case the laws would become a _ridiculous comedy_. Or a criminal
    oppression if, feeling themselves possessed of force, they should
    employ it to execute laws tyrannical, as being opposed to public
    liberty, public religion, and public faith."

As to separating the Church from the State, the _Civiltá_ proudly
quotes the _Monde_ of Paris:--

    The Catholics have number and force on their side ... before
    apostatising the French government would think twice ... the
    government surely would not give the signal for its own fall, and
    for a long revolution.

The separation of Church and State is here spoken of evidently in the
ordinary sense; but the charge of having already separated the State
from the Church was one frequently brought against the government
of France, when the language employed was that of the initiated. In
that language the Draft of Decrees now under consideration described
separation of the State from the Church as the denial of the right or
duty of the State to coerce by the appointed penalties, except so far
as may be demanded in the interests of public peace, those who violate
the Catholic religion.[308]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 304: _Unitá Cattolica_, March 4, quoting _Volksblatt_.]

[Footnote 305: See exposition of Ezek. xxxvii. 21-24, _Civiltá_, VII.
vi. 293.]

[Footnote 306: Compare the _Crito_ and the _Phædo_.]

[Footnote 307: Serie VII. ix. 257 ff.]

[Footnote 308: Cap. xii. _Doc. ad. Ill._ ii., p. 96]

CHAPTER IX

The Courts of Vienna and Paris manifest anxiety--Disturbances in
Paris--Daru's Letters--Beust moves--His Despatches--His Passage of
Arms with Antonelli--Daru's Despatch and Antonelli's Reply--Daru's
Rejoinder--Beust lays down the Course which Austria will
follow--Arnim's Despatch--The _Unitá_ on the Situation--Veuillot on the
Situation--Satisfaction of the Ultramontanes.

The fire of small arms from the press only irritated the Curia; but
presently the sound of heavy guns began to be heard, and ended in a
boom, first from the Burg and next from the Tuileries. The two Emperors
who, with the Pope, held a share in the sovereignty of Austria and
France respectively, began to be aware of the fact that they might find
themselves left by their senior partner exactly in the legal position
which we have seen Phillips describe as that of the State in relation
to the Church--the position in law of a married woman as compared with
her husband. It will be remembered that, according to the doctrine
of the _Civiltá_, every Catholic State must have two kings. It will
further be remembered that all the Pope's subjects are bound to observe
his law before that of the nation. If, therefore, the universal ruler
could promulge what laws he pleased, and all these laws were to take
the foreway of any competing laws of the State, it was plain that of
the two kings in each State, the local one was at the mercy of the
universal one.

On January 18, the very day on which Gratry dated his famous letter,
and on which, probably, Döllinger penned his protest dated one day
later, Count Daru wrote a letter, of which the press got hold: "They
cannot be so blind," said the Foreign Minister of France, "as to
suppose that it would be possible for us to keep our troops there a
day after infallibility was proclaimed." He hoped that the Holy Father
would yield to the counsel of the most illustrious of the French
bishops. A fortnight later (Feb. 5), in a second letter, he expressed
fears that the majority would take advantage of its powers, and said
that he had caused Cardinal Antonelli to be apprised of the truth
through M. de Banneville; but he adds: "It is clear that everything may
be thrown into uncertainty by the conduct of the Italian, Spanish, and
missionary bishops, who seem to live in a world apart." He again speaks
of the impossibility of keeping up a French garrison, and declares
that the Propaganda seems to take no account of the Concordat, and
that perhaps violence may be done to the pact which unites France with
Rome. The revolutionary party, he affirms, is not only conspiring, but
actually moving, and Rome must be blind to put weapons in their hands
by breaking the force of the Conservatives, and compelling rebellion by
the Syllabus.

This language betrays the weakness of statesmen who rely on Rome, as
if it was a Conservative agency, but it would cause little anxiety
to the Curia. They had forty thousand drilled men in France holding
important places under the State. At this very time the movements of
the revolutionary party in Paris were dwelt upon by Don Margotti in the
tone of an enthusiastic bone-setter, who, hearing of accidents, felt
sure that he must be called in. On February 11 the _Unitá Cattolica_
said that--

    "Bonaparte had cause to fear barricades in Paris. He and his
    minister had been setting up barricades against the Council, and
    so the revolutionists were setting up barricades against him.
    The Church always conquered the barricades of Gallicanism, but
    Bonaparte may not conquer those of Paris. Some morning we may find
    that he has fled. The Emperor would have set his house in order in
    a better manner, if, instead of launching into the parliamentary
    system, he had declared from the day the Council was announced that
    he would submit himself and France in everything and for everything
    to its decision...."

The very next day it is added--

    "The troubles in Paris are a vengeance of divine justice on
    Napoleon for his misconduct in Italy. Had he not prevented the Pope
    from sending his cousin, Count Pepoli of Bologna, to the galleys,
    he would not have had to imprison Rochefort."

If the same men who thus detested Napoleon threatened the Italians
with French arms, it was simply from the belief that the Papacy had a
stronger hold upon France than the empire. After saying (February 8)
that modern society is to the Church what the world was to Christ, and
that the first Syllabus against the world was compiled by Christ, Don
Margotti says on the next day to the Italians--

    You will not go to Rome, because France will always oppose you;
    and she does so because, if she did not, the world would. If
    the free-thinkers do not believe in miracles, let them see one
    in this--that Rome will never be taken from the Pope. Even a
    government with Rochefort at its head would defend the temporal
    dominion of the Pope-king.

There is a solemn passage in Vitelleschi where he speaks of the
frequency with which governments find that they have to face some
revolutionary movement at one and at the same time as that in which the
claims of the Church are being pressed upon them. He does not pronounce
that the two facts are in individual cases connected, but he does say
that the frequent recurrence of the two simultaneously is "an organic
phenomenon worthy of the deepest attention" (p. 235). Rechtbaur in
Vienna said, "They threaten revolution if the State does not renounce
its rights"; and a couple of days after it had quoted this remark, the
_Unitá Cattolica_ said--

    Diocletian left a long tail behind him. His tail consists of those
    politicians who protest against the Syllabus as a declaration of
    war against modern society. Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich,
    Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome.
    Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of
    revolution--all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would
    abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council....
    The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better
    than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a
    country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome.

The letters of Count Daru, quoted above, caused inquiry in Rome.
Quirinus asserted that the only existing copy of them was in the hands
of the English government. It was known that Lord Acton was a near
relation of the English Minister for Foreign Affairs. Putting this
and that together, the Curia was inclined to say that Quirinus must
be Lord Acton; and it is confidently affirmed that Monsignor Randi,
whose spiritual duties were those of Director of Police, was taken
into consultation with the Pope as to whether it would or would not be
expedient to banish the suspected English nobleman.[309] The _Unitá_
tried to make capital against Dupanloup out of these letters. It could
not believe that the Bishop of Orleans would write to Daru and tell him
what passed in the Council (March 8).

The anxiety felt at Courts in Catholic nations had now penetrated the
mind of Count Beust. On February 10 he penned a remarkable despatch,
in which he recited his pacific intentions and his innocent hopes, as
indicated in his treatment of the Council hitherto, and especially
in his rejection of the overtures of Bavaria. He was now, however,
obliged to confess that, in Rome, there was a manifest determination
not to acknowledge, nay, more, not to tolerate, that liberty which
Austria claimed for the State in civil legislation. He now confesses
to "alarm," and affirms that the Decrees of the Church "would dig an
impassable gulf between the laws of the Church and those which govern
the greater part of modern societies." He plainly declares that Austria
would reserve to herself the right of interdicting the publication of
any Act infringing the majesty of the law, and that every person who
should disregard such prohibition must bear the legal consequences.
This despatch was followed by one to Berlin,[310] pointing out how
delicate had been the position of Austria in the present transaction.
The empire was passing through an internal transformation. Hence
arose a special necessity of maintaining the supremacy of law, and a
corresponding expediency of avoiding internal conflict. In addition
to reasons of State for not identifying his policy with that of the
minority of the bishops of the Council, Count Beust alleged that
those prelates found that any interference on the part of governments
turned to an embarrassment for themselves, because they were accused
of being the instruments of the political rulers, and he felt that it
was not the bishops but the Cabinets that must defend the rights of
States. A third despatch was directed to Munich.[311] In this, Count
Beust intimated that Prince Hohenlohe might naturally think that it
would have been better had the Count in time seen the force of his
recommendations. Parrying this objection, he strongly urged united
action, and stated that Austria was now ready to co-operate in a matter
that evidently affected the common interests of all governments. The
effect of all this was a formal visit of Count Trauttmansdorff, the
Austrian ambassador, to Cardinal Antonelli. According to the report
of the Count, the Cardinal had really nothing to say beyond the most
commonplace evasions. The Decrees were still subject to discussion,
and, on the other hand, interdicting the publication of Decrees in a
certain country did not deprive them of their validity. Besides, he
could not see how prohibiting the publication of the laws of the Church
could be consistent with the policy which consisted in giving liberty
to the publication of anything. Moreover, all the world knew that,
while Rome affirmed principles, she would be very reasonable and gentle
in the application of them, and none need to take the least alarm.
Count Trauttmansdorff expresses his satisfaction with the attitude of
the German bishops, but thinks that Austria has lost her influence by
her recent changes of policy, and especially by her attacks upon the
Concordat. He expects, on the contrary, great effect from the exercise
of French influence.

The reply of Count Beust to this despatch was prompt and clear. True,
he said, Decrees of the Church retain their validity though rejected
by the government; but this was the very circumstance that showed the
gravity of the position. It would become a serious matter, both for the
Church and for Catholic governments, if laws which were valid for the
one, were repudiated by the other. Again, as to the Cardinal's remark
that refusing the Church liberty to promulge her laws was scarcely
consistent with professions of giving liberty to publish anything,
Count Beust thought that this remark could hardly be serious. "Respect
for the law is the basis of all liberty," said the Count, "and liberty
which passes that boundary, becomes licence." But this arrow would fall
blunted from a conscience covered by the buckler of the Vatican. Any
Vaticanist would simply say, Respect for a higher law is not disregard
of law; and whenever Rome has spoken, her word is the higher law,
respect for which is the real basis of order.

The reply of Antonelli to the despatch of Beust is a singular document.
He is so generally credited with ability as a diplomatist that one
would fear to say, even if one thought, that it is anything but an
able paper, whether viewed in an intellectual or a diplomatic aspect.
He states that the remonstrances of Beust were expressed in "not
very delicate terms," and in weaker and much less courteous forms
puts forward the arguments which we shall presently find employed
in his reply to Daru. So far from accepting the reproach of want of
delicacy, Beust instantly and formally repelled it, and said that
the Pope's Nuncio, when appealed to, could hardly find an expression
in his despatch on which to attempt to sustain the allegation of the
Cardinal. He demanded a copy of the despatch, and, as soon as he had
obtained it, instructed the ambassador at Rome to thank Antonelli for
granting it, and to tell him that he had immediately laid it before the
Emperor.[312] Whether the Emperor thought the despatch respectful to a
power such as his we cannot say.

The day after that on which Count Trauttmansdorff reported his
interview with Cardinal Antonelli, Count Daru, in Paris, despatched
an important document to the Vatican. According to an analysis of it,
contained in the reply of Antonelli,[313] the Count summed up the
effect of the Canons in two propositions. First, the infallibility
of the Church extends, not only to the deposit of faith, but also
to all that is necessary to its preservation. Secondly, the Church
is a divine and perfect society, and exercises its powers in two
tribunals, the interior and the exterior. She is absolute in the
domain of legislation, judicial procedure, and coercive force; and
moreover exercises her power with full liberty, and in independence
of any civil power whatever. The Count points out that the claims of
the Church are now extended to authority over history, philosophy,
and science, and involve an absolute subordination to the authority
of the Church of the very principles of a national constitution, the
rights and duties of governments, with the political rights and duties
of citizens, both electoral and municipal. They are extended even to
everything included in judicature and in legislation, in respect both
of persons and things; to the rules of public administration, to the
rights and duties of corporations, and in general to all the rights of
the State, not excepting the right of conquest, and that of peace and
war. Is it to be imagined, asks Count Daru, that princes will bow their
sovereignty before the supremacy of the Court of Rome? Considering the
protection granted by France to the Holy See for twenty years past,
she has special duties before the world, and he, therefore, claims
that projects of laws which are to be laid before the Council shall be
communicated to the French government, and that time shall be allowed
to forward the observations that may be deemed desirable before they
are pressed for decision.

The reply of Antonelli to Daru has been generally looked upon as one of
the ablest specimens of his skill. Unless at the moment the greatest
daring was the greatest skill, we must think the impression of skill
is made chiefly on the minds of those who have not carefully studied
the Vatican dialect. It would seem that Count Daru, or his advisers,
were perfectly aware of the meaning of the document; and to any one
who was so, a more absolute statement of Papal suzerainty can scarcely
be conceived. The technical term "direct" plays an important part in
the various assertions. The Cardinal does not deny the extension of
the Papal authority to any one of the matters pointed out by Daru. He
never denies that that authority is absolute, but always takes care to
couple with the world "absolute" the word "direct"--it is not "direct
and absolute"; and the real meaning of much of the despatch would be
brought out by the simple question, which any ecclesiastical adviser
of the French Foreign Office _who was true to the government_ would
ask, Is it indirect and absolute? Moreover, the blank statement that
the kingly power depends upon the priestly, is, in the form in which
Antonelli puts it, an extension even of the ordinary Jesuit doctrine,
which couples the dependence of the kingly power upon the priestly
with several qualifications, practically not amounting to much, but
theoretically necessary to be kept in view, because they enable men to
seem to deny what they mean to maintain. Commencing by a complimentary
paragraph as to the protection of France and the gratitude of the
Pope, Antonelli goes on to express great surprise that the Canons
should cause so much uneasiness. They only expressed the maxims and
fundamental principles of the Church, published in all forms, taught
in the schools, maintained for ages, and often approved of even by
civil governments. The Church, continues Antonelli, never claims to
exercise a "direct and absolute" power over the political rights of the
State. Having received the mission to lead men, whether as individuals
or as constituted into societies, to a supernatural end, the Church
had received the corresponding authority to judge the morality of all
acts interior or exterior, in respect of their conformity to laws
natural and _divine_. "As no action, whether commanded by a supreme
power or freely performed by a person, can be divested of a quality of
morality or justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, though
directly turning upon the morality of actions, indirectly extends
_to all matters with which morality is connected_." But this is not
the same as direct interference in political affairs, which, by the
order established by God, and by the teaching indeed of the Church,
belong to the temporal power without any dependence on any authority.
The subordination of the civil power to the religious one is in the
sense[314] of the superiority of the priesthood. Hence the authority
of sovereignty depends on that of priesthood, as human things depend
on divine, and temporal on spiritual. And if temporal felicity, which
is the end of civil power, is subordinate to eternal felicity, which
is the spiritual end of the priesthood, it follows that to attain
the end towards which God would have them respectively tend, the one
power is subordinate to the other; and thus, as between them, there
exists in one of the two a subordination of functions as there exists a
subordination of ends.

Therefore, proceeds the despatch, if infallibility does extend to all
that is necessary to conserve the faith, no prejudice will, on that
account, arise to science, history, or politics. Of course (we may
interject) the reasoning is, that any subordination arising from a
divinely-appointed order cannot be the cause of prejudice, but only
of advantage. Infallibility, he proceeds, has been exercised in times
past, and princes have had no occasion to disquiet themselves. If the
Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect
Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a
plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no
confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the
exercise of the rights of the two powers. The Church does not exercise,
in virtue of her authority, "a direct and absolute" interference in
the principles and constitutions, in the forms of civil power, in the
political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the
other matters enumerated in the despatch of the minister.

Almost the only thing not clear in the remarkable State paper in which
Daru replied to this despatch,[315] is the way in which he understood
the last remarks we have quoted from the Cardinal. He speaks of them
as being important, but in what sense? As showing a wish to allay the
impressions made by the Draft of Decrees, which is all the Cardinal
really professes? or as containing any statement properly calculated to
allay those apprehensions? Count Daru had evidently not read hastily,
and had not been without clear-headed interpreters. He could not, for a
moment, think that Antonelli had said that the Church had no authority
to interfere in political matters, when he really had said no more
than that she did not _exercise_ a "direct and absolute" interference,
by virtue of her authority. No more could Count Daru suppose that
saying that she did not do so was a promise that she would not do so,
although, even had such a promise been made, couched in the terms
employed by Antonelli, the word "direct" would have deprived it of any
practical value. Every other portion of Count Daru's Memorandum must
have made the Pope, to whom it was submitted, feel that the Minister of
France understood the intentions of the Vatican.

    The more one examines the doctrine of this document, the more
    impossible does it become to overlook the fact that, in the
    main, it amounts to the complete subordination of civil power
    to the religious society.... Unless we refuse to words their
    true and natural meaning, we cannot escape the conviction that
    the Draft Decree on the Church has, for its object and end, the
    re-establishment, in the entire world, of doctrines which would
    place civil society under the empire of the clergy.... Under
    the formidable sanction of the anathema, the infallibility and
    authority of the Church are to be extended, not only to truths
    handed down by revelation, but to all things that may appear
    necessary for preserving the deposit of tradition. In other words,
    her infallibility and authority have no other limits than those
    which the Church may herself assign to them; and all principles of
    civil order, politics, and science, fall, directly or indirectly,
    within their range. It is on this almost boundless field that
    the Church is to exert the right of pronouncing decisions and
    promulgating laws, binding the conscience of the faithful,
    independently of any confirmation on the part of the political
    authority, and even in direct opposition to laws emanating from it.
    It is on this domain, the bounds of which, it appears, the Church
    alone may fix, that the Canons ascribe to her a complete power,
    which is at once legislative, judicial, and coercive, and is to be
    put forth in the external tribunal as well as in the internal,--a
    power the exercise of which the Church may assure by material
    penalties, and Christian princes and governments would be bound
    to lend their assistance by chastising all who should attempt to
    withdraw themselves from under her authority.

No wonder that Count Daru draws the inference that "governments would
retain no power, and civil society would retain no liberty, but the
power and the liberty which it might please the Church to leave to
them." The dearest rights of States, their political constitution,
their legislation on property, on the family, and on instruction,
"might any day be called in question by the ecclesiastical authority."
Moreover, it is now proposed that to all this shall be added Papal
infallibility. "_That is to say, after having concentrated all
political and religious powers in the hand of the Church, they will
concentrate all the power of the Church in the hand of her head._"

As to the artifice, that only principles were to be carried, but that
the application of them would not be enforced, Daru says, No such
statement suffices to reassure us. What, he asks, Are people in the
forty thousand parishes of France to be taught that they are free to
do that which they are not free to believe? He will not even treat
this representation as grave. He gives the Church credit for intending
a serious work, and, therefore, when once she has inscribed a maxim
among the immutable truths, she will try to bring it into practice. The
Pontiff has not assembled the bishops of the whole world to promulgate
sterile laws.

Antonelli had alleged that the principles in dispute were not new.
That, replied Count Daru, he knew too well, but kings and nations had
never accepted those principles, and the attempt to establish them had
always, even in the middle ages, caused bloody conflict. He concluded
by declaring that if the propositions were adopted, they would have the
inevitable consequence of bringing about grievous troubles.

The French government declared its intention of demanding that a
special ambassador should be admitted to the Council. This Don
Margotti hailed, first as a victory of the Council, and then as one of
the most splendid victories of Pius IX. The ground of this professed
exultation was that abstinence from the Council meant the separation
of Church and State. "The Lord be praised, who is preparing greater
triumphs for His spouse!" France trembles for her revolution and her
Gallicanism.[316] So can voice and face be changed in a moment.

Beust, in further despatches, declined any proposal for sending
ambassadors to the Council, on the ground that governments would,
by such an act, make themselves, in some sort, parties to its
proceedings. He had laid down and firmly adhered to the principle of
abiding within the line of purely political action. That principle, he
declared, fully covered the two steps of interdicting all publications
exciting to contempt of the law, and punishing all persons guilty of
any contempt of it.[317] But he instructed Count Trauttmansdorff to
support the French with all cordiality, in the demand that matters
touching political interests, which were submitted to the Council,
should be communicated to France before being enacted. But, on the
part of the State, he could not take up theological arguments or plead
the interests of the Catholic Church. He would take his stand on the
interests of the State only, and tell the Court of Rome that, if it
provoked a conflict, Austria would not give way to its decisions. For
similar reasons, he must abstain from identifying the government with
the bishops of the minority. Approving and sympathizing with their
position, he nevertheless felt that they might come to change their
ground, and accept what the government could not accept.

The French government applied, also, to the North German Confederation
to support its representatives. Bismarck was deliberate but firm. On
April 23,[318] Arnim sent in a despatch, cordially supporting the
claims put forward by Daru. He said, that the Decrees, so far from
being any vague menace for the future, were rather calculated to
revive, and surround with a new dogmatic sanction, certain pontifical
Decrees sufficiently known, and constantly combated by civil society
in every age, and of every nation. An earnest wish to shun a collision
pervaded the despatch.

The impression made upon the Curia by these appeals may perhaps
be better gathered from Don Margotti and M. Veuillot than from
Antonelli's despatches. On March 3 the _Unitá Cattolica_ says, France
and Austria have really remonstrated against the proposed definition
of infallibility. They are afraid of the doctrine of Christ. If they
would only adopt the Council and its doctrine, it would restore even
their finances. "Do make an experiment. You have tried a thousand
constitutions in France and Austria: why should you disdain to try
the true Catholic constitution?" Let those two countries faithfully
proclaim the doctrine, accept and spread it among the people, "and in
less than a year you will confess that it is a great salvation for
the French and Austrian empires." This is followed by a letter from a
professor of theology on the opportuneness of defining the dogma of the
personal infallibility of the Pope. He contends first that it would--

    give a blow to Liberalism, which is the doctrine of human
    infallibility; for representative assemblies claim a true
    infallibility, because the decrees of such assemblies _are not
    reformable by the Church_; but if a single man alone is declared
    infallible, they all, whether individually or collectively, become
    fallible, and must receive from him their rules in jurisprudence
    and legislation, and every institution or ordinance declared by
    the Pontiff not to be good is, without appeal, rejected as false
    and corrupt. Liberalism, wherever it prevails, converts rulers
    into tyrants and subjects into slaves! The spectacle of seven
    hundred bishops giving up all to the Pope will restore the idea of
    legitimate authority.

Anticipating the _final_ struggle against the Church, he says, "It is
of the utmost importance that the Church bind up her people in the
firmest unity; for the battle will be sore, and she will escape only by
divine intervention." On March 4, the _Unitá_ says that the Council is
assailed by traitors. The devil always has a foot in good things, but
he has two in the Council. Satan entered into the deputies of Italy,
then into the body of Prince Hohenlohe, then he passed on to Döllinger,
to Père Hyacinth, and to Père Gratry. The devil had entered into the
cabinets of Beust and Daru, and into the palace at Munich, where
Döllinger had been admitted to the same honours as formerly had been
granted to Lola Montez.

M. Veuillot[319] imagines a conversation between a Catholic and a
Liberal Catholic, of which the following is a condensation. It shows
the kind of information which was granted, and the kind of argument
which was welcome, to the forty thousand educated men on whom largely
depends the fate of all French governments _which attempt to govern
through them_:--

    The governments are displeased.---- Why?---- Because!---- What
    of that?---- You offend common sense. The cause is the dogma of
    infallibility.---- But the Holy Spirit?---- It was not the Holy
    Spirit that signed the petition for infallibility.---- Did He sign
    the other?---- The other is inspired by the highest wisdom.---- So
    be it. Both call upon the Holy Spirit and He will come.---- He will
    not come.----Why?---- The Rules of the Council are bad, the Hall is
    defective, discussion is impossible, the Council is not free.----
    What? the Fathers can read, study, pray, speak, and the Council is
    not free!---- No, discussion is physically impossible, and it is
    from the shock of discussion that light breaks out just as from
    the concussion of flints.---- The Council has no need of that kind
    of light which fires powder.---- The governments are up against
    infallibility.---- Let them come down.---- They'll make you come
    down yourself.---- Allow me, if you speak to me, upon my word of
    honour, I am not the Council; and if you speak to the Council, it
    will answer, as it always has done to good advisers of your sort.

    I fear God, dear Abner.

After this comes what with M. Veuillot's readers passes for argument,
In the present state of law in regard to religious liberty, governments
have nothing to do with infallibility but to study the new situation
which it will create, and to conform their conduct to it, as liberty
requires of them. Either they will voluntarily respect liberty, or they
will encounter its defenders and sustain the combat. The governments
ought to know that Catholics mean not to give up anything of their
right, and of the fulness of their life. As to the Church, continues
M. Veuillot, she manages her affairs as it suits her. She looks
beyond governments, beyond generations. She sows for the future, she
constructs for centuries. Although she desires not to put governments
to inconvenience, _it must be allowed that her compassion and her
complaisance towards these foreigners must have their limits_. She
bears the heavy burden of freedom of worship, and she takes the light
advantages of it.

Further on we find the same sinister reference to disturbances as in
Don Margotti (p. 246):--

    A letter is talked of from one of our ministers, who, it would
    appear, says that the difficulty of the government is not in Paris
    but in Rome. While this letter of the statesman is being read in
    Rome, barricades are springing up under his feet in Paris, and
    barricades are difficulties.... The head of the Church is always a
    great statesman, and ends by solving the difficulty. When statesmen
    will go to school to the Pope they will do marvels; but the world
    must not look for that just yet.

It is well known, says M. Veuillot, returning to the sore point of
the hints thrown out by Daru about withdrawing the troops, that if
Daru withdraws the French sentinel from the door of the Council, many
sentinels would be withdrawn from other doors in France (vol. i. p.
328). No wonder that Italians speak of the _Univers_ and the _Rappel_
as kindred, if hostile. Rochefort and Veuillot are the two poles of the
same violent hatred of ordered liberties and moderated power.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 309: _Fromman_, p. 91.]

[Footnote 310: _Friedberg_, p. 547.]

[Footnote 311: _Friedberg_, p. 549.]

[Footnote 312: _Friedberg_, p. 563.]

[Footnote 313: _Friedberg_, p. 533.]

[Footnote 314: The expression is peculiar. It is, _E nel senso della
precellenza del Sacerdozio sull' Impero_ a motive della superiorità del
fine dell' uno sopra quello dell' altro; quindi l'autorità dell' Impero
da quella del Sacerdozio dipende, come le cose umane dalle divine, le
temporali dalle spirituali.]

[Footnote 315: _Friedberg_, 538 ff.]

[Footnote 316: _Unitá_, March 8 and 9.]

[Footnote 317: _Friedberg_, p. 557.]

[Footnote 318: _Ibid._, p. 567.]

[Footnote 319: Vol. i. p. 239.]

CHAPTER X

Personal Attack on Dupanloup--Attempts at a Compromise--Impossibility
of now retreating--Daru Resigns--Ollivier's Policy--Feeling that
the Proceedings must be Shortened--The Episode of the Patriarch
of Babylon--Proposal for a New Catechism--Michaud on Changes in
Catechism--The Rules revised--An Archbishop stopped--Protest of One
Hundred Bishops--Movement of Sympathy with Döllinger--The Pope's
Chat--Pope and M. de Falloux--Internal Struggle with Friedrich.

The Villa Grazioli was one of the houses angrily pointed at by the
zealots of infallibility. There resided Dupanloup, too much courted
for the pride of those who thought that any man in Rome who opposed
the Curia ought to be ostracised. We do not remember any public hint
given to the police to watch the villa, such as the _Unitá Cattolica_
broadly gave as to the Palazzo Valentini, the residence of Cardinal
Hohenlohe (February 26). But the amiabilities of the "good press" were
not denied to the Villa Grazioli. Bishop Wicart, of Laval, wrote to his
local organ, insisting that every word of his letter should be printed,
and saying that the talk about Monseigneur Dupanloup in the diocese of
Laval must be put an end to. "I declare, before God, and in readiness
to appear at His judgment-seat, that I had rather die--fall dead on
the spot--than follow the Bishop of Orleans in the course he is now
taking."[320]

It was not to this attack exclusively that Dupanloup referred in a
letter to the chapter of his cathedral:--

    The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during
    a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church
    and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for
    those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital
    question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for
    the true interests of religion and of the Papacy.[321]

Ebullitions like this were but a sample of the increasing irritation
on both sides. The majority naturally wanted to have done with the
strife, the result of which was already certain. Vitelleschi says that
the Curia desired that the Council should be merely a great ceremony
for the solemn fulfilment of a pre-arranged program (p. 76). They
bitterly accused the minority of egging on the governments to oppose
the Council, to menace the Church, to insult the Holy Father, or even
to dictate to the Holy Ghost. Every objection to the new dogma was
denounced as rebellion against the Pontiff, hostility to the Council,
disloyalty to Peter, and so forth. Documents such as those of Beust
and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right. At the moment
when Rome was "officially taking the affairs of the world in hand,"
it was insufferable for people representing provinces such as Austria
or France, to attempt to control the Mistress of the world. Strictly
speaking, Beust and Daru did not represent those two provinces any
more than Menabrea represented Italy. They represented only the carnal
and inordinate jealousy of the supernatural order entertained by the
natural order in those provinces. They must be made to learn the
meaning of the commission, "Teach all nations."

The members of the minority, trained by Rome to rush to statesmen and
importune them for everything that could serve the Church, now that
they believed her to be drifting to a terrible peril, did as they had
been accustomed to do. Personally they were stung by hard words, not
only from the Pope, but from all officials down to small diocesan
editors, emulous of Don Margotti and M. Veuillot. Even priests in their
own dioceses were set against them. As a party, the minority were
irritated by restraint, suspicion, manoeuvres, affronts, offers, and
even by _espionage_. Their one solace was, they felt, a vain one. They
could indeed speak, but they could not really debate. Their one refuge
was vainer still. They could draw up petitions, but they might as well
address them to Julius Cæsar for any answer that was ever vouchsafed.
The air was full of complaints of long speeches. Some proposed that
no more should be read, some that no more should be delivered in any
form; but that they should be written, printed, and distributed among
the Fathers. Some combined the two propositions, suggesting that only
_they_ should deliver speeches who could do so _extempore_, and that
the others should print theirs for those who liked to read them. The
_Unitá Cattolica_ hailed the proposal to have no more speeches; it
would shorten the Council.

Others, again, tried to form a third party, on the basis of some
compromise which would satisfy the Court by giving it in substance all
the concentration of power it wanted, and yet would save the minority
from the difficulty of accepting Papal infallibility in express terms.
Bishop Vitelleschi was named in connexion with this attempt. They who
made it did not fully realize either the political or the theological
bearing of the points at issue. The whole conduct of future operations
must depend on the ability of the central authority to act at any
moment and in any place, without the remotest fear of hesitation
or delay on the part of the instruments; above all, without any
possibility of that old bugbear, an appeal to a General Council, being
raised up again.

The pretensions which Pius IX had set up under the veil of secrecy now
began, through publicity, to drag Rome on to her doom. She would not
have dared, at first, to face governments with her present claims. She
had silently spread them in her schools, had excited her fancy with the
echoes of them coming back mysteriously from provincial synods and from
episcopal thrones, had shaped them into formulæ, one part of which her
fears had cast away, and another part of which publicity had put to
shame. Some now asked her to stop when the coach was at full swing down
hill! The attempt to do so would be attended with extreme danger. She
would lose, not only the new authority at which she had been grasping,
but also a considerable part of the old authority, out of which that
was to have been developed.

The Canons which had been the occasion of the protest from governments
could indeed well be spared, if the supreme authority and infallible
judgement of the sovereign were proclaimed but without that the Canons
would be paper laws in the hand of a discredited administration
The Syllabus, cried M. Veuillot, had lighted a torch, five years
beforehand, by which to study the objects of the Council (vol. i.
p. 55). The Curia had studied the objects during the five years by
that light. For it retreat on the main point was now an absolute
impossibility. Had France really withdrawn her troops, the Curia could
have broken up the Council under the justification of physical fear,
and so would have escaped the dilemma by an intervention of Providence.
But it was not to be. And we may as well here slightly anticipate our
narrative, in order to complete the incident of the French note. Daru
was one of the ministers who resigned on finding out that the Emperor's
professions of setting up a responsible ministry were such as to remind
one of the _mot_ attributed to Dupin, at the very height Napoleon's
power: "It is really too bad: one cannot now believe even the opposite
of what he says."

It was reported in Rome that, within twenty-four hours, two telegrams
had arrived from Paris. The first read: "Decidedly Daru will not have
infallibility. He announces that there will be a rupture." The second
read: "Daru retires. Ollivier replaces him. The Council free." If
it is true, cried M. Veuillot, it is glorious for M. Ollivier (vol.
i. p. 462). The despatch of Ollivier, on taking over the office of
Foreign Affairs from Daru, would have been thought straightforward
if proceeding from any Court but such a one as that of the Tuileries
then was. After stating that the Emperor had not sent an ambassador to
the Council, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with its
proceedings, but that recently, when warned by the rumours in Europe of
dangers menacing the cause of religion, he had for a moment stepped out
of his reserve and offered counsel, Ollivier proceeds:--

    The Holy Father has not seen it right to listen to our counsels,
    nor to accept our observations. We do not insist, and we resume our
    attitude of reserve and expectation.

    You will not seek or accept, henceforth, any conversation, either
    with the Pope or with Cardinal Antonelli, on the affairs of the
    Council.

    You will confine yourself to gaining information, and keeping
    yourself acquainted with facts, with the sentiments which have
    prepared them, and with the impressions which have followed
    them.[322]

So terminated an incident that caused, for a time, a considerable
flutter, and seems to have offered to the Curia the only fair escape
from the dilemma into which it had got. It was now felt that the
legislation necessary to put the new constitution into working order,
must be pressed into as small a space of time as possible. The
restoration of ideas had not advanced satisfactorily since the meeting
of the Council and the restoration of facts had made no progress at
all. The voluminous Drafts had already brought Court theology into
contempt.

Friedrich had spent an evening and morning in writing to Lord Acton
on the Papal system as developed in the Draft Decree on the Church,
and in expressing his fears that the bishops would not see through
it, when a piece of news reached him, which though at ordinary times
it would scarcely have been talked of in Rome, just then caused some
excitement (p. 143). It was, as he relates, to the effect that Audu,
Patriarch of Babylon, after having spoken in opposition to the Curia,
had, as we have seen (page 107 of _this_ edition), been sent for at
night by the Pope, who allowed no witness of the interview but Valerga,
the so-called Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, however, as Vitelleschi
says, was, previous to his elevation, simply a Roman ecclesiastic.
Valerga acted as interpreter. The Pope raged, commanded the weak
old man to resign his patriarchate, forced a pen into his hand, and
ceased not storming till it was done. Then, to give practical effect
to the resignation, two bishops, not chosen by Audu, were appointed,
and he must consecrate them.[323] Such was the tale. Friedrich took
it as a sample of infallibility in practice even before the Council
had sanctioned it in theory. In itself, the story would seem very
improbable in London, but not at all so in Constantinople or Rome. In
the latter city the reputation of Pius IX is high for fits of rage,
in which his best friends are treated like lackeys. Liverani, who over
and over again calls him an angel, tells nevertheless several stories
of conduct to those about him which, if they could be told of an
English squire, would not get him the name of angel from his stewards
and bailiffs. Even the all but adoring editor of the _Speeches_ gives
a specimen which evidently hammered a deep dint into his Neapolitan
sensibilities. If the tales are true, the rage passes away, giving
place to habitual jocoseness.

Vitelleschi says that an alternative was set before the Chaldean
Patriarch--either he must submit to the Pope's authority as to certain
appointments, or resign. Being reduced to this extremity by his
imperious brother, the poor old man did resign, and the event "created
a great sensation." To the Roman nobleman the scene presented no
improbability. He does not even hint that it is a rare specimen of the
tranquil waters which lie behind St. Peter's Rock. The noise made by
the rumours forced even so great a person as M. Veuillot to take notice
of them. His usual style of contradiction is very striking, and perhaps
instructive. He will spend, it may be, pages in making somebody, who
has said something, look extremely ridiculous; but, at the end, you
wonder what he has contradicted. On the present occasion, however, M.
Veuillot did stoop to particulars. First, he says that the Patriarch
had himself chosen two bishops, but after the Pope had approved of
them, he refused to consecrate them. This is in direct contradiction of
a statement, on the other side, that the Propaganda had chosen the two
bishops in question and that the Patriarch refused to consecrate them.
The latter version gives a clear cause of dispute, whereas that of M.
Veuillot leaves the resistance of the Patriarch, as he himself says,
inexplicable. But as to what took place, his account is this:--

    The Pope called the Patriarch into his cabinet, and told him to
    consecrate the two suffragans in twenty-four hours, or to sign
    his resignation. The Patriarch asked for a delay of three days,
    then of two days. The Pope was inflexible; he required that the
    Patriarch should forthwith sign the engagement to obey. The
    Patriarch took a pen, and began to write; but he stopped, saying
    that the pen would not go. The Pope presented him with a penknife.
    The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who acted as interpreter, mended
    the pen. The Chaldean Patriarch resisted no further. He wrote
    the engagement to consecrate the two bishops, or to abdicate in
    twenty-four hours, and pushed his precision so far as to affix the
    date--half-past seven in the evening. The next morning he performed
    the consecration.

M. Veuillot vehemently denies that the Pope was in a rage, or that he
broke pens with his fist, or that he played the part of a tyrant. He
seems to take it for granted that good Catholics ought to be edified
with his own account of this rehearsal of a scene in the forthcoming
drama of "ordinary and immediate jurisdiction" in all dioceses of the
world.

We have hinted that Vitelleschi expresses no feeling of improbability
as to the tale of the Chaldean Patriarch. On the contrary, he
immediately follows it up by alluding to rumours of proceedings
contemplated by the Propaganda against certain bishops under its
jurisdiction, who had manifested a want of docility in seconding
its projects (p. 82). These rumours, he says, revived uncomfortable
recollections of the Inquisition, adding that events of this nature
are of common occurrence, and might happen a thousand times without
attracting much notice. But the moment was exceptional.

The interest of the General Congregations, from the time when the
movement for the definition of infallibility declared itself, centred
in that impending question, and but faintly, and intermittently, swayed
towards any other. The particular matter now on hand was a proposal
to do away with the diocesan Catechisms throughout the world, and to
adopt a uniform one for all. Outside the Church of Rome this would
probably have seemed a natural point of uniformity, but, inside of it,
the determination of the municipal _coterie_ to drive roughshod over
all that was homely or ancient, all that was national or local, roused
the spirit of opposition. It was clearly felt that taking away from the
bishops the right of approving their own Catechisms was a further blow
at their authority. For many years past the Jesuits had been altering
Catechisms, and so gradually naturalizing the doctrine of infallibility
on soil hostile to it, especially through schools conducted by
nuns.[324] They had made the Catechism a great financial success. A new
one for the whole world would be an estate for the Curia.

The book of the Abbé Michaud, _De la Falsification du Catéchism_, is
a curious study. He expresses the sum of his researches by saying
that Catholicism has been replaced by Popery. The old Paris Catechism
did not use the expression "the _Roman_ Church." It always said,
"the Catholic Church"; and in some Catechisms, in France, the word
"Roman" first came in as late as 1839, and that only in a profession
of faith at the end: "I acknowledge the Holy Catholic Apostolic and
Roman Church." Noting the progressive change in definitions of the
Church, Michaud gives examples, showing that the earliest do not even
mention the Pope, and that the latest speak of nothing but the Pope (p.
23). The early Catechisms call Christ the Foundation of the Church;
succeeding ones give this title to the Confession of St. Peter; next
to the Apostles, then to Peter, and, finally, to the Pope; and some
recent ones even say that the Church is founded on the Papacy (p.
34). The designation the "Head of the Church," is gradually withdrawn
from Christ, to be bestowed upon the Pope. One Catechism, as early
as 1756, said that the visible Head of the Church, being subordinate
to the Invisible one, made only one Head with Him. On the question
of the seat of authority in the Church, a precisely similar process
has taken place; and infallibility has followed in the same track.
Formerly, says the Abbé it was believed that the Pope had no authority
or infallibility but through the Church. Now, it is declared that the
Church has no authority or infallibility but through the Pope. We may
remark that the terms of the Vatican Decrees do not go so far as the
last assertion. The framers meant to do so, but their logic failed
them, and they have left a dualism full of future perplexity. The Abbé
shows that the Catechisms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
and many down to the year 1843, always speak of the infallibility
of the Church. Later, the term, "the infallibility of the Teaching
Church," is introduced. That means, of the Pope and the bishops.
Michaud does not quote any with this terminology earlier than 1786. But
that could not suffice for the Romanists. The Abbé says that, at the
present time they teach, not only that the Pope is infallible, but that
he is the source of infallibility. "As the Church was replaced by the
Teaching Church, the Teaching Church has been replaced by the Pope." A
religious and political system shifting in this fashion does not well
bear even that kind of check which is afforded by the existence of
different Catechisms in neighbouring dioceses. It was not quite so easy
to teach at Rouen that the Pope singly is infallible, when at Paris the
Catechism said that the Church was infallible, and at Cologne it said
plainly that the Pope was not infallible. And the fact of this tendency
to change doctrine downward, and further downward, was a reason for a
feeling against one Catechism stronger than could be understood in any
community with a fixed rule of faith.

The changes made in the application to the Church of the word
"believe," are equally curious. The old form of words as to believing
in one Catholic Church was first changed into believing in the Teaching
Church. Then "respect and obedience to the Pope" began to be inserted,
from the end of the seventeenth century onward. In 1819 an Arras
Catechism claimed "sovereign respect"; but so far there is no mention
of belief in decisions of the Pope. It was in 1834 that the Catechisms
of Avignon and Amiens prepared for the transition from "respect" to
"belief," by teaching the necessity of inviolable attachment to all
that the Pope teaches. The consummation so prepared for was not far
off The St. Brieuc Catechism of 1835, and that of the Abbé Guillois of
1851, taught that it is necessary and Catholic to believe in the Pope
as well as in the Church.

The transition from "belief" to "the faith" is very easy. Originally,
the _dépôt_ of the faith, which the Church had to guard, and to which
no man could add, and from which no man could take away, was called
The Doctrine of Christ. Then it began to be called The Doctrine of
the Apostles; later, The Doctrine of the Successors of the Apostles;
and, after that, The Doctrine of the Prince of the Successors of the
Apostles; and, finally, of course, The Doctrine of the Pope (p. 76).
The new and uniform shorter Catechism (_De Parvo Catechismo_) was to
be modelled on that of Bellarmine, others being consulted. No hint was
given as to how it was to be prepared, and the bishops raised many
doubts. Should it not be submitted to the Council? Or, if that was not
done, surely it would not be made obligatory, but only recommended.
Others would have twelve bishops elected by the Council itself to
prepare it. Some wished that, when prepared, three years should be
given for the bishops to examine and test it; and then that only after
having been approved by them should it be made binding. None of these
guards against centralization found any favour.

The complaints about the Rules, and the desire of the majority for
something to expedite business, were to produce some effect at last.
When between two and three months had passed without a single one of
the much-prepared Drafts being homologated, as the Scotch would say, by
the Council, it was time to do something. The plan of shaping Rules for
the Council without the bishops was resorted to once more. New Rules
were given out as an edict, just as the original ones had been, and
were headed _A Decree_, as if the Council itself had framed them. To
allow the conclave to make rules for itself, or to amend those imposed
upon it, would have been a dangerous approximation to ancient conciliar
forms. It had become even clearer than had been foreseen, that a free
Council would be a less docile instrument than the sort of Secret
Consistory which had been so cleverly devised.

The statement of Vitelleschi, that the Rules provided for the printing
of the speeches and their distribution among the Fathers, is not
correct; and his further statement, that they gave the Presidents
the right of cutting short any speaker, is inexact. All they give is
the ordinary right of calling a speaker back to the question, _ad
propositam quæstionem ipsum revocare_.[325] But it is a different
question, whether the Presidents did not take this as containing the
power of cutting a speaker short. Immediately after its promulgation,
Haynald made a quotation to prove that a Pope had, at the time when the
Breviary was being revised, expressed an opinion contrary to that now
held by the majority, and the President immediately requested him, says
Vitelleschi, to come down from the pulpit. That certainly is much more
than calling him back to the question. Friedrich relates this scene
as one in which signs of impatience, given both by voice and feet,
were general among the majority, even Cardinals making demonstrations.
So Cardinal Capalti seized the bell and called the speaker to the
question. The Archbishop insisted that it was the duty of the majority
to hear him; but Capalti told him that they evidently would not hear
him, and he must stop.[326]

_La Liberté du Concile_ adds an important particular.[327] Haynald had
been attacked by a Belgian bishop for an opinion expressed by him in a
speech. He immediately asked leave to reply; and, in order to observe
the Rules to the letter, he went to the _bureau_ of the Presidents, and
requested leave to speak on a personal point--the false interpretation
put upon his speech. Leave was refused, but the Presidents told him
that he could take the opportunity of explaining when he should speak
in another debate. He waited for weeks. On the day now in question,
before commencing to speak, he told the President that, after his
speech, he meant to reply to the attack which had long before been
made upon him. He was authorized to do so. But no sooner had he begun
to present his personal defence, than the majority interrupted him
with violent clamour. Instead of enforcing respect for the dignity of
the Council and the liberty of speech, one of the Presidents cried to
the speaker, "You see that they will not hear you." And when Haynald
represented that he had been authorized to defend himself, "Hold your
peace and come down" (_Taceas et descendas_), cried Cardinal Capalti,
who thus took the place of Cardinal De Angelis, the Senior President.

It was on February 22 that the new Rules were delivered, and on March
1 more than one hundred prelates, of all nations, sent in a solemn
protest to the Presiding Cardinals. This was all they could do, short
of leaving the Council. They begin by pointing out that the new Rules
professed to preserve the liberty due to bishops of the Catholic
Church; but that, in most respects, it seemed as if their liberty was
diminished by them, and even exposed to abolition.[328] The Rules said
that, when new Drafts of Decrees were distributed, the Fathers were to
send in their remarks and suggestions in writing, and the Presidents
would allow a suitable time for so doing. The petitioners represent
that this might do for ordinary matters, but when grave questions of
dogma were to be discussed, the time allowed should be very ample, and
the wishes of those who wanted an extension of it should be met.

The Rules said that, after the committee had considered such remarks
and suggestions as might have been sent in, they should present the
Draft to the Council amended, and with it a summary report containing
a _mention_ of the remarks and suggestions which had been made. The
hundred bishops say that a mention is not enough. That would leave the
committee free to omit what it pleased. The remarks and suggestions
ought to be given at full, else the committee would become the entire
Council, and, in most things, the only judge.[329] Moreover, the
reasons assigned by authors of remarks and suggestions should also
be given. They request, further, that authors of suggestions should
have the right of explaining them, and, if need be, of defending them
before the committee. The idea of a right of reply, which the original
Rules had completely ignored, had been, after a fashion, introduced
into the new ones. That is, the members of the committee were to have
the right of reply, either at once or on a later day, to any one
speaker, or to a number of them. The hundred bishops do not challenge
this immense power granted to the committee, but they demand that the
speaker so replied to shall have his right of rejoinder.

The hundred strongly reclaim against a provision for closing a
discussion by a rising and sitting vote. This, they say, is a mode of
voting unknown in Councils, and is liable to haste, to error, and to
the contagion of momentary feeling. It might be quite allowable in
parliamentary proceedings, where a thing done this year may be undone
the next. But it is not admissible in a case where the matters in hand
are so awful and irrevocable as Decrees, which once adopted are never
to be amended or discussed again. They demand that no question should
be closed so long as any one who had not spoken claimed his right to
do so as a witness and a judge of the faith. They demand also that
speakers should be heard alternately, one for and one against any
proposal under consideration; and, moreover, in matters affecting the
faith, that no discussion should be closed so long as fifty Fathers
objected. They strongly urge that, in a General Council, neither
precedent nor propriety requires that many Decrees rashly adopted shall
be preferred to a few thoroughly sifted.

They then come to the solemn point, as to how many votes suffice to
make a dogma? The new Rules did not require a majority of two-thirds,
as many political constitutions provide in a case of importance.
They left the decision open to a simple majority. This the hundred
bishops treat as a total and astounding novelty. In General Councils,
moral unanimity in matters of dogma had been the rule. It was a rule
accepted, and avowedly acted upon, at Trent, by Pius IV. No other rule
would be consistent with the principle of Vincent of Lerins, "What has
been believed always, everywhere, and by all." Catholic dogmas being
formed by consent of the Churches, it followed that they could not be
defined in a Council except by the consent, morally unanimous, of the
bishops who represent those Churches. They assert that this condition
is the pivot on which the whole Council turns. This condition, they
proceed to say, seems to be the more urgent in the Vatican Council,
because so many Fathers were admitted to vote, as to whom it was not
clear whether they held their title to do so by ecclesiastical or by
divine right.

Thus indicating the fact that, first, a majority had been made up
largely of men who represented nothing, and that now that majority was
to be used to change, not only the dogmas of the Church, but the very
source and criterion of dogma, they proceed to a sorrowful declaration,
that unless the point as to the numbers voting was conceded, their
consciences would be burdened with an intolerable weight. They should
have fears that the oecumenical character of the Council would be
called in question; that a handle would be given to enemies for attacks
on the Holy See and on the Council; and that thus the authority of
the Council would be undermined among the Christian people, as though
it had been lacking in truth and liberty; and in these troublous
times that would be a calamity so great that a worse could not be
imagined.[330]

    "Thus," cries _La Liberté du Concile_, "you have a hundred bishops
    who say, Oppression is couched in these Rules. We have liberty
    indeed, but liberty restrained, garrotted; which can be choked
    whenever they like. _Imo etiam tolli posse videatur._ They say
    more. They say that these Rules contain a grave menace, a flagrant
    violation of Catholic tradition, an intolerable oppression of their
    conscience, pregnant with the greatest perils for the future,
    capable of striking the Council to the heart and of inducing
    incalculable misfortunes. That is said by one hundred bishops."

The foundation formed by such a rule of faith as the consent of the
Churches seemed solid as long as streams were shut off, but now that
the waters were rising the bishops began to feel symptoms of a shaking.
They did not, however, yet know that one rush from a sluice, to be
suddenly opened by the Pope himself, was, ere they rose, to bear that
sand clean away, and to drop them down on to a rotten rock of Roman
infallibility. Even the consent of the Church was to be dispensed with.

In the meantime, learned bodies in Germany had hastened to support
Döllinger. Public addresses came to him from the universities of Bonn,
Prague, and Breslau, and from colleges in other places, bearing the
best names of German Catholics in letters and science. The towns,
emulating the colleges, joined in the movement; Cologne, Kempten,
Freiburg-in-Brisgau, and other places sending in addresses. Munich
voted to the venerable scholar an honorary citizenship, which he
modestly declined. It was evident that the German people would have
followed in large numbers in the movement thus begun, but the bishops
who, in Rome seemed to be earnest in opposing the Curia, suppressed
all attempts to discourage it on the part of their clergy or people.
They had woven a tangled web at Fulda, and were getting deeper and
deeper into its meshes. On the other side, the Pope, the Curia, and
the Infallibilist bishops did everything possible to bring pressure to
bear upon the bishops of the Opposition, both from the clergy and from
the people. As with Hildebrand, so now, all authority which did not
move at the beck of "Peter," was overturned or overmatched by raising
subordinates at the call of the higher power. Döllinger had said, in
reply to an address, that he had done no more than maintain views in
which, as to the substance, he was at one with the majority of the
German prelates. This was in Rome skilfully turned into a reason for
demands upon those prelates. Signor Aloysi, evidently by commission of
the Pope, proposed to the Archbishop of Munich to disavow Döllinger,
and to procure a collective disavowal from the German bishops. This the
Archbishop declined to do.

It is hardly fair to conclude that the German bishops made a show of
opposition merely to be able to say to the people, We resisted till
the word was spoken, as you did; but now that it is spoken, we submit,
and so must you. In addition to calculations of this kind there was
probably a consciousness that a mortal struggle was rising between
Rome and all the religion, freedom and light in the outside world,
and that it would go hard with Rome. The only possible counterpoise
to their fear of the Pope would have been a movement on the part of
governments to separate the Church from the State. But the politicians
were as little prepared for that as the bishops were for schism. So,
both the one and the other, however involuntarily, concurred in helping
Rome on towards the catastrophe. Ketteler proposed that the German
bishops should disavow Döllinger, but could not carry his point.[331]
He disavowed him on his own account. Senestrey forbade theological
students of his diocese to attend the classes of Döllinger; but Scherr,
Archbishop of Munich, refused to do even this. The press, however,
made amends for the slackness of the Ordinary. M. Veuillot told how
Döllinger's father had said that the devil of a boy had two heads
and no heart, and how, in his Cathedral stall, he did not know how
to handle his breviary, and sometimes read, instead of it, proofs of
his books. Quirinus might, indeed, say, "It is no longer possible to
conceal by any periphrasis the fact that the spirit the Opposition
has to combat is no other than the spirit of lying" (p. 260). But the
writers of the Curia charged upon all Opposition writers, not only
hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, but especially lying, with the
loving and making of lies.

The Pope, whose jokes and outbursts alternately supplied gossip, is
reported by Friedrich as saying that Döllinger was a heretic, or very
near it, and that Günther was much more respectable, as he had been
quiet for a long time (dead). Some one observing to him that Döllinger
was a harmless old man, he replied, Pretty kind of old man that
receives addresses from every quarter. He made no secret that he took
the Opposition bishops generally for "softheads," but thought they
must have some one behind them. He knew who nodded approval while
Strossmayer spoke, and who pressed his hand when he came down. He said
that Cardinal Schwarzenberg played the part of the sub-deacon in the
manger; that is, the part of the ass in the scene of the Nativity.
Schwarzenberg, he said, had been the only person who declared that the
definition of the Immaculate Conception would draw bad consequences
after it. But "the definition took place on a morning when the sun
shone so wonderfully that I recognized in it the confirmation of my
design." Much more chat of the same quality is given.

Friedrich has one short paragraph to the effect that it was confidently
asserted that Veuillot had a seat behind the scenes in the Council
Hall. A man deeply initiated in the secrets of the Council did not deny
it (p. 165). If this was the case, it would be curious to compare it
with M. Veuillot's account of his being on the Pincio, instead of in
the Cathedral, on the opening day. That meditation in the rain seemed
rather eccentric.

The Pope had arranged for an exhibition of Catholic art, and opened it
in person with a speech. The passage which made the greatest impression
was that in which he alluded to a recent saying of M. de Falloux,
a zealous French Catholic politician, and the actual author of the
Education Bill which embodied Montalembert's policy, to the effect
that the Church had never had her '89, and she needed one. The Pope
declared, "I say that is blasphemy." There were many versions of the
utterance, but M. Veuillot, evidently by authority, stuck to this one.
M. de Falloux, after a considerable time, wrote to Bishop Freppel,
saying that he had not used the phrase alleged. Bishop Freppel told
the Pope that M. de Falloux wrote that he had not used it. The Pope
replied that if M. de Falloux had not used it, he had not condemned M.
de Falloux. There the tale is left by Veuillot (i. p. 360).[332]

A case like this indicates the struggles between old opinion and the
new light of unforeseen circumstances, through which many must, at
this time, have been passing. In the case of Hyacinth and Gratry, the
struggle had come to the surface; in that of Döllinger, it put on the
solemnity of age; in that of Montalembert, the awe of death. From the
oratory at Birmingham to the chambers of the Quirinal, from under the
roof of the Vatican to lone stations in some mission wild, were men
moaning with a conscience-ache. The coming on of an eclipse could
hardly be more awful to a meditative Magus than the advancing shadow of
heresy on the Church herself to one who had believed her infallible.
The dread images of doubt and uncertainty not only haunted, but
threatened many a brave spirit. If the infallibility of the Church was
to be reduced to the level of that of the Popes, in the doctrines and
morals they had solemnly taught; to the level, for instance, of Pius IX
and his Syllabus--alas, alas for the great ideas of the past! And was
it so clear that it had been innocent to lay those under anathema who,
looking away from man to Christ, from Councils to the Bible, had meekly
said, The only infallible guide over life's broad sea is not the church
steeples, but the stars.

The veil is partly lifted off from one such struggle. Friedrich's stay
in Rome had been harassing. Suspected of being the correspondent of
the _Augsburg Gazette_, he had been denounced in the papers, treated
rudely by bishops, jeered at by the Pope, reported as being banished,
and dogged by police spies even in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe.
All this would intensify his perception of the moral corruption of
the city, of which many a priest before him had spoken, from Luther
to Liverani, or Lammenais. It would also give a keener edge to the
theological debates which were going on in his own mind. After an
interval of five days in his diary, he writes, under date of February
25 (p. 195)--

    At last I must once more take up the pen. If the last few days have
    been important for the history of the Council, still more important
    have they been for my own life-history. A mental struggle within
    me has reached its close, one which was hard to undergo, and which
    shook my entire mental and physical being. Now all stands clear
    before my eyes. I know the end toward which I am to steer. The Lord
    has once more led me a stage further in my life-path. It was truly
    a melancholy thought for me when, finding for a moment a point of
    rest in the midst of this struggle, I looked back upon my peculiar
    course. From that decision to become a Jesuit, onwards to this
    journey to Rome, an unseen hand has so perceptibly led me, almost
    always without design of mine, that even here, in the midst of the
    new storms, I have been able to take fresh courage. I stand here in
    Rome only through the unseen guidance of the Lord; for it was not
    I that ever took a step to come here; indeed, all was done without
    me. But I see clearly that even that dispensation was to purify my
    views and intentions, and to lead me on towards the sole prescribed
    end of my life.

    At one time, how much was Rome for me! How did I, in a sense,
    worship all that came from it! Now I see that here reign not only
    the most horrid ignorance, but, still more, pride, lies, and sin.
    Henceforth my life has its task marked out for two ends. Henceforth
    it is devoted to the struggle against the Curia (not primacy), and
    to that against the Jesuits. If I fall in it, I shall believe that
    the Lord has so willed, and that there can be, and that there is,
    a martyrdom for Christ, and for His Church, among the faithful.
    If I have had to learn here that the Curialists and the Jesuits
    are enemies not less furious than the heathen, I shall openly show
    the world that they do not scruple to devise the death of their
    enemies. The _Univers_ may erroneously write, "The scandal in Rome
    is great," because I am here and am betraying the secrets of Rome;
    but one may say with full right, "The scandal in Christendom is
    great."

The bishops of the minority still declared their determination to
resist every attempt to concentrate infallibility in the Pope; but
Darboy said to a diplomatist, What use is it to send in protests that
never receive an answer?[333] The last protest, however, contained
the grave matter in which a hundred bishops pledged themselves to
language casting doubt upon the oecumenicity of the Council. Of no
use for its immediate purpose, that document will always be of real
use in judging of the value of much that has been said by its signers
since the Council. Prominent Infallibilists intimated that the dogma
would not be so defined as to declare the opposite opinion a heresy.
Yes, says Friedrich, they would leave it as Trent left the Immaculate
Conception--in such a position that some day, when the sun shines fair
upon a Pope, it may be promulged as a dogma. Then he adds, what many
may have heard stated in Rome, It is strongly asserted that the very
reason why the Council Hall has been placed where it stands, is that
there at a certain hour the sunbeams fall upon the Papal throne (p.
219).

Vitelleschi says that the visitors to the Exhibition of Church Art
did not generally exceed the number of the _gendarmes_, and expresses
an opinion that the real Christian arts are better represented in
such international exhibitions as might be seen elsewhere. Anything
less like Christianity than many of the objects which in Rome are
called objects of Christian art, is hard to conceive, or anything
more fitted to turn men into triflers, if once they give themselves
up to such baubles as the great concern of life, either social or
religious. In this exhibition, Friedrich was struck with a statue of
the Pope defining the Immaculate Conception, and with pictures of the
same event, "with the inevitable sunbeams." He was also arrested by a
group of the Risen Christ, with Pius standing before Him in a flowing
pluvial. He says that when one looks at the humble figure of our
Lord, and then at the self-conscious Pius, one is inclined to surmise
that the latter is thinking, "I am not only what Thou art, but much
more. I command all; Thou didst serve all" (p. 220). Quirinus quotes,
without translating it, a saying of an Italian noble, which might
have suggested the very thought: "Other Popes believed that they were
Vicars of Christ; but this Pope believes that our Lord is his Vicar
in heaven" (p. 326). These are the things which the worshippers of
Pius IX call blasphemy, while most Italians smile if you doubt their
legitimacy. Friedrich tells how the auditor of Cardinal Hohenlohe,
an ecclesiastic, expressed the horror that had been caused in Rome
by Friedrich's articles on Manning in the _Literaturblatt_. He added
that Hohenlohe would have been a great Cardinal but for two blunders,
that of visiting Cardinal Andrea when he returned to Rome, and that of
bringing Professor Friedrich to the Council (p. 220).

The ministry of Prince Hohenlohe, in Bavaria, had fallen under the
hostile influences of the Church party. On the other hand, the recent
action of France and Austria had shown that possibly the Curia, if not
prompt, might meet with more formidable checks than any that could
arise from Bavaria. As to France, the Curia would seem, rightly or
wrongly, to have felt that if Napoleon dared them to the worst, they
could shake him out of his place, if not as easily, yet as surely as
the bearers of the Pope's portative throne could upset a Pontiff.
Daru's demands were officially made known by the reluctant, indeed the
all but recalcitrant M. de Banneville, no earlier than March 1. At
this very time Dupanloup was drawing up, and the French bishops were
preparing to sign, the protest against the new Rules. The adhesion of
the German and Hungarian bishops to this protest was to be foreseen.
The Curia, therefore, took the decision to face both Bonapartes and
bishops, and to throw down the gauntlet.

The meetings of General Congregations had been suspended to give the
Fathers time for study. On the evening of March 7 a short notice was
sent round to their houses, saying that an additional chapter, to be
called the Eleventh, would be inserted in the Draft of Decrees on
the Church. This new chapter was simply that declaration of Papal
infallibility which had been asked for by the famous Address. So the
die was cast. All uncertainty as to the designs of the Curia was at
an end. Not only was the dogma to be defined, but all who should deny
it were to be excluded from the unity of the Church. Quirinus says
that the Pope gave his sanction to this critical act under great
personal excitement. For four-and-twenty years had he sought the crown
of infallibility, believing himself to be wrongfully deprived of it
by the error and unbelief of mankind. In 1848, when Count Mamiani,
after ceasing to be the Prime Minister of the new Pontiff, met his
friends in Florence, he said, "It is utterly impossible to act as the
constitutional minister of a Pope who is stark mad on the subject of
his own personal infallibility."[334]

The bishops found that they had only ten days allowed them to send in
their written comments upon the fundamental change now impending in
the constitution of the Church, in their creed, and in their standard
of faith. Vitelleschi remarks that the brevity of the time given
will remain as a testimony to the pressure exercised, and will lower
the impression of the wisdom of men who hurried the Church through
such a transformation.[335] The _Civiltá_ states that the time was
afterwards extended by a week.[336] If it was proposed to give to
Orders of the Queen in Council all the scope and effect of Acts of
Parliament, our Lords and Commons would expect at least one week beyond
ten days' notice before meeting the Court party in the lists, and more
particularly if the right of moving that the Bill should be read that
day six months had been for ever snatched away from them.

A visit of the ex-Grand Duke of Tuscany, or, as the _Civiltá_ takes
care to call him, the Grand Duke, is formally recorded, as if to show
the proper relations between princes and the Pontiff. On his arrival,
the Grand Duke was waited upon by the majordomo and chamberlain of
the Pope; and next day by Antonelli, as Secretary of State. The day
following, the Grand Duke "went to the apostolic palace to do homage
to the Holy Father." This is the true language of vassalage. To make
it plainer, the Pope, on the same day, "admitted the Archduke Charles
of Tuscany to an audience."[337] It was, however, not encouraging for
the projectors of "a new world" that the only princes who came with
suitable reverence to the door which formed the entrance to it were
princes who represented a world that had waxed old, had decayed, and
indeed had vanished away.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 320: _Friedberg_, p. 112.]

[Footnote 321: _Friedberg_, p. 114.]

[Footnote 322: _Friedberg_, p. 138.]

[Footnote 323: _Vitelleschi_, p. 81.]

[Footnote 324: _Quirinus_, p. 267.]

[Footnote 325: _Friedberg_, p. 415; _Acta_, p. 18; Freiburg ed., p.
163.]

[Footnote 326: _Friedrich_, p. 198.]

[Footnote 327: _Doc. ad Ill._, i. 164.]

[Footnote 328: "_In pluribus Patrum libertas inde minui, imo etiam
tolli posse videatur._"]

[Footnote 329: _Alioquin jam deputatio esset totum concilium et in
pluribus solus judex._]

[Footnote 330: _Documenta_, i. p. 263. Here _veritas_ seems to mean
reality "quasi veritate et libertate caruerit."]

[Footnote 331: _Quirinus_, p. 261.]

[Footnote 332: Strangely enough, in April 1876, the papers spoke of
the excitement caused in France by the fact that Bishop Freppel had
positively excommunicated the zealous M. de Falloux for some breach of
the ecclesiastical law, in a matter connected with Church property.]

[Footnote 333: _Tagebuch_, p. 219.]

[Footnote 334: See a very life-like sketch of Pio Nono in the
_Manchester Examiner and Times_ of December 17, 1874, which, in Rome,
is ascribed to the pen of Mr. Montgomery Stuart.]

[Footnote 335: _Vitelleschi_, p. 177.]

[Footnote 336: Srrie II. x. 112.]

[Footnote 337: _Civiltá_, VII. x. 118.]

_BOOK IV_

_FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY TO THE
SUSPENSION OF THE COUNCIL_

CHAPTER I

Joy of Don Margotti--New Feelers for an Acclamation--Suggested Model
of the Scene--Its Political Import--A Pause--Case of the Jesuit
Kleutgen--Schwarzenberg out of Favour--Politics of Poland--Döllinger
on the New Rules--Last Protest of Montalembert--His Death--Consequent
Proceedings in Rome.

"The Vicar of Jesus Christ for ever" was the title of the article in
which Don Margotti announced the fact that the Pope had sent in the
proposal of infallibility. Ollivier, said Don Margotti, once stated
that he loved strong powers with confidence in themselves, and as the
Pope always wished to be loved by ministers of Napoleon III, he had
showed them that he was strong.[338] "It is a great spectacle, but it
will be a still greater one when infallibility is proclaimed, and the
Syllabus is proclaimed, in spite of the opposition of governments, of
revolutions, and of all hell."

But the speedy closing of the question, now formally opened, was
indispensable. The suggestion of an acclamation on the day of Mary in
December had proved vain; but the day of Joseph was now approaching.
The term allowed for sending in written observations on the Draft would
expire on March 17, and the _Unitá_, in its number of the 11th, put up
the following prayer: "O Blessed St. Joseph, grant us the grace that
on the 18th of March may be discussed, and on the 19th, the day of thy
Festival, may be proclaimed, the most pleasant and most wise doctrine
of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ." The correspondent
of the _Unitá_ from Rome said, "We hope for the definition on the 19th,
St. Joseph's Day"; and its correspondent at Paris stated that no doubt
existed that the dogma would be proclaimed on that day. Two days before
the one so anticipated, the _Unitá_ published suggestive accounts of
the scenes in 1854, when the Immaculate Conception was acclaimed. It
quoted Canon Audisio, a well-known writer, and one sometimes called a
Liberal Catholic. Just after the noontide bell, when the two hundred
bishops had knelt to repeat the Angelus, as soon as they resumed their
seats, a cry speedily broke out from among them, _Petre, doce nos:
confirma fratres tuos_: (Peter, teach us! strengthen thy brethren!) The
teaching desired was a definition of the Immaculate Conception. The
whole assembly wept. "It was a weeping so cordial and sublime that you
cannot imagine it, and pen cannot describe it."

After this hint, as to what the scene--always a chief point--on the
19th should be, the principles of polity involved in the scene are
indicated; for in Rome all acting is for the purpose of ruling. Some
prelates, said the _Araldo di Lucca_, as quoted by the _Unitá_, had
thought that the Bull announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
should make mention of the assembly of the bishops; but a prelate from
France, rising _in the spirit of Athanasius_, said, "No; the episcopate
should not decide, but only the chief Pontiff; he alone must speak."
He went on to argue that, by showing obedience to the Pontiff, they
would secure the obedience of the people, and strengthen the principle
of authority. The _Unitá_ significantly adds, "It appears to us, and
it will appear to all, that not only the dogma of the Immaculate was
defined on that memorable sitting of the 24th of November, 1854, but
also that of Papal infallibility."

While the party of movement was full of hope, the minority were in
dismay. Their chosen ground of inopportuneness had been cut from under
their feet. The Pope and five hundred bishops had decided that the
question was opportune. They now felt that if the dogma should be
suddenly defined, they must either submit or be outside of the Church.
The new Rules permitted the discussion to be closed at the will of
the majority. It was notorious that any discussion whatever, on a
point so immediately affecting the authority of the Pope, not only in
the Church, but also in the world, was hateful to every right-minded
Curialist, and, in fact, that as taking place hard by the tomb of St.
Peter, such a discussion was regarded as a thing all but intolerable.
The suggestions in the _Unitá_ from Rome, Paris, and Turin had not been
put out without high sanction. Was it possible that, on St. Joseph's
Day, all would be ended by an irresistible acclamation?

Some think that so deep a feeling was now produced in the minority,
and that so clear did they make it that they would not acquiesce in
an acclamation, that they impressed the Vatican for a time. Friedrich
repeats, on the authority of one who was intimate with the Pope, a
saying of the latter, "The Jesuits have set me on this road, and now I
shall go on in it, and they must bear the responsibility." The personal
position of members of the minority became more and more trying, owing
to the increasingly active part taken by the Pontiff in the discussion.
A second brief to the Jesuit Ramière[339] followed the one which
ridiculed Maret, commending another publication of the same author,
in which, alluding to the possibility that some now opposing the
infallibility of the Pope would secede from the Church, Ramière said,
"These form the secret enemy who impedes our march, and, in driving him
from our ranks, the sacred army will obtain the most precious guarantee
of its future success."[340] Friedrich adds, what agrees with much that
is said, or hinted, by other Liberal Catholics, strange as it sounds in
our ears, "Any one who knows the Jesuits can explain the closing words
of the pamphlet, 'Then, truly will the Council have realized the most
ardent desire of the Saviour, and established the conditions on which
this divine Master makes the submission of the entire world to the yoke
of the faith depend.'"

    "That is," explains Friedrich, "the yoke of the Society of Jesus;
    for even under the name Jesus, 'we are only to understand the
    Society of Jesu.' At the Festival of St. Ignatius Loyola, priests
    must repeat the words, with great emphasis, 'At the name of Jesu
    every knee shall bow.' The former Confessor of the Pope, now
    replaced by a Jesuit, always felt scandalized by this, on the eve
    of the Festival, and earnestly wished to have those words removed
    from the Mass for Loyola's Day."

Archbishop Cardoni, being asked what had become of the Draft Decrees
on Faith, said that the committee first examined them, after which
Deschamps, Pie, and Martin, as a sub-committee, partly prepared
a revised form, and finally the recasting of them was completed
by Kleutgen, the Jesuit. What, it was asked, the Kleutgen who was
condemned by the Inquisition? Yes, replied the Archbishop faintly.
This Kleutgen had been a German political refugee, but joined the
Jesuits, and became confessor to a nunnery. One of the nuns, a
German princess, was dying. Her relations, through interest with the
Pope, succeeded in procuring her release. It proved to be a case of
poisoning. The Inquisitors took proceedings, and Kleutgen was somehow
incriminated. The convent was closed, the nuns were dispersed into
other establishments, and the confessor was sentenced to prison for six
years. The imprisonment was changed into reclusion in one of the Jesuit
houses, in a delightful neighbourhood near Rome. Kleutgen found means
to regain favour, and was now remoulding the faith for the benefit of
reconstituted society.[341]

Cardoni told how he, an Archbishop, had been received the preceding day
by the Pope before Schwarzenberg, a Cardinal and a prince, and it was
added that Schwarzenberg had been obliged to wait a fortnight for his
audience, whereas a Cardinal was entitled to have one after two days.
Cardinal De Angelis alleged that the Pope had seen Schwarzenberg behind
the Vatican smoking a cigar, with a "small hat" on his head. To this
the Germans replied that it was well known that Schwarzenberg did not
smoke.[342] We cannot state what would be the penalty for a Cardinal
convicted of wearing a small hat, but they are a class of "creatures"
whose eternal salvation may, by the will of their lord, be declared to
depend on matters the connexion of which with the Christian religion
it takes a Pontiff to find out. Sixtus V decreed the penalty of
excommunication against any Cardinal who should open a letter bearing
the plain address "Cardinal," without the title "Most Illustrious and
Most Reverend." They were to burn such letters. (_Frond_, ii., p. xiii.)

Archbishop Ledochowski, whose name has frequently been heard of since
the Council, had been made Primate of Poland by the Pope. This office,
in olden time, carried with it the regency of the country, in the
interregnum between the death of one king and the election of another.
As primate, the Archbishop put on the colours of a Cardinal. Count
L---- told Friedrich that Ledochowski had said that he was right glad
that he had so early joined the Infallibilists, for Rome was certain
to carry through what she had taken in hand, and therefore the bishops
of the Opposition would gradually come over to the right side, and
would cut a poor figure at the last. Count L---- expressed himself as
indignant at this morality. But, said Friedrich, scarcely had the Count
ended, when I read in the _Univers_ that Ledochowski was mentioned
for promotion as a Cardinal. We may here, as illustrating the bearing
of titles and colours on very serious affairs, interject a statement
of what happened later.[343] Ledochowski, after the Council, at once
took up a new position. When the German bishops next met at Fulda, he
would not join them. As Primate of Poland, he said, he belonged to the
tomb of St. Adelbert rather than to that of St. Boniface. He would
no longer admit Germans to his seminary for priests. In places where
preaching had existed alternately in German and Polish, he suppressed
the German. His organ, the _Tyotnick_, related how, during the Council,
the Pope had given him the title of Primate of Poland, but denied that
he _used_ the political powers attached to the title. Nevertheless, the
_Catholic Calendar_ for 1872, published in Thorn, placed the name of
Ledochowski in the list of reigning princes, as Primate of Poland and
representative of the King of Poland. So that, if the powers attached
to the title were not used, the reasons were not far to seek.[344]

While early converts were joyful, Ketteler continued to be mysterious.
In a meeting of German prelates he declared that, though all his life
he had worked for infallibility, he could not do so now. This Draft
Decree was a crime. But what was to be done? Send in another protest?
All cried out at once, No! no! they have treated us like domestics, and
not even given us an answer.[345]

On February 27 Don Margotti had said that even a Protestant or a
Mohammedan, a Schismatic or a Jew, would see from the new Rules that no
assembly could be freer. Döllinger, on the other hand, had published a
letter on the new Rules. He took the ground indicated in the protest
of the one hundred bishops. In matters of faith, as he contended, the
Rules shifted the source of authority from tradition to majority. This
he showed to be a direct departure from the doctrine of the Catholic
Church.

The days which some had fixed upon for the triumph of an acclamation
were passed in excitement of a different kind. A letter appeared in
the _Gazette de France_ and the _Times_, from Montalembert, addressed
to some gentleman who had challenged his present opposition as
inconsistent with his former championship of the Church. The dying
man then delivered his last public utterance. He protested that, in
his early days, the pretensions now put forth were unheard of. In
language already cited he described the incredible change of the clergy
after 1850, and their present shortsighted prostration before the idol
they had set up. He showed that in his speech of 1847 there was not a
word of the doctrine of Papal infallibility. He might have indicated
also the still more celebrated speech on the restoration of Pius IX.
He quoted that remarkable letter of Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, in
which he depicted the difference between the old Ultramontanism and
the new. Montalembert then declared that his whole regret was that
illness prevented him from descending into the arena to join Dupanloup
and Gratry, to contend on his own ground, that of history and of
social consequences. "Then should I merit--and it is my sole remaining
ambition--a share in the _litanies of insult_ daily launched against
my illustrious friends by a portion, too numerous, of the clergy--that
poor clergy which is preparing for itself so sad a destiny, and which
formerly I loved, defended, and honoured, as no one in modern France
had done." The _Unitá_ cried, "Better for Montalembert had he died
a year ago; better indeed had he never been born."[346] While these
words were ringing in the ears of all, came a telegram announcing
that Montalembert was no more. That evening the Pope had one of those
audiences in which he delights; a kind of public meeting, with three
hundred persons present. Of course every one expected that the little
member which in the days of Pius IX has done much to make the Pope an
entertainment for Italians, would not be able to keep off the exciting
topic. "A Catholic has just died," said his Holiness, "who rendered
services to the Church. He wrote a letter which I have read. I know not
what he said at the moment of death; but I know one thing--that man
had a great enemy, pride. He was a Liberal Catholic--that is to say, a
half-Catholic.... Yes, Liberal Catholics are half-Catholics."[347]

About the time when the Pope was thus speaking of him whose eloquence
had been worth regiments to him, Father Combalot was crying from the
pulpit of Notre Dame Della Valle--

    "Satan has entered into Judas! There are men who were Christians,
    and who on the brink of the grave become enemies of the Pope, and
    speak of torrents of adulation, and accuse us of erecting him into
    an idol. To speak so is Satanic work. There are three academicians
    who do it" [Montalembert, Gratry, and Dupanloup].[348]

Archbishop De Mérode, brother-in-law of Montalembert, and almoner
to the Pope, arranged that a High Mass should be celebrated in the
Aracoeli on the height of the Capitoline, that is, the church of the
Roman municipality, in which Montalembert was entitled to the honour
of such a solemnity because of the dignity of Roman citizen which had
been conferred upon him for his distinguished services to the Church.
On the 16th a notice was circulated, announcing the intended Mass, in
publishing which the _Univers_ stated that it was known that there
would be no oration--a record which spoiled subsequent fables. Late
that evening, in the great church of the French, a preacher dwelt upon
the memory of Montalembert, inviting the audience to the solemn service
at the Capitoline the next morning. At the same time the rooms of
Archbishop Darboy were crowded. French prelates related what remarks
they had written on the proposal for infallibility. Each one beheld
in his own a great and heroic act. Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims,
had employed a quotation from Bessarion against the curial system,
and expected to be called Jansenist, Gallican, Febronian, and such
like. Friedrich, we suspect, was making prelates understand that if
once they allowed themselves to recommence deliberation under the new
Rules, all hope of successful opposition would be idle, and hinting his
belief that under such Rules the Council had no proper oecumenicity.
Suddenly news came from Mérode. Something was wrong. It proved that
the High Mass for Montalembert had been forbidden by the Pontiff.
What! the departed spirit of the foremost Frenchman in the chivalry
of the Church to be insulted on the Capitoline by the Pope in person!
Among all those Frenchmen, many were old enough to remember the most
brilliant of Montalembert's sallies, and all were old enough to have
witnessed the public disgust when a Court chamberlain turned him out at
the election of 1857, half of the clergy voting against him, and the
other half staying at home. But this beat all. A Cardinal present could
not restrain the confession, "Now I am well ashamed of being a Roman
Cardinal."[349]

The announcement was too late to reach all, and when the hour for
the service came, some twenty bishops and many French notables
assembled. Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits, had come from the
neighbouring _Gesù_, thinking, doubtless, of the splendid services to
the Order which had been rendered by the confiding genius of the man
for whose soul he was now to pray. Even Louis Veuillot came, trying
to forget the irritations of recent years, perhaps hoping in part to
make reparation for ingratitude and insolence, and unable now to see
the opponent, seeing only as in old days the "son of the Crusaders,"
facing, provoking, and dominating a hostile Parliament, with his
head back and his blue eye flashing, till at some turning-point in
his theme the fountains of a great deep broke up, the deep of his
mighty emotions, and then gushed out a flood which carried all before
it. When they reached the steps of the Aracoeli, an official, who
was one of the subordinates of Mérode, cried out in a French phrase
which he had learned on purpose, that they must go away, that the
Mass was forbidden. It is evident that they were all overcome with
mortification, not to use stronger language. Even M. Veuillot pushed by
and said, "It can do no harm to repeat some paternosters for him."[350]

Quirinus says that probably it was De Banneville who represented to
the Pope the serious effects that would be produced in France by this
proceeding. So, on the evening of the 17th, instead of arranging
for the acclamation of infallibility, the Pope was making the small
amends of sending a private message to have a Mass celebrated, on
the following morning, on behalf of a certain deceased Charles, in
the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina. No public notice whatever was
given of this service. The bishops were all shut up in a General
Congregation. The Pope went privately, without any suite, sat hidden
in a latticed "tribune," and then had it announced to the world that
he had personally attended a Mass on behalf of Montalembert. When the
exceedingly painful feeling he had caused began to appear, an attempt
was made to turn the occasion to account by throwing the blame on
Dupanloup. It was declared that it had been announced that he would
deliver an oration, and indeed that the proposed function had been got
up by him as a party demonstration. This gave Dupanloup the opportunity
of writing[351]:--

    This is an outrage at once upon the Holy Father, Monsignor De
    Mérode, the bishops, and myself. This entire tale, Sir, is false
    from the first word to the last. I did not appoint the service.
    I was not to officiate. I have had nothing whatever to do in
    distributing cards of invitation. Whatever may have been my
    profound and inviolable affection for M. De Montalembert, it
    belonged to the members of his family present in Rome, Monsignor
    De Mérode and the Count De Mérode, and not to me, to arrange the
    details of this religious ceremony. It is within my knowledge that
    in doing so they conformed to all the laws and formalities usual in
    Rome in similar cases.

The last statement was made to upset one of the excuses, that proper
leave had not been asked for the service. So those false stories, at
least, were stayed.

As the news spread in succession from place to place, the imaginations
of Liberal Catholics all over Europe would restlessly wander up and
down the Capitoline, seeing on that historical slope the signal given
for their eternal disgrace in the Holy City. It was given too by an
arrow shot from the Pontiff's own bow, and aimed at the shade of
Montalembert. We do not profess to know what injury the imagination
of such men might picture as having been done to the spirit that was
gone, but those Christians who believe in a God who, not even in this
world, much less in the great hereafter, trusts any child of man,
though the least of all the little ones, to a Vicar--those who believe
in a sacrifice which no man can repeat, prohibit, or buy, when they
heard what had occurred, saw the spirit pass into the true temple,
_and outfly all the arrows of death_. Oh, how benign is that light of
immortality which shows us the spirits of the departed resting in the
hands of their Father, altogether above dependence on the malice or the
compassion, on the liberality or the avarice, on the devotion or the
unbelief of living men; and which, with the same blessed beam, shows us
the living protected from all possible malice, raised into independence
of all possible goodwill of the dead, by a near and solicitous paternal
Watcher. All the traffic of the markets of Purgatory, a traffic as low
and demoralizing as any traffic can be, scarcely exposes the system
which has sprung up around that invention so much as one broil like
that which the traffickers raised around the soul of Montalembert--no,
not around his soul, that was beyond their reach, only around his
memory.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 338: _Unitá Cattolica_, March 10.]

[Footnote 339: _Friedberg_, p. 491.]

[Footnote 340: _Tagebuch_, p. 221.]

[Footnote 341: _Tagebuch_, p. 230.]

[Footnote 342: _Ibid._, p. 231.]

[Footnote 343: Menzel, _Jesuitenumtriebe_, p. 297.]

[Footnote 344: The following passage in the speech made to the Pope
by Ledochowski on his elevation to the purple, is taken from the
_Emancipatore Cattolico_, April 22, 1876:--"And as the persecution
was most bitter in that part of Poland which is now under Prussian
occupation ... the honour of this sacred purple falls like a celestial
dew upon my oppressed and agonised country, and seems silently to say
to her, that if forgotten and abandoned of the world, she is still
loved and blessed by God, of whom your Holiness is the Vicar." The very
next paragraph in the same paper is headed, _The Heresy of Love of
Country_.]

[Footnote 345: _Tagebuch_, p. 236.]

[Footnote 346: March 11.]

[Footnote 347: This is the version quoted from the _Moniteur Universel_
in _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, p. 154. M. Veuillot acknowledged that
the "hard word" was in the speech, and the above version has not been
denied.]

[Footnote 348: _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, p. 155, quoting _Gazette
de France_, March 20. In the _Univers_ of April 4, quoted on the same
page, Combalot acknowledged the words, and said that he was preaching
at the time "by the grace and the mission of the infallible Pontiff."]

[Footnote 349: _Tagebuch_, p. 259.]

[Footnote 350: This trait of kindly feeling is given by Friedrich.]

[Footnote 351: The fullest account of the whole transaction is that in
_Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_. But Friedrich, Quirinus, Veuillot, and
Fromman have all been consulted, and show that the main particulars
admit of no doubt. Dupanloup's letter is both in _Ce Qui se Passe au
Concile_, and in German, in _Friedberg_, p. 110.]

CHAPTER II

Threat of American Prelates--Acclamation again fails--New
Protest--Decrees on Dogma--Ingenious connexion of Creation with the
Curia--Serious Allegations of Unfair and Irregular Proceedings of the
Officials--Fears at the Opening of the New Session--The Three Devotions
of Rome--More Hatred of Constitutions--Noisy Sitting; Strossmayer
put down--The Pope's Comments--He compares the Opposition to Pilate
and to the Freemasons--He is reconciled to Mérode--The Idea of
Charlemagne--Secret Change of a Formula before the Vote.

"That took effect," wrote Quirinus, for once, in noting a step of
members of the minority. The step so spoken of was a simple one. Four
American prelates sent in a declaration that if any attempt was made to
carry infallibility by acclamation, as had been suggested, they would
leave the Council, go home, and publish their reasons for so doing.

Whether this proceeding alone, or this together with other indications,
influenced the majority, certain it is that when the General
Congregations were resumed, on March 18, there was no acclamation. St.
Joseph did not avail more for his day than the Immaculate had done for
hers. All that we hear of any attempt to provoke an acclamation is the
statement of Vitelleschi that one prelate tried to get infallibility
carried "by chance," but received countenance only from very few. The
minority gave in their protest against the new Rules to the Presiding
Cardinals. We need not say that neither then nor at any later time did
they receive an answer. The business now placed before the Fathers was
the Draft of Decrees on Dogma as revised. The eighteen chapters had,
under the hands of the committee, the sub-committee, and Kleutgen,
shrunk to four. Even as they now stood, the chapters had to undergo
considerable alteration before taking the shape in which they appear
upon the _Acta_. As they stand there, they are not at first sight
capable of interesting the theologian for their theology, or the
politician for their bearing on politics. At the time, they led many to
wonder why grave men should have spent years in formulating rudimentary
principles, and that not very successfully. The alleged reason was
that everything being wrong in the ideas of the age, the Church must
commence by asserting the existence of a God, and the fact that He had
created the world. An attempt was made to throw some dignity about
this proceeding by quoting a prophecy of some saint, to the effect
that an age would come when a General Council would have to do this.
On the other hand, as Vitelleschi shows, Roman wit said that really,
after sitting four months and a half, the Vatican Council would vote
almost unanimously that God created the world. Friedrich, however, saw
that the Curial system was insinuated in these Decrees, but it took a
theologian to discern it, and one who was not a mere theologian. Yet
when it was pointed out there could be no doubt of the fact. The simple
headings, "God, the Creator of the World," "Revelation," "Faith,"
and "Faith and Reason," would to Protestant eyes seem very unlikely
to cover any such purpose. Nevertheless, they are made to serve the
purpose of laying a foundation for the dominion of the Church, over
all science and knowledge, for the dominion of the Pope, ay, even that
of the Roman Congregations, over the Church, and for the lifting of
men out of civil control into the higher sphere of Christian liberty,
or, as the world would call it, for placing them under the dominion
of ecclesiastical law. The process by which this is done is simple,
and had been clearly indicated in the officious expositions of those
judgments of the Syllabus which condemned "naturalism." First, God,
as a personal Being, exists, has created the world, and rules it.
Secondly, He gives a revelation by which man is raised above natural
knowledge and perfection to a higher knowledge and perfection. Thirdly,
this revelation is a deposit committed to the Church, which holds in
charge the Word of God, _written and traditional_; and all things
are to be believed which she propounds as divinely revealed, whether
they are propounded by solemn judgment, or by the ordinary teaching
authority. Hence, naturally, all science must be held subject to this
faith, and therefore subject to this Church; and _all things condemned
in the Decrees of the Holy See_ are to be held as anathema, even though
not specified in the present Decrees.

The four chapters containing these principles would not fix the
attention of any student if he took them up in a village of the
Campagna or of Connaught as the work of the priest of the parish. He
would be tempted to doubt whether the worthy man who faced Atheism and
Pantheism with these weapons had ever really met with them face to
face in either their ancient or modern forms. He might even be tempted
to think that the intellectual life of the author had been passed
within walls, and that so far as concerns the books and the minds
which really sway contemporary thought in either of the directions
indicated, he had scarcely ever felt their grip. But when we look at
this document as the work of a great society, on the preparation of
which had been employed the leisure of years by a few, and then the
united counsels of a large yet elect number, it certainly does not
exalt our idea of human gifts. But it is not well to let the critical
contempt which German scholars especially have displayed for the Drafts
while under discussion, and for the Decrees when ultimately framed,
blind us to the practical success of this late but adroit creed. For
the purpose of laying a colourable theological basis under a municipal
arrangement for governing mind and knowledge, belief and morals, laws
and institutions all over the world, by a college of Augurs called
Christian priests, it was not a mere superfluity of the professors,
as many seemed to think. Sambin, Guérin, and other writers, not to
mention prelates in abundance, struck a note, which is now taken up in
colleges, seminaries, and schools. These compact chapters, being once
exalted to the level of the Word of God, formed a short and easy method
for connecting the Creator and the creation of the world with the last
edict of the Vatican.

One of the startling statements in the secret memorandum, _La Liberté
du Concile_, touches this Decree. A conclusion to it was proposed which
to many appeared to include infallibility. This was strongly opposed.
The committee withdrew it, saying that it would be reserved to the end
of the final chapter on Faith. This step was applauded. The next day,
or the next but one, however, the reporter announced that the vote upon
it would be taken then and there. Eighty-three, in voting, demanded
modifications; which, according to the Rules, compelled a consideration
by the committee of the amendments they proposed. The committee finally
resolved, with one dissentient, to substitute a new wording which would
satisfy all. But when the moment came to vote, before the reporter
mounted the pulpit, a communication was put into his hands. This
attracted the attention of the Fathers. He mounted the pulpit, but did
not report what the committee had adopted! He did report what it had
set aside! The vote was instantly called for--no one could speak, the
Rules did not allow it. The majority did its duty; and the wording,
surreptitiously reported, was made "of Faith."[352]

Strong and circumstantial confirmation of this incredible statement is
given in Kenrick's unspoken speech.[353] Incidentally he says, "The
reporter, while we wondered what was the matter, suddenly recommended
this conclusion, which had been first submitted and then withdrawn."
This he says only on his way to tell Archbishop Manning that if the
sense put by him upon this famous conclusion was the true one, the
reporter was either himself deceived or had, knowingly, deceived the
bishops. Deceiver or deceived, his declaration had won many votes.
To get the clause passed, the reporter said it taught no doctrine,
and was only a conclusion to round off the chapters. But when once
passed, Manning cited it as concluding the question of infallibility,
and making it improper for the bishops to discuss that question any
longer.[354] Kenrick confesses that at the time he feared a trap.
The writer of _La Liberté du Concile_ declares that if the liberty
of the Council was doubtful, this incident proved the liberty of the
committees to be more doubtful still.

The sitting was opened with evident anxiety on both sides. The minority
feared the threatened attempt at acclamation; the majority feared that
the minority would formally refuse to enter on deliberation under
the new Rules. When, however, instead of action, the paper protest
was given in, and the reporter for the committee, Simor, Primate of
Hungary, had mounted the pulpit, and things had resumed their course,
the majority were evidently relieved. They knew that the minority had
now committed themselves to the new Rules; and that, however they
might recalcitrate hereafter, they would no more be able to shake off
the meshes of the net than they had been in the past to shake off
those of the old Rules. Five speakers had inscribed their names. They
were supporters of the committee. It proved that the acoustics of the
Hall had really been improved by a boarded partition which had been
substituted for the curtain. When three had spoken the bell of the
President rang, and the speaker then in possession was stopped. The
Pope was descending to view the sacred relics, and the Fathers had to
break up to form a procession in his train. Not one of them had been
called to swell that train in the morning when he went, not to see and
to be seen, but to the mass for "a certain Charles." At the close of
this anxious sitting Bishop Pie congratulated Cardinal Bilio, "It has
gone off well." So it had; the minority were now fairly enclosed in the
net.

M. Veuillot cries, "There are three great devotions in Rome: the Holy
Sacrament, the Holy Virgin, and the Pope. Rome is the city of the Real
Presence, and the city of the Mother of God, and the city of the Vicar
of Jesus Christ."[355] That saying sheds a clear light on the effect
of materializing and localizing the idea of the _divine presence_ by
such notions as that of transubstantiation. The show of constitutional
reforms just then being made in Paris by Napoleon III, contrasting
as it did with what was being done in Rome, naturally disgusted M.
Veuillot. He said that the title of Emperor now seemed grotesque. It
was sad to witness the crown turned into a curiosity of the museum,
or an accessory of the theatre. This was his idea of a constitutional
crown. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the tiara
remained to us. Happily it was more solid than the crown. Pius IX.,
he said, would bequeath it to his successor more brilliant and more
indestructible. Scandal of the world! kingdoms everywhere and no kings!
Here is a king, but no kingdom! Let Liberals come to the Vatican and
attempt to take liberties with the constitution. Let even universal
suffrage attempt it; let it try to make any change here in which the
guardian of the constitution does not concur.[356]

The noisy sitting of March 22 has had its echoes all over the world.
The contradictions given by inspired writers to the uninspired ones
appear to be even less definite than usual. We may content ourselves
with giving that of Cardinal Manning as the sum of them all:--

    Having from my earliest remembrance been a witness of public
    assemblies of all kinds, and especially of those among ourselves,
    which for gravity and dignity are supposed to exceed all others,
    I am able and bound to say that I have never seen such calmness,
    self-respect, mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control, as
    in the eighty-nine sessions of the Vatican Council. In a period
    of nine months the Cardinal President was compelled to recall
    the speakers to order perhaps twelve or fourteen times. In any
    other assembly they would have been inexorably recalled to the
    question sevenfold oftener and sooner. Nothing could exceed the
    consideration and respect with which this duty was discharged.
    Occasionally murmurs of dissent were audible; now and then a
    comment may have been made aloud. In a very few instances, and
    those happily of an exceptional kind, expressions of strong
    disapproval and of exhausted patience at length escaped. But the
    descriptions of violence, outcries, menace, denunciation, and even
    of personal collisions, with which certain newspapers deceived the
    world, I can affirm to be calumnious falsehoods, fabricated to
    bring the Council into odium and contempt.[357]

_La Liberté du Concile_ confirms that portion of this statement which
says that the speakers were often allowed to deliver irrelevant matter,
when, in other assemblies, they would have been called back to the
question. It says that no bishop of the majority could be named who was
ever interrupted, although some of them strayed from the question so
far that, in the first stages of the proceedings, they rushed into the
question of infallibility.[358]

The first speaker in the celebrated sitting of March 22, was
Schwarzenberg. He was not favourable to the Curia, their proceedings,
or their plans. He had not felt an impression in the Congregations
as if a Council was being held. At last the terrible bell was heard.
It was faint, but it was certainly sounding. What! a Cardinal rung
down?--and Schwarzenberg, with his princely rank, his historical name,
his age, and his majestic presence! Even among the Cardinals, it is
said, there was a slight murmur--a greater one among the bishops.
But Schwarzenberg himself heard bravos for the President.[359] But
the stately old man held his own.[360] After two other prelates had
succeeded to the precarious honour in which the Prince Cardinal had
been challenged, Strossmayer mounted the pulpit.

He attacked the statement contained in the Draft Decrees, that
Protestantism was the source of the several forms of unbelief specified
in that Draft. Strossmayer showed that the worst revolutions and the
worst outbursts of infidelity had not been in Protestant countries,
and that Catholics had not produced better refutations of atheism,
pantheism, and materialism than had Protestants, while all were
indebted to such men as Leibnitz and Guizot. The Senior President,
Cardinal De Angelis, cried, "This is not a place to praise the
Protestants"; and having got so far in Latin, he declined into some
other tongue.[361] No, says Quirinus, it was not the place, being
within some few hundred paces of the Inquisition. The excitement had
now become great. Strossmayer proceeded, amid partial clapping of
hands and general murmurs of disapproval, to demand how they meant to
apply the principles embodied in the new Rules, of making a dogma by
a majority. When he cried "That alone can be imposed on the faithful
which has in its favour a moral unanimity of bishops," up rose Cardinal
Capalti, rang the bell, and, in a voice anything but courteous, as
Vitelleschi says, ordered the speaker to stop. Strossmayer replied that
he was tired of being called to order, and of being thwarted at every
point; that such proceedings were incompatible with freedom of debate,
and that he protested.[362] Then burst out an uproar that alarmed all
who were outside in the church. Strossmayer stood, lifted up his hands,
and thrice cried solemnly, "I protest! I protest! I protest!" Some one
shouted, "You protest against us, and we protest against you." As the
Archbishops of Rheims afterwards related, one of the majority stood up
and shouted to Strossmayer, "We all condemn thee!" Bishop Place, of
Marseilles, cried, "I do not condemn thee." Some one called Strossmayer
a cursed heretic. Some shook their fists, some crowded round the
pulpit, some cried "Pius IX. for ever!" some cried, "The Cardinal
Legates for ever!" and others, as Vitelleschi adds, made noises equally
serious and serene. _La Liberté du Concile_ speaks of the unheard of
violence, of the cries which rang through the basilica outside, and of
the menaces of a large number who rushed to the tribunal and surrounded
it.[363] Friedrich speaks of clenched fists, and of fears lest the
prelates should tear one another's hair.

The people in the church interpreted the commotion each man according
to his own mind. Some--and that wild interpretation is laid to the door
of the English--thought the Garibaldians had attacked the Fathers;
some, that the long looked for dogma had at last sprung, full armed,
out of the head of the assembly, and that all the uproar was caused by
alarm at the portent. These raised cries of "Long live the Infallible
Pope!" The crowd pressed round the door of the Hall, and there was
danger of a tumult in the church. The servants of the bishops tried to
enter the Council Chamber, fearing that their masters were being harmed
in the disturbance. But the _gendarme_, whom Vitelleschi calls the most
effective instrument of every sort of infallibility, cleared off the
throng, resisted only by the servants, who clung to the door in the
hope of rescuing their masters.

An American bishop said, with some patriotic pride, "Now I know of an
assembly rougher than our own Congress."[364] Archbishop Landriot, of
Rheims, said he was quite in despair.[365] Even Ketteler said, "It is
too bad, the way they handle us here. I do not know how we shall go
back to our dioceses and exist there."[366] Namszanowski, the Prussian
military bishop, said to Friedrich that he had told an Italian prelate,
"Things are more respectably done with us in a meeting of shoemakers,
than here in the Council." Going on to express his impression that the
only hope for the Church was in the fall of the temporal power, and the
assumption of control over patronage and Church affairs by a temporal
government, which would get rid of the excessive number of clergy, he
continued, "The most humiliating thing for us German bishops is, that
here we are forced to learn that it is the Freemason and Liberal papers
that are correct, and that our Catholic ones, if we must call them
Catholic, _lie_, LIE."

The Pontiff soon made his voice heard as to the scene of this loud
resounding Tuesday. On the following Friday he had the missionary
bishops, numbering a hundred, assembled in the Sala Regia. There the
pictures of St. Bartholomew, of Barbarossa, and of the League against
the Turks, had time to suggest hopes of future triumph before the
Pontiff made his appearance. No sooner had he done so, than all fell on
their knees. He had gathered them for a practical purpose. The Dorcases
of the Church had been making, not coats and aprons for the widows,
but raiment rich and rare for the prelates, and costly attire for
altars and images. It was to distribute these goodly garments that his
Holiness had now convoked them, but, of course, the great thing was the
speech. Pointing clearly to the Opposition, he said, "We are surrounded
by great difficulties, for some, like Pilate when terrified by the
Jews, are afraid to do right. They fear the revolution. Though knowing
the truth, they sacrifice all to Cæsar, even the rights of the Holy
See, and their attachment to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Wretches! what
a fault they commit! The warfare of bishops," he went on to say, "is to
defend the truth with the Vicar of Christ. My children, do not forsake
me. Attach yourselves to me. Be with me. Unite yourselves to the Vicar
of Jesus Christ."

We follow the version of M. Veuillot (vol. i. p. 372). Vitelleschi
reports one of the Pope's expressions as "Be united to me, and not
with the revolution" (p. 129), and asks, Who could have imagined that
the good bishops who had been all their lives fighting the revolution
should now be accused of revolution? He adds, "Rulers who endeavour
to degrade Strossmayer to the level of a Rochefort, not unfrequently
reverse the intended result, and raise a Rochefort to the height of a
Strossmayer" (p. 130).

"And you, my dear Orientals," said the Pope, "I have ornaments also
for you, but not enough of them. I give you what I have." Then he
tried to calm their fears, excited by recent collisions. He concluded
by the supreme disclosure, "We have in the Council the organs of the
Liberal party, whose word of command is to gain time by opposing
everything, and to wear out the patience of the majority." The allusion
of the Pope was understood. Bitter, indeed, was it for the bishops
of the minority to find themselves thus stigmatized before all men by
the sovereign. But the effect was practical. The day following, ten
Orientals announced their adhesion to the denunciation of Gratry by
the Archbishop of Strasburg. Presently, forty-three missionary bishops
published their concurrence in the profound discovery of Bonjean, of
Ceylon, that the dogma of infallibility would conduce to the conversion
of Buddhists, Brahmans, Protestants, _and other difficult religionists
of the East_.[367]

As the Pope went to St. Cross of Jerusalem for the _Agnus Dei_, M.
Veuillot heard cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!" and said that
this was a reply to the objections raised about the heresy of Pope
Honorius. Hefele had unpleasantly brought this heresy into notice
in a Latin pamphlet, which he had been obliged to print at Naples.
Of inopportune things, few had been more inopportune of late than
the appearance in Paris of a new edition of the _Liber Diurnus_, by
Rozière. This ancient monument, with its simple formula? and infallible
evidence, enabled every one to lay his finger on the fact that for
centuries Popes had on oath abjured the heresy of Pope Honorius. But M.
Veuillot heard an answer to all this in the cries of "The Infallible
Pope for ever!"

But of all that the Pope passed on his route to Holy Cross, that
which most excited the imagination of M. Veuillot was the Holy Stair
and the _triclinium_, where Charlemagne received the sword kneeling.
Charlemagne, he says, ruled only long enough to indicate the place and
form which he wished to give to his throne; but now, after a thousand