Volume 27 — THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE. A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.” CHAPTER III. THE RIVALS. (continued 4)

Mr. Marshall was born the 19th of June, 1815; was educated under Dr. Burnup at Greenwich and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained in the Anglican Church by the bishop of Salisbury in 1842. In 1844 he published his Notes on the Episcopal Polity of the Church of England, for which he received the thanks of the then archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley. This was the prelate, it may be remarked, to whom the writers of the famous Tracts for the Times dedicated their translation of what they called “this library of ancient bishops, Fathers, doctors, martyrs, confessors of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church,” with, as they added, “his grace’s permission, in token of reverence for his person and sacred office, and of gratitude for his episcopal kindness.” We mention this, because thanks from such a man in such an office for a work on the episcopal polity of the Church of England in 1844, when that polity was not a little canvassed, was an omen of good things to come for the writer, who was then nestled in a very small and poor cure among the Wiltshire downs, once a house of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. These prospects were blighted for ever by Mr. Marshall’s conversion in the following year, 1845. Indeed, he seems in that year to have committed two acts, one blameless and the other highly to be commended, which yet in their conjunction foreboded a life of no small anxiety in temporal matters; we mean to say that his marriage was followed in a few months by his reception into the church at Oscott by Dr. Wiseman. Thus the nest in the southern hills was lost just as he wanted its shelter most, and instead of the future protection of him whom the Tractarian dedication called “The most reverend Father in God, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England”—a patron, it may be added, of one hundred and seventy livings, besides canonries and options—Mr. Marshall, at the age of thirty, with a young wife, commenced a new life without a profession and without prospect, and with 107fifty pounds in his pocket. It may be said Mr. Marshall was true all his life long to the spirit which he thus showed at the first crisis of it.

It may be conjectured that the studies made by Mr. Marshall in composing his work on the episcopal polity of the Church of England predisposed his mind in the following year to seek admission into that world-wide community over which presides the head and source of the episcopate.

It was hardly possible that a clear and conservative and eminently logical mind such as that with which he was naturally endowed could have its attention fixed for so long a time as is requisite to compose a well-thought-out work upon the relations of the bishops to each other throughout the world, without coming to the conclusion that the Anglican episcopate rests on no definite basis whatever; without noticing that no one of its defenders has ever yet been able to state on what positive basis it claimed to stand. It exists, in fact, by reviling the Church of Rome, being itself nothing else but a fragment of Western Christendom severed by Tudor lust and despotism from the compages of Christian unity to which it once belonged, and dragging on an existence in subjection to the state which eminently represents in ecclesiastical matters the insular pride and independence of the English mind. Its root is national, not Catholic; its soil human, not celestial; and for a thinking mind, such as Mr. Marshall’s, to examine its position could lead but to one result when it was accompanied by such honesty of purpose as, by the grace of God, Mr. Marshall possessed and manifested.

For let none misconstrue what Mr. Marshall was doing. To give up at thirty years of age, just married, with no private fortune, the profession of clergyman in the Church of England to become a Catholic layman, was an act not only of remarkable honesty but of superhuman courage. At thirty human life presents a long avenue of years. The prospect of traversing these in poverty and obscurity, with a young wife by your side, when the reasonable hope of honor and affluence has just been presented, is one which perhaps it requires greater trust in God, greater fortitude to meet, nay, to choose, than those, for instance, exhibited who heard themselves ordered to summary execution by the “abagi jussit” of the refined and philosophic Roman gentleman, Pliny the Younger, for having addressed their hymns in the early morning to Christ their God.

Anything, humanly speaking, more absolutely hopeless than Mr. Marshall’s position, after taking that step in 1845, as a married ex-clergyman convert, cannot be conceived. At that time private education offered no emolument, for pupils were entirely in the hands of institutions taught by priests or of individual priests; and as even now the services of a priest, well educated and intellectually gifted, are thought among Catholics in England to be adequately remunerated by the salary of one hundred pounds a year, what chance had a married convert to pick a living out of that mode of employing his brains? Much more was writing—that is to say, for Catholic objects—unremunerative. Brains are still at a fearful discount among Catholics in England. They are not paid as much as the lowest unskilled labor; and if this is true in 1081878, judge how it was true in 1845. The writer believes that it was the very last time he saw Mr. Marshall when he complained bitterly of the inadequate remuneration that he received for writing. Then, further, for any occupation in the outside world, to be an ex-clergyman Catholic convert was the worst possible recommendation. The writer remembers a most distinguished author in Anglican history quitting the railway carriage in which he was sitting, in order not to converse with one who had lately deserted what was called “the church of his baptism”—as if Christian baptism was insular in its nature, and was a peculiar possession belonging to the “penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.” Such is the lot which, for a whole generation since Mr. Marshall’s conversion in 1845, he and a host of others have voluntarily encountered. Mr. Marshall may be taken as a typical instance of the class. He may be spoken of freely now. He has run his course; he has kept the faith; he knows now fully, as none of us yet know, the wisdom of such a course; as he knew once, as none of us can more fully feel, the folly of such a course in the estimation of the world.

Most unexpectedly, however, and in a way that he could not the least have foreseen, this common lot of indigence and inaction, in which the work of life and the head which supports it are together taken away in the case of a married clergyman-convert, was terminated about three years after by his appointment as an inspector of schools in the government system of primary education. The Catholics were entering into that system in 1847, and, as a consequence of the rules and conditions obtained by the Catholic poor-school committee with reference to such entry, the appointment of a Catholic to the office of inspector by the government, whose nomination, however, was to be approved by the committee as representing the Catholic body, became necessary. The first so appointed was Mr. Marshall, and he held the office from 1848 to 1860. There cannot be a doubt that the functions which he there had to discharge were in certain respects functions which required great delicacy of touch. It was not without many suspicions that Catholic clergy admitted an officer of the government into their schools. That those who had been in old times forbidden every act of their ministry, pursued by ferocious spies of the state into their most secret lurking-holes, unearthed in order to be tortured by the race of Cecils and Walsinghams, and then hanged, drawn, and quartered—this in the first stage of the state’s enmity; then, in the second, who had been contemptuously ignored, and left to struggle with every trial of poverty, and to collect their scattered sheep in holes and corners—that the descendants and inheritors of such men, in whom the royal blood of Peter was flowing, should suspect at first the servants of a government which had done such things in hatred of Peter’s royal blood, this was most natural. We are convinced that during the five years in which Mr. Marshall was the only Catholic inspector of primary schools, he did much by courtesy, and yet more by his character as an uncompromising Catholic, to do away with this suspicion, and to lead an ever-increasing number of Catholic primary schools to accept inspection. 109By this conduct he indirectly raised greatly their standard of efficiency in secular instruction; and he commenced that union of the spiritual and the secular authority in the work of education which is now bearing great fruit, and which is incomparably fairer to the dearest interests of Catholics than the system existing in the primary schools of the United States. We think, indeed, that Mr. Marshall, in his anxiety to conciliate, may sometimes have pushed the limits of indulgence somewhat too far. It is honorable to him that he never spared in his reports to government the open commendation of religious teachers. Some of those reports contain the most enthusiastic praise of Catholic teaching which we remember to have read. And they were reports of a government official.

His occupation of inspector ceased in 1860; and being fully conversant with the circumstances which led to his quitting a post of honor and trust, which was then producing to him an income of eight hundred pounds a year, we must express our strong feeling that it was a great error of judgment on his part which led him so to act that it was possible to deprive him of this office. He was thus thrown back into all those difficulties of maintenance which he had so bravely encountered fifteen years before. It is true that Mr. Marshall was in fibre an author; the elementary character of the education he had to control, and the constant iteration of its petty details, besides the exclusion from his range of inspection of all those religious instructions in which he would naturally have taken a great interest—these things galled him. He fled for refuge to the more interesting subject of “Christian Missions,” on which he composed the well-known work published by him at Brussels in 1862, but which, in spite of the vast number of volumes which it required him to look over for his facts, he managed to compose before he quitted the inspectorship. If he could have had the place of a professor in some great Catholic institution, which would have afforded him a moderate income and a fitting subject on which he could have thrown the powers of his most active and apprehensive mind, that would have been to him an earthly elysium. But elysiums are not of the earth, at least not of nineteenth-century earth to Catholics in England. He gave up eight hundred pounds a year to be for the rest of his life a vigorous, witty, sarcastic, and trenchant Catholic champion and a wanderer on the face of the earth. From henceforth he was of those who have “no abiding city.” If he began this second stadium of his life with an act of imprudence which religion did not call for, which, in our individual judgment, we think it did not even justify, he traversed those seventeen years of bitter trial with the spirit of a confessor, and he ended them with the death of an humble, contrite, earnest Christian. He on whose words, defending Catholic doctrines, illustrating Catholic truths, excited multitudes in great cities have hung, who could make them thrill through with the emotions which he felt himself, died in a small room over a shop in an obscure outskirt of London, tended by an unwearied, uncomplaining affection which had been proof against every sorrow and every trial, and was the only earthly consolation left to him. In the eyes 110of the world it was a sad end of an agitated life. But we make bold to say that he is not sorry now for his choice; and that what he accepted rashly he transformed by endurance into matter for lasting reward, for the praise which does not pass away.

For in this last stadium of his life he showed most conspicuously that which we consider to have been the special honor of it. Let us state succinctly the remaining facts in that life, and then pass to a brief consideration of them. Mr. Marshall went in 1869 to the United States with his family, intending to settle there, which intention, however, he abandoned on a further acquaintance with the country. He lectured there during the winters of 1870-1 and 1871-2 on “The Liberty of the Catholic Church,” “St. Paul and Protestantism,” “Ireland’s Providential Mission,” in most of the large cities. In 1872 he brought out My Clerical Friends, and later on Protestant Journalism, reprinted from the London Tablet, for which he wrote a series of articles on Russia and on ritualism. It was the latter series which was brought to an abrupt termination by his illness in June, 1877. In 1866 he was decorated with the Cross of St. Gregory the Great by the Holy Father as a recognition of his services in the cause of the church; and in 1871 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. in the Jesuit College at Georgetown, near Washington. He broke down at the age of sixty-two. A life which, under less trying circumstances, might have been considerably prolonged, in the possession and exercise of those mental gifts with which he was richly endowed, was thus terminated before its natural time.

What is the lesson which it presents to us? We say without hesitation that the Cross of St. Gregory which the Holy Father presented to him hung on the breast of a true Christian knight. Not for gold nor earthly honor would he sacrifice one jot of Christian liberty. He preferred to be paid poorly for his work as a Catholic than to be paid richly, as he might have been, had he chosen to lay out the gifts of eloquence and clear reasoning and the power of satire which he possessed, in some of many non-Catholic causes. Had he even chosen to write, as many Catholics think themselves constrained to do, on secular subjects, merely taking care not to offend the spirit of the time—intensely anti-Catholic as that spirit is—had he written with all his energy and wit, not against his religion, but keeping it in his pocket, he would, we think, not have died at sixty-two nor in penury. But, so doing, he would not have been worthy of the Cross of St. Gregory; he would have been the world’s journeyman, not the Cross’s knight. Rather than so live, he has died sans peur et sans reproche, with his career shortened, as is the wont of knights; with his shield battered but stainless; with his lance unlowered. God grant many knights of such temper to his church in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, for the times are coming when they will be wanted!

111

STRICTURES ON AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “POLITICAL RAPACITY OF THE ROMISH CHURCH.”

Following the advice once given by an old Anglican preacher to a newly-fledged brother, “When you have nothing else to say, pitch into the pope,” Rev. Mytton Maury contributes to the January number of the American Church Review an article having for title “The Political Rapacity of the Romish Church.” Intrinsically the article hardly deserves a reply, owing to the recklessness with which it puts forth mere assertions and inferences as though they were facts; while yet it should, perhaps, under present circumstances, not be silently passed by without at least a statement of historical truth in regard to some of the events and their causes, which are therein so perverted as to seem to present a sort of partial foundation for deductions that are utterly false. The explicit aim of the article is to show that “in recent as in past times, the unalterable aim of the Church of Rome has been the establishment of its unconditional supremacy, as in things spiritual, so in things political.”

It is the old, often-exploded tale that took very well with the gobemouches in the days when everything said against the church, true or false, was grist to the Protestant mill, but which cannot stand for a moment against a clear, full, and impartial examination of history. The gist of Mr. Maury’s argument is that, as the demeanor of the Papacy was intolerably overreaching and overbearing during the pontificate of Gregory VII., as the Church of Rome is always the same, as not even the gratitude which Pope Pius VII. owed (teste Maury) to the Allied Powers who overthrew Napoleon was sufficient to make that pontiff bate a jot or tittle of the rights of the church, and as not even outrage, injustice, and spoliation were sufficient to induce Pius IX. to forget or barter any of the doctrines or claims of the church, so there is nothing to be expected of any future occupant of the Holy See but that he shall be politically a ravening wolf. Q. E. D. There pervades the article a curious after-taste of a once straight-forwardly-asserted but throughout-insinuated straining on the part of the church in these United States after political aggrandizement—a charge well suited in itself, could it only be made plausible, and we think intended, to catch the ears of the groundlings. Reference is made to a late pamphlet of Von Sybel, from which the writer would seem to have culled his one-sided statements; and we have in the meantime tried to procure that pamphlet, deeming it far better to examine the original than to refute mere excerpta. The brochure in question has not yet been received, and we must content ourselves with a refutation of the ill-founded charges and an exposition of the baseless statements contained in Mr. Maury’s article.

There is an exquisite appropriateness in the fact that the charge of political rapacity comes from a minister of that sect of which Henry VIII., half-Catholic, half-Protestant, and wholly beast, 112was the acknowledged supreme head, the so-called bishops of which sit in the British House of Lords, and owe their appointment to anybody, Jew or Gentile, who may happen to be prime minister. Lord Melbourne—by no means a model Christian, unless as entitled to the name by being an adept in profanity—leaves us ample testimony of the cliquing and caballing by which the appointments to vacant sees were secured, and puts on record a jocose saying that they (bishops and deans) just died to plague him. It is true that their presence in the Lords means nothing, and that they have no power but that of being a little obstructive. That, however, is not their fault. They would fain have more power, if they could. Even in their dioceses they have no sort of effective power belonging to a bishop. Neither clergy nor laity obey them even in spiritual matters, whether in England or in the United States; nor can we for our life see why, on Protestant grounds, in view of the utter nullity of their office, so far as its influence for good is concerned, they have not long ago been abolished, as much more valuable articles have been done away with. In political life other sinecures have in this century been got rid of. Irish disestablishment, which these bishops opposed to their utmost, will infallibly prove the precursor of a similar fait accompli in England. If, after that, the members of their sect choose to maintain them, and even to add to their number, we can have no sort of objection, because then those who utterly repudiate their ministry will not, as now, be obliged to contribute to their support. They may, if they please, match the American army in the proportion of highly-paid, showy, and useless officials to the number of rank and file; in fact, they come in the United States pretty near doing so already. But that is not our business, since we do not pay for them; still, we cannot help having an opinion in the matter.

Again, an impartial observer might reasonably think that a preacher of a sect whose ministers, and, we suppose, their congregations, are of every persuasion or utter want of creed touching the essentials of faith, from the narrowest Calvinism to the most pronounced Puseyism—some of whose highest dignitaries deny the inspiration of Scripture, while others are Universalists, and others, again, denounce the doctrine of baptismal regeneration—a sect which has, in short, less claim to consistency either of faith or practice than any other of all Protestantism—would have enough to attend to in trying to find out what his church did believe and what he should preach, without travelling away to Rome and back to the days of “Hildebrand” for the purpose of raking up falsehoods or misapprehensions with which to bespatter or cast suspicion upon the Church of Rome. This is, perhaps, but a matter of taste; and Mr. Maury’s idea both of taste and duty differs from what ours would be in the same premises. In any case let us see what he has to say, giving his statements such credit as they may prove to deserve.

It is strange, by the way, how the ignorant and insane prejudice which exists among many Protestants against the church warps otherwise fair minds and kindly hearts in the consideration of any question in which she is a party or her rights are in question. We 113venture to say that if any government attempted the same sort of tyrannical interference at this day with the Jews, not to speak of any Christian sect, that Prussia is now striving to exercise over the Catholics of her dominion, a cry of righteous indignation against the wanton and palpable injustice would go up from all the rest of Christendom. We should, perhaps, except the Anglicans, who are less a sect of Christendom than a clique or set of recipients of government pap, with no fixed doctrinal or moral principles save an overweening idea of their own eminent respectability, a thorough knowledge of the buttered side of their own bread, and a keen appreciation of number one. They have become hereditarily accustomed to consider Anglicanism less as a scheme of doctrine and morals than as an institution for distributing government patronage among their ministers, and for securing in these a somewhat superior police in aid of the state. Yet some of the best minds even among these have been very outspoken in condemnation of the aggressions of Prussia upon the principles of religious freedom. Let us imagine even a George Washington appointing the rabbins who should minister to the adults, and the teachers who should instruct in Judaism the rising generation of Hebrews in this country. Is there anybody who does not see at a glance the wrong thereby done these people? Does any one need argument on the subject? Suppose, in addition, he were to claim the right to appoint the instructors in the rabbinical seminaries, to select schismatic or suspended rabbins for the purpose, and to insist on prescribing the curriculum of the establishment in which young men are instructed for their ministry. Would we not all consider them very unjustly treated, and do our utmost to rectify the wrong? Yet this is exactly what the Prussian government has for some years been attempting to do with the Catholics within their territorial limits; and the vast majority of Protestants either look on with indifference or actually encourage the efforts made for rendering the church but a subordinate bureau of government under Bismarck and Falk, of whom it would be exceedingly difficult to say whether they are Protestants, simply infidels, or downright atheists. What is certain is that they are not Catholics and that they hate the church. Not long since the body of a drowned man was being towed ashore in the East River, and a considerable crowd had gathered to see it, when some one on the edge of the dock remarked, “Oh! it’s only a negro.” Nobody took any further interest in the corpse, and the crowd dispersed at once, every one going his way. So, in this case, the idea seems to be that it is only the Catholics that suffer. But these gentlemen will find out, in the long run, that it is a blow at liberty of conscience (for which theoretically they express great regard), struck, it is true, at Catholics only as yet; they will find out, if any sect of Protestantism but holds together long enough, or ever believes anything with sufficient seriousness to imagine it vital, that the same Prussian government has just as strong an objection to any other decided conscience as to the Catholic. In the references that Mr. Maury makes to this struggle we will assume him to be honest; and, in so doing, we must also take for granted that he 114does not understand the nature of the contest between Prussia and her Catholic population, else he would not attempt to represent it as a flaming instance of “unsparing political rapacity” on the part of the church. The fable of the wolf and the lamb has rarely had a more apt illustration.

It will simplify matters very much if we state once for all at the outset that Mr. Maury entirely mistakes the ground held by the church or by Catholic writers on her behalf when he represents them as apologizing for what he calls mediæval pretensions, and deprecating any apprehensions as to their renewal. No Catholic writer takes any such ground; and as the salient instances adduced of such mediæval pretensions is the controversy about investitures, and the action of Pope Gregory VII. towards Henry IV. of Germany, which produced their meeting at Canossa, we, as Catholics, have no apology to make for either. As head of the church, Pope Leo XIII. must to-day protest just as strongly against the right of lay investiture in spirituals; and had he lived at that day, he could, as minister of the sacrament of penance, in view of the shameless debaucheries, atrocious cruelties, monstrous acts of injustice, and heinous sacrileges of Henry, not have done otherwise than impose on the emperor a penance that should be known of all men. The church has yet to learn that one of her members, though he may wear a crown, is any more exempt from her spiritual jurisdiction than if he were clad in corduroy and wielded the pick. St. James would seem quite to have agreed with her; and as before God in heaven, so there can be within the church of God no exception of persons. We accept, then, as crucial instances by which this alleged political rapacity of the church is to be tested, both the question of investitures and the excommunication and deposition of the Emperor Henry by St. Gregory. They really contain all that can or need be said on the subject at issue. If it be shown that only malevolence and ignorance of the times and circumstances could have twisted them to an apparent support of the accusation founded upon them, and not now for the first time brought against the church, we shall have accomplished our task. Apart from what he says on these matters, which are essentially but one transaction, the rest of Mr. Maury’s article is but des paroles en l’air.

In the middle ages and under the feudal system all the lands of each separate country were looked upon as belonging to the sovereign, and were held of him in feudum (hence the name of that system)—on condition, namely, of certain services to be rendered. In no country had the feudatory process got such vogue and attained such magnitude as in that portion of the Holy Roman Empire now going by the name of Germany, about the beginning of the eleventh century. There is no Holy Roman Empire now. Each separate parcel of it has had perhaps twenty different forms of government since, and may within a hundred years have as many more. That emperor was at that time essentially the master of Christendom; and between him and the few smaller monarchs then existing there was no breakwater, no umpire, but the pope. Now, it came to pass in course of time that many bishops 115and abbots in Germany became possessed, by legacy, gift, purchase, or otherwise, in their own personal right or as appanages of their sees or abbeys, of farms, estates, demesnes and castles, to the possession of each of which was attached the condition of rendering at stated times some certain services to the sovereign as their liege lord. Many archbishops, bishops, and abbots there also were who were not simply ecclesiastical rulers but at the same time temporal lords. The people, who unfortunately had then and for ages afterward very little to say, or at least could say but little effectively, in regard to how they should be governed, have left on record an enduring monument of the view they entertained as to the difference between the rule of the secular knights and the ecclesiastical regimen in that most trustworthy of all forms, that evidence which cannot be forged—i.e., the proverb. To this day there is not a dialect of Germany that has not, in one form or other, the saying: “Unterm Krummstab ist gut leben”—Happy the tenant whose landlord bears the crosier. They were well cared for, kindly treated, and their complaints attended to by their clerical landlords, which, we all know, was far from being the case with the serfs and villeins under the marauding knights. There was no reason for objection to the service or homage by which ecclesiastical persons, dioceses, or abbeys held those lands; and with the usual care of the church, which has always laid stress first on the physical well-being of the people and then on their moral improvement—deeming the former at least highly conducive to the latter, and esteeming it of no use to leave a moral tract in a house where there is no bread—the church, we repeat, for the benefit of the people, encouraged at that time the holding of these lands by ecclesiastics, and neither pope, prelate, nor people complained for over two hundred years of the acts of homage—observe that the homage of the middle ages is not our homage of to-day—by which those estates were held. And this, too, though the rulers of the church, having nearly all the prudence, wisdom, and learning then existing in Christendom, must have known, just as well as we do to-day, that every acre of land beyond what is indispensably necessary held by the church, and every building that can be utilized for any other than an ecclesiastical purpose, is simply an inducement to the extent of its value, a temptation to plunder, sure to be acted upon sooner or later by the civil government, until that one shall arise which the world has never yet seen, in which right shall ever be stronger than might.

But under Conrad II. and Henry III. the possession of these lands began to give rise to an abuse which had not been foreseen. Both these emperors were chronically in want of money. They were afflicted with a standing incapacity to pay what they borrowed; and there resulted, as a natural consequence, an exceeding hesitancy on the part of lenders to take the royal word in lieu of funds. The name was no doubt regal, imperial, and all that, but the paper to which was attached the signature or thumb-mark of his imperial majesty was not what would now be denominated on ’Change gilt-edged; and money must be procured. In the words of another and later august emperor: Kaiser bin i, und Knödel muss 116i hale. So these emperors commanded on sundry occasions, when a bishop or abbot died, that the ring and pastoral staff, emblems and insignia of spiritual dignity and jurisdiction, should be brought to them. They appropriated the revenues during the vacancy of the diocese or abbey, prevented the canonical elections from being held, or refused to allow the prelates elect to exercise their functions. But to men of this stamp a lump sum of money in hand was of far more importance than a regularly-recurring income, and they began to give over the ring and crosier to that cleric (of course noble, and of course unfit) who could pay the highest price for them. This knave was then supposed to become bishop or abbot, so far, at least, as to have a right to the temporalities of the see or abbacy—generally all that such a man would care about. In this way dioceses were kept vacant for a series of years and flourishing monasteries went to ruin, since the pope would not (save where a deception was resorted to) permit the consecration of flagitious persons. We need not argue to show that this was simony of the basest sort. The thing had become so general in Germany, and the effect such, at the time of the accession of Henry IV., that, instead of the election of a bishop by the clergy of the diocese, or of an abbot by the monks of the monastery (which is the only canonical mode), the power of appointing and installing both had been seized by the emperor; and it may more readily be imagined than described in words what sort of men the purchasers were. Bishoprics and other prelacies were shamelessly put up at auction; and not merely the right to the temporalities (in itself sufficiently unjust) but the sacred authority itself was currently believed to be conferred by the investiture per annulum et baculum. It was only when things had come to this pass—one plainly not to be borne, unless with the loss of all ecclesiastical liberty and the grievous detriment of religion—that the Roman pontiffs, who had previously intervened but in special instances of complaint, deemed that the foul system must be plucked up by the roots. A more flagrant abuse, or one more imperatively demanding redress, it would be hard to find in all history.

Henry IV. made no scruple whatever of selling all ecclesiastical benefices to the highest bidder, and had already twice disposed in that way of the archiepiscopal see of Milan. He seems to have been a sort of prototype of Henry VIII. of England, but to have ruled over a people of a much less elastic conscience and possessing a stronger sense of religion. In the early part of his reign he sought by all means in his power to procure from the pope a divorce from his wife, Bertha, using the basest means for the purpose of tempting her into seeming criminality. He saw at the time a Gospel light beaming from the eyes of another Anne Boleyn of that day. The refusal of the pope, coupled with the threats of his subjects (we mean the nobility, for there were at that time no subjects in the modern sense), who were more willing to put up with his tyranny than to see the innocent empress treated as poor Katharine of Aragon subsequently was, caused him to desist; but he was a monster of lust, injustice, mendacity, and cruelty. 117Hildebrand, while yet cardinal, wrote to him that, should he ever become pope, he would surely call him to account for his tyranny, licentiousness, and for his making merchandise of benefices. Having been elected in 1073, Hildebrand assumed the tiara under the name of Gregory VII.; wrote at once to the Countess Mathilda not to recognize or countenance in any way the simoniacal bishops of Tuscany; to the archbishop of Mainz to the same effect concerning the intruding prelates of that country; and to Henry himself he addressed at intervals three several letters, warning him of the injury he was doing to religion by his uncanonical and simoniacal course toward the church of God, and exhorting him to desist from his detestable presumption. These several letters and all of them having proved of no effect, he issued his decree, the important words of which begin: Siquis deinceps.

This decree, repeated and confirmed in several Roman synods under St. Gregory, iterated and amplified by Victor III. in 1087, and reiterated by Urban II. in two councils, ended in an agreement between Paschal II. and the Emperor Henry V. that the emperors should cease henceforward to claim the right of investiture, while the bishops and abbots should give up the estates for which they owed service to the crown. It was found impossible to carry this agreement into effect, principally on account of the unwillingness of the people to accept the proposed change of masters; and the last-mentioned pope granted to the emperor that he might go through the form of investiture per annulum et baculum, “providing the elections of bishops and abbots were freely and legitimately held by the clergy and monks, all stain of simony being removed.” However, this agreement, notwithstanding that the liberty of the church was fairly guarded by its provisions, was regarded by the Catholic world as but a temporary repressal of the arrogant claims of the state, which would infallibly be but held in abeyance, to burst forth again under the pretext of the form by ring and crosier; and the agreement was recalled in 1112. The matter was at length finally settled, to the entire satisfaction of the church, by a convention at Worms between Callistus II. and Henry V., which mutual agreement was definitely sanctioned by the First Council of Lateran.

It would be hard to imagine anything more absurd in the face of history than the charge of rapacity, and that, too, political rapacity, alleged against St. Gregory because he would not allow ecclesiastical benefices, abbacies, and bishoprics to be sold like meat in the shambles, and the miscreants who could gather together the largest sums of money to minister at the altar and bear rule over God’s people. That controversy was not excited on account of, or in opposition to, the homage exacted or the investiture conferred on the transfer of secular estates. Those ceremonies were both legal and right. Nobody objected to them then, nor would anybody object to them at this day if lands were held on feudal tenure. If Mr. Hayes chose to grant an estate to the archbishop of Cincinnati in trust for the church (the archbishop has no other use for it), on condition that the archbishop should appear on a certain day of every year and bow three times reverentially toward him, we suppose there is not a Catholic in the 118State of Ohio that would enter the smallest objection to the annual ceremony. But let Mr. Hayes, or any President of the United States, on the death of, say, the bishop of Columbus, send for or take his crosier and ring; still more, let him appoint some one (cleric or not), who is willing to pay for the billet, to the vacant see, and we promise that there would be unpleasant times and doings. There never has been but one legitimate way to preferment, high and low, in the church—that is, the canonical; and now, as in the days of the apostle, he that comes not in by the door, the same is a thief and a robber. As to the statement that the action of the pope, in abolishing investiture by ring and crosier, was in any sense a blow aimed at the independence of civil government, it is simply false; while it is manifest that neither the dignity, the liberty, nor even the very existence of the church was consistent with simony and the advancement of the most unworthy men to her dignities. The pope, whoever he might be, could not have acted otherwise than did St. Gregory; and had the latter not done as he was inspired by the Almighty to do, he could, when dying at Salerno, not have used those words which thrill one as do no other dying words, save those uttered from the cross: “Dilexi,” said the dying saint—“dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem: propterea morior in exilio.”

So far is the whole, or any portion, of the history of the church from lending even a semblance of color to the alleged political rapacity of the popes, or any of them, that the plain inference of the man who reads true history in order to find out truth will be that they invariably spurned every consideration of the kind. To keep what influence they held, or to gain any in future, their plan would have been to divorce those bestial monarchs whenever they desired it—to play (like Parker and the Elizabethan bishops) a perpetual minor accompaniment to the monarch’s fiddle. Had they done these things, leaving duty undone and right disregarded, there would have been fewer execrable, political anti-popes in history, fewer popes would have died in exile, and there would have been no trouble whatever about investitures. The complaisance displayed by Luther and Melanchthon toward the landgrave of Hesse, if shown by the pope toward the original head of Anglicanism, would have obviated the necessity for any outward change of religion in England herself. It must be admitted that conscience and not interest seems to have carried the day at Rome.

Under the head of this controversy about investitures, of which we have given the true, as Mr. Maury has given a false and garbled, history (principally from Mosheim, who seems to have manipulated every event simply with a view to favoring Protestantism), he has made incidentally several random and several false assertions. Observe that we do not attribute to him wilful falsehood; but his zeal outruns his judgment, and, if a statement seems to make in his favor, he is not sufficiently careful in verifying it; e.g., “In view of the fact that this church (the Catholic) is making rapid advances in the acquisition of political influence in the United States,” etc.

Here is a statement very glibly uttered and flatly untrue. The church, as such, neither has nor desires to have any political influence 119in this or in any other country; and we challenge the assertor to the proof of his slander. Her members have votes like other people; and there are probably in the United States within her communion (taking the ordinary statistics and ratio of voters to population) about a million voters. But they vote on both sides, like their neighbors; and whenever there are three parties the third always presents a sprinkling of Catholic voters. The proportion of Catholic office-holders in our country never has been in any sort of proportion to the Catholic population; nor do we mention the fact to complain of it. Our prayer is that they may be long kept out of the foul wallow. The only prominent official that we can for the moment recollect was Judge Taney. We believe there is one Catholic in the present Senate, but we doubt very much whether the present House of Representatives contains ten Catholic members. Men like James T. Brady and Charles O’Conor are not apt to be chronic office-holders. These alleged advances toward political aggrandizement, if made at all, have not been made in the dark or in a corner. They must be capable of being pointed out. Put your finger on them; show them to us. What are they? Where are they? Where were they made? We had occasion lately in these pages to insist that the statement was false by which Catholics were represented as all voting one way, or as voting under the direction of their priests and bishops; and we reproduce the words then used, viz.:

“But we appeal to the Catholic voters of this country, of American or foreign birth, to answer: Has your bishop or parish priest ever undertaken to dictate to you how you should vote? Has your vote, on whatever side given, interfered in the slightest degree with your status in the church? Do you know of a single instance in which one or the other of these things has taken place? We cannot lay down a fairer gage. If such things happen, they cannot occur without the knowledge of those among and with whom they are done. Had the proof been forthcoming, the country would have rung with it long ere this. We demand and defy the proof.”

We stand now by what is therein said, adding that people who are unwilling to be brought to law should not assert, at least in print, what they do not know to be true, or might, with very little pains, ascertain to be false. It will not do to make hap-hazard assertions, merely on the ground that they will be well received by a portion of the community, whether small or large. There are people who do not think that it is honest, and who characterize such conduct by a very harsh name. If a writer in the Church Review chooses to address Episcopalians, and those alone, on matters connected with their own special organization, we shall care but very little what he says, and shall certainly not interfere. With them be it. But he shall not make sweeping, false statements about the Catholic Church, without being informed that, however it may have happened, these utterances lack the essential element of truth.

Again, he says: “They (the bishops and abbots) assumed the leadership of the soldiers of the district over which they had jurisdiction,” etc.

We did not imagine that there was any man at this day, pretending to an inkling of education, who did not know that it has at no time been lawful for a clergyman of the Church of Rome to bear arms. Clergymen bearing arms are 120excommunicated by the law of the church. Mr. Maury, in another part of his article, undertakes to give a definition of canon law which is misleading, and bears every appearance of having been culled from some writer who knew as little of the canon law as does Mr. Maury. The drill-master needs only to see a recruit take up a musket in order to state positively: “My lad, you never had a lesson on musket-drill in your life.” To us Mr. Maury’s uncouth and largely false definition of canon law is proof positive that he never opened a book on the subject in his life. And yet he undertakes deliberately to enlighten people upon its nature in print. Fie, Mr. Maury! Let us give you your first lesson on canon law, and it is this: Those clerics who enlist are irregular, and it is prescribed by canon law that “they shall be punished by loss of their grade, as contemners of the holy canons and profaners of the sanctity of the church.” Of course we, like others, have frequently read that little story, well befitting a Protestant ecclesiastical history, in which it is stated that a certain bishop of Beauvais was taken prisoner in arms, and that, on the pope’s interceding for him, the coat of mail in which the prisoner is said to have been clad was sent to His Holiness with the message: “Discerne an hæc sit vestis filii tui.” It is more than probable that the story was made for the sake of the supposed jest. Certain it is that the attempt to trace it deprives it of any authority, while even as a fiction it shows on the part of its author what Mr. Maury has not—viz., a knowledge of the canon law on the subject. Did not a late bishop of Louisiana act as a major-general in the army? Now, canon law is not binding on members of that sect, nor are its ministers at all bound to know the canons, unless, indeed, they undertake to instruct others upon them, and then we humbly submit that things are different.

Once more: “It (the state) expressly limited its right to the temporal advantages belonging to the endowments, and made no claim to conferring the spiritual functions,” etc.

What the state actually did was this. It said: “We have sold to the highest bidder this see or that abbacy. We know full well that to be simony, and that the person on whom we have conferred the crosier and ring is ipso facto excommunicated by reason of that simony. We also know him to be an unfit, and even a grossly immoral, person. But there he is; and you must either consecrate him or that prelature shall not be filled. At all events he shall have the revenues. He has bought and paid for them.” How any man of ordinary honesty, how any one not previously determined by his prejudices to make out a case, should talk of its “not suiting the views of the ambitious pontiff that the church should be subjected to the state even to this limited (sic!) extent,” is one of those things that must remain a mystery till the day when we shall be able to look back on the affairs and actions of this world with a clearer mental vision than any we have borne while in it. Mr. Maury’s sect, founded by a king, the doctrines of which (if it have any) are in England defined by a parliament and its practice decided by the courts, the convocation of which has for two hundred years not ventured to cheep, and then hardly above its breath, can of 121course endure, in view of the loaves and fishes, to be subject to the state in all matters. But the church of God can only, like her Master, render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and she does not deem conscience to be one of his perquisites. Instructive, if not edifying, reading in regard to the results brought about by the secular power’s appointment of bishops, deans, etc., may be found in the lives, autobiographic and otherwise, of the prime ministers of England. The doctrines of Anglicanism are now, notwithstanding parliaments and courts, just what they have been from the beginning—a series of incomprehensible shifts and evasions, a set of enigmas with no fixed response to any of them. The columns of the London Times will show how “livings” are disposed of, canted at public sale, puffed into fictitious value by representations of the age of the present incumbent and the short-livedness of his family. If we must take instructions from anybody, surely ministers of such a sect as this are not the persons to be listened to either in matter of religion or of taste.

Further on, and in relation to the decree of Pope St. Gregory, we find: “It is impossible to conceive of (sic) presumption surpassing that which inspired this, or to imagine a more absolute disregard of the rights of sovereigns. It was a declaration of war by the church upon the state. Disobedience to it was absolutely unavoidable under the existing system of feudal tenure,” etc.

After what has been given of the history of this controversy it is but a work of supererogation to show that each one of the statements in these three sentences is a separate and distinct falsehood. St. Gregory excommunicated and debarred from entrance into the church the simoniacal holders of bishoprics or abbacies, as also every emperor, duke, marquis, count, knight, or other person who should presume to confer the investiture of a bishopric or other ecclesiastical dignity; he finds no fault with the temporal homage or service due on account of secular estates, whether pertaining to the incumbent or to the prelature. Being head (not of a sect nor of a church, but) of the church, he was not, like a titular archbishop of Canterbury, a mere figure-head, whose presence served to give a false show of authority to ecclesiastical decrees made by a collection of laymen, perhaps not even Christians; and his excommunication must consistently strike all the accomplices in a most nefarious work. It is impossible for a Catholic to conceive how the pope could have acted otherwise than he did, since the church knows to this day, and will till the end of time know, no different rules to apply to those of her members who are highest in temporal dignity from those which affect the poorest inmate of the almshouse. The state had now for nearly a century been making war upon the church; and as to the impossibility under feudal tenure of anything but disobedience to the decree of His Holiness, we see in point of actual fact that the matter was quietly and satisfactorily settled by the withdrawal on the part of the state of the offensive and impious claim to confer investiture in spiritualibus. No one found any fault with the purely temporal homage, and it was only when, by seizure and sale of cross and crosier (with which, according to the rude ideas of many 122people in that age, was involved the spiritual authority), the king put forth a claim to the power of appointing bishops, that the church withstood him to the face. He strove to usurp a spiritual power which never belonged to him or to any other temporal authority. We can all see in history what has been the fate of those sects of Protestantism which, for the sake of mere existence or of temporary courtly favor, have given up the rights and powers that would have been inherent in them, were they a church. Their doctrines are a mass of doubt and contradiction. Their ministry, having neither authority nor message to the world, consists of dumb dogs that bark not. Perhaps Anglicanism has been the most successful of them. Is there any thoughtful man, even among its own members, that can in reason look hopefully forward to its future?

But it will be objected: “All this, however satisfactory so far as it goes, only proves that Henry IV. attempted a very gross outrage against the church; and we freely admit that the pope could then, as he can, in case of necessity, now, excommunicate from the church. The church would be a sham if he could not. But how about the claim to the right of deposing kings, set up by the popes and carried out by St. Gregory against the emperor of Germany?” We entirely acknowledge the reasonableness of the question, not merely from the Protestant point of view, but from the general standpoint of our own days; and we propose to answer concisely (allotted space allowing nothing else) the question put, though a complete response thereto would require a separate book. Meantime, we refer such as wish a full and expansive treatise on the subject to M. Gosselin’s “Pouvoir du Pape au Moyen-Age.”

This power was not, nor was it ever claimed to be, inherent in the Papacy, but was simply the result of a necessity, alike felt and acknowledged by all in those turbulent and unruly times, for some tribunal of final arbitrament. It had its source in the common consent of all Christendom—in the fact that the popes were, in the language of Count de Maistre, “universally recognized as the delegates of that power from which all authority emanates. The greatest princes looked upon the sacred unction as the sanction and, so to speak, as the complement of their right.” Even the highest of all the monarchs of the middle ages, the German emperor, derived his august character and was regarded as emperor in virtue of the unction and coronation by the pope. It was “the public law of the middle ages,” as Fénelon has well explained; and it is the universal acquiescence in that law which explains the conduct of popes and councils in deposing incompetent or vicious rulers. “In exercising this power,” says M. Gosselin, “the popes but followed and applied the principles received, not merely by the mass of the people but by the most virtuous and enlightened men of the age.” We sometimes nowadays have sense enough to avoid a war by leaving the decision of a question to a convention of arbitrators, as in the case of the Geneva conference; sometimes to a single umpire, as the difficulty about the occupancy of the island of San Juan was submitted to the decision of the late king of Belgium. Several international disputes, which might doubtless otherwise have eventuated 123in war, have been left to the emperor of Brazil as arbiter. We know very well that the right to bind by such decisions is in no way inherent in the sovereignty of Brazil or of Belgium, but in the fact that mankind agrees to abide by their decision in the matters submitted to them. Now, in those days, while unfortunately, as history shows us but too many proofs, knaves and scoundrels existed as now, yet while feudalism lasted the theory was that civil society was completely swayed by the spirit of Christianity. All the new governments which had sprung up from the débris of the Roman Empire were indebted both for foundation and nurture, during what may be termed their infancy and childhood, to the fostering care of the popes and bishops. Had it not been for the church, mankind would without doubt have relapsed into a state of barbarism. It is not, then, matter of surprise that common consent should, under those circumstances, have vested in the pope the right of deposing a sovereign in cases where no other remedy existed. Our sole remedy nowadays for such evils rests in the power of insurrection, which may or may not be successful, but must, in either case, be the cause of at least as much misery and far more actual bloodshed than the evils it was meant to remedy. There is room extra ecclesiam for difference of opinion on the subject, and minds do, no doubt, honestly differ as to which of the two is the better plan. For our own part, while we utterly disclaim the remotest sympathy with the feudal system, yet we are not prepared to say that it was not the best possible in that age, and should most unhesitatingly give the preference, first, to papal intervention, as being least likely to be biassed, and, second, to any fixed and recognized, fairly impartial tribunal, rather than risk the doubts and undergo the horrors of rebellion, successful or otherwise. Far be it from us to wish to recall the middle ages with their utter disregard for the rights of the people, who, but for the popes, would have had none to put in a word in their behalf; and it was only under the feudal system that the public law of Europe could call for the interference of him whom all then believed the vicegerent of the Almighty. Laws, nationalities, customs, languages, and religion have all changed. What then was legal and desirable, nay, absolutely necessary, is no longer law; and the lapse of whole nations and of large parts of others from the faith of Christ has abrogated a custom which, like all other civil regulations, could but derive its authority from international consent. It may, however, “be doubted whether in a historical light,” to use the words of Darras, “the system of the middle ages was not quite equal to our modern practice.” But this troublesome and invidious duty thus thrown upon the popes was, however, never claimed to be an integral or essential part of their authority, but simply to attach temporarily to the office by law, consent, and necessity. Of course there were then, as there are now, men who imagined that the political system of their day would never change, and that the Holy Roman Empire and the feudal system would last for ever. It is well to remember that there is but one institution that is sure and steadfast among men—the church to which He has promised who can perform.

The right and duty of excommunicating 124professing Catholic kings and princes is, on the other hand, and always has been, inherent in the Papacy, to be exercised by the pope when all other means have failed, in case of stern necessity and for the good of the church. Such right is inseparable from his office, and can be exercised just as fully from the Catacombs or from a dungeon as from the high altar of St. Peter’s at Rome.

It astonishes us somewhat to find that the mind sufficiently clear to indite the following sentiments should have failed so completely to understand the nature of the struggle over the investitures, and should have seen but through a glass darkly the condition of governments, men, and things requiring the application of his doctrines to practice. Mr. Maury says, and says well:

“It is to be admitted that the intervention of the popes in foreign political affairs in early and mediæval European history was not unfrequently matter of moral necessity. The papal authority constituted for those periods the High Court of International Arbitration. Not seldom the pontiffs stood forth as the solitary champions of right and justice.... We cannot but make ample allowance for their interference; nay, in many cases we must admire it.... In the case of the popes themselves moral necessity must often be allowed to have more than justified their interference in the domestic policy of foreign governments,” etc.

We must hasten through the remainder of Mr. Maury’s article. A great portion of it strikes wide of the mark, having no application to the point at issue, which we understand to be the political rapacity of the “Romish” Church. The sketch of the career of Napoleon, his imprisonment of the pope, the theological opinions of the canaille of generals that the Little Corporal gathered about him, and the action (not of the French people, but) of the rude rabble of the large cities at the time of the Revolution, would seem even to evince that the rapacity existed elsewhere. Again, it would be mere waste of ammunition to argue with an opponent who seriously maintains that gratitude for what he terms “the restoration of the Papacy” ought to have induced Pius VII., or any other pope, to govern the church thenceforward on such principles as would meet the approval of the so-called Holy Alliance. The man who can entertain such a notion has not the first rudimentary idea making toward a conception of what the church of God is, however well he may understand that of Queen Victoria.

Only two further points shall we briefly notice. One is the restoration of the Jesuits by Pius VII.—a fact upon which Mr. Maury lays great stress, as indicating the political rapacity of the church. The order had been suppressed by Pope Clement in 1773, not as having been proved guilty of any wrong whatever, but simply because their existence as an order, under the then circumstances and state of feeling in Europe, seemed to that pope and his council to give not cause but pretext for scandal to a certain portion of nominal Christendom. It is admitted that the prime movers in exciting this enmity against the Jesuits were the infidels in France, the Pombal faction in Portugal, the persons bearing in Spain the same relations to the monarch which were in France held by Madame de Pompadour, and those weak people who believe all that is diligently sounded in their ears from the rostrum or presented to their eyes by the press. Pope Clement deemed it the most 125prudent course to suppress the order, and he did so. It was their duty to obey, and they obeyed to the letter. Had he been a Protestant archbishop or bishop, would he have been so thoroughly obeyed? Would there even have been a pretence of obedience? Had the Jesuits been the wily knaves they are frequently represented as being, would they have disbanded on the instant? Has any association in history, we will not say so powerful, but even one-tenth part so numerous, so able, and so well disciplined, ever been extinguished by the myrmidons of the most powerful civil government? Had they been Protestants, we should at once have had a new and powerful sect. Had they been merely a conscienceless, oath-bound society, they could have gone on, despite all the civil governments on earth. Being Jesuits, they obeyed the mandate of the Vicar of God. Pius VII. deemed the time opportune for their revival. It may be that his experience of the favor shown to the usurping Napoleon during the period of his own imprisonment, and the manifest tergiversations of nearly all the higher French clergy at that unhappy time, caused him to long for the faithful Jesuits. Of this we know nothing. His right to restore them was just as clear as had been that of Pope Clement to suppress them. We propose neither to go into a eulogy of the Jesuits nor to defend them from the slurs and slanders cast upon them, mostly by those who know little more of them than the name. They need no eulogy from us, and are quite competent to defend themselves by word and pen. Mr. Maury (who seems to be an ardent Jesuit-hater; we know nothing of him but his article) is evidently one of those who fancy that the church is a political party, and that, on gaining an advantage over her opponents, she may bargain to shift principles and suit discipline to those who have been instrumental in bringing about the result. We quite agree with him, however, that, judging by all history, the church does not seem to regard herself in that light. Very many popes have died in exile. For seventy continuous years the head of the church was in captivity at Avignon. Pope Pius VII. was long a prisoner at Savona. For all that we know, the present pontiff may yet have to hide in the Catacombs. But neither in the past has there been, nor will there be found in the future, a pope who for personal duress or temporal domain (however clear his right thereto) will barter away one iota of the sacred deposit of faith and practice. The church leaves it to the politicians to seek foul ends by base means—to bargain that “in case you commit this forgery or that perjury for me, I shall, on attaining power, see that you are not only held guiltless but rewarded.” Were this her way of acting, she would be very unlike her Founder, and certainly would not be the institution with which our Saviour has promised to be till the consummation of the world. Mr. Maury would seem to think that he is making a point in charging the church with being true to her principles, with being changeless, with not giving way to feelings of gratitude (?) so far as, upon occasion, to give up her position as the conservatrix of faith and morals. He repeats the charge, under different forms, sundry times in the course of his article. Does he perchance not know that this is 126exactly the characteristic of the church in which Catholics glory? Did he never hear of the church before? Does she now come before his mental vision for the first time? One is really tempted to think so from the fact that he speaks of the pope’s styling himself “God’s vicar upon earth,” as though it were a new title never assumed until Pope Pius used it in his encyclical of March, 1814. If it will do Mr. Maury any good or save him future labor in writing, we can inform him that we Catholics would have neither faith nor confidence in a church that could sway and swerve, that allowed herself to be ruled by politicians or by heretics; and that we all believe Pope Leo XIII. to be, like his predecessor St. Peter, “God’s vicar here on earth.” Let him stop the first Catholic boy he meets who attends catechism class, ask him what is the pope, and he will get that answer in so many words.

The other point is this: Mr. Maury takes it very ill that the church should find fault with the Falk laws and the supervision that the German government claims and attempts to exercise over her in that country; while he asserts that no fault is found with the Bavarian government, which (he says) exercises the self-same jurisdiction over the church that Germany is now striving to carry out. The latter part of his statement is untrue. But, admitting that it were true, cannot even Mr. Maury see that there would be all the difference in the world between permitting to a Catholic ruler certain rights of supervision touching ecclesiastical matters, and giving the same rights to infidels, rationalists, transcendentalists, atheists—in any case to non-Catholics? Perhaps we should hardly expect this, since, unless our information be very incorrect, wardens or vestrymen, or both, may be, and often are, in his own sect, not mere non-communicants but of no profession of religion whatever. That such is the case in England we know; and Mr. Thackeray painted from life both the Rev. Charles Honeyman and Lady Whittlesea’s chapel, which is there depicted as a speculation of Sherrick, the Jewish wine-merchant. True, the Bavarian government has adopted a new constitution subsequent to the establishment of its concordat with the Holy See; and we are far from denying that things would be on a very unsatisfactory footing in Bavaria were the reigning house to become Protestant, or the government, by an accidental (and we admit possible) influx of free-thinkers, to determine to give trouble. This, however, has not yet taken place, and the proverb holds that it is unnecessary to greet his satanic majesty till one actually meets him. We doubt not but that any overt act against the freedom of the church will, in that country, be as promptly resented and rendered as thoroughly ineffective as has hitherto been the case in Prussia. All the power and influence of the German government has, so far, been unable to push the so-called Old Catholics into even a decent show of repute; and no Catholic in communion with the pope will ever lend himself to any such thing as the Bismarckian scheme of a German national church, or national church of any other empire, kingdom, or republic. An independent provincial church is to the mind of the Catholic an utter absurdity; and no proposition looking to any such end 127would for a moment be entertained at Rome. Catholics do not and cannot exist without being in communion with the pope, whosoever or wheresoever he or they may be. It seems grievously to vex Mr. Maury that in no single instance has the church allowed herself to be made, as has the legal sect in England, a mere tool in the hands of the state; and he takes pains to stigmatize what he ironically describes as the “gentle suavity” of Pope Pius and the Cardinal Consalvi, intimating that it was mere stratagem; but he forgets that there is no sort of hypocrisy in doing the best that can be done under given circumstances, providing always that no principle be given up. Even on his own showing the church has under no circumstances abandoned for a moment the principle that she should and must be entirely free from any control of the state in matters spiritual. Were it any one of the little sects that set up such claim for religious freedom as against governmental interference, a cry in its favor would go up along the line from Dan to Beersheba; but in the case of mother church it only furnishes a reason for an article on her political rapacity. Some original genius once remarked that consistency is a jewel. It certainly is very rare; and here is a radiant instance of it on the part of our opponents. The moment that the state presumes to trench upon the domain of conscience we must all obey God rather than man. Usque huc et ne plus ultra. Up to that point we stand ready to act and obey loyally as citizens. Beyond that line we neither can nor will be bound; and they who demand that we should put our consciences in the keeping of Reichstag, Parliament, or Congress know but little of human rights and less of the rightful domain of civil law.

A little reflection might have shown Mr. Maury the absurdity of his statement that Consalvi demanded of the Bavarian government the expulsion of the Protestant population of that country, then amounting to nearly a million. Surely Mr. Maury is joking! In the many centuries during which the popes have had full sway in the Eternal City, not one of them has ever proposed the expulsion of the Jews, a large number of whom have at all times resided in Rome. Mr. Maury represents Cardinal Consalvi as an eminently shrewd man, whereas he must have been little better than an idiot to entertain such an idea, much more to express it in writing, even to the dullest court in Europe. He never did do so. Surely this must be, like several other statements of the writer which we have not time at present to take up, a lapsus pennæ into which haste in writing and zeal for “the good cause” betrayed him. Authority for it we have been utterly unable to find, though the account of the negotiations of that cardinal are in the main given with tolerable fulness in the books at our hand.

That system of religion is surely in a very bad way the hold of which on the minds and consciences of its adherents cannot be maintained without the aid of government; nor does it deserve the name of religion at all when its ministers are such as those must be who owe their appointment to the back-stair intrigues by which men attain political offices. The Roman Curia has shown both wisdom and a high sense of honor in persistently refusing, on principle, to recognize 128any other than the canonical election of her prelates. But it does seem somewhat hard that her unwillingness to curry favor with the various reigning houses and their ministries should be attributed to political rapacity. So far as the pope is concerned, he was just as much the head of the church under the persecution of Diocletian as in the days of Leo X., and is just as really and effectually the father of all the faithful to-day as on the day when the Papal States were restored to him by Pepin in 768. The minds of men have, however, become so accustomed to acts of injustice that they regard them with comparative indifference. The justice of the pope’s claim to the patrimony of St. Peter is infinitely clearer and of far more ancient standing than that of any sovereign in Christendom to the throne he occupies. Necessary to the existence of the Papacy those states certainly are not, save in the sense that he who is not a temporal sovereign must to a certain extent be a subject, and that an ill-disposed government, under or within control of which the pope may be, will always be in a condition to hamper him, and to put trammels on his intercourse with his people over the entire world. As it may well be doubted whether there ever was a period when the Holy Father was more firmly entrenched in the affections and confidence of his faithful children than now, when despoiled of territory, courtly pomp and splendor—all of which he might have retained had he been willing to stretch principle to compliance with iniquity—so a more unsuitable season could hardly, in the view of any impartial on-looker, have been selected for charging the church with political rapacity. Had she possessed that, or desired its results, her position, however high in a worldly point of view, would hardly have been so honorably glorious in the eyes of her faithful members.

129

THE DEATH OF PIUS IX. THE CONCLAVE AND ELECTION.

(FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD IN ROME.)

Rome, February 21, 1878.

He is no more! As a Christian, he loved justice with the charity of his divine Master; as a priest, his vows; as a bishop, his flock; as a Sovereign Pontiff, he kept the deposit of faith with a great, intelligent love. And we loved him dearly in life, as pontiff never was loved before, and shall ever think of him as the one colossal figure of justice, unmoved and immovable, of the nineteenth century. In memoria æterna erit justus ille; ab auditione mala non timebit.

We thought, as we gazed upon his loving face on the Feast of the Purification, and the seventy-fifth anniversary of his First Communion, that he never looked better. He looked younger, ’twas said by those present. His face had a glow that suggested his early manhood. His voice, too, was vigorous and robust as he addressed the parish priests, the heads of the religious orders, and the rectors of the colleges, who had presented him with the Candlemas taper, according to custom. And when he had thanked all present, and requested them to bear his thanks to the faithful for having offered up prayers to God and the Virgin Immaculate for his recent recovery from illness, he pronounced the sweetest little homily, so characteristic of Pius IX., on the necessity of giving religious instruction to the little ones. Alas! it was the sweetest song of the swan, because the last.

THE LAST HOURS.

Towards evening, on the 6th inst., it was observed by his physicians that the Holy Father was somewhat feverish. This excited no alarm, for such attacks seemed but the lingering traces of his recent illness. The Pope retired to bed at his usual hour, about ten o’clock. His rest, however, was not tranquil. He seemed to be oppressed in his breathing. About four o’clock on the morning of the 7th he was seized with a shivering chill, his breathing became quick and hard, his pulse excited. About half-past six o’clock the fever came on with greater force, producing an utter prostration of the august patient. His mental faculties remained clear and undisturbed, and at half-past eight he received the Viaticum with great devotion from the hands of his sacristan, Mgr. Marinelli. The malady became more intense, the catastrophe inevitable; so at nine o’clock he was anointed. Meanwhile, the news of the Pope’s sudden and dangerous illness had spread through the city, and the cardinals hastened to the Vatican. By order of the cardinal-vicar the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in all the churches of the city. That fact contained the dread significance that the Pope was dying. The Romans flocked to the churches and prayed fervently against the crisis, yet trembled at the thought that, when the Blessed Sacrament would be restored to the tabernacle, all would be over, well or ill. The cardinals and prelates assembled around the bed of the sufferer knew too well what the issue would be. He knew it himself, for, taking the crucifix from under his pillow, he blessed them. His suffering increased. At one o’clock p.m. Cardinal Bilio, the grand-penitentiary, began to repeat the last prayers of the church for the dying. The Holy Father pronounced distinctly, though with the greatest difficulty, the act of contrition. Then he subjoined in a voice that betokened great trust, “In domum Domini ibimus”—We will go into the house of the Lord. When the cardinal came to pronounce the last address to the departing soul, he hesitated at the word proficiscere (depart); but the Pope added quickly, “Si! proficiscere”—Yes! proficiscere. When he had repeated the exhortation the cardinal knelt down and asked the dying Pope to bless the cardinals. There were present Cardinals Borromeo, Sacconi, De Falloux, Manning, Howard, and Franchi. He raised his right hand and made the triple sign of the cross. It was the last 130Apostolic Benediction imparted by Pius IX. At half-past two in the afternoon the rumor spread through the city that the Pope was dead. Telegrams to the same effect were sent to all parts of the world by the correspondents of the press. The secretary of the Minister of the Interior had caused a bulletin of the same tenor to be posted up in the vestibule of Parliament. But the agony of death had not even set in upon the venerable patient, though all hope of a change for the better was abandoned. At half-past three the struggle began in very earnest. It was a sight that brought copious tears to the eyes of the beholders—Pius IX. in his agony. Never more strongly than during those supreme moments did the youthful vitality of the Pontiff manifest itself. Two hours and a half of a death-agony is something we associate only with robust constitutions in the flower of manhood. At five o’clock the physician requested Cardinal Bilio to pronounce a second time the recommendation of the departing soul. He did so, and then, kneeling down, he began the rosary, giving out for contemplation the Five Sorrowful Mysteries. At the fourth—the carrying of the cross—he stopped, looked anxiously at the face of the Pontiff, stood up, and gazed still more eagerly upon those loving features. The eyes had closed sweetly, a pearly tear, just born, glistened on the lids, the lines of agonizing pain seemed to disappear perceptibly—it was all over, and the Angelus bell rang out over a fatherless city, ay, a fatherless world.

HOW ROME RECEIVED THE NEWS.

The news created no excitement. There was no crowd to speak of in the Square of St. Peter. Only a few loiterers stood for a moment gazing up at the bronze doors which open into the Vatican; but they “moved on” at the quiet request of a policeman. There were no soldiers visible—nothing war-like, if exception be made to the bristling bayonets of the Swiss Guards. Soon after the Ave Maria the bronze doors were closed, and the loiterers betook themselves across the Bridge of St. Angelo into the city. There all was quiet, too, save and except the theatres; they went on performing, though the authorities had a superabundance of time to order them to be closed. The two lesser theatres, in which Pulcinella gives nightly amusement to the unlaved of Rome, closed of their own accord on hearing of the Pope’s death. The other theatres received official notice to suspend performances until further notice, on the following day. During the day of Pius IX.’s suffering King Humbert and Queen Margherita sent repeatedly to the Vatican to inquire after his health. During the night the following notification from the cardinal-vicar of Rome was affixed to the churches:

“TO THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE OF ROME.

“Raffaele, of the title of St. Croce in Gerusalemme, cardinal-priest of the Holy Roman Church, Monaco La Valletta, Vicar-General and Judge-Ordinary of Rome and its district, Commendatory Abbot of Subiaco.

“The Majesty of God Omnipotent has called to himself the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., of holy memory, as we have just been advised by the most eminent cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, to whom it belongs to give public testimony of the death of the Roman Pontiffs. At this announcement the Catholic people in every corner of the world, devoted to the great and apostolic virtues of the immortal Pontiff and to his sovereign magnanimity, will mourn. But above all let us weep profoundly, O Romans! for to-day has unfortunately ended the most extraordinarily glorious and prolonged pontificate which God has ever granted to his vicars on earth. The life of Pius IX., as Pontiff and as sovereign, was a series of most abundant benefits, both in the spiritual and temporal order, diffused throughout all the churches and nations, and especially upon his own Rome, where at every step monuments of the munificence of the lamented Pontiff and father are met with.

“According to the sacred canons, in all the cities and distinguished places solemn obsequies and suffrages shall be celebrated for the soul of the deceased hierarch, and every day, until the Holy Apostolic See be provided with a new chief, solemn prayers shall be offered up to implore from his divine Majesty a most speedy election of the successor of the never-to-be-sufficiently-lamented deceased.

“To this effect, 1. Notice is given 131that public and solemn funeral services will be celebrated in the patriarchal Vatican basilica by the chapter thereof, whither, as soon as possible, the body of the immortal Pontiff will be carried, and placed, according to custom, in the chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament. 2. It is ordained that in all the churches of this illustrious city, as well of the secular as the regular clergy, and privileged in any way, all the bells be rung in funeral notes for the space of an hour, from three to four, to-morrow. 3. As soon as the precious mortal remains of the Sovereign Pontiff be carried into the Vatican basilica, solemn obsequies shall be celebrated in the aforesaid churches. 4. The reverend clergy, secular and regular, are exhorted to offer up the unbloody Sacrifice in suffrage for the soul of the august deceased, as has always been done, and the communities of both sexes, as also all the faithful, are invited to recommend his blessed soul in their prayers. 5. Finally, it is prescribed that in each of the aforesaid churches, in the Mass and other functions, the collect Pro Pontifice be added as long as the vacancy of the Apostolic See shall last.

“Given from our residence, February 7, 1878.

“R. Card. Monaco, Vicar. ”Placido Can. Petacci, Secretary.”

Soon after the soul of Pius IX. had departed his physicians returned to the chamber of the dead, now guarded by two of the Noble Guards—who never lose sight of the body until it is consigned to the tomb—and made a formal autopsy, which they couched in these terms: “We, the undersigned, attest that His Holiness Pope Pius IX., already affected for a long time by slow bronchitis, ceased to live, through pulmonary paralysis, to-day, February 7, at 5.40 p.m.—Dr. Antonini, physician; Dr. Ceccarelli, surgeon; Dr. Petacci, assistant; Dr. Topai, assistant.”

Dr. Ceccarelli then composed the body reverently on the bed, and covered it with a white cloth; whereupon it was carried into a neighboring chamber, looking north, towards the Belvedere wing of the palace. Detachments of the chapter of St. Peter’s kept a vigil, reciting psalms the night long. On the following morning, the 8th inst., Mgr. Macchi, Master of the Chamber, attended by Mgri. Casali del Drago and Della Volpe, Participating Secret Chamberlains of His Holiness, repaired to the apartment taken possession of the previous evening by Cardinal Pecci, Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, and gave him a formal announcement of the death of the Pope. The cardinal, having put on robes of violet, which is the mourning of the church, repaired in procession with the rest to the room in which the venerable remains lay, to effect a solemn mortuary recognition. All knelt down and prayed for a while in silence. His eminence then recited the De profundis, and, standing up, he reverently raised the cloth from the face of the dead. Taking a little silver hammer from the hand of a master of ceremonies, he struck the forehead of the Pontiff with it thrice, pronouncing at each stroke, in a loud voice, the name of the Pope. After a momentary silence he turned to those present and said: Papa vere mortuus est—The Pope is indeed dead. The cardinal then tendered a request to Mgr. Macchi, Master of the Chamber, for the Fisherman’s ring, which was still on the finger of the Pope. The monsignore removed it and gave it to the cardinal, who wrote a receipt for it. Thereupon Mgr. Pericoli, Dean of the Apostolic Prothonotaries, knelt down and read the following attestation: “This morning, February 8, at eight o’clock A.M., the Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Pecci, Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, accompanied by the College of Clerics of the Chamber, by Mgr. the Vice-Chamberlain, by Mgr. the Auditor of the Reverend Chamber, by the advocate-general of the Apostolic Chamber, by the procurator-general, and by the two secretaries and chancellors of the Chamber, repaired to the private rooms of His Holiness, in one of which he found on the death bed the corpse of his same Holiness.

“Having ascertained the death of the Holy Father, and recited opportune prayers in suffrage of the blessed soul, his aforesaid most reverend eminence made a request to the Most Illustrious and Reverend Mgr. Macchi, Master of the Chamber of His Holiness, for the Fisherman’s ring, which was immediately consigned by the same Mgr., the Master of the Chamber, to the most eminent chamberlain, who received it, with 132a view of presenting it in the first cardinalitial congregation (to be broken); for which ring his most reverend eminence gave an act of receipt to the aforesaid Mgr. the Master of the Chamber.

“Whereof, at the request of the most eminent and reverend chamberlain, a solemn act was drawn up, rogated by the Most Illustrious and Reverend Mgr. Pericoli, cleric of the Chamber, and Dean of the College of Apostolic Prothonotaries, the act being signed by the most eminent and reverend chamberlain, by the others above named, and by the two secret chamberlains of His Holiness, the Most Illustrious and Reverend Mgri. Casali del Drago and Della Volpe, in the quality of witnesses.

“According to the injunctions made by the eminent and reverend chamberlain to the clerics of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, these assembled in the presence of his most reverend eminence, in an apposite congregation, and in the regular manner, divided among themselves the different offices.”

THE INTERREGNUM.

The supreme government of the church during the vacancy of the Apostolic See belongs to the cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, and to the deans of the three orders of cardinals—bishops, priests, and deacons. These are respectively Cardinal Pecci, Cardinal Amat, dean of the cardinal-bishops, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, dean of the cardinal-priests, and Cardinal Caterini, dean of the cardinal-deacons. Cardinal Simeoni’s office as Secretary of State ceased with the death of Pius IX., and will be discharged ad interim by Mgr. Lasagni, secretary of the Council and of the Consistory. He retains the office of prefect of the apostolic palaces. Every day during the Novendiales (that is, the nine days on which solemn obsequies are celebrated for the deceased pontiff) there is a congregation of the cardinals, whereat their eminences appear with the rochet uncovered, as a sign of jurisdiction. They are all popes in fieri. In consideration of this a cardinal always rides alone in his carriage during the vacancy. Moreover, during the conclave, in the general reunions of the cardinals, each one has a canopy erected over his seat. When the election takes place all the canopies are removed, save that which is over the seat of the pontiff-elect.

Immediately after the ceremony described, an extraordinary congregation of the cardinals was held in the palace of the Vatican. Object, the manner of celebrating the funeral services; and the question, Where is the conclave to be held? The first question was disposed of quickly, it being unanimously resolved to observe the constitutions as regards the funeral. The question of where the conclave should be held presented many difficulties, considering the political circumstances of the Holy See at present. The foreign cardinals, and Cardinal Manning in particular, supported the proposal of not holding the conclave in Rome, not only because little faith was to be placed in the Law of the Guarantees, but for the reason that it would be a new and powerful protest against the usurpations consummated by the Italian government. The Italians overruled these considerations, and constituted a majority in favor of holding the conclave in Rome. Cardinal Manning’s project of holding the conclave at Malta received thirteen votes.^[40] Some city on the Adriatic coast of Austria was also proposed, but with little favor.

Pending this discussion the canons of St. Peter’s washed the body of the Holy Father in scented water, and then gave it to the physicians to be embalmed. This was on the evening of the 8th inst. They performed the operation in the traditional way, taking out the præcordia and embalming them separately; afterwards the body. The præcordia, according to an old tradition, are interred in the parish church near which the pontiff dies; consequently those of Pius IX. will be buried in St. Peter’s. Had he died at the Quirinal, the church of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio would receive them. The operation of embalming was brought to a successful termination on the morning of the 9th.

The city on the 8th presented a sad appearance. All the shops were closed, traffic for the most part was suspended, the Bourse was closed, and the soldiers marched to and from their regular stations without music. There were no amusements in the evening, and very few people 133to be seen in the streets. A shadow rested on the city. There was a great blank. Something was wanting—is wanting. The world seems strange, purposeless, and unutterably dreary without Pius IX.

THE DEAD PONTIFF.

After the embalming process his body was vested in the white cassock, the red cope bordered with ermine, and the camauro, or red cap, likewise bordered with ermine, placed on the head. He was then laid out on a modest catafalque, under a canopy, in one of the halls of the Vatican. The Roman nobles and persons of distinction were permitted to see him. Never have we seen death so beautiful as in Pius IX. His face, always aglow with a sweet smile, was now doubly sweet and restful. There was not a trace of pain left on it, and its beautiful whiteness seemed a supernatural glow which God had breathed there for his well-meriting servant. The hands, too, clasping his beloved crucifix, seemed to have a warmth about them which is not associable with death. Indeed, he seemed to sleep, did our Holy Father. Towards nightfall the body was habited in full pontificals, golden mitre, red chasuble, red satin gloves, gold-embroidered, and red satin slippers, also richly wrought in gold; and when darkness descended upon the Eternal City they carried Pius IX. down into St. Peter’s. The Swiss Guards formed themselves into a double line in the halls of the Vatican and along the Loggie of Raphael, whose classic beauty, recently restored and enhanced, will bear testimony ages hence to the munificence of Pius IX. as a Mæcenas. Masters of the horse in their fantastic and quaint liveries, the canons of St. Peter’s bearing torches and chanting the psalms, mace-bearers robed in sable velvet, and a detachment of the Swiss, bearing their pikes reversed, preceded the bier. This was borne on the shoulders of the throne-bearers, and a square was formed around it by the Noble Guards in full uniform and the penitentiaries of St. Peter’s. They were followed by the domestic prelates of the papal household, and the secular and military officials, likewise in dress uniform. The cardinals succeeded, marching two abreast, bearing torches, and responding to the psalms as intoned by the clergy in advance. They were followed by a detachment of the Palatine Guard. The Roman nobles, and other personages of distinction, brought up the rear of the procession. The flaming torches lighting up the halls, the corridors, the regal stairway, down which the cortège moved, the liveries of the servants, the uniforms of the soldiers, the robes of the priests, the purple of the cardinals, and, above all, that already heaven-lit face looking upwards, as if in placid and joyous contemplation of the Truth Eternal, the assertion and vindication of which was his dearest object in life, produced a sensation in the beholder which baffles description, there being no term of comparison to which we can liken it. And the muffled psalmody in those silent halls, inexhaustibly silent because of the circumstance and the hour, seemed to be, what it indeed was, the music of another and a tranquil sphere, where there is no “hostile domination,” no death.