Chapter 13

FOOTNOTES:[312]See Dr. G.H. Putnam'sCensorship of the Church of Rome(2 vols., 1907), i., 168.[313]See, besides the work of Pallavicini already quoted, Paolo Sarpi'sIstoria del Concilio Tridentino.[314]It is, however, true that the hostile Italian biographer, Gregorio Leti (Vita di Sisto Quinto, 3 vols., 1693), who tells this must be read with discretion; and we must use equal discretion in reading Tempesti'sStoria della Vita e Geste di Sisto V.(1754), which is inspired by a contrary determination to praise Sixtus. I need recommend only the full and generally judicious biography of Sixtus which we owe to Baron de Hübner (Sixte Quint, 3 vols., 1870), remarking that in it the panegyrical tendency is more conspicuous than the critical. For a smaller biography M.A.J. Dumesnil'sHistoire de Sixte-Quint(1869) is excellent.[315]December 5, 1586.[316]BullQuum Sicut, May 28, 1586. BullQuum Alias, December 17, 1585.[317]Recent Popes had established what was, in effect, a system of life assurance. A large money-payment secured an income for life out of the proceeds of certain taxes. Sixtus multiplied theseMonti(as the funds were called) in order to obtain a large sum of money at once, and he thus mortgaged the resources of the Holy See. Ranke, whose chapters on Sixtus are amongst his best, heavily censures the Pope's finance.[318]I., 349.[319]See the author'sCandid History of the Jesuits(1913), pp. 110-113.[320]BullCum Unoquoque, January 1, 1586.[321]BullQugæ Ordini, 1589.[322]BullCum Benigno, 1585.[323]This edifying mood of the Pope might have been fatal to the ancient Roman remains if he had enjoyed a lengthy Pontificate. When the cardinals timidly curbed his iconoclasm, he replied that he would destroy the uglier of the pagan monuments and restore the remainder. Among these "uglier" monuments were the Septizonium of Severus, the surviving part of which he actually demolished, and the tomb of Cæcilia Metella!

FOOTNOTES:

[312]See Dr. G.H. Putnam'sCensorship of the Church of Rome(2 vols., 1907), i., 168.

[313]See, besides the work of Pallavicini already quoted, Paolo Sarpi'sIstoria del Concilio Tridentino.

[314]It is, however, true that the hostile Italian biographer, Gregorio Leti (Vita di Sisto Quinto, 3 vols., 1693), who tells this must be read with discretion; and we must use equal discretion in reading Tempesti'sStoria della Vita e Geste di Sisto V.(1754), which is inspired by a contrary determination to praise Sixtus. I need recommend only the full and generally judicious biography of Sixtus which we owe to Baron de Hübner (Sixte Quint, 3 vols., 1870), remarking that in it the panegyrical tendency is more conspicuous than the critical. For a smaller biography M.A.J. Dumesnil'sHistoire de Sixte-Quint(1869) is excellent.

[315]December 5, 1586.

[316]BullQuum Sicut, May 28, 1586. BullQuum Alias, December 17, 1585.

[317]Recent Popes had established what was, in effect, a system of life assurance. A large money-payment secured an income for life out of the proceeds of certain taxes. Sixtus multiplied theseMonti(as the funds were called) in order to obtain a large sum of money at once, and he thus mortgaged the resources of the Holy See. Ranke, whose chapters on Sixtus are amongst his best, heavily censures the Pope's finance.

[318]I., 349.

[319]See the author'sCandid History of the Jesuits(1913), pp. 110-113.

[320]BullCum Unoquoque, January 1, 1586.

[321]BullQugæ Ordini, 1589.

[322]BullCum Benigno, 1585.

[323]This edifying mood of the Pope might have been fatal to the ancient Roman remains if he had enjoyed a lengthy Pontificate. When the cardinals timidly curbed his iconoclasm, he replied that he would destroy the uglier of the pagan monuments and restore the remainder. Among these "uglier" monuments were the Septizonium of Severus, the surviving part of which he actually demolished, and the tomb of Cæcilia Metella!

CHAPTER XVII

BENEDICT XIV.: THE SCHOLAR-POPE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:[324]Modern research has easily settled that Galilei was not physically ill-treated, and that there was probably no intention to carry out the formal threat of torture. But this refutation of the excesses of the older anti-Papal historians leaves the serious part of the indictment intact. Galilei was forbidden by the Holy Office in 1616 to advance as a positive discovery his view of the earth's position. In 1632, to the great indignation of Urban VIII., he disregarded this prohibition, which he thought a dead letter, and was condemned by the Inquisition as "vehemently suspected of heresy." The crime against culture is not materially lessened by the fact that the Inquisition lodged the astronomer in its most comfortable rooms.[325]Lettres familières(1858), i., 250-1. The President was in Rome during the conclave in the following year and repeated that Lambertini was "licentious in speech but exemplary in conduct" (ii., 399). On a later page (439) he frankly describes the Pope as "indecent in speech." There is a passage in one of the Pope's later letters to Cardinal Tencin which may illustrate his censure. Benedict tells the Cardinal that he has bought a nude Venus for his collection, and finds that the Prince and Princess of Württemberg have, with a diamond ring, scratched their names on a part of the statue which one may not particularize as plainly as the Pope does (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., ii., 268).[326]Lettres familières, ii., 439.[327]September 29, 1745.[328]Letter to Tencin August 1, 1753 (ii., 282).[329]The correspondence is reproduced in Artaud de Montor'sHistoire des Souverains Pontifes(1849), vii., 79. Benedict was severely censured by the pious, and he declared to Cardinal Tencin that he "did not find it clear that Voltaire was a stranger to the faith" (i., 246). The biography of Benedict, one of the most interesting of the Popes, is still to be written. F.X. Kraus, in his edition of Benedict's letters, reproduces fragments of a pretentious Latin biography by a contemporary, Scarselli, and M. Guarnacci has a sketch in hisVitæ Pontificum Romanorum(1751, vol. ii., col. 487-94). These relate only to his earlier years. A. Sandini (Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum, 1754) has only three pages on Benedict, and the anonymousVie du Pape Benoît XIV.(1783—really written by Cardinal Caraccioli) is not critical. The biographical sketches in Artaud de Montor and Ranke are quite inadequate. But the biographer has now a rich material in Benedict's Bulls (completeBullarium, 13 vols., 1826 and 1827), works (chief edition, 17 vols., 1839-1846, and three further works edited by Heiner in 1904), and letters. Of the latter the best editions are those of F.X. Kraus (Briefe Benedicts XIV. an den Canonicus Pier Francesco Peggi, 1884), Morani ("Lettere di Benedetto XIV. all' arcidiacono Innocenzo Storani" in theArchivio Storico per le Marche e per l'Umbria, 1885), Fresco ("Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale Angelo Maria Querini" in theNuovo Archivio Veneto, 1909, tomo xviii., pp. 5-93, and xix., pp. 159-215), "Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale F. Tamburini" in theArchivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. xxxiv. (1911), pp. 35-73, and E. de Heeckeren (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., 2 vols., 1912).[330]I., 49.[331]Ex omnibus Christiani orbis, Oct. 16, 1756. It prescribes silence on the disputed issues and leaves it to confessors to determine whether their penitents are so wilfully rebellious against the BullUnigenitusas to be excluded from the sacraments.[332]July 1, 1742.[333]September 12, 1744.[334]June 29, 1748.[335]March 18, 1751.

FOOTNOTES:

[324]Modern research has easily settled that Galilei was not physically ill-treated, and that there was probably no intention to carry out the formal threat of torture. But this refutation of the excesses of the older anti-Papal historians leaves the serious part of the indictment intact. Galilei was forbidden by the Holy Office in 1616 to advance as a positive discovery his view of the earth's position. In 1632, to the great indignation of Urban VIII., he disregarded this prohibition, which he thought a dead letter, and was condemned by the Inquisition as "vehemently suspected of heresy." The crime against culture is not materially lessened by the fact that the Inquisition lodged the astronomer in its most comfortable rooms.

[325]Lettres familières(1858), i., 250-1. The President was in Rome during the conclave in the following year and repeated that Lambertini was "licentious in speech but exemplary in conduct" (ii., 399). On a later page (439) he frankly describes the Pope as "indecent in speech." There is a passage in one of the Pope's later letters to Cardinal Tencin which may illustrate his censure. Benedict tells the Cardinal that he has bought a nude Venus for his collection, and finds that the Prince and Princess of Württemberg have, with a diamond ring, scratched their names on a part of the statue which one may not particularize as plainly as the Pope does (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., ii., 268).

[326]Lettres familières, ii., 439.

[327]September 29, 1745.

[328]Letter to Tencin August 1, 1753 (ii., 282).

[329]The correspondence is reproduced in Artaud de Montor'sHistoire des Souverains Pontifes(1849), vii., 79. Benedict was severely censured by the pious, and he declared to Cardinal Tencin that he "did not find it clear that Voltaire was a stranger to the faith" (i., 246). The biography of Benedict, one of the most interesting of the Popes, is still to be written. F.X. Kraus, in his edition of Benedict's letters, reproduces fragments of a pretentious Latin biography by a contemporary, Scarselli, and M. Guarnacci has a sketch in hisVitæ Pontificum Romanorum(1751, vol. ii., col. 487-94). These relate only to his earlier years. A. Sandini (Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum, 1754) has only three pages on Benedict, and the anonymousVie du Pape Benoît XIV.(1783—really written by Cardinal Caraccioli) is not critical. The biographical sketches in Artaud de Montor and Ranke are quite inadequate. But the biographer has now a rich material in Benedict's Bulls (completeBullarium, 13 vols., 1826 and 1827), works (chief edition, 17 vols., 1839-1846, and three further works edited by Heiner in 1904), and letters. Of the latter the best editions are those of F.X. Kraus (Briefe Benedicts XIV. an den Canonicus Pier Francesco Peggi, 1884), Morani ("Lettere di Benedetto XIV. all' arcidiacono Innocenzo Storani" in theArchivio Storico per le Marche e per l'Umbria, 1885), Fresco ("Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale Angelo Maria Querini" in theNuovo Archivio Veneto, 1909, tomo xviii., pp. 5-93, and xix., pp. 159-215), "Lettere inedite di Benedetto XIV. al Cardinale F. Tamburini" in theArchivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. xxxiv. (1911), pp. 35-73, and E. de Heeckeren (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., 2 vols., 1912).

[330]I., 49.

[331]Ex omnibus Christiani orbis, Oct. 16, 1756. It prescribes silence on the disputed issues and leaves it to confessors to determine whether their penitents are so wilfully rebellious against the BullUnigenitusas to be excluded from the sacraments.

[332]July 1, 1742.

[333]September 12, 1744.

[334]June 29, 1748.

[335]March 18, 1751.

CHAPTER XVIII

PIUS VII. AND THE REVOLUTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What really happened at Savona is the only serious controversy in the life of Pius VII., and this controversy is based entirely on the reluctance of Catholic writers to admit that the Pope erred. The usual theory, based on the work of D'Haussonville,[347]is that Pius fell into so grave a condition, mentally and physically, that he can hardly be regarded as responsible. Recent and authoritative Catholic writers have given a different defence. H. Welschinger[348]seems to suggest that Pius was drugged by his medical attendant, but he goes on to make this fantastic suggestion superfluous by claiming that Pius did not consent at all, either orally or in writing. Father Rinieri, on the other hand, scorns the theory of temporary insanity, holds that the Pope deliberately assented, and claims that the consent was perfectly justified because it was conditional; the Pope agreedif, as the bishops said, his concession would lead to peace and his restoration to liberty. These theories destroy each other, and are severally inadmissible. Welschinger, to exonerate the Pope from weakness, assumes that the Archbishop of Tours lied; for that prelate wrote at once to Paris that they had "drawn up a note in His Holiness's room, and he had acceptedit," and on his duplicate of the note he wrote: "This note, drawn up in His Holiness's room, and in a sense under his directions, was approved and agreed to."[349]Indeed, when Welschinger himself quotes the Pope saying, in his fit of repentance, "Luckily Isignednothing," we gather that Piusorallyassented. Rinieri, on the other hand, is wrong in making the Pope's assent strictly conditional; the last clause of the note merely states that the Pope is assured that good results will follow. And both writers are at fault when they lay stress on the fact that the note was a mere draft of an agreement. Unless the four bishops lied, Pius VII., under great importunity and predictions of disaster, and in a very poor state of health, consented to a principle which was utterly inconsistent with Papal teaching.

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

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

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

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

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