withdraw his troops, compel the Pope to consent to anything not actually
sinful. Such a situation is alarming in the highest degree for other
countries. But for the absolute confidence that all men have in the
fidelity and conscientiousness of the present Pope, and for the
providential circumstance that there is no ecclesiastical complication
which the French Government could use for its own ends, it would not be
tolerated by the rest of the Catholic world. Sooner or later these
conditions of security will disappear, and the interest of the Church
demands that before that happens, the peril should be averted, even by a
catastrophe.
The hostility of the Italians themselves to the Holy See is the tragic
symptom of the present malady. In other ages, when it was assailed, the
Italians were on its side, or at least were neutral. Now they require
the destruction of the temporal power, either as a necessary sacrifice
for the unity and greatness of their country, or as a just consequence
of incurable defects. The time will come, however, when they will be
reconciled with the Papacy, and with its presence as a Power among them.
It was the dependence of the Pope on the Austrian arms, and his
identification in popular opinion with the cause of the detested
foreigner, that obscured his lofty position as the moral bulwark and
protector of the nation. For 1500 years the Holy See was the pivot of
Italian history, and the source of the Italian influence in Europe. The
nation and the See shared the same fortunes, and grew powerful or feeble
together. It was not until the vices of Alexander VI. and his
predecessors had destroyed the reverence which was the protection of
Italy, that she became the prey of the invaders. None of the great
Italian historians has failed to see that they would ruin themselves in
raising their hands against Rome. The old prophecy of the _Papa
Angelico_, of an Angel Pope, who was to rise up to put an end to discord
and disorder, and to restore piety and peace and happiness in Italy, was
but the significant token of the popular belief that the Papacy and the
nation were bound up together, and that one was the guardian of the
other. That belief slumbers, now that the idea of unity prevails, whilst
the Italians are attempting to put the roof on a building without walls
and without foundations, but it will revive again, when centralisation
is compelled to yield to federalism, and the road to the practicable has
been found in the search after impossibilities.
The tyrannical character of the Piedmontese Government, its contempt for
the sanctity of public law, the principles on which it treats the clergy
at home, and the manner in which it has trampled on the rights of the
Pope and the interests of religion, the perfidy and despotism it
exhibits, render it impossible that any securities it may offer to the
Pope can possess a real value. Moreover, in the unsettled state of the
kingdom, the uncertain succession of parties, and the fluctuation of
power, whatever guarantee is proposed by the ministry, there is nobody
to guarantee the guarantor. It is a system without liberty and without
stability; and the Pope can never be reconciled to it, or become a
dweller in the new Italian kingdom.
If he must choose between the position of a subject and of an exile, he
is at home in the whole Catholic world, and wherever he goes he will be
surrounded by children who will greet him as their father. It may become
an inevitable, but it must always be a heroic resolution. The court and
the various congregations for the administration of the affairs of the
Church are too numerous to be easily moved. In former times the
machinery was more simple, and the whole body of the pontifical
government could be lodged in a single French monastery. The absence of
the Pope from Rome will involve great difficulties and annoyance; but it
is a lesser evil than a surrender of principle, which cannot be
recalled.
To remove the Holy See to France would, under present circumstances, be
an open challenge to a schism, and would afford to all who wish to
curtail the papal rights, or to interrupt the communication between the
Pope and the several churches, the most welcome pretexts, and it would
put arms in the hands of governments that wish to impede the action of
his authority within their States.
The conclusion of the book is as follows:--
If the Court of Rome should reside for a time in Germany, the Roman
prelates will doubtless be agreeably surprised to discover that our
people is able to remain Catholic and religious without the
leading-strings of a police, and that its religious sentiments are a
better protection to the Church than the episcopal _carceri_, which,
thank God, do not exist. They will learn that the Church in Germany
is able to maintain herself without the Holy Office; that our
bishops, although, or because, they use no physical compulsion, are
reverenced like princes by the people, that they are received with
triumphal arches, that their arrival in a place is a festival for the
inhabitants. They will see how the Church with us rests on the broad,
strong, and healthy basis of a well-organised system of pastoral
administration and of popular religious instruction. They will
perceive that we Catholics have maintained for years the struggle for
the deliverance of the Church from the bonds of bureaucracy
straightforwardly and without reservation; that we cannot entertain
the idea of denying to the Italians what we have claimed for
ourselves; and that therefore we are far from thinking that it is
anywhere an advantage to fortify the Church with the authority of the
police and with the power of the secular arm. Throughout Germany we
have been taught by experience the truth of Fenelon's saying, that
the spiritual power must be carefully kept separate from the civil,
because their union is pernicious. They will find, further, that the
whole of the German clergy is prepared to bless the day when it shall
learn that the free sovereignty of the Pope is assured, without
sentence of death being still pronounced by ecclesiastics, without
priests continuing to discharge the functions of treasury-clerks or
police directors, or to conduct the business of the lottery. And,
finally, they will convince themselves that all the Catholics of
Germany will stand up as one man for the independence of the Holy
See, and the legitimate rights of the Pope; but that they are no
admirers of a form of government of very recent date, which is, in
fact, nothing else than the product of the mechanical polity of
Napoleon combined with a clerical administration. And this
information will bear good fruit when the hour shall strike for the
return, and restitution shall be made....
Meanwhile Pius IX. and the men of his Council will "think upon the
days of old, and have in their minds the eternal years." They will
read the future in the earlier history of the Papacy, which has
already seen many an exile and many a restoration. The example of the
resolute, courageous Popes of the Middle Ages will light the way. It
is no question now of suffering martyrdom, of clinging to the tombs
of the Apostles, or of descending into the catacombs; but of quitting
the land of bondage, in order to exclaim on a free soil, "Our bonds
are broken, and we are free!" For the rest God will provide, and the
unceasing gifts and sympathies of the Catholic world. And the parties
in Italy, when they have torn and exhausted the land which has become
a battle-field; when the sobered and saddened people, tired of the
rule of lawyers and of soldiers, has understood the worth of a moral
and spiritual authority, then will be the time to think of returning
to the Eternal City. In the interval, the things will have
disappeared for whose preservation such pains are taken; and then
there will be better reason than Consalvi had, in the preface to the
_Motu Proprio_ of 6th July 1816, to say: "Divine Providence, which so
conducts human affairs that out of the greatest calamity innumerable
benefits proceed, seems to have intended that the interruption of the
papal government should prepare the way for a more perfect form of
it."
We have written at a length for which we must apologise to our readers;
and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which
deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the
thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum
up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed
audience, he undertakes to controvert two different interpretations of
the events which are being fulfilled in Rome. To the Protestants, who
triumph in the expected downfall of the Papacy, he shows the
consequences of being without it. To the Catholics, who see in the Roman
question a great peril to the Church, he explains how the possession of
the temporal sovereignty had become a greater misfortune than its loss
for a time would be. From the opposite aspects of the religious camps of
our age he endeavours to awaken the misgivings of one party, and to
strengthen the confidence of the other. There is an inconsistency
between the Protestant system and the progress of modern learning; there
is none between the authority of the Holy See and the progress of modern
society. The events which are tending to deprive the Pope of his
territory are not to be, therefore, deplored, if we consider the
preceding causes, because they made this catastrophe inevitable; still
less if, looking to the future, we consider the state of Protestantism,
because they remove an obstacle to union which is humanly almost
insurmountable. In a former work Doellinger exhibited the moral and
intellectual exhaustion of Paganism as the prelude to Christianity. In
like manner he now confronts the dissolution and spiritual decay of
Protestantism with the Papacy. But in order to complete the contrast,
and give force to the vindication, it was requisite that the true
function and character of the Holy See should not be concealed from the
unpractised vision of strangers by the mask of that system of government
which has grown up around it in modern times. The importance of this
violent disruption of the two authorities consists in the state of
religion throughout the world. Its cause lies in the deficiences of the
temporal power; its end in the mission of the spiritual.
The interruption of the temporal sovereignty is the only way we can
discern in which these deficiences can be remedied and these ends
obtained. But this interruption cannot be prolonged. In an age in which
the State throughout the Continent is absolute, and tolerates no
immunities; when corporations have therefore less freedom than
individuals, and the disposition to restrict their action increases in
proportion to their power, the Pope cannot be independent as a subject.
He must, therefore, be a sovereign, the free ruler of an actual
territory, protected by international law and a European guarantee. The
restoration consequently is necessary, though not as an immediate
consequence of the revolution. In this revolutionary age the protection
of the Catholic Powers is required against outward attack. They must
also be our security that no disaffection is provoked within; that there
shall be no recurrence of the dilemma between the right of insurrection
against an arbitrary government and the duty of obedience to the Pope;
and that civil society shall not again be convulsed, nor the pillars of
law and order throughout Europe shaken, by a revolution against the
Church, of which, in the present instance, the conservative powers share
the blame, and have already felt the consequences.
In the earnest and impressive language of the conclusion, in which
Doellinger conveys the warnings which all Transalpine Catholicism owes to
its Head as an Italian sovereign, it seems to us that something more
definite is intended than the expression of the wish, which almost every
Catholic feels, to receive the Pope in his own country. The anxiety for
his freedom which would be felt if he took refuge in France, would be
almost equally justified by his presence in Austria. A residence in an
exclusively Catholic country, such as Spain, would be contrary to the
whole spirit of this book, and to the moral which it inculcates, that
the great significance of the crisis is in the state of German
Protestantism. If the position of the Catholics in Germany would supply
useful lessons and examples to the Roman court, it is also from the
vicinity of the Protestant world that the full benefit can best be drawn
from its trials, and that the crimes of the Italians, which have begun
as calamities, may be turned to the advantage of the Church. But
against such counsels there is a powerful influence at work. Napoleon
has declared his determination to sweep away the temporal power. The
continuance of the occupation of Rome, and his express prohibition to
the Piedmontese government to proceed with the annexation during the
life of the present Pope, signify that he calculates on greater
advantages in a conclave than from the patient resolution of Pius IX.
This policy is supported by the events in Italy in a formidable manner.
The more the Piedmontese appear as enemies and persecutors, the more the
emperor will appear as the only saviour; and the dread of a prolonged
exile in any Catholic country, and of dependence for subsistence on the
contributions of the faithful, must exhibit in a fascinating light the
enjoyment of the splendid hospitality and powerful protection of France.
On these hopes and fears, and on the difficulties which are pressing on
the cardinals from the loss of their revenues, the emperor speculates,
and persuades himself that he will be master of the next election. On
the immovable constancy of her Supreme Pontiff the Catholic Church
unconditionally relies; and we are justified in believing that, in an
almost unparalleled emergency, he will not tremble before a resolution
of which no Pope has given an example since the consolidation of the
temporal power.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 334: _The Rambler_, November 1861.]
[Footnote 335: _Kirche und Kirchen_, Munich, 1861 ("Papstum und
Kirchenstaat").]
[Footnote 336: So late as 1791 Pius VI. wrote: "Discrimen intercedit
inter homines, qui extra gremium Ecclesiae semper fuerunt, quales sunt
Infideles atque Judaei, atque inter illos qui se Ecclesiae ipsi per
susceptum baptismi sacramentum subjecerunt. Primi enim constringi ad
catholicam obedientiam non debent, contra vero alteri sunt cogendi." If
this theory had, like that of the Protestants, been put in practice by
the Government, it would have furnished the Protestants with an argument
precisely similar to that by which the Catholics justified the severity
they exercised towards them.]
[Footnote 337: The works contained in Clark's library of translations
are chiefly of this school.]
XI
DOeLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK[338]
When first seen, at Wuerzburg, in the diaries of Platen the poet, Dr.
Doellinger was an eager student of general literature, and especially of
Schlegel and the romantic philosophy. It was an epoch in which the
layman and the _dilettante_ prevailed. In other days a divine had half a
dozen distinct schools of religious thought before him, each able to
develop and to satisfy a receptive mind; but the best traditions of
western scholarship had died away when the young Franconian obtained a
chair in the reorganised university of Munich. His own country, Bavaria,
his time, the third decade of the century, furnished no guide, no
master, and no model to the new professor. Exempt, by date and position,
from the discipline of a theological party, he so continued, and never
turned elsewhere for the dependence he escaped at home. No German
theologian, of his own or other churches, bent his course; and he
derived nothing from the powerful writer then dominant in the North. To
a friend describing Herder as the one unprofitable classic, he replied,
"Did you ever learn anything from Schleiermacher?" And if it is doubtful
which way this stroke was aimed, it is certain that he saw less than
others in the Berlin teacher.
Very young he knew modern languages well, though with a defective ear,
and having no local or contemporary attachments he devoted himself
systematically to the study of foreign divines. The characteristic
universality of his later years was not the mere result of untiring
energy and an unlimited command of books. His international habit sprang
from the inadequacy of the national supply, and the search for truth in
every century naturally became a lecturer whose function it was to
unfold from first to last the entire life of the Church, whose range
extended over all Christian ages, and who felt the inferiority of his
own. Doellinger's conception of the science which he was appointed to
carry forward, in conformity with new requirements and new resources,
differed from the average chiefly by being more thorough and
comprehensive. At two points he was touched by currents of the day.
Savigny, the legal expert of a school recruited from both denominations
and gravitating towards Catholicism, had expounded law and society in
that historic spirit which soon pervaded other sciences, and restored
the significance of national custom and character. By his writings
Protestant literature overlapped. The example of the conspicuous jurist
served as a suggestion for divines to realise the patient process of
history; and Doellinger continued to recognise him as a master and
originator of true scientific methods when his influence on
jurisprudence was on the wane. On the same track, Drey, in 1819,
defended the theory of development as the vital prerogative of Rome over
the fixity of other churches. Moehler was the pupil of Drey, and they
made Tuebingen the seat of a positive theology, broader and more
progressive than that of Munich.
The first eminent thinker whom he saw and heard was Baader, the poorest
of writers, but the most instructive and impressive talker in Germany,
and the one man who appears to have influenced the direction of his
mind. Bishop Martensen has described his amazing powers; and Doellinger,
who remembered him with more scant esteem, bore equal testimony to the
wealth and worth of his religious philosophy. He probably owed to him
his persistent disparagement of Hegel, and more certainly that
familiarity with the abstruse literature of mysticism which made him as
clear and sure of vision in the twilight of Petrucci and St. Martin as
in the congenial company of Duperron. Baader is remembered by those who
abstain from sixteen volumes of discordant thought, as the inventor of
that system of political insurance which became the Holy Alliance. That
authority is as sacred and sovereignty as absolute in the Church as in
the State, was an easy and obvious inference, and it had been lately
drawn with an energy and literary point to which Baader was a stranger,
by the Count de Maistre, who was moreover a student of St. Martin. When
the ancient mystic welcomed his new friend, he was full of the praises
of De Maistre. He impressed upon his earnest listener the importance of
the books on the pope and on the Gallican church, and assured him that
the spirit which animates them is the genuine Catholicism. These
conversations were the origin of Doellinger's specific ultramontanism. It
governed one half of his life, and his interest in De Maistre outlasted
the assent which he once gave to some of his opinions. Questions arising
from the Savoyard's indictment against Bacon, which he proposed to
Liebig, formed the connection between the two laboured attacks on the
founder of English philosophy.
Much of that which at any time was unhistoric or presumptive in his mind
may be ascribed to this influence; and it divided him from Moehler, who
was far before him in the fulness of the enjoyment of his powers and his
fame, whom he survived half a century, and never ceased to venerate as
the finest theological intellect he had known. The publication of the
_Symbolik_ made it difficult for the author to remain in Wirtemberg;
Tuebingen, he said, was a place where he could neither live nor die
happy; and having made Doellinger's acquaintance, he conceived an ardent
wish to become his colleague at Munich.
Im Verkehre mit Ihnen, und dem Kreise in dem Sie leben, habe ich mich
aufs anmuthigste erheitert, sittlich gestaerkt, und religioes getroestet
und ermuthigt gefunden; ein Verein von Einwirkungen auf mich wuerde
mir gewaehrt, deren aller ich in fast gleichein Grade beduerftig war.
Doellinger negotiated his appointment, overcame the resisting ministerial
medium through the intervention of the king, and surrendered his own
department of theology, which they both regarded as the most powerful
agency in religious instruction. Moehler had visited Goettingen and
Berlin, and recognised their superiority. A public address to Planck,
praising the Protestant treatment of history, was omitted by Doellinger
from the edition of his miscellaneous writings. They differed so widely
that one of them hesitated to read Bossuet's _Defensio_, and generally
kept the stronger Gallicans out of sight, whilst the other warmly
recommended Richer, and Launoy, and Dupin, and cautioned his pupils
against Baronius, as a forger and a cheat, who dishonestly attributed to
the primitive Church ideas quite foreign to its constitution. He found
fault with his friend for undue favour to the Jesuits, and undue
severity towards Jansenism. The other advised him to read Fenelon, and
succeeded in modifying this opinion.
Sie werden vielleicht um so geneigter sein, mir zu verzeihen, wenn
ich Ihnen melde, dass ich inzwischen recht fleissig die
Jansenistischen Streitigkeiten, durch Ihre freundliche Zuschrift
angeregt, studirt habe, und Ihrer Darstellung ohne Zweifel jetzt weit
naeher stehe als frueher. Selbst die Bulle Unigenitus erscheint mir in
einem weit guenstigeren Lichte als frueher, obschon ich die Censur
mancher Quesnel'scher Saetze immer noch nicht begreifen kann. Sie
schrieben mir, dass die Fenelon'sche Correspondenz einen grossen
Einfluss auf Ihre Betrachtungsweise ausgeuebt habe. Auch bei mir ist
dieses der Fall.
But in describing the failure of scholastic theology, the exaggeration
of De Maistre, the incompetence of the Roman censorship, the irreligion
of Leo X., and the strength of Luther's case against the Papacy, the
sensitive Suabian made a contrast, then, and long after, with
Doellinger's disciplined coolness and reserve.
Dann war wirklich die bestehende Form der Kirche im hoechsten Grade
tadelhaft, und bedurfte der Reinigung. Die Paepste waren Despoten,
willkuehrliche Herrscher geworden. Gebraeuche hatten sich angehaeuft,
die im hoechsten Grade dem Glauben und der christlichen Froemmigkeit
entgegen waren. In vielen Punkten hatte Luther immer Recht, wenn er
von Missbraeuchen der Roemischen Gewalt spricht, dass dort alles feil
sei.--Tetzel verfuhr ohnediess auf die empoerendste Weise, und
uebertrieb, mit einer religioesen Rohheit und einem Stumpfsinn ohne
Gleichen, das Bedenkliche der Sache auf die aeusserste Spitze.
The disagreement which made itself felt from time to time between the
famous colleagues was not removed when one of them wished the other to
change his confessor before his last illness.
Moehler claimed the supreme chair of ecclesiastical history as a matter
of course, and by right of seniority. He apologised for venturing to
supersede one who had gained distinction in that lecture-room, but he
hinted that he himself was the least fit of the two for dogmatics.
Ich habe mich fuer die historischen Faecher entschieden. Ihr Opfer,
wenn Sie Dogmatik lesen, anerkenne ich, aber ich bitte das meinige
nicht zu uebersehen. Welcher Entschluss, ich moechte sagen, welche
Unverschaemtheit ist es, nach Ihnen und bei Ihren Lebzeiten,
Kirchengeschichte in Muenchen zu doziren?