Chapter 27

FOOTNOTES:[425]It seems that the Bishop of Orleans, and most of the French prelates in opposition, wished to make a solemn protest against the treatment they had met with; against the advantage taken of the hot season to weary them; against the want of fairness shown towards them by the Presidents all through the discussion; and, lastly, against the excesses, insults, and affronts of which the majority had been guilty with regard to them. Having made this protest, they proposed to leave Rome immediately.—Vitelleschi, p. 200.[426]Quirinus, p. 624.[427]We have avoided noting the charges of misquotation and falsification of authorities made on the one side and the other. It would be endless.[428]Quirinus says that he should think it a sin to print it, but that the Romans freely credited and repeated it.[429]Serie VII. xi. p. 94.[430]Veuillot, ii. p. 389.[431]Friedberg, 688; or a French translation inLe Concile du Vat. et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste, p. 212.[432]Das Vatikanische Dogma, p. 5.[433]StimmenandActa Sanctæ Sedis.[434]Quirinus, p. 684.[435]Friedberg, p. 144.[436]Quirinus, p. 714.[437]TheDifficultés de la Situationsays that Guidi replied, "Holy Father, I have spoken to-day what I taught for many years, in broad daylight, in your College of the Minerva, without any one ever having found my doctrine blameable. The orthodoxy of my teaching must have been certified to your Holiness when you selected me to go to Vienna to combat certain German doctors whose principles were shaking the foundations of the Catholic faith." Printed in French in the Appendix III. toQuirinus(p. 848).[438]Civiltá, VII. xi. 424-5.[439]VII. xi. 37.[440]Civiltá, VII. xi. p. 129.[441]E.g. pp. 224, 226, 228.

FOOTNOTES:

[425]It seems that the Bishop of Orleans, and most of the French prelates in opposition, wished to make a solemn protest against the treatment they had met with; against the advantage taken of the hot season to weary them; against the want of fairness shown towards them by the Presidents all through the discussion; and, lastly, against the excesses, insults, and affronts of which the majority had been guilty with regard to them. Having made this protest, they proposed to leave Rome immediately.—Vitelleschi, p. 200.

[426]Quirinus, p. 624.

[427]We have avoided noting the charges of misquotation and falsification of authorities made on the one side and the other. It would be endless.

[428]Quirinus says that he should think it a sin to print it, but that the Romans freely credited and repeated it.

[429]Serie VII. xi. p. 94.

[430]Veuillot, ii. p. 389.

[431]Friedberg, 688; or a French translation inLe Concile du Vat. et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste, p. 212.

[432]Das Vatikanische Dogma, p. 5.

[433]StimmenandActa Sanctæ Sedis.

[434]Quirinus, p. 684.

[435]Friedberg, p. 144.

[436]Quirinus, p. 714.

[437]TheDifficultés de la Situationsays that Guidi replied, "Holy Father, I have spoken to-day what I taught for many years, in broad daylight, in your College of the Minerva, without any one ever having found my doctrine blameable. The orthodoxy of my teaching must have been certified to your Holiness when you selected me to go to Vienna to combat certain German doctors whose principles were shaking the foundations of the Catholic faith." Printed in French in the Appendix III. toQuirinus(p. 848).

[438]Civiltá, VII. xi. 424-5.

[439]VII. xi. 37.

[440]Civiltá, VII. xi. p. 129.

[441]E.g. pp. 224, 226, 228.

CHAPTER VII

To the Eve of the Great Session, July 18—A Fresh Shock for the Opposition—Serious Trick of the Presidents and Committee—Outcry of the French Bishops—Proposal to Quit the Council—They send in another Protest—What is Protestantism?—Immediate War not foreseen—Contested Canon adopted—The Bishops threatened—Hasty Proceedings—Final Vote on the Dogma—Unexpected Firmness of the Minority—Effect of the Vote—Deputation to the Pope—His incredible Prevarication—Ketteler's Scene—Counter Deputation of Manning and Senestrey—Vast Changes in the Decrees made in a Moment—Petty Condemnations—The Minority flies.

Itmight have been thought that incidents of public interest had now terminated. On the very next day, however, after the close of the great discussion, occurred a collision which, had the opposition been morally capable of saving anything, would have given it the opportunity of saving the Roman Catholic Church from falling into the condition of a body without any constitution, except the "inner light" of one man. It opened their eyes, perhaps not more widely, but once more. It smote their feelings, excited a momentary effort at action, and ended in a protest drawn up by Bishop Dinkel.

One Sunday the Fathers were studying sixty-two amendments proposed on the second chapter of the great Decree. It seemed awful work to decide so many points affecting the faith on a single Monday morning! But behold, in the evening come in one hundred and twenty-two amendments on the fourth chapter, to be voted upon on the Tuesday!

The procedure was on this wise. Amendments suggested, after being in the hands of the Committee, were reported in print, and then put to the vote. The Sub-Secretary said, The committee oppose the amendment: let those who oppose it stand up. Or, The Committee accept the amendment: let those who accept it stand up. So by scores at a time were questions settled on which men had had no chance of reflecting.Only once, saysLa Liberté du Concile, did the Fathers succeed in obtaining from the Presidents a delay. It was on the very occasion just mentioned, when they showed that the only time permitted to them to read over the hundred and twenty-two amendments to be despatched on the Tuesday, would be what would be left of the Monday after they had despatched no less than sixty-two. They did obtain twenty-four hours' extension of the time. "You are convoked on purpose to vote," says the writer, who, be it remembered, printed only fifty copies, for Cardinals alone, "and you have not time to study not even to read it over again" (Doc. i. p. 175).

If ever an important act was passed by an assembly it was the Canon which closes the third chapter of the great Vatican Decree. Quirinus hardly exaggerates its importance when he speaks of it, if interpreted by the rules of Canon law, as handing over the bodies and souls of all men to one. On July 5, the Fathers had in print before them a formula for this Canon, and three proposed amendments. The Bishop of Rovigo, as reporter for the committee, broke all rule first by saying that amendments No. 70 and 71 should not be voted upon, as the committee had adopted No. 72, with a modification. It would appear that, utter as was the disregard here manifested even of the Pope's own Rules as well as of the rights of the proposers of the amendments and of those of the Council, this was allowed to pass. But soon even that broken-spirited Opposition was roused. It was plain to some that what the Bishop read as No. 72 was not what was in print as 72. The Presidents wanted to put what had been read, but then, according to theActa Sanctæ Sedis, arose Haynald and protested. Though the Council itself had no right to shape the amendments, the Rules required that all amendments should be put before it as they had been shaped by the committee, and it was for the Council to say Yea or Nay. Darboy also rose, and more fully entered his protest. The protest could not at the moment be brushed aside. Here was obviously a proposal differing from that of the committee, foisted in against all rule, and without notice. For once the prohibition against speaking to order had beendefied. The Presidents, thrown into confusion, could not conceal the attempted trick; yet they durst not abandon the spurious Canon. They therefore said something about inadvertence, and withdrew it for the present, to be submitted to the committee, then to be printed and voted upon at another time.

The fact was that the difference between the two forms involved the whole question of jurisdiction between bishops and Pope. One form had been withdrawn by the committee, and an amendment had been accepted. The Pope was incensed. He ordered the third Canon to be altered back to the form which had been objected to, and even this was greatly strengthened. He never submitted the alteration to the committee, but sent it direct to the reporter to be then and there put to the vote instead of the Canon which stood on the printed Order of the Day. How great was the difference in the wording of what the Fathers had before them in print, and what was attempted to be palmed upon them, is obvious on reading the two—

Meditation on what was involved in these claims to all-absorbing power was not likely to relieve the bishops of the pain caused by the stealthy attempt upon their vote. What the Presiding Cardinals and the Bishop of Rovigo had tried to steal from them, was not trash. It was all that ancient bishops, even when acknowledging the primacy of Rome, would have fought for with at least ecclesiastical weapons. Of the Committee not a man spoke his scorn, and the steady majority was not shaken. The world accused it of conspiring against the rights and liberties of mankind. It might full as well have been accused of conspiring against the rights and liberties of bishops. If the official organs had often, during the Council, used such language as "lying" and so forth, they were quiet now, while words like "lying," "cheating," "deceiving," etc., flew freely about, and, if Quirinus be correct, were repeatedly used in the meetings of the bishops of the minority.

But if the majority was not disturbed, a note rang out from the French minority which might remind any one who has lived in their country through a revolution, of thePrend ton sac—Take thy sack!—the three sudden taps which at such a time make timid hearts in a house beat as if they had been hit by the drumstick.

"1. The hour of Providence has struck," cries this voice, with the true French ring. "The decisive moment for saving the Church has arrived. 2. By the additions made to the third Canon of the third chapter, the committee,de fide, has violated the Rules, which permit not the introduction of any amendment without discussion by the Council. 3. The addition surreptitiously made is of importance beyond calculation. It changes the constitution of the Church. It enacts the monarchy of the Pope pure, absolute, and indivisible. It carries the abolition of the judicial rights and the co-sovereignty of the bishops, and with it the affirmation and anticipatory definition of separate and personal infallibility. 4. Duty and honour permit us not to vote this Canon without discussion, as it contains an immense revolution. The discussion can and may last six months, for it affects the capital question, the very constitution of the sovereign power in the Church. 5. This discussion is impossible, because of the pressure of the season and the disposition of the majority. 6. One thing alone, worthy and honourable,remains to be done—to demand the immediate prorogation of the Council till the month of October, and to present a declaration, in which all the protests already sent in shall be enumerated, and the last violation of the Rules shall be set forth, as well as the contempt shown to the dignity and liberty of the bishops. At the same time, we must give notice of our intended departure, which can no longer be deferred. 7. By the departure, on such grounds, of a considerable number of bishops of all nations, the œcumenicity of the Council would be at an end, and all acts which it might subsequently adopt would be null in point of authority. 8. The courage and devotedness of the minority would produce an immense effect in the world. The Council would meet in the month of October in circumstances vastly more favourable. All the questions now only broached would be taken up again and treated with dignity and liberty. The Church would be saved, and the moral order of the world."[442]

Had this energetic advice been adopted, the Roman Catholic Church would for the time have been saved from the last step in a downward series; but whether the moral order of the world would have been the better is another question. Those who seek a moral order higher than could be given by the men who attempted to palm the new Canon upon the Council, may well be content to have the lines drawn and the forces defined. The Council has given to all men an opportunity of knowing, if they will, what are the morals of the Pope and his officers, and what is order in their vocabulary. The moral order of the world must now be secured either under the absolute dominion of the Pontiff, or, as it has been best secured before, over the remains of his pretensions.

But the bishops of the minority were not the men to give the Church a further chance of continuing that confusion of all moral order which resulted from her old ambiguities. They did now as they had done before—let her take her way, and sent in a protest stating the main facts of the deception and breach of Rules.[443]One can almost see the smiles of the men in power at the sight of one piece of paper more.

If ever there was a case to justify the hasty saying ascribedto Burke, that Protestantism is a mere negation, it was that of the Vatican minority always protesting and never maintaining its ground. Of course, every protest has its negative side, but that is the side turned towards him who is protested against. It always has its positive side; that is, the side of him who makes the protest. He asserts a right. Dr. Newman, in a moment of sound sense, said, "What is the very meaning of the word 'Protestantism,' but that there is a call to speak out?"[444]So, when in a day of mercy, nations, hearing from heaven a call to speak out, protested against the sins and follies of the Pontiff, their protest was indeed a mere negation to him whose pretensions were rolled back; but to those who made the protest good, it was a positive upholding of existing rights, a positive recovery of lapsed rights, a positive deliverance from great evils, and a positive entrance into possession of great and heritable good. They protested against the doctrinal authority of the Pontiff, and maintained the doctrinal authority of the Bible. They protested against the authority of ecclesiastical courts or Councils to fetter the press, the pulpit, or the private conscience. In doing so, they maintained a duty imposed, and a right given, by God. The negative result was to the Inquisition and the Curia. The positive result was to the Press, the Pulpit, the Civil Court, and the silent tribunal of the Soul, with its reinstated jury of accusing and excusing thoughts. They protested against indulgences, purgatory, and all the commerce of the mass, and maintained the free gift of God's unpurchaseable grace, the sovereignty of His judgment, the finished and all-perfect sacrifice of His Son. They protested against sensuous and idolatrous spectacle, and upheld scriptural worship; protested against colours, scents, and gorgeous dress, and upheld sound teaching, borrowing all its glory from spiritual elements, none from physical; they protested against priestly caste, and upheld a brotherhood, a royal nation of priests; they protested against progressive conformity to newly-invented superstitions, against the service of local and subordinate divinities, and at the same time upheld progressiveconformity to the standard of our Lord and His apostles. They protested against the idea of one fold or one pen, but upheld that of one flock diversified in its members, various in its folds, but one in love to the common Lord and in likeness to the common Father.

When Darboy and Dupanloup, on July 4, gave up the attempt of averting the definition by delay, how little did they know that a couple of days later and the whole prospect of the Papacy would be changed. When the Pope on the morrow of that day followed up his victory by the additional blow which the surreptitious Canon dealt at the very semblance of liberty or rule in the Council, how little did he suspect that the visions of restoration long floating before his fancy were to give place to real scenes of fresh disaster. It was only on June 10 that Ollivier, in the Chamber of Deputies, gave confident assurances of peace, while on July 6, in the same Chamber, Gramont sounded an unmistakable blast of war. Even now, human foresight did not measure the rapidity with which events were to rush to a collision, and then to a catastrophe. Napoleon III had so often seemed bent on measuring himself with Prussia, and had so often drawn back, that it was not unreasonable to hope that, even after bellicose words, he might be prudent once more.

The next week following that day which placed in hazard the fortunes of the restorer of the Papacy and those of the Papacy itself, was spent in the Council in voting the chapters in their final shape. The Canon which had been brought surreptitiously forward on the fifth was produced in the regular manner on the thirteenth, and after all the outcry it was passed; "the most pregnant article," says Quirinus, "that had been laid before any Council for six hundred years." It was now voted by rising and sitting,—which is not to be wondered at when originally the Presidents had wanted it to be voted without being even known. We must not blame the minority for not now debating it. The Rules did not allow of this. It had been adopted by the committee and must be met with a Yea or Nay. How many voted against this pregnant act is uncertain. Somesay fifty or sixty, some ninety or a hundred.[445]In that act every shred and tatter of the Gallican liberties, or any other liberties, except that of doing the Pope's will, passed from the Papal officers, whom, as Quirinus says, the Roman Chancery still calls bishops. The chapter to which this Canon was attached annulled all national rights whatever, whether Gallican, Josephine, or parliamentary, which might conflict with the supreme authority. Vitelleschi (p. 202) says that the Secretary of State appeared very uneasy as to the opinion of governments on this fresh declaration. The bishops naturally would have similar apprehensions, but as to them, fear cast out fear. They had good reason to believe in the gentleness of Liberal governments, and they had no reason to believe in the gentleness of the Pope. They trusted, says Vitelleschi, to the tolerance and freedom of thought which has everywhere triumphed in modern days. With the Papal government, on the other hand, they had neither tolerance nor freedom to trust to. They knew that if they dared to provoke it, the stroke of Pius IX would come down hot and heavy. The oath of a bishop to the Pope, which obviously aims more at feudal vassalage than at spiritual works, had made the Emperor Joseph II feel that men bound by it were not citizens in the sense of free men. "It does not accord with the fidelity or obedience due by a bishop, as a subject, to his sovereign.... A bishop who feels himself bound by that oath must become perjured."[446]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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