§ 185. THE PAPACY AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH.
The papacy, humiliated but not destroyed by Napoleon I., was in
A.D. 1814 by the aid of princes of all creeds restored to the full
possession of its temporal and spiritual authority, and amid many
difficulties it reasserted for the most part successfully its
hierarchical claims in the Catholic states and in those whose
Protestantism and Catholicism were alike tolerated. Many severe
blows indeed were dealt to the papacy even in the Roman states by
revolutionary movements, yet political reaction generally by-and-by put
the church in a position as good if not better than it had before. But
while on this side the Alps, especially since the outbreak of A.D. 1848,
ultramontanism gained one victory after another in its own domain, in
Italy, it suffered one humiliation after another; and while the Vatican
Council, which put the crown upon its idolatrous assumptions (§ 189, 3),
was still sitting, the whole pride of its temporal sovereignty was
shattered: the States of the Church were struck out of the number of the
European powers, and Rome became the capital and residence of the prince
of Sardinia as king of United Italy. But reverence for the pope now
reached a height among catholic nations which it had never anywhere
attained before.
§ 185.1. =The First Four Popes of the Century.=--Napoleon as
First Consul of the French Republic, in A.D. 1801 concluded a
concordat with =Pius VII.=, A.D. 1800-1823, who under Austrian
protection was elected pope at Venice, whereby the pope was
restored to his temporal and spiritual rights, but was obliged
to abandon his hierarchical claims over the church of France
(§ 203, 1). He crowned the consul emperor of the French at Paris
in A.D. 1804, but when he persisted in the assertion of his
hierarchical principles, Napoleon in A.D. 1808 entered the papal
territories, and in May, A.D. 1809, formally repudiated the
donation of “his predecessor” Charlemagne. The pope treated the
offered payment of two million francs as an insult, threatened
the emperor with the ban, and in July, A.D. 1809, was imprisoned
at Savona, and in A.D. 1812 was taken to Fontainebleau. He
refused for a time to give canonical institution to the bishops
nominated by the emperor, and though at last he yielded and
agreed to reside in France, he soon withdrew his concession,
and the complications of A.D. 1813 constrained the emperor, on
February 14th, to set free the pope and the Papal States. In May
the pope again entered Rome. One of his first official acts was
the restoration of the Jesuits by the bull _Sollicitudo omnium_,
as by the unanimous request of all Christendom. The Congregation
of the Index was again set up, and during the course of the year
737 charges of heresy were heard before the tribunal of the holy
office. All sales of church property were pronounced void, and
1,800 monasteries and 600 nunneries were reclaimed. In A.D. 1815
the pope formally protested against the decision of the Vienna
Congress, especially against the overthrow of the spiritual
principalities in the German empire (§ 192, 1). Equally fruitless
was his demand for the restoration of Avignon (§ 165, 15).
In A.D. 1816 he condemned the Bible societies as a plague to
Christendom, and renewed the prohibition of Bible translations.
His diplomatic schemes were determined by his able secretary
Cardinal Consalvi, who not only at the Vienna Congress, but also
subsequently by several concordats secured the fullest possible
expression to the interests and claims of the curia.--His
successor was =Leo XII.=, A.D. 1823-1829, who, more strict in
his civil administration than his predecessor, condemned Bible
societies, renewed the Inquisition prosecutions, for the sake
of gain celebrated the jubilee in A.D. 1825, ordered prayers
for uprooting of heresy, rebuilt the Ghetto wall of Rome,
overturned during the French rule (§ 95, 3), which marked off
the Jews’ quarter, till Pius IX. again threw it down in A.D. 1846.
After the eight months’ reign of =Pius VIII.=, A.D. 1829-1830,
=Gregory XVI.=, A.D. 1831-1846, ascended the papal throne, and
sought amid troubles at home and abroad to exalt to its utmost
pitch the hierarchical idea. In A.D. 1832 he issued an encyclical,
in which he declared irreconcilable war against modern science
as well as against freedom of conscience and the press, and his
whole pontificate was a consistent carrying out of this principle.
He encountered incessant opposition from liberal and revolutionary
movements in his own territory, restrained only by Austrian
and French military interference, A.D. 1832-1838, and from the
rejection of his hierarchical schemes by Spain, Portugal, Prussia,
and Russia.[541]
§ 185.2. =Pius IX., A.D. 1846-1878.=--Count Mastai Feretti in
his fifty-fourth year succeeded Gregory on 16th June, and took
the name of Pius IX. While in ecclesiastical matters he seemed
willing to hold by the old paths and distinctly declared against
Bible societies, he favoured reform in civil administration
and encouraged the hopes of the liberals who longed for the
independence and unity of Italy. But this only awakened the
thunder storm which soon burst upon his own head. The far
resounding cry of the jubilee days, “_Evviva Pio Nono!_” ended
in the pope’s flight to Gaeta in November, 1848; and in February,
1849, the Roman Republic was proclaimed. The French Republic,
however, owing to the threatening attitude of Austria, hastened
to take Rome and restore the temporal power of the pope. Amid the
convulsions of Italy, Pius could not return to Rome till April,
1850, where he was maintained by French and Austrian bayonets.
Abandoning his liberal views, the pope now put himself more and
more under the influence of the Jesuits, and his absolutist and
reactionary politics were directed by Card. Antonelli. From his
exile at Gaeta he had asked the opinion of the bishops of the
whole church regarding the immaculate conception of the blessed
Virgin, to whose protection he believed that he owed his safety.
The opinions of 576 were favourable, resting on Bible proofs:
Genesis iii. 15, Song of Sol. iv. 7, 12, and Luke i. 28; but some
French and German bishops were strongly opposed. The question was
now submitted for further consideration to various congregations,
and finally the consenting bishops were invited to Rome to settle
the terms of the doctrinal definition of the new dogma. After
four secret sessions it was acknowledged by acclamation, and
on 8th December, 1854 (§ 104, 7), the pope read in the Sixtine
chapel the bull _Ineffabilis_ and placed a brilliant diadem
on the head of the image of the queen of heaven. The disciples
of St. Thomas listened in silence to this aspersion of their
master’s orthodoxy; no heed was paid to two isolated individual
voices that protested; the bishops of all Catholic lands
proclaimed the new dogma, the theologians vindicated it, and the
spectacle-loving people rejoiced in the pompous Mary-festival.
The pope’s next great performance was the encyclical, _Quanta
cura_, of December 8th, 1864, and the accompanying syllabus
cataloguing in eighty-four propositions all the errors of the
day, by which not only the antichristian and anti-ecclesiastical
tendencies, but also claims for freedom of belief and worship,
liberty of the press and science, the state’s independence of the
church, the equality of the laity and clergy in civil matters, in
short all the principles of modern political and social life, were
condemned as heretical. Three years later the centenary of Peter
(§ 16, 1) brought five hundred bishops to Rome, with other clergy
and laymen from all lands. The enthusiasm for the papal chair
was such that the pope was encouraged to convoke an œcumenical
council. The jubilee of his consecration as priest in A.D. 1869
brought him congratulatory addresses signed by one and a half
millions, filled the papal coffers, attracted an immense number
of visitors to Rome, and secured to all the votaries gathered
there a complete indulgence. On the Vatican Council which met
during that same year, see § 189.[542]
§ 185.3. =The Overthrow of the Papal States.=--In the Peace of
Villafranca of 1859, which put an end to the short Austro-French
war in Italy, a confederation was arranged of all the Italian
princes under the honorary presidency of the pope for drawing up
the future constitution of Italy. During the war the Austrians
had vacated Bologna, but the French remained in Rome to protect
the pope. The revolution now broke out in Romagna. Victor Emanuel,
king of Sardinia, was proclaimed dictator for the time over that
part of the Papal States and a provisional government was set
up. In vain did the pope remind Christendom in an encyclical
of the necessity of maintaining his temporal power, in vain
did he thunder his _excommunicatio major_ against all who would
contribute to its overthrow. A pamphlet war against the temporal
power now began, and About’s letters in the _Moniteur_ described
with bitter scorn the incapacity of the papal government. In his
pamphlet, “_Le Pope et le Congrès_,” Laguéronnière proposed to
restrict the pope’s sovereignty to Rome and its neighbourhood,
levy a tax for the support of the papal court on all Catholic
nations, and leave Rome undisturbed by political troubles. On
December 31st, 1859, Napoleon III. exhorted the pope to yield
to the logic of facts and to surrender the provinces that refused
any longer to be his. The pope then issued a rescript in which
he declared that he could never give up what belonged not to
him but to the church. The popular vote in Romagna went almost
unanimously for annexation to Sardinia, and this, in spite of
the papal ban, was done. A revolution broke out in Umbria and
the March of Ancona, and Victor Emanuel without more ado attached
these states also to his dominion in A.D. 1860, so that only
Rome and the Campagna were retained by the pope, and even these
only by means of French support. At the September convention of
A.D. 1864 Italy undertook to maintain the papal domain intact,
to permit the organization of an independent papal army, and to
contribute to the papal treasury; while France was to quit Roman
territory within at the latest two years. The pope submitted
to what he could not prevent, but still insisted upon his most
extreme claims, answered every attempt at conciliation with
his stereotyped _non possumus_, and in A.D. 1866 proclaimed
St. Catherine of Siena (§ 112, 4) patron of the “city.” When
the last of the French troops took ship in A.D. 1866 the radical
party thought the time had come for freeing Italy from papal rule,
and roused the whole land by public proclamation. Garibaldi again
put himself at the head of the movement. The Papal State was
soon encircled by bands of volunteers, and insurrections broke
out even within Rome itself. Napoleon pronounced this a breach
of the September convention, and in A.D. 1867 the volunteers
were utterly routed by the French at Mentana. The French guarded
Civita Vecchia and fortified Rome. But in August, 1870, their own
national exigencies demanded the withdrawal of the French troops,
and after the battle of Sedan the Italians to a man insisted
on having Rome as their capital, and Victor Emanuel acquiesced.
The pope sought help far and near from Catholic and non-Catholic
powers, but he received only the echo of his own words, _non
possumus_. After a four hours’ cannonade a breach was made in the
walls of the eternal city, the white flag appeared on St. Angelo,
and amid the shouts of the populace the Italian troops entered
on September 20th, 1870. A plebiscite in the papal dominions gave
133,681 votes in favour of annexation and 1,507 against; in Rome
alone there were 40,785 for and only 46 against. The king now
issued the decree of incorporation; Rome became capital of united
Italy and the Quirinal the royal residence.
§ 185.4. =The Prisoner of the Vatican, A.D. 1870-1878.=--The
dethroned papal king could only protest and utter denunciations.
No result followed from the adoption of St. Joseph as guardian
and patron of the church, nor from the solemn consecration of the
whole world to the most sacred heart of Jesus, at the jubilee of
June 16th, A.D. 1875. The measures of A.D. 1871, by which Cavour
sought to realize his ideal of a “free church in a free state,”
were pronounced absurd, cunning, deceitful, and an outrage on
the apostles Peter and Paul. By these measures the rights and
privileges of a sovereign for all time had been conferred on the
pope: the holiness and inviolability of his person, a body-guard,
a post and telegraph bureau, free ambassadorial communication
with foreign powers, the _ex-territoriality_ of his palace of
the Vatican, embracing fifteen large saloons, 11,500 rooms,
236 stairs, 218 corridors, two chapels, several museums, archives,
libraries, large beautiful gardens, etc., as also of the Lateran
and the summer palace of Castle Gandolpho, with all appurtenances,
also an annual income, free from all burdens and taxes, of three
and a quarter million francs, equal to the former amount of
his revenue, together with unrestricted liberty in the exercise
of all ecclesiastical rights of sovereignty and primacy, and
the renunciation of all state interference in the disposal of
bishoprics and benefices. The right of the inferior clergy to
exercise the _appellatio ab abusu_ to a civil tribunal was set
aside, and of all civil rights only that of the royal _exequatur_
in the election of bishops, _i.e._ the mere right of investing
the nominee of the curia in the possession of the revenues of
his office, was retained.--To the end of his life Pius every year
returned the dotation as an insult and injury, and “the starving
holy father in prison, who has not where to lay his head,”
received three or four times more in Peter’s pence contributed
by all Catholic Christendom. Playing the _rôle_ of a prisoner
he never passed beyond the precincts of the Vatican. He reached
the semi-jubilee of his papal coronation in A.D. 1871, being
the first pope who falsified the old saying, _Annos Petri non
videbit_. He rejected the offer of a golden throne and the
title of “the great,” but he accepted a Parisian lady’s gift of
a golden crown of thorns. In support of the prison myth, straws
from the papal cell were sold in Belgium for half a franc per
stalk, and for the same price photographs of the pope behind
an iron grating. As once on a time the legend arose about the
disciple whom Jesus loved that he would not die, so was it
once said about the pope; and on his eighty-third birthday, in
A.D. 1874, a Roman Jesuit paper, eulogising the moral purity of
his life, put the words in his mouth, “Which of you convinceth
me of sin?” But he himself by constantly renewed rescripts,
encyclicals, briefs, allocutions to the cardinals and to numerous
deputations from far and near, unweariedly fanned the flame of
enthusiasm and fanaticism throughout papal Christendom, and
thundered threatening prophecies not only against the Italian,
but also against foreign states, for with most of them he lived
in open war. A collection of his “Speeches delivered at the
Vatican” was published in 1874, commented on by Gladstone in
the _Contemporary Review_ for January, 1875, who gives abundant
quotations showing papal assumptions, maledictions, abuse and
misunderstanding of the Scriptures with which they abound. On
the fiftieth anniversary of the pope’s episcopal consecration,
in June, 1877, crowds from all lands assembled to offer their
congratulations, with costly presents and Peter’s pence amounting
to sixteen and a half million francs. He died February 8th, 1878,
in the eighty-sixth year of his age and thirty-second of his
pontificate. His heirs claimed the unpaid dotations of twenty
million lire, but were refused by the courts of law.[543]--His
secretary Antonelli, descended from an old brigand family,
who from the time of his stay at Gaeta was his evil demon,
predeceased him in A.D. 1876. Though the son of a poor herdsman
and woodcutter, he left more than a hundred million lire. His
natural daughter, to the great annoyance of the Vatican, sought,
but without success, in the courts of justice to make good her
claims against her father’s greedy brothers.
§ 185.5. =Leo XIII.=--After only two days’ conclave the
Cardinal-archbishop of Perugia, Joachim Pecci, born in A.D. 1810,
was proclaimed on February 20th, 1878, as Leo XIII. In autograph
letters he intimated his accession to the German and Russian
emperors, but not to the king of Italy, and expressed his
wish for a good mutual understanding. To the government of the
Swiss Cantons he declared his hope that their ancient friendly
relations might be restored. At Easter, 1878, he issued an
encyclical to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops,
in which he required of them that they should earnestly entreat
the mediation of the “immaculate queen of heaven” and the
intercession of St. Joseph, “the heavenly shield of the church,”
and also failed not to make prominent the infallibility of
the apostolic chair, and to condemn all the errors condemned
by his predecessors, emphasizing the necessity of restoring the
temporal power of the pope, and confirming and renewing all the
protests of his predecessor Pius IX., of sacred memory, against
the overthrow of the Papal States. On the first anniversary of
his elevation he proclaimed a universal jubilee, with the promise
of a complete indulgence. He still persisted in the prison
myth of his predecessor, and like him sent back the profferred
contribution of his “jailor.” In the conflicts with foreign
powers inherited from Pius, as well as in his own, he has
employed generally moderate and conciliatory language.--He has
not hesitated to take the first step toward a good understanding
with his opponents, for which, while persistently maintaining
the ancient principles of the papal chair, he makes certain
concessions in regard to subordinate matters, always with
the design and expectation of seeing them outweighed on the
other side by the conservation of all the other hierarchical
pretensions of the curial system. It was, however, only in
the middle of A.D. 1885 that it became evident that the pope
had determined, without allowing any misunderstanding to arise
between himself and his cardinals, to break through the trammels
of the irreconcilable zealots in the college. And indeed after
the conclusion of the German _Kulturkampf_ (§ 197, 13, 15),
brought about by these means, in an allocution with reference
thereto addressed to the cardinals in May, 1887, he gave an
unexpected expression to his wish and longing in regard to an
understanding with the government on the Italian question, which
involved an utter renunciation of his predecessor’s dogged _Non
possumus_, the attitude hitherto unfalteringly maintained. “Would
that peaceful counsels,” says he, “embracing all our peoples
should prevail in Italy also, and that at last once that unhappy
difference might be overcome without loss of privilege to the
holy see!” Such harmony, indeed, is only possible when the pope
“is subjected to no authority and enjoys perfect freedom,” which
would cause no loss to Italy, “but would only secure its lasting
peace and safety.” That he counts upon the good offices of the
German emperor for the effecting of this longed-for restoration
of such a _modus vivendi_ with the Italian government, he
has clearly indicated in his preliminary communications to the
Prussian centre exhorting to peace (§ 197, 14). The _Moniteur
de Rome_ (§ 188, 1), however, interpreted the words of the pope
thus: “Italy would lose nothing materially or politically, if
it gave a small corner of its territory to the pope, where he
might enjoy actual sovereignty as a guarantee of his spiritual
independence.”--On Leo’s contributions to theological science
see § 191, 12; on his attitude to Protestantism and the Eastern
Church, see § 175, 2, 4. He expressed himself against the
freemasons in an encyclical of A.D. 1884 with even greater
severity than Pius. Consequently the Roman Inquisition issued
an instruction to all bishops throughout the Catholic world
requiring them to enjoin their clergy in the pulpit and the
confessional to make it known that all freemasons are _eo ipso_
excommunicated, and by Catholic associations of every sort,
especially by the spread of the third order of St. Francis
(§ 186, 2), the injunction was carried out. At the same time a
year’s reprieve was given to the freemasons, during which the
Roman heresy laws, which required their children, wives, and
relatives to denounce them to all clergy and laymen, were to be
suspended. Should the guilty, however, allow this day of grace
to pass, these laws were to be again fully enforced, and then it
would be only for the pope to absolve them from their terrible sin.
§ 186. VARIOUS ORDERS AND ASSOCIATIONS.
The order of the Jesuits restored in A.D. 1814 by Pius VII.
impregnated all other orders with its spirit, gained commanding
influence over Pius IX., made the bishops its agents, and turned the
whole Catholic church into a Jesuit institution. An immense number
of societies arose aiming at the accomplishment of home mission work,
inspired by the Jesuit spirit and carrying out unquestioningly the
ultramontane ideas of their leaders. Also zeal for foreign missions
on old Jesuit lines revived, and the enthusiasm for martyrdom was due
mainly to the same cause.
§ 186.1. =The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.=--After the
suppression of their order by Clement XIV. the Jesuits found
refuge mainly among the =Redemptorists= (§ 165, 2), whose
headquarters were at Vienna, from which they spread through
Austria and Bavaria, finding entrance also into Switzerland,
France, Belgium, and Holland, and after 1848 into Catholic
Prussia, as well as into Hesse and Nassau. The =Congregation
of the Sacred Heart= was founded by ex-Jesuits in Belgium
in A.D. 1794, and soon spread in Austria and Bavaria.--The
=restored Jesuit order= was met with a storm of opposition from
the liberals. The July revolution of A.D. 1830 drove the Jesuits
from France, and when they sought to re-establish themselves,
Gregory XVI., under pressure of the government, insisted that
their general should abolish the French institutions in A.D. 1845.
An important branch of the order had settled in Catholic
Switzerland, but the unfavourable issue of the Separated Cantons’
War of 1847 drove its members out of that refuge. The revolution
of 1848 threatened the order with extinction, but the papal
restoration of A.D. 1850 re-introduced it into most Catholic
countries. Since then the sons of Loyola have renewed their
youth like the eagle. They have forced their way into all lands,
even in those on both sides of the ocean that had by legislative
enactments been closed against them, spreading ultramontane views
among Catholics, converting Protestants, and disseminating their
principles in schools and colleges. Even Pius IX., under whose
auspices Aug. Theiner had been allowed, in A.D. 1853, in his
“History of the Pontificate of Clement XIV.” to bring against
them the heavy artillery drawn from “the secret archives of the
Vatican,” again handed over to them the management of public
instruction, and surrendered himself even more and more to their
influence, so that at last he saw only by their eyes, heard only
with their ears, and resolved only according to their will.[544]
The founding of the Italian kingdom under the Prince of Sardinia
in A.D. 1860 led to their expulsion from all Italy, with the
exception of Venice and the remnants of the Papal States. When,
in A.D. 1866, Venice also became an Italian province, they
migrated thence into the Tyrol and other Austrian provinces,
where they enjoyed the blessings of the concordat (§ 198, 2).
Spain, too, on the expulsion of Queen Isabella in A.D. 1868, and
even Mexico and several of the States of Central and Southern
America, drove out the disciples of Loyola. On the other hand,
they made brilliant progress in Germany, especially in Rhenish
Hesse and the Catholic provinces of Prussia. But under the
new German empire the Reichstag, in A.D. 1872, passed a law
suppressing the Jesuits and all similar orders throughout the
empire (§ 197, 4). They were also formally expelled from France
in A.D. 1880 (§ 203, 6). Still, however, in A.D. 1881 the order
numbered 11,000 members in five provinces, and according to
Bismarck’s calculation in A.D. 1872 their property amounted to
280 million thalers. In A.D. 1853 John Beckx of Belgium was made
general. He retired in A.D. 1884 at the age of ninety, Anderlady,
a Swiss, having been appointed in A.D. 1883 his colleague and
successor.--The hope which was at first widely entertained
that Leo XIII. would emancipate himself from the domination of
the order seems more and more to be proved a vain delusion. In
July, 1886, he issued, on the occasion of a new edition of the
institutions of the order, a letter to Anderlady, in which he,
in the most extravagant manner, speaks of the order as having
performed the most signal services “to the church and society,”
and confirms anew everything that his predecessors had said and
done in its favour, while expressly and formally he recalls anew
anything that any of them had said and done against it.
§ 186.2. =Other Orders and Congregations.=--After the storms of
the revolution religious orders rapidly recovered lost ground.
France decreed, on November 2nd, 1789, the abolition of all
orders, and cloisters and in 1802, under Napoleon’s auspices,
they were also suppressed in the German empire and the friendly
princes indemnified with their goods. Yet on grounds of utility
Napoleon restored the Lazarists, as well as the Sisters of Mercy,
whose scattered remnants he collected in A.D. 1807 in Paris into
a general chapter, under the presidency of the empress-mother.
But new cloisters in great numbers were erected specially in
Belgium and France (in opposition to the law of 1789, which was
unrepealed), in Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, etc.,
as also in England and America. In 1849 there were in Prussia
fifty monastic institutes; in 1872 there were 967. In Cologne one
in every 215, in Aachen one in every 110, in Münster one in every
sixty-one, in Paderborn one in every thirty-three, was a Catholic
priest or member of an order. In Bavaria, between 1831 and 1873
the number of cloisters rose from 43 to 628, all, with the
exception of some old Benedictine monasteries, inspired and
dominated by the Jesuits. Even the Dominicans, originally such
determined opponents, are now pervaded by the Jesuit spirit. The
restoration of the =Trappist order= (§ 156, 8) deserves special
mention. On their expulsion from La Trappe in A.D. 1791 the
brothers found an asylum in the Canton Freiburg, and when driven
thence by the French invasion of A.D. 1798, Paul I. obtained from
the czar permission for them to settle in White Russia, Poland,
and Lithuania. But expelled from these regions again in A.D. 1800
they wandered through Europe and America, till after Napoleon’s
defeat they purchased back the monastery of La Trappe, and made
it the centre of a group of new settlements throughout France
and beyond it.--Besides regular orders there were also numerous
=congregations= or religious societies with communal life
according to a definite but not perpetually binding rule, and
without the obligation of seclusion, as well as =brotherhoods=
and =sisterhoods= without any such rule, which after the
restoration of A.D. 1814 in France and after A.D. 1848 in Germany,
were formed for the purposes of prayer, charity, education,
and such like. From France many of these spread into the Rhine
Provinces and Westphalia.--In Spain and Portugal (§ 205, 1, 5)
all orders were repeatedly abolished, subsequently also in
Sardinia and even in all Italy (§ 204, 1, 2), and also in several
Romish American states (§ 209, 1, 2), as also in Prussia and
Hesse (§ 197, 8, 15). Finally the third French Republic has
enforced existing laws against all orders and congregations not
authorized by the State (§ 203, 6).--On the 700th anniversary of
the birth of St. Francis, in September, 1882, Leo XIII. issued an
encyclical declaring the institute of the Franciscan Tertiaries
(§ 98, 11) alone capable of saving human society from all the
political and social dangers of the present and future, which had
some success at least in Italy.
Of what inhuman barbarity the superiors of cloisters are still
capable is shown _instar omnium_ in the horrible treatment of the
nun =Barbara Ubryk=, who, avowedly on account of a breach of her
vow of chastity, was confined since A.D. 1848 in the cloister of
the Carmelite nuns at Cracow in a dark, narrow cell beside the
sewer of the convent, without fire, bed, chair, or table. It was
only in A.D. 1869, in consequence of an anonymous communication
to the law officers, that she was freed from her prison in a
semi-animal condition, quite naked, starved, and covered with
filth, and consigned to an asylum. The populace of Cracow,
infuriated at such conduct, could be restrained from demolishing
all the cloisters only by the aid of the military.
§ 186.3. =The Pius Verein.=--A society under the name of the Pius
Verein was started at Mainz in October, 1848, to further Catholic
interests, advocating the church’s independence of the State,
the right of the clergy to direct education, etc. At the annual
meetings its leading members boasted in grossly exaggerated terms
of what had been accomplished and recklessly prophesied of what
would yet be achieved. At the twenty-eighth general assembly
at Bonn in A.D. 1881, with an attendance of 1,100, the same
confident tone was maintained. Windhorst reminded the Prussian
government of the purchase of the Sibylline books, and declared
that each case of breaking off negotiations raised the price
of the peace. Not a tittle of the ultramontane claims would be
surrendered. The watchword is the complete restoration of the
_status quo ante_. Baron von Loë, president of the Canisius
Verein, concluded his triumphant speech with the summons to
raise the membership of the union from 80,000 to 800,000, yea
to 8,000,000; then would the time be near when Germany should
become again a Catholic land and the church again the leader of
the people. At the assembly at Düsseldorf in A.D. 1883, Windhorst
declared, amid the enthusiastic applause of all present, that
after the absolute abrogation of the May laws the centre would
not rest till education was again committed unreservedly to the
church. In the assembly at Münster in A.D. 1885, he extolled
the pope (notwithstanding all confiscation and imprisoning for
the time being) as the governor and lord of the whole world.
The thirty-third assembly at Breslau in A.D. 1886, with special
emphasis, demanded the recall of all orders, including that of
the Jesuits.
§ 186.4. =The various German unions= gradually fell under
ultramontane influences. The Borromeo Society circulated Catholic
books inculcating ultramontane views in politics and religion.
The Boniface Union, founded by Martin, Bishop of Paderborn,
aided needy Catholic congregations in Protestant districts. Other
unions were devoted to foreign missions, to work among Germans in
foreign lands, etc. In all the universities such societies were
formed. In Bavaria patriot peasant associations were set on foot,
as a standing army in the conflict of the ultramontane hierarchy
with the new German empire. For the same purpose Bishop Ketteler
founded in A.D. 1871 the Mainz Catholic Union, which in A.D. 1814
had 90,000 members. The Görres Society of 1876 (§ 188, 1) and
the Canisius Society of 1879 (§ 151, 1) were meant to promote
education on ultramontane lines.--In =Italy= such societies
have striven for the restoration of the temporal power and the
supremacy of the church over the State. The unions of =France=
were confederated in A.D. 1870, and this general association
holds an annual congress. The several unions were called
“_œuvres_.” The _Œuvre du Vœu National_, _e.g._, had the task
of restoring penitent France to the “sacred heart of Jesus”
(§ 188, 12); the _Œuvre Pontifical_ made collections of Peter’s
pence and for persecuted priests; the _Œuvre de Jesus-Ouvrier_
had to do with the working classes, etc.
§ 186.5. The knowledge of the omnipotence of =capital= in
these days led to various proposals for turning it to account
in the interests of Catholicism. The Catholic Bank schemes of
the Belgian Langrand-Dumonceau in 1872 and the Munich bank were
pure swindles; and that of Adele Spitzeder 1869-1872, pronounced
“holy” by the clergy and ultramontane press, collapsed with
a deficit of eight and a quarter million florins.--Archbishop
Purcell of Cincinnati invited church members to avoid risk to
bank with him. He invested in land, advanced money for building
churches, cloisters, schools, etc., and in A.D. 1878 found
himself bankrupt with liabilities amounting to five million
dollars. He then offered to resign his office, but the pope
refused and gave him a coadjutor, whereupon the archbishop
retired into a cloister where he died in his eighty-third year.
In the _Union Générale_ of Paris, founded in 1876, which came
to a crash in 1882, the French aristocracy, the higher clergy
and members of orders lost hundreds of millions of francs.
§ 186.6. =The Catholic Missions.=--The impulse given to Catholic
interests after 1848 was seen in the zeal with which missions
in Catholic lands, like the Protestant Methodist revival and
camp-meetings (§ 208, 1), began to be prosecuted. An attempt was
thus made to gather in the masses, who had been estranged from
the church during the storms of the revolution. The Jesuits and
Redemptorists were prominent in this work. In bands of six they
visited stations, staying for three weeks, hearing confessions,
addressing meetings three times a day, and concluding by a
general communion.
§ 186.7. Besides the Propaganda (§ 156, 9), fourteen societies in
Rome, three in Paris, thirty in the whole of Catholic Christendom,
are devoted to the dissemination of Catholicism among =Heretics=
and =Heathens=. The Lyons Association for the spread of the faith,
instituted in 1822, has a revenue of from four to six million
francs. Specially famous is the =Picpus Society=, so called from
the street in Paris where it has its headquarters. Its founder
was the deacon Coudrin, a pupil of the seminary for priests
at Poictiers [Poitiers] broken up in A.D. 1789. Amid the evils
done to the church and the priests by the Revolution, in his
hiding-place he heard a divine call to found a society for the
purpose of training the youth in Catholic principles, educating
priests, and bringing the gospel to the heathen “by atoning for
excesses, crimes, and sins of all kinds by an unceasing day and
night devotion of the most holy sacrament of the altar.” Such a
society he actually founded in A.D. 1805, and Pius VII. confirmed
it in A.D. 1817. The founder died in A.D. 1837, after his
society had spread over all the five continents. Its chief aim
henceforth was missions to the heathen. While the Picpus society,
as well as the other seminaries and monkish orders, sent forth
crowds of missionaries, other societies devoted themselves to
collecting money and engaging in prayer. The most important of
these is the =Lyonese Society= for the spread of the faith of
A.D. 1822. The member’s weekly contribution is 5 cents, the
daily prayer-demand a paternoster, an angel greeting, and a
“St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.” The fanatical journal of the
society had a yearly circulation of almost 250,000 copies, in
ten European languages. The popes had showered upon its members
rich indulgences.--After Protestant missions had received such
a powerful impulse in the nineteenth century, the Catholic
societies were thereby impelled to force in wherever success had
been won and seemed likely to be secured, and wrought with all
conceivable jesuitical arts and devices, for the most part under
the political protection of France. The Catholic missions have
been most zealously and successfully prosecuted in North America,
China, India, Japan, and among the schismatic churches of the
Levant. Since 1837 they have been advanced by aid of the French
navy in the South Seas (§ 184, 7) and in North Africa by the
French occupation of Algiers, and most recently in Madagascar.
In South Africa they have made no progress.--In A.D. 1837-1839
a bloody persecution raged in Tonquin and Cochin China; in
A.D. 1866 Christianity was rooted out of Corea, and over 2,000
Christians slain; two years later persecution was renewed in
Japan. In China, through the oppressions of the French, the
people rose against the Catholics resident there. This movement
reached a climax in the rebellion of 1870 at Tientsin, when all
French officials, missionaries, and sisters of mercy were put to
death, and the French consulate, Catholic churches and mission
houses were levelled to the ground. Also in Further India since
the French war of A.D. 1883 with Tonquin, over which China
claimed rights of suzerainty, the Catholic missions have again
suffered, and many missionaries have been martyred.
§ 187. LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS.
Alongside of the steady growth of ultramontanism from the time of the
restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814, there arose also a reactionary
movement, partly of a mystical-irenical, evangelical- revival and
liberal-scientific, and partly of a radical-liberalistic, character.
But all the leaders in such movements sooner or later succumbed before
the strictly administered discipline of the hierarchy. The Old Catholic
reaction (§ 190), on the other hand, in spite of various disadvantages,
still maintains a vigorous existence.
§ 187.1. =Mystical-Irenical Tendencies.=--=J. M. Sailer=,
deprived in A.D. 1794 of his office at Dillingen (§ 165, 12), was
appointed in A.D. 1799 professor of moral and pastoral theology
at Ingolstadt, and was transferred to Landshut in A.D. 1800.
There for twenty years his mild and conciliatory as well as
profoundly pious mysticism powerfully influenced crowds of
students from South Germany and Switzerland. Though the pope
refused to confirm his nomination by Maximilian as Bishop of
Augsburg in A.D. 1820, he so far cleared himself of the suspicion
of mysticism, separatism, and crypto-calvinism, that in A.D. 1829
no opposition was made to his appointment as Bishop of Regensburg.
Sailer continued faithful to the Catholic dogmatic, and none
of his numerous writings have been put in the Index. Yet he lay
under suspicion till his death in A.D. 1832, and this seemed to
be justified by the intercourse which he and his disciples had
with Protestant pietists. His likeminded scholar, friend, and
vicar-general, the Suffragan-bishop =Wittmann=, was designated
his successor in Regensburg, but he died before receiving papal
confirmation. Of all his pupils the most distinguished was the
Westphalian Baron von =Diepenbrock=, over whose wild, intractable,
youthful nature Sailer exercised a magic influence. In A.D. 1823
he was ordained priest, became Sailer’s secretary, remaining his
confidential companion till his death, was made vicar-general
to Sailer’s successor in A.D. 1842, and in A.D. 1845 was
raised to the archiepiscopal chair of Breslau, where he joined
the ultramontanes, and entered with all his heart into the
ecclesiastico-political conflicts of the Würzburg episcopal
congress (§ 192, 4). His services were rewarded by a cardinal’s
hat from Pius IX. in A.D. 1850. His pastoral letters, however,
as well as his sermons and private correspondence, show that he
never altogether forgot the teaching of his spiritual father. He
delighted in the study of the mediæval mystics, and was specially
drawn to the writings of Suso.
§ 187.2. =Evangelical-Revival Tendencies.=--A movement much
more evangelical than that of Sailer, having the doctrine of
justification by faith alone as its centre, was originated by
a simple Bavarian priest, =Martin Boos=, and soon embraced sixty
priests in the diocese of Augsburg. The spiritual experiences
of Boos were similar to those of Luther. The words of a poor old
sick woman brought peace to his soul in A.D. 1790, and led him
to the study of Scripture. His preaching among the people and his
conversations with the surrounding clergy produced a widespread
revival. Amid manifold persecutions, removed from one parish
to another, and flying from Bavaria to Austria and thence into
Rhenish Prussia, where he died in A.D. 1825 as priest of Sayn,
he lighted wherever he went the torch of truth. Even after his
conversion Boos believed that he still maintained the Catholic
position, but was at last to his own astonishment convinced of
the contrary through intercourse with Protestant pietists and the
study of Luther’s works. But so long as the mother church would
keep him he wished not to forsake her.[545] So too felt his
like-minded companions =Gossner= and =Lindl=, who were expelled
from Bavaria in A.D. 1829 and settled in St. Petersburg. Lindl,
as Provost of South Russia, went to reside in Odessa, where he
exercised a powerful influence over Catholics and Protestants and
among the higher classes of the Russians. The machinations of the
Roman Catholic and Greek churches caused both Gossner and Lindl
to leave Russia in A.D. 1824. They then joined the evangelical
church, Lindl in Barmen and Gossner in Berlin. Lindl drifted
more and more into mystico-apocalyptic fanaticism; but Gossner,
from A.D. 1829 till his death in A.D. 1858 as pastor of the
Bohemian church in Berlin, proved a sincere evangelical and a
most successful worker.--The Bavarian priest Lutz of Carlshuld,
influenced by Boos, devoted himself to the temporal and spiritual
well-being of his people, preached Christ as the saviour of
sinners, and exhorted to diligent reading of the Bible. In
A.D. 1831, with 600 of his congregation, he joined the Protestant
church; but to avoid separation from his beloved people, he
returned again after ten months, and most of his flock with him,
still retaining his evangelical convictions. He was not, however,
restored to office, and subsequently in A.D. 1857, with three
Catholic priests of the diocese, he attached himself to the
Irvingites, and was with them excommunicated.
§ 187.3. =Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.=--=Von Wessenberg=,
as vicar-general of the diocese of Constance introduced such
drastic administrative reforms as proved most distasteful to
the nuncio of Lucerne and the Romish curia. He also endeavoured
unsuccessfully to restore a German national Catholic church.
In the retirement of his later years he wrote a history of the
church synods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which
gave great offence to the ultramontanes.--=Fr. von Baader= of
Munich expressed himself so strongly against the absolutism
of the papal system that the ultramontane minister, Von Abel,
suspended his lectures on the philosophy of religion in A.D. 1838.
He gave still greater offence by his work on Eastern and Western
Catholicism, in which he preferred the former to the latter.[546]
The talented =Hirscher= of Freiburg more interested in what is
Christian than what is Roman Catholic, could not be won over
to yield party service to the ultramontanes. They persecuted
unrelentingly =Leop. Schmid=, whose theosophical speculation
had done so much to restore the prestige of theology at Giessen,
and had utterly discredited their pretensions. When his enemies
successfully opposed his consecration as Bishop of Mainz
in A.D. 1849, he resigned his professorship and joined the
philosophical faculty. Goaded on by the venomous attacks of his
opponents he advanced to a more extreme position, and finally
declared “that he was compelled to renounce the specifically
Roman Catholic church so long as she refused to acknowledge the
true worth of the gospel.”
§ 187.4. =Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.=--The brothers
=Theiner= of Breslau wrote in A.D. 1828 against the celibacy
of the clergy; but subsequently John attached himself to the
German-Catholics, and in A.D. 1833 Augustine returned to his
allegiance to Rome (§ 191, 7).--During the July Revolution in
Paris, the priest Lamennais, formerly a zealous supporter of
absolutism, became the enthusiastic apostle of liberalism. His
journal _L’Avenir_, A.D. 1830-1832, was the organ of the party,
and his _Paroles d’un Croyant_, A.D. 1834, denounced by the
pope as unutterably wicked, made an unprecedented sensation. The
endeavour, however, to unite elements thoroughly incongruous led
to the gradual breaking up of the school, and Lamennais himself
approximated more and more to the principles of modern socialism.
He died in A.D. 1854. One of his most talented associates on
the staff of the _Avenir_ was the celebrated pulpit orator
=Lacordaire=, A.D. 1802-1861. Upon Gregory’s denunciation of
the journal in A.D. 1832 Lacordaire submitted to Rome, entered
the Dominican order in A.D. 1840, and wrote a life of Dominic
in which he eulogised the Inquisition; but his eloquence still
attracted crowds to _Notre Dame_. Ultimately he fell completely
under the influence of the Jesuits.
§ 187.5. =Attempts at Reform in Church Government.=--In A.D. 1861
=Liverani=, pope’s chaplain and apostolic notary, exposed the
scandalous mismanagement of Antonelli, the corruption of the
sacred college, the demoralization of the Roman clergy, and the
ambitious schemes of the Jesuits, recommended the restoration
of the holy Roman empire, not indeed to the Germans, but to
the Italians: the pope should confer on the king of Italy by
divine authority the title and privileges of Roman emperor, who,
on his part, should undertake as papal mandatory the political
administration of the States of the Church. But in A.D. 1873 he
sought and obtained papal forgiveness for his errors. The Jesuit
=Passaglia= expressed enthusiastic approval of the movements of
Victor Emanuel and of Cavour’s ideal of a “free church in a free
state.” He was expelled from his order, his book was put into
the Index, but the Italian Government appointed him professor of
moral philosophy in Turin. At last he retracted all that he had
said and written. In the preface to his popular exposition of the
gospels of 1874, the Jesuit father =Curci= urged the advisability
of a reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian
government, and expressed his conviction that the Church States
would never be restored. That year he addressed the pope in
similar terms, and refusing to retract, was expelled his order in
A.D. 1877. Leo XIII. by friendly measures sought to move him to
recant, but without success. The condemnation of his books led
to their wider circulation. In A.D. 1883 he charged the Holy See
with the guilt of the unholy schism between church and state; but
in the following year he retracted whatever in his writings the
pope regarded as opposed to the faith, morals, and discipline of
the Catholic church.
§ 187.6. =Attempts to Found National Catholic Churches.=--After
the July Revolution of A.D. 1830 the Abbé =Chatel= of Paris
had himself consecrated bishop of a new sect by a new-templar
dignitary (§ 210, 1) and became primate of the =French Catholic
Church=, whose creed recognised only the law of nature and viewed
Christ as a mere man. After various congregations had been formed,
it was suppressed by the police in A.D. 1842. The Abbé =Helsen=
of Brussels made a much more earnest endeavour to lead the church
of his fatherland from the antichrist to the true Christ. His
=Apostolic Catholic Church= was dissolved in A.D. 1857 and its
remnants joined the Protestants. The founding of the =German
Catholic Church= in A.D. 1844 promised to be more enduring. In
August of that year, Arnoldi, Bishop of Treves, exhibited the
holy coat preserved there, and attracted one and a half millions
of pilgrims to Treves (§ 188, 2). A suspended priest, =Ronge=, in
a letter to the bishop denounced the worship of relics, seeking
to pose as the Luther of the nineteenth century. =Czerski= of
Posen had in August, 1844, seceded from the Catholic church, and
in October founded the “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,”
whose creed embodied the negations without the positive beliefs
of the Protestant confessions, maintaining in other respects
the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Ronge meanwhile
formed congregations in all parts of Germany, excepting Bavaria
and Austria. A General Assembly held at Leipzig in March, 1845,
brought to light the deplorable religious nihilism of the leaders
of the party. Czerski, who refused to abandon the doctrine of
Christ’s divinity, withdrew from the conference, but Ronge held
a triumphal procession through Germany. His hollowness, however,
became so apparent that his adherents grew ashamed of their
enthusiasm for the new reformer. His congregations began to break
up; many withdrew, several of the leaders threw off the mask
of religion and adopted the _rôle_ of political revolutionists.
After the settlement that followed the disturbances of A.D. 1848
the remnants of this party disappeared.[547]
§ 187.7. The inferior clergy of Italy, after the political
emancipation of Naples from the Bourbon domination in A.D. 1860,
longed for deliverance from clerical tyranny, and founded in
A.D. 1862 a society with the object of establishing a =national
Italian church= independent of the Romish curia. Four Neapolitan
churches were put at the disposal of the society by the minister
Ricasoli, but in 1865, an agreement having been come to between
the curia and the government, the bishops were recalled and the
churches restored. Thousands, to save themselves from starvation,
gave in their submission, but a small party still remained
faithful. Encouraged by the events of 1870 (§§ 135, 3; 189, 3),
they were able in 1875 to draw up a “dogmatic statement” for
the “Church of Italy independent of the Roman hierarchy,” which
indeed besides the Holy Scriptures admitted the authority of
the universal church as infallible custodian and interpreter
of revealed truth, but accepted only the first seven œcumenical
councils as binding. In the same year Bishop Turano of Girgenti
excommunicated five priests of the Silician town Grotta as
opponents of the syllabus and the dogma of infallibility. The
whole clergy of the town, numbering twenty-five, then renounced
their obedience to the bishop, and with the approval of the
inhabitants declared themselves in favour of the “statement.”
North of Rome this movement made little progress; but in 1875
three villages of the Mantuan diocese claimed the ancient
privilege of choosing their own priest, and the bishop and
other authorities were obliged to yield. The Neapolitan movement,
however, as a whole seems to be losing itself in the sand.
§ 187.8. =The Frenchman, Charles Loyson=, known by his Carmelite
monkish name of _Père Hyacinthe_, was protected from the Jesuits
by Archbishop Darboy when he inveighed against the corruptions
of the church, and even Pius IX. on his visit to Rome in 1868
treated him with favour. The general of his order having imposed
silence on him, he publicly announced his secession from the
order and appeared as a “preacher of the gospel,” claiming
from a future General Council a sweeping reform of the church,
protesting against the falsifying of the gospel of the Son of God
by the Jesuits and the papal syllabus. He was then excommunicated.
In A.D. 1871 he joined the German Old Catholics (§ 190, 1);
and though he gave offence to them by his marriage, this did
not prevent the Old Catholics of Geneva from choosing him as
their pastor. But after ten months, because “he sought not the
overthrow but the reform of the Catholic church, and reprobated
the despotism of the mob as well as that of the clergy, the
infallibility of the state as well as that of the pope,” he
withdrew and returned to Paris, where he endeavoured to establish
a French National Church free of Rome and the Pope. The clerical
minister Broglie, however, compelled him to restrict himself to
moral-religious lectures. In February, 1879, he built a chapel
in which he preaches on Sundays and celebrates mass in the French
language. He sought alliance with the Swiss Christian Catholics,
whose bishop, Herzog, heartily reciprocated his wishes, and with
the Anglican church, which gave a friendly response. But that
this “seed corn” of a “Catholic Gallican Church” will ever grow
into a fully developed plant was from the very outset rendered
more than doubtful by the peculiar nature of the sower, as well
as of the seed and the soil.
§ 188. CATHOLIC ULTRAMONTANISM.
The restoration of the Jesuit order led, during the long pontificate
of Pius IX., to the revival and hitherto unapproached prosperity of
ultramontanism, especially in France, whose bishops cast the Gallican
Liberties overboard (§§ 156, 3; 203, 1), and in Germany, where with
strange infatuation even Protestant princes gave it all manner of
encouragement. Even the lower clergy were trained from their youth
in hierarchical ideas, and under the despotic rule of their bishops,
and a reign of terror carried on by spies and secret courts, were
constrained to continue the profession of the strictest absolutism.
§ 188.1. =The Ultramontane Propaganda.=--In =France=
ultramontanism revived with the restoration. Its first and ablest
prophet was Count =de Maistre=, A.D. 1754-1821, long Sardinian
ambassador at St. Petersburg. He wrote against the modern
views of the relations of church and state, supporting the
infallibility, absolutism, and inviolability of the pope. He
was supported by Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais,
Lacordaire, and Montalembert. Only Bonald maintained this
attitude. Between him and Chateaubriand a dispute arose over
the freedom of the press; Lamennais and Lacordaire began to
blend political radicalism with their ultramontanism; Lamartine
involved himself in the February revolution of 1848 as the
apostle of humanity; and Montalembert took up a half-way position.
In 1840 Louis =Veuillot= started the _Univers Religieux_ in place
of the _Avenir_, in which, till his death in 1883, he vindicated
the extremest ultramontanism.--In =Germany= ultramontane views
were disseminated by romancing historians and poets mostly
converts from Protestantism. =Görres=, professor of history in
Munich, represented the Reformation as a second fall, and set
forth the legends of ascetics in his “History of Mysticism” as
sound history. The German bishops set themselves to train the
clergy in hierarchical views, and by a rule of terror prevented
any departure from that theory. The ultramontanising of the
masses was carried on by missions, and by the establishment
of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. In the beginning of A.D. 1860
there were only thirteen ultramontane journals with very
few subscribers, while in January, 1875, there were three
hundred. The most important was _Germania_, founded at Berlin in
1871.--The _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome was always revised before
publication by Pius IX., and under Leo XIII. a similar position
is held by the _Moniteur de Rome_, while the _Osservatore Romano_
and the _Voce della verità_ have also an official character.
§ 188.2. =Miracles.=--Prince =Hohenlohe= went through many parts
of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, performing miraculous cures;
but his day of favour soon passed, and he settled down as a
writer of ascetical works.--Pilgrimages to wonder-working shrines
were encouraged by reports of cures wrought on the grand-niece
of the Bishop of Cologne (§ 193, 1), cured of knee-joint
disease before the holy coat of Treves (§ 187, 6). Subjected to
examination, the pretended seamless coat was found to be a bit
of the gray woollen wrapping of a costly silk Byzantine garment
1½ feet broad and 1 foot long.
§ 188.3. =Stigmatizations.=--In many cases these marks were
found to have been fraudulently made, but in other cases it was
questionable whether we had not here a pathological problem,
or whether hysteria created a desire to deceive or pre-disposed
the subject to being duped under clerical influence. =Anna Cath.
Emmerich=, a nun of Dülmen in Westphalia, in 1812, professed
to have on her body bloody wound-marks of the Saviour. For five
years down to her death in 1824, the poet Brentano sat at her
feet, venerating her as a saint and listening to her ecstatic
revelations on the death and sufferings of the Redeemer and his
mother. Overberg, Sailer, and Von Stolberg were also satisfied of
the genuineness of her revelations and of the miraculous marking
of her body. The physician Von Drussel examined the wound-prints
and certified them as miraculous; but Bodde, professor of
chemistry at Münster, pronounced the blood marks spots produced
by dragon’s-blood. Competent physicians declared her a hysterical
woman incapable of distinguishing between dream and reality,
truth and lies, honesty and deceit. Others famous in the same
line were Maria von Wörl, Dominica Lazzari, and =Crescentia
Stinklutsch=; also Dorothea Visser of Holland and Juliana
Weiskircher from near Vienna.
§ 188.4. Of a very doubtful kind were the miraculous marks on
=Louise Lateau=, daughter of a Belgian miner. On 24th April, 1868,
it is said she was marked with the print of the Saviour’s wounds
on hands, feet, side, brow, and shoulders. In July, A.D. 1868,
she fell into an ecstasy, from which she could be awakened
only by her bishop or one authorized by him. Trustworthy
physicians, after a careful medical examination, reported
that she laboured under a disease which they proposed to call
“stigmatic neuropathy.” Chemical analysis proved the presence of
food which had been regularly taken, probably in a somnambulistic
trance. In the summer of 1875 her sister for a time put an end
to the affair by refusing the clergy entrance into the house,
and she was then obliged to eat, drink, and sleep like other
Christians, so that the Friday bloody marks disappeared. But
now, say ultramontane journals, Louise became dangerously ill,
and clergy were called in to her help, and the marks were again
visible. Her patron Bishop Dumont of Tournay being deposed by
the pope in 1879, she took part against his successor, and was
threatened with excommunication (§ 200, 7). She was now deserted
by the ultramontanes and Belgian clergy, and treated as a poor,
weak-minded invalid. She died neglected and in obscurity in
A.D. 1883.
§ 188.5. Of pseudo-stigmatizations there has been no lack even
in the most recent times. In 1845 =Caroline Beller=, a girl of
fifteen years, in Westphalia, was examined by a skilful physician.
On Thursday he laid a linen cloth over the wound-prints, and sure
enough on Friday it was marked with blood stains; but also strips
of paper laid under, without her knowledge, were pricked with
needles. The delinquent now confessed her deceit, which she had
been tempted to perpetrate from reading the works of Francis of
Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Emmerich. Theresa Städele in 1849,
Rosa Tamisier in 1851, and Angela Hupe in 1863, were convicted of
fraudulently pretending to have stigmata. The latter was proved
to have feigned deafness and lameness for a whole year, to have
diligently read the writings of Emmerich in 1861, to have shown
the physician fresh bleeding wounds on hands, feet, and side, and
to have affirmed that she had neither eaten nor drunk for a year.
Four sisters of mercy were sent to attend her, and they soon
discovered the fraud. In 1876 the father confessor of Ernestine
Hauser was prosecuted for damages, having injured the girl’s
health by the severe treatment to which she was subjected in
order to induce ecstasy and obtain an opportunity for impressing
the stigmata. =Sabina Schäfer= of Baden, in her eighteenth year,
had for two years borne the reputation of a wonder-working saint,
who every Friday showed the five wound prints, and in ecstasy
told who were in hell and who in purgatory. She professed
to live without food, though often she betook herself to the
kitchen to pray alone, and even carried food with her to give
to her guardian angel to carry to the distant poor. When under
surveillance in 1880 she sought to bribe her guardian to bring
her meat and drink, fragments of food were found among her
clothes, and also a flask with blood and an instrument for
puncturing the skin. She confessed her guilt, and was sentenced
by the criminal court of Baden to ten weeks’ imprisonment. The
ultramontane _Pfälzer Bote_ complained that so-called liberals
should ruthlessly encroach on the rights of the church and the
family.
§ 188.6. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.=--The
most celebrated of these manifestations occurred in 1858 at
=Lourdes=, where in a grotto the Virgin repeatedly appeared to a
peasant girl of fourteen years, almost imbecile, named Bernadette
Soubirous, saying “_Je suis l’Immaculée Conception_,” and urging
the erection of a chapel on that spot. A miracle-working well
sprang up there. Since 1872 the pilgrimages under sanction of the
hierarchy have been on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and
the cures in number and significance far excelling anything heard
of before.--At the village of =La Salette= in the department of
Isère, in 1846 two poor children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of
eleven years, saw a fair white-dressed lady sitting on a stone
and shedding tears, and, lo, from the spot where her foot rested
sprang up a well, at which innumerable cures have been wrought.
The epidemic of visions of the Virgin reached a climax in Alsace
Lorraine in 1872. In a wood near the village of =Gereuth= crowds
of women and children gathered, professing to see visions of
the mother of God; but when the police appeared to protect the
forest, the manifestation craze spread over the whole land, and
at thirty-five stations almost daily visions were enjoyed. The
epidemic reached its crisis in Mary’s month, May, 1874, and
continued with intervals down to the end of the year. In some
cases deceit was proved; but generally it seemed to be the
result of a diseased imagination and self-deception fostered
by speculative purveyors and the ultramontane press and clergy.
§ 188.7. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.=--In
the summer of 1876 three girls of eight years old in the village
of =Marpingen=, in the department of Treves, saw by a well a
white-robed lady, with the halo over her head and with a child
in her arms, who made herself known as the immaculate Virgin,
and called for the erection of a chapel. A voice from heaven
said, This is my beloved Son, etc. There were also processions
and choirs of angels, etc. The devil, too, appeared and ordered
them to fall down and worship him. Thousands crowded from far
and near, and the water of the fountain wrought miraculous cures.
The surrounding clergy made a profitable business of sending
the water to America, and the _Germania_ of Berlin unweariedly
sounded forth its praises. Before the court of justice the
children confessed the fraud, and were sentenced to the house of
correction; and though on technical grounds this judgment was set
aside, the supreme court of appeal in 1879 pronounced the whole
thing a scandalous and disgraceful swindle.--Weichsel, priest
of =Dittrichswald= in Ermland, who gained great reputation as an
exorcist, made a pilgrimage to Marpingen in the summer of 1877,
and on his return gave such an account of what he had seen to
his communicants’ class that first one and then another saw the
mother of God at a maple tree, which also became a favourite
resort for pilgrims.
§ 188.8. =Canonizations.=--When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a
Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted
birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they
would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them.
St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX.
canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs
of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627
canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts
martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would
not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted
this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862,
the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons,
and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the
heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the
distinction. The number of _doctores ecclesiæ_ was increased by
Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori
in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized
four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French
mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed
by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made
a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject
poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.
§ 188.9. =Discoveries of Relics.=--The Roman catacombs continued
still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly
erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of
St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt
of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the
bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the
church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering
a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this
made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission
of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of
all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and
local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon,
in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which
he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable
genuineness of the discovered bones as _ex constanti et
pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ
prodita_, pronounced the relics generally _perennes fontes_,
from which the _dona cælestia_ flow forth like brooks among the
Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is
just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen
up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also
many other relics “_divinitus_” have been discovered, as _e.g._
the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the
martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James
the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his
predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.
§ 188.10. =The blood of St. Januarius=, a martyr of the age
of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on
occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the
blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the
saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans,
if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms
a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy.
Unbelievers venture to suggest that this _precioso sangue del
taumaturgo S. Gennaro_ is not blood, but a mixture that becomes
liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the
crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.