Front matter (continued 7)

The Pope's tenderness to the Jews was part of his crude financial policy. A Portuguese Jew, who had fled from the Inquisition, was his chief fiscal adviser, and Sixtus interpreted in the most genial manner the current teaching of theologians, that, since the Jews were irreparably damned on a greater count, they might lend money at interest, and the Papacy might tax their wealth. Baron Huebner, in a moment of unusual candour, corrects some of the less discriminating biographers: Sixtus, he says, "protected the Jews in order to exploit them."[318] Pius V. had expelled the Jews from all parts of the Papal States except Rome and the March of Ancona, and Sixtus, by his constitution Hebræorum Gens, cancelled the restriction and ordered Christians to treat the Jews and their synagogues with respect. We feel that interest led Sixtus on to a more human feeling. He dispensed the unhappy Jews from wearing the odious yellow dress which Christian princes and prelates imposed on them, and for a few years, in that one corner of Europe, they enjoyed the life of human beings.

Sixtus was less lenient to the Jesuits than to the Jews. The primitive fervour of the Society was already dimmed by prosperity or perverted by casuistry, and complaints came to Rome from all parts. Having been a Franciscan monk, Sixtus was not well disposed toward the new congregation, which had aroused the hostility of the older religious bodies. He used to observe, in his grim, meditative way: "Who are these men who make us bow our heads at the mention of their name?" He referred to the Catholic practice of inclining the head at the mention of the name of Jesus, but he disliked the whole constitution of the Society and resented the privileges it had won from his predecessors. A prolonged quarrel of the worldly and degenerate Jesuits of Spain with General Acquaviva gave him an opportunity to intervene, and he ordered an inquiry into their rules. In 1590 he announced that he would alter the name and the constitutions of the Society. Acquaviva stirred such Catholic monarchs as were docile to his brethren to petition the Pope in their favour, but Sixtus was not prepared to listen to the suggestions, in ecclesiastical affairs, of worldly princes. Acquaviva then persuaded Cardinal Carafa, to whom the inquiry had been entrusted, to prolong his inquiry, and it became a race between the failing energy of the Pope and the intrigues of the Jesuits. Rome witnessed the contest with the interest it had once bestowed on the chariot-races of the Blues and the Greens. The inquiry was transferred to other prelates, and, when these also were suborned, Sixtus peremptorily ordered Acquaviva to request that the name of the Society should be changed. The petition was reluctantly made, the Bull authorizing the change of name was drafted and—Sixtus V. died before he put his name to it. In the circumstances it was inevitably whispered that Jesuit poison had ended the Pope's life, but the legend was as superfluous as it was familiar.[319]

The rest of the Pope's administrative work must be briefly recorded before we pass to the consideration of his political activity. He attempted to restrict the prodigality of the Romans in dress, food, funeral and wedding expenses, etc., but this sumptuary legislation[320] was not enforced. He found general and disgraceful laxity in the convents of nuns, and enacted a death-penalty against offenders: the same penalty he, with his habitual truculence, imposed for cheating at cards or dice. He directed the police to cleanse Rome of prostitutes and astrologers, reformed the prisons,[321] made provision for widows and orphans, pressed the redemption of captives,[322] and constructed ten galleys for the defence of the Italian coast against the Turks and pirates. He cleared of debt the Roman University (Sapienza) and restored it to its full activity. He engaged Fontana to crown St. Peter's with its long-deferred cupola, and threw such energy into the work that he almost completed in twenty-two months a task which the builders expected to occupy ten years. He, with equal vigour, set up the obelisks in front of St. Peter's, reconstructed the Lateran Palace in part, and restored the columns of Trajan and Antoninus; though, in a naïve desire to express the triumph of Christianity over Paganism, he put statues of Peter and Paul on the ancient Roman pedestals.[323] He also set up a press in the Vatican Library, which he restored and decorated, and from this he issued the Latin version of the Bible which the Council of Trent had ordered, as well as the works of St. Ambrose and St. Bonaventure.

The magnitude of this domestic program and the vigour of the sexagenarian Pope are enhanced when we further learn that his brief Pontificate was, as usual, occupied with grave political problems. With German affairs the Papacy had now little concern, but we must record that Sixtus permitted some of the Catholic bishops to allow the laity to communicate in both kinds. To England he devoted more attention, though his violent and undiplomatic methods only made worse the position of the Catholics in that country. Mary Stuart contrived to write to him, after she had been condemned, and he spoke of Elizabeth to the cardinals as "the English Jezabel." He urged Henry III. to intercede for Mary and himself wrote a defence of her. When she was executed, he spurred Philip I. in his designs against England and promised him 500,000 florins when his fleet reached England and a further half million when the Spaniards occupied London. When an English spy was detected at Rome, Sixtus ordered his tongue to be cut out and his hand struck off before he was beheaded. In defiance of his own decree he bestowed the cardinalate on William Allen, and he directed Allen to translate (for distribution in England) the Bull in which he enumerated the dark crimes of Elizabeth, renewed the sentence of excommunication against her, and declared her subjects released from their allegiance. These measures, which only increased the sufferings of the Catholics, betray again the limitation of the Pope's vigorous intelligence, and, when the Armada sank, he turned from Spain to France and realized the futility of his policy.

The chief political problem was, however, the attitude of Rome toward the rival Catholic Powers, Spain and France, and the less important action of Sixtus in Venice (which, as a bulwark against the Protestant north, he sought, in spite of his old grievances, to conciliate), Savoy (where he compelled the Duke to refrain from appointing bishops), Besançon (where he forced upon the reluctant chapter a friar-friend whom he had made Archbishop), Belgium (where he demanded a truce between the University and the Jesuits), and Switzerland (where he attempted in vain to restrain the secular authorities), need not be considered at length. The French problem, complicated by the ambition of Spain, might have given anxious hours to a more astute statesman than Sixtus, and we shall hardly expect a man with so little subtlety to reach a distinguished solution of it.

The ineptness of Catherine de' Medici and the folly and profligacy of her diseased son, Henry III., had brought France to a dangerous pass. Henry of Guise coveted the throne, under a pretence of zeal for the Church: Henry of Navarre grimly awaited his natural succession to it: and Philip of Spain dreamed of annexing France, as well as England, to his swollen dominion. The Spanish representative at Rome, Count Olivarez, who nourished a secret disdain of the peasant-Pope, urged Sixtus to eliminate Henry of Navarre from the competition by excommunication, for having relapsed to the Protestant creed, and, on September 5, 1585, Sixtus issued against him and the Prince of Condé the Bull Ab Immenso. Henry of Navarre retorted cheerfully that the Pope was himself a heretic, and Henry III. angrily drove the Pope's new Nuncio from France; to which Sixtus retorted by expelling from Rome Henry's representative, the Marquis Pisani. To the great delight of Philip and the Catholic League, Henry III., feeble and distracted, humbly submitted, and was compelled to put pressure on the remaining Protestants. Sixtus, in fact, promised Henry a Spanish army from the Netherlands to assist in coercing the Huguenots, and urged him to co-operate with Philip and with the League (under Guise). In his exclusive, and entirely natural, concern for the orthodoxy of the country, Sixtus failed to understand in any degree its peculiar political condition or the utterly selfish designs of Guise and of Philip. He was impelling the country toward civil war.

In 1587 the Germans invaded France, and Henry of Navarre in turn confronted the troops of the League. Some small initial victories of the League led the Pope to congratulate the Duke of Guise in the most extravagant language, and it was only the fear of exasperating Philip that restrained him from bestowing on the Duke's son the hand of one of his grand-nieces. One cannot suppose that Sixtus failed to see that Guise had ambition, but he showed little penetration of character in admonishing the Duke to recover Paris for Henry III. and to assist that monarch to set up the Inquisition in France and exterminate heresy. The Nuncio's letters show that he was, under the Pope's instructions, absorbed in a futile effort to reconcile the Duke and the King, and it is said that Sixtus angrily advised the effeminate monarch either to make a friend of Guise or to destroy him. Even Henry III. showed more appreciation of the political situation.

Sixtus turned impatiently toward Spain and encouraged the designs of Philip. On July 15, 1588, he signed a treaty with the League and Spain, and the new alliance promised the complete eradication of heresy from France. The failure of the Armada and the Pope's habitual distrust of Philip clouded the alliance for a time, but Henry III. was not willing to accept the Pope's terms for a transfer of his affections. Sixtus was especially eager to have the decrees of the Council of Trent published in France. To this the Gallican clergy objected, and Henry himself declared that he would publish them only "salvis juribus regis et regni": a phrase which Sixtus, to use his own words, "cursed." Even when, to the Pope's extreme anger, Henry had the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise assassinated, Sixtus remained too irresolute to derive advantage from the King's remorse or apprehension, though the Spaniards and the League gained ground at Rome. Henry III., indeed, entered into alliance with the Protestant Henry against the League, and Sixtus was content to issue a fresh threat of excommunication against the Huguenot.

But the assassination of the King in August (1589) simplified the situation, and Sixtus definitely allied himself with Spain and the League against Henry IV.: a very natural, but equally impolitic, decision. Venice recognized Henry, and the Pope at first recalled his Nuncio from Venice and then, hearing the success of the new King, ordered him to return. Sixtus was beginning to appreciate the situation, and, when the Duke of Luxemburg came to Rome to tell of Henry's willingness to reconsider his religious position, he was amiably received. The Spaniards made a last violent struggle, and even threatened to arraign the Pope for heresy before a General Council, but Sixtus now saw his way clearly. Throughout the year 1590 he braved the threats of the Spaniards and watched the progress of Henry IV., but the struggle against Spaniards and Jesuits was too exacting for a man of his years and he succumbed to fever on August 24th.

Sixtus must unhesitatingly be included among the great Popes, but it is perplexing to read, as one often does, that he was "one of the greatest of the Popes." The work he accomplished in five years is far greater than most of the Popes achieved, or would have achieved, in twenty years, and at least the greater part of his reform-work in Rome and Italy was of considerable value. Yet even here we must not overlook his defects: he transgressed his own regulations when he would gratify his affections, he enforced reforms with harshness and violence, and he greatly lessened the value of his economic work by hoarding a vast sum for the purpose (apparently) of conducting a visionary grand campaign against Turks and heretics. His political attitude was, as I have shown, injudicious and irresolute. Both in character and statesmanship he falls far short of the greater Popes, and it is, perhaps, some indication of the evil plight of the Church that Sixtus V. should be the ablest man it could produce in a century of grave and persistent danger.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVII

BENEDICT XIV.: THE SCHOLAR-POPE

The seventeen Popes who occupied the Vatican between Sixtus V. and Benedict XIV. do not call for individual notice. With common integrity of life and general mediocrity of intelligence they guarded and administered their lessened inheritance. A few fragments of the lost provinces were regained—Ferrara and Urbino were reunited to the Papal States, and Protestantism was crushed in southern Germany and Poland—but the general situation was unchanged. The Papal conception of European life, the conviction that heresy must and would be only a temporary diversion of the minds of men, was definitely overthrown, and the Church of Rome became one of various flourishing branches of the Christian Church. The interest of the historian passes from the personalities of the Popes to the movements of thought which herald or prepare the next great revolution.

In regard to that specific development of European thought which we call the birth of science we are, perhaps, apt to misread its earlier stages because we find it in its final stage so destructive of old traditions. The Popes of the seventeenth century are too much flattered when they are credited with a distinct perception of the menace of science and a resolute opposition to it. Properly speaking, they had no attitude toward "science," but, as the history of science and the fortune of such men as Giordano Bruno, Galilei, and Vesalius show, they resented and hampered departures from the stock of traditional learning.[324] On the other hand, the period we are considering was marked by the phenomenal material success and the moral degeneration of the greatest force the Counter-Reformation had produced—the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits did far more than the Papacy to arrest the advance of Protestantism and to conquer new lands for the Church, but the diplomatic principles inherited from their founder and the desperate exigencies of a stubborn war led them into a pernicious casuistry, while prosperity led to such relaxation as it had produced in the old religious bodies. In politics the new age was characterized by the decay of Spain and "the Empire," and the rise of France, and the increased power of France led to a revival of the old Gallic defiance, within orthodox limits, of the Papacy, culminating in the famous "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy" (1682), and to the powerful lay movements which gathered round Pascal and the Jansenists or Voltaire and the philosophers. Benedict XIV. mounted the Papal throne in the height of these developments, and his attitude of compromise makes him one of the most singular and interesting Popes of the new era.

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini was born at Bologna, of good family, on March 31, 1675. At the age of thirteen he entered the Clementine College at Rome, and with the advance of years he became a very industrious student of law—canon and civil—and history. He took degrees in theology and law, and was incorporated in the Roman system as Consultor to the Holy Office, Canon of St. Peter's, and Prelate of the Roman Court. Successive Popes made the indefatigable scholar Archbishop of Theodosia in partibus, Archbishop of Ancona and Cardinal (1728), and Archbishop of Bologna (1731). Lambertini was a rare type of prelate. He did not, as so many high-born prelates did, relieve the tedium of the clerical estate with the hunt, the banquet, and the mistress. His episcopal duties were discharged with the most rigorous fidelity, his clergy were sedulously exhorted to cultivate learning and virtue, and his leisure was devoted to the composition of erudite treatises on The Beatification of the Servants of God, The Sacrifice of the Mass, The Festivals of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and Canonical Questions. Yet the Cardinal-Archbishop was no ascetic in spirit, and there was much gossip about his conversation. He loved Tasso and Ariosto as much as juridical writings. He liked witty society, and his good stories circulated beyond the little group of his scholarly friends. President de Brosses visited him at Bologna in 1739, the year before he became Pope, and wrote of him:

A good fellow, without any airs, who told us some very good stories about women (filles) or about the Roman court. I took care to commit some of them to memory and will find them useful. He especially liked to tell or to hear stories about the Regent and his confidant Cardinal Dubois. He used to say, "Tell me something about this Cardinal del Bosco." I ransacked my memory, and told him all the tales I knew. His conversation is very pleasant: he is a clever man, full of gaiety and well read. In his speech he makes use of certain expletive particles which are not cardinalitial. In that and other things he is like Cardinal Camus; for he is otherwise irreproachable in conduct, very charitable, and very devoted to his archiepiscopal duties. But the first and most essential of his duties is to go three times a week to the Opera.[325]

Lambertini's liberty and joviality of speech did not, in spite of his strict virtue and most zealous administration, commend him to the more severe cardinals, and when Clement XII. died, on February 6, 1740, he was not regarded as a candidate for the Papacy. But the struggle of French, Spanish, and Austrian partisans continued for six months without prospect of a settlement, and in the intolerable heat of the summer the cardinals cast about, as usual, for an outsider. Lambertini had humorously recommended himself from time to time. He used to say, President de Brosses reports: "If you want a good fellow (coglione—a particularly gross word) choose me."[326] The Emperor Joseph II., who did not want an inflexible Pope, supported his candidature, and he was assuredly the most distinguished of the cardinals to whom the wearied voters now looked. He was elected on August 17th, and he took the name of Benedict XIV.

He was now sixty-five years old: a round, full-faced, merry little man, with piercing small eyes and an obstinate resolution to live at peace with the world. A few years later,[327] he describes his daily life to his friend Cardinal Tencin. He rises early and takes a cup of chocolate and a crust. At midday he has a soup, an entrée, a roast, and a pear: on "fast" days he reduces himself to a pot-au-feu and a pear, but it does not agree with him to observe the law of abstinence from meat, and he advises the cardinals to follow his example. In the evening he takes only a glass of water with a little cinnamon, and he retires very late. He works hard all day and feels that he is justified in seeking relief in sprightly conversation. Indeed, when one surveys the vast published series of Benedict's Bulls (some of which are lengthy and severe treatises), rescripts, works, and letters, one realizes that his industry was phenomenal. When he had to condemn some volume of the new sceptical literature which was springing up in Europe, he read it himself three times and reflected long on it. His interest ranged from England, whose political affairs he followed closely, to the mountains of Syria and the missions of China. Every branch of Papal administration had his personal attention. He thought little of the cardinals, and often pours genial irony on them in his innumerable letters. Of his two predecessors, Benedict XIII. "had not the least idea of government," and Clement XII. "passed his life in conversation," and "it is with the oxen from this stable [the cardinals promoted by them] that we have to work today."[328] In finance, politics, administration, liturgy, and all other respects he had inherited a formidable task, and he discharged it in such wise that he died at peace with all except his Roman reactionaries. The Catholic rulers deeply appreciated him. Frederick of Prussia had a genial regard for him. Horace Walpole celebrated his virtues in Latin verse, and one of the Pitts treasured a bust of him. Voltaire, through Cardinal Acquaviva, presented his Mahomet to him in 1746, and the amiable Pope, quite innocent of the satire on Christianity, wrote to tell Voltaire how he had successfully defended his Latin verses.[329]

Benedict's immediate predecessor, Clement XII., an elderly disciplinarian whose strength was not equal to his pretensions, had left the internal and foreign affairs of the Quirinal—the Popes now dwelt chiefly in that palace—in a condition of strain and disorder, nor was Benedict's Secretary of State, Cardinal Valenti, the man to relieve the Pope of the work of reform. Choiseul, who was then the French representative at Rome, describes Valenti as very able but very lazy: a man of great charm, especially to ladies, and easy morals. Yet the treasury was empty, and the finances were shockingly disorganized. Although Clement XII. had introduced the lottery to support his extravagant expenditure, the Papal income in 1739 fell short of the expenses by 200,000 crowns a year, and the Camera owed between fifty and sixty million crowns—President de Brosses says 380,000,000 francs—to the Monti, or funds out of which the Popes paid life-incomes. Smuggling was so general, even among ambassadors and cardinals, that half the Papal revenue was lost. Cardinals Acquaviva and Albani each granted immunity from excise to four thousand traders: so Benedict wrote to Tencin in 1743. A third of the population of Rome consisted of ecclesiastics who lived on the Papal system, and a third were foreigners of no greater financial value; while the natives could so easily obtain food at the innumerable monasteries, or by begging, that there was little incentive to industry.

Benedict XIV. had no financial capacity, but the desperate and ever worsening condition of the treasury spurred him to work. He restricted the immunities from excise, cut down the extravagant payment of the troops, and severely curtailed the number of his servants. In a few years he had a surplus, which he divided among the impoverished nobles. He then reduced the taxes, had new factories built, and encouraged the introduction of new methods into agriculture. His zeal in suppressing "usury" was not so fortunate, but he restored the Papal finances to such a degree that he could at length indulge his cultural tastes. Sandini gives a list of the monuments he restored at Rome—including the new façade with which he disfigured Sta. Maria Maggiore—and we know from his letters that he was assiduous in collecting classical statues and fine books for the Roman galleries and libraries. He founded four academies at Rome—for the study of Roman history and antiquities, Christian history and antiquities, the history of the Councils, and liturgy—and once in each week presided, at the Quirinal, over a sitting of each academy. To the Roman university (Sapienza) he added chairs of chemistry, mathematics, and art, and he pressed in every way the higher education of the clergy. In 1750 he appointed a woman teacher, Maria Gaetana d'Agnesi, of mathematics at Bologna University, and wrote her a gracious letter commending the ambition of her sex.

Jansenists and philosophers were now fiercely exposing the weaknesses of Papal culture, and Benedict, who freely criticized the errors of his predecessors, attempted some revision of the mass of legends which had been accepted by the Church. In 1741 he appointed a commission to revise the Breviary, but the extensive alterations they proposed to make in the lives of the saints alarmed the reactionaries. On April 26, 1743, we find Benedict wearily complaining to Tencin of the difficulty of reform: "There is now all over the world such a disdain of the Holy See that—I will not say the protest of a bishop, a city, or a nation—but the opposition of a single monk is enough to thwart the most salutary and most pious designs."[330] The French clergy had been compelled in 1680 and 1736 to issue more critical editions of the Breviary, and Benedict wished to provide one for the universal Church. But the bigots were too strong for the Pope and the scheme of reform lies in the dust of the Vatican archives, while the Roman Breviary still contains legends of the most remarkable character. In reforming the Martyrology (1748) the Pope was more successful, and he published a new Ceremonial for Bishops (1752). He also published an indult permitting any diocese that cared to reduce the number of Church-festivals. The number of days on which men rested from work had become a scandal, and many complaints had reached the Holy See. Benedict's indult was gradually adopted by entire nations.

Of far greater interest is Benedict's attitude toward what we may call foreign affairs, and in this we discover again the more genial side of his character. Those who had known the different aspects of the Pope's personality—the punctilious learning of the ecclesiastic and the bonhomie of the man—must have wondered how he would confront the hereditary problems of the Papacy. Benedict at once made it plain that his policy would be one of deliberate and judicious compromise. Anxious though he was, especially in view of the Italian ambitions of Maria Theresa, about his temporal possessions, he placed his spiritual power and responsibility in the foreground, and on temporal matters he made more concessions than any Pope of equal wit and will had ever made. He was, he told Tencin, "the mortal enemy of secrets and useless mysticism." For disguised Jesuits and intriguing Nuncii he had no employment. He took court after court, with which his predecessor had embroiled the Papacy, and came to an agreement which almost invariably satisfied them; and in the war of the Spanish succession, when Spanish and Austrian troops in turn violated his territory, he remained strictly neutral.

The chief problem in France was the conflict of the Jesuits and the Jansenists, which was complicated by a revival of the Gallican spirit that put difficulties in the way of Papal interference. The Bull Unigenitus, with which Clement XI. had sought to extinguish the controversy, had increased the disorder, and the zealots pressed the Pope to intervene. Parlement would have resented his interference, and it was not until 1755, when the Assembly of the Clergy failed to find a solution, that Louis XV. asked the Pope to make a further declaration. The credit of his moderate Encyclical[331] is not wholly due to him. The French asked him to refrain from pressing the Unigenitus as a standard of faith and merely to demand external respect for it. This agreed with the Pope's moderate disposition, but the Jesuits and other zealots at Rome were enraged, and Choiseul—without Benedict's knowledge, of course—made extensive use of bribery to win the College of Cardinals. Benedict's letters reflect his weariness between the antagonistic parties and frequently express that he is willing to respect Gallican susceptibilities to any extent short of a surrender of the faith. A draft of the Encyclical was submitted to the French court before it was published. Both the Jesuits and the lawyers attacked it, but the Parlement was won to the King by an attempt on his life and the Jesuits soon found all their energy needed to defend their existence.

With Spain the Pope concluded one of the most remarkable Concordats in Papal history. There had gradually been established a custom by which the Papacy appointed to all benefices which fell vacant during eight months of the year, and the bishops and their chapters appointed to vacant benefices during the remaining third of the year. The court had the right of appointment only to benefices in Granada and the Indies. As a natural result, Spanish ecclesiastics crowded to Rome, and it was estimated that the Dataria derived from them about 250,000 crowns a year. Spain resented the arrangement, but the clerical population of Rome clung tenaciously to it. Benedict in 1751 entered into secret negotiations with Spain, and contrived to keep them secret until 1753, when he startled and irritated Rome by publishing his famous Concordat. By this he granted the Spanish King the right to nominate to all except fifty-two benefices in Spain and America. The cardinals bitterly complained that they had not been consulted, while the officials deplored the abandonment of Papal prestige and the cessation of so much profitable employment. Benedict had, however, made a shrewd bargain with Ferdinand VI. The King had to pay a capital sum of 1,143,330 crowns, which, at an interest of three per cent., would cover the yearly loss to the Curia. At a later date the Pope released the Spanish Infanta from the dignity of cardinal, yet permitted him to retain a large part of his clerical income.

A similar agreement ended the long friction with Portugal and (in 1740) gave John V. the right to present to all the episcopal sees and abbeys in his dominions; and in 1748 the Pope further gratified the King with the title of Fidelissimus. The King of Sardinia received, soon after Benedict's succession, the title of Vicar of all the Papal fiefs in his dominions and the right, for an annual payment of 2000 crowns, to gather their revenues. Naples, in turn, was pacified, after many years of dangerous friction. There had been stern quarrels about jurisdiction over the clergy, and by a Concordat of the year 1741 Benedict consented to the creation of a supreme court, with an equal number of clerical and lay judges and an ecclesiastical president, for the trial of such cases. With Venice the Pope was less successful. The decaying Republic had a standing quarrel with Austria about the patriarchate of Aquileia; Austria, which possessed part of the territory, would not acknowledge the authority of the Venetian patriarch. Benedict appointed a Vicar for the Austrian section, and Venice, ever ready to flout Papal orders, drove the Nuncio from the city. The Pope thereupon divided the province into two archbishoprics, but Venice still angrily protested and the dispute remained unsettled at Benedict's death.

Austria gave the Pope his most anxious hours. The joy of Rome at the fidelity of southern Germany was in the eighteenth century clouded by the growth of a spirit akin to Gallicanism: the spirit which would presently be known as Febronianism. Charles VI. had in 1740 left the Empire to his elder daughter, Maria Theresa, and Spain had contested the succession in the hope of winning for itself the provinces of Lombardy and Tuscany. In the war which followed Benedict took no side, but the conflicting armies devastated his territory and approached very near to Rome. His letters to Tencin reflect his distress and anxiety, no less than his helplessness. When the war was over, he sent a representative to the conference at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his rights were endangered by the contest of the two ambitious queens; Elizabeth of Spain was the last of the Farnese and was disposed to claim for her son the principality which Paul III. had wantonly conferred on his son Pier Luigi. The chief question that interested the Papacy was whether Don Philip should receive the investiture of Parma and Piacenza from Rome or the Empress, and Benedict had the satisfaction of seeing it virtually settled in favour of Rome. On Paul III. himself, and other nepotist Popes, Benedict passes a very severe judgment in his letters. For his part he severely excluded his relatives from Rome, and when a young son of his nephew came to study at the Clementine College, he took care that the boy should receive no particular favour.

It is one of the remarkable features of Benedict's Pontificate that he won considerable respect even in the Protestant lands. Englishmen, perhaps, did not know, as we know from the Pope's letters, how deeply he sympathized with the exiled Stuarts. "James III." lived for some time at Rome on a pension provided by France, Spain, and the Papacy, and Benedict had often to relieve the financial embarrassment of the foolish and extravagant prince. His second son became Cardinal York, and, in conferring the dignity on him, Benedict declared that he would be pleased to withdraw it if ever Providence recalled him to the throne of his fathers. In spite of these amiable sympathies, Benedict was much appreciated by cultivated Englishmen, and in 1753 he reconstituted and enlarged the English hierarchy.

With Frederic of Prussia, also, he had friendly relations. He was the first Pope to recognize the title of "King of Prussia" assumed in 1701 by the Electors of Brandenburg, and in this again he overruled the opposition of the cardinals. In 1744 Frederic begged the Pope to make Scatfgoch, a Breslau canon whom the King liked, coadjutor to the Bishop of Breslau. Scatfgoch talked with scandalous license about religion and morals; it was said at Rome that he dipped his crucifix into his wine to give the Saviour the first drink. Benedict, to Frederic's anger, refused; but three years later, when the bishop died, and the Nuncio reported the conversion of the canon, the Pope gratified Frederic by making him bishop. Frederic permitted the erection of a Catholic chapel at Berlin.

The new Catholic world beyond the seas made more than one claim on the untiring Pope. Immediately after his election we find him sending a Vicar Apostolic to settle the troubles of the Maronites of Syria, and in 1744 he reconciled and regulated the affairs of the Greek Melchites of Antioch. In the farther East a fierce controversy still raged, both in China and India, regarding the heathen rites and practices which the Jesuit missionaries permitted their native converts to retain. Clement XI., Innocent XIII., and Benedict XIII. had successively employed him, when he was an official of the Curia, to prepare a verdict on these "Chinese and Malabar rites," but it was reported that the Jesuits still defied the orders of the Popes. In his private letters to Tencin, Benedict sternly condemns the "tergiversations" of the Jesuit missionaries, but in his Papal pronouncements he is more cautious. His Bulls Ex Quo Singulari,[332] which puts an end to the trouble in China, and Omnium Solicitudinum,[333] which condemns the practices in Malabar (India), are scholarly and severe treatises. They hardly mention the Jesuits, but they leave no loophole for those casuistic missionaries. From the other side of the globe Benedict received complaints that Christians were still enslaving the American natives, on the pretext of converting them, and he renewed the prohibition issued by Paul III. and Urban VIII.

From all quarters of the globe Benedict received heated complaints about the Jesuits. They permitted the worship of ancestors in China, and closed their eyes to Hindu charms and amulets in India. They conducted great commercial enterprises in North and South America, and struggled bitterly against the bishops in England. France accused them of intensifying the domestic strife of its Church, and Spain and Portugal brought grave charges against them. But Benedict XIV. seems to have dreaded the overweening and doomed Society. Even his private letters are singularly free from direct allusions to them, and more than one Jesuit scholar was employed by him on tasks of importance. His friend Cardinal Passionei, a worldly cardinal, of easy ways, who spent his days in luxurious ease at Frascati, often urged him to reform the Society, but it was not until the last year of his life that he took any step in that direction. Portugal was now approaching its great struggle with the Jesuits, and Benedict, on April 1, 1758, directed Cardinal Saldanha to inspect and report upon the condition of the Jesuit houses and colleges in that country. He died a month later, unconscious of the great revolution which the Catholic Powers were preparing to force on the Papacy.

Of the isolated ecclesiastical acts of Benedict it is impossible to give here even a summary. No Pope since the great Pontiffs of the early Middle Ages had enriched his Church with so much (from the Papal point of view) sound legislation: none had had so scientific a command of ecclesiastical affairs or united with it so indefatigable an industry. His Bull Magnæ Nobis Admirationis[334] prescribes, in the case of mixed marriages, the rules which are enforced in the Church today. He forbade monks to practise surgery or dispense drugs; though Europe would have been more completely indebted to him in this respect if he had not made an exception in favour of the atrocious drug known as "theriac" and the foolish compound which went by the name of "apoplectic balsam." He condemned Freemasonry,[335] though his decree was not enforced. But one must glance over the thirteen volumes of his Bullarium and the seventeen volumes of his religious and liturgical works if one would realize his massive industry and devotion to his duties.

In the spring of 1758 his robust constitution yielded to the ravages of gout, labour, and anxiety, and he died on May 3d. He was not, as some say, "the idol of Rome." The cardinals felt the disdain of them which he often expresses in his letters, and many of the clergy regarded him as too severe on them and too pliant to the laity. Neither was he a genius. Clearness of mind, immense industry, and sober ways are the sources of his output. His works are not read today even by ecclesiastics, and it is ludicrous to represent them as his title to immortality. Yet Benedict XIV. was a great Pope: a wise ruler of the Church at a time when once more, unconsciously, it approached a world-crisis. The magnitude of the change which was taking place in Europe he never perceived, but his policy was wise in the measure of his perception, and his geniality of temperament, united to so wholehearted a devotion to his duty, won some respect for the name of Pope in lands where it had been for two hundred years a thing of contempt.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVIII

PIUS VII. AND THE REVOLUTION

Benedict XIV. had maintained Papal power and prestige in his Catholic world by prudent concessions to a European spirit which he recognized as having definitely emerged from its mediæval phase. His successors for many decades lacked his penetration; though one may wonder if, without sacrificing essential principles of the Papal scheme, they could have advanced farther along the path of concession to a more and more exacting age. However that may be, they generally clung to the autocratic principles of the Papacy, and as a consequence they ceased to be the leaders of their age and became little more than corks tossed on heaving waters. Not until Leo XIII. do we find a Pope with a human quality of statesmanship. In the intervening Pontificates the barque of Peter drifted on the wild and swollen waters, pathetically bearing still a flag which bore the legend of ruler of the waves.

Clement XIII. (1758-1769) and Clement XIV. (1769-1774) were occupied with the problem of the Jesuits. One by one the Catholic Powers—Portugal, France, Naples, and Spain—swept the Jesuits from their territory, with a flood of obloquy, and then made a collective demand on the Pope for the suppression of the Society. Clement XIII. had made a futile effort to assert the old dictatorial power; and Catholic nations had retorted by seizing part of the diminished Papal States. France had occupied Avignon and Vennaissin, and Naples had taken Benevento and Pontecorvo. The bewildered Pope found peace in the grave, and the Powers ensured the election of a man who did not regard the suppression of the Society as an impossibility. For four years Ganganelli, Clement XIV., resisted or restrained the pressure of the Catholic Powers, but in 1773 the famous Bull Dominus ac Redemptor Noster disbanded the most effective force of the Counter-Reformation, plainly endorsing the charge against it of corruption.[336]

Pius VI. (1775-1798) came vaguely to realize that there was some deep malady in the world which, in bewildering impotence, he contemplated. The hostility to the Jesuits had been a symptom; nor was the symptom more intelligible to so unskilful a physician when the Protestant rulers of Russia and Prussia protected the Jesuits, while the Catholic Powers sternly restrained his wish to restore the Society. Vaguely, also, he realized that there was a deeper infidelity in the world; that the "philosophers" of France and Spain and Italy and the "illumined ones" of Germany were a new thing under the sun; and that the traditions of the Papacy did not help in dealing with such "Catholic" statesmen as Pombal, Aranda, Tanucci, and Choiseul. He had not even the traditional remedy of finding support in the "Roman Empire." Under Joseph II. and Kaunitz, Austria had developed a rebellious spirit which rivalled the most defiant phases of Gallicanism.[337]

Pius visited Vienna, and trusted that his handsome and engaging presence would reconcile the Emperor to his large pretensions, but the visit was fruitless and the vanity of the Pope was bruised. At least the mass of the people were faithful, Pius thought. Then there came the terrible disillusion of the French Revolution, and resounding echoes of its fiery language in Italy and Spain. Pius made his last blunder—though the most natural course for him to take—by allying himself with Austria and England against the Revolution, and the shadow of Napoleon fell over Italy. Napoleon shattered the Austrian forces and compelled the Pope to sacrifice Avignon and Venaissin, to lose the three Legations (Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna), and to pay out of his scanty income 30,000,000 lire. In the following year, 1798, the French inspired a rebellion at Rome. The Romans set up once more feeble images of their ancient "Consuls" and "Ædiles," and the aged Pope was dragged from point to point by the French dragoons until he expired at Valence on August 29, 1798. General Bonaparte had said, contemptuously, that the Papacy was breaking up. There were those who asked if Pius VI. was the last Pope.

But a new act of the strange European drama was opening. Bonaparte was in Egypt, brooding over iridescent dreams of empire, and the treaty of Campo Formio which he had concluded before leaving had given Venice (as well as Istria and Dalmatia) to Austria. To Venice, accordingly, forty-six of the scattered and impoverished cardinals made their way, for the purpose of electing a new Pope, and the Conclave was lodged in the abbey of San Giorgio on November 30th. The history of the Papal Conclaves has inspired a romantic and caustic narrative,[338] and the account of the Conclave of 1798-1799 is not one of the least interesting. Austria, which had occupied the northern Papal provinces, and Naples, which had succeeded the French in the south and was now "guarding" Rome, did not desire the election of a Pope who would claim his full temporal dominion. Against them was the solid nucleus of conservative and rigid cardinals, and on the fringe of the struggle were the unattached cardinals, some of whom had a lively concern about this General Bonaparte who had just returned from Egypt. The statesman of the College was Cardinal Consalvi, a very able and accomplished son of a noble Pisan family. Consalvi, as a good noble and churchman, loathed the Revolution, but, when the struggle of voters had lasted three or four months and the two chief parties had reached a deadlock, he listened to the suggestion of Cardinal Maury that the mild "Jacobin" Cardinal Chiaramonti would be the best man to elect. Bonaparte had spoken well of Chiaramonti, and Austria would not resent the election of a lowly-minded Benedictine monk. Whether or no Consalvi suspected that Maury was (at least in part) working for a personal reward, he took up the intrigue, and on March 24th Chiaramonti became Pius VII. They had put an aged and timid monk at the helm on such a sea.

Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti was born at Cesena, of a small-noble family, on August 14, 1742. He entered the Benedictine Order at the age of sixteen and distinguished himself in his studies. As he was distantly related to Pius VI., who was a flagrant nepotist, he easily earned promotion at Rome. He taught theology and was titular abbot of San Callisto. In time he became Bishop of Tivoli, then Bishop of Imola and Cardinal. He was administering his diocese with due zeal, and more than ordinary gentleness, when the storm of the French invasion broke upon Italy. He was not a politician. He advised his people to submit to the Cisalpine Republic set up by the French, and mediated for them with General Augereau when some of them rebelled. But, when the Austrians came in turn, he advised the people to submit to their "liberators," and, when the French returned, the magistrates of Imola charged him with treachery and he had to plead on his own behalf. However, his colleagues affected to regard him as a Jacobin, and his easy attitude toward the French and the temporal power won him the tiara. He was crowned in San Giorgio on March 21st.

Austria had refused the use of San Marco for the ceremony, because it was nervously anxious to discourage ideas of royalty in the new Pope, and its representative in the Sacred College, Cardinal Hrzan, urged Pius to go from Venice to Vienna, and to make Cardinal Flangini (a Venetian) his Secretary of State. Pius quietly refused, and chose Consalvi. In quick succession the Austrian ambassador offered him the territory they had taken from Lombardy, without the Legations, and then two out of the three Legations (they keeping Romagna), but Consalvi prompted him to refuse, and he set out for Rome. The Austrians would not suffer him to pass through the Papal territory they held, and he had to proceed by boat to Pesaro. But the news that the Neapolitans had retired from Rome, and that the Austrians (chastened by Napoleon) now offered him the three Legations they were unable to keep, cheered the Pontiff on his journey and he entered Rome in triumph.[339]

Consalvi, whose firm hand guides that of the Pope during most of his Pontificate, began at once to put in order the chaotic affairs of the Papacy. The treasury was empty, though the four resplendent tiaras had been stripped of their jewels, the taxes were insupportable, and the coinage was shamefully debased. Consalvi removed some of the taxes—though he was forced to restore them at a later date—and, at a cost of 1,500,000 scudi, called in the adulterated coin. He turned with vigour to the affairs of Germany, where the princes who were dispossessed of their territory on the left bank of the Rhine by the Treaty of Lunéville[340] proposed to recoup themselves from the ecclesiastical estates on the right bank.[341] But every other interest was soon overshadowed by the relations of Napoleon to Rome, and the story of Pius VII. is almost entirely the story of those singular and tragic relations.

Napoleon had re-entered Italy, and won Marengo, before Pius reached Rome. But experience in the East and consideration of his growing ambition had made Voltaireanism seem to him impolitic, and he now sent a representative to treat with the new Pope as respectfully as if he commanded 200,000 men. They would co-operate in restoring religion in France. Pius timidly expressed some concern at the Mohammedan sentiments Bonaparte had so recently uttered in Egypt, but he and the cardinals assented to the proposal, and Archbishop Spina was sent to Paris in November (1800). In view of Napoleon's demands—that the old hierarchy of 158 bishops should be reduced to sixty, that a certain proportion of the Republican (constitutional) bishops should be elected together with a proportion of the emigrant royalists, that no alienated church-property should be restored, and that Christianity should not be established as "the religion of France"—Spina found that his powers were inadequate, and Napoleon sent Cacault to Rome with the draft of a Concordat (March, 1501). Pius and his cardinals shrank from so formidable a sacrifice, and would negotiate, in time-honoured Roman fashion. But ancient customs did not impress Bonaparte. Cacault reported in May that the Concordat was to be signed in five days, whether it killed the bewildered Pope or no (as Consalvi said it would), or France would set up its Church without his aid. As a compromise, Cacault suggested that Consalvi should accompany him to Paris, and the Quirinal had faith in its great diplomatist. Even Consalvi, however, was nervous and almost powerless before the studied violence of Napoleon, and his diplomatic movements were constantly met with a brusque declaration that Napoleon would detach France, if not Catholic Europe, from the Papacy if the Concordat were not quickly signed.[342]

The attitude of Napoleon was not merely despotic. Although France was still overwhelmingly Catholic, as writers on the revolutionary excesses often forget, an important minority, including most of Napoleon's higher officers, were bitterly anti-clerical and opposed any attempt to restore the Church. Napoleon, who felt that the religious sentiment of the majority must be dissociated from the emigrants and bound up once more with a national Church, would have preferred to dispense with Rome and proceed on extreme Gallican principles. But Catholic sentiment would not acquiesce in so violent a procedure, and Napoleon realized the vast gain it would be to him to win the cosmopolitan influence of the Pope. This feeble and timid monk, he thought, needed intimidation, and of that art Napoleon was a master. After a final twenty-four hours' sitting on July 13th-14th, the draft was passed by Consalvi. After a further struggle, and some further modification, it satisfied both parties, and Consalvi sent it, with some satisfaction, to Rome for the Pope's signature. The new bishops were to be nominated by Napoleon and instituted by the Pope, and the Catholic faith was to be declared "the religion of the majority." Freethinkers resented the whole negotiation: Gallicans deplored that the power of the clergy had been divided between the Pope and the Consul: Royalists abroad protested bitterly against the required resignation of the old bishops. Pius felt that this miraculous restoration of the Church was worth the price. He signed the Concordat and blessed the restorer of the faith.

But the Pope and Consalvi obtained a further insight into Napoleon's character when the Concordat was made public on Easter Sunday (1802). With it were associated, as if they were part of the agreement, certain "Organic Articles" of the most Gallican description. No Bull or other document from Rome could be published in France, no Nuncio or Legate exercise his functions, and no Council be held, without the authorization of the secular authorities. All seminary-teachers were to subscribe to the famous principles of 1682, and in case the higher clergy violated those or the laws of the Republic the Council of State might sit in judgment on them. Pius made a futile protest, when he read the seventy-six lamentable articles, but Napoleon soon had the Pope smiling over a gift of two frigates to the Papal navy; and Pius laicised Talleyrand and raised five French bishops, including Napoleon's half-uncle Fesch, to the cardinalate. A similar Concordat was forced by Napoleon on the Cisalpine Republic in 1803, and Naples was compelled to return Benevento and Pontecorvo. The first phase ended in smiles.

Cardinal Caprara was sent as legate to Paris, and his experiences moderated the Pope's satisfaction. He was quite unable to resist the election of the constitutional bishops (the clergy who had adhered to the Republican Constitution, which Rome severely and naturally condemned) and he could not wring from them a formal acknowledgment of their errors. But these matters were soon thrust out of mind by fresh events in France. On May 18, 1804, Napoleon was elected Emperor, and he invited Pius to come to Paris to crown him. There was a natural hesitation at Rome to flout the Bourbons and their allies by such a recognition of Napoleon, but the long delay was not in substance due to that political scruple; nor was it in any serious degree due, as some writers say, to the recent execution of the Duc d'Enghien, which appears little in Papal documents. Consalvi persuaded the Pope to bargain with Napoleon: to stipulate for the abolition of the Organic Articles, the punishment of the constitutional clergy, and the return of the three Legations. As before, the diplomacy of Consalvi was boisterously swept aside by Napoleon, and on November 2d the aged Pope set out for Paris. Not a single definite promise had been made, and it seems, from later language of the Pope, that either he or Consalvi regarded the journey with grave distrust. Pius left behind him a document authorizing the cardinals to choose a successor, in case Napoleon violently detained him in France. We may ascribe this foresight to Consalvi, as throughout these earlier years Pius appears to be merely the agent of the wishes of the cardinals.

Napoleon must have noted with satisfaction the ease with which his constant trickery escaped the Pope's eye. On November 25th he, in hunting dress, with studied casualness, met the Pope on the open road at Fontainebleau, arranged that he should himself sit on the right in their joint carriage, and drove him into Paris by night. Every detail had been carefully planned with a view to the avoidance of paying unnecessary honour to the Pope. Pius noticed nothing, and wrote enthusiastically to Italy of Napoleon's goodness and zeal for religion; and indeed the enthusiasm of the faithful Catholics of Paris, when they found a venerable Pope blessing them from the balconies of the Tuileries, might well seem to him to indicate a triumph after the dark decade that had passed. Disillusion came slowly. Josephine, who now knew that she was threatened with divorce, confided to the Pope that there had been no church-celebration of her marriage with Napoleon, and Pius refused to crown them until it took place. Napoleon thundered, but the Pope had a clear principle and the difficulty was met by trickery. Cardinal Fesch was permitted by the Pope to marry them without witnesses, and Napoleon pointed out to friends that he was taking part in the ceremony without internal consent. On the following day, December 2d, the coronation took place at Notre Dame, and Napoleon at one stroke annihilated the prestige of the Pope by crowning himself and Josephine with his own hands.

Another wave of disdain of the Pope passed through foreign lands: "A puppet of no importance," said even Joseph de Maistre. Pius remained gentle and patient. He had still to win the reward of his sacrifices: to induce the Emperor to restore the Papal States, to modify the Organic Articles, to abolish the law of divorce, enforce the observance of Sunday, and reintroduce the monastic orders. The cardinals had drawn up a pretty program. Napoleon suavely refused every proposition, and sent one of his officers to suggest that Pius would do well to settle at Avignon, and have a palace at Paris. Pius, now thoroughly alarmed, refused emphatically to stay in France, and disclosed that he had arranged to give him a successor if he were detained. And Pius returned to give the cardinals a roseate account of the resurrection of religion in France and the goodness of the Emperor. When he refused, shortly afterwards, to crown Napoleon King of Italy at Milan, there were those who admired his firmness. It is more likely that he acted on the advice of the disappointed cardinals.

Up to this point Pius VII. had given no indication of personality. One must, of course, appreciate that the restoration of the Church in France would seem to him an achievement worth large sacrifices, yet his childlike joy in Napoleon's insincere caresses, his utter failure to detect the true aims and the trickery of the Emperor, and the entire lack of plan or efficacy in his protests, must have convinced Napoleon, as they convinced hostile Royalists, that he was a mere puppet. He cannot possibly have had the measure of ability with which Cardinal Wiseman would endow him. The same conclusion is forced on us by a consideration of the second part of his relations with Napoleon. Isolated from his abler cardinals, he, like a child, bemoans his inability to form his judgment, and stumbles from error to error. But ten years of defeat have taught him that he is dealing with an enemy of religion, and he reveals a certain greatness of character in his resistance.

In the spring of 1805 the Emperor asked the Pope to dissolve, or declare null, the marriage which his brother Jerome had contracted in America with a Miss Paterson, a Protestant. Pius was eager to do so, if ecclesiastical principles yielded the slightest ground for such an act, but, after a long examination, he was obliged to refuse. Napoleon began to speak of him as a fool. The summer brought war with Austria once more, and in October the French troops marched through the Papal States on their way to Naples, and occupied Ancona. When Pius protested (November 13, 1805), the Emperor scornfully replied—after an interval of two months—that if its Papal owners were not able or willing to fortify Ancona, he must occupy it: that the Pope and the cardinals prostituted religion by their friendly relations with English and Russian enemies of France: and that he would respect the Pope's spiritual sovereignty, and expected from him respect for the Emperor's political sovereignty.[343] On February 13, (1806) Napoleon wrote more explicitly. The Pope must close his harbours against the English, expel from Rome all representatives of the enemies of France, get rid of his bad counsellors (Consalvi), and remember that Napoleon is Emperor of Rome.[344] Pius, after consulting the cardinals, replied that the "Roman Emperor" was at Vienna, and that the Papacy would not be drawn into a war between France and England. To the French representative in Rome the Pope used a very firm language; he would die rather than yield on what he conceived as a matter of principle. When, some time afterwards, Napoleon annexed Naples, and the Papacy protested that it was a Papal fief, Napoleon rightly gave Consalvi the credit for the opposition and forced him to resign. He had in 1802 restored Benevento and Pontecorvo to Rome: he now gave the former to Talleyrand and the latter to Bernadotte.

It must seem an idle practice to seek apologies for Napoleon's conduct, but we do well to conceive that each man was justified in his procedure. Napoleon was wrong only in his pretexts and his methods. He was no orthodox Catholic, and had no illusions about the sacred origin of the temporal power. If the Pope chose to be a king, he submitted to the laws of kings. The Papacy undoubtedly thwarted the work of the Emperor in Italy and aided his enemies. Cardinal Pacca says in his Memoirs that Pius wrote him that he "risked everything for the English."[345] Common opposition to Napoleon brought about a remarkable approach of Rome and England, and the Quirinal had hopes of advantage for the Church in England. The Papal ports were of great service to the English fleet, and therefore of great disservice to the French.

Pius VII. seems never to have realized the elementary fact that Napoleon was not a Christian. He relied too long on the orthodox fiction that, because the Pope was the successor of Peter in spiritual matters, any temporal power taken from him was taken from "The Blessed Peter." Napoleon did not share that illusion, and it is singular that he waited so long before consolidating his Italian kingdom by absorbing the Papal States. The year 1807, when Napoleon was busy with Prussia, passed in recriminations. Pius would, he said, show them that the substitution of Cardinal Casoni as his Secretary of State for Consalvi made no difference. He seemed to be finding his personality, but there were fiery cardinals like Pacca still with him.

In January, 1808, Napoleon ordered General Miollis to occupy Rome, and presently he expelled from Rome all cardinals who were not subjects of the Papal States. Pius, during the night, had a protesting poster fixed on the walls. On April 2d Napoleon annexed Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camerino: on the foolish pretext (among others) that Charlemagne had bestowed those provinces on the Papacy for the good of Catholicism, not for the profit of its enemies. Pius sent a long and dignified protest to all bishops in his dominions and broke off diplomatic relations with France. Gabrielli had succeeded Casoni in counselling Pius, and the French now made the singular mistake of arresting Gabrielli and substituting Pacca—a fiery and inflexible opponent of Napoleon. In August Pacca came into violent collision with the French and they went to arrest him. He summoned the Pope, and Pius personally conducted him to the protection of the Quirinal. In the solitude of the Quirinal they prepared for the last step and drafted an excommunication of Napoleon.[346] At length on June 10, 1809, they received Napoleon's declaration that the Papal States were incorporated in his Empire, and the Bull of excommunication (Quum Memoranda) was issued. It did not name Napoleon, and it was at once suppressed by the French, but General Miollis considered that a conditional order for the arrest of the Pope, which Napoleon had sent, now came into force. At three in the morning of July 6th the troops broke into the Quirinal. When General Radet and his officers reached the Audience Chamber, they found the Pope sitting gravely at a table, with a group of cardinals on either side. For several minutes the two groups gazed on each other in tense silence, and at length Radet announced that the Pope must abdicate or go into exile. Taking only his breviary and crucifix, the Pope entered the carriage at four o'clock, and he and Pacca were swiftly driven through the silent streets, and on the long road to Savona. They found that they had between them only the sum of twenty-two cents, and they laughed.

Pius reached Savona on August 16th (1809), and was lodged in the episcopal palace. He refused the 50,000 francs a year and the carriages offered by Napoleon. He refused to walk in Savona, and spent the day in a little room overlooking the walls, or walking in the scanty garden of the house. He had no secretary and his aged hands trembled, but pious Catholics conspired to defeat his guardians (or corrupt his guardians) and his letters and directions went out stealthily over Europe. His cardinals were removed to Paris, and when Napoleon divorced Josephine and married Marie Louise (April 1, 1810), only thirteen out of the twenty-seven cardinals refused to attend the ceremony. Pius still declined to enter into Napoleon's plans. Metternich sent an Austrian representative to argue with him, but the Pope would not yield his temporal power, and he demanded his cardinals. Cardinals Spina and Caselli, of the moderate party, were sent to persuade him, but the mission was fruitless. Napoleon, who was sorely harassed by the Pope's refusal to institute the new bishops, tried to act without him, and made Maury Archbishop of Paris. Pius sent a secret letter to the Vicar Capitular of Paris, declaring that the appointment was null, and Napoleon angrily ordered a search of his rooms and the removal of books, ink, paper, and personal attendants.

At last, in June, 1811, the strategy of Napoleon succeeded. The Archbishop of Tours and three other bishops presented themselves at Savona with the terrible news that Napoleon had summoned a General Council at Paris and expected the bishops to remedy the desperate condition of the French Church—there were twenty-seven bishops awaiting institution—independently of the Pope. Pius still refused to submit, but day after day the prelates and the Count de Chabrol harrowed him with descriptions of the appalling results of his obstinacy, and on the tenth day they hastened to Paris with the news that Pius had consented on the main point: he would institute the bishops within six months, or, if he failed to do so, the Archbishop would have power to institute them.

What really happened at Savona is the only serious controversy in the life of Pius VII., and this controversy is based entirely on the reluctance of Catholic writers to admit that the Pope erred. The usual theory, based on the work of D'Haussonville,[347] is that Pius fell into so grave a condition, mentally and physically, that he can hardly be regarded as responsible. Recent and authoritative Catholic writers have given a different defence. H. Welschinger[348] seems to suggest that Pius was drugged by his medical attendant, but he goes on to make this fantastic suggestion superfluous by claiming that Pius did not consent at all, either orally or in writing. Father Rinieri, on the other hand, scorns the theory of temporary insanity, holds that the Pope deliberately assented, and claims that the consent was perfectly justified because it was conditional; the Pope agreed if, as the bishops said, his concession would lead to peace and his restoration to liberty. These theories destroy each other, and are severally inadmissible. Welschinger, to exonerate the Pope from weakness, assumes that the Archbishop of Tours lied; for that prelate wrote at once to Paris that they had "drawn up a note in His Holiness's room, and he had accepted it," and on his duplicate of the note he wrote: "This note, drawn up in His Holiness's room, and in a sense under his directions, was approved and agreed to."[349] Indeed, when Welschinger himself quotes the Pope saying, in his fit of repentance, "Luckily I signed nothing," we gather that Pius orally assented. Rinieri, on the other hand, is wrong in making the Pope's assent strictly conditional; the last clause of the note merely states that the Pope is assured that good results will follow. And both writers are at fault when they lay stress on the fact that the note was a mere draft of an agreement. Unless the four bishops lied, Pius VII., under great importunity and predictions of disaster, and in a very poor state of health, consented to a principle which was utterly inconsistent with Papal teaching.

Later events put this beyond question, and make all these speculations ridiculous. It is unquestioned that when, on the following morning, Pius asked for the bishops and learned that they had gone, he fell into a fit of remorse and despair which brought him near to the brink of madness. It is equally unquestioned that Napoleon's council drew up a decree in the sense of the famous Savona note and that on September 20th Pius signed it. Napoleon had been dissatisfied with the Pope's oral consent and his retractation (which the Emperor concealed), and had tried to bully the council into a declaration independently of the Papacy. When he failed, he assured them of the Pope's consent and they passed the decree. Eight bishops and five cardinals took it to Savona, and the Pope subscribed to it. The only plausible defence of Pius is that he granted or delegated the power to the archbishops, instead of merely declaring that the archbishops possessed it. But the Pope's acute remorse shows that he had not deliberately meant this.

Napoleon, however, saw that his scheme had failed in this respect, and he kept the Pope at Savona while he set out on the Russian campaign. After a time the Emperor, alleging that British ships hovered about Savona, ordered the removal of the Pope to Fontainebleau, and he was transferred with such secrecy and discomfort that he almost died in crossing Mont Cenis. At Fontainebleau he maintained his quiet, ascetic life: even afforded the spectacle of a Pope mending his own shirts. The thirteen "black" cardinals—the men who opposed Napoleon and were stripped of their red robes and sent into exile—could not approach him, and he paid little attention to Napoleon's courtiers. In December (1812) Napoleon was back from his terrible failure, but he still sought to bluff the aged Pope. In a genial New-Year letter he proposed that Pius should settle at Paris and have two million francs a year: that he would in future permit the Catholic rulers to nominate two thirds of the cardinals: and that the thirteen black cardinals should be censured by the Pope and gracefully pardoned by the Emperor. Pius hesitated; and on the evening of January 18th, when Napoleon suddenly burst into his room and embraced him, the old tears of childlike joy stood in his eyes once more. Napoleon remained and put before him a new Concordat, sacrificing the demands he had made in his letter, but demanding the abdication of the temporal power and six months' limit for the Papal institution of bishops. Harrowing pictures of the Pope's condition and the pressure put on him by Napoleonic prelates are drawn by pious pens. But the fact is not disputed that on January 25th the "martyr-Pope" signed the Concordat and sacrificed the temporal power.

When Pacca and Consalvi and the black cardinals, who were now set at liberty, arrived at Fontainebleau, they shuddered at his surrender, but they could not upbraid the pale, worn, distracted Pontiff. He acknowledged his "sin," as he called it, and asked their advice. By one vote—fourteen against thirteen—the stalwarts decided that he must retract and defy Napoleon, and a remarkable week followed. They drafted a new Concordat, and the Pope wrote a few lines each day, which were taken away in Pacca's pocket to the rooms of Cardinal Pignatelli, who lived outside. The Emperor's spies were defeated, and he had a last burst of rage when the new Concordat was put before him. But the Allies were closing round the doomed adventurer. As they approached, he offered Pius half the Papal States, and made other futile proposals. In January, 1814, Pius was conveyed to Savona: on March 17th he was informed that he was free. Napoleon had fallen.

Consalvi was dispatched to join in the counsels of the Allies, and Pacca, who took his place, set himself joyously to obliterate every trace of the Revolution and Napoleon. Monasteries were re-opened, schools and administrative offices restored to the clergy, the Inquisition re-established, the Jews thrust back into the Ghetto: even these new French practices of lighting streets at night and vaccinating people were abolished. Above all things the Society of Jesus must be restored. Pius had in 1801 recognised the Society in Russia[350] and in 1804 he granted it canonical existence in the two Sicilies. The appalling experience of the last twenty-five years had now swept the last trace of liberalism out of the minds of Catholic monarchs, and on August 17, 1814, the Bull Sollicitudo Omnium restored the Society throughout the world; though Portugal rejected it and France dared not carry it out. A few months later Rome trembled anew, when it heard that Napoleon had left Elba and Murat marched across the Papal States to support him. Pius fled from Rome, rejecting all the overtures of Napoleon and Murat, but the Hundred Days were soon over and reaction reigned supreme. Pius never lost his quaint appreciation of Napoleon. Mme. Letitia, the brothers Lucien and Louis, and Fesch lived in honour at Rome, and, when the mother complained that the English were killing her son at St. Helena, Pius earnestly begged Consalvi to intercede for him. At Napoleon's death in 1821 he directed Fesch to conduct a memorial service.

Meantime Consalvi had won back the Papal States (except Avignon and Venaissin and a strip of Ferrara) at the Vienna Congress, and had returned to moderate the excesses of the reactionary Pacca. Consalvi had no liberal sentiments, but he had intelligence. At least half of the educated Italians were Freethinkers, and the secret society of the Carbonari spread over the country, ferociously combatted by the orthodox Sanfedisti. Italy entered on what the wits called the long struggle of the "cats" and the "dogs": a rife period for brigands. Consalvi, in spite of Pacca and the Zelanti, compromised. He retained many of the Napoleonic reforms, though, when the Spanish revolution of 1820 had its revolutionary echoes all over Italy, he drew nearer to the Holy Alliance for the bloody extirpation of liberalism. Rome prospered once more, and artists and princes flocked to it, but Pius VII. must have felt in his last years that the soil of Europe still heaved and shuddered.

The relations of the Quirinal[351] with other countries were restored in some measure, in face of stern opposition. A new Concordat with France was signed in 1817, but the Legislative Assembly refused to pass it and it did not come into force before the death of Pius. Spain set up a régime of truculent orthodoxy under the sanguinary rule of Ferdinand, and the Revolution of 1820 was crushed for him by the French. Austria made no new Concordat and retained much of the Febronian temper. Prussia signed a favourable Concordat in 1821. Bavaria came to an agreement in 1817, but the liberals defeated it; and Naples and Sardinia were ruled in the spirit of the Holy Alliance. William I. sought a Concordat for the Netherlands, though without result: England endeavoured to bring about an agreement in regard to the Irish bishops, which was defeated by the Irish: and the dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Richmond, and Cincinnati were set up in America.

I do not enter into closer detail, as we recognize in all this work the hand of Consalvi rather than of Pius. The aged Pope continued to rejoice over every symptom, or apparent symptom, of religious recovery, and to miscalculate his age. Even the revolution of 1820 failed to shake orthodox security and led only to a more truculent persecution of the new spirit. Pius had now passed his eightieth year and could not be expected to see what neither Metternich nor Consalvi could see. In the summer of 1823 he fell into his last illness. As he sank, men noticed that he was murmuring "Savona, Fontainebleau," but he died praying quietly on August 17th. It was a strange fate that put Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti on a throne in such an age. Whatever church-lore he may have had, he confronted the problems of his age with dim and feeble intelligence, and he was at times, when there was no Pacca or Consalvi to guide him, induced to make concessions which are not consistent with the fond title of "martyr-Pope." He was a good Bishop of Imola.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIX

PIUS IX.

In spite of the grave condition of the Catholic world, the ill-concealed spread of liberal ideas among the educated, and the spurts of rebellion throughout Europe, the cardinals met the new danger with as little wisdom as their predecessors had confronted the Reformation. The three Conclaves which were held within eight years of the death of Pius VII. were marred by the old wrangles of parties and ambitions of individuals, and they issued in the election of entirely unsuitable Popes. The Papacy allied itself with the monarchs in an effort to stifle the growing modern spirit, and imitated their unscrupulous methods. Leo XII. and Gregory XVI., at least, left behind them records at which modern sentiment shudders. Yet they showed as little appreciation as Louis XVIII. or Charles X. of the irresistible development through which Europe was passing, and there seem to be whole centuries of evolution between their acts and announcements and those of Leo XIII.

Cardinal della Ganga, who became Leo XII. at the death of Pius, was a deeply religious and narrow-minded man who achieved much moral and social reform in his dominions, yet his death in 1829 was, says Baron Bunsen, hailed at Rome "with indecent joy." His despotic Puritan measures angered his subjects, and his gross injustice to the Jews and fierce persecution of the Carbonari and Liberals fed the growing Italian hatred of the Papacy. Pius VIII. (1829-30) was a milder Zelante and had won—a singular distinction for a Pope in such a crisis—some repute in canon law and numismatics. He was nearly seventy years old, and his Secretary of State, the disreputable Albani, was over eighty. The revolutionary movement of 1830 completed his afflictions, and a Roman wag proposed as his epitaph: "He was born: he wept: he died."[352] Then came the longer Pontificate of Gregory XVI., the chief events of which will pass before us as we review the earlier career of Pius IX. Gregory was a pious, narrow-minded Camaldulese monk. Like his predecessor, he was well versed in canon law and as ill fitted as a man could be to rule in the nineteenth century. He left the repression of the rebels to his Secretary of State Lambruschini, and said his beads, and ate sweetmeats at merry little gatherings of cardinals, while Young Italy marched nobly to the scaffold and its brilliant writers opened the eyes of the world to the foul condition of the Papal States.

Gregory died on June 1, 1846, dimly foreseeing an age of revolution, and reform was now the great issue before the Conclave. The late Pope's supporters put forward the truculent Lambruschini, but from the first Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was conspicuous in the voting, and on the second day of the Conclave he was elected by thirty-seven out of fifty votes. It was useless any longer to ignore that appalling indictment of abuses, corruption, and incompetence which the Italian writers were circulating throughout Europe. The cardinals chose a reformer: a man who was at times described even as a Liberal.

Giovanni Maria Gianbattista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti—the name reflects the piety of his mother—was then fifty-four years old. He had been born at Sinigaglia on May 13, 1792, of parents who belonged to the small provincial nobility. He was sent to school at Volterra, and he is variously described by fellow-pupils who took opposite sides in the fierce conflict of his later years as a pale, pure little angel of marvellous industry, and as a sickly, epileptic little idler with the reputation, Trollope says, of being "the biggest liar in the school."[353] He seems to have been a delicate, handsome, undistinguished pupil of proper character. His virtuous mother wished him to become a priest, and he received the tonsure at Volterra in 1809. In October he was sent to continue his studies at Rome, and for some months he lived in the Quirinal, in charge of an uncle who was a canon of St. Peter's. They were related to Pius VII. and were favoured. The French invasion of 1810 drove them back to Sinigaglia, and Giovanni was summoned for service in the Noble Guard of the Viceroy of Italy. His epileptic tendency was successfully pleaded for exemption, and he returned to Rome in 1814. It seems, however, that he was not deeply religious, and he applied for service in the Papal Guard rather than for orders.[354] His fits closed the military service of the Pope against him, and, on the letter of the law, should equally exclude him from the clergy. He became very depressed and morose, but Pius VII. strained the regulations in favour of his young relative. He was to receive ordination on condition that he never said mass without an assistant. In 1819 he became a priest, and made the small progress which a distant relative of the Pope might expect. In 1823 he accompanied a Papal representative to Chile, and the voyage probably strengthened his constitution. Pius VII. died during his absence from Rome, but as Giovanni's protector, Cardinal della Ganga, became Pope, he returned to favour at Rome. He received a canonry, the administration of the Hospital of St. Michael, and (in 1827) the archbishopric of Spoleto.

It is clear that the young Archbishop did excellent work at Spoleto, and we must read with discretion the statements of his less temperate critics. His predecessor had been idle and worthless, and Mastai-Ferretti applied himself with zeal, judgment, and success to the reform of clergy and laity. In 1829 Leo XII., his patron, died, and Pius VIII. entered upon his short and futile Pontificate. Gregory XVI., who succeeded him, at once met the blasts of the Revolution of 1830. The outbreak at Rome was suppressed, but the revolutionaries captured Bologna and brought about a dangerous agitation throughout Italy. Mastai-Ferretti is said to have been compelled to fly from Spoleto, but his actions and attitude at this time are not wholly clear. Austrian troops suppressed the Revolution, and Gregory entered upon that truculent crusade against the Liberals and their claims which diverted England from its new alliance with the Papacy and even shocked Metternich. When the Austrians compelled him to take the Secretaryship of State from Cardinal Bernetti, he bestowed it on the more intemperate Cardinal Lambruschini, and the struggle with the Carbonari and the Young Italians continued. In his Encyclical Mirari Vos (August 15, 1832) Gregory pledged the Papacy to a stern refusal of the democratic reforms which the new Europe demanded.

Mastai-Ferretti had meantime (February 16, 1832) been removed to the bishopric of Imola: a more profitable see and a recognized path to higher honours. His amiable and conciliatory character inclined him to meet the more moderate Liberals with ease, though he does not seem to have made any profound study of the political development of his time. When Cardinal Lambruschini condemned scientific associations, the Bishop of Imola is reported to have commented that he saw no inconsistency between science and religion. On these safe and innocuous expressions the Bishop won a repute for "Liberalism" among the more reactionary members of the Curia, and Gregory XVI. long hesitated to raise him to the cardinalate. He was an exemplary bishop, and in the reform of education and of philanthropic institutions he performed no slight social service, which may have attracted the esteem of the more moderate Liberals. He was admitted to the Sacred College on December 14, 1840, and continued for six years to direct his diocese and encourage those temperate reforms which most of his colleagues were too indolent or too prejudiced to favour. The condition of the Church was again becoming critical. The Carbonari were weakened and dispersed in Italy, but Mazzini had begun to lead "the Youth of Italy" to a more open and more heretical attack on Austria and the Papacy, while high-minded and humanitarian priests like Gioberti, Ventura, and Rosmini in Italy, and Lamennais in France, were, in varying degrees, looking to a Catholic Liberalism to ease the pressure of the growing popular revolt. Gregory XVI. and his advisers regarded the entire Liberal movement, in every shade, as a sinful and temporary aberration. They passed the most drastic laws for its suppression: the prisons of Italy were distended with their victims: yet their orthodox militia, the Sanfedisti, had to wage a perpetual and bitter struggle against the spreading revolt.

We who look back on this painful travail of the birth of democracy are at times unduly impatient with idealists who failed to recognize its promise at the time. Not merely ecclesiastical statesmen, but heterodox observers and sons of the people like Carlyle, looked upon the new movement as an emanation from the pit, a menace to society. But most biographers pass to the opposite extreme when they conceive Pius IX. as judiciously studying the demands of the age, realizing that a moderate measure of democracy and liberty was just and inevitable, and then renouncing his Liberal faith when he saw the excesses of the democrats. For this there is no documentary support. Pius was amiable, accessible, and anxious to please all: he was neither a statesman nor an economist, and had not a firm judgment of the European situation. He was disposed to see justice in the semi-Liberalism of Gioberti or Ventura, and disposed the next day to listen to the Mephistophelean counsels of Metternich. Europe was to him a world in which a large number of thoughtful people demanded reforms which were consistent with the political and religious supremacy of the Papacy, and he was disposed to favour and indulge them. He failed to realize, until 1848, that the firm and consistent demands of the new age were inconsistent with Papal supremacy. But he clearly disliked the mediæval policy of the Curia and he was regarded with hope by the reformers within the fold. It was they who greeted his election in June, 1846. The more radical Italians did not want a reforming Pope, because they did not want a Papacy.

Pius was crowned on June 21st, and at once turned to what he would regard as "democratic" measures. He gave dowries to a thousand poor girls, and decreed that all pledges in the Monte di Pietà which were less in value than two lire should be returned to their owners. On July 16th he declared a general amnesty of political prisoners, and the Romans flocked to the Quirinal to cheer their handsome and courageous Pope, and demonstrations of joy resounded throughout Italy. The amnesty was in reality conditional: the released prisoners and returning exiles were to promise not again to "disturb the public order." However, there was at the time no severe application of the condition, and Pius continued in his reforming mood. That he had no serious leaning to Liberalism he made abundantly clear to the more thoughtful before the end of the year. On November 9th he issued an Encyclical in which he condemned Bible Societies, secret political societies, critics of the Church, license of the press, and so on.[355] The Radicals still mingled with the crowds below his balcony and flattered him. Some, no doubt, had the idea that he might be induced to go farther; but Mazzini and others have revealed that they astutely used these demonstrations to educate the people in larger demands and provoke a more serious revolt. Pius threw open his garden to the public on certain days, opened night schools and Sunday schools, re-opened the Accademia dei Lincei (for the promotion of science), and discussed plans of railways for Italy. He was in a patriarchal mood which came near to social idealism. Journals multiplied, and clubs became active: especially the Circolo Romano, which gradually came under the influence of a prosperous and very radical publican from the Trastevere, Angelo Brunetti, nicknamed "little Cicero" (Ciceruacchio) for his demagogic eloquence. The dreamy Christian Liberals, Gioberti and Ventura, gave the not very penetrating Pope the idea that he was going to make a model State of Papal Italy and, through it, to lead the world on the new upward path.

The Radicals encouraged the clouds of incense which obscured the Pope's vision, and he listened gravely to the requests for representative government. On April 19, 1847, he proposed a Consulto di Stato: a council composed of laymen from the various provinces—all carefully selected by the clergy and gravely reminded that their business was merely to offer suggestions. In July he formed a Civic Guard for Rome: in November he inaugurated a scheme of municipal administration for Rome: and at the close of December he formed a ministry—of cardinals and other clerical dignitaries. By this time, however, Pius had become perplexed and suspicious. Cardinal Gizzi, his Secretary of State, resigned, the Gregorian cardinals frowned, and the Austrians complained of his concessions. There was a banquet in Rome to Cobden, and there was a very noisy and triumphant banquet to Ciceruacchio. The Pope forbade popular demonstrations, yet he perceived daily that his concessions did nothing to appease the popular appetite. The Italians demanded elected, lay officers.

To make matters worse for the Pope the Austrians advanced against the Papal States. The difference was adjusted, but from the summer of 1847 hostility to Austria increased rapidly, and the people demanded an efficient Papal army to resist them. When, on February 8th, the news came of the third French Revolution, the agitators, who had now complete influence, became bolder. Ciceruacchio himself, supported by the Liberal Princes Corsini and Borghese, saw the Pope, and demanded war on Austria and democratic institutions. At sight of the massive and resolute crowds which supported them, the Pope promised a lay ministry and a more efficient army; but on the following day he, addressing the crowd in patriarchal terms, complained of the excessive demands of a "minority" among them and protested that the Papacy needed no war on Austria, as the Catholic Powers would protect it. The Radical leaders saw his weakness, and under their steady pressure he began to make his famous concessions to democracy. A new ministry, with lay nobles in most of the positions, was formed in March, the Jesuits were advised to leave Rome, the ancient walls and restrictions of the Ghetto were abolished, and a constitution was granted. The members of the Lower Chamber were to be elected, but the College of Cardinals would have a veto on the proceedings of both houses, and they could not discuss ecclesiastical or "mixed" affairs: a very grave restriction in a theocratic State.

The Radicals now concentrated the people on the cry of war with Austria, and on that issue the Pope fell. The Papal troops had crossed the frontier in support of the Sardinians, and, as Pius refused to declare war, the Austrians treated them as brigands. The meetings in Rome became more and more violent, the new ministry resigned, and, as Pius still refused to declare war, a second ministry handed in its resignation. The summer and autumn of 1848 passed in this struggle. Pius insisted that war was not consistent with his religious character, and all Rome united in opposing him. In November, at the suggestion of Rosmini, the Pope ordered Pellegrino Rossi to form a new ministry. Rossi, a friend of Napoleon III., was hated by the Radicals, and his dream of a union of Italian princes under the Pope's direction conflicted with their plan of a united and free Italy. He was assassinated on November 15th, and on the following day a vast crowd, partly armed, marched to the Quirinal and peremptorily laid down their claims. In the confusion a prelate at one of the windows was shot, and the Pope, seeing the Roman Guard mingling with the crowd, abjectly surrendered, and retired to disavow his concession and prepare for flight. The situation was very grave, and the action of the Pope was far from heroic. It is not a maxim of the higher morality that you may evade an angry crowd by making promises that you do not intend to fulfil, or that you may afterwards discover that such promises were void.

The sequel is well-known. With the assistance of the foreign ambassadors the Pope, disguised as a simple priest, fled to Gaeta. So great was his concern that when the King of Naples, warned of his flight, came the next day and inquired for the Pope, the officials at Gaeta were quite unaware that Pius had been amongst them for twenty-four hours. The cardinals gathered about him, and he appealed to the Catholic Powers to restore his authority and suppress the rebels. It is not an entirely accurate analysis to say that the Pope's "Liberalism" now ended, and he became a reactionary. He had been duped by the Radicals and had never understood his subjects. A feeble and carefully controlled lay representation, with neither legislative nor executive power, was not a part of the Liberal creed. Pius IX. was never a Liberal. He was from the first unwilling to surrender the absolute authority of the clergy, to grant freedom of discussion, to abolish the monstrous growth of clerical officialdom, or to apply a fitting proportion of the income of the Papal States to their effective military defence. When he saw that even moderate Liberals demanded these things, he recognized that he had never been in agreement with them, and that his own half-measures were of no value. He now further recognized that the advanced Liberals had captured his people, and he turned, quite logically, to a policy of oppression. There was no material change of his political faith.

From Gaeta he appointed a "governing commission" (under a cardinal) for Rome, and, when the people refused it and set up a Republic, he placidly entrusted his case to France, Spain, Naples, and Sardinia, and devoted himself to the preparation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Rosmini was still with him, urging compromise with the democrats, but the somewhat unscrupulous Cardinal Antonelli, who now became Secretary of State, astutely destroyed the influence of the reformer, and confirmed Pius in his attitude of defiance and repression. Even when the French troops—apparently thinking that they could seduce the Romans to admit them in peace and could then compel the Pope to adopt a conciliatory policy—crushed the Roman Republic, and re-opened the gates to the Pope, Pius did not hasten to return. On September 4th he left Gaeta for Portici, and it was not until April 12, 1850, that he returned to the Quirinal. The crowd ironically applauded Pio Nono Secondo.

The Pope had replied to the French appeals for a promise of reform that it was not consistent with his dignity to make promises under apparent pressure, but he had consented to the creation of new political institutions. From Portici he promised a new Consiglio di Stato, a Consiglio dei Ministri, and a Consulta di Stato. These were wholly under clerical control, and the elections for the District Councils, the only bodies which were to have free popular representatives, were soon suppressed. But there is little need to dwell on the second phase of Papal government under Pius IX. Cardinal Antonelli and the Jesuits had a paramount influence, and the dream of enlightenment and self-government was roughly dissipated. Between 1850 and 1855 the Roman Council alone passed ninety sentences of death, and the prisons were again thickly populated; while the disorders of finance and administration, and the appalling illiteracy of the people in an age of advancing education, were scrupulously maintained. The scandal which in later years followed the death of Antonelli—the spectacle of his natural daughter struggling for his vast fortune, though he was a son of the people—sufficiently disclosed the character of that able and indelicate minister, while the Jesuits were not unmindful that the first act of the revolution had been to expel them. They had sent some of their abler representatives to Gaeta, and from that time they had a deep influence on the ecclesiastical policy of the Pope, while Antonelli ruled the Papal States and offered what Lord Clarendon called a "scandal to Europe." Within little over a year of the Pope's return there were more than 8000 political prisoners in the Papal jails, while the ignorant people were oppressed by heavy taxes and an army of clerical officials.

It is probable that Pius IX. had no clearer perception of the state of Europe and Italy after the revolution of 1849 than he had had in the earlier years. He devoted his attention to spiritual matters and listened, in temporal concerns, to the suave assurances of Antonelli. This pacified Europe was to be weaned from its bad dreams by a cult of the Sacred Heart, devotion to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and so on. His first important act (September 29, 1850) was to re-establish the hierarchy in England, to the great alarm and anger of the English Protestants. England had quickly lost its passing sympathy with the Papacy, and English travellers took home dreadful accounts of the condition of the Papal States. The Pope does not seem to have been acquainted either with the disgust of the English at the state of his dominion or with the fact that the apparent restoration of the old faith in England meant little more than a vast immigration from famine-stricken Ireland.