FOOTNOTES:[352]During his twenty-months' Pontificate, in 1829, Catholic Emancipation was carried in England. But the Quirinal's share was confined to rejoicing. Consalvi, however, had "worked incessantly" for it, and had been much aided by the Duchess of Devonshire. See his words in Artaud'sHistoire du Pape Léon XII., i., 171.[353]The contradiction is characteristic of the literature on Pius IX. Most of it was written before or just after his death and is fiercely partisan. Petruccelli della Gattina'sPie IX.(1866) is the chief and least reliable of the hostile biographies: T.A. Trollope'sStory of the Life of Pius IX.(2 vols., 1877) is one of the most temperate of the anti-Papal works and still has some use: F. Hitchman'sPius the Ninth(1878) is slighter but equally moderate. Such studies as those of Shea, Maguire, Dawson, Wappmannsperger (2 vols.), Stepischnegg (2 vols.), Pougeois (6 vols.), and Freiherr von Helfert are equally prejudiced on the Catholic side. The best study of the character and work of Pius is Dr. F. Nielsen'sPapacy in the Nineteenth Century(2 vols., 1906), a temperate (perhaps not sufficiently critical) and scholarly work. Bishop G.S. Pelczar'sPio IX. e il suo Pontificato(3 vols., Italian translation 1909) is learned but fulsome and undiscriminating. Father R. Ballerini's incomplete study (published asLes premières pages du Pontificat du Pape Pie IX., 1909) has no distinction. For special aspects see D. Silvagni,La Corte e la Società Romana(1885), and Count von Hoensbroech'sRom und das Zentrum(1910), and works quoted hereafter.[354]Ballerini and Helfert deny this but Pelczar and Nielsen make it clear. The graver statement of the hostile biographers—that he spent his youth in dissipation—rests on no respectable evidence.[355]Lettres Apostoliques de Pie IX., p. 177.[356]The original documents relating to the Pope's actions will be found in theActa Pii Noni,Acta Sanctæ Sedis, andDiscorsi del Summo Pontefice Pio IX. (1872-8).[357]In the plebiscite which was taken in the city of Rome 40,785 voted for incorporation and forty-six for the Pope: in the city and province 133,681 voted for incorporation and 1507 against. Naturally, the minority is not fully represented, as many refused to vote.
FOOTNOTES:
[352]During his twenty-months' Pontificate, in 1829, Catholic Emancipation was carried in England. But the Quirinal's share was confined to rejoicing. Consalvi, however, had "worked incessantly" for it, and had been much aided by the Duchess of Devonshire. See his words in Artaud'sHistoire du Pape Léon XII., i., 171.
[352]During his twenty-months' Pontificate, in 1829, Catholic Emancipation was carried in England. But the Quirinal's share was confined to rejoicing. Consalvi, however, had "worked incessantly" for it, and had been much aided by the Duchess of Devonshire. See his words in Artaud'sHistoire du Pape Léon XII., i., 171.
[353]The contradiction is characteristic of the literature on Pius IX. Most of it was written before or just after his death and is fiercely partisan. Petruccelli della Gattina'sPie IX.(1866) is the chief and least reliable of the hostile biographies: T.A. Trollope'sStory of the Life of Pius IX.(2 vols., 1877) is one of the most temperate of the anti-Papal works and still has some use: F. Hitchman'sPius the Ninth(1878) is slighter but equally moderate. Such studies as those of Shea, Maguire, Dawson, Wappmannsperger (2 vols.), Stepischnegg (2 vols.), Pougeois (6 vols.), and Freiherr von Helfert are equally prejudiced on the Catholic side. The best study of the character and work of Pius is Dr. F. Nielsen'sPapacy in the Nineteenth Century(2 vols., 1906), a temperate (perhaps not sufficiently critical) and scholarly work. Bishop G.S. Pelczar'sPio IX. e il suo Pontificato(3 vols., Italian translation 1909) is learned but fulsome and undiscriminating. Father R. Ballerini's incomplete study (published asLes premières pages du Pontificat du Pape Pie IX., 1909) has no distinction. For special aspects see D. Silvagni,La Corte e la Società Romana(1885), and Count von Hoensbroech'sRom und das Zentrum(1910), and works quoted hereafter.
[353]The contradiction is characteristic of the literature on Pius IX. Most of it was written before or just after his death and is fiercely partisan. Petruccelli della Gattina'sPie IX.(1866) is the chief and least reliable of the hostile biographies: T.A. Trollope'sStory of the Life of Pius IX.(2 vols., 1877) is one of the most temperate of the anti-Papal works and still has some use: F. Hitchman'sPius the Ninth(1878) is slighter but equally moderate. Such studies as those of Shea, Maguire, Dawson, Wappmannsperger (2 vols.), Stepischnegg (2 vols.), Pougeois (6 vols.), and Freiherr von Helfert are equally prejudiced on the Catholic side. The best study of the character and work of Pius is Dr. F. Nielsen'sPapacy in the Nineteenth Century(2 vols., 1906), a temperate (perhaps not sufficiently critical) and scholarly work. Bishop G.S. Pelczar'sPio IX. e il suo Pontificato(3 vols., Italian translation 1909) is learned but fulsome and undiscriminating. Father R. Ballerini's incomplete study (published asLes premières pages du Pontificat du Pape Pie IX., 1909) has no distinction. For special aspects see D. Silvagni,La Corte e la Società Romana(1885), and Count von Hoensbroech'sRom und das Zentrum(1910), and works quoted hereafter.
[354]Ballerini and Helfert deny this but Pelczar and Nielsen make it clear. The graver statement of the hostile biographers—that he spent his youth in dissipation—rests on no respectable evidence.
[354]Ballerini and Helfert deny this but Pelczar and Nielsen make it clear. The graver statement of the hostile biographers—that he spent his youth in dissipation—rests on no respectable evidence.
[355]Lettres Apostoliques de Pie IX., p. 177.
[355]Lettres Apostoliques de Pie IX., p. 177.
[356]The original documents relating to the Pope's actions will be found in theActa Pii Noni,Acta Sanctæ Sedis, andDiscorsi del Summo Pontefice Pio IX. (1872-8).
[356]The original documents relating to the Pope's actions will be found in theActa Pii Noni,Acta Sanctæ Sedis, andDiscorsi del Summo Pontefice Pio IX. (1872-8).
[357]In the plebiscite which was taken in the city of Rome 40,785 voted for incorporation and forty-six for the Pope: in the city and province 133,681 voted for incorporation and 1507 against. Naturally, the minority is not fully represented, as many refused to vote.
[357]In the plebiscite which was taken in the city of Rome 40,785 voted for incorporation and forty-six for the Pope: in the city and province 133,681 voted for incorporation and 1507 against. Naturally, the minority is not fully represented, as many refused to vote.
CHAPTER XX
LEO XIII.
WhenLeo XIII. mounted the Pontifical throne, the Papacy had had three quarters of a century of disastrous experience of the reactionary policy. The Restoration of 1815 had seemed to inaugurate for Rome a new period of prosperity. The touching experiences of Pius VII. and the widely recognized need of combating by religious influence the new spirit of revolt disposed the monarchs of Europe, and a large part of their subjects, to regard the successor of Peter with respect. He had been their ally in resisting Napoleon: he was their ally in restoring feudalism. England moderated its rude tradition of "the Scarlet Woman." The Tsar of the Russias felt that Romanism was a large element in the spiritual renaissance he contemplated. Louis XVIII. remembered how altar and throne had fallen together. Ferdinand of Spain drowned the revolt in blood. Austria reconsidered its Febronianism. Italy seemed incapable of rebellion.
But the revolutionary wave had retired only to come back with greater effect, and from 1830 to 1850 the face of Europe was transformed. The Popes almost alone defied the spirit to which monarchs bowed, and they stood almost alone amid their ruins. England returned to its disdain: Russia and Switzerland angrily broke offrelations with the Vatican: Germany was engaged in what the Vatican regarded as a formidable effort to crush Catholicism in the new Empire. Austria was sullen and weakened. France was rapidly passing into its third and final revolt against Catholicism. Spain was forced into an alliance with the growing Liberals against the Carlists. Italy was overwhelmingly opposed to the Papacy on what the Papacy declared to be a sacred and vital issue, and was honeycombed with Rationalism. Belgium was almost dominated by a Liberal middle class. The South American republics were falling away in succession. The two most profoundly Catholic peoples, Ireland and Poland, were ruined, and their children were scattered and seduced. Thus would any penetrating cardinal have interpreted the situation of the Church in 1878; yet, if his penetration were great enough, he would see that there was a tendency among this Liberal middle class, which now dominated Europe, to seek once more an alliance with religion against the deeper social heresies which were appearing. Would the new Pope prove subtle enough to grasp that opportunity and save the Church? His "infallibility" would avail little: he would be unwise to emphasize it. He must be a diplomatist and a rhetorician.
The new Pope, Leo XIII., was nearly sixty-eight years old, and had had a better education in the history of the nineteenth century than most of the Italian cardinals had. Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci was born on March 2, 1810, at Carpineto. His first lesson, in the country mansion, would be to hear his father. Colonel Pecci, and his very pious mother, a Tertiary of the Franciscan Order, talk of the Napoleonic nightmare that had just passed away. From the ageof eight to fourteen he was under the care of the Jesuits at Viterbo, and, as it was represented to him that the younger sons in so large a family had to look to the Church for their income, after some hesitation, he allowed them to tonsure him, at the age of eleven.[358]In 1824 his mother died, and he went to study, still under the Jesuits, at the Collegio Romano at Rome. He had conspicuous ability and high character, and besides improving his Latin—he already wrote Latin poems—he studied philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy. He attracted attention, as clever boys attract the attention of the clergy, and was directed toward the clerical career. He must enter the "Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics," said one prelate; and, with the aid of his brothers, he drew up a genealogical tree to prove that his father, the easy-going colonel of Carpineto, was descended from the mediæval Pecci of Siena. The Academy did not pronounce his proof valid—the connexion is probable enough—but, on his merits, and in view of his important patrons, admitted him among the nobles of Anagni (1831).
Joachim—he had called himself Vincenzo until 1832—took a degree in theology, and told his brothers that hewas going to illumine their ancient family. He still loved to take a flintlock musket over the hills during his holidays, but he indulged in no dissipations and became pale and thin over the books which were to help his ambition. His father died in 1836, and it is in his naïve letters to his brothers that we discover the human elements ignored by his eloquent biographers.[359]He begins to follow politics, in the most ardent Papal spirit. Cardinal Pacca, the intransigeant, recommended the pale, slim young cleric to Gregory XVI., and in 1837 he was appointed domestic prelate. Cardinal Sala also befriended the young Monsignore, and he went from one small office to another. Sala pointed out that for further advancement he must become a priest, and he became a priest (December 31, 1837); but his letters make it clear that he entered the priesthood in a mood of such exalted piety that Sala feared he was about to quit the world and become a Jesuit.
About a month after his ordination (February 2, 1838) he was appointed Apostolic Delegate (Civil Governor) of Benevento, where the brigandage which disgraced the Papal States was particularly rabid. In three years, with the aid of a skilful chief of police, he almost suppressed brigandage and smuggling, and did much for the province. His progress was not so heroically triumphant as the biographers represent. In his letters to his brothers he complains that his predecessor has robbed the treasury and they must help him: that his ninety-seven ducats a month do not enable him to have the fine horses and carriage he needs: and, later (in 1839), that the clerics at Rome are plotting to cheat him of the higher promotion which he deserves. In 1841 the Pope transferred him to Perugia, and hedid good work in reforming education, founding a bank for small traders, and so on.
In January, 1843, his real education began. He was appointed Nuncio at Brussels and was made titular Archbishop of Damietta. Able as he was, the promotion to so important an office was premature. Of French (or any languages but Latin and Italian) he knew not a syllable until he set out, and with the modern thought which was then current in Brussels he was acquainted only by means of the version of it given by Pius IX. in the Syllabus, of which he fully approved. His handsome presence and amiable ways carried him far. There is an almost boyish expression on his face at this period: on the long, thin, smiling face and bright eyes and soft sensuous mouth. King Leopold, a Protestant, liked him, and allowed the young archbishop to attract him to religious functions and persuade him of the importance of religion in appeasing social ambitions. Pecci, in turn, could not contemplate the gas-lit streets, the railways, the postal system, etc., of Belgium, without realizing that the Papal States would have to admitsomethingof this modern thought. But he was for a safe modernism, consistent with theQuanta Curaand the Syllabus. He was suave to all: even to the rebellious Gioberti, who was then giving Italian lessons in Brussels. To this period of his career belongs the good story of a naughty Liberal marquis, who ventured to offer him a pinch of snuff from a box which was adorned with a nude Venus, and the Archbishop is said to have taken it and asked: "Madame la marquise?" Secretly, however, he urged the Catholics to organize a struggle against the Liberals. The Liberals wanted a compromise on the school-question, and, when the Nuncio assisted in defeating it, the Premier Deschampswrote contemptuously to Rome that they would like a Nuncio who was a "statesman." As, about the same time, the bishopric of Perugia fell vacant and the Perugians asked for their former Delegate, Gregory recalled Pecci. His disappointment—which he plainly expresses in his letters—was softened only by the Pope's assurance that the transfer would be regarded as "equal to promotion to a nunciature of the first class"; in other words, he remained on the path to the cardinalate, as he desired.[360]
From Brussels he brought a warm testimonial written by King Leopold, and he spent a month in London (where he had an interview with the Queen) and some weeks in Paris. He reached Rome in May (1846), to find Gregory dying, and he witnessed the election of Pius IX., and, at Perugia, applauded the early "liberalism" of the Pope. Perugia had a large share of the advanced thinkers who now overran Italy, and the Bishop would assuredly become more closely acquainted with their ideas. From his later encyclicals, however, one must suppose that he never made a profound study of their claims, either on the intellectual or the social side. Of philosophy he had only the mediæval version given him in the Collegio Romano and the Sapienza, and of economics or sociology he knew nothing. Such science as he knew—the elements of chemistry and astronomy—was easily reconcilable with religion, and this gave him an apparently liberal attitude toward science. On the other hand, he had genuine sympathies and he felt that the new aspirations of the working classwere not to be met with a sheer rebuff.[361]The ideas of Gioberti and Ventura appealed to him. Even when Gioberti had fallen out of favour at the Quirinal, Archbishop Pecci, when he passed through Perugia in 1848, gave him hospitality in his palace. Henri des Houx affirms that he heard on good authority that for this Pius IX. suspended the Archbishop from pontifical duties for several weeks. Later, he incurred suspicion by permitting a memorial service at the death of Cavour. It is admitted by the leading Catholic biographers that he was in bad odour at the Quirinal. The promised cardinal's hat was withheld for eight years[362]and his great ability was wasted on a provincial bishopric. The slight is ascribed to the jealousy of Cardinal Antonelli, and his advance after the Secretary's death confirms the suspicion.
It is, however, plain that Pecci was a most excellent Bishop, and that he was no more "Liberal" than Pius IX. in his first year. He strictly organized the work and education of the clergy, restored the seminary and built a College of St. Thomas, founded many schools, churches, and hospitals, brought Brothers of Mercy and nuns from Belgium, and opened a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He left a fine record of religious-social work, and the orthodox poor loved him. Yet we must set aside the exaggerations of biographers. Pecci cherished the purely Papal ideal and was out of touch with the majority of his people. In 1859, when a group of rebels set up a "Provisional Government" at Perugia, he nervously shut himself in his palace for two days and, without a protest, allowed the ferociousSwiss Guard sent by Antonelli to wear themselves out in an orgy of slaughter and pillage. A few months later Sardinia expelled the Papal troops, and, when a plebiscite was taken, 97,000 voted for incorporation in the kingdom of Sardinia, and only 386 voted against. The Archbishop protested emphatically and consistently against the seizure of the Pope's temporal power, and, when the hated laws of Sardinia were successively applied to Perugia (on civil marriage, the suppression of the religious orders, military service for clerics, etc.), he continued to protest in the warmest language. In 1862 he suspended three priests who adopted the Italian cause, and was cited before the civil tribunal; but the case was allowed to lapse. We know that he was carefully watched from the Quirinal, and that he had an informant of his own at the Curia,[363]but his pronouncements and letters make it abundantly clear that he never swerved from the strict Papal conception of contemporary thought and politics.
Antonelli died in December, 1876, and (as is ignored by most of his biographers) Pecci very shortly went to live at Rome—long before he was appointed Chamberlain. He had an able coadjutor in the bishopric, and he pleaded his age and increasing weakness. He lived in the modest Falconieri Palace, and trusted to get a suburbicarian bishopric. To his annoyance, two which fell vacant in the next few weeks were given by Pius to others, but at length, in August, the Pope appointed him Camerlengo (Chamberlain). In that capacity he had, the following February, to tap the dead Pope on the forehead with a hammer and to arrange theConclave. He was not widely known at Rome, and few foresaw his elevation to the throne. It is, in fact, probable that Pius IX. had made him Camerlengo, not in order to exclude him from the Papacy, but because he was not likely to be required for it. Since Alexander VI. no Chamberlain had been elected Pope. There were, however, shrewd observers who predicted his rise, and little surprise was expressed when, after the third scrutiny, on February 20th, he secured forty-four out of the sixty-one votes. We may set aside romantic speculations about the Conclave. A few cardinals perceived that the Church needed in its ruler just such a combination of clear intelligence, broad knowledge, and diplomatic temper as Cardinal Pecci possessed, and he was sufficiently sound on Papal politics to disarm the more conservative. It is not impossible that waverers reflected as they gazed on the worn white frame of the cardinal, that, whatever policy he adopted, Leo XIII. would not long rule the Church.
The Liberal press had recalled his friendship with Gioberti and his permission of a service in memory of Cavour, but Leo quickly reassured the more rigid cardinals. The crowd gathered in the great square to receive the blessing of the new Pope, yet hour followed hour without his making an appearance. R. de Cesare shows that the Italian Government was prepared, not only to preserve order, but to render military honours if he appeared on the balcony. The intransigeant cardinals opposed it, and four hours later he gave the blessing inside St. Peter's. Similarly with his coronation. It is untrue that the Italian Government refused to take measures to preserve order if he were, as was usual, crowned in St. Peter's. On the advice of the more conservative cardinals he chose to be crowned insemi-privacy in the Sistine Chapel on March 3d.[364]Indeed when, on February 22d, he had been compelled to go to his late palace for his papers, he crossed Rome in the utmost secrecy. He would, like Pius, have "no truck with the robbers." To the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Swiss President he had written on the day of his election to say that he looked forward to more friendly relations, but in his first Consistory, on March 28th, he assured the cardinals that there would be no reconciliation with Italy, and on April 28th he issued his first Encyclical,Inscrutabile, in which, besides asserting the claim of the temporal power, he described Europe, in more graceful terms than Pius, yet in the same spirit, as filled with a "pestilential virus" and nearing death unless it speedily took the antidote of Papal obedience. There was to be no truck with "the new civilization" also.
Yet Leo XIII. has passed into contemporary history as the great "reconciler of differences," in Carlyle's phrase: the man who, by a superb diplomacy and a fortunate conjunction of character and genius, rescued the Church from the dangerous position in which Pius IX. had left it and raised it to a higher level of prestige and power. The historian must make allowance for contemporary enthusiasm. Probably most rulers of ability and character have left that impression among the generation which witnessed their death. Leo, moreover, as befitted a temperate and high-minded man, excited no bitter opposition. All the current biographies of him are from Catholic pens: few of them even pretend to have the candour and balance of historical writers. Leo's story is still to be written. It suffices here to remark that the forces he most fiercely combated—Socialism and Rationalism—made during his Pontificate a progress out of all proportion to the increase of population: that the Church of Rome actually decreased, if we take account of the growth of population: and that "modernism" within the Church became the customary attitude of cultivated Catholics. Among the most potent facts of his Pontificate are the facts that France, to retain which he made grave sacrifices, was entirely lost to the Church: that Italy, which he defied, has established its position with absolute security and abandoned its creed to a remarkable extent: that Portugal, Spain, and Spanish-America have witnessed a similar spread of revolt: that in England, Germany, and America there has been no progress other than increase by births and immigration: that Leo's effort to check Socialism by a Christian social zeal failed and was almost abandoned by him in his later years: and that his attempt to impose St. Thomas of Aquinas on modern thought and his design of directing modern Scriptural research have only embarrassed the scholars of his Church. He was one of the great men of his great age, the ablest Pope in three hundred years: but he failed. He made no impression whatever on what he called the "diseases" of modern thought and life, and he left his Church numerically weaker—in proportion to the increase of population—than he found it.[365]
His policy in Italy is almost invariably described as being conciliatory without sacrificing the Papal claim.We cannot regard as entirely amiable a policy of reminding the Italian monarchy and statesmen, every few years, that they are sacrilegious and excommunicated thieves, and it is surely now clear that Leo erred in maintaining the attitude of Pius and forbidding Catholics to take part in the elections. TheCatholic Encyclopædiaimputes to him the remarkable expectation that the revolutionary elements in Italy would, if not checked by the Catholic vote, win power at the polls and the government would seek the aid of the Vatican; and the writer describes this as a miscalculation which Pius X. was obliged to correct.[366]Indeed the one wise move on the part of Leo XIII. in regard to Italy is either suppressed or discussed with strained scepticism by Catholic writers. During the first few years after his coronation Leo continued to protest against the wickedness of the world in general and of Italy in particular. In 1881 he had a singular and unpleasant proof of the resentment of Rome. On July 13th the remains of Pius IX. were transferred to the Church of St. Lawrence, where he wished to be buried, and, the government feeling that a public ceremony would lead to disorder, the translation was to be secret and nocturnal. But the "secret" was carefully divulged before the hour, and a vast crowd of the faithful assembled to do homage to the Papa-Re. The rougher anti-clericals were thus stimulated to make an unseemly protest, and Leo took occasion again to protest to the Catholic Powers that his position was intolerable.
On April 24, 1881, the Pope urged the Catholic Associations to enter the field of municipal politics, and in the following year he, in the EncyclicalEtsi nos(February 5th), and on the occasion of the death of Garibaldi (June 2d), again made severe attacks upon Italy. The friction increased. In July (1882) Leo had to protest that bishops, not recognizing the government, received no incomes or palaces, and that monks and nuns who endeavoured to evade the law of suppression were hardly treated. Then a dismissed employee of the Vatican brought an action against the Pope in the Italian court, and though the action was dismissed, the court claimed jurisdiction, and Leo made a heated protest to France and Austria. In 1884 the Propaganda was compelled to invest its money in Italian funds, and the Pope, after the customary protest, set up a number of procurators in foreign countries to whom the faithful might send their offerings. In 1886 the anti-clerical campaign became more violent; tithes were abolished, and many Italian Catholics began to desire reconciliation. Italy entered into the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany, and henceforward appeals to the "Catholic" Powers were obviously futile. France itself had by this time an anti-clerical government and majority, and German and Austrian Catholics bitterly resented the Italian attack on the Triple Alliance.
In February, 1887, Cardinal Jacobini, the Secretary of State, died, and Cardinal Rampolla entered upon his famous career. Leo openly directed the new Secretary to insist on the restoration of the temporal power, and ordered that the Rosary be recited nightly in the churches of Rome. But in the course of that year there was a change in the Vatican policy, though, since it was unsuccessful, it is usually concealed or called into question. Crispi himself revealed, a few years later, that there were negotiations for a settlementbetween the Vatican and the Quirinal, and that France, irritated by the Triple Alliance, threatened to put greater pressure on its Church unless the Pope withdrew from the negotiations.[367]Mgr. de T'Serclaes virtually admits the fact, and conjectures that Crispi wanted Italy to have a share in the approaching celebration of the Pope's Jubilee. We have no right to question Crispi's assurance that France intervened, and that the Vatican was willing to hear of compromise. The Papal authorities, however, concealed the unsuccessful offer and returned to the earlier attitude. The Pope's sacerdotal Jubilee was celebrated in 1888 with immense rejoicings, and the anti-clericals retorted with fresh legislation. In 1889 a statue of Giordano Bruno was erected at Rome. It is said that Leo XIII. spent the hours of the demonstration in tears at the foot of the altar, and that he had some idea of leaving Rome. The gates of the Vatican were carefully watched, and there was great excitement in Rome when it was announced that he had actually passed over a few yards of Roman territory—to visit the studio of a sculptor near the Vatican. But the Pope clung to his theory of being imprisoned in the Vatican, and the remaining years were like the earlier: anathema on one side, disdain and defiance on the other. When he died, the laity of Rome itself had become so largely anti-clerical that Catholic Deputies to the Chamber did not care to be seen going to mass, and in the north Socialism was advancing at a remarkable pace.
In Germany, on the other hand, Leo won considerable success, though his biographers describe it inaccurately. TheKulturkampfwas at its height when Leo was elected, and he at once wrote a firm and courteousletter to the Emperor, trusting that peace would be restored. In his cold and ironical reply (evidently written by Bismarck) the Emperor observed that there would be peace when the Pope directed the clergy to obey the laws, and Leo retorted (April 17, 1878) that the laws were inconsistent with the Catholic conscience. But circumstances favoured the Pope. Two attempts were made to assassinate the Emperor, and he directed Bismarck to see that rebellious impulses in the young were checked by religious education. It seems clear that the Emperor had begun to dislike the struggle with the Church, and by this time Bismarck himself must have seen that persecution had led only to the better organization and greater energy of the Catholics, while his policy was threatened from another side by the rapid advance of Social Democracy. The Papal Nuncio at Munich, Mgr. Aloisi-Masella, was invited to Berlin. He was instructed from Rome to decline the invitation, and Bismarck arranged a "wayside inn" meeting at Kissingen. As Bismarck insisted on the government retaining a veto on all ecclesiastical appointments, the negotiations broke down, and little progress was made when they were resumed by the Vienna Nuncio and Prince von Reuss.
In the following year Falk, the framer of the famous May Laws, resigned, and the Vatican resumed its efforts. On February 24, 1880, the Pope informed the Archbishop of Cologne that the government might have a restricted veto on the ordinations of priests if it would grant an amnesty—eight out of twelve bishops were still in exile or prison—and modify the laws. Bismarck refused, but there was some relaxation of the laws. In 1881 several bishops were appointed, and in 1882 Bismarck voted funds for a German representative at the Vatican. It was, however, at once discovered that the bargain put the Pope in a dilemma. Bismarck demanded that Leo should direct the Alsatian clergy to submit, but, though the Pope promised that he would "see to it," he dared not interfere. In 1884 diplomatic relations were formally restored. Several bishops returned from exile, and episcopal incomes were restored; but the amnesty was not extended to the Archbishop of Cologne and the Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen, and Catholic students were not allowed to go to Louvain, Rome, or Innspruck.
In 1885 Bismarck made a further step by inviting the Pope to mediate between Germany and Spain in their quarrel for the possession of the Caroline Islands. It is said that Bismarck was entrapped into this by a Catholic journalist announcing that Spain was about to make the invitation. However that may be, the invitation flattered the Vatican, and the two rebellious archbishops were "persuaded" by the Pope to resign. The German Catholics were now beginning to murmur against the Pope, and the negotiations proceeded slowly, but in 1886 Bismarck bluntly denounced the May Laws, and it was proposed to modify them. Shortly afterwards, however, it appeared that the Pope had conveyed an impression that he would pay a high price (besides the veto on priests) for the surrender. The Centre Party opposed Bismarck's new law of military service, and he appealed to Rome. Rampolla, through the Bavarian Nuncio, directed the Catholic members to desist, but, to the equal dismay of the Chancellor and the Pope, they refused to obey and caused a dissolution of the Reichstag. Their leader, Baron Frankenstein, replied to the Bavarian Nuncio that they took ordersfrom Rome only in ecclesiastical matters.[368]Bismarck, in his anger, got copies of the letters and published them. What followed we can only gather from the sequel. The Centre withdrew its opposition, the military law was passed, and the May Laws were modified. German Liberals beheld the strange spectacle of the Iron Chancellor, in the Reichstag, indignantly denying that the Pope was a "foreign power," who ought not to intervene in German affairs.
No further concessions were won from Germany—the Jesuits are still excluded—but since 1887 the Church in that country has enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity. William II. acceded to the throne in 1888, and from the first he insisted on friendly relations with Rome. On three occasions (1888, 1893, and 1903) he visited Leo at the Vatican. Bismarck retired in 1890, after a final defeat by the Centre Party. The money due to the bishops (whose incomes had been suspended) now amounted to more than £400,000, and Bismarck invited the Pope to compromise in regard to it. Leo refused; the government must settle the matter with the Catholics of Germany, he said. In the later debate in the Reichstag the Minister of Worship heatedly denounced the Pope for duplicity, but the Centre had its way and the whole sum was restored to the bishops. It is further claimed, though without documentary evidence, that the Emperor's visit to the Vatican in 1893 was for the purpose of urging the Pope to order the members of the Centre to support the new military laws. In the sequel the Catholic members were divided and the laws passed. But documents on these recent events will not reach the eye of this generation, and we cannot be sure how far theKulturkampfwas abandonedas a reward for Papal support of Germany's military policy. On the other hand, the alliance in hostility to Socialism has proved a failure. The Catholic vote at the polls fell, during Leo's Pontificate, from 27.9 per cent. of the total vote to 19.7 (in 1903): the Social Democratic vote increased nearly tenfold.[369]
In France the policy of the Pope was correct and particularly unsuccessful. A few years after the fall of the Papal States the number of professing Catholics in France arose to about thirty millions in a nation of thirty-six millions; and the sincerity of a very large proportion may be judged from the fact that nearly two thirds of the Papal income from Peter's Pence (which rose to nearly half a million sterling a year) came from French Catholics. Yet when Leo died, the professing Catholics had fallen to about six millions in a population of thirty-nine millions. We must beware of ascribing this failure to Leo XIII., though undoubtedly he never exhibited a sound knowledge or statesmanlike grasp of the situation in France. That country was developing along anti-clerical lines, and no Pope or prelate could have diverted it. Leo was absorbed in the superficial struggle of royalists and republicans until the serious development had proceeded too far. In the later seventies the anti-clericals began to assert their rapidly growing power and influence legislation. The Jesuits were again expelled, and education further withdrawn from Catholic control. The Pope followed the development in helpless concern until October 22, 1880, when, at the demand of the French faithful, he passed his censure. The Republican authoritiespaid no heed and in 1883 Leo sent a protest to President Grévy. In a cold and indifferent reply the President pointed out that the Catholic clergy could expect little favour from a Republican institution which they constantly attacked, and the Pope's attention was forcibly drawn to the royalist agitation which divided the Church and fed the anti-clerical campaign against it. We must conclude that Leo, like so many Catholics, miscalculated the recuperating power of royalism, besides fearing to offend a powerful section of the clergy and laity, as he still hesitated to direct Catholics to submit to the Republic. For a time he trusted that the democratic movement headed by the Comte de Mun would bring relief, but it increased the confusion, and on February 16, 1892, Leo issued his famous Encyclical, urging the French Catholics to submit to the Republic and assail only its anti-clerical laws. The royalists sulked: in one diocese the Peter's Pence offerings fell from £60,000 to £35,000. Even the Panama Scandal in 1893 failed to yield any advantage, and the Church completed its series of blunders by adopting the crusade against Dreyfus. In his later years Leo could but helplessly look on while Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes disestablished and debilitated the Church. Even within the Church he was compelled to witness an immense advance of the "Americanism" which he detested.[370]
In Belgium the political circumstances were more favourable to the plans of the Vatican. In the summer of 1879 the Liberals passed a law for the secularization of the elementary schools, and the Catholics complained that the Pope, who blamed the violence of their language, failed to discharge his office with due severity. In point of fact, Leo was working so diplomatically, assuring the King that the clergy must respect the civil authority and separately encouraging the clergy to resist "iniquitous" laws, that the government at length publicly taxed him with duplicity and withdrew its representative from Rome. In 1885, however, the Catholics returned to power, and, enjoying the advantage of a division of the hostile forces (Liberals and Socialists), established a lasting influence in the country.
Austria, on the other hand, proved unsatisfactory to the Vatican. From the day of its alliance with Italy the Roman officials looked with annoyance on Austria, and the consistent tone of Mgr. de T'Serclaes' references to it reflect the Vatican attitude. A letter which the Pope wrote to the bishops of Hungary in 1886, urging them to resist the new and unecclesiastical laws in regard to marriage and education, was construed as a wish to cause trouble in Austria, or between Austria and Italy, and the same murmurs arose when Leo urged the Austrian clergy to resist further Liberal laws in 1890. The laws were carried, and the protests of the Pope were disregarded. In Spain the Pope was more fortunate, as he curbed the disposition of the clergy to adopt the ill-fated Carlist cause.[371]Portugal remained outwardly faithful, and a Concordat granted by the King in 1886 permitted the Pope to effect a much needed reform in the ecclesiastical administration of India. Some advantages were won, also, in Switzerland, where the older hostility was checked, and the Church prospered.
The relations of the Vatican with Russia were singular, and gave rise to bitter complaint among the Catholic subjects of the Tsar. To the amiable letter in which Leo announced his election the Tsar gave a cold and discouraging reply. In 1879, however, the attempt on the Tsar's life gave Leo an opportunity to insinuate his belief that only Catholic influence could curb these criminal impulses; and when Alexander II was assassinated in 1883, he approached his successor with more success. In the succeeding years of diplomatic intercourse the repression of the Catholic Poles was partly relieved; but no concession was made when the Pope presented to the Tsar the petition of the Ruthenian Catholics in 1884, or when he deprecated the exile of the Bishop of Wilna in 1885. In 1888, however, Russia approached the Vatican through Vienna, and the negotiations have given rise to acute controversy. The Poles murmured that the Pope was disposed to betray their national interests in order to please France by obliging its virtual ally, Russia. How far the Pope was preparing to enforce on the Poles the Russian demands—for a more extensive use of the Russian language in Poland and for a surrender of the offspring of mixed marriages—and to what extent he realized the true designs of Russia, cannot be confidently determined. It is clear only that he meditated concession, and the suspicion that he thus sought a political advantage in France is not implausible.
A similar complaint arose among that other shattered Catholic nation, the Irish. The Parnellite movement of the eighties, it was said, was used by him as a means of accommodating and conciliating England; and there is little room for doubt that this design influenced his policy. It was one of the general lines of his campaign in Europe to persuade rulers that the power of hisChurch would be their greatest guarantee of docility. In 1881 he warned Archbishop McCabe that the disturbances of public order in Ireland were not to be favoured, and he made the hint more explicit in the following year. In 1883 he gravely disturbed the Irish Catholics by issuing a drastic condemnation of the Parnell Testimonial Fund and forbidding the clergy to work for it; while Errington was amiably received at the Vatican. The disturbance became graver, and in 1885 Leo summoned the Irish bishops to Rome. Even their representations failed to disturb his policy, and on April 13, 1888 (after a Roman envoy, Mgr. Persico, had been sent on the quaint mission of studying the situation in Ireland), a decree of the Holy Office condemned the "Plan of Campaign." So loud were the murmurs at this invasion of the political rights of the Irish that an Encyclical (Sæpe Nos) had to be dispatched on June 24 to secure the submission of the bishops. We may at least discover some penetration in the Pope's confidence that Ireland would not permanently resent the abuse of his authority.
The advantage gained in England was slight. The broad stream of immigration from Ireland since 1840, which had given the illusion of a rapid growth of Catholicism, and the more slender stream which is associated with the Oxford Movement, had materially lessened, and a period of loss had begun (in proportion to the increase of population). For nearly two decades the Pope was content with domestic measures like the regulation of the conflicts between monks and bishops (May 8, 1881) and the establishment of an hierarchy in India. On April 20, 1895, he took a bolder step, and in the EncyclicalAd Anglosinvited the English people to renew their ancient allegiance to Rome.Undismayed by the absence of a response, he, on September 13, 1896, issued the famous EncyclicalApostolicæ Curæ, in which he assailed the validity of orders in the English Church. The brisk controversy which ensued does not concern us; but we may assume that, from the figures at the disposal of the Vatican, the Pope would sadly realize, when the century drew to a close, that the Catholic Church in England had not increased, beyond the natural growth by births and immigration, during his long and laborious Pontificate.
In the United States Leo had a thorny task. With his keen scent for Socialistic insurgence against constituted authority, he proposed, in 1887, to condemn the 730,000 American Catholic workers who were incorporated in the "Knights of Labour." Cardinal Gibbon defended them, and a grudging toleration was issued from Rome. In 1893 the Pope sought to improve his relations with the Republic by taking a handsome part in the fourth centenary of the discovery of America, but by that time a grave struggle had begun to rend the cosmopolitan Church in the States. Americans naturally resented the Germanism of the German Catholic schools, and in 1892 Archbishop Ireland consented to hand over to the School Board some of these elementary schools, on condition that the Catholic teachers were retained and hours were assigned for religious instruction. The Germans and the Ultramontanes raised the cry that Ireland and Gibbon were favouring the "godless schools" of the Republic, and denounced the plan to Rome. Again the Cardinal and the Archbishop won a grudgingtolerari posse("may be tolerated in the circumstances") but a fierce agitation went on in the American Church, and the Pope'srepresentative, Mgr. Satolli, was vigorously opposed by the more American prelates.
In 1896 it was believed that Satolli was instrumental in securing the removal of Mgr. Keane from the rectorship of the Catholic University at Washington, and when an intriguing German professor was dismissed by the University authorities and Rome demanded his restoration. Cardinal Gibbon forced the Pope to withdraw the demand. The ultras then—with the persistent aid of the Jesuits and theirCiviltà Cattolicaat Rome—attacked a biography of Father Hecker, of which an American translation had been published with warm recommendations from Ireland and Gibbon. A Roman prelate authorized the printing of a scathing attack on the book, and, although Rampolla protested that neither he nor the Pope was involved in the authorization, the American prelates took up a menacing attitude. At this juncture Leo, whose repeated counsels to lay the strife had been disregarded, wrote his famous letter on Americanism to Cardinal Gibbon (January 22d, 1899). Piquant stories are told of the sentiments expressed by the American prelates, but these the historian cannot as yet control. The struggle ended in a compromise. The book was not condemned, but quietly withdrawn, and the American prelates generally disavowed the principles to which the Pope gave the name of Americanism.
These are but feeble summaries of the vast diplomatic activity which absorbed the long days of the venerable Pontiff, and one must leave almost unnoticed other important actions. In 1885 he negotiated with the Chinese government for the representative of the Celestial Empire at Rome, but the French, rightly suspecting an intrigue on the part of Germany to strengthen its influence in the Far East, forced him to desist. He had the satisfaction of closing a schism in the Armenian Church (1878), and secured favourable measures in some of the Balkan States and a few of the South American republics. He restored the Borgia Rooms in the Vatican (1897), created a modern observatory out of the old Gregorian observatory of the sixteenth century (1888), formed a Reference Library of 30,000 volumes at the Vatican, and opened the Vatican archives to scholars (1883).[372]Frail, worn to a pale shade of his former self, the devoted Pope maintained to the end his formidable struggle against a seceding world. Rising at six in the morning—often having summoned his secretary to the bedside during the night—he said his mass and heard a mass said by his chaplain. Then after a cup of chocolate or goat's milk, he began the long day's work with Rampolla, or impressed his innumerable visitors with his piercing dark eyes and translucent features. At two he dined—soup, eggs (rarely meat), and a little claret—and then, after a nap or a drive in the gardens, returned to work until his simple supper at ten. After that the journals of the world, carefully marked, were read to him; and the burning lamp told of his ceaseless thinking and praying until after midnight. Fortunately he did not, like so many Popes, lack financial resources. The Papal income before 1870 had been about £130,000, and the Italian government had offered to pay this. When Pius IX. refused the offer, his income was swollen by voluntary gifts to £400,000a year, and he left nearly a million and a quarter sterling to his successor. In addition to this large income Leo received vast sums on the occasion of his Sacerdotal Jubilee in 1888 and his Episcopal Jubilee in 1893: the presents (besides Peter's Pence) in 1888 were valued at £2,000,000 by the Vatican authorities, and in 1893 the money offered amounted to £1,600,000.
The chief means by which the Pope created in his followers the illusion of triumphant statesmanship was the Encyclical. A most assiduous student of Latin from his boyhood, he raised the ecclesiastical tongue to a level it had rarely touched and impressed the world with his literary scholarship. A Roman prelate once described to me how he would linger over the composition, toying with his pen and saying to his secretary: "Whatisthat word that Sallust uses?" His style was an attempt to combine the graceful lucidity of Sallust and the opulence of Cicero. The literary merit of his Encyclicals was so great that even generally informed men at times overlooked the inadequacy of their content: an inadequacy which is seen at once when we reflect that the great Encyclicals which dealt with the socio-political questions of the hour are not consulted by any non-Catholic authority on such questions. The attack upon Socialism which runs through his writings provoked only the smiles of his opponents and did not check the large secessions of French, German, and Italian Catholics to Socialism. A second principal theme was the duty of submission to authority, and the Pope's analysis of authority, on the basis of St. Thomas, belongs to the pre-scientific stage of sociology. A third general theme is that Catholicism made the civilization of Europe, and that that civilization is perishing because of its apostasy. In this argument the Popenot only gravely misunderstood the age in which he lived, but betrayed an historical conception of the social evolution of Europe which belongs essentially to the more backward seminaries.[373]
The chief Encyclicals, which were at one time claimed as masterly expositions of eternal principles, have already passed out of even Catholic circulation.Quod Apostolici(December 28, 1878) is a vigorous attack on Socialism, on familiar lines.Æterni Patris(August 4, 1879) imposed the philosophy of St. Thomas, the opportunist character of which the Pope never perceived, on the modern Catholic world.[374]Arcanum(February 14, 1880) asserted the strict Catholic ideal of indissoluble marriage, and had no influence on the increasing concession of divorce.Diuturnum(June 29, 1881), written after the assassination of the Tsar, argued that these outrages naturally followed the abandonment of the true faith; it did not include an examination of the cruelties of the Russian authorities.Humanum Genus(April 20, 1884) condemned Freemasonry.Immortale Dei(November 19, 1885) dealt, in Scholastic vein, with the constitution of States and the foundations of authority, and is a fine exposition of mediæval thought on the subject.In Plurimis(May 8, 1888) condemned slavery in Europe.Libertas(June 20, 1888) is another Scholastic dissertation on liberty, leading to an attack on the modernclaims of freedom of thought, worship, and expression.Rerum Novarum(May 15, 1891) is the most famous of the Pope's utterances on social questions. The organization of the Catholic workers in Italy, France, and America, and the concern about the condition of the workers (really about the growth of Socialism) which Bismarck and William II. had hypocritically conveyed to the Pope, moved him to formulate his views on social questions. The only points of relative importance are that a Pope at last consented to bless the efforts of the workers to obtain better conditions (with strict regard to private property and submission to authority), and that he pleaded for a "sufficient wage"; but the seeming boldness of this latter truism was undone a few weeks later, when the Archbishop of Malines wrote to ask if an employer sinned against justice in giving a wage which would support the worker but not his family, and the Pope nervously directed Cardinal Zigliara to reply (anonymously) that such an employer would not sin against justice, though "possibly against charity and natural equity."[375]Providentissimus Deus(November 18, 1893), which sought to promote biblical studies, caused Catholic scholars to groan in despair; it proclaimed the inerrancy of the Old Testament.[376]Apostolicæ Curæ(September 13, 1896) condemned Anglican orders, and led to a prolonged controversy in England.Graves de communi(January18, 1901) shows the later enfeeblement of the Pope's social zeal. He still approves Christian democracy, and demands justice in the industrial world, but he stresses alms-giving as a social solution and urges particular concentration on religious effort.[377]
The great Pope struggled on until his ninth decade of life had opened. He died on July 20, 1903, leaving his sternly contested inheritance to less skilful hands, marking, with his dying eyes, the onward progress of all the forces he had hailed as disastrous and the advance of "Americanism" (or Modernism) within the Church. His failure must not blind us to the greatness of his personality. He united intellectual breadth and penetration with a high character and a lofty devotion to his work. His weakness was the antiquated and restricted nature of his knowledge and his inheritance of an untenable position. The concessions he made to his age were too tardy, too grudging, and often too obviously opportunist. With equal readiness he wrote a letter of recommendation of a work of canon law (by Marianus de Luca) which advocated the execution of heretics, and he blessed the republics of France and America. But the great theme of his life was that civilization was perishing because it had shaken off the allegiance of Rome, and he lived to see the world "rounding onward to the light" and departing ever farther from its old traditions.