PIUS IX.
In spite of the grave condition of the Catholic world, the
ill-concealed spread of liberal ideas among the educated, and the
spurts of rebellion throughout Europe, the cardinals met the new
danger with as little wisdom as their predecessors had confronted the
Reformation. The three Conclaves which were held within eight years
of the death of Pius VII. were marred by the old wrangles of parties
and ambitions of individuals, and they issued in the election of
entirely unsuitable Popes. The Papacy allied itself with the monarchs
in an effort to stifle the growing modern spirit, and imitated their
unscrupulous methods. Leo XII. and Gregory XVI., at least, left behind
them records at which modern sentiment shudders. Yet they showed as
little appreciation as Louis XVIII. or Charles X. of the irresistible
development through which Europe was passing, and there seem to be
whole centuries of evolution between their acts and announcements and
those of Leo XIII.
Cardinal della Ganga, who became Leo XII. at the death of Pius, was
a deeply religious and narrow-minded man who achieved much moral and
social reform in his dominions, yet his death in 1829 was, says Baron
Bunsen, hailed at Rome "with indecent joy." His despotic Puritan
measures angered his subjects, and his gross injustice to the Jews
and fierce persecution of the Carbonari and Liberals fed the growing
Italian hatred of the Papacy. Pius VIII. (1829-30) was a milder
_Zelante_ and had won--a singular distinction for a Pope in such
a crisis--some repute in canon law and numismatics. He was nearly
seventy years old, and his Secretary of State, the disreputable Albani,
was over eighty. The revolutionary movement of 1830 completed his
afflictions, and a Roman wag proposed as his epitaph: "He was born: he
wept: he died."[352] Then came the longer Pontificate of Gregory XVI.,
the chief events of which will pass before us as we review the earlier
career of Pius IX. Gregory was a pious, narrow-minded Camaldulese
monk. Like his predecessor, he was well versed in canon law and as ill
fitted as a man could be to rule in the nineteenth century. He left
the repression of the rebels to his Secretary of State Lambruschini,
and said his beads, and ate sweetmeats at merry little gatherings of
cardinals, while Young Italy marched nobly to the scaffold and its
brilliant writers opened the eyes of the world to the foul condition of
the Papal States.
Gregory died on June 1, 1846, dimly foreseeing an age of revolution,
and reform was now the great issue before the Conclave. The late Pope's
supporters put forward the truculent Lambruschini, but from the first
Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was conspicuous in the voting, and on the
second day of the Conclave he was elected by thirty-seven out of fifty
votes. It was useless any longer to ignore that appalling indictment of
abuses, corruption, and incompetence which the Italian writers were
circulating throughout Europe. The cardinals chose a reformer: a man
who was at times described even as a Liberal.
Giovanni Maria Gianbattista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro
Mastai-Ferretti--the name reflects the piety of his mother--was then
fifty-four years old. He had been born at Sinigaglia on May 13, 1792,
of parents who belonged to the small provincial nobility. He was sent
to school at Volterra, and he is variously described by fellow-pupils
who took opposite sides in the fierce conflict of his later years as
a pale, pure little angel of marvellous industry, and as a sickly,
epileptic little idler with the reputation, Trollope says, of being
"the biggest liar in the school."[353] He seems to have been a
delicate, handsome, undistinguished pupil of proper character. His
virtuous mother wished him to become a priest, and he received the
tonsure at Volterra in 1809. In October he was sent to continue his
studies at Rome, and for some months he lived in the Quirinal, in
charge of an uncle who was a canon of St. Peter's. They were related
to Pius VII. and were favoured. The French invasion of 1810 drove
them back to Sinigaglia, and Giovanni was summoned for service in
the Noble Guard of the Viceroy of Italy. His epileptic tendency was
successfully pleaded for exemption, and he returned to Rome in 1814.
It seems, however, that he was not deeply religious, and he applied
for service in the Papal Guard rather than for orders.[354] His fits
closed the military service of the Pope against him, and, on the letter
of the law, should equally exclude him from the clergy. He became very
depressed and morose, but Pius VII. strained the regulations in favour
of his young relative. He was to receive ordination on condition that
he never said mass without an assistant. In 1819 he became a priest,
and made the small progress which a distant relative of the Pope might
expect. In 1823 he accompanied a Papal representative to Chile, and
the voyage probably strengthened his constitution. Pius VII. died
during his absence from Rome, but as Giovanni's protector, Cardinal
della Ganga, became Pope, he returned to favour at Rome. He received
a canonry, the administration of the Hospital of St. Michael, and (in
1827) the archbishopric of Spoleto.
It is clear that the young Archbishop did excellent work at Spoleto,
and we must read with discretion the statements of his less
temperate critics. His predecessor had been idle and worthless, and
Mastai-Ferretti applied himself with zeal, judgment, and success to
the reform of clergy and laity. In 1829 Leo XII., his patron, died,
and Pius VIII. entered upon his short and futile Pontificate. Gregory
XVI., who succeeded him, at once met the blasts of the Revolution of
1830. The outbreak at Rome was suppressed, but the revolutionaries
captured Bologna and brought about a dangerous agitation throughout
Italy. Mastai-Ferretti is said to have been compelled to fly from
Spoleto, but his actions and attitude at this time are not wholly
clear. Austrian troops suppressed the Revolution, and Gregory entered
upon that truculent crusade against the Liberals and their claims which
diverted England from its new alliance with the Papacy and even shocked
Metternich. When the Austrians compelled him to take the Secretaryship
of State from Cardinal Bernetti, he bestowed it on the more intemperate
Cardinal Lambruschini, and the struggle with the Carbonari and the
Young Italians continued. In his Encyclical _Mirari Vos_ (August 15,
1832) Gregory pledged the Papacy to a stern refusal of the democratic
reforms which the new Europe demanded.
Mastai-Ferretti had meantime (February 16, 1832) been removed to the
bishopric of Imola: a more profitable see and a recognized path to
higher honours. His amiable and conciliatory character inclined him
to meet the more moderate Liberals with ease, though he does not seem
to have made any profound study of the political development of his
time. When Cardinal Lambruschini condemned scientific associations,
the Bishop of Imola is reported to have commented that he saw no
inconsistency between science and religion. On these safe and innocuous
expressions the Bishop won a repute for "Liberalism" among the more
reactionary members of the Curia, and Gregory XVI. long hesitated to
raise him to the cardinalate. He was an exemplary bishop, and in the
reform of education and of philanthropic institutions he performed
no slight social service, which may have attracted the esteem of the
more moderate Liberals. He was admitted to the Sacred College on
December 14, 1840, and continued for six years to direct his diocese
and encourage those temperate reforms which most of his colleagues
were too indolent or too prejudiced to favour. The condition of the
Church was again becoming critical. The Carbonari were weakened and
dispersed in Italy, but Mazzini had begun to lead "the Youth of Italy"
to a more open and more heretical attack on Austria and the Papacy,
while high-minded and humanitarian priests like Gioberti, Ventura, and
Rosmini in Italy, and Lamennais in France, were, in varying degrees,
looking to a Catholic Liberalism to ease the pressure of the growing
popular revolt. Gregory XVI. and his advisers regarded the entire
Liberal movement, in every shade, as a sinful and temporary aberration.
They passed the most drastic laws for its suppression: the prisons of
Italy were distended with their victims: yet their orthodox militia,
the Sanfedisti, had to wage a perpetual and bitter struggle against the
spreading revolt.
We who look back on this painful travail of the birth of democracy
are at times unduly impatient with idealists who failed to recognize
its promise at the time. Not merely ecclesiastical statesmen, but
heterodox observers and sons of the people like Carlyle, looked upon
the new movement as an emanation from the pit, a menace to society.
But most biographers pass to the opposite extreme when they conceive
Pius IX. as judiciously studying the demands of the age, realizing that
a moderate measure of democracy and liberty was just and inevitable,
and then renouncing his Liberal faith when he saw the excesses of the
democrats. For this there is no documentary support. Pius was amiable,
accessible, and anxious to please all: he was neither a statesman nor
an economist, and had not a firm judgment of the European situation.
He was disposed to see justice in the semi-Liberalism of Gioberti or
Ventura, and disposed the next day to listen to the Mephistophelean
counsels of Metternich. Europe was to him a world in which a large
number of thoughtful people demanded reforms which were consistent
with the political and religious supremacy of the Papacy, and he was
disposed to favour and indulge them. He failed to realize, until 1848,
that the firm and consistent demands of the new age were inconsistent
with Papal supremacy. But he clearly disliked the mediæval policy of
the Curia and he was regarded with hope by the reformers within the
fold. It was they who greeted his election in June, 1846. The more
radical Italians did not want a reforming Pope, because they did not
want a Papacy.
Pius was crowned on June 21st, and at once turned to what he would
regard as "democratic" measures. He gave dowries to a thousand poor
girls, and decreed that all pledges in the Monte di Pietà which were
less in value than two lire should be returned to their owners. On July
16th he declared a general amnesty of political prisoners, and the
Romans flocked to the Quirinal to cheer their handsome and courageous
Pope, and demonstrations of joy resounded throughout Italy. The amnesty
was in reality conditional: the released prisoners and returning exiles
were to promise not again to "disturb the public order." However,
there was at the time no severe application of the condition, and
Pius continued in his reforming mood. That he had no serious leaning
to Liberalism he made abundantly clear to the more thoughtful before
the end of the year. On November 9th he issued an Encyclical in which
he condemned Bible Societies, secret political societies, critics
of the Church, license of the press, and so on.[355] The Radicals
still mingled with the crowds below his balcony and flattered him.
Some, no doubt, had the idea that he might be induced to go farther;
but Mazzini and others have revealed that they astutely used these
demonstrations to educate the people in larger demands and provoke
a more serious revolt. Pius threw open his garden to the public on
certain days, opened night schools and Sunday schools, re-opened the
Accademia dei Lincei (for the promotion of science), and discussed
plans of railways for Italy. He was in a patriarchal mood which came
near to social idealism. Journals multiplied, and clubs became active:
especially the Circolo Romano, which gradually came under the influence
of a prosperous and very radical publican from the Trastevere, Angelo
Brunetti, nicknamed "little Cicero" (Ciceruacchio) for his demagogic
eloquence. The dreamy Christian Liberals, Gioberti and Ventura, gave
the not very penetrating Pope the idea that he was going to make a
model State of Papal Italy and, through it, to lead the world on the
new upward path.
The Radicals encouraged the clouds of incense which obscured the Pope's
vision, and he listened gravely to the requests for representative
government. On April 19, 1847, he proposed a Consulto di Stato: a
council composed of laymen from the various provinces--all carefully
selected by the clergy and gravely reminded that their business was
merely to offer suggestions. In July he formed a Civic Guard for Rome:
in November he inaugurated a scheme of municipal administration for
Rome: and at the close of December he formed a ministry--of cardinals
and other clerical dignitaries. By this time, however, Pius had
become perplexed and suspicious. Cardinal Gizzi, his Secretary of
State, resigned, the Gregorian cardinals frowned, and the Austrians
complained of his concessions. There was a banquet in Rome to Cobden,
and there was a very noisy and triumphant banquet to Ciceruacchio. The
Pope forbade popular demonstrations, yet he perceived daily that his
concessions did nothing to appease the popular appetite. The Italians
demanded elected, lay officers.
To make matters worse for the Pope the Austrians advanced against the
Papal States. The difference was adjusted, but from the summer of
1847 hostility to Austria increased rapidly, and the people demanded
an efficient Papal army to resist them. When, on February 8th, the
news came of the third French Revolution, the agitators, who had now
complete influence, became bolder. Ciceruacchio himself, supported by
the Liberal Princes Corsini and Borghese, saw the Pope, and demanded
war on Austria and democratic institutions. At sight of the massive and
resolute crowds which supported them, the Pope promised a lay ministry
and a more efficient army; but on the following day he, addressing the
crowd in patriarchal terms, complained of the excessive demands of a
"minority" among them and protested that the Papacy needed no war on
Austria, as the Catholic Powers would protect it. The Radical leaders
saw his weakness, and under their steady pressure he began to make his
famous concessions to democracy. A new ministry, with lay nobles in
most of the positions, was formed in March, the Jesuits were advised
to leave Rome, the ancient walls and restrictions of the Ghetto were
abolished, and a constitution was granted. The members of the Lower
Chamber were to be elected, but the College of Cardinals would have
a veto on the proceedings of both houses, and they could not discuss
ecclesiastical or "mixed" affairs: a very grave restriction in a
theocratic State.
The Radicals now concentrated the people on the cry of war with
Austria, and on that issue the Pope fell. The Papal troops had crossed
the frontier in support of the Sardinians, and, as Pius refused to
declare war, the Austrians treated them as brigands. The meetings
in Rome became more and more violent, the new ministry resigned,
and, as Pius still refused to declare war, a second ministry handed
in its resignation. The summer and autumn of 1848 passed in this
struggle. Pius insisted that war was not consistent with his religious
character, and all Rome united in opposing him. In November, at the
suggestion of Rosmini, the Pope ordered Pellegrino Rossi to form a
new ministry. Rossi, a friend of Napoleon III., was hated by the
Radicals, and his dream of a union of Italian princes under the Pope's
direction conflicted with their plan of a united and free Italy. He was
assassinated on November 15th, and on the following day a vast crowd,
partly armed, marched to the Quirinal and peremptorily laid down their
claims. In the confusion a prelate at one of the windows was shot, and
the Pope, seeing the Roman Guard mingling with the crowd, abjectly
surrendered, and retired to disavow his concession and prepare for
flight. The situation was very grave, and the action of the Pope was
far from heroic. It is not a maxim of the higher morality that you may
evade an angry crowd by making promises that you do not intend to
fulfil, or that you may afterwards discover that such promises were
void.
The sequel is well-known. With the assistance of the foreign
ambassadors the Pope, disguised as a simple priest, fled to Gaeta.
So great was his concern that when the King of Naples, warned of his
flight, came the next day and inquired for the Pope, the officials
at Gaeta were quite unaware that Pius had been amongst them for
twenty-four hours. The cardinals gathered about him, and he appealed
to the Catholic Powers to restore his authority and suppress the
rebels. It is not an entirely accurate analysis to say that the Pope's
"Liberalism" now ended, and he became a reactionary. He had been duped
by the Radicals and had never understood his subjects. A feeble and
carefully controlled lay representation, with neither legislative nor
executive power, was not a part of the Liberal creed. Pius IX. was
never a Liberal. He was from the first unwilling to surrender the
absolute authority of the clergy, to grant freedom of discussion, to
abolish the monstrous growth of clerical officialdom, or to apply a
fitting proportion of the income of the Papal States to their effective
military defence. When he saw that even moderate Liberals demanded
these things, he recognized that he had never been in agreement with
them, and that his own half-measures were of no value. He now further
recognized that the advanced Liberals had captured his people, and
he turned, quite logically, to a policy of oppression. There was no
material change of his political faith.
From Gaeta he appointed a "governing commission" (under a cardinal)
for Rome, and, when the people refused it and set up a Republic, he
placidly entrusted his case to France, Spain, Naples, and Sardinia,
and devoted himself to the preparation of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary. Rosmini was still with him, urging compromise
with the democrats, but the somewhat unscrupulous Cardinal Antonelli,
who now became Secretary of State, astutely destroyed the influence
of the reformer, and confirmed Pius in his attitude of defiance and
repression. Even when the French troops--apparently thinking that they
could seduce the Romans to admit them in peace and could then compel
the Pope to adopt a conciliatory policy--crushed the Roman Republic,
and re-opened the gates to the Pope, Pius did not hasten to return. On
September 4th he left Gaeta for Portici, and it was not until April 12,
1850, that he returned to the Quirinal. The crowd ironically applauded
_Pio Nono Secondo_.
The Pope had replied to the French appeals for a promise of reform that
it was not consistent with his dignity to make promises under apparent
pressure, but he had consented to the creation of new political
institutions. From Portici he promised a new Consiglio di Stato, a
Consiglio dei Ministri, and a Consulta di Stato. These were wholly
under clerical control, and the elections for the District Councils,
the only bodies which were to have free popular representatives, were
soon suppressed. But there is little need to dwell on the second
phase of Papal government under Pius IX. Cardinal Antonelli and the
Jesuits had a paramount influence, and the dream of enlightenment and
self-government was roughly dissipated. Between 1850 and 1855 the
Roman Council alone passed ninety sentences of death, and the prisons
were again thickly populated; while the disorders of finance and
administration, and the appalling illiteracy of the people in an age
of advancing education, were scrupulously maintained. The scandal
which in later years followed the death of Antonelli--the spectacle of
his natural daughter struggling for his vast fortune, though he was a
son of the people--sufficiently disclosed the character of that able
and indelicate minister, while the Jesuits were not unmindful that
the first act of the revolution had been to expel them. They had sent
some of their abler representatives to Gaeta, and from that time they
had a deep influence on the ecclesiastical policy of the Pope, while
Antonelli ruled the Papal States and offered what Lord Clarendon called
a "scandal to Europe." Within little over a year of the Pope's return
there were more than 8000 political prisoners in the Papal jails,
while the ignorant people were oppressed by heavy taxes and an army of
clerical officials.
It is probable that Pius IX. had no clearer perception of the state
of Europe and Italy after the revolution of 1849 than he had had in
the earlier years. He devoted his attention to spiritual matters and
listened, in temporal concerns, to the suave assurances of Antonelli.
This pacified Europe was to be weaned from its bad dreams by a cult of
the Sacred Heart, devotion to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and so
on. His first important act (September 29, 1850) was to re-establish
the hierarchy in England, to the great alarm and anger of the English
Protestants. England had quickly lost its passing sympathy with the
Papacy, and English travellers took home dreadful accounts of the
condition of the Papal States. The Pope does not seem to have been
acquainted either with the disgust of the English at the state of
his dominion or with the fact that the apparent restoration of the
old faith in England meant little more than a vast immigration from
famine-stricken Ireland.
He then applied himself to securing the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary. From Gaeta in 1849, while Mazzini and his
colleagues ruled Rome and Antonelli struggled with the representatives
of the rival Catholic Powers for his restoration, Pius had sent out
some five hundred letters to the bishops of the world, inviting their
opinion on the doctrine. It had long passed the stage of being a
disputed academic thesis, and most of the replies were favourable.
The Jesuits, who had become the special protagonists of the doctrine,
fostered the native piety of the Pope, and on December 8, 1854, it
became a dogma of the Church.[356]
In 1857 made a tour of the Italian provinces. His chief purpose was to
visit the Holy House of Loretto, but the intriguers of the Quirinal
used the opportunity to enhance the Pope's illusion that only a few
negligible fanatics quarrelled with the Papal government. In the
previous year the diplomatists assembled at the Congress of Paris had
censured that government in the most violent terms and demanded reform.
It is hardly likely that their comments were put before the Pope, and
care was taken that his reception in the provinces should flatter
his genial love of popularity. Inconvenient petitioners were refused
access to him, and the clergy and more devout laity greeted him with
applause. Gregorovius, who was then in Rome, notes in his _Diary_ that
Pius returned to the Quirinal full of joy; and a few years later the
inhabitants of these provinces would vote, by an overwhelming majority,
for the abolition of the Papal government.
In the following year the graver development of Italian politics
began. Napoleon III., whose protection of the corrupt Papal system
had infuriated the Liberals, met Cavour secretly at Plombières and
agreed, in case of attack by Austria, to help the King of Sardinia in
his ambition; his reward would be the provinces of Nice and Savoy. The
attempt by Orsini in the following January to assassinate Napoleon did
not help the diplomatists of the Vatican, as Cavour plausibly urged
that the tyranny of the Papal States was responsible for the rebels who
were scattered over Europe, and the struggle for the unity of Italy
went on from year to year. The war between Sardinia and Austria broke
out in the spring of 1859, and Austria was defeated at Magenta and
retired from the Legations. These provinces were resolutely opposed
to a return of clerical government, and Cavour, whose monarch was not
yet prepared for war on the Papacy, sent one representative after
another to persuade the Pope to permit the appointment of lay rulers of
Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and Romagna, under his suzerainty. Antonelli
and Pius refused to make the least concession to the rebels, nor were
the provincials disposed to assent to such a settlement. After some
months of insurgence and bloody repression, a plebiscite was organized
in the Legations (March 11, 1860) and an overwhelming majority voted
for incorporation in the kingdom of Sardinia. In spite of the Pope's
fulminations, Sardinia accepted the vote, and Napoleon received Nice
and Savoy as the price of his acquiescence.
Dismayed and perplexed by the futility of his appeals to the Catholic
Powers and of the spiritual censures at his disposal, the Pope now
invited volunteers, and crowds of undisciplined Irish and French
Catholics came to swell the little Papal army and fall with truculent
piety on the rebellious districts. Garibaldi, on the other hand,
forced the halting designs of Cavour, and, with the cry of "Rome or
Death," flung his irregular troops into the struggle. After a vain
effort at peaceful settlement, Cavour, "in the interest of humanity,"
sent the Sardinian regulars into the Papal States, and the Pope's
forces were destroyed in September at Castel Fidardo (in sight of the
Holy House of Loretto) and Ancona. A plebiscite was organized in Umbria
and the Marches, and there is no serious ground to question that the
figures published express the sentiment of the provinces. In Umbria
99,075 voted for Victor Emmanuel and 380 for the Pope: in the Marches
133,783 voted for Sardinia and 1212 for Rome. A large allowance for
abstentions does not alter the significance of these figures.
Pius still protected, by a conviction that the plebiscite had been
fraudulent, his illusion that only a disreputable minority resented his
beneficent government, and the diplomacy of the Quirinal during the
next ten years was the least enlightened that could have been devised
for securing the slender remaining territory. Many cardinals, and even
Antonelli, came to see that a recognition of Victor Emmanuel as King
of Italy would be the wiser course, but Pius, supported by the Jesuits
(who had founded their _Civiltà Cattolica_, as an organ of Papal
sentiment, in 1850), obstinately refused to temporize. He would have
no negotiation with "the robbers," the excommunicated rebels against
God. He retained--or the French troops still retained for him--only
Rome and the Roman district, and proclaimed that he relied on Catholic
Europe to restore his full rights. Years were spent in vain efforts
to induce him to surrender his temporal power, or to recognize Victor
Emmanuel as his "Vicar" in the kingdom of Italy, and in the meantime
the Italian aspiration for Rome as a capital grew stronger, and the
Pope's obstinate retention of his temporal possessions was easily
represented in an unfavourable light throughout Europe. The cardinals
were not indifferent to the offer of 10,000 scudi a year and seats in
the Italian Senate; and Antonelli was won by a promise of 3,000,000
scudi and rich gifts for his family. There can be little doubt that
the rapid development of anti-clericalism in Italy during the sixties,
and the growing disdain of Rome in England and France, would have been
materially checked if the Pope had been more sagacious. He dreamed that
the Catholic world still shared the crusading fervour of the Middle
Ages, and he was insensible of the selfish motives of France, Naples,
and Austria.
In the midst of the negotiations he committed the grave blunder of
issuing his Encyclical _Quanta Cura_ (December 8, 1864) with the famous
accompanying Syllabus, or list of eighty condemned propositions. There
is no need to analyze here that mediæval indictment of the modern
spirit. Many of the propositions are now commonplaces in the mind of
every educated Catholic, and it is precisely their boast that--to use
some of the condemned words--the Catholic Church may be reconciled
with "progress, liberty, and the new civilization." The pages of the
_Civiltà Cattolica_ sufficiently indicate who were the Pope's unhappy
inspirers. In brief, the document convinced Europe that Rome insisted
on being driven off the path of progress at the point of the bayonet,
and in 1866 the French evacuated Rome, leaving the Pope only 2000
mercenary soldiers, who were to don his uniform. When Garibaldi made
his third impulsive inroad--the second, in 1862, had been arrested by
the Piedmontese--in October, 1867, the French arrested him, but the
war of 1870 gave Italy its opportunity. On September 20, 1870, the
Italian troops entered the breach in the Roman walls, and the long
and romantic story of the temporal power of the Popes was over. By
the Law of Guarantees (May 15, 1871) Italy granted the Pope sovereign
rights, with an annual income of 3,250,000 lire and an extension of
extraterritorial rights to certain Roman palaces. By a final error Pius
refused to acknowledge his position, set up the melodramatic fiction
of "the Prisoner of the Vatican," and, by forbidding Catholics to
take part in the elections of the new kingdom, allowed Italy to drift
farther and farther away from his spiritual control.[357]
Meantime the famous Vatican Council had crowned his more purely
ecclesiastical work. The idea of summoning the whole Christian world
to a second and greater Trent, of healing religious dissensions and
uniting religious forces against modernism, had dazzled the imagination
of the Pope at Gaeta. His advisers encouraged him, and in 1865 he
appointed a commission to discuss the subject. In 1867, when his heart
was uplifted by the great gathering at Rome for the celebration of
the (supposed) eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter, he
announced the council, and in the following year (June 28, 1868) the
Bull _Æterni Patris_ invited all Christians--heretic and schismatic,
as well as orthodox--to the Vatican Council of 1869. It was opened on
December 8th, when 719 members assembled from the Catholic world.
The great issue--the one issue that may be discussed here--was the
question of defining the infallibility of the Pope. Here again the
Jesuits ardently supported the wish of Pius IX., and a struggle had
taken place in the Catholic world for some years. It was known that
such devout and influential priests as Newman in England, Bishop
Dupanloup and Archbishop Darboy in France, and Bishop Ketteler
and Cardinal Schwarzenberg and Döllinger in Germany, opposed the
definition, and the greatest care was taken in selecting members of the
council whose position did not make them entitled to sit in it. When
Newman was proposed from England, Manning (an enthusiastic supporter
of the Papal policy) and the Jesuits defeated the project, as Purcell
has since established in his life of Manning. When, however, the
seven hundred members of the council had assembled, it was realized
that between one hundred and fifty and two hundred voters regarded
a definition of infallibility as inopportune, and the procedure and
control of the council were diplomatically arranged. What Newman called
"the aggressive, insolent faction" of the Infallibilists strained every
nerve to destroy the opposition. They drew up a petition to the Pope,
and Pius was deeply annoyed to find that little over four hundred names
appeared at its foot; and of the signatories the majority were prelates
who lived at Rome in dependence on the Quirinal.
But the familiar story need not be told again in detail. The debates
were prolonged into the broiling summer, in spite of the remonstrances
of the northerners, and the Pope's indignation at the minority was
freely expressed. When, on July 13th, the vote was taken, 451 voted
"Aye," 62 voted a qualified "Aye" (_Placet juxta modum_), and 88 voted
in opposition. Pius wavered, and was disposed to listen to counsels of
compromise, but the majority pressed, and the stormy debate continued.
The Inopportunists were reduced to silence, and at the final vote, on
July 18th, only two voted against the project; though many abstained
from voting. Time has thrown a strange light on that historic struggle.
On the one hand, it has transpired that the definition was drawn up in
such terms that the controversialist could plausibly accommodate it
with the known blunders of earlier Popes, and few followed the spirited
revolt of Döllinger: on the other hand, the Papacy has from that day to
this made no use of its infallibility, in an age of perplexing doubts,
and the ardour of the Infallibilists has cooled.
During the following years the Pope sank once more into depression
as the situation in Italy engendered grave troubles. Bible Societies
and Protestant churches appeared in Italy, even in Rome, and Pius
vainly denounced the monstrosity. Bishops dare not apply to the
Italian government for their appointments, and had to remain without
incomes and palaces. The Jesuits were expelled, and in 1872 a law
of dissolution menaced the 8151 members of religious houses in Rome
and the provinces. Bavaria refused to publish the Bull _Pastor
Æternus_, and its struggle with the Church extended to Prussia and
culminated in the long and bitter Kulturkampf (1872-1887). In France
the anti-clerical Liberals gained from year to year on the Catholic
reaction which had followed the Commune of 1871, and Gambetta's
battle-cry rallied the old forces in alarming numbers. In 1876
(November 6th) Antonelli died, and the grave scandal which disclosed
his irregularities gave joy to the enemies of the Papacy. A last gleam
of consolation came to the Pope in 1877, when the Catholic world
held a magnificent celebration, on June 3d, of his episcopal jubilee.
But the aged Pope saw no retreat of the disastrous forces he had
encountered, and, after the longest and most calamitous rule in Papal
history, he died on February 7, 1878.
Little need be added in regard to his relations with other countries
than France and Italy. The record is one of both successes and failures
which were misunderstood at Rome: to the modern historian it is the
record of the lapse of millions from the Roman allegiance. In the
United States forty-four new dioceses were established between 1847 and
1877, yet the American prelates of the time bitterly lament the loss
of hundreds of thousands of scattered Catholic immigrants. In England
the Romeward movement within the English Church came to an end long
before the death of Pius, and the Church made no numerical progress
in excess of births and immigration. In Holland the hierarchy was
peacefully restored, but in Switzerland there was such tension that the
Internuncio was expelled in 1874. Russia severed relations with Rome in
1860: Württemberg (1861) and Baden (1859) signed Concordats with Rome,
but found it impossible to maintain them: and the new German Empire
was, as I said previously, involved by Bismarck and Falk in a bitter
struggle with Rome.
The relations with Catholic countries were little more satisfactory.
Sardinia had mortally offended the Quirinal long before the struggle
for Italian unity began: by a long series of anti-clerical measures
it abolished tithes, laicised education and marriage, expelled the
religious orders and confiscated their property, gave freedom of
worship to Protestants, and dealt summarily with hostile bishops.
Austria had signed in 1855 (August 18th) a Concordat which was
favourable to the Church, but the young Francis Joseph, whose education
had been carefully directed in the clerical interest, was forced by
the storm of opposition to deviate from it. It was abolished in 1870,
and four years later laws were passed which the Vatican regarded as
anti-clerical. Spain maintained, through its various revolutions, a
consistent docility, and was the only country on which the dying eyes
of the Pope could dwell with satisfaction. It contracted a favourable
Concordat on March 16, 1851, which was supplemented in 1859. Portugal
signed a favourable Concordat in 1857. In Latin America on the other
hand, the Church suffered grave reverses. Costa Rica and Guatemala
(1852), Haiti (1860), Nicaragua (1861), and San Salvador, Honduras,
Venezuela, and Ecuador (1862) signed satisfactory Concordats, but
Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina entered upon
anti-clerical ways, and the spirit of revolt against the clergy was
spreading throughout Southern and Central America. Not since the days
of Leo X. had the Church suffered such grave and widespread defection.
In estimating the character of Pius IX. and his relation to these
losses the modern historian has little difficulty. The exaggerations
of both his critics and his panegyrists are patent. He was a
sincerely religious and zealous man, but the hope once entertained
of his canonization (or, at least, beatification) was as absurd
as the malevolent attacks on his character from the other side.
His intellectual quality must be similarly judged: he had little
penetration, no breadth of mind, no power to read aright the symptoms
of his age. In considering the fatal obstinacy with which he refused
all accommodation in regard to his temporal power, we must carefully
bear in mind his religious views, and not merely dwell on his slight
capacity for diplomacy or statesmanship. So grave a surrender could
not be commended by a few years of revolution except to a man of
greater insight and foresight than Pius IX. In sum, he would in years
of peace and piety have made an excellent and undistinguished steward
of the Papal heritage, but he was very far from having the greatness
of mind which the circumstances of the Church required, and the vast
organization over which he so long presided emerged still further
weakened from its second historical crisis. It had fought Protestantism
and lost: it had fought Democracy and Progress and lost. It remained
for a wiser Pope to initiate the policy of accommodation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 352: During his twenty-months' Pontificate, in 1829, Catholic
Emancipation was carried in England. But the Quirinal's share was
confined to rejoicing. Consalvi, however, had "worked incessantly" for
it, and had been much aided by the Duchess of Devonshire. See his words
in Artaud's _Histoire du Pape Léon XII._, i., 171.]
[Footnote 353: The contradiction is characteristic of the literature
on Pius IX. Most of it was written before or just after his death and
is fiercely partisan. Petruccelli della Gattina's _Pie IX._ (1866)
is the chief and least reliable of the hostile biographies: T.A.
Trollope's _Story of the Life of Pius IX._ (2 vols., 1877) is one of
the most temperate of the anti-Papal works and still has some use: F.
Hitchman's _Pius the Ninth_ (1878) is slighter but equally moderate.
Such studies as those of Shea, Maguire, Dawson, Wappmannsperger (2
vols.), Stepischnegg (2 vols.), Pougeois (6 vols.), and Freiherr von
Helfert are equally prejudiced on the Catholic side. The best study
of the character and work of Pius is Dr. F. Nielsen's _Papacy in
the Nineteenth Century_ (2 vols., 1906), a temperate (perhaps not
sufficiently critical) and scholarly work. Bishop G.S. Pelczar's
_Pio IX. e il suo Pontificato_ (3 vols., Italian translation 1909)
is learned but fulsome and undiscriminating. Father R. Ballerini's
incomplete study (published as _Les premières pages du Pontificat
du Pape Pie IX._, 1909) has no distinction. For special aspects see
D. Silvagni, _La Corte e la Società Romana_ (1885), and Count von
Hoensbroech's _Rom und das Zentrum_ (1910), and works quoted hereafter.]
[Footnote 354: Ballerini and Helfert deny this but Pelczar and Nielsen
make it clear. The graver statement of the hostile biographers--that he
spent his youth in dissipation--rests on no respectable evidence.]
[Footnote 355: _Lettres Apostoliques de Pie IX._, p. 177.]
[Footnote 356: The original documents relating to the Pope's actions
will be found in the _Acta Pii Noni_, _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, and
_Discorsi del Summo Pontefice Pio IX_. (1872-8).]
[Footnote 357: In the plebiscite which was taken in the city of Rome
40,785 voted for incorporation and forty-six for the Pope: in the
city and province 133,681 voted for incorporation and 1507 against.
Naturally, the minority is not fully represented, as many refused to
vote.]