If that of which every German dreams, and so few are ready to take any
practical steps to attain,--German unity,--ever comes, it must ride
roughshod over the Romish clergy, for one thing. Of course there are
other obstacles. So long as beer is cheap, and songs of the Fatherland
are set to lilting strains, will these excellent people “Ho, ho, my
brothers,” and “Hi, hi, my brothers,” and wait for fate, in the shape
of some compelling Bismarck, to drive them into anything more than the
brotherhood of brown mugs of beer and Wagner's mysterious music of the
future. I am not sure, by the way, that the music of Richard Wagner
is not highly typical of the present (1868) state of German unity,--an
undefined longing which nobody exactly understands. There are those
who think they can discern in his music the same revolutionary tendency
which placed the composer on the right side of a Dresden barricade in
1848, and who go so far as to believe that the liberalism of the young
King of Bavaria is not a little due to his passion for the disorganizing
operas of this transcendental writer. Indeed, I am not sure that any
other people than Germans would not find in the repetition of the five
hours of the “Meister-Singer von Nurnberg,” which was given the other
night at the Hof Theater, sufficient reason for revolution.
Well, what I set out to say was, that most Germans would like unity if
they could be the unit. Each State would like to be the center of the
consolidated system, and thus it happens that every practical step
toward political unity meets a host of opponents at once. When Austria,
or rather the house of Hapsburg, had a preponderance in the Diet, and it
seemed, under it, possible to revive the past reality, or to realize the
dream of a great German empire, it was clearly seen that Austria was a
tyranny that would crush out all liberties. And now that Prussia, with
its vital Protestantism and free schools, proposes to undertake the
reconstruction of Germany, and make a nation where there are now only
the fragmentary possibilities of a great power, why, Prussia is a
military despot, whose subjects must be either soldiers or slaves, and
the young emperor at Vienna is indeed another Joseph, filled with the
most tender solicitude for the welfare of the chosen German people.
But to return to the clergy. While the monasteries and nunneries are
going to the ground in superstition-saturated Spain; while eager workmen
are demolishing the last hiding-places of monkery, and letting the
daylight into places that have well kept the frightful secrets of three
hundred years, and turning the ancient cloister demesne into public
parks and pleasure-grounds,--the Romish priesthood here, in free
Bavaria, seem to imagine that they cannot only resist the progress of
events, but that they can actually bring back the owlish twilight of
the Middle Ages. The reactionary party in Bavaria has, in some of the
provinces, a strong majority; and its supporters and newspapers are
belligerent and aggressive. A few words about the politics of Bavaria
will give you a clew to the general politics of the country.
The reader of the little newspapers here in Munich finds evidence of at
least three parties. There is first the radical. Its members sincerely
desire a united Germany, and, of course, are friendly to Prussia, hate
Napoleon, have little confidence in the Hapsburgs, like to read of
uneasiness in Paris, and hail any movement that overthrows tradition and
the prescriptive right of classes. If its members are Catholic, they are
very mildly so; if they are Protestant, they are not enough so to harm
them; and, in short, if their religious opinions are not as deep as a
well, they are certainly broader than a church door. They are the party
of free inquiry, liberal thought, and progress. Akin to them are what
may be called the conservative liberals, the majority of whom may be
Catholics in profession, but are most likely rationalists in fact; and
with this party the king naturally affiliates, taking his music devoutly
every Sunday morning in the Allerheiligenkirche, attached to the
Residenz, and getting his religion out of Wagner; for, progressive as
the youthful king is, he cannot be supposed to long for a unity which
would wheel his throne off into the limbo of phantoms. The conservative
liberals, therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms,
look with little delight on the increasing strength of Prussia, and
sympathize with the present liberal tendencies of Austria. Opposed to
both these parties is the ultramontane, the head of which is the
Romish hierarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of ignorant
peasantry, over whom the influence of the clergy seems little shaken
by any of the modern moral earthquakes. Indeed I doubt if any new ideas
will ever penetrate a class of peasants who still adhere to styles of
costume that must have been ancient when the Turks threatened Vienna,
which would be highly picturesque if they were not painfully ugly, and
arrayed in which their possessors walk about in the broad light of these
latter days, with entire unconsciousness that they do not belong to this
age, and that their appearance is as much of an anachronism as if the
figures should step out of Holbein's pictures (which Heaven forbid), or
the stone images come down from the portals of the cathedral and walk
about. The ultramontane party, which, so far as it is an intelligent
force in modern affairs, is the Romish clergy, and nothing more, hears
with aversion any hint of German unity, listens with dread to the
needle-guns at Sadowa, hates Prussia in proportion as it fears her,
and just now does not draw either with the Austrian Government, whose
liberal tendencies are exceedingly distasteful. It relies upon that
great unenlightened mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and
in Austria proper, one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism. The
practical fight now in Bavaria is on the question of education; the
priests being resolved to keep the schools of the people in their own
control, and the liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities
and admit laymen to a share in the management of institutions of
learning. Now the school visitors must all be ecclesiastics; and
although their power is not to be dreaded in the cities, where teachers,
like other citizens, are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power
in the rural districts. The election of the Lower House of the Bavarian
parliament, whose members have a six years' tenure of office, which
takes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leading
issue will be that of education. The little local newspapers--and every
city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the absence of
news and an abundance of advertisements--have broken out into a style
of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makes me, an American,
feel quite at home. Both parties are very much in earnest, and both
speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a very hopeful sign.
The pretensions of the ultramontane clergy are, indeed, remarkable
enough to attract the attention of others besides the liberals
of Bavaria. They assume an influence and an importance in the
ecclesiastical profession, or rather an authority, equal to that ever
asserted by the Church in its strongest days. Perhaps you will get an
idea of the height of this pretension if I translate a passage which the
liberal journal here takes from a sermon preached in the parish church
of Ebersburg, in Ober-Dorfen, by a priest, Herr Kooperator Anton
Hiring, no longer ago than August 16, 1868. It reads: “With the power
of absolution, Christ has endued the priesthood with a might which is
terrible to hell, and against which Lucifer himself cannot stand,-a
might which, indeed, reaches over into eternity, where all other earthly
powers find their limit and end,--a might, I say, which is able to break
the fetters which, for an eternity, were forged through the commission
of heavy sin. Yes, further, this Power of the forgiveness of sins makes
the priest, in a certain measure, a second God; for God alone naturally
can forgive sins. And yet this is not the highest reach of the priestly
might: his power reaches still higher; he compels God himself to serve
him. How so? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to bring
there the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, lifts himself up
Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, upon his
throne, in order to be ready for the beck of his priests upon earth.
And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, than there
Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, come down from
heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, and changes, upon the
words of the priest, the bread and wine into his holy flesh and blood,
and permits himself then to be taken up and to lie in the hands of the
priest, even though the priest is the most sinful and the most unworthy.
Further, his power surpasses that of the highest archangels, and of the
Queen of Heaven. Right did the holy Franciscus say, 'If I should meet a
priest and an angel at the same time, I should salute the priest first,
and then the angel; because the priest is possessed of far higher might
and holiness than the angel.'”
The radical journal calls this “ultramontane blasphemy,” and, the day
after quoting it, adds a charge that must be still more annoying to
the Herr Kooperator Hiring than that of blasphemy: it accuses him of
plagiarism; and, to substantiate the charge, quotes almost the very same
language from a sermon preached in 1785--In this it is boldly claimed
that “in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, there is nothing mightier
than a priest, except God; and, to be exact, God himself must obey
the priest in the mass.” And then, in words which I do not care to
translate, the priest is made greater than the Virgin Mary, because
Christ was only born of the Virgin once, while the priest “with five
words, as often and wherever he will,” can “bring forth the Saviour of
the world.” So to-day keeps firm hold of the traditions of a hundred
years ago, and ultramontanism wisely defends the last citadel where the
Middle Age superstition makes a stand,--the popular veneration for the
clergy.
And the clergy take good care to keep up the pomps and shows even
here in skeptical Munich. It was my inestimable privilege the other
morning--it was All-Saints' Day--to see the archbishop in the old
Frauenkirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered banners that
were captured from the Turks three centuries ago,--to see him seated
in the choir, overlooked by saints and apostles carved in wood by some
forgotten artist of the fifteenth century. I supposed he was at least an
archbishop, from the retinue of priests who attended and served him, and
also from his great size. When he sat down, it required a dignitary of
considerable rank to put on his hat; and when he arose to speak a few
precious words, the effect was visible a good many yards from where
he stood. At the close of the service he went in great state down the
center aisle, preceded by the gorgeous beadle--a character that is
always awe-inspiring to me in these churches, being a cross between
a magnificent drum-major and a verger and two persons in livery, and
followed by a train of splendidly attired priests, six of whom bore
up his long train of purple silk. The whole cortege was resplendent in
embroidery and ermine; and as the great man swept out of my sight, and
was carried on a priestly wave into his shining carriage, and the noble
footman jumped up behind, and he rolled away to his dinner, I stood
leaning against a pillar, and reflected if it could be possible that
that religion could be anything but genuine which had so much genuine
ermine. And the organ-notes, rolling down the arches, seemed to me to
have a very ultramontane sound.