ULTRAMONTANISM IN FRANCE
1. A powerful if unintentional contribution to Ultramontanism was
Napoleon’s reconstruction of the French Episcopate.
The nineteenth century found the Church of France in a desperate
condition. Overthrown by the Revolution, and deprived of its
possessions and its sanctuaries, many of its Royalist Bishops were
refugees in England from a form of government which they abhorred;
and the Pope himself (Pius VI.) died, a captive of the Revolution, in
French territory (1799).[219] But with the new century Napoleon rose
to power. He saw that, in spite of the dominant Atheism, France was
Catholic at heart; and resolved upon a restoration of the Catholic
Church. Accordingly he sided with the Papacy. But since the exiled
prelates were notoriously hostile to the Revolution, being zealous
adherents of the old Monarchy, he was convinced that their readmission
would provoke social disorder and irreconcilable strife. On this ground
he required Pope Pius VII. to make a clean sweep of the entire French
Episcopate, either by their resignation or their deprivation.[220] This
was to be followed by a complete reconstruction of the dioceses, and
reappointment to the newly-constituted Sees. Fifty diocesan Bishops
were henceforward to exist, together with twelve Archbishops, while
more than half the ancient Gallican Episcopate was to be entirely swept
away. Against this revolutionary proposal Pius VII. protested, but he
protested in vain. The master of France was inexorable, and Pius was
compelled to yield. Cardinal Consalvi,[221] the Papal Secretary, says
that he vainly urged that the deposition of one hundred French Bishops
without condemnation was unprecedented in the annals of Christendom,
that nothing could be more ruinous to the famous Gallican liberties.
But the iron will of Napoleon broke through all remonstrances, and
the Pope was compelled to require the French Bishops to place their
resignation in his hands.[222]
[219] Jervis, iii. p. 323.
[220] _Ibid._
[221] Consalvi, _Mémoires_, i. p. 345.
[222] Jervis, p. 363.
Some complied. Some delayed and temporised. Others refused. The
refugees in England replied that, holding their episcopal commission
from the Holy Spirit, who had constituted them rulers in the Church
of God, they could not submit to the Pope’s requirements.[223]
Nevertheless, their existence was ignored, and the combined power of
Pius VII. and Napoleon Bonaparte carried this ecclesiastical revolution
into effect.
[223] _Ibid._ p. 373.
Napoleon reserved to himself the right of appointment to the newly
constituted Sees.[224] This unprecedented act of supreme authority[225]
was, of course, altogether distinct from Infallibility; but it formed
a precedent for almost limitless submission, and promoted a spirit
of resignation to authority, which afterwards exhibited itself in
the province of dogmatic truth, and contributed indirectly not a
little to the passing of the Vatican Decree. It also shook the whole
constitution of the Church of France. Its effect on Gallican ideas was
naturally great.
[224] _Ibid._ p. 362.
[225] Lord Acton calls it “the most arbitrary act ever done by a
Pope.”--_Hist. Freedom_, p. 323.
The French Minister Ollivier goes so far as to maintain that the Roman
Court, in spite of its persistent efforts, would only have secured
uncertain advantage if the French Revolution had not come to its
aid.[226]
[226] Ollivier, i. p. 280.
But still down to 1870 the French Government retained in its control
the right of nominating the Bishops. And this right it exercised
independently of the papal desires. Pronounced Gallicans were elevated
to the Episcopate in spite of Pius IX.’s objections. At times, when his
concurrence was delayed, pressure was instantly brought to bear from
France. And that pressure it was not prudent to resist; for at that
period France was the protector of the Papacy.
It is sometimes said that the old Gallicanism perished in the French
Revolution. This is misleading. The Church and the Monarchy had stood
together, and the overthrow of the one broke the power of the other.
In the altered circumstances the papal claim over monarchs became
practically impossible. It was never denied at Rome, but it was not
asserted. It was left discreetly in the background, and consequently
the old Gallican political protest became meaningless. But the old
spiritual principles were re-affirmed in France in 1820 by Cardinal
de la Luzerne with not less vigour and frankness than in the days of
Bossuet.
The independence of the temporal power from papal authority, says
Cardinal Luzerne,[227] is a question which he does not intend to
discuss. Not because he has the slightest doubt upon the subject; on
the contrary, the complete independence of the temporal power is of
all the Gallican maxims that to which he is personally most strongly
attached. He deplores from the depth of his heart that the Popes ever
asserted the opposite principle. Their pretensions have been disastrous
to the Catholic Church, and particularly so to the Holy See. But his
reason for not discussing the subject is that the Gallican principle
finds hardly any opponents even in Italy. Since Italian writers do not
attack it there is no need to defend.
[227] _Works_ (Migne’s ed.), ii. 14.
But on the question of Papal Infallibility he feels constrained
to express his strong adhesion to the Gallican doctrine.[228] The
partisans of Infallibility affirm that when the Pope, taking the
necessary precautions, speaks officially, he is infallible, and
his decisions are unalterable laws for all the Church. That is the
Ultramontane opinion. We, on the contrary, says Cardinal Luzerne, do
not believe the Holy Father to be infallible. We believe that when he
acts as Pope his decisions ought to be respected; but his dogmatic
decrees, however worthy of regard, are not infallible, and only
exact an outward submission, but not an inward assent until they are
endorsed by the acceptance of the Universal Church. Papal decisions
have weight--some more, some less. They are not equal in authority, and
none of them are infallible. The Ultramontane system, that the Pope is
infallible when he speaks officially, sins against the truth in the
essential point of novelty.[229] Gallicanism, if it had a political
side, was essentially ecclesiastical and spiritual. Its political
interest was to protect the rights and claims of a national Church. It
regarded the Church of each people as a definite entity, although of
course merged in the unity of the Universal Church. But this was not
the fundamental principle of the Gallican idea. The heart and centre of
their contention lay in the rights of the Collective Episcopate, as
contrasted with the claims of the Papacy. And the whole of the struggle
which issued in the Vatican Assembly of 1870 was a struggle between
these two conceptions of spiritual authority.
[228] _Works_, ii. p. 37.
[229] _Ibid._ p. 38.
The extent to which the old Gallican principles prevailed in France of
the early nineteenth century may be gathered from Bergier’s Theological
Dictionary, which was the French popular encyclopedia of theology, and
obtained a great circulation.
“_Infallibilist_--The name sometimes given to those who maintain
that the Pope is infallible,--that is to say, that when he addresses
to the entire Church a dogmatic decree, a decision on a point of
doctrine, it cannot happen that this decision should be false or
subject to mistake. This is the ordinary opinion of Ultramontane
theologians.”[230]
[230] Bergier, _Dictionnaire de Théologie_ (1850).
Then after summarising Bossuet’s teaching, the article concludes that,
since it is an essential function of the pastors of the Church to
witness to the universal faith, the witness of the sovereign Pontiff
taken by itself cannot produce the same degree of moral certitude which
results from a very considerable number of concurrent witnesses. As
head of the Universal Church, the sovereign Pontiff is undoubtedly well
informed as to the general belief and is its principal witness; but his
witness, united to that of a vast multitude of Bishops, possesses quite
a different force than when it is alone.
* * * * *
2. There were the Ultramontane writers in France, who contributed
vastly to the propagation of Roman ideas.
One of the pioneers of Ultramontane development was Joseph de Maistre.
Connected for some time in the first half of the nineteenth century
with the Court of St Petersburg, he had all the instincts of the
diplomatist; and his religious ideal was to see modern Christian
society under the absolute control of the political papal dictatorship
of the Middle Ages. Manning once ventured the remark that Gratry was no
theologian. It has been said with far more accuracy that De Maistre was
neither an historian nor a theologian, but rather one who transferred
to the province of ecclesiastical control the principles and methods
of diplomatic procedure. He was a man of remarkable vigour and
pertinacity; a man of logic in his way, pushing relentlessly to extreme
conclusions on the basis of a brilliant assumption; audacious in his
assertions, and confident with an unsurpassed serenity.
The movements of modern thought, the aspirations towards larger
freedom, were to De Maistre thoroughly repugnant.
“The audacious race of Japhet,” he writes, “has never ceased to
advance towards what it describes as liberty; that is, towards a
state in which the governed is governed as little as possible, and is
always on guard against its masters.”
Such was his attitude towards European progress and development. This
was written in 1844, and may doubtless be partly explained by the
time; but this was the spirit in which he approached the doctrine
of papal authority. And the method in which he attempted to advance
the Ultramontane opinions may be gathered from such examples as the
following.
If the Gallican School set the Council above the Pope, as the final
judge in matters of faith, De Maistre entirely depreciates the
significance of Ecumenical Councils. His estimate of their value as
compared with his valuation of the Papacy is almost contemptuous.
Councils are, in his view, periodical or intermittent exhibitions
of sovereignty. They are extremely rare, purely accidental, without
any regularity of recurrence; easier to assemble in primitive days
when the extent of Christendom was comparatively small. But in modern
times an Ecumenical Council is a mere chimera. It would take five or
six years to arrange. If the objection is made, Why were all these
Councils held if the decision of the Pope sufficed? De Maistre adopts
for his reply the following--“Don’t ask me; ask the Greek Emperors,
who would have these Councils assembled, and who convoked them and
demanded the consent of the Popes, and raised all this useless fracas
in the Church.” De Maistre goes further still. Quoting the opinion of
Hume on the Council of Trent, that “it is the only General Council
which has been held in an age truly learned and inquisitive,” and
“that no one expects to see another General Council until the decay
of learning and the progress of ignorance shall again fit mankind
for these great impostures”; he calmly observes that while in its
spirit this is a “reflexion brutale,” yet in its substance it is
worthy of consideration. Hume is right to this extent: that “the more
the world becomes enlightened the less it will think of holding a
General Council.” The world, he adds, has become too great for General
Councils, which appear better adapted for the youth of Christianity.
He admits that a Council may, indeed, be serviceable, and that perhaps
the Council of Trent did what only a Council could do. But he is so
exceedingly jealous of its possible interference with the absolute
sovereignty of the Pope that he can find no more than this in its
favour; except to conclude this portion of his remarks with a curiously
incongruous protestation of his perfect orthodoxy on the subject
of General Councils. Thus De Maistre’s Ultramontane proclivities
completely blinded him to the true nature of this form of Catholic
self-expression. We should not gather from his depreciative words that
the Spirit of God had anything to do with the Councils of Christendom.
It is singular, moreover, that a leader of modern Extremist views
should have written in this strain only twenty-six years before the
Vatican Council.
De Maistre’s treatment of the case of Honorius forms a most curious
psychological study. The condemnation of Honorius by a General Council
was to the Gallican School a conclusive proof that the Church which
so expressed itself knew nothing of Ultramontane opinions on Papal
Infallibility. De Maistre has a theory which we believe is entirely
his own. He draws from imagination an account of what Honorius might,
from an Ultramontane standpoint, be expected to have said if he had
been living at the time, and had entered into the deliberations of the
Council which condemned him. Here is the speech which Honorius, it
appears, ought to have made:--
“My brothers, God has undoubtedly abandoned you, since you dare to
judge the Head of the Church who is established to pass judgment upon
you. I have no need of your assembling to condemn Monothelitism. What
can you say that I have not said already? My decisions are sufficient
for the Church. I dissolve this Council by withdrawing from it.”
De Maistre could scarcely forget that the successor of Honorius, who
on his theory ought to have made some protest against the Council’s
audacious treatment of their predecessor, omitted to make any. This
is met with the remark that if certain successors of Honorius do
not appear to have roused themselves against “the Hellenisms of
Constantinople,” their silence only proves their humility and their
prudence, and has no dogmatic weight. The facts meanwhile continue
what they are. The fact that the successors of Honorius for centuries
went on reiterating his condemnation is not mentioned by De Maistre.
But, as he truly says, the facts meanwhile continue what they are. Yet
he implies that they do not. For he then suggests that perhaps the
Acts of the Sixth Council have been falsified. The possibility of such
dishonesty in ancient times is illustrated from the letters of Cicero.
The application is then delicately left for the reader to make. As for
the author, “Quant à moi, je n’ai pas le temps de me livrer à l’examen
de cette question superflue.”
De Maistre’s argument for Papal Infallibility is a political argument
pure and simple. All true government in human society is monarchy. And
the ultimate decision in the political order must be regarded as an
infallible decision. The sovereign power cannot permit the laws to be
called in question. What sovereignty is in the political order, the
same is infallibility in the spiritual. We only demand, therefore, for
the Church the same prerogative of finality which we demand for the
State.[231]
[231] _Du Pape_, p. 20.
Readers of Mozley on _Development_ will remember his crushing reply to
this transparent sophism.
“It is indeed absurd,” writes Mozley, “to expect that the mind should
be satisfied with it, because what the mind wants is to believe what
is true; and this argument does not touch the question of truth
or error in the doctrines themselves decided on by this ultimate
authority. It tells us the fact that they are decided on, and no
more. It views the Church simply as a polity, and professes to apply
the same principles to it which belong to other polities; and, wholly
omitting its prophetical office of teaching truth, makes it impose
its dogmas on us on the same principle on which the State imposes
Acts of Parliament.”[232]
[232] Mozley, _Essay on Development_, p. 126.
This contribution to Ultramontanism received a criticism, also from the
Roman Bishop Maret, just on the eve of the Vatican Council.
“These weaknesses,” says Maret, “of an able mind may remind us that
the true seat of sovereignty and infallibility in the Church is not
to be reached by logic but by appeal to Scripture and Tradition.
Joseph de Maistre has not recognised this necessity. If he had not
been a partisan dominated by a pre-conceived theory based on insecure
foundations, he would have realised that a writer’s first duty was to
make a careful study of the General Councils, if he would understand
the Church’s constitution. And this he has most inadequately
done.”[233]
[233] Maret, ii. p. 313.
Here then, said a contemporary French critic,[234] we have the
doctrine of infallible authority humanised and rationalised. But the
contradiction is too gross to permit this solution of the problem
to be taken literally. The _tour de force_ is too puerile. We
decline to believe that De Maistre was altogether duped by it. It is
impossible that he could not have seen the huge abyss which separates
Infallibility, as the Church understands it, from civil sovereignty
and final judicial appeal. The former not only demands submission, but
assent, belief. The second only imposes respect and exterior obedience,
without involving any interior conviction or belief; without
preventing discussion, contradiction, and reversal by subsequent
legislation.
[234] _Revue des deux Mondes_ (1858), p. 643.
The ability of De Maistre is everywhere acknowledged. But he is a
crowning illustration of error by excess. He is afflicted, as the same
critic said, with the malady of logical intemperance. He is a victim
of his own love of paradox. His passionate, masterful desire to push
everything to the most extreme conclusions lands one on the brink of an
intellectual abyss frightful to contemplate. He escapes with acrobatic
agility where in all reason he ought to fall, and would fall, if his
passion did not sustain him; where certainly calmer men must fall.[235]
[235] _Revue des deux Mondes_ (1858), p. 630. Cf. Lenormant’s opinion
of Joseph de Maistre: “Il avait plus de talent que de science, et
surtout de bon sens, et pour ma part, je ne me rangerai jamais parmi
ses disciples.”--_Les Origines de l’Histoire_, i. p. 67, _n._
In addition to De Maistre, there was Lamennais--a philosopher rather
than a theologian; clever, acute, impassioned, rhetorical; a sort of
French Tertullian. In profound mistrust of human reason, he threw
himself with emotional violence into the work of exalting authority as
the one refuge and salvation against error. Unbalanced and extreme in
all he did, he ended in an equally violent reaction against the very
authority which he had laboured to exalt. But the moral of the change
was lost upon his countrymen. Scandalised by his apostasy, they clung
to his earlier ideals, and continued to maintain what the master had
forsaken. He lived in discredit and died in distress, after mournfully
witnessing the wide extension of an Extremist school, which he had
devoted his best years to create, but was totally unable to restrain.
* * * * *
3. A third important factor was the _political pressure_ exerted by the
French Government upon the Church. The influence of Napoleon promoted
the very last thing he desired, “for a Church, pinched, policed, and
bullied by the State, was inevitably thrown back upon the support of
the Papacy.”[236]
[236] Cf. Cambridge Modern History. _French Revolution_, ix. p. 771.
From this despotic treatment at home the Church naturally turned its
eyes towards Rome. Rome, with its troubles and misfortunes, grew
more dear. A whole school of deeply religious and saintly men arose
in France, filled with enthusiastic devotion to the See of Peter.
Lacordaire--whether defending the cause of religious education, or
submitting himself to an adverse decision from Rome when his master
Lamennais broke away, or re-establishing the order of Dominicans
in France, or advocating the papal authority in the Cathedral at
Paris--produced an immense effect in enlisting the sympathies of men
with Rome. The gifted Montalembert,--eloquent, imaginative, threw
the weight of his power and high position into the papal cause, and
became among laymen recognised leader of Roman interests. The great
Bishop Dupanloup, warmest-hearted of men, impulsively gave the movement
an indiscriminating blessing, and brought upon himself numerous
expressions of papal gratitude.
None of these were far-sighted men; none of them realised in the least
the ultimate drift of the authority they so powerfully advanced.
Lacordaire died before the question of Infallibility came within the
council chamber of the Church; but Montalembert and Dupanloup alike
beheld the prospect with consternation, and expressed their vehement
disapproval.
* * * * *
4. Another element which is said to have contributed to make the French
priests as a body largely Ultramontane was the despotic power of the
French Episcopate. Probably no Bishops in Christendom were such
autocrats as the French. The account given by the French statesman
Ollivier, which is confirmed from other sources, represents the
ordinary priest as subjected to a virtual slavery. If the despotic
power of the French Bishops over their priests was to some extent
moderated by piety, yet anxiety to maintain their authority constantly
issued in acts of pitiless severity. The greater portion of the
French priests were dismissible at will, without judicial process, or
adequate opportunity for self-defence. Ollivier considers the causes of
dismissal to have been frequently quite insufficient. One Bishop alone
removed one hundred and fifty priests in a single month, and the State
declined to interfere. Under these circumstances the Pope intervened.
He took the part of the priests against the Bishop, and asserted the
right of the inferior clergy to appeal to himself. From that moment,
says Ollivier, Ultramontanism, hitherto forlorn enough, pervaded the
mass of the priesthood. Down-trodden by a Gallican Episcopate, the
priest hastened to proclaim the infallibility of a Pope by whom his own
superiors might be the more effectively controlled. Ultramontanism grew
to be a passion in the clerical world. And this movement from beneath
affected the Episcopate. Either they were driven on by the force of
the stream, or left stranded without the general sympathy. Ollivier
says that whereas, in the past, men spoke of Gallican independence, it
became a commonplace of Vaticanism to speak of French docility.[237]
[237] Ollivier, i. p. 300. See also the anonymous pamphlet, “Pourquoi
le Clergé Français est Ultramontane” (1879).
* * * * *
5. Another impressive step in the direction of Papal Infallibility
was taken in 1854 by Pius IX. when he declared the theory that the
Blessed Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived to be a dogma of the
Church. This theory--rejected by St Bernard and by St Thomas, “a thesis
of a theological school of the Middle Ages,” opposed by the Dominican
order--was pronounced by Pius, on his sole authority, not with the
concurrence of a Council of Christendom, to be of faith. And to this
decree the entire Roman Communion submitted. No such act had occurred
in the Church before. And although this act could bear constructions
not involving Infallibility, for the Gallican might ascribe its
validity to the tacit consent of the Church, yet it powerfully promoted
the Infallibility view; and it was constantly appealed to as a
practical exercise of infallible authority and a justification for the
Vatican Decrees of 1870.
Thus, if the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church as opposed to
that of the Pope was formerly the prevalent belief in France, as the
independence of the Church of France diminished, the authority of Rome
increased. The pressure of episcopal authority over the priests led the
latter to magnify the distant authority of the Pope as a balance to
local control; and while the Bishops resented, the priests desired an
increase of papal power. Meanwhile the Roman See, wherever practicable,
filled places of influence with Ultramontanes. The whole weight of the
Jesuit teaching was thrown unitedly, persistently, and with tremendous
force, in all these schools into the scale of Infallibility.