Front matter (continued 7)

The theologian, full of the lore of Munich, standing in the quaint Alpine city, on the Adige, with the image in his mind of the doctors who, three hundred years ago, there disputed before the bishops and before the world, would naturally form an exalted idea of the work awaiting him in the grander assembly on the banks of the Tiber. The church of St. Maria Maggiore would swell, in his anticipation, into St. Peter's; the listening prelates to a threefold or fourfold array. The struggle itself was to be much more concentrated, turning on one vital point. It was not now merely a question as to what was to be taught, but as to who was the divine teacher. It was not a dispute about one doctrine or more, but about the very fountain of doctrine. It was not any question between the Church and her enemies, but one between the Church and her head. It was to be decided whether the oracle was the whole Church, or the Pope without the Church. The dispute was awkward. Raising it showed Protestants that Rome, while claiming infallibility, had not yet settled where it lay.

After a narrow escape of being murdered on the railway near Terni, Friedrich reached the Holy City. Such was the throng, already, that he had to pay ten francs for the use of a room for a while in the afternoon, before going to his home in the Palazzo Valentini with Cardinal Hohenlohe. That palace stands in the Piazza of the Twelve Apostles, full of reminiscences of days when Alberich and his descendants ruled the city, and held the Popes, sometimes in prison, but always in subjection to the chiefs springing from Theodora and Marozia.

On November 28, a discourse was delivered in St. Peter's, by Father Raimondo Bianchi, Procurator-General of the Dominicans, which was thought sufficiently important to be printed with the Freiburg edition of the Acta (p. 130). If good preaching lies in saying much and suggesting more, in the least time, this sermon is perfection; for it occupies less than four octavo pages. A note which we have already heard delicately touched by Archbishop Manning, a note at that time as often sounded as any in the episcopal scale, was given forth with full power: "Be wise, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth."[179]

On December 4, the Dominicans appeared again. The Pope, departing from the usual course, had appointed Father Jandel as their general; some say selecting him that he might amend the theology of the order, the members of which were known to be weak Immaculatists, and suspected of not being sound Infallibilists. Father Jandel now broke out in a circular, which twenty years ago we should have smiled at as at new gri-gri, but which now seems to be more like to the red cross of the Muster. We shall presently see how scientifically Tarquini had demonstrated that the right of directly wielding the temporal sword did, in spite of all denials, belong to the Pope and a General Council, and we have already seen with what fascination popular pens were surrounding the life and death of the "soldier of the Cross."

"We hasten," exclaims Jandel, "to announce to you the joyful tidings, and we make speed to convey to you the pontifical brief which grants new indulgences for the recitation of the rosary during the whole continuance of the Vatican Council." The brief thus heralded looks as if the inspiration of St. Peter Arbues, "first inquisitor of the kingdom of Aragon," was beginning to operate. The Pontiff informs the faithful that St. Dominic, armed with this rosary, as with an invincible sword, crushed the infamous heresy of the Albigenses. Therefore, in the present crisis, equipped with the same armour, and with the authority of the Vatican Council, they will be enabled to "overthrow and extirpate the manifold monsters of error that prowl around." To invite all to arm themselves with this holy weapon, special indulgences are granted to those who will daily recite ten rosaries, so long as the Council lasts. We believe a rosary consists of one Paternoster, ten Ave Marias, and one Gloria; so that each week seven hundred prayers to the Virgin, seventy to God, with seventy doxologies, would have to be repeated. The Pope strongly expresses his simple faith in the efficacy of this expedient.[180]

All who know what has been going on in Europe of late years know that the time for smiling at rosaries is past. A charm or a chupattie ceases to be a trifle when it becomes the symbol connecting devotion with deeds of blood. At a time when millions upon millions of children are in the hands of those who, with gentle manners and profoundly conscientious views, instil antipathies which time can scarcely extract, charms become formidable when to such antipathies they are the symbols of—as the Civiltá puts it—a pure conscience, a sublime cause, and an immortal hope.

The significance of these demonstrations was greatest for those who had watched the doctrines which were being elaborated by the Jesuits and diffused both through periodicals and such scholastic books as that of Tarquini. The doctrine of Boniface VIII, that the material sword was not in the hand of the priest, but only at his beck, was being replaced by a higher one. Boniface accused those of Manichean dualism who did not confess that both swords were in his power. But it proved that he had himself leaned too much towards dualism, for he denied the material sword to the priest's own hand. This doctrine would no longer do. Cardinal Tarquini, who, it must not be forgotten, is set before us by Cardinal Manning as the modern example of teaching milder than that of Bellarmine and Suarez, goes beyond the theology of former times, and claims the direct right of the sword, even in war, for the hand of the Pope and a Council, though still denying it to inferior ecclesiastical authorities.

I admit, says Tarquini (p. 39), that the Church is a spiritual society as to its end; I deny that it is so as to its substance—that is, as to the members composing it, since they are not mere spirits but men. I admit that it ought to use spiritual means—that is, means which are adapted to the attainment of the spiritual end. I deny that it should use only means which are spiritual in themselves and in their nature. Every one who is not a simpleton knows that men (in whom soul is joined with body) are to be moved, corrected, and coerced; hence they cannot be led to an end, even a spiritual one, by purely spiritual means. But the matter, quality, and proportion of the means is to be determined by the requirements of the end.

As to the words of our Lord, that His disciples shall not exercise lordship as the kings of the Gentiles do, he admits that they bind the Church to shun dominion so far as that means a spirit of ambition whereby any one might subject others to himself for his own glory or advantage; but he denies that they require her to shun dominion in so far as it means the office of ruling, and that of administering means contributing to the attainment of her end.

He labours to meet the objection against the use of force by the Church, drawn from her own doctrine, that men are to be called to her bosom freely and without compulsion. He asserts that liberty here means freedom from intrinsic necessity, but not from extrinsic necessity, or coaction. This coaction or compulsion does not prevent either merit, or the attainment of the spiritual end; indeed, when applied by the Church, greatly promotes them. He admits that compulsion is not to be used towards infidels—that is, unbaptized persons—but denies that it is not to be used towards baptized persons.

As to the objection founded on 2 Tim. iv. 2-5, that "the weapons of the Church are altogether confined to exhortations and tears," he simply says, I deny it. Then he argues that the words of St. Paul in this place rather weaken than support those who oppose the use of force; because the terms he employs are both general and sharp: reprove, rebuke, be instant in season and out of season. All means which necessity may call for are included. He admits that longsuffering and doctrine are to be employed, if necessity demands no harsher means; but denies that they are to be employed exclusively. He demands that the character of the times in which these texts were written shall not be forgotten, namely, times in which the Church, being under the unfriendly government of the heathen, was not able to put forth the fulness of her power. But it cannot be proved by any arguments that this right (jus gladii) may not be immediately exercised by the supreme magistracy of the Church, if necessity call for it; for the contrary indeed may be demonstrated from natural law, since the Church is a Perfect Society; and no passage can be cited from positive divine law in which it is really prohibited, for Matthew xxvi. 52 is quite inapplicable, where Christ says to Peter, then a private man, "Put up again thy sword into its place"; and 2 Cor. x. 4, where Paul, declaring the might of his own power, says, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal (that is, are not fragile or futile), but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds."

The fact that the meaning of carnal weapons is coolly assumed to be fragile or futile ones, is not to be overlooked. It would naturally follow that the chassepots at Mentana, which were neither fragile nor futile, were not carnal weapons. Of course Tarquini would have said that though in their proper nature carnal, when serving a purely spiritual end they took on a spiritual character. But we cannot forget that the "strongholds" which the weapons of Paul were mighty to pull down were "imaginations," and the captives they led bound were "thoughts." That is a sphere in which the proper weapon is not either shot or fetter, but the word and the works of men whom God makes wise to teach and holy to charm. There is one symbol which the Vatican never sees, that of the true and only Head of the Church, with no sword in His hand, much less two, but one sharp sword with two edges proceeding out of His mouth. That alone is the weapon that is not carnal but mighty through God.

We now begin to see the grounds cropping out on which Mr. Bryce's doctrine of two heads to the Catholic State, one civil and one spiritual, was condemned. The days of dualism and Manicheism in any form were numbered.

With their complaints that the Jesuits, both in the confessionals and in their text-books, corrupted Catholic morality, the Liberal Catholics mingled loud and bitter complaints that they sought to make the people superstitious and to keep them ignorant. It was often alleged that even their schools, or those under their virtual if not ostensible control, were themselves preserves of ignorance and superstition, keeping the scholars from an education, according to their capacity, for one "suited to their position," and at the same time preparing them to receive all kinds of fables and "lying wonders,"—a term not infrequently quoted by Liberal Catholics. Those fables and wonders would open a field so large, and one lying on a level so low, that we have not cared even to glance at them. As found in local clerical papers, or books of what is called "devotions," they are so gross that a writer could hardly repeat them without incurring loss, not only in the respect of others, but in self-respect. Liberal Catholics, however, know that they are a real power in Jesuit hands, one of the powers in the future war against science, the Press, and free government, and through these, against Protestantism. One specimen of the higher order we may give, from which some opinion may be formed of those vented in small places, by ignorant men, through low publications.

We speak of the great Civiltá,[181] of the "metropolis of the Christian world," and of a deliverance of the Capitol itself. The plan of the Garibaldians, insists the Civiltá, in October 1867, was to seize the Capitol and to ring the great bell, at the sound of which all over Rome their hordes were to rise. But Anna Maria Taigi, who had died thirty years before, in the odour of sanctity, had seen prophetic visions of Rome wasted with fire and sword, and dreadful with heaps of unburied corpses, breeding dire pestilence. Some thought that 1849 might have been the fulfilment of the vision; others that it was the attempt of 1867. But by the special "devotion" to this saintly woman, such dread event was to be averted. On the evening when all felt that the shock was coming, but no one saw whence or how, a priest of ninety years old, "well known to all in Rome," said to another, "I feel assured that the venerable Anna Maria will defend the city; and her image must at once be carried to the Capitol, for that is the point they will aim at; the Capitol once saved, Rome belongs to the Pope." The other priest objected that the hour was late and the streets unsafe. The old man insisted, reassured him, blessed him, and sent him away with the image, charging him to place it on the highest point. As the priest, bearing the image, reached the steps of the Capitol, a friend from a window, perceiving him, earnestly warned him to go home. Trembling, yet resolute, he pressed up the hill. All was silent as a desert. Having reached the utmost height under the bell-tower, he was fixing up the image, when he heard people move, and a door opened. A woman appeared. "I came," said he, "solely for the purpose of setting up an image." It would appear that it was a picture, for he had brought wafers with him to fasten it. Carlotta (for that was the woman's name) looked at the image, and cried, "Why, that is the venerable Anna Maria Taigi; I also practise devotion to her." The priest withdrew in silence and in haste. Meanwhile a priest from Bologna went in to visit the nonagenarian devotee of Anna Maria. "Don Pedro," cried the old man, "the Venerable has taken possession of the Capitol in the name of the Pope, and she will defend it from the Garibaldians." The attempt on the Capitol was almost immediately made and failed. Those who remember the tale of the Capitol when Brennus was the Garibaldi will be tempted to ask how great is the present elevation of faith above that of the days of the sacred geese.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIII

Great Ceremony of Executive Spectacle, called a Pro-Synodal Congregation, to forestall Attempts at Self-Organization on the part of the Council—The Scene—The Allocution—Officers appointed by Royal Proclamation—Oath of Secrecy—Papers Distributed—How the Nine had foreseen and forestalled all Questions of Self-organization—The Assembly made into a Conclave, not a General Council—Cecconi's Apology for the Rules.

The event now to be described was called a Pro-Synodal Congregation. Being designed to give parliamentary effect to secret decisions of the Court, it was in reality a Ceremony of Executive Spectacle. Such a description seems obscure, but the official name is misleading. Congregation is the word used in Councils for deliberative sittings, in which measures are proposed and debated, in contrast to Sessions, which mean only grand public solemnities, where decrees already voted are formally adopted. Therefore the word Congregation would suggest deliberation and some sort of consultative participation, by the bishops, in the proceedings.

This prelude to the Council was not a vain show, but had been contrived by the best diplomatic and artistic skill of the Curia. After the Directing Congregation had spent nine months in elaborating rules of procedure to bind the bishops neck and foot, the Nine began to see that, should the Council meet before it was organized, it might fall into the temptation to organize itself. Some one skilled in parliamentary forms might move to elect officers, and to have, as in former times, open discussion, in order to hear questions of theology argued by the doctors, before they, the judges, began to frame their sentence. Some one might even suggest that they should agree upon their own rules of procedure. Now, all these points had been irrevocably settled beforehand against the episcopate by its superiors, and any attempt to discuss them might cause the greatest confusion. If some spirit, perhaps like Darboy, as is gravely said, "excessively enamoured of liberty," should once stir such questions, the records of Trent were there to show that it might cause trouble to settle them. Therefore the Nine were disquieted. Such possibilities must be forestalled.

Moreover it had been resolved that, to take time by the forelock, the all-important Rules should be printed in advance, and should, before any possible self-action of the Council, be distributed during the grand public ceremonial of opening. Doubtless, when first adopted, this resolution seemed not only satisfactory, but far-seeing. It was not till as late as the month of August that some one pair of eyes among the Nine caught sight of the fact that, the opening ceremony being legally a Session of the Council, some "advanced spirit" might take advantage of that circumstance to assert that the Rules, being issued in a sitting of the Council, were an act of the Council, and therefore were liable to revision by it. That would never do. Therefore, at two sittings, on August 16 and 22, the former resolution was rescinded, and the ingenious expedient was devised of the Ceremony of Executive Spectacle now to be described. The Rules could be issued as part of the ceremony, and thereby would every pretext for declaring them an act of the Council be forestalled.

The Sixtine Chapel, connected in the imagination of the Fathers with all the glories and sanctities of their Church, was specially fitted up for the event. From every region under heaven gathered prelates richly attired, each feeling the splendour of the scene, and consciously augmenting it. Their susceptibilities of spectacle were vividly awake. As boys, those susceptibilities had been trained and forced. As men, they had themselves trained and forced the same susceptibilities in others. Now, in old age, they came to have the art of government by spectacle practised upon themselves; practised by masters to whom their consciences, sympathies, and imaginations taught them to look up. Under the skilled touch of those masters were they now about to let drop, without a word, and for the most part unconsciously, privileges of their order, which had been guarded by their predecessors as carefully as they would themselves guard their episcopal rings. The place, the men, the scene, the coming displays, and the dawning future, big with events, were, for the moment, all in all to them. It was the historic eve of the day of days; and deep feeling fluttered under their silk and brocade and gold.

Before their eyes spread the wonderful painting of Michael Angelo, in which, according to M. Frond he "reproduced" the scene of the last judgement. It is a monument to the power of genius, even when driven to work on what the true aesthetic of the painter told him should be left to the imaging of the spirit, and should not be attempted by the pencil. There, again, stood the vacant throne, waiting for him who, when he first ascended it, had, as the reader will remember, these words solemnly impressed upon his ear, in the house and by the ministers of God: "Know that thou art Father of princes and of kings, and art Governor of the World." The Cardinal Priests and Cardinal Bishops were on the right of the throne, the Cardinal Deacons on the left. Near it stood Patriarchs, Primates, and Archbishops, in regular gradation, and after them in regular gradation came Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Orders. Every brilliant figure in that throng was standing, except the Cardinals. Through a door, preceded by his household, was see entering the form of him who holds the place of God upon earth. The Sacred College stood up, all clad in violet, with rochette, mantelleta, and mozzetta. Then all cast themselves down upon their knees. The Pontiff, blessing his prostrate vassals, moved to the throne, seated himself, and, with beaming visage looked paternally down on the rulers of docile millions—rulers whose many-tinted splendour was but the effluence of his own majesty.

Now, in his hale, ringing voice, the Pope read an allocution. It expressed much affection for his venerable brethren, and solicitude for the success of their approaching deliberations. To those who had come up full of confidence in the moderation of the Curia, all that they heard was reassuring. To those who had been troubled with fears of hazardous innovation, the bearing and words of the initiated had been soothing, and so was all that now fell from the throne. Still, the few who really studied would look in vain for light on the questions which had been agitated. Those who had such questions in their minds did not know that from December to the middle of October the Nine had been engaged in answering them, and had already taken care that every seam through which any constitutional liberties might leak in should be tightly caulked.[182] Nor did they know that they were to-day gathered together for the very purpose of having many of these questions laid so deep that they should never rise again. Had they known the whole plan, was there one of them man enough to defeat it? Mighty against civil authority, were they not weak as water against a higher and more domineering priest?

Even the few would hardly have time to realize the fact that the paternal and cordial allocution gave no light upon practical matters, when lo! Cardinal Antonelli on the right of the throne, and Cardinal Grassellini on the left! And, presently, Cardinal Clarelli, the Secretary of Briefs, comes forth and proclaims—

Our Most Holy Lord Pius IX, Pope, for the good ordering of things to be done in this Council, as more largely contained in the Letters Apostolic to be forthwith distributed, hath elected and named Presidents of the General Congregations, to preside over the same in his name and with his authority, the Most Reverend Lords Cardinals Charles de Reisach, Bishop of the Sabina, Antony de Luca, Joseph Andrew Bizzarri, Aloysius Bilio, and Hannibal Capalti (Acta, p. 30).

This was immediately followed by the proclamation of the name of Bishop Fessler as Secretary, and the names of other high officials. Upon this announcement the Pope solemnly gave the pontifical benediction. Without the Council, and before the Council, he had bound on earth the question of presidents, of secretary, of officers, and of rules. But his first deed was not bound in heaven. Reisach, proclaimed by him as chief president of the Council, was never to behold it.

As the Fathers took their seats, the master of the ceremonies led in Prince Orsini in the insignia of Prince-in-Waiting. The temporal prince kissed the sacred foot, and then took his place on the steps of the throne.

Now a long line of dignitaries was presented, and going down on the ground, formed a crescent of beautiful kneeling figures before the sovereign. Two Cardinal Deacons brought out the volume of the Holy Gospels, and, standing close to the Pontiff, held it above his knees. Monsignor Jacobini then read out as follows—

We, elected by your Holiness officers of the General Vatican Council, promise and swear upon the Holy Gospels, faithfully to discharge the duties required of us respectively, and moreover not to divulge or disclose to any one outside of the bosom of the said Council, any of the matters proposed for examination in the said Council, nor yet the discussions, nor the speeches of individuals, but on all these, as also upon other matters committed to us, to observe inviolable secrecy.[183]

Thereupon, each one rising in turn, and advancing in front of the priest-king, laid his right hand upon the book, held by the two Princes of the Church, and then said: "I, N.N., promise, vow, and swear, according to the tenor of the words just read. So help me God and these God's Holy Gospels!" He then kissed the book and the sacred foot.[184]

About the middle of the long succession rose John Baptist de Dominicis Tosti, and stood to take the oath as one of the promoters of the Council. Suppose that a voice had at that moment cried: "Some two years hence, this de Dominicis Tosti and Prince Chigi shall sit side by side with two ministers of the Reformed Faith, as joint presidents over a public discussion, in this city, on the question whether Peter ever visited Rome, between Catholic priests on the one side, and Evangelical ministers on the other." What an anathema would have burst from the disgusted prelates! No such shadow of an impossible shade dimmed the brilliancy of the scene.

While under the various charms of that scene, the beauty of the colours, the perfection of the postures, and the grace of the men, few would remark that the form of oath, binding, as it did, to strict secrecy on the very subjects discussed, and even on speeches, turned their forthcoming assembly from a General Council into a Roman conclave. A few indeed might see, but the overwhelming majority would not see, that several points which Councils had settled for themselves, even when they met under Emperors, were now being splendidly settled for them beforehand—in their presence, indeed, but without their co-operation, and scarcely with their consciousness. How could they think of such commonplace affairs in a moment like that? What with the glorious garments of the Sacred College, the stars and ribbons of Prince Orsini, the beauty of the enthroned Priest-King, the crescent of kneeling dignitaries before him, and the touching symbol of the temporal prince kissing the priestly foot and reverently waiting at the priestly throne, there was enough to dazzle men less under the spell of robes. True, the temporal prince was here but a pale reminiscence of better days—of those days which some of them had called to the mind of the people since the gathering of 1867; days when kings, ere they received the crown, lay prostrate before the altar, and swore on their knees to administer canon law; days when they had, moreover, to take both sword and sceptre from the hands of the bishop.[185] Still, this temporal prince served to assert rights which had never been renounced, and was a comforting token of brighter times after the Council.

No sooner was the swearing of the officers over, than the Pope took his departure. Then came the master of the ceremonies, and distributed some papers to the Fathers.[186]

They proved to be the Allocution just delivered, the Program of Ceremonies for the opening of the Council, and another document, Letters Apostolic—longer, and seemingly duller, than the Program. But this, too, was distributed by the master of ceremonies. At Courts where government by spectacle is preferred to government by reason, ceremonies enclose a wide area. What was the right of proposition, or the right of definition, or the right of public discussion, or the right of printing, or the right of meeting, in comparison with the proper places, forms, and postures? Did not Article 136 direct that the sacred pallium was to be taken off the Holy Father by the Cardinal Deacon, and to be delivered over to the Sub-Deacon Apostolic? Did not Article 39 direct that the Sub-Deacon Apostolic, accompanied by two judges of the High Court of the Signet, should bear the slippers to the throne; and Article 40 direct that the Pontiff should put them on?[187] Probably for one bishop who after retiring looked first into the fateful Rules, ninety would look into the Program.

It was two days after the issue of these documents that Professor Friedrich arrived in Rome. He found the Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg and the Bishop of Augsburg with the Program in their hands, and also the Rules of Procedure. They were full of confidence that the Curia did not intend to propose anything dangerous. But Friedrich wanted to learn what were the subjects to be proposed, on which point the bishops knew nothing. The members of Commissions had all been bound by oath to conceal, even from their own diocesans, what was prepared for them to vote. It was to be presented to them with this alternative: Vote it, or become marked men!

On reaching the Palazzo Valentini, Friedrich found that all that was known by Cardinal Hohenlohe as to the subjects which he would have to vote upon amounted to this—a few days previously Cardinal de Angelis had asserted that nothing would be done beyond condemning the principles of 1789. This proves that the purple, at least of Cardinal Hohenlohe, was kept as far aloof from the secrets of the Nine as the black of Friedrich. Quirinus says (p. 77) that the most distinguished theologian in Rome, Cardinal Guidi, was not only kept in perfect ignorance of all that was being prepared, but was never admitted to an audience with the Pope after he had expressed to him his own views. Another notability is said by the same author to have been also out of the circle of the trusted, and many writers share this view; this was Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits. Words ascribed to him by Quirinus are these: "To recover two fractions of the States of the Church they are pricking on to a war against the world; but they will lose all."

Friedrich found that the decision of constitutional points of vital importance was to be wrapped up in a gay gauze of ceremonies. The very form to be given to the Decrees was slipped in among the items of the pageant. The conciliar formula used at Trent was replaced by that of Papal Bulls. The collective hierarchy were not to be permitted to say, It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us; nor to say, This Holy Council ordains and decrees. The name of the Pope alone was to appear as decreeing, and the only words in the decree indicating the existence of any Council were "The Holy Council approving." Matters like this, affecting not only the framework of the Church, but the seat of dogmatic authority, were settled without a note of preparation, in a program of ceremonies, among directions about faldstools, incense, and the Pope's slippers. It was as if the Lord Chamberlain, when the Queen was about to open a new Parliament, should put out a program of precedence, costumes, and ceremonies, foisting in a few clauses indicating that Her Majesty would promulge a statute or two, with the approbation of the assembled Lords and Commons. It would be no trifle if he did so of his own motion, but would become tremendously serious if it had been done with full cognizance of the monarch.[188]

No wonder that the keen-eyed Professor was driven from the Program to the Rules of Procedure. But the fact that the other was the document first read, even by him—a man in whom the decorative element is evidently too feeble for a useful priest, and the critical element too strong—indicates the direction which the studies of gentlemen like his archbishops and bishops would take; gentlemen, who knowing that they had been jealously kept in the dark respecting what they were to be called to vote upon as the faith of their Church for ever, were nevertheless satisfied, by a few bows and smiles, that it was to be something of no importance.

Friedrich was deeply moved by what he found in the Rules, coupled with what he considered the ignorance of the bishops.

Every adept, he cries, must see that virtually the form here used in propounding decrees contains Papal infallibility. It is the Pope, and he alone, that defines and decides. Infallibility is even now attributed to him, and not to the Council, and then, seeing that this formula is to be acted upon in the first session (or public ceremony), it is the Pope who formulates the decree without having taken even the advice of the Council, and without any discussion on its part. It is not so much as known what are to be the subjects of the Decrees which the Council will adopt; and yet Decrees containing definitions are announced for the 8th. What can this mean? Are we really to have Papal infallibility carried by acclamation, as the Civiltá suggested, or shall we only have a Decree, as they had at Trent, declaring the Council open, and regulating the mode of life of its members? Who can tell? For my own part I am uncommonly disquieted (p. 10).

This disquietude of Friedrich represented the first shock of collision against sunk fences, which had cost the Nine long labour. According to their faithful historian, the "most arduous and thorny of their tasks was that of settling the procedure."

It was admitted by the Nine that, even in the fifth Lateran Council, the question was put to the Fathers, whether the Rules drawn up were acceptable. It was also feared that the bishops might be offended if the Pope settled the Rules without hearing their opinion. But, on the other side, there were three arguments: first, the danger of "interminable" discussions; secondly, the danger of "some spirit excessively enamoured of liberty, and of too advanced opinions"; and, thirdly, the history of former Councils (p. 148). So in June it was finally determined that the Council should not be permitted to have a word to say to its own rules and forms of procedure. And in August, as we have seen, the perfect plan of forestalling all attempts to say a word upon them was contrived.

One possible objection was brought under attention, by the history of previous Councils, namely, that there might be a danger of the Pope restraining the rightful liberty of the bishops. This idea, however, was dispersed by the light logic which passes at Court. "It would be no less a folly than an insult to think that a pontifical law could aim at lessening the liberty of the Council" (p. 147). In this happy sentence the now mitred historian refines on the words of M. Veuillot, who was content to say that all would be free because the Pope would be free.

The consultations of the Nine must have been serious upon the critical point of denying to the Council the right of introducing proposals. The course finally decided upon called for boldness in the deed, combined with art in the drapery. It was first settled that the right of proposition belonged to the Pope alone. Then it was argued that if this right was granted to the bishops, "it would turn the Council itself into a constitutional assembly"—which was just what, with all their faults, the earlier Councils had been, and even that of Trent, in an inferior degree.

The serious question of excluding all members of the Church but those constituting the Council had to be faced. Cecconi cannot conceal that at Trent the entrance to the Council Hall, during the discussions of the Doctors, was free. Massarellus, the indefatigable secretary of that Council, in his minute of those present at the first session, gives more names of laymen than of archbishops. The insertion of their names means more than that they were in the building—they had seats of honour.[189] The number of the order of priests present at that first sitting far exceeded that of the bishops. True, they had no vote; but they had a most important office, that of discussing points of doctrine, in the presence of the bishops, before the latter themselves began to do so. They were the Bar, the prelates, the Bench. Massarellus himself, secretary from the beginning, was only a doctor, till the Council reached the days of Pius IV, who made him a bishop.[190]

All the dragooning of the middle ages had not taught men that it was right for millions to sit outside in the dark, while a few priests consulted, and determined how their creeds, catechisms, ordination vows, marriage obligations, parental rights, and national duties were to be altered. The vast changes consummated at Trent had not yet done their work in reducing the human mind to servility. The Bible had not been shackled by a General Council. The Press had not been scientifically gagged. Authors and booksellers had not felt the scourge of the Index. Schools and colleges had not been shut up against discussion and free inquiry, in any such degree as was then introduced. Consequently the Western Catholic of that day, though in a sense Roman, was by no means that passive creature of priestly authority into which three centuries of the sway of the Tridentine Decrees, administered by a monarch never checked by a public legislature, have moulded the modern layman.

At Trent the people were present to hear what was said. At the Vatican their political position and religious belief were both to be decided upon by decrees not reformable, like all that men do; but irreformable, as if God had made them. Yet the presence of the people was looked upon as "the interference of persons from without," and this, it was felt, would be "a deplorable inconvenience," notably aggravated by the temper of the times because of the enormous diffusion of the Press. The journals could not be prevented from writing about the Council; but means were sought to keep the subjects under discussion from the knowledge of the "democracy," as Maret calls priests and people. They should learn the tenor of Decrees adopted only when they were ratified (Cecconi, p. 253). To this end, three points were resolved upon: first, the General Congregations (that is, the deliberative sittings) should be altogether private; secondly, the public Sessions (that is, the grand solemnities for adopting and promulgating Decrees already framed and voted) should be open only in the liturgical part, the legislative part being strictly close; thirdly, all the Fathers and officers should be bound to the deepest silence (p. 254).

We are far from saying that the bishops of the time before Trent would have accepted a Roman conclave like this, in lieu of a General Council of the Catholic Church; but if they had done so, the laity of that time, from Emperor to burgher, would not have suffered it. The laity then did not represent the offspring of ten generations successively confined in the Tridentine cribs. Their rights, though roughly defined, were readily asserted, and sturdily maintained.

The Directing Congregation, having now existed for nearly five years, had preordained all that was to come to pass in the Council. It had held fifty-nine formal meetings, very many of which were devoted to the Rules of Procedure. Beyond the purpled Nine, not a soul was ever admitted, save only Monsignor Giannelli, their secretary. Five of the Nine were the destined Presidents of the Council. So that, of the whole College of Cardinals, only four besides the Presidents were in the secrets of this body. Just at a few of the last meetings, Bishop Fessler, the secretary of the Council, was called in. It is not needful to say that the Directing Congregation was in constant official communication with the Pontiff.[191]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIV

The Eve of the Council—Rejoicings—Rome the Universal Fatherland—Veuillot's Joy—Processions—Symbolic Sunbeams—the Joybells—The Vision of St. Ambrose—The Disfranchisement of Kings.

The Civiltá described how, in beholding prelates daily arrive, the joy of Rome rose higher and higher; joy resembling but surpassing that of the great events of 1854, 1862, and 1867. Not only prelates came, but champions of the sword, the pen, and the tribune, ready to face the world in the cause of the Pope-King. Count Henri de Riancey begs pardon of Rome for indulging, at such a moment, in a word for France. Yet his heart does not turn to France, except on account of what she has done for the Pope.

Let Rome, the fatherland of all fatherlands, permit to us this flash of patriotism. It is France which has the honour of guarding the last fragments of the pontifical dominions ... She has loved righteousness; and that is the reason why she is anointed with the oil of gladness above her fellows (Frond, vol. i. p. xix.).

Poor France! that love of righteousness, which had made her slay so many Italians to keep up the temporal power, was not to avert from her, "in the year of the Council," a baptism other than that of the oil of gladness.

Ordinary Christians would not catch the reference in the above quotation. To them, "loving righteousness," especially when connected with the person of the Messiah, is not identified with, but in holy opposition to, the idea of setting Christian ministers in rank before secular princes, and in power above kings. But "He loved righteousness and hated iniquity" stands upon the tomb of Hildebrand, who sought to establish the "dominion of Christ," the "kingdom of God," the "reign of righteousness," or as many similar expressions as you please, by subjecting all the kings of the earth to the Priest of God. Pius IX is frequently spoken of as the founder of the lordship of the Pope over the whole earth in the future, as Hildebrand was the founder of his lordship over it in the past. Therefore the sweetness felt by a good Ultramontane in connecting the two together.

I am bewildered with joy, cried M. Veuillot. I try to depict that joy, to swim in life. There is an unspeakable gladness in men's souls. People feel an aurora. I picked up a number of journals, and was going to answer a lively article against myself, in the Gazette de France; but the author has no idea how all his eloquence falls short of a man who, in one and the same day, has seen Pius IX, Rome, and the Sun.

Pius IX had not admitted M. Veuillot to kiss the sacred foot for merely literary service. The devoted advocate laid at the feet he kissed three thousand pounds in money, collected, through his paper, for the expenses of the Council. M. Veuillot scolds M. Taine grandly, for having made some comparison between Rome and Paris—Paris, stretching from the field of Pantin on one side, to the Follies Belleville on the other; and Rome, which has no limits but those of the world, and does not accept those—Paris, which gives birth to M. Rochefort; and Rome, which directs the nineteenth Œcumenical Council! Had M. Taine seen Rome yesterday, full of processions of all colours, and bishops of all countries, he would have said it was more lovely than Paris.

The processions of all colours were no fancy stroke. Nine days of solemn service in honour of the approaching anniversary of the Immaculate, and at the same time of the Council, gave an opportunity of showing to strangers all the confraternities of Rome. They marched to the various basilicas, especially to St. Peter's; the ostensible object being to worship the sacred relics which, with uncommon magnificence, were exposed to their veneration.

The clergy of all lands saw and were seen with wonder and delight. "When therefore," said Eusebius, speaking of Nicaea, "the Emperor's order was brought into all the provinces, persons set out as if for some goal, and ran with all imaginable alacrity, for the hope of good things drew them, and the participation of peace, and lastly a new miracle, to wit, the sight of so great an Emperor."[192] Dr. Friedrich does not express himself so prettily as Eusebius on the appearance of the assembled clergy. The Asiatic cries, "And one city received them all, as it were some vast garland of priests, made up of a variety of beautiful flowers." The Bavarian says, "The clergy of every country have sent a strong contingent, from the proud monsignore to the dirtiest village priest."

The importance of sunny weather for public events, great everywhere, is perhaps exaggerated in Rome. Pius IX is believed to be peculiarly susceptible to sunbeams. Three of his most memorable days are, by his adorers, connected with a sunburst which shone for him especially. Professor Massi relates how, on the day of his taking "possession," the apostolic cortège followed the "brilliant carriage" of the new Pope from the Via Sacra up the Coelian Hill, the Cardinals being mounted on "steeds richly adorned"—doubtless worthy to be compared with those Sicilian steeds which bore Gregory the Great, of whose stud Gregorovius soberly says, "We scarcely doubt but that Pindar would have thought the apostolic horses worthy of an ode."[193] The day was overcast—which omen had a damping effect—but just as the new Pope approached the Lateran, a glorious rainbow spanned the east, gladdening all with the certainty of a reign of peace. In like manner, Professor Massi tells of that proud April evening when the Pontiff, after a long exile, once more looked down upon the earth from his own Olympus. The clerical writers do not exactly call it heaven, but content themselves with speaking of the figure of the Pope so exalted, as "standing between earth and heaven," or as a spectacle which reminds us of the Divinity (Frond, p. 16). The secularizing of sacred terms, till we come down to "apostolic cortèges" and "apostolic horses," and the materializing of spiritual terms, till "the kingdom of Christ," sometimes means the temporal power, is a process which must go on until the heaven of the materialized imagination will be levelled to the height of the noblest dome, and to the beauties of the best decorator. The peerless piazza of St. Peter's was, on the day in question, filled with French uniforms. At the foot of the great staircase rose a platform covered with purple, and decked with flying banners. The heavens, all day covered with clouds, suddenly turned azure, and the setting sun poured his beams on the dome of Michael Angelo, on the cross of the Obelisk, and on the statues which adorn the Colonnade, just as Pius IX "raised his paternal hand to bless the arms which had avenged his throne." The third day on which the sun shone expressly for Pius IX has been already mentioned, that of the Immaculate Conception.

It was not only, as some say, the nuns, but also priests and littérateurs who took it as both indispensable and certain that St. Peter's should be bathed in the brightest gold the skies could send on the day which was to unite three glories—the anniversary of the Immaculate, the opening of the General Council, and the probable acclamation of Pius IX as infallible.

On December 7, when the midday gun was fired from St. Angelo's, a peal of joybells rang out from more than four hundred churches. From the distant Coelian came the deep note of the Lateran, floating over Coliseum and Capitol; from the Esquiline came that of Santa Maria Maggiore, floating over the Quirinal. These two met the boom of St. Peter's swinging across the Tiber, and, blending with it, formed, in that sea of sound, a rolling base for the billows, on whose crests every variety of bell-note clashed and sparkled. Far beyond the gates, the lone and beautiful St. Paul's lifted up its voice, as if bidding the untilled plains to tell the unfrequented shore that there was joy in the cloister capital.

Hints from Jesuit pens lead us to see some of the Order standing on the Janiculum, by S. Pietro in Montorio, drinking in the view of the renowned panorama, while the impressions of years would be brought to a focus by the sensations of a moment. Every thrill would be taken either for a proof or a promise. Things done by the Order were being glorified, things to be done were being assured by the voice of many churches. Before memory would rise the figures of Hildebrand, Dominic, Ignatius, illuminated by the imagination of the past. Before hope would rise the figure of the new Hildebrand, with his now unlimited sceptre, and new Loyolas and Dominics, illuminated by the imagination of the future. Other German Henrys would be seen standing in penance, other English Johns signing away their supremacy: and surely if at Ingolstadt the Order had trained a Ferdinand II, another could now be trained, and the Virgin and St. Ignatius would not fail to raise up a more successful Tilly, and a more faithful Wallenstein. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth," would seem ringing with articulate speech from the tongue of every bell.

As the Ave Maria sounded in the sunset, the guns of S. Angelo saluted the happy eve. The Pope rode in state to the Church of the Twelve Apostles, and the crowd lined the entire way. The Jesuit writers heard enthusiastic cheers at every point. Some partial illuminations were attempted, but the weather was unfavourable. This, however, damped not the spirits of any one, for there was to be a glorious illumination on the morrow, when the rain was bound to cease. M. Veuillot, buoyant as were his spirits, admitted that, with all his love for Rome, he could not deny that it rains there in winter. But hope was exulting, enthusiasm unbounded. The preparation of ideas had, it was thought, done its work; the restoration of facts was now not far off. The Civiltá asks, Did ever Council meet under such a Pope, with his graces and his virtues, his rich experience, his burden of palms won in incessant victories over the enemies of Christ; the restorer of the hierarchy in two nations, the founder of many dioceses; the conqueror of the fallacies, hypocrisies, and fraudulence of the politicasters of our day, the glorifier of the Virgin, who "sensibly" covers him with her mantle, and takes delight in twining roses with the thorns whereof the tiara that crowns him is altogether composed?[194] The words of a French layman equal those of the Italian Jesuit. It is again the Count Henri de Riancey who cries, "The Father of the Fathers, Sovereign Pontiff of the Bishops, refuge of the bishops; he is the Universal Patriarch, the Prefect of the house of God, the Guardian of the vineyard of the Lord. He it is who confirms the faith of Christians; he is Abraham in his patriarchate, Melchisedek in order, Moses in authority, Samuel in jurisdiction, Peter in power, Christ in unction" (Frond, i. p. xxx.).

It was St. Ambrose's day. M. Veuillot, in imagination, saw the saint "appear on the threshold on which the eyes of the human species are fixed, full of hope," But M. Veuillot seldom meets with a saint, dead or living, but a political end soon appears. This was, he cries, a felicitous rencounter. What made it so? When Ambrose had become bishop, he excommunicated the Emperor Theodosius for the crime of inhumanity. His image in this act is to M. Veuillot evidently the prototype of Pius IX leaving the kings out of the Council. But it is one thing to refuse the Communion, which was open for the humblest believer, to the greatest potentate alive, because his word has wantonly handed his subjects over to death; and it is another thing to refuse to all believers in existence a place, even as hearers, in the chamber where new laws binding them and their children for ever are to be decreed.

The scene at Milan, and that at St. Peter's, similar to the ardent Ultramontane, would strike us rather by contrast. On the former threshold we see a Christian pastor guarding the Lord's Table. On the latter, a king, and an aspirant after universal political supremacy, guarding the secret of his own counsels. Outside the Milan threshold we see one sinner in purple, while the common Christians are free to approach. Outside the Vatican are all members of Churches whom the king in purple and scarlet acknowledges as members of his own Church. The people are disfranchised with the princes at their head. The priests had long been losing their franchise in the election of their bishops. More recently they had been losing their freehold in their parishes. When the Jesuits obtained possession of Pius IX, the parish priest had a life interest in his parish subject to good behaviour. But this formed too much of a tie to the nation. The parochial clergy had to be mobilized. So, gradually, they had been put into berths only by temporary appointment, and held the place ad nutum, at the nod of the bishop. They had been glad that the sword in the hand of the king should not be in his power, but at the nod of the priest. It was scarcely so pleasant that the parish, in the hand of the priest, should be at the nod of the bishop. The making of it so had already to a large extent been accomplished. It was now to be completed; but those tyrannous kings might attempt to check the move by what they would call protecting the lower clergy, what the Vatican would call destroying the liberty of the Church.

The whole spirit of the Jesuit Press at this period indicated that the Modern State had so wearied out the Vatican that the only chance for kings to make their peace with it would lie in separating their cause from that of parliaments and constitutions. If they meant to be tolerated long after the Council, they must not only reign but govern—govern Catholic States under the Syllabus. A ruler by divine right—which among the baptized means one instituted by the Pope and corrected by him—is the essence of the matter. "The Pope and the People!" is the last exclamation of M. Veuillot, on the eve of the day when the nations were to come to judgment—on the eve of the day when the salutary conspiracy recommended by the Civiltá with its first breath was to hold its crowning conclave, when the holy Crusade, heralded with the same breath, was to receive both its legal warrant and its world-wide impulse. A triumphal arch was to mark the completion of a stage of toil and the entrance upon a stage of transformation. "The Pope and the People. I believe that these words are invisibly written on the door of this Vatican Council, which door forms the entrance to a new world; rather is it a triumphal arch erected on the rediscovered highway of the human race."[195]

That triumphal arch and that rediscovered way of the human species which, to M. Veuillot, made the entrance to the Vatican Council sublime, invested it, to the eyes of Liberal Catholics, with clouds of doubtful omen. The triumph vaunted was real and even stupendous, but it was a triumph over the principles in the name of which Liberal Catholics had fought and won the battles of the Church. The rediscovered way was no other than the broad road of clerical dominion over spiritual and temporal things which, in the ages before the Reformation, had led the Church down to a degree of corruption now denied by none—a broad road, which had since then been swept and mended, but to which had in the meantime been added the countless sidepaths of Jesuit morals. If all those sidepaths should by authority be opened for the winding and the straying of human guile and passion, what would the Catholic nations come to? Studious Liberal Catholics were aware of the two sides of the Jesuit system of morals, whereof Protestants generally were cognizant only of one. These knew, indeed, that a lawful end renders the means to it lawful; but Liberal Catholics knew that it was also taught that an unlawful end did not infect with guilt the means by which it had been reached, provided only that in themselves those means consisted of acts not necessarily unlawful. Thus on both sides—that of seeking a lawful end by unlawful means, and that of employing lawful means for an unlawful end—was the gate made wider, the road broader, and the way more smooth for guile to creep or passion to roll downward, but attended all along by the comforts of absolution, and sprinkled with holy water.[196]

And as to the new world to which the Council was to be an entrance, Liberal Catholics had seen the Pope's special college of writers, in the Civiltá, dwell upon the act whereby Alexander VI drew a line from pole to pole, and gave to Spain all regions that should be discovered to the west of it, and to Portugal all those that should be discovered to the east of it; and contend that the Pope, in saying of those regions, I give, concede, and assign them to this king and to that, acted simply as the Vicar of Christ; nay, that by that act the autonomy of the Indians was not in the least offended; and that, moreover, what in the jargon of infidel and of heretics was called the pretensions of Rome, was nothing else but the exercise of a clear and sublime right, resorted to by the Pope in seeking a solid protection, in new countries, for the autonomy of nations and of individuals, when otherwise, to the offence of religion, it might have been violated by barbarians.[197] But was this supreme power to dispose by sentence of the lot of nations, even though unknown, without in so doing offending in the least against their rights, to be exalted into eternal dogma? If so, and if mankind would endure it, well might the door of the Council be regarded as the entrance to a new world. But whether future ages will reckon it as the entrance to a new world or not, we are about to see that it was indeed the entrance to an arena on which was to be witnessed a process of revolution from above and a struggle of priest with priest,—a process as instructive, a struggle as curious, as any that our age has produced, among its many transformations of polity and redistributions of power.

FOOTNOTES:

BOOK III

FROM THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY

CHAPTER I

The First Session, December 8, 1869, or Opening Ceremony—Mustering—Robing—The Procession—The Anthem and Mass—The Sermon—The Act of Obedience—The Allocution—The Incensing—Passing Decrees—The Te Deum—Appreciations of various Witnesses.

At dawn, on Wednesday, December 8, 1869, the guns of Fort St. Angelo saluted the long looked for day, while from the other side of the Tiber those of the Aventine replied. The bellowing of these beasts of war awoke the city to witness a Council of the ministers of peace. As the sounds reached the ear of peasant, monk, and nun, already plodding in the dark from places outside the walls, the sky was low, and pouring down a truly Roman rain. Unlike towns round which smiling homes are sown broadcast outside of the bounds, Rome, when approached by most of the routes, first shows the city walls, and not till a good while later does it show the beginning of habitations. The poor suburbs which lie outside a few of the gates are less dreary than the space inside, where lonely roads, shut in by blank walls, lead amidst crumbling mementoes of rulers of the world, and marks of the actual reign of drones not able to master ordinary difficulties. Every now and then comes a church, or one of the two hundred and more convents and nunneries which sanctify the place. But scarcely any of these have an outline such as to yield, in twilight, the effect of either Gothic spires or Moorish minarets, or even of good Grecian colonnades.

Many a cowled figure struggled under the drenching rain along these desolate ways. One would pass the spot where Peter was arrested by his Master, when the Fisherman uttered the famous "Lord, whither goest Thou?" and was turned back to Rome to die. Another would pass by the vale of Egeria and he might well wonder if Numa ever had to seek inspiration there in such dismal gloom. Crossing the open ground about the Lateran, some of the monks might think of the terrible morn when Totila, in mercy, halted his troops inside the gates, sending the clang of his trumpets through the dark, all over the city, to give the wretched Romans the chance of flight.

Other monks coming from St. Agnese, and entering by the Porta Pia, would reflect upon the adornment of that gate by the Holy Father, and upon its happy name which links it both with Pius IX and with its own founder. Its founder, Pius IV, signed the Creed of the Council of Trent, and Pius IX was to sign the new Creed of the Council of the Vatican. This beautiful coincidence would, with the monks, make the gate an emblem of the Church, against which the gates of hell should never prevail. If they only happened to recollect that its old name Nomentana marked it as the Mentana Gate, the encouraging impression would rise almost to the brightness of a revelation. The day, only two years before, when the conquering crusaders marched in, and the welkin rang with shouts of "Long live Pius IX!" "Long live the zouaves!" "Long live the Crusaders!" "Long live Catholic France!" would return to memory as the pledge of mightier Mentanas. Had an invisible hand drawn aside the veil, and shown them that gate, some nine months later, admitting the Italian troops, followed by the dog Pio drawing a little cart full of Bibles; and then shown, still later, the residence of a British Ambassador to the King of Italy inside the gate, and on the outside the residence of Garibaldi, the monks would have vowed by all the saints, old and new, that the vision came from a lying spirit.

Some, again, crossing the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge, would, in spite of the blinding rain, see the figure of Constantine victoriously dominating the heights, and that of Maxentius being hurled into the stream. A while afterwards, when passing near the Broken Wall, where St. Peter himself had kept watch, and with his own hand had blinded and routed the Goths, they would feel that now when his successor was to be at last duly exalted, the Apostle would surely keep the city more jealously than before; and if there was need of a Belisarius to crush the Italian barbarians, the Lord would raise him up at the intercession of Peter.

As they came further inwards, the crowds of the city were already in motion. Down from the Coelian and Esquiline were they pouring past the Coliseum, reflecting men delighting in the thought that all high things which exalt themselves against the Church would fall into her power just as the Coliseum had done; for the "high things" of the Romanized imagination are naturally material ones. The Arch of Titus, darkly outlined in the morning grey, would be the prophetic pledge that the Jews, however stubborn, would yield to the Pontiff at last. But where was the golden candlestick—where the temple vessels? After Genseric carried them off, had they ever returned? The ruinous Palatine would symbolize woes coming to modern Caesars, as sure as those which had crushed the ancient ones. Indeed, it is not impossible that some would see visions like those seen by monks of yore, who beheld the soul of the great Theodoric dragged into the crater of Stromboli.

From the Aventine, where Peter resided with Priscilla and Aquila, and which is now little but a site for monastic establishments, many would come, passing by the place where once stood the Circus Maximus. The thoughtful would there have in their eye the grand spectacles of Pagan Rome. It was by a spectacle that Romulus allured the Sabines to unity by violence; and it was by a spectacle that Pius IX was now wooing the world to wedlock with the Papacy—ready, if only able, to take short measures with the coy. But what were the shows of the old rude times to this? What if three hundred thousand pairs of eyes did gleam together on the spectacles which, with bread, made up the earthly all of the Roman plebs? They never had looked upon such an array of holy bishops, from the whole earth, as would be seen to-day. The colours for which they went mad, their idolized blues and greens, were but few, and ill-combined, compared with the colours now about to be displayed. The ancient cry, "Bread and Spectacles!" was indeed still kept alive by Roman authorities, but was to-day to be satisfied in a Christian style glorious beyond Pagan example.

Along the Via Sacra few foreigners would appear, but from the Capitoline Germans would set out. It is natural to think of some student, fresh from the pages of Gregorovius, his imagination vividly setting face to face the ancient Rome and the actual. He would think of the exclamation, "Renowned, queenly, immeasurable Rome, a sea of beauty surpassing all power of speech!" Where were the glory and the beauty now? Inside the churches and palaces indeed were masses of decoration and artistic stores of wealth, but the city viewed, on that dismal December morning, as a city, was poor and ill-kept. The glory which once compelled men at this central point to call her Golden Rome was departed. What now represented the Temple of Jupiter—its pillars on gilded bases with gilded capitals, its gates of gilded bronze, and its roof of tiles of gilded brass? There stands the Church of the Aracoeli; Jupiter is succeeded by the Bambino, a doll, carved by St. Luke, which is driven in a stately carriage round the city to the beds of the dying.

Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman, certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of Wycliffe in the sea?

A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so. Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients, and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea of a world-empire originated with the Romans—nay, no more than did the idea of the Trojan War.

Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against riderless mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses, goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.

Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and tongues into religious and political submission to one human head. Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in the words of Joseph de Maistre, that the Pantheon had been devoted to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority. But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize St. Peter Arbues, red with the blood of thousands of the seed of Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces. He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome for Frond's history—[198]

It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable. Nevertheless, there are many gods, in heaven and in earth. There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (hommes divinisés). The gods of Christianity are the saints. Around God are assembled all the gods, to serve Him in the place and order assigned to them.

The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it, as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that "saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious, which was no doubt the original idea.[199]

By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and signs of impotence.

In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general, not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and cabmen.[201]

The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds. They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering under their umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory, thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico. At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs, with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green, embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff, formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and if a prince—we presume by birth—followed by a third. Then came the nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts, and ribbons like streamers among the stars—stars that dazzle Romans far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles, always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls, and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety. Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack, the convent, the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village festival, spangled the thickening crowd.

The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions, even the correspondent of the Stimmen aus Maria Laach alluded to the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the Times; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes." In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest, as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of zouaves and one of the line.

The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain," says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language, containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb, girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman would have been surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet. Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True, he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest, but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship, as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii. 8-10).

There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ! In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen do we require, for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father, dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the access of sons!

He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father, and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under their own power.

The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder and abler brethren of the priests.

Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the promiscuous crowd; for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too, with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, he says, by the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the Univers what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"—a fact which he states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells, appear more luminous to him.

Correspondents of the Civiltá published on the spot, of the Stimmen published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East, were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle, and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.

Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers, striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that, somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they had too much ground to fear.

On the other hand, the Jesuits were quietly exulting in the knowledge that the days of the Liberal Catholics were numbered. "Weighed and found wanting" were words often upon their lips at that time.

The feeling of the Protestants, of all classes, was chiefly that of curiosity. Such of them as believed that Rome yet retained enough of the Christian element to be capable of reform wished that the Jesuits might fail. Those, on the other hand, who believed that at Trent Rome had written upon herself the doom irreformable, thought that the only thing now before her was to go down deeper into her own errors, and to make herself formally what she long had been virtually, the religion simply of the fait accompli, a system in which each error once committed must enter into the blood, and even form abnormal bone. Perhaps the words "judicial blindness" were never so often quietly uttered by charitable men as then, and during the months ensuing.

The tomb of Peter shared with his statue in the honours of the morn. In the ray of its lamps knelt many a figure of "fair women and brave men." The men hoped to rise braver for the coming struggle. The words of the Pontiff were vividly in the memories of the devout—words uttered to five hundred bishops. "We never doubted that a mysterious force and salutary virtue emanated from the tomb where repose the ashes of Peter, as a perpetual object of religious veneration to the world; a force which inspires the pastors of the Lord's flock with bold enterprises, noble spirit, and magnanimous sentiment."[203] Pius IX would hardly have seen the force of an inquiry, should any one have dared to make it, whether there was any known case in which one of the Apostles had in Jerusalem sent even the most ignorant of Christians to the tomb of the proto-martyr, ay, or to the tomb of tombs, in order there to seek some blessing that could not be found by going into his own closet, and praying to his Father who seeth in secret.

The Civiltá, however, gave a more intelligent turn to this Papal suggestion—

It is to be hoped (it said) that this Council, announced on the centenary of St. Peter, convoked by a Bull dated on the day of St. Peter, and assembled round the wonderful tomb of St. Peter, will be par excellence the Council of St. Peter. That means the most obsequious to the prerogatives of Peter, whose divine authority, the centre and foundation of all social authority, is at the same time that which is most combated by the spirit of the world, according to the words of the Saviour, "The whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John v. 19).

While the people waited, the bishops were robing in the Julian corridor, and the patriarchs in one of the adjoining apartments. Over the grand portico of St. Peter's is a hall, well known on Holy Thursday as the place where the twelve apostles celebrate the Supper—the hall in which the five hundred presented their salutation in 1867. This had been converted into a chapel, by the erection of an altar. Here assembled the members of the procession. Each prelate, on completing his costume, made for the hall, but was not permitted to have any attendant. It being the Day of the Immaculate Conception, the colour of the vestments was white; a rule, however, which did not bind the Orientals. The cardinals were robing in a room apart. Each of them having done so, entered the hall followed by his train-bearer. Bishops, prelates, and cardinals waited while the Pope robed. This he did in the Pauline Chapel, attended by three cardinals, two bishops, the sub-deacon apostolic, two protonotaries, and a few minor officials. They adorned him with amice and with alb, with girdle and with stole. Then did the cardinal-priest in waiting bring the censer, and the Pope put the incense on. Then did they further array him in the "formal," the pluvial, and the precious mitre. At about half-past nine o'clock, Pius IX, in all the glory of gems and garments, entered the hall, where between seven and eight hundred bishops stood before the altar, awaiting their royal head. He did not wear either the tiara or the usual golden mitre, but a special precious mitre made for the occasion, "This" says, Vitelleschi (p. 3), "was to indicate a certain equality with the other bishops, which, however, is confined to these little accessories of the ceremonial." The white pluvial was fastened on his breast by an enamelled clasp, about which clerical writers are particular. The clasp was set with jewels in the form of a dove, with outstretched wings, surrounded by a halo of rays, and representing the Holy Ghost. The Pope passed among the Fathers holding out his fingers, in the usual manner, on this side and on that, giving them what is grotesquely called the pontifical benediction. Then kneeling at the faldstool he took off his mitre and prayed. Two cardinals, approaching the kneeling Pontiff, placed a book before his eyes. He looked upon it, lifted up his aged but resounding voice, and sang—

Creator Spirit, come!

This strain was taken up by the choir, and the first verse was sung, all kneeling. The Pontiff then rose, put on his mitre, and was seated in his portative throne.

The portative throne is a contrivance for exhibiting a dignitary to the gaze of a multitude, which does not remind one of anything to be seen elsewhere in Europe, but does strongly remind one of the way in which a great Guru is carried in India. It is a gorgeous litter, on which is placed a gorgeous chair, under a gorgeous canopy, called a Baldachino. In the chair is seated the Pontiff. Men robed in crimson bear the litter; others bear the canopy on long gilded decorated poles, and beside it others bear gigantic fans of peacocks' feathers.

Even in a secular procession, more serious than an election triumph, this sort of chairing would be of doubtful taste; but in a religious act, above all an act done in the house of God, it would be impossible, except where the aesthetic of faith had expired, and the aesthetic of thought had long surrendered to the aesthetic of sensation. As the Pontiff was set on high a shot fired from St. Angelo told the waiting multitude that the procession was formed.

We have said that the clergy of the city lined the whole course of the procession on either side. This extended from the door of the hall, through some of the apartments of the Vatican, down the celebrated Royal Staircase, through the magnificent portico of St. Peter's, up the nave to the statue of the Apostle, then to the altar at his grave, and finally, to the right of that altar, into the hall of the Council. As the head of the procession emerged from the hall, the manifold costumes of the clergy formed the skirting of the lofty walls, in the apartments through which it slowly swept. The most noticeable of these was the Royal Hall, Sala Regia, where frescoes, suggestive of more swords than one, appealed, by Papal memories, to Papal hopes. There was Gregory VII giving absolution to the penitent emperor Henry IV. There was the attack upon Tunis in 1553, there the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, the League against the Turks, and Barbarosas receiving the benediction of the Pope in the Piazza of St. Mark. From the Royal Hall descends the Royal Staircase Scala Regia. All down its two flights the reverent clergy lined the way, as the "Church Princes" swept by. In the lower flight the Ionic capitals of the colonnade gracefully lengthened out the perspective, while the stately march of mitres glanced between the shafts. With a supreme sense of the importance of the act did the train pass down the noble stair; each prelate no less sustaining the dignity of the moment because just then the eye of the outer world beheld them not. In the view of a real Vaticanist a great procession is a good in itself, and a very high good, apart from its uses; or, perhaps more properly, it is felt that its effectiveness for use wholly depends upon the sense of discipline in its members.

Finally the foot of the stair was reached. The portative throne passed the statue of Constantine, the first who ever drew sword for the Church. It swept round and faced the statue of Charlemagne, the first upon whose head the Church ever set imperial crown. Each stood at an end of the magnificent vista formed by the portico—grand watchers at the door of the Pontiff, ever telling that the kings whom his Church wants are not merely nursing fathers but champions in fight. As the sight of their uplifted monarch burst upon the people, and that of the people upon their king, the heavy guns from the Aventine were firing alternately with those of St. Angelo, while all the bells were trying to exceed the joypeal of the preceding day. Before his Holiness reached this point, the procession had already entered the nave in slow and gorgeous order.