AWAY FROM ROME!
In Spain too, the fire had long since been glowing beneath the ashes. Charles III was an energetic, keenly intelligent man who was de- votedly loyal to the Church, but he could not resist an opportunity to take revenge on the Jesuits for having agitated against certain re- forms promulgated by his ministry. It was held that they had not merely instigated the popular movement against innovations in social and industrial practice, but had also fostered a plan to dethrone the monarch. Letters of a highly treasonable character forged by a tool of Aranda were placed on the King's desk. Among them was a document signed with Ricci's name. This declared that the King was not of legitimate descent, that he had no just claim to the throne, that all possessions in America should be taken from the Spanish crown, that an independent, Jesuit kingdom should be established in Paraguay, and that the monarchy should be transferred to the King's brother. This forgery achieved the purpose for which it was in- tended. Mercilessly and unfeelingly the King drove the Society out of the country with armed troops during 1767. The ruling was extended to Naples, Parma and Venice. The persecution of the So- ciety was then rapidly transformed into an attack by the Catholic states on the Papacy itself. It was even planned to declare a war on Rome and to starve out the city.
The doctrine of the omnipotence of the state had also taken root in Germany. The desires of governments as well as of impressive groups of the faithful were summarized in a book written in 1763 by Nicholas von Hontheim under the pseudonym of Justinus Febrionus. During the struggle between Rome and the Bourbons, this treatise made a profound impression all over Europe, It was a well-intentioned, utterly Utopian declaration that the primitive Christian conception of episcopal rights and councillor authority was not in accordance with the monarchical claims of an infallible Papacy; and it expressed the hope that worldly rulers would co-operate to renew and pacify the Church. By the next year, the book was already on the Index, but neither this censure nor the ensuing recantation of its author lessened its influence. It encouraged the Bourbon courts to pursue their policy, and gave the young Emperor of Austria and his brother, the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, their ideas of ecclesiastical reform by the
POPE
