Upon this he left the desk, and Jacobini, the Sub-Secretary, ascending

it, called out the name of Cardinal Mattei, who was absent from old

age. He then called "Constantine, Bishop of Porto"; and Cardinal

Patrizi, rising, and taking off his mitre, said, _Placet_. The voice

near the throne made the darkening hall to echo _Placet_, and the

voice near the door repeated the echo, _Placet_. Then the scrutineers

recorded the vote. Cardinal Amat was next called, and his _Placet_ and

some five or six others sounded harmoniously in the deepening gloom.

Jacobini then called Frederick Joseph, Archbishop of Prague. The

princely priest who from the age of thirty-three had worn the purple,

and who was to represent the house of Schwarzenberg and the Church of

Bohemia,--that Church imposed by burnings and by blood,--responded not.

There was a moment's pause and a sense of a want. _Absent_, cried the

voice near the throne. _Absent_, replied the voice near the door; and

the influences from without were seconded by a damping influence from

within. The next name was that of Cardinal Corsi, a man of repute for

piety, who was well known to be averse to the definition. According to

Vitelleschi, he and the other dissentient Cardinals drew their scarlet

hats over their eyes and remained silent. But they wore mitres, not

hats. Of the rest, Quirinus asserts that, besides the Cardinal Vicar,

Patrizi, only two put into their _Placet_ spirit enough to stand up,

and they were Bonaparte and Panebianco. Fourth after Corsi came the

name of the senior French Cardinal. "James, Archbishop of Besançon,"

cried Jacobini; but Cardinal Mathieu did not respond. _Absent_, cried

the official voice. _Absent_, echoed the fellow official. Even France

seemed failing. Thrice had the tranquillizing _Placet_ cheered the

still deepening shadows, when Jacobini came to the notable name of

"Joseph Othmar, Archbishop of Vienna." But Rauscher was far away, and

once more did the thunderous air thrill with the depressing sound,

_Absent_. Now followed a successive roll of more than twelve _Placets_,

and then came the name of Philip, Archbishop of Bologna. All watched

Cardinal Guidi, who pronounced a _Placet_. The Pope closely eyed him,

and when the creature delivered his judgment before earth and heaven in

favour of the dogma which just one month previously he had, in the same

place, solemnly proposed to lay under an anathema, his royal master

said, "Poor man!" or, as others report it, "Good man!" but Vitelleschi

remarks that in Italian they might both mean the same thing. To Guidi

succeeded two staunch _Placets_, from Bonnechose and Cullen, but next

was called Gustavus of Santa Maria Traspontina. Eyes looked for another

prince-priest who represented the house of Hohenlohe and the feelings

of Bavaria, but there was no response. Hohenlohe, like Rauscher and

Schwarzenberg, was _absent_.

After the list of Cardinals was exhausted, the patriarchal Sees were

called. Two Sees were especially connected with the tradition of Peter.

After men of genuine Italian name, Antici-Mattei and Ballerini, had,

for Constantinople and for Alexandria, answered _Placet_, was called

the name of Antioch. Its Patriarch was named Jusseff, and the call

evoked no response; so Antioch, the See of Peter, and _absent_, the

sign of disapprobation, were set in men's minds together. Of course

the Roman Valerga said _Placet_ for Jerusalem. Then came the other

city connected with the life of Peter, and when Audu, whose secret

experience after his first audacity in venturing to differ from Pius

IX was known to all, was called to answer for Babylon, all expected

that he would have been overcome like Guidi. But no. Oriental servility

did not equal Rome, and so the reply made for Babylon was _Absent_.

_La Dernière Heure du Concile_ asserts that as Audu had been sent for

by the Pope, so had Jusseff been sent for by the authorities of the

Propaganda, "to know by what right he dared to bear testimony to the

belief of the East without having previously submitted his speech to

revision" (p. 4). Next came the primatial Sees. Where was the Primate

of France? Where the Primate of Hungary? They, too, among the _absent_.

And of the Archbishops, where were those of Paris, of Milan, and of

Munich? Where the Nestor of the English-speaking group, John of Tuam?

These were painful deficiencies. Still, in numbers if not in influence

the roll of _Placets_ from among the Archbishops presented a very

large majority. Among the bishops, the first name called was that of

the very aged Losanna, of Biella, one of the staunchest opponents. So

the first reply, though for an Italian bishop, was _Absent_. Then a

flow of _Placets_, frequently chequered by an _Absent_. In all, says

Vitelleschi, nearly one hundred and fifty bishops were absent, many

of them men who held the most illustrious Sees.[470] The _Acta Sanctæ

Sedis_ confesses to one hundred and twelve absentees from among those

called; which number did not, of course, include men who had already

obtained leave of absence. The number who were present was five

hundred and thirty-five. In this whole list the uniform responses were

either _Placet_ or _Absent_ till the name of the Bishop of Caizzo, a

Neapolitan, was called. The official reported his vote as _Placet_.

Caizzo raised his voice and loudly uttered _Non placet_. Then, again,

to the end, _Placet_ followed _Placet_, alternating with the voice of

the rolling thunder. Finally was called Fitzgerald of little Rock in

America. Thinking that he alone of the Fallibilists was present, he

had begged not to be brought forward; but now that another bishop had

given a negative vote he responded, _Non placet_.[471] This set tongues

agoing. It was roundly asserted that the appearance of the Neapolitan

and the American had been arranged for, in order to give an air of

freedom. Vitelleschi naturally thinks that it is needless to search so

far for motives. Yet, the _Civiltá_ makes a display of these two votes,

saying that without them it would have been alleged that the Fathers

were not free. It tells of a correspondent of some of the "bad" papers

who on hearing the first _Non placet_ was evidently annoyed, and being

asked by a friend the cause of that annoyance said, "This negative vote

spoils all for us."[472] The _Civiltá_ quotes a description of how

Riccio, the Neapolitan, after the definition, went down on his knees

and said, _Credo_, I believe; and how Fitzgerald pressed his episcopal

cross to his breast and said, "Now I believe. Now do I also firmly

believe."[473] When all the votes had been delivered, the scrutineers

and notaries brought to the Secretary of the Council a statement of

the result. The Secretary, followed by the scrutineers and notaries,

advanced to the steps of the throne. There they all knelt down. The

Secretary ascended the steps and read, "Blessed Father, the Decrees and

Canons are agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted."

All this time the gloom was deep. "The voice of the Lord" again and

again pealed over the city. Thunderbolts more than once struck close to

the Cathedral. Some glass in the windows of the apse just behind the

throne was broken. Some, according to Jesuit writers, said, Providence

is proclaiming the downfall of Gallicanism. Some, according to the

_Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, said, The demon is disturbed, the storm shows

that this does not please him. This interpretation would seem to have

been that of the learned editor, for he adds, "The thunderbolts which

Jupiter of the Pagans forged did the city no harm." Many said, God is

installing the new Moses upon the new Sinai. This, at least with those

who wrote, was evidently the prevailing interpretation.

The moment had come. Now was to be spoken the word so oft invoked in

apostrophe, apologue, and prayer,--the word for which many had pictured

a universe in chaos as waiting in blind but agonizing throes,--the word

which so-called Christian journals and Christian ministers had, times

unnumbered, described as the voice of God pronouncing the creative

fiat, Let there be light. But where was the sun? According to many

promises and to careful arrangements, he was at this moment to pour

down upon the Lawgiver while announcing to all people, nations, and

languages, the new law that changeth not, a radiance which would be as

if angels were unfolding their wings above him and around. But the sun

would not! The priest, in his conflict with chaos, was, at the supreme

moment, left to the light of his own beloved wax candles. That light

which his taste tells him adorns the house of God in the eye of day,

and teaches celestial truths to immortal men, became at last of real

use.

The High Priest arose from his throne. All hearts stood still. He

thought, and they thought, that he was about to proclaim himself

unerring. But had not the wine been spirited away between the cup and

the lip? The faults incident to composing in a committee, and those

incident to amending in a hurry, were both embedded in the Decree. All

it said of the infallibility of the Pope was derived and comparative;

he is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer

willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding

faith and morals. History had conquered dogma here as it had done in

the chapter on authority. The declaration was not that the Church was

as infallible as the Pope, which would have been the order had the

historical consciousness traced the infallibility of the Church as

derived from that of the Pope. The declaration was that the Pope was as

infallible as the Church,--a proof that his infallibility was derived

from hers, and that historical consciousness dictated that order. This

comparative infallibility was all that was ascribed to the Pope in this

artful but unskilful composition. But to what, according to the same

article, did the infallibility of the Church amount? This was rendered

by the wording the point all essential, and the standard beyond which

infallibility could not extend. The Church was in the same article,

and in words the most positive, dealt with as a body the consent of

which was not to be taken into account. All, therefore, which the

great Word had brought forth, was a declaration that the Pope was as

infallible as a body whose consent was not to be taken into account.

The world may be well content. The crafty were caught in their own gin

when they renounced the consent of the Church. When men have long and

successfully argued in a circle, it is a delicate thing all at once, in

the heat of a July day, to break one half of the circle, and then to

declare that the other half is perfectly round, quite as round as the

whole. Historically, the infallibility of the Church was first of all

made the base and measure of that of the Pope. Then, diplomatically,

the infallibility of the Church was reduced to a nullity. This nullity,

by inexorable logic, falls back on all the infallibilities grown out

of it, or measured by it. So the Decree is chaos in spite of all the

candles. But on one point it speaks not comparatively but positively.

Without comparison with anything on earth or above the earth, the

Decrees of the Pope are pronounced irreformable. That is the one and

the only indisputable result.

The aspirant after infallibility stood, about, as he imagined, to

pronounce the word. He opened his lips, and by the candlelight read:

"The Decrees and Canons contained in the constitution just read are

agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted. We, therefore, with the

approval of the Sacred Council, confirm these and those as now read,

and define them by apostolic authority."

The anathema attached to the definition of infallibility strikes below

the feet of Protestants. It only anathematizes those who contradict

the definition. Protestants do not stoop to do so. They may freely

admit that the Pope is as infallible as the Church which made him

irreformable, and for once they may believe more than the Pope, by

admitting that the Church is as infallible as he. They certainly are

not tempted to deny that the Pope, whether in his Decrees or out of

them, is irreformable. Here, again, they believe more than the Pope.

The _Civiltá_ states that now burst out a loud acclamation among the

Fathers, accompanied with salvos of artillery. The small crowd of

priests and nuns, and such like, as Vitelleschi says, about the door

of the Hall raised a shout. Quirinus says that the nuns cried "_Papa

mio_"--My Pope. According to the _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, St. Peter's was

very full of people, who broke forth in such applause that you would

scarcely have believed that you were in the temple of the Prince of the

Apostles, hearing it echo again and again with these unwonted sounds.

The Irreformable then addressed his Bishops in the following

allocution. In order to do so, according to the _Stimmen_, he had to

make several vain attempts, owing to the repeated applause of the

Fathers; an applause which recalls a sad word of Vitelleschi, that some

are never so jubilant as when they have placed a new yoke on their

necks. At length the thunders of applause were still, and the waiting

world was ready to hear the first utterance of the first human being

ever set up on a throne in a temple, by hundreds of men of full age and

of sound reason, to utter to all the earth words never to be questioned

or amended, much less recalled. Hush! _The Infallible_ gives forth the

first oracle in his now acknowledged plenitude of power. Does it sound

like "the word of God," at whose potent spell a disordered world will

rise to new order and repose, or like that of an old man chiding the

absent bishops who had not adorned the triumph of the day?

This exalted authority of the Roman Pontiff, venerable brethren,

does not oppress, but assists; does not destroy, but builds up and

often confirms in dignity, unites in affection, and strengthens

and protects the rights of brethren--that is, of the bishops. Let

those who now judge in the earthquake know that the Lord is not in

the earthquake. Let them remember that, a few years ago, holding

different views, they copiously expressed themselves as of our own

opinion, and that of the majority of this great assembly; but they

then judged in the calm. In judging of the same case, can we have

two opposing consciences? God forbid! May God, therefore, enlighten

their minds and their hearts; and as He alone works great marvels,

may He illuminate their minds and hearts, so that all may come to

the breast of their Father, that of the unworthy Vicar of Jesus

Christ on earth, who loves them, who esteems them, and who longs to

be one with them. And so, bound together in the bond of charity,

may we be able to fight the battle of the Lord, so that our enemies

may not deride us, but may rather fear us, and may in time lay down

the weapons of wickedness before the truth; and may we all be

enabled to say with St. Augustine, "Thou hast called me into Thy

wonderful light, and lo, I see!"[474]

The bishops applauded, and the journals found the allocution divine.

The Liberal Catholics, however, felt that when the Pope said, "I

desire to be one with them," he meant, "I desire to see them submit

to me." The grave point was, that this being the first utterance from

the chair after he had been solemnly declared to be as infallible

as the Church, an utterance made--if ever one could be made--in the

exercise of his office as pastor of the universal Church, it contained

a misstatement of fact and a misconception of doctrine. The Pope,

occupied with the absentees, ventured roundly to assert that they who

now opposed had been a few years ago fully of his opinion and of that

of the majority. If ever a public misstatement deserved to be called

by a strong short name, this one did. Had the language of the Decree,

now lifted to the level of the law that changeth not, been put by a

Protestant, as the doctrine of their Church, before Schwarzenberg and

Rauscher, before Darboy and Dupanloup, before Strossmayer, Kenrick,

Clifford, and MacHale, any day previous to the year 1870, they would

have railed at the Protestant as a slanderer, and perhaps would not

have let him escape without an episcopal curse. Would not Spalding have

sneered at D'Aubigné as a fool and a false witness had he said that the

Pope could make a dogma without either the counsel of bishops or the

consent of the Church? No, the ears of the Pope were full of words of

witness; the bureaux of the Council contained document after document

in evidence that the statement which he now dared to make when none

dared to contradict, was not true, and was known not to be true. Those

bishops, in order to please the Pope, had unwisely, as they now felt,

stretched the doctrine of primacy, which they did hold, till it looked

to unpractised eyes very like Papal infallibility. True, they had done

this in what seemed rather to be addresses of ceremony than formularies

of doctrine; for whenever infallibility itself had been nakedly

presented to them, even without the adjunct of ordinary jurisdiction

in every diocese, and without any repudiation of the consent of the

Church, they had mustered the manhood to oppose it. The Pope neither

stated the facts nor discriminated between opinion and opinion. He did

state as fact what was not fact, and confounded opinions that differed.

Friedrich, with the acute author of the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_,

and not a few others, thinks that he is personally incapable of

understanding theological distinctions, and that he could not explain

what the doctrine of Papal infallibility means. This seems to be

impossible, and yet there is very much to prevent one from pronouncing

it ridiculous. But whether he is capable of distinguishing in such a

case or not is a very slight matter. The fact that remains for us is,

that his first utterance from the acknowledged seat of infallibility

was wholly occupied with the absent bishops, that he insinuated that

they had a double conscience, and that the grounds on which he made

that insinuation were incorrect in fact and inaccurate in thought. Had

the question whether the Papacy was a divine organ of truth, or merely

a contrivance of clever old men, liable to be overseen, like other

mortals, in their words and deeds, been designedly subjected to a fair

test, we can with difficulty conceive of one fairer or more conclusive,

than that first utterance from the recognized seat of inerrancy. There

is nothing divine in it, and the human elements do not rise above a

very ordinary level.

The city was silent and chill. We can form but a faint idea of how

much, in such a case, mere external impressions sway a community

trained like the one of which we speak. It was as if the salvos from

St. Angelo, the feeble voice of the Irreformable, had been swallowed

up in the salvos of the skies, the voice of the Sole Infallible. The

_Giornale di Roma_ and the _Civiltá_, the _Univers_ and the _Unitá_,

would have spared no epithets in denouncing the man who three months

before should have said that, on the night when the creative word, the

fiat, Let there be light, should be uttered; on the night when the

patient voice of the people and of the priests should be hushed under

"the voice of God" proclaiming infallibility, a noble Roman would

pen what Vitelleschi that night quietly wrote down: "The government

offices, the religious establishments, and a few private houses, were

illuminated; but the rest of the city remained in perfect silence and

profound darkness."

The concluding words of the Roman writer, in narrating the triumph of

the day, are not wholly indifferent to us in England (p. 221)--

History is bound to award to the author and originator of every

work the praise or blame which is due to him. All must remember the

part taken by the Fathers of the _Civiltá Cattolica_, and Monsignor

Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, in promoting the dogma of the

personal infallibility of the Pope, and all know that it was their

mind and their will that carried it. On the day of the promulgation

of the dogma, Monsignor Manning received as a gift from the Society

of the Jesuits, a portrait of Bellarmine, with the following

inscription--

Henrico Edwardo Manning,

Archiep. Westmonast.

Sodales Soc. Jesu;

Collegii Civilitatis Catholicæ,

Sessionis IV Concilii Vaticani

Mnemosynon.

It is said that the portrait was really that of St. Charles Borromeo.

One other note was often made as to this memorable day. It was the same

day on which was done the deed that irrevocably sealed the fall of the

Second Empire, and consequently the fall of its pendant and _protégé_,

the Papal throne. The declaration of war was delivered in Berlin on the

day following, and must have left Paris that day!

The reader having already had several specimens, and fair ones, of

_Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, is in a position, so far as relates to

it, to form his own opinion of its "stinking calumnies," to adopt

the characteristic language of the Most Eminent, Most Reverend, and

Right Reverend Fathers of the Council. But as to _La Dernière Heure du

Concile_ (The last hour of the Council), we may at this point fitly

give a few examples. It speaks of "Rules imposed in violation of the

most manifest rights of the Council, of Commission chosen beforehand,

of illusory votes, of an oppressive tutelage, of discussions without

order and without aim, of modifications of the Rules as arbitrary

as they were multiplied." It asserts that as to the minority public

calumnies were not spared them; that their speakers were more than

once forced to leave the desk without being able to explain, much less

to defend their views; while the majority from the beginning took the

reasons of the minority for insults, and rendered back insults for

reasons; and that the petitions of the minority were not only left

without effect, but without answer. It pictures the Jesuits as meeting

the bishops after three centuries of feigned truce on the ground where

their General Laynez, defeated at Trent, had left them; but as now

coming perfectly prepared for the battle, while the bishops had not

foreseen anything--

To-day it is not the episcopate that refuses to hear Father

Laynez, but it is Father Laynez who, master of the field, does

not even deign to listen to the episcopate, and announces to it

that the question has been long decided.... The day that Pius

IX said, There shall be a Council, the Company of Jesus said, I

shall be the Council. We have seen three of its doctors absorb

both the doctrinal power of the august assembly, and its right

of initiative. The bishops have been called to sanction what the

Jesuits have written, and there is the whole history of the Council.

Speaking of the Propaganda, the writer declares that it holds in its

hands all the Vicars Apostolic, and most of the Oriental bishops.

Taking advantage of its annual grants, it gives week by week to the

prelates who are supported by them that special impulse which shapes

the Council. In winter it set watch before the doors of the poor

Oriental bishops and obliged them to shut their cells against brethren

who came to visit them. Thus it comes to pass

that the word of two hundred Fathers of the oecumenical assembly

always remains the word of the Pope alone. In fact, hitherto it is

a thing unheard of that a single one of these prelates, sons of the

Propaganda, should have the courage to speak before the Council or

to vote otherwise than it would have them do. This single proof is

of incomparable and demonstrative force, as against the reality of

their freedom; for while all the other Churches, without exception,

have had some independent voices, the Church which I shall call

that of the Propaganda has not hitherto produced one.

Proceeding to the most tender point of all, the writer says--

Above this _surveillance_ of an institution the Jesuits have

contrived another, which is shown more rarely, and is reserved for

great events. This reaches the heads that are loftiest, even when

they are held up, and it makes those who might feel a movement of

independence tremble in spite of themselves. I mean the authority

of Pius IX. Too long it has been sought to keep his action in the

background, in the private history of the Council, by casting into

the shade a figure which is entitled to stand in a strong light.

Hitherto the writers of history have, at each new incident in the

Council, been content to say, It is the work of the Roman Court.

Well, the Roman Court is Pius IX, and history, when the hour comes,

rending the covering of mystery, must let every one bear the

responsibility which belongs to him. It will have to say that it is

Pius IX who would have the Council in spite of the Cardinals, and

who now will have, in spite of them, his personal infallibility.

It is he who required for the Council this hall where one cannot

hear; it is he who became irritated with Audu and tore from him

the abdication of his rights; it is he who refused to receive the

petition of the minority requesting that unhappy debates should be

averted; it is he who violated all rule in bringing on the burning

question; it is he who suddenly smothered discussion when it

became menacing for his pretensions; it is he who from the clergy

of Rome required an address which they had at first refused; it

is he who dismissed Theiner to reward Cardoni; it is he who by a

classification to be much regretted distressed the prelates who on

the anniversary day of his election came to congratulate him; it

is he who called Guidi after his speech to subdue his independent

spirit; is it he who from the Council demands either his personal

infallibility or else the courage to die from the heat of the

sun and of the fever; it is he who will be everything, both the

universal faith and tradition--_La tradizione son io!_ Never was

absolutism seen so near at hand, in an institution which Jesus

Christ had founded free and independent in spite of its monarchical

and indivisible unity.

The aspect of the case which most distressed the writer seemed to

be that studied humiliation of the bishops which marked the whole

procedure of the Pope, and especially that raising against them of

their own subordinates which bishops probably thought was a measure

reserved only for employment against civil rulers, not against

"Venerable Brethren." Contrasting the present excesses with those of

the Popes of the middle ages the writer proceeds--

At present we stand in presence of the Papacy struggling, not

against princes, but against the episcopacy; as if Pius IX could

find on the ruin of his brethren a more elevated throne, or in

their annihilation a more impregnable fortress. O misfortune of

the times and abuse of the most holy institutions! They want to

have only a single real bishop in the world--the Pope; a single

infallible and authorized doctor--the Pope! Let every voice be

silent unless to say what he has said; let no action be performed

but under his episcopal jurisdiction--universal, immediate; let

those who have been appointed by God to govern, renounce their

imprescriptible rights; let them tear the pages of the gospel on

which those rights are graven; we do not any longer want more than

one mouth, one hand, an absolute monarch; then, say they, only

then, shall we have universal order.... At present the Caesars

disappear everywhere and visibly; in vain do I look for a Louis XIV

or a Joseph II; governments are essentially transformed and are

confounded with the country which at least has no courtiers. There

now remains in reality but one Caesar, who is himself everything

both in spiritual matters and in temporal, dispensing his favours

to those who defend him, and making those who contradict him feel

his wrath; and this Caesar is not called either Francis Joseph or

Napoleon III.

And while this time all temporal powers have scrupulously respected

the liberty of the Council, a single one has hampered it in every

way, has dreaded and destroyed it. I need not name the one. Thus

the Church which had furnished to modern civil societies the model

of a monarchy, in which the aristocratic and popular elements

effectually tempered the excess of the supreme power, the Church

which had first of all given to the modern world the example of

its great assemblies, discussing in freedom the rights of truth

and justice--this Church presents to us to-day the spectacle of a

Council without liberty and the menace of an absolutism without

control.

This will suffice to account for the displeasure of the Pope and the

Jesuits; but whether it sufficed to warrant the action of the Council

and its language, posterity will judge. In our climate the allusion to

the cruelty of keeping the old men in Rome in what is there called "the

severest season," would seem overstrained. But the danger of attending

a conclave in that season will be found described by Mr. T.A. Trollope

as greater than that of a soldier on the field of battle. And his

details of a conclave held in July to elect the Barberini Pope, gives

frightful corroboration of that serious statement.[475] As M. Veuillot,

looking from the point of view of the initiated, had at once leaped to

the conclusion of the Pope only; and as Vitelleschi, reasoning from

the data furnished by the Canons presented to the Council, inferred

that all that would remain of earthly authority would be the Pope

only; so this writer, starting from the episcopal point of view, and

with difficulty rising above it, at last stands face to face with the

sole figure of authority left, the Pope only; and he finds that while

the spirit of Christianity has been changing Caesars into mild and

patriotic princes, another spirit has changed the Bishop of Rome into a

Caesar, claiming all supremacy in things temporal and spiritual.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 464: Vol. ii. 427.]

[Footnote 465: _Friedberg_, p. 622; _Quirinus_, 797.]

[Footnote 466: Vol. ii. p. 436.]

[Footnote 467: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 367.]

[Footnote 468: The names are given in _Friedberg_, p. 149.]

[Footnote 469: _Vitelleschi_ says that of 157 absent only 38 were

accounted for. The rest represented the Non-contents.]

[Footnote 470: P. 216.]

[Footnote 471: _Vitell._ and _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_.]

[Footnote 472: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 347.]

[Footnote 473: _Ibid._, VII. xi. pp. 479, 480.]

[Footnote 474: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 366.]

[Footnote 475: _Papal Conclaves_, p. 312.]

CHAPTER IX.

From the Great Session to the Suspension of the Council, October 20,

1870--The Time now come for the Fulfilment of Promises--Position and

Prospects--Second Empire and Papacy fall together--Style of Address

to the Pope--War for the Papal Empire foreshadowed--Latest Act of the

Council--Italy moves on Rome--Capture of the City--Suspension of the

Council--Attitude of the Church changed--Last Events of 1870.

The reader may perhaps feel that we have now reached a point at which

many prophecies await their fulfilment, and many calculations their

test. The enthusiasts had, on religious grounds, foretold that the

utterance of the "creative word," would be attended with portentous

religious effects. A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly

diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such

expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh

era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union,

whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression

upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the

other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution.

Thus, when the consummation should be reached, and a ruler should be

solemnly set up by the bishops of the whole Church before the kings

of the earth, like, to use the favourite simile of the time, the Lord

setting His King upon His holy hill of Sion; and when this king should

be officially declared to have the government upon his shoulders, to be

invested with all authority for the moral regulation of human affairs,

they expected that the princes, bowing down, would accept him as their

supreme judge and arbiter. Indeed, at one time, the confident talk, not

merely of men among themselves, but of the publications most in the

confidence of the guiding men, had been about laying down conditions

to kings and governments on which they might hope to rule in peace.

Hints had not been spared, that only two alternatives could be allowed

to them--the acceptance of the new moral order on the one hand, or the

loss of their places on the other.

The restoration of society to what was called the Catholic ideal,

its reconstruction on the new divine basis, its deliverance from the

chronic plagues which in modern times had wasted it, were at once to

begin, and moral order was to smile where of late chaos had lowered.

Already these theorists beheld society crying for the Pope as its

saviour. Furthermore, during the days of preparation for the Council,

and during its deliberations, only one among all the nations had been

singled out for solemn blessing and glowing assurances that God would

not forget her services to the Church. Italy had been warned and

cursed. Austria and her new constitution had been formally condemned.

Russia had been laid under every possible anathema. Spain, ever since

her change of government, had shared the same condemnation. As to

the heretical countries, they were generally left, without separate

mention, in the depths to which their sins had sunk them. But the

Ultramontane organs in Germany and France had marked Prussia out for

signal detestation, and denounced the union of Germany under the

leadership of Prussia for the relentless opposition of the Church of

God. France alone was blessed with the withering benediction of the

priest.

The hour had come that was to show how far the seers had read the

future, and how far the calculators had reckoned well. So far as

related to the great dogma, and the definition of it, all that had been

designed was happily accomplished; indeed, more completely accomplished

than had been proposed in any design avowed up to the eleventh hour.

So far, therefore, both seers and calculators were justified. They had

not seen a false vision, so long as they contemplated the dogmatic

issue; nor had they reckoned without their host, so long as they had

reckoned upon bishops, priests, and friars. Events were now to tell how

far the transformation of Society into the accepted model, how far the

homage of kings, how far the self-surrender of Parliaments, how far the

submission of codes to be remodelled by the Church, and how far the

general consent of the human race to be guided by him who claimed to

hold the place of God among men, were to pass from the realm of hope

into that of experience.

The progress of the Council, and of opinion contemporary with its

sittings, had dissipated many illusions. Even the bishops had to be

conquered, and were not won. Europe had been awakened and had not been

attached, but alienated. Great as the glories of the spectacles had

confessedly been, and much as they dazzled spectators, they had not

carried legislative effect, except where the artistic legerdemain had

admitted of immediate application. The vote of the minority on July

13 was one symptom of failure. Their final record of dissent, put

into the Pope's own hand, was a more serious symptom. Their flight

from the last public session was more serious still. The absence of

the representatives of the governments from that session was yet far

more depressing. All, therefore, that was now to be hoped for from the

Church was submission; and the very utmost that any calculating man

dared to hope for from governments was endurance. The worst was that

statesmen had learned much more than they were ever meant to learn,

and had seen into matters a deal further than laymen ought to see. And

so the first night of the new dispensation closed in under dull skies,

both physically and morally.

When the Romans, always curious to see how facts can be dressed for

appearance outside of the walls, looked to the _Giornale di Roma_ for

an account of the session, they found there that all the bishops who

had not appeared--upwards of two hundred--were placed in one class,

"absent from different legitimate and recognized reasons." This was

followed by the assertion that "the great majority of them held the

same doctrine as that which had been defined." Accustomed as the Romans

are to this method of putting facts in vestments, the occasion was

solemn before God and exposed to the eye of man. Vitelleschi wrote

that in these representations the minority might find "a foretaste of

the false statements and judgments they must in future expect." Some

readily account for such assertions by saying that it was hoped that

the documents which proved the contrary would never come to light.

But much is due to the habit of reckoning on the power of a great

organ to set officials upon repeating what it says, till the facts are

forgotten. The _Civiltá_ copied these statements, and yet at a later

date gave a truer account of the absentions.

It said: Cardinals, 42 _pro_ and 4 _contra_; Patriarchs, 6 _pro_ and 2

_contra_; Primates, 6 _pro_ and 2 _contra_; Archbishops, 80 _pro_ and

18 _contra_; Bishops, 349 _pro_ and 47 _contra_; Abbots and Generals,

40 _pro_ and only 1, a Chaldean, _contra_. The same article, however,

does not shrink from asserting that "many" of the minority voted

_Placet_ in the public session.

The heaviest solicitudes of the Curia were now to begin. Events had

been so guided that so long as they were dealing with their own

instruments, the bishops and the clergy, they were left completely

to effect their purpose. Now came the point where they were to

operate upon mankind. That society which they had meant completely to

subjugate, flattering themselves that they were about to restore it,

was now placed face to face with them in an awful aspect, one which

neither priests nor kings could fully interpret. Certain it was,

however, that neither kings nor "peoples" were upon their knees before

the Vicar of God, or were inclined to go down upon them. Some feared

that instead of kings and nations appealing to him to save them, he

would soon be found appealing to some one to save him. The fortunes

of the restored empire of the Bonapartes, and those of the restored

Papacy, had been bound up together. Men now watched and whispered,

saying that as they had been strangely united in their lives, perhaps

they would not be divided in their fall. The 13th of July, the day

of the voting which gave the Pope his fatal majority, was the day of

the incident at Ems. It was the day also on which the Duc de Gramont

informed the French Chambers that, although the Hohenzollern candidate

for the throne of Spain had been withdrawn, that did not close the

dispute. The 18th of July, the day on which the Pope read out by

candlelight the Decree upon his own infallibility, was the day on which

Napoleon despatched his fatal declaration of war to Berlin. A baptism

of fire had been often and pompously foretold as the result of the

great dogma. After its promulgation all that the world ever heard of a

baptism of fire was when Napoleon telegraphed to the Empress, whom the

devout regarded as the true author of the war, telling her, in loud

brag before the nations, how her boy had received his baptism of fire.

That again was but two days before simultaneous sorrows sounded the

knell of the empire and of the throne which sheltered under the shadow

of its wing--the two embodiments of arbitrary will calling itself

authority.

On August 4, the Pope was chafing at the news that the French troops

at Civitá Vecchia had actually commenced embarkation. On the same day

Bonaparte read the telegram from Wissenberg. On August 6, Count Arnim

on the Capitoline was writing to Berlin to tell his government that

Napoleon had declined an offer of the Pope to mediate between the

belligerents, assigning as the ground that after the declaration of war

negotiations were too late. That same day came upon Napoleon the double

disasters of Wörth and Spichern. The reply of the King of Prussia to

the same offer of mediation on the part of the Pope was to the effect

that if the Pontiff would procure for him assurances of the pacific

intentions of Napoleon, and guarantees against similar violations of

the peace in the future, he would not refuse to receive them from the

hands of his Holiness.[476] The total result then of the first attempt

at political action abroad, in the new character, was a simple failure.

At the same time political embarrassments at home were thickening, as

they had done every day since the fatal July 13.

It was after Rome had learned that the sun of Austerlitz had not shone

on the fields of Wörth and Spichern, that the first formal act occurred

showing that the Council had neither been dissolved nor prorogued. All

that the Pope had done was to give the bishops a general leave until

November 11. Had everything gone smoothly, this arrangement would

have enabled the men of the Curia to go on as if they were a General

Council. The step to which we allude was merely the formal addition of

certain names to the Committee on Church Discipline, to replace those

who had left Rome. And this is registered on August 13.

Meantime an intimation was given of the style of adhesion to the Papacy

in its renewed glory which would be acceptable at the Vatican. The

_Civiltá_ selected for publication, "by preference," as it expresses

it, an address from the Society of Catholic Youth in Bologna. It stated

that, as if in recompense of the new and lofty honour to the Virgin

Mary procured by the word of Pius IX, Divine Providence had exalted in

his person the divine dignity of the successor of Peter to the summit

of glory and power--

We shall ever keep our eyes fixed on Thee, the mirror of eternal

Truth. We shall ever keep them directed to this Apostolical Chair,

whence the waters of true wisdom and of eternal life perennially

flow. Speak, then, O Infallible Teacher, and we, the youthful

sons of the Catholic Church, will hear Your words as the words

of eternal wisdom; Your judgment shall be for us the judgment of

God; Your definition shall be as the definitions of God; Your

instruction as the instruction of God. In your authority as Vicar

of Christ we venerate the authority of God, and submitting our

mind and our heart to that authority, we have faith to sustain

the dignity of human nature in face of the pretentious tyranny of

haughty intellect spoiled and blinded by guilty passions.[477]

The historical tales which had for years been carried on in the pages

of the _Civiltá_ under the title _The Crusaders of St. Peter_, from

which we have occasionally given scenes, rather strangely happened,

in the number of the _Civiltá_ for August 24, to come to an end. It

concluded with the list of the immortal dead, as recorded for the world

in a monument which Italy may well preserve. The Pope did not know what

a record of the exotic character of his own power he was putting up.

The ideal of this monument, and of the methods by which the world was

to be made Catholic, is given by the _Civiltá_ in a very few words--

It was the conception of Pius IX that, in the Agro Verano, on soil

consecrated by the tombs of the ancient martyrs, should arise the

memorial of the crusaders of the nineteenth century. And another

conception of Pius IX was the colossal group in marble which

represents St. Peter in the attitude of committing the sword to

a warrior in armour, who with the cross bears a flag, with the

legend, _The Catholic World_. Peter is Pius; the warrior is the

Christian army. The idea of the mission of that army glows in the

authoritative action of him who gives the commission, and in the

humble and generous action of him who receives the commission, and

is admirably expressed in two texts of Scripture beneath, drawn

from the Book of the Maccabees: "Take this holy sword, a gift from

God, wherewith thou shalt overthrow the adversaries of my people

Israel.... For victory standeth not in the multitude of the army,

but strength cometh from heaven."

The names of the martyrs of this crusade are given, and among those

who fell in the Battle of Mentana is only one Italian. France,

Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, and Germany are all represented,

and Switzerland still more strongly. In the other most considerable

engagement, that of Monte Libretti, there is again but a single

Italian. Among those who perished by being blown up in barracks in

Rome were several Italians, in large part musicians. That record is

certainly worth the keeping of Italy at any cost, and the setting of it

up is only one of the manifold evidences of how blinded the Papacy was

in the last days of its temporal power.[478] Well might the Pope in the

Syllabus condemn the doctrine of non-intervention.

On August 15, a great "function" was celebrated at Rome, in the Church

of St. Louis of the French, in commemoration of the name-day of the

Emperor Napoleon--that modern Charlemagne who restored the Roman

Catholic Church in France, and whose nephew restored the Pope to his

holy city. Cardinal Bonaparte, the Marquis de Banneville, and all

the French notables attended in state. About the same time a sorely

smitten man, accompanied by his boy, was crossing the drawbridges of

Metz, turning their faces to the rear, amid gibes and nicknames from

the French soldiery. While winding up the heights of orchard and of

vineyard which overhang the beauteous dale of the Moselle, and when

looking on the fair uplands of Lorraine, upon which were sleeping,

in happy obscurity, villages like St. Privat and Gravelotte, like

Rezonville and Mars La Tour, the withered Emperor and his yet unripe

son might see French soldiers marching in retreat, but could not see

the Germans by whom they were being already outmarched. Meanwhile

in Paris the two elect ladies of the Golden Rose--Isabella and

Eugénie--were spectators, the first sighing after a crown already lost,

the second trembling for a regency attained as if only to expedite

the breaking of the sceptre of her husband. Had either of them faith

enough to believe that the Virgin could reward them for services done

to the Holy Father by giving them the necks of their enemies? Our Lady

of Victories, "terrible as an army with banners," to quote a favourite

text with Jesuit writers, was propitiated at least by the Empress

Regent.

So far the political calculations of the Curia had all been turned to

vanity. Bavaria had not fraternized with the French, much less carried

Würtemburg and Baden with her. The blast of invasion which was to sound

the death-knell of German unity had proved to be its mustering-cry.

Italy up to the present moment had stood in awe of France, but if the

latter should receive another blow or two, matters might reach a pass

at which the Italian government would have more cause to fear Garibaldi

than Napoleon--and then?

News soon arrived that the Germans, out-marching the French, had met

them in the villages which we have lately mentioned, the names of

which were by that meeting written large on the memory of nations.

The poor Pope saw that Bonaparte, whom he had used and hated, was not

likely to retain power any longer to guard his temporal throne. He knew

that Italy was wiser than the first Bonaparte, who taught the French

that the Pope was to be treated as if he had two hundred thousand

bayonets--a lesson that has cost them dear. Italy adopted the principle

that, in respect of bayonets, the Pope was to be counted as worth just

as many as he could command. Italy would also treat him more wisely as

a teacher. She would not incarcerate, exile, or personally insult him,

but would leave him free to bless or curse as he felt moved, and to be

heeded or disregarded according as every man felt persuaded in his own

mind.

It was with hearts weighted with the heavy news from the banks of the

Moselle that the Fathers of the Council met in their Congregation on

August 23. How changed that gathering from the proud assembly of last

December, which challenged the homage of all kings, and at the sight

of which the Margottis and the Veuillots spoke of our Parliaments as

puppet-shows! Those whose organs of the Press a few months before wrote

as if neither kings nor presidents had any long tenure of power, except

as they might make their peace with the Church, felt themselves to

sit amid the indifference of mankind, and under the menacing strokes

of Providence. The bishops who had warned them of their ignorance and

folly, but had been crushed, were now far away. In the Congregation,

the Fathers discussed some matters of Church discipline, but as the

shadow of Sadowa had arrested all preparations for the Council during

fourteen months, and that of Garibaldi for three or four, now a darker

shadow, projected from Wörth and Gravelotte, was falling upon the

remaining ecclesiastics, as the evening gloom of the Aventine falls

on late gamblers in what was once the Circus Maximus. They had played

for the certainty of the temporal power, and for the reversion of

the lordship of the world. They had boldly staked all episcopal and

clerical rights. The upshot was that the losers had lost, and that the

one winner was to be a loser too. The next news showed them that, on

the very day when they thus met, was completed the investment of Metz.

Thus did they see the thrice beaten but still coherent army of Bazaine

altogether cut off from the routed and disorganised army of MacMahon.

They had fixed to meet again on September 1.

The Fathers probably felt that it was doubtful whether the Congregation

fixed for September 1 would meet; but it was highly politic to keep up

the airs of a General Council, because it increased the sanctity of the

city, and made it morally more difficult for Italy to attack. Ere they

met, it became known that at Beaumont, Failly--the faithful General

Failly, the leader of the expedition of Mentana, lauded and blessed for

his "prodigious chassepots"--had met the Bavarians, soldiers of that

king whom the _Unitá_ never wearied of insulting, and that at their

hands Failly had lost his guns, his baggage, and his camp, a large

part of his men, and all his reputation. The Congregation of September

1, did meet, and it was the last. While Bishop Quinn, of Brisbane, in

Australia, was offering up the Mass, the undulating plateaux around

Sedan were reeking with an incense which had, within the last few

years, been invoked with lamentable frequency by the organs of the

Vatican. As the Fathers were rising from their afternoon siesta, tens

of thousands of blue and grey eyes, from all the heights commanding

the city of Turenne, began to dance for joy at seeing the white flag

waving from the old castle lying low down in the hollow--ay, the white

flag waving over the Imperial head of him who to them represented the

traditional devastators of the German Fatherland, but who was, to the

bishops of the Council, the prince who for twenty years had been the

stay of the temporal power.

No sooner had the news from Sedan reached the Agro Romano, than Curia

and peasant alike knew all that was to follow. One week after that day

the Fathers gathered, on September 8, for the last great ceremony, or,

as it was called, "the last extra conciliar act."[479] The remains of

the world-transforming host of December now speckled the noble Piazza

del Popolo, pressing to the great church of Santa Maria. It was the

Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. All that the _Civiltá_ tells

of the day is that there were great expectations, and that the Feast

of the Immaculate Conception, then three months distant, would witness

a splendid session. We should say that there was no expectation of the

sort, except indeed among the few who really counted on the Virgin as

being certain at last to work for the Pope the miracles which it had

been so often suggested that she was in gratitude bound to perform.

The majority calculated that she had acquitted all her debts to him by

making him infallible. Desirable as it was to keep up the appearance

that Rome was just then the seat of a General Council, they knew that

though for us and other remote people beyond the mountains that might

have a sacred sound, for the Italians it was not a name to conjure with.

On the very day when the Fathers were cheerlessly performing this final

ceremony, a notification was sent forward by Victor Emmanuel that he

was unable longer to stay the impetus of the nation, which panted to

take possession of its capital. The letter of the king was weak and

disingenuous. It was more like the work of a priest than of a soldier.

He affected to be a good Catholic, while deliberately dethroning the

Vicar of God. He affected to hope that the Pope would acquiesce in

his own dethronement. The reply of the Pontiff was more worthy of his

position, and more becoming his professions.

This hostile movement called out a quality in which Popes are surely

infallible, that of appealing to foreigners for armed intervention

against their own countrymen. Of all men, to whom should the Pope now

turn but to the King of Prussia--as if the King of Prussia did not

know at what the Pope and his instruments had been aiming! The date of

the reply of King William was in itself a history. He wrote from the

capital of fair Champagne. Already had the tide of war closed round

the hot infallibilist Räss in his stately Cathedral of Strasburg;

and, rolling on, it had, under the shadow of St. Remy, enveloped the

deserter from the Opposition, Landriot, in his thrice beautiful fane at

Rheims.

St. Remy sent no sufficing homage by the hand of King William. The

soldier-king quietly declined to undertake any such political

intervention as the priest-king desired. In one word, he dispelled

the idea of the venerable applicant, that the cause of Prussia was

implicated. The matter, said King William, is one "which does not, as

your Holiness appears to think, in any way affect the interests of

Prussia." That calm word would provoke many a vow to make the heretic

feel that the Pope could affect the temper of millions of his subjects,

and therefore the interests of his government.

Yet one week from the notification of Victor Emmanuel, and on September

15, rode up an Italian staff officer, with all the forms of war, to

the Milvian Bridge--that _Pons Milvius_ ever memorable for the victory

of Constantine and the death of Maxentius. The latest addition to

its history of military incidents, which began with the conspiracy

of Catiline, had been made one-and-twenty years previously, when the

insurgent Romans defeated an attempt to carry the bridge made by the

French under Oudinot. The point of meeting did not, therefore, seem

to be one of good omen for Pius IX. The Italian officer was Colonel

Count Caccialupi, or Chase-the-Wolves. He came from General Cadorna to

demand, in the name of the King of Italy, the surrender of the city.

On behalf of his Holiness, General Kanzler at once gave his reply. The

place was to be defended. General Bixio on that day closed in upon

Civitá Vecchia.

Meanwhile, Count Arnim, in the hope of averting bloodshed, plied

between the city and the Italian camp. The Pope, however, was resolved

upon resistance. He did, indeed, give orders that it should be

continued only so long as to compel the Italians to open a breach,

in order, as he said, to attest the fact that his capital fell by

violence. That end, we might have thought, would have been equally

well answered, without bloodshed, by surrendering after the first gun.

The forces of the Pope numbered eight thousand, and those of Cadorna

fifty thousand. Rapidly as the temporal power and the Second Empire

were both rushing downhill, it appeared as if they were constantly to

keep step. So did it fall out that on that very September 19, when

the Prussians, defeating Vinoy, closed round Paris, Cadorna, coming

up from the north, sat down before gates of Rome. His lines stretched

from the Salara Gate to the Gate of San Giovanni, thus enclosing that

cemetery of St. Lorenzo, where stood the monument to the Crusaders,

with so many foreign and so few Italian names. Coming up from the

south, General Angiolotti stretched from the Gate of St. Giovanni to

that of St. Sebastiano. Early the next morning Bixio, coming up from

Civitá Vecchia, which he had captured, took post before the Gate of San

Pancrazio, remembered for the contest between Garibaldi and the French.

With the first light of September 20 did the chambers of the Vatican

begin to rattle with the sound of other artillery than the joy-guns of

St. Angelo. The last time that sound had disturbed those vaults was

when it came as the voice of a French republic, commanding a Roman

republic to make way for the most despotic rule in Europe. Now France

was learning for herself what it is to hear the guns of the stranger

before the gates of the capital; and Rome was feeling what it is to

hear the voice of the Fatherland bidding the stranger depart. Of the

two potentates who in 1849 thundered at the weak walls of poor old

Rome, he who then acted the restorer was now an exile and a captive,

while he who was then an exile panting for return, now sat in the halls

to which he was then restored, but sat feeling in the thud of every gun

that even within those halls he too would soon call himself a captive.

While the din pained the spirit of the aged Pio Nono, forty of the

Italians attacking and twenty of the foreigners defending were killed,

and a hundred and fifty of the assailants and fifty of the garrison

were wounded. Reports came that the heaviest fire was directed against

the Porta Pia, the gate particularly connected by name with his own

name, adorned and restored by his liberality, and endeared to his

military recollections by the triumphal entrance of his crusaders from

Mentana less than three years before. A letter is published in which

the Pope ordered General Kanzler to surrender as soon as a breach

should be made. But it would not appear that he had really granted him

power to do so; for the _Civiltá_ expressly says that the order to

hoist the white flag was given by the Pope himself, and accounts for

needless bloodshed by the delay which occurred ere that order could

reach the gate that was beleaguered.[480]

Some five hours had passed since the horrid din began. No Michael

with his legions of angels, no Madonna terrible as an army with

banners, smote the host of the aliens. No Peter struck the barbarians

with blindness. No Dominic, with a cohort of sainted Inquisitors; no

Ignatius, with a celestial "Company," flashed death upon the worse

than Moslems who fought for uprisen Italy. All these things had been

expected. They came not, but instead of them came the news that a

breach at the Porta Pia invited the Italians in. At last the poor old

priest-king made up his mind to stay the futile flow of blood. He

knew the temper of his zouaves. They would have stood and died like

crusaders; but at last the word was given. There on the dome of proud

St. Peter's was the white flag, and there did it float out upon the

September breeze, and waved in the forenoon sun--waved over Pontiff and

Cardinal, over the Circus of Nero and the Inquisition of the Popes.

Was it real? Eyes would be wiped to see if they did not deceive. Eyes,

ay, the eyes of soldiers, would be wiped from thick, hot tears. Could

it be--could it ever be? Come at last! The hour for which ages had

impatiently waited, for which myriads of Italians had died. Italy

one! her arms outstretched from Etna and from Monte Rosa, clasping at

last every one of her children, and even availing by their returning

strength to lift up her poor old Rome from under the load of the priest

and the stranger.

He who two brief months before had, amid deep darkness at noonday,

read out, by artificial light, the Decree of his own unlimited power

and irreformable law, lay down that night amid a rude and intrusive

glare streaming from across the Tiber into the multitudinous windows

of the Vatican. It came from the lights of Rome all ablaze with

illuminations for the fall of the temporal power. In the piazza below

lay the Pope's little army of foreigners, passing their last night in

the Holy City under shade of the basilica in which they had consecrated

their bayonets to St. Peter, and within embrace of the two arms of

the glorious crescent colonnade. For true it is that stone cupolas,

and stone columns, put up by the distant dead, may be of real avail

as stays of a power after the hearts and hands of willing men have

ceased to hold it up. The soldiers passed the next morning in confused

preparations for a departure. At noon a cannon was fired, and the Pope

appeared on his balcony. He could not conceal his overpowering emotion.

With the retreating steps of these prisoners of war, were about to

vanish mystic visions of martial feats crowned by divine miracle. The

soldiers raised their old cry, _Viva Pio Nono_, in loud and ringing

tones; which, smiting against the basilica and the palace, were from

thence rolled back, and flew across the stream, till the sound of _Viva

Pio Nono_ once more floated along the neighbouring streets of the

capital. Uprisen Italy, quietly sustaining her uplifted Rome, hearkened

in silence to the foreign cheer. Then, for the last time, did the Pope

give to his beloved soldiers what they had so often received, his

benediction. As he withdrew, when the corridors opened lone and long

before him, when the doors closed behind, cutting him off from the only

bayonets on which he could rely, no wonder if he felt that the palace

of the Pontiffs had become a prison.

The crusaders, turning to the left, passed out of the Gate Angelica;

then winding round under the windows of the Vatican, close by the

garden walls, and along the Janiculum, they finally reached the Gate

of San Pancrazio, where Cadorna and his staff awaited them to receive

the formal surrender. Proud were the men under the red, white, and

green, with the cross of Savoy, as they saw the head of the approaching

column. As the first men of the French legion came up they insulted the

Italian staff. According to the _Civiltá_, Bixio was so incensed that

he reproached Cadorna for having conceded to such troops the honours of

war. The friendly writer extenuates their misconduct by alleging the

irritation cause by affronts received from the rabble in the streets

on the previous day. But when the zouaves came up led by the brave

Colonel Charette, they behaved like soldiers (_Civiltá_, VIII. i. 212).

When the crusaders of Pio Nono passed away from the Gate of San

Pancrazio, who would have dared to say that the sixty dead and the two

hundred wounded of the day before were to be the last victims of war

provoked by Popes abusing the name of the Prince of Peace? And who

would not feel for the French crusaders, who, led by their priests, and

thinking that they did God service, had for twenty years inflicted upon

Italy, at the behest of the Pope, the miseries of foreign occupation,

and now, in facing their own fair land, were to behold the foreigner

seated in her proudest palaces.

From that day forth, when the Roman met the priest on the street, he

felt that he was no longer bound, except at the dictate of his own

conscience, to confess to him his sins; that, indeed, he was not even

bound to purchase an Easter ticket, to be produced as evidence that

he had duly presented himself in a tribunal in which, in fact, he had

never set foot. From that day forth, when the friar entered the church

of St. Ignatius, neither the great picture of the torments of the

heretics, nor what, in his dialect, he might call the "divine" _lapis

lazuli_, retained all its old brilliancy; for within those sacred walls

the internal tribunal of the kingdom of God was no longer anything

more than a voluntary confessional. From that day forth disappeared

from the seats of justice on the Seven Hills the ecclesiastical

magistrate, and with him the external tribunal of the Church. From

that day forth appeared for the first time for long and weary ages,

the civil magistrates, sitting in open court under the eye of all,

to administer, with whatever shortcomings, a law which accepted the

Christian principle of even-handed justice to Jew and Gentile; to those

who said, We are of Cephas, and to those who only said, We are of

Christ. In the eye of the Vatican this was the fall of the supernatural

order, the godless triumph of naturalism; but in other eyes it was

the substitution of God's good ordinance for the contrivance of

priestcraft, which, conscious that it was not natural, called itself

supernatural. From that day forth the Roman noble ceased to be a mere

title-bearer and jewel-stand, for now a career in the government of his

country opened before him. From that time forth the people ceased to

be a mere populace, and entered on the dignities of a democracy. Law,

letters, science, politics, diplomacy, and oratory now called upon the

bright-browed child of the working man to come and grace them with his

gifts, and not to sit doomed to the destiny of the incapable, unless he

would put on the frock of the priest. From that day forth the double

office of Despot-Pontiff, answering to the ideal of later Pagan Rome,

was replaced by the mild office of the monarch, reigning at the head of

an aristocracy and a democracy. The priest as a teacher of doctrines,

as a celebrant of rites, or as a practitioner of charms, remained as

free as ever he had been before; but as a power to impose himself upon

all, and as exclusive king of men, his reign had passed away. Italy

said, "For ever"; the priest replied, "Only for a very little time"!

On October 2 the Italian government took a plébiscite in the Roman

States, to enable the people by a vote to record their own desire as to

whether they would belong to the kingdom of Italy or to the Spiritual

State. According to the _Civiltá_, the voting in the Holy City was

40,835 in favour of Italy, and 46 against. It must not be imagined that

the total amount of dissent was represented by the 46. The partisans

of the supernatural order generally abstained; but probably they would

have done otherwise had they not known that, even if they all mustered,

the majority would be overwhelming. They, as usual, cried out against

bribery, coercion, and similar wrongs. Indeed, to read the Papal

organs at this day, one might believe that ever since the national

movement began, every vote and every battle has been carried against

the preponderating mass of Italians by some few Freemasons, Jews, and

invisible conspirators.

The Council which was to restore all things still sat. Not even a

prorogation had taken place. Now, however, the Pontiff, though not

intending to dissolve it, determined to suspend it until a happier

time. Exactly a month after Rome had passed into the hands of Italy,

appeared on October 20 the Act by which the Council was suspended.

In the Bull of Convocation the Pope had spoken of his intentions for

the general benefit of society. In the Bull of Suspension it appeared

that the particular society which best knew him and his remedies had

spewed them out of her mouth. After having for many centuries had

experience of his spiritual supremacy and temporal power, Italy had

mournful proofs that they were socially evil. No land in Europe could

produce a record of any dynasty which had so often brought into it

foreign armies, to beat its people down, and to keep them under. No

land in Europe could, from times within the memory of living men,

produce such lists of the executed, the exiled, the imprisoned, and

of those submitted to torture. No land in Europe had a ruling class

among members of which public justice, when once free, had, week after

week, to deal with such vile immoralities as the Courts of Italy had

to punish in members of the priesthood. Italy had made the last trial

of priestly rule with a prince personally free from the social blots

which in the case of many of his predecessors had complicated questions

of the public weal with questions of personal vice. Under Pius IX the

system stood out more fairly to be judged by its principles and by its

fruits. And under Pius IX Italy had rung with accounts of moral wrongs,

of crimes of power, of curses uttered by the subject, such as had long

since ceased to be heard of in other countries of Europe free from

Turkish rule. The monstrosity that called itself a Spiritual State,

and sneered at Lay States, was carnal, and vile to the core. The wave

which, as soon as the breakwater of the Second Empire had been removed,

rolled in at the Porta Pia, was even more a wave of moral scorn and of

social execration than of political hostility.

The Council met amid florid promises that princes generally, at least

Catholic ones, would accept the Vicar of God as their supreme judge,

mingled with terrible citations of them all to appear before him,

in order to find at one and the same time their correction and their

deliverance in his infallible sentence. All this was uttered with the

haughty spirit that goes before a fall. The fall after the haughtiness

did not tarry, and was strikingly indicated by a phrase under the hand

of the High Priest himself, in the Bull of Suspension: "We have been

brought into such a position as to be entirely under a hostile dominion

and power, God in His inscrutable judgments having so permitted it."

Society had already beheld its self-proffered saviour clinging to the

skirts of Napoleon III, and then crying to King William to save him

from his fellow-countrymen. Now the kings heard their self-proffered

judge himself declare that by a judgment truly supreme the temporal

power had fallen--that power which he and all his bishops had

separately and unitedly assured the Church was altogether necessary to

the proper exercise of his office of universal bishop.

We heard the _Civiltá_, in September, foretell that when December 8

should come it would witness a splendid session. Now at last it came,

a waymark noting the end of a very eventful year--eventful in the life

of France, in the life of Italy, in the life of the German nation, and

in that of the Papal Church. But the anniversary of the Immaculate,

of the Syllabus, and of the opening of the Vatican Council, brought

with it no splendid session. They who twelve months ago had met to

sit in judgment on the nations were scattered, and were in various

languages making strange explanations and dexterous appeals to allay

the general disquiet relating to their political plans; and in doing

so were creating in the minds of all who understood what they said,

and who knew what they had done, an impossibility of ever hereafter

trusting to representations of theirs. Meantime, without his seven

hundred bishops, without his adoring crowds, without the glitter of

fallen royalties and of quasi-civic dignitaries, without his beloved

zouaves, yet still guarded by his stalwart and fantastic Swiss--for at

that Court it is ever foreign steel that is true--the Pope, sitting

in a palace of eleven thousand apartments, rich as any king, and free

as any bishop in the world, yet felt and called himself a prisoner.

Therefore when the day of exciting memories came, it was, says the

_Civiltá_, spent in mourning and desolation. But a new offering to the

Virgin was to raise the sacredness of December 8, even in this year

of sorrow, to a higher pitch than ever. Hitherto the patron of the

Holy Church had been St. Michael the Archangel, under whose spear the

first rebel fell--which rebel, as some time ago we saw, prefigured the

latest rebel, Garibaldi. Indeed, after Mentana, St. Michael was, as

military men say, "mentioned" in the Court journal. For the _Civiltá_,

in relating the overthrow of the Garibaldians, did not fail to note

the fact that "it was on the day consecrated to the Prince of the

Angelic Host, to the Patron of the Holy Church, St. Michael," that

the invaders crossed the border. But now the Immaculate, who alone is

terrible as an army with banners, who alone destroys all heresies, was

to be further exalted, by the raising of her husband to that celestial

dignity which had hitherto been borne by the great archangel. It was,

say the reverend college of writers in the ruling periodical, a grand

consolation that amid the mourning and desolation wherein December 8

was passed, the Decree proclaiming St. Joseph as the Patron of the

Catholic Church was promulged. They add that this Decree was issued to

satisfy the Fathers of the Council, and that it might be considered

as a firstfruit of devotion and piety reaped from the Council. The

Italians said that St. Michael, as captain of the Lord's host, had not

in late years wielded the sword to the satisfaction of the authorities.

Others said that the reason of the slight put upon him was simply

that St. Joseph was the patron of the Company of Jesus. Others again

looked no further for an explanation than to the fact that a form of

religion which now--whatever was imagined and in theory professed--had

in reality no standard of faith left but that of the _fait accompli_,

would naturally seek change for the sake of rest.

Certain it is that from centre to circumference of the Papal orb, the

devout were besieging the altars of those powers among whom Modern

Rome distributes the affairs of that department which was by Ancient

Rome assigned to Mars. In England, as the _Civiltá_ proudly tells,

was formed "The Prayer League of our Lady of Victories, entirely

composed of innocent children." In Vienna the arch-confraternity of

St. Michael called the citizens to a solemn novena; Belgium moved

in a similar manner, and Spain on December 8 beheld the faithful

thronging to the altars of Mary. "Processions and pilgrimages" added

a "splendid" demonstration, in which Belgium, Germany, and the Tyrol

merited particular mention. The tomb of St. Boniface was besieged with

pilgrims, praying that the tomb of Peter might be redeemed from the

hands of the Italian Islamite. And the tomb of Henry the Emperor Saint,

"fierce defender of the rights of the Holy See," was so beset with

pilgrims on the day two months after the commencement of the captivity,

that the streets of Bamberg resounded with the suppliant song of

_eighty-two_ processions seeking to move the warrior saint. In Munich,

after exhibiting in "functions" within the Churches "all that is grand

in the Catholic cult," the clergy, the archbishop, and the devout,

in crowds said to comprise all Munich, paraded the streets chanting

prayers for the ransom of the Pontiff.

If St. Michael had not retained his militant position, his

confraternity in Vienna, conscious of where lay the sinews of war, sent

loads of Peter's Pence. So in point after point of Europe the vows

and bonds assumed in favour of Peter's Pence by fresh associations

from Holland to Portugal, and from England to Hungary, are recorded.

In England it was to the ladies that the "work" of raising Peter's

Pence was assigned. The ladies of Vienna claimed it, the ladies of

Madrid followed the example. And a valiant meeting in Belfast, and a

meeting in Galway, resolved largely to swell the tide of Peter's Pence.

The Catholic clubs joined in the movement, not only to console the

Holy Father, but to condemn "the guilty policy of spoliation." Italy

was grievously complained of for having dealt, by law, with certain

Catholic Associations as political bodies, committing offences against

the nation. But the great and splendid "work" of the Pence of Peter

is not enough. The meetings and manifestoes are equally necessary, and

of the manifestoes the spirit is breathed in these words, addressed

to governments: "Do us justice; or if not, to shake you out of your

indifference, we shall avail ourselves of every means which the law

allows."

One brave claim of German Catholics is this: "As loyal subjects we

demand that our rights and our interests shall be protected even in the

territories of the Church." And politicians, _knowing these things_,

will say and write that men moved from a foreign centre to make such

claims of intervention on their governments are as good subjects as

other men! They well know that such an agitation raised in the midst

of a mortal struggle, if it succeeds, plunges the nation into a second

war; and even if it does not succeed, diverts the nation from its own

defence, and tends to divide it. But these German patriots say that

they will embrace every opportunity that arises of pressing such rights

as those above indicated upon their governments, by the Press, by

"councils," by meetings, and especially by sending men to Parliament

who will have courage to take up the Catholic cause. The _Civiltá_

characterizes this language as the proclamation "of a vigorous, a

continued, and a legal struggle against all governments which do not

care for the cause of the Pontiff." "What the law allows," would, in

the mind of many an honest Catholic, mean the law of the land; but

on how many of such men could reliance be placed when, after all had

been done which the law of the land allowed, they were instructed by

sacred lips that when it contradicted the "divine" law it ceased to be

binding, and that then the law in the case was God's law, which was

whatever the Church declared it to be?

Geneva was made a chosen centre of activity, and the names of great

and famous personages were paraded. While the ultimate ends to be

aimed at were fitly expressed as "reinstating the Holy Father in his

temporal sovereignty, and re-establishing the social reign of the

gospel," the proximate ends were, to move the heart of Christ to mercy

by pilgrimages and prayers, to act upon governments, to excite opinion

by the Press, and to procure for the Pope means. Fifty meetings in the

middle of December in the diocese of Fulda alone, while Germany was in

the crisis of the war; the object of those meetings being to plunge her

into a war with Italy! Indeed, it seemed to the _Civiltá_ as if, awoke

from the slumber of ages by the prayers of the Catholics around his

tomb, St. Boniface had gone out anew upon his apostolic pilgrimage, to

rouse up the ancient devotion of the people to the Holy See.[481]

One new society, which has not its name specified, is said to be

already a great one. It is composed of all who had borne arms in the

crusade of Pius IX. From Holland to Marseilles, from Canada to the

Tyrol, they had bound themselves together in a common bond. We are

not left in doubt as to what that bond might be. Indeed, we are told

that "what it is cannot be obscure; their former enterprise makes it

clear." To us the former enterprise would make the means clear--namely,

war; but not so clear the end. They formerly warred to avert the fall

of the temporal power. Were they now to go to war for the immediate

and local object of "reinstating the Holy Father," and at the same

time for the ulterior and world-conquering object of "re-establishing

the social reign of the gospel"; that is, of forming the world into

Spiritual States, or at least into States under the spiritual reign

of the clergy? The object is prudently veiled in vague language, but

language clear enough for the instructed; "full of warlike ardour in

a meeting of Dutch and Belgians at Lovaine, they said that the aim of

their union was to meet the future wants of the Church, was to conquer

all the forces of impiety."[482] But even in the language put into the

lips of soldiers, and into the resolutions of public meetings, the

object is never defined so as to limit it to restoring the temporal

power, and generally a wide object beyond that narrow one is allowed

to transpire. When old crusaders undertake with "warlike ardour" to

meet the future wants of the Church, we may divine of what kind her

future wants are to be; and when such men undertake to conquer all

the forces of impiety, we may expect a social reign of the gospel,

ushered in by the zouaves--such a social reign of it as some of the

spiritual princes of the Continent re-established when, after their

Spiritual States had been shaken by the Reformation, Catholic leagues

reinstated the prince-bishops in power. As to England, the _Civiltá_,

at a date subsequent to notices already alluded to, names the Duke of

Norfolk as heading a protest against the occupation of Rome from the

noblest of the nation; Lord Campden and "Giorgio Clifford" as leading a

universal subscription of English youth; the ladies as conducting the

"work" of Peter's Pence; R. Martin as forming a league of prayer for

persons of all grades; and Warteton (_sic_) as instituting "the crusade

for Pius IX, a league of our Lady of Victories entirely composed

of children."[483] How many British children are learning in this

much-mentioned league by the inspirations of our Lady of Victories, to

covet their baptism of fire in the projected crusade, we do not know,

nor yet how they are to be taught to select the particular branch

of the "forces of impiety" against which their first arms are to be

proved. But, says the _Civiltá_--

there will be a struggle, there will be travails, there will be

sorrows. But the victory is in their [the Catholics'] hands: of

this the proof more than manifest is found in eighteen centuries

of continuous combats and victories of Catholicism. As the great

Matthias, indignant because before his eyes an officer of the king

dared to burn incense to an idol, rose up crying, "Let him that is

true to the law follow me," and commenced those grand struggles

and grand victories of the Maccabees which are known to all, so

the most fervent Catholics, indignant and horrified at the capture

of Rome, pointing out the Revolution, in the meetings at Fulda and

at Malines, at Ghent and at Geneva, as the cause of so much evil,

as the enemy of Christ and of His Vicar, cried, "Let all that are

Catholics at heart rise up and follow us in the fight." Their cry

has been heard, and the general crusade is already begun.[484]

The development of the _general crusade_ has been slower than the

seers in their many Maccabean visions saw; but at the end of six years

all the preparations for it are in progress, and the two-fold end is

steadily kept in view: first, Rome is to receive back the Pope at the

point of the bayonet; and secondly, the whole world is to accept "the

social reign of the gospel" at the point of the bayonet too, unless

nations, being timely wise, bow the neck and lick the dust where

marches the Vicar of God. So man proposes. But since the day in 1850

when, as we heard at the beginning, a "salutary conspiracy and a holy

crusade" were formally announced as the two things needful, much that

man astutely planned and firmly proposed has not come to pass according

to man's design, but has been strangely turned to the purposes of a

clearer wisdom, and a kinder will. Even the monument in the cemetery of

St. Lorenzo to the Crusaders, which exhibits Peter, under the effigy

of Pio Nono, giving the sword to the Christian army, and commanding it

to make a Catholic world, now bears, in addition to its texts from the

Maccabees, a fresh inscription: "Ransomed Rome leaves to posterity,

as a lasting sign of calamitous times, this monument, erected by the

theocratic government to foreign mercenaries."

On the last day of 1870--that year of which the echoes will sound

all down the vale of time, repeating the cry, "Man proposes but God

disposes"--a strange sound was heard in Rome. Floods had brought sorrow

into the city. Victor Emmanuel left Florence, and at four o'clock in

the morning of December 31, for the first time, as king in his capital,

set foot in Rome. In its sovereigns the city was familiar with titles

of Saints, of Great, of Holiness, and of Blessedness, and with ancient

titles noting many a shade of skill and power. But there was a title

which was not only unknown, but seemed alien to all the traditions that

had gathered around the place from the days of Sulla and of Catiline

till now. As the burly king, amid the frantic joy which had marked his

brief visit, was about to enter the carriage to return, a little girl

approached with a nosegay of fair flowers, and said: "Take this, KING

HONEST MAN!"

If with the expiring hours of 1870 the reign of Craft died in Rome, and

that of Honesty began, it would mark the mightiest of all the modern

revolutions.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 476: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 760.]

[Footnote 477: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 481-2.]

[Footnote 478: _Civiltá_, VII. xi. 559 ff.]

[Footnote 479: _Civiltá_, VIII. i. 66.]

[Footnote 480: VIII. i. 108.]

[Footnote 481: VIII. i. pp. i. 155-69.]

[Footnote 482: _Civiltá_, VIII. i. 293.]

[Footnote 483: VIII. i. p. 288.]

[Footnote 484: VIII. i. pp. 421-22.]

CHAPTER X

How far has the Vatican Movement been a Success, and how far a

Failure?--As to Measures of the Nature of Means a Success--As to

Measures of the Nature of Ends hitherto a Failure--Testimony of Liberal

Catholics to the one, and of Ultramontanes to the other--Apparatus of

Means in Operation for the Ultimate End of Universal Dominion--Story

of Scherr as an Example of the Minority--Different Classes of

those who "Submit"--Condition and Prospects of the Two Powers in

Italy--Proximate Ends at present aimed at--Control of Elections--Of the

Press--Of Schools--Problem of France and Italy--Power of the Priests

for Disturbance--Comparison between Catholic and Non-Catholic Nations

for last Sixty Years--Are Priests capable of fomenting Anarchical

Plots?--Hopes of Ultramontanes rest on France and England--The Former

for Military Service, the Latter for Converts--This hope Illusory.

Before allowing ourselves to form any opinion on the question how

far the attempt to place all authorities under the Pontiff has been

a failure and how far a success, it is necessary that, in our own

thoughts, two classes of measures should be set well apart. If we look

only at measures which the leaders of the movement regarded in the

light of ends, it is easy to pronounce it an utter failure, as most

Italians and many of other nations have done. If, on the other hand,

we look only at measures which the leaders regarded in the light of

means, it is easy to proclaim, as all the voices of the Vatican have

proclaimed, that so far the movement has been a success, wondrous even

to the point of being manifestly divine.

We think it impossible to deny the complete success of the Vatican

movement in perfecting the measures devised as means. Those Liberal

Catholics who at present loudly pronounce the movement a failure, have

only to read their own writings of 1869 and of the earlier months of

1870, to find that at that time certain advances in the policy of

the Curia were described as unattainable. Those advances have been

accomplished. As to certain measures, it was said that governments,

bishops, clergy, people, would unite to make them impossible. Those

measures are now statutes and ordinances. The Liberal Catholics,

indeed, may pensively say that the gains of the Curia are the losses of

the Church. That may be. Time will tell. The fact now to be registered

is simply this: Certain changes were declared necessary, and at the

same time sufficient for the attainment of the great end of universal

domination. Those changes were pronounced to be revolutionary in the

Church, dangerous to society, and, in fine, impossible. They were

resisted, were urged on, and were triumphantly carried.

We also think it impossible to deny that up to the present time (1876)

the movement, viewed in relation to ultimate ends, has been a complete

failure. We do not say as much of proximate ends. As we have used the

writings of Liberal Catholics to measure the success in regard to

means, so would we use the writings of the Court party to measure the

failure in regard to ends. It is already familiar to us that in those

writings the moral renovations which were to attend the dawn of the new

era, could not be indicated by any metaphor short of the primal burst

of light on the horror of chaos. It was to be! So soon as the Lord

should manifestly set His king upon His holy hill of Sion, all kings

were to fall down before him, and his enemies were to lick the dust.

Parliaments were to recognize their impotence and expire. Populations,

suddenly illuminated, were to behold the saviour of society, and were

lovingly to bow to his law. As to any possible opposition, it was

described as the heathen raging--as the people imagining a vain thing.

It was only the kings of the earth setting themselves and the rulers

taking counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed.

Now, in fulfilment of these promises, what has come to pass? The Pope

has fallen from his temporal throne. A long and bloody war, carried on

with a view to place Don Carlos on the throne of Spain, has failed.

Contrary to the fairest promise, hopes of placing the Count of Chambord

on the throne of France have faded away. The tentative federation of

Germany has been consolidated by an imperial crown, hereditary in the

reigning house of Prussia. Austria has persisted in her anti-Catholic

legislation, as it was called, and has extended it by abrogating the

Concordat. Switzerland and Germany have both returned the attacks of

the ecclesiastical power upon the civil power, by laws reasserting

the national supremacy in every sphere of public life. Italy, in the

act of overturning the temporal power, has completed her own unity.

In the act of completing her own unity, she has, in the city of Rome,

violated what the Pope calls Catholic unity, by admitting religious

liberty within the sacred walls. In America no great State has modified

its law in favour of the new theocracy. Several of the Catholic States

have shown a consciousness of its aims, and jealousy of its accredited

agents. In Canada, leading Liberal statesmen have clearly evinced a

rising consciousness of what the Papacy is, and of what it aims at. The

one ideal ruler of the Curia, the one set before the youth of nations

as their model, Garcia Moreno, President of Ecuador, has fallen, openly

assassinated in broad daylight. Thus, at the time when, according to

his seers, the Pontiff was to survey a new cosmos rising out of the

chaos of the Modern State, he, all round the horizon, beholds only

confusion worse confounded. Not one nation has submitted its code

to his revision. Not in one kingdom of the earth has a ruler been

installed to reign under the laws of the Syllabus.

Does not this statement concede all that is claimed by those who say

that the movement is a failure not redeemed by one success? What it

does really concede is, that of the two ways, in one of which the

ends aimed at were to be accomplished, the first has disappointed all

hope. The ends proposed were so grand that only in one of two ways

could they be realized; and whatever may be said of the enthusiasm of

the projectors, it is not to be denied that they never lost sight of

this fact, and never concealed it. The two ways were either such an

intervention of Providence as would amount to a cosmopolitan miracle,

or else the slow operation of means extending over ages. While the

Pope and his more superstitious followers seemed to expect that the

Virgin and the new-made saints would obtain miraculous transformations,

the more calculating, even at moments when the flow of money and of

friends seemed not only to exhilarate the Vatican, but to intoxicate

it, did not fail to keep in view the fact that centuries might

intervene--centuries marked by many a partial success and many a

temporary discomfiture--between the day when the perfected machinery of

means should be set in motion, and the day when the crowning victory

should lead the head of the human species in triumph to the goal. The

Jesuits are now entitled to point to that fact in bar of any premature

exultation over their disappointment. At the same time, with all their

power of simulating the joy of victory in defeat, they have been unable

to prevent chagrin from tinging much of their later language. The

great spectacle did not operate as a charm. The sublime revelation of

a central authority for all human affairs did not subdue any wayward

institutions. Providence put no seal on the deeds done. The replacing

of St. Michael in his office of patron of the Church, was symptomatic

of considerable dissatisfaction with the departmental divinities in

general.

On the other hand, this complete failure of supernatural aid, or of

any favouring current in public events, does not alter the fact that

a system of means, contemplated and desired for ages, has at last

been perfected, and that it is now over all the world being gradually

brought into operation. The magnitude of the means indicates the

universality of the ends. The fact that centuries upon centuries have

elapsed since Popes began to claim what Pius IX has now acquired,

that more than three centuries have passed even since, at Trent, the

Jesuit General set up the pretensions which have now, at last, become

the law of one hundred and seventy millions, is a consideration not

lightly to be set aside, particularly when we contemplate the strife

for universal dominion now openly inaugurated as a continuing struggle,

to be handed down from generation to generation of men trained and

consecrated to this very thing.

The stupendous scope of the ends might well demand as means measures

exceptionally great, and the magnitude of the measures already carried

as means may now well excuse, if not justify, confidence that the

ends after they shall have been steadily pursued for ages will also

be attained. Those ends were not less, when united into one, than the

dominion of the world.

The Internal Tribunal, seated in every church, in every palace, in

every castle, and at need in every private chamber, would always in

point of authority take precedence of any local law, and would rule

bed, board, purse, family, and all action which conscience determines.

The External Tribunal, seated in every city, would maintain the

headship of the bishop over the civil magistrate, and the supremacy

of spiritual over civil law and authority, as sacredly as we should

maintain the supremacy of our civil law and authority over military law

and authority.

The External Tribunal would make the Internal an establishment of the

law. Every man, every woman, ay, every child of a certain age, who

should not appear at least once in the year in that tribunal, would run

into a punishable offence.

The Supreme Tribunal in the person of the Pope, acting either directly

or through any Court or Congregation he might appoint, would be the

final bar at which would appear contending kings, contending nations,

or other appellants whatever, as also all whom he might, for any cause,

be pleased to cite. From that judgment-seat would fall the sentence

that only the Almighty could challenge. According to the well-known

formula, the Supreme Judge would carry all rights in the shrine of his

own breast.

Such a universal dominion was the end, the ultimate end in view. The

end was hallowed to the mind of those proposing it by the persuasion

that this dominion of the priest of God is the veritable kingdom of

Christ. It is only by realizing how conscientious is this view of the

spiritual empire, or the Roman Empire in a spiritual form--a view

which, founded on a historic ideal, fascinates the imagination of

Romanists--that we can either be just and charitable to the men who

move for these ends, or can arrive at any reasonable estimate of the

amount of future force in their movement. Mere politicians, say some,

who have no religious feeling! Yes, many such; but these politicians

well know that their power is proportioned to the amount of religious

feeling which they can create and make ready to be acted upon. It is

by putting together the political skill of the one set of men and the

religious feeling of the other, that we obtain means of judging as to

the quality of the directing and the amount of the impelling forces to

be developed in the future struggle.

After all that they have recently accomplished within the Church,

what can be too hard, they ask, to accomplish outside? They wanted

to make the entire Church an instrument in which every joint, to the

remotest limb, should infallibly respond to the will of the central

director, so that at any given moment, and on any one point, the whole

of its force could be brought to bear wherever resistance might be

encountered, or wherever an advance might promise success. To make it

such an instrument required changes which were pronounced unattainable,

but they laughed the discouragement to scorn. Those changes affected

all the three spheres of organization, constitution, and dogma. In

_organization_ every clergyman had to be made movable at the will of

the bishop, and every bishop had to be made dependent on the will of

the Pope. The franchises of both the parish and the diocese had to be

revoked. It is done. But it could not be done without a constitutional

change. In the _constitution_ the Bishop of Rome had to be made by law

the Ordinary of every diocese in the world, and every other bishop

in the world had to be made by law a mere surrogate of the Bishop of

Rome. That one bishop had to be made by law the sole lawgiver even

when the entire episcopate meets in a General Council, and the whole

episcopate in General Council assembled had to be by law reduced from a

co-ordinate branch of a legislature to what is, in effect, a mere privy

council to the Bishop of Rome. It is all done. But it could not be done

without a dogmatic change. In _dogma_ it had to be determined that the

edicts of the Bishop of Rome embodied in themselves all the alleged

infallibility of the Church; ay, and even the consent of the Church, as

a necessary sanction, had to be in dogma disavowed. We blame not any

Liberal Catholic who said that these things were impossible. But the

impossible is done. The new organization is not a mere administrative

change, but rests firmly on a new legislative constitution. The new

constitution is not a mere legislative change liable to legislative

revision--it rests irreformable on adamantine dogma.

Thus, then, are the hundred and seventy millions, or two hundred

millions, as they are called, bound into one very compact bundle, to

be thrown into this scale or that by a single hand. Within the Church,

says Vitelleschi, resistance is impossible. No obstruction can now

arrest the current of command from Pope to nuncio, from nuncio to

bishop and regulars, from bishop to canons and parish priests, from

regulars to all manner of confraternities, from parish priests to

unions and to voters. Where governments have one officer the Church

has many. Where the government officer has no time to shape public

opinion, the Church officer has little else to do. Where the lackeys in

government service wear fine liveries, and the lords walk about like

our fellow-creatures, the lackeys of the Church have fine liveries too,

but the lords outshine even the theatre. Where, in Catholic countries,

the officer of government comes into his seat of authority, or returns

into it quietly, care is taken that the bishop shall, at his coming,

appear exalted above all principality and power. In proportion as

States, becoming more Christianized, have risen above show, the Papal

Church, becoming more paganized and materialized, has sunk deeper into

the craft and the love of display. While the officers of government

see that the young are taught the material processes necessary to

future power, the officers of the Church see that they are taught

for what ends it will be good, noble, and martyr-like to employ power

when they shall take their future share in governing the world. Bishop

Reinkens, in a little work that ought to be read by every man who

means to understand the questions that are to come up--_Revolution und

Kirche_--declares that the policy of the Papacy is now revolution.

Certain it is that for effecting a world-wide revolution, never did

instrument exist so generally outspread and so perfectly centralized,

so elaborately ramified and yet so pliant, as will be the society ruled

over at the Vatican when once all the old men who resisted the changes

have died off, and the new generation instructed in the spirit of the

Syllabus has slowly grown up, as the generations formed by Trent grew

up wherever the canons of that Council were received.

Such a growth is too slow to be waited for before partial results are

secured; and every partial result it is hoped will be a stepping-stone

towards the complete one. Therefore is every agency already named

employed in promoting the organization of forces to bear a part in the

grand struggle when it comes; but meantime in every local struggle.

Associations of children, associations of peasants, associations of

artizans, associations of old soldiers, called veteran associations,

and numerous associations besides, are formed in various countries

and on several models. On the social side clubs and "circles"

contribute the convivial element, and on the devotional side orders

and confraternities contribute the ascetic element to the common

organization. New "devotions," new visions, new places of pilgrimage,

new images, new prayers, new relics, new charms, new waters of virtue,

new shrines, new patrons, new miracles, and new wonders feed the flame.

By tens of thousands, and by hundreds of thousands, men take an oath

of obedience to the Pope. By tens of thousands volunteers pledged to

shed their blood for him are enrolled--"On paper," say the Italians,

mocking; but 1867 showed that the crusaders meant crusading; and if

tens of thousands of such volunteers under leaders such as Charette

are enrolled they are not to be laughed at. The schools have not been

in operation during the last ten years for nothing. Associations

in France bear the portentous names of Jesu-Workman and Jesu-King

(_Jésu-Ouvrier_ and _Jésu-Roi_)--the one aiming at organizing workmen,

the other at organizing courts. The name of Jésu set up on these

associations clearly points to the central organizing Company which

Liberal Catholics with reverent indignation charge with daring to give

a double meaning even to the all-blessed Name, not excepting its use in

the solemn words, "At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow."

Even after July 18 the Liberal Catholics did not give up the Church

as irrevocably sunk into the hands of the Jesuits. They counted on

the eighty-eight bishops who had voted Nay, and on their promise one

to another not to act separately. Had that promise been kept, it was

just possible that, under favouring circumstances, the fatal steps of

July might have been modified or even recalled, for by all tradition

the acts of any Council were supposed to remain within its power,

and to be open to its revision till it was legally dissolved. The

Curia put this tradition under its heel. It posted up the Decrees on

the doors of the Lateran and in other public places in the city, and

certified the whole world that by this act they had become its supreme

and irreformable law. How did the eighty-eight deport themselves?

They had tamely allowed all manner of revolutionary acts, when done

from above, and they allowed this last one as tamely as the rest. The

erring Peter of the Vatican was not at the head of a community capable

of producing a man who could withstand him to the face, and could

tell him, as one told the erring Peter of Antioch, that he was to be

blamed. Indeed, logically, the bishops seemed to have no ground of

objection. The Decrees did not profess to be those of a Council, but

those of the Pope, a Council having approved of them. If, then, the

Pope by promulging any doctrinal Bull without citing the approbation

of a Council, could give to it the force of irreformable law, unless

it should be rejected by the bishops, how much more was he entitled

to give that force to these Decrees. Even had their tenets afforded

them ground for resistance, the eighty-eight were not the men to avail

themselves of it. From one we may learn the complexion of them all.

At midnight on July 19, Von Scherr, Archbishop of Munich, who had

throughout the Council acted with the Opposition, re-entered his

city. He came, as the Germans say, without song or chime--that is, in

strict privacy. At first many thought--and Friedrich was one of the

number--that this demeanour was adopted, on the part of his Grace,

to shun any public demonstration which the people might have made in

honour of his attitude in Rome. But the whisper soon crept round,

"Gregory has submitted."

Presently the Faculty of Theology, with Döllinger at its head, came in

all form to present the Archbishop with an address of congratulation

on his happy return. After the formal reply to the address, his Grace

said, "Rome has spoken: you gentlemen know the rest. We could do

nothing but give in." Friedrich says that he saw how Döllinger was

boiling, while the rest were also moved. "We struggled long," continued

the Archbishop, "and gained much, and we also averted a deal of evil."

This remark, says Friedrich, evidently encountered general incredulity.

The Archbishop then told of the deputation to the Pope--of which he was

a member--on July 15; of the hopes raised by the reply it received; of

how those hopes were dashed by the influence of Senestrey--for he does

not seem to have named Manning; and finally, of the sad disappointment

of Cardinal Rauscher on going the next day to thank his Holiness for

yielding, and on hearing from those lips which to the "Catholic"

world are the fount of truth, that the formula which, on the previous

evening, the Pope denied having seen, was actually distributed among

the prelates, and was declared to be irrevocable.

At the close of the conversation, Scherr, turning to Döllinger, said,

"Shall we start afresh to work for the Holy Church?" The aged _Probst_

replied, "Yes, for the OLD one." It was evident that, if Scherr had

just then had any other man before him, his anger would have waxed

hot. He suppressed it, however, and replied, "There is only one Church,

not a new one and an old." Then were the words pronounced by Döllinger,

"They have MADE a new one." The note was sounded. The Archbishop could

only say, "There have always been alterations in the Church and in the

doctrines." This speech played upon the countenances of the Professors,

calling up in each case a look characteristic of the man. "Never shall

I forget," says Friedrich, "the respective bearing of Döllinger and

Haneberg." Döllinger was soon excommunicated; Haneberg was soon in a

bishop's palace, but ere long he died. No one took up the conversation,

and as the Archbishop turned from Döllinger to address some one else,

Friedrich saw tears in his eyes.

In the hall of the university where the Professors had robed, and where

they now unrobed, they spent a quarter of an hour in talking over

the scene. Döllinger, however, did not stay. Rather early the next

morning, the Archbishop deigned to visit the plain house in Von der

Tann Street. Döllinger plainly told him that he could not receive the

dogma of July 18, being, as it was, in open contradiction to the past

teaching and history of the Church. In that dogma the worst thing of

all was the addition made after the discussion, "not by the consent of

the Church." Here was a surprise for the Archbishop. He knew nothing of

that addition. He had left the field before the last gun was fired. He

had now to learn the shape which his new faith had actually taken, and

to learn it from the lips of Döllinger. The venerable Provost who was

to be excommunicated had to tell the Archbishop who was to do the deed

what the change of creed actually was for not conforming to which he

was to be given over to Satan. That scene might have afforded Kaulbach

another picture.

Von Scherr at first spoke in Munich of the promise made by the bishops

of the minority to one another not to act separately. By the end of

August he had forgotten all about it. A "highly placed" layman was

informed by the Archbishop that he need not trouble himself with

infallibility, as the Decree would not be promulged in the diocese,

and what was not promulged was not binding. Almost immediately

afterwards it was printed in his own paper. Ere long, Scherr was as

hot for infallibility as if his object had been to make the Curia

forget in his present zeal any unpleasant impressions made by his

former opposition. He was exemplary in protesting, threatening, and

excommunicating. Friedrich gives particulars to prove, in the case of

Scherr, that disregard of truth which is so freely alleged against the

bishops generally, into which we will not enter.

As we have said, from one of the minority we may judge of all. Neither

Hefele nor Kenrick, neither Dupanloup nor Strossmayer, displayed any

Christian fortitude sufficient to arrest their Church in her downward

course, or indeed displayed anything to give the Curia aught but food

for scorn of the Opposition. Their convictions had been solemnly stated

and ably argued. Those convictions did suffice to cause hesitation.

But the force of conviction only tested the force of habit, and did

not break it. The new submission made them tenfold more than ever the

creatures of that overweening power which they had spent their lives

in exalting, which for a moment they had attempted to moderate, but to

which they now succumbed in its most heinous assumptions.

The lower clergy have followed the bishops in submission. At one time

it seemed as if many of them would withstand. Except, however, in the

two countries nearest to Italy--Switzerland and Germany--no appreciable

resistance has been offered. In Germany the men in whom the force of

belief overcame the habit of submission were almost exclusively those

whom the elevating influence of university life had lifted above the

ordinary level of the clergy. Their number is not large; but the

valuable writings which they have already produced show that they

have no mean power of influencing the future currents of theological

thought. Spirited France, in spite of its Gallican traditions, was a

pattern of tameness. The striking examples of Loyson and Michaud found

exceedingly few to follow. Gratry "submitted." Throughout the rest of

the world the exceptions have been isolated and without influence.

Among the laity, again, it is only in Switzerland and Germany that

success has been even chequered. The otherwise uniform submission has

there been broken by numbers considerable to-day, but more considerable

for the future. Yet compared with the mass in submission, those numbers

are soon told. But, on the other hand, that mass in submission is not

of uniform value to the future theocracy. It contains the cordial

adherents who already believed; the dutiful adherents who doubted, but

at the word of the Council said, It is decided, and I now, as in duty

bound, believe; the reckless adherents, who, like most in Italy and

many in France, would as cheerfully have submitted to a dogma declaring

the Popes imponderable, as to one declaring them infallible, and who do

really believe that they are irreformable. Differing from all these are

men who had an intelligent conviction against the new dogma, or against

the new constitution, or against both. These, brought face to face with

the alternative--submit, or bear the curse of the Church; submit, or

survive the rending in twain of every life-tie--did sadly and slowly

submit--submit without attempting to reconcile things to their reason,

as it is said that Montalembert declared he would do. These men may

never make apt instruments of the priests, but they do make their

proud trophies. One strong man silently submitting is a statuesque

monition to many others not to think. A still further element of

unknown extent mingles with the mass. It consists of those who,

without either formal submission or open breach, do not believe the

new dogma, and do not approve of the new constitution. This now inert

bulk may turn to a force bearing in either direction, or may divide

into two portions; one giving the priests control over profession and

appearance, without any corresponding control over belief--which is,

perhaps, of all their triumphs the most practical; and another in which

conviction, growing at last too strong for the habit of submission,

breaks by its divine force the human bond, and throws men upon their

conscience, their Bible, and their God. But when men have once really

believed in a God who leaves the rule over His redeemed offspring

to a Vicar, and have believed in man as a creature whose conscience

another man is to keep, it is hard to find in them foothold for solid

Christian convictions. They are kneaded to the hand of the priest.

If they leave him, they become infidels, who though in feeling his

opponents, perhaps his persecutors, become in argument and action his

practical allies. Joining him in rooting out faith in the Bible and in

primitive Christianity, they urge men to his two extremes of doctrine,

the authority of the Church or Atheism, and consequently to his two

extremes of government, the Papacy or the International. One Auguste

Comte is worth many a monastery.

It is this "sublime" spectacle of success with hierarchy, clergy, and

laity, which makes the recent past, to the augurs of reconstruction,

a certain presage of a triumph, perhaps distant, but complete, in

the future. No recalcitrating bishop now; or if a few worn-out men

are still secretly of the old inclining, they are rapidly dying off.

The list of the eighty-eight is already a short one. No bishop is

now installed who to the old oath which already made him a vassal of

the Pope does not add the new articles of the Vatican Decrees. No

seminaries are now training priests to deny the infallibility of the

Pope, or his ordinary, immediate, and omnipresent authority. In most

the Jesuit text-books are adopted. No catechisms are now teaching

against Papal infallibility, or teaching ambiguously. The new doctrine

will be couched in terms clearer or less clear, according to political

and theological necessities; but, whether in Prague or Sydney, in

Florence or Liverpool, in Boston or Warsaw, in Berlin or Lima, the

catechism will contain a text from which the friar or priest will put

the same principles of social reconstruction into the minds of boys and

girls. To the view of the Jesuits, the future unfolds like a peacock's

tail, all sparkling with the eyes of the young. The outward loss to

the Church which has been sustained was reckoned upon before hand.

They hold that it is more than compensated by the perfect internal

compactness gained. When once the preparations are complete--and a few

score years are of no account--a generation well trained will be ready

at the call of him who holds among men the place of God, to take up the

cross of St. Peter, to cry, "God wills it," and to march till all high

things that exalt themselves against Christ shall be pulled down, and

the Church alone shall stand, the one all-perfect society embracing the

human species.

The loss of the temporal power affected all the calculations of the

foregoing period. It came with appalling suddenness. It startled all

men to see the Emperor who had been the sole prop of the temporal

power fall, not like a prince put to the worst amid a loyal people,

but with an unheard-of crash like a log upon ice, while his empire

instantly went under; and to see in another moment the Italian sentries

standing round the Vatican. All efforts had first to be turned to a

restoration. As if to illustrate the weakness which the subjects of the

Pope form for any State, while yet the war was raging King William had

to negotiate with Ledochowsky,[485] and ere yet the blood was dry, a

petition signed by fifty-six members of the Prussian Parliament prayed

the new Emperor of Germany to restore the Pope--which meant to declare

war on Italy. While the Emperor still lay at Versailles a deputation,

headed by three counts, passed through bleeding France to pray the

victor to flesh his sword anew. Emperor William well knew that if all

the powers of the Papacy sufficed for the task, the new empire would

be rent to shivers in a day. The army which had taken Paris did not

march on Rome. France had next to exhibit herself as a suppliant at

the feet of the Holy Father--a Holy Father who wanted her with her

right arm broken to draw with her left and cut down the Italians. She

met this wicked suggestion with humble requests that the Holy Father

would show forbearance and not demand services for which she was not

prepared. Incredible as it may seem, Father Hyacinth Loyson stated, in

the _Journal des Débats_, that French bishops, before thus attempting

to entangle their own government, had actually applied to the invading

Germans.[486] Refused by the invader, refused by their country, they

hated where they could not smite. Germany was marked for destruction;

and France was held to future service when the time should come.

Meantime, every effort was put forth to check and disunite Italy, but

in vain. She has strained the religious toleration which the Pope

abhors so as even to cover overt political hostilities. She has allowed

him to issue all manner of incentives to undo the Italian kingdom by

either domestic revolt or foreign intervention, or if possible by both.

She has allowed him to gather together crowds of hostile foreigners and

to excite them to affront and revile the nation. She has grown stronger

and more solid during the process, laughing equally at the Napoleonic

idea that the Pope was to be treated as if he had two hundred thousand

bayonets, and at the Bonaparte violence which inflicted personal

insult, prison, and exile. At this moment, after six years have passed,

the Vatican as unblushingly asserts that Italy--the real Italy--is

on its side as it did in the years preceding Solferino.[487] Victor

Emmanuel has tried the experiment of letting the Pope play the prisoner

or the freeman, the prophet, priest, or Caesar, the tribune or the

medicine-man, just at his wayward will. The enmity of the Pope has been

good for Italy as for England, Germany, America, and all countries

favoured with it; but if the day comes when the Pope meets the bow of

any future Prime Minister of Italy with a responsive bow, then may we

begin to look for fresh cycles of conspiracy and convulsion.