saying Non placet--ay, M. Veuillot had heard, by shouting it and outrageously repeating it in the face of the Pope.[464] While nothing was more desirable than that, to prove the freedom of the Council, two or three should say Non placet, any serious number doing so would be detestable. The refusal of the non-contents to vote at all would be only one degree less bad. M. Veuillot, however, discovered that many whose departure, "or rather desertion," had been reported were still really in Rome. But, on the other hand, he saw carriages at the doors of leaders of the "tormenting and tormented" Opposition; at those of the Archbishops of Paris and Lyons, and of Cardinals Rauscher and Matthieu. Even the Via Frattina was visited to note the symptoms at the door of Maret. After night-fall, Veuillot cries, "Many are gone, and many more are going in the morning. They will really absent themselves. I cannot help thinking of a caricature. It represented some seditious fellows in a scare, who said, 'Now is the moment to show ourselves; let us hide!'"
As the noontide of that July Sunday blazed upon the Vatican, a deputation had entered the presence chamber, headed by Darboy and Simor, Primate of Hungary. They came to make one last attempt to procure the prorogation of the Council without the promulgation of the dogma. Their only answer was the old Non possumus. Then the last of the luckless series of protests was solemnly delivered. They had not heart enough to fight, and had too much conscience to submit. So they took the middle course, and spoiled for ever the pretext of moral unanimity except the dead unanimity of form. Their fears, or their views of unity and reverence would not allow them in public to withstand the Pope. He had justly calculated the effect upon them of throne and tiara, with the fear of possible degradation. They had not, perhaps, sufficiently calculated what might have been the effect on him of honest men standing up one after another in their appointed place, and saying before all the Churches, as a wiser than they had done of a better than he, that he was to be blamed. They would have exposed, it is true, Pope Pius IX to a temporary check, yet they might have saved the Papacy from an irrevocable error. But in proportion as the Papacy had become weak in producing conviction, it had concentrated its strength on the means of producing submission. Its success in that art was now to be its own punishment. No Protestant had expected any effectual resistance from men trained as Romish bishops. Any real tenacity of conscience shown during the Council, was due to nobler influences spread abroad in countries where the ascendancy of Rome is not complete. There is, to our mode of thinking, something not merely incongruous and grotesque, but a great deal worse, in putting forward the paltry plea of personal offence, or personal consideration, when the matter in hand is a dogma that is to mould the religion of millions for ever. The fact that these prelates do put forward such a notion countenances the statements often made about men giving as the reason for their votes that they could not refuse the Holy Father or hurt his feelings. Vitelleschi thinks that the fear of being required to resign their Sees or subscribe the dogma was one of the elements in determining the minority to leave Rome before the definition (p. 212). If so, seeing them escape from that dilemma would be one of the causes of the mortification shown by the majority, as expressed by Veuillot. We give the last of the protests in full[465]:--
Most Blessed Father, in the Congregation held on the 13th of this month we gave our votes upon the proposed Decree of the first dogmatic constitution of the Church of Christ.
It is known to your Holiness that there were eighty-eight Fathers, who, pressed by conscience and moved by love of the Holy Church, gave their votes in the words Non placet, that sixty-two others voted in the words Placet juxta modum, and that, moreover, about seventy were absent from the Council and abstained from voting. To these are to be added a number who, from infirmity or other serious reasons, have returned to their dioceses.
In this manner, our votes have been made known to your Holiness and to the whole world, and it has been made evident by how many bishops our opinion is approved; and thus have we discharged our office and duty.
From the time above stated, nothing has occurred to change our judgment; but, on the contrary, several things have been added, and those exceedingly serious, which have strengthened us in our purpose.
Confirming, then, by this document our votes, we have determined to abstain from the public session to be held on the 18th. That filial piety and reverence, which lately brought our deputies to the feet of your Holiness do not permit us openly, and in the Father's face, to say Non placet in a case so closely concerning the person of your Holiness.
And, indeed, the votes that would be given in the public session could only repeat those already given in the Congregation.
We, therefore, return to our flocks without delay, for after so long an absence we are much needed on account of the rumours of war, and especially on account of the great spiritual necessities. We return grieving that, because of the sad juncture of circumstances, even peace and tranquillity of conscience is disturbed among the faithful.
Meanwhile, commending with all our hearts the Church of God, and your Holiness, to the grace and protection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are of your Holiness the most devoted and most obedient sons.
Leaving, then, in the hands of the Pope this solemn confirmation of a belief registered by a formidable array of bishops, that he ought not to be proclaimed as the infallible representative of God, they turned their backs on the palace which had witnessed their many humiliations. Their allusion to the things which had been added since the 13th as being "exceedingly serious," is another of the many witnesses out of their own mouths against their subsequent statements. Their clear statement that did they vote in the session it could only be to repeat their former vote, seals with the seal of deliberate misrepresentation many solemn assertions since that day made under mitres.
It was a grief to the soul of M. Veuillot to learn that the Ambassador of France had graced with his presence the departure of Darboy. De Banneville had accompanied the Archbishop to the station, escorted by Mérode, with Monsignor Vecchiotti, and Father Trullet. The recalcitrant Archbishop was even placed in "a kind of carriage of honour"; a fact which reminded the Argus of the Univers that a certain bishop had said, We go away conquerors, but we leave some wounded on the field. "This fine carriage seemed to me an ambulance."[466] Thus, poor Darboy took his way towards the storm-cloud, blackening behind the hills, in the after clap of which he alone of all the host was to find a bloody grave.
The Monday morning dawned heavily over Rome. As the eyes of the last portion of the fleeing minority were sadly tracing the outlines of the hills on the upper course of the Tiber, while those of the first portion were tracing the forms of the outlying Alps and a few were watching morn as it spread over the waves of the Mediterranean, a Pope for the first time rose in Rome with the consciousness that ere sunset he would be infallible, not only in fact, but also in law. His less happy prececessors had claimed that crown, but never had received it. Now he was about, with the consent of the Church, to put on the power to be infallible for ever, "without the consent of the Church." Had ever diplomacy won such a victory? had ever an oligarchy so completely signed itself away? Tell him that the temporal power was of no spiritual value! But could all that have been accomplished except within the walls of a strong city? As Pius IX looked from the Papal apartments across the Tiber, the Pincian was gloomy, and the Sabine Hills were hid in clouds under a threatening sun. But he would remember the day of his taking possession, and how gloom had turned to rainbow; the day of the return from Gaeta, and how the sun had opened from the west at the right moment; above all, the day of "The Immaculate," and how the sun had seemed glad of the sight. True, the dutiful luminary had failed on the opening day of the Council, but the Jesuit Fathers had written that the solemnity would be brilliant at its close, and that the city would blaze with triumph, as Ephesus had done in the year 431. And was not the throne so placed in the Council Hall, that, all being propitious, the beams would fall as they had done on the day of the Immaculate; and surely the Virgin would not fail to send them. At all events, it was certain that he would lie down that night not only the Pope of the Immaculate, but the Pope of the Infallible--the first human being in the records of the world to whom a number of the creatures of God had deliberately given the right of telling to them and to their succeeding generations what they were to believe for ever and ever. The deifying of an emperor, either in the plains of Babylon or in the temples of Rome, was a little thing as compared with the apotheosis now about to be performed. The dogmas of the emperor were not to be eternal on earth, though he might cause himself to be decreed immortal in heaven. The word "apotheosis" was perfectly natural to the pen of Vitelleschi, or of any other Liberal Catholic who dared to speak what he thought. But it is nevertheless true that deification among the heathen, whether ancient or modern, involved little exaltation compared with that now to be given to the Bishop of Rome. A Theseus or a Rama, an Antinous or an Augustus, had a lowly part in ruling eternal destinies compared with that to be now assigned to the Count and Priest Mastai-Ferretti.
The monasteries and nunneries sent forth a contingent, as on the opening day; but where were the proud vehicles and the pressing throngs? Vitelleschi says that two or three houses in the city were decorated. How dead was the indifference denoted by such language on an occasion absolutely unprecedented, cannot be conveyed to the minds of those who do not know what the people of a southern city can do when they really mean to decorate. As the places for spectators in the Hall filled up, it was whispered from one to another, "No crowned heads." An Infanta of Portugal was the lone flower of royalty
"Where once a garden smiled."
Even ambassadors failed. France, the eldest daughter, was not there. Spain, the Catholic, was not there. Portugal, the faithful, was not there. Austria, the apostolic, was not there. Bavaria was not there. Poland was dead. Italy was alive again, but her heart and hope were elsewhere. Belgium and Holland had each sent a consul, the one to welcome infallibility, with its constitution condemned by the Church, the other with its heresy. Vitelleschi mentions a representative of the Principality of Monaco. The Giornale di Roma is not so worldly minded as to specify any state, but says that members of the diplomatic corps were present.[467]
About nine o'clock the Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals, all in red, began to stream in. Five hundred and thirty-five seats were soon occupied. It thus appeared that there were some two hundred less than at the opening. About twenty had died.[468] Several were ill. Some, in Rome, were absent from disclination to attend.[469] Of the minority only two now changed sides. Of these, one was a demonstrative Oppositionist--Landriot, of Rheims. This conspicuous absence of the minority was a disappointment and a humiliation, though it was nothing more. Even the Acta Sanctæ Sedis says that its effect was traceable on the countenances of the Fathers. They grieved for the obstinacy of their brethren. Indeed, in the Congregation where the vote was taken, some, with clasped hands, had implored their friends to give up their false opinion at last. Still the conqueror had his triumph, though he had not the satisfaction of seeing the captives follow in his train. It was Cæsar without Vercingetorix. It would have been a proud moment for the resident Cardinals had Rauscher and Schwarzenberg made Vienna and Prague bow down to Rome. Had the sturdy Darboy done homage for Paris, it would have been a sign to the Curia that the new world of the Jesuit seers was at last actually above the horizon. The readers of M. Veuillot can well imagine into what ecstasies he would have fallen, and with what dithyrambs his pages would have detonated, had his ears been permitted to hear Dupanloup pronounce his Placet. This was not to be. Those bishops were not the men to stand up in their places and contend; yet were they not so thoroughly beaten as ostentatiously to submit. Their paper confirmation of their legislative vote came like an impertinent parley to tease the conquerors. What ought to have been either a combat or a fête? was neither. It was a ceremonial of which even the Civiltá quotes its description from the Giornale di Roma, while M. Veuillot himself is too much affected to write more than a few lines--as if silence was the vestment which his strong emotions were wont to put on. In his after touches he often speaks of the glory of the dogma, but we do not remember that he ever alludes to the glory of that day. The Protestant Fromman, whom we have not been accustomed to quote, though very glad to consult, called the ceremony tedious; but that was unpardonable.
The Pope did not enter on this occasion, as on former ones, between Antonelli and Mertel, but between Grassellini and Mertel. Had Antonelli, because of having failed to give his vote in the Congregation, lost his wonted place on the day when the fruit was to be plucked? The hall and city, according to Vitelleschi, "wore a cold and severe aspect." December 8 seemed to have dropped its mantle on July 18. Perhaps, however, ere the moment of promulgation arrived, the Roman azure would be in the ascendant, and hearts would be gladdened at the right time. Indeed, the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, in contradiction to all profane authors, states that just before the Pope uttered his sentence the gloom somewhat cleared up. It does not attempt to say that the sun shone.
After the preparatory ceremonies, Fessler and Valenziani approached the throne. The Secretary handed the constitution Pastor Eternus to the Pontiff, with its chapters and its canons making a new Church, if ever a new constitution made a new corps, and making, as Pius IX hoped, the commencement of a new era for the kingdoms of this world, all of which, with the glory of them, had been by some one promised to him after this day. That constitution professed to give to him, or rather to recognize as inhering in him, authority over all territories on earth, and over all those actions of man that possessed any moral character. Over the entire sphere of human accountability henceforth and for ever it was for him to reign as should seem to him right. Valenziani ascended the desk, and read out the title of the Decree. He then sat down, and while the sky grew blacker, the house darker, and the hearts of men more heavy with an impression of something terrible, he read chapter after chapter, until at last he reached the close, and the house echoed back his cadence, with the word of the Pope's self-written doom, Irreformable,--"The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by consent of the Church, irreformable."
After a moment's pause came the sealing Canon, "If any shall presume to contradict this our definition, let him be anathema."
The reader ceased. The storm alone was speaking. For a moment no human tone disturbed the air. But memory was repeating two terrific words, and imagination kept saying that the winds were whispering.
Irreformable! Anathema!
Valenziani rose, and sending his voice athwart the gloom, said, "Most Reverend Fathers, are the Decrees and Canons contained in this Constitution agreed to?"
Upon this he left the desk, and Jacobini, the Sub-Secretary, ascending it, called out the name of Cardinal Mattei, who was absent from old age. He then called "Constantine, Bishop of Porto"; and Cardinal Patrizi, rising, and taking off his mitre, said, Placet. The voice near the throne made the darkening hall to echo Placet, and the voice near the door repeated the echo, Placet. Then the scrutineers recorded the vote. Cardinal Amat was next called, and his Placet and some five or six others sounded harmoniously in the deepening gloom. Jacobini then called Frederick Joseph, Archbishop of Prague. The princely priest who from the age of thirty-three had worn the purple, and who was to represent the house of Schwarzenberg and the Church of Bohemia,--that Church imposed by burnings and by blood,--responded not. There was a moment's pause and a sense of a want. Absent, cried the voice near the throne. Absent, replied the voice near the door; and the influences from without were seconded by a damping influence from within. The next name was that of Cardinal Corsi, a man of repute for piety, who was well known to be averse to the definition. According to Vitelleschi, he and the other dissentient Cardinals drew their scarlet hats over their eyes and remained silent. But they wore mitres, not hats. Of the rest, Quirinus asserts that, besides the Cardinal Vicar, Patrizi, only two put into their Placet spirit enough to stand up, and they were Bonaparte and Panebianco. Fourth after Corsi came the name of the senior French Cardinal. "James, Archbishop of Besançon," cried Jacobini; but Cardinal Mathieu did not respond. Absent, cried the official voice. Absent, echoed the fellow official. Even France seemed failing. Thrice had the tranquillizing Placet cheered the still deepening shadows, when Jacobini came to the notable name of "Joseph Othmar, Archbishop of Vienna." But Rauscher was far away, and once more did the thunderous air thrill with the depressing sound, Absent. Now followed a successive roll of more than twelve Placets, and then came the name of Philip, Archbishop of Bologna. All watched Cardinal Guidi, who pronounced a Placet. The Pope closely eyed him, and when the creature delivered his judgment before earth and heaven in favour of the dogma which just one month previously he had, in the same place, solemnly proposed to lay under an anathema, his royal master said, "Poor man!" or, as others report it, "Good man!" but Vitelleschi remarks that in Italian they might both mean the same thing. To Guidi succeeded two staunch Placets, from Bonnechose and Cullen, but next was called Gustavus of Santa Maria Traspontina. Eyes looked for another prince-priest who represented the house of Hohenlohe and the feelings of Bavaria, but there was no response. Hohenlohe, like Rauscher and Schwarzenberg, was absent.
After the list of Cardinals was exhausted, the patriarchal Sees were called. Two Sees were especially connected with the tradition of Peter. After men of genuine Italian name, Antici-Mattei and Ballerini, had, for Constantinople and for Alexandria, answered Placet, was called the name of Antioch. Its Patriarch was named Jusseff, and the call evoked no response; so Antioch, the See of Peter, and absent, the sign of disapprobation, were set in men's minds together. Of course the Roman Valerga said Placet for Jerusalem. Then came the other city connected with the life of Peter, and when Audu, whose secret experience after his first audacity in venturing to differ from Pius IX was known to all, was called to answer for Babylon, all expected that he would have been overcome like Guidi. But no. Oriental servility did not equal Rome, and so the reply made for Babylon was Absent. La Dernière Heure du Concile asserts that as Audu had been sent for by the Pope, so had Jusseff been sent for by the authorities of the Propaganda, "to know by what right he dared to bear testimony to the belief of the East without having previously submitted his speech to revision" (p. 4). Next came the primatial Sees. Where was the Primate of France? Where the Primate of Hungary? They, too, among the absent. And of the Archbishops, where were those of Paris, of Milan, and of Munich? Where the Nestor of the English-speaking group, John of Tuam? These were painful deficiencies. Still, in numbers if not in influence the roll of Placets from among the Archbishops presented a very large majority. Among the bishops, the first name called was that of the very aged Losanna, of Biella, one of the staunchest opponents. So the first reply, though for an Italian bishop, was Absent. Then a flow of Placets, frequently chequered by an Absent. In all, says Vitelleschi, nearly one hundred and fifty bishops were absent, many of them men who held the most illustrious Sees.[470] The Acta Sanctæ Sedis confesses to one hundred and twelve absentees from among those called; which number did not, of course, include men who had already obtained leave of absence. The number who were present was five hundred and thirty-five. In this whole list the uniform responses were either Placet or Absent till the name of the Bishop of Caizzo, a Neapolitan, was called. The official reported his vote as Placet. Caizzo raised his voice and loudly uttered Non placet. Then, again, to the end, Placet followed Placet, alternating with the voice of the rolling thunder. Finally was called Fitzgerald of little Rock in America. Thinking that he alone of the Fallibilists was present, he had begged not to be brought forward; but now that another bishop had given a negative vote he responded, Non placet.[471] This set tongues agoing. It was roundly asserted that the appearance of the Neapolitan and the American had been arranged for, in order to give an air of freedom. Vitelleschi naturally thinks that it is needless to search so far for motives. Yet, the Civiltá makes a display of these two votes, saying that without them it would have been alleged that the Fathers were not free. It tells of a correspondent of some of the "bad" papers who on hearing the first Non placet was evidently annoyed, and being asked by a friend the cause of that annoyance said, "This negative vote spoils all for us."[472] The Civiltá quotes a description of how Riccio, the Neapolitan, after the definition, went down on his knees and said, Credo, I believe; and how Fitzgerald pressed his episcopal cross to his breast and said, "Now I believe. Now do I also firmly believe."[473] When all the votes had been delivered, the scrutineers and notaries brought to the Secretary of the Council a statement of the result. The Secretary, followed by the scrutineers and notaries, advanced to the steps of the throne. There they all knelt down. The Secretary ascended the steps and read, "Blessed Father, the Decrees and Canons are agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted."
All this time the gloom was deep. "The voice of the Lord" again and again pealed over the city. Thunderbolts more than once struck close to the Cathedral. Some glass in the windows of the apse just behind the throne was broken. Some, according to Jesuit writers, said, Providence is proclaiming the downfall of Gallicanism. Some, according to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, said, The demon is disturbed, the storm shows that this does not please him. This interpretation would seem to have been that of the learned editor, for he adds, "The thunderbolts which Jupiter of the Pagans forged did the city no harm." Many said, God is installing the new Moses upon the new Sinai. This, at least with those who wrote, was evidently the prevailing interpretation.
The moment had come. Now was to be spoken the word so oft invoked in apostrophe, apologue, and prayer,--the word for which many had pictured a universe in chaos as waiting in blind but agonizing throes,--the word which so-called Christian journals and Christian ministers had, times unnumbered, described as the voice of God pronouncing the creative fiat, Let there be light. But where was the sun? According to many promises and to careful arrangements, he was at this moment to pour down upon the Lawgiver while announcing to all people, nations, and languages, the new law that changeth not, a radiance which would be as if angels were unfolding their wings above him and around. But the sun would not! The priest, in his conflict with chaos, was, at the supreme moment, left to the light of his own beloved wax candles. That light which his taste tells him adorns the house of God in the eye of day, and teaches celestial truths to immortal men, became at last of real use.
The High Priest arose from his throne. All hearts stood still. He thought, and they thought, that he was about to proclaim himself unerring. But had not the wine been spirited away between the cup and the lip? The faults incident to composing in a committee, and those incident to amending in a hurry, were both embedded in the Decree. All it said of the infallibility of the Pope was derived and comparative; he is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith and morals. History had conquered dogma here as it had done in the chapter on authority. The declaration was not that the Church was as infallible as the Pope, which would have been the order had the historical consciousness traced the infallibility of the Church as derived from that of the Pope. The declaration was that the Pope was as infallible as the Church,--a proof that his infallibility was derived from hers, and that historical consciousness dictated that order. This comparative infallibility was all that was ascribed to the Pope in this artful but unskilful composition. But to what, according to the same article, did the infallibility of the Church amount? This was rendered by the wording the point all essential, and the standard beyond which infallibility could not extend. The Church was in the same article, and in words the most positive, dealt with as a body the consent of which was not to be taken into account. All, therefore, which the great Word had brought forth, was a declaration that the Pope was as infallible as a body whose consent was not to be taken into account. The world may be well content. The crafty were caught in their own gin when they renounced the consent of the Church. When men have long and successfully argued in a circle, it is a delicate thing all at once, in the heat of a July day, to break one half of the circle, and then to declare that the other half is perfectly round, quite as round as the whole. Historically, the infallibility of the Church was first of all made the base and measure of that of the Pope. Then, diplomatically, the infallibility of the Church was reduced to a nullity. This nullity, by inexorable logic, falls back on all the infallibilities grown out of it, or measured by it. So the Decree is chaos in spite of all the candles. But on one point it speaks not comparatively but positively. Without comparison with anything on earth or above the earth, the Decrees of the Pope are pronounced irreformable. That is the one and the only indisputable result.
The aspirant after infallibility stood, about, as he imagined, to pronounce the word. He opened his lips, and by the candlelight read: "The Decrees and Canons contained in the constitution just read are agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted. We, therefore, with the approval of the Sacred Council, confirm these and those as now read, and define them by apostolic authority."
The anathema attached to the definition of infallibility strikes below the feet of Protestants. It only anathematizes those who contradict the definition. Protestants do not stoop to do so. They may freely admit that the Pope is as infallible as the Church which made him irreformable, and for once they may believe more than the Pope, by admitting that the Church is as infallible as he. They certainly are not tempted to deny that the Pope, whether in his Decrees or out of them, is irreformable. Here, again, they believe more than the Pope.
The Civiltá states that now burst out a loud acclamation among the Fathers, accompanied with salvos of artillery. The small crowd of priests and nuns, and such like, as Vitelleschi says, about the door of the Hall raised a shout. Quirinus says that the nuns cried "Papa mio"--My Pope. According to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, St. Peter's was very full of people, who broke forth in such applause that you would scarcely have believed that you were in the temple of the Prince of the Apostles, hearing it echo again and again with these unwonted sounds.
The Irreformable then addressed his Bishops in the following allocution. In order to do so, according to the Stimmen, he had to make several vain attempts, owing to the repeated applause of the Fathers; an applause which recalls a sad word of Vitelleschi, that some are never so jubilant as when they have placed a new yoke on their necks. At length the thunders of applause were still, and the waiting world was ready to hear the first utterance of the first human being ever set up on a throne in a temple, by hundreds of men of full age and of sound reason, to utter to all the earth words never to be questioned or amended, much less recalled. Hush! The Infallible gives forth the first oracle in his now acknowledged plenitude of power. Does it sound like "the word of God," at whose potent spell a disordered world will rise to new order and repose, or like that of an old man chiding the absent bishops who had not adorned the triumph of the day?
This exalted authority of the Roman Pontiff, venerable brethren, does not oppress, but assists; does not destroy, but builds up and often confirms in dignity, unites in affection, and strengthens and protects the rights of brethren--that is, of the bishops. Let those who now judge in the earthquake know that the Lord is not in the earthquake. Let them remember that, a few years ago, holding different views, they copiously expressed themselves as of our own opinion, and that of the majority of this great assembly; but they then judged in the calm. In judging of the same case, can we have two opposing consciences? God forbid! May God, therefore, enlighten their minds and their hearts; and as He alone works great marvels, may He illuminate their minds and hearts, so that all may come to the breast of their Father, that of the unworthy Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, who loves them, who esteems them, and who longs to be one with them. And so, bound together in the bond of charity, may we be able to fight the battle of the Lord, so that our enemies may not deride us, but may rather fear us, and may in time lay down the weapons of wickedness before the truth; and may we all be enabled to say with St. Augustine, "Thou hast called me into Thy wonderful light, and lo, I see!"[474]
The bishops applauded, and the journals found the allocution divine. The Liberal Catholics, however, felt that when the Pope said, "I desire to be one with them," he meant, "I desire to see them submit to me." The grave point was, that this being the first utterance from the chair after he had been solemnly declared to be as infallible as the Church, an utterance made--if ever one could be made--in the exercise of his office as pastor of the universal Church, it contained a misstatement of fact and a misconception of doctrine. The Pope, occupied with the absentees, ventured roundly to assert that they who now opposed had been a few years ago fully of his opinion and of that of the majority. If ever a public misstatement deserved to be called by a strong short name, this one did. Had the language of the Decree, now lifted to the level of the law that changeth not, been put by a Protestant, as the doctrine of their Church, before Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, before Darboy and Dupanloup, before Strossmayer, Kenrick, Clifford, and MacHale, any day previous to the year 1870, they would have railed at the Protestant as a slanderer, and perhaps would not have let him escape without an episcopal curse. Would not Spalding have sneered at D'Aubigné as a fool and a false witness had he said that the Pope could make a dogma without either the counsel of bishops or the consent of the Church? No, the ears of the Pope were full of words of witness; the bureaux of the Council contained document after document in evidence that the statement which he now dared to make when none dared to contradict, was not true, and was known not to be true. Those bishops, in order to please the Pope, had unwisely, as they now felt, stretched the doctrine of primacy, which they did hold, till it looked to unpractised eyes very like Papal infallibility. True, they had done this in what seemed rather to be addresses of ceremony than formularies of doctrine; for whenever infallibility itself had been nakedly presented to them, even without the adjunct of ordinary jurisdiction in every diocese, and without any repudiation of the consent of the Church, they had mustered the manhood to oppose it. The Pope neither stated the facts nor discriminated between opinion and opinion. He did state as fact what was not fact, and confounded opinions that differed. Friedrich, with the acute author of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, and not a few others, thinks that he is personally incapable of understanding theological distinctions, and that he could not explain what the doctrine of Papal infallibility means. This seems to be impossible, and yet there is very much to prevent one from pronouncing it ridiculous. But whether he is capable of distinguishing in such a case or not is a very slight matter. The fact that remains for us is, that his first utterance from the acknowledged seat of infallibility was wholly occupied with the absent bishops, that he insinuated that they had a double conscience, and that the grounds on which he made that insinuation were incorrect in fact and inaccurate in thought. Had the question whether the Papacy was a divine organ of truth, or merely a contrivance of clever old men, liable to be overseen, like other mortals, in their words and deeds, been designedly subjected to a fair test, we can with difficulty conceive of one fairer or more conclusive, than that first utterance from the recognized seat of inerrancy. There is nothing divine in it, and the human elements do not rise above a very ordinary level.
The city was silent and chill. We can form but a faint idea of how much, in such a case, mere external impressions sway a community trained like the one of which we speak. It was as if the salvos from St. Angelo, the feeble voice of the Irreformable, had been swallowed up in the salvos of the skies, the voice of the Sole Infallible. The Giornale di Roma and the Civiltá, the Univers and the Unitá, would have spared no epithets in denouncing the man who three months before should have said that, on the night when the creative word, the fiat, Let there be light, should be uttered; on the night when the patient voice of the people and of the priests should be hushed under "the voice of God" proclaiming infallibility, a noble Roman would pen what Vitelleschi that night quietly wrote down: "The government offices, the religious establishments, and a few private houses, were illuminated; but the rest of the city remained in perfect silence and profound darkness."
The concluding words of the Roman writer, in narrating the triumph of the day, are not wholly indifferent to us in England (p. 221)--
History is bound to award to the author and originator of every work the praise or blame which is due to him. All must remember the part taken by the Fathers of the Civiltá Cattolica, and Monsignor Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, in promoting the dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope, and all know that it was their mind and their will that carried it. On the day of the promulgation of the dogma, Monsignor Manning received as a gift from the Society of the Jesuits, a portrait of Bellarmine, with the following inscription--
Henrico Edwardo Manning, Archiep. Westmonast. Sodales Soc. Jesu; Collegii Civilitatis Catholicæ, Sessionis IV Concilii Vaticani Mnemosynon.
It is said that the portrait was really that of St. Charles Borromeo.
One other note was often made as to this memorable day. It was the same day on which was done the deed that irrevocably sealed the fall of the Second Empire, and consequently the fall of its pendant and protégé, the Papal throne. The declaration of war was delivered in Berlin on the day following, and must have left Paris that day!
The reader having already had several specimens, and fair ones, of Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, is in a position, so far as relates to it, to form his own opinion of its "stinking calumnies," to adopt the characteristic language of the Most Eminent, Most Reverend, and Right Reverend Fathers of the Council. But as to La Dernière Heure du Concile (The last hour of the Council), we may at this point fitly give a few examples. It speaks of "Rules imposed in violation of the most manifest rights of the Council, of Commission chosen beforehand, of illusory votes, of an oppressive tutelage, of discussions without order and without aim, of modifications of the Rules as arbitrary as they were multiplied." It asserts that as to the minority public calumnies were not spared them; that their speakers were more than once forced to leave the desk without being able to explain, much less to defend their views; while the majority from the beginning took the reasons of the minority for insults, and rendered back insults for reasons; and that the petitions of the minority were not only left without effect, but without answer. It pictures the Jesuits as meeting the bishops after three centuries of feigned truce on the ground where their General Laynez, defeated at Trent, had left them; but as now coming perfectly prepared for the battle, while the bishops had not foreseen anything--
To-day it is not the episcopate that refuses to hear Father Laynez, but it is Father Laynez who, master of the field, does not even deign to listen to the episcopate, and announces to it that the question has been long decided.... The day that Pius IX said, There shall be a Council, the Company of Jesus said, I shall be the Council. We have seen three of its doctors absorb both the doctrinal power of the august assembly, and its right of initiative. The bishops have been called to sanction what the Jesuits have written, and there is the whole history of the Council.
Speaking of the Propaganda, the writer declares that it holds in its hands all the Vicars Apostolic, and most of the Oriental bishops. Taking advantage of its annual grants, it gives week by week to the prelates who are supported by them that special impulse which shapes the Council. In winter it set watch before the doors of the poor Oriental bishops and obliged them to shut their cells against brethren who came to visit them. Thus it comes to pass
that the word of two hundred Fathers of the oecumenical assembly always remains the word of the Pope alone. In fact, hitherto it is a thing unheard of that a single one of these prelates, sons of the Propaganda, should have the courage to speak before the Council or to vote otherwise than it would have them do. This single proof is of incomparable and demonstrative force, as against the reality of their freedom; for while all the other Churches, without exception, have had some independent voices, the Church which I shall call that of the Propaganda has not hitherto produced one.
Proceeding to the most tender point of all, the writer says--
Above this surveillance of an institution the Jesuits have contrived another, which is shown more rarely, and is reserved for great events. This reaches the heads that are loftiest, even when they are held up, and it makes those who might feel a movement of independence tremble in spite of themselves. I mean the authority of Pius IX. Too long it has been sought to keep his action in the background, in the private history of the Council, by casting into the shade a figure which is entitled to stand in a strong light. Hitherto the writers of history have, at each new incident in the Council, been content to say, It is the work of the Roman Court. Well, the Roman Court is Pius IX, and history, when the hour comes, rending the covering of mystery, must let every one bear the responsibility which belongs to him. It will have to say that it is Pius IX who would have the Council in spite of the Cardinals, and who now will have, in spite of them, his personal infallibility. It is he who required for the Council this hall where one cannot hear; it is he who became irritated with Audu and tore from him the abdication of his rights; it is he who refused to receive the petition of the minority requesting that unhappy debates should be averted; it is he who violated all rule in bringing on the burning question; it is he who suddenly smothered discussion when it became menacing for his pretensions; it is he who from the clergy of Rome required an address which they had at first refused; it is he who dismissed Theiner to reward Cardoni; it is he who by a classification to be much regretted distressed the prelates who on the anniversary day of his election came to congratulate him; it is he who called Guidi after his speech to subdue his independent spirit; is it he who from the Council demands either his personal infallibility or else the courage to die from the heat of the sun and of the fever; it is he who will be everything, both the universal faith and tradition--La tradizione son io! Never was absolutism seen so near at hand, in an institution which Jesus Christ had founded free and independent in spite of its monarchical and indivisible unity.
The aspect of the case which most distressed the writer seemed to be that studied humiliation of the bishops which marked the whole procedure of the Pope, and especially that raising against them of their own subordinates which bishops probably thought was a measure reserved only for employment against civil rulers, not against "Venerable Brethren." Contrasting the present excesses with those of the Popes of the middle ages the writer proceeds--
At present we stand in presence of the Papacy struggling, not against princes, but against the episcopacy; as if Pius IX could find on the ruin of his brethren a more elevated throne, or in their annihilation a more impregnable fortress. O misfortune of the times and abuse of the most holy institutions! They want to have only a single real bishop in the world--the Pope; a single infallible and authorized doctor--the Pope! Let every voice be silent unless to say what he has said; let no action be performed but under his episcopal jurisdiction--universal, immediate; let those who have been appointed by God to govern, renounce their imprescriptible rights; let them tear the pages of the gospel on which those rights are graven; we do not any longer want more than one mouth, one hand, an absolute monarch; then, say they, only then, shall we have universal order.... At present the Caesars disappear everywhere and visibly; in vain do I look for a Louis XIV or a Joseph II; governments are essentially transformed and are confounded with the country which at least has no courtiers. There now remains in reality but one Caesar, who is himself everything both in spiritual matters and in temporal, dispensing his favours to those who defend him, and making those who contradict him feel his wrath; and this Caesar is not called either Francis Joseph or Napoleon III.
And while this time all temporal powers have scrupulously respected the liberty of the Council, a single one has hampered it in every way, has dreaded and destroyed it. I need not name the one. Thus the Church which had furnished to modern civil societies the model of a monarchy, in which the aristocratic and popular elements effectually tempered the excess of the supreme power, the Church which had first of all given to the modern world the example of its great assemblies, discussing in freedom the rights of truth and justice--this Church presents to us to-day the spectacle of a Council without liberty and the menace of an absolutism without control.
This will suffice to account for the displeasure of the Pope and the Jesuits; but whether it sufficed to warrant the action of the Council and its language, posterity will judge. In our climate the allusion to the cruelty of keeping the old men in Rome in what is there called "the severest season," would seem overstrained. But the danger of attending a conclave in that season will be found described by Mr. T.A. Trollope as greater than that of a soldier on the field of battle. And his details of a conclave held in July to elect the Barberini Pope, gives frightful corroboration of that serious statement.[475] As M. Veuillot, looking from the point of view of the initiated, had at once leaped to the conclusion of the Pope only; and as Vitelleschi, reasoning from the data furnished by the Canons presented to the Council, inferred that all that would remain of earthly authority would be the Pope only; so this writer, starting from the episcopal point of view, and with difficulty rising above it, at last stands face to face with the sole figure of authority left, the Pope only; and he finds that while the spirit of Christianity has been changing Caesars into mild and patriotic princes, another spirit has changed the Bishop of Rome into a Caesar, claiming all supremacy in things temporal and spiritual.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 464: Vol. ii. 427.]
[Footnote 465: Friedberg, p. 622; Quirinus, 797.]
[Footnote 466: Vol. ii. p. 436.]
[Footnote 467: Civiltá, VII. xi. 367.]
[Footnote 468: The names are given in Friedberg, p. 149.]
[Footnote 469: Vitelleschi says that of 157 absent only 38 were accounted for. The rest represented the Non-contents.]
[Footnote 470: P. 216.]
[Footnote 471: Vitell. and Acta Sanctæ Sedis.]
[Footnote 472: Civiltá, VII. xi. 347.]
[Footnote 473: Ibid., VII. xi. pp. 479, 480.]
[Footnote 474: Civiltá, VII. xi. 366.]
[Footnote 475: Papal Conclaves, p. 312.]
Chapter IX
From the Great Session to the Suspension of the Council, October 20, 1870--The Time now come for the Fulfilment of Promises--Position and Prospects--Second Empire and Papacy fall together--Style of Address to the Pope--War for the Papal Empire foreshadowed--Latest Act of the Council--Italy moves on Rome--Capture of the City--Suspension of the Council--Attitude of the Church changed--Last Events of 1870.
The reader may perhaps feel that we have now reached a point at which many prophecies await their fulfilment, and many calculations their test. The enthusiasts had, on religious grounds, foretold that the utterance of the "creative word," would be attended with portentous religious effects. A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union, whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution.
Thus, when the consummation should be reached, and a ruler should be solemnly set up by the bishops of the whole Church before the kings of the earth, like, to use the favourite simile of the time, the Lord setting His King upon His holy hill of Sion; and when this king should be officially declared to have the government upon his shoulders, to be invested with all authority for the moral regulation of human affairs, they expected that the princes, bowing down, would accept him as their supreme judge and arbiter. Indeed, at one time, the confident talk, not merely of men among themselves, but of the publications most in the confidence of the guiding men, had been about laying down conditions to kings and governments on which they might hope to rule in peace. Hints had not been spared, that only two alternatives could be allowed to them--the acceptance of the new moral order on the one hand, or the loss of their places on the other.
The restoration of society to what was called the Catholic ideal, its reconstruction on the new divine basis, its deliverance from the chronic plagues which in modern times had wasted it, were at once to begin, and moral order was to smile where of late chaos had lowered. Already these theorists beheld society crying for the Pope as its saviour. Furthermore, during the days of preparation for the Council, and during its deliberations, only one among all the nations had been singled out for solemn blessing and glowing assurances that God would not forget her services to the Church. Italy had been warned and cursed. Austria and her new constitution had been formally condemned. Russia had been laid under every possible anathema. Spain, ever since her change of government, had shared the same condemnation. As to the heretical countries, they were generally left, without separate mention, in the depths to which their sins had sunk them. But the Ultramontane organs in Germany and France had marked Prussia out for signal detestation, and denounced the union of Germany under the leadership of Prussia for the relentless opposition of the Church of God. France alone was blessed with the withering benediction of the priest.
The hour had come that was to show how far the seers had read the future, and how far the calculators had reckoned well. So far as related to the great dogma, and the definition of it, all that had been designed was happily accomplished; indeed, more completely accomplished than had been proposed in any design avowed up to the eleventh hour. So far, therefore, both seers and calculators were justified. They had not seen a false vision, so long as they contemplated the dogmatic issue; nor had they reckoned without their host, so long as they had reckoned upon bishops, priests, and friars. Events were now to tell how far the transformation of Society into the accepted model, how far the homage of kings, how far the self-surrender of Parliaments, how far the submission of codes to be remodelled by the Church, and how far the general consent of the human race to be guided by him who claimed to hold the place of God among men, were to pass from the realm of hope into that of experience.
The progress of the Council, and of opinion contemporary with its sittings, had dissipated many illusions. Even the bishops had to be conquered, and were not won. Europe had been awakened and had not been attached, but alienated. Great as the glories of the spectacles had confessedly been, and much as they dazzled spectators, they had not carried legislative effect, except where the artistic legerdemain had admitted of immediate application. The vote of the minority on July 13 was one symptom of failure. Their final record of dissent, put into the Pope's own hand, was a more serious symptom. Their flight from the last public session was more serious still. The absence of the representatives of the governments from that session was yet far more depressing. All, therefore, that was now to be hoped for from the Church was submission; and the very utmost that any calculating man dared to hope for from governments was endurance. The worst was that statesmen had learned much more than they were ever meant to learn, and had seen into matters a deal further than laymen ought to see. And so the first night of the new dispensation closed in under dull skies, both physically and morally.
When the Romans, always curious to see how facts can be dressed for appearance outside of the walls, looked to the Giornale di Roma for an account of the session, they found there that all the bishops who had not appeared--upwards of two hundred--were placed in one class, "absent from different legitimate and recognized reasons." This was followed by the assertion that "the great majority of them held the same doctrine as that which had been defined." Accustomed as the Romans are to this method of putting facts in vestments, the occasion was solemn before God and exposed to the eye of man. Vitelleschi wrote that in these representations the minority might find "a foretaste of the false statements and judgments they must in future expect." Some readily account for such assertions by saying that it was hoped that the documents which proved the contrary would never come to light. But much is due to the habit of reckoning on the power of a great organ to set officials upon repeating what it says, till the facts are forgotten. The Civiltá copied these statements, and yet at a later date gave a truer account of the absentions.
It said: Cardinals, 42 pro and 4 contra; Patriarchs, 6 pro and 2 contra; Primates, 6 pro and 2 contra; Archbishops, 80 pro and 18 contra; Bishops, 349 pro and 47 contra; Abbots and Generals, 40 pro and only 1, a Chaldean, contra. The same article, however, does not shrink from asserting that "many" of the minority voted Placet in the public session.
The heaviest solicitudes of the Curia were now to begin. Events had been so guided that so long as they were dealing with their own instruments, the bishops and the clergy, they were left completely to effect their purpose. Now came the point where they were to operate upon mankind. That society which they had meant completely to subjugate, flattering themselves that they were about to restore it, was now placed face to face with them in an awful aspect, one which neither priests nor kings could fully interpret. Certain it was, however, that neither kings nor "peoples" were upon their knees before the Vicar of God, or were inclined to go down upon them. Some feared that instead of kings and nations appealing to him to save them, he would soon be found appealing to some one to save him. The fortunes of the restored empire of the Bonapartes, and those of the restored Papacy, had been bound up together. Men now watched and whispered, saying that as they had been strangely united in their lives, perhaps they would not be divided in their fall. The 13th of July, the day of the voting which gave the Pope his fatal majority, was the day of the incident at Ems. It was the day also on which the Duc de Gramont informed the French Chambers that, although the Hohenzollern candidate for the throne of Spain had been withdrawn, that did not close the dispute. The 18th of July, the day on which the Pope read out by candlelight the Decree upon his own infallibility, was the day on which Napoleon despatched his fatal declaration of war to Berlin. A baptism of fire had been often and pompously foretold as the result of the great dogma. After its promulgation all that the world ever heard of a baptism of fire was when Napoleon telegraphed to the Empress, whom the devout regarded as the true author of the war, telling her, in loud brag before the nations, how her boy had received his baptism of fire. That again was but two days before simultaneous sorrows sounded the knell of the empire and of the throne which sheltered under the shadow of its wing--the two embodiments of arbitrary will calling itself authority.
On August 4, the Pope was chafing at the news that the French troops at Civitá Vecchia had actually commenced embarkation. On the same day Bonaparte read the telegram from Wissenberg. On August 6, Count Arnim on the Capitoline was writing to Berlin to tell his government that Napoleon had declined an offer of the Pope to mediate between the belligerents, assigning as the ground that after the declaration of war negotiations were too late. That same day came upon Napoleon the double disasters of Wörth and Spichern. The reply of the King of Prussia to the same offer of mediation on the part of the Pope was to the effect that if the Pontiff would procure for him assurances of the pacific intentions of Napoleon, and guarantees against similar violations of the peace in the future, he would not refuse to receive them from the hands of his Holiness.[476] The total result then of the first attempt at political action abroad, in the new character, was a simple failure. At the same time political embarrassments at home were thickening, as they had done every day since the fatal July 13.
It was after Rome had learned that the sun of Austerlitz had not shone on the fields of Wörth and Spichern, that the first formal act occurred showing that the Council had neither been dissolved nor prorogued. All that the Pope had done was to give the bishops a general leave until November 11. Had everything gone smoothly, this arrangement would have enabled the men of the Curia to go on as if they were a General Council. The step to which we allude was merely the formal addition of certain names to the Committee on Church Discipline, to replace those who had left Rome. And this is registered on August 13.
Meantime an intimation was given of the style of adhesion to the Papacy in its renewed glory which would be acceptable at the Vatican. The Civiltá selected for publication, "by preference," as it expresses it, an address from the Society of Catholic Youth in Bologna. It stated that, as if in recompense of the new and lofty honour to the Virgin Mary procured by the word of Pius IX, Divine Providence had exalted in his person the divine dignity of the successor of Peter to the summit of glory and power--
We shall ever keep our eyes fixed on Thee, the mirror of eternal Truth. We shall ever keep them directed to this Apostolical Chair, whence the waters of true wisdom and of eternal life perennially flow. Speak, then, O Infallible Teacher, and we, the youthful sons of the Catholic Church, will hear Your words as the words of eternal wisdom; Your judgment shall be for us the judgment of God; Your definition shall be as the definitions of God; Your instruction as the instruction of God. In your authority as Vicar of Christ we venerate the authority of God, and submitting our mind and our heart to that authority, we have faith to sustain the dignity of human nature in face of the pretentious tyranny of haughty intellect spoiled and blinded by guilty passions.[477]
The historical tales which had for years been carried on in the pages of the Civiltá under the title The Crusaders of St. Peter, from which we have occasionally given scenes, rather strangely happened, in the number of the Civiltá for August 24, to come to an end. It concluded with the list of the immortal dead, as recorded for the world in a monument which Italy may well preserve. The Pope did not know what a record of the exotic character of his own power he was putting up. The ideal of this monument, and of the methods by which the world was to be made Catholic, is given by the Civiltá in a very few words--
It was the conception of Pius IX that, in the Agro Verano, on soil consecrated by the tombs of the ancient martyrs, should arise the memorial of the crusaders of the nineteenth century. And another conception of Pius IX was the colossal group in marble which represents St. Peter in the attitude of committing the sword to a warrior in armour, who with the cross bears a flag, with the legend, The Catholic World. Peter is Pius; the warrior is the Christian army. The idea of the mission of that army glows in the authoritative action of him who gives the commission, and in the humble and generous action of him who receives the commission, and is admirably expressed in two texts of Scripture beneath, drawn from the Book of the Maccabees: "Take this holy sword, a gift from God, wherewith thou shalt overthrow the adversaries of my people Israel.... For victory standeth not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven."
The names of the martyrs of this crusade are given, and among those who fell in the Battle of Mentana is only one Italian. France, Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, and Germany are all represented, and Switzerland still more strongly. In the other most considerable engagement, that of Monte Libretti, there is again but a single Italian. Among those who perished by being blown up in barracks in Rome were several Italians, in large part musicians. That record is certainly worth the keeping of Italy at any cost, and the setting of it up is only one of the manifold evidences of how blinded the Papacy was in the last days of its temporal power.[478] Well might the Pope in the Syllabus condemn the doctrine of non-intervention.
On August 15, a great "function" was celebrated at Rome, in the Church of St. Louis of the French, in commemoration of the name-day of the Emperor Napoleon--that modern Charlemagne who restored the Roman Catholic Church in France, and whose nephew restored the Pope to his holy city. Cardinal Bonaparte, the Marquis de Banneville, and all the French notables attended in state. About the same time a sorely smitten man, accompanied by his boy, was crossing the drawbridges of Metz, turning their faces to the rear, amid gibes and nicknames from the French soldiery. While winding up the heights of orchard and of vineyard which overhang the beauteous dale of the Moselle, and when looking on the fair uplands of Lorraine, upon which were sleeping, in happy obscurity, villages like St. Privat and Gravelotte, like Rezonville and Mars La Tour, the withered Emperor and his yet unripe son might see French soldiers marching in retreat, but could not see the Germans by whom they were being already outmarched. Meanwhile in Paris the two elect ladies of the Golden Rose--Isabella and Eugénie--were spectators, the first sighing after a crown already lost, the second trembling for a regency attained as if only to expedite the breaking of the sceptre of her husband. Had either of them faith enough to believe that the Virgin could reward them for services done to the Holy Father by giving them the necks of their enemies? Our Lady of Victories, "terrible as an army with banners," to quote a favourite text with Jesuit writers, was propitiated at least by the Empress Regent.
So far the political calculations of the Curia had all been turned to vanity. Bavaria had not fraternized with the French, much less carried Würtemburg and Baden with her. The blast of invasion which was to sound the death-knell of German unity had proved to be its mustering-cry. Italy up to the present moment had stood in awe of France, but if the latter should receive another blow or two, matters might reach a pass at which the Italian government would have more cause to fear Garibaldi than Napoleon--and then?
News soon arrived that the Germans, out-marching the French, had met them in the villages which we have lately mentioned, the names of which were by that meeting written large on the memory of nations. The poor Pope saw that Bonaparte, whom he had used and hated, was not likely to retain power any longer to guard his temporal throne. He knew that Italy was wiser than the first Bonaparte, who taught the French that the Pope was to be treated as if he had two hundred thousand bayonets--a lesson that has cost them dear. Italy adopted the principle that, in respect of bayonets, the Pope was to be counted as worth just as many as he could command. Italy would also treat him more wisely as a teacher. She would not incarcerate, exile, or personally insult him, but would leave him free to bless or curse as he felt moved, and to be heeded or disregarded according as every man felt persuaded in his own mind.
It was with hearts weighted with the heavy news from the banks of the Moselle that the Fathers of the Council met in their Congregation on August 23. How changed that gathering from the proud assembly of last December, which challenged the homage of all kings, and at the sight of which the Margottis and the Veuillots spoke of our Parliaments as puppet-shows! Those whose organs of the Press a few months before wrote as if neither kings nor presidents had any long tenure of power, except as they might make their peace with the Church, felt themselves to sit amid the indifference of mankind, and under the menacing strokes of Providence. The bishops who had warned them of their ignorance and folly, but had been crushed, were now far away. In the Congregation, the Fathers discussed some matters of Church discipline, but as the shadow of Sadowa had arrested all preparations for the Council during fourteen months, and that of Garibaldi for three or four, now a darker shadow, projected from Wörth and Gravelotte, was falling upon the remaining ecclesiastics, as the evening gloom of the Aventine falls on late gamblers in what was once the Circus Maximus. They had played for the certainty of the temporal power, and for the reversion of the lordship of the world. They had boldly staked all episcopal and clerical rights. The upshot was that the losers had lost, and that the one winner was to be a loser too. The next news showed them that, on the very day when they thus met, was completed the investment of Metz. Thus did they see the thrice beaten but still coherent army of Bazaine altogether cut off from the routed and disorganised army of MacMahon. They had fixed to meet again on September 1.
The Fathers probably felt that it was doubtful whether the Congregation fixed for September 1 would meet; but it was highly politic to keep up the airs of a General Council, because it increased the sanctity of the city, and made it morally more difficult for Italy to attack. Ere they met, it became known that at Beaumont, Failly--the faithful General Failly, the leader of the expedition of Mentana, lauded and blessed for his "prodigious chassepots"--had met the Bavarians, soldiers of that king whom the Unitá never wearied of insulting, and that at their hands Failly had lost his guns, his baggage, and his camp, a large part of his men, and all his reputation. The Congregation of September 1, did meet, and it was the last. While Bishop Quinn, of Brisbane, in Australia, was offering up the Mass, the undulating plateaux around Sedan were reeking with an incense which had, within the last few years, been invoked with lamentable frequency by the organs of the Vatican. As the Fathers were rising from their afternoon siesta, tens of thousands of blue and grey eyes, from all the heights commanding the city of Turenne, began to dance for joy at seeing the white flag waving from the old castle lying low down in the hollow--ay, the white flag waving over the Imperial head of him who to them represented the traditional devastators of the German Fatherland, but who was, to the bishops of the Council, the prince who for twenty years had been the stay of the temporal power.
No sooner had the news from Sedan reached the Agro Romano, than Curia and peasant alike knew all that was to follow. One week after that day the Fathers gathered, on September 8, for the last great ceremony, or, as it was called, "the last extra conciliar act."[479] The remains of the world-transforming host of December now speckled the noble Piazza del Popolo, pressing to the great church of Santa Maria. It was the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. All that the Civiltá tells of the day is that there were great expectations, and that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, then three months distant, would witness a splendid session. We should say that there was no expectation of the sort, except indeed among the few who really counted on the Virgin as being certain at last to work for the Pope the miracles which it had been so often suggested that she was in gratitude bound to perform. The majority calculated that she had acquitted all her debts to him by making him infallible. Desirable as it was to keep up the appearance that Rome was just then the seat of a General Council, they knew that though for us and other remote people beyond the mountains that might have a sacred sound, for the Italians it was not a name to conjure with.
On the very day when the Fathers were cheerlessly performing this final ceremony, a notification was sent forward by Victor Emmanuel that he was unable longer to stay the impetus of the nation, which panted to take possession of its capital. The letter of the king was weak and disingenuous. It was more like the work of a priest than of a soldier. He affected to be a good Catholic, while deliberately dethroning the Vicar of God. He affected to hope that the Pope would acquiesce in his own dethronement. The reply of the Pontiff was more worthy of his position, and more becoming his professions.
This hostile movement called out a quality in which Popes are surely infallible, that of appealing to foreigners for armed intervention against their own countrymen. Of all men, to whom should the Pope now turn but to the King of Prussia--as if the King of Prussia did not know at what the Pope and his instruments had been aiming! The date of the reply of King William was in itself a history. He wrote from the capital of fair Champagne. Already had the tide of war closed round the hot infallibilist Räss in his stately Cathedral of Strasburg; and, rolling on, it had, under the shadow of St. Remy, enveloped the deserter from the Opposition, Landriot, in his thrice beautiful fane at Rheims.
St. Remy sent no sufficing homage by the hand of King William. The soldier-king quietly declined to undertake any such political intervention as the priest-king desired. In one word, he dispelled the idea of the venerable applicant, that the cause of Prussia was implicated. The matter, said King William, is one "which does not, as your Holiness appears to think, in any way affect the interests of Prussia." That calm word would provoke many a vow to make the heretic feel that the Pope could affect the temper of millions of his subjects, and therefore the interests of his government.
Yet one week from the notification of Victor Emmanuel, and on September 15, rode up an Italian staff officer, with all the forms of war, to the Milvian Bridge--that Pons Milvius ever memorable for the victory of Constantine and the death of Maxentius. The latest addition to its history of military incidents, which began with the conspiracy of Catiline, had been made one-and-twenty years previously, when the insurgent Romans defeated an attempt to carry the bridge made by the French under Oudinot. The point of meeting did not, therefore, seem to be one of good omen for Pius IX. The Italian officer was Colonel Count Caccialupi, or Chase-the-Wolves. He came from General Cadorna to demand, in the name of the King of Italy, the surrender of the city. On behalf of his Holiness, General Kanzler at once gave his reply. The place was to be defended. General Bixio on that day closed in upon Civitá Vecchia.
Meanwhile, Count Arnim, in the hope of averting bloodshed, plied between the city and the Italian camp. The Pope, however, was resolved upon resistance. He did, indeed, give orders that it should be continued only so long as to compel the Italians to open a breach, in order, as he said, to attest the fact that his capital fell by violence. That end, we might have thought, would have been equally well answered, without bloodshed, by surrendering after the first gun. The forces of the Pope numbered eight thousand, and those of Cadorna fifty thousand. Rapidly as the temporal power and the Second Empire were both rushing downhill, it appeared as if they were constantly to keep step. So did it fall out that on that very September 19, when the Prussians, defeating Vinoy, closed round Paris, Cadorna, coming up from the north, sat down before gates of Rome. His lines stretched from the Salara Gate to the Gate of San Giovanni, thus enclosing that cemetery of St. Lorenzo, where stood the monument to the Crusaders, with so many foreign and so few Italian names. Coming up from the south, General Angiolotti stretched from the Gate of St. Giovanni to that of St. Sebastiano. Early the next morning Bixio, coming up from Civitá Vecchia, which he had captured, took post before the Gate of San Pancrazio, remembered for the contest between Garibaldi and the French.
With the first light of September 20 did the chambers of the Vatican begin to rattle with the sound of other artillery than the joy-guns of St. Angelo. The last time that sound had disturbed those vaults was when it came as the voice of a French republic, commanding a Roman republic to make way for the most despotic rule in Europe. Now France was learning for herself what it is to hear the guns of the stranger before the gates of the capital; and Rome was feeling what it is to hear the voice of the Fatherland bidding the stranger depart. Of the two potentates who in 1849 thundered at the weak walls of poor old Rome, he who then acted the restorer was now an exile and a captive, while he who was then an exile panting for return, now sat in the halls to which he was then restored, but sat feeling in the thud of every gun that even within those halls he too would soon call himself a captive.
While the din pained the spirit of the aged Pio Nono, forty of the Italians attacking and twenty of the foreigners defending were killed, and a hundred and fifty of the assailants and fifty of the garrison were wounded. Reports came that the heaviest fire was directed against the Porta Pia, the gate particularly connected by name with his own name, adorned and restored by his liberality, and endeared to his military recollections by the triumphal entrance of his crusaders from Mentana less than three years before. A letter is published in which the Pope ordered General Kanzler to surrender as soon as a breach should be made. But it would not appear that he had really granted him power to do so; for the Civiltá expressly says that the order to hoist the white flag was given by the Pope himself, and accounts for needless bloodshed by the delay which occurred ere that order could reach the gate that was beleaguered.[480]
Some five hours had passed since the horrid din began. No Michael with his legions of angels, no Madonna terrible as an army with banners, smote the host of the aliens. No Peter struck the barbarians with blindness. No Dominic, with a cohort of sainted Inquisitors; no Ignatius, with a celestial "Company," flashed death upon the worse than Moslems who fought for uprisen Italy. All these things had been expected. They came not, but instead of them came the news that a breach at the Porta Pia invited the Italians in. At last the poor old priest-king made up his mind to stay the futile flow of blood. He knew the temper of his zouaves. They would have stood and died like crusaders; but at last the word was given. There on the dome of proud St. Peter's was the white flag, and there did it float out upon the September breeze, and waved in the forenoon sun--waved over Pontiff and Cardinal, over the Circus of Nero and the Inquisition of the Popes. Was it real? Eyes would be wiped to see if they did not deceive. Eyes, ay, the eyes of soldiers, would be wiped from thick, hot tears. Could it be--could it ever be? Come at last! The hour for which ages had impatiently waited, for which myriads of Italians had died. Italy one! her arms outstretched from Etna and from Monte Rosa, clasping at last every one of her children, and even availing by their returning strength to lift up her poor old Rome from under the load of the priest and the stranger.
He who two brief months before had, amid deep darkness at noonday, read out, by artificial light, the Decree of his own unlimited power and irreformable law, lay down that night amid a rude and intrusive glare streaming from across the Tiber into the multitudinous windows of the Vatican. It came from the lights of Rome all ablaze with illuminations for the fall of the temporal power. In the piazza below lay the Pope's little army of foreigners, passing their last night in the Holy City under shade of the basilica in which they had consecrated their bayonets to St. Peter, and within embrace of the two arms of the glorious crescent colonnade. For true it is that stone cupolas, and stone columns, put up by the distant dead, may be of real avail as stays of a power after the hearts and hands of willing men have ceased to hold it up. The soldiers passed the next morning in confused preparations for a departure. At noon a cannon was fired, and the Pope appeared on his balcony. He could not conceal his overpowering emotion. With the retreating steps of these prisoners of war, were about to vanish mystic visions of martial feats crowned by divine miracle. The soldiers raised their old cry, Viva Pio Nono, in loud and ringing tones; which, smiting against the basilica and the palace, were from thence rolled back, and flew across the stream, till the sound of Viva Pio Nono once more floated along the neighbouring streets of the capital. Uprisen Italy, quietly sustaining her uplifted Rome, hearkened in silence to the foreign cheer. Then, for the last time, did the Pope give to his beloved soldiers what they had so often received, his benediction. As he withdrew, when the corridors opened lone and long before him, when the doors closed behind, cutting him off from the only bayonets on which he could rely, no wonder if he felt that the palace of the Pontiffs had become a prison.
The crusaders, turning to the left, passed out of the Gate Angelica; then winding round under the windows of the Vatican, close by the garden walls, and along the Janiculum, they finally reached the Gate of San Pancrazio, where Cadorna and his staff awaited them to receive the formal surrender. Proud were the men under the red, white, and green, with the cross of Savoy, as they saw the head of the approaching column. As the first men of the French legion came up they insulted the Italian staff. According to the Civiltá, Bixio was so incensed that he reproached Cadorna for having conceded to such troops the honours of war. The friendly writer extenuates their misconduct by alleging the irritation cause by affronts received from the rabble in the streets on the previous day. But when the zouaves came up led by the brave Colonel Charette, they behaved like soldiers (Civiltá, VIII. i. 212).
When the crusaders of Pio Nono passed away from the Gate of San Pancrazio, who would have dared to say that the sixty dead and the two hundred wounded of the day before were to be the last victims of war provoked by Popes abusing the name of the Prince of Peace? And who would not feel for the French crusaders, who, led by their priests, and thinking that they did God service, had for twenty years inflicted upon Italy, at the behest of the Pope, the miseries of foreign occupation, and now, in facing their own fair land, were to behold the foreigner seated in her proudest palaces.
From that day forth, when the Roman met the priest on the street, he felt that he was no longer bound, except at the dictate of his own conscience, to confess to him his sins; that, indeed, he was not even bound to purchase an Easter ticket, to be produced as evidence that he had duly presented himself in a tribunal in which, in fact, he had never set foot. From that day forth, when the friar entered the church of St. Ignatius, neither the great picture of the torments of the heretics, nor what, in his dialect, he might call the "divine" lapis lazuli, retained all its old brilliancy; for within those sacred walls the internal tribunal of the kingdom of God was no longer anything more than a voluntary confessional. From that day forth disappeared from the seats of justice on the Seven Hills the ecclesiastical magistrate, and with him the external tribunal of the Church. From that day forth appeared for the first time for long and weary ages, the civil magistrates, sitting in open court under the eye of all, to administer, with whatever shortcomings, a law which accepted the Christian principle of even-handed justice to Jew and Gentile; to those who said, We are of Cephas, and to those who only said, We are of Christ. In the eye of the Vatican this was the fall of the supernatural order, the godless triumph of naturalism; but in other eyes it was the substitution of God's good ordinance for the contrivance of priestcraft, which, conscious that it was not natural, called itself supernatural. From that day forth the Roman noble ceased to be a mere title-bearer and jewel-stand, for now a career in the government of his country opened before him. From that time forth the people ceased to be a mere populace, and entered on the dignities of a democracy. Law, letters, science, politics, diplomacy, and oratory now called upon the bright-browed child of the working man to come and grace them with his gifts, and not to sit doomed to the destiny of the incapable, unless he would put on the frock of the priest. From that day forth the double office of Despot-Pontiff, answering to the ideal of later Pagan Rome, was replaced by the mild office of the monarch, reigning at the head of an aristocracy and a democracy. The priest as a teacher of doctrines, as a celebrant of rites, or as a practitioner of charms, remained as free as ever he had been before; but as a power to impose himself upon all, and as exclusive king of men, his reign had passed away. Italy said, "For ever"; the priest replied, "Only for a very little time"!
On October 2 the Italian government took a plébiscite in the Roman States, to enable the people by a vote to record their own desire as to whether they would belong to the kingdom of Italy or to the Spiritual State. According to the Civiltá, the voting in the Holy City was 40,835 in favour of Italy, and 46 against. It must not be imagined that the total amount of dissent was represented by the 46. The partisans of the supernatural order generally abstained; but probably they would have done otherwise had they not known that, even if they all mustered, the majority would be overwhelming. They, as usual, cried out against bribery, coercion, and similar wrongs. Indeed, to read the Papal organs at this day, one might believe that ever since the national movement began, every vote and every battle has been carried against the preponderating mass of Italians by some few Freemasons, Jews, and invisible conspirators.
The Council which was to restore all things still sat. Not even a prorogation had taken place. Now, however, the Pontiff, though not intending to dissolve it, determined to suspend it until a happier time. Exactly a month after Rome had passed into the hands of Italy, appeared on October 20 the Act by which the Council was suspended. In the Bull of Convocation the Pope had spoken of his intentions for the general benefit of society. In the Bull of Suspension it appeared that the particular society which best knew him and his remedies had spewed them out of her mouth. After having for many centuries had experience of his spiritual supremacy and temporal power, Italy had mournful proofs that they were socially evil. No land in Europe could produce a record of any dynasty which had so often brought into it foreign armies, to beat its people down, and to keep them under. No land in Europe could, from times within the memory of living men, produce such lists of the executed, the exiled, the imprisoned, and of those submitted to torture. No land in Europe had a ruling class among members of which public justice, when once free, had, week after week, to deal with such vile immoralities as the Courts of Italy had to punish in members of the priesthood. Italy had made the last trial of priestly rule with a prince personally free from the social blots which in the case of many of his predecessors had complicated questions of the public weal with questions of personal vice. Under Pius IX the system stood out more fairly to be judged by its principles and by its fruits. And under Pius IX Italy had rung with accounts of moral wrongs, of crimes of power, of curses uttered by the subject, such as had long since ceased to be heard of in other countries of Europe free from Turkish rule. The monstrosity that called itself a Spiritual State, and sneered at Lay States, was carnal, and vile to the core. The wave which, as soon as the breakwater of the Second Empire had been removed, rolled in at the Porta Pia, was even more a wave of moral scorn and of social execration than of political hostility.
The Council met amid florid promises that princes generally, at least Catholic ones, would accept the Vicar of God as their supreme judge, mingled with terrible citations of them all to appear before him, in order to find at one and the same time their correction and their deliverance in his infallible sentence. All this was uttered with the haughty spirit that goes before a fall. The fall after the haughtiness did not tarry, and was strikingly indicated by a phrase under the hand of the High Priest himself, in the Bull of Suspension: "We have been brought into such a position as to be entirely under a hostile dominion and power, God in His inscrutable judgments having so permitted it." Society had already beheld its self-proffered saviour clinging to the skirts of Napoleon III, and then crying to King William to save him from his fellow-countrymen. Now the kings heard their self-proffered judge himself declare that by a judgment truly supreme the temporal power had fallen--that power which he and all his bishops had separately and unitedly assured the Church was altogether necessary to the proper exercise of his office of universal bishop.
We heard the Civiltá, in September, foretell that when December 8 should come it would witness a splendid session. Now at last it came, a waymark noting the end of a very eventful year--eventful in the life of France, in the life of Italy, in the life of the German nation, and in that of the Papal Church. But the anniversary of the Immaculate, of the Syllabus, and of the opening of the Vatican Council, brought with it no splendid session. They who twelve months ago had met to sit in judgment on the nations were scattered, and were in various languages making strange explanations and dexterous appeals to allay the general disquiet relating to their political plans; and in doing so were creating in the minds of all who understood what they said, and who knew what they had done, an impossibility of ever hereafter trusting to representations of theirs. Meantime, without his seven hundred bishops, without his adoring crowds, without the glitter of fallen royalties and of quasi-civic dignitaries, without his beloved zouaves, yet still guarded by his stalwart and fantastic Swiss--for at that Court it is ever foreign steel that is true--the Pope, sitting in a palace of eleven thousand apartments, rich as any king, and free as any bishop in the world, yet felt and called himself a prisoner. Therefore when the day of exciting memories came, it was, says the Civiltá, spent in mourning and desolation. But a new offering to the Virgin was to raise the sacredness of December 8, even in this year of sorrow, to a higher pitch than ever. Hitherto the patron of the Holy Church had been St. Michael the Archangel, under whose spear the first rebel fell--which rebel, as some time ago we saw, prefigured the latest rebel, Garibaldi. Indeed, after Mentana, St. Michael was, as military men say, "mentioned" in the Court journal. For the Civiltá, in relating the overthrow of the Garibaldians, did not fail to note the fact that "it was on the day consecrated to the Prince of the Angelic Host, to the Patron of the Holy Church, St. Michael," that the invaders crossed the border. But now the Immaculate, who alone is terrible as an army with banners, who alone destroys all heresies, was to be further exalted, by the raising of her husband to that celestial dignity which had hitherto been borne by the great archangel. It was, say the reverend college of writers in the ruling periodical, a grand consolation that amid the mourning and desolation wherein December 8 was passed, the Decree proclaiming St. Joseph as the Patron of the Catholic Church was promulged. They add that this Decree was issued to satisfy the Fathers of the Council, and that it might be considered as a firstfruit of devotion and piety reaped from the Council. The Italians said that St. Michael, as captain of the Lord's host, had not in late years wielded the sword to the satisfaction of the authorities. Others said that the reason of the slight put upon him was simply that St. Joseph was the patron of the Company of Jesus. Others again looked no further for an explanation than to the fact that a form of religion which now--whatever was imagined and in theory professed--had in reality no standard of faith left but that of the fait accompli, would naturally seek change for the sake of rest.
Certain it is that from centre to circumference of the Papal orb, the devout were besieging the altars of those powers among whom Modern Rome distributes the affairs of that department which was by Ancient Rome assigned to Mars. In England, as the Civiltá proudly tells, was formed "The Prayer League of our Lady of Victories, entirely composed of innocent children." In Vienna the arch-confraternity of St. Michael called the citizens to a solemn novena; Belgium moved in a similar manner, and Spain on December 8 beheld the faithful thronging to the altars of Mary. "Processions and pilgrimages" added a "splendid" demonstration, in which Belgium, Germany, and the Tyrol merited particular mention. The tomb of St. Boniface was besieged with pilgrims, praying that the tomb of Peter might be redeemed from the hands of the Italian Islamite. And the tomb of Henry the Emperor Saint, "fierce defender of the rights of the Holy See," was so beset with pilgrims on the day two months after the commencement of the captivity, that the streets of Bamberg resounded with the suppliant song of eighty-two processions seeking to move the warrior saint. In Munich, after exhibiting in "functions" within the Churches "all that is grand in the Catholic cult," the clergy, the archbishop, and the devout, in crowds said to comprise all Munich, paraded the streets chanting prayers for the ransom of the Pontiff.
If St. Michael had not retained his militant position, his confraternity in Vienna, conscious of where lay the sinews of war, sent loads of Peter's Pence. So in point after point of Europe the vows and bonds assumed in favour of Peter's Pence by fresh associations from Holland to Portugal, and from England to Hungary, are recorded. In England it was to the ladies that the "work" of raising Peter's Pence was assigned. The ladies of Vienna claimed it, the ladies of Madrid followed the example. And a valiant meeting in Belfast, and a meeting in Galway, resolved largely to swell the tide of Peter's Pence. The Catholic clubs joined in the movement, not only to console the Holy Father, but to condemn "the guilty policy of spoliation." Italy was grievously complained of for having dealt, by law, with certain Catholic Associations as political bodies, committing offences against the nation. But the great and splendid "work" of the Pence of Peter is not enough. The meetings and manifestoes are equally necessary, and of the manifestoes the spirit is breathed in these words, addressed to governments: "Do us justice; or if not, to shake you out of your indifference, we shall avail ourselves of every means which the law allows."
One brave claim of German Catholics is this: "As loyal subjects we demand that our rights and our interests shall be protected even in the territories of the Church." And politicians, knowing these things, will say and write that men moved from a foreign centre to make such claims of intervention on their governments are as good subjects as other men! They well know that such an agitation raised in the midst of a mortal struggle, if it succeeds, plunges the nation into a second war; and even if it does not succeed, diverts the nation from its own defence, and tends to divide it. But these German patriots say that they will embrace every opportunity that arises of pressing such rights as those above indicated upon their governments, by the Press, by "councils," by meetings, and especially by sending men to Parliament who will have courage to take up the Catholic cause. The Civiltá characterizes this language as the proclamation "of a vigorous, a continued, and a legal struggle against all governments which do not care for the cause of the Pontiff." "What the law allows," would, in the mind of many an honest Catholic, mean the law of the land; but on how many of such men could reliance be placed when, after all had been done which the law of the land allowed, they were instructed by sacred lips that when it contradicted the "divine" law it ceased to be binding, and that then the law in the case was God's law, which was whatever the Church declared it to be?
Geneva was made a chosen centre of activity, and the names of great and famous personages were paraded. While the ultimate ends to be aimed at were fitly expressed as "reinstating the Holy Father in his temporal sovereignty, and re-establishing the social reign of the gospel," the proximate ends were, to move the heart of Christ to mercy by pilgrimages and prayers, to act upon governments, to excite opinion by the Press, and to procure for the Pope means. Fifty meetings in the middle of December in the diocese of Fulda alone, while Germany was in the crisis of the war; the object of those meetings being to plunge her into a war with Italy! Indeed, it seemed to the Civiltá as if, awoke from the slumber of ages by the prayers of the Catholics around his tomb, St. Boniface had gone out anew upon his apostolic pilgrimage, to rouse up the ancient devotion of the people to the Holy See.[481]
One new society, which has not its name specified, is said to be already a great one. It is composed of all who had borne arms in the crusade of Pius IX. From Holland to Marseilles, from Canada to the Tyrol, they had bound themselves together in a common bond. We are not left in doubt as to what that bond might be. Indeed, we are told that "what it is cannot be obscure; their former enterprise makes it clear." To us the former enterprise would make the means clear--namely, war; but not so clear the end. They formerly warred to avert the fall of the temporal power. Were they now to go to war for the immediate and local object of "reinstating the Holy Father," and at the same time for the ulterior and world-conquering object of "re-establishing the social reign of the gospel"; that is, of forming the world into Spiritual States, or at least into States under the spiritual reign of the clergy? The object is prudently veiled in vague language, but language clear enough for the instructed; "full of warlike ardour in a meeting of Dutch and Belgians at Lovaine, they said that the aim of their union was to meet the future wants of the Church, was to conquer all the forces of impiety."[482] But even in the language put into the lips of soldiers, and into the resolutions of public meetings, the object is never defined so as to limit it to restoring the temporal power, and generally a wide object beyond that narrow one is allowed to transpire. When old crusaders undertake with "warlike ardour" to meet the future wants of the Church, we may divine of what kind her future wants are to be; and when such men undertake to conquer all the forces of impiety, we may expect a social reign of the gospel, ushered in by the zouaves--such a social reign of it as some of the spiritual princes of the Continent re-established when, after their Spiritual States had been shaken by the Reformation, Catholic leagues reinstated the prince-bishops in power. As to England, the Civiltá, at a date subsequent to notices already alluded to, names the Duke of Norfolk as heading a protest against the occupation of Rome from the noblest of the nation; Lord Campden and "Giorgio Clifford" as leading a universal subscription of English youth; the ladies as conducting the "work" of Peter's Pence; R. Martin as forming a league of prayer for persons of all grades; and Warteton (sic) as instituting "the crusade for Pius IX, a league of our Lady of Victories entirely composed of children."[483] How many British children are learning in this much-mentioned league by the inspirations of our Lady of Victories, to covet their baptism of fire in the projected crusade, we do not know, nor yet how they are to be taught to select the particular branch of the "forces of impiety" against which their first arms are to be proved. But, says the Civiltá--
there will be a struggle, there will be travails, there will be sorrows. But the victory is in their [the Catholics'] hands: of this the proof more than manifest is found in eighteen centuries of continuous combats and victories of Catholicism. As the great Matthias, indignant because before his eyes an officer of the king dared to burn incense to an idol, rose up crying, "Let him that is true to the law follow me," and commenced those grand struggles and grand victories of the Maccabees which are known to all, so the most fervent Catholics, indignant and horrified at the capture of Rome, pointing out the Revolution, in the meetings at Fulda and at Malines, at Ghent and at Geneva, as the cause of so much evil, as the enemy of Christ and of His Vicar, cried, "Let all that are Catholics at heart rise up and follow us in the fight." Their cry has been heard, and the general crusade is already begun.[484]
The development of the general crusade has been slower than the seers in their many Maccabean visions saw; but at the end of six years all the preparations for it are in progress, and the two-fold end is steadily kept in view: first, Rome is to receive back the Pope at the point of the bayonet; and secondly, the whole world is to accept "the social reign of the gospel" at the point of the bayonet too, unless nations, being timely wise, bow the neck and lick the dust where marches the Vicar of God. So man proposes. But since the day in 1850 when, as we heard at the beginning, a "salutary conspiracy and a holy crusade" were formally announced as the two things needful, much that man astutely planned and firmly proposed has not come to pass according to man's design, but has been strangely turned to the purposes of a clearer wisdom, and a kinder will. Even the monument in the cemetery of St. Lorenzo to the Crusaders, which exhibits Peter, under the effigy of Pio Nono, giving the sword to the Christian army, and commanding it to make a Catholic world, now bears, in addition to its texts from the Maccabees, a fresh inscription: "Ransomed Rome leaves to posterity, as a lasting sign of calamitous times, this monument, erected by the theocratic government to foreign mercenaries."
On the last day of 1870--that year of which the echoes will sound all down the vale of time, repeating the cry, "Man proposes but God disposes"--a strange sound was heard in Rome. Floods had brought sorrow into the city. Victor Emmanuel left Florence, and at four o'clock in the morning of December 31, for the first time, as king in his capital, set foot in Rome. In its sovereigns the city was familiar with titles of Saints, of Great, of Holiness, and of Blessedness, and with ancient titles noting many a shade of skill and power. But there was a title which was not only unknown, but seemed alien to all the traditions that had gathered around the place from the days of Sulla and of Catiline till now. As the burly king, amid the frantic joy which had marked his brief visit, was about to enter the carriage to return, a little girl approached with a nosegay of fair flowers, and said: "Take this, KING HONEST MAN!"
If with the expiring hours of 1870 the reign of Craft died in Rome, and that of Honesty began, it would mark the mightiest of all the modern revolutions.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 476: Civiltá, VII. xi. 760.]
[Footnote 477: Civiltá, VII. xi. 481-2.]
[Footnote 478: Civiltá, VII. xi. 559 ff.]
[Footnote 479: Civiltá, VIII. i. 66.]
[Footnote 480: VIII. i. 108.]
[Footnote 481: VIII. i. pp. i. 155-69.]
[Footnote 482: Civiltá, VIII. i. 293.]
[Footnote 483: VIII. i. p. 288.]
[Footnote 484: VIII. i. pp. 421-22.]