Front matter (continued 15)

Many writers mention what is clearly stated in a letter of Hefele, under date of July 9:—[447]

The intention of the Pope is, in spite of the minority, to proceed at once to the publication of the new dogma, and forthwith to hand to every bishop two documents for his signature: (1) A profession of faith containing the article of infallibility; (2) A solemn declaration that the Council has been a free one. So you see into what a position we are brought, and that it does not depend on our own will whether we shall remain in our places or not. He that will not sign will instantly be placed under censure.

According to Vitelleschi, this threat terrified the poor bishops of the Opposition. If they refused to acknowledge the validity of the Council, nothing, as he says, was before them but to resign their Sees. If they meant to impugn the validity of the Council, Rome was not the place in which to do it, and, what is still more significant, they themselves "were not the men to do it."

It proved on the next day that the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the vacant crown of Spain, which had given to France the occasion for a quarrel, had been withdrawn. But it also appeared that Lord Lyons had to reproach the Duke De Gramont with a breach of promise, inasmuch as the Duke had authorized him to assure her Majesty's Government that if the withdrawal of the prince could only be procured the affair would be at an end. It was plain that the long-prophesied attack of France was resolved upon at last. What with the impatience of the majority for the fruits of their victory and the disgust and discouragement of the minority, the sufferings from the heat and the solicitude occasioned by approaching war, the assembly had ceased to be, in any serious sense of the word, deliberative. Amendments literally by the score were now produced and disposed of with a haste which was in shocking contrast with the gravity of the subjects. La Liberté du Concile says that on the all-important chapters on faith there were proposed two hundred and eighty-one amendments. The Fathers were called on to vote them by standing and sitting, and this was done in such haste that they had not even time to re-read them. The Under-Secretary did not read them out. He cried, "Number ten, number fifty, or number seventy-seven," as the case might be, "the committee rejects: those who are in favour of its rejection stand up." The solid majority stood up, and all was over. So in another case he cried out, "Number five or fifteen," adding "The committee accepts: those who are in favour of accepting stand up"; and the same result. "I do not vote," said one bishop, "because not only am I unable to form a conviction, but I am unable even to form a clear idea of what is the point" (Documenta, i. 174). And each minutest point was to be irreformably fixed! We had, says this writer, four hundred quarto pages on the subject of infallibility, including notes, remarks, and all, while only a few days were allowed to study it. So when the Draft Decrees on Faith were for the second time brought out new cast, with a preamble, four chapters, and eighteen canons, twenty-four hours were allowed to prepare to discuss them; and the preparation must be in Latin. Twenty-four hours for an accountable creature of God to prepare himself to say whether he would take a side for or against laying upon himself the obligation to pronounce eighteen curses more against his fellow creatures!

The hope had been flattered all along that no anathema would be attached to the dogma of infallibility. But at the very last Bishop Gasser, of Brixen, one of the keen Curialists, produced the formula enriched with an anathema against any one who should presume to contradict it. Quirinus says that Gasser was unwilling to be left behind by Manning, Deschamps, Dreux-Brézé, and the Spaniards. Finally the whole was submitted to the solemn decision on that very day on which the French Chamber, that had so long voted money for the forces to support the Papacy in Rome, voted five hundred and fifteen millions of francs to break up united Germany once more.

On the morning of July 13 the hour had come. Up to the last it had been asserted that no bishops but two or three would say Non placet. Every form of assurance had been spoken and printed that this would prove to be the case. The Virgin, the Saints, ay, and even the Holy Spirit, had been over and over again pledged to procure this result. At last, Ketteler and Landriot of Rheims made a clever attempt to bring it about by proposing to the Opposition, with which they had seemed to be at one, that they should all vote Placet juxta modum (content on certain conditions).[448] This would have enabled the Court to say that there were no votes of "non-content." The Archbishop of Milan said, "The only befitting course for us who are convinced of the falsehood of the doctrine is to say, No."[449] The Pope, it is said, told Darboy that not above ten would vote Non placet.[450] Certain it is that bets would have been freely taken in Rome the night before that not a dozen would do so. The devout were confident because the Virgin would order it otherwise, and the worldly were confident because they thought the bishops would not be unmindful of their own interests.

The Hall once more received its aged senators. Eighteen centuries called to them to remember what a Church Christ had set up; how pure in principle, how free in regulations, how plain in forms, how simple in organization, how far from pomp or dreams of domination, from cursing, or from use of physical force; how little of a body, how much of a spirit, was that real Church. It was a leaven moving by the force of an inward and self-propagating life to leaven the whole lump, in which for itself it only asked to lie hidden, and by its innate force to determine the quality of the meal, not stooping to design a mould for the shape of the loaves, on a model as irreformable as the patterns of a Hindu artisan. Many bishops had said that they had found themselves called together to gratify one self-asserting man of ordinary gifts, and less than ordinary acquirements, by giving him a diploma as the titular Lord of the world, which would have no practical effect except that of making him dictator of the Church, and bringing them and their people into collision with everything bright and noble, which he, in his infatuation, had set himself to put down. Many of them, at considerable risk to their own interests, were determined to register their solemn No! In spite of all hopes previously entertained, the feeling that the minority were resolved had spread among the majority. Quirinus tells how Deschamps, who had drafted a set of supererogatory anathemas, and had only withdrawn them in face of serious threats from Maret, and who was therefore known as having sought to place every man of the minority in the dilemma between giving an instant affirmative vote, or being immediately outside the Church by anathema, now approached the leaders of the Opposition. "With humble gestures and whining voice," he entreated them to do as Ketteler and Landriot, profesedly belonging to them, had proposed, namely, to vote "Content on certain conditions," and said that really there was a disposition on the part of the authorities to insert qualifications. "The trick was too bare-faced to succeed." Darboy called the attention of the three Cardinals to this attempt to divide the Opposition at the last, and the bishops said to the new Primate of Belgium, on whose head the gifted already saw the mitre kindling into the flame-colour of a hat, "It is unexampled impudence." We shall find hereafter, in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, what would appear to be an allusion to this scene.

The voting then began. It appeared that there were six hundred and one bishops present, showing that many of those who were in the city had stayed away. Antonelli was not there. Of course all the men belonging to Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter were for the Pope. So were nearly all those of the Neapolitan States, and the overwhelming majority from the other portions of Italy; Spain, South America, and the missionary bishops, might be said to be as one man. But to the surprise of every one, several of the Orientals, under the Propaganda as they were, and terrorized as they had been, had the heart to say No. Even poor old Audu, Patriarch of Chaldea, dared to say Non placet, knowing, from his experience by night in the Vatican, to what he might be exposed. Of course Ballerini and Valerga, and other Romans, whose Orientalism went no deeper than their vestments, were Roman still. When the important preliminary votes had been taken by rising and sitting, the Sub-Secretary ascended the pulpit. He called out name after name, each one replying by the words, Placet, Non placet, or Placet juxta modum; that is, Content, Not Content, or Conditionally Content. The vast majority said Placet; but the stateliest of Cardinals, Prince Schwarzenberg, said No. Milan said No; Paris, No; Munich, No; Vienna, No; Gran, the Primatial See of Hungary, No; Lyons, the Primatial See of France, No. In all, no less than eighty-eight living witnesses that day lifted up their testimony, and sent it on to all after-time, that, so far as they knew, the doctrine of Papal infallibility had not been, and was not then, the faith of the Churches which they represented. Nearly all these did represent Churches, many of them the oldest, the most educated, and the most numerous in the Papal world. Maret, who was a bishop in partibus, being among the minority, was like a bird in the wrong flock.

Strange to say, no less than seven Cardinals then present in Rome abstained from voting. The abstentions altogether numbered eighty. Poor Cardinal Guidi, who had been sadly belaboured for his fault, had been forbidden to receive visitors, and had been made miserable by all the arts which priests can practise, and to which priests are exposed, now voted Juxta modum; that is, conditionally content. The number who did the same were sixty-two. A false impression was spread among the Liberal Catholics that these were all adverse to the definition. Not so. Some of them did not think the formula now before them strong enough, and had notable additions to propose. The Contents were, 451; the Non-contents, 88; and the Conditional Contents, 62.[451] The Acta of the Council contain not a syllable of this sitting, any more than of all the others of the General Congregations.

The effect of this vote in Rome was immense. No class of men had counted upon it. Even ardent supporters of the minority had shown a want of any confidence that they would stand fast up to this point. The impression got abroad, for the moment, that not even Pius IX, little delicate as he was, would accept an apotheosis, as it was called, which had been publicly discredited by nearly all the bishops of great Sees, who were in any sense independent of the Bishop of Rome. "According to general belief, especially in Rome," says Vitelleschi (p. 206), "the Church never creates a dogma new in itself; but in defining a dogma, simply attests some belief which has been always and universally professed." The Romans saw that both the "always" and the "universally" were for ever disproved by the vote. They knew how speedily black could be made white, but they did not see how the device could this time succeed. There was the vote, saying what had been the belief of the bishops up to that hour. But probably the Romans soon corrected their first impression by their habitual estimate of Pius IX. They never accuse him of pride, although they always accuse him of vanity and vainglory. A case in which the common voice so sharply draws the distinction is exceedingly rare in public life. He is not above accepting anything that is agreeable. Quirinus will have it that he still declared that the vote of the Opposition would be reversed, and that these misguided men would be so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that they would publicly vote for the right.

From Munich a telegram was sent to Hefele bearing many names, among them that of Reithmayer, announcing universal "joyful sensation" at the vote, and calling for "immovable perseverance," otherwise "incalculable mischief."[452]

Nothing further now remained but the great solemnity for promulging the Decree, and gathering the fruits of nearly eight months' toil. Only five days' delay was taken—days of intense excitement, and of incidents striking at the time, and important for all time. The minority saw how their hopes that the Pope would recoil before a vote so solemn as that recorded had been vain. The war-horse was prancing outside the door of the Council, and the fighting sons of Loyola could already tell what tidings he would bring. Louis Napoleon might have doubts, but the Fathers of the Civiltá had none. "Everything is always directed and turned by Providence for the good and the triumph of the Church." (VII. xi. 379). The crisis, they knew, would give the Vicar of God an opportunity of intervening, with his newly certified authority and infallibility, as mediator. This office once accepted would easily be turned to that of supreme judge. So would his new reign be grandly commenced. The Monde, of Paris, said to be the organ of the Nuncio, already called the war a religious war against Protestantism. France had been assured in every form that she had only to attack Prussia, and all the Catholics of Southern Germany would join her. Without the miscalculation at the Tuileries caused by these statements, it is not probable that the French would have been hurled into the ditch of Sedan. Both the precepts and the prophecies of the reconstructionists failed. The cry, "The Church," raised by the Bavarian priests was not so strong as that of "The Fatherland," raised by the patriots. This fact was still unknown at the Vatican. Though the inflation manifest before the Council was somewhat reduced, too much remained.

The prospect was not so bright to the bishops. They had not been always cooped up within the walls of Rome. Hints of how thoughts were turning reached them from home. They knew that men of study and of wisdom were either hostile to the new Constitution, or painfully solicitous. Some of the bishops had deep personal convictions, which experience during the Council had intensified; convictions that the whole proceeding was neither more nor less than the adoption of a false doctrine to sanction a fatal policy, and that the error was so fundamental as to involve the acceptance of a purely human fountain of doctrine for all time to come. They met and debated whether they should vote in the open session. Only twenty, according to Archbishop Scherr, were in favour of this course, and these did not insist on their own views, lest they should divide the eighty-eight.

On the evening of July 15, about eight o'clock, a deputation entered the Vatican, composed of the Primates of France and Hungary, with the Archbishops of Paris and Munich, and the Bishops of Mainz and Dijon. They had to wait an hour—a time doubtless filled up with meditations more ecclesiastical than those which sometimes occupy the moments lost in the ante-rooms of the Vatican; rooms full of traditional tales of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and the sinful lusts of the flesh; such tales as good men, who had been forced to hear them, would not easily be forced to repeat.[453]

They were admitted about nine o'clock. They came from the minority to urge that the Pope should withdraw the additions made to the third canon of the third chapter, that canon the attempt to snatch an unconscious vote upon which had caused so profound an impression. They also wished the addition of a limiting clause to the definition of infallibility in the fourth chapter. Quirinus seems afraid to report the answer given by the Pope, and that for a reason which we suspect has often prevented English correspondents writing in Italy from telling true tales. They know that we judge of Popes and Cardinals by some such standard as that of our own public men, and that therefore to us the true tale would look like an invention. In the present case the answer was, "I shall do all I can, my dear sons; but I have not yet read the proposed Decree, and I do not know what it contains."[454] His Holiness requested to have the petition in writing. The spokesman, Darboy, replied, with French tact, that he would have it sent to His Holiness, and would take the liberty of forwarding at the same time the proposed Decree, which the Commission and the Presiding Cardinals had omitted to lay before his Holiness, though it wanted only two days of the public session, and thus had exposed him to the danger of promulging a Decree of which he was ignorant. Darboy not only did this, but also took care that others should know what the Pope had actually said. He wrote to the Committee on Faith, strongly censuring them for their neglect in not laying the proposed Decrees before the Pontiff!

It is curious to observe how all the Liberal Catholic writers who had come to Rome began by speaking of the Pope with the deference usual on this side of the Alps, but finally slipped into the habit of calling him "Pius." They evidently often had difficulty between their sense of the conventional respect due to a personage whom so many own as their head, and their feelings as honest men. The latter would have often prompted them to speak of Pius IX as Italians do, and not as Englishmen or Germans are wont to do.[455]

"Pius," continues Quirinus, added that if they would increase their eighty-eight votes to a hundred he would see what could be done. Only those who know the opinions entertained by that writer of the Pope's personal ignorance, and of his habit of speaking as if he knew everything, can appreciate the statement that his Holiness concluded by assuring the deputation that it was notorious that the whole Church had always taught the unconditional infallibility of the Popes.

Bishop Ketteler now threw himself on his knees before the Pontiff. For some time he remained in that position, entreating his sovereign to make some concession, and thus to restore peace and unity to the Church and to the Episcopate. This was the very scene to please one like Pius IX. And so the deputation left him with some hopes of concession—"full of the best hopes," said the Archbishop of Munich.[456]

Two men speedily sought to undo any impression that might have been made. Many a Roman Catholic has, in imagination, hovered over that scene, returning again and again to watch the figures of the agents of the Committee on Faith as they glided into the presence-chamber. Such Catholics in their imaginings have scowled at, ay, have cursed Senestrey the pupil of the Jesuit College Germanicum, and Manning the pupil of Oxford, as the instruments of the Jesuits going at this moment to harden the heart of the Pontiff, which some hoped had begun to relent. It is said that this remarkable pair urged that all was now ripe, that the majority were enthusiastic, and that moreover if the Pontiff made concessions he would be dishonoured in history as a second Honorius.[457] This "frightened the Pope," said Archbishop Von Scherr.

The hopes brought back by the deputation to the minority were speedily dispelled. In the course of the morning Cardinal Rauscher waited on his Holiness to thank him in the name of the minority for the gracious reception of their deputation. The shrewd Austrian pointed out to his royal master the effects which would flow from the definition as framed by the majority. "It is too late," said the Pope; "the formula is already distributed to the bishops and has been discussed. Besides, the public session is convened. It is now impossible to yield to the wishes of the minority."[458] On Friday night the Pope said that he had not seen the formula; on Saturday morning the Pope said that the formula was already distributed and discussed. And this formula was unchangeably to determine the fountain of doctrine, of ministerial authority, and of all power in a so-called Church. Friedrich, on writing down these words from the lips of his Archbishop, adds in a parenthesis, "One is ready to go crazed at the measureless frivolity with which the holiest questions are handled in Rome."

That same morning a Congregation was held to consider the suggestions made by those who had given conditional votes. Two Spaniards, according to Quirinus (p. 804), had made two propositions tending to complete the repudiation of the collective authority of the universal Church by the Bishop of Rome. The proposed Decree, as it stood, limited his definitions to "matters which the Holy See had held from ancient times in common with other Churches."[459]

This language, however vaguely, did recognize both antiquity and catholicity. The worthy Spaniard doubtless felt that the Vicar of God ought not to be limited by any such things; that he should be left free to define what he felt called to define. The committee had been of the same mind, and had adopted the proposal of the Spaniard that the above-quoted clause should be struck out. The Sub-Secretary cried, "The amendment proposed to 76 is accepted by the committee: those who are in favour of accepting it, stand up." Nearly all stood up. Ten or twelve stood up against it, and away went the antiquity and catholicity as expeditiously as any Cardinal could desire.[460]

The inner lights of the Pontiff were thus freed from any restraint arising out of ancient views, and the local creed of Rome was freed from any restraint arising out of a common Christianity as between that city and other Churches.

Now, however, came to pass a marvel, if anything could be marvellous there and then. The venerable men seated all around had spent their long lives in hearing and telling of one thing—the glory, the authority, the divinity of the Church, and the overwhelming conclusiveness of her consent. All who did not hear the Church were, according to them, lost. Even when, in preparing the way for the change of base which they had foreseen before leaving home, some of them had appeared to throw tradition altogether overboard, it was only in order to substitute for it the general consent of the Church. Which of us would have dared to tell devout Roman Catholics that their own bishops, when once in Rome under the terror of the Pontiff and the Jesuits, would disavow the consent of the Catholic Church, and say that without it the word of a single man was quite as good? They may now attempt to explain the words "not by consent of the Church," as meaning something small; or even to say that Popes ever and always formally disclaimed the necessity of her consent. The world must leave them to do so; but they know, as well as we do, that had we said that their bishops would of a sudden put words like these into the creed, they would have called us calumniators. Yet what came to pass?

That came to pass which had often been hinted as necessary by the zealots during the Council, but had always been looked upon as impossible by most men of the minority, although a few had openly said that in such a Council nothing was impossible. Another Spaniard, when he gave his conditional vote, had proposed that the words of the Decree which said, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves irreformable," should be amended so as to read, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by consent of the Church, irreformable." Vitelleschi says that no information was given as to the authority at whose suggestion these metamorphic words were approved by the committee, but approved by the committee they were. So, without any opportunity of debate, the Under Secretary cried, "The amendment under number 152, having been modified, is accepted by the committee"; and reading it, he added, "Let those who are in favour of accepting it stand up." The great majority stood up. "Let those who are against accepting it stand up." "About thirty" stood up.[461] Thus were those ancient men called upon in their episcopal robes to extinguish the light of that lamp to which they had ministered oil all the days of their lives. They obeyed like soldiers, and the old, old light of a catholic consent was quenched for ever. Many of the eighty-eight were absent, and knew not of this new, swift, and crowning victory of the guild over the hierarchy.

Done in a moment! the Romish bishops had effaced from their law, and from their rule of faith, the consent of the Catholic Church! Talk of revolutions, of hasty parliamentary votes, of the sudden impulse of a mob; but where in history is there an instance of breaking with a long and loud resounding past, in such haste, and so irrevocably; irrevocably, not by the ordinary law which entails the consequences of an act upon the future, but irrevocably by the form and intent of the action itself? We know, alas! what these bishops are capable of representing; but it is for the unborn to judge the men who did that act and then faced round, saying that they changed nothing. And these men are to teach the human species the art of conserving all that they have "inherited and proved"! The Church of the Popes had long ceased, in the eye of Protestants, to have a claim to catholicity. Now, however, in the eye of Liberal Catholics she explicitly rejected catholicity by statutory and irreformable law. They saw her contract herself to the sect of one man and his retainers, to a religion made up of faith in one man, his inner light, and his faits accomplis.

The slow but irresistible operation of principles had at last worked out its ultimate issue. Liberal Catholics were the first to see that the religion of the Pope had now really ceased to be Catholic, or even national, or indeed municipal—that it had in fact become only palatial. They at once named it the religion of the Vatican. They did not so soon admit that the principle of one city church—not the mother, and not a model—being the mistress of all others, and practically the fountain of their faith, contained in itself the germ of all that had now come to fruit.

The sitting which began with deeds so very solemn ended in another way. For once the poor Pope had been exposed to the plague of pamphlets in the Holy City. It is pathetic to read the wailing over the destiny that subjected so holy a being to this in addition to his other "martyrdoms," "Calvaries," "crucifixions," and such like words, to win a tear. Many of the vexatious writings were in Latin. Thus if they had the additional bitterness of being the work often of bishops, always of priests, they still had the veil of a dead language. Not a few, however, had been written in living tongues. Two of the latter, which cut dreadfully deep, were in French—What is going on in the Council? and The Last Hour of the Council. We are now to see how these are dealt with. It is announced by the First President that a certain protest will be distributed. So papers are handed round. During this process the Under-Secretary calls out, Let the Fathers take notice that the sitting is not over! Then from the pulpit, in the name of the Presidents, he reads a protest against false reports in general, and the two pamphlets in particular. They were stinking calumnies and shameful lies—putidissimæ calumniæ ... probosa mendacia. The Italians and Spaniards, who could not have read them, cried, "We condemn them." The minority cried, "We do not condemn them." The President called upon those who did condemn them to stand up. Sambin says that so few remained seated that, to avoid exposing them to humiliation, the contrary was not put. Among these men Friedrich names Rauscher and Schwarzenberg. Two copies of the condemnation had been handed to every one of the bishops. The President now read a request that each would return one of them signed with his own name. This trap, however, was not successful. Haynald said that if the Presidents would translate La Dernière Heure into Latin, he and the rest of the Hungarians would be able to see if it was as bad as their Eminences had said it was.[462] The Acta Sanctæ Sedis make no mention of any demur, but notes that many prelates said, "Willingly, with all my heart, yes, even to blood!" But why giving bad names to two pamphleteers should call forth such heroic resolutions is not obvious. Thus did an Œcumenical Council spend its last legislative moment in recording a condemnation of two pamphlets which obviously the bulk of those who gave sentence could not have read. The presentation to every man personally of the two papers, and the call to sign, coming from the chair, was a symptom not calculated to dissipate certain fears that had got abroad among the minority. It was reported that if they dared to give an adverse vote in the public session, two papers would be immediately presented to them, the one being a subscription to the dogma, the other being the resignation of their sees. If they did not sign the first, they must sign the second. They knew that in case they refused to sign both, they were within the walls of Rome. And suppose a bishop to have signed his resignation and then to find himself in the hands of the Papal police! And men liable even to the suspicion of such menaces were free "judges and legislators!"

So ended the last of the General Congregations, being the eighty-sixth since the beginning. It will be ever memorable—a monument of despatch and versatility. It renounced, as lights in doctrine, antiquity, catholicity, and the consent of the Church, and it denounced two French pamphlets, and gave to Ce Qui se Passe au Concile and La Dernière Heure du Concile an immortality in the formal Acts of that assembly denied to all the petitions, suggestions, deliberations, and votes of the whole hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in their fourscore and six anxious and pregnant sittings in General Congregation.

For awhile the protest against these pamphlets, of which the wording is named by Vitelleschi as a sample of the violent language common in the Roman bureaux at the time, is actually printed among the Acts of the Council, those Acts contain not a word of the votes, proposals, or discussions of the General Congregations; not a hint of all the protests put in by the minority, not a hint of the voting in the great Congregation on July 13, or, in fact, of anything that could give a knowledge of the processes, or of any other results than the lists of committees and the formulated Decrees. By processes we do not mean the ceremonial ones, for they are briefly described, but the legislative and deliberative ones, which are entirely omitted. The Bulls of the Pope and the Decrees of the Presidents as to procedure are printed; but no action of the bishops. When what has passed through the hands of the bishops becomes a Papal constitution, it of course appears. As to the historians, they indeed do give the voting on July 13; but we believe that not one of those who wrote by or under authority gives one of the documents of the protesting bishops, from the beginning of the Council to the end, or any indication of where they may be found. Vitelleschi tells how, on this same day, Cardinal Rauscher himself made a last desperate effort to impress the immovable Pope, and was received with scant courtesy.

That Saturday night a number of downcast old men, each with more or less of a retinue, took leave of Rome. Some went by the desolate way to Civitá Vecchia. On reaching that city, and beginning to breathe the free air of the sea, they might well wonder how long the red, white, and blue flag would warn away the red, white, and green; how long the eldest daughter of the Church would help the autocrat to impose his obscure tyranny on this threadbare patch of land,—a land whereof the natural lot was neither poverty nor dependence upon the foreigner. Some of them took the less desolate way towards the North. In the clear July night they passed by Monte Rotondo, with Mentana not far off. When would Garibaldi be heard of anew? Or would the next dash at Rome be left to Garibaldi? Spoleto, Terni, and other places lost in 1860, would suggest the question: Will Ireland and Belgium find men for new crusades, and if so, will they be more successful? The lamps of Perugia, high on the hill, would recall tales of slaughter under Pius IX. Perhaps the prelates had not heard them, or had said that they were all lies. All of the Frenchman, or of the German, in their hearts would be drawn in one direction; all of the Papist in another. The Frenchman would naturally say, He who has repaid the restoration of twenty years ago, and the support given since then, by deliberate insult of the greatest names of the Gallican dead, by coarse offences against every man of mark among the French living that dared to speak a dissentient word, and by the ostentatious abrogation of all the Gallican liberties, deserves not that the flag of France should longer shelter his policy. The German would naturally say, The attempt to undo the unity of the Fatherland, and once more to expose us through division to the incursions, the burnings, and the plunderings of the French, is no less than diabolical; and he that aims at breaking up Germany for the sake of weakening Italy, should be left to his deserts. But in such men, after all, the Frenchman or the German represented but the human instincts, not the drilled, trained thoughts, and the unchangeably moulded habits. The German, or the Frenchman, represented the boy, but the Papist represented the man. "The weakening of the individual will in the priest," of which Vitelleschi speaks, as one of the secrets of that mysterious zeal to-day for things which were esteemed untrue yesterday, is scarcely more striking than is the weakening of national sympathy, except when the interests of the Papacy are supposed to be connected with those of the nation.

We may close this chapter with one specimen more of the practical preaching for the establishment of the new moral order, of the real Christian civilization, which the scribes of the Court had kept under the eyes of all who sought, in their pages, for tidings of the great things which the Council was doing. Our last specimen was that of an English youth: this is that of a French one. Bravely fighting his gun at Monte Rotondo, fell young Bernard Quatrebarbes, the son of a Breton marquis, mortally wounded. When the victors of Mentana delivered the prisoners, no less than four cousins gathered around the pallet of the wounded Bernard. At Rome he was joined by his father, his sister, and other female relations. The day after his arrival in the city, his humble room in the hospital having been entered by Pius IX, "radiant with sovereign sweetness," as the writer expresses it, Bernard was naturally in ecstasy at such an august apparition. The Pope desiring to see the wound of his crusader, and making the sign of the cross over it, said, "God will bless thee, my friend, as I bless thee." The Marquis announced to his wife the departure of her boy in three words, "Bernard in Paradise." "Words," exclaims the author, unconsciously signalizing the fall of Rome from Christian hope—"Words worthy of the primitive Christians." Ay, but, thank God, primitive Christians before saying over their dead "in Paradise" instead of "in Purgatory," did not wait till one fell fighting for the royalty of a bishop! Over the fisher drowned with his nets, over the mother who died in childbirth, they rejoiced with the joy of hope eternal. It was for later, darker ages to drag them back again into a dim region where a crowd of intervening patrons and all manner of priestly spells came between them and the bosom of a Father, between them and the home where all the brothers meet.

Maria Sophia, ex-Queen of Naples, came so often to the bedside of the dying Bernard, that our narrator says she almost seemed to have taken up her abode in the hospital, and sometimes she was moved to tears. By that bedside also did her husband say to the Marquis, "How noble is your son!" To the Marquis also wrote another expectant exile, the Count of Chambord, saying that he admired "the short but bright career of Bernard, and his marvellous end." It was the Colonel of Bernard that told the father of his departure, and in these words: "I have another patron in heaven." But above all when the news was conveyed to the Pope, he said: "Bernard Quatrebarbes is a saint in heaven." At home in Brittany, while the corpse lay in the chapel of the château, the people flocked around the bier; but it was "more to invoke the departed than to pray for him." The new Hermit who preaches the new crusade thus concludes his memoir:—

The death of Bernard Quatrebarbes, who sacrificed to God youth, fortune, and pleasure, a tranquil life and the joys of home, in order to march in the defence of the truth, of virtue, of the Church, will awaken the drowsy soul of more than one young cavalier. Bernard is already a martyr, and he will be an apostle.[463]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIII

Grief of M. Veuillot—Final Deputation and Protest.

Sunday, July 17, was rather more of a fast than of a feast for M. Veuillot. He says, "War and oppositions are cruel clouds." Bad as were the rumours of war, those of "rebellion" among the bishops were still worse. It had evidently become known that the minority were not to be cowed into gracing the public solemnity with their compulsory Placet. It was even rumoured that the bishops would go into the open session and disturb the solemnity by saying Non placet—ay, M. Veuillot had heard, by shouting it and outrageously repeating it in the face of the Pope.[464] While nothing was more desirable than that, to prove the freedom of the Council, two or three should say Non placet, any serious number doing so would be detestable. The refusal of the non-contents to vote at all would be only one degree less bad. M. Veuillot, however, discovered that many whose departure, "or rather desertion," had been reported were still really in Rome. But, on the other hand, he saw carriages at the doors of leaders of the "tormenting and tormented" Opposition; at those of the Archbishops of Paris and Lyons, and of Cardinals Rauscher and Matthieu. Even the Via Frattina was visited to note the symptoms at the door of Maret. After night-fall, Veuillot cries, "Many are gone, and many more are going in the morning. They will really absent themselves. I cannot help thinking of a caricature. It represented some seditious fellows in a scare, who said, 'Now is the moment to show ourselves; let us hide!'"

As the noontide of that July Sunday blazed upon the Vatican, a deputation had entered the presence chamber, headed by Darboy and Simor, Primate of Hungary. They came to make one last attempt to procure the prorogation of the Council without the promulgation of the dogma. Their only answer was the old Non possumus. Then the last of the luckless series of protests was solemnly delivered. They had not heart enough to fight, and had too much conscience to submit. So they took the middle course, and spoiled for ever the pretext of moral unanimity except the dead unanimity of form. Their fears, or their views of unity and reverence would not allow them in public to withstand the Pope. He had justly calculated the effect upon them of throne and tiara, with the fear of possible degradation. They had not, perhaps, sufficiently calculated what might have been the effect on him of honest men standing up one after another in their appointed place, and saying before all the Churches, as a wiser than they had done of a better than he, that he was to be blamed. They would have exposed, it is true, Pope Pius IX to a temporary check, yet they might have saved the Papacy from an irrevocable error. But in proportion as the Papacy had become weak in producing conviction, it had concentrated its strength on the means of producing submission. Its success in that art was now to be its own punishment. No Protestant had expected any effectual resistance from men trained as Romish bishops. Any real tenacity of conscience shown during the Council, was due to nobler influences spread abroad in countries where the ascendancy of Rome is not complete. There is, to our mode of thinking, something not merely incongruous and grotesque, but a great deal worse, in putting forward the paltry plea of personal offence, or personal consideration, when the matter in hand is a dogma that is to mould the religion of millions for ever. The fact that these prelates do put forward such a notion countenances the statements often made about men giving as the reason for their votes that they could not refuse the Holy Father or hurt his feelings. Vitelleschi thinks that the fear of being required to resign their Sees or subscribe the dogma was one of the elements in determining the minority to leave Rome before the definition (p. 212). If so, seeing them escape from that dilemma would be one of the causes of the mortification shown by the majority, as expressed by Veuillot. We give the last of the protests in full[465]:—

Most Blessed Father, in the Congregation held on the 13th of this month we gave our votes upon the proposed Decree of the first dogmatic constitution of the Church of Christ.

It is known to your Holiness that there were eighty-eight Fathers, who, pressed by conscience and moved by love of the Holy Church, gave their votes in the words Non placet, that sixty-two others voted in the words Placet juxta modum, and that, moreover, about seventy were absent from the Council and abstained from voting. To these are to be added a number who, from infirmity or other serious reasons, have returned to their dioceses.

In this manner, our votes have been made known to your Holiness and to the whole world, and it has been made evident by how many bishops our opinion is approved; and thus have we discharged our office and duty.

From the time above stated, nothing has occurred to change our judgment; but, on the contrary, several things have been added, and those exceedingly serious, which have strengthened us in our purpose.

Confirming, then, by this document our votes, we have determined to abstain from the public session to be held on the 18th. That filial piety and reverence, which lately brought our deputies to the feet of your Holiness do not permit us openly, and in the Father's face, to say Non placet in a case so closely concerning the person of your Holiness.

And, indeed, the votes that would be given in the public session could only repeat those already given in the Congregation.

We, therefore, return to our flocks without delay, for after so long an absence we are much needed on account of the rumours of war, and especially on account of the great spiritual necessities. We return grieving that, because of the sad juncture of circumstances, even peace and tranquillity of conscience is disturbed among the faithful.

Meanwhile, commending with all our hearts the Church of God, and your Holiness, to the grace and protection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are of your Holiness the most devoted and most obedient sons.

Leaving, then, in the hands of the Pope this solemn confirmation of a belief registered by a formidable array of bishops, that he ought not to be proclaimed as the infallible representative of God, they turned their backs on the palace which had witnessed their many humiliations. Their allusion to the things which had been added since the 13th as being "exceedingly serious," is another of the many witnesses out of their own mouths against their subsequent statements. Their clear statement that did they vote in the session it could only be to repeat their former vote, seals with the seal of deliberate misrepresentation many solemn assertions since that day made under mitres.

It was a grief to the soul of M. Veuillot to learn that the Ambassador of France had graced with his presence the departure of Darboy. De Banneville had accompanied the Archbishop to the station, escorted by Mérode, with Monsignor Vecchiotti, and Father Trullet. The recalcitrant Archbishop was even placed in "a kind of carriage of honour"; a fact which reminded the Argus of the Univers that a certain bishop had said, We go away conquerors, but we leave some wounded on the field. "This fine carriage seemed to me an ambulance."[466] Thus, poor Darboy took his way towards the storm-cloud, blackening behind the hills, in the after clap of which he alone of all the host was to find a bloody grave.

The Monday morning dawned heavily over Rome. As the eyes of the last portion of the fleeing minority were sadly tracing the outlines of the hills on the upper course of the Tiber, while those of the first portion were tracing the forms of the outlying Alps and a few were watching morn as it spread over the waves of the Mediterranean, a Pope for the first time rose in Rome with the consciousness that ere sunset he would be infallible, not only in fact, but also in law. His less happy prececessors had claimed that crown, but never had received it. Now he was about, with the consent of the Church, to put on the power to be infallible for ever, "without the consent of the Church." Had ever diplomacy won such a victory? had ever an oligarchy so completely signed itself away? Tell him that the temporal power was of no spiritual value! But could all that have been accomplished except within the walls of a strong city? As Pius IX looked from the Papal apartments across the Tiber, the Pincian was gloomy, and the Sabine Hills were hid in clouds under a threatening sun. But he would remember the day of his taking possession, and how gloom had turned to rainbow; the day of the return from Gaeta, and how the sun had opened from the west at the right moment; above all, the day of "The Immaculate," and how the sun had seemed glad of the sight. True, the dutiful luminary had failed on the opening day of the Council, but the Jesuit Fathers had written that the solemnity would be brilliant at its close, and that the city would blaze with triumph, as Ephesus had done in the year 431. And was not the throne so placed in the Council Hall, that, all being propitious, the beams would fall as they had done on the day of the Immaculate; and surely the Virgin would not fail to send them. At all events, it was certain that he would lie down that night not only the Pope of the Immaculate, but the Pope of the Infallible—the first human being in the records of the world to whom a number of the creatures of God had deliberately given the right of telling to them and to their succeeding generations what they were to believe for ever and ever. The deifying of an emperor, either in the plains of Babylon or in the temples of Rome, was a little thing as compared with the apotheosis now about to be performed. The dogmas of the emperor were not to be eternal on earth, though he might cause himself to be decreed immortal in heaven. The word "apotheosis" was perfectly natural to the pen of Vitelleschi, or of any other Liberal Catholic who dared to speak what he thought. But it is nevertheless true that deification among the heathen, whether ancient or modern, involved little exaltation compared with that now to be given to the Bishop of Rome. A Theseus or a Rama, an Antinous or an Augustus, had a lowly part in ruling eternal destinies compared with that to be now assigned to the Count and Priest Mastai-Ferretti.

The monasteries and nunneries sent forth a contingent, as on the opening day; but where were the proud vehicles and the pressing throngs? Vitelleschi says that two or three houses in the city were decorated. How dead was the indifference denoted by such language on an occasion absolutely unprecedented, cannot be conveyed to the minds of those who do not know what the people of a southern city can do when they really mean to decorate. As the places for spectators in the Hall filled up, it was whispered from one to another, "No crowned heads." An Infanta of Portugal was the lone flower of royalty

"Where once a garden smiled."

Even ambassadors failed. France, the eldest daughter, was not there. Spain, the Catholic, was not there. Portugal, the faithful, was not there. Austria, the apostolic, was not there. Bavaria was not there. Poland was dead. Italy was alive again, but her heart and hope were elsewhere. Belgium and Holland had each sent a consul, the one to welcome infallibility, with its constitution condemned by the Church, the other with its heresy. Vitelleschi mentions a representative of the Principality of Monaco. The Giornale di Roma is not so worldly minded as to specify any state, but says that members of the diplomatic corps were present.[467]

About nine o'clock the Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals, all in red, began to stream in. Five hundred and thirty-five seats were soon occupied. It thus appeared that there were some two hundred less than at the opening. About twenty had died.[468] Several were ill. Some, in Rome, were absent from disclination to attend.[469] Of the minority only two now changed sides. Of these, one was a demonstrative Oppositionist—Landriot, of Rheims. This conspicuous absence of the minority was a disappointment and a humiliation, though it was nothing more. Even the Acta Sanctæ Sedis says that its effect was traceable on the countenances of the Fathers. They grieved for the obstinacy of their brethren. Indeed, in the Congregation where the vote was taken, some, with clasped hands, had implored their friends to give up their false opinion at last. Still the conqueror had his triumph, though he had not the satisfaction of seeing the captives follow in his train. It was Cæsar without Vercingetorix. It would have been a proud moment for the resident Cardinals had Rauscher and Schwarzenberg made Vienna and Prague bow down to Rome. Had the sturdy Darboy done homage for Paris, it would have been a sign to the Curia that the new world of the Jesuit seers was at last actually above the horizon. The readers of M. Veuillot can well imagine into what ecstasies he would have fallen, and with what dithyrambs his pages would have detonated, had his ears been permitted to hear Dupanloup pronounce his Placet. This was not to be. Those bishops were not the men to stand up in their places and contend; yet were they not so thoroughly beaten as ostentatiously to submit. Their paper confirmation of their legislative vote came like an impertinent parley to tease the conquerors. What ought to have been either a combat or a fête? was neither. It was a ceremonial of which even the Civiltá quotes its description from the Giornale di Roma, while M. Veuillot himself is too much affected to write more than a few lines—as if silence was the vestment which his strong emotions were wont to put on. In his after touches he often speaks of the glory of the dogma, but we do not remember that he ever alludes to the glory of that day. The Protestant Fromman, whom we have not been accustomed to quote, though very glad to consult, called the ceremony tedious; but that was unpardonable.

The Pope did not enter on this occasion, as on former ones, between Antonelli and Mertel, but between Grassellini and Mertel. Had Antonelli, because of having failed to give his vote in the Congregation, lost his wonted place on the day when the fruit was to be plucked? The hall and city, according to Vitelleschi, "wore a cold and severe aspect." December 8 seemed to have dropped its mantle on July 18. Perhaps, however, ere the moment of promulgation arrived, the Roman azure would be in the ascendant, and hearts would be gladdened at the right time. Indeed, the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, in contradiction to all profane authors, states that just before the Pope uttered his sentence the gloom somewhat cleared up. It does not attempt to say that the sun shone.

After the preparatory ceremonies, Fessler and Valenziani approached the throne. The Secretary handed the constitution Pastor Eternus to the Pontiff, with its chapters and its canons making a new Church, if ever a new constitution made a new corps, and making, as Pius IX hoped, the commencement of a new era for the kingdoms of this world, all of which, with the glory of them, had been by some one promised to him after this day. That constitution professed to give to him, or rather to recognize as inhering in him, authority over all territories on earth, and over all those actions of man that possessed any moral character. Over the entire sphere of human accountability henceforth and for ever it was for him to reign as should seem to him right. Valenziani ascended the desk, and read out the title of the Decree. He then sat down, and while the sky grew blacker, the house darker, and the hearts of men more heavy with an impression of something terrible, he read chapter after chapter, until at last he reached the close, and the house echoed back his cadence, with the word of the Pope's self-written doom, Irreformable,—"The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by consent of the Church, irreformable."

After a moment's pause came the sealing Canon, "If any shall presume to contradict this our definition, let him be anathema."

The reader ceased. The storm alone was speaking. For a moment no human tone disturbed the air. But memory was repeating two terrific words, and imagination kept saying that the winds were whispering.

Irreformable! Anathema!

Valenziani rose, and sending his voice athwart the gloom, said, "Most Reverend Fathers, are the Decrees and Canons contained in this Constitution agreed to?"

Upon this he left the desk, and Jacobini, the Sub-Secretary, ascending it, called out the name of Cardinal Mattei, who was absent from old age. He then called "Constantine, Bishop of Porto"; and Cardinal Patrizi, rising, and taking off his mitre, said, Placet. The voice near the throne made the darkening hall to echo Placet, and the voice near the door repeated the echo, Placet. Then the scrutineers recorded the vote. Cardinal Amat was next called, and his Placet and some five or six others sounded harmoniously in the deepening gloom. Jacobini then called Frederick Joseph, Archbishop of Prague. The princely priest who from the age of thirty-three had worn the purple, and who was to represent the house of Schwarzenberg and the Church of Bohemia,—that Church imposed by burnings and by blood,—responded not. There was a moment's pause and a sense of a want. Absent, cried the voice near the throne. Absent, replied the voice near the door; and the influences from without were seconded by a damping influence from within. The next name was that of Cardinal Corsi, a man of repute for piety, who was well known to be averse to the definition. According to Vitelleschi, he and the other dissentient Cardinals drew their scarlet hats over their eyes and remained silent. But they wore mitres, not hats. Of the rest, Quirinus asserts that, besides the Cardinal Vicar, Patrizi, only two put into their Placet spirit enough to stand up, and they were Bonaparte and Panebianco. Fourth after Corsi came the name of the senior French Cardinal. "James, Archbishop of Besançon," cried Jacobini; but Cardinal Mathieu did not respond. Absent, cried the official voice. Absent, echoed the fellow official. Even France seemed failing. Thrice had the tranquillizing Placet cheered the still deepening shadows, when Jacobini came to the notable name of "Joseph Othmar, Archbishop of Vienna." But Rauscher was far away, and once more did the thunderous air thrill with the depressing sound, Absent. Now followed a successive roll of more than twelve Placets, and then came the name of Philip, Archbishop of Bologna. All watched Cardinal Guidi, who pronounced a Placet. The Pope closely eyed him, and when the creature delivered his judgment before earth and heaven in favour of the dogma which just one month previously he had, in the same place, solemnly proposed to lay under an anathema, his royal master said, "Poor man!" or, as others report it, "Good man!" but Vitelleschi remarks that in Italian they might both mean the same thing. To Guidi succeeded two staunch Placets, from Bonnechose and Cullen, but next was called Gustavus of Santa Maria Traspontina. Eyes looked for another prince-priest who represented the house of Hohenlohe and the feelings of Bavaria, but there was no response. Hohenlohe, like Rauscher and Schwarzenberg, was absent.

After the list of Cardinals was exhausted, the patriarchal Sees were called. Two Sees were especially connected with the tradition of Peter. After men of genuine Italian name, Antici-Mattei and Ballerini, had, for Constantinople and for Alexandria, answered Placet, was called the name of Antioch. Its Patriarch was named Jusseff, and the call evoked no response; so Antioch, the See of Peter, and absent, the sign of disapprobation, were set in men's minds together. Of course the Roman Valerga said Placet for Jerusalem. Then came the other city connected with the life of Peter, and when Audu, whose secret experience after his first audacity in venturing to differ from Pius IX was known to all, was called to answer for Babylon, all expected that he would have been overcome like Guidi. But no. Oriental servility did not equal Rome, and so the reply made for Babylon was Absent. La Dernière Heure du Concile asserts that as Audu had been sent for by the Pope, so had Jusseff been sent for by the authorities of the Propaganda, "to know by what right he dared to bear testimony to the belief of the East without having previously submitted his speech to revision" (p. 4). Next came the primatial Sees. Where was the Primate of France? Where the Primate of Hungary? They, too, among the absent. And of the Archbishops, where were those of Paris, of Milan, and of Munich? Where the Nestor of the English-speaking group, John of Tuam? These were painful deficiencies. Still, in numbers if not in influence the roll of Placets from among the Archbishops presented a very large majority. Among the bishops, the first name called was that of the very aged Losanna, of Biella, one of the staunchest opponents. So the first reply, though for an Italian bishop, was Absent. Then a flow of Placets, frequently chequered by an Absent. In all, says Vitelleschi, nearly one hundred and fifty bishops were absent, many of them men who held the most illustrious Sees.[470] The Acta Sanctæ Sedis confesses to one hundred and twelve absentees from among those called; which number did not, of course, include men who had already obtained leave of absence. The number who were present was five hundred and thirty-five. In this whole list the uniform responses were either Placet or Absent till the name of the Bishop of Caizzo, a Neapolitan, was called. The official reported his vote as Placet. Caizzo raised his voice and loudly uttered Non placet. Then, again, to the end, Placet followed Placet, alternating with the voice of the rolling thunder. Finally was called Fitzgerald of little Rock in America. Thinking that he alone of the Fallibilists was present, he had begged not to be brought forward; but now that another bishop had given a negative vote he responded, Non placet.[471] This set tongues agoing. It was roundly asserted that the appearance of the Neapolitan and the American had been arranged for, in order to give an air of freedom. Vitelleschi naturally thinks that it is needless to search so far for motives. Yet, the Civiltá makes a display of these two votes, saying that without them it would have been alleged that the Fathers were not free. It tells of a correspondent of some of the "bad" papers who on hearing the first Non placet was evidently annoyed, and being asked by a friend the cause of that annoyance said, "This negative vote spoils all for us."[472] The Civiltá quotes a description of how Riccio, the Neapolitan, after the definition, went down on his knees and said, Credo, I believe; and how Fitzgerald pressed his episcopal cross to his breast and said, "Now I believe. Now do I also firmly believe."[473] When all the votes had been delivered, the scrutineers and notaries brought to the Secretary of the Council a statement of the result. The Secretary, followed by the scrutineers and notaries, advanced to the steps of the throne. There they all knelt down. The Secretary ascended the steps and read, "Blessed Father, the Decrees and Canons are agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted."

All this time the gloom was deep. "The voice of the Lord" again and again pealed over the city. Thunderbolts more than once struck close to the Cathedral. Some glass in the windows of the apse just behind the throne was broken. Some, according to Jesuit writers, said, Providence is proclaiming the downfall of Gallicanism. Some, according to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, said, The demon is disturbed, the storm shows that this does not please him. This interpretation would seem to have been that of the learned editor, for he adds, "The thunderbolts which Jupiter of the Pagans forged did the city no harm." Many said, God is installing the new Moses upon the new Sinai. This, at least with those who wrote, was evidently the prevailing interpretation.

The moment had come. Now was to be spoken the word so oft invoked in apostrophe, apologue, and prayer,—the word for which many had pictured a universe in chaos as waiting in blind but agonizing throes,—the word which so-called Christian journals and Christian ministers had, times unnumbered, described as the voice of God pronouncing the creative fiat, Let there be light. But where was the sun? According to many promises and to careful arrangements, he was at this moment to pour down upon the Lawgiver while announcing to all people, nations, and languages, the new law that changeth not, a radiance which would be as if angels were unfolding their wings above him and around. But the sun would not! The priest, in his conflict with chaos, was, at the supreme moment, left to the light of his own beloved wax candles. That light which his taste tells him adorns the house of God in the eye of day, and teaches celestial truths to immortal men, became at last of real use.

The High Priest arose from his throne. All hearts stood still. He thought, and they thought, that he was about to proclaim himself unerring. But had not the wine been spirited away between the cup and the lip? The faults incident to composing in a committee, and those incident to amending in a hurry, were both embedded in the Decree. All it said of the infallibility of the Pope was derived and comparative; he is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith and morals. History had conquered dogma here as it had done in the chapter on authority. The declaration was not that the Church was as infallible as the Pope, which would have been the order had the historical consciousness traced the infallibility of the Church as derived from that of the Pope. The declaration was that the Pope was as infallible as the Church,—a proof that his infallibility was derived from hers, and that historical consciousness dictated that order. This comparative infallibility was all that was ascribed to the Pope in this artful but unskilful composition. But to what, according to the same article, did the infallibility of the Church amount? This was rendered by the wording the point all essential, and the standard beyond which infallibility could not extend. The Church was in the same article, and in words the most positive, dealt with as a body the consent of which was not to be taken into account. All, therefore, which the great Word had brought forth, was a declaration that the Pope was as infallible as a body whose consent was not to be taken into account. The world may be well content. The crafty were caught in their own gin when they renounced the consent of the Church. When men have long and successfully argued in a circle, it is a delicate thing all at once, in the heat of a July day, to break one half of the circle, and then to declare that the other half is perfectly round, quite as round as the whole. Historically, the infallibility of the Church was first of all made the base and measure of that of the Pope. Then, diplomatically, the infallibility of the Church was reduced to a nullity. This nullity, by inexorable logic, falls back on all the infallibilities grown out of it, or measured by it. So the Decree is chaos in spite of all the candles. But on one point it speaks not comparatively but positively. Without comparison with anything on earth or above the earth, the Decrees of the Pope are pronounced irreformable. That is the one and the only indisputable result.

The aspirant after infallibility stood, about, as he imagined, to pronounce the word. He opened his lips, and by the candlelight read: "The Decrees and Canons contained in the constitution just read are agreed to by all the Fathers, two excepted. We, therefore, with the approval of the Sacred Council, confirm these and those as now read, and define them by apostolic authority."

The anathema attached to the definition of infallibility strikes below the feet of Protestants. It only anathematizes those who contradict the definition. Protestants do not stoop to do so. They may freely admit that the Pope is as infallible as the Church which made him irreformable, and for once they may believe more than the Pope, by admitting that the Church is as infallible as he. They certainly are not tempted to deny that the Pope, whether in his Decrees or out of them, is irreformable. Here, again, they believe more than the Pope.

The Civiltá states that now burst out a loud acclamation among the Fathers, accompanied with salvos of artillery. The small crowd of priests and nuns, and such like, as Vitelleschi says, about the door of the Hall raised a shout. Quirinus says that the nuns cried "Papa mio"—My Pope. According to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, St. Peter's was very full of people, who broke forth in such applause that you would scarcely have believed that you were in the temple of the Prince of the Apostles, hearing it echo again and again with these unwonted sounds.

The Irreformable then addressed his Bishops in the following allocution. In order to do so, according to the Stimmen, he had to make several vain attempts, owing to the repeated applause of the Fathers; an applause which recalls a sad word of Vitelleschi, that some are never so jubilant as when they have placed a new yoke on their necks. At length the thunders of applause were still, and the waiting world was ready to hear the first utterance of the first human being ever set up on a throne in a temple, by hundreds of men of full age and of sound reason, to utter to all the earth words never to be questioned or amended, much less recalled. Hush! The Infallible gives forth the first oracle in his now acknowledged plenitude of power. Does it sound like "the word of God," at whose potent spell a disordered world will rise to new order and repose, or like that of an old man chiding the absent bishops who had not adorned the triumph of the day?

This exalted authority of the Roman Pontiff, venerable brethren, does not oppress, but assists; does not destroy, but builds up and often confirms in dignity, unites in affection, and strengthens and protects the rights of brethren—that is, of the bishops. Let those who now judge in the earthquake know that the Lord is not in the earthquake. Let them remember that, a few years ago, holding different views, they copiously expressed themselves as of our own opinion, and that of the majority of this great assembly; but they then judged in the calm. In judging of the same case, can we have two opposing consciences? God forbid! May God, therefore, enlighten their minds and their hearts; and as He alone works great marvels, may He illuminate their minds and hearts, so that all may come to the breast of their Father, that of the unworthy Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, who loves them, who esteems them, and who longs to be one with them. And so, bound together in the bond of charity, may we be able to fight the battle of the Lord, so that our enemies may not deride us, but may rather fear us, and may in time lay down the weapons of wickedness before the truth; and may we all be enabled to say with St. Augustine, "Thou hast called me into Thy wonderful light, and lo, I see!"[474]

The bishops applauded, and the journals found the allocution divine. The Liberal Catholics, however, felt that when the Pope said, "I desire to be one with them," he meant, "I desire to see them submit to me." The grave point was, that this being the first utterance from the chair after he had been solemnly declared to be as infallible as the Church, an utterance made—if ever one could be made—in the exercise of his office as pastor of the universal Church, it contained a misstatement of fact and a misconception of doctrine. The Pope, occupied with the absentees, ventured roundly to assert that they who now opposed had been a few years ago fully of his opinion and of that of the majority. If ever a public misstatement deserved to be called by a strong short name, this one did. Had the language of the Decree, now lifted to the level of the law that changeth not, been put by a Protestant, as the doctrine of their Church, before Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, before Darboy and Dupanloup, before Strossmayer, Kenrick, Clifford, and MacHale, any day previous to the year 1870, they would have railed at the Protestant as a slanderer, and perhaps would not have let him escape without an episcopal curse. Would not Spalding have sneered at D'Aubigné as a fool and a false witness had he said that the Pope could make a dogma without either the counsel of bishops or the consent of the Church? No, the ears of the Pope were full of words of witness; the bureaux of the Council contained document after document in evidence that the statement which he now dared to make when none dared to contradict, was not true, and was known not to be true. Those bishops, in order to please the Pope, had unwisely, as they now felt, stretched the doctrine of primacy, which they did hold, till it looked to unpractised eyes very like Papal infallibility. True, they had done this in what seemed rather to be addresses of ceremony than formularies of doctrine; for whenever infallibility itself had been nakedly presented to them, even without the adjunct of ordinary jurisdiction in every diocese, and without any repudiation of the consent of the Church, they had mustered the manhood to oppose it. The Pope neither stated the facts nor discriminated between opinion and opinion. He did state as fact what was not fact, and confounded opinions that differed. Friedrich, with the acute author of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, and not a few others, thinks that he is personally incapable of understanding theological distinctions, and that he could not explain what the doctrine of Papal infallibility means. This seems to be impossible, and yet there is very much to prevent one from pronouncing it ridiculous. But whether he is capable of distinguishing in such a case or not is a very slight matter. The fact that remains for us is, that his first utterance from the acknowledged seat of infallibility was wholly occupied with the absent bishops, that he insinuated that they had a double conscience, and that the grounds on which he made that insinuation were incorrect in fact and inaccurate in thought. Had the question whether the Papacy was a divine organ of truth, or merely a contrivance of clever old men, liable to be overseen, like other mortals, in their words and deeds, been designedly subjected to a fair test, we can with difficulty conceive of one fairer or more conclusive, than that first utterance from the recognized seat of inerrancy. There is nothing divine in it, and the human elements do not rise above a very ordinary level.

The city was silent and chill. We can form but a faint idea of how much, in such a case, mere external impressions sway a community trained like the one of which we speak. It was as if the salvos from St. Angelo, the feeble voice of the Irreformable, had been swallowed up in the salvos of the skies, the voice of the Sole Infallible. The Giornale di Roma and the Civiltá, the Univers and the Unitá, would have spared no epithets in denouncing the man who three months before should have said that, on the night when the creative word, the fiat, Let there be light, should be uttered; on the night when the patient voice of the people and of the priests should be hushed under "the voice of God" proclaiming infallibility, a noble Roman would pen what Vitelleschi that night quietly wrote down: "The government offices, the religious establishments, and a few private houses, were illuminated; but the rest of the city remained in perfect silence and profound darkness."

The concluding words of the Roman writer, in narrating the triumph of the day, are not wholly indifferent to us in England (p. 221)—

History is bound to award to the author and originator of every work the praise or blame which is due to him. All must remember the part taken by the Fathers of the Civiltá Cattolica, and Monsignor Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, in promoting the dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope, and all know that it was their mind and their will that carried it. On the day of the promulgation of the dogma, Monsignor Manning received as a gift from the Society of the Jesuits, a portrait of Bellarmine, with the following inscription—

Henrico Edwardo Manning, Archiep. Westmonast. Sodales Soc. Jesu; Collegii Civilitatis Catholicæ, Sessionis IV Concilii Vaticani Mnemosynon.

It is said that the portrait was really that of St. Charles Borromeo.

One other note was often made as to this memorable day. It was the same day on which was done the deed that irrevocably sealed the fall of the Second Empire, and consequently the fall of its pendant and protégé, the Papal throne. The declaration of war was delivered in Berlin on the day following, and must have left Paris that day!

The reader having already had several specimens, and fair ones, of Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, is in a position, so far as relates to it, to form his own opinion of its "stinking calumnies," to adopt the characteristic language of the Most Eminent, Most Reverend, and Right Reverend Fathers of the Council. But as to La Dernière Heure du Concile (The last hour of the Council), we may at this point fitly give a few examples. It speaks of "Rules imposed in violation of the most manifest rights of the Council, of Commission chosen beforehand, of illusory votes, of an oppressive tutelage, of discussions without order and without aim, of modifications of the Rules as arbitrary as they were multiplied." It asserts that as to the minority public calumnies were not spared them; that their speakers were more than once forced to leave the desk without being able to explain, much less to defend their views; while the majority from the beginning took the reasons of the minority for insults, and rendered back insults for reasons; and that the petitions of the minority were not only left without effect, but without answer. It pictures the Jesuits as meeting the bishops after three centuries of feigned truce on the ground where their General Laynez, defeated at Trent, had left them; but as now coming perfectly prepared for the battle, while the bishops had not foreseen anything—

To-day it is not the episcopate that refuses to hear Father Laynez, but it is Father Laynez who, master of the field, does not even deign to listen to the episcopate, and announces to it that the question has been long decided.... The day that Pius IX said, There shall be a Council, the Company of Jesus said, I shall be the Council. We have seen three of its doctors absorb both the doctrinal power of the august assembly, and its right of initiative. The bishops have been called to sanction what the Jesuits have written, and there is the whole history of the Council.

Speaking of the Propaganda, the writer declares that it holds in its hands all the Vicars Apostolic, and most of the Oriental bishops. Taking advantage of its annual grants, it gives week by week to the prelates who are supported by them that special impulse which shapes the Council. In winter it set watch before the doors of the poor Oriental bishops and obliged them to shut their cells against brethren who came to visit them. Thus it comes to pass

that the word of two hundred Fathers of the œcumenical assembly always remains the word of the Pope alone. In fact, hitherto it is a thing unheard of that a single one of these prelates, sons of the Propaganda, should have the courage to speak before the Council or to vote otherwise than it would have them do. This single proof is of incomparable and demonstrative force, as against the reality of their freedom; for while all the other Churches, without exception, have had some independent voices, the Church which I shall call that of the Propaganda has not hitherto produced one.

Proceeding to the most tender point of all, the writer says—

Above this surveillance of an institution the Jesuits have contrived another, which is shown more rarely, and is reserved for great events. This reaches the heads that are loftiest, even when they are held up, and it makes those who might feel a movement of independence tremble in spite of themselves. I mean the authority of Pius IX. Too long it has been sought to keep his action in the background, in the private history of the Council, by casting into the shade a figure which is entitled to stand in a strong light. Hitherto the writers of history have, at each new incident in the Council, been content to say, It is the work of the Roman Court. Well, the Roman Court is Pius IX, and history, when the hour comes, rending the covering of mystery, must let every one bear the responsibility which belongs to him. It will have to say that it is Pius IX who would have the Council in spite of the Cardinals, and who now will have, in spite of them, his personal infallibility. It is he who required for the Council this hall where one cannot hear; it is he who became irritated with Audu and tore from him the abdication of his rights; it is he who refused to receive the petition of the minority requesting that unhappy debates should be averted; it is he who violated all rule in bringing on the burning question; it is he who suddenly smothered discussion when it became menacing for his pretensions; it is he who from the clergy of Rome required an address which they had at first refused; it is he who dismissed Theiner to reward Cardoni; it is he who by a classification to be much regretted distressed the prelates who on the anniversary day of his election came to congratulate him; it is he who called Guidi after his speech to subdue his independent spirit; is it he who from the Council demands either his personal infallibility or else the courage to die from the heat of the sun and of the fever; it is he who will be everything, both the universal faith and tradition—La tradizione son io! Never was absolutism seen so near at hand, in an institution which Jesus Christ had founded free and independent in spite of its monarchical and indivisible unity.

The aspect of the case which most distressed the writer seemed to be that studied humiliation of the bishops which marked the whole procedure of the Pope, and especially that raising against them of their own subordinates which bishops probably thought was a measure reserved only for employment against civil rulers, not against "Venerable Brethren." Contrasting the present excesses with those of the Popes of the middle ages the writer proceeds—

At present we stand in presence of the Papacy struggling, not against princes, but against the episcopacy; as if Pius IX could find on the ruin of his brethren a more elevated throne, or in their annihilation a more impregnable fortress. O misfortune of the times and abuse of the most holy institutions! They want to have only a single real bishop in the world—the Pope; a single infallible and authorized doctor—the Pope! Let every voice be silent unless to say what he has said; let no action be performed but under his episcopal jurisdiction—universal, immediate; let those who have been appointed by God to govern, renounce their imprescriptible rights; let them tear the pages of the gospel on which those rights are graven; we do not any longer want more than one mouth, one hand, an absolute monarch; then, say they, only then, shall we have universal order.... At present the Caesars disappear everywhere and visibly; in vain do I look for a Louis XIV or a Joseph II; governments are essentially transformed and are confounded with the country which at least has no courtiers. There now remains in reality but one Caesar, who is himself everything both in spiritual matters and in temporal, dispensing his favours to those who defend him, and making those who contradict him feel his wrath; and this Caesar is not called either Francis Joseph or Napoleon III.

And while this time all temporal powers have scrupulously respected the liberty of the Council, a single one has hampered it in every way, has dreaded and destroyed it. I need not name the one. Thus the Church which had furnished to modern civil societies the model of a monarchy, in which the aristocratic and popular elements effectually tempered the excess of the supreme power, the Church which had first of all given to the modern world the example of its great assemblies, discussing in freedom the rights of truth and justice—this Church presents to us to-day the spectacle of a Council without liberty and the menace of an absolutism without control.

This will suffice to account for the displeasure of the Pope and the Jesuits; but whether it sufficed to warrant the action of the Council and its language, posterity will judge. In our climate the allusion to the cruelty of keeping the old men in Rome in what is there called "the severest season," would seem overstrained. But the danger of attending a conclave in that season will be found described by Mr. T.A. Trollope as greater than that of a soldier on the field of battle. And his details of a conclave held in July to elect the Barberini Pope, gives frightful corroboration of that serious statement.[475] As M. Veuillot, looking from the point of view of the initiated, had at once leaped to the conclusion of the Pope only; and as Vitelleschi, reasoning from the data furnished by the Canons presented to the Council, inferred that all that would remain of earthly authority would be the Pope only; so this writer, starting from the episcopal point of view, and with difficulty rising above it, at last stands face to face with the sole figure of authority left, the Pope only; and he finds that while the spirit of Christianity has been changing Caesars into mild and patriotic princes, another spirit has changed the Bishop of Rome into a Caesar, claiming all supremacy in things temporal and spiritual.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IX.

From the Great Session to the Suspension of the Council, October 20, 1870—The Time now come for the Fulfilment of Promises—Position and Prospects—Second Empire and Papacy fall together—Style of Address to the Pope—War for the Papal Empire foreshadowed—Latest Act of the Council—Italy moves on Rome—Capture of the City—Suspension of the Council—Attitude of the Church changed—Last Events of 1870.

The reader may perhaps feel that we have now reached a point at which many prophecies await their fulfilment, and many calculations their test. The enthusiasts had, on religious grounds, foretold that the utterance of the "creative word," would be attended with portentous religious effects. A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union, whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution.

Thus, when the consummation should be reached, and a ruler should be solemnly set up by the bishops of the whole Church before the kings of the earth, like, to use the favourite simile of the time, the Lord setting His King upon His holy hill of Sion; and when this king should be officially declared to have the government upon his shoulders, to be invested with all authority for the moral regulation of human affairs, they expected that the princes, bowing down, would accept him as their supreme judge and arbiter. Indeed, at one time, the confident talk, not merely of men among themselves, but of the publications most in the confidence of the guiding men, had been about laying down conditions to kings and governments on which they might hope to rule in peace. Hints had not been spared, that only two alternatives could be allowed to them—the acceptance of the new moral order on the one hand, or the loss of their places on the other.

The restoration of society to what was called the Catholic ideal, its reconstruction on the new divine basis, its deliverance from the chronic plagues which in modern times had wasted it, were at once to begin, and moral order was to smile where of late chaos had lowered. Already these theorists beheld society crying for the Pope as its saviour. Furthermore, during the days of preparation for the Council, and during its deliberations, only one among all the nations had been singled out for solemn blessing and glowing assurances that God would not forget her services to the Church. Italy had been warned and cursed. Austria and her new constitution had been formally condemned. Russia had been laid under every possible anathema. Spain, ever since her change of government, had shared the same condemnation. As to the heretical countries, they were generally left, without separate mention, in the depths to which their sins had sunk them. But the Ultramontane organs in Germany and France had marked Prussia out for signal detestation, and denounced the union of Germany under the leadership of Prussia for the relentless opposition of the Church of God. France alone was blessed with the withering benediction of the priest.

The hour had come that was to show how far the seers had read the future, and how far the calculators had reckoned well. So far as related to the great dogma, and the definition of it, all that had been designed was happily accomplished; indeed, more completely accomplished than had been proposed in any design avowed up to the eleventh hour. So far, therefore, both seers and calculators were justified. They had not seen a false vision, so long as they contemplated the dogmatic issue; nor had they reckoned without their host, so long as they had reckoned upon bishops, priests, and friars. Events were now to tell how far the transformation of Society into the accepted model, how far the homage of kings, how far the self-surrender of Parliaments, how far the submission of codes to be remodelled by the Church, and how far the general consent of the human race to be guided by him who claimed to hold the place of God among men, were to pass from the realm of hope into that of experience.

The progress of the Council, and of opinion contemporary with its sittings, had dissipated many illusions. Even the bishops had to be conquered, and were not won. Europe had been awakened and had not been attached, but alienated. Great as the glories of the spectacles had confessedly been, and much as they dazzled spectators, they had not carried legislative effect, except where the artistic legerdemain had admitted of immediate application. The vote of the minority on July 13 was one symptom of failure. Their final record of dissent, put into the Pope's own hand, was a more serious symptom. Their flight from the last public session was more serious still. The absence of the representatives of the governments from that session was yet far more depressing. All, therefore, that was now to be hoped for from the Church was submission; and the very utmost that any calculating man dared to hope for from governments was endurance. The worst was that statesmen had learned much more than they were ever meant to learn, and had seen into matters a deal further than laymen ought to see. And so the first night of the new dispensation closed in under dull skies, both physically and morally.

When the Romans, always curious to see how facts can be dressed for appearance outside of the walls, looked to the Giornale di Roma for an account of the session, they found there that all the bishops who had not appeared—upwards of two hundred—were placed in one class, "absent from different legitimate and recognized reasons." This was followed by the assertion that "the great majority of them held the same doctrine as that which had been defined." Accustomed as the Romans are to this method of putting facts in vestments, the occasion was solemn before God and exposed to the eye of man. Vitelleschi wrote that in these representations the minority might find "a foretaste of the false statements and judgments they must in future expect." Some readily account for such assertions by saying that it was hoped that the documents which proved the contrary would never come to light. But much is due to the habit of reckoning on the power of a great organ to set officials upon repeating what it says, till the facts are forgotten. The Civiltá copied these statements, and yet at a later date gave a truer account of the absentions.

It said: Cardinals, 42 pro and 4 contra; Patriarchs, 6 pro and 2 contra; Primates, 6 pro and 2 contra; Archbishops, 80 pro and 18 contra; Bishops, 349 pro and 47 contra; Abbots and Generals, 40 pro and only 1, a Chaldean, contra. The same article, however, does not shrink from asserting that "many" of the minority voted Placet in the public session.

The heaviest solicitudes of the Curia were now to begin. Events had been so guided that so long as they were dealing with their own instruments, the bishops and the clergy, they were left completely to effect their purpose. Now came the point where they were to operate upon mankind. That society which they had meant completely to subjugate, flattering themselves that they were about to restore it, was now placed face to face with them in an awful aspect, one which neither priests nor kings could fully interpret. Certain it was, however, that neither kings nor "peoples" were upon their knees before the Vicar of God, or were inclined to go down upon them. Some feared that instead of kings and nations appealing to him to save them, he would soon be found appealing to some one to save him. The fortunes of the restored empire of the Bonapartes, and those of the restored Papacy, had been bound up together. Men now watched and whispered, saying that as they had been strangely united in their lives, perhaps they would not be divided in their fall. The 13th of July, the day of the voting which gave the Pope his fatal majority, was the day of the incident at Ems. It was the day also on which the Duc de Gramont informed the French Chambers that, although the Hohenzollern candidate for the throne of Spain had been withdrawn, that did not close the dispute. The 18th of July, the day on which the Pope read out by candlelight the Decree upon his own infallibility, was the day on which Napoleon despatched his fatal declaration of war to Berlin. A baptism of fire had been often and pompously foretold as the result of the great dogma. After its promulgation all that the world ever heard of a baptism of fire was when Napoleon telegraphed to the Empress, whom the devout regarded as the true author of the war, telling her, in loud brag before the nations, how her boy had received his baptism of fire. That again was but two days before simultaneous sorrows sounded the knell of the empire and of the throne which sheltered under the shadow of its wing—the two embodiments of arbitrary will calling itself authority.