IF the temporal power of the popes has subsisted later than the year
1701, it is principally because no one was concerned to accelerate its
inevitable fall. Placed between Milan and Naples, as a barrier to the
preponderance of either Austria or the Bourbons over Italy, the feeble
States of the Holy See seemed to belong to the political system of
Europe, and to contribute to the maintenance of the general equilibrium.
Each prince being interested in not suffering another to invade them,
all concurred to retard a revolution, which the progress of general
knowledge would soon bring about, which would be accomplished of its own
accord, from the moment they would cease to prevent it, and which, at a
future time, other circumstances perhaps would render more reconcilable
with the situation of European affairs.
Besides the general cause which we have pointed out, three particular
causes have perpetuated, during the eighteenth century, the temporal
sovereignty of the Roman pontiffs; at first, the ill-enlightened
devotion of Louis XIV. from 1700 to 1715; in the second place, the
influence of the Jesuits, as well during these first fifteen years as
under the ministry of cardinal Fleury from 1726 to 1743; finally, the
wisdom of the two popes, Lambertini and Ganganelli of whom the one
governed the church from 1740 to 1758, the other from 1769 to 1774. If,
like these two, the other popes of the eighteenth century had known how
to manage and circumscribe their power, they would have preserved,
perhaps confirmed it: but they aspired to aggrandize it, the spiritual
arms have continued to serve as instruments to pontifical ambition;
while they have dared to reproduce the silly doctrines of the supremacy
and infallibility of the popes; and the Holy See, which might have
remained a power of the third order, has fallen even below this rank in
aspiring to reassume the first.
Clement XI. taking advantage of the circumstances in which the king, the
clergy, the government, and the people of France found themselves,
published the bull ‘Vineam Domini’ in 1705, the bull ‘Unigenitus’ in
1713.³²⁵ It is well known what an uproar the latter excited the Holy
See and the Jesuits had the misfortune to triumph; a defeat had been
less injurious to them than such a victory. Clement XI. nevertheless
conceived so high an idea of his own power, that he engaged in a long
dispute with Victor Amadeus king of Sicily: he re-claimed over the
Sicilies the same rights in the 18th century, which had been
relinquished by Urban II. a pope of the eleventh, and the almost
immediate successor of Hildehrand; he confirmed the excommunications
launched by the Sicilian bishops against the magistrates of this
country; he abolished by a constitution, in 1715, a tribunal which for
six hundred years had exercised the right of deciding sovereignly,
within this kingdom, many kinds of ecclesiastical affairs.—But this
constitution which attacked a prince, had not the success of the
‘Unigenitug’ which a monarch was pledged to support. Clement died
without having humbled Victor Amadeus.
³²⁵ The bull ‘Unigenitus’ is one of those in which the king of France
is not designated ‘king of Navarre.’
At the instigation of the Jesuits, Benedict XIII.. in 1729, re-canonized
the much celebrated Hildebrand, whom Gregory XIII. and Paul V. had
already inscribed in the catalogue of the blessed. The liturgy was
enriched by Benedict XIII. with an office to be celebrated the 25th of
May each year, in honour of St. Hildebrand or St. Gregory VII. A legend
inserted in this office relates the high achievements of this exemplary
pontiff:
“how he
“knew how to oppose with generous and athletic
“intrepidity, the impious attempts of the emperor
“Henry IV. how, like an impenetrable wall, he de−
“fended the house of Israel; how he plunged this
“same Henry in the deep abyss of misery; how
“he excluded him from the communion of the faith−
“ful, dethroned him, proscribed him, and absolved
“from their duty towards him the subjects who had
“pledged fidelity to him.”
Such are the Christian words which Benedict XIII. directed to be recited
or sung in the churches, for the edification of the faithful and
instruction of kings. But the parliament of Paris took offence at this
very pious legend, condemned it as seditious, and forbade its
publication.—The parliaments of Metz, of Rennes, and Bourdeaux, opposed
themselves, not less vigorously, to the insertion in the breviaries of
this novel style of praying to God. There were even French bishops,
those of Montpelier, Troyes, Metz, Verdun, and Auxerre, who would not
recognize this new supplement to the divine office, and published
directions, to refuse expressly the worship of St. Hildebrand. It may be
proper to observe, that Cardinal Fleury, who then ruled France,
abstained from mingling his voice with that of those who remonstrated
against this canonization: in truth, he did not take up more openly the
defence of the legend;³²⁶ but he knew where to find the members of the
parliament who had rejected it; he obliged them to register, on the 3rd
of April 1730, without any modification, the bull ‘Unigenitus’, which
was not a whit more pleasing to them. In France then they were quit for
this bull; and the government did not compel the celebration of the
sainted pontiff who had dethroned an emperor. Benedict was obliged to
content himself with establishing this devout practice in Italy, where,
since 1729, all the churches pay religious adoration annually to Gregory
VII. The sovereigns of Europe are either ignorant of it, or disdain to
complain of it.
³²⁶ He contented himself with neutralizing as much as he could, the
effects of the resistance of the bishops, and the resolutions of
the parliament. The 18th of February 1730, he wrote to the council
“that it sufficed in the present circumstances that the essential,
that is, the maxims of the kingdom be secured. Prudence requires
that we seek not to encrease the evil rather than cure it. The
king desires especially that no mention be made of the mandate of
the bishop of Auxerre; he ought to know that it was his duty,
before its publication, to have made himself acquainted with the
intentions of H. M. on so delicate an affair, and have come to
concert the mode in which it should have been expounded.”
In a letter to the first president, dated 24th of February, the same
year, Fleury testifies ‘much joy’ that kings passed off so well in the
parliament with respect to the decree by which the briefs of Benedict
XIII. had been condemned and suppressed; but the cardinal adds: "I have
forgotten to represent to you, that it would not be suitable that this
decree should be cried about the streets, for fear of wrong
interpretations, and the noise that the ill-disposed might make about
it.”
We cannot avoid remarking, that in this affair the bishop of Auxerre and
the parliaments defended the rights of the throne and the independence
of the royal authority, and that their opponent was the prime minister
of the monarch. Behold the peril to which a young prince was exposed in
yielding such unlimited confidence to a cardinal.
After Benedict XIII. Clement XII. reigned ten years; an economical and
charitable pontiff, who did good to his subjects, and little ill to
foreigners. His successor Lambertini, or Benedict XIV. merits greater
praise: he was one of the best men and wisest princes that the
eighteenth century produced. Me mounted the chair of St. Peter the same
time as Frederick II. the throne of Prussia; and for eighteen years they
were the two sovereigns the most distinguished by their personal
qualifications. Frederick, separated as he was from the communion of the
Holy See, rendered to Benedict those testimonies of esteem which did
honour to both. Lambertini inspired the schismatic Elizabeth Petrowna,
empress of Russia, with similar sentiments; and the English, attracted
to Rome by the celebrity of this pontiff, as well as by the love of the
arts, of which he was the protector, praised him with enthusiasm when
they wished to paint him with truth. His amiable mind and gentle manners
obtained the more approbation, from his knowing how to combine the
talents and the graces of his age, with the austere virtues of his
office, and the practice of every religious duty. Benedict XIV. had
reconciled Europe to the papacy: in beholding him, it were impossible to
recall to memory a Gregory VII. an Alexander VI. or even a Benedict
XIII. His evangelical toleration confirmed, in a reasoning age, the
pontifical throne, shaken by the restless ambition of his predecessors;
and his successors had needed only to have copied his example, in order
to secure their temporal enjoyments by the benefits of their pastoral
office.
But he was succeeded in 1758 by Rezzonico, whose narrow mind and
incurable self-sufficiency, plunged again the Roman court into the most
fatal disrepute. He was a second Benedict XIII. a pope of the middle
ages, cast by mistake into the midst of modern knowledge, inaccessible
to its influence, and even incapable of perceiving its presence. When
Portugal, Spain, France, and Naples, bitterly accused the Jesuits, and
got rid of them but too late, Clement XIII. persevered in upholding and
falling with them; he seemed to connect with the cause of the Holy See,
that of a society whose rebellion monarchs would no longer endure. In
Portugal they had attempted the life of the king, and three Jesuits were
among the number of those detected; the court of Lisbon asked permission
of that of Rome to try them in the same manner as their accomplices, by
the ordinary tribunals; Clement would not allow it. They were obliged to
accuse one of the three Jesuits, Malagrida, of heresy, not of high
treason; to seek in writings he had before published, for certain
mystical errors and extravagant visions, and to deliver him to the
inquisition, which had him burned as a false prophet, without deigning
to question him as to the attempt on the life of the monarch. It was
impossible to accumulate more fully all the iniquities calculated to
rouse the indignation of Eufope. Priests suspected strongly of the most
horrible crimes escaped from the secular tribunals, the throne was not
avenged, but the Inquisition burned a poor enthusiast; Rome exacted the
impunity of a parricide, and Malagrida, without a trial, perished the
victim of superstition, and of a detestable policy.
About the same time Ferdinand of Bourbon, duke of Parma, reformed the
inveterate abuses in the churclies and monasteries, and disregarded the
rights which the pope arrogated to himself, of conferring benefices, and
deciding all suits in the territories of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla.
Clement assembled the cardinals: in the midst of them he condemned as
sacrilege all the acts of Ferdinand’s administration; he declared
unlawful whatever he had dared to do in a duchy which appertained to the
Holy See “in ducatu nostto” he annulled the edicts published by the
dukes; he directed the anathemas of the ‘holy thursday bull’, “in cœna
Domini,” against those who drew up these edicts, those who executed
them, and whoever adhered to them. Ferdinand, by new decrees, suppressed
the pope’s brief and banished the Jesuits. Naples, Venice, Spain,
Austria, France, all Europe, took up the duke of Parma’s cause against
the holy father. The brief is condemned as invasive of the independent
rights of sovereigns; the parliament of Paris extends this condemnation
to the bull of holy thursday and, while the king of Naples makes himself
master of Beneventum and Ponte Corvo, Louis XV. like Louis XIV. resumes
possession of the Comtat Venaissin; the parliament of Aix declares this
territory to belong to France, and the count de Rochechouart arrives,
and thus addresses the vice-legate, governor of Avignon:
“Sir, the king commands me
“to replace Avignon in his hands, and you are so−
“licited to withdraw:”
this was the usual formula in such cases. They spoke also of obliging
the pope to restore Ronciglione; Portugal thought of appointing for
herself a patriarch: the Romans themselves murmured; and they had in all
probability taken very decisive measures, if Clement had not departed
this life the 3d of February 1769,³²⁷ and behold wherefore those arms
are directed against the church, with which sovereigns are only armed
to defend her; behold the cause why they dare to attack with arms in
their hands the pastor of the flock of Jesus Christ, even to seduce the
people from the authority of their only legitimate sovereign, to invade
our states, and a patrimony, which is not ours, but that of St. Peter,
of the church, and of "God.” He alludes to Beneventum, Ponte-Corvo,
Avignon, &c. and these domains he here calls in direct terms, ‘the
patrimony of God.’
³²⁷ The 19th of June 1768, he wrote, with his own hands, to Maria
Theresa, to implore the assistance of this princess against the
other sovereigns of Europe. "Thank God,” said he, “we have
resisted with a sacerdotal heart unworthy collusions.”
We transcribe these lines from one of the ten Authentic registers which
contain the letters of Clement XIII. to the sovereigns. These letters
contain the pleadings on behalf of the Jesuits, for the bull ‘In cœna
Domini’ and for the omnipotence of the Holy See: invectives against the
Jansenists, the parliaments and laical authority; much lamentations,
mysticisms and trifles.
We shall publish in our Second Volume, the allocation pronounced by the
same pope, the 3d of September 1762, in secret consistory, to abrogate
all the acts of the parliaments of France against the Jesuits. This
manuscript was found enclosed in a second paper, on which was to be read
the following note of the keeper of the Archives, Garampi:
“Allocation which his holiness, our lord the pope, held in his secret
consistory, the 3d of September 1762, in abrogation of all the acts and
proceedings of the parliaments of France for the expulsion of the
Jesuits; which his holiness commanded me to preserve sealed in the
office of Archives in the castle of St Angelo with the secrets of the
holy office, and which was to be opened by no one without the special
authority (oracolo) of his holiness, or of his successors in faith, this
24th day of August 1763.” Joseph C. Garampi, prefect of the secret
office of Archives of the Vatican, and that of the castle of St. Angelo,
with my proper hand.
The conduct of Ganganelli or Clement XIV. was so judicious and so pure
that Avignon, Ponte-Corvo, and Beneventum, were restored to him. The
prejudices, but too legitimately entertained against the court of Rome,
once more began to yield, in the minds of both sovereigns and people,
and the temporal power of the popes began again to appear compatible
with the peace of Europe. Two great acts have peculiarly done honor to
this pontificate; the bull ‘In cœna Domini,’ and the suppression of the
Jesuits. This society had existed now two hundred and thirty years, and
had never ceased to be the enemy of kings and people. The particular
interests which it cultivated attached it only to the court of Rome; it
embraced by its establishments every country subject to the Holy See,
and recognized itself, no other country save the church, no other
sovereign but the pope. Its ambition was to exercise, under the
protection of Rome, an active influence over courts, families, the
clergy, youth, and literature. Having become odious since 1610, by
serious and unjustifiable enterprises, it felt the necessity of uniting,
with its political intrigues, the affectation of learned labour and
literary employment. We behold it devoting itself to public education,
and cultivating every department of literature, obtaining scarcely in
any an eminent distinction, but producing in almost all a great number
of men who filled and did honour to the second rank. This success
restored it, and conferred on it a power which it abused in various ways
from 1685 to 1750: and its fall, demanded by the people and determined
by kings, might have drawn after it that of the temporal power of the
popes, if Ganganelli had not detached the interests of the Holy See from
those of the Jesuits, and, finally, consummated their abolition. When he
died, some months after their suppression, they were accused of having
shortened his days. If it were true that he fell the victim of their
implacable resentment, as is generally believed, they have by this last
crime hastened by many years the extreme decrepitude, and hour of
dissolution, of that pontifical power of which they had been the
supports. Apparently they were unwilling it should survive them; they
immolated the man who alone rendered it tolerable. Since the year 1774,
it has done little else than wander about, exhaust itself, fall into
agonies, and expire.