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Frederick was convinced that the intellectual niveatt of Europe would lose a great deal by reason of the dissolution of the Society: "But since my brethren the Catholic, most Christian, most loyal and apostolic kings, have driven them away, I am collecting as many of them as I can." And in 1773 he wrote to Colombini, his charge d'affaires in Rome: "Please tell everybody who wants to listen that in so far as the Jesuits are concerned, I am firmly resolved to keep them in my states during the future, even as I have done in the past."
News that the Jesuits in Silesia, Poland and Russia were resisting the brief wounded the dying Pope- At about the same time the heart of the aged Ricci was breaking in San Angelo, where he had been kept under stern, shameless arrest. He closed his troubled life in the presence of the Sacred Host with a profession of his own innocence and that of his Order. The new Pope honoured him with a magnifi- cent funeral.
This new Pope who chose the name of Pius VI (17751779) been Count Angelo Braschi, and was to be a figure in the Passion of the Papacy during the years to come. He had given assurance to the Bourbons regarding the Jesuit question, and they had sponsored his election. Fate opposed this man, animated by a holy charity and dominated by amiable ideals, from the beginning to the end. But he was able to wear the crown of thorns as worthily as if it had been a coronet of gold. His great antagonist was the German Emperor, but a greater still was revolutionary France.
Joseph II and Kaunitz, his minister, pursued the ecclesiatical goals of a liberalistic time with even greater determination than that of Joseph's pious mother, Maria Theresa. The Church was to be com- pletely under the domination of the State, to remain not much more than a pedagogical instrument. In that case there was no need of a Roman primacy which was, indeed, an obstacle in the way. Hastily and brusquely, he astounded the millions of his subjects with any number of reforms. Many of them were practical and sound, but they came down so much like a cloudburst that they also did a good deal of damage and did not penetrate beneath the surface. The Em- peror, beguiled by the teachings of the Physiocrats, was concerned primarily with the improvement of society, but he failed to realize
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