FROM ROME!
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the great non- Catholic states of Europe had gained the upper hand over Spain, France, Austria and Poland, the Catholic states. Whatever may have been the cause of this reversal, the peoples who now found themselves at a disadvantage began to voice disapproval of "clerical" influence on their affairs, and tore at the bonds which associated them with central Roman authority. While the Papacy was not an important factor in the political antagonisms and the shifting balances of power which characterized the century, it was necessarily compelled to reckon seriously with the change in attitude of Catholic states and govern- ments. This change was bound up with the dynastic history of these countries, above all with the extension of Bourbon power over the thrones of Spain, Sicily, Naples and Parma. The Bourbon family signed a pact (1761) , which obliged these countries to form an alliance with France against England. It also gave expression to a concept of government hostile to Rome i. e., that same enlightened ab- solutism which dominated Austria, Prussia and Russia.
In the new conception of Church and State, Gallicanism, liberalistic philosophy and Jansenism were blended. The secularization of the intellect made inroads on religion, paradoxical though that may seem; and the object was, after having changed the character of religion, to make it serve the natural order. Christianity was adjudged all right as a moral teaching, as a pedagogical influence upon the common people, and as a curb of instincts which if left to themselves would lead to chaos. But it was considered evil if it pointed out a realm beyond reason and nature by giving utterance to dogmas, mysteries, and ideas of revelation and the supernatural life. Through the secret anti-Church of Freemasonry this spirit of a humanism compounded of denatured religious impulses gained an influence upon ruling cabinets, which it hoped to use as instruments for re-educating the masses still loyal to the Church. Later on, of course, this spirit re- acted against governments and monarchs as the spirit of revolution. Every kind of enthusiasm, particularly the enthusiasm of faith, was an- noying to this humanitarian enlightenment; but the fact that it still
309
3 io AWAY FROM ROME!
favoured a modicum of ecclesiastical reform and respected the truth that man's need to worship God is ineradicable, allied it with many trends in Jansenism, especially those that lay rooted in hostility to Rome. Everywhere at the Courts a conservative and a reformistic tendency were represented, and these clashed most sharply over the question of the Papacy. Many good things are attributable to this liberalisric movement the abolition of serfdom, witchcraft mania, and the use of the torture, as well as of the bitter animosity with which the confessions treated one another. Last but not least, the human spirit was granted the freest possible mobility, so that no out- ward force any longer stood between it and union with Rome and Catholic teaching. Yet in comparison the inner dynamism and rich- ness of the Middle Ages had been incomparably more powerful. There is no more subjectivistic and no more objectivistic man than Augustine; there has never been a more daring "liberal" than Frederic II. No epoch in history reveals such radical antitheses and such a courageous philosophy, ready to carry on despite prison and stake, as do the thousand years of continuous intellectual battle which we call the Middle Ages.
The Popes of the eighteenth century number no Hildebrands or Innocent Ills among them. They did not break, for the reason that they bent like reeds. Their good fortune was their wisdom, and this their wisdom was the good fortune of the Papacy. Innocent XI had ad- dressed the Rot Soleil once more in the sharp language of the mediaeval time. For the sake of the freedom of Church he permitted thirty- five dioceses in Christian France to remain without bishops during six years. The most farsighted minds there realized that churches which separate themselves from the Pope are bound fast by Kings. The Papal decrees were left lying in the customs' offices, and saints who were embarrassing to the monarch were deprived of the cult, yes, even of the feast day. "God Himself," says a contemporary, "is under suspicion as being a rival to the state." Clement XI, Benedict XIII, Clement XII, had to take cognizance of the fact that their Nuncios were banned from Bourbon courts and from Portugal. Jan- senism gained ground in Vienna, Brussels, on the Iberian peninsula, and throughout the whole of Italy. With it there came passionate
OPPOSITION TO THE JESUITS 311
antipathy to the Jesuits. The philosophers, declared Voltaire, would not have won their game until they had finished with Loyola. The destruction of the Society became the most coveted prize in Catholic states.
The Kings found men who could buttress their consciences. These had in common an antipathy to spiritual authority Pombal in Portugal, Aranda and Squillace in Spain, Tanucci in Naples, Choiseul and Aiguillon in France. The Society could point to its great achieve- ments: its civilizing efforts in the East and West Indies, the moral improvement that had followed its pastoral labours in Germany, the achievements of its gifted men in the sciences (astronomy and phi- lology above all) , and its schools, which Lord Bacon had termed the best of all educational institutions. But the Society's power was an obstacle to the plans of worldly rulers and even to those of the Popes.
Contemporaries of Ignatius such as Melchior Cano, the Dominican who compared himself to Cassandra before the Fall of Troy, had issued warnings and had been mistaken only regarding the time in which they said their prophecies would be fulfilled. "Es orden dc negocios" it is the Order of state business, said the confessor of Charles V, Al- ready during the century following its foundation, the Jesuit Hoffaeus, representing the upper German Province of the Society wrote: "Our holy father, Ignatius, foresaw that by reason of concern with worldly matters, manifold hardships might befall the Society. This concern not only scatters the Fathers and hampers them in the service of God, but also makes them hated and destroys the fruits of their efforts in behalf of their fellow man. The worst examples and experiences have shown that in this business God is not with us. Whenever we have loaned our services for such things, even though it might be upon request and often quite by force, matters took an evil course, not merely when it was the business of worldly rulers, but even when it was that of the Popes." If the Society were not finally to profit by experience it would certainly meet with God's punishment. In particular (he added) the confessors of monarchs must be counselled to exercise the greatest caution in dealing with temporal affairs.
A century and a half after these voices were heard, Troy really fell. The Kings prodded their ministers, and the ministers got the formula from the philosophers. D'Alembert wrote to Voltaire, "Let us place
3 i2 AWAY FROM ROME!
no obstacles in the way of the Jansenist spider which seeks to eat up the Jesuits. I these have once been destroyed, then the Jansenisr canaille will die a beautiful death of their own accord." Voltaire, too, saw the future in the rosy light of his dream: "It is not Jansenism which is preparing the way for the downfall of the Jesuits; it is the Encyclopedia, yes the Encyclopedia. I see the Jansenists dying a beautiful death after they have assassinated the Jesuits, and in the year following toleration will be established, the Protestants will be called back, the priests will marry, confession will be abolished, arid fanati- cism will be laid to rest so gently that nobody will realize what has happened.*'
While the catastrophe was hovering over the heads of the Jesuits, they were also deprived of the Pope's friendship. Benedict XIV (1740-1758), more learned than any of his predecessors, above re- proach, of pleasant disposition and keen wit, sought the goal he had firmly set for himself by the route of wisdom and not of force. To the subjects of the Papal States, he was an amiable father of his coun- try. He lowered the taxes, cut down court expenditures, abetted in- dustry and agriculture. He reduced the military budget very con- siderably, used some of the money saved to enlarge the Vatican Library, founded academies for archeology and Church history, and improved the education of the clergy. He also sent a handsome sum of money to Germany to build St. Hedwig's Church in Berlin. He recognized the title of Frederick the Great to the kingly throne o Catholic Silesia, though the Curia had previously refused to concede the point; and he thanked Voltaire cordially for the dedication of his Mohammed. The Rome of his days, where Raphael Mengs and Winckelmann painted, studied and wrote, and where Cardinal Albani functioned as protector of marble gods, heroes, nymphs, sylphs and fauns, began to be the ccntte toward which scholars, artists and lovers of the arts journeyed. Yes, many of them were surprised to behold the successor of St. Peter in the role of door-keeper of a resurrected Olympus. These were the years during which intercourse between Rome and the Court of Augustus II of Dresden, Catholic once again, was constant.
Yet at heart Benedict remained a sincerely religious Pope. The
OPPOSITION TO THE JESUITS 313
intellectual liberalism, which permitted him to jest that though he had all truth locked up in the shrine of his breast he was compelled to admit that he could not find the key to it, must be coupled with that deep seriousness of his veneration of holiness which inspired him to write his memorable treatise on the process of canonization, which is so free of all cant. Calm and moderate in his political views, he maintained diplomatic relations with the governments even though the price was a noticeable loss of influence by the Curia. This temperance is displayed in the Concordats with Naples, Sardinia and Spain. State control of the Church was now in vogue; and if he had forced the issue to the breaking point he would have been compelled to reckon with an alliance between the monarchs and the secret societies. But to these, especially Freemasonry, he was opposed from the bottom of his soul. Following the example of Clement XII he condemned them and forbade Catholics to join under the severest penalties. Another great source of anxiety was the Society of Jesus. Complaints were coming in from all over the world over business transactions made by the Order. Its riches and its lax doctrines were described to him; and he was moved to enforce a thoroughgoing reform very especially by what he heard of Jesuit missionary methods in India and China. There heathen customs were assimilated despite Papal decrees to the contrary. But he died before he could take action* and so bequeathed the whole burden to his successors.
Clement XIII was a supporter of the Society, so that nothing by way of action was to be expected from Rome during his time. In order to be on terms of equality with other states, the Catholic countries therefore resorted to self-help against the hated 20,000, thus driving the Devil out with Beelzebub.
It began in Portugal. A treaty between this country and Spain concerning boundaries in the colonies on the La Plattc and the Uruguay compelled 30,000 Indians to leave the flourishing missionary republic which their Jesuit fathers had established in the territory taken over by Portugal, and to seek new places of residence in the wilderness. Against the will of the General, some fathers joined the natives in opposing the command. This act of self-defence was as welcome to no one as it was to the leading Portuguese statesman Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal. This enlightened despot, who throttled his King
314 AWAY FROM ROME!
Jose, a melancholy epicure who signed whatever his minister laid on his desk without reading it, now declared war on the Jesuits both in the colonies and in Portugal itself. Among the foes of the Society he was the most energetic and the most merciless a free thinker, a beast of prey who felt no twinge of the heart as he crouched and sprang. He knew everything that had been said and written againsr the Society and offered selected readings to the King. His soldiers dealt ruthlessly with the Indians who, partly for the sake of theii spiritual fathers, defended themselves bravely but were finally defeated by an army led by Carvalho's brother.
Carvalho had many reasons for fearing that he might be dismissed and so held the nobles and the clergy all the more firmly under his thumb. He wrote pamphlets against the Jesuits in which he accused them of connivance with an attempt on the King's life, though that attempt had probably been instigated by a noble family in order to avenge the seduction of a daughter. He declared them guilty of having instigated a popular rebellion in Oporto against the destruction of the vineyards, and said that behind the screen of efforts to improve the economic situation of their missions they were planning to get control of world trade and to establish an independent kingdom. Carvalho's associate was Cardinal Saldanha, Papal inspector of the Society, whom some say had been bribed. One night during Septem- ber, 1756, all Jesuits at the Court were arrested and exiled. A sudden search of their houses in Portugal for money and papers revealed noth- ing incriminating. The hundred thousand pesos duros which were found in Lisbon had been a present from the Queen of Spain to the missions. Three years later, hundreds of fathers were marched off to the Papal States with rations like those given to convicts. Many re- mained behind in inhuman prisons, and more than fifty mounted die scaffold during 1761. Among them was one of die greatest figures in the Society, the eighty-year-old missionary Father Mala- greda whose life had been as rich in adventure as the Odyssey. He went to his death in a habit on which grimacing demons had been painted. A pointed paper cap was placed on his head, and a gag was put in his mouth. The Court and the ministers enjoyed the play from gaily decorated loges. Twenty years later, the damp subterranean dungeons were opened and more than eight hundred Jesuits again saw
THE SOCIETY IN FRANCE 315
the glory of the century of enlightenment. Pombal himself, placed under arrest by the Court as guilty of grievous offenses against the welfare of the nation, managed by a hair to escape the gallows.
France had long since followed this example. Parliament and the University of Paris, ancient foes of the Society, finally witnessed its fall. The Fathers were the victims of the Machiavellian tactics of the Cabinet which they themselves had fostered.
The occasion here was the bankruptcy of Father Lavallette on the Island of Martinique (1755). He was to repay borrowed money with goods to a company in Marseilles, which was associated with him in the development of two islands of the Antilles. But both money and goods were partly lost through shipwreck, and partly fell into the hands of the English during the naval war. The Order had neither forbidden nor authorized the undertaking. Therefore the Superior in France refused to honour notes amounting to 2,400,000 livrcs which Father Lavallette had signed. The result was a civil suit which scandal-mongering publicists utilized as a means of bringing the whole Jesuit question to the fore. The Parliament of Paris ruled that Lo- renzo Ricci, General of the Order, must pay the debt, and ordered that the statutes and books of the Jesuits be examined. The decisions arrived at by the commission, the prominent members of which were three priests, were catastrophic. Once more the Crown sought to rescue the Society by proposing to the General that some changes in the Constitution be made. But the Pope, in unison with the unbend- ing General, answered with the famous words, "Sint ut sunt aut nan sint" They must be what they are or not be! In 1762 the Parlia- ment disbanded the Jesuits, suppressing eighty-four colleges in all, after it had secretly granted the King the right to levy taxes in the amount of 60,000,000 francs as a reward for his endorsement of the measures taken and of the confiscation of the Society's property. Doubtless it was not without pressure from Madame Pompadour, to whom a brave Jesuit had refused absolution because of her adulterous living, that Louis XV was induced to confirm the parliamentary de- cision. A Papal bull was issued in protest, and the publication of this the Parliament of Paris forbade throughout the Kingdom. The Arch- bishop of Rouen threatened to place all who circulated it under the ban, and in some cities copies were burned in the public square.
316 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 CLEMENT DISBANDS THE SOCIETY 317
state. It is, of course, true that both were influenced also by Sonnen- feis, a Jewish writer, and other theoreticians of political liberalism.
The Conclave, which now met under pressure of brazen intrigues especially on the part of the Bourbons, finally succeeded in surmount- ing all difficulties and electing on the twenty-second ballot Lorenzo Ganganelli, a simple, pious Franciscan. He took the name of Cle- ment XIV; the year was 1769, and the new Pope reigned until 1774. He was the son of a physician, was well educated in theology and natural history, and loved to stroll in the woods with a book. When he received the purple he wrote: "I regard these honours as an addition to the letters on my tombstone, powerless to aid him who lies be- neath." Once crowned he spent the nights which intervened be- tween stormy days, sighing for the peace of his monastic celL His favourite recreation was the trucco> a kind of bowling game played on the billiard table, or a dashing ride through the environs of Rome. He rode his horse so hard that the guard of nobles were scarce able to follow. He devoted himself with the greatest seriousness to the duties of his office. Art and science owe him a real debt. He began to arrange and exhibit in a museum the long since accumulated antique sculptures and the priceless stone tablets bearing more than 5000 heathen and Christian inscriptions. Like Benedict XIV who had befriended him and had made a place for him in the Papal administra- tion, he sought to foster peace with the States. The custom of read- ing the belligerent bull Ccena Domini once a year was abandoned* But now the Courts demanded no less than the dissolution of the Society of Jesus as a whole by the Pope. During four years he hesi- tated, anxious and shaken. It seemed to him that the danger of a schism could be warded off only if he sacrificed the Society. Spies of Pombal and Tanucci, agreements between cabinets and great prel- ates, and a hectic agitation fomented among the people by means of pamphlets and pictures, hemmed in the Pope more and more.
There was a Jansenistic strain in his soul, but he by no means lacked a feeling of responsibility for the loss of so powerful an organ of the Church and the Papacy as the Society was. In addition the joint demands of the Bourbon crowns were only partly or not at all in con- formity with the wishes of the courts of Austria, Poland, Prussia, Russia and Piedmont.
3 i8 AWAY FROM ROME!
The Society fell. Clement disbanded it with the brief Dominus ac Redemptor noster of July 21, 1773. This long, carefully meditated document placed the emphasis on a plea for peace within the Church. The Society was declared to have lost much of the beneficent strength of its early period, and to have become a source of dissension in Church and State; and it was added that complaints regarding its interference in the business of government, its dangerous teachings, and its insatia- ble appetite for worldly goods, had increased beyond the limits of endurance. The Pope did not expressly make the charges listed his own, and he gave the whole measure the appearance of a step taken in the interests of ecclesiastical diplomacy.
Lisbon and Madrid celebrated the event with public rejoicing, fire- works, and cannon volleys. Elsewhere there was less noise; sometimes feelings were aroused not against the Jesuits but against the Pope. It was in France that hatred of the Society first died down. In 1775 Pere Beauregard was already preaching again in Notre Dame and predicting the Revolution in descriptions soon to be verified in every detail. Two powers, Prussia and Russia, took steps to maintain the Society for the benefit of their Catholic subjects. Catherine II wrote a letter to the Pope in praise of the Jesuits, and Frederick the Great not only forbade all the bishops in his state to read the brief but also threatened dire penalties if they disobeyed his order. The act seemed to him political and not religious. To Frederick the Pope was "the Vice-God of the Seven Hills," but the Jesuits were the most learned Catholics, the ablest and cheapest teachers, and the best priests. In letters to his emancipated friends Voltaire and D'Alembert, Frederick defended the persecuted Society with a sharp pen: "It is true/ 1 he wrote, "that I have a confounded lot of sympathy for the Jesuit Fathers. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that they are monks. I simply know they are reliable educators of youth and scholars whose scientific institutes are of immeasurable value to the educated members of society." And again: "The Jesuits have been driven out but if you insist, I shall prove to you that all this has been brought about only by vanity, secret desires for revenge, mean little intrigues, cabals, and selfishness/* And still again: "I for my part consider it an honour to conserve the ruins of this worthy Order in Silesia, and thus mitigate their misfortune a little, even though I, too, am a confirmed heretic."
JOSEPH II OF AUSTRIA 319
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
3 2o AWAY FROM ROME I
that things not patently useful may have a deep meaning and a real value. In order to save wood, orders were given that the dead should be buried in sacks. Joseph was in favour of monks and nuns who taught school or nursed the sick, but wanted to transform the con- templative Orders into active Orders. This could not be achieved overnight, as he supposed. There were also too many monasteries; and therefore he secularized hundreds of them, confiscated their goods and fortunes, and turned over to them a fund which was to serve ecclesiastical and charitable purposes. At least this was the intention and the command of this unselfish, high-minded ruler, but his com- missioners often acted in quite another way. The jewels which had once adorned Madonnas now appeared round the necks of the wives and mistresses of emancipated officials. Rome was given more cause for concern when the Church marriage laws were tampered with, when Papal decrees were subjected to revision, when the Index was sup- planted by an imperial censorship, when Austrian subjects were for- bidden to study at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, when the remaining Orders were cut off from intercourse with their fellow re- ligious in other countries, and when the state interfered in questions of liturgy. All this brought down upon Joseph's head the sarcastic remark of his Prussian colleague: "Mon frere, le sacristain.**
The protests of the Curia were in vain. The Pope then resolved, in view of the accusations of laxity which had reached his ears, to pay the Emperor a personal visit, and announced his intention to do so. But the answer was not so much a welcome as a hint to stay away. Pius now had the choice between a humiliation and the certainty that he would be accused of being afraid or of failing to live up to his word. He went quite simply, with just a few retainers; for the swamps of Pontus, which like many a Pope before him he had sought to drain, had swallowed up much money. Nevertheless there were expensive presents in his carriage, and before he left Rome he himself was the recipient of a gift a priceless fur sent by the Russian Crown Prince and his wife. After an emotional scene of parting between the Pope and the Roman people, his journey became a veritable tri- umphal inarch. Bells rang from all sides, and shouting, kneeling people gathered along every road. "Quanto c bello!" "Tanto c
ROME RESISTS 321
bello, quanto c santo!" This journey of a Pope to Canossa has been described scene by scene, honour by honour, and also defeat by de- feat. Vienna and the masses which assembled from all parts of the Empire paid homage to the Sovereign Pontiff on each of the thirty days he remained. Before the Hofburg, where he resided in the chambers of Maria Theresa as the guest of the Emperor, thousands thronged incessantly; and up and down the Danube pilgrim boats were thick as stars. The Emperor, too, showed him every courtesy and honour. On Maundy Thursday he received the Blessed Sacrament from the Pope's hand. But as soon as negotiations were inaugurated, Joseph remained the absolute monarch. Kaunitz, who in his own home had insulted the Pope, whom he had insisted must visit him first, acted the liberal, and reduced to naught the few concessions his master seemed willing to make. Some emancipated intellectuals in- dicted pamphlets against the Papacy, and signs were pasted on walls making scorn of Pius. He had accomplished practically nothing when he embraced the Emperor and took his departure in front of the Church of Maria Brunn. Two hours after this touching scene, the monastery established on this site was dissolved; and three days later, there followed one hundred fifty dissolutions in the Netherlands as well as others in Austria and Bohemia. When the Pope rode home- ward through Bavaria and the Tyrol, the people paid him renewed homage, but this was no consolation for the spirit which ruled those in the government. The Roman cardinals were dissatisfied with the Pope. Copies of Febronius* book and of the Viennese pamphlets were sold throughout Rome, One day the Pope went to kneel on the prie-dieu in his chapel and found there a sheet of paper on which this was written: "What Gregory the Seventh, the greatest of all priests, once founded, Pius VI, the least of all priests, has destroyed again." Underneath the Pope wrote: "Christ's kingdom is not of this world. He who distributes the crowns of Heaven docs not rob those of earth/'
Relations between Vienna and the Vatican became still more diffi- cult. The Emperor retorted to a threat of the ban with the remark that the shameless person who had dared to sign such a document with the Pope's name merited punishment. When Joseph himself came to Rome, French and Spanish diplomats restrained him from letting
AWAY FROM ROME!
matters drift toward a complete breach. Soon thereafter Pius had the consolation of learning that the Imperial reforms in Belgium had come to a scandalous conclusion. Nevertheless the movement of emanci- pation under the slogan of "Away from Rome" made progress north of the Alps and then pervaded the Austrian domains in Italy. When it was announced in Germany that a nunciature was to be established in Munich, four archbishops convened at Ems, inveighed against the institution of Papal embassies as such and demanded in Febrionisric terms that the Roman primacy be weakened in favour of a national ecclesiastical establishment and pf an episcopal Church government under the Emperors protection. Rome, too, needs enemies to wax strong, and Pius replied by reviving the epistolary style of Hildebrand, He attacked the Emperor, the Empire and prelates estranged from Rome, whom he charged with seeking only their own aggrandizement. The archbishops did not remain in agreement among themselves, met resistance from other bishops who had more to fear from them than from Rome, and ended by assenting to the Papal brief. Joseph's brother Leopold tried to extend the family reputation for reforms; but at the Synod he convened in Pistoia, the Gallican and Jansenistic spirit did not prevail. Nevertheless these defeats merely veiled the fact that the Church was being more and more completely undermined by the princes and prophets of a liberalistic age.
Rome itself, which performed its duty and issued strong pronounce- ments was hardly aware of the really serious impact of all this sub- terranean rumbling. The life of the city, the nobles, the cardinals, the ambassadors, the artists and the literati, were more and more concerned with everyday joys, intrigues and aesthetic exercises; and the voices of the Popes, who were learned above reproach, generous but not girded for battle, hardly carried across the boundaries of the Papal States, let alone the continents.
All the farther did the thunder of the Paris of 1789 resound.
The new ecclesiastical legislation of the Revolution met with sur- prisingly strong resistance. Though clerics who refused to take the oath deprived themselves of bread and home, 40,000 of them left the country. Pius condemned the Constitution civil du derge. When it reached Paris, his brief was put into the hands of an effigy of the
PIUS VI AND NAPOLEON 323
Pope and burned. The possessions o the Roman See in France were confiscated. There were French tumults in Rome but the people still sided with the Pope. Bonaparte, having defeated the Austrians in Italy, attacked the Papal States because Pius had joined the coalition of powers against him. The armistice and the subsequent Peace of Tolentino (1797) cost the Pope Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna, 36,000,000 lire in money, Church treasures, part of the library and of the Museo Pio Clementine which the Pope had completed. Caravans heavily laden with loot rolled off toward the Seine. But Paris wanted still more: the "Lama of Europe" and his religion were to be destroyed forever. In Rome a republican party raised the tri- colour and shouted "Down with the Pope." Papal militia executed a young French General. The Directory sent another, Berthier, to take revenge, and the city was compelled to surrender to him. The Pope was declared deposed, the Republic was proclaimed, and seven consuls were entrusted with the provisional government. A tree of liberty was planted on the Capitol, and Berthier read an address in honour of the occasion: "Manes of Cato, Pompeii, Brutus, Cicero, Hortensius, receive the homage of liberated France. The grandsons of the Gauls come today with the olive branch of peace in their hands, in order to erect on this holy place that altar of freedom consecrated by the hand of the first Brutus." The Pope did not flee as had been hoped, and so Berthier demanded that he abdicate. Pius replied: "I have been elected Pope and I will die a Pope. You can cause great suffering to an eighty-three-year-old man, but it will not last long. I am in your power but you have the body only and not the spirit." The French feared a Roman rebellion and arrested the Pope so that they might take him out of the city. He remonstrated that he wished to die in Rome. c< You can die anywhere,*' Berthier replied.
Since the end of the sixteenth century, there has existed a list of phrases characterizing the Popes who had gone before and those who were still to come. It is associated with the name of St. Malachias, an Irish Saint of the twelfth century. In this reputed prophecy, the phrase applied to Pius VI was peregrinus apostolicus martens in exilio "the apostolic wanderer who dies in exile." The Pope carried out this prediction to the letter. The journey led to Siena via post- chaise. Here an earthquake destroyed the monastery in which he
324 AWAY FROM ROME!
was staying, and the sick Pontiff barely escaped with his life. Then he was carried on farther to Florence, and thence to the Carthusian Monastery. Finally he was borne in a sedan over Turin across the Alps to Grenoble and eventually to the citadel of Valence. Here he ended his days during the summer of 1799, dying with the cross upon his breast.
Funeral orations were held, not merely for the Pope, but for the Papacy. The goddess of freedom was already erected on San Angelo, and her foot was on the tiara.
After his campaigns in Egypt and Syria, Napoleon buttressed his power when the fortune of batde favoured him at Marengo, and made a peace with Austria at Luneville. The road to the imperial throne was now open to him; but almost at this very time the Conclave was in session in Venice. Months passed before the thirty-five cardinals could reach an agreement, for the members of the Curialist party, who were resolved to defend the rights of the Papal States, were opposed to the political desires of Austria. Finally Monsignor Consalvi, Secre- tary of the Conclave, proposed Cardinal Chiaramonri. He declared that it was well known that this cardinal was not hostile to France, and that as Bishop of Imola he had even been in friendly relations with Napoleon. It was possible, he thought, to rely more on the Republic than on the Catholic monarchies, since the young General had accorded a dignified funeral to Pope Pius and seemed to hold religion and ecclesiastical order in respect. Moreover Bonaparte for his part held Cardinal Chiaramonri in high esteem. He was elected; and out of veneration for the martyr who had preceded him, he took the name of Pius VII.
This Pope was descended from a noble family, had entered the Benedictine Order when he was only seventeen and had later been professor of theology in Parma and Rome. His agreeable disposition, kindness and friendliness won the hearts of many. When the revolu- tionary French had invaded his diocese, he had quietly stood his ground and had preached a sermon in which democracy and the Gospel were declared in harmony. To this Bonaparte had replied by declaring it a Jacobin discourse. Nevertheless Pius did not seem to be called to serve as helmsman during a storm. Napoleon declared that he was a Iamb, a good man, a generous angel. But what he lacked in states-
CARDINAL CONSALVI 325
manlike quality was supplied by his Secretary of State, Cardinal Ercolc Consalvi. Pius had immediately raised this expert in ecclesiastical administration, who was not a priest and never became one, to the rank of cardinal-deacon, and had entrusted him with the duties o Pro-Secretary of State. This Roman marquis had received his early training in the famous seminary erected by the English Cardinal Duke Henry of York in Frascati, and had soon discerned the way he was to go. Nevertheless he now hesitated to assume the burdens of office to which the Pope called him, and casting himself at the Pontiffs feet begged for another assignment. But Pius was adamant, and so a friend of the Muses was placed on the captain's bridge of world history. Rome had seen evil days under the reign of French liberty. The people were ground down by plunderers and gougers; prices soared sky-high. The Pope was therefore greeted jubilantly. He had to thank the victor of Marengo for the fact that he was again the master of his own house. Consalvi began to dig out of the ruins what remained of the Papal States as a result of the Peace of Luneville. In his own memoirs one can read the chronicle of the trials and cares which haunted him day and night. Most scrupulously he kept his hands clean and returned even the slightest present sent him by his most intimate friends. Thus when he was named Cardinal, the Duke of York remembered his erstwhile favourite pupil handsomely in his will; but Consalvi compelled him to cancel these bequests. Seldom in history have two men worked together so highmindedly as did this Pope and his minister, to achieve all the results which pure devo- tion to a cause and greatness of character could produce in a rime when justice and power were so completely intertwined, Bonaparte was soon to realize the significance of moral weapons.
He seemed to be kindly disposed toward the Church. In conversa- tion with the Bishop of Vercelli and in a public address to the clergy of Milan, he expressed his willingness to live on good terms with the Holy Sec provided that the new position of France and its importance in the world were understood there. A country shaken by revolution was again in need of the support of the Catholic religion. During June, 1801, he and his general staff attended a service held in the Cathedral of Milan in honour of the Victory of Marengo. Before he went he wrote to the two other Consuls: 'Today I am going in
326 AWAY FROM ROME!
pomp and splendour to the *Te Deum, regardless of what our atheists in Paris may say." During this same summer negotiations with Rome were concluded. On both sides the situation was desperately difficult. The Constitutional Assembly had broken with the Pope, had torn France adrift from the Church, and had divided the clergy into parties. But Bonaparte needed religious unity for reasons of state, and he needed the Pope to sanction his claim to the throne. Those immediately surrounding him urged the most contradictory requests on him: he should free the state from all the superstitions of religion, he should follow the example of Henry VIII and declare himself supreme head of the French National Church instead of leav- ing supremacy in religious matters to a foreigner, and he should make France a Protestant country. The reasons why he repudiated all these suggestions are well known. Napoleon, the statesman, wanted the Catholic religion and no other; and he wanted it because he desired a visible centre of responsibility. "If there were no Pope," he said, "we should have to make one." The man who spoke thus was not a deist but a politician. The future Emperor hoped that he would subordinate to his leadership the representative of the most ancient spiritual power of Europe, who was also the symbol of its historical unity. LaFayette did not understand all that Napoleon's ecclesiasti- cal policy implied, but he summarized its most intimate motives when he wrote: "Why not admit it, the little vial of coronation oil is to be broken over your head. This is what you want."
Ambassadors and outlines of a treaty were sent hither and thither. Napoleon demanded a Church constitution based upon the revolu- tionary status quo the sale of Church property in favour of the state, confiscation of real estate owned by the clergy, appointment and payment of the clergy by the state, and a new division of France into sixty dioceses, the bishops of which were to be chosen from those who had taken the oath as well as from those who had not taken it. When the Papacy replied in the negative, he sent a threat that he would declare war on Rome and the Papal States. If the Paris pro- posals were not signed within two weeks without modification, the French ambassador Cacault was to leave Rome at once and to join Murat, Commander of the Franco-Italian army.
Cacault himself pleaded with Consalvi to go to Paris personally,
THE CONCORDAT WITH NAPOLEON 527
and the Pope as well as the cardinals shared this view. Accordingly the Secretary undertook the difficult journey. The very first meet- ing in the Tuileries, which was designed to give the Cardinal an impression of the power and awfulness of the First Consul, proved how difficult it was to reach an agreement. The limping Talleyrand led Consalvi into Napoleon's presence amid the blaring of trumpets, the rumbling of drums and the stares of a host of notables in bright uniforms. "I know the reason why you have come to France," Napo- leon began in a lordly tone. "And I insist that negotiations begin without delay. I shall give you five days' time. If within this period the negotiations have not been completed, you can go back to Rome. As far as I am concerned, I have already resolved upon what course to take if you do so." Consalvi replied calmly, "In sending his Prime Minister to Paris, His Holiness has proved the interest with which he views the possibility of concluding a Concordat with France. I entertain the hope that I may be fortunate enough to complete this work within the time desired." Without altering his attitude, Napo- leon voiced during half an hour his ideas concerning religion, the Papacy and the Concordat. He took it ill that Rome and Russia were on good terms, and that immediately after his election Pius had acceded to the Czar's request and had permitted the Society of Jesus to continue its work in Russia. This, declared Napoleon, was surely an insult to the Catholic king of Spain. Consalvi defended this step and proved that Spain had been informed in advance concerning it. At the desire of the Abbe Bernier, Napoleon's plenipotentiary, the Cardinal sat up all night and wrote out a memorandum of the reasons which had impelled the Holy See to reject the French proposals. Talleyrand scribbled a contemptuous remark on the margin and turned over the document to the Consul. Meanwhile the Austrian Am- bassador, Count Cobenzl, lectured Consalvi concerning the incalcula- ble results of a failure: Bonaparte would break with Rome and would compel France and other countries under his control to apostatize. The Cardinal gave way in so far as his instructions permitted, without completely acceding to the wishes of the other side. Before the Con- cordat was signed Napoleon instructed the Moniteur to publish the news that Cardinal Consalvi had succeeded in completing the business which had brought him to Paris, and that on July i4th, the anniversary
328 AWAY FROM ROME!
of the storming of the Bastille, the Concordat would be proclaimed. Meanwhile, however, the document had been altered by Bernier at Napoleon's command. Consalvi, pen in hand, read the text before he signed and detected the deceit. Bernier stuttered in perplexity and defended his master, while Joseph Bonaparte entreated the Cardinal to sign. "It is not difficult to imagine what the wrath of a man like my brother would be if he were publicly exposed in his own news- paper as the author of a false news-despatch concerning so important a matter.*' Consalvi demanded that new negotiations take place. These lasted nineteen hours without pause. Now the moment had come when the signed Concordat was to go into effect. One single article was still under debate. It concerned the freedom of worship and its public practice, and the official character of the Catholic re- ligion. Consalvi stated that this point must be reserved for future discussion, and signed the rest, Joseph rushed off to consult Napo- leon. Before an hour had passed, he returned with a troubled expres- sion on his face. Bonaparte had torn the document into shreds. He insisted that the article to which Consalvi had made reservations must also be signed and that if it were not negotiations would be terminated.
In just a few more hours the festive anniversary banquet, to which Consalvi had also been invited, was to begin. Napoleon's advisers implored the Cardinal to give way. "I felt a fear like that of death/' he writes. "I saw the reproaches of everyone directed at me. . . During two hours of struggle, I persisted in my refusal and negotiations were broken off/'
During the dinner Napoleon strode toward Consalvi with a flushed face and addressed him in a loud and contemptuous voice, "I see, Cardinal, that you have wanted a breach. You shall have it! I don't need Rome I will act on my own. I need no Pope. . . You can go! This is the best thing you could do. When are you leaving?" In loud and passionate terms the Consul reiterated his annoyance be- fore the rest of the invited guests.
Cobenzl now undertook to bring about a reconciliation; and this was affected after a conference lasting eleven hours. When the com- promise was reported to Napoleon he was furious but soon became very silent and conceded the point. He himself could not want a breach; for a France torn asunder from the Papacy could not hope to
THE ORGANIC ARTICLES 329
remedy the situation resulting from a division of the clergy yes, even of the Church into two camps. On the very same day (July 15, 1801) the Concordat was signed. In a farewell audience, Consalvi alluded to the great sacrifices which he had made for the sake of peace with France. The greatest were the relinquishment of claims to Church property and the concession to the ruler of the state of the right to appoint the bishops. Physically and mentally exhausted, Consalvi left the city in haste because of Napoleon's desire to see the Roman Bull of Confirmation at the earliest possible date. He had not won everything, but he had gained a great deal. He wrote: "Was it not a triumph to know that religion was to revive again in a country where people had worshipped the Goddess of Reason and read on the towers of temples the inscriptions, 'To youth, to manhood, to old age, to friendship, to commerce?' "
The event did not elicit a uniform echo on either side. Legitimists were shocked and there were plenty of angry free-thinkers. Some praised the Curia, and some poked fun at it. Pius and the cardinals were on the whole in agreement that a Concordat must not be spurned which made possible nothing less than the restoration of Catholicism in France and therewith its preservation in Europe, for under the cir- cumstances the apostasy of France would most certainly have involved other states. After a long debate it was ratified and die confirmation was sent to Paris. In order to weaken the effect of the agreement, Napoleon drew up the Organic Articles and proclaimed them together with the Concordat on Easter Day, 1802, These possessed the validity of state law, and in the spirit of an absolutism hostile to Rome forced the Church into chains of civil subservience, police supervision, and nationalistic limitations. The manner in which they were published created and was intended to create the impression chat they formed part of the Concordat and had, like it, been approved by the Holy See. Consalvi said that therewith the new structure erected at the cost of so much effort had been pulled down again. While the Monitcvr was making public the Concordat and the Articles in the same number in which die publication of Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity was announced, while Archbishop Belioy then well-nigh ninety was celebrating in Notre-Damc, in the presence of Napoleon and his generals, the coming of peace to the Church, while heralds were pro-
330 AWAY FROM ROME!
claiming the Concordat to the city amidst the glare of the trumpets, and while the orator of the occasion was praising the First Consul as a new Pepin and Charlemagne, the Pope in Rome was protesting to his Consistory against the Organic Articles. But the bitterness of the chalice he was asked to drink was mitigated by the comfort of knowing that the most powerful ruler in Europe had sought to secure the blessing of the Papacy upon his efforts to enact an ecclesiastical law, at the very time when many thought that this Papacy was about to fade into the shadows of history. Once more the Holy See had been recognized as a great power and had come to terms with an opponent.
Nor was the attack of the Revolution upon Church property an unmitigated loss for the Church or the Papacy. The general seculari- zation which took place in Germany in 1803 destroyed a thousand- year-old association of bishoprics, it undermined the economic founda- tion of ecclesiastical activity, it suddenly imposed upon Catholics the fate of inferiority in material things, it also deprived them of spiritual weapons when such cultural centres as universities and monastic higher schools were closed, and especially in the southern territories it forced the Church into the position by reason of which throughout the nineteenth century and even later it was generally regarded as "out- moded" by those who enjoyed the advantages accruing to Protestants* But history is a giant which breathes in long breaths, and makes known the true meaning of events only after those affected are in their graves. With the ecclesiastical principalities, there disappeared also the type of consecrated Grands Seigneurs who utilized their enormous incomes to carry on as builders, patrons of the arts, custodians of treasures, and connoisseurs, to the disadvantage of the mission which constitutes the true meaning and purpose of the Church. Subsequent times enjoy the cultural achievements of such men, achievements which also testify to the strength with which the Catholic faith can express it- self in artistic creation. Nevertheless it also is hard to avoid passing judgment on the spiritual consequences involved. Now a great blood- letting brought about a profound change. No longer would many sons of princely or aristocratic families covet bishoprics and canonical appointments, which the state henceforth financed less liberally. A
PIUS VII GOES TO FRANCE 331
simple, middle-class officialdom now arose in the Church, and gradu- ally freed itself from dependence on the absolute state. Because re- ligion was its innermost concern, it automatically began to understand anew that over and above national boundaries there was in progress a struggle of the Church and die Papacy for influence in the world*
Napoleon continued to serve the cause of Rome by harassing the Pope. After he had caused himself to be elected hereditary Emperor of the French in 1804, ^ e ^ so invited Pope Pius VII to Paris for his anointing and consecration. He had remembered that Pope Zach- arias had come to the land of the Franks when Pepin was crowned. For safety's sake he let Cardinal Consalvi know that if His Holiness refused to come he would be deeply offended, that much harm would result and that, on the other hand, if the Pope did as he was bidden great advantages would accrue to the Papal States. Every excuse would be looked upon as a mere protest, Napoleon added. Rome was frightened. Just a few days before Cardinal Fesch had reported the horrible murder of the Duke of Enghien; and the Pope had burst into tears for the victim's sake, and also for the sake of the real mur- derer, whom he was now expected to crown. He postponed sending congratulations to the newly elected Emperor until the transformation of the Republic into a Monarchy had formally taken place. During the Roman discussions of whether the Pope was to go or not, the de- termining factor was a petition to Napoleon to give freer rein to the Church in France. Consalvi wrote to Paris that only a religious rea- son and definite assurances by the Emperor could provide a suitable motive for the Papal journey. The Curia raised more objections than could be listed. If Bonaparte is crowned, will not the Revolu- tion be crowned also? Will the other courts not avenge themselves on Rome for such an act? Must one not be prepared to expect further violence and deceit from this man? What would be the effect of a defeat such as Pius VI had experienced? And again does not the good of religion demand that the master of Europe and the power of France be won over to the side of the Church? Finally the number in favour of the Pope going to Paris formed a majority in the Sacred College. When Rome declared that a letter of invitation was ex- pected, the Emperor answered with a repulsively slippery missive, the
33* AWAY FROM ROME!
disagreeable effect o which Cardinal Fcsch (who delivered it) tried hard to mitigate. The Pope informed the College that out of a sense of apostolic duty he had decided to leave for Paris.
Pope and Emperor met in the wood of Fontainebleau at noon on the ajth of November. Napoleon was dressed in a hunting costume and was accompanied by a pack of fifty hounds. The Pope was shown chambers in the castle, which were separated from those of Napoleon by only one room. Visits, receptions and addresses occupied all his rime during the few days he remained. Josephine, who was wedded to Napoleon only under civil law, feared that he would divorce her because she was childless, poured out her heart to the Pope, and de- sired the blessing of the Church upon her marriage so that she might not be excluded from the Coronation. Cardinal Fesch performed the marriage ceremony before the day of Coronation according to a form of dubious validity.
On November 2Sth, Pope and Emperor left for Paris. The city was decked out with splendour and every street was crowded. Pius, who now resided in 2 wing of the Tuileries, was accorded the highest honours. His dignity and his person made such an impression that the Emperor was jealous. He did not give the Pope permission to say Mass in public. "The people come an hour's distance to sec me," he said, "but they trudge along for twenty hours to get the Pope's blessing/*
On the bright, cold morning of December 2, the festive procession moved toward Notrc-Damc, the Pope wearing a cope and the data. When he entered the Cathedral, a choir of eight hundred voices sang TH ffs Petrus. . . Napoleon kept everyone waiting a long rime. Then the choir sang again as he entered, a little figure in a huge im- perial mantle, with a laurel wreath on his head, looking pale and sombre. Beside him walked the Empress, beaming with joy. The ceremony began. Pius inquired of the Emperor, "Do you promise to preserve peace in the Church of God?" Napoleon replied firmly, "I promise/' The Pope anointed the foreheads, arms and hands of the kneeling couple, girded the ruler with the consecrated sword, and said over him a prayer incorporating what the Church expected from Ac temporal power. But before he could take hold of the crowns that rested on the altar, Napoleon arose, placed one crown on his own
POPE AGAINST EMPEROR 333
head, and put the other on the head of his wife. All present under- stood the meaning of this action. He ascended the throne, the Pope blessed him and greeted him as "Augustus." The thousands in the throng shouted their homage, and outside the Cathedral the event was announced with salvos of cannon fire. The new Cxsar then took an oath of loyalty to the constitution and High Mass followed.
The Pope's disillusionment began at the Coronation banquet: he was not shown to the place that was rightfully his. During the days that followed he realized that he would make no headway. He wrote a letter that revealed his feelings, and Talleyrand answered with non- committal phrases. In Rome gossips had long since been referring to the Pope as Napoleon's court chaplain, and the mockery' really expressed the true intentions of the Emperor. He wanted Pius to leave Rome and settle either in Paris or Avignon. If he decided on the second city, the Palace would be renovated and a splendid retinue pro- vided. But to this the Pope retorted that in this case France would have only a poor monk named Barnaba Chiaramonti, since he had already taken steps to assure the immediate selection of a new Pope in Rome provided that certain unfortunate things occurred "Avant dt quitter I' hale fat signc une abdication regulaire" Therewith he had already escaped from the grasp of the despot, even as a spirit escapes from matter.
Napoleon compelled the Pope to postpone his departure until he himself had preceded him to Italy. The parting was cool. The Pope had come with precious gifts, but the presents he got in return and took with him were not the magnificent treasures that had been promised and even described in the newspapers, but merely Gobelins and Church vessels of mediocre quality. Included was a tiara, the most precious gem in which had been removed from the crown of Pius VI, prisoner of France. The last insult to Pius was that the new coat of arms chosen for the Italian monarchy incorporated the Papal keys and the symbols of the three legations which had been taken from the Papal States. The Pope rode out of France in the wake of Napoleon, who was journeying to Milan for the King's coronation; and whenever the Emperor changed horses, Pius was given those that had been left behind. It was as if history had suddenly forgotten half a thousand years and was taking up the battle of the Middle Ages
334 AWAY FROM ROME!
anew. Bonaparte interfered arbitrarily in the ecclesiastical concerns of Italy, scolded the Pope for refusing to annul the marriage of his brother Jerome with Miss Patterson, and occupied Ancona because he was not content with the mere right to march through the Papal States. He said that he could not find it convenient to endure any border state which did not recognize his system and obey his laws. The French Emperor looked upon himself as Roman Emperor. The Pope, who was only the Prince of Rome, was bidden to look upon friends and enemies of the Emperor as his own friends and enemies. If he did not, his worldly possessions might be in danger. What Napoleon really demanded was that the Pope become his vassal. This at a time when the act of coronation had most seriously impaired in the rest of Europe the belief that the Roman See was independent! Napoleon also told Consalvi that he had only one alternative either to act always according to the Emperor s will, or to resign the Min- istty.
The victor of Austerlitz more and more arrogantly defined himself as the real master of the Papal States, demanded that the harbours be closed to English ships, that all "heretics" i. e, Russians, Swedes, Englishmen be ordered out, made his brother Joseph King of Na- ples, and deeded away possessions of the Roman See according to his whims. When the Pope protested and sent copies of his protest to all the Courts, Napoleon looked upon this act as revolution and threat- ened that he would place Consalvi, the author (whom he termed the Pope's seducer) under arrest. The Minister requested Pius to dis- miss him so that Napoleon would be deprived at least of one excuse. "Cast me into the sea like Jonah," he said, "because it is my fault that this storm has descended upon you." Pius assented because he real- ized that the Emperor's plans would then be unveiled more speedily.
Soon they were apparent. Gallicanism was to prevail in Italy also. The College of Cardinals was to become an instrument of French policy, the Code Napoleon was to be introduced as law into the Papal States, celibacy and religious Orders were to be abolished, and the Pope was to be compelled to surrender his neutrality and sovereignty. The resistance offered by the Vatican was in vain. On February 2, 1808, General Miollis marched into the city, disarmed the Papal troops, incorporated them into the French army, arrested the
THE POPE A PRISONER 335
Guard of Nobles, drove out the Cardinals who had refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Joseph Bonaparte, and occupied San Angclo. A new act of violence occurred every day. The Papal government had no money and no power, and it had feared that the despairing populace would rebel. Miollis informed the Pope that he had authority to shoot or hang anyone who did not obey his orders. On September 6, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacca, was to be arrested in the Quirinal and later deported. The Pope rushed into his room with dishevelled hair and demanded that he share imprisonment with him in the Palace. Prepared for the worst, the two remained in the Quiri- nal, around which there was now stationed a heavy guard. Pius spurned the opportunity to flee on board an English ship, and he repulsed every thought of a popular uprising. But the Bull which imposed the ban on Napoleon had already been written in 1806 and was kept secretly in the the Secretary of State's office.
On May lyth, 1809, Napoleon carried out his great attack on Rome. A decree signed at Schoenbrunn Castle excoriated the "con- tinuous animosity of the Supreme Head of religion against the most powerful Prince of Christendom." The voice came from behind a mask which the Papacy recognizes always and will recognize until the end. "In order to bring to a speedy conclusion these quarrels so injurious to the welfare of religion and of the Empire, His Majesty could have recourse only to one means to annul the Donation of Charlemagne and therewith make the Popes what they always ought to be, thus guaranteeing the spiritual power against the passions to which temporal power is subject. Jesus Christ, who was of the blood of David, did not want to be King of the Jews. . . My kingdom is not of this world, Christ has said, and with this utterance He con- demned for all times every blending of religious interests with worldly ambition." Moreover the argument was not missing that the Pope must stand above the nations, and that if he act as a sovereign inter- ested in state policies the neutrality of his influence upon the peoples will be undermined. To say that the Church might be ruled by the Pope as long as it docs not minimize the liberties of the Gallican Church simply meant that the Pope was not the Pope of France. "When future generations shall laud the Emperor for having restored religion and built up altars anew, they will nevertheless find fault with
336 AWAY FROM ROME!
him because he exposed the Empire that is the great confederation of states to the influence o this curious blend of powers which is hostile to religion and likewise to the peace of Europe. This obstacle can only be overcome if one severs the supreme secular power from the supreme spiritual power and declares that the Papal States are only a part of the French Empire."
The decrees inaugurating the future government of Rome, defined as "an imperial and free city/' as well as the particular instructions given for the treatment to be accorded the Pope were on the whole characterized by wise restraint. The Pope was to be arrested only in case he offered resistance or misused the immunity of the Papal resi- dence by writing pastoral letters against the Emperor, for example. The time for such scenes is gone. Philip Lebeau had Boniface VIII arrested and Charles V kept Clement VII in custody for a rime. A priest who declares war on the secular authority does violence to his position."
On the morning of June loth, Napoleon's edict was proclaimed on the public squares of Rome and the Papal arms were removed from San Angelo's to the tune of cannon volleys. The tricolour was raised.
Cardinal Pacca rushed to the room of the Pope with a copy of the decree. "It has happened/ 1 he said, and read the document aloud with deep emotion. The Pope listened quietly, went to his desk and signed a protest written in Italian and the Bull Ad perpetuam ret mtmon&m which imposed the ban on "the robbers of Peter's patri- mony." Napoleon's name was not mentioned in this Bull. Despite all the espionage of the French, the document was displayed to the public in some churches. Other copies were brought to foreign coun- tries and one was even nailed to the door of Notre-Dame. In it one read that the rape of the Papal States was the fulfilment of a long cherished plan, though it was now called "defense." One read a list of all French violations of treaties, of arbitrary acts and attempts at deceit, all Papal sacrifices for the sake of peace, and all acts of violence committed by the garrison of Rome. "If we do not wish to expose ourselves to the accusation of having ignominiously abandoned the Church, we must seize every means in our power. . /* General Miollis and Murat believed themselves empowered to arrest the Pope tx> abduct him from Rome. The Police General Radet received
INTO EXILE 337
orders to carry out the deed. At dawn on the 6th of July troops came quietly and swiftly from all sides. They climbed through the win- dows on ladders. Cardinal Pacca, who spent the whole of the night visiting the guard, permitted himself some hours of sleep durincr the morning. He was awakened and told that the French were already in the Palace. He looked out into the garden and saw that people with torches were running hither and thither. Clad in his night robe, he rushed to the Pope and awoke him. Pius, who was calm and cheerful, threw a silk mozzetta about his person and went into the audience chamber while the axes were crashing against the doors. He ordered the room opened. Radet entered with a few officers. Pale and in a trembling voice, the General managed only slowly to say what he had to say. The grenadiers presented arms and then fell on their knees. He had orders, said Radet, to induce His Holiness to relinquish his secular power and also to accompany him to General Miollis, who would determine what was to be his future residence. The words were exchanged calmly and courteously. "We cannot relinquish something that does not belong to us," said Pius. "The secular authority belongs to the Church of Rome, of which we arc merely the administrator. The Emperor can order us to be cut to pieces, but this he will never secure from us." Radet insisted upon an immediate departure. Cardinal Pacca, who was permitted to ac- company the Pope, did not have time to fill the trunks with laundry. In the courtyard a carriage was waiting to receive the arrested church- men, and after they entered it was locked with a key. The route did not lead to General Miollis' headquarters, but out of the city to a spot where a squadron of cavalry with drawn sabres joined the party* Then the carriage went on down the road to Etruria. When the Pope complained that he had not even been given time to supply him- self with baggage and companions, Radet attempted to make an excuse for the lie he had been obliged to tell. Pius asked the Cardinal if he had any money. When the answer was negative he drew out his own wallet which contained one papcto. Cardinal Pacca then opened his purse and found three pence. Both of them laughed. Pius showed the General his coin. "See," he said, "that is all I possess of my prin- cipality."
The day was hot. The air in the carriage was stifling, since the
53 8 AWAY FROM ROME!
curtains had been drawn. The noonday pause was made at a dirty inn. During the afternoon the Pope quenched his thirst from a riv- ulet that flowed along the road. Now and then weeping women appeared in doorways. After a journey of nineteen hours, they were given a miserable night's lodging. The Pope, who was clad in his light mozzett*. froze. The next morning he had a fever and refused to travel farther until his physician and his servants arrived. They came on the same day. The carriage sped on past Siena to Florence, through clouds of dust. The route was deflected from the cities them- selves* because the people were in a state of great excitement. In the Carthusian Monastery outside Florence, the Pope occupied the room in which Pius VI had been held a prisoner. When, after a few hours of sleep, he was again ordered to get into the carriage, the tired Pope was annoyed and declared that Bonaparte sought his death. They went on over Genoa, Alessandria, Monte Cenis in the direction of Grenoble; and still no order had come from Napoleon. Meanwhile the Emperor had despatched letters in which he expressed his indigna- tion at the Pope's arrest. It was only Pacca, the villain and enemy of France, who should have been seized. He requested that good treatment be accorded the Pontiff, Savona was ordered to offer hos- pitality, but meanwhile he might remain in Grenoble. But the peo- ple poured in and rendered homage to an uncomfortable extent, al- though no newspaper had been allowed to carry tidings of the Pope's presence in France. He was taken over Avignon, past Marseilles and Toulon, to Nice where he could enjoy the acclaim of the multitude, which strewed flowers on the streets during the day and sent up fire- works by night. Then finally the cortege arrived at Savona, on August 15, 1809. Here in the Palace of the Bishop, all the splendour of a princely life was afforded the Pope at Napoleon's command. He refused it all, including a proffered two million francs, chose to follow the customs of his monastic youth, and occupied three little rooms together with his old servant. The high wall of the garden reminded him that he was a prisoner.
Meanwhile Cardinal Pacca was destined to spend three hard years in the mountain fortress of Fenestrel in Savoy with other political prisoners for his companions. At the close of 1809 all Cardinals who were able to travel were ordered to proceed to Paris so that in case of
THE " BLACK CARDINALS" 339
the Pope's death the new election would take place under Napoleon's control. Consalvi, who spent many difficult hours in Rome because, though he got on excellently with the higher officers of the Imperial government, he refused to recognize this itself, was compelled to bow to military force and to leave for Paris during the same year. The manner in which tie Cardinals and prelates conducted themselves, and their attitude toward the monarch who was under the ban and who was tormenting the Church, was nothing short of being a unified protest. Of the twenty-nine who were in Paris on the day that Napoleon was wedded to Maria Louisa of Austria, thirteen had de- clared the divorce from Josephine unlawful because not the Pope but a canonical court lacking jurisdiction had endorsed it and proclaimed it. They did not attend the church ceremony; and among their number was Consalvi, whose imperturbable self-seclusion expressed most elo- quently the protest against the new situation. Their resistance was so obvious that Napoleon let them know that he no longer regarded them as Cardinals. They were forbidden to appear in purple, wore simple clerical dress and were for this reason henceforth known as "Black Cardinals." They were deprived of their incomes and for- tunes and were exiled from Paris into a number of cities. Napoleon believed that they were rebels who had conspired for the purpose of declaring his offspring illegitimate. Consalvi in particular was the object of his spleen. He had him sent to Rheims and hoped that with die help of the more submissive Cardinals he could gradually put through his plan of a Byzantine government of the Church and a French Papacy. When the Pope resisted the dictatorial ecclesiastical policy of France, he was placed under strict arrest in Savona. He refused to install canonically the bishops appointed by Napoleon, and declared that if they carried out their offices without his confirmation they were usurpers. Pen, ink and seal ring were taken from him. Meanwhile Consalvi, living in proud poverty at Rhcims, was writing his memoirs, which also sang the praises of the imprisoned Pontiff.
Bonaparte now tried the last way out, which was to convene a Council that would carry out his wishes. So many dioceses were without bishops and so many prisons were filled with recusant clergy that he was spurred to great effort. An organization committee wrestled with the exceedingly difficult problems created by the fact
340 AWAY FROM ROME!
that a synod was to convene without the Pope against the Papacy. Napoleon's voluminous correspondence on the subject unconsciously threw a revealing light upon the significance of the tiara. The vilest means were employed in order to mislead the sick and isolated old man at Savona. It was, for example, told him that he might go back to Rome, but the condition was that he must take an oath of loyalty to the Emperor. A ctltjation consisting of bishops and officials friendly to Bonaparte and of the bribed physician of the Pope were unable to get much out of him but did succeed in wringing from him the concession that within six months he would confirm the bishops that Napoleon had appointed. But when the delegation left, he spent days of repentance in a state of spiritual collapse.
On June ijth, iSio, the Council assembled one hundred six bishops (six of them were Germans) , and then remained in session until Oc- tober. The Church saw that many weak, and few strong, prophets of its freedom had convened. It was the Bishop of Miinster in Westphalia, who urged most courageously the liberation of the Pope. But in spite of even-thing Napoleon obtained nothing excepting a Brief from Savona which permitted the Metropolitan to install the bishops appointed by the government, in the name of the Pope. He then declared that the Concordat was no longer in force.
On the road to Moscow he was still pondering the ancient question of the two powers. According to Thiers, he declared that when he had conquered Russia he would also triumph over the religious opposi- tion of the priesthood and even over the resistance of the human intel- lect itself. During May 1812, he gave orders in Dresden that the Pope was to be brought to Fontainebleau. After a harrowing trip, Pius entered the rooms he had occupied previously and dwelt in them a sick man. When the Emperor wrote some courteous lines and had his subordinates accord Papal honours, the Pontiff saw through these things too clearly to derive any pleasure from them.
On January i9th, 1813, Napoleon, having been defeated, visited his prisoner, embraced him, kissed him and called him his Father. On the next day negotiations concerning the future were inaugurated and the conqueror became the philosopher of Papal history. The great changes which had come about in the world, he said, necessitated also that the Papacy should give up its temporal power. What could not
NAPOLEON 7 IN DEFEAT 341
come about if the Emperor of Europe and the Pope reached an agree- ment? How the Protestants would pale before such an alliance! Was it not the will of Providence that a virtuous Pope and a mighty Emperor should join hands?
At bottom it was not a new idea concerning the relations between the state and the Papacy which Napoleon was then pondering. Spir- itual government was to be preserved in appearance, but hollowed out in essence; and secular government alone was to rule men in their totality. According to Las Casas he still meditated upon what he believed he had obtained at Fontainebleau after he had become a pris- oner on the Island of St. Helena. "I had finally brought about the greatly desired separation of the spiritual from the temporal," he said. "Blending the two has been very injurious to the holiness of the first and has created disorder in society precisely in the name of, by the hand of, the one who should constitute the centre of harmony. From this moment on, I wanted to elevate the Papacy higher than it had ever been elevated before and to surround it with pomp and homage. I would have brought the Papacy to the point where it no longet complained about its temporal position. I would have made of it an idol. It would have remained my ally. Paris would have been the capital city of the Christian world, and I would have controlled religious life even as I controlled political life.**
During a thousand years the Carolingians, the Ottonians, the Hohcnstaufens, the Habsburgs, the Capetians, the Valois, and the Bourbons had exhausted all the possible ways of helping, injuring and subjugating the See of Peter. And if the new autocrat of Europe had realized his wish to be a Gesar, he could in his relations with the Pope have undertaken nothing that could have seemed to the revolu- tionized world anything more than an outmoded procedure. No new idea, no new act of intervention, made him the master of the most stubborn of his foes. There is comedy of divine profundity in this clash between power and power, between the impotence concealed in the strength of the genius who created a new epoch and of strength hidden in the impotence of a modest old man whose marvellous en- ergies appeared to lie only in the realm of yesterday. For the sake of this yesterday, which after all had not departed since it was the beater of timeless treasure which it was destined to pass on to the u-
34 2 AWAY FROM ROME!
ture, the new Gcsar also sought to find a footing on the Rock which had withstood so many turbulent floods of time. It was a sign that he did not know this yesterday; and if he had succeeded in making the High Priest his functionary, the curbed Papacy would not have lent his crown the splendour he desired.
Negotiations for a new Concordat lasted five days. Pius was no longer in possession of his powers. Bishops and Cardinals urged him to do the Emperor's bidding. He signed a calamitous paper with eleven preliminary articles, in which surrender to the rights to the Papal States was implied. The "Black Cardinals" were called back, and though Napoleon put up a stiff resistance Cardinal Pacca came too. He was not unaware of the new situation and was deeply moved when he saw his old friend again. The Pope stood before him a bent, pale, old man with sunken, almost lifeless eyes. They embraced, and Pius immediately explained with many self-accusations what had hap- pened. Since Napoleon had in the interim proclaimed this provi- sional agreement a law of the state and had ordered Te Deums to be sung in thanksgiving in the Churches, most of the Cardinals coun- selled the Pope to retract. Such a retraction was sent by the Pope personally to Napoleon at Consalvi's suggestion. In this letter he said that his conscience was on the rack and also expressed his aston- ishment that the provisional outline of a future treaty should have been made public. The Emperor kept the letter a secret so that he could act as if he had not received it, fc
Napoleon had neither the desire nor the rime to let matters drift to a schism, because he had to inaugurate the campaign of 1813. Reckoning with the possibility that the allied armies might reach Paris and liberate the Pope, he gave orders that the prisoner should be brought quietly back to Savona. Before he left Pius gave the Cardi- nals written directions governing the time of his absence. The "Black Cardinals" were interned in Southern France.
The fortunes of 1813-1814 compelled Napoleon, who had also lost Italy, to set the Pope free. When Pius went back to Rome, jubilant crowds welcomed him everywhere. At the same time, Napoleon was dictating his abdication in Fontainebleau. During the next year Gen- eral Murat invaded the Papal States, and the Pope had to flee once again to Genoa for a short time. The prophecies of St. Malachias
AQUILA RAPAX 343
had said that this Pope was a preying eagle, aquila rapax; but Na- poleon called him a lamb. The prophet had given the victim the name of the danger which had threatened him. The Eagle who had spread his wings over Europe retreated across the ocean; and as the nations breathed freely again, the song o the romantic poets was raised in honour of the Pope.
THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
Deeply shaken by the Revolution and the ambitions of Bonaparte, Europe seethed with factions taking sides for and against the Pope. Though on the surface reaction had won a complete victory, the spirits which had summoned upheaval had not been curbed. Many real opportunities presented themselves to the Church, to endorse the new and to help Europe find peace; and many of them were really grasped. But the leaders of the Spiritual Monarchy did not discern the real meaning of the historical evolution, and failed to utilize the right mo- ment to ally themselves with legitimate demands for freedom and reasonableness in the way which the nature of the Church itself sug- gested. For decades the Papacy was unable to make up its mind or to take the initiative in any striking way.
It was a brilliant but burdensome victory which Consalvi won when, after arduous negotiations with England, Austria and Russia, he put through the restoration of the Papal States at the Congress of Vienna. He could be grateful to the Napoleonic system for the administrative reforms it bequeathed to him, but he now went on to create some- thing entirely new in the form of an absolutistic spiritual bureaucracy, Despite the fact that it was economically beneficial to the Papal do- mains, this really marked the beginning of great misfortune for Italy, for the Papacy and for Papal world prestige. Much more advanta- geous were the concordats and conventions that were concluded, es- pecially those arrived at with the several states of Germany, where the beginnings of an inner revival of Catholicism in Bavaria, Prussia, and Hanover coincided with the grant of a new canonical status and the erection of a Church province in the region of the upper Rhine. Finally the restoration of the Society of Jesus throughout the world, which Pius VII decreed immediately after his release from French cus- tody, was an attempt to strengthen the power of the Church and the Papacy. The brief in question, Sollicitudo omnium ecclcsUrum (August 7, 1814), was read solemnly in the Gesu, the ancient princi- pal church of the Society in Rome, and expressed the confident hope that "the powerful and experienced oarsmen," would bring the barque
THE RESTORATION 345
of Peter safely through storm and wave. The realization of the man- ner in which the Jesuits regarded human life induced even so mystical a mind as that of Novalis to say: "The Society of Jesus will forever remain the model of all societies which feel an organic yearning for unlimited development and lasting permanence. . . All plans must fail which h?vc not taken into full consideration every tendency oi human nature."
All these Papal acts at the close of the pontificate of Pius VII ex- pressed and served the spirit of the principle of legitimacy which un- derlay the Restoration and the alliance between throne and altar. But during the years which intervened between the Congress of Vienna and his death, the Pope saw clearly the powers which within and without the movement of Restoration were opposed to the Papacy. The philosophy of enlightenment still coursed in the veins of Europe, and the Viennese rendezvous of monarchs and diplomats had by no means stamped it out. This is proved not merely by Metternich's person and policy but also by harbingers of a spiritual return to the Church. Such men as Count Joseph de Maistre of Savoy, either lived in the atmosphere of enlightenment or utilized, as did Bishop Sailer of Germany, the real progress of the eighteenth century to for- mulate an idea of religious culture, the opponents of which protested that it has not been blessed by Rome.
The propagandists of revolution had pleaded for cosmopolitanism; but now everywhere nationalism came to the surface in its most vio- lent form, and sought, as German resolutions presented to the Con- gress of Vienna prove, to establish more firmly the old conception of die Church as a State ecclesiastical establishment. The absolutism of secular governments, to the example set by which the Papal States also succumbed, aroused precisely in these States the most spirited opposi- tion. There the Carbonaria aped the model of secret societies which had long since spread over the whole of Europe, and utilized the sym- bolism and craft terminology of charcoal burners to revive revolution- ary sentiment in favour of a united Italy and against the "priest- tyrants." Consalvi's courage and prudence managed once again, with the help of Austrian troops, to suppress this revolutionary movement against the throne and the altar. In it a poverty-stricken plebs had joined with unemployed soldiers and officers of Napoleon's disbanded
346 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
armies and with oratorical Russian agents to oppose their ideal of republican freedom and autonomous liberalism to "reaction." A net- work of secret clubs and lodges spread over the whole of Italy and prepared the way for that civic and philosophical attitude of mind which decades later would end the political control of Italy by the Papacy. The counter movement of the San Fides (Santa Fede}, which sought to defend the faith, could muster no superiority, least of all moral superiority, and possessed no political idea round which it could rally a majority. The uncreative opposition of the intransi- gents, the ZeUnti, who suspected Consalvfs skillful opportunism of being liberal, completely severed the Papacy, after Pius VII's death, from virile co-operation with the age. Friends of the Holy See did it as much harm as its enemies.
Meanwhile, by the mere fact that it existed, the Papacy remained a power and exerted an influence, even though it did not itself try to extend thai influence. The idea incorporated in it and its historical greatness sufficed to make the world honour once again this symbol of being in the midst of becoming, this spirit of abiding truth that stood above the turbulent waters of change. Though the partisans of the ancicn regime might look upon the oldest legitimate throne and hearth of what authority there was left in Europe merely as an instrument to sanction rule by divine right, and though in brilliant salons the sons of: a sceptical century congratulated each other that the Church was still there to act as the facade behind which the old rulers could march to their thrones again, there was deep and widespread popular longing for a reality that had been lost.
This yearning was common to all those manifestations which are summarized under the term Romanticism. Men sought a place to which they could escape from the cold, glaring light of emancipation and from the war-torn present. Whatever was not of today, what- ever retreated from the senses and led to the infinite and the dark, whatever could not be touched but only believed all this possessed a new power to arouse and sometimes also to comfort the human heart. The powers which looked back upon a long array of ancestors were besought to bring salvation to an era that was on the verge of collapse. Accordingly everything that was of antiquity, including the Middle Ages and the Church as the great dispenser of historical
CHATEAUBRIAND AND DE MAISTRE 347
tradition, were the objects of a new affection. As the men of this time looked about them, love looked through their eyes a love which refashioned, transfigured, reinterpreted all tilings according to the dictates of their yearning. And since the characteristics and con- ditions of the men and the peoples who sought fulfilment and peace in the past and in the spiritually strange were different, the fruits of Romanticism were not of one kind.
Even in the trend toward the Church, multiform reasons and ob- jectives appeared. In France there were published two profoundly influential books of European significance, Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity, and Joseph de M aistre's Concerning the Pope. But they are manifestoes utterly different in nature and tendency. Almost all the Romantics of Germany and France are alike in this that they do not speak of living membership in the Church, but only of the Church as a means wherewith to realize the purposes they have in mind. In Germany Protestants were numbered among the prime-movers of lit- erary Romanticism; and their intention was everything else but to make propaganda for the existing Catholic system. Even so they prepared the way for a religious revival, and even for the Ultramon- tane movement. The Romantics of all the nations might well have made their own the basic statement of policy phrased thus by Novalis: "The intelligent observer views calmly and dispassionately these new revolutionary times. Does not the revolutionary seem to him like Sisyphus? Now he has attained the point of balance; and already the mighty burden rolls down again on the other side. That burden will never stay up unless an attraction toward Heaven keep it there. All your supports are too weak if your state preserves its tendency to re- vert to earth."
France, the land in which the idea of restoration originated, also gave the Papacy its strongest theoretical advocate. Chateaubriand drew a picture of an irenic Church dedicated to spiritual tasks. The young Lamennais beheld the infallible totality of human reason em- bodied in the Church, which in turn was embodied in the Pope, the unlimited sovereign and bearer of that infallible common intellect. Count de Maistre carried the exposition of the theocratic absolutism of the Papacy to its ultimate conclusion. But this teaching of the sens commnn, in which Catholicism and universal reason became
348 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
equals, concealed a very dangerous germ that might destroy the things that were being praised. While the Revolution had torn down thrones and altars for the sake of man, traditionalism was tearing down man for the sake of thrones and altars. On both sides something was being made an end in itself which must not be an end in itself if life is not to become vapid. If one simply terms every- thing human or everything Divine, the result will be equally non- sensical. Lamennais own sister said that he would become a devil if he did not become an angel; and the same thing might ultimately have been said of this school as a whole, if history had not intervened with its own rationalism. Lamennais, eternally in ferment, involved his misleading system of thought in the tragedy of his life. Joseph de Maistre's book, a basic Ultramontane text, aroused the weightiest doubts in Rome itself, where the heretical face was detected behind the veil. Pius MI liked it as little as did Louis XVIII in Paris. An anonymous theological writer pointed out the naturalistic foundation of this apotheosis of the Papacy the view that Catholicism is a creation of the totality of human reason and the incarnation des lots du monde dhtnsees, and that the roots of dogma and discipline lie only in the depths of human nature, or (as the phrase would have it) in the opinion univtrselle. The fact that Rome was cold even to a book written in its own behalf showed that the apostles of the Papal idea were keeping a sharp watch over dogmatic purity.
Pius VII did not go so far as to condemn the book. He was an eighty-year-old man, resting after the sore trials of his life; and he was glad to be able to end his days in Rome, and little desirous of stirring up new conflicts and embroglios. He had forgiven Na- poleon as an erring soul and now he continued to think kindly of the exiled monarch, whom he had recognized as a great man. He also made the Papal States a place of refuge for the Napoleonic family. In spite of everything he did owe it to Bonaparte that, with the help of a Concordat, France remained a Catholic land. Pope Pius died on August 20, 1823, and a few months later Consalvi followed him in death.
The three Popes who reigned during the next twenty years were cautiously conservative men whose eyes were fixed on the past. They were: Leo XII, Coraalvi's opponent and a favourite of the Zelanri;
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 349
Pius VIII, who reigned only eight months under the thumb of his all powerful Secretary of State, Cardinal Albani; and Gregory XVI, the creature of Metternich, and like him a devotee of the anti-revolu- tionary policy. Gregory was by nature an unselfish monk, who de- spite all his traits of an ecclesiastical monarch of the old style, which his secretaries Bernetti and Lambruschini encouraged him to foster, was none the less aware that the civil administration of the Papal States would surely lead to disaster.
The continuous decline toward catastrophe that was to characterize an Italy ruled by the Popes and Austria took place against the brighter background of universal Church history. In France the religious re- vival was based upon the spiritual achievement of Romanticism and upon the power of the reactionary part)'. The clergy, the religious Orders, and ecclesiastical influence on public life all grew, but so did the opposition of revolutionary liberalism to throne and hierarchy. Though Charles X was closely allied with the Church, he was com- pelled in 1828 to sacrifice the Jesuit schools. After the Polignac Min- istry had issued its ordinances against electoral and journalistic free- dom, the throne of the Bourbons fell. The excesses and depredations of the July Revolution of 1830 compelled Catholics to face a new situation. Acting on Papal advice, they recognized the government of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, and joined the ranks of the new movement. The leader was Lamennais, who with the young Count Montalembert, Pere Gerbert and Pere Lacordaire founded the journal UAvenir. Their slogan was "For God and Liberty/* and under this caption they demanded separation of Church and State. Lamennais * doctrine of a sens commun now embodied a naturalistic impulse, which undermined faith in the supernatural. In 1832 Gregory XVI con- demned L'Avenir. Montalembert and Lacordaire submitted sin- cerely but Lamennais, who accompanied them to Rome, could not get over this humiliation. Now, "he hung on the Cmss the Jacobin cap,*' against which he had set out to do battle. His next books con- stituted a glowing appeal to the peoples of the world to free them- selves "from the bondage of priests and tyrants/' He separated him- self from his friends, and his friends separated themselves from him. They joined with others to labour as "new sons of the Crusaders," In the pulpit, in nursing the poor and the sick, in writing books and
350 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
journals which strove to effect a reconciliation between the Church and the time. Their democratic Catholicism, which was optimistic, virile and invigorating, became a power in parliament and society un- der the motto, "Catholic above all," and continues to be that even now. Their ideal of a free Church in a free State, which ideal was soon to enter the history of the Papacy through another source, was opposed by the extreme absolutism of Ultramontane spirits like Louis Veuillot. While these joined Joseph de Maistre in wishing to revive the Inquisi- tion, the other group sought to win the human heart by showing that religion was the treasure and the guide it sought.
The five and a half decades which intervene between the seculari- zation and the turbulent year 1848 also strengthened Catholic self- confidence in Germany and fostered, by reason of political and spirit- ual necessity, a new endorsement of the monarchical principle in the Church, The regions of Miinstcr, the Rhineland and Bavaria became centres of religious revival before and after the dawn of the nine- teenth century. If one mentions the names of the Princes Gallitzin, Ovcrbcrg, Friedrich Stollberg, Sailer, Moehler, and Goerres, one has also listed the manifold energies of the revival, which wrestled with themselves and with the world about them. The fact that they arose, grew and found expression is easier to note than to explain. They were spirits which could be satisfied neither with the enlightenment, nor with German classicism, nor with the political doctrine of the Revolution. Least of all were they attracted to the Lutheran confes- sion, which was inwardly formless and in addition incarcerated in the structure of the state. Nevertheless a secret bond united them with all these forces, despite a frequent seeming antagonism. To this bond they owed more than they realized or conceded. That is the reason why the German "Catholic spring" at the beginning looked upon the Church, which it had sought out with reawakened affection, as a mystical community rather than as an hierarchical system. To it the mediaeval format of the Papacy was a thing of the past, without sig- nificance for the present. Though it saw clearly that the idea of the Church transcended the idea of the State, it believed none the less that both were on a footing of relative equality in the world of realities. As a consequence the Church must also not become the handmaiden
REVIVAL IN GERMANY 351
of the State. It needs energetic leadership by its supreme instance, not in secular matters but so much the more in ecclesiastical matters. The medieval grant to the Church of power transcending the power of the State had been abrogated. "One must carefully distinguish be- tween the immovable, unshakable element in the Papacy from the movable element in the Papacy," said Moehlen "The first will last as long as the Church lasts; the second takes on form according as the needs and circumstances of the time require."
This point of view did not prevail in Germany. Though it was temperate it clashed with rigid conceptions of the Church as an es- tablished institution which had grown popular since the Emperor Joseph's time. When Ultramontane thought, which had evolved curiously enough in the land of Gallicanism, began to exert an influ- ence across the Rhine, it throve most mightily in the well policed Ger- man states. The "Cologne incident," was a storm which broke our in Prussia and elsewhere after threatening clouds had overshadowed the eighteenth century. In this struggle over what was to be the religion of children born in mixed marriage, the victory went to a Church which had developed an organic independence not to be curbed either by culture or the state. The firmness of the Arch- bishops of Cologne and Posen, who went to prison for having obeyed the Papal Brief of 1830, impelled the Catholics of Germany to rally their forces anew. Goeraes now hurled his indictments against Prus- sia. The excesses committed by the omnipotent State were so fan- tastic that the Church was enabled to regain self-confidence. The Papacy which had exhorted the bishops to stand firm against the gov- ernment came to seem a custodian of liberty. The new theories of ecclesiastical monarchism passed from books to men and were soon transformed into life, conviction and passionate feeling. When Fred- erick William IV, the "romantic King," had freed the prelates from arrest and had restored peace with the Curia by making generous con- cessions, the principle of an autonomous Church closely affiliated with the Pope and the Papacy also became an issue in Austria, the rest ot Germany and Switzerland.
In other countries of Europe the new Roman idea also made similar headway against the hostile front of revolutionary liberalism and State
352 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
autocracy. In Great Britain the effect of the American and French Revolutions was that Catholics were gradually freed from their posi- tion of inferiority. A strong Irish movement of liberation led by O'Connell, and a Catholic trend in the Anglican Church from which the memorable figure of John Henry Newman, later on a Car- dinal, arose were occurrences of vital significance and of obvious historical logic. But in so far as their causes could be discerned they were more a religious expression of the organic Church than a turning toward Rome for reasons of ecclesiastical policy. "Oh, yes, if I were compelled (what could not be deemed entirely proper) to drink a toast to religion, I should of course, empty my glass to the Pope's health, but I should drink first to my conscience and then to the Pope,** Newman wrote later on when the dogma of infallibility was under discussion. In this expression of classic Catholic thinking, the bound- ary is clearly indicated beyond which the power of the Papacy cannot legitimately go.
Catherine II had promised protection to the Catholics of her realm. Where they actually received it, it did not last long. The seed sown so prodigally more than a hundred years before by Jesuits and Capuchins was stifled for many reasons. The Russian Catholic Church province under Archbishop Mohilew was under Josephinistic pressure and the Orthodox Church itself lacked the education and the religious energy needed to overcome the effects of a sceptical century on the cities, St. Petersburg had a metropolitan who sacrificed all four Gospels in order to dine with Czar Alexander I, and who ruled over a drunken clergy that conducted divine services in a slatternly fashion and on Easter Sunday gave the Last Supper to a besotted army. Such a priesthood, said Joseph de Maistrc who was an eyewitness, could easily reach an agreement with that Protestantism whose two dogmas were love of woman and hatred of the Pope. The capital city was crowded with preachers of sundry faiths, agents of Bible societies and revolutionary mystics, all of whom sounded the alarm against Rome. Alexander's soul was pious but amorphous. Today he listened to the Jesuits, but tomorrow Frau von Krucdencr had no difficulty persuading her "Angel of light" to establish the Holy Alliance. The College of Jesuits in Polozk, the last defendable fortress of the Catholic idea, was made a full-fledged Russian university in 1812; but already in 1820 it
THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 353
was a mere shell, because the Society had been banned from all Russian and Polish provinces. This fate was incurred by reason of the So- ciety's propaganda in the army and the aristocracy. During the next thirty years Nicholas I reigned and there was little delay in carrying out the Russian system of separating Catholics from Rome by strategy and force.
The United States Constitution of 1787 had granted freedom to all religions, and the Congress of 1789 had decreed separation between Church and State. During this period Rome sent its first Apostolic Vicar to the new Republic, and established the first bishopric in Balti- more. Diligent labour and hard competition with other confessions placed the parochial life of Catholics emigrating unceasingly from Europe on a firm foundation. The fact that the Church was not tied up with the governmental system made it necessary for these masses, the great majority of whom were poor and moreover (as Orestes Bron- son said) hardly brave enough to declare in the presence of their enemies that their souls were their own, to seek the strong support afforded by a firmly-established and well-knit hierarchy. The Church which embraced the whole world could make a deep impression of unity on North America, where the domain of religion was divided up into innumerable parts. But Catholic life suffered not a little from the intellectual environment in which it was placed, from prag- matism and from the conception that economic success was God's blessing. For this reason the European often finds the writings of American religious leaders alien to his own conception. But the growing efficacy of Roman leadership, which manifested itself also during the era of "Americanism," brought home to Catholics of the New World what religion, the Church and missionary activity are adjudged to be in the shadow of St. Peter's.
After the blow received in Russia, the Society of Jesus advanced victoriously in other countries. Its General whom popular parlance termed the "Black Pope" was once again in Rome and his troops were now free to labour in the Papal States, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, England and America. Under the leadership of John Philip Roothaan, a wise, imperturbable, unflinching native of Amsterdam and one of the exiles of Polozk, the Order developed out- wardly and inwardly. Italy's troubled and sorrowful history during
354 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
the first half of the century opened with the decrees of the Congress of Vienna: restitution of the Archdukes, erection of a Lombardo- Venetian Monarchy as an Austrian province, and restoration therewith of Habsburg power over the largest part of the peninsula which Metter- nich insisted must henceforth be no more than a name on the map. Youth was to forget that there had ever been such a country as Italy. The study of Dante in the schools was forbidden, and instead young people were drilled in the questions and answers of a catechism in which blasphemous importance was attributed to the power and significance of the civil authority. One question was: "What does the word Fatherland mean?" The answer read: "A Fatherland is not only the country in which one is born, but also the country into which one has come by reason of annexation." The Austrian administration of Lombardy and Venice was better at least in intent than Metter- nich's politics, Matters were worse in Naples, where the rottenest branch of the Bourbons intermarried with the Habsburgs and allowed the whole of life to deteriorate into superstitious and bigoted ignorance, corruption, and lawlessness. The Bourbons were better in Florence and Tuscany, but there also the stirring of a national attitude seeking liberation from Vienna and Rome was suppressed.
The condition of the Papal States was such that they fostered rather than appeased the veiled civil war which went on in Italy between 1820 and 1848. The system of administration which associated service to the Church and service to the state in an incurably unnatural union produced a priestly bureaucracy which was soon staffed by men no longer called either to the priesthood that was required or to the state service in which they wished to carve out careers. The graft which the clear-sighted Pope Benedict XIV had already denounced grew still more colossal and aroused dangerous political passions in the Pope's subjects. Leo XII was hated for his spy system; and the learned Gregory XVI, for all his good intentions, could not transform himself into a territorial sovereign who realized that a new hour had long since struck in world history. When a large part of the Papal States re- belled in conformity with the spirit of the July Revolution in Paris, they were calmed down by hasty concessions and a glimpse of Aus- trian bayonets; and then the great powers sent the Pope the famous memorandum of 1831 suggesting reforms self-administration in
FERMENT IN THE PAPAL STATES 355
the municipalities, elected councils, and the accession of laymen to the most important offices. But at bottom everything remained as of old; the cardinals wanted it to be so, and the Pope was too old and too lonely to act in accordance with his deeper insight. He brought about many reforms in the administration of the law and believed that he would be safe against rebellion as the result of the acquisition of 5000 Swiss who appeared as reliable as the home troops were hope- less. Dissatisfaction increased and its butt was not Rome alone. Everyone knew that if things became serious the Curia could rely only upon the arms of hated Austria and was therefore under the spell of Viennese influence. In the chancelleries of the Curia there were also sighs over stupidities of which no Roman was guilty, "L* Austria ci obbliga!"
Incompetent ecclesiastical administration and Austrian pressure were not the sole causes of the collapse of the Papal States. Its ter- ritory, the patrimonium Petri proper with Rome and its environment, the Romagna, Umbrip and the Compagna Marittima, had been in- troduced to new political systems and intellectual problems as a result of the two French occupations. Treasured customs, privileges and security of thought and belief had gone, but the new which had come in their place now struggled to develop and met resistance from the rcstorational tendency of an ecclesiastical government which did not give its State the freedom to be a State for its own sake and that of its citizens, or give its citizens the freedom to lead a full, independent human life.*" This State was an island of involuntary saints, above which a governmental machinery of enormous dimensions creaked with age and was just barely strong enough to let its victims feel the extent to which the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence. There were throngs of political prisoners in the jails, commerce and industry hardly existed, means of transportation such as the new railway were scorned, the most gifted saw themselves excluded from public office if they did not wish to don spiritual attire and bid farewell to matri- mony, and young women who naturally desired to marry active men who amounted to something were simply superfluous. Moreover the state indebtedness weighed heavily on the provinces, and the supervis- ing cardinals could free their legations and delegations from onerous burdens less than ever because they themselves had lost their money.
356 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
The Popes no longer issued from ruling and wealthy families, and the nepotism which would have guaranteed to them loyal ministers and instruments of a firm policy had ceased to exist.
Why then did the Popes not simply abandon their temporal states? When Pius VII had escaped from Napoleon, he explained to the Austrian Emperor that his own fate was sufficient proof of the need of territorial possessions as a visible, tangible guaranty of the complete freedom and independence o the Roman See. Robbed of his sover- eignty and his States and subordinated to the power of a monarch, the Head of the Church would be hindered from carrying out his tasks in whatever country he dwelt and would meet the obstacle of jealousy when treating with other states. The same opinion was entertained by men of wide vision who were not Popes. Frederick the Great replied to the suggestion that a Catholic prince should take over the Papal States and himself reside in Rome by saying that soon other rulers and the Catholics of other states w T ould have nothing more to do with a Pope who had thus been deprived of his freedom. It was also Voltaire's opinion that without temporal power the Pope would be the humble chaplain of the Emperor to whom Italy would be en- slaved.
Though the Papal States were on the verge of collapse, they never- theless formed the political symbol of a unique spiritual verity, an expression of Papal sovereignty, and also the nucleus of a national tradi- tion which when it felt itself strong easily forgot what it owed the Papacy.
Unity and freedom that was the slogan of the Italian Risorgi- mento. All its advocates agreed in cherishing national unity and in passionately resisting alien rule. They included poets and seers like Manzoni, Leopardi and Capponi, priests like Rosmini and Gioberti, statesmen like Cesare Balbo, d'Azeglio and Camillo Cavour, revolu- tionists enlisted from the ranks of the Carbonari, and Freemasons like Mazzini and Garibaldi. But when the question arose as to how free- dom was to be obtained, and what kind of freedom and what form of state and civil existence were desirable, the Risorgimento split up so grievously that the patriots of unity were no longer able to reach an agreement. Minds parted company over the meaning of man> the world, and all ultimate verities. Therewith, of course, the Papacy
MAZZINI AND ROSMINI 357
also entered the debate as something more than just a physical object of Italian policy. During the great discussions which had raged from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the Papacy had been attacked in the interests of religion and the Church; now it saw march- ing forth to battle those who hoped that in destroying the Papacy they would also destroy those very forces of religion and Church. The dream of the revolutionary leaders was what is customarily termed a humanism adjudged to be a law unto itself and needing no exterior authority (let alone a supernatural authority) such as the throne or the altar. Mazzini's secret society, La Giouanc Italia, swore by free- dom, virtue and resolve to take up arms against all tyranny. In Pied- mont during 1833 the Pope was condemned to death by hanging. It was decreed that after the Rome of the Cxsars and the Popes there was to arise a third "Rome of the people" liberated from all superstition and despotism.
On the other side there were the Nco-Guelphs Gioberti, Balbo, Rosmini and others. Now bold and enthusiastic, now temperate and reasonable, they agreed in demanding a reformed and reforming Papacy which was to be the heart and the guiding hand of a free Italy and therewith also a source of blessing for the rest of Europe, Others again defined themselves as friends of the modern state who were not hostile to the Papacy. Like the liberal Catholics of France, like the political theorists Victor de Broglie and Alexis de Tocqueville, they sought to find a middle ground between despotism and anarchy. Cavour, a Picdmontese like Giobcrti, Balbo and d'Azeglio, believed that gaining for Italy the treasure of freedom would bring profit to religious insight and action. He was an advocate of the idea of a frtc Church in a free state, possessed a deep insight into government and modern feeling and was sufficiently emancipated from scruples to be- come the leader of a great political movement. Then a Pope whom the prophet had termed "Cross of the Cross" ascended the throne in 1846.
Count Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola and six years a Cardinal, was the victorious candidate of those Cardinals who viewed the revolu- tionary ferment with grave concern. As Pius IX he began in June, 1836, a reign that was to prove the longest in the history of the Popes.
358 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
He was of a princely bearing and of a noble and kindly disposition. He was also generous and pious, witty and sanguine, and liberal as well as national in outlook. For this reason he appealed to the advo- cates of a new freedom and also to the people. But no real statesman has ever been fashioned solely of attractive human traits.
The Pope immediately emptied the political prisons and invited all exiles to return. There was great rejoicing. This was the Papa Angelico! Everything would now take a turn for the better. Met- ternich knew that Europe was sleeping on a volcano. He was in- dignant with this amnesty, which he said meant ordering the thieves to set the house on fire, too. A series of Papal reforms in the spirit of freedom filled Italy with enthusiasm and won the Pope many sup- porters in foreign countries. To the masses which clamoured for liberties, he was the most liberal of sovereigns; but in Vienna the police blinked an eye when a pamphlet entitled His Pseudo-Holiness, Pius IX, was circulated. One year after his election Austria strength- ened its garrison in Ferrara. The Pope protested and Italy acclaimed him. Even Mazzini said that Pius must lead the national movement lest the country (this was a threat) abandon its allegiance to the Cross. The Pope repudiated Mazzini's letter. He declared that he was Pope for the whole world, and not a nationalistic fanatic or a caliph of Italy. But the amnesty had already proved fateful. Followers of Mazzini and revolutionists of every kind invaded the Papal States and made unheard of demands. The ovation took on an ominous colour; and after a ride through the city the Pope fainted.
The year 1848 had scarcely begun when a political conflagration that started in Palermo swept over Europe. It spared the Church in France, which had become a popular power as the result of its pact with democracy, it solidified the autonomy of religious societies in Germany, and in Rome it aroused popular passion with the slogan, "Down with the ecclesiastical ministry!" The Pope granted a new constitution and Cardinal Antonelli formed a ministry consisting of six laymen and three clergymen. Then Charles Albert of Sardinia- Piedmont declared war on Austria, and all Italy was summoned to do battle. The Pope also blessed troops he sent out to defend the terri- tory. But if he refused to fight for the national cause, the nation would fight against him. Important personages urged him to take
PIUS IX 359
the leadership of an Italian confederation. But was he to don a coat of armour like Julius II and drive out the "barbarians?" Either as the result of warnings that came from foreign countries or as the result of his own insight into the meaning and dignity of the Papacy, he de- clared on April 29th that his universal office did not permit him to make war on the Catholic powers. The hosannas were now followed by "Crucify him!" The halo which had surrounded the head of Pio Nono was dimmed at one stroke. All the ministers except Cardi- nal Antonelli resigned. A democratic ministry came into office, and the populace shouted that the Pope was a traitor. He stated his point of view in a manifesto, Popule Meus, quid fed tibi? Surely (he insisted) , it was high time that all should realize that the Sovereign Pontiff was conscious of the dignity and power of his office. Gioberti and Rosmini advised him to join a North Italian confederation; but then Piedmont was defeated in the Battle of Castozza and a new Turin ministry abandoned the idea of a confederation.
On September i6th, Count Pellegrino Rossi, the former French ambassador to Rome, took over the ministry. He was a moderate liberal opposed to the war with Austria, whom the Mazzini party hated and the reactionaries did not favour. This noble, farseeing statesman was struck down by the dagger of a conspirator as he went up the steps of the Cancellaria to attend a meeting of the Camera. The next day (November i6th) a mob surrounded the Quirinal. It de- manded war against Austria, a democratic ministry and other things. Pius issued a reply stating that he would take no orders from rebels. Thereupon cannon balls were fired into the palace and a number of persons were killed, among them Monsignor Palma, who was stand- ing beside the Pope. In order to prevent worse things from happen- ing, Pius assented to the new government that was demanded but stipulated that he would have nothing to do with it. Immediately the Swiss guards were disarmed, a citizen army took its place, and under its guard the Pope found himself the prisoner of his subjects. On November 24th, he escaped from Rome to Gaeta, with the help of the French and Bavarian ambassadors, clad as a simple priest.
A Constitutional Assembly proclaimed the Roman Republic. Its next objective was to rid Italy of the Pope (spapare) , The well known verses of Monti went the rounds:
360 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
Strip the fisherman from the Holy Land Of his king's sceptre and, bid him as before Unravel his net on the naked sand.
But again Radetsky defeated the Piedmontese at Novara on March 23, 1849, anc ^ ^ station was completely reversed. Charles Albert abdicated, Lombardy and Venice were once more incorporated into the Austrian monarchy, and the aversion of the great powers to a unified republican state was favourable to the policy of the Pope and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli. While Garibaldi and the followers of Mazzini retained control of Rome, Pius conferred in Gaeta with the representatives of the powers whom he had petitioned for aid. The military intervention was entrusted to France. Austria occupied the northern section of the Papal States, and the French ex- peditionary forces under Marshal Oudinot forced Garibaldi after a sharp fight to surrender Rome on June 30th. But the "liberal Pope" was now a thing of the past. Pius sighed and said that the peoples were not yet ripe for liberalism. It was not difficult for Antonelli to lead a heart thus thoroughly converted along his own way. On July i4th, the Papal sovereignty was re-established, after the French had tried in vain to solve the constitutional problem. A motu proprio (September i2th) almost completely abolished constitutional liberties. It was not until April i2th, 1850, that the Pope returned. His hair had turned grey.
The Austrians continued to occupy the Romagna and Rome, and this gave the revolutionary party a pretext for further warfare against the Papal government. Victor Emmanuel II had succeeded his father, Charles Albert, in Piedmont. There alone the constitutional idea had prevailed and reforms had benefitted the army and the country. In so far as ecclesiastical policy was concerned, the ministers Siccardi, Santa Rosa and Cavour enforced their liberal ideas. The canonical courts were abrogated, civil marriages were recognized, monasteries were suppressed. All these things were omens of the impending struggle against the temporal power of the Pope, and against them the Curia protested in vain. During the same year (1850) Pius restored the Catholic hierarchy in England and erected an archbishopric at Westminster. This victory over the No Popery movement and its
ENGLISH HIERARCHY RESTORED 361
parliamentary representatives was a most impressive sign that the Papal idea was gaining ground. Rome concluded concordats with governments of the old and the new world, carried out organizatoria] reforms in all domains of the Church, and erected new educational institutions in strict conformity with dogmatic and canonical decisions. The Jesuits took over the propaganda for Papal centralism, and in the Neo-scholastic movement set up a rival to modern philosophy in St. Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the world. This combined the philosophical treasures of antiquity and of Christianity. In France and Germany (where in 1852 the Catholic Centre Party was formed) Catholic Societies and assemblies became religious factors of im- portance and therewith also political factors. Catholic journalism and literature, not always and everywhere in agreement with strictly Ultramontane points of view, revealed both a new mastery of expres- sion and a new spiritual energy.
Similar phenomena were noticeable in Italy, Germany, France and Spain. All these forces, which had been released by the Revolution and Romanticism, united in a counter-revolutionary movement which believed that the endangered principle of personal absolutism was defended and represented in contemporary life by the monarchical Head of the Church. Moreover the political and intellectual attack on the Roman throne had automatically elicited from this throne it- self a resisting strength which had its own peculiar source hidden from the onslaughts of the outside world. The steadfastness and resistance it manifested were based on the logic of a system and on an organic historical growth, the first origins of which had been rooted in a reality transcending history. Even if the Pope who in 1854 conferred the status of a dogma on the ancient doctrine of the Francis- can and Jesuit schools that Mary in the first moment of her con- ception had been kept free of all stain of original sin had really been as his enemies declared an unlearned, credulous Pope, who in true Southern style was caught in the meshes of a highly imaginative de- votionalism, the fact nevertheless remained that his declaration merely set forth a conclusion derived from ancient teaching that Mary is the Virgin Mother of the Divine Son. Pius had asked all the bishops of the world for a vote on the subject; but when he defined the dogma of his own accord and without a Council he was already in fact voicing
362 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
"a decision of the moot question whether the Pope in matters of faith is infallible in his own person also, or whether he can claim this in- fallibility only at the head of a Council."
The trend of events took its course despite all the rulers of the Papal States could do. Cavour succeeded in gaining a strong ally for his king in the person of Napoleon III; and the two powers wrested Lombardy from Austria by the victory of Magenta. This province was then awarded to Sardinia, but the Austrians kept Venice. Soon alien control of the peninsula ended abruptly. When the Austrian troops evacuated the Romagna, this rebelled against the Papal govern- ment and in 1859 demanded union with Piedmont. Napoleon courted favour with both Piedmont and Rome in the hope of carrying out his federalistic program without the use of force. His official councillor, Lageronniere, drew up a document advocating that the Pope was to retain Rome and the patrimonium Petri as the basis of a patriarchal government possessing no state sovereignty. The smaller the country, he argued, the greater is the monarch. Meanwhile the action of the Romagna and the abdication of the Dukes of Parma, Modena and Tuscany in response to popular clamour brought about a confederation of states under Piedmontese leadership. With a bold stroke Cavour had, without the knowledge of Napoleon but with the tacit understanding of England, got the provinces of Central Italy to vote on the question of whether they wished incorporation in an Italian kingdom. The results were everything he could have desired. The Papal troops under General de Lamoriciere were defeated by the Piedmontese at Castelfidardo during September 1860; and in the same year the Garibaldians vanquished the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. A great statesman, a prince and a pirate had thus brought about unification. Only Venice was still Austrian, and the protection of France still held Rome and the patrimonium Petri for the Pope. On March 17, 1861, Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed King of Italy. Florence was to be the capital city. Soon thereafter Cavour died on June 6, with the formula of "a free church in a free state" on his lips. He still thought that that formula would guarantee a reconciliation between the priesthood and the state, although he could verify with his eyes the truth of what Montalambert had told him during the previous April: "In every corner of your state one sees the Church hampered,
CAVOUR AND ITALY 363
insulted, and robbed, the bishops exiled, Catholic writers jailed, Catholic journals ruined, priests denounced and tormented, monasteries closed and desecrated, and religious women torn out of their violated cells. These are the tides by which you claim our confidence and our gratitude."
Cavour's followers interpreted his legacy thus: a state free of the Church. Assembled by the Pope on Pentecost Sunday, 1862, the College of Cardinals and the three hundred bishops who had gathered for the canonization of the Japanese martyrs of 1597, declared it neces- sary that the temporal power of the Holy See, which had been ordained by Providence, be upheld. Cardinal Antonelli responded to all the antecedent French attempts at negotiation with a non possumtts; but this answer was not in accord with the will of the nation. Nearly 9000 priests requested the Pope to surrender the temporal power and thus took up a position contrary to that of the Pentecostal Assembly. During the same summer Garibaldi attempted to conquer Rome, and the Peoples' Party agitated against France. Napoleon, forced to reckon with the clerical protest in France, concluded the September Convention of 1864 with Victor Emmanuel. By this Italy pledged itself to concede to the Pope what remained of the Papal States, and France agreed to evacuate Rome within two years. But when the last French troops were withdrawn toward the close of 1866 and when Austria lost the war with Prussia, Italy broke the treaty. With the secret consent of the government, Garibaldi's soldiers attacked the Papal States. Then Napoleon's troops returned in 1867 and, using their new rifles for the first time in a battle, defeated the insurgents at Mentana with the help of Papal troops. A French garrison in Civita- vecchia protected the Pope and his territory until the war of 1870. When Napoleon was overwhelmed at Sedan, the Papal States also ceased to exist. The Piedmontese received encouragement from Prussia and prepared to lay siege to the Eternal City. Count Ponza di San Martino brought from Florence a letter from the King which stated that the soldiers were marching to guarantee the security of the Pope and requested that in return he remove the alien militia for the sake of the peace of the countty and also of the independence of the See on the Tiber. The King declared that he addressed this petition to the heart of the Holy Father "with the loyalty of a son, with the
364 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
fidelity of a Catholic, with the reliability of a king, and with the senti- ments of an Italian." The Pope read the letter and threw it aside saying, "belle parole, ma brutti fatti" Ponza sought to create a better feeling, "I do not trust you," said Pius. "You are all whitened sepulchres."
On the 2oth of September Cadorna's cannon thundered and soon the green-white-red flag was afloat on the heights of the Capitol. The Pope had wished no other defence than a statement of protest to the effect that a deed of violence was being done. The militia was dis- armed and the Vatican was protected against the mob by troops which occupied the Leonine quarters of the city, concerning which negotia- tions were still in progress. After the comedy of a plebiscite the Kingdom celebrated the incorporation of Rome on October 9, 1870. On June 2d of the following year Victor Emmanuel took up his resi- dence in the Quirinal, and the Pope imprisoned himself in the Vatican. This voluntary imprisonment was a protest against an act of robbery and against the Laws of Guaranty passed by the state, which assured him the free exercise of his sovereign rights, an annual income of three and one half million francs, and the extra-territoriality of the Vatican, the Lateran, and Castel Gandolpho. Personally a broken man, Pius and the Popes who followed him up to the year 1929 were comforted by the unceasing opposition of the Catholics of all countries to Italy's attitude in the Roman question. The ancient dream of unity, the dream of Dante, Rienzi, Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, Man- zoni, Cavour and Gioberti had been fufilled; but shortly before the moment of its realization the Papacy, whose temporal power was totter- ing, emerged as if from a corrupted and bursting pod to new spiritual life.
As a declaration of war upon all manifestations of the time spirit, which knowingly or unknowingly ran counter to the nature of the Church or the authority of the Popes, the Encyclical Quanta cura (1864) had been issued, with an appendix known as the Syllabus which listed sixty sentences that were condemned. The origins of this Syllabus go back to the year 1849, w ^en it had been suggested by Joachim Pecci, later on Pope Leo XIIL The last of these con- demned theses reads: "The Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile
THE SYLLABUS 365
himself with and concur in progress, liberalism, and modern culture (cum recenti civiltiate) ." This defensive action gave the impression of being an offensive carried out by the sovereign, mediaeval Papacy against the totality of intellectual and social development based on the Reformation and the Revolution, against the secularization of existence, against the autonomy of man and his fields of activity, and against the prevailing apostasy from a world beyond the realm of the merely natural.
The response on all sides was tremendous excitement. Even Catholics were frightened and endeavoured, as they today still en- deavour, to minimize the validity of the Syllabus as a guide to con- science and to soften its harsh diction. The liberal world, which is the whole modern world, is dedicated on principle to a lack of prin- ciples, and so rose up against the Papal "heresy" which was essentially a summons to order in the midst of chaos. For the Pope's protest against basic characteristics of the time-spirit was meet and necessary in view of the meaning and the mission of the Church. The fact that the extremes of Individualism and Socialism were warring bitterly against each other in spite of, or because of, a common faith in natural- ism, gave a third party the right to condemn that belief in unbelief which he saw as the fundamental error of errors. There is no doubt that the Pope acted rightly; but his utterance lacked that insight into the depths and the inevitability of the ferment which Catholic thinkers of older and more recent times had possessed. Leo XIII would soon find for his great encyclicals and allocutions a calmer method like that in which Elias, after storm, earthquake and fire had passed, heard the voice of the Lord.
Two days after the publication of Quanta cura> Pope Pius informed the Cardinals that he wished to summon a General Council. Four years later he convoked it, and it met on December 8th, 1869. The meetings were held in the north transept of St. Peter's, where princes of the Church and prelates of all countries of the earth foregathered, though Italy had a representation totally out of proportion to the num- ber of 747 qualified voters. The preparations had been made in secret, and therefore the fear of those not initiated was (particularly in Ger- many) so much the greater lest a Papalism after the heart of Pius IX, the Jesuits, and the Neo-ultramontane extremists would prove victori-
366 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
ous. But Rome was only about to draw all the consequences of its past history to the attention of a present which both positively and negatively demanded that such conclusions be drawn. Catholic liber- alism in anti-Gallican France, the German struggle for freedom of the Church, Jesuit theology, the historical school of Moehler, Doellinger and their disciples, which sooner or later was bound to be caught in a conflict between free inquiry and dogma, and finally also the mood of a lower clergy oppressed by its bishops as well as a concurrent enthusiasm of the masses for new forms of devotion, which had been consciously associated with the Papal idea: all these ways led to Rome. There, however, in view of the ominously noiseless catastrophe by which the Divine principle was disappearing from amidst the peoples, the wish was harboured to remind all of the fact of the Church's existence in all its greatness and awfulness and to face the most signal danger which this Church confronted as a result of modern civiliza- tion the danger of becoming a mere "Catholicism," an idea torn asunder from the real essence and existence of the Church, the truth and importance of which would be dependent solely upon the yes or no of man and society. If the Church was to remain a living or- ganism whose word, strength and mission hailed from the world be- yond, it must imperatively re-emphasize the fact that it was a source of salvation and a representative instance of trancendental life. It was impossible to do all this more impressively, more obviously than through the steps taken by the Vatican Council to define the nature of the Papal teaching authority.
The question of infallibility in the realm of faith and morals was not the sole concern of the Council, but it aroused by all odds the largest measure of attention. It had excited minds in France, Germany and England, before the Council ever met; and the nine months during which it was under discussion constituted one single, stormy day. Preliminary debates in the several countries and nations had revealed deep-rooted antagonisms and evoked expressions of hostility. Four- teen of the twenty German bishops sent a letter to the Pope requesting him to abandon the idea of the definition. There, as in France and elsewhere, men passionately devoted to the faith, loyal to the Church and affectionately submissive to Rome were among the opposition. The theological thesis of infallibility which St. Robert Bellarmine had
THE VATICAN COUNCIL 367
drawn up at the beginning of the seventeenth century and which long since had generally been accepted as a practically certain truth, was doubted by practically none of those who attended the Council. But they were gravely concerned over the effects of a solemn declaration. Would this enkindle anew the violent indignation which had followed the Syllabus? If the exaggerated Ultramontane explanation of the sentences condemned in the Syllabus had already led to negation of the true nature of the Church and had impaired relations between her and State and civic life, what would one not have to expect from these devotees of a Papal absolutism if the teaching authority of the Pope were defined in a dogma possibly all too sharply alien to the spirit of the Council of Constance? Was not the warning given by Bishop Ketteler of Mainz justified: absolutismus corruptio populorum? Would one not have to expect the apostasy of hundreds of thousands, especially in Germany where Doellinger, a little while ago the Ajax of the Ultramontane party, was now acting with tremendous success as the advocates diaboli of the Papacy? Bishops in democratic coun- tries feared especially any stress on hostility to the state, such as had arisen in connection with the Syllabus, believing that there would follow a counter-attack by the State on the religious freedom of Catho- lics. Moreover, what would remain of the dignity and rights of the episcopal office? Even after the Council had convened, the Bishop of Liverpool said: "We have come here as bishops of the Church; shall we not return to our dioceses as satraps of a central autocrat?** A powerful minority of intellectually important men from Austria, Hungary, Germany, France, and the United States fought hard against the numerical superiority of the partisans of infallibility. Thus the Council itself and the unofficial discussions which accompanied it proceeded to the last amid violent conflicts of opinion, during which apostolic devotion to conscience did not lack utterance. But Rome was deaf this time to every objection advanced in the name of op portunism. During the last general discussion July 13, 1870, four hun- dred and fifty-one of the six hundred and one in attendance were on its side. On July 17, which was the eve of the fourth solemn session, fifty-six bishops of the minority party published a defense of their point of view. They, for the most part, took advantage of their right to a vacation and left the city.
368 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
On the next day Pius proclaimed urbi et orbi: **With the assent of the Sacred Council we teach and define as a dogma revealed by God: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when he in the fulfilment of his office as the shepherd and teacher of all Chris- tians, finally decides by the strength of that holy apostolic power lodged in his office that a doctrine concerning faith or morals is to be believed by the universal Church, is by reason of the divine assistance promised to him in the person of St. Peter, given that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished that His Church should speak when reaching a final decision concerning a belief or a practice; and that therefore such decisions by the Roman Pontiff are of themselves un- changeable and do not need the expression of the Church's concurrence. But if someone, which may God forbid, should presume to gainsay this our definition, then he shall stand excommunicate."
Both Catholic teaching and pastoral practice clamoured for a more detailed exposition of this article of faith. A popular commentary, which soon thereafter was also given the express commendation of the Pope himself, was drawn up by the bishops of Switzerland. This said among other things: "Revelation coming from God, which is the background of faith, is a domain completely isolated and carefully defined inside which the infallible decisions of the Pope may be arrived at, concerning matters which exact from the faith of Catholics new responsibilities. . . It in no way depends upon the whims of the Pope or on his personal opinions whether this or that teaching can be made the object of a dogmatic definition. He is bound and cir- cumscribed by the creeds already existing, and by previous definitions of the Church; he is bound and circumscribed by the divinely revealed teaching which guarantees that side by side with the religious com- munion there must exist a civil community, that side by side with ecclesiastical authority there stands the power of secular magistrates who are endowed with complete sovereignty in their own domain, and that to these magistrates we owe in conscience obedience and re- spect in all things that are morally permissible and that belong to the domain of civil society."
The Council had not gone beyond the sphere of spiritual power, it had not touched upon the question whether temporal possessions were necessary to the Church, and it had not made the Syllabus as a whole
PAPAL INFALLIBILITY 369
the subject-matter of an infallible doctrinal decision. Nor did the wide-spread fear that arbitrary and ill-considered use would be made of the Papal teaching authority as defined in any sense prove valid. It is theologically uncertain whether any of the Papal pronouncements since the Vatican Council is to be looked upon as an ex cathedra decision. The intellectual tumult which lasted throughout the Council and continued even afterward soon quieted down, at least in so far as Catholics were concerned; and the bishops who had opposed the de- cision also accepted it. Nevertheless a stubborn centre of resistance was formed in the new religious communion of Old Catholics, who, though they were not fully in agreement among themselves, not only repudiated Papal infallibility and Roman primacy but in addition abjured essential elements of Catholic teaching and practice. At the end they were nearer to Protestantism than their name would indicate. Since the days when this secession took place, opinion has on the whole been more just to the decrees of the Council. It is realized that the See of Peter had only drawn the conclusions that followed from the high dignity of its religious office; and it would seem that this deepened awareness of its awesome character has been everything else but an incentive to issue ex cathedra decisions, on any but tie weightiest grounds.
After voting on the question of infallibility, most of the prelates in attendance at the Council left Rome either because of the Franco- Prussian war or because of the summer heat. The general dispensa- tion granted by the Pope was to last until the sessions could be re- sumed in November; but events which happened in Italy immediately thereafter rendered it impossible for the bishops to return. Pied- montese troops invaded the Papal States and occupied Rome. When Pius IX learned on the morning of September 2oth, that Cadorna's artillery had opened a breach in the Porta Pia, he cried "Consttm- matum est" In a sense this might be said of the Papacy, which had achieved its own inner perfection just a little prior to the loss of its temporal sovereignty. Despite all the evils that may be enumerated, the Papal States did a great deal for the religious mission of Peter's successors and not merely for the Papacy as the institutional repre- sentative of an incomparably lofty ideal. They also aided the civic and cultural progress of Europe. But their time and their significance
37 o THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
now belonged to the past; and after the Italian annexation there re- mained only the difficult "Roman question," as to how a physical and political basis for a Papal sovereignty manifestly necessary was to be provided. This question arose on that very aoth of September on which the white flag was raised above St. Peter's as a sign of capitula- tion to secular might. This surrender to the threat of cannon by no means implied that the Papacy had abandoned its claims to the exercise of ecclesiastical world power. It was just as little a moral assent to the violation of justice, for the protest of Pius IX and his solemn re- fusal to recognize the Laws of Guaranty of 1871 anent the freedom of the exercise of the Papal office which freedom the World War brought to the fore anew was reiterated by all his successors until a final settlement was reached in 1929.
Rome had once conquered Italy and now Italy had conquered Rome. But during the sixty years that followed the loss of a territory it had governed even as kings of the world govern, the Papacy strengthened its power and position in the world both of action and of thought. Until the day of his death Pius IX beheld the revolutionary effects of what had been done and decided in the Vatican Council upon the new German Empire. Laws passed by the Prussian government were to insure to the state the right of supervision over the servants of a growing Church. Not only the Protestant spirit of the Imperial dynasty, but also the statesmanlike anxiety of Bismarck to unify public opinion brought about a Kulturkampf, the objective of which was a National Church establishment independent of Rome. The Chancel- lor himself realized that he was involved in the "age-old struggle for power between the kingship and the priesthood." Strong Catholic leaders Mallinckrodt, Ketteler, Reichensberger, Schorlemer, Windt- horst believed that patriotic German men could also serve their country by taking the field in defense of the religious liberties of their fellow Catholics and thus helping to ward off those real powers of revolution which Bismarck also knew were directed against state and nation. The Chancellor completely altered his domestic policy and abandoned the struggle with the Church toward the close of the seventies, realizing that the Catholic Party was not necessarily to be regarded as the implacable foe of his Imperial policy. "I am," he
LEO XIII 371
said in 1880, "wearied to death of this fight. The spokesmen for the Catholic cause and the Centre Party are invincible." His hope of mastering the movement with Protestant weapons, in the spirit of Protestantism, was expressed in the declaration, "We shall not go to Canossa." But in this he erred.
Rome, too, had been granted another statesman. Gioacchino Pecci was the son of a landed gentleman and had been Nuncio in Brussels, Bishop of Perugia, and Cardinal Treasurer of the Curia. On the day following his sixty-ninth birthday he received the tiara as Leo XIII and began the most efficacious pontificate since the Sack of Rome. His intention was to bring about a reconciliation between the Papacy and modern states at the initiative of the Vatican. This decision Leo had reached very gradually as the result of long training in a school of experience that was sometimes trying. Concerning the state, educa- tion and culture, in so far as these had developed either without the co-operation of the Papacy or even in a spirit of antagonism to that Papacy, he spoke in his very first encyclical, which was then followed by a long series of other encyclicals which constituted a genuine program of action. No Pope of recent epochs had used this language and few can even have thought of it in private. He made wisdom the support of his throne, which he wanted to strengthen in order that the state might be strong. As he looked back over history, he saw that evidence for the divine origin of the Papacy was supplied also by the very fact that it had survived all the weaknesses and upheavals in its history. "The more conscientiously unadulterated historical truth is explored, the more clearly will every unprejudiced mind see that despite the many shadows which can be discerned on the human figures of the Popes and their associates, that history as a whole speaks with sovereign insistence to the mind of man of a Church of Christ that is divine."
He afforded Catholic efforts in all countries dependable leadership and associated them with his policy of reconciliation. He was pri- marily political, statesmanlike and humanistic by nature; he was a poet who admired Virgil and himself wrote didactic lyrics noted for their perfection of form; he was familiar with all the new forces and problems with which society wrestled, and realized in the spirit of St. Thomas Aquinas that the human lot on earth is dependent upon
37 2 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
rights and bears the imprint of a divine seriousness; and he sought throughout his long reign to deprive humanity of reasons for being estranged from the Church. No one was to see in it a contemptible institution "which compelled men to remain barbarians and illiterates." The consequence was that his many encyclicals, which befriended the states and respected the national genius expressed in the particular governmental form of each, his political, social and cultural admoni- tions, and the measures he took as a magnaminous benefactor of science (for example the opening of the Vatican archives) , convinced Catho- lic and non-Catholic peoples alike that the Papacy was anxious to foster what was best in the efforts of mankind. The most difficult task which Leo had to perform was to straighten out the precariously tangled situation in which Germany had become involved under Pius IX, by reason of the fact that the newly formed Empire, its Protestant Em- peror and its Chancellor, looked upon confessional differences as ob- stacles to a unified intellectual devotion to the now united Fatherland. Domestic policy was under the aegis of individualistic liberalism, which in the interests of unbounded progress was possessed with the idea that its dogma of a dogmaless freedom was a spiritual panacea.
Thus matters remained until 1878 when Bismarck also radically changed his point of view. The Catholic population had likewise held that the exclusion of Austria from Germany weakened its own position, and now had to fear that a schism might result from the de- cisions reached by the Vatican Council. Accordingly it mustered all the strength acquired during the first half of the century for a stand against the animosity of the manifold anti-Catholic groups in the new Empire. Ecclesiastical questions aroused more passions in private and public life than did anything else. Even so the contemporaneous struggle over Weltanschauung between Protestant orthodoxy and a science which either repudiated or ignored Christian revelation de- monstrated that the opposition to Rome did not originate solely in a difference between German state policy and Catholic devotion to the Papacy. It is almost impossible to find an easy formula for what really enkindled this conflict. If one enumerates an hereditary furor ^eutonicus, Luther's hatred of Rome, Bismarck's "determination to give the strongest possible foundations to a unity won on the battle- field," the "vulgar fuss about Hegel" (Schopenhauer), and dreams
THE ROMAN QUESTION 373
of a German religion the creed of which was to be gattdeamus igitur, one will at least have named things that were never out of sight dur- ing this Kulturkampf. The objective of the attack, of which Bis- marck was the primary cause, was a national Church independent of Rome and subject to the State; the scene was Prussia and Bavaria first of all, and then Hessia, Baden and Wiirtemberg; the means were at the beginning a sequence of laws which cut more or less deeply into the inner life and the rights of the Church, and then, after the German and Prussian episcopacy with which the Centre Party and its leader Windthorst were associated had protested, financial and police meas- ures were resorted to, among them being the exclusion and imprison- ment of several bishops and many priests. There were then twelve Prussian episcopal sees, and in 1877 all but four were vacant. The struggle ended during the following year. The power of the inner life proved itself stronger than mere might in those whom that might could not overwhelm. In addition, inner political questions above all the fight against the Social Democrats compelled the Chancellor to part company with liberalism and to come to terms with the Con- servatives and the Centre.
It was during this period of transition that Leo opened his pontificate with a policy of rapprochement and reconciliation. Step by step, against even the opposition of the bishops and the Centre Party, the Pope reached a measure of peace with the German government, which for its part passed in succession laws that abrogated the greater part of the Kulturkampf legislation. Bismarck restored the Prussian Embassy to the Vatican and in 1885 entrusted the Pope with negotiations to settle amicably the conflict between Spain and Germany over the Caroline Islands. Other signs that the relationship had grown more friendly were the Emperor William Fs gift of a mitre in honour of the Pope's Golden Jubilee as a priest in 1887, and the visit which William II and the Empress paid to the Vatican in 1893.
But this conciliatory policy was not triumphant in every respect. It could not always succeed because its objectives included the restora- tion of the temporal power. The Pope and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, pleaded vainly with the great powers for a solu- tion of the Roman question which would combine the national unity of Italy with the sovereign position of the Pope as a monarch of equal
374 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
rank with others. It was not merely the hostile attitude of the new Quirinal, though this could hardly avoid looking upon the Catholic protest (ordered by the Pope) against the "usurping Kingdom" as a constant challenge, but also French opposition to Italy and the Triple Alliance which prevented the success of Vatican hopes for restoration. The closer ties which after 1899 bound France to the Vatican and the energetic, even imperative instruction to the Catholic monarchists of the country to place themselves on the basis of the new Republic, since monarchies and republics were both divinely permitted forms of government, did not succeed in stemming the growing opposition of the French government to the Papacy. Political and philosophical forces in France and Italy deprived the Pope of a chance to live at peace with his native country, which he loved as much as any patriot, and likewise prevented the fulfilment of even a very modest desire for effective sovereignty within a small territory.
Yet so much more impressive was the triumph of his efforts to ex- tend the hierarchical and spiritual influence of the Church, and through recourse to thought and action in the spirit of the New Testament to revamp and make secure the tottering foundations of the social order. Ut unum omnes as professed by this shepherd of peoples stood for the desire to weld Church, State and society in that union which, since the beginnings of Christianity, had been the goal of all the great thinkers, constructive geniuses, saints and prophets of the Catholic communion. Leo's great encyclicals, the most famous of which is Rerum Novarum of 1891, were rooted in a thoroughly reasoned system of Christian social thought to which he adhered firmly from the beginning of his reign. These messages were not of merely temporary value. They proved as lastingly significant as the subjects with which they dealt were permanently timely i. e., Socialism, the labour problem, an- archy, Christian democracy, the limits of the authority of the state, marriage and the family, freedom and law, civilization and the Church, unity of faith. The educational institutions Leo founded in Rome, the services he rendered to religious Orders and to missions, and the erection of new dioceses in the United States, India, Japan, Scotland and the Scandinavian countries, offset the failure of other plans such as the unification of the Anglican Church with Rome. All his breadth of mind, all his skill in making the best of opportunities
PIUS X 375
which last he had to reckon with as does every master of policy, were always carefully circumscribed by the iron firmness o the principles to which even the most conciliatory Papacy is committed by the Church. Leo also knew, as his condemnation of Americanism in 1899 proved, how to defend energetically the rigidly centralistic Roman system, which the centrifugal, individualistic tendencies of the century made doubly necessary. The shepherd and teacher in whom "the most conservative power on earth had successfully come to terms with democracy," bequeathed to his heirs the fruits of a wise reign. When at the age of ninety-four he closed his eyes, which had pierced so far into the depths of men and things, the Catholic world realized that the prophecy Lumen de ccelo had been fulfilled.
The succeeding pontificates take us to the threshold of the present time and manifest the rich, masculine vitality of the Papal faith. Pius X, saintly in his personal life, was the instigator of many reforms, in- cluding the revision of canon law. He appended to the liberal cultural policy of Leo XIII a clear definition of the borderline beyond which rapprochement could not go. His stubborn and uncompromising war on Modernism, which stirred the passionate interest of the whole world, was waged against the only real danger with which the Church and not the Catholic Church only must reckon today. The belief that the world together with all ideas of God and religion exists within man alone implies a devotional monologue of humanity before its own spirit. Though dominant in philosophy and given expression in all the arts and in all the manifestations of practical life, this belief is in the eyes of the Church the substance of all heresy, for the very nature of the Church is contained in the fact that there exists a divine, revealing Voice, which is not the echo of our own human voices. Sev- eral encyclicals, a new Syllabus, and the Pope's stern inquisitorial in- tervention were able to create the semblance of an armistice before the World War broke out as a consequence of other things or were they really other things? Then there followed under Benedict XV years during which all the battle-torn nations were open at least to the idea of an institution which, as a state transcending the states, preserves above the din of strife concepts of eternal values. The Pope, praised and bitterly assailed alike, gave much to and did much for all
376 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS
parties; but it was not the peace move of 1917, which had to fail by reason of sabotage, and not the political skill of the Curia, which managed to keep intact and neutral its relations with other states even though it itself stood on Italian soil, that gave the Papacy its new, deep appeal to the modern mind. It was rather the mere existence, the mere vigorous vitality, of a spirit which hovered above the waters. But though this new position was attained, the ancient opposition lived on; and all its programs, written and unwritten, open and dose with attacks on the Roman throne.
QUO