CHAPTER XIV

The Eve of the Council--Rejoicings--Rome the Universal

Fatherland--Veuillot's Joy--Processions--Symbolic Sunbeams--the

Joybells--The Vision of St. Ambrose--The Disfranchisement of Kings.

The _Civiltá_ described how, in beholding prelates daily arrive, the

joy of Rome rose higher and higher; joy resembling but surpassing that

of the great events of 1854, 1862, and 1867. Not only prelates came,

but champions of the sword, the pen, and the tribune, ready to face the

world in the cause of the Pope-King. Count Henri de Riancey begs pardon

of Rome for indulging, at such a moment, in a word for France. Yet his

heart does not turn to France, except on account of what she has done

for the Pope.

Let Rome, the fatherland of all fatherlands, permit to us this

flash of patriotism. It is France which has the honour of guarding

the last fragments of the pontifical dominions ... She has loved

righteousness; and that is the reason why she is anointed with the

oil of gladness above her fellows (_Frond_, vol. i. p. xix.).

Poor France! that love of righteousness, which had made her slay so

many Italians to keep up the temporal power, was not to avert from her,

"in the year of the Council," a baptism other than that of the oil of

gladness.

Ordinary Christians would not catch the reference in the above

quotation. To them, "loving righteousness," especially when connected

with the person of the Messiah, is not identified with, but in holy

opposition to, the idea of setting Christian ministers in rank before

secular princes, and in power above kings. But "He loved righteousness

and hated iniquity" stands upon the tomb of Hildebrand, who sought to

establish the "dominion of Christ," the "kingdom of God," the "reign

of righteousness," or as many similar expressions as you please, by

subjecting all the kings of the earth to the Priest of God. Pius IX is

frequently spoken of as the founder of the lordship of the Pope over

the whole earth in the future, as Hildebrand was the founder of his

lordship over it in the past. Therefore the sweetness felt by a good

Ultramontane in connecting the two together.

I am bewildered with joy, cried M. Veuillot. I try to depict that

joy, to swim in life. There is an unspeakable gladness in men's

souls. People feel an aurora. I picked up a number of journals,

and was going to answer a lively article against myself, in the

_Gazette de France_; but the author has no idea how all his

eloquence falls short of a man who, in one and the same day, has

seen Pius IX, Rome, and the Sun.

Pius IX had not admitted M. Veuillot to kiss the sacred foot for merely

literary service. The devoted advocate laid at the feet he kissed

three thousand pounds in money, collected, through his paper, for the

expenses of the Council. M. Veuillot scolds M. Taine grandly, for

having made some comparison between Rome and Paris--Paris, stretching

from the field of Pantin on one side, to the Follies Belleville on the

other; and Rome, which has no limits but those of the world, and does

not accept those--Paris, which gives birth to M. Rochefort; and Rome,

which directs the nineteenth OEcumenical Council! Had M. Taine seen

Rome yesterday, full of processions of all colours, and bishops of all

countries, he would have said it was more lovely than Paris.

The processions of all colours were no fancy stroke. Nine days of

solemn service in honour of the approaching anniversary of the

Immaculate, and at the same time of the Council, gave an opportunity of

showing to strangers all the confraternities of Rome. They marched to

the various basilicas, especially to St. Peter's; the ostensible object

being to worship the sacred relics which, with uncommon magnificence,

were exposed to their veneration.

The clergy of all lands saw and were seen with wonder and delight.

"When therefore," said Eusebius, speaking of Nicaea, "the Emperor's

order was brought into all the provinces, persons set out as if for

some goal, and ran with all imaginable alacrity, for the hope of good

things drew them, and the participation of peace, and lastly a new

miracle, to wit, the sight of so great an Emperor."[192] Dr. Friedrich

does not express himself so prettily as Eusebius on the appearance of

the assembled clergy. The Asiatic cries, "And one city received them

all, as it were some vast garland of priests, made up of a variety of

beautiful flowers." The Bavarian says, "The clergy of every country

have sent a strong contingent, from the proud monsignore to the

dirtiest village priest."

The importance of sunny weather for public events, great everywhere,

is perhaps exaggerated in Rome. Pius IX is believed to be peculiarly

susceptible to sunbeams. Three of his most memorable days are, by his

adorers, connected with a sunburst which shone for him especially.

Professor Massi relates how, on the day of his taking "possession," the

_apostolic cortège_ followed the "brilliant carriage" of the new Pope

from the Via Sacra up the Coelian Hill, the Cardinals being mounted on

"steeds richly adorned"--doubtless worthy to be compared with those

Sicilian steeds which bore Gregory the Great, of whose stud Gregorovius

soberly says, "We scarcely doubt but that Pindar would have thought the

apostolic horses worthy of an ode."[193] The day was overcast--which

omen had a damping effect--but just as the new Pope approached the

Lateran, a glorious rainbow spanned the east, gladdening all with the

certainty of a reign of peace. In like manner, Professor Massi tells

of that proud April evening when the Pontiff, after a long exile, once

more looked down upon the earth from his own Olympus. The clerical

writers do not exactly call it heaven, but content themselves with

speaking of the figure of the Pope so exalted, as "standing between

earth and heaven," or as a spectacle which reminds us of the Divinity

(_Frond_, p. 16). The secularizing of sacred terms, till we come down

to "apostolic cortèges" and "apostolic horses," and the materializing

of spiritual terms, till "the kingdom of Christ," sometimes means the

temporal power, is a process which must go on until the heaven of the

materialized imagination will be levelled to the height of the noblest

dome, and to the beauties of the best decorator. The peerless piazza of

St. Peter's was, on the day in question, filled with French uniforms.

At the foot of the great staircase rose a platform covered with purple,

and decked with flying banners. The heavens, all day covered with

clouds, suddenly turned azure, and the setting sun poured his beams on

the dome of Michael Angelo, on the cross of the Obelisk, and on the

statues which adorn the Colonnade, just as Pius IX "raised his paternal

hand to bless the arms which had avenged his throne." The third day on

which the sun shone expressly for Pius IX has been already mentioned,

that of the Immaculate Conception.

It was not only, as some say, the nuns, but also priests and

_littérateurs_ who took it as both indispensable and certain that

St. Peter's should be bathed in the brightest gold the skies could

send on the day which was to unite three glories--the anniversary of

the Immaculate, the opening of the General Council, and the probable

acclamation of Pius IX as infallible.

On December 7, when the midday gun was fired from St. Angelo's, a

peal of joybells rang out from more than four hundred churches. From

the distant Coelian came the deep note of the Lateran, floating over

Coliseum and Capitol; from the Esquiline came that of Santa Maria

Maggiore, floating over the Quirinal. These two met the boom of St.

Peter's swinging across the Tiber, and, blending with it, formed, in

that sea of sound, a rolling base for the billows, on whose crests

every variety of bell-note clashed and sparkled. Far beyond the gates,

the lone and beautiful St. Paul's lifted up its voice, as if bidding

the untilled plains to tell the unfrequented shore that there was joy

in the cloister capital.

Hints from Jesuit pens lead us to see some of the Order standing on

the Janiculum, by S. Pietro in Montorio, drinking in the view of the

renowned panorama, while the impressions of years would be brought to

a focus by the sensations of a moment. Every thrill would be taken

either for a proof or a promise. Things done by the Order were being

glorified, things to be done were being assured by the voice of many

churches. Before memory would rise the figures of Hildebrand, Dominic,

Ignatius, illuminated by the imagination of the past. Before hope

would rise the figure of the new Hildebrand, with his now unlimited

sceptre, and new Loyolas and Dominics, illuminated by the imagination

of the future. Other German Henrys would be seen standing in penance,

other English Johns signing away their supremacy: and surely if at

Ingolstadt the Order had trained a Ferdinand II, another could now be

trained, and the Virgin and St. Ignatius would not fail to raise up a

more successful Tilly, and a more faithful Wallenstein. "Be wise now

therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth," would

seem ringing with articulate speech from the tongue of every bell.

As the _Ave Maria_ sounded in the sunset, the guns of S. Angelo saluted

the happy eve. The Pope rode in state to the Church of the Twelve

Apostles, and the crowd lined the entire way. The Jesuit writers heard

enthusiastic cheers at every point. Some partial illuminations were

attempted, but the weather was unfavourable. This, however, damped not

the spirits of any one, for there was to be a glorious illumination

on the morrow, when the rain was bound to cease. M. Veuillot, buoyant

as were his spirits, admitted that, with all his love for Rome, he

could not deny that it rains there in winter. But hope was exulting,

enthusiasm unbounded. The preparation of ideas had, it was thought,

done its work; the restoration of facts was now not far off. The

_Civiltá_ asks, Did ever Council meet under such a Pope, with his

graces and his virtues, his rich experience, his burden of palms won

in incessant victories over the enemies of Christ; the restorer of the

hierarchy in two nations, the founder of many dioceses; the conqueror

of the fallacies, hypocrisies, and fraudulence of the politicasters of

our day, the glorifier of the Virgin, who "sensibly" covers him with

her mantle, and takes delight in twining roses with the thorns whereof

the tiara that crowns him is altogether composed?[194] The words of

a French layman equal those of the Italian Jesuit. It is again the

Count Henri de Riancey who cries, "The Father of the Fathers, Sovereign

Pontiff of the Bishops, refuge of the bishops; he is the Universal

Patriarch, the Prefect of the house of God, the Guardian of the

vineyard of the Lord. He it is who confirms the faith of Christians;

he is Abraham in his patriarchate, Melchisedek in order, Moses in

authority, Samuel in jurisdiction, Peter in power, Christ in unction"

(_Frond_, i. p. xxx.).

It was St. Ambrose's day. M. Veuillot, in imagination, saw the saint

"appear on the threshold on which the eyes of the human species are

fixed, full of hope," But M. Veuillot seldom meets with a saint, dead

or living, but a political end soon appears. This was, he cries, a

felicitous rencounter. What made it so? When Ambrose had become bishop,

he excommunicated the Emperor Theodosius for the crime of inhumanity.

His image in this act is to M. Veuillot evidently the prototype of

Pius IX leaving the kings out of the Council. But it is one thing to

refuse the Communion, which was open for the humblest believer, to

the greatest potentate alive, because his word has wantonly handed

his subjects over to death; and it is another thing to refuse to all

believers in existence a place, even as hearers, in the chamber where

new laws binding them and their children for ever are to be decreed.

The scene at Milan, and that at St. Peter's, similar to the ardent

Ultramontane, would strike us rather by contrast. On the former

threshold we see a Christian pastor guarding the Lord's Table. On the

latter, a king, and an aspirant after universal political supremacy,

guarding the secret of his own counsels. Outside the Milan threshold

we see one sinner in purple, while the common Christians are free to

approach. Outside the Vatican are all members of Churches whom the

king in purple and scarlet acknowledges as members of his own Church.

The people are disfranchised with the princes at their head. The

priests had long been losing their franchise in the election of their

bishops. More recently they had been losing their freehold in their

parishes. When the Jesuits obtained possession of Pius IX, the parish

priest had a life interest in his parish subject to good behaviour.

But this formed too much of a tie to the nation. The parochial clergy

had to be mobilized. So, gradually, they had been put into berths

only by temporary appointment, and held the place _ad nutum_, at the

nod of the bishop. They had been glad that the sword _in the hand_ of

the king should not be in his power, but at the nod of the priest. It

was scarcely so pleasant that the parish, in the hand of the priest,

should be at the nod of the bishop. The making of it so had already to

a large extent been accomplished. It was now to be completed; but those

tyrannous kings might attempt to check the move by what they would call

protecting the lower clergy, what the Vatican would call destroying the

liberty of the Church.

The whole spirit of the Jesuit Press at this period indicated that

the Modern State had so wearied out the Vatican that the only chance

for kings to make their peace with it would lie in separating their

cause from that of parliaments and constitutions. If they meant to

be tolerated long after the Council, they must not only reign but

govern--govern Catholic States under the Syllabus. A ruler by divine

right--which among the baptized means one instituted by the Pope and

corrected by him--is the essence of the matter. "THE POPE AND THE

PEOPLE!" is the last exclamation of M. Veuillot, on the eve of the

day when the nations were to come to judgment--on the eve of the day

when the salutary conspiracy recommended by the _Civiltá_ with its

first breath was to hold its crowning conclave, when the holy Crusade,

heralded with the same breath, was to receive both its legal warrant

and its world-wide impulse. A triumphal arch was to mark the completion

of a stage of toil and the entrance upon a stage of transformation.

"THE POPE AND THE PEOPLE. I believe that these words are invisibly

written on the door of this Vatican Council, which door forms the

entrance to a _new world_; rather is it a triumphal arch erected on the

rediscovered highway of the human race."[195]

That triumphal arch and that rediscovered way of the human species

which, to M. Veuillot, made the entrance to the Vatican Council

sublime, invested it, to the eyes of Liberal Catholics, with clouds

of doubtful omen. The triumph vaunted was real and even stupendous,

but it was a triumph over the principles in the name of which

Liberal Catholics had fought and won the battles of the Church. The

rediscovered way was no other than the broad road of clerical dominion

over spiritual and temporal things which, in the ages before the

Reformation, had led the Church down to a degree of corruption now

denied by none--a broad road, which had since then been swept and

mended, but to which had in the meantime been added the countless

sidepaths of Jesuit morals. If all those sidepaths should by authority

be opened for the winding and the straying of human guile and passion,

what would the Catholic nations come to? Studious Liberal Catholics

were aware of the two sides of the Jesuit system of morals, whereof

Protestants generally were cognizant only of one. These knew, indeed,

that a lawful end renders the means to it lawful; but Liberal Catholics

knew that it was also taught that an unlawful end did not infect with

guilt the means by which it had been reached, provided only that in

themselves those means consisted of acts not necessarily unlawful. Thus

on both sides--that of seeking a lawful end by unlawful means, and that

of employing lawful means for an unlawful end--was the gate made wider,

the road broader, and the way more smooth for guile to creep or passion

to roll downward, but attended all along by the comforts of absolution,

and sprinkled with holy water.[196]

And as to the new world to which the Council was to be an entrance,

Liberal Catholics had seen the Pope's special _college of writers_,

in the _Civiltá_, dwell upon the act whereby Alexander VI drew a

line from pole to pole, and gave to Spain all regions that should be

discovered to the west of it, and to Portugal all those that should

be discovered to the east of it; and contend that the Pope, in saying

of those regions, I _give_, _concede_, and _assign_ them to this king

and to that, acted simply as the Vicar of Christ; nay, that by that act

the autonomy of the Indians was not in the least offended; and that,

moreover, what in the jargon of infidel and of heretics was called the

pretensions of Rome, was nothing else but the exercise of a clear and

sublime right, resorted to by the Pope in seeking a solid protection,

in new countries, for the autonomy of nations and of individuals, when

otherwise, to the offence of religion, it might have been violated by

barbarians.[197] But was this supreme power to dispose by sentence of

the lot of nations, even though unknown, without in so doing offending

in the least against their rights, to be exalted into eternal dogma? If

so, and if mankind would endure it, well might the door of the Council

be regarded as the entrance to a new world. But whether future ages

will reckon it as the entrance to a new world or not, we are about to

see that it was indeed the entrance to an arena on which was to be

witnessed a process of revolution from above and a struggle of priest

with priest,--a process as instructive, a struggle as curious, as any

that our age has produced, among its many transformations of polity and

redistributions of power.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 192: _Life of Const._, lib. iii. cap. 6.]

[Footnote 193: _Geschichte der Stadt Rom._ ii. p. 60.]

[Footnote 194: Serie VII. vol. ix. p. 21.]

[Footnote 195: Vol. i. p. 14.]

[Footnote 196: See Gury, especially his _Casus Conscientiæ_. A small

duodecimo _Doctrina Moralis Jesuitarum_ (Celle, 1874), gives copious

extracts from Jesuit authors with a German translation. For the English

reader, Mr. Cartwright's work on the Jesuits supplies a good outline.]

[Footnote 197: VI. i. 662-80.]

_BOOK III_

_FROM THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF

INFALLIBILITY_

CHAPTER I

The First Session, December 8, 1869, or Opening

Ceremony--Mustering--Robing--The Procession--The Anthem and Mass--The

Sermon--The Act of Obedience--The Allocution--The Incensing--Passing

Decrees--The _Te Deum_--Appreciations of various Witnesses.

At dawn, on Wednesday, December 8, 1869, the guns of Fort St. Angelo

saluted the long looked for day, while from the other side of the Tiber

those of the Aventine replied. The bellowing of these beasts of war

awoke the city to witness a Council of the ministers of peace. As the

sounds reached the ear of peasant, monk, and nun, already plodding in

the dark from places outside the walls, the sky was low, and pouring

down a truly Roman rain. Unlike towns round which smiling homes are

sown broadcast outside of the bounds, Rome, when approached by most of

the routes, first shows the city walls, and not till a good while later

does it show the beginning of habitations. The poor suburbs which lie

outside a few of the gates are less dreary than the space inside, where

lonely roads, shut in by blank walls, lead amidst crumbling mementoes

of rulers of the world, and marks of the actual reign of drones not

able to master ordinary difficulties. Every now and then comes a

church, or one of the two hundred and more convents and nunneries which

sanctify the place. But scarcely any of these have an outline such as

to yield, in twilight, the effect of either Gothic spires or Moorish

minarets, or even of good Grecian colonnades.

Many a cowled figure struggled under the drenching rain along these

desolate ways. One would pass the spot where Peter was arrested by

his Master, when the Fisherman uttered the famous "Lord, whither

goest Thou?" and was turned back to Rome to die. Another would pass

by the vale of Egeria and he might well wonder if Numa ever had to

seek inspiration there in such dismal gloom. Crossing the open ground

about the Lateran, some of the monks might think of the terrible morn

when Totila, in mercy, halted his troops inside the gates, sending the

clang of his trumpets through the dark, all over the city, to give the

wretched Romans the chance of flight.

Other monks coming from St. Agnese, and entering by the Porta Pia,

would reflect upon the adornment of that gate by the Holy Father, and

upon its happy name which links it both with Pius IX and with its own

founder. Its founder, Pius IV, signed the Creed of the Council of

Trent, and Pius IX was to sign the new Creed of the Council of the

Vatican. This beautiful coincidence would, with the monks, make the

gate an emblem of the Church, against which the gates of hell should

never prevail. If they only happened to recollect that its old name

_Nomentana_ marked it as the Mentana Gate, the encouraging impression

would rise almost to the brightness of a revelation. The day, only two

years before, when the conquering crusaders marched in, and the welkin

rang with shouts of "Long live Pius IX!" "Long live the zouaves!"

"Long live the Crusaders!" "Long live Catholic France!" would return

to memory as the pledge of mightier Mentanas. Had an invisible hand

drawn aside the veil, and shown them that gate, some nine months later,

admitting the Italian troops, followed by the dog Pio drawing a little

cart full of Bibles; and then shown, still later, the residence of a

British Ambassador to the King of Italy inside the gate, and on the

outside the residence of Garibaldi, the monks would have vowed by all

the saints, old and new, that the vision came from a lying spirit.

Some, again, crossing the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge, would, in spite

of the blinding rain, see the figure of Constantine victoriously

dominating the heights, and that of Maxentius being hurled into the

stream. A while afterwards, when passing near the Broken Wall, where

St. Peter himself had kept watch, and with his own hand had blinded and

routed the Goths, they would feel that now when his successor was to

be at last duly exalted, the Apostle would surely keep the city more

jealously than before; and if there was need of a Belisarius to crush

the Italian barbarians, the Lord would raise him up at the intercession

of Peter.

As they came further inwards, the crowds of the city were already in

motion. Down from the Coelian and Esquiline were they pouring past the

Coliseum, reflecting men delighting in the thought that all high things

which exalt themselves against the Church would fall into her power

just as the Coliseum had done; for the "high things" of the Romanized

imagination are naturally material ones. The Arch of Titus, darkly

outlined in the morning grey, would be the prophetic pledge that the

Jews, however stubborn, would yield to the Pontiff at last. But where

was the golden candlestick--where the temple vessels? After Genseric

carried them off, had they ever returned? The ruinous Palatine would

symbolize woes coming to modern Caesars, as sure as those which had

crushed the ancient ones. Indeed, it is not impossible that some would

see visions like those seen by monks of yore, who beheld the soul of

the great Theodoric dragged into the crater of Stromboli.

From the Aventine, where Peter resided with Priscilla and Aquila, and

which is now little but a site for monastic establishments, many would

come, passing by the place where once stood the Circus Maximus. The

thoughtful would there have in their eye the grand spectacles of Pagan

Rome. It was by a spectacle that Romulus allured the Sabines to unity

by violence; and it was by a spectacle that Pius IX was now wooing

the world to wedlock with the Papacy--ready, if only able, to take

short measures with the coy. But what were the shows of the old rude

times to this? What if three hundred thousand pairs of eyes did gleam

together on the spectacles which, with bread, made up the earthly all

of the Roman _plebs_? They never had looked upon such an array of holy

bishops, from the whole earth, as would be seen to-day. The colours for

which they went mad, their idolized blues and greens, were but few, and

ill-combined, compared with the colours now about to be displayed. The

ancient cry, "Bread and Spectacles!" was indeed still kept alive by

Roman authorities, but was to-day to be satisfied in a Christian style

glorious beyond Pagan example.

Along the Via Sacra few foreigners would appear, but from the

Capitoline Germans would set out. It is natural to think of some

student, fresh from the pages of Gregorovius, his imagination vividly

setting face to face the ancient Rome and the actual. He would think of

the exclamation, "Renowned, queenly, immeasurable Rome, a sea of beauty

surpassing all power of speech!" Where were the glory and the beauty

now? Inside the churches and palaces indeed were masses of decoration

and artistic stores of wealth, but the city viewed, on that dismal

December morning, as a city, was poor and ill-kept. The glory which

once compelled men at this central point to call her Golden Rome was

departed. What now represented the Temple of Jupiter--its pillars on

gilded bases with gilded capitals, its gates of gilded bronze, and its

roof of tiles of gilded brass? There stands the Church of the Aracoeli;

Jupiter is succeeded by the Bambino, a doll, carved by St. Luke, which

is driven in a stately carriage round the city to the beds of the dying.

Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as

students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old

stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with

the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the

Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect

of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the

grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman,

certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever

did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of

Wycliffe in the sea?

A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of _The Ghetto and Rome's

Great Show_, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline

some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut

up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so.

Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients,

and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb

of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon

the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were

modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale

comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not

approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the

ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea

of a world-empire originated with the Romans--nay, no more than did the

idea of the Trojan War.

Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather

kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of

the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding

Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising

in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now

be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the

cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut

up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious

worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of

Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who

gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him

and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was

under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the

ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States

of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past

when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called

Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round

the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against

riderless mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this

service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses,

goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those

former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the

price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso

stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan

Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and

to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants

had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele

and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and

all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in

Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.

Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had

been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to

his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when

some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural

to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up

new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That

was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic

Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and

tongues into religious and political submission to one human head.

Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in

the words of _Joseph de Maistre_, that the Pantheon had been devoted

to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the

Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority.

But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of

De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified

vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were

so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the

Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but

the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize

St. Peter Arbues, red with the blood of thousands of the seed of

Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces.

He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's

estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He

would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the

following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome

for Frond's history--[198]

It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought

back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible

corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable.

Nevertheless, there are many _gods_, in heaven and in earth.

There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (_hommes

divinisés_). The _gods_ of Christianity are the _saints_. Around

God are assembled ALL THE GODS, to serve Him in the place and order

assigned to them.

The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it

to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests

lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it,

as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or

something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that

"saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious,

which was no doubt the original idea.[199]

By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the

roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was

pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched

the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the

regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the

persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally

associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream

come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the

models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome

artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the

lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and

signs of impotence.

In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an

English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an

American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one

Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore

them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general,

not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on

this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and

Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable

extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the

priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and

cabmen.[201]

The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that

day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens

failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds.

They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering

under their umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look

up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory,

thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the

Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and

if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it

was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the

chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico.

At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the

Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt

round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs,

with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green,

embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments

of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff,

formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid

princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says

Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and

if a prince--we presume by birth--followed by a third. Then came the

nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts,

and ribbons like streamers among the stars--stars that dazzle Romans

far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles,

always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls,

and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several

hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand

street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not

help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach

might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse

one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of

Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other

important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the

Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of

soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety.

Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and

white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack, the convent,

the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village

festival, spangled the thickening crowd.

The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to

line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue

of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as

having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that

it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none

of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions,

even the correspondent of the _Stimmen aus Maria Laach_ alluded to

the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the

_Times_; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes."

In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest,

as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two

soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that

temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of

zouaves and one of the line.

The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one

February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace

windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they

entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the

Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain,"

says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to

content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the

Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to

burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language,

containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched

in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham

had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so

here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been

so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb,

girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living

Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman

would have been surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers

would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his

breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a

large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand

held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned

a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of

books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the

Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul

with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet.

Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True,

he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest,

but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself

when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was

Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed

the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by

lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching

a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever

degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship,

as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it

is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the

commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master,

even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon

the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye

called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii.

8-10).

There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as

against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as

against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one

all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial

reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father

which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more

tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might

set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ!

In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen do we require,

for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father,

dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the

access of sons!

He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen

them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father,

and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one

Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the

commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very

first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He

well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers

and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of

the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil

authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under

their own power.

The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands

performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would

think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story

was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the

impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up

image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would

mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver

spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the

work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple

is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated

Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed

this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions

by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is

theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods

and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple

fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the

finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder

and abler brethren of the priests.

Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the promiscuous crowd;

for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told

us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear

whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although

probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too,

with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there

was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a

Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be

in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, _he says_, by

the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the

_Univers_ what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"--a fact which he

states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not

smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told

that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio

about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and

the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council

as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the

sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells,

appear more luminous to him.

Correspondents of the _Civiltá_ published on the spot, of the _Stimmen_

published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East,

were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle,

and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some

vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were

themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of

the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.

Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers,

striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their

national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now

exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that,

somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the

Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they

had too much ground to fear.

On the other hand, the Jesuits were quietly exulting in the knowledge

that the days of the Liberal Catholics were numbered. "Weighed and

found wanting" were words often upon their lips at that time.

The feeling of the Protestants, of all classes, was chiefly that of

curiosity. Such of them as believed that Rome yet retained enough of

the Christian element to be capable of reform wished that the Jesuits

might fail. Those, on the other hand, who believed that at Trent Rome

had written upon herself the doom _irreformable_, thought that the

only thing now before her was to go down deeper into her own errors,

and to make herself formally what she long had been virtually, the

religion simply of the _fait accompli_, a system in which each error

once committed must enter into the blood, and even form abnormal bone.

Perhaps the words "judicial blindness" were never so often quietly

uttered by charitable men as then, and during the months ensuing.

The tomb of Peter shared with his statue in the honours of the morn. In

the ray of its lamps knelt many a figure of "fair women and brave men."

The men hoped to rise braver for the coming struggle. The words of the

Pontiff were vividly in the memories of the devout--words uttered to

five hundred bishops. "We never doubted that a mysterious force and

salutary virtue emanated from the tomb where repose the ashes of Peter,

as a perpetual object of religious veneration to the world; a force

which inspires the pastors of the Lord's flock with bold enterprises,

noble spirit, and magnanimous sentiment."[203] Pius IX would hardly

have seen the force of an inquiry, should any one have dared to make

it, whether there was any known case in which one of the Apostles had

in Jerusalem sent even the most ignorant of Christians to the tomb of

the proto-martyr, ay, or to the tomb of tombs, in order there to seek

some blessing that could not be found by going into his own closet, and

praying to his Father who seeth in secret.

The _Civiltá_, however, gave a more intelligent turn to this Papal

suggestion--

It is to be hoped (it said) that this Council, announced on the

centenary of St. Peter, convoked by a Bull dated on the day of St.

Peter, and assembled round the wonderful tomb of St. Peter, will

be _par excellence_ the Council of St. Peter. That means the most

obsequious to the prerogatives of Peter, whose divine authority,

the centre and foundation of all social authority, is at the same

time that which is most combated by the spirit of the world,

according to the words of the Saviour, "The whole world lieth in

wickedness" (1 John v. 19).

While the people waited, the bishops were robing in the Julian

corridor, and the patriarchs in one of the adjoining apartments. Over

the grand portico of St. Peter's is a hall, well known on Holy Thursday

as the place where the twelve apostles celebrate the Supper--the hall

in which the five hundred presented their salutation in 1867. This

had been converted into a chapel, by the erection of an altar. Here

assembled the members of the procession. Each prelate, on completing

his costume, made for the hall, but was not permitted to have any

attendant. It being the Day of the Immaculate Conception, the colour

of the vestments was white; a rule, however, which did not bind the

Orientals. The cardinals were robing in a room apart. Each of them

having done so, entered the hall followed by his train-bearer. Bishops,

prelates, and cardinals waited while the Pope robed. This he did in

the Pauline Chapel, attended by three cardinals, two bishops, the

sub-deacon apostolic, two protonotaries, and a few minor officials.

They adorned him with amice and with alb, with girdle and with stole.

Then did the cardinal-priest in waiting bring the censer, and the Pope

put the incense on. Then did they further array him in the "formal,"

the pluvial, and the precious mitre. At about half-past nine o'clock,

Pius IX, in all the glory of gems and garments, entered the hall,

where between seven and eight hundred bishops stood before the altar,

awaiting their royal head. He did not wear either the tiara or the

usual golden mitre, but a special _precious mitre_ made for the

occasion, "This" says, Vitelleschi (p. 3), "was to indicate a certain

equality with the other bishops, which, however, is confined to these

little accessories of the ceremonial." The white pluvial was fastened

on his breast by an enamelled clasp, about which clerical writers are

particular. The clasp was set with jewels in the form of a dove, with

outstretched wings, surrounded by a halo of rays, and _representing the

Holy Ghost_. The Pope passed among the Fathers holding out his fingers,

in the usual manner, on this side and on that, giving them what is

grotesquely called the _pontifical_ benediction. Then kneeling at the

faldstool he took off his mitre and prayed. Two cardinals, approaching

the kneeling Pontiff, placed a book before his eyes. He looked upon it,

lifted up his aged but resounding voice, and sang--

Creator Spirit, come!

This strain was taken up by the choir, and the first verse was sung,

all kneeling. The Pontiff then rose, put on his mitre, and was seated

in his portative throne.

The portative throne is a contrivance for exhibiting a dignitary to the

gaze of a multitude, which does not remind one of anything to be seen

elsewhere in Europe, but does strongly remind one of the way in which

a great Guru is carried in India. It is a gorgeous litter, on which is

placed a gorgeous chair, under a gorgeous canopy, called a Baldachino.

In the chair is seated the Pontiff. Men robed in crimson bear the

litter; others bear the canopy on long gilded decorated poles, and

beside it others bear gigantic fans of peacocks' feathers.

Even in a secular procession, more serious than an election triumph,

this sort of chairing would be of doubtful taste; but in a religious

act, above all an act done in the house of God, it would be impossible,

except where the aesthetic of faith had expired, and the aesthetic of

thought had long surrendered to the aesthetic of sensation. As the

Pontiff was set on high a shot fired from St. Angelo told the waiting

multitude that the procession was formed.

We have said that the clergy of the city lined the whole course of the

procession on either side. This extended from the door of the hall,

through some of the apartments of the Vatican, down the celebrated

Royal Staircase, through the magnificent portico of St. Peter's, up

the nave to the statue of the Apostle, then to the altar at his grave,

and finally, to the right of that altar, into the hall of the Council.

As the head of the procession emerged from the hall, the manifold

costumes of the clergy formed the skirting of the lofty walls, in the

apartments through which it slowly swept. The most noticeable of these

was the Royal Hall, _Sala Regia_, where frescoes, suggestive of more

swords than one, appealed, by Papal memories, to Papal hopes. There

was Gregory VII giving absolution to the penitent emperor Henry IV.

There was the attack upon Tunis in 1553, there the massacre of St.

Bartholomew's, the League against the Turks, and Barbarosas receiving

the benediction of the Pope in the Piazza of St. Mark. From the Royal

Hall descends the Royal Staircase _Scala Regia_. All down its two

flights the reverent clergy lined the way, as the "Church Princes"

swept by. In the lower flight the Ionic capitals of the colonnade

gracefully lengthened out the perspective, while the stately march

of mitres glanced between the shafts. With a supreme sense of the

importance of the act did the train pass down the noble stair; each

prelate no less sustaining the dignity of the moment because just then

the eye of the outer world beheld them not. In the view of a real

Vaticanist a great procession is a good in itself, and a very high

good, apart from its uses; or, perhaps more properly, it is felt that

its effectiveness for use wholly depends upon the sense of discipline

in its members.

Finally the foot of the stair was reached. The portative throne passed

the statue of Constantine, the first who ever drew sword for the

Church. It swept round and faced the statue of Charlemagne, the first

upon whose head the Church ever set imperial crown. Each stood at an

end of the magnificent vista formed by the portico--grand watchers at

the door of the Pontiff, ever telling that the kings whom his Church

wants are not merely nursing fathers but champions in fight. As the

sight of their uplifted monarch burst upon the people, and that of the

people upon their king, the heavy guns from the Aventine were firing

alternately with those of St. Angelo, while all the bells were trying

to exceed the joypeal of the preceding day. Before his Holiness reached

this point, the procession had already entered the nave in slow and

gorgeous order.

In front came chamberlains, chaplains, and officials of sixteen

ascending grades. After these came the Fathers of the Council,--first

the generals of orders, next mitred abbots, and then followed bishops,

archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, in succession of still ascending

rank, every man in appropriate splendour. The Orientals outshone their

western brethren even more than usual; for the robes of the Latins,

being confined to the white of the day, were at a disadvantage beside

the eastern coats of many colours. The Senator, as the incumbent

is called of a quaint old office under the Papal government, which

we might call that of honorary mayor of Rome, marched between the

prelates and the throne in golden robe of rich variety. He was

accompanied by the conservators, whom we might call something like

honorary councilmen, and also by the commandants of the three orders

of guards--the noble, the Palatine, and the Swiss. Finally, sitting

aloft, with the fans and the bearers, and the poles and the canopy,

came the Pontiff. The moving throne was followed by a lengthened rear

procession, formed of sundry officials, and closing with the priests,

who had for some time been practising shorthand, in order to act as

reporters.

The faithful from east and west gazed with enraptured eyes. Many were

proud to recognize their own bishops; some still prouder to see their

own gifts in robe or gem shining among the adornments of the day. Any

Hindu present, looking at priest and soldier, might have exclaimed

in the words of the _Bhagavad Gita_: "Many a wondrous sight, many a

heavenly ornament, many an upraised weapon; adorned with celestial

robes and chaplets; anointed with heavenly essence, covered with every

marvellous thing."[204]

From early morn, "_the holiest_," to use the term of one of the

priestly descriptions, had been exhibited upon the altar; but out

of tenderness to the throng had been veiled till the procession

approached. As it entered the temple, every member of it uncovered

to "_the holiest_." Those who were not members of the Council,

after reaching the high altar, defiled to the left. The Fathers of

the Council approaching the altar, each in his turn bent the knee

before the Host; and then turning to the right, beheld the front of

the Council Hall erected between two of the piers which sustain the

great dome of Michael Angelo. Over the door was a picture, professing

to represent the Eternal Father. The door was kept by the military

figures of the Knights of Malta and the noble guards. Each prelate,

in turn, entered the hall, bowed to the cross erected upon the altar,

and was shown to the place assigned to him, according to his rank

and seniority; for care was taken that the bishops should not group

themselves either according to nation or according to opinion. There,

standing and bareheaded, they awaited the Holy Father (_Frond_, vii. p.

98).

After the procession had been for some time moving up the nave, a

whisper, "The cross, the cross," passed from lip to lip. The cross was

borne immediately in front of the Fathers of the Council. Priest told

priest of its choice beauty and immense costliness. Designed in the

Gothic of the thirteenth century, and rich with gems, it represented

Christ, not in His passion, but crowned, as conquering Lord, in glory.

Among the expressions of delight, the proudest was, "It is a present to

the Pope from the English convert, the Marquis of Bute."

The Pope did not, on this occasion, as he usually does, pass up the

whole of the nave on his portative throne--a process which guide-books

describe as representing the Lord of Glory entering Paradise. He now

alighted at the entrance of the basilica, and, with deliberate step

and thrice radiant smiles, his head alone mitred while all others were

uncovered in presence of the "holiest," he marched among soldiers,

priests, and subjects, a sovereign _in excelsis_. Before him went his

hundreds of lieutenants, in attire which would have dazzled ancient

Pontifex, Flamen, and Augur. Every one of them was prepared to contend

with princes in his cause, to set his name before that of their king,

and to claim, in their respective countries, a supreme sway for his

sceptre. Not a few of them had endured prosecution or prison to uphold

his law against that of their country, and no note of the lyres that

sounded the praises of the day was sweeter than that which commemorated

the name of any martyr-bishop, hero of the kingdom of God, against the

naturalism of the age.

The Cardinals had not followed the bishops into the hall. They now

stood near the high altar. Two bishops were at the faldstool, with book

and candle. At the altar itself stood the officiating Cardinal, with

a priest, a deacon and sub-deacon, a master of the ceremonies, five

acolytes bearing candles, and three clerks of the chapel. On arriving

at the altar the Pontiff bowed upon the faldstool. Then the last

strophe of the _Veni Creator_ was exquisitely sung by the choir. To use

the words of a priest, written, not for Spaniards or Brazilians, but

for Germans: "Every member of the historical procession cast himself

upon his knees before our God and Saviour in the form of bread, before

whom all kings bow."[205]

After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited

aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"--_Protector

Noster Aspice Deus_--and for some time he continued reciting prayers

in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he

recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a

third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St.

Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (_Guérin_, p. 76).

The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right,

entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for

some time.

As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades

in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial--the Cardinals

Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers deserved half of the ill that

was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like

Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts,

Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of

his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on

high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but

docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then

passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of

Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching

Christ" (p. 55).

The German Jesuit who wrote for the _Stimmen_ said, "The bloodless

offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the _invisible

Head of the Church be present in form of bread_. Opposite sits His

representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the

Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (_Neue Folge_, vi. p. 162).

This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the

priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning,

when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as

having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the

most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude

which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India,

first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual

worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence--

Lo, God is here, let us adore!

At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down

in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and

forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any

merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the

directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or

silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really

deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty

with all who take an impression for a reason. The program is in the

_Acta_, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for

each minutest move.

The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of

St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands;

he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the

Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope

and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and

tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they

were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he

said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (_Acta_, pp.

204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction,

during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals

of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses

of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer,

with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the

formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council,

and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The

preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came

an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To

prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles

of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action

took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of

the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of

Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of

some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people.

Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The

Pontiff recites _Quam dilecta_, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is

a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of

the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges

of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of

its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the

throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers

trimmed with gold lace. The Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers.

Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out

the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the

altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to

hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches

the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne

and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court

of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal

priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff

the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle;

after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the

stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble

wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to

the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet

accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon

the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the

Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps

of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And

seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of

thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed

that this was imposing, impressive, divine.

This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the

sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the

vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one

arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed

the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops,

approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the

throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots

and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne,

rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an

hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of

the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the

Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of

history had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on

which its first beams were beginning to strike--came forward lordly

figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each,

with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart

and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense

and myrrh.

Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five

quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says,

"What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled

the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in

mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular

point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes

of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of

confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings

were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma,

looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through

the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces

represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw

signs of happy days returning.

The Jesuits said, "Surely those non-Catholics who witnessed this action

must have perceived that Catholicity, like unity, is found only where

Christ lives, speaks, and reigns--in Peter; that is, in the Roman

Church, of which Pius IX is now Peter." But we may quietly ask, Could

even those writers fancy Peter, at the only Apostolic Council, seated

upon a throne somewhere on Mount Zion, while John, James, and Paul

came up in the presence of the assembled Church and kissed his knee,

and Philip, Barnabas, and others knelt and kissed his foot? Far as the

aesthetics of those Jesuits had descended, by a long materializing

process, they must surely have read enough of the Holy Scriptures to

feel that the scene enacted in St. Peter's, though a fine edition of

a Durbar, was a sad fall from an Apostolic Council. You promise the

pupils of Plato a higher wisdom than they ever knew in the Academy, and

they find for wisdom the gewgaws of Freemasons. Such a scene was bad

in manners, bad in politics, and bad in religion. In manners, it tended

to make men servile in a lower position and arrogant in a higher; in

politics, it tended to make them either slaves or despots; in religion,

it tended to make them either unbelieving or superstitious. Is it part

of the penalty of Rome that barbaric forms should linger at its Court,

when the spirit of Christianity has banished them from the Courts of

Christian kings? Our own monarch, at the head of her two hundred and

eighty millions, is too good a Christian to make her subject Rajahs,

as a spectacle for her commons and her troops, come and fall down and

kiss her foot. The words which commanded the followers of Christ not

to exercise over one another the kind of lordship which the kings of

the Gentiles exercised over them were, with pompous action, publicly

trampled upon in this scene of "the obedience," and that both in the

spirit and in the letter. He who complacently sat and acted out that

scene in the house of God for an hour and a quarter, might better claim

to represent many known in the history of ambition, than the lowly Lord

of Peter.

Up to this time only sixty-seven articles of the program had been

performed. Thirty more were exhausted by postures, manipulations,

and devotions. The officiating cardinal-priest then came forward,

bearing the reeking censer. He waved it before the enthroned priest,

around whom swelled up the clouds till subject eyes looked up to him

through a sacred haze, and till he looked down on his subject creatures

from a sky of fragrant mist. This ceremony fulfilled, all took their

seats with their mitres on, and the Pontiff, rising, delivered his

allocution. It overflowed with joy and hope. It clearly pointed out

the enemy to be destroyed. "A conspiracy of the wicked, mighty by

combination, rich in resources, fortified with institutions, and using

liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." Obviously this enemy was not a

theological but a political one. Vitelleschi, who naturally heard with

Italian ears, says that the language, though _using a cloak_, was plain

enough to show what enemy was meant.

As the Pontiff drew to the close of his allocution, he, with a burst

of feeling, put up two invocations, one to the Holy Spirit, the

other to the Blessed Virgin. After this, with contagious intensity

of emotion, he threw up both hands to heaven. At a bound, the whole

assembly stood up. Then he poured forth the final invocation with the

fullest resonance of his wonderful tones--tones which might have served

in chanting from Gerizim to Ebal. He invoked angels and archangels,

Peter, Paul, and all the saints, more particularly those whose ashes

were venerated on that spot. This speech from the apostolic throne,

exclaims Monsignor Guérin, beginning with the liveliest joy, afterwards

expressing divine agonies, concluded with firm and tranquil confidence!

Now followed another round of ceremonies, at the close of which the

master of the ceremonies proclaimed, "Let those who are not members of

the Council withdraw." The royal and noble spectators left the scene;

the doors were closed. The Knights of Malta and the noble guard stood

sentry between the faithful, who were to receive the creed as it might

be shaped, and the Fathers, who were to decide for them what their

creed should be. What would take place before those doors should be

opened again? Persistent rumour had said that the extreme party meant

to attempt an acclamation. Therefore many believed it possible that in

one brief sitting the basis of infallibility might be shifted from that

of an infallible Church to that of an infallible man.

Other rumours asserted that some French prelates had let it be known

that if any attempt at getting up an acclamation should be made,

they would leave the Council. But what might take place behind those

charmed walls, who could tell? All that could be said with certainty

was that now, for the first time in the history of man, one hundred

and seventy millions, perhaps two hundred millions, were standing idle

spectators of the process of altering their creed. They had not a

single representative; not one channel of expression, not one possible

resort in appeal. What used to be a general council was now a conclave;

sitting behind a guard of armed men. King and priest, councillor of

state and doctor of divinity, were equally shut out. The Catholic

multitude appeared indifferent. The few who were not indifferent were

powerless. They had all been parties to narrowing the idea of the

Church to that of the clergy. That idea was now, without the consent of

any one being asked, formally narrowed from that of the clergy to that

of the bishops and Court prelates. It might further be narrowed from

that of the Episcopate to that of the Pope. It appears to us not very

easy to call men fanatics who have done so much with mankind, when they

propose and expect to do still more!

The point at which we now stand in the program of the day is the 109th

Article, which is the first of several prescribing a ceremony with

a substance. Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop

Valenziani of Fabriano, approached the throne. The Secretary handed a

document to the Pontiff. The Pope handed the document to Valenziani,

who thereupon, ascending the pulpit, turned towards the throne, made a

profound obeisance, took off his mitre, and read out as follows--"Pius,

the Bishop-Servant of the Servants of God, with the approbation of the

Holy Council." Having now pronounced the title of the decree, he again

put on his mitre, seated himself, and proceeded to read the substance

of the Decree. This consisted of one sentence, declaring the Council

opened. In that ill-constructed hall few heard what was read; and many

were wicked enough to hint that, if ill-constructed, the hall was not

ill-contrived. Once more laying aside the mitre, Bishop Valenziani rose

and asked, "Is the Decree now read agreed to?" The bishops were seated

in their mitres, the abbots standing bareheaded. There was no formal

vote. Those who understood what was said, cried _Placet_, and others

repeated the cry. No one dissented. This result was communicated to the

sovereign, and he from the throne proclaimed--"The Decree now read is

agreed to by the Fathers, none dissenting; and we decree, enact, and

sanction it, as read."

These forms were exactly repeated, and a second Decree was passed.

Like the first, it consisted of a single sentence, which fixed the

next public session for January 6. The two Promoters of the Council,

as they were called, now advancing, first knelt on the lowest step of

the throne, and then addressed the notaries, saying, "We pray you,

Protonotaries here present, to draw up an authentic document, recording

all and singular the acts done in this public session of the all-holy

OEcumenical Vatican Council." The senior protonotary then appealing to

the Majordomo and the High Chamberlain, who stood on the right hand of

the throne, said, "We shall draw it up, ye being witnesses" (_Frond_,

vii. p. 119).

The constitutional crisis had come and gone, and very few were aware

of it. Those who had thought of the program as anything more than

the order of a pageant, must have observed that the signification of

those acts amounted to no less than putting aside the conciliar form

of Decree, and adopting in its stead that of the Papal Bulls. We have

already seen that Friedrich, as a Church historian, saw this at a

glance. It need not be said that the ancient Councils, representing

the whole Church, spoke in their own name, themselves _decreeing_

and _enacting_. As to the only Council "over" which Pontiff Peter I

"presided," it would not do to cite it as an example.[207] As late as

Trent, every Decree bore upon the face of it the words, "_This holy

Council enacts and decrees_." All the statutes of the Council of Trent,

without alteration of a word, were immediately confirmed by the Pope,

he having beforehand promised, in writing, to do so. The formula then

used was, of course, liable to the interpretation that it indicated the

superiority of the Council to the Pope. That interpretation had been

actually put upon it by schools in the Church, at one time, including

whole nations.

The Decrees now passed had never been before the Council for

deliberation, but were handed from the throne ready made. The Pope,

according to the formula, did not merely sanction, but _decreed_,

_enacted_, and _sanctioned_--that is, he took the part of both

parliament and crown.

The Council is only mentioned as "approving" of this absorption of

its own powers into those of its head. The part thus allowed to this

so-called OEcumenical Council, this Senate of Humanity, in framing

Decrees, is less than the part allowed to the College of Cardinals in

the framing of Bulls. Take, for instance, the Bull of Convocation. It

expressly says that, in issuing it, the Pope acts not only with the

consent of the Cardinals, but by their counsel.

This expresses more than "with the approbation." All, therefore, that

the collective episcopate did for the College of Cardinals was somewhat

to curtail its relative legislative importance. Alone, both its counsel

and consent were recognized. When united with all the bishops, only

its consent. This looked like telling the bishops that their counsel

was superfluous. In the Bull history conquered dogma. The counsel and

consent of the Cardinals was the memento of the historical fact that

the Bishop of Rome originally spoke with authority only when he spoke

as the mouthpiece of the local clergy. In the Decree dogma conquered

history. The Bishop of Rome alone was to appear as speaking with

authority, and all other bishops were to appear only as approving,

but neither as counselling nor confirming; as for the clergy, they

were no longer of the Teaching Church. The substance of the Decrees

passed was perfectly innocent. They had, moreover, the advantage of

exactly copying the acts done in the first session at Trent, while

destroying the forms there employed. In the _Acta_ of that Council two

resolutions, declaring the Council opened, and fixing the day for the

second public session, were entered as constituent acts, before the

heading given to Decrees of the constituted body began to be used. The

two constituent resolutions were not even headed by the name of the

Council, while the name of the Pope does not occur in the heading of

any of the Decrees, much less does it stand as the sole legislative

authority.

At Trent it was not a private member of the Council, like Bishop

Valenziani, but the first presiding legate, Cardinal De Monte, who read

out the draft of a resolution, in the form of a question declaring

the Council opened. To this question the Fathers "all with one consent

answered, _Placet_." The second resolution was put in the same form.

Both, as we have intimated, were entered without the heading of

Decrees, and stand as the acts of a body organizing itself, but not as

legislative acts of that body when organized. Every subsequent Decree

is a real legislative act, and therefore bears the formal heading, "The

All-Holy Council of Trent, in the Holy Ghost lawfully assembled ...

ordains and decrees."[208]

The formula adopted in the Vatican Council had the advantage of

determining, once for all, what that Council was to be, namely,

a secret consistory of bishops, to give an approval to Papal

Constitutions. Its Presidents were Cardinals, an office unknown to the

Christian Church--princes simply of the Court of Rome, though most

of them bear the orders of priest. Of the members of the Council a

vast number, though called bishops, were really no more than mitred

equerries and chamberlains. In the means it took to deprive the

diocesan bishops of their inherited powers in Council, the Curia knew

its men. Brought up in the sentiment that an effective "function" is

the sublimest stroke of civil or ecclesiastical government, it would

have been a revolt against all their instincts to disturb a pageant

so unrivalled as the one in which they that day had the felicity of

bearing a part. The Curia placed them in this dilemma: Either they

must rise up amidst that blaze of splendour and resist the act of the

sovereign at whose feet they had just bowed, or they must learn at a

later stage, if they should then challenge the Rules of Procedure,

that the moment for objection was past. The success of the Curia was

complete. The general drew out his men for a review, and turned the

Thermopylæ of the opposition without having ever seen a Spartan. Those

who had come up resolved to oppose changes in their creed soon found

that the one pass that might have been held against overwhelming odds

was already in the enemy's rear. The Nine had not spent nearly ten

months on the Rules of Procedure for nothing.

When this brief episode in the drama of the day had passed over, the

doors were thrown open, and the spectators who had been excluded

resumed their places. Many of the priests outside would feel

disappointed that they had not heard the hall resound with the voices

of an acclamation. That would have told that Papal infallibility was

adopted without discussion. Friedrich lets it appear that he felt

relieved at the opening of the doors before there had been any exulting

sound, and doubtless many shared his feeling.

Rumours, persistently kept up, declared that Archbishop Manning

would propose the dogma, and that the majority, breaking out into

acclamation, would bear down all opposition. If such a design was ever

entertained, it had been thought--some say it had been found--that

it would prove wiser not to proceed so hastily. The passing of two

Decrees in the form of Papal Constitutions was enough to carry "the

forms of the house," while the issuing of the Rules of Procedure as a

Bull, before the Council was opened, had taken away every pretext for

alleging that they were open to revision by the Council itself, as

being its own acts.

Archbishop Manning, on his return to England, in a pastoral, treated

the rumour of an intended acclamation as if it was only laughable.

A reason which he assigns for this is that Rome had had enough of

acclamations, seeing that many who acclaimed infallibility in 1867 had

openly turned against it. The rumours, however, were too consistent,

and too well supported by the hints of the _Civiltá_ and by the plain

words of Monsignor Plantier and others, to be prudently dismissed

with a smile--at least, anywhere but in England. They were not what

Dr. Manning represents them, rumours of an acclamation without a

definition, but of a definition carried by acclamation, as in the case

of the Immaculate Conception. On the other hand, Archbishop Manning's

thrust at those who had in 1867 signed language that might seem to mean

everything included in infallibility, without themselves intending to

express that doctrine, is natural in one who had not wholly unlearned

the Protestant worth of words. Nevertheless, of all grounds on which

the prefects of the Pope should begin to trip one another up, the

ground to be selected by preference is scarcely that of finesse in the

interpretations they put on what they say. As to the part assigned to

Dr. Manning personally, it is possible that the rumour represented no

more than the fact that both they who hoped for an acclamation, and

they who feared it, mentioned the name which occurred to them as that

of the most likely instrument of such a procedure, and both happened to

pronounce the same name. As if to justify this instinctive selection of

both parties, Dr. Manning, on his return home, said that if the Council

"had defined the infallibility at its outset, it would not have been an

hour too soon; and perhaps it would have averted many a scandal we now

deplore."[209]

A Roman noble thus notes the zeal of Dr. Manning--

No one is so devoted as a convert. Having himself erred for half

his lifetime did not restrain him from becoming the most ardent

champion of infallibility. This circumstance raised a presumption

of a deficiency, on his part, in that traditional ecclesiastical

spirit which is never fully acquired but by being early grounded

and by long continued usage--a presumption which was justified by

his excessive and intemperate restlessness. This seemed a cause

sufficient to lessen his authority with the Conservative portion

of the ecclesiastical world, which judges with more calmness and

serenity.[210]--(_Vitelleschi_, p. 35.)

The real work of the day was now done. It was time to sing the _Te

Deum_. The Pontiff sounded the first note, and was followed by the

Fathers of the Council, by the choir, by the thousands outside in the

Basilica. The strain was caught up in nave and aisles, in every chapel

and every gallery; it mounted aloft into vaults and dome, till all who

were beneath the gorgeous roof thrilled under that returning swell of

exulting sound; and many felt as if the world was falling, overwhelmed

with harmony, at the feet of Pio Nono.

The eighteen articles of the program still remaining contained little

beyond unrobing, re-robing, and dissolving.

The people had been for seven hours in the Cathedral. It still

rained in torrents. The clerical organs said the providential

rain had prevented mobs in different places from making hostile

demonstrations. During the time spent in the Cathedral, the people had

not heard--except so far as some of them could make out the Latin--a

sentence of the Word of God or of the words of man. The seven hours

of the twenty thousand had been spent in an intermitting gaze. All

went away, not only praising the pageant of the day, but extolling

it. Friedrich quotes a diplomatist who said it was "superb." The

correspondent of the _Times_ said: "It has been my fortune to see many

pageants in Rome, but none of them equalled, in majestic solemnity, the

scene presented by the procession of bishops from all countries in the

world."[211] Monsignor Guérin cried: "It offered the most majestic and

enchanting spectacle which it was ever given to mortals to behold here

below." M. Veuillot said that bishops were there from the rising to the

setting of the sun--men who would invade regions as yet closed against

them--the light-bearers and the God-bearers.[212] These old men, he

added, would overthrow darkness and death, and the day would break

(vol. i. p. 12). Vitelleschi remarked that there was indeed a bishop

from Chaldea and one from Chicago, but the former did not represent a

Catholic Chaldea, nor the latter a Catholic Chicago. Even, he added, in

countries called Catholic, what proportion of the population are really

of their flocks? He might have further added, And if their teaching

is true, what proportion of their flocks are really Catholics?--for

they teach that a doubt on any single article of faith propounded by

their Church, or a doubt on one of her interpretations of a text of

Scripture, taints one with heresy. How many Italians were, on the day

of the opening of the Council, free from that taint?

We are reminded of an Englishman whose name, when he was only thirty

years of age, gained for him distinguished attention at the Vatican.

His Protestantism was much influenced by his early study of the

corruptions of Christianity at the centre of them. Had John Milton

witnessed that pageant we know exactly what he would have said. First

he would have shown that when the filial spirit of Christianity had

been lost, the servile spirit of Paganism supervened. When men ceased

to come to God as children to a father, they sought circuitous access

through upper servants. Then followed what he describes in a sentence

with a strong flavour of the Phædrus--

They began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and

the soul, yea, the very shape of God Himself, into an exterior and

bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of

joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed;

they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked

it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other

deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and

gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamin's vestry:

then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures,

his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul, by this means

of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights,

bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from

her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of

religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted

off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her

heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on

in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity.... They

knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by

them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloaking their

servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful,

sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the

piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.--_Of

Reformation in England, first book._

A writer in the _Stimmen_ thought that if those who were separated from

the Church had only been present they might have been won back. It

would be an easy way to settle the merits of a religion, if it could be

done by the simple experiment of what body had the grandest building

for a display, or the greatest number of richly dressed men to perform.

We do not presume to say whether Peter ever did visit Rome or not;

but, supposing that he did, the question between him and the sovereign

Pontiff of the day, as to the value of their respective religions,

would soon have been settled in favour of Nero, if it had gone by

buildings, statues, robes, and retinues. Probably the poor itinerant

preacher was so conscious that, as Milton would say, his religion "to

the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's

children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion," that he would not

have challenged comparison with the purpled Pontiff on that ground. Any

writer who could imagine that the tendency of a "function" performed in

the manner of the one we have described is to convince Protestants that

the Church of Rome has in her forms much likeness left to the Church

of Christ, must be unaware of the first elements of a comparison. When

we search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so, the

estrangement of the Papacy from the Christianity of Christ, and its

affinity to the Romanism of the Pagan Pontiffs, become more and more

impressive.

The feeling in St. Peter's did not permit guards to be dispensed with.

It transpired that extreme precaution had been taken to prevent the

Basilica from being blown up. At the time, the general impression

appeared to be that some of the National party had played upon the

fears of the priests, hoaxing them with hints of such a design. But

after what occurred in Paris during the reign of the Commune, one can

hardly think it impossible that some of the violent and ignorant may

have entertained wild plans. In 1867, a startling example of what might

be done had been shown in the blowing up of a barrack of the zouaves.

When populations which have long been governed by spectacle, set out

for a political sensation, they sometimes go dreadful lengths to find a

stirring one.

The city was to have been grandly illuminated, but the drenching rain

would have mocked all effort to keep in the tender life of the lamps.

Let us hope, said the clerical writers, that the blue sky of Rome will

smile on the close of the Council, and that then the eternal city will

glow brighter even than Ephesus in 431 (_Stimmen_, N.F., p. 166).

In addition to human helps to faith, it was announced that divine

helps had been vouchsafed. On this ever-memorable day the bones of the

martyrs at Concordia had distilled water, which in that part of Venetia

was a recognized presage of a joyful future. This is announced in the

organ of that Court which was soberly undertaking to inaugurate a new

era for all the societies of men (_Civiltá_, VII. ix. 104).

The same periodical in the very next sentence gave samples of

_fanatical_ English Protestants. Citing the _Pall Mall Gazette_, it

told how a series of meetings had been held in Freemasons' Hall, at the

suggestion of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné, to pray for the Council. It went on

to say that the Chairman, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird, had told how similar

meetings for prayer were to be held all over the world, and even among

the Protestants of Italy. It quoted two of the petitions said to have

been offered up. Canon Auriol prayed _that all the machinations of Rome

might be turned to confusion_, and Dr. Cumming that the _day of her

imagined triumph might prove to be that of her prophesied ruin_.

It was much pleasanter work to tell of the Anti-Council of the

Freethinkers at Naples. Praying Protestants are to be hated and

extinguished. But vaunting infidels are to the Jesuits what fires

are to insurance offices--their apparent foes, but their only real

supports. That assembly spent a couple of days in vague and sometimes

vast talk. It abused the Pope, and the Jesuits say it blasphemed God.

It proposed to find a code of morals without religion, those flowers

without any stems which are the holy grail of such knights errant.

Finally, it attacked the French Emperor and the Italian monarchy, and

was dissolved by the police. Demonstrations of a somewhat similar

kind were attempted in a few other cities of Italy. In France, on

the contrary, the following cities were illuminated, and were

lauded not only in their local clerical journals, but in the great

_Civiltá_: Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Limoges, Clermont,

Saint-Etienne, Laval, Moulins, Nismes, Auch, "and others." Even in

Paris many convents illuminated their facades. (_Guérin_, p. 78.)

At Vienna a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and officials

composing the Catholic Societies, and numbering, it is said, four

thousand, was held to celebrate the day. The only Italian city

specified as having made any favourable demonstration was Brescia;

and the account amounted to no more than that of an attendance of

some Society of young men at Mass, and of the sending of a promise of

adhesion to the Council.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 198: _Frond_, iii., p. 254. M. Fisquet is author of the work

_Gallia Christiana_, in fifty volumes.]

[Footnote 199: The Hindu _Bhagavad Gita_ thus represents the

distinction between God and the gods. "I behold, O God! within Thy

heart the _dews_ (gods) assembled, and every specific tribe of beings.

I see Brahma (the creator, only a god) sitting on his lotus throne, all

the Reeshees, and heavenly Ooragas.... I see Thee without beginning,

without middle, and without end.... The space between the heavens and

the earth is possessed by Thee alone, and every point around.... Of

the celestial bands, some fly to Thee for refuge; whilst some, afraid

with joined hands sing forth Thy praise. The Maharshees holy bands hail

Thee"; and then follows an enumeration of various orders of celestials,

who "all stand gazing on Thee, all alike amazed."(a)

(a: Wilkins' translation, Garrett's ed., pp. 34, 55.)

While thus Hinduism long anticipated either Pagan or Papal Romanism,

in a system of inferior worship to inferior powers, it more logically

attached inferior paradises to such worship. "Those who worship the

_Devatas_ (gods) go unto the Devatas; those who worship the Patriarchs

go unto the Patriarchs; the servants of the spirits go to the spirits;

and they who worship me go unto me."(b) That is sensible as a polity,

if fallen as a religion. But it may be doubtful whether those who

worship the Inquisitors would like to go to the Inquisitors.

(b: Ibid., p. 46.)]

[Footnote 200: Dr. Philip, author of _The Ghetto and Rome's Great

Show_.]

[Footnote 201: _See_ Liverani at full.]

[Footnote 202: Chap. x. 8, 0.]

[Footnote 203: _Allocution_ of June 26, 1867.]

[Footnote 204: Wilkins' translation, Garrett's triglot edition,

Bangalore, p. 53.]

[Footnote 205: _Stimmen_, _Neue Folge_, vi. p. 116.]

[Footnote 206: _Frond_, iii, p. 10.]

[Footnote 207: In the list of Popes, the name Peter is repeated only in

the case of one, and he was an anti-pope.]

[Footnote 208: The form of the opening resolutions and of the Decrees

is found in any edition of the Canons and Decrees of the Council; the

full account of the proceedings, taken down at the time by Massarellus,

the Secretary of the Council, in Theiner's _Acta Genuina_, vol. i. 28,

29.]

[Footnote 209: _Priv. Petri_, Part III. p. 36.]

[Footnote 210: This version, made before the publication of the English

translation, differs from it only in immaterial points. (See _Eight

Months_, p, 22.)]

[Footnote 211: _Times_, Dec. 14, 1869.]

[Footnote 212: "_Les portes-lumiéres et les portes-Dieu._"]

CHAPTER II

First Proceedings--Unimportant Committees and All-Important

Commissions--No Council if Pope dies--Theologians discover their

Disfranchisement--Father Ambrose--Parties and Party Tactics--Were the

Bishops Free Legislators?--Plans of Reconstruction--Plan of the German

Bishops--Segesser's Plan--New Bull of Excommunications.

The day following the wonderful Wednesday, of which the proceedings

filled up the last chapter, was not too much for rest, and probably,

indeed, was too little for the bishops to tell how effective the

function had been. On the Friday, however, they had again to meet

for the first General Congregation, or deliberative sitting. This

was presided over by the Cardinals appointed, whereas the Pope

in person presided over the Public Sessions, or solemnities, for

formally promulging Decrees. Cardinal De Reisach, Chief President,

was not in his chair, but upon his death-bed. As we have seen, he had

superintended the drawing up (it is believed that with his own hand he

had drawn up) the first code of laws to regulate the relations of the

Church to civil society; but his code has never met the public eye.

From this first General Congregation, writes Friedrich, even the

theologians were shut out.

The occupation of the day for nearly eight hundred bishops was to elect

two committees of five each: one to examine applications for leave of

absence; and the other to settle contests as to precedence, and similar

matters, which contests at Trent often proved to be serious, indeed

ere now the streets of Rome have witnessed bloodshed arising out of

disputes of this sort between bishops. The members of these committees

were called respectively Judges of Excuses and Judges of Complaints and

Disputes. The mode of election was simple; every one wrote five names

on a card. It proved that Fallibilists must not expect the smallest

share of office. Cardinal De Luca took the chief place, and opened

the Congregation with a few simple sentences. These were translated

by interpreters for the Orientals who did not understand Latin. The

prelate who on this occasion celebrated Mass at the opening of the

sitting was the Bishop of Osimo, afterwards Cardinal Vitelleschi, to

whom some have ascribed the authorship of the work of his brother,

which we often quote.[213]

The real business of the day, too important to be left to the

episcopate, had been done without them. It consisted in appointing the

Commission of Proposals. Twelve Cardinals, twelve archbishops, and two

bishops were announced as the men whom the Pontiff had put in charge

of the rights of their brethren. Prelates with titles from Antioch,

Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and Sardis; one from Chili and one from

Baltimore; one from Spain, one from Westminster, two Italians, and a

few others, were empowered to say whether the men who ruled the sees

of Paris, Lyons, Munich, Cologne, and Milan, and those of Hungary and

Portugal, were or were not to be recommended to the Pope for permission

to bring forward any proposal. The Commission could not grant them

leave to do so, but it could report to the Pontiff, who alone could

determine.

As some seven hundred and fifty bishops found all their hopes of

proposing anything placed at the discretion of these twenty-six men,

it was not for them to reason why: it was for them simply to read in

the names now announced the record of past services and the fate of

future suggestions.[214] They had not stayed the proceedings when they

found that the Pro-synodal Congregation had been used to fasten upon

them an edict which took away their right of self-organization, and it

was now hopeless to attempt to recover that right. The three youngest

archbishops on the list were Giannelli, Manning, and Deschamps; the

secretary of the Nine, and the two hottest Infallibilists--all three

on the way to the purple, which they have since received at one and the

same time.

But the sensation of the day, perhaps brought about at this moment

to divert attention from the painful inroad just made upon episcopal

rights, was a Bull determining the course to be taken should the death

of the Pontiff occur during the Council. This edict determined that

the bishops must not, in that case, elect a successor or transact

any business, but that the Council must be held as suspended till

another Pope should be duly elected by the Cardinals alone, and till

it should be again called together by him. Pius IX ordained that this

law should endure for ever, as the rule in all similar cases. This

measure made the Council an appendage to the person of the Pope, not

capable of sustaining its existence without him, and consequently

having no imaginable power over him. It also made it inferior to the

College of Cardinals--an abnormal body, composed of "creatures" of the

crown, without any pretence to a constitutional place in the Christian

Church--"Princes," and some of them, like Antonelli, not even priests.

"Pivots," as their name imports, true "pivots"[215] of the Court, which

has turned a religion into a school of costume, policy, and arms, they

have, we repeat, as Cardinals, neither name nor place, neither order

nor office, in the known constitution of the Catholic Church. When

men who held that bishops were successors of the Apostles allowed the

right of all the bishops in the world to choose their own head to be

confiscated by an edict in favour of these Court officers, they were

not likely afterwards to be strong supports of any true authority, only

of that arbitrary will which finds all the sanction of its acts in

itself. The Cardinals may well denounce nationalism, since to uphold

their pretensions the mitres of all nations must bow to the hat of a

prince in the suite of one little king. It would be unreasonable to

think less of a man for wearing a scarlet hat and scarlet stockings,

if his position in life calls him to it; almost as unreasonable as

to think more of him for it. But to put a prince into that grotesque

Court dress, and then turn him, by virtue of his Court position, into

a titular bishop, or archbishop, and to expect his irregular office to

be recommended by his incongruous attire, is a proof of the unlimited

faith of the Curia in costume.

The experience of the day taught two lessons. First, the hall proved to

be utterly unfit for deliberation, as every architect or public speaker

must have known that it would prove, though about twenty-four thousand

pounds had been spent in adapting a space within the Cathedral. But the

second lesson of the day's experience was of a different kind. It had

become plain that Fallibilists and Infallibilists were to be parted off

from one another by a hard official line, and that no distinction would

be made between Fallibilists and Inopportunists. The Curia, instead of

showing any fear of the minority, was evidently resolved on letting it

be known that Rome was not the place to form an opposition. The Rules

had in fact already disposed of the minority.

We have intimated that possibly theologians came up to the Council

with no more knowledge of what awaited them than the bishops. This

was at least the case with Friedrich. On the Monday after the opening

ceremony, accompanied by Kagarer, theologian to his Grace of Munich,

he waited on the Secretary of the Council. I knew, says the Professor,

that at Trent every theologian was not entitled only, but bound, to

take part in the labours of the Council, by preparing papers and

publicly discussing questions. But, he adds, "we were undeceived with

a witness." The Secretary told them that the duty of theologians in

connexion with the Council was "nothing." They were only to give

information or advice to their respective bishops, as it might be asked

for.

The decision thus announced to the doctors had been taken eleven

months previously. The Nine, at their meetings of January 24 and

31, (_Cecconi_, p. 205) had determined that there should be no

congregation of inferior theologians, as the doctors were called,

in opposition to the bishops, the superior theologians. The open

discussions which had given light to the people on the one side and

to the prelates on the other were thus quenched. The people were no

more to have any means of ascertaining what was being done with their

creed, nor even, when something had been done, were they to have means

of ascertaining what were the processes by which the new dogmas had

been established. All that they were now to learn was to be the _fait

accompli_, henceforth to become the standard of faith for all and

in all. The order of priests was to be shorn of its last vestige of

representation in the Councils of the Church. The bishops, on the other

hand, were not to be allowed to know what could be said for or against

a proposed dogma, before they were called upon to close it up for ever.

This one turn of the screw wrung even from Cecconi a mild but distinct

expression of doubt. He feels (p. 205) that "the Fathers generally

lost a mighty assistance in the discharge of their high office." He

ventures to quote Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of Trent, whose

language shows that the old Jesuits had broad views compared with

those now ruling. Pallavicino's words remind us of the cry of poor

Monsignor Liverani: "We might be allowed to be Liberals up to the mark

of Bellarmine"--

Many of the bishops were learned in the science of theology, but

the most eminent, as is the case in all sciences, were the private

theologians, since they had not been diverted by public cares from

regular study, without which eminent prudence is often acquired,

but not eminent erudition.

But Pius IX had no intention of allowing bishops to satisfy their

consciences by hearing all that could be said on both sides before they

gave a judgment.

It would be hard to find a neater specimen of the terms in which the

abolition of a venerable franchise may be couched than in the words

of Cecconi. He lets us know that on the 4th of July, 1869, the Nine

resolved to "confer on the theologians of bishops the right of being

eligible to be called to serve the committees of the Council." It would

be only in keeping with a system of quotation regularly practised if

this statement of Cecconi should be, hereafter, used to prove that

the theologians at the Vatican Council did not suffer any curtailment

of their rights, but received an increase of them. But exclusion from

the right of pleading before "my lords" was not all the degradation

awaiting the unfortunate doctors. Bishop Fessler told them that they

were free to give information or advice each to his own bishop, but,

adds Friedrich, _only to him_. We wonder what man was not free to

give private advice if asked for it. They were not to be allowed _to

attend meetings of the bishops; not even to meet among themselves to

consult in common upon questions affecting the Council_.[216] Friedrich

was not the most to be pitied of the theologians. Father Ambrose, a

Carmelite, had been brought up from Germany by his general, a Spaniard.

At the first interview the general told him that the all-important

question was that of Papal infallibility. Father Ambrose declared

himself a Fallibilist, and produced a work which he had prepared on

the subject. He at once lost his post; and the general wished to send

him off to Malta. Cardinal Hohenlohe pleaded for his restoration, but

in vain. The general feared that the order would be utterly put to

shame if in addition to the scandal of the Cracow nun, and that of

Father Hyacinthe's defection, a theologian of the Order brought up to

the Council should be known as a Fallibilist. The poor man had even to

go to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and to beg of him to give him back a copy

of his little work which he had presented to his Eminence. This the

Cardinal refused to do, saying that even if the general had ordered

it, he had nothing to say to a Cardinal. Ambrose was permitted to

return to Würzburg, and before he started a prelate said to him, "I

should rejoice if any one recalled me or sent me home. We bishops have

been ordered here to the Council without being told what we were to

deliberate upon, and now that I know it, I could gladly turn my back

upon the Council and Rome."

Another minute touch of Friedrich at this moment shows how he heard a

devoted Roman adherent of the Papacy say that an officer had sent him

twenty scudi (about four pounds) as an offering to Peter's Pence; but

he had returned the money, telling his friend he would do better to

spend it on his family. "His conscience had dictated this course," for

he knew how Peter's Pence were spent.

The correspondent of the _Stimmen_ must have been under the triumphal

influence of the opening, when he informed his German readers that

wonderful unanimity reigned, and that what might be called the

Opposition was daily shrinking up into nothing, and would soon reward

only microscopical research.[217] The _Unitá Cattolica_ of January 1

alleged that the _Français_, in using the expression, "A fraction of

malcontents," might possibly be right, if it meant an almost impalpable

fraction; but if it meant anything more, it was false. The alleged

discontent, it went on to say, was spoken of as if it related to the

Commission of Proposals appointed by the Pope. Some were said to wish

that the Council itself should have had the selection of a committee.

It was false; no one complained. It could not be disputed that the

Pontiff, having the right to convoke, rule, and guide the Council,

had also the right to determine what questions should be submitted

to it. Pius IX had, indeed, himself confirmed this in the Bull by

which he settled the Rules of Procedure. This is not conscious but

unconscious irony. It reflects the course of the Papacy, displaying

its administrative force and its logical infirmity in one word. A

right is first desired, then secretly assumed, next insinuated in

indirect forms, and finally embodied in an act assuming it as already

ascertained; after which, this very act is taken as proof that it was

previously established. When the Nine met, they confessed that it was

questionable if the right existed to lay down rules for a General

Council of the Catholic Church by a sub-committee of the Cardinals.

But they assumed the right as unchallenged, embodied the assumption in

an edict, and now turned to that edict as proof of the pre-existing

right. A few days later, the correspondent of the _Stimmen_ again said

that, while the intelligence furnished to the ordinary journals was

absurd, one thing might be relied upon, namely, that what was called an

Opposition was daily diminishing.[218]

Another Jesuit, writing after the Council, did not confirm these

statements of the inspired organs, but followed the profane journals,

whose intelligence was at the time decried--

Behold, says Sambin, two camps face to face! On one side, Rome

and her Sovereign Pontiff, surrounded by a vast majority of the

bishops, displaying the banner of the Church as set up by her

divine Redeemer. On the other side, an uncertain number of men

belonging to all ranks of the hierarchy, seduced by illusory

appearances or frightened by the danger of attacking modern ideas

in front--men who fancy that the Church ought to parley with the

notions of the age.[219]

The orthodox view on this point was expressed by the _Civiltá_ in

its first number after the Council was opened. "The Press and public

meetings are the two mainsprings by which the spirit of the age, or

Masonry, or, to give things their proper names, Satan, moves public

opinion for his own ends."[220] At that moment Satan was busy not only

with the Italian and German Press, but with the _Standard_, _Saturday

Review_, and other English papers.

Another aspect of the Council was exhibited, not in the secular

newspapers, but in the clerical periodicals. Eight days after the

opening session, the _Stimmen_ was informed how, on an afternoon as

mild as summer, the grounds of the Villa Borghese were enlivened by

a review in honour of the Fathers of the Council. The troops were

much commended, not omitting the _Squadriglieri_, whom the Italians

profanely charged with having been recruited from the brigands but

whom the Jesuits described as excellent Catholics. The _Civiltá_ was

really edified by this display. In the military review, it says--and

we repeat word for word--the profane spectacle was dominated by the

thought of the _new crusaders_ defiling before so many bishops,

spectators and a spectacle no longer witnessed at a military review. It

was well and truly said that this _review_ looked like a _function_ in

St. Peters'.[221]

A few days later, the faithful, whose supply of news never related

to either doctrine or discipline, were edified by an account of a

performance in a military casino, in honour of the Austrian and Swiss

bishops. It is inferred that the Pope's foreign troops must be highly

educated, because the beautiful scenery had been entirely painted

by the soldiers. The curtain represented St. Michael the Archangel

overcoming the _first great rebel_. The first great rebel, by some

wonderful prolepsis, was clad in a red shirt, and wore the features of

Garibaldi. No writers so well know as the Jesuits how to make fun of

Garibaldi's bit of ritualism, with his red shirt and poncho. A German

war-song of the middle ages, addressed to St. Michael, was sung with

loud applause, and sung _encore_. Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg, the

Archbishops of Salsburg and Cologne, the Bishop of Mainz, and the

Prussian Military Bishop, with a retinue of counts and one prince,

hallowed and graced the performance.[222]