matters, would find several improvements. Side pavements had been
allowed in the main streets. Gaslight had, after long and painful
efforts, been admitted.

Railways had entered the walls. The personal liberality of the Pope
had effected several improvements, both in public works and charitable
institutions. The French had done a great deal for the cleansing of the
streets, although the filth of some of them, and the indecency of some
of the bye ones, were still beyond belief to any one from England. The
Pope's army, which as late as 1860 was an odd-looking array, was now a
sightly and active force, composed mainly of foreigners, in large part
French. And, finally, it had become possible to tell the time of day.

Formerly, midday had been one of the mysteries of Rome. It seemed as if
the right of private judgment, banished from the churches, had taken
refuge in the steeples, for each particular clock went off at some
mysterious impulse, and struck twelve at the noon of its own. Thus
for good part of an hour, they do say often longer, the air continued
thrilling with the tidings that it was just noon of day. Naughty Romans
ascribe the change to General Baraguay d'Hilliers, while in command
of the French garrison. Having vainly endeavoured to get a standard
of time established, he presumed, with French audacity, to carry the
case by appeal from the sacristy to the sun. Placing a gun on Fort
St. Angelo, with a burning-glass upon it, he stole the tidings from
another world which were not to be got from the temples at hand.[66]

One of the most powerful of the pilgrims was M. Louis Veuillot, who as
editor of the _Univers_ had for very many years done much to second
in literature the work done in schools, of reviving antipathies and
superstitions which were in danger of dying out in France. His notes of
this visit form part of his two octavos. As soon as he reaches the foot
of the Alps, at Susa, he begins to scold Italy and the Italians, takes
every opportunity of doing so, and goes out of the country scolding
worse than when he came in.

But if Italy and the Italians were exceedingly evil in the eyes of M.
Veuillot, he found compensation in the perfect loveliness of Rome and
the Romans. The very cabmen are loudly praised, and the cabs carry
"ideas;" the Press, especially the _Civiltá_, is of course far above
the French level. But the Pope was the grandest spectacle of all. As he
entered the Basilica, preceded by a train of five hundred prelates, it
made an impression of power greater than if four millions of men had
defiled past, armed with the most perfect artillery.[67]

Naturally, however, the imagination of M. Veuillot was most fired with
the prospect of that historical future which was about to open on the
human species. Darkness still covers the chaos after the cataclysm,
but the breaking of the light draws nigh. The news of a projected
Council has reached the ears of M. Veuillot. His first word is, "Rome
is officially taking the reins of the world into her hand." Other
expressions scattered up and down his animated pages are as follows--

    The day that the Council is convoked the counter-revolution will
    commence.... Pius IX will open his mouth, and the great word, Let
    there be light, will proceed out of his lips.... It will be a
    solemn date in history; it will witness the laying of the immovable
    stone of Re-construction.... At the voice of the Pontiff the bowels
    of the earth will be moved, to give birth to the new civilization
    of the Cross.... Here is the great reservoir whence the future will
    pour out and overflow the human race.... These days in Rome are a
    revelation of the state of the world, and the starting point of a
    renovation.... The pilgrimage of Catholic Europe to Rome in 1867
    will have consequences of which the _Moniteur_ [alluding to remarks
    in that journal] will be informed hereafter, and of which the world
    will become aware when the _Moniteur_ would wish them to be unheard
    of.... For centuries Rome has not seen the Pope in such splendour,
    nor has he so manifestly appeared in his character as head of the
    human race.

M. Veuillot is of course one of those who look on the modern liberty of
the press as a great curse. We may insert here what came to hand long
after these pages were written, as an illustration of the kind of Press
that is to be quenched. The _Times_ of January 26, 1876, in the letter
of its Paris correspondent, gives a morsel from the _Univers_, in the
style of M. Veuillot. The _Times_ had said something about an interview
of the Marquis of Ripon, as a new convert, with the Pope. The _Univers_
devotes to that article "a column and a half of invectives," and thus
winds up: "The _Times_ is now the giant of the Press, and prospers
in both hemispheres. But the day will come when the two worlds will
want no more of its agony column, or of its bad literature; and its
last compositor, inactive before his immense poison machine, suddenly
idle, will wait in vain for copy which will never come." Will the
compositor look out of the top window in Queen Victoria Street to see
if Macaulay's New Zealander has arrived on London Bridge?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 65: Acton, _Zur. Ges._, p. 14.]

[Footnote 66: This was first told me by a Roman tradesman, in presence,
among others, of a very good-natured canon, who joined in the general
laugh at my innocent surprise. This year (1875) an ex-officer of the
Pope's service added, "Ay, but the priests bribed the artillerymen
to steal half the charge of powder, and to turn the gun toward the
Campagna, so that the report should scarcely be heard." Probably
the last statement is a mere rumour, not representing any actual
transaction, but indicating, really enough, the state of mind of the
people as to what their masters were likely to do. I have heard it said
that Sir James Hudson used to declare that when first appointed to
Turin he could walk all round the city while it struck twelve o'clock.]

[Footnote 67: _Rome pendant le Concile_, vol. i. p. 35.]

CHAPTER XII

The Political Lesson of the Gathering, namely, All are called upon to
recognize in the Papal States the Model State of the World--Survey of
those States.

"_Opportuneness of the Centenary of St. Peter for reviving the True
Idea of the Political Order among States_," is the heading of an
article in the _Civiltá Cattolica_ for 1867. The first words are, "He
who comes to Rome finds St. Peter become a king"; a proposition of
which we should modify the predicate, saying, He who comes to Rome
finds a king, professing to be St. Peter. "He (i.e. Peter) has joined
the tiara of the Pontiff to the crown of the Prince." Why did not the
writer say the "tiara of the Apostle"? That would be too great an
offence against antiquity. It is the tiara of the Pontiff, as if Peter
had taken over that office from Nero.

However, these are but the introductory notes. The writer proceeds to
expound the political effects of baptism. Christianity has not changed
the civil power as to its substance, but as to its relations, by making
a change in the subject of power. That subject is no longer mere man,
but man made Christian by baptism. This doctrine--which frequently
reappears as the theological basis of reconstruction--is more fully
stated by M. Veuillot: "They will not deny that the true human race is
baptized humanity.... It is, then, baptism which constitutes humanity,
and all that has not been introduced into the Church by baptism is, in
reality, only a sort of raw material, which as yet awaits the breath
of life" (p. cxii.). In order to prevent any conflict between baptized
man and the law of the Church, the _civil power must be subject to the
Church_. Suarez is quoted to the effect that as a man would not be
rightly constituted unless the body were subject to the soul, neither
would the Church be rightly established unless the temporal power were
subject to the spiritual. And hence, the political conclusion is firmly
drawn: "The idea of such a subordination is realized in the pontifical
government. Because, owing to the peculiar character of him who here
holds the temporal power, it cannot rebel against the spiritual power,
civil law can never here set itself against evangelical law, nor is any
political act possible which should offend against morals."

The last affirmation will appear boldest to those who best know what
political acts have been done in the Roman States, and in the present
reign. No one of these acts could offend against Christian morals! for
the all-sufficing reason that Peter had become the king, and Peter does
no wrong. Thus we find infallibility, as received in the court creed,
covering measures of taxation and police, as well as lotteries and
monopolies--an abuse of the doctrine made still more obvious by what
follows, in which the infallibility of the Government is grounded on
its immaculate conception, and consequently perfect nature. Since in
the Pontifical States "the laws must be sanctioned by him who holds
the place of God on earth, him whom God has given to us for guide and
teacher, they can never be in conflict with the divine will.[68] The
infallible Depositary of evangelical interests can never sacrifice them
to earthly ones. Though in such a government the two powers [spiritual
and temporal] are distinct in form, they are in complete harmony and
duly co-ordinated one with the other, presenting to lay States the
perfect example of the Christian civil power."

It is granted that lay States can never equal this example, but they
ought to imitate it. By their very conception they can never be free
from the original taint, owing to which it becomes possible for "the
temporal power to rebel against the spiritual power." Not only is
it possible, but, by their nature, they are predisposed to that sin
of sins. But all rulers of lay States are to know that in becoming
subjects of the Church the subjects of civil power have been changed,
though the substance of civil power has not been changed. We do not
stay to inquire what may be the substance of civil power, after its
subjects have been lifted above obedience to it by another human
power, higher than itself in all things wherein the two may come into
collision.

In conclusion, the faithful are told that the centenary of St. Peter,
by bringing together people from all parts of the world, will give to
them the opportunity of beholding "a State in which peace, morality,
and justice reign. It is like an oasis amid the desolation of the
desert; and it is so because the political order is in full harmony
with evangelical law."

The approaching pilgrims, in comparing the oasis into which they were
about to enter, with the deserts from which they had emerged, would
be able to judge by the experience of centuries as to whether, where
Peter reigns, the lifting up of the subject above lay government
into the supernatural order had led to the elevation of the laity to
supernatural goodness, or to the lowering of the clergy to the level of
political officials.

Two writers, as dissimilar as Addison and Edgar Quinet, had, in some
degree, anticipated the comparison here challenged, each speaking
from a point of view suited to his own day and mode of thinking. The
Englishman remarks how great is the difference between Roman Catholic
populations where they touch upon reformed countries and where they are
under the unbroken influence of the Papacy. Ignorance, superstition,
and crime gradually deepen till the Alps and the Pyrenees are passed,
when all these become strikingly worse.

The Frenchman says that there was only one model country in Europe.
This was correct; for France had never cast out the influence of the
Reformation, or made away with all the Protestants; and had, moreover,
been the hotbed of what Quinet calls the philosophers. Italy, again,
had always been a stronghold of the so-called philosophers, although
all the Protestants had been consumed. In Spain, however, as he points
out, the Inquisition had really fulfilled its mission; both Protestants
and philosophers having been annihilated, schools and letters having
been reduced to order, and the whole nation having been made to move
for more than two hundred years on the Papal lines. The consequence
was the total ruin of religion in the country.[69]

The comparison to which strangers were challenged by the Curia had
the great advantage of being a comparison of good, not of evil. If
the Papal States are to lay States as the oasis to the desert, proof
actually lies before us of something more than human superiority--of
something amounting to a higher dispensation. If the Papal States are
but moderately superior to others, proof of any higher dispensation
fails; but proof of human superiority remains. If they are only
equal to lay States even proof of human superiority fails. If they
are inferior, proof fails both of divine commission and of human
superiority, and proof arises of the presence of greater human fault.

The only true book of Positive Philosophy yet (we do not say of
Positive Science) is the blessed old Books of books. It brings
everything to the test of fruits. It puts the extraordinary man to the
test before ordinary men. He who refuses the ordained appeal to the
Word, and to fruits, and to the verdict of every man's conscience,
writes his own description as a false prophet.

We shall not, therefore, set out to compare evil, but good. We shall
not inquire if there are more waste acres in the Papal States, more
filthy huts, more wretched villages, more mean little towns called
cities, more blighted prospects, talents thrown to waste, and families
brought to decay, more liars, thieves, drunkards, blasphemers, and
libertines, more depraved homes, more guilty conspiracies, more
strikers, robbers, and assassins, more beggars in the streets, more
idlers and extortioners in office, more wretches in prison, and more
dead men in graves dug by the law, than, say, in our own far from
immaculate or infallible England. We shall only look for the opposite
of all these, and more of it--so much more as would furnish proof of a
special dispensation of God's loving-kindness to men.

In one particular, such of the pilgrims as had heard of the desolation
of the Roman Campagna would feel surprise, somewhat similar to that
often felt by travellers in the Desert of Sinai. The latter, expecting
to find extended plains of burning sand--a Sahara--find a country
like another, only that it has no vegetation. So when pilgrims on the
Campagna found green plains basking under a lovely sky, they would
wonder how men could call it waste. Only by degrees would they realize
the fact that there were no farm-houses, no labourers' cottages, no
hamlets. In Arabia vegetation has failed, and with it animal existence.
This region is a degree less desert: the herb enjoys life and supports
the beast; only man has failed.

A trained observer seeing the plain forsaken and the villages in
military positions on the heights, would at once say, as he would
in Syria: The land has not learned what rest is! It has not yet
experienced, for any continuance, that lot of conscious security in
which the family suffices to itself, the lonely house is safe, and
the village needs neither wall nor steep. The valleys of Tuscany or
Piedmont tell a better tale of law and government.

When, at wide intervals, an inn or what is called a _Tenuia_ occurs,
perhaps it is announced by a few fine children, ill-clad and begging.
The house has an expression of fear. The windows are few and small, and
the yard, instead of a fence or low wall, is defended by a high one.
There are no stack yards, no farm store and treasure spreading securely
and ornamentally around as if conscious of strong, benign protectors.
There is no grass-plot, no gravelled or flagged walk, no flower-bed
before the door, no flower pot in the window, no garden. The house
has never blossomed into the home. It is, after all these ages, but a
shelter from weather and violence.

Entering, you find dirt to a degree neither easy to believe nor
pleasant to describe, which grows worse and worse the longer and
more minutely you observe. The furniture consists of a few stools,
a rough table or bench, with a sack or two of straw for a bed. The
few utensils, whether of earthenware or metal, are, like the stools
and bench, poor in quality, rude in form, and ill-kept. Scarcely
ever is there against the walls a print or photograph, an engraved
sheet, a clock or plaster bust. You look in vain for book, periodical,
or journal. The idea of children's picture-books, or of a cottage
library, is out of the question; and the Bible is not to be seen.
If there be a picture of the Madonna or the patron saint, it is,
in point of art, far below the pictures which often light up the
cottage of our humblest labourer. If there is a book, it is a wretched
dream-book teaching how to succeed in the lottery. No polished chest of
drawers, no white dresser, no fire range bearing witness of taste and
"elbow-grease," no pretty crockery, no easy-chair. You may perhaps see
a man asleep on the bare bench and another on the floor.

As you let the picture print itself, with all its inevitable comments,
upon your mind, it calls up comparisons with what you have seen in
the unlettered countries of the world--not with the homes that grow
up around a family Bible. Here the arts which bring Art home to the
multitude have found no entrance. Engraving, printing, carving,
ornamental work in metal, wood, or pottery, gardening, or artistic
husbandry, are graces that have not crossed this dirty threshold. The
aesthetics, which have had some part in the government of the country
have never developed the blessed aesthetic of home.

Physically, you find a race of great capacity. The frame, if wanting
the compactness of the French and the solidity of the English, is large
and shapely; such as after a few well-fed and well-housed generations
would probably be one of the finest in the world. There is a certain
sluggishness, which is generally called laziness. Perhaps it is not so
much laziness as a lack of that physical elasticity which comes with
successive generations of hopeful effort and good condition, but sinks
away under hopelessness, or the effects of poor food and bad air. The
natural intelligence is quick, and the manners generally polite, often
winning. The pleasant word and the obliging act are both ready. But
when did these carters and labourers wash? Was anything ever done to
cleanse these garments, partly of goatskin with the hair attached and
partly of heavy cloth? We do not call raids now and then to keep vermin
under, an effort at really cleansing. And the heads of the women and
children! Whatever the prevalent aesthetics have accomplished, they
have never awakened the sacred aesthetic of the human person, which is
not to be confounded with the lower aesthetic of dress.

Turning towards the villages, the observer is again reminded of Syria,
where he may have been led on by the prospect of a beautiful city set
on a hill, and found a squalid village. Self-defending construction, as
in the case of the lone house on the plain, reappears here. No outlying
cottages before the village, no detached ones within it, no gardens
or orchards behind. The backs of the houses form a continuous high
wall, pierced with small windows, constituting an irregular but not
despicable work of defence. Again you find the absence of any bit of
green, or of flower-beds before the house, or of flowers in the window.
The gardens of Nottingham alone would put those of all the Papal States
to shame, excepting such as are attached to palaces.

Before entering the houses one feels as if it would be unfair to
compare them with those of English villages in our more cultured and
sunny counties. But we may take a Yorkshire manufacturing village, near
collieries. There the ground is dirty with coal slack; the air dirty
with coal smoke and heavy with damp vapours; the houses are of the
colour of baked mud, called brick; the sky is low, and more brown than
grey. Nature and art seem to have combined to make the house dirty.
Here, on the contrary, the ground is as dry as a board, the air bright,
the walls of warm-coloured stone, the sky lofty, luminous and blue.
Nature has done everything to suggest cleanliness, and also to reward
it with such brilliant effect as we can only see in the brightest
moments which summer lights up within our English homes. And as to
manufacture, its grimy fingers have never touched the place.

Yet under the unfavourable conditions you find tidy women, with tidy
children, by tidy firesides. The floor, seats, tables, drawers,
dresser, walls, all show that the domestic arts of ornament, in however
humble a style, are represented. The cottage child sits with its book
on its knee, and you are not afraid to look into the corners. The Bible
and hymn-book are probably upon the shelf; and if you do not know that
the scene of the cotter's Saturday night is actually enacted there,
you feel that it might be.

Under the favourable circumstances, on the other hand, floor, stairs,
wall, furniture, utensils, and the persons of the women and children
are kept in such a style that one of the women from the Yorkshire
cottage would not like to pass a night in the place. And you must not
look into the corners. Any stray picture which may be on the walls,
only serves to remind you, by contrast, of the wonderful development
of illustrative art in England, Germany, and America, and of its
penetrating influence in the homes of the remote and poor. Here,
sometimes, you may find, even in the village church, prints and dolls,
the former of which in England would be considered poor, and the latter
tawdry in the village shop. Yet in the same church there may be some
real work of art, which has for generations had every opportunity of
forming the public taste.

The land in these Papal States, like the people, is nobly capable; but
our present inquiries turn, not upon the future, but upon proof of
immaculate and infallible government, for the last thousand years or
more.

Fixing, then, our attention on the works of man, we find cause
repeatedly to wish that we had some measure for exactly determining how
much progress has been made, amid these lovely scenes, by the human
mind since it passed from under the dominion of Pagan Romanism into
that of Papal Romanism. At present we have not the means of accurately
settling this question, and perhaps we never shall have, though honest
research may yet sufficiently elucidate it for a practical judgment.
So long as Christianity worked by its legitimate forces, those of
the Spirit alone, with its legitimate instrument, the Word alone, it
cast out the cruel and obscene spirits of paganism, silently, but not
slowly. In individuals and in families real Christians were made. This
continued so long as the ministers of Christ ministered like their
Master, reading the Word of God, and preaching it, but no more thinking
of performing "functions," like the heathen, than He did; so long as
they had neither place nor name in the posts graded and rewarded by
human powers; so long as they enjoyed no consideration but what was won
through wisdom, goodness, and spiritual fruitfulness; so long as their
whole inheritance was not a profession, but a calling, which renounced
the world, not by cutting God's holiest human ties, but by abandoning,
for life, every hope of title, pomp, or power. So long as this spirit
reigned, and whenever it again reappeared, they could point to numbers,
whom they found vile but left created anew in Christ Jesus unto good
works.

But from the time when Christianity became a public power, the
courtier, the priest, and the crowd began to flow into the Church,
and carried part of their heathenism in with them. When the device
of the Emperors was parodied--and as they had assumed the office of
Pontiff to confirm the civil dictatorship, the Roman Bishop assumed the
temporal supremacy to confirm the spiritual dictatorship--all the three
paganizing forces of statecraft, priestcraft, and popular superstition
came more vigorously into play; with the result stated by Gregorovius:
"So that Church which arose out of the union of Christianity with the
Roman Empire, drew from the latter the system of centralization, and
the stores of ancient language and education; but the people utterly
corrupted, could not yield her the living material for the development
of the Christian ideal. On the contrary, it was just they who in
early times defaced Christianity, and permeated the Church, scarcely
yet established in the Empire, with the old heathenism."[70] It was,
however, on the new system of conversion that the people could not
yield the material for developing Christianity. On the old one they
had done so. When the Church waits for converts till the Spirit of God
brings her penitents, she will always find material (often raw and
foul, but capable) for doing all her work.

But we find the first step in an inquiry as to the progress which has
been accomplished challenged by the Vatican philosophy, which decries
modern improvements like the railway, telegraph, steam engine, and
so on, as "material progress." When we ordinary mortals say "mental
progress" we mean a progress of mind; but when the Pope says "material
progress," does he mean a progress of matter? No; then what does he
mean? Perhaps to suggest some such idea as the progressive ascendancy
of matter over mind; but if so, it is unfortunate for him, as a
philosopher, that the inventions he despises represent the advancing
ascendancy of mind over matter. And very unhappy is it for mankind that
all his influence goes to employ matter in colour, form, and movement,
to make man a creature of sensation, and to stay the operation of
reason and of faith, exchanging reason for sentiment and faith for
sight.

Suppose that an observer before passing from the valley of the Sacco
into that of the Anio looks at a historical place like Palestrina,
situated on one of the noblest heights of the land; a point whence
Pyrrhus and Hannibal, in succession, looked with the longing of
warriors across the Campagna to the distant Rome; and whence the
Temple of Fortune, emulating Egyptian proportions, and overspreading
a whole hillside, dominated the plain, and held forth its lights to
the far off sea. This city has a Cardinal Bishop, and a palace of the
great Papal-princely family of the Barberini, and yet is what a homely
Englishman would call a nasty village. If such a one had to pick his
steps up the alleys that serve for streets, in the afternoon, when
the issue of the cow-houses is flowing down them, he would rather be
at home. The people are civil and apparently industrious, but the
energy of the children goes out in begging. The decay and dirt which
conquer all, furnish to an English eye a plain instance of material
progress--matter gaining upon mind. The palace is neither kept up
nor abandoned as a ruin, but, as if to set the town an example of
thriftless filth, it is used partly for an aesthetic exhibition,
containing as it does one wonderful mosaic, with frescoes and portraits
of the Pope and Cardinals of the family, and is partly given up
to--matter. Just as confidently as a skilled observer would conclude
that Middlesbrough or Cincinnati bore witness against any claim to
great antiquity, would he conclude that Palestrina bore witness
against any claim to supernaturally good government. How much lower was
the place when it was heathen?

From the ridge between the two valleys, by Civitella, the stranger has
one of those prospects of which no previous travel blunts the charm,
and no subsequent travel blunts the memory. Here he finds well-made
men ploughing, and women with busts worthy of Sabine mothers carrying
stones. Looking at the plough, he finds it only a few degrees stronger
and better than that used by the ordinary Hindu ryot. It is very far
behind the improved ones to be seen in northern Italy, and would be a
real curiosity to Bedfordshire or Lincolnshire ploughmen.

If the observation of implements is extended to those of the
handicrafts, it confirms the impression of want of taste made by those
of agriculture. But tools are not things to make a show, and the noble
aesthetic of labour has not been fostered. Labour is not part of the
supernatural order, only of the natural; it serves but temporal ends.
And who made the natural? And who dares to teach man, created in the
image of God, that the daily duty appointed to him--duty to himself,
his family, his country, and his race--serves but temporal ends? If
neglected, are only temporal ends frustrated? When our Father sends us
what fills our hearts with food and gladness, is He working nought but
temporal ends? For what is helpful to sanctification commend us even to
the stones on the head of the female hodman, rather than to the beads
at the waist of the novice nun! Albeit the former is a coarse toil not
to be seen without a blush by man born of a woman, yet is it a real
lift at the load of life--a load natural and therefore divine; whereas
the other is neither work nor play, not tending either to lift the load
of life or to cheer on the labour of lifting it, but tending only to
weaken all the powers by rendering the mind a slave of charms. Least of
all is it spiritual or supernatural. It is simply manipulation applied
by the master with sensational skill, and in the subject suspending
thought on sensational routine.

How far do the villages of the thrice beautiful Sabina exceed those of
our Lake District or of Wales in that poetic property of all villages,
"innocence"? The last thing we should do is to set up our own as a
standard. But if you hear the friars talk of the villagers, and the
villagers of the friars and police, the townsfolk of the countryfolk,
the doctor of his practice, and the priest of the refractory, you will
hear mention made, with incidental ease, of crimes which, if committed
in the Lake Districts of England, or in the tourists' haunts in Wales,
would fill the journals for weeks. And how often here does scandal name
the priest before all others!

Do the towns in Papal territory contrast with those in "lay States" as
the oasis does with the desert? Suppose the observer to stand before
Subiaco, seated amid Sabine peaks in the smiling valley of the Anio--a
favourite haunt of artists, and worthy of their favour. A marble arch
marks the entrance to the town; a summer palace of the Pope crowns it.
A little way off stands the sacred cave where Benedict first taught.
That is the Lupercal of Roman monasticism. There arose the institution
which became the one grand public institution of Papal Italy--arose
out of purposes not only pure, but lofty, though upon plans departing
from those both of Moses and of Christ. These made the love of God in
the individual a spiritual force to leaven the family, and made the
family the basis of all institutions. The monasticism of the further
east made spiritual life a dainty too delicate for the fireside. The
Christian system made each new convert a moral agent acting within the
social fabric. When Christians adopted the Oriental system, each new
convert was abstracted from the social fabric, was taught to turn his
or her back on the family, and to call being in the family being in the
world, and renouncing the family renouncing the world. Out of a life of
three-and-thirty years spent among men, our Lord has left us scarcely
another trace of thirty of those years than this, that He spent them in
the family.[71] This convent of Benedict still preserves its celebrated
gardens, boasted of as a beauty for the whole earth--including the bed
of roses, the lineal descendants of those which were transformed from
thorns by miracle.

On the principles of Christianity, if this place has for ages enjoyed a
spiritual government free from religious error, and a temporal one free
from moral fault, and has, in addition, been blessed with the presence
of the representative of God upon earth, we shall without fail find it
a scene of enlightenment, righteousness, and bliss. It must in these
respects be far before places where frail human nature has been in the
hands of churches liable to err, and of governments which commit faults
every day. If, on the other hand, they who have here been stewards of
the unrighteous mammon have employed it ill, who will entrust to them
the true riches, who will give to them the keeping of his soul?

At the entrance of the city, on a morning in May, the sound of chanting
floats down the street, and a procession of clergy moves along, passes
under the marble arch, and proceeds to a church in the suburbs. Then
the priests bless the fields to secure good crops, as is done by the
priests in India.

The streets of the city paraded by this procession are not beautiful,
and had they been steeped for a few years in a smoky, moist Lancashire
atmosphere they would be exceedingly ugly. They are not clean but
dirty, below the condition of any country town in the Protestant
parts of Ireland. They are not busy, but have a listless air, as if
people had little to do and not much heart in doing it. The signs of
enterprise and of improvement which in towns under good governments
silently tell the tale, are not to be seen--signs which already, in
1867, might be traced in most of the towns of the New Italy. The
well-dressed portion of the people is small, and the proportion of
those poorly but tidily dressed extremely small. A gala costume even
of the poor is fine, for whatever is for effect is studiously done.
Many men and women, evidently not in abject poverty, but capable of
dressing up for a state occasion, are not tidy, but badly the reverse.
The number of ragged adults is great, and that of ragged children very
great; it is hard to estimate that of the beggars, for even young
women employed and not very miserably dressed, will take advantage of
a passing stranger to seek a penny; and as to the children, begging
appears to be a recognized branch of street life.

A young gentleman from Rome, tall and handsome, on the point of getting
into a carriage with his companions, anxiously inquires if the road to
Palestrina is safe. Have there not been attacks of brigands lately?
The fact is not denied, though he is assured that all will be well.
In any talk about quarrelling, the use of the knife--that is, the
dagger-knife--is alluded to as a common incident. When any occurrence
illustrates the amount of confidence felt by the people in the honesty
or truthfulness of one another, it seems generally low on the first
point and almost _nil_ upon the second.

If the working classes show no sign of having been blessed with a
government better than that of all mankind, does any sign of it appear
among the trading classes? Beginning at the upper strata of finance and
commerce, a merely English eye would look in vain for tokens of their
existence. Coming down to the shops, perhaps an episcopal city in the
"oasis" would so impress Roman Catholic shopkeepers from Thurles or
Tuam that they would think a comparison profane. Their evil lot has
been cast in a lamentable portion of the "desert," the misdeeds of
whose rulers, and the wrongs of whose pastors and people, have often
made the hearts of the devout in Italy to bleed. Protestant shopkeepers
of Munster and Connaught would not be so awestruck but that they
could make a comparison. They would not find under the fairer sky,
and the theocratic rule, what they would take for symptoms of divine
superiority. The shopkeepers of Enniskillen and Portadown, not blessed
even with a heretic bishop, would smile at the comparison.

As to the professional classes, they are nearly absorbed in the clergy;
for this is a state in which the only way to "found a family" is to
begin by taking vows of celibacy, and the only way to bequeath coronets
is to begin by renouncing the world. The one unworldly profession
counts, among its prizes, a triple crown, scores of princedoms,
ministries of state, of finance, and even of war, embassies, exceeding
many palaces, honours surpassing those of nobility, gorgeous uniforms,
lofty titles, revenues of enormous amount, with powers and dignities
bearing a double value--one measurable by the standards of the world,
and one immeasurable in the eyes of the faithful. The bulk of the land
has passed into the possession either of corporations of clergy or of
families founded by priests successful in their profession.

The Mosaic economy is generally taken to be more carnal than the
Christian; but Moses, leaving Egypt, where the king and the priests
were the only landowners, enacted that the priests should not hold
land, and though married men, should have only a house and "a cow's
grass." Here, on the contrary, the priest, though renouncing the world
in some spiritual sense, comes a hundredfold more into possession of
it in a material one. If mind shows its dominion over land and sea,
over adamant and wind, over time and space, the feat is labelled for
contempt as "material progress." If ministers of the Gospel become
immersed in the management of manors, provinces, taxes, lotteries, and
even of brigades, the fall is certificated for reverence as "spiritual"
ascendancy. In Israel the royal tribe was one "of which no man gave
attendance at the altar," and the priestly tribe one of which none came
to the throne. Here the priest is king, and the temporal prince kisses
his foot. A favourite image is that of the mystic David, pastor and
king in one. Here is the cure of _political_ NATURALISM.

The clergy of the Pontifical States included the two widest extremes
of professional life to be found in Christendom--that of show and
dressiness beyond what our courtiers or soldiers display, and that
of personal meanness and social degradation to which no professional
class among us approaches. Society seemed to avenge itself for the
humiliations it had to suffer from the court priest, by the contempt
with which it treated the clown priest. We once asked an advocate if
all the priests did not read the _Unitá Cattolica_, and we give his
reply, not as describing what priests are, but as showing what men of
education may say of them--"All?" said the Dottore; "well, nearly all
that can read." "But you do not mean to say that there are priests who
cannot read?" "Well, not precisely; but there are many that could not
read a journal intelligently, so as to enjoy it."

The co-existence of fear with hatred of a dominant priesthood may be
observed in any country where priests have been the governing class,
and perhaps, after the Pontifical States, may be best observed in
India. The Brahmans, however, have not in the popular eye so direct a
command over the lot of the departed as Rome has secured for her own
priests, nor have they any such pecuniary profit out of the faith of
the survivors. On the other hand, no class of Brahmans sinks so far
below the average of respectability, among their countrymen, as do the
lower clergy of the Roman and Neapolitan States.

But the contempt of the Italians for the priesthood is no more thorough
than is their reverence. The man who will not introduce a certain
priest to his daughters, will pay him to save the soul of his mother
out of the pains of purgatory. To the Monsignore Don Juan, to use a
term of Gregorovius, he will manifest profound respect, while in his
heart he scorns him. To the not worse but less successful priest he
will manifest contempt and spend some wit upon his vices, and yet, in
his heart, will fear his occult power over the souls of his departed
kindred.

The worldly professions have no such lot as the sacred one. Except
the show corps for inglorious pomp around the sovereign, the military
sphere for Romans is narrow, foreigners taking the lead. _Letters are
no profession._ The civil service is principally in the hands of the
priests. The law exists, and there are men with the titles of advocates
and judges. But if we drew any idea of the status and "chances"
belonging to such titles, from England, it would be altogether
misleading.

Chief Justice Whiteside has shown how wide the difference is, and he
spoke of the great city. In the little one of which we now speak, two
English gentlemen, who could not find room in the inn, were directed to
the house of an advocate, who played my host with assiduity and good
humour, and charged four francs each for dinner, bed, candles, and
service. The doctors seem most like men with a professional standing;
and if they keep from politics, they have a fair chance of leading a
quiet life in obscure usefulness.

Yet is the whole world called to take this state of things as the model
of the subordination of the layman to the priest. "The idea of that
subordination," we are told, "is realized in the Papal government." The
ideal! This absorption, then, of the State into the so-called Church,
this suppression of king, nobles, and people under the priest, is not
an abnormal and monstrous _lusus ecclesiae_, but is the ideal of the
new "political order." Any one can understand it--the king merged
in the prince-bishop or else a vassal of the priest; the noble the
retainer and jewelled ornament of the priest; the people the helots of
the priest. That is the model. Here is realized for us the ideal of
_the one fold and one shepherd_.

The English labourer knows that his son may, like James Cook, walk the
quarter-deck, or, like Robert Stephenson, sit in the legislature. The
Roman noble knows that the utmost his son, if not a priest, can rise to
is to wear pearls and stars at the court of a priest, and kiss his foot
when he makes a great show.

The kindly monk who, at Subiaco, shows a stranger over the Sacred Cave
of Benedict, glories in far-famed gardens, which any peasant from
Appenzell could tell him might be equalled in some private houses in
such a village as Heiden. Fame sometimes draws out the dying notes of
her trumpet unaccountably long. The monk is careful to enlist your
admiration for several meritorious works in painting and sculpture, but
to Protestants one gem is shown only by request. It is a portrait of
the devil painted on the wall, in dark passages, and not visible except
when a light is flashed upon it. This done, it appears for a moment,
or longer, as the operator pleases, through one opening, fitted with
real iron gratings, athwart of which the demon glares out of the gloom
upon the spectator. Such a picture is capable of being put to uses
that would meet the strongest views of those who call for something to
strike the senses, and through them to affect the feelings.

As long ago as the days of the man of the land of Uz, the monotheistic
way of depicting a spiritual presence was, "I could not discern the
form thereof"; and, surely, even in that remote time, the aesthetic was
higher than that of the Sacred Cave.

Following the smiling valley from Subiaco to Tivoli, one would, in
1867, probably see youths in the uniform of the zouaves, lounging on
a bank, near one or both of the towns. Foreign mercenaries! would the
Italians say. Foreign, certainly, and some of them mercenaries; but
some, even in the dress of a private, would unmistakably show the
gentleman--no mercenary, but a crusader who, in answer to the cry
raised after Castelfidardo, has come from afar to fight for St. Peter,
to "die for religion."

Even in this mountain valley the villages still keep to the heights.
Where is the squire and his generous hall?--no room here for his
magisterial office or commanding influence! Where is the farmstead,
full and cozy, warm nest of fruitful brood sure to store a land with
golden eggs? When the squire was quenched under the mitre of the
abbot, the farmer was smothered in the cowl of the friar. Where are
the parsonages and manses, homes where thought-culture is generally
at the maximum, and external show often at the minimum, Christian
families rooted in nature, blessed by divine ordinance, where woman
is doing what the Mother of our Lord was doing at the head of her
house--families holier a hundred times than the "religious" family,
artificially substituted for nature and gospel? If from the list of
bright names written up in England since the Reformation were blotted
all that were first inscribed in the family Bible of parsonage or
manse, that list would be more shortened than most men would imagine.

From the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, with its grandiose, ill-kept gardens,
the prospect across the Campagna, when the distant city and its unique
dome are limned against the sunset sky, is one of rare enchantment.
Suppose that on these Sabine or on the Alban Hills you ask some
intelligent inhabitant if these are not the Delectable Mountains, the
summits of the true Celestial Empire, where no act of moral wrong has
been done by the authorities for, say, the last ten hundred years.
Perhaps you might hear such a statement as we once heard. It was from
a gentleman in the pay of the government; but he knew that he had
not to speak either to a priest or to that denationalized creature
which Romans soon detect under the English form, a _convertito_. The
statement may not have been correct. But it was such as under our
unblessed lay government is never heard. It was such as under a good
government could never be invented. Such a statement, professing to be
made from a man's own knowledge, one never heard in Europe, except in
Naples under the last two kings; but one might hear such in Egypt, and
one could easily hear such, many years ago, in the Mysore, from old men
talking of the times of Hyder Ali.

The desolation of the Campagna is the true and terrible material
progress. Here physical impediments to health and life have conquered,
not being encountered by moral and mental force. What natural riches
are here! If England has wealth in its coal, how much has Italy in
its sunshine? How much has that saved in the last thousand years in
clothes, bedding, and fuel? How much in the wear and tear of buildings,
and of implements? How much has it given in ripening what we can never
ripen, and in ripening quickly and perfectly what we can ripen but
slowly and in part? How much has it both saved and given in diminishing
the physical temptation to intemperance? This soil, this sun, and in
addition the tribute of nations, poured out here for ages in all the
endless forms of Peter's gain--where is all that wealth gone? Here
we are amid the riches of nature, to which successive centuries have
brought riches of tribute, and yet are we wrapped around by silence,
vacuity, and fear. Sleep not here! whispers every friendly voice.
Wealth of matter, poverty of man! The Papal government is sometimes
accused of bringing the malaria. No; it only let it come and let it
stay. Like many who will not believe in invisible mind, it would not
believe in invisible matter. The miasma was the hand of God, and was
not to be fought against.

The Papal government is also accused of bringing all the foreign hordes
who wasted this once glorious plain. It did not always bring them. It
only brought them so often that had it been done by any faction in
the heart of a country not being priests, mankind would have sunk the
memory of the faction under eternal disgrace. Now, the sickly Campagna
labourer, the thing like a Fijian hut which to him is home, and the
buffalo, seem a meet monument to the memory of Saracen and Lombard
destroying, and of Cardinals plundering, till only the grass was left.
Who would have the heart to ask himself, Is this the proof that the
oasis of priests amid the desert of lay States, is a garden planted of
the Lord?

Roughly speaking, Rome is about the size of Dublin. All the Catholic
world sighs over the woes and desolations inflicted on Ireland by
Protestant cruelty. Where has Rome set up a suburb like Kingstown,
Dalkey, or Bray? Where sown a tract of country with rich smiling homes
like those which spangle the emerald from Dublin to the Wicklow hills?
Where in the oasis could a bishop on returning to Belfast point to a
creation of wealth and beauty made in Papal times equal to Holywood,
or the Antrim shore? And could his colleague of Cork dare to make the
people who look on the lone banks of the stream from Rome to the sea
mourn for those who hang their harps by the "pleasant waters" that
flow within sound of the bells of Shandon? Had the Roman Curia reigned
there, the vale would now be insecure; a wretched village or two, with
skeletons and clouts by way of relics in tawdry churches, would crown
the heights; instead of villas, mansions, and cots, a monastery or two
walled up to heaven would hold the best points on the hills, inviting
artists, but perhaps ill rewarding them, while nursing idlers within
and beggars without. And had Rome less reigned at Cork than she has
done, a scene many degrees livelier and richer than that which now
surrounds the fair city would have noted the response of intelligent
industry to the boons of a very bountiful Providence.

Inside the capital of the oasis!--capital of a region where for a
thousand years, at the very least, no act morally wrong has been done
by authority, true bower of a peerless Eden! Let no Englishman say that
these pretensions are not to be treated seriously. We should all have
said so thirty years ago. But now men from any nation in Europe, some
blaming us, some vaunting over our return, will tell us that of late
years more has been done to accredit these pretensions by a portion of
the English clergy than by any educated class in Europe, and that more
to adorn and sanction these pretensions has been done by a portion of
the English aristocracy than by any privileged class in Europe. This is
one instance more of the fact that not interests but principles are the
safeguards of mankind.

Is the city, then, morally the perfection of beauty? Is it so rich in
the Christian graces as to accredit the claim to be the central seat of
an infallible power, the one spot on earth where it is directly touched
by a divine authority? The priest at once tells you how holy the
city is: there are eight basilicas, more than four hundred churches,
and more than two hundred convents. Yes, but perhaps the "religious
family" fabricated by teaching woman that her holy place is not the
family which God founded, and in which every man has his own wife and
every woman her own husband, may not in operation have proved a better
thing than the Christian family. Poor creatures put into an artificial
family where duties ordained by God are made void, and ties set by
Him as strings in the harp of nature to make holy melody, are rudely
unstrung--a "family" in which many of the things called _good works_
are neither virtues nor graces, but vain repetitions of fantastic
forms--a family where the obedience called for is not obedience to
any natural authority or to any divine law, but to arbitrary will;
communities of poor creatures such as these, we say, may not in the
long run have proved centres of holiness. When we ask if the city is
holy, we mean nothing about basilicas, or churches, or convents; but we
mean, are the people like Jesus Christ, like a people prepared as a fit
population for a sinless heaven?

We shall in reply give nothing but a statement on one side from the
_Civiltá_, and one on the other from the prelate Liverani, so that
neither heretic nor foreigner, nay, not even a layman, shall disturb
the testimony. The _Civiltá_,[72] after the occupation of the city by
Italy, showed that one of its characteristics had been the perfect
subordination of all civil arrangements to evangelical law. _Christ
reigns, Christ governs._ This motto had in Rome a worthy and complete
application. Not only individuals, but the family, the city, laws,
policy, all social institutions, felt the salutary influence. In the
metropolis of Christianity, marriage, education, instruction, the
administration of justice and charity, public and private manners, had
to be regulated by Christian laws and evangelical principles:--

    Such to a nicety was Rome. It was called the holy city, that is,
    the city more than any other consecrated to God and forming the
    expression of the kingdom of God upon earth. And the effect of
    this Christian order was seen in the very virtues of the civil
    population. The Roman people was not second to any other in piety
    towards God, and in propriety of conduct; and not only so, but it
    seemed the most dignified, the gravest, and the furthest removed
    from vulgarity and tumult.

The prelate on the other hand says--and we begin at the Vatican (p.
87):--

    Thus came it to pass that at the Court of Rome, that is, the
    house of the lieutenant of Him of whom it is written, "_The evil
    shall not dwell with Thee, neither shall the unjust remain within
    Thy sight_," turned into a sink of scandal and a sewer of every
    foul iniquity (p. 87).... It was always to me a mystery how the
    Roman clergy, rich in gold and lands till most of the Agro Latino
    is in their hands, with their splendid temples and sumptuous
    ceremonies, with their retainers diffused among all classes,
    with control of the charities, the pulpit, the confessional, the
    confraternities--how it is that with all these elements of power
    in their hands I hear from one end of Rome to the other the cry,
    Death to the priests! (p. 87).... The particulars hitherto related
    disclose [in the Court] an iniquity only too deeply rooted, and
    even turned into blood and nature; they disclose sores both
    inveterate and envenomed, hard to cure and hard to eradicate. It
    was this that made Clement VIII say to Bellarmine, "I have not
    strength to contend with such a flood of bad habits; pray to God to
    release me soon, and to shelter me in His glory." Also the brave
    Marcellus II was accustomed to repeat a sentence of Onofrio, which
    I do not wish to copy (133).

As to the people, we shall give but one word. Liverani, remarking on
objections raised against modern Italian rule by the "good Press,"
because certain houses existed in the cities, says:--

    It reminds me of a pleasantry of the old rector of the parish of
    St. Angelo in _Pescheria_, who one day said to me that when he
    took charge of the parish he found one house bad and one not so,
    turn and turn about; but he soon found that they were all alike.
    This editor is ingenuous and innocent as if he wrote in a land of
    angels, instead of in the place where not long ago a prelate-judge
    abused his office to the point of using violence with arms in his
    hands against the sister and daughter of the convicts, so that he
    was prosecuted before the Vicar and before the Holy Office, and
    removed from the bench; but after a few years, the good nature
    of the prince being overcome by powerful intercession, he was
    reinstated in another judicial office.

We shall not go further into this subject than to add that one of the
bitter reproaches cast upon the Italian senate by the _Unitá_ was that
when the most noted and most respected living man in Italian literature
and politics, Mamiani, said, speaking on the conscription, that at all
events the morals of the barrack-room were better than the morals of
the convent, the senate received the statement with loud applause.

However correct or incorrect may be the views of the several witnesses
from whom we have heard a word, there can be no hesitation in
pronouncing that any attempt to show evidence of divine superiority
utterly fails--so utterly as to be more than ridiculous. But if there
is not divine superiority, there must have been false pretensions. The
one or the other is inevitable. If the States of the Church have not
for the last thousand years been ruled by the representative of God,
they have been ruled by one who was himself deceived and a deceiver of
others.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 68: "I have no need to declare myself ready to repel and
reject that which the Pope cannot do. He cannot do an act contrary to
the Divine law."--_Cardinal Manning_, _Vat. Dec._, p. 41.]

[Footnote 69: _Ultramontanism et la Société Moderne._]

[Footnote 70: Vol. i. p. 14.]

[Footnote 71: The principle here alluded to is elucidated in an
instructive manner in _Nazareth and its Lessons_, by the Rev. G.S.
Drew.]

[Footnote 72: VIII, i. 132.]

CHAPTER XIII

Solemn Confirmation of the Syllabus by the Pope before the assembled
Hierarchy, and their Acquiescence, June 17, 1867.

The twenty-first anniversary of the accession of Pius IX occurred
shortly before the day for which the great assembly of 1867 was
convened. As the Court historian omits all mention of the Syllabus
when first issued, so does he also omit to say a word of its definite
confirmation by the Pontiff on June 17, 1867, and of its formal
acceptance by the episcopate. We are indebted for the details in this
case to an author who published before the events of 1870. Important
as the transaction was, we cannot find that at the time any of the
ordinary organs of the Vatican notified it to the world. Many of the
learned disputants in the controversies which were soon to arise took
ground which showed that they were unaware of this decisive event.

It was Archbishop Manning who related how Mass was celebrated in the
Sistine Chapel, and how the Pope retired, at its close, to robe in
the Pauline Chapel. Here the Cardinal Vicar, Patrizi, followed by the
whole of the Sacred College and the bishops, presented an address of
congratulation, concluding with hopes for many years of additional
life to Pius IX, that he might behold the peace of the Church, and her
triumph.

As recorded by the Archbishop, the terms employed by his Holiness in
reply were of historical importance.[73] It will be remarked that the
watchwords, deprecated by the Pope, are not those of heretics, but of
statesmen--Unity and Progress; and no Italian or German could doubt
what were the unity and progress decried--

    I accept your good wishes from my heart, but I remit their
    verification to the hands of God. We are in a moment of great
    crisis. If we look only to the aspect of human events, there is no
    hope; but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxicated with
    dreams of unity and progress, but neither is possible without
    justice. Unity and progress based on pride and egotism are
    illusions. God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths on
    which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which
    undermine its foundations; and I have not been silent. In the
    Encyclical of 1864, and in what is called the Syllabus, I declared
    to the world the dangers which threaten society, and I condemned
    the falsehoods which assail its life. That act I now confirm in
    your presence, and I lay it again before you as the rule of your
    teaching. To you, venerable brethren, as bishops of the Church, I
    now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely
    for support. When the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness,
    they had a pillar of fire to guide them in the night, and a cloud
    to shield them from the heat by day. You are the pillar and the
    cloud to the people of God.

Here the bishops learned, with the full weight of pontifical authority,
that the Syllabus was "the rule of their teaching." Some explained the
Syllabus as affecting discipline, and therefore liable to alteration.
The _Civiltá_ and the _Slimmen_ had always asserted that it was purely
doctrinal, and therefore above all change. In pronouncing it the "rule
of teaching" the Pope settled that vital point. Some, again, had been
tempted to think that the Syllabus might be laid up, like an ancestral
weapon; they were undeceived, and given to know that it must be tested
in war. Such were placed in the dilemma of having to offer resistance
to the sovereign thus surrounded, or of having to observe a silence
which must ever after carry the effect of consent. Even if they did
not feel with the Pope, that the foundations of universal society were
crumbling in unprecedented decay, they did keenly feel with him that
the foundations of his own temporal power were crumbling. Every doubter
held his peace, and the Pope's act became virtually what, as we shall
see, in a few days it became formally,--the act of the whole episcopate.

The Pope is not fortunate in quoting Scripture, often showing that he
takes glosses for the text. He imagines that the "cloud by day" was not
a pillar before the host, but an extended field of clouds overshadowing
the wide-spread multitudes and not merely the tabernacle.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: _Centenary of St. Peter_, p. 6.]

_BOOK II_

_FROM THE FIRST PUBLIC INTIMATION OF A COUNCIL TO THE EVE OF THE
OPENING_

(_June 1867 to December 1869_)

CHAPTER I

First Public Intimation of the intention to hold a Council, June 26 to
July 1, 1867--Consistory--Acquiescence in the Syllabus of the assembled
Bishops--The Canonized Inquisitor--Questions and Returns preparatory
to Greater Centralization--Manning on the Ceremonies--O'Connell on the
Papist Doctrines--The Doctrine of Direct and Indirect Power.

June 26, 1867, was the day of the Secret Consistory, to which not
less than five hundred bishops from all regions of the earth lent
their splendours. The Pope in his allocution deplored the evils which
had overtaken the Church, and, as he supposed, in equal measure had
overtaken all society. And now, at length, did he reveal his intention
of convoking such an assembly as had not been witnessed for three
hundred years. He had firm hope that from a General Council the light
of catholic truth would shine forth and scatter the darkness which
enveloped the minds of men; and that the Church, like the battle-array
of an unconquered host, discomfiting her enemies, rolling back their
onset, and triumphing over them, would spread abroad over the earth the
dominion of Christ.

Though journalists and bishops at the time bravely reproduced this
martial figure, the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 13), writing after the
battles of 1870, makes the Pope say that the Church would gain her
fairest triumphs by converting her enemies.

The very name of an OEcumenical Council, uttered in the tones of
Pius IX, instinct with personal and official hope, caused among the
assembled prelates a movement of effusive joy. They felt that such a
council would prove a "marvellous source of unity, sanctification,
and peace." On July 1, assembling in the great hall over the portico
of St. Peter's, with all possible accessories of form, they presented
to his Holiness what they called a Salutation. This had been drawn
up by Archbishop Haynald of Colocza, assisted by Bishop Dupanloup,
Archbishop Manning, and others. It had been proposed to proclaim Papal
infallibility in the document itself; but this set the French prelates
up in arms.[74] Though stopping short of that goal, the bishops go far
in their approaches to it.

"May the unmeasured benefits assured to society by the Roman
Pontificate," say the bishops, "be, by this deed of Thy providence,
once more displayed to the world, and may the world be convinced of
the powers of the Church, and of her mission as the _mother of civil
humanity_!" They were persuaded that a Council would have the effect
of showing that everything tending to consolidate the foundation of a
community, and to give it permanence, is fortified and consecrated by
the example of authority, and of the obedience due thereto, presented
in the divine institution of the Pontificate. Princes and peoples
would not, "in the face of such a display, allow the highest sanction
of all authority, the august rights of the Pope, to be trampled upon
with impunity, but would see him secured in the enjoyment both of the
liberty of power and the power of liberty."[75]

The words in which the bishops confirm their testimony of 1862, to
the "necessity," of the temporal power are few and firm. They then
proceed to cover the space between that time and the present. "With
grateful feelings do we recall, and with fullest assent do we commend,
the things done by Thee subsequent to that time, for the salvation of
the faithful and the glory of the Church." This is a waymark showing
that the old doctrine still ruled the practice of the Court, though
long banished from its theory. The acquiescence of the bishops was
practically necessary to give the ultimate sanction to the acts of the
Pope.

Then comes the solemn adhesion of the assembled hierarchy to the
condemnations collected together in the Syllabus--"Believing Peter to
have spoken by the lips of Pius the things which have been spoken,
confirmed, and pronounced by Thee, for the safe keeping of the deposit,
we also declare, confirm, and announce; and we reject with one heart
and voice those things which Thou hast adjudged to be reprobated and
rejected, as being contrary to divine faith, the salvation of souls, or
the good of human society."[76]

So it was done. The Pope had called for the express submission of
the episcopate to his own acts, hitherto variously understood and
discussed, and they had given it in round terms. Dr. Manning, in
characterizing their document as "The Address or Response, in which
they united themselves in heart and mind to their supreme Head,"[77]
might well speak of "the gravity and moral grandeur of that act," for
with him vastness always seems to prove grandeur, and an act of vast
moral consequence this surely was. We shall hereafter see the fact
tardily come to light that absent prelates were called upon to give in
their adhesion by letter, and did so.

On either the Papal or the Episcopal theory, the Syllabus had now the
status of Church law, and had become to all the clergy "the rule of
your teaching." On the Papal theory, because it was the formal act of
the Pontiff for the teaching and ruling of the whole Church; and on the
Episcopal theory, because the collective hierarchy had not only tacitly
acquiesced but openly accepted it.

Yet it is worthy of special remark that the Syllabus is not mentioned
in this Salutation. More than two years later, however, the _Civiltá_
said, "There is no doubt that the prelates had the Encyclical and
Syllabus in view, since in these two documents are contained all the
things which the Pope has _spoken_, _confirmed_, _announced_, and
_reproved_ in matters of doctrine."[78] And even as early as one year
from the time, we shall find that the double authority of the Bishop of
Rome, and of all other bishops, was declared to be outraged by Darboy
when he practically disowned the Syllabus.

The next point touched by the prelates was one lying near to the heart
of the Pope. They had been moved with joy on beholding the loyal faith,
love, and reverence of the Roman people for their most indulgent
prince. "Happy people and truly wise"--_Felicem populum ac vere
sapientem_.[79] So, whoever had doubted as to the Model State, it was
not the five hundred. Were they sincerely ready to make the people of
their respective nations "truly wise" by bringing them to look on that
government as the model?

The bishops evidently knew that they were initiating a movement which
would test the combative qualities of both Pope and prelates. Every
discerning man among them must have felt what Archbishop Manning
expressed, "This event may be taken, I believe, to be the opening of a
new period, and to contain a future which may reach over centuries."[80]

Under anticipations so serious do these old men, addressing a very old
one, thus conclude--

    Courage, most Blessed Father! Guide the bark of the Church with a
    firm hand, as has been Thy wont, certain of gaining the port. The
    Mother of divine grace, whom Thou hast saluted with fairest titles
    of honour, will defend Thy course, by the aid of her intercession;
    she will be to Thee the star of the sea.... Thou wilt have the
    celestial choirs of the saints favouring Thee; those whose glory
    Thou hast, with diligence and apostolic toil, sought out, and also
    hast proclaimed to the exulting world, both aforetime and in these
    recent days. May the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul stand
    by Thee!... At the helm now held by Thee once stood Peter. He will
    intercede with the Lord that the bark which, by the aid of his
    prayers, has for eighteen centuries traversed the deep sea of human
    life, may under Thy command enter the celestial haven, all sail
    set, and laden with richest spoil of souls immortal.[81]

It is to be remarked that in this passage Peter is not honoured, like
his successor, with capitals to all his pronouns. Again, he and Paul
are coupled together as if they might have been somewhat on a level.
Perhaps in both points the bishops made an unconscious concession
to history, but in the state of things now initiated, such jots and
tittles were to become symptomatic.

One allusion in the Address, which would pass with a smile in England,
had great significance for the mind of Pius IX. It is that made to his
claim to peculiar aid from the Blessed Virgin, because of the higher
exaltation which he had procured for her, and also to his claim upon
new saints whose titles he had made out. In the case of the Japanese
saints, we have already seen how practical were his views. He was
fighting for the territory of his predecessors, and, finding that he
had not hosts enough on earth, he reversed the ordinary process of
binding on earth and leaving it to be ratified in heaven, and now bound
in heaven, by creating "new patrons in the presence of God," leaving it
to be ratified on earth by a corresponding increase of forces.

The vision of these new heavenly auxiliaries dazzled the imagination.
Even the professor of history in the university speaks of the awful
moment when the Pope raised them to their thrones as "the sublime rite,
during which heaven and earth hung upon the lips of the Pope."[82] The
expressions of confidence in these new-made powers, as champions in the
thickening struggle for that patrimony which, though costing so much
blood, forgery, and intrigue, so much dependency on foreign arms, so
much slaughter of Italians, had been retained through evil report and
good report, irresistibly remind one of Licinius when menaced by the
advance of Constantine, under the auspices of one God only. Licinius
feels the advantage he has in the numbers of gods on whom he can rely.

    "This present day," he, as reported by Eusebius, says, "will either
    declare us conquerors, and so most justly demonstrate our gods to
    be the saviours and true assistants, or else, if this one God of
    Constantine's, who comes from I know not whence, shall get the
    better of our gods, which are many, and at present do exceed in
    number, nobody in future will be in doubt which God he ought to
    worship, but will betake himself to the more powerful God, and
    attribute to Him the rewards of victory. And if this strange God,
    who is now a _ridicule_ to us, shall appear to be the victor, it
    will behove us also to acknowledge and adore Him, and to bid a
    long farewell to those to whom we light tapers in vain. But if our
    gods shall get the better--which no person can entertain a doubt
    of--after the victory obtained in this place we will proceed to
    bring a war upon those impious contemners of the gods."[83]

Even if this does not describe what Licinius really said, it does
represent the view of the early Christian, as to the heathen mode of
thought, putting confidence in a multiplicity of celestial patrons, in
the lighting of tapers and such like.

The name of Arbues, the Spanish Inquisitor, has been mentioned as being
second on the list of those now to be canonized. Professor Sepp, of
Munich, long known as a Catholic theologian and Oriental traveller,
says in his _Deutschland und der Vatican_ (p. 52)--

    Nothing was more calculated to degrade the Church, and render her
    unpopular, or to bring a flush of shame to the cheek of every
    Catholic, than this revival of the most disagreeable recollections
    of history. Had Arbues contended against the burning of heretics,
    we should have welcomed him, in the name of God, as a saint.
    But history gives us no information about the man except that
    he discharged the odious office of a Torquemada, and that the
    long-persecuted Jews brought him to an untimely end. The most
    that can be said for him is that he died for the idea of the
    Inquisition; and for that he is to be set up on our altars.

Many another Liberal Catholic blushed with Sepp. Baron Weichs, in
Vienna, cried, "A single example will show you the difference between
the spirit which reigns here and that which reigns on the banks of
the Tiber. While here we speak of abolishing the penalty of death,
there they canonize an Inquisitor, covered over with the blood of the
victims whom he had immolated because they worshipped God in their own
way." The _Civiltá_ exclaims, "And men of this sort are to be reputed
Catholics, and to make laws for Catholics. _O tempora! O mores!_"[84]

The Cardinals of the Holy Office had drawn up a list of questions on
points of Church discipline, which was delivered to the bishops while
in Rome, and afterwards sent to many, probably to all, of those who
were absent. Lord Acton points out that these questions do not touch
the depths of existing wants.[85] And Michelis seems to look upon them
as a blind, to cover the real point at which the Council was to aim.
They are, however, clearly framed to elicit facts bearing on uniformity
of discipline, and especially on points of administration in mixed
questions--that is, questions wherein both civil and ecclesiastical
authority are concerned; for instance, schools, mixed marriages, civil
marriages, domestic relations, and the like. The returns which the
answers would supply would be of great value in the study of plans for
reconstruction, and would seem to be of more practical importance than
Lord Acton imagines, for the purpose of governing a mobilized clergy
through bishops turned into prefects, by orders from one bureau, and
of impressing through them a uniform movement on both institutions and
families, in matters affecting national law.

The five hundred bishops soon dispersed to the four corners of the
earth, carrying into their respective spheres enthusiastic descriptions
of the beautiful, the grand, the splendid, the superb, the glorious,
the unutterably majestic ceremonies which they had just witnessed, and
no less enthusiastic hope of "the greatest event of the age," when the
princes of the Church should assemble around her head to overawe her
enemies and build her up anew. We do not use the epithet "divine," but
it is perhaps right to say that the _Civiltá_ described the appearing
of the Pope "upon the portative throne, in all the majesty of his
divine rank ... the Pope-king, the supreme representative of the
two-fold authority which rules the nations in the name of God."[86] It
of course celebrates the "standards which represented the glory of the
Princes of the Apostles," and does not forget the "twenty thousand wax
candles."[87]

Archbishop Manning reminded his clergy that in the solemn adherence
of the bishops to those acts of the Pontiff, they did not confirm
those acts as if needing confirmation, or accept them as if needing
acceptance, or imply that they had been "of imperfect and only
inchoate authority until their acceptance should confirm them." ...
"They did not add certainty to what was already infallible."[88] The
infallibility, he contended, belonged to all the approbations and
condemnations alike--not, as some "blindly say," by virtue derived
from canons, councils, or ecclesiastical institutions, "but from the
direct grant of our Lord Jesus Christ, before as yet a canon was made
or a council assembled." This is a somewhat crude statement of the
doctrine which all the Irish and French Catholics we ever knew in our
younger days resented, when ascribed to themselves by Protestants. They
called it the doctrine of the "Papists," and contended that Protestants
wronged all such Roman Catholics as were not Papists, by calling them
so, indiscriminately. What we call "temporal authority," what the
Jesuits have taught Rome to call "spiritual authority over temporal
affairs," was one point, and the infallibility of the Pope was a second
point, on which the Papist was at issue with the Liberal Catholic. In
this sense Montalembert and O'Connell were not Papists. The latter
says--

    I am sincerely a Catholic, but I am not a Papist. I deny the
    doctrine that the Pope has any temporal authority directly or
    indirectly in Ireland. We have all denied that authority on oath,
    and we would die to resist it. He cannot, therefore, be any
    party to the Act of Parliament we solicit, nor shall any Act of
    Parliament regulate our faith and conscience. In spiritual matters
    too the authority of the Pope is limited: he cannot, although
    his conclave of Cardinals were to join him, vary our religion
    either in doctrine or essential discipline in any respect. Even in
    non-essential discipline the Pope cannot vary it without the assent
    of the Irish Catholic bishops. Why, to this hour the discipline of
    the General Council of Trent is not received in this diocese.[89]

The utterances of Archbishop Manning, though sweet to the ears of those
who had the dispensing of the purple in Rome, were, nevertheless, hard
on those who, as children, had learned that such doctrine was no part
of their creed. In his day Alban Butler had proudly said, "But Mr.
Bower never found the infallibility of the Pope in our creed, and knows
very well that no such article is proposed [propounded] by the Church,
or required of any one."[90]

Dr. Manning went on to declare that he had received the Syllabus at
the first "as a part of the supreme and infallible teaching of the
Church."[91] In this he proved how far he went before most prelates of
experience on this side of the Alps and Pyrenees, although he coolly
credits them, every one, with having done likewise.[92]

Just as the episcopate had been committed in 1862 to the temporal
power, so was it committed in 1867 to the Syllabus. Whether a bishop
believed that his assent had any constitutional effect or not was
now a matter of comparative indifference, for his future action was
bound; and the Syllabus was to prescribe the decrees and direct the
deliberations of the future Council--in fact, to be its basis and its
guide.

The language of Manning was treated by many Catholics as the menaces
of a zealot; but the zealot knew that he spoke for the Pope and the
Jesuits. During the conflict now on the point of breaking out, many
honest men fought against the supposed design that the Syllabus
should receive "doctrinal authority" from the Council, while in the
mind of those in whose hands lay their future faith, the Council was
under the doctrinal authority of the Syllabus. The Council might
contribute to administration by turning the propositions into canons or
constitutions, but could not add to their authority.

The anticipation of Archbishop Manning as to the political effect of
the doctrinal change then impending was clearly recorded, and in terms
never to be forgotten--

    "Civil governments, so long as their Catholic subjects can be
    dealt with in detail, are strong and often oppressive. When they
    have to deal with the Church throughout the world, the minority
    becomes a majority, and subjects, in all matters spiritual, become
    free. We are approaching a time when civil governments must deal
    with the Church as a whole, and with its head as supreme; and a
    General Council which makes itself felt in every civilized nation
    will powerfully awaken civil rulers to the consciousness that
    the Church is not a school of opinion, nor a mere religion, but
    a spiritual kingdom, having its own legislature, tribunals, and
    executive."[93]

Some seven years after sounding this note, preparatory to a powerful
awakening of civil rulers, the Archbishop, having seen some beginning
of the results of that policy to which he was helping to hurry on his
Church, could say, "I must add that they who are rekindling the old
fires of religious discord in such an equal and tempered commonwealth
as ours, seem to me to be serving neither God nor their country."[94]

The language of O'Connell, as above quoted, was not employed loosely.
He spoke as a Catholic, and as a lawyer; but, above all, as a
politician. Had his declaration with regard to the spiritual power been
less explicit, that upon the temporal power might, though not without
violence, have been open to an Ultramontane interpretation. It might
have been said that he only meant that the Pope had no authority in
Ireland, which either directly or indirectly sprang from a temporal
origin; for, in the language of the Ultramontanes, temporal authority
does not mean authority over temporal affairs, but authority of
temporal origin. His statement on the spiritual authority however,
precludes any such interpretation. Even the spiritual authority
he declares to be limited, both in doctrine and in discipline: it
cannot "vary" doctrine, and cannot even vary the essential points of
discipline, without the consent of the Irish bishops. If spoken to-day,
this reserve in favour of the bishops would involve nationalism; and
O'Connell's denial of the Pope's infallibility, without the consent of
the bishops, would be heresy. Archbishop Manning, with a great many
others, sought to prove, before the Council sat, that the latter
position was proximate to heresy. So O'Connell and Montalembert must
always lie under the brand of having lived and died as proximate
heretics. The elect champion of the Pope's faith to-day may, if he
refuses to change, be the butt of his anathema to-morrow.

NOTE

DR. NEWMAN ON THE SYLLABUS

It was eight years after the Syllabus had been formally confirmed
by the Pope, and after its ratification by the collective hierarchy
had been officially communicated to the Papal clergy in England by
Archbishop Manning, that Dr. Newman treated of it in his letter to the
Duke of Norfolk, in reply to the "Expostulation" of Mr. Gladstone. The
assertions in that reply are among the most unaccountable known to the
history of our literature. Still, such as they are, they have been made
in a pamphlet bearing the name of an English duke on its title-page,
and that of an English gentleman at its end. Moreover, they were
received by our Press--and the fact is known throughout Europe--with
perfect gravity.

Dr. Newman (p. 78) asks and answers an important question as follows--

"Who gathered the propositions out of these Papal documents, and
put them together in one? We do not know." After no more than three
sentences he adds: "The Pope has had the errors, which at one time
or other he therein condemned, brought together into one, and that
for the use of the bishops." On the next page he asks: "Who is its
author? Some select theologian or high official, doubtless; can it be
Cardinal Antonelli himself? No, surely; anyhow, it is not the Pope."
First he tells us that we do not know who put it together, then that
the Pope has done it, or has had it done. Again, in the same manner,
he first tells us that it is not Cardinal Antonelli's, and then more
than once calls it Cardinal Antonelli's (p. 91), as if his authorship
of the document was an established point on which arguments might be
grounded. Dr. Newman in this manner procures for himself a double set
of premises, which he employs throughout, with frequent shifting. His
argument now assumes the affirmative, namely, that the Syllabus is the
work of the Pope; and now it assumes the negative, that the Syllabus is
not the work of the Pope; and this is what the English Press with, so
far as we know, unanimity agrees to call logical.

"But," asserts Dr. Newman, "the Syllabus makes no claim to be
acknowledged as the word of the Pope" (p. 80). The very heading of
the Syllabus sets up the claim to be accounted the word of the Pope;
ay, and his word in official, public, and teaching acts. The heading
is, "The Syllabus of the Principal Errors of our Time set forth in
Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic, by
our most holy lord, Pope Pius IX." This claim is not incidental, but
formal and capital, incapable of being either overlooked or put aside.
No man's judgments are here introduced but those of Pope Pius IX, and
of his judgments not one here recited is less official than are Letters
Apostolic.

"The Syllabus, then," further asserts Dr. Newman, "has no dogmatic
force. It addresses us not in its separate portions, but as a whole"
(p. 81). The affirmative is true, the Syllabus addresses us as a whole.
The negative is not true, namely, that the Syllabus does not address us
in its separate portions.

Does Dr. Newman mean that there is a single one of the eighty
propositions which does not bear the Papal brand, "error"? It is very
wide of the mark--no man in England better knows _how_ wide of it--to
talk about different brands, some more and some less damnatory, such as
"heretical," "false," "impious," or the like.

"There is not a single word in the Encyclical to show that the Pope
in it is alluding to the Syllabus" (p. 82). This is said to refute
an allegation of Mr. Gladstone, which Dr. Newman calls "marvellously
unfair." That allegation is, that the Encyclical virtually, _though not
expressly_, includes the whole of the errors condemned. It will be seen
by any one who refers to our own remarks upon the Encyclical (pp. 5-7),
that had Mr. Gladstone read it as we do, he would not have written
what he did. He would have written instead of it something to this
effect, that the Encyclical includes the whole of these condemnations,
not by reciting them, but by clearly expressed reference. What he did
say, instead of being unfair, comes short of what is required by the
evidence contained in the documents. The reference in the one to the
other is formal. "In pursuance of our apostolic ministry, and walking
in the illustrious footsteps of our predecessor, we have lifted up our
voice, and in several published Encyclical Consistorial Allocutions,
and other Letters Apostolic, we have condemned the errors of our sad
times." This language proves that Mr. Gladstone in saying that the
whole of the Pope's condemnations were virtually though not expressly
included in the Encyclical, was within the limits of the evidence. They
are expressly referred to, and those additional ones contained in the
Encyclical itself are linked on to the previous ones as a complement,
making them a whole. In itself the point is of no consequence whatever,
but Dr. Newman has chosen to make it important, and for _his_ theory it
may have some importance.

"All we know," says Dr. Newman, "is that by the Pope's command this
collection of errors is sent by his Foreign Minister to the bishops"
(p. 78). That is not all we know. We also know that the Foreign
Minister did not, by the Pope's command, send it as the work of
Cardinal Antonelli. We know that he did send it as the work of Pope
Pius IX. We know that he recited in one and the same note, once for
all, the language common to the two documents. 1. As regards what is
condemned--"the principal errors of our times." 2. As to who it was
that condemned them--the Pope. 3. As to the official acts in which he
did condemn them, namely, Allocutions, and so on.

The next assertion we have to note is made in a strong interrogative
form. "How can a list of errors be a series of pontifical
declarations?" (p. 84). We reply, how can it be otherwise? What does
an error mean in the language of such a document? It means errors
declared to be such by the Pontiff; a list of such "errors," therefore,
is simply a list of pontifical declarations. Dr. Newman knows as well
as he knows his own name, that every clause of the Syllabus is a
pontifical declaration that the words there written express an error.

Alluding to the forty-second of the condemned propositions, namely,
that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law
should prevail, Dr. Newman says this is a universal, and the Pope does
but deny a universal. A universal may be denied in two ways. First by
its contradictory, which may amount only to saying in popular language
that the rule is not without exceptions. But there is another way of
denying a universal, namely, by its contrary; that is, asserting that
the rule is just the contrary of what some one has stated.

Now if Dr. Newman believes that when the Pope denies that, in case of
conflict, the civil law should prevail, the Pope means no more than
that there are exceptions to that rule, he believes what is in flat
contradiction to the whole tenor of the Pope's language, and that of
his organs year by year--language cast in forms as forcible as the
case admits of. If he does not mean that, his repeated statement about
denying universals is, in a technical sense, incorrect, and, in a
popular sense, misleading.

Dr. Newman's treatment of the Sentence (24) which condemns those
who say that the Church has not the right to employ force, is very
instructive. First, he says (p. 89), "Employing force is not the Pope's
phrase, but Professor Nuytz's." And what then? Is this phrase, "It is
an error to say the Church has not a right to employ force" Professor
Nuytz's or the Pope's? Next Dr. Newman says that what the Pope means
is, "It is an error to say with Professor Nuytz that what he calls
employing force is not allowable to the Church." And what then? What
does Professor Nuytz call force but force? Schrader translates it
"outward force." Dr. Newman does not venture so far as to translate it
"spiritual coercion." The whole sentence is about temporal power and
the use of force--_Vis inferendae--potestatem temporalem_; it never
glances at spiritual censures in the popular sense.

At the next step, Dr. Newman professes to "set down what the received
doctrine of the Church is on ecclesiastical punishments" (p. 89).
Does he do so, or make any straightforward attempt to do it? Not by
any means. "Ecclesiastical punishments" is a term of wide extension,
embracing great varieties of penalty, from the deposition of an Emperor
to the paltry penance of a nun. In all this range of inflictions, the
single point touched by Dr. Newman is that of corporal punishment. The
selection of this one point proves that he was perfectly aware that
both Nuytz and the Pope meant force when they said force; and this fact
reduces the talk about Nuytz's sense of that term to what it is.

But having selected corporal punishment as the whole of ecclesiastical
punishment, how does Dr. Newman set down the received doctrine
regarding it? By quoting a passage which, under the appearance of
surrendering something, really claims something additional, according
to a common usage with Papal writers (p. 89). Cardinal Soglia, as
quoted by Dr. Newman, makes a merit of giving up on behalf of the
Church "the corporal sword by which the body is destroyed, or blood is
shed." This, however, the Church _formerly_ never claimed to hold _in
her hand_, but _only in her power_ and _at her beck_, in the hand of
the temporal ruler. But, in giving up the corporal sword, Soglia is
not contented to claim for the Church in her own hand what the bull
_Unam Sanctam_ claims; that is, the spiritual sword. He does of course
claim that, but he further claims that the same hand should have and
hold also the corporal instalments "of lighter punishments," such as
imprisonment, flogging, and beating with sticks--anything "short of
effusion of blood." The last penalty is the stroke of the corporal
sword, and is left to the temporal arm. The Church did not in past time
claim two swords in her own hand, the spiritual one and the corporal.
She only claimed a spiritual sword according to Boniface VIII; and
according to Dr. Newman she claims also a cat, a cudgel, and a rack.

Neither in what he writes, nor in what he quotes, on this subject does
Dr. Newman allow even an allusion to appear to the question whether the
corporal sword is or is not _in the power_ of the Church. He cannot
be unaware that untrained Englishmen, in reading the statement of his
authority to the effect that the corporal sword is by some writers
withdrawn from the Church, would suppose that they taught that it is
not in her power. Dr. Newman knows that such an impression upon their
minds would be a false one. He knows that Cardinal Soglia does not give
any hint that the corporal sword is a weapon which the Church may not
employ. Dr. Newman himself does not give any such hint. To ordinary
readers, indeed, he seems to resent the assertion that she may employ
it; but even in seeming to resent it he does not venture to affirm
that she may not do so. Much less does he say, in plain English, that
such is the received doctrine. He engages us in chat about flogging
and thrashing, and forgets all about where his Church keeps her
corporal sword--the only one we care about. Not that we like even the
instruments of flogging and thrashing, much less the instruments of
other corporal pains which fall short of the "effusion of blood."

Dr. Newman, at one time, says that the Syllabus does not address us
in its separate portions; and at another, shows that every one of its
portions refers to an original document, in which that portion is to
be found. These documents, he admits, _are_ authoritative; but the
Syllabus, which culls out the really authoritative parts of them,
is not authoritative. We can hardly credit Dr. Newman with making a
distinction of the following sort: that one is to feel bound by the
Pope's judgments when they lie buried in a clumsy document, and not
feel bound by them when they have been culled out by himself, and put
simply before us. If Dr. Newman feels free to teach in opposition to
any one of the eighty sentences as read from the Syllabus, though bound
to teach according to it when read in the original document, what he
has written on the subject may have some kind of serious meaning for
himself, though incomprehensible to other people.

One other point we would notice. "When we turn to these documents which
_are_ authoritative," says Dr. Newman, "we find the Syllabus cannot
even be called an echo of the apostolic voice." We certainly do not
profess to find that it is so. It is an echo of a voice very unlike an
apostolic one. But Dr. Newman means the Pope's voice. Of that voice the
words in the Syllabus are not an echo, because they are its own words.
Dr. Newman says that, as uttered in the Syllabus, they are not an exact
reproduction of the words of the Pope; meaning by that, as found in the
original documents. The words in the Syllabus are the exact words of
the Pope used on a second occasion, and sometimes slightly varied from
those he originally did use.

Dr. Newman has a passage in his own history which is not to be
forgotten, and which ought to have made it difficult for him to stand
on points about a variation of language made by a Pope, objecting that
it impairs the authority of solemn documents.

There was a moment in the life of Dr. Newman when he still retained
the freedom of a Christian man to teach the Catholic faith, ancient,
strong and true. But he was on the point of parting with it--in the
very act of swearing away that blessed birthright of his soul. He had
already recited the form of sound words called the Nicene Creed, and
had come to the point where the plunge must be made from the rock of
Scripture, on which it builds, into the quicksands of tradition. In the
modern form of oath which, at that dark moment, he was venturing to
take upon his conscience, the first sentences, after parting from the
language of the Catholic Church, the first that are the work of Rome,
shift to another foundation from that laid under the old, scriptural,
abiding verities. The true and noble old words, "the life of the world
to come," built on the living Rock, are immediately succeeded by such
preparation for modern inventions as the following: "I most firmly
admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and the
other practices and statutes of the said Church. I do also admit the
Holy Scripture according to that sense which holy Mother Church has
held and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge as to the true sense
and interpretation of the Holy Scripture; nor shall I ever receive or
interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."

This new thing in a creed was said by the Pope to have been ordained by
the Council of Trent. If Dr. Newman had taken the trouble to see how
far the terms to which he had to swear were an "echo" of those of the
Council, he would have found that there was a discrepancy, considerable
in words, but, in practice, monstrous. The Council decreed that no one
should interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the
Fathers. That decree was confirmed by the Pope. It had thus acquired
all the warrant of infallibility, and the most solemn guarantee for
being irreformable that Rome had it in her power to give. This decree
was "of faith." How long did it continue to be "of faith"? Only until
the Pope prepared his Bull, collecting the dogmatic decrees into a
novel creed. Then it was altered. The men who, henceforth, were to be
the priests of Rome found themselves called upon to take oath, not as
the Council willed it and worded it, that they would never interpret
Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, but that
they would never interpret it except according to the unanimous consent
of the Fathers. This was another will and another wording altogether.
The latter amounts to little less than an oath that they would never
interpret it at all, except on very few points.

To make the scope of this alteration clearer, let us suppose the case
of Dr. Newman himself, while yet in the enjoyment of that ministry of
the English Church which he afterwards threw away. Had he then been
required not to preach anything contrary to the unanimous opinion
of the bench of bishops, he might have felt tolerably free. But had
he been required never to preach anything except according to the
unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he would have felt--Why, I
can hardly preach at all. Yet this vast change is made in a creed while
its articles are passing through the process of being culled from the
original documents, and presented in a collected form. In this form
it was imposed by oath upon the consciences of men for ever. One and
the same Papal hand signed its infallible certainty and irreformable
permanency in one shape, in a little time afterwards altered its tenor,
destroyed its certainty, reformed its scope, and then signed its
infallibility and its irreformable permanency in the new shape. And an
Englishman who swallows this camel in the creed stands between us and
the light, straining out a gnat that he says has got into the Syllabus.

But what is the real teaching, as to the use of physical force, of
Cardinal Soglia, who is soberly put forward by Dr. Newman before the
English public as justifying him in crying out against Mr. Gladstone
for accusing the Church of claiming the right to use force? Page
216: "The Church, exercising her power in the external tribunal, has
been long accustomed to chastise offenders even with prison, exile,
confinement in monasteries, whipping or flagellation, with fine, and
other similar penalties; which, inasmuch as they affect the body,
are commonly called corporeal." Page 219: "We affirm that in the
inherent authority of the Church, by which she can coerce offenders
with salutary penalties, is certainly contained the right of awarding
such temporal penalties as consist in fine, exile, prison, whipping,
and other things of the same kind." Page 222: "If a case occurs in
which severer punishment appears necessary, the ecclesiastical judge
may not himself resort to it, but he is to hand over the delinquent
to the secular power to be punished according to its will. Besides,
it is evident that the crime of heresy itself was brought under the
cognizance of the ecclesiastical tribunals up to the point when the
heretics, being convicted, and found obstinate, were first punished by
ecclesiastical censures, and afterwards, being subjected by the lay
power to capital penalty, were exterminated." Page 222: "The Church
never pronounced a sentence of blood. Even the Inquisition smote
heretics with the spiritual sword, and prison, but the lay princes
subjected them to the last capital penalty." Page 217: "Perhingius
believes that the Church does possess the right of inflicting capital
punishment, but that she is not accustomed to exercise it, or to
carry it out by ecclesiastical ministers and judges, but through lay
ones, and by means of the temporal power, because the latter is more
becoming, and more appropriate to the claims of the Church." What
follows would, by internal evidence, seem to be added by Vecchiotti,
but no intimation is given to that effect. Page 217: "He [Cardinal
Tarquini] held that there is no kind of penalty with which the Church
may not in her own right punish offenders; and thus temporal goods,
reputation, rights of office and of heritage, and life itself, are
subject to the ecclesiastical power. Otherwise the Church could not
compel disobedient rebels, or avenge herself for their crimes, nor
could she cut off rotten and noxious members from the body." Soglia, or
rather his continuator, speaking of the moderns, Tarquini and "other
doctors," and their doctrine of physical force, says (p. 217), "They
derive it from the character and constitution of the Church herself,
or from the nature of a perfect society and its end. Hence, just as in
a perfect civil society the right of execution _jus necis_ belongs to
the lay power for the good of the commonwealth and of the citizens,
so do they assert that none can deny that by stronger reason the same
right resides in the ecclesiastical power for the spiritual good of the
faithful."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 74: Acton's _Zur Geschichte_, pp. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 75: _Acta_ (Freiburg edition), p. 35.]

[Footnote 76: _Acta_ (Freiburg edition), p. 33.]

[Footnote 77: _Centenary of St. Peter_, p. 5.]

[Footnote 78: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 587.]

[Footnote 79: _Acta_ (Freiburg edition), p. 34.]

[Footnote 80: _Centenary of St. Peter_, pp. 12, 13.]

[Footnote 81: _Acta_ (Freiburg edition), p. 36.]

[Footnote 82: _Frond_, i, p. 82.]

[Footnote 83: Eusebius' _Life of Constantine_, lib. ii. c. 5.]

[Footnote 84: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 23.]

[Footnote 85: _Zur Geschichte_, p. 4.]

[Footnote 86: Serie VI. vol. xi. p. 165.]

[Footnote 87: Ibid. p. 234.]

[Footnote 88: _Centenary of St. Peter_, pp. 33, 34.]

[Footnote 89: _The Select Speeches of O'Connell._ Edited by his son,
1862. P. 447.]

[Footnote 90: Life prefixed to the _Lives of the Saints_, vol. i. p.
14. Ed. of 1836.]

[Footnote 91: _Centenary of St. Peter_, p. 38.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid. p. 34.]

[Footnote 93: _Centenary of St. Peter_, p. 95.]

[Footnote 94: _Vaticanism_, p. 155.]

CHAPTER II

Six Secret Commissions preparing--Interrupted by Garibaldi--A Code
for the Relations of the Church and Civil Society--Special Sitting
with Pope and Antonelli to decide on the Case of Princes--Tales of the
Crusaders--English Martyrs--Children on the Altar--Autumn of 1867 to
June 1868.

While in the provinces the bishops were kindling enthusiasm for the
coming assembly, and for the movement of reconstruction in general, in
Rome six Commissions were at work, under the Directing Congregation,
making secret preparations for the Council. Each of these Commissions
had of course a Cardinal at its head. The first, that for Theology,
was under Cardinal Bilio, a monk, and a native of Piedmont, only
forty years of age, and but lately raised to the purple.[95] Rightly
or wrongly, as Vitelleschi says, he is credited with the principal
share in the preparation of the Syllabus. Others, however, are named
for the same honour. We ourselves heard a member of the original
Congregation for the preparation of the Syllabus assert that it
was Passaglia who first suggested it. Passaglia was a great Jesuit
theologian, who lost position by declaring against the temporal power.
The second Commission, for Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs, was under
Cardinal Reisach, a man of sixty-five, an accomplished Bavarian, but
so denationalized in manner and spirit, that his countrymen sometimes
accused him of affecting to have almost forgotten German. For some
years he left Rome to hold high place in his native country. As
Archbishop of Munich he did much to supplant the old national faith
by the Vatican one, and to unsettle the previously existing relations
of Church and State. Under his eye the popular catechism of Canisius
was changed. The answer, "The Pope by himself is not infallible," had
done good service for centuries; but now it had to make way for a new
one; and eventually the whole book was transformed by the French Jesuit
Deharbe.[96]

The Commission next in importance was that on Ceremonies. If the
theological one had to formulate the principles on which the world
was to be governed, and the ecclesiastico-political one had to draft
the rules and frame the executive machinery by which those principles
were to be carried out, the Commission on ceremonies had to devise
the scenic effects with which the movement should, to use a frequent
expression of Roman, French, and even of German Catholic writers, be
put upon the stage--the _mise en scène_.

Oriental Affairs, the Religious Orders, and Ecclesiastical Discipline,
were the subjects committed to the other three Commissions.

A seventh, of which the official history makes no mention, was,
according to Vitelleschi (p. 26), an object of great public attention.
It was for Biblical matters, and the revision of the Index. Its
President was Cardinal de Luca. But it inclined to a more liberal
procedure in regard to the Index, gave offence, and after a few
meetings, was discontinued. The official organs, as the same author
says, buried it in oblivion, though its labours were of great public
interest.

The renewed preparations had not proceeded long before they were once
more interrupted by political events. From August to December the
Directing Congregation could hold no meeting. General Dumont had been
sent back to Rome, by Napoleon III, to inspect and harangue those
French soldiers who now formed a principal part of the so-called
Pontifical, or OEcumenical army. The national Italian party was excited
by his presence and his speech. France forced them to feel that foreign
occupation was discontinued only in name. Garibaldi, supported only
by feeble forces, moved upon Rome with the reckless valour which had
succeeded in Sicily. The movements of the Italian Government to
restrain him were altogether inefficacious. The efficiency and zeal
of the little army of "Crusaders" had been utterly underrated by the
Italians. The Dutch, English, Swiss, German, and French youths who
fought for the Crown of martyrdom were a different material from the
soldiers of Ferdinand or from those of the old Papal corps. They faced
great odds, and did right daring deeds. But they were too few. The
ready French were once more called in. On November 3 they secured
for Pius IX another respite by the battle of Mentana; but the Pope's
own historian does not even name the French. For all that is said by
Cecconi, not a foreign mercenary might have been in the Pontiff's pay,
not a foreign regiment might have been sent to his relief. Indeed
the word "foreigner," as applied to any baptized person bearing
arms for the Pontiff, is offensive language--another fruit of this
degenerate age. In opposition to certain "ill-advised" Catholics, who
thought it a pity to have recourse to foreign arms, the _Civiltá_
cries: "Foreigners?--the word is a great and odious lie! At Solferino
the French were foreigners; at Mentana they were in their father's
house."[97] So does the one belief that the Pope is the appointed lord
of the world change the lights that fall on every national movement. We
only saw the fact that at Solferino the French killed Teuton invaders
of Italy, and that at Mentana they were the invaders who killed
Italians. We shall find French mothers of "martyred" counts calling him
for whom they fell, "our King."

When the lance of Garibaldi was thus, for the second time, shivered
against the shield of France, who would have said that when next lifted
it would be in her defence, after the armies that had for twenty years
upheld the temporal power had gone into captivity?

The martial value of the religious motives and principles which
animated the Crusaders, as contrasted with the Garibaldians, became
a favourite theme for sacred pens. The Crusaders showed by their
bearing that they were "conscious of serving the majesty of the God of
battles." They lost no passing opportunity of renewing their strength
at the altar.

    The proud lads, in full equipment of war, bowed the knee before
    the altar, offered up their lives to God, and consecrated their
    bayonets to St. Peter; or hastily receiving the Sacrament, they
    arose with joy and seized their pieces, which had been laid down by
    the rails of the sacred table. Happy he who with his eyes beheld
    such elevation of thought, such constancy of purpose, such sanctity
    of Christian war march triumphantly through the Roman territory.[98]

On October 8, the correspondent of the _Times_ at Berlin stated that
Napoleon III had bound himself to leave Victor Emmanuel free as to
Rome, provided the latter would help him in case of war with Prussia.
Earlier than this, in the month of September, the Austrian bishops
found themselves menaced with an abolition of the Concordat, and had to
make a formal appeal to the Emperor against such a step.

    "We have at this time of day," said Baron Weichs, "to decide
    whether we shall be an independent State, or whether, as in Japan,
    we shall have two sovereigns; the one, subordinate, residing at the
    Burg in Vienna; the other, the omnipotent Master, having his throne
    in Rome, at the Vatican, or, more properly speaking, at the Jesuit
    establishment."

The _Revue des deux Mondes_ had spoken of these words as wise, even as
very wise, and the _Civiltá_ replied, "To us they seem to be nothing
but buffoonery."[99]

In November, Napoleon III proposed that the European Powers should meet
in a Congress, to decide upon some solution of the Roman question.
After this proposal had failed, his Minister, M. Rouher, pronounced, in
the Assembly, his celebrated "Never!"--the French would never permit
Rome to be occupied by the Italians. This exclamation is often printed
by the "good Press" in the largest capitals.

A fortnight after the day of Mentana the activity of the Commissions
was resumed, and invitations were sent out to the theologians already
selected in different countries, to come to Rome and enter on their
labours. The Nuncio at Munich had not recommended any one from the
renowned faculty of that city, but had sought his men at Würzburg.
England was represented by Monsignor Weathers, and the United States
by Monsignor Corcoran. On October 2, Cardinal Caterini wrote to
Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham, instructing him, in the Pope's name,
to invite "the priest John Newman." Three weeks later the bishop
replied, enclosing Dr. Newman's answer, which, however, is not printed.
According to the bishop, Dr. Newman said that a journey to Rome would
be perilous to his life, and though deeply touched with the kindness of
the Holy Father, he believed that the latter would not desire him to
come at the risk of his life, especially as nothing would be advanced
by his presence in an august solemnity of such moment, unskilled as he
was in matters of the sort.[100]

The language of Dr. Newman, as reported in this correspondence, shows
that he had but faint light on the part which mere divines were to play
in the Council. Probably he was misled by history into supposing that
their part would be public and considerable. His place, had he gone,
would have been upon an unseen commission; his share probably anything
but an important one; and, as likely as not, his opinion might have
been asked only in writing, and upon a question of Oriental affairs,
instead of upon theology, as was that of his famous fellow oratorian
Theiner. Of the very few German scholars invited to Rome who were not
of the Jesuit school, one was Haneberg, who, according to Michelis, was
so little consulted that he was soon back in Munich, to avoid idling
away his time.

In March the Pope intimated his intention of issuing in June the Bull
of Convocation; and then the purpled had to consider who should be
summoned. The most serious doubt arose as to those useful fictions
called _bishops in partibus_. They have much of what goes to make a
bishop--the orders, robes, title, and consequence, everything but the
office. Their want of this is delicately expressed by Cecconi--they
have no determinate flock; which in lay language means no flock at
all. The number of these Court followers have been so increased that
Sepp illustrates the case by that of a government creating a batch of
peers to carry some measure.

But such peers do not depend for their living on the men who want their
votes. Even the Cardinals had not the courage to assert that creatures
like these had a _right_ to sit in the Council. They did raise the
question of right, and left it formally unanswered; but their next
question was, Is it expedient to invite them? They boldly affirmed that
it was expedient.

In May 1868, it was decided that the only proceeding to be observed
with respect to Catholic princes was that of communicating a copy
of the Bull of Convocation to each Court. But should the princes be
invited to attend? This question "was much debated among the purpled
consulters, and was negatived."[101]

The decision thus taken was logical, for no one is a Catholic prince
"as such" who does not place the law of his land under canon law;
or, in proper language, who does not maintain "harmonious laws,"
recognizing politics as lying in the domain of morals, and therefore
as being under the spiritual authority. When the controversy on the
Syllabus began, the _Civiltá_ had enjoyed a triumphant laugh at M.
Langlais, a distinguished French advocate. M. Langlais had argued
that the Encyclical would not have transgressed its proper boundary
had it treated only of faith and morals, but that having touched
the foundations of political institutions, it had transgressed that
boundary. The _Civiltá_ cried--

    There exist then, according to M. Langlais, foundations of
    political institutions outside of the circle of morals! outside,
    consequently, of the circle of manners; or maybe, outside of the
    circle of human actions.... His argument assumes that the political
    order cannot be at the same time moral, or at least founded in the
    moral order, and assumes further that it must be separate from it,
    else he could not say that the Pope, simply by entering upon the
    political order, had gone out of the moral order (VI. i. 652-53).

It is not said that Antonelli in particular took alarm. But it is
said that fears arose lest the "novelty" resolved upon should prove
perilous; therefore the subject had to be reconsidered in the presence
of the Secretary of State. The danger that might follow the brusque
exclusion of princes was so felt that the former decision was on the
point of being reversed. This shows Antonelli's ascendant. But his
colleagues had a resource. Only six days before the date fixed for
publishing the Bull, a special summons, not from Giannelli, but from
Antonelli himself, called together the Commission at a quarter past
eight o'clock in the evening, to a meeting to be held "in presence of
the Most Holy" (_coram sanctissimo_)--i.e. before the Pope.[102]

Before the Most Holy! Thus are we placed in presence of the Eleven,
and the kings are on their trial. The Nine are joined by the two men
so dissimilar and so indissoluble, Pius IX and Antonelli, in whom,
as an official biographer puts it, he early discerned "the man of
God," appointed as his succour and stay in his divine office. At the
head of the Eleven sits the portly, good-looking Pope, the beau-ideal
of an important squire in a remote place--full of will, spirit, and
self-confidence, with more art in governing than he has got credit for,
at least in that domineering and deluding which avails with priests. He
would be as hilarious as a squire who never put to death anything more
precious than a pheasant, and never cursed even a gamekeeper with any
intention that his curse should be bound in heaven.

Pius IX would now feel all the weight of his office. He was sitting
as supreme Judge, to decide upon the claims of the kings of the
earth. Were they worthy or were they not worthy to be received into
the Council which was to lay "the corner-stone of reconstruction,"
the Council in which the prerogatives rightfully claimed by his
predecessors of blessed memory, but from which the Church, slow of
heart to believe, had hitherto withheld her former sanction, were at
last to be openly acknowledged in his person?

No one could doubt what view Pius IX would take. The kings were clearly
guilty. They had consented to the voice of their people against the
voice of the Church. They had abolished harmonious laws. The internal
tribunal was reduced to a voluntary confessional; the external
tribunal, in most places, was removed, and everywhere subordinated.
Even as to the Supreme Tribunal, who hearkened to the words, "Know that
thou art the Father of princes and of kings, and the Governor of the
world?"

When the call for Trent went forth, the only doubtful crowns were two
lying away between civilization and Cimmerian night in England and
Sweden. Now on every hand the word was, There are no Catholic princes.
That old English crown was now represented by two monsters of power,
the British Empire and the United States. Two other monsters had come
up, Prussia and Russia. Spain was fallen, Poland was extinct, Italy was
hostile, Austria was enfeebled, France was strong but not sound--there
were no Catholic States. The social system was indeed in ruins. It was
only by clearing away that the foundations for reconstruction could be
properly laid; but clearing away was attended with danger. The princes
were not to be invited, but they were to be allowed to claim admission.
The Bull was then and there altered in this sense.[103]

Meanwhile symptoms of the coming conflict began to appear. Catholics
of all classes looked forward to great events for the Church and the
nations. Those who did not share the hopes of the hidden Council, or
who recoiled from the dogmas likely to be decreed, felt anxious. The
Press began to pour out pamphlets and reprints, enabling all to read up
on the question of Councils.

"The Crusaders of St. Peter" was the title of historical tales now
regularly appearing in the _Civiltá_, which continued for years. The
object was to make the blood of Mentana the seed of a great oecumenical
army. Every incident was described with vivid conception and boundless
faith in the destiny of the Papacy, with faith too in the duty of all
to rear up sons for the Crusade, and faith that those who fell escaped
purgatorial pains and found direct entrance among the beatified.

The following are passages scattered here and there--

    It was a sight to rejoice the angels in heaven, that of these brave
    men laying down the carabine to perform the little office of the
    Virgin, and then turning from the little office of the Virgin to
    take up the carabine.... On the march fatigue was lightened by
    reciting the prayer which had so often conquered the foes of the
    Church, the rosary.... The masters of war know that on the field
    of battle the last army to deserve ridicule is an army fresh from
    confession and communion.... A young gentlewoman gave birth to her
    first-born. "How long it will be," she said, "ere he can carry a
    musket! But Pius IX can do anything. He can make a zouave even now
    of my Eugenio." Melted by such faith, the Pope wrote a benediction
    on a paper "consecrated to him" by the infant. The venerated word
    was placed in the domestic sanctum, and in return for it "the
    zouave at the breast will do a soldier's service." Some weeks
    later, on receiving from him a first oblation, the Pope again wrote
    a word for "his soldier in swaddling clothes." The family were
    overjoyed at being permitted within five months to kiss two Papal
    autographs. The mother wrote, "Eugenio was asleep. I ran to put the
    Papal benediction on his head and forehead. He immediately broke
    out in a smile, and to me he looked like an angel. I could not
    restrain my tears. He still slept, but bounded for joy as long as I
    kept the blessed letters on his little head.... Should the avengers
    of Mentana try their hand, the zouave will lisp his first word
    crying _Viva Maria_!"

Arthur Guillemin said to his crusaders as he led them to the attack at
Monte Libretti, fresh from absolution, "You are all in the grace of
God; do not count them, they will fall into our hands." They marched
into battle, some with the rosary round their neck, some with the
Carmelite scapular on their breast, and some with the cord of St.
Francis round the loins, just like that model of a crusader St. Louis.
The young Count de Quélen, who fell heroically at Monte Libretti, had
just received a letter from his mother. "If thou art to die, my good
Urban, die like a hero, like a soldier of God." After his death she
writes to a friend in Rome--

    "My beloved son is dead--died for his God. Oh what a comfort
    is that thought amid this desolation! He fell like the brave,
    defending the Church and our venerated Pontiff. Was it not a signal
    favour granted to him by that Lord who is so good that He put it
    into his heart to shed every drop of his blood for Him, and by this
    very means to bring him to paradise, where Urban henceforth--yes,
    I dare believe it--enjoys the vision of his God, and is beatified
    for all eternity, with beatitude unmixed?" [Thus it was plain that
    having fallen in battle he had, as the writer of the story says,
    "seized the palm of martyrdom, as he, following St. Louis, called
    it," and so had escaped the pains of purgatory.] "If," continues
    the mother to her friend, "you go to a reception of our holy and
    venerated Pontiff and King, assure him, I pray you, that I am happy
    that my son has shed his blood for him."

When the body arrived at Quimper, two hundred priests and a crowd
uncounted from the surrounding Breton villages came, "rather to
venerate than to pray for the departed." The houses were draped in
black, the black was decked with the French and the Papal flags; on the
coffin lay his sword, twined with laurels and crowned with vermilion.
The bishop pronounced the panegyric "magnifying him as a martyr for
religion." Mrs. Stone, a volunteer sister of charity, went from Rome to
Nerola to visit the wounded prisoners in the hands of the Garibaldians,
and especially Alfred Collingridge. The dying crusader said, "The Lord
has given me the favour I asked--to die for the Holy Father. Oh, yes,
may God accept of my death and my blood for the triumph of Holy Church
and for the conversion of England!" He complained that his rosary had
been taken away, and Mrs. Stone supplied him with her own. Alfred
Collingridge, from Oxford, "was the first of the English who laid down
his life in the Crusade of St. Peter." The writer prays, "May this
first English blood shed on Roman soil rise up before God, and descend
again in a dew of mercy on the land of Britain!" Of Alfred's countrymen
were present, his own brother George, two Watts-Russells, David Shee,
and Oswald Cary, "all soldiers of St. Peter" (VII. v. 155 ff.). The
father hearing from George of the death of Alfred, had only one regret,
that he could not himself step into his vacant place.

When Arthur Guillemin fell he was unhappily consigned to a grave in
common with Garibaldians; because it "was not then possible to separate
in the grave the friends of God from His enemies." Six months later,
Fathers Wilde and Gerlache, with others, piously sought the body of the
martyr to restore it to his native Aire-sur-la-Lys, by express desire
of Pius IX. Canon Druot had come to Rome to claim it in the name of the
family, the country, and the Church of Guillemin's birth. The seekers
of the relic included an O'Reilly, a Le Dieu, a Bach, a Loonen, and
a Mimmi. "You will find him," said a peasant, "with a Garibaldian at
his feet." The first object recognized was a Carmelite scapular. "It
is like mine," cried an officer; "two both alike were given to him and
me by the Countess Macchi!" Soon was seen the end of the cord of St.
Francis, worn by the deceased in imitation of St. Louis of France.
As the corpse was borne off to Rome, the people pressed around and
cried _Evviva_!--Long life to him! This cry "strange around a bier,"
expressed a "profound sense of the marvellous," and threw "a glittering
light upon the idea formed by Christians of those who fall fighting
in the modern crusade." At Rome, in the great Church of St. Louis of
France, the bier was surrounded by ambassadors, prelates, and officers,
including the Minister of War. At home, the "precious deposit" was
received in an illuminated chapel, decorated, not with symbols of
death, but of glory. "The crowd of pilgrims from the whole of northern
France" thronged the town. The bier was adorned with symbols of
victory, the work of Roman artists. The coffin was borne by the youth
of the town, emulous by changes to come under the coveted burden. A
party of pontifical zouaves in uniform attended. From the corners
of the hearse rose trophies of the pontifical flag "garlanded with
triumphal laurel." While yet the corpse lay in the illuminated chapel,
a new-born nephew of Arthur was borne in by the mother, who "piously
laid him upon the coffin, as used the ancient Christians to lay their
little ones on the sepulchres of the martyrs. A thrill of reverence
went through the assembly." During the funeral procession, the eyes
of the multitude "were fixed with devout curiosity on a piece of his
uniform spread out upon the bier, in which was seen the rent made by
the wound" (VII. iv. 415).

Aire-sur-la-Lys is not very far from our own shores, beyond Calais.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 95: _Cecconi_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 96: An interesting account of this change is given in
Sepp's stirring speech in the Bavarian Parliament on the Mering case,
_Deutschland und der Vatican_, pp. 182-85.]

[Footnote 97: VII. iii. 559.]

[Footnote 98: _Civiltá_, VII. x. 161.]

[Footnote 99: Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 22.]

[Footnote 100: _Cecconi_, pp. 370, 371.]

[Footnote 101: _Cecconi_, p. 122.]

[Footnote 102: _Cecconi_, p. 382.]

[Footnote 103: _Cecconi_, pp. 121-24.]

Bull of Convocation--Doctrine of the Sword--The Crusade of St.
Peter--Incidents--Mission to the Orientals, and Overtures to
Protestants in different Countries--June 1868 to December 1868-69.

It was on St. Peter's Day, June 29, 1868, that the Bull of Convocation