Front matter (continued 3)

On the second point, that of the desirableness of holding a Council, nearly all the Cardinals were agreed. "In the present confusion of principles and systems, the whole episcopate assembled in Council, pointing out the way of eternal salvation to nations and sovereigns, and also the true relation between the natural order and the supernatural order, with the rights and duties of governors and governed, would be a luminous beacon scattering the darkness that covers the world. Perhaps in the presence of such a spectacle, heretical and schismatical societies would lay aside old prejudices, and would be drawn to a reunion."

However, the unanimity of the Cardinals was not complete. One advised that the calling of a General Council should be reserved for times when some great difference within the Church demanded a settlement. A second thought that the delicacy of some of the points to be handled, and the want of that external support which the Church formerly possessed, outweighed any prospect of advantage. A third could not pronounce between advantages and disadvantages, but gladly left the decision with the Sovereign Pontiff, whom God always assisted with special light.

Cecconi's statement as to the general agreement of the Cardinals appears to clash with that made by persons in Rome, who ought to be well informed, and who affirm that, at first nearly all the Cardinals were opposed to the Pope's desire, and only yielded to his ungovernable longing to have his own infallibility proclaimed. Lord Acton says the Cardinals gave their counsel against the project, and that the Pope proceeded heedless of their opposition.[51] Both statements may be correct; for even if the Cardinals had opposed the project when informally talked about, they might yield when the official initiative taken by their wilful sovereign convinced them that it was to be. One of the counsellors of Ali, the fourth caliph, when rebuked by Abdullah Abbas for giving bad advice in contradiction to good, previously given and rejected, replied, "When a person, either through folly or obstinacy, is found to reject counsels which are obviously salutary, he must expect to receive counsels of a complexion precisely the reverse."

On the third point, namely, that of the difficulties in the way of holding a Council, the Cardinals held that great prudence would be required. The decrees of the Council would be received with indifference by the ungodly and the worldly, or would be made the pretext for new trespasses against the Church. Then, as to governments, would they permit the bishops to attend? Would they not prohibit the execution in their territories of decrees not conformed to the interests of those who held the power of the sword? Again, what would be the use of new canons if the civil power would not further the execution of them, or would even thwart it? And besides all this, the political horizon was clouded, and the Council might be interrupted. So far for external difficulties.

As to internal ones, points noted were, the long absence of the bishops from their flocks, the risk of dissensions in the Council, and of consequent scandal—a risk which appeared the greater as the thorny character of some of the questions to be treated was considered. The Cardinals also felt that there was some danger that a desire might arise on the part of the bishops to extend their own privileges, already too great, so much so as even to be hurtful to the practical uniformity of ecclesiastical government, as well as to the firmness of ecclesiastical discipline, and to the union of the bishops with the head of the Church.

On the most important point of all, the subjects with which the Council should deal, the summary of the notes given by Cecconi is so meagre as to suggest the idea either that the views of their Eminences must have been crude, or that they did not care to put on paper such views as were matured; always supposing that the summary really represents the whole of the contents. After a few generalities, the first particular subject named for condemnation is the liberty of the Press, after which are named civil marriages, impediments to marriage, mixed marriages, and such like, with questions of ecclesiastical property, and the observance of fasts and feasts.

Only two of the Cardinals mentioned the subject of Papal infallibility. A third named Gallicanism and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty. Only one mentioned the Syllabus.

The omission to name the Syllabus in this instance is one of a series of acts of reticence in respect of that document which are at least curious. It is not mentioned in the Encyclical which accompanied it. It is not mentioned by the official historian at the time of its issue; and when, as we shall hereafter see, the Pope solemnly confirmed it in the presence of five hundred bishops, the act was not mentioned by the Court organs. Further, the Syllabus was not mentioned even in the very document by which the collective hierarchy expressed their solemn adhesion to it. Nor was the adhesion to it by letter of the prelates then absent mentioned till, as our tale will show, all this was brought out by the friction of events.

Points in these notes to be borne in mind, as throwing light on the future of our history, are, that those who desired a Council hoped it would be a short one, and were of opinion that the powers of bishops were too great; and that the relations of the supernatural order and the natural order must be regulated, i.e. reduced to rule. These two commonwealths, commonly called the Church and State, had hitherto adjusted their relations, at least wherever Rome represented the supernatural order, by the rough method of trials of strength and skill. The object of reducing their relations to rule would be to restore that harmony of action which, according to the Curia, formerly existed in happy ages, but had been lost in the changes of time. Naturally, this desired harmony could only be restored by each abiding, according to rule, in its own place—the lower under the higher, and the higher above the lower.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VII

A Secret Commission to prepare for the Council, March 1865—First Summons—Points determined—Reasons why Princes are not consulted—Plan for the Future Council.

In March, 1865, Cardinals Patrizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzari, and Caterini were appointed a secret commission to make preparations for the proposed Council. It was in the deepening grey of an evening in Lent that the red coaches drove down the Via della Scrofa carrying those Cardinals to their first meeting, in the palace of the Vicariate. Rome did not know that this represented the first move in the preparation of one of those world-representing displays which had some part in bringing on her ancient decay, and a greater one in gilding it over: displays which, while changing in the accidents of form, have retained the essential character of a sense-subduing pageant, and retained also the purpose of binding the city to an autocrat. The significance of the display now contemplated was to consist in showing both Quirites and Italians that the world bowed down to the tiara, and so to bind Rome to the Pope for ever.

At this first meeting of the Commission, Giannelli read a memorandum intimating his belief that France, Italy, and Portugal would prohibit their bishops from attending a Council,—more particularly Italy; but as Germany, England, America, Spain, and others, would not do so, a considerable number would be able to assemble. This indicates a consciousness that political distrust of Rome was felt most strongly in Roman Catholic countries.

After hearing this memorandum the Cardinals proceeded to consider the following questions, and gave to each the answer indicated—

1. Is the summoning of an Œcumenical Council under the circumstances necessary, and opportune?

Affirmed.

2. Should Catholic princes be previously consulted?

Negatived. Nevertheless, when the Bull of Convocation has been issued, it would be well and becoming for the Holy See to adopt suitable procedures with the princes.

3. Should the Sacred College be consulted before the issuing of the Bull of Convocation, and if so, how?

Affirmed; but in the manner to be determined by the Most Holy—or, in common speech, in such manner as the Pope may please.[52]

4. Should a Special Congregation be appointed to direct affairs relating to the Council?

Affirmed.

5. Should the Directing Congregation, after the publication of the Bull, consult some bishops in different countries as to the subjects proper to be treated, both in doctrine and discipline, regard being had to the variety of countries?

Affirmed.

The reason which led the Cardinals to negative the idea of consulting the Catholic princes is supposed by Cecconi to have been a fear lest obstacles to the holding of a Council might be raised, and also lest the proceeding might be interpreted as a recognition of the supremacy of the State (p. 29).

On the 13th of March these resolutions of the Commission were reported to the Pope, by whom they were approved with one slight modification. Instead of a consultation of certain select bishops after the convocation of the Council, he appointed that it should take place before.

The first step in carrying out these resolutions was the appointment of a Directing Congregation, which was composed of the Cardinals of the Commission, with a few others, the number eventually being nine. That body was in existence two years and a half before the hierarchy generally received an intimation, in a Secret Consistory, of the intention to hold a Council.

At the meeting of the Directing Congregation on March 19, the sketch of a plan for the labours of the Council was presented by one of its members, not named. He proposed that the work should be divided into four branches, and that each should be assigned to a different committee.

1. Doctrine, to be committed to the Inquisition, presided over by a Cardinal of the Inquisition, the committee to be enlarged by the addition of some members not attached to the Holy Office. This committee could be subdivided into sections.

2. Ecclesiastical-Political Affairs, to be committed to the Congregation for ecclesiastical affairs, enlarged by consulters and others.

3. Missions and Oriental Churches, to be committed to the Propaganda and the Congregation of Oriental Rites.

4. Discipline, to be committed to the congregation for bishops and regulars, with the addition of consulters, canonists, and theologians.

Each committee was to be presided over by a Cardinal, and all were to report to the Directing Congregation, with which should rest the ultimate authority.[53]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIII

Memoranda of Thirty-six chosen Bishops, consulted under Bond of Strictest Secrecy, April to August, 1865—Doctrine of Church and State—Antagonism of History and the Embryo Dogma—Nuncios admitted to the Secret—And Oriental Bishops.

On April 10 his Holiness sanctioned a letter to thirty-six select bishops of different countries, intimating under the most binding secrecy his intention of holding a Council in the Holy City, at some time yet undetermined, and requesting them to communicate their views as to the subjects proper to be treated.[54]

In August, nearly all the answers had arrived. Out of the thirty-six, only three bishops cast doubts on the wisdom of the project; all the others were rejoiced.

The letters of the thirty-six, according to Cecconi, expressed views on the present condition of society coinciding with those of the purpled in Rome. The thirty-six generally remarked on the absence of any special heresies. When we come to particulars, the subjects which our author finds specified are: the right of the Church to hold land; her independence of the State; her right to control education; her right to judge what promotes and what hinders religion. Among other matters noted, the chief are: the obligation of the faithful to adhere to the decisions of the Church, and in particular to those of the Holy See, and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, with "similar points."

After Cecconi has apparently concluded his summary of the suggestions of the thirty-six, a sentence is slipped in, saying, that among the verities which ought to be propounded by the Council, some mentioned Papal infallibility—"a doctrine admitted in all Catholic schools, with a few exceptions." Hereupon departing from his general rule, and adopting marks of quotation, he gives the words of one particular bishop, without naming him. These bear directly on the point most agitated before and during the Council. Such English readers as know much of the controversy, will probably risk a guess as to the author, and it may be that persons in Munich will hardly stop at guessing, but will say they know. It plainly was no Bavarian, not even a German, neither of whom would fall into such an expression as "Munich in Bavaria." "At present there are but few who impugn this prerogative of the Roman Pontiff; and they do so, not from a theological point of view, but the better to assert and maintain the freedom of science. It would seem that a school of theologians has sprung up with this object, at Munich, in Bavaria, in whose writings the principal aim is to lower the Holy See, its authority and its mode of government, by the aid of historical dissertations, and to bring it into contempt, and above all to combat the infallibility of Peter teaching ex cathedrâ."

This language intimates that the science for which especially freedom was claimed at Munich was history, which wants no other freedom than that of learning the truth and telling it, that of detecting lies and forgeries and exposing them. Even the Court historian feels the significance of this announcement of the mutual antipathy existing between history and the embryo dogma.

Among the "isms" designated for anathema by the chosen thirty-six, those which have any bearing on divinity proper could be named by most ordinary readers. One "ism" to be condemned is regalism, or the doctrine that the king is supreme in his own country; another is liberty of conscience and of the Press; and of course the bishops no more forget magnetism, somnambulism, and freemasonry, than their purpled superiors of the Curia.

Two points brought out under the head of discipline, are, the mobilization of the clergy, and the educational rights of the Church; strong condemnation being levelled against mixed schools.

After the secret preparations in Rome had been continued for nearly twelve months, the circle of confidential advisers was further extended. On November 17, 1865, the Cardinal President of the Directing Congregation communicated the intention of his Holiness to the nuncios in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, and Brussels; and requested them to name canonists and theologians of sound principles, exemplary life, and distinguished learning who might be called up to Rome to serve on the preparatory committees.

The next extension of the circle was to the Oriental bishops, who were consulted by Cardinal Barnabò, the Prefect of the Propaganda. They hailed the prospect of a Council, hoping that it might at length remove barriers which held the East in separation from Rome. Of these barriers they name both ancient and modern instances. Among the former the worst appears to be "national spirit," and among the latter we find Protestantism and the everlasting Freemasons. "Nationalism" is a trial to the Papal Church in the west as well as in the east. Cardinal Manning, in the Pastoral issued just before the Council met, said—

The definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff, speaking ex cathedrâ, is needed to exclude from the minds of Catholics the exaggerated spirit of national independence and pride, which has, in these last centuries, so profoundly afflicted the Church. If there be anything which a Catholic Englishman ought to know, it is the subtle, stealthy influence by which the national spirit invades and assimilates the Church to itself; and the bitter fruits of heresy and schism which that assimilation legitimately bears.[55]

The clearest instance of the national spirit invading and assimilating the Church to itself occurred in decaying Rome. The military and absolutist spirit of the empire supplanted in the ministry and organization of the Church the original spirit of humility and brotherhood. The spirit of the national pomps supplanted the primitive superiority to sensation and display. The spirit of the governing classes set up side by side with the simple code of Christ a new code, meant avowedly to restore the old Roman domination of law, under the form of a spiritual empire. The spirit of that domination claimed to impose upon other churches the will of the Church of the capital and did not scruple to call her the mother-church, and to support her claims with lie and forgery oft repeated. But after the Pope, conspiring with the minister of the Frankish king, and rising with him against their two sovereigns, had erected himself into a petty prince, the national spirit of the empire began to narrow down to the municipal one of aboriginal Rome. Ever since that time the municipal spirit has increasingly become the spirit of the Papacy. Whatever that power has effected, it has never been able to make itself a nation. Aiming at a universal empire, the spirit of its rule has become more and more close, local, bureaucratic as that of any wee Italian republic of the middle ages. Men must not only act and move, but must also think and speak, according to rules excogitated by certain guilds within the Aurelian walls.

There is a curious but striking contrast between this professedly supernatural institution and one which scarcely claimed a regular place among natural institutions. Coming up amid the decline and corruption of an empire older, richer, and more populous than had been the empire of Rome, the East India Company, in a couple of generations, made a nation out of some hundreds of States among which had raged yearly conflicts. That nation still contains many thrones, but within its circle, and in spite of their jealousies, no less than two hundred and forty millions of men, a family immensely greater than Rome ever cursed with war or blessed with law, now live in peace and freedom such as were unknown to the ages which had aforetime passed over their country. On the plains around the presidential cities of India, where a century ago Mahratta, Moslem, and Rajpoot were wont to ravage, now reigns peace at seed-time and peace at harvest. Security sits and sings on every tree, and Industry, building her nest in every bush, sends out broods that, free from fear, busily cover the land. What a contrast with the endless whirl of war which in what are called the Ages of Faith—ages when the spells of the chief priest in Rome had power over semi-barbarous chiefs—ever eddied on the plain around Rome, a glorious plain, growing waste and more and more waste, while kings came, now to be crowned, now to put a Pope in prison, and while Italians and foreigners rose and sank by turn in the alternating surges—foreigners, however, most frequently coming into the fight at the call of a self-asserting but mongrel and parasitical government, which claimed to be the heaven-sent superior, not only of commercial corporations like the East-India Company, but also of the very kings and emperors whom it played off against one another, and on whom it had always to rely. A national spirit indeed! Such a national spirit as we see in reformed countries, and as was once in an inferior degree seen in the Gallican nation, is large, tolerant, and magnanimous compared with the tight, pretentious municipal spirit unconsciously depicted by Liverani when he enumerates the small men from small towns, puffed up with the name of cities, who, in the Curia, swelled themselves out with notions of world-commanding importance—notions rendered possible only by their own helpless narrowness.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IX

Interruption of Preparations for Fourteen Months, through the consequences of Sadowa—The French evacuate Rome—Alleged Double Dealing of Napoleon III—Civiltá on St. Bartholomew's—Change of Plan—Instead of a Council a Great Display—Serious Complaints of Liberal Catholics.

It was on May 24, 1866, that the Directing Congregation held its third meeting, Monsignor Nina acting as secretary in the absence of Giannelli, who was indisposed. But, soon afterwards, dark clouds enveloped the Vatican, and ere the Congregation could again meet fourteen months had passed away.

On July 3, 1866, a shell burst at Sadowa which struck in three different directions, and in each case the blow was heavy. Austria fell from the primacy of Germany, and from her place among Italian States. Italy, acquiring Venice, entered into full possession of herself, Rome alone excepted. The disjointed members of Germany moved to union under Prussia, like bone coming to its bone.

These were deplorable reversals of Papal policy, unfriendly both to the temporal dominion at home and to the spiritual dominion abroad. By the instrumentality of France and Austria it had been possible, for ages, to keep Italy and Germany parcelled into small States, easily played off against one another, inimical to great national organizations or high national sentiment, and glad of an alliance with a small State possessing an organization by which it could interfere almost everywhere, and in almost everything. The long-continued success of the policy directed to this end seemed to stamp it as almost miraculous. Had Germany united under the Hapsburgs, ready to keep Italy disunited, it would have mattered less to Rome. But her uniting under the Hohenzollerns, and aiding Italy to become one, was doubly dangerous. Reconstruction as going on in Italy and Germany must be met by reconstruction on a universal scale.

On November 4, 1866, the people of Venetia carried their suffrages to the feet of King Victor Emmanuel, while Austria and France sullenly acquiesced. The king said, "Italy is made if not completed"—a hint which the Vatican both understood and resented. Five weeks later, at four o'clock on the morning of December 11, Mr. Gladstone, whose name had already left a beneficent mark on the history of Italy, was watching by the gaslight from a window in Rome as the French troops wound round the corner of a street, and he felt that the seed of great events lay in that evacuation![56] That day the flag of red, white, and blue which for seventeen years had cast a light on the Vatican and a shadow on the Tiber, was lowered at St. Angelo. The Pope felt that it would soon be succeeded by the red, white, and green. So that as if by a historical parody on the old furor of the circus, the rage of parties in Rome was once more lashed up by the blue and the green respectively.

"Do not deceive yourselves," said the Pope to General Montebello, when he presented himself to take leave; "the revolution will come hither: it has proclaimed it: you have heard it, you have understood it and seen it."

The Civiltá Cattolica, alluding to the "soporifics" administered at this irritating moment by French journalists and diplomatists, asked whether France would hold the same language to Italy, now menacing the Pope, as she had held to Austria and Spain when preparing to assist him, namely, that "any departure from the principle of non-intervention would involve a war with France." She had not so spoken to Italy, and would not do so, for had not Billault said, "It is not possible to turn French bayonets against Italy." This being the case, France might hold her peace and not tease the respectable public with soporifics.[57]

When Napoleon III, in the discourse from the throne, alluding to the fear of Rome being taken from the Pope, said that Europe would not permit an event which would throw confusion into the Catholic world, the Civiltá bitterly exposed his double dealing. Some would take this language as a pledge to uphold the temporal power, but others would see that it was only a shuffling of the responsibility off the shoulders of France on to those of Europe. Had he said France will not stand it? No, but that Europe will not allow it.

It would be about this time that Viscount Poli and Arthur Guillemin, a lieutenant of zouaves and a zealous crusader, sitting over a cup of coffee, saw five gentlemen enter the coffeehouse who were not Romans, but superintendents of a railway then being constructed. One of them laid on the table a nosegay, so arranged that the colours formed "the cockade of a king hostile to the Pontiff"—doubtless red and white camellias, forming, with their green leaves, the colours of Italy. Guillemin, who was in uniform, heard remarks which showed that the gentlemen knew what the flowers signified. He rose, seized the nosegay, dashed it to the ground, and trampled it to pieces. Then, as the others grumbled, he drew out his revolver, laid it by his side, and went on sipping his coffee, and chatting with the Viscount.[58]

The Civiltá was at this time publishing a series of articles on the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, sometimes calling it "the slaughter" and sometimes "the executions of Paris"; and calculating that there might have been some two thousand Protestants put to death in the capital, and, say, eight thousand in all France!

Among his other crimes, Bismarck stayed the preparations for the Council by the campaign of Sadowa. The most reverend Court historian evidently has no sense of any need for giving the world other reasons for the total interruption of those preparations than the political troubles. Yet one who learned Christianity at the feet of Christ would not readily see why the studies of holy men in the mysteries of divine revelation should depend upon a battle in Bohemia, or on the flitting of a French garrison. Surely, divines might go on searching into naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, somnambulism, and freemasonry, whether Germany was uniting or splitting up again. Nevertheless, studies in regalism and Caesarism in the regular subordination of the natural order to the supernatural, and in the best measures for replacing the political system of Europe on the divine basis, or, as we should say, for subordinating civil and restoring ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were liable to be influenced by the flights of the eagles. And the augurs who were tracing the lines for the foundations of the reconstruction, found in the movements of the eagles of Prussia and France omens that counselled delay.

According to the original design, the Council was to be opened on the day observed as the eighteenth centennial anniversary of St. Peter's martyrdom. But, owing to these sad interruptions, when 1867 approached the secret preparations were not sufficiently advanced. Such, at least, is the only reason given by Cecconi why the Council was postponed.

The Pope, however, was resolved to cover St. Peter's day with glory. So his own thrice sacred anniversary, that of "the Immaculate," and of the Syllabus, was once more signalized by the issue of letters to the bishops of the whole world, citing them to Rome for the 29th of the ensuing June. They were not only to celebrate the centenary of Peter's martyrdom, but to take part in the canonization of some twenty additional saints, and also to attend certain consistories. The second name upon the list of the "new patrons in the presence of God" about to be created was that of Peter de Arbues, "Spanish inquisitor and martyr,"[59] of whose canonization we shall hear again. This invitation was dated three days before the French evacuated Rome. As trusty bayonets were failing, additional celestial powers were to be called into the firmament.

All this time the Liberal Catholics were becoming increasingly uneasy at the prospect of the dangers on which the Church was drifting. They had hoped to see her first embrace and then dominate modern culture and liberties. This was a dream of O'Connell, of Lammenais, and of Gioberti. At this aimed the erudite and steadfast German Catholics. But every new utterance of the Court, whether in official document or inspired organ, showed that it was determined upon dragging the Church in an opposite direction. According to the policy to which it had fully committed itself, the Church was to conquer, not by adopting the modern age, but by restoring the middle ages. The dominion of the Pontiff over the whole earth as spiritual despot and temporal suzerain was the ideal to which everything must give way. Montalembert, who had been flattered by the opening career of Pius IX, as sailors say they are flattered by what they call foxy weather, expresses himself as follows: "I began as early as 1852 to wrestle against the detestable political and religious aberrations summed up in contemporary Ultramontanism." He showed that when in 1847 he defended the Jesuits of the Sonderbund against Thiers, as he did with equal eloquence and want of foresight, he did not utter one word of the modern doctrines, and that for a good reason, because, he says, "No one had thought of setting them up when I entered on public life." Indeed, he affirms that, in 1847, Gallicanism was dead, but that it had been revived through the encouragement given to extreme pretensions during the pontificate of Pius IX. He then quotes an important letter addressed to himself, in 1863, by Sibour, at that time Archbishop of Paris—

The new Ultramontane school is conducting us to a twofold idolatry—idolatry of the temporal power and idolatry of the spiritual power. When you, like myself, made a splendid profession of Ultramontanism, you did not understand things in this fashion. We defended the independence of the spiritual power against the usurpations and pretensions of the temporal power; but we respected the constitution of the State and the constitution of the Church. We did not sweep away every intermediate power, or every gradation of order, nor yet every legitimate resistance, nor all individuality and spontaneity. The Pope and the Emperor were not then—the former the whole Church, the latter the whole State.

Montalembert goes on to say that the old Ultramontanes had recognized the right of the Pope, in a great crisis, to rise above all rules; but they did not confound the exception with the rule. These cares and apprehensions were for the time concealed, and were only brought to light by the anguish of that moment when the final leap downward was about to place a gulf that could never be re-crossed between Rome and all things free and equal. But when the expression did come, it bore with it the record of previous irritations.

"The Ultramontane bishops," said Montalembert,[60] "have pushed everything to the extreme, and have argued to the utmost against all liberties, those of the State as well as those of the Church."

"If such a system was not of a nature to compromise the gravest interests of religion, in the present, but much more in the future, we might content ourselves with despising it; but when one has the presentiment of the ills which are being prepared for us, it is difficult to be silent and resigned."

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER X

Reprimand of Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, for disputing the Ordinary and Immediate Jurisdiction of the Pope in his Diocese—Sent in 1864, Published in 1869.

Within a twelvemonth of the issue of the Syllabus, letters of significance were passing between Paris and Rome. One of those letters throws light on the steps taken to grind down any bishop who dared to assert, as bishops used to do, some authority for their own office, independent of the direct and universal meddling of Rome. That some prelates were still tempted to this offence we have seen hinted by the Cardinal consulters, in the original notes upon the question of holding a Council.

One of the most considerable figures in the hierarchy was Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, to whose name a historical death has given tragic immortality. When the preparations for the issue of the Syllabus must have been far advanced, in 1864, he had drawn upon himself letters of censure from Rome. To these he had replied both publicly in the senate, and privately, in a manner which showed that some remnants of old French doctrines yet survived the modern influence in primary schools and episcopal seminaries. And wherever any sense of the ancient office of a bishop did survive, there was constant irritation in the condition of dependence to which the system of quinquennial faculties reduced the men who, bearing the old name, held the modern post under the bureaux in Rome. Only a few weeks before the Magna Charta of reconstruction was promulged, on October 26, 1864, a letter was addressed to Darboy which fills no less than ten octavo pages of small type in the documents of Friedberg.[61] Besides its solid value as instruction, this epistle has the interest of a sharp lecture. Furthermore, its very language coloured the most important of the Vatican decrees.

The quarrel arises on the old subject of the "exemption" of the regulars from episcopal control, and the direct action of the Curia in a diocese, over the head of a bishop and under his feet. Readers of Church history will be tempted to think lightly of the Pope's candour when he speaks of Darboy's complaint as a new one, but however this suspicion may touch those who furnished the materials for the letter, it does not attach to the Pope personally, for he is not usually supposed to read history, though he often sets it to rights.

If inaccurate in his facts, Pius IX is orthodox in his policy, for just as bishops must be independent of the government of the country, so must the regulars be independent of the bishops, that power to set wheels in motion may be carried from the engine-house in Rome into the midst of a nation by two perfectly independent shafts. When the Church is a national one, a bishop has some stake in the country, though slight compared with his stake at the Vatican; and he must, at all events, keep up relations with the authorities. The former circumstance brings temptations to a "national spirit"—one of the standing evils cried down by the Curia. The latter circumstance may make it convenient that the bishop should not always know what is really the course of action being prepared. In both points of view the regulars can be utilized. Darius took care to have three separate powers in each province, all directly dependent on the Imperial Court alone.[62] And from his days highly organized Asiatic governments have had, besides the apparently omnipotent lieutenants, confidential agents in every province, depending directly on the metropolitan authorities.

The Pontiff commences his letter by reminding his venerable brother that he made professions of devotion to the Holy See on his elevation to that of Paris. Then he tells him that certain of his letters replying to animadversions of the Pope, show him to hold views opposed to the divine primacy of the Roman Pontiff over the whole Church. Darboy had asserted that the power of the Pope, in a diocese other than his own, was not ordinary and immediate, but such as should be interposed only as a last resource, in cases of manifest necessity. He had represented the intervention of the Pope, by the exercise of ordinary and immediate jurisdiction, as turning a diocese into a mission, and a bishop into a vicar apostolic. Moreover, he had said, in the French senate, that when such intervention took place at the private instance of individuals, it rendered the administration of the diocese all but impossible; and he had added that regulars, Nuncio, and Curia all aimed at bringing about such intervention as an ordinary thing, and that he would resist it and call upon the bishops and people to do so. He had even spoken of submitting letters apostolic to the government, and of having recourse to the lay power; nay, he had gone so far as to mention the Organic articles, though he could not be ignorant of how the Holy See had always protested against them.

The Pope could scarcely believe that his venerable brother had uttered such things, and was moved with wonder and anguish at finding him avowing the condemned opinions of Febronius, which a bishop ought to abhor. In denying the "immediate and ordinary" jurisdiction of the Pope, he had denied the decree of the fourth Lateran Council. The words "feed My lambs, feed My sheep" mean that believers all and singular are to be subject to Peter and his successors, as to the Lord Christ Himself, whose vicar upon earth the Roman Pontiff truly is. Every Catholic would reply to the charge as to a diocese being turned into a mission, and a bishop into a vicar apostolic, by saying that it was as false as it would be to say that prefects, judges, or provincial magistrates were not ordinary magistrates, because a direct, immediate, and ordinary power was held by the king or emperor.

St. Thomas Aquinas, continues the letter, had said "the Pope has a plenitude of pontifical power, as a king in his kingdom, but bishops are received into a share of the solicitude, like judges set over particular cities." As a Catholic bishop, Darboy ought to know that all had a right to appeal to Rome, none to appeal from her. Such a complaint as that the interference of Rome rendered the administration of a diocese almost impossible had never been made either in past ages or in the present one. When Darboy spoke of appealing to bishops and people, he ought to have known that the same had been done by Febronius, and that it was an offence against the divine Author of the constitution of the Church.

The Archbishop had not been informed against, proceeded the Pope, by the regulars, but, from other quarters the fact came before his Holiness that the Archbishop had exercised the right of visitation over them, on which he had been admonished, and of this admonition he had been pleased to speak, in the senate, as of a sentence delivered without the cause having been heard. It was hardly to be believed! The Archbishop knew the Decretals, and knew how, in all ages, the Popes had written in the same manner to bishops when they became aware of something in their sees which was not quite right.

As it was a question of the visitation of regulars, it must be remembered that the right of exemption had long been enjoyed by the Jesuits and Franciscans in Paris, and that the Apostolic See had exercised its own special or "privative" jurisdiction. Darboy had alleged that, by the law of the Council of Trent, regulars could not have canonical existence in any diocese without consent of the bishop, which consent had never been received by the monks in question. But, having been long on the ground, they had acquired a prescriptive right, by virtual, if not by express, consent of successive bishops. And as to the fact that the civil law forbade them to possess land, of what use were such laws in ecclesiastical administration? In these most turbulent and miserable times of noxious, odious rebellion, civil law might even deny to bishops their civil standing.

The Pontiff cannot dissemble his extreme surprise and annoyance that his venerable brother had attended the funeral of Marshal Magnan, the Grand Orient of the Freemasons, and had given the solemn absolution while the insignia of freemasonry were on the bier, and brethren of the condemned sect wearing its orders were present. The sect aimed at corrupting all minds and manners; at destroying every idea of honesty, virtue, truth, and justice; at diffusing monstrous opinions and abominable vices, fostering detestable crimes, and undermining all legitimate authority; yea, at overturning the Catholic Church and civil society, and at expelling God from heaven.

His Holiness cannot pass over the fact that it has come to his ears that an opinion has been expressed to the effect that acts of the Holy See do not compel obedience unless the civil government has given authority to carry them out. This opinion is pernicious, erroneous, and injurious to the authority of the Holy See and to the interests of the faithful. Furthermore, the Pope's venerable brother had incorrectly asserted in his speech that Benedict XIV in his Concordat with the King of Sardinia had agreed that the royal sanction should be required before pontifical acts were carried into execution; and that according to the instructions annexed to the Concordat, they were to be submitted to the senate, except when they dealt with matters of dogma or morals; which false assertion the venerable brother would not have made had he weighed the words of the instructions. The letter concludes with protestations of the Pope's affection for his venerable brother and his flock.

This epistle, after being long held in reserve, was launched into publicity at a time when Darboy's influence was threatening to be inconvenient in the Council, and when the French government had requested a cardinal's hat for him.[63]

It is, perhaps, not superfluous to remark that the terms "plenitude of power" as denoting the prerogative of the Pope, and "received to a share of the solicitude," as denoting the origin and nature of the bishop's authority, are not merely happy phrases, but scientific terms fitted to express the Papal theory of the Church constitution as opposed to the Episcopal theory. The Episcopal theory, holding that the office of all bishops is of divine institution, regards the Pope, not as the source of episcopal authority, but as supreme and ultimate arbiter. According to the Papal theory, the authority of the bishop is an emanation from that of the Pope, who, as monarch, unlimited by any co-ordinate authority, retains in his own hands not only extraordinary but ordinary, not only ultimate but immediate jurisdiction over every subject within the bounds assigned to a bishop. The latter is a prefect, not only liable to be discharged or imprisoned, but liable while retained in office to have any matter taken out of his hands and settled contrary to his views. This is the theory which, like a scourge of not small cords, is employed to flog Darboy, while the incongruous epithet "venerable brother," dangles at the handle—a vestige of a past age and an exploded theory. An emperor does not call his prefect "venerable brother."

A portion of the letter which will well repay study is that indicating the attitude of the Curia to all authority not immediately within its own hands, even if in the hands of its "prefects." Against any such authority it will receive the reports of its private agents, and treat those reports as having the status of a legal appeal. It will act, if need be, without hearing the accused, and maintain that none shall appeal from it, though all may appeal to it. This is the case even with the episcopal authority; what, then, is the case with the civil? It is swept aside as an unclean thing; "of what use are such laws in ecclesiastical affairs?" If Archbishop Darboy, strong in his character, strong in his see—the largest in the Roman Catholic world—and strong in his influence at the Tuileries, is thus treated when complained of by the Jesuits, what must be the case with small prelates who venture to provoke their power?

As to the Freemasons, one is tempted to wish to be in their secret, for then one would possess a rough test of Papal infallibility. If they do not aim at overturning all government, and expelling God from heaven, infallibility does not carry far.

The time for the great assembly was now approaching, and, meanwhile, the Papal organs were enlivened by the prospect of a war between France and Prussia, on the question of Luxembourg. When this hope was deferred the readers of the Civiltá[64] were informed that nevertheless every possible preparation for war was being pushed forward by the French on the largest scale, and with greatly improved arms.

On the 9th of May, 1867, the deputies Angeloni and Crotti were called up in the Italian Parliament to take the oaths and their seats. Angeloni did so; but Crotti, a well-known member of the Ultramontane aristocracy, after pronouncing the words, "I swear to be faithful to the king and constitution," added, "saving always divine and ecclesiastical laws." This formula was at once recognized as being that which had been published in Rome by the Penetenzieria, with the declaration that the repetition of it was the only condition on which Catholics could accept seats in the Italian chambers. Called upon to take the oath in the form prescribed by the law of the land, Count Crotti stood firm by the higher law of the Penetenzieria, and the Chamber disowning his salvis legibus divinis et ecclesiasticis, refused to admit him.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XI

Great Gathering in Rome, June 1867—Impressions and Anticipations—Improvements in the City—Louis Veuillot on the Great Future.

The whole earth had been moved in the hope of not only exhibiting a pageant outshining former ones, but also of carrying the dogma of Papal infallibility by an ecclesiastical coup d'état, or, as it is called, by acclamation, without the delays of a discussion.[65] Had this been accomplished, the legislative form of a General Council would have been rendered futile for the time to come, or at the most, would have been but a grander method of working the institution of "consultative despotism," to adopt the strict definition of Montalembert. The invitation had been enthusiastically responded to. The spectacle of the Papacy menaced with the loss of Rome was touching, and the belief was cherished that a great demonstration of the interest felt by the Catholic world on its behalf would contribute to ward off the peril. Besides these motives, another in full activity was the ever powerful one, especially powerful with Romanists, the desire to see a pageant; and this sight was to surpass all the former displays of Rome.

The city put on its best, the churches were newly embellished, the streets decked in festive array. Bishops came from all the ends of the earth, till the thoroughfares were mottled with the toilets of five hundred. Priests crowded in till, it is said, twelve thousand breathed the sacred air of the city, every one of them proud to tread that spot of our unruly earth, where the priest was king of men.

Besides the clergy, came such multitudes of pilgrims that, according to Cecconi, the population of the city was almost doubled. The Romans saw their familiar rite, the worship of the statue of St. Peter—l'adorazione della statua di San Pietro—performed on a prodigious scale. In modern as in ancient Rome, adoration has its degrees; all worship does not imply the ascription of supreme, but only of celestial, honours. No Pontiff in the days of the Republic ever pretended that Quirinus was creator of the world and father of eternity. He was the protecting divinity of Rome, but with very limited powers in comparison with Peter, carrying no sceptre equal to the keys.

Such of the visitors as had seen the city in former times, if not too much pre-occupied with the sanctity of the place to observe such matters, would find several improvements. Side pavements had been allowed in the main streets. Gaslight had, after long and painful efforts, been admitted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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