possessed by those Catholics who attempt to write controversy when
their first years have been passed in the camp of the Anglican
“Establishment,” and so they have learned all its secrets. Dr. Marshall
was “bred and born” an Anglican. He was the descendant of a long line
of Protestants. He was educated at two English public schools, and
subsequently spent three years at Cambridge; emerging from the
university to “take orders” in the Establishment, and soon becoming
incumbent of a parish. Finding his lot cast in a pleasant rural
district, where he had but very few clerical duties, he devoted his
spare time to the study of the Fathers; and, while reading, he made
copious notes. The present writer, who had the happiness to be his
pupil, remembers well with what avidity he used to devour the big tomes
which he borrowed from the not distant cathedral library. Finding, as
he read on, that the Fathers were “strangely Roman Catholic,” that
“they most distinctly were none of them Protestants,” he may be said to
have read and to have written himself into the faith, which he embraced
the moment that he realized it. And no sooner was he received into the
Catholic Church than he devoted all his talents to the proving to
English Protestants the truths of which he himself was convinced.
_Christian Missions_ was his first great work, though it had been
preceded by more than one brilliant pamphlet; and _My Clerical Friends_
and _Protestant Journalism_ followed in much later years. Besides these
works there was the unceasing contribution to more than one of the
English Catholic papers, to several magazines or periodicals, and also
to a few secular weeklies. It may be remembered with what raciness, and
at the same time with what depth, he used to punish “our Protestant
contemporaries” for their inventions and their puerilities about the
church. His series on the “Russian Church” was especially brilliant,
and produced much sensation among High-Churchmen. But his many other
series, such as “Fictitious Appeals to a General Council,” “Sketches of
the Reformation,” “Two Churches,” “Modern Science,” were all deserving
of most careful digestion, and produced their due effect upon
Anglicans. It was when probing the Ritualists, week after week, with
the most terrible weapons of Catholic logic, that Dr. Marshall was
seized with his last illness, and he laid aside for ever that pen
which, for thirty years, had been the dread of many insincere
Protestants.
If we examine critically into the merits and demerits of this
accomplished theologian and controversialist, we shall find three
points in particular which mark him off from other men, and which
render him, as we have said, unique. First, he had the capacity of
uniting extensive learning with a lightness, even a gayety, of style;
weaving scores of quotations into a few pages of easy writing, without
ever for a moment becoming dull. He played and he toyed with any number
of quotations, as though he had them all at his fingers’ ends; and he
“brought them in” in such a way that, instead of cumbering his pages,
they made them more diverting and light. Let it be asked whether this
one particular art is not worthy of universal imitation? Nine out of
every ten of even good polemical writers “drag their quotations in by
the head and shoulders,” or hurl them down upon the pages as though
they had been carted with pitch-forks and had to be uncarted in similar
fashion. A lightness and a tripping ease in the introduction of
quotations is one of the most captivating of gifts; for it takes the
weight off the learning, the drag off the style, the “bore” off the
effort of controversy. It would be very easy to name half a score of
good books, vastly learned and admirably fitted for the shelves, which
are simply rendered unreadable by that after-dinner sleepiness which
comes from too heavy a table. Now, is it not desirable that even wise
men should make a study of this art of trippingly weaving
quotations?—for, as a matter of fact, a quotation badly used might just
as well not be used at all. Dr. Marshall made quotations a grace of his
style, instead of an interruption of his text; and so neatly did he
“Tunbridge-ware” them into his pages that they fitted without joint and
without fissure. This is, we think, a great merit; and if Dr. Marshall
had done nothing more than suggest to learned writers that it is
_possible_ to quote immensely yet trippingly, he would have rendered a
service to all polemics. He has been, perhaps, “an original” in this
respect; or, if not an original, he has at least been unique in the
excellence of the practice of the art.
The second feature in his writings which strikes us as admirable is an
individuality in the neatness of expression. Short sentences, quite as
pithy as short, with a calm grace of defiant imperturbability, make his
writings equally caustic and gay. Scholarly those writings certainly
are; they have all the honeyed temperance of art and much of the
perfection of habit. No one could write as Dr. Marshall could write
unless he had made writing his study. No doubt style “is born, not
made”; but most styles are better for education, and we could name but
few writers of whom we could say that their style was apparently _more_
natural than it was acquired. Of Dr. Newman it might be said “the style
is the man,” for there is a personal repose in his writings; and we
could imagine Dr. Newman, even if he had not been a great student,
still writing most beautifully and serenely. “The perfection of Dr.
Newman’s style is that he has no style” was a very good remark of a
learned critic; but then we cannot talk of such very exceptional men as
giving a rule for lesser writers. Now, Dr. Marshall had a very marked
style. It was ease, with equal art and equal care. The care was as
striking as the ease. This, it will be said, proves at once that Dr.
Marshall was not what is called “a genius.” Well, no one ever pretended
that he was. A man may be both admirable and unique without having one
spark of real genius; and a man may have graces of style, with highly
cultured arts of fascination, and yet be no more than just sufficiently
original to attract a marked popular attention. Few men attain even to
this standard; and certainly, as writers of controversy, very few men
even approach to it. What we assert is that to be “controversially
unique” a writer must be exceptional in certain ways, and especially in
the two ways we have particularized—namely, light quoting and light
writing. We return, then, to the opinion that for neatness of
phraseology; for the “art,” if you will, of suave cuttingness; for the
clever combination of the caustic with the calm, of the profoundly
indisputable with the playful, Dr. Marshall was really remarkable. He
could say a thing quietly which, if robbed of its quietness, would have
been, perhaps, a veritable insult. Perhaps it was the more pungent
because quiet; and here we touch the third and last of the literary
characteristics which we propose to notice briefly at this time.
“Milk and gall are not a pleasing combination,” observed a
gentleman—who was an Anglican at the time—after reading _Our Protestant
Contemporaries_. He added that he did not care for milk—he was too old
to find it sufficiently stimulating—but he objected to gall, at least
when it was directed against some favorite convictions of his own mind.
Most persons will agree with this old gentleman, who, however, became a
convert to the church. Yet it may be said that there are two apologies
which may be offered for this defect—if defect, indeed, it be—of “milk
and gall.” First, let it be remembered that the keen perception of the
ridiculous, which is generally a characteristic of superior minds,
finds its richest exploration in what, from a certain point of view,
may be regarded as those immense fields of folly which are popularly
denominated English Protestantism. To the humorous mind there is
nothing so humorous as the mental gymnastics of Protestants. To
suppress this humorous sense becomes impossible to any writer who does
not look on gloom as a duty. Dr. Newman only suppresses it in this way:
that his huge mind works above the mere playground, or avoids it as too
provocative of games. He descended into it once in _Loss and Gain_, and
he became fairly romping towards the close; now and then, too, we can
detect the laughing spirit which only veils itself, for decorum, in his
grave writings; but he feels probably that _his_ weapons are too sharp
to need satire, for he is not a controversialist, but a reasoner. When
he does, for the moment, write satire, he shows what he could do, if he
would; but we are glad that the normal attitude of his mind is rather
didactic than playful.
Of lesser writers we cannot expect that their discrimination should be
hampered by a grave sense of doctorship; it is not necessary that they
should sit in professors’ chairs; they are writing for the million,
whose perceptions of what is true must be aided by their perceptions of
what is false. Moreover, the English mind, not being normally
humorous—which is a great national loss in all respects—requires to be
jolted and jerked into an attitude which would be most useful for the
intelligence of truth. If we could only get Englishmen to see the
comedy of heresy, they might soon want the gravity of truth; but they
are constitutionally dull in apprehending those fallacies which
southern peoples can see through in a moment. Now, a writer who can
teach Englishmen to laugh at their Protestantism, to appreciate its
anomalies and its shams, to see the difference between a parson and a
priest, between ten thousand opinions and one faith, and generally to
get rid of morbid sentiment and prejudice, and to look at things in a
thoroughly healthful way, has “taken a line” which is as salutary for
feeble souls as is bright mountain air for feeble bodies. Dr. Marshall
used to laugh _with_ Protestants at their shams much more than he used
to laugh _at_ the victims. But it is true that there was sometimes an
acerbity in his remarks which gave offence to those who loved not the
humor. Could this be helped? Be it remembered that acerbity, in the
apparent mood of expression, is often more intellectual than it is
moral; it is simply an attitude of conviction, or it is the natural
vexation of a profound religious faith which cannot calm itself when
protesting against folly. Nor do we think it at all probable that, if
there were _no_ gall in controversy, more converts would be made to the
truth. And, after all, what do we mean by the word “gall”? Is humor
gall? Is satire gall? Is even acerbity, when it is obviously but
vexation, a fatal undoing of good? Much will depend on the mood of the
reader. Some readers like spice and cayenne even in their “religious”
opponents. Most readers know that mere literary temperament cannot make
a syllogism out of a fallacy. All readers distinguish between caprices
of temperament and the attitude of the reason and the soul. It is only
on account of the mental babes among Protestants that it is to be
regretted that all Catholics are human. For the ordinary, strong reader
a good dash of human nature is much better than is too much of “the
angel.” Take mankind for what they are, and we like the honesty of the
irritation which sometimes puts the gall into the milk. It might be
desirable that our first parent had not fallen. If he had not fallen we
should not have had controversy. But since he has fallen, and since we
must have controversy, we must also of necessity have gall.[183]
We have only to express regret that so useful a writer as Dr.
Marshall has passed away out of the ranks of controversialists. As a
speaker, too, Dr. Marshall was most delightful; indeed, he spoke
quite as well as he wrote. At the time when he was in the United
States it was thought by some persons that Dr. Marshall was quite the
model of a speaker; for he was at once gentle and commanding, refined
yet highly pungent, scholarly yet most easy to be understood. These
praises were allowed by every one to be his due. We have, then, to
lament the loss of a really richly-gifted Catholic, who, though an
Englishman, was cosmopolitan. And when we remember that such men as
Dr. Marshall (with Dr. Faber, or Mr. Allies, or Canon Oakeley) were
born Protestant—intensely Protestant—Englishmen, we can appreciate
what was involved in their conversion to the church, both in the
intellectual and in the purely social sense. Conversion means more
than a change of conviction to such Englishmen as have been born of
Protestant parents; it means the revolution of the whole life of the
_man_, as well as of the whole life of the Christian. Such men seem
to be born over again. When they have passed away we can say for
them, with as much hope as charity, _Requiescant in pace_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAPAL ELECTIONS.
II.
In the twelfth century the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church were in
full and undisputed possession of the right of electing the Sovereign
Pontiff; and although the exercise of this right is commonly attributed
to the Sacred College, only from the passing of the famous decree of
the Third Council of Lateran, in 1179, beginning _Licet de vitanda
discordia in electione Romani Pontificis_ (cap. vi. _de Elect._), it
rather supposes the cardinals to be already the sole papal electors,
and merely determines what majority of their votes shall constitute a
valid election.[184] Factious and semi-ignorant persons have often
protested against this exclusive right of the cardinals to elect the
visible head of the church. Of such a kind was Wycliffe, whose
diatribe, _Electio Papæ a cardinalibus per diabolum est introducta_,
was condemned by the Council of Constance (artic. xl. sess. viii.); and
Eybel, whose errors were exposed by Mamacchi, under his poetical name
of Pisti Alethini, as a member of the Academy of the Arcadians.[185]
In early times, when the pope died at Rome the cardinals met to elect a
successor in the Lateran or the Vatican basilica, or in the cathedral
of any other city in which they might have determined to hold the
election. Conclave is the term used exclusively for many centuries for
the place in which the cardinals meet in private to elect a pope; but
it was used in the early middle ages of any room securely shut,[186]
just as, among the ancient Romans, _conclave_ was a covered and
enclosed apartment or hall that could be fastened with a lock and
key—_cum clavi_. Long before the pontificate of Gregory X. the
cardinals who assembled for a papal election met in some part of a
large and noble building—generally the sacristy of a cathedral—where
they transacted the business of the day, and returned after each
session to their private abodes. The gloss _Nullatenus_, on the decree
of Alexander III., says that if two-thirds—the majority required—of the
cardinals will not agree upon a candidate, they should be closely
confined until they do—_includantur in aliquo loco de quo exire non
valeant donec consenserint_—and mentions several popes elected after
the cardinals had been subjected to a reasonable duress. This is
precisely the conclave. It was not, however, until the year 1274 that
the mode of procedure in a papal election was settled—after the
incursions of the barbarians and the many vicissitudes to which the
Holy See then became subject had deranged the earlier and apostolic
manner—and the rules and regulations of the modern conclave were
published. After the death of Clement IV. in Viterbo, on Nov. 22, 1268,
the eighteen cardinals composing the Sacred College met there to elect
his successor; but not agreeing after a year and a half, although the
kings of France and Sicily, St. Bonaventure, General of the
Franciscans, and many influential, learned, and holy men came in person
to urge them to compose their differences and relieve the church of her
long widowhood, they were all got together one day, by some artifice,
in the episcopal palace, which was instantly closed upon them and
surrounded with guards. Even this imprisonment did not change their
temper, and after some further delay the captain of the town, Raniero
Gatti, took the bold resolution of removing the entire roof and
otherwise dilapidating the edifice, in hopes that the discomforts of
the season, added to their confinement, might break the stubbornness of
the venerable fathers.[187] This move succeeded, and a compromise was
effected among the discordant cardinals on the 7th of September, 1271,
in virtue of which the papal legate in Syria, Theobald Visconti,
Archdeacon of Liege, was elected. This was not the first time that
extraordinary and almost violent measures had been taken to bring the
cardinals to make a prompt election. At Viterbo the captain of the town
coerced their liberty; at Naples the commandant of the castle bridled
their appetite when, after the death of Innocent IV., in 1254, he
diminished day by day the quantity of food sent in to them—_cibo per
singulos dies imminuto_—until they agreed upon a worthy subject.[188]
Gregory X., who was so singularly elected at Viterbo while far away in
Palestine, called a general council, which met at Lyons on May 2, 1274.
Five hundred bishops, over a thousand mitred abbots and other
privileged ecclesiastics, the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch,
the grand master of the famous Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the
kings of France and Aragon, besides ambassadors from Germany, England,
Sicily, and other important nations, took part in it. The pope was
resolved to establish the manner of electing the Roman Pontiff on a
better principle, and now drew up a constitution which, in spite of
considerable opposition from the cardinals, was read between the fourth
and fifth sessions, and finally received the approbation of the
fathers. This is substantially the code that still regulates the
conclave. The original constitution, which had been suspended by some
popes and not observed by the cardinals in several elections, was
introduced into the body of canon law[189] by Boniface VIII., in order
to impress it, if possible, with a more solemn and perpetual obligation
of observance; and when some of the cardinals, incensed at the transfer
of the see to Avignon, maintained that, despite all this, the Sacred
College could modify or abolish it at discretion, it was confirmed by
the General Council of Vienne and their factious spirit reproved. This
conciliar decree has also a place in the canon law, where it is found
among the Clementines (_Ne Romani, 2 de elect._)[190]
“Where the danger is known to be greatest,” says the preamble to Pope
Gregory’s constitution, “there should most care be taken. How many
risks and what great inconvenience a long vacancy of the Holy See
entails is shown by looking back upon the disorders of other days. It
is, therefore, wise that, while diligently engaged in reforming minor
evils, we should not neglect to provide against calamity. Now,
therefore, whatever our predecessors, and particularly Alexander III.,
of happy memory, have done to remove a spirit of discord in the
election of the Roman Pontiff, the same we desire to remain in full
force; for we do not intend to annul their decrees, but only by our
present constitution to supply what experience points out to be
wanting.”
The whole decree may be divided into fifteen paragraphs, which are
called the Fifteen Laws of the Conclave. They are summarized as
follows:
On the death of the pope the cardinals, having celebrated for nine days
his obsequies in the city where he died, shall enter the conclave on
the tenth day, whether absent colleagues have arrived or not, and be
accompanied by a single attendant, whether lay or clerical, or at most,
in case of evident necessity, by two attendants. The conclave shall be
held in the palace last occupied by the pope, and there the cardinals
must live in common, occupying a single spacious hall not cut off by
curtains or partitions, and so carefully closed on every side that no
one can secretly pass in or out. One room, however, may be cut off for
private purposes—_reservato libero ad secretam cameram aditu_—but no
access shall be allowed to any cardinal, nor private conversation with
nor visits to him, except from those who, by consent of all the other
cardinals, may be summoned to consult on matters germane to the affair
in hand; nor shall any one send letters or messages to their lordships
or to any of their familiars, on pain of excommunication. A window or
other opening shall be left in the hall of conclave, through which the
meals are introduced, but it must be of such a size and shape that no
human being can penetrate thereby. If, after three days from the
opening of the conclave, no election has been made, the prelates
appointed to attend to this shall allow each cardinal no more than one
dish at dinner and supper during the next five days, after which only
bread and water until they come to a conclusion. The cardinals shall
take nothing from the papal treasury during the vacancy of the see; but
all its revenues are to be carefully collected and watched over by the
proper officers. They shall treat of nothing but the election, unless
some imminent danger to the temporalities of the Holy See may demand
their attention; and, laying aside all private interests, let them
devote themselves entirely to the common weal; but if any cardinal
shall presume to attempt by bribes, compacts, or other arts to entice
his brethren to his own side, he shall suffer excommunication, nor
shall any manner of agreement, even if sworn to, be valid. If a
cardinal draw off from the conclave, or should he retire from motives
of health, the election must still proceed; yet, if he recover, he
shall be readmitted. Cardinals arriving late or at any stage of the
proceedings, as also those who may be under censures, shall be
received. No one can give his vote outside of the conclave. Two-thirds
of the votes of all the electors present[191] are requisite to elect;
and any one not radically disqualified[192] is eligible to the Papacy.
The feudal superiors of the territory and the municipal officers of the
city in which the conclave is held are charged to observe these
regulations, and shall swear in presence of the clergy and people to do
so. If they fail to do their duty they shall be excommunicated, be
declared infamous and lose their fiefs, and the city itself shall be
interdicted and deprived of its episcopal dignity. Solemn funeral
services are to be held in every important place throughout the
Catholic world as soon as news arrives of the pope’s death; prayers are
to be recited daily and fast days appointed for the speedy and
concordant election of an excellent pontiff.