in Rome had been harassing. Suspected of being the correspondent of
the _Augsburg Gazette_, he had been denounced in the papers, treated
rudely by bishops, jeered at by the Pope, reported as being banished,
and dogged by police spies even in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe.
All this would intensify his perception of the moral corruption of
the city, of which many a priest before him had spoken, from Luther
to Liverani, or Lammenais. It would also give a keener edge to the
theological debates which were going on in his own mind. After an
interval of five days in his diary, he writes, under date of February
25 (p. 195)--
At last I must once more take up the pen. If the last few days have
been important for the history of the Council, still more important
have they been for my own life-history. A mental struggle within
me has reached its close, one which was hard to undergo, and which
shook my entire mental and physical being. Now all stands clear
before my eyes. I know the end toward which I am to steer. The Lord
has once more led me a stage further in my life-path. It was truly
a melancholy thought for me when, finding for a moment a point of
rest in the midst of this struggle, I looked back upon my peculiar
course. From that decision to become a Jesuit, onwards to this
journey to Rome, an unseen hand has so perceptibly led me, almost
always without design of mine, that even here, in the midst of the
new storms, I have been able to take fresh courage. I stand here in
Rome only through the unseen guidance of the Lord; for it was not
I that ever took a step to come here; indeed, all was done without
me. But I see clearly that even that dispensation was to purify my
views and intentions, and to lead me on towards the sole prescribed
end of my life.
At one time, how much was Rome for me! How did I, in a sense,
worship all that came from it! Now I see that here reign not only
the most horrid ignorance, but, still more, pride, lies, and sin.
Henceforth my life has its task marked out for two ends. Henceforth
it is devoted to the struggle against the Curia (not primacy), and
to that against the Jesuits. If I fall in it, I shall believe that
the Lord has so willed, and that there can be, and that there is,
a martyrdom for Christ, and for His Church, among the faithful.
If I have had to learn here that the Curialists and the Jesuits
are enemies not less furious than the heathen, I shall openly show
the world that they do not scruple to devise the death of their
enemies. The _Univers_ may erroneously write, "The scandal in Rome
is great," because I am here and am betraying the secrets of Rome;
but one may say with full right, "The scandal in Christendom is
great."
The bishops of the minority still declared their determination to
resist every attempt to concentrate infallibility in the Pope; but
Darboy said to a diplomatist, What use is it to send in protests that
never receive an answer?[333] The last protest, however, contained
the grave matter in which a hundred bishops pledged themselves to
language casting doubt upon the oecumenicity of the Council. Of no
use for its immediate purpose, that document will always be of real
use in judging of the value of much that has been said by its signers
since the Council. Prominent Infallibilists intimated that the dogma
would not be so defined as to declare the opposite opinion a heresy.
Yes, says Friedrich, they would leave it as Trent left the Immaculate
Conception--in such a position that some day, when the sun shines fair
upon a Pope, it may be promulged as a dogma. Then he adds, what many
may have heard stated in Rome, It is strongly asserted that the very
reason why the Council Hall has been placed where it stands, is that
there at a certain hour the sunbeams fall upon the Papal throne (p.
219).
Vitelleschi says that the visitors to the Exhibition of Church Art
did not generally exceed the number of the _gendarmes_, and expresses
an opinion that the real Christian arts are better represented in
such international exhibitions as might be seen elsewhere. Anything
less like Christianity than many of the objects which in Rome are
called objects of Christian art, is hard to conceive, or anything
more fitted to turn men into triflers, if once they give themselves
up to such baubles as the great concern of life, either social or
religious. In this exhibition, Friedrich was struck with a statue of
the Pope defining the Immaculate Conception, and with pictures of the
same event, "with the inevitable sunbeams." He was also arrested by a
group of the Risen Christ, with Pius standing before Him in a flowing
pluvial. He says that when one looks at the humble figure of our
Lord, and then at the self-conscious Pius, one is inclined to surmise
that the latter is thinking, "I am not only what Thou art, but much
more. I command all; Thou didst serve all" (p. 220). Quirinus quotes,
without translating it, a saying of an Italian noble, which might
have suggested the very thought: "Other Popes believed that they were
Vicars of Christ; but this Pope believes that our Lord is his Vicar
in heaven" (p. 326). These are the things which the worshippers of
Pius IX call blasphemy, while most Italians smile if you doubt their
legitimacy. Friedrich tells how the auditor of Cardinal Hohenlohe,
an ecclesiastic, expressed the horror that had been caused in Rome
by Friedrich's articles on Manning in the _Literaturblatt_. He added
that Hohenlohe would have been a great Cardinal but for two blunders,
that of visiting Cardinal Andrea when he returned to Rome, and that of
bringing Professor Friedrich to the Council (p. 220).
The ministry of Prince Hohenlohe, in Bavaria, had fallen under the
hostile influences of the Church party. On the other hand, the recent
action of France and Austria had shown that possibly the Curia, if not
prompt, might meet with more formidable checks than any that could
arise from Bavaria. As to France, the Curia would seem, rightly or
wrongly, to have felt that if Napoleon dared them to the worst, they
could shake him out of his place, if not as easily, yet as surely as
the bearers of the Pope's portative throne could upset a Pontiff.
Daru's demands were officially made known by the reluctant, indeed the
all but recalcitrant M. de Banneville, no earlier than March 1. At
this very time Dupanloup was drawing up, and the French bishops were
preparing to sign, the protest against the new Rules. The adhesion of
the German and Hungarian bishops to this protest was to be foreseen.
The Curia, therefore, took the decision to face both Bonapartes and
bishops, and to throw down the gauntlet.
The meetings of General Congregations had been suspended to give the
Fathers time for study. On the evening of March 7 a short notice was
sent round to their houses, saying that an additional chapter, to be
called the Eleventh, would be inserted in the Draft of Decrees on
the Church. This new chapter was simply that declaration of Papal
infallibility which had been asked for by the famous Address. So the
die was cast. All uncertainty as to the designs of the Curia was at
an end. Not only was the dogma to be defined, but all who should deny
it were to be excluded from the unity of the Church. Quirinus says
that the Pope gave his sanction to this critical act under great
personal excitement. For four-and-twenty years had he sought the crown
of infallibility, believing himself to be wrongfully deprived of it
by the error and unbelief of mankind. In 1848, when Count Mamiani,
after ceasing to be the Prime Minister of the new Pontiff, met his
friends in Florence, he said, "It is utterly impossible to act as the
constitutional minister of a Pope who is stark mad on the subject of
his own personal infallibility."[334]
The bishops found that they had only ten days allowed them to send in
their written comments upon the fundamental change now impending in
the constitution of the Church, in their creed, and in their standard
of faith. Vitelleschi remarks that the brevity of the time given
will remain as a testimony to the pressure exercised, and will lower
the impression of the wisdom of men who hurried the Church through
such a transformation.[335] The _Civiltá_ states that the time was
afterwards extended by a week.[336] If it was proposed to give to
Orders of the Queen in Council all the scope and effect of Acts of
Parliament, our Lords and Commons would expect at least one week beyond
ten days' notice before meeting the Court party in the lists, and more
particularly if the right of moving that the Bill should be read that
day six months had been for ever snatched away from them.
A visit of the ex-Grand Duke of Tuscany, or, as the _Civiltá_ takes
care to call him, the Grand Duke, is formally recorded, as if to show
the proper relations between princes and the Pontiff. On his arrival,
the Grand Duke was waited upon by the majordomo and chamberlain of
the Pope; and next day by Antonelli, as Secretary of State. The day
following, the Grand Duke "went to the apostolic palace to do homage
to the Holy Father." This is the true language of vassalage. To make
it plainer, the Pope, on the same day, "admitted the Archduke Charles
of Tuscany to an audience."[337] It was, however, not encouraging for
the projectors of "a new world" that the only princes who came with
suitable reverence to the door which formed the entrance to it were
princes who represented a world that had waxed old, had decayed, and
indeed had vanished away.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 320: _Friedberg_, p. 112.]
[Footnote 321: _Friedberg_, p. 114.]
[Footnote 322: _Friedberg_, p. 138.]
[Footnote 323: _Vitelleschi_, p. 81.]
[Footnote 324: _Quirinus_, p. 267.]
[Footnote 325: _Friedberg_, p. 415; _Acta_, p. 18; Freiburg ed., p.
163.]
[Footnote 326: _Friedrich_, p. 198.]
[Footnote 327: _Doc. ad Ill._, i. 164.]
[Footnote 328: "_In pluribus Patrum libertas inde minui, imo etiam
tolli posse videatur._"]
[Footnote 329: _Alioquin jam deputatio esset totum concilium et in
pluribus solus judex._]
[Footnote 330: _Documenta_, i. p. 263. Here _veritas_ seems to mean
reality "quasi veritate et libertate caruerit."]
[Footnote 331: _Quirinus_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 332: Strangely enough, in April 1876, the papers spoke of
the excitement caused in France by the fact that Bishop Freppel had
positively excommunicated the zealous M. de Falloux for some breach of
the ecclesiastical law, in a matter connected with Church property.]
[Footnote 333: _Tagebuch_, p. 219.]
[Footnote 334: See a very life-like sketch of Pio Nono in the
_Manchester Examiner and Times_ of December 17, 1874, which, in Rome,
is ascribed to the pen of Mr. Montgomery Stuart.]
[Footnote 335: _Vitelleschi_, p. 177.]
[Footnote 336: Srrie II. x. 112.]
[Footnote 337: _Civiltá_, VII. x. 118.]
_BOOK IV_
_FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY TO THE
SUSPENSION OF THE COUNCIL_
CHAPTER I
Joy of Don Margotti--New Feelers for an Acclamation--Suggested Model
of the Scene--Its Political Import--A Pause--Case of the Jesuit
Kleutgen--Schwarzenberg out of Favour--Politics of Poland--Döllinger
on the New Rules--Last Protest of Montalembert--His Death--Consequent
Proceedings in Rome.
"The Vicar of Jesus Christ for ever" was the title of the article in
which Don Margotti announced the fact that the Pope had sent in the
proposal of infallibility. Ollivier, said Don Margotti, once stated
that he loved strong powers with confidence in themselves, and as the
Pope always wished to be loved by ministers of Napoleon III, he had
showed them that he was strong.[338] "It is a great spectacle, but it
will be a still greater one when infallibility is proclaimed, and the
Syllabus is proclaimed, in spite of the opposition of governments, of
revolutions, and of all hell."
But the speedy closing of the question, now formally opened, was
indispensable. The suggestion of an acclamation on the day of Mary in
December had proved vain; but the day of Joseph was now approaching.
The term allowed for sending in written observations on the Draft would
expire on March 17, and the _Unitá_, in its number of the 11th, put up
the following prayer: "O Blessed St. Joseph, grant us the grace that
on the 18th of March may be discussed, and on the 19th, the day of thy
Festival, may be proclaimed, the most pleasant and most wise doctrine
of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ." The correspondent
of the _Unitá_ from Rome said, "We hope for the definition on the 19th,
St. Joseph's Day"; and its correspondent at Paris stated that no doubt
existed that the dogma would be proclaimed on that day. Two days before
the one so anticipated, the _Unitá_ published suggestive accounts of
the scenes in 1854, when the Immaculate Conception was acclaimed. It
quoted Canon Audisio, a well-known writer, and one sometimes called a
Liberal Catholic. Just after the noontide bell, when the two hundred
bishops had knelt to repeat the Angelus, as soon as they resumed their
seats, a cry speedily broke out from among them, _Petre, doce nos:
confirma fratres tuos_: (Peter, teach us! strengthen thy brethren!) The
teaching desired was a definition of the Immaculate Conception. The
whole assembly wept. "It was a weeping so cordial and sublime that you
cannot imagine it, and pen cannot describe it."
After this hint, as to what the scene--always a chief point--on the
19th should be, the principles of polity involved in the scene are
indicated; for in Rome all acting is for the purpose of ruling. Some
prelates, said the _Araldo di Lucca_, as quoted by the _Unitá_, had
thought that the Bull announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
should make mention of the assembly of the bishops; but a prelate from
France, rising _in the spirit of Athanasius_, said, "No; the episcopate
should not decide, but only the chief Pontiff; he alone must speak."
He went on to argue that, by showing obedience to the Pontiff, they
would secure the obedience of the people, and strengthen the principle
of authority. The _Unitá_ significantly adds, "It appears to us, and
it will appear to all, that not only the dogma of the Immaculate was
defined on that memorable sitting of the 24th of November, 1854, but
also that of Papal infallibility."
While the party of movement was full of hope, the minority were in
dismay. Their chosen ground of inopportuneness had been cut from under
their feet. The Pope and five hundred bishops had decided that the
question was opportune. They now felt that if the dogma should be
suddenly defined, they must either submit or be outside of the Church.
The new Rules permitted the discussion to be closed at the will of
the majority. It was notorious that any discussion whatever, on a
point so immediately affecting the authority of the Pope, not only in
the Church, but also in the world, was hateful to every right-minded
Curialist, and, in fact, that as taking place hard by the tomb of St.
Peter, such a discussion was regarded as a thing all but intolerable.
The suggestions in the _Unitá_ from Rome, Paris, and Turin had not been
put out without high sanction. Was it possible that, on St. Joseph's
Day, all would be ended by an irresistible acclamation?
Some think that so deep a feeling was now produced in the minority,
and that so clear did they make it that they would not acquiesce in
an acclamation, that they impressed the Vatican for a time. Friedrich
repeats, on the authority of one who was intimate with the Pope, a
saying of the latter, "The Jesuits have set me on this road, and now I
shall go on in it, and they must bear the responsibility." The personal
position of members of the minority became more and more trying, owing
to the increasingly active part taken by the Pontiff in the discussion.
A second brief to the Jesuit Ramière[339] followed the one which
ridiculed Maret, commending another publication of the same author,
in which, alluding to the possibility that some now opposing the
infallibility of the Pope would secede from the Church, Ramière said,
"These form the secret enemy who impedes our march, and, in driving him
from our ranks, the sacred army will obtain the most precious guarantee
of its future success."[340] Friedrich adds, what agrees with much that
is said, or hinted, by other Liberal Catholics, strange as it sounds in
our ears, "Any one who knows the Jesuits can explain the closing words
of the pamphlet, 'Then, truly will the Council have realized the most
ardent desire of the Saviour, and established the conditions on which
this divine Master makes the submission of the entire world to the yoke
of the faith depend.'"
"That is," explains Friedrich, "the yoke of the Society of Jesus;
for even under the name Jesus, 'we are only to understand the
Society of Jesu.' At the Festival of St. Ignatius Loyola, priests
must repeat the words, with great emphasis, 'At the name of Jesu
every knee shall bow.' The former Confessor of the Pope, now
replaced by a Jesuit, always felt scandalized by this, on the eve
of the Festival, and earnestly wished to have those words removed
from the Mass for Loyola's Day."
Archbishop Cardoni, being asked what had become of the Draft Decrees
on Faith, said that the committee first examined them, after which
Deschamps, Pie, and Martin, as a sub-committee, partly prepared
a revised form, and finally the recasting of them was completed
by Kleutgen, the Jesuit. What, it was asked, the Kleutgen who was
condemned by the Inquisition? Yes, replied the Archbishop faintly.
This Kleutgen had been a German political refugee, but joined the
Jesuits, and became confessor to a nunnery. One of the nuns, a
German princess, was dying. Her relations, through interest with the
Pope, succeeded in procuring her release. It proved to be a case of
poisoning. The Inquisitors took proceedings, and Kleutgen was somehow
incriminated. The convent was closed, the nuns were dispersed into
other establishments, and the confessor was sentenced to prison for six
years. The imprisonment was changed into reclusion in one of the Jesuit
houses, in a delightful neighbourhood near Rome. Kleutgen found means
to regain favour, and was now remoulding the faith for the benefit of
reconstituted society.[341]
Cardoni told how he, an Archbishop, had been received the preceding day
by the Pope before Schwarzenberg, a Cardinal and a prince, and it was
added that Schwarzenberg had been obliged to wait a fortnight for his
audience, whereas a Cardinal was entitled to have one after two days.
Cardinal De Angelis alleged that the Pope had seen Schwarzenberg behind
the Vatican smoking a cigar, with a "small hat" on his head. To this
the Germans replied that it was well known that Schwarzenberg did not
smoke.[342] We cannot state what would be the penalty for a Cardinal
convicted of wearing a small hat, but they are a class of "creatures"
whose eternal salvation may, by the will of their lord, be declared to
depend on matters the connexion of which with the Christian religion
it takes a Pontiff to find out. Sixtus V decreed the penalty of
excommunication against any Cardinal who should open a letter bearing
the plain address "Cardinal," without the title "Most Illustrious and
Most Reverend." They were to burn such letters. (_Frond_, ii., p. xiii.)
Archbishop Ledochowski, whose name has frequently been heard of since
the Council, had been made Primate of Poland by the Pope. This office,
in olden time, carried with it the regency of the country, in the
interregnum between the death of one king and the election of another.
As primate, the Archbishop put on the colours of a Cardinal. Count
L---- told Friedrich that Ledochowski had said that he was right glad
that he had so early joined the Infallibilists, for Rome was certain
to carry through what she had taken in hand, and therefore the bishops
of the Opposition would gradually come over to the right side, and
would cut a poor figure at the last. Count L---- expressed himself as
indignant at this morality. But, said Friedrich, scarcely had the Count
ended, when I read in the _Univers_ that Ledochowski was mentioned
for promotion as a Cardinal. We may here, as illustrating the bearing
of titles and colours on very serious affairs, interject a statement
of what happened later.[343] Ledochowski, after the Council, at once
took up a new position. When the German bishops next met at Fulda, he
would not join them. As Primate of Poland, he said, he belonged to the
tomb of St. Adelbert rather than to that of St. Boniface. He would
no longer admit Germans to his seminary for priests. In places where
preaching had existed alternately in German and Polish, he suppressed
the German. His organ, the _Tyotnick_, related how, during the Council,
the Pope had given him the title of Primate of Poland, but denied that
he _used_ the political powers attached to the title. Nevertheless, the
_Catholic Calendar_ for 1872, published in Thorn, placed the name of
Ledochowski in the list of reigning princes, as Primate of Poland and
representative of the King of Poland. So that, if the powers attached
to the title were not used, the reasons were not far to seek.[344]
While early converts were joyful, Ketteler continued to be mysterious.
In a meeting of German prelates he declared that, though all his life
he had worked for infallibility, he could not do so now. This Draft
Decree was a crime. But what was to be done? Send in another protest?
All cried out at once, No! no! they have treated us like domestics, and
not even given us an answer.[345]
On February 27 Don Margotti had said that even a Protestant or a
Mohammedan, a Schismatic or a Jew, would see from the new Rules that no
assembly could be freer. Döllinger, on the other hand, had published a
letter on the new Rules. He took the ground indicated in the protest
of the one hundred bishops. In matters of faith, as he contended, the
Rules shifted the source of authority from tradition to majority. This
he showed to be a direct departure from the doctrine of the Catholic
Church.
The days which some had fixed upon for the triumph of an acclamation
were passed in excitement of a different kind. A letter appeared in
the _Gazette de France_ and the _Times_, from Montalembert, addressed
to some gentleman who had challenged his present opposition as
inconsistent with his former championship of the Church. The dying
man then delivered his last public utterance. He protested that, in
his early days, the pretensions now put forth were unheard of. In
language already cited he described the incredible change of the clergy
after 1850, and their present shortsighted prostration before the idol
they had set up. He showed that in his speech of 1847 there was not a
word of the doctrine of Papal infallibility. He might have indicated
also the still more celebrated speech on the restoration of Pius IX.
He quoted that remarkable letter of Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, in
which he depicted the difference between the old Ultramontanism and
the new. Montalembert then declared that his whole regret was that
illness prevented him from descending into the arena to join Dupanloup
and Gratry, to contend on his own ground, that of history and of
social consequences. "Then should I merit--and it is my sole remaining
ambition--a share in the _litanies of insult_ daily launched against
my illustrious friends by a portion, too numerous, of the clergy--that
poor clergy which is preparing for itself so sad a destiny, and which
formerly I loved, defended, and honoured, as no one in modern France
had done." The _Unitá_ cried, "Better for Montalembert had he died
a year ago; better indeed had he never been born."[346] While these
words were ringing in the ears of all, came a telegram announcing
that Montalembert was no more. That evening the Pope had one of those
audiences in which he delights; a kind of public meeting, with three
hundred persons present. Of course every one expected that the little
member which in the days of Pius IX has done much to make the Pope an
entertainment for Italians, would not be able to keep off the exciting
topic. "A Catholic has just died," said his Holiness, "who rendered
services to the Church. He wrote a letter which I have read. I know not
what he said at the moment of death; but I know one thing--that man
had a great enemy, pride. He was a Liberal Catholic--that is to say, a
half-Catholic.... Yes, Liberal Catholics are half-Catholics."[347]
About the time when the Pope was thus speaking of him whose eloquence
had been worth regiments to him, Father Combalot was crying from the
pulpit of Notre Dame Della Valle--
"Satan has entered into Judas! There are men who were Christians,
and who on the brink of the grave become enemies of the Pope, and
speak of torrents of adulation, and accuse us of erecting him into
an idol. To speak so is Satanic work. There are three academicians
who do it" [Montalembert, Gratry, and Dupanloup].[348]
Archbishop De Mérode, brother-in-law of Montalembert, and almoner
to the Pope, arranged that a High Mass should be celebrated in the
Aracoeli on the height of the Capitoline, that is, the church of the
Roman municipality, in which Montalembert was entitled to the honour
of such a solemnity because of the dignity of Roman citizen which had
been conferred upon him for his distinguished services to the Church.
On the 16th a notice was circulated, announcing the intended Mass, in
publishing which the _Univers_ stated that it was known that there
would be no oration--a record which spoiled subsequent fables. Late
that evening, in the great church of the French, a preacher dwelt upon
the memory of Montalembert, inviting the audience to the solemn service
at the Capitoline the next morning. At the same time the rooms of
Archbishop Darboy were crowded. French prelates related what remarks
they had written on the proposal for infallibility. Each one beheld
in his own a great and heroic act. Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims,
had employed a quotation from Bessarion against the curial system,
and expected to be called Jansenist, Gallican, Febronian, and such
like. Friedrich, we suspect, was making prelates understand that if
once they allowed themselves to recommence deliberation under the new
Rules, all hope of successful opposition would be idle, and hinting his
belief that under such Rules the Council had no proper oecumenicity.
Suddenly news came from Mérode. Something was wrong. It proved that
the High Mass for Montalembert had been forbidden by the Pontiff.
What! the departed spirit of the foremost Frenchman in the chivalry
of the Church to be insulted on the Capitoline by the Pope in person!
Among all those Frenchmen, many were old enough to remember the most
brilliant of Montalembert's sallies, and all were old enough to have
witnessed the public disgust when a Court chamberlain turned him out at
the election of 1857, half of the clergy voting against him, and the
other half staying at home. But this beat all. A Cardinal present could
not restrain the confession, "Now I am well ashamed of being a Roman
Cardinal."[349]
The announcement was too late to reach all, and when the hour for
the service came, some twenty bishops and many French notables
assembled. Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits, had come from the
neighbouring _Gesù_, thinking, doubtless, of the splendid services to
the Order which had been rendered by the confiding genius of the man
for whose soul he was now to pray. Even Louis Veuillot came, trying
to forget the irritations of recent years, perhaps hoping in part to
make reparation for ingratitude and insolence, and unable now to see
the opponent, seeing only as in old days the "son of the Crusaders,"
facing, provoking, and dominating a hostile Parliament, with his
head back and his blue eye flashing, till at some turning-point in
his theme the fountains of a great deep broke up, the deep of his
mighty emotions, and then gushed out a flood which carried all before
it. When they reached the steps of the Aracoeli, an official, who
was one of the subordinates of Mérode, cried out in a French phrase
which he had learned on purpose, that they must go away, that the
Mass was forbidden. It is evident that they were all overcome with
mortification, not to use stronger language. Even M. Veuillot pushed by
and said, "It can do no harm to repeat some paternosters for him."[350]
Quirinus says that probably it was De Banneville who represented to
the Pope the serious effects that would be produced in France by this
proceeding. So, on the evening of the 17th, instead of arranging
for the acclamation of infallibility, the Pope was making the small
amends of sending a private message to have a Mass celebrated, on
the following morning, on behalf of a certain deceased Charles, in
the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina. No public notice whatever was
given of this service. The bishops were all shut up in a General
Congregation. The Pope went privately, without any suite, sat hidden
in a latticed "tribune," and then had it announced to the world that
he had personally attended a Mass on behalf of Montalembert. When the
exceedingly painful feeling he had caused began to appear, an attempt
was made to turn the occasion to account by throwing the blame on
Dupanloup. It was declared that it had been announced that he would
deliver an oration, and indeed that the proposed function had been got
up by him as a party demonstration. This gave Dupanloup the opportunity
of writing[351]:--
This is an outrage at once upon the Holy Father, Monsignor De
Mérode, the bishops, and myself. This entire tale, Sir, is false
from the first word to the last. I did not appoint the service.
I was not to officiate. I have had nothing whatever to do in
distributing cards of invitation. Whatever may have been my
profound and inviolable affection for M. De Montalembert, it
belonged to the members of his family present in Rome, Monsignor
De Mérode and the Count De Mérode, and not to me, to arrange the
details of this religious ceremony. It is within my knowledge that
in doing so they conformed to all the laws and formalities usual in
Rome in similar cases.
The last statement was made to upset one of the excuses, that proper
leave had not been asked for the service. So those false stories, at
least, were stayed.
As the news spread in succession from place to place, the imaginations
of Liberal Catholics all over Europe would restlessly wander up and
down the Capitoline, seeing on that historical slope the signal given
for their eternal disgrace in the Holy City. It was given too by an
arrow shot from the Pontiff's own bow, and aimed at the shade of
Montalembert. We do not profess to know what injury the imagination
of such men might picture as having been done to the spirit that was
gone, but those Christians who believe in a God who, not even in this
world, much less in the great hereafter, trusts any child of man,
though the least of all the little ones, to a Vicar--those who believe
in a sacrifice which no man can repeat, prohibit, or buy, when they
heard what had occurred, saw the spirit pass into the true temple,
_and outfly all the arrows of death_. Oh, how benign is that light of
immortality which shows us the spirits of the departed resting in the
hands of their Father, altogether above dependence on the malice or the
compassion, on the liberality or the avarice, on the devotion or the
unbelief of living men; and which, with the same blessed beam, shows us
the living protected from all possible malice, raised into independence
of all possible goodwill of the dead, by a near and solicitous paternal
Watcher. All the traffic of the markets of Purgatory, a traffic as low
and demoralizing as any traffic can be, scarcely exposes the system
which has sprung up around that invention so much as one broil like
that which the traffickers raised around the soul of Montalembert--no,
not around his soul, that was beyond their reach, only around his
memory.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 338: _Unitá Cattolica_, March 10.]
[Footnote 339: _Friedberg_, p. 491.]
[Footnote 340: _Tagebuch_, p. 221.]
[Footnote 341: _Tagebuch_, p. 230.]
[Footnote 342: _Ibid._, p. 231.]
[Footnote 343: Menzel, _Jesuitenumtriebe_, p. 297.]
[Footnote 344: The following passage in the speech made to the Pope
by Ledochowski on his elevation to the purple, is taken from the
_Emancipatore Cattolico_, April 22, 1876:--"And as the persecution
was most bitter in that part of Poland which is now under Prussian
occupation ... the honour of this sacred purple falls like a celestial
dew upon my oppressed and agonised country, and seems silently to say
to her, that if forgotten and abandoned of the world, she is still
loved and blessed by God, of whom your Holiness is the Vicar." The very
next paragraph in the same paper is headed, _The Heresy of Love of
Country_.]
[Footnote 345: _Tagebuch_, p. 236.]
[Footnote 346: March 11.]
[Footnote 347: This is the version quoted from the _Moniteur Universel_
in _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, p. 154. M. Veuillot acknowledged that
the "hard word" was in the speech, and the above version has not been
denied.]
[Footnote 348: _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, p. 155, quoting _Gazette
de France_, March 20. In the _Univers_ of April 4, quoted on the same
page, Combalot acknowledged the words, and said that he was preaching
at the time "by the grace and the mission of the infallible Pontiff."]
[Footnote 349: _Tagebuch_, p. 259.]
[Footnote 350: This trait of kindly feeling is given by Friedrich.]
[Footnote 351: The fullest account of the whole transaction is that in
_Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_. But Friedrich, Quirinus, Veuillot, and
Fromman have all been consulted, and show that the main particulars
admit of no doubt. Dupanloup's letter is both in _Ce Qui se Passe au
Concile_, and in German, in _Friedberg_, p. 110.]
CHAPTER II
Threat of American Prelates--Acclamation again fails--New
Protest--Decrees on Dogma--Ingenious connexion of Creation with the
Curia--Serious Allegations of Unfair and Irregular Proceedings of the
Officials--Fears at the Opening of the New Session--The Three Devotions
of Rome--More Hatred of Constitutions--Noisy Sitting; Strossmayer
put down--The Pope's Comments--He compares the Opposition to Pilate
and to the Freemasons--He is reconciled to Mérode--The Idea of
Charlemagne--Secret Change of a Formula before the Vote.
"That took effect," wrote Quirinus, for once, in noting a step of
members of the minority. The step so spoken of was a simple one. Four
American prelates sent in a declaration that if any attempt was made to
carry infallibility by acclamation, as had been suggested, they would
leave the Council, go home, and publish their reasons for so doing.
Whether this proceeding alone, or this together with other indications,
influenced the majority, certain it is that when the General
Congregations were resumed, on March 18, there was no acclamation. St.
Joseph did not avail more for his day than the Immaculate had done for
hers. All that we hear of any attempt to provoke an acclamation is the
statement of Vitelleschi that one prelate tried to get infallibility
carried "by chance," but received countenance only from very few. The
minority gave in their protest against the new Rules to the Presiding
Cardinals. We need not say that neither then nor at any later time did
they receive an answer. The business now placed before the Fathers was
the Draft of Decrees on Dogma as revised. The eighteen chapters had,
under the hands of the committee, the sub-committee, and Kleutgen,
shrunk to four. Even as they now stood, the chapters had to undergo
considerable alteration before taking the shape in which they appear
upon the _Acta_. As they stand there, they are not at first sight
capable of interesting the theologian for their theology, or the
politician for their bearing on politics. At the time, they led many to
wonder why grave men should have spent years in formulating rudimentary
principles, and that not very successfully. The alleged reason was
that everything being wrong in the ideas of the age, the Church must
commence by asserting the existence of a God, and the fact that He had
created the world. An attempt was made to throw some dignity about
this proceeding by quoting a prophecy of some saint, to the effect
that an age would come when a General Council would have to do this.
On the other hand, as Vitelleschi shows, Roman wit said that really,
after sitting four months and a half, the Vatican Council would vote
almost unanimously that God created the world. Friedrich, however, saw
that the Curial system was insinuated in these Decrees, but it took a
theologian to discern it, and one who was not a mere theologian. Yet
when it was pointed out there could be no doubt of the fact. The simple
headings, "God, the Creator of the World," "Revelation," "Faith,"
and "Faith and Reason," would to Protestant eyes seem very unlikely
to cover any such purpose. Nevertheless, they are made to serve the
purpose of laying a foundation for the dominion of the Church, over
all science and knowledge, for the dominion of the Pope, ay, even that
of the Roman Congregations, over the Church, and for the lifting of
men out of civil control into the higher sphere of Christian liberty,
or, as the world would call it, for placing them under the dominion
of ecclesiastical law. The process by which this is done is simple,
and had been clearly indicated in the officious expositions of those
judgments of the Syllabus which condemned "naturalism." First, God,
as a personal Being, exists, has created the world, and rules it.
Secondly, He gives a revelation by which man is raised above natural
knowledge and perfection to a higher knowledge and perfection. Thirdly,
this revelation is a deposit committed to the Church, which holds in
charge the Word of God, _written and traditional_; and all things
are to be believed which she propounds as divinely revealed, whether
they are propounded by solemn judgment, or by the ordinary teaching
authority. Hence, naturally, all science must be held subject to this
faith, and therefore subject to this Church; and _all things condemned
in the Decrees of the Holy See_ are to be held as anathema, even though
not specified in the present Decrees.
The four chapters containing these principles would not fix the
attention of any student if he took them up in a village of the
Campagna or of Connaught as the work of the priest of the parish. He
would be tempted to doubt whether the worthy man who faced Atheism and
Pantheism with these weapons had ever really met with them face to
face in either their ancient or modern forms. He might even be tempted
to think that the intellectual life of the author had been passed
within walls, and that so far as concerns the books and the minds
which really sway contemporary thought in either of the directions
indicated, he had scarcely ever felt their grip. But when we look at
this document as the work of a great society, on the preparation of
which had been employed the leisure of years by a few, and then the
united counsels of a large yet elect number, it certainly does not
exalt our idea of human gifts. But it is not well to let the critical
contempt which German scholars especially have displayed for the Drafts
while under discussion, and for the Decrees when ultimately framed,
blind us to the practical success of this late but adroit creed. For
the purpose of laying a colourable theological basis under a municipal
arrangement for governing mind and knowledge, belief and morals, laws
and institutions all over the world, by a college of Augurs called
Christian priests, it was not a mere superfluity of the professors,
as many seemed to think. Sambin, Guérin, and other writers, not to
mention prelates in abundance, struck a note, which is now taken up in
colleges, seminaries, and schools. These compact chapters, being once
exalted to the level of the Word of God, formed a short and easy method
for connecting the Creator and the creation of the world with the last
edict of the Vatican.
One of the startling statements in the secret memorandum, _La Liberté
du Concile_, touches this Decree. A conclusion to it was proposed which
to many appeared to include infallibility. This was strongly opposed.
The committee withdrew it, saying that it would be reserved to the end
of the final chapter on Faith. This step was applauded. The next day,
or the next but one, however, the reporter announced that the vote upon
it would be taken then and there. Eighty-three, in voting, demanded
modifications; which, according to the Rules, compelled a consideration
by the committee of the amendments they proposed. The committee finally
resolved, with one dissentient, to substitute a new wording which would
satisfy all. But when the moment came to vote, before the reporter
mounted the pulpit, a communication was put into his hands. This
attracted the attention of the Fathers. He mounted the pulpit, but did
not report what the committee had adopted! He did report what it had
set aside! The vote was instantly called for--no one could speak, the
Rules did not allow it. The majority did its duty; and the wording,
surreptitiously reported, was made "of Faith."[352]
Strong and circumstantial confirmation of this incredible statement is
given in Kenrick's unspoken speech.[353] Incidentally he says, "The
reporter, while we wondered what was the matter, suddenly recommended
this conclusion, which had been first submitted and then withdrawn."
This he says only on his way to tell Archbishop Manning that if the
sense put by him upon this famous conclusion was the true one, the
reporter was either himself deceived or had, knowingly, deceived the
bishops. Deceiver or deceived, his declaration had won many votes.
To get the clause passed, the reporter said it taught no doctrine,
and was only a conclusion to round off the chapters. But when once
passed, Manning cited it as concluding the question of infallibility,
and making it improper for the bishops to discuss that question any
longer.[354] Kenrick confesses that at the time he feared a trap.
The writer of _La Liberté du Concile_ declares that if the liberty
of the Council was doubtful, this incident proved the liberty of the
committees to be more doubtful still.
The sitting was opened with evident anxiety on both sides. The minority
feared the threatened attempt at acclamation; the majority feared that
the minority would formally refuse to enter on deliberation under
the new Rules. When, however, instead of action, the paper protest
was given in, and the reporter for the committee, Simor, Primate of
Hungary, had mounted the pulpit, and things had resumed their course,
the majority were evidently relieved. They knew that the minority had
now committed themselves to the new Rules; and that, however they
might recalcitrate hereafter, they would no more be able to shake off
the meshes of the net than they had been in the past to shake off
those of the old Rules. Five speakers had inscribed their names. They
were supporters of the committee. It proved that the acoustics of the
Hall had really been improved by a boarded partition which had been
substituted for the curtain. When three had spoken the bell of the
President rang, and the speaker then in possession was stopped. The
Pope was descending to view the sacred relics, and the Fathers had to
break up to form a procession in his train. Not one of them had been
called to swell that train in the morning when he went, not to see and
to be seen, but to the mass for "a certain Charles." At the close of
this anxious sitting Bishop Pie congratulated Cardinal Bilio, "It has
gone off well." So it had; the minority were now fairly enclosed in the
net.
M. Veuillot cries, "There are three great devotions in Rome: the Holy
Sacrament, the Holy Virgin, and the Pope. Rome is the city of the Real
Presence, and the city of the Mother of God, and the city of the Vicar
of Jesus Christ."[355] That saying sheds a clear light on the effect
of materializing and localizing the idea of the _divine presence_ by
such notions as that of transubstantiation. The show of constitutional
reforms just then being made in Paris by Napoleon III, contrasting
as it did with what was being done in Rome, naturally disgusted M.
Veuillot. He said that the title of Emperor now seemed grotesque. It
was sad to witness the crown turned into a curiosity of the museum,
or an accessory of the theatre. This was his idea of a constitutional
crown. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the tiara
remained to us. Happily it was more solid than the crown. Pius IX.,
he said, would bequeath it to his successor more brilliant and more
indestructible. Scandal of the world! kingdoms everywhere and no kings!
Here is a king, but no kingdom! Let Liberals come to the Vatican and
attempt to take liberties with the constitution. Let even universal
suffrage attempt it; let it try to make any change here in which the
guardian of the constitution does not concur.[356]
The noisy sitting of March 22 has had its echoes all over the world.
The contradictions given by inspired writers to the uninspired ones
appear to be even less definite than usual. We may content ourselves
with giving that of Cardinal Manning as the sum of them all:--
Having from my earliest remembrance been a witness of public
assemblies of all kinds, and especially of those among ourselves,
which for gravity and dignity are supposed to exceed all others,
I am able and bound to say that I have never seen such calmness,
self-respect, mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control, as
in the eighty-nine sessions of the Vatican Council. In a period
of nine months the Cardinal President was compelled to recall
the speakers to order perhaps twelve or fourteen times. In any
other assembly they would have been inexorably recalled to the
question sevenfold oftener and sooner. Nothing could exceed the
consideration and respect with which this duty was discharged.
Occasionally murmurs of dissent were audible; now and then a
comment may have been made aloud. In a very few instances, and
those happily of an exceptional kind, expressions of strong
disapproval and of exhausted patience at length escaped. But the
descriptions of violence, outcries, menace, denunciation, and even
of personal collisions, with which certain newspapers deceived the
world, I can affirm to be calumnious falsehoods, fabricated to
bring the Council into odium and contempt.[357]
_La Liberté du Concile_ confirms that portion of this statement which
says that the speakers were often allowed to deliver irrelevant matter,
when, in other assemblies, they would have been called back to the
question. It says that no bishop of the majority could be named who was
ever interrupted, although some of them strayed from the question so
far that, in the first stages of the proceedings, they rushed into the
question of infallibility.[358]
The first speaker in the celebrated sitting of March 22, was
Schwarzenberg. He was not favourable to the Curia, their proceedings,
or their plans. He had not felt an impression in the Congregations
as if a Council was being held. At last the terrible bell was heard.
It was faint, but it was certainly sounding. What! a Cardinal rung
down?--and Schwarzenberg, with his princely rank, his historical name,
his age, and his majestic presence! Even among the Cardinals, it is
said, there was a slight murmur--a greater one among the bishops.
But Schwarzenberg himself heard bravos for the President.[359] But
the stately old man held his own.[360] After two other prelates had
succeeded to the precarious honour in which the Prince Cardinal had
been challenged, Strossmayer mounted the pulpit.
He attacked the statement contained in the Draft Decrees, that
Protestantism was the source of the several forms of unbelief specified
in that Draft. Strossmayer showed that the worst revolutions and the
worst outbursts of infidelity had not been in Protestant countries,
and that Catholics had not produced better refutations of atheism,
pantheism, and materialism than had Protestants, while all were
indebted to such men as Leibnitz and Guizot. The Senior President,
Cardinal De Angelis, cried, "This is not a place to praise the
Protestants"; and having got so far in Latin, he declined into some
other tongue.[361] No, says Quirinus, it was not the place, being
within some few hundred paces of the Inquisition. The excitement had
now become great. Strossmayer proceeded, amid partial clapping of
hands and general murmurs of disapproval, to demand how they meant to
apply the principles embodied in the new Rules, of making a dogma by
a majority. When he cried "That alone can be imposed on the faithful
which has in its favour a moral unanimity of bishops," up rose Cardinal
Capalti, rang the bell, and, in a voice anything but courteous, as
Vitelleschi says, ordered the speaker to stop. Strossmayer replied that
he was tired of being called to order, and of being thwarted at every
point; that such proceedings were incompatible with freedom of debate,
and that he protested.[362] Then burst out an uproar that alarmed all
who were outside in the church. Strossmayer stood, lifted up his hands,
and thrice cried solemnly, "I protest! I protest! I protest!" Some one
shouted, "You protest against us, and we protest against you." As the
Archbishops of Rheims afterwards related, one of the majority stood up
and shouted to Strossmayer, "We all condemn thee!" Bishop Place, of
Marseilles, cried, "I do not condemn thee." Some one called Strossmayer
a cursed heretic. Some shook their fists, some crowded round the
pulpit, some cried "Pius IX. for ever!" some cried, "The Cardinal
Legates for ever!" and others, as Vitelleschi adds, made noises equally
serious and serene. _La Liberté du Concile_ speaks of the unheard of
violence, of the cries which rang through the basilica outside, and of
the menaces of a large number who rushed to the tribunal and surrounded
it.[363] Friedrich speaks of clenched fists, and of fears lest the
prelates should tear one another's hair.
The people in the church interpreted the commotion each man according
to his own mind. Some--and that wild interpretation is laid to the door
of the English--thought the Garibaldians had attacked the Fathers;
some, that the long looked for dogma had at last sprung, full armed,
out of the head of the assembly, and that all the uproar was caused by
alarm at the portent. These raised cries of "Long live the Infallible
Pope!" The crowd pressed round the door of the Hall, and there was
danger of a tumult in the church. The servants of the bishops tried to
enter the Council Chamber, fearing that their masters were being harmed
in the disturbance. But the _gendarme_, whom Vitelleschi calls the most
effective instrument of every sort of infallibility, cleared off the
throng, resisted only by the servants, who clung to the door in the
hope of rescuing their masters.
An American bishop said, with some patriotic pride, "Now I know of an
assembly rougher than our own Congress."[364] Archbishop Landriot, of
Rheims, said he was quite in despair.[365] Even Ketteler said, "It is
too bad, the way they handle us here. I do not know how we shall go
back to our dioceses and exist there."[366] Namszanowski, the Prussian
military bishop, said to Friedrich that he had told an Italian prelate,
"Things are more respectably done with us in a meeting of shoemakers,
than here in the Council." Going on to express his impression that the
only hope for the Church was in the fall of the temporal power, and the
assumption of control over patronage and Church affairs by a temporal
government, which would get rid of the excessive number of clergy, he
continued, "The most humiliating thing for us German bishops is, that
here we are forced to learn that it is the Freemason and Liberal papers
that are correct, and that our Catholic ones, if we must call them
Catholic, _lie_, LIE."
The Pontiff soon made his voice heard as to the scene of this loud
resounding Tuesday. On the following Friday he had the missionary
bishops, numbering a hundred, assembled in the Sala Regia. There the
pictures of St. Bartholomew, of Barbarossa, and of the League against
the Turks, had time to suggest hopes of future triumph before the
Pontiff made his appearance. No sooner had he done so, than all fell on
their knees. He had gathered them for a practical purpose. The Dorcases
of the Church had been making, not coats and aprons for the widows,
but raiment rich and rare for the prelates, and costly attire for
altars and images. It was to distribute these goodly garments that his
Holiness had now convoked them, but, of course, the great thing was the
speech. Pointing clearly to the Opposition, he said, "We are surrounded
by great difficulties, for some, like Pilate when terrified by the
Jews, are afraid to do right. They fear the revolution. Though knowing
the truth, they sacrifice all to Cæsar, even the rights of the Holy
See, and their attachment to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Wretches! what
a fault they commit! The warfare of bishops," he went on to say, "is to
defend the truth with the Vicar of Christ. My children, do not forsake
me. Attach yourselves to me. Be with me. Unite yourselves to the Vicar
of Jesus Christ."
We follow the version of M. Veuillot (vol. i. p. 372). Vitelleschi
reports one of the Pope's expressions as "Be united to me, and not
with the revolution" (p. 129), and asks, Who could have imagined that
the good bishops who had been all their lives fighting the revolution
should now be accused of revolution? He adds, "Rulers who endeavour
to degrade Strossmayer to the level of a Rochefort, not unfrequently
reverse the intended result, and raise a Rochefort to the height of a
Strossmayer" (p. 130).
"And you, my dear Orientals," said the Pope, "I have ornaments also
for you, but not enough of them. I give you what I have." Then he
tried to calm their fears, excited by recent collisions. He concluded
by the supreme disclosure, "We have in the Council the organs of the
Liberal party, whose word of command is to gain time by opposing
everything, and to wear out the patience of the majority." The allusion
of the Pope was understood. Bitter, indeed, was it for the bishops
of the minority to find themselves thus stigmatized before all men by
the sovereign. But the effect was practical. The day following, ten
Orientals announced their adhesion to the denunciation of Gratry by
the Archbishop of Strasburg. Presently, forty-three missionary bishops
published their concurrence in the profound discovery of Bonjean, of
Ceylon, that the dogma of infallibility would conduce to the conversion
of Buddhists, Brahmans, Protestants, _and other difficult religionists
of the East_.[367]
As the Pope went to St. Cross of Jerusalem for the _Agnus Dei_, M.
Veuillot heard cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!" and said that
this was a reply to the objections raised about the heresy of Pope
Honorius. Hefele had unpleasantly brought this heresy into notice
in a Latin pamphlet, which he had been obliged to print at Naples.
Of inopportune things, few had been more inopportune of late than
the appearance in Paris of a new edition of the _Liber Diurnus_, by
Rozière. This ancient monument, with its simple formula? and infallible
evidence, enabled every one to lay his finger on the fact that for
centuries Popes had on oath abjured the heresy of Pope Honorius. But M.
Veuillot heard an answer to all this in the cries of "The Infallible
Pope for ever!"
But of all that the Pope passed on his route to Holy Cross, that
which most excited the imagination of M. Veuillot was the Holy Stair
and the _triclinium_, where Charlemagne received the sword kneeling.
Charlemagne, he says, ruled only long enough to indicate the place and
form which he wished to give to his throne; but now, after a thousand
years, his conception is one of the victorious apparitions.
When the world merits to re-enter on the path of unity, God will
raise up a man, or a people, which will be Charlemagne. This
Charlemagne, man or nation, will be seen here, at the Lateran,
kneeling before the Pope, returned from dungeons or from exile; and
the Pope will take the sceptre of the world off the altar, and put
it into his hands.[368]
M. Veuillot knows better than he here seems to know. Charlemagne's
conception was that of Constantine over again--a State Church; and over
a State Church Charlemagne reigned. The conception of Hildebrand, now
to be acted out, was that of a Church State, for which any Charlemagne
might conquer, but over which no second head should reign. Unity, as
M. Veuillot well knew, was now to comprehend not only one _fold_, but
also one _shepherd_. No more dualism! no more two-headed monsters! We
had come to the dispensation of the spiritual David, Shepherd and King
in one. It is, however, clear that the vision revealed to M. Veuillot,
as in 1867, still disclosed a struggle to come before the victory;
for his Pope, on taking his place as disposing of the sceptre of the
world, comes back from dungeons or from exile. Moreover, Veuillot still
smothers the poor kings in ambiguity. The new and final Charlemagne is
to be a man _or a nation_.
The sittings which followed the stormy one were remarkably still; and
it is said that Haynald and Whelan from Wheeling were allowed to say
very strong things without interruption. It might be supposed that
a short chapter on God the Creator of the World, could hardly give
rise to a discussion on the Curial system; but when Rome set out to
speak about the Creator, she first of all made mention of herself. The
opening words of the chapter were, "The Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic
Church." To this form exception was taken. One proposed that the word
"Roman" should be omitted, which was, of course, offensive to the
Curia, the municipal spirit always forcing into view the shibboleth,
quite unconscious that it marred the show of universality. Indeed,
it is asserted by many that the extreme Curialists wanted the words
"Roman Church" alone, without Catholic. Others proposed that the word
"Catholic" should stand before "Roman," or at least that a comma should
be inserted between the two. It is a singular fact that a vote of the
Council was actually taken on this question of the comma. On this
great question of the comma the committee for once did not tell the
majority how to vote. _La Liberté du Concile_ thinks that the majority
voted for the comma. The numbers, however, were not reported in that
sitting; and when the next one was opened, and all waited to hear on
which side was the majority, lo! the reporter gets up, and, contrary
to all rule, usage, and decency, quietly sets aside the vote as if it
had never taken place; does not, indeed, mention it! He simply says
that the committee has rejected the comma! Now the majority, knowing
how it ought to vote, did its duty faithfully. So even about a tittle,
in the literal sense, the writer of _La Liberté du Concile_ was highly
incensed, contending that the rights of deliberation were ridden over
roughshod. Finally, the phrase came out as "The Holy Catholic Apostolic
Roman Church." Friedrich thinks that this phraseology compromises the
claim to represent the Universal Church, and must be taken as only
professing to represent the Roman Patriarchate.
Meantime the minority held anxious deliberations. They doubted whether
they should not require a positive promise that no Decree touching
faith should be carried by a majority, and whether if this was denied
they should not refuse to take part in voting. They finally resolved
that they would reserve their opposition, as completely as possible,
for the all-important question of infallibility. They hoped by this
means to secure the double end of showing a conciliatory disposition in
everything in which they could give way with a good conscience, and of
preventing a precedent from being established for carrying articles of
faith by majorities. The last piece of strategy seemed specious. It,
however, obviously laboured under the infirmity that they were all the
time giving strength to the Rules which established the principle of
majorities.
The preamble to the revised Draft of Decrees on Dogma contained not
only the passage about Protestantism which Strossmayer had criticized,
but also a clause suggested by the Bishop of Moulins, which virtually
contained the doctrine of infallibility. This was strongly resisted by
the minority, but all attempts to get it withdrawn had proved vain.
In the sitting of the 26th, the order and method of voting, which was
now for the first time to be put in practice, was fully read out.
But before the vote was taken, a paper was sent in to the Presiding
Cardinals, said to proceed from Bishop Clifford of Clifton. The
Presidents left the Hall, and on their return to the surprise of all,
the preamble, instead of being put to the vote, was withdrawn. When it
reappeared, the objectionable passage about infallibility was removed,
and the phrase as to Protestantism was moderated; and so the impending
collision was averted. But the way of doing this showed that majority
and minority were equally far from possessing the guarantees of
legislative freedom. What would a powerful majority in our Parliament
say if, after the clauses in a Bill had been settled in Committee, the
Ministers should retire and decide on altering them, and without a word
present them in a new form to the House for the final vote when no one
could speak?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 352: _Doc._, i. 176.]
[Footnote 353: _Ibid._ i. 225.]
[Footnote 354: Kenrick's words are: Dixit verbis clarioribus, per
illud nullam omnino doctrinam edoceri; sed eam quatuor capitibus ex
quibus istud decretum compositum est imponi tanquam cis coronidem
convenientem; eamque disciplinarem magis quam doctrinalem charactererem
habere. Aut deceptus est ipse, si vera dixit Westmonasteriensis;
aut nos sciens in errorem induxit, quod de viro tam ingenuo minime
supponere licet. Utcumque fuerit ejus declarationi fidentes, plures
suffragia sua isti decreto haud deneganda censuerunt ob istam
clausulam; aliis, inter quos egomet, dolos parari metuentibus et
aliorum voluntati hac in re ægre cedentibus.]
[Footnote 355: Vol. i. 389.]
[Footnote 356: Vol. i. p. 398 ff.]
[Footnote 357: _Pet. Priv._, iii. 27, 28.]
[Footnote 358: _Doc._, i. p. 172.]
[Footnote 359: _Tagebuch_, 277.]
[Footnote 360: _Lib. du Con._, Doc. i., p. 172.]
[Footnote 361: _Tagebuch_, 278.]
[Footnote 362: _Vitelleschi_, 128.]
[Footnote 363: _Doc._, i. p. 172.]
[Footnote 364: _Quirinus_, 388.]
[Footnote 365: _Tagebuch_, 278.]
[Footnote 366: _Ibid._ 278.]
[Footnote 367: _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, 163.]
[Footnote 368: Vol. i. p. 443.]
CHAPTER III
Important Secret Petition of Rauscher and others--Clear Statement
of Political Bearings of the Question--A Formal Demand that the
Question whether Power over Kings and Nations was given to Peter
shall be argued--Complaints of Manning--Dr. Newman's Letter--The
_Civiltá_ exorcises Newman--Veuillot's Gibes at him--Conflicts with
the Orientals--Armenians in Rome attacked by the Police--Priests
arrested--Broil in the Streets--Convent placed under Interdict--Third
Session--Forms--Decrees unanimously adopted--Their Extensive Practical
Effects.
The dangers opening in the future defined themselves more and more
clearly to the eyes of the bishops as the import of the constitutional
changes now in progress was more fully apprehended. Reflection,
conversation, and reading had done much since they came to Rome to
clear their views. Even if they read as little of Church history, or
of the current Curial literature, as is intimated in the oft-repeated
laments of Friedrich, and in the less frequent but equally strong
hints of Quirinus and others, they must surely have read something
of the _Unitá_ if not of the _Civiltá_, or at least of the sprightly
_Univers_. Any one of the three, in spite of that pious style of
mystery which Vitelleschi speaks of, would soon have made a very dull
bishop indeed conscious that the world was going to be transformed.
The sagacious Rauscher put the forecast of the time into the form
of a petition, dated April 10, which states the case of the future
position of Roman Catholic citizens more strongly than some statements
of it in our country, which have been treated as the invention either
of Mr. Gladstone, or at best of Lord Acton, or of some other Liberal
Catholic.[369] The petition is headed as being from several prelates of
France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, England, Ireland, and America. The
editor of the _Documenta_ says that Germany should have been added.
Among the prelates from that country who signed it he specifies the
Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg, the Bishops of Augsburg, Trêves,
Ermland, Breslau, Rottenburg, Maintz, Osnabrück, and the Prussian
Military Bishop. According to this statement, the name of Ketteler was
to this document. When the German bishops met again at Fulda, after
the Council, they put forth the very interpretation of the Bull _Unam
Sanctam_ which is here solemnly treated as both false and absurd. Of
course they were confronted with their own words. Friedrich says, in a
note (p. 349), that Ketteler in the _Reichstag_, and in the well-known
_Germania_ No. 146, for 1872, asserted that no German bishop had signed
the petition, and that, therefore, the word "Germany" was not found in
the superscription:--
But all this is vain lying and cheating, such as we are well
accustomed to in the Ultramontane press and its episcopal
inspirers. In No. 242 of the _Germania_ Ketteler himself owns that
two German bishops, not Prussian, signed it. In reference to this,
a theologian, deeply initiated in the secrets of the minority,
writes to me under date June 20, 1871, that there are many Germans
among the signatories.
Rauscher, and those who signed with him, alleged that the point about
to be decided bore directly on the instruction to be given to the
people, and on the relations of civil society to Catholic teaching.
Disclaiming any thought of accusing the Popes of the middle ages of
ambition, or of having disturbed civil society, and asserting their
belief that what the Pontiffs then did was done by virtue of an
existing state of international law, they go on to say that those Popes
held that our Lord had committed two swords to the successors of Peter;
one, spiritual, which they themselves wielded; the other material,
which princes and soldiers ought to wield at their command. Then
dealing with the attempt to represent this Bull as requiring only that
all shall acknowledge the Pope as the head of the Church, they declare
that gloss to be irreconcilable with love of the truth on the part of
any one who is acquainted with the circumstances as between Boniface
VIII and Philip le Bel; and that, moreover, it is a mode of treating
the subject which puts weapons into the hands of the enemies of the
Church to calumniate her. They add, "Popes, down to the seventeenth
century, taught that power over temporal things was committed to them
by God, and they condemn the opposite opinion." Mark, they do not say
temporal authority, but power over temporal things. With them temporal
authority is authority of temporal origin.
Now follows a historical statement of great importance. "We, with
nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world, propound another doctrine
to the Christian people as to the relation of the ecclesiastical power
to the civil." They then make the stock comparison of the heavens and
the earth, as indicating the relative dignity of the spiritual and
temporal power, and say that each is supreme in its own sphere. The
ambiguous phrase "supreme in its own sphere," means, in Ultramontane
language, as we have seen, only that the temporal prince is not subject
to any other temporal power. But these bishops evidently meant at
the time to be clear of ambiguities. They added an explanation of
immense significance--"Neither power in its office is dependent upon
the other." This is a formal and total denial of what the _Civiltá_
had long been preaching, of what Phillips and Tarquini and all the
accredited modern writers taught. The utmost they ever admit is,
that in its _nature_, and in its _origin_, temporal power is, or may
be, independent of the spiritual. But in office all impersonated
authorities must be dependent on the impersonated authority of the
Vicar of God. The next stroke of the petitioners was still bolder.
Admitting that princes, as members of the Church, are subordinate to
her discipline, they affirm that she does not in any way hold a power
of deposing them, or of releasing their subjects from their allegiance.
Still more incisive was the stroke that followed, for it was aimed at
the whole principle of Papal authority over the State. They declared
that the power of judging things, which the Popes of the middle ages
had exercised, came to them by a certain state of public law; and that,
as the public institutions and even the private circumstances which
then existed had changed, the power itself has with the foundation of
it passed away. This was the language which might be used before the
Bull _Unam Sanctam_ had received the stamp of infallibility. It was
language in which the claims founded on the text "Teach all nations,"
or "I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms,"
are met with a downright denial. The fact that the Popes had at one
time acted as supreme judges was accounted for by a state of political
relations, not by a divine right, just, we may say, as the fact would
have been accounted for that the kings of Persia were appealed to as
arbiters by Greeks. Still further, the change which had taken place
was not only admitted, but it was held to have annulled the former
relation between the power of the Papacy and civil society. A careful
consideration of the positions thus stated, and a comparison of them
with matter in the Curial writings of the present pontificate with
which we are already familiar, afford some measure of the distance
separating the Ultramontanes north of the Alps, of the old type, like
Rauscher among the clergy and Montalembert among the laity, from the
new school formed by the development of the Jesuits into what had now
become the Catholic party. We do not say that the old Ultramontanes did
not give the Pope authority irreconcilable with Holy Scripture, and
power dangerous to civil society. All we can say is that the authority
and power which they did give to him was bounded by a frontier
tolerably defined, and therefore capable of being defended.
The remark of the Pope, carried away from the Vatican by numbers of
bishops and not a few laymen, and repeated in every form of gossip
printed or spoken, to the effect that the bishops of the Opposition
were only time-servers and Court ecclesiastics, is, in Rauscher's
petition, repelled with dignity and force. Their opinions, as just
stated, they declare are not new but ancient. They were those of
all the Fathers, and of all the Pontiffs down to Gregory VII. They
believed them to be the true doctrines of the Catholic Church; for
God forbid that, under stress of the times, they should adulterate
revealed truth. But they must point out the dangers which would arise
to the Church from a Decree irreconcilable with the doctrines that they
have hitherto taught. No one, they affirm, can help seeing that it is
impossible to reform (they do not say reconstruct) society according to
the rule laid down in the Bull _Unam Sanctam_. But any right which God
has indeed given, and any obligation corresponding to such right, is
incapable of being destroyed by the vicissitudes of human institutions
and opinions. If then the Roman Pontiff had received the power of the
two swords, as it is asserted in the Bull _Ex Apostolatus Officio_,
he would, by divine right, hold plenary power over nations and kings;
and it would not be allowable for the Church to conceal this from
the faithful. But if this was the real form of Christianity as an
institution, little would it avail for Catholics to assert that, as
to the power of the Holy See over temporal things, that power would
be restrained within the bounds of theory, and that it was of no
importance in relation to actual affairs and events, seeing that Pius
IX was far from thinking of deposing civil rulers.
This last statement was directly aimed at Antonelli's habitual mode of
putting the case in conversation with diplomatists, and also as we have
seen in his despatches. But our prelates contend that, in reply to such
assertions,
"opponents would scornfully say, We do not fear the sentences of
the Pontiffs; but after many and various dissimulations, it has
become evident at last that"--(the italics are our own)--"_every
Catholic, whose actions are ruled by the faith he professes, is a
born enemy of the State, since he finds himself bound in conscience
to contribute, as far as in him lies, to the subjection of all
nations and kings to the Roman Pontiff_".
On these solemn grounds they formally demand that the question whether
our Lord did or did not commit power over kings and nations to Peter
and to his successors shall be directly proposed to the Council and
examined in every aspect. In order that the Fathers may not be called
without adequate preparation to decide a question the consequences of
which must profoundly affect the relations of the Church and civil
society, they demand further that this point shall be brought on for
discussion before that infallibility. Their petition was not addressed
to the Pontiff in person, but to the Presiding Cardinals.
No efforts made since, or which may be made hereafter, can erase this
record of the views of the bishops at the time in question. Their
conduct since the Council proves that for themselves, as individuals,
conviction is lost in submission. For the dogma has conquered history.
With the German bishops submission passed beyond silence, and proceeded
as far as deliberately certifying to the public as ancient views
and sincere ones the very views which they had secretly shown to be
innovations and pretences, alien to ancient teaching and to their own
belief. God's two priceless jewels, conscience and conviction, are
here sent to the bottom of the stagnant pool of submission to a human
king. It is by contemplating such a course of conduct in men with a
position to hold in the eye of the sun, that we learn the force of such
words as those of Vitelleschi, when he says that the frequent collision
in Catholic countries between a man's civil conscience and his
ecclesiastical one is the reason why so often there is no conscience
at all. And men such as these German bishops are the moral guides of
millions! and out of millions so guided States have to be built up,
and men have to be fitted for the judgment of Him who requireth truth
in the inward parts! And Vitelleschi evidently thinks that, in a moral
point of view, the German bishops were the best!
Gossip in Rome spoke of Dr. Manning as burning with impatience at
the delays which had been interposed in the way of the forthcoming
dogma. Baron Arnim told Freidrich how it was said that the Archbishop
prophesied that the governments would be annihilated for their
resistance to it.[370] Quirinus speaks of the Archbishop as expecting
a wonderful dispensation of the Holy Ghost to follow the promulgation
of the dogma, and to smooth the way of the Church in her regeneration
of the nations. Whatever may have been the amount of correctness in
these details, the fact remains that at that moment a mind which had
attracted notice to itself as urging Englishmen to Rome for unity, was
bitterly complained of by Liberal Catholics as being the very genius of
contraction and division, urging their Church either to beat them down
or to cast them out--to make herself too narrow for them, and to tell
them that they should be endured only on new conditions.
At the same time a cry came from our own shores. It was the voice of
one who had made himself conspicuous by alluring Englishmen towards
Rome for certainty, and on whose spirit the shadow of a new and dark
uncertainty was now settling down--uncertainty as to the future source
of doctrinal truth; uncertainty as to the doctrinal authority of
existing documents; uncertainty, in fine, as to what had been, and as
to what was to be, the oracle; uncertainty as to the future work of
God. At the same moment when Dr. Manning was accused by Roman Catholics
of violating the old terms of unity, Dr. Newman was turned into a
warning to Protestants as a victim of uncertainty. When describing how
he and his party fared when first, after shifting from the rock of
Holy Scripture, they settled on another foundation, which they called
Anglicanism or the _Via Media_, Dr. Newman had said:--
There they found a haven of rest; thence they looked out on the
troubled surge of human opinion and upon the crazy vessels which
were labouring without chart or compass upon it. Judge, then, of
their dismay when, according to the Arabian tale, on their striking
their anchor into the supposed soil, lighting their fires on it,
and fixing in it the poles of their tents, suddenly the island
began to move, to heave, to splash, to frisk to and fro, to dive,
and at the last to swim away, spouting out inhospitable jets of
water upon the credulous mariners who had made it their home.[371]
We can hardly doubt that some English parson who in his youth had for
a moment felt attracted by the notion of unity and certainty, by
the charm of vestments, processions, and banners, thanked God on the
morning after he had read the following letter, when he looked at the
family Bible, that he had not left the solid ground and set up a tent
on what Dr. Newman and his Anglicans told people was solid ground, but
which proved to be the sporting and frisking monster that he himself
described. Ay, and perhaps some Cornish miner, as he went down into his
darkness, happy in his Saviour--a Saviour who seemed to come nearer to
him as day and man, as home and the fair sky, went farther away--so
happy that he hummed--
In darkest shades, if Thou appear,
My dawning is begun:
Thou art my soul's bright morning star,
And Thou my rising sun--
perhaps this miner put up a prayer for the poor gentleman in Birmingham
who was in such uncertainty about what might be his creed by next
Christmas, and yet knew no better than to beg of Augustine and Ambrose
to prevail upon the Almighty not to let His Church tell out all the
truth about the Vicar whom the gentleman fancied that He had set over
her, but to cause her to practise reserve, or to speak in non-natural
senses.
To avoid contamination by impure authorities we shall follow only the
_Civiltá_ in its narrative of the Newman incident.[372] The _Standard_
stated that Dr. Newman, in a letter to his bishop, then absent in
Rome, had called the promoters of infallibility an insolent and
aggressive faction, and had prayed to God to avert from His Church the
threatening danger. The _Weekly Register_ declared itself authorized
by a personal friend of Dr. Newman to give the most absolute denial to
this deliberate fiction. Dr. Newman himself wrote to the _Standard_
to deny that he had written to his bishop and called the promoters
of infallibility an insolent and aggressive faction. Yet, after Dr.
Newman's method, there were words and words about it. Soon appeared in
the _Standard_ a second letter from him, confessing that he had been
informed from London that several copies of his letter existed in that
city, containing the affirmation which he had denied. He now said
that, before sending his contradiction, he had looked at the notes of
the letter to his bishop, and had not found the words "insolent and
aggressive faction." But he confessed that since learning that several
people in London had those words in their possession, he had looked
again and found them. He added that by the faction he did not mean that
large number of bishops who had declared in favour of infallibility,
nor yet the Jesuits. He meant a collection of persons of different
countries, ranks, and conditions in the Church.
The _Civiltá_ was careful to remark that Dr. Newman had not withdrawn
his offensive words. Others no less remarked that he had never
confessed to a single point in his own statement till compelled to do
so. He had published a contradiction which to ordinary Englishmen would
seem to carry an almost complete denial of the whole allegation. But
the _Standard_ on April 7 published the following letter, showing that
not only the substance of the allegation was correct, but also its
details:--
Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a
Council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil
impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now
we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at
Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its
partisans (such as the _Civiltá_, [the _Armonia_], the _Univers_,
and the _Tablet_) little else than fear and dismay. When we are all
at rest, and have no doubts, and--at least practically, not to say
doctrinally--hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there
is thunder in the clearest sky, and we are told to prepare for
something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how. No
impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be
created. Is this the proper work of an OEumenical Council?
As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial
at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are
suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to
defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private
judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the
face of historical facts.
What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated
before? When has a definition _de fide_ been a luxury of devotion
and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive,
insolent faction be allowed to "make the heart of the just sad,
whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful"? Why cannot we be let alone
when we have pursued peace and thought no evil?
I assure you, my lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way
and another, and do not know where to rest their feet--one day
determining "to give up all theology as a bad job," and recklessly
to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable, at
another tempted to "believe all the worst which a book like _Janus_
says," others doubting about "the capacity possessed by bishops
drawn from all corners of the earth to judge what is fitting for
European society," and then, again, angry with the Holy See for
listening to "the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists,
and converts."
Then, again, think of the store of pontifical scandals in the
history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured
forth and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us
in one way M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another.
And then again the blight which is falling upon the multitude
of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who themselves perhaps--at least
their leaders--may never become Catholics, but who are leavening
the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their
own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their
ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.
With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself
whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to
pray those early doctors of the Church, whose intercession would
decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius,
Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity.
If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined, then
is it God's will to throw back "the times and moments" of that
triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I
have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable providence.
You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think you
will allow me to express to you feelings which, for the most part,
I keep to myself....
This letter could not, because of Dr. Newman's reputation, be
passed over in silence. The _Civiltá_ well knew how to utilize that
reputation, yet it indicates by its mode of dealing with him that it
does not set Dr. Newman so high, either intellectually or morally, as
his own countrymen do. It treated the whole affair as a temptation of
one of a pious imagination but a sickly judgment. The temptation was
one peculiar to Englishmen--it was low spirits. An Englishman labouring
under that temptation would read the _Civiltá_, the _Armonia_, the
_Univers_, etc., with sombre-coloured spectacles. It was a disease in
the eyes. Those affected by it looked upon the definition of a verity
as a scourge of God, an affliction not merited! Still, as Dr. Newman
did not for himself fear it, he would be able to explain it to others.
But the definition of a truth was to prove a blight for the poor
Anglican Ritualists:--
Do you not perceive that it is only temptation that makes you see
everything black?... If the holy doctors whom you invoke, Ambrose,
Jerome, etc., do not decide the controversy in your way, it is not,
as the Protestant _Pall Mall Gazette_ fancies, because they will
not or cannot interpose, but because they agree with St. Peter
and with the petition of the majority.... Would you have us make
processions in sackcloth and ashes to avert this scourge of the
definition of a verity? And if it is defined, when the Fathers
chant _Te Deum_ will some of you intone the _Miserere_? On the
contrary, you too will applaud it.... Dupanloup will not merely be
resigned, he will be a champion of infallibility, and we shall all
together say, Amen, hallelujah! and it also will be a hymn like
the song in the Apocalypse.... Get rid of this ugly melancholy
temptation. It makes you lose your logic and your English good
sense. Even the Protestant journals teach you better, and as one
devil cast out another, a Protestant article may serve to cast out
a temptation.
The compassionate Jesuits of the _Civiltá_ then proceed to cast the
one devil out of Dr. Newman by the aid of two others, which are
respectively the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Manchester Examiner
and Times_--the former in an appearance of April 8, the latter in
an appearance of April 9. Lest this exorcism should not suffice, it
calls to its aid seven other spirits equally evil--the _Times_, the
_Saturday Review_, the _Telegraph_, the _Daily News_, the _Spectator_,
the _Standard_, and the _Echo_. All these, fallen angels though they
were, had agreed in the opinion that a religious truth had better be
told than hidden, and that a Church which had an infallible head ought
to know it. Though on this one point right, these Protestant journals
had, however, held up the letter of Dr. Newman as a proof of internal
division underlying a vaunted unity. But in this they were illogical.
With this boast the _Civiltá_ fitly couples a declaration of Dr.
Newman, in which the tortured spirit, whose piercing cry had reached
the ear of the world through thick walls, and had been identified
in spite of artful windings, puts on, in presence of Protestants,
another voice, wishing them to become partakers of its satisfaction
and repose! M. Veuillot was not the man tamely to find himself coupled
with Mr. Murphy by one like Dr. Newman, whom, if repute in England set
extravagantly high, certainly he did not. He told how the _Univers_
had begged four thousand pounds for Dr. Newman and sent it to him, on
the occasion when he was cast in damages for a libel on Achilli, an
ex-censor of the press, at Viterbo, who had become a Protestant:--
"The respectable convict," says Veuillot, "received it and was
pleased, but he gave no thanks and showed no courtesy. Father
Newman ought to be more careful in what he says; everything that is
comely demands it of him. But, at any rate, if his Liberal passion
carries him away till he forgets what he owes to us and to himself,
what answer must one give him, but that he had better go on as he
set out, silently ungrateful?"[373]
Such were the inhospitable jets spouted out upon Dr. Newman by the
floundering creature on the back of which the twice "credulous mariner"
had pitched his tent. Englishmen may smile at finding Dr. Newman
aspersed with the reproach of Liberalism. His puerile spite at the
very name of it, as shown in his writings, thus found its Nemesis. M.
Veuillot, by a link of connexion which is not obvious, confesses that
he too, in youth and inexperience, indulged in dreams of peace. But
his mature ideas were ruled by a manlier spirit. "I dream of a long
war--long, hot, inexorable, and one that will change the face of the
world."
For some time past the Orientals had been receiving and giving cause
for solicitude. The incident already related of the Chaldean Patriarch
was but a symptom of general uneasiness. The Pontiff had resolved
on abrogating the old right of electing bishops, under which the
communities nominated three persons, of whom the Patriarch instituted
the one whom he preferred. We have seen how the Chaldean Patriarch was
overcome. Jussef, the Melchite Patriarch, refused to surrender his
rights, and it is said that, in an audience before other Orientals,
the Pope went so far as to seize him by the shoulders.[374] The Syrian
Patriarch, on receiving the Pope's command, had taken to his bed, and
had not yet answered. The Maronite Patriarch had refused his consent,
and had, notwithstanding repeated invitations, stayed in Antioch,
instead of coming on to the Council.
The Armenians, however, excited more attention than all the others.
Their Patriarch, Hassun, had, some time before, surrendered his rights,
and while, in consequence, rising high in favour with the Curia, had
incurred ill-will among his own people. Rome, taking advantage of
his concessions, had made new and exorbitant claims, on which the
yoke of the Papacy was thrown off. Imperative orders to submit were
disregarded. A special commissioner was sent from Rome to allay the
disturbance, but his success was very limited.
For some time rumours had been floating about the city that two
Oriental bishops had been thrown into prison. These changed to rumours
of an arrest, and an escape. At last the _Univers_[375] published an
account, stating that the theologian attached to an Armenian bishop
had used such language respecting the authorities, that Cardinal
Barnabò, Prefect of the Propaganda, had ordered him to the Convent of
the Passionists. But he refused to go in such terms that the Cardinal
Vicar was obliged to employ force. The theologian was then taken from
the residence of the bishop, and put into a vehicle. He was, however,
so violent that the "agents" let him escape into the house again, and
though they there attempted a second time to take him, they finally
gave way before the opposition of the bishop.
At the same time the _Univers_ mentions "a much graver fact." The
Pontiff had ordered an apostolic visitation of the convent of the
Armenians, which stands just behind the Colonnade of St. Peter's. The
twelve who once walked among men with the humble name of apostles would
have little thought that an apostolic visitation should come to mean an
inspection by an officer of the King and Pontiff of Rome. The Bishop
Ksagian (_sic_) refused to receive the visitor. The Pope ordered the
bishop to the Convent of St. Sabina. The bishop, however, refused to
go, and appealed to Bishop Place, of Marseilles, to procure French
protection for him.
_Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_ (p. 144) says that Bahtiarian, an Armenian
Archbishop, had his Vicar-General with him, against whom some one
informed, as having spoken with hostility of Hassun, the Romanized
Patriarch whom we have just mentioned, and of Valerga, the so-called
Patriarch of Jerusalem. Cardinal Barnabò ordered the Vicar-General to
a Jesuit convent, but the Archbishop insisted that he would not allow
him to go, except upon a written order from the Pope himself. We are
not sure whether this represents the first scene in the account of the
_Univers_.
Some days afterwards, proceeds _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, as
Bahtiarian was going to say Mass, his Vicar-General followed him,
carrying the missal, accompanied by another Armenian priest. In the
street the Archbishop passed through a group of police, headed by an
officer. They seized the two priests who were walking behind him, and
dragged them to a vehicle. The Orientals valiantly defended themselves,
and a struggle ensued. Hearing cries, the Archbishop turned back, and
saw his Vicar-General down, and the missal on the ground being trampled
upon. He rushed forward, pointing to the book, and crying, "It is the
Gospel: it is the Gospel of Christ! Do you treat the Gospel like that?"
The officer did not dare to do violence to the Archbishop, who managed
to carry off his Vicar-General, and that day both of them took refuge
in the Armenian Convent. It would seem that now followed the order
for a visitation of the convent, which Archbishop Casangian (as this
account correctly gives the name and title) resisted; and he, in turn,
received an order to go to a convent for "retirement." It is even said
that leave to quit Rome was refused by the police to all the Armenians,
not excepting a bishop who was furnished with a medical certificate
that it was necessary for his health.
The _Civiltá_ and the _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_ do not mention the arrests.
The one says that Kasangian, as they spell his name, was Abbot-General
by arbitrary election, the other that he was so by tolerance of the
Pope. The visitation was first attempted by a Passionist Father,
delegated by Pluym, a bishop _in partibus_, who had been by the Pope
appointed Visitor-General of the Order. The attempt was resisted. The
document which gives to Pluym his powers calmly says that "_power
divinely conferred resides in the Pope of loosing, by his sentence,
the things bound by sentence of any judges whomsoever_."[376] The
disobedient Archbishop and the local Abbot were both ordered to another
convent, _for spiritual exercises_, as long as the Pope should appoint.
They both refused to go. Fresh letters gave the powers of visitor to no
less a person than Valenziani, the bishop who in the Council read the
Decrees. These letters declared Archbishop Kasangian deposed from the
office of Abbot-General of the Order; declared the office of the Abbot
of the monastery vacant, and all other offices within it whatsoever;
declared that no authority existed in that house but what flowed from
Valenziani, and declared that all pains and penalties he might impose
should be ratified.
So armed, Valenziani presented himself with consummate address and
admirable suavity. Even according to the _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, he
declared that his visitation had no object but to lead the Armenians to
fulfil their duty. But the Orientals knew the double tongue. In his own
words, they lent no obedient ear. Others say that they would not allow
the Pope's brief to be read. Defied and defeated in the very "street of
the Holy Office," Valenziani had the once terrible interdict fastened
to the door of the rebellious convent. It was owing, says the _Acta
Sanctæ Sedis_, to the clemency of the Holy See that the _severest
punishment_, such as was due to the offence, was not inflicted.[377]
Others told of different causes.
The protection of France being refused to the Armenians, the strange
spectacle was seen, as Vitelleschi puts it, of brethren in Christ
being forced to seek protection against His Vicar from a Turk (p.
130). Rustum Bey, the Ottoman ambassador, came from Florence, and,
it is said, was not well received, by Antonelli, who gave him to
understand that, in Rome, all priests were subjects of the Pope. But
the ambassador would not waive the rights of the Porte, which, he
alleged, was obliged to show favour to the Armenians, to prevent them
from throwing themselves into the arms of Russia. The day of unity had
not yet dawned. The poor world had still to suffer from more heads than
one. Finally, after specious attempts of the authorities to get the
Armenians into their power, and wonderful wariness and dexterity on the
part of the Orientals, one morning the convent behind the colonnades
of St. Peter's was found empty--not the first time that a convent had
been left empty in Rome. The monks had somehow managed to take their
flight from a spot only a few yards from the Inquisition and within
rifle shot of scores of convents--in which "retirement" for "religious
exercises" might have been, for them, a very serious matter. It is
said that, before the flight, Rustum Bey told the monks, in case of
need, to hoist the Turkish flag, and threatened that, if any harm was
done to them, reprisals should be taken on Romish convents in Turkey.
Indeed, M. Veuillot goes so far as to assert that they actually did
hoist the Turkish flag, and also the French. He says that they executed
the sentence of excommunication upon themselves (ii. 87). If they did
hoist the Turkish flag, it would have been a curious sight to see the
two emblems of religion and physical force which still survive in
Europe--the crescent, and the keys and tiara--floating side by side,
close by the prisons of the Inquisition and the circus where Nero gave
to unity by physical force, his pontifical sanction. It was asserted
that attempts were made to put the Armenian Archbishop of Tarsis also
into "retirement."[378]
The exaggerated rumours afloat regarding espionage would be stimulated
by anecdotes like the above. It seems to have been agreed, on all
hands, that during the Council the force detailed for that important
duty had been increased manifold. Friedrich mentions one Papal
officer who said that out of every fifty persons fifteen were spies.
He gave examples of people now living handsomely who were known to
have nothing. One Marchese had set up his carriage. Why, Friedrich
says, even the train-bearer of a Cardinal will give a dinner to the
train-bearers of the other Cardinals in order to spy them out. He
naturally enough remarks that a historian learns a good deal by finding
himself amidst such a state of things. It enables him to understand
many things in history. But, strangest of all, reflects the Professor,
is it to find people looking on this worn-out system as the model for
the whole earth. It is, however, just the fact that such a state of
things was looked upon as the model for the whole earth, that gives a
deep interest to every trait showing what that state of things really
was.
Friedrich, remarking that the Count De Chambord, as a dispossessed
prince who expected his throne back from the infallible Pope, very
naturally was an Infallibilist, goes on to say that only dispossessed
princes are papistically minded. They were nearly all waiting in Rome,
and he had reason to know that they expected that the declaration of
infallibility, and the things connected therewith, would lead to their
restoration, as the Pope certainly expected that it would lead to the
recovery of his own States.[379]
April 24 was the day fixed for the third public session. The first had
been devoted to the opening ceremony, the second to the swearing of
the Creed; but this was one for the promulgation of Decrees. Up to
the last it was doubtful whether all the bishops of the minority would
adopt the policy recommended by the leaders, not to cause any division
into majority and minority till the struggle on infallibility itself
came on. Some say that Kenrick and Strossmayer held out so far as to
stay away. But Kenrick voted, although, as we have seen, he expressed
regret at having yielded to others instead of following his own
judgment. The robes for the day were red. The doors of the house were
thrown open, and non-members who had a place in the galleries were not
required to withdraw at the time when the Rules prescribed that they
should do so. When the Decrees were handed from the throne, Valenziani
read them out from the pulpit. Jacobini, the Sub-Secretary, then
ascended it, and called out the name of Cardinal Mattei. "_Absent!_"
cried a voice from near the throne. "_Absent!_" cried a voice from
near the door, at the other end of the Hall. Jacobini then called out,
"Constantine, Bishop of Porto"; and Patrizi, rising, said "_Placet._"
"_Placet_," cried the voice from near the throne. "_Placet_," cried the
voice from near the door, and the scrutineers and officers registered
the vote. It was not long before a test name was called--that of
Schwarzenberg, one of the few Cardinals older than the present
pontificate. He had already advised the policy of concession for
to-day, saying, "We must not blow our powder away." But this was not
known to all the majority, and when the magnificent prince pronounced
his _Placet_, there was a manifest expression of relief. When the
Cardinals had all been called the names were no longer repeated--only
the title of the See.
Cardinal Manning relates how diplomatists, who had hoped to see
division, were struck as they looked from their galleries, and saw the
leaders of the Opposition, one after another, stand up and pronounce
their _Placet_. Friedrich says that the countenances of the Jesuits
changed from gloom to delight, when Schwarzenberg, Hohenlohe, Darboy,
and others, gave in their votes, and that they manifested a particular
interest in that of Hefele. He also says that the gentlemen who were
with him in the tribune figuring as theologians, but whom he calls
train-bearers, were intensely anxious about the indispensable sunbeams,
which, however, he adds, were for that day cut off from the Hall. Just
as the Pope entered the assembly, the sunbeams did pass the threshold;
and the gentlemen around him cried out, "The sun, the sun!" their
eyes dancing for joy. After the Decrees had been passed, the Pope
pronounced a short allocution, rejoicing in their unity, and saying,
"Our Lord Jesus Christ gave peace to His apostles, and I also, who am
His unworthy Vicar, in His name give peace to you." Friedrich says
that some French bishops hailed this with clapping of hands, but that,
instead of this being general, there were signs of dissatisfaction, and
particularly from the galleries. The first statement is confirmed by
the _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_.
Friedrich could hardly catch the formula in which the Pope announced
his passing of the Decrees; but it struck him that it was not the same
as that prescribed in the Rules; and on receiving the text as passed,
he found that a change had been made without any intimation whatever
having been given of it. To him the change was nothing, as the new
form only said what he knew the previous one meant, although bishops
had seriously differed with him for saying so. The Rules prescribe the
formula, "We decree, enact, and sanction"; and this was now changed to
the more compact and expressive Papistical formula, "We define, and,
by apostolic authority confirm." The word "sanction" had a flavour of
historic dualism.
The Curialists boasted, after this session, that they had gained three
points, and the statement of them shows a clear conception of their own
strategy and of the positions to be won:[380] first, the Pope had, for
the first time in three hundred and fifty years, proclaimed Decrees
in a Council in his own name only, merely mentioning the Council as
approving; secondly, the new Rules had been accepted; thirdly, the
final clause of the Decrees carried the conclusion that the former
dogmatic Decrees of the Popes were accepted as of authority. This last
point alone was of prodigious consequence, and vindicates Friedrich's
discernment in tracing the Curial system at first sight in these
apparently elementary and rather feeble chapters. Only one fortnight
earlier, as we have seen, Cardinals and prelates declared that they
and the majority of bishops in great nations had taught in direct
contradiction to the Bull _Unam Sanctam_. But from to-day both that
Bull and, among others, the _Ex Apostolatus Officio_ of Paul IV, the
father of the Roman Inquisition, were of Divine authority! Or, as
Quirinus puts it, "Rules of faith for the whole Catholic world, and
thus it will be taught universally in Europe and America, henceforth,
that the Pope is absolute master in temporal affairs also; that he
can order war or peace, and that every monarch or bishop who does
not submit to him, or helps any one separated from him, ought to be
deprived of his throne, if not of his life" (p. 471).
The Decrees contain eighteen anathemas! Vitelleschi says, that of those
in the cathedral who paid any attention to the proceedings, none seemed
ever to reflect that, as Catholics, they would lie down that night with
new articles of faith and new declarations (anathemas) weighing on
their intellect and conscience. "Authority" teaches men to admit new
creeds with awful facility, and to utter anathemas almost as readily as
a primitive Christian would have said, God bless you! The Curialists
did not exaggerate the substantial victory which had been won, or
the practical importance of the three points already specified. The
legislative effect of those points upon what little of constitutional
arrangements had still been left in the Romish communion was very
great. They linked all the past dogmatic Decrees of the Popes to the
authority of the Creator of the world. The unfailing interpreter of
the view taken by the Court of the position of affairs, M. Veuillot,
says (i. 472), "The last paragraph confirms all the Constitutions, and
apostolical Decrees, which condemn the errors of the times. Thus have
the condemnations pronounced in the Syllabus received the official
stamp."[381]
Even the anathemas were pleasant to M. Veuillot's cultured taste. "You
have read the eighteen anathemas against errors pronounced in the old
form of the sovereignty of the Church." Some had said that there would
be no more anathemas, some that they did not want any more. "But there
they are, and there they are for eternity. In my view, the work of
revolt accomplished during a hundred years falls smitten with old age"
(ii. 45, 46).
Not long afterwards, chiding the _Figaro_, the _Gaulois_, and other
journals, for asking what the Council was doing, he replied, "The
Council is making a wide and deep furrow like the grave of a world. You
will go down into that furrow, and you will not spring up" (ii. 58). As
to the _plébiscite_ then about to be taken in France, he said that he
could not vote Yes, because that would be permanently handing oneself
over to princes who would not take any engagement to the Church; and he
would not say No, for he did not wish to precipitate disasters (ii. 66).
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 369: _Documenta_, ii. 388.]
[Footnote 370: _Tagebuch_, p. 283.]
[Footnote 371: _The Tractarian Movement._]
[Footnote 372: VII. x. 348 ff.]
[Footnote 373: Vol. ii. pp. 31-34.]
[Footnote 374: _Tagebuch_, p. 344.]
[Footnote 375: _Ibid._ p. 304.]
[Footnote 376: _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, v. 447.]
[Footnote 377: _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, vol. v. 501-7.]
[Footnote 378: Compare _Tagebuch_ (pp. 304, 324, 325, and 344) with
_Quirinus_ (p. 432) and _Vitelleschi_ (p. 130).]
[Footnote 379: _Tagebuch_, p. 358.]
[Footnote 380: _Quirinus_, p. 477.]
[Footnote 381: The _Civiltá_, without naming the Syllabus, asserts that
by this paragraph the Council itself has put a new seal on all the
acts of the Pontiff condemning erroneous opinions. It says the mouths
are shut of those sowers of tares who would pretend that opinions
not branded as heresies were left free by the Council, because not
separately named (VII. x. 524).]
CHAPTER IV
To the End of the General Debate on the Decrees _De
Ecclesia_, June 3--Temporal Benefit to the Curia of Spiritual
Centralization--Spalding's Proposals--Impatience of the Pope and
Veuillot--Outcry against _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_--All other
Subjects to be Postponed, and Infallibility to be brought on out of
its order--Renewed protest of Minority--Open Change of Dispute from
one on Opportuneness to one on the Merits of the Dogma--Anecdotes
of Bishops--Violations of Rules--Private Notes of Bishops on the
Dogma--Doubts cast on the Authority of the Council--Formula of New
Decree--How it will Work.
"Who would not gladly pay a handsome sum to be armed with an infallible
decision which will at once crush all opposition and put down all
adversaries?"[382] This was the practical question suggested by the
speculations of Romans. Increased resort to the oracle would certainly
follow the lifting of its Decrees above all dispute. What, indeed,
they might well ask, would not a party in some hot dispute pay for a
Decree that could never be disturbed? and in high affairs of State,
when some Croesus had set his heart on a great enterprise, would he
not make offerings to the oracle, which even a Herodotus might rejoice
to immortalize? Moreover, as Quirinus adds, almost every Roman had a
brother, an uncle, or a cousin, in the clerical circle around which the
profits would be distributed. If bishops, with countries to call their
own, feared the result of the attempt to set up clerical authority
above civil, Roman prelates who had no country, but were only the
political dependents of foreigners, openly declared that they looked
upon the restoration of spiritual authority over temporal affairs as
the one thing called for by the times. So long as this notion was
confined to the Roman prelates proper, one could comprehend it. They
had lived apart from men and affairs, except their own affairs, and
were absolute strangers to the actual age and world. But that bishops
from free countries or great ones should entertain such dreams, or
while not themselves sharing in the illusions, should adopt the
religious expedients by which it was hoped to give them effect, is
marvellous. Perhaps it may be partly explained by that weakening of the
individual conscience and will, through the principle of authority, to
which Vitelleschi so instructively refers; by that complete personal
dependence of bishops on the Curia for consideration, and even for
means, which is noted on all hands; by the unbroken habit of yielding
to Rome, or of being beaten in every attempt at resistance; by old age,
and by the incurable isolation of the men themselves from humanity.
They were men bound, as we view it, only by artificial ties, to a guild
bent upon ruling the world, while they themselves received gold rings
and goodly apparel for bearing their share in the enterprise. Or, as
they viewed it, they were men separated from the world, identified only
with the Church and the clergy, and utterly dependent upon the Vicar
of God. What could they do? A quarrel with a government had hitherto
always brought a bishop glory, but not so a quarrel with the Curia.
In the former case, the Pope took care to make up to the bishop in
professional advantage more than he could lose by political collision.
In the latter case, no government could or would make up to him for
disgrace or ruin. A martyr bishop was one of the most effective figures
in every Church display. A great occasion would be comparatively dull
without one. Governments could make no such use of bishops who might
suffer for loyalty.
It is curious to find in the Archbishop of Baltimore one of the keenest
partisans of infallibility. Formerly, Dr. Spalding had foretold that
the dogma would only occasion difficulties, and had advised resistance.
The causes of his new zeal were of course discussed in Rome, where
changes of opinion are liable to be assigned to personal rather than to
public motives. Spalding prepared a formula of infallibility to the
effect that all Papal decisions must be received with internal assent.
It is even said that he took this for a mild form compared with the
direct declaration of the doctrine. Two of his American colleagues, on
the other hand, the Archbishops of St. Lewis and of Cincinnati, bore a
distinguished part among the prelates of the minority, as did also the
Archbishop of Halifax.[383] Kenrick, of St. Lewis, left an impression
of force equalled only by few prelates in the assembly.