a formal protestatio, in which he not only denounced the failure of the Powers to do justice to the church, but also their refusal to re-establish that “centre of political unity,” the Holy Roman Empire.
The rest of Consalvi’s life was devoted to the work of reorganizing the States of the Church, and bringing back the allegiance of Europe to the papal throne. He was practically governor of Rome; and Pius was so much under his control that “Pasquin” said the pope would have to wait at the gates of paradise till the cardinal came from purgatory with the keys. Nor was the affectionate confidence of the pope misplaced. Consalvi’s rule, in times of singular difficulty and unrest, was characterized by wisdom and moderation. He had to steer a middle course between the extremes represented by the Carbonari on the one hand and the Sanfedisti on the other, and he consistently refused to employ the cruel and inquisitorial methods in vogue under his successors. His foreign policy was guided by the traditional antagonism of the papacy to German domination in Italy, and generally by a desire to free the Holy See as far as possible from the political entanglements of the age. Thus he resisted all Metternich’s efforts to draw him into his “system”; stoutly maintained the doctrine of non-intervention against the majority of the Powers of the continental alliance; protested at the congress of Troppau against the suggested application of the principle of intervention to the States of the Church; and at Verona joined with Tuscany in procuring the rejection of Metternich’s proposal for a central committee, on the model of the Mainz Commission, to discover and punish political offences in Italy.
On the death of Pius VII. (August 21, 1823), Consalvi retired to his villa of Porto d’ Anzio; and, though he accepted from the new pope the honorary office of prefect of the college De Propaganda Fide, his political career was closed. He died on the 24th of January 1824. By his will he directed that all the presents he had received should be sold, and the proceeds applied to the completion of Thorwaldsen’s monument of Pius VII. in St Peter’s.
Consalvi, besides being a statesman, was a man of wide and varied interests. As a young abate he had followed the fashion of writing verses, and to the end he remained a notable patron of the arts and sciences, music being his main passion. For the city of Rome he did much; ancient buildings were excavated and preserved by his direction; chairs of natural science and archaeology were founded in the university; and extensive purchases were made for the Vatican museum, which was augmented by the addition of the beautiful Braccio Nuovo, or new wing.
Cardinal Consalvi’s Mémoires were published in two vols. by S. Crétineau-Joly (Paris, 1864). Other collections of documents are:—C. von Duerm, Correspondance du Cardinal Consalvi avec le Prince C. de Metternich, 1815 (Louvain and Brussels, 1899); S. Rinieri, Correspondenza inedita dei Cardinali Consalvi e Pacca, 1814–1815 (Turin, 1903). See J. L. Bartholdy, Züge aus dem Leben des Cardinal Hercule Consalvi (Stuttgart, 1824); Cardinal Wiseman, Recollections of the Last Four Popes (London, 1858); Crétineau Joly, L’Eglise romaine en face de la Révolution (1859); Ernest Daudet, Le Cardinal Consalvi (Paris, 1866); E. L. Fischer, Cardinal Consalvi (Mainz, 1899); Dr Fredrik Nielsen, bishop of Aarhus, Hist. of the Papacy in the 19th Century (2 vols., Eng. trans. by A. J. Mason, D.D., London, 1906), which treats of Consalvi’s work in great detail. For other general authorities see Cambridge Modern History, bibliographies to vol. ix. chap. vii., by L. G. Wickham-Legg, and vol. x. chap. v., by Lady Blennerhassett.
CONSANGUINITY, or Kindred, in law, the connexion or
relation of persons descended from the same stock or common
ancestor (vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium).
This consanguinity is either lineal or collateral. Lineal consanguinity
is that which subsists between persons of whom one
is descended in a direct line from the other, while collateral
relations descend from the same stock or ancestor, but do not
descend the one from the other. Collateral kinsmen, then, are
such as lineally spring from one and the same ancestor, who is
the stirps, or root, as well as the stipes, trunk or common stock,
whence these relations branch out. It will be seen that the
modern idea of consanguinity is larger than that of agnatio in
the civil law, which was limited to connexion through males,
and was modified by the ceremonies of adoption and emancipation,
and also than that of cognatio, which did not go beyond the
sixth generation, and was made the basis of Justinian’s law of
succession. The more limited meaning of consanguinei was
brothers or sisters by the same father, as opposed to uterini,
brothers or sisters by the same mother. The degrees of collateral
consanguinity were differently reckoned in the civil and in the
canon law. “The civil law reckons the number of descents
between the persons on both sides from the common ancestor.
The canon law counts the number of descents between the
common ancestor and the two persons on one side only,” and
always on the side of the person who is more distant from
the common ancestor. English law follows the canon law in
beginning at the common ancestor and reckoning downwards.
The question of consanguinity owes its great importance to
the relationship it bears to the laws of marriage and inheritance.
For instance, the law forbids marriage between persons within
certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity, a prohibition which
applies with equal force to a bastard as well as to those born in
wedlock. The laws of inheritance and descent are regulated in
a great measure according to consanguinity, however much
they may vary in different jurisdictions.
Apart from those countries which have made either the civil or the canon law the basis of reckoning degrees of consanguinity (and practically all civilized countries adopt one or other), it is impossible to describe any method or system, for they are as various as the countries and tribes. See, however, the article Indian Law; and consult Lewis H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (Washington, 1870); J. F. McLennan, On Primitive Marriage (Edinburgh, 1865): E. A. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage (2nd ed., London, 1894); E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose (1902); A. Lang and J. J. Atkinson, Social Origins and Primal Law (1903); E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (4th ed., 1903). See also Affinity; Marriage; Inheritance.
CONSCIENCE, HENDRIK (1812–1883), Flemish writer, was
born at Antwerp on the 3rd of December 1812. Although he
invariably signed his name Hendrik, his baptismal name was
Henri. He was the son of a Frenchman, Pierre Conscience,
from Besançon, who had been chef de timonerie in the navy of
Napoleon, and who was appointed under-harbourmaster at
Antwerp in 1811, when that city formed part of France. Hendrik’s
mother was a Fleming, Cornelia Balieu. When, in 1815,
the French abandoned Antwerp after the Congress of Vienna,
they left Pierre Conscience behind them. He was a very eccentric
person, and he took up the business of buying and breaking-up
worn-out vessels, of which the port of Antwerp was full after
the peace. The child grew up in an old shop stocked with marine
stores, to which the father afterwards added a collection of
unsaleable books; among them were old romances which
inflamed the fancy of the child. His mother died in 1820,
and the boy and his younger brother had no other companion
than their grim and somewhat sinister father. In 1826 Pierre
Conscience married again, this time a widow much younger
than himself, Anna Catherina Bogaerts. Hendrik had long before
this developed an insatiable passion for reading, and revelled
all day long among the ancient, torn and dusty tomes which
passed through the garret of “The Green Corner” on their way
to destruction. Soon after his second marriage Pierre took a
violent dislike to the town, sold the shop, and retired to that
Kempen or Campine which Hendrik Conscience so often describes
in his books—the desolate flat land that stretches between
Antwerp and Venloo. Here Pierre bought a little farm, with a
great garden round it, and here, while their father was buying
ships in distant havens, the boys would spend weeks, and even
months, with no companion but their stepmother.
At the age of seventeen Hendrik left the paternal house in Kempen to become a tutor in Antwerp, and to prosecute his studies, which were soon broken in upon by the revolution of 1830. He volunteered as a private in the new Belgian army, and served in barracks at Venloo, and afterwards at Dendermonde, until 1837, when he retired with the grade of sergeant-major. Thrown in this way with Flemings of every class, and made a close observer of their mental habits, the young man formed the idea of writing in the despised idiom of the country,
