TEXT OF THE ORGANIC ARTICLES.
Organic Articles of the Convention of the 26 Messidor, Year IX.Article 1. No bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, provision, signature serving for provision, nor other documents expedited by the Court of Rome, eventhough they concern private individuals can be received, printed, or otherwise put in force without the authorization of the Government.Article 2. No individual styling himself a nuncio, legate, vicar, or commissary Apostolic, or who makes use of any other determining title can, without the same authorization, exercise upon French soil, or elsewhere, any function relative to the affairs of the Gallican church.Article 3. The decrees of the foreign synods, even those of the general councils, cannot be published in France before the Government has examined their form, their conformity with the laws, rights and privileges of the French Republic, and all that which in their publication could alter or interfere with the public tranquility.Article 4. No council, national or metropolitan, no diocesan synod, no deliberative assembly, shall be held without the express permission of the Government.Article 5. All ecclesiastical functions shall be gratuitous, except the offerings which will be authorized and fixed by the regulations.Article 6. Recourse to the Council of State shall be had in every case of abuse on the part of superiors and other ecclesiastical persons.The cases of abuse are as follows: Usurpation or excess of power, contravention of the laws and regulations of the Republic; violation of the rules which are consecrated by the Canons received in France; any attack on the liberties, privileges, and customs of the French church; and every undertaking or proceeding which, in the exercise of worship, might compromise the honor of citizens, trouble their consciences unnecessarily, or which might degenerate into a source of oppression or injury to them, or become a public scandal.Article 7. Recourse to the Council of States shall also be permitted whenever an attack is made upon thepublic exercise of worship, and the liberty which the laws and regulations guarantee to its ministers.Article 8. This recourse is the privilege of all persons interested. In default of a particular complaint, this duty will devolve upon the prefects. Public functionaries, ecclesiastics or other persons who wish to make use of this appeal, will address a memorial, detailed and signed, to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religion, whose duty it will be to obtain, in the shortest time possible, all proper information, and upon his report the affair will be taken up and finished in the administrative form, or sent, as the case may demand, to the competent authorities.Article 11. The archbishops and bishops may, with the authorization of the Government, establish in their dioceses cathedral chapters and seminaries. All other ecclesiastical establishments are suppressed.Article 12. Bishops shall be permitted to add to their names the title of Citizen or that of Monsieur. All other qualifications are interdicted.Article 16. No one may be nominated to bishopric who has not attained the age of thirty years, or who is not of French origin.Article 18. The priest nominated by the First Consul shall make haste to obtain institution from the Pope.He cannot exercise any function before the bull containing such institution has received the seal of the Government, and before he has taken personally the oath prescribed by the convention made between the French Government and the Holy See. This oath shall be taken before the First Consul: a formal attestation of the same shall be drawn up by the Secretary of State.Article 19. The bishops shall name and install the pastors; nevertheless they shall not publish their nomination nor give canonical institution until that nomination has been approved by the First Consul.Article 23. The bishops shall be charged with theorganization of their seminaries, and the regulation of that organization shall be submitted to the approbation of the First Consul.Article 24. Those who shall be chosen to teach in the seminaries shall subscribe to the declaration made by the clergy of France in 1682 and published by an edict of the same year; they will be obliged to teach the doctrine therein contained; and the bishops shall address a formal attestation of such submission to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.The bishops will ordain no persons whose names have not been submitted to the Government and approved by it.Article 27. Pastors may not enter upon their functions before they have taken in the hands of the prefect the oath prescribed by the convention made between the Government and the Holy See. A formal attestation of this act shall be drawn up by the secretary general of the prefecture, and they shall receive a copy of the same.Article 32. No foreigner can be employed in the functions of the ecclesiastical ministry without the permission of the Government.Article 39. There shall be but one liturgy and one catechism for all the Catholic churches of France.Article 40. No pastor may order extraordinary public prayers in his parish without the special permission of the bishop.Article 41. No feast, with the exception of Sunday, may be established without the permission of the Government.Article 45. No religious ceremony shall be held outside the edifices consecrated to Catholic worship in such cities as contain temples destined for a different worship.Article 53. They shall not in their powers make any publication foreign to religious worship, unlessthey be authorized to do so by the Government.Article 54. They shall not bestow the nuptial blessing except on such as can prove in good and due form that they have already contracted their marriage before a civil official.Article 56. In all ecclesiastical and religious documents it will be required to observe the equinoctial calendar established by the laws of the Republic; the days shall be designated by the names they hold in that calendar.Article 64. The salary of an archbishop shall be 15,000 francs.Article 65. The salary of bishops shall be 10,000 francs.Article 66. Pastors shall be distributed into two classes. The salary of pastors of the first class shall be 1,500 francs; that of pastors of the second class shall be 1,000 francs.Article 67. The pensions which they receive, in execution of the laws of the Constituent Assembly, shall be counted as a part of their salary. The councils general of the large communes can, out of their landed property or from the taxes, accord an augmentation of salary if the circumstances require it.Article 68. Curates and assistants shall be chosen from ecclesiastics pensioned in execution of the laws of the Constituent Assembly. The sum of these pensions and the product of offerings made to them shall constitute their salary.Article 69. The bishops shall draw up a list of rules relative to the offerings which ministers of worship are authorized to receive for the administration of the sacraments. These rules drawn up by the bishops may not be put in force without having been approved by the Government.Article 70. Every ecclesiastic who receives a pension from the State shall be deprived of such pension if he refuses to perform the functions which shall be confided to him.Article 71. The councils general of the department are authorized to provide a suitable residence for the archbishops and bishops.Article 72. The presbyteries and the gardens thereto pertaining shall, if they are not alienated, be turned over to the pastors or to the assistants in charge of the same missions. In default of such presbyteries the councils general are authorized to provide them with a suitable residence and garden.Article 73. The foundations which have for their object the maintenance of ministers and the exercise of worship can only consist of rentals constituted in the State; they shall be accepted by the diocesan bishop, and cannot be executed except with the authorization of the Government.Article 74. The immovable property, other than edifices destined for residence and the gardens pertaining, cannot be affected to ecclesiastical titles, nor possessed by ministers of worship by reason of their functions.Article 75. The edifices formerly destined for Catholic worship, actually in the hands of the nation, shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops by a written order of the prefect of the department. A copy of this order shall be addressed to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.
Organic Articles of the Convention of the 26 Messidor, Year IX.
Article 1. No bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, provision, signature serving for provision, nor other documents expedited by the Court of Rome, eventhough they concern private individuals can be received, printed, or otherwise put in force without the authorization of the Government.
Article 2. No individual styling himself a nuncio, legate, vicar, or commissary Apostolic, or who makes use of any other determining title can, without the same authorization, exercise upon French soil, or elsewhere, any function relative to the affairs of the Gallican church.
Article 3. The decrees of the foreign synods, even those of the general councils, cannot be published in France before the Government has examined their form, their conformity with the laws, rights and privileges of the French Republic, and all that which in their publication could alter or interfere with the public tranquility.
Article 4. No council, national or metropolitan, no diocesan synod, no deliberative assembly, shall be held without the express permission of the Government.
Article 5. All ecclesiastical functions shall be gratuitous, except the offerings which will be authorized and fixed by the regulations.
Article 6. Recourse to the Council of State shall be had in every case of abuse on the part of superiors and other ecclesiastical persons.
The cases of abuse are as follows: Usurpation or excess of power, contravention of the laws and regulations of the Republic; violation of the rules which are consecrated by the Canons received in France; any attack on the liberties, privileges, and customs of the French church; and every undertaking or proceeding which, in the exercise of worship, might compromise the honor of citizens, trouble their consciences unnecessarily, or which might degenerate into a source of oppression or injury to them, or become a public scandal.
Article 7. Recourse to the Council of States shall also be permitted whenever an attack is made upon thepublic exercise of worship, and the liberty which the laws and regulations guarantee to its ministers.
Article 8. This recourse is the privilege of all persons interested. In default of a particular complaint, this duty will devolve upon the prefects. Public functionaries, ecclesiastics or other persons who wish to make use of this appeal, will address a memorial, detailed and signed, to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religion, whose duty it will be to obtain, in the shortest time possible, all proper information, and upon his report the affair will be taken up and finished in the administrative form, or sent, as the case may demand, to the competent authorities.
Article 11. The archbishops and bishops may, with the authorization of the Government, establish in their dioceses cathedral chapters and seminaries. All other ecclesiastical establishments are suppressed.
Article 12. Bishops shall be permitted to add to their names the title of Citizen or that of Monsieur. All other qualifications are interdicted.
Article 16. No one may be nominated to bishopric who has not attained the age of thirty years, or who is not of French origin.
Article 18. The priest nominated by the First Consul shall make haste to obtain institution from the Pope.
He cannot exercise any function before the bull containing such institution has received the seal of the Government, and before he has taken personally the oath prescribed by the convention made between the French Government and the Holy See. This oath shall be taken before the First Consul: a formal attestation of the same shall be drawn up by the Secretary of State.
Article 19. The bishops shall name and install the pastors; nevertheless they shall not publish their nomination nor give canonical institution until that nomination has been approved by the First Consul.
Article 23. The bishops shall be charged with theorganization of their seminaries, and the regulation of that organization shall be submitted to the approbation of the First Consul.
Article 24. Those who shall be chosen to teach in the seminaries shall subscribe to the declaration made by the clergy of France in 1682 and published by an edict of the same year; they will be obliged to teach the doctrine therein contained; and the bishops shall address a formal attestation of such submission to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.
The bishops will ordain no persons whose names have not been submitted to the Government and approved by it.
Article 27. Pastors may not enter upon their functions before they have taken in the hands of the prefect the oath prescribed by the convention made between the Government and the Holy See. A formal attestation of this act shall be drawn up by the secretary general of the prefecture, and they shall receive a copy of the same.
Article 32. No foreigner can be employed in the functions of the ecclesiastical ministry without the permission of the Government.
Article 39. There shall be but one liturgy and one catechism for all the Catholic churches of France.
Article 40. No pastor may order extraordinary public prayers in his parish without the special permission of the bishop.
Article 41. No feast, with the exception of Sunday, may be established without the permission of the Government.
Article 45. No religious ceremony shall be held outside the edifices consecrated to Catholic worship in such cities as contain temples destined for a different worship.
Article 53. They shall not in their powers make any publication foreign to religious worship, unlessthey be authorized to do so by the Government.
Article 54. They shall not bestow the nuptial blessing except on such as can prove in good and due form that they have already contracted their marriage before a civil official.
Article 56. In all ecclesiastical and religious documents it will be required to observe the equinoctial calendar established by the laws of the Republic; the days shall be designated by the names they hold in that calendar.
Article 64. The salary of an archbishop shall be 15,000 francs.
Article 65. The salary of bishops shall be 10,000 francs.
Article 66. Pastors shall be distributed into two classes. The salary of pastors of the first class shall be 1,500 francs; that of pastors of the second class shall be 1,000 francs.
Article 67. The pensions which they receive, in execution of the laws of the Constituent Assembly, shall be counted as a part of their salary. The councils general of the large communes can, out of their landed property or from the taxes, accord an augmentation of salary if the circumstances require it.
Article 68. Curates and assistants shall be chosen from ecclesiastics pensioned in execution of the laws of the Constituent Assembly. The sum of these pensions and the product of offerings made to them shall constitute their salary.
Article 69. The bishops shall draw up a list of rules relative to the offerings which ministers of worship are authorized to receive for the administration of the sacraments. These rules drawn up by the bishops may not be put in force without having been approved by the Government.
Article 70. Every ecclesiastic who receives a pension from the State shall be deprived of such pension if he refuses to perform the functions which shall be confided to him.
Article 71. The councils general of the department are authorized to provide a suitable residence for the archbishops and bishops.
Article 72. The presbyteries and the gardens thereto pertaining shall, if they are not alienated, be turned over to the pastors or to the assistants in charge of the same missions. In default of such presbyteries the councils general are authorized to provide them with a suitable residence and garden.
Article 73. The foundations which have for their object the maintenance of ministers and the exercise of worship can only consist of rentals constituted in the State; they shall be accepted by the diocesan bishop, and cannot be executed except with the authorization of the Government.
Article 74. The immovable property, other than edifices destined for residence and the gardens pertaining, cannot be affected to ecclesiastical titles, nor possessed by ministers of worship by reason of their functions.
Article 75. The edifices formerly destined for Catholic worship, actually in the hands of the nation, shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops by a written order of the prefect of the department. A copy of this order shall be addressed to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religious worship.
PRESAGES OF PEACE.
The Concordat signed and ratified Catholic France settled down to the enjoyment of comparative peace and security. It was, however, only the security which follows the ravages of disease, the peace of convalescence, full of weariness, languor and exhaustion. The fifty bishops installed by the new decrees could not help a feeling of discouragement as they viewed the situation. The Church, it is true, was brought back to a position of honor and importance in the nation; but it was, at thesame time, weighed down by the heavy burdens of Gallicanism and Caesarism; the former severing the ties that bound it to the head and centre of Christianity, the Holy Father; the latter making it subservient to the whims and fancies of a ruler, human at most and liable through the schemes of politics to be hostile and intolerant. The former was suited to the imperialistic ambitions of Bonaparte, who had already begun to dream of the glories of the old regime; the latter was couched in the fraudulent laws of the Organic Articles; the former was to lose its force before the lapse of half a century; the latter was to last as long as the Concordat itself.
Thus it was that the outlook at the beginning of the century was little favorable to the just execution of the Concordat. With all correspondence with Rome interdicted save under civil surveillance, deprived of the right of assemblage, and bound by slavish ties to a State official who alone could administer, reward, punish, teach, or cause to teach, according to his own pleasure, all true liberty seemed to have vanished as completely as during the dark times of the Revolution. With churches, schools and colleges under the direction of politicians, the right of ecclesiastical censure denied, and the number of aspirants to the priesthood limited, the religious society of France had become little more than an annex to the State, inferior in importance and subordinate to it in all things. The religious congregations were dispersed, the missionaries were forbidden to exercise their zeal, and for the thirty millions of Catholics in the country there were only eight thousand priests of whom fully two thousand bore the taint of the constitutional oath.
The bishops themselves were for the most part victims of the revolutionary tempest. Some of them had come forth from prison or from the foot of the scaffold whereon they had seen their fathers, brothers and friends brutallybutchered by frenzied mobs. Others had come back from an exile wherein they had guarded religiously the dear image of the French Church and the hope of her speedy restoration. "But it was the Church they had seen flourishing under the shadow of a kingly sceptre, the Gallican Church with its gaudy livery and its royal servitude decorated with the names of privilege and liberty. Accustomed to receive favors from the hand of power, it was easy for them to transfer their adulatory homage from the thrones of Louis XIV. and Louis XVI. to the boots and spurs of him who, after all, had just opened to them the gates of their country and filled his native land with glory."
CORONATION OF NAPOLEON.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that the will of the Conqueror should remain uppermost in all church affairs during the course of the Consulate, when only a few courageous and noble souls dared to stand forth in the defence of ecclesiastical rights and liberties. The Consulate was termed theLune-de-miel, the honeymoon, in this new union of Church and State; but its joys, such as they were, were to feel ere long the bitterness entailed by the unreasoning and imperious exactions of an overbearing consort.
The soldier who had risen to the command of armies had been honored with the title of First Consul; his head, yet uncrowned, was restless till it should feel upon it the emblem of royalty. It was his ambition to be called, and to be like Charlemagne, an emperor; he desired that the consecrating oils in the great ceremony should be conferred by no less a personage than the Holy Father himself, and he wished that the Pope should perform this ceremony at Paris. The venerable Pontiff,when apprised of this new demand of Bonaparte, was at a loss how to respond. He looked for counsel to his most prudent friends, and above all to the great Giver of light, and then weighing in the balance the great harm he knew must come from a formal refusal, and the immense benefits he felt must accrue to the Church from so slight a sacrifice, he determined, leaving the issue to Divine Providence, to gratify this wish of the General. He did not do so, however, before renewing his protest against the obnoxious Organic Articles, and obtaining from Bonaparte a promise of their speedy revokal.
In compliance with these resolves, the Holy Father set out from Rome on November 2, 1804, and after a journey of nearly a month's duration, through provinces once hostile, but now enthusiastic in their greetings, he reached Fontainebleau on Sunday, November 25th. Here he was met by Bonaparte who displayed at first an apparent desire to shower every honor upon his illustrious guest. Yet even this short stay near Paris was marked by the same evidences of fickleness and selfishness on the part of the First Consul, as were shown in his every relation with the Holy See. At one time it would seem as if nothing were too good for the aged Pontiff, and the Consul, to demonstrate this conviction, would display the most utter obsequiousness to his spiritual superior; an hour afterwards the Holy Father was made to feel most keenly the sense of humiliating dependence upon his tormentor. Yet the spirit of the martyr bore up bravely through storm and sunshine. He met the delegation sent to him from the French Senate with a calm undisturbed serenity that drew expressions of admiration from men hostile to the very name of religion; he forebore any words of reproach against the unwarranted demands of Bonaparte. There were, however, some things upon which he insisted strongly, and without which he wouldrefuse, even on the eve of the great day, to be present at the coronation. There were among the French bishops men who had signed the Civil Constitution during the Revolution in defiance of ecclesiastical warnings to the contrary. Still unrepentant, they hoped under the protection of Bonaparte to continue in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction without yielding proper submission to the Holy See. To compel them to this latter course was the determined policy of Pius VII. though the constitutional bishops found a ready ally in the First Consul himself. The latter at first endeavored to gloss over the objections of the Pope, hoping that in the excitement of the day the coronation ceremony might take place before any action would be taken in regard to the obnoxious bishops. But Pius VII. was far too vigilant to become a victim to this deception. The aged Pontiff demanded the act of submission as a necessary condition before the great ceremony should proceed, and Bonaparte, tacitly acknowledging his defeat, yielded. The constitutional bishops at his command repaired to the presence of the Holy Father and complied fully with his wishes.
On the evening of December 1st, the Holy Father learned for the first time that the new Emperor had never contracted an ecclesiastically legal marriage with Josephine, his reputed wife. Despite the fact that all preparations for the great ceremony had been completed, the Pope sent word to Napoleon that he should refuse to take part in the coronation on the morrow unless the Emperor and Josephine should contract their marriage vows that very night in the presence of a duly authorized priest of the Church. Again the Emperor, fretful and impatient as he was, yielded to the demands of the Pope, and the marriage ceremony was performed at midnight in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of Cardinal Fesch, uncle to Napoleon. The following day, December 2nd, theConqueror of Europe, the great Dictator of France, realized the dream of his lifetime. The solemn ceremony of his consecration and coronation as Emperor of the French took place in the great cathedral of Notre Dame in the midst of all the splendor which the united resources of Church and State could afford. The ceremony began shortly after ten o'clock, when Napoleon, proceeding with Josephine to the foot of the altar, in the presence of the Holy Father made the solemn promise that he would maintain peace in the Church of God. The two candidates for royalty knelt upon cushions and received from His Holiness the oils and imperial consecration. Napoleon then ascended the altar, and taking the crown into his own hands placed it upon his head, after which he took up the smaller crown of the Empress and bearing it to Josephine crowned her. She received the diadem kneeling. The ceremony was concluded with theTe Deum.
Pius VII. returned to Rome after what was to him a humiliating and exacting journey. Indeed he could congratulate himself that he had at all escaped perpetual exile at Paris. Before he had left that city, the new Emperor, flushed with his recent glories, conceived the plan of retaining the Pope at Paris. The latter, however, had prepared himself for the demand and could answer courageously, that if they were to use force they would have at Paris only a poor monk called Barnabas Chiaramonti. Before he had left Rome he had arranged that in such an emergency a new Pope would be immediately elected.
THE AFFAIR OF JEROME.
Even at the entrance of the Eternal City, new complications met to annoy and confuse him, which, however, he settled with his usual diplomatic firmness and condescension. The affair of Prince Jerome was just then attracting attention. The latter, a lad of nineteen, andbrother of the Emperor, had married while in America, December 24, 1803, a certain Miss Patterson, a descendant of one of Maryland's best families. The ceremony was performed by Archbishop Carroll, and was valid in the eyes of the Church. Upon his returning to France with his young bride he was met by the anger of his imperial brother, who as soon as possible wrote to Pope Pius VII.: "I have several times spoken to Your Holiness about a brother, nineteen years old, whom I sent on a frigate to America, and who after a month's stay, married in Baltimore—although a minor—a Protestant daughter of an American merchant. He has just returned; he feels the extent of his fault. I have sent back Miss Patterson, his alleged wife, to America. According to our laws the marriage is null. A Spanish priest so far forgot his duty as to give the nuptial blessing." Napoleon then proceeds to request the Pope to declare the marriage invalid, giving as his principal reasons: That the lady was a Protestant; that Jerome was yet a minor according to French law; that the Gallican Church of France held it invalid, and that the marriage was clandestine and null according to the Council of Trent. To all these objections the Holy Father answered that the marriage was entirely valid, that it was not subject to the Council of Trent, the decrees of which had not been published in America, and that it was not in his power to annul the same unless stronger reasons were brought forward to warrant such action. To this determination the Pope adhered unflinchingly, despite the threats and revengeful actions of Napoleon. Even later, in 1807, when Jerome was married to a princess of Wurtemburg, the Holy Father, far from consenting, renewed his declaration as to the validity of the first marriage.
Napoleon, now at the summit of his political and military career, looked forward to still other conquests. Hehad crowned himself Emperor of the French at Paris; he received another crown at Milan, making him king of Italy. Then came Austerlitz and Jena and Eylau to humiliate Austria and Prussia and Russia. He became a king-maker by placing his brothers upon the thrones of Naples, Holland and Westphalia. The battle of Wagram, 1809, brought Austria to the feet of the Emperor, who demanded in marriage the hand of the Austrian Emperor's daughter, the Princess Maria Louisa. Josephine, her claims long vanished, was divorced from Napoleon upon the plea of State necessity. An emperor to be an emperor indeed, must be able to look upon the children who shall carry his great name to posterity. The marriage of Josephine and Napoleon had been fruitless in this regard; reasons of State, therefore, demanded, according to Napoleon, that a dissolution should take place, and that a new empress be called to the throne. This reasoning of Napoleon was accepted by Europe; only the Holy Father withheld his approbation and assent. Josephine was divorced and the Emperor remarried to Maria Louisa. It was on this occasion that the terms were coined in the ecclesiastical world "the red and the black cardinals," at the great ceremony which was performed by Cardinal Fesch in the Tuileries, April 2, 1810. Of the twenty-nine cardinals then in Paris, thirteen, including Consalvi, refused to honor the occasion with their presence. This mark of disapprobation was punished by the Emperor who besides depriving them of their salaries forbade them to wear the colors or insignia of their cardinalatial rank. Hence their designation as the black cardinals. These two divorces betray sufficiently the shallow honor of Napoleon in dealing with the Church, a quality which other events of this period brought more into evidence.
The vainglorious assumptions of the Emperor knew nobounds. Petted and flattered where he was not feared, he often smiled as he heard himself compared with Alexander, Caesar, or Charlemagne. He designed as a means of greater glory the complete solidification of his empire under his own supreme control. Only one obstacle lay in the way of his colossal ambition. He chafed at the thought that there was yet in Italy one little state which would hold out against his pretensions; and then, hurried on by the lust of power, and blinded by prosperity, this pretended successor of Charlemagne proceeded against the Pope. Again the aged Pontiff remonstrated. He reminded Napoleon of his former injustice in the matter of the Organic Articles; he reproached him for the injurious dispositions of the Civil Code which he had introduced into France, especially the law granting divorce, the tendency of which laws was to render the discipline of the Church almost null; and now in the face of this new danger, the projected subjugation of the States of the Church, he reminded the Emperor of the judgments that the Almighty must send upon those who disregard His Divine ordinances. The words of the Pope, instead of moderating the intentions of Napoleon, served only to fill him with violent anger. He determined thenceforth to cast aside all promptings of conscience and to take immediate steps for the complete subjugation of Rome. Benevento and Ponte Corvo at once fell into his hands; his troops took possession of Ancona and all cities on the Adriatic coast; Rome itself was invaded; the Papal militia was incorporated with the French; the Pope was deprived of every official necessary for the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and surrounded by a guard in his own palace of the Quirinal.
EXCOMMUNICATION OF NAPOLEON.
For these outrages the Holy Father addressed Napoleon: "By the bowels of the mercy of our God we exhort,we pray, we conjure you, Emperor and King Napoleon, to change your designs, to clothe yourself again with those sentiments which you manifested at the beginning of your reign. Remember that there is a God and King above you; remember, and always keep before your mind, that you will see very soon and in a terrible manner how those who command others shall by Him be judged with the utmost rigor." The holy Pontiff then published in the face of Europe a solemn protest against the unjust pretensions of Napoleon.
In a frenzy of rage the Emperor made answer to this complaint from the French camp at Schoenbrunn by declaring Rome an imperial and free city. On June 10, 1809, the pontifical standard was taken down from Castle San Angelo and the tri-color hoisted in its place. The same day Pius VII. and Cardinal Pacca, hearing of the event, exclaimed sorrowfully, in the words of the dying Savior: "Consummatum est." The Pope had long felt the necessity of excommunicating his enemies, but had forborne up to this time in the hope that the Emperor might display some spirit of repentance. As soon as he perceived that such hope was groundless, he only needed this crowning act of sacrilege to close the doors of his heart, and to proceed to make use of the spiritual arms of the Church. That same night the venerable Pontiff signed the Bull of Excommunication against Napoleon and all concerned in this spoliation. A courageous man was found who, before the morning, affixed this Bull to the doors of the principal churches of Rome. It was of course torn down as soon as discovered and carried to Napoleon, who was then in camp at Vienna.
Two years before, in July, 1807, the Emperor had asked scornfully: "What does the Pope mean by the threat of excommunicating me? Does he suppose that the arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?" Itwas but a few years later when the arms did actually fall from the hands of his soldiers in the great retreat from Moscow when famine and cold tore them from their grasp.
ARREST OF THE POPE.
The Emperor now determined to proceed against the person of the Pope. General Radet was commissioned to arrest the Holy Father and Cardinal Pacca and to conduct them immediately away from Rome. The story of that arrest and the indignities heaped upon the aged Pontiff during his journey could not well be told in a few pages. We will then make it suffice to narrate only the salient facts.
At six o'clock on the morning of July 6, 1809, the French troops burst into the palace of the Quirinal. Radet, after a very few words of explanation, seized the Holy Father, and hurried him, with his faithful Cardinal Pacca, into a dingy carriage which was waiting in readiness. The Pope was absolutely without proper provision of clothing or money. There was no leave-taking, no words of consolation from his faithful subjects, but as a criminal is dragged away to punishment, so was Pius VII. carried out of Rome, across the Campagna to the north, until he reached the place of his captivity at Savona. Here he remained for three years, always under restraint and closely guarded.
AT SAVONA.
In the meantime the imperial jailer made use of every expedient to break down the firm will of his august prisoner. It was shortly after the marriage of Napoleon and Maria Louisa that the Emperor, acting upon the advice of the Austrian Prince Metternich, sent the Ritter von Lebzeltern, envoy of Austria to the Holy See, to attempt a mediation. In this meeting the Emperor proposed that the Pope should take up his residence at Avignon, whileretaining his title to the temporal sovereignty; if he wished to reside in Rome, he must resign the temporal sovereignty, though permitted in such case to keep up the outward forms of Papal independence such as receiving and sending ambassadors and envoys. He declared at the same time through Lebzeltern, that he had no need of reconciliation with the Pope; that his bishops had the necessary powers for the granting of matrimonial dispensations, that theCode Napoleonauthorized civil marriage, and that in the prime difficulty of all, the institution of bishops, he could set aside the action of the Pope and make use of a national council. The answer of Pius VII. was firm and uncompromising. He rejected the proposal of resigning his temporal power, he demanded free communication with his bishops and the faithful. He dismissed Lebzeltern without any concessions whatever, leaving the case exactly as it stood before that envoy's visit.
The anger of the Emperor upon learning the mind of the Pope did not prevent him from making another attempt at reconciliation. This time he sent two of the red cardinals, Spina and Caselli, formerly the Papal negotiators for the Concordat, who met with no greater success. Napoleon now determined to take the reins of ecclesiastical government into his own hands. He began this course by appointing Cardinal Maury, the Bishop of Montefiascone, to the post of Archbishop of Paris. The measure met with instant condemnation, especially from Pope Pius VII. who, writing to the Cardinal, reproached him for betraying the Church: "You are not ashamed," he said, "of taking part against Us in a contest which we only carry on to defend the dignity of the Church." To these remonstrances of the Holy Father the unhappy Cardinal paid no heed. For daring to thus utter his condemnation of the Emperor's conduct and Maury's treachery,Napoleon determined to punish the Pope. The apartments of the Holy Father were broken into by imperial orders, all writing materials were taken away, his books, even his breviary, were forbidden him, his servants were sent away to Fenestrelle, his household expenses were cut down (fivepauli, about fifty cents a day for each person being allowed for the maintenance of his household), the carriages he had used were sent to Turin, and even the fisherman's ring was demanded and sent to Paris. Before this was done, however, the Pope broke the ring in two.
Napoleon now began to seek precedents in history for the deposing of the Pope. Not succeeding in this he began a systematic persecution of priests and laymen suspected of too ardent piety, hoping thus to render devotion to the exiled Pope odious. Chafing at the ill success of all these subversive measures Napoleon determined upon a final scheme. He recalled the independence of the Russian czar in matters of Greek Church discipline; he reflected that George III. was undisturbed by any show of independence on the part of the English hierarchy. Why, therefore, should not Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, make to himself a new schism, a new hierarchy, institute his own bishops, and be free from the troublesome superintendence of the Pope? The idea was inviting, and the Emperor immediately took steps towards its accomplishment. A great council was called at Paris. Its permanent presiding officer was Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of the Emperor, and it numbered among its deliberators one hundred and four French and Italian bishops. Like other councils it discussed matters of universal importance, but its chief debates concerned the canonical institution of the French hierarchy. In this matter the council decided that no bishop might be considered legitimate who had not obtained his canonicalinstitution from the great Father of the faithful. Yet that the council might not displease the Emperor it was decided that a deputation of bishops be sent to Savona to again beg the Holy Father to institute the candidates proposed. Again the Pope renewed his refusal, though, for the sake of peace, he agreed that if the sovereign Pontiff should delay such institution for six months, it might then be granted by the metropolitan or senior bishop. This was merely a delegation of power, not a cession, and was granted only for the emergency of the time being.
The Council of Paris was, taken collectively, null, inasmuch as it was convoked and carried on without the requisite conditions. Its decrees were, therefore, without any binding force. In fact, even the Emperor himself recognized this and was only too happy to find a pretext for its dissolution.
AT FONTAINEBLEAU.
Napoleon now perceived that if he was to gain anything over the will of the Pope he must contrive to have his illustrious prisoner nearer to his own person. Under the pretext, therefore, that the English ships were hovering about Savona to liberate the Pope, the Emperor shortly after the termination of the Council of Paris, caused the Holy Father to be removed secretly to the palace of Fontainebleau. (June 16, 1812).
The conduct of the Emperor during the stay at Fontainebleau was in keeping with his past behavior. Under a specious display of ceremonial reverence towards Pius VII. he concealed a course of cruel treatment unworthy of a man, much less of a sovereign. It is true, the palace of Fontainebleau was not wanting in regal magnificence, that the table of the Pope was all that might be desired, and that the servants who surrounded him showed duerespect for their spiritual ruler. At the same time the Emperor himself acted the part of a bully and braggart towards a weak and feeble old man. An insulting tone of voice ever accompanied the most insulting demands, until the Pontiff worn out and half delirious with agony was made to yield to the most unwarrantable demands. Thus it was that upon the bed of sickness the Holy Father was finally led to apply his signature to a Concordat which, in a state of health, he would have repudiated in the most decided terms. It must be remembered, however, that this yielding was not in an affair of faith and morals, nor did it concern the Universal Church; it was a cession for the time being of temporal rights, not even a final session, but one made temporarily in the interests of peace, and as such did not affect the Papal position as the teacher and ruler of all the faithful. The Emperor, in his joy at this apparent victory, began at once to show unwonted kindness towards the Pope, and as a sign of his good will, permitted the old cardinals, the faithful black cardinals, to return from prison and exile to comfort him in his captivity. This concession proved unfortunate for Napoleon, for scarcely had they gained access to the Sovereign Pontiff than they began to represent to him the immense importance of the Concordat which he had signed. It was represented as a renunciation of all those inalienable rights which belonged to him, not personally, but as the Sovereign Ruler of the Roman States, a most humiliating concession after all he had hitherto borne in their defence. The Holy Father in deep sorrow protested that the document was not definitive, but merely a preliminary statement, which should be reconsidered before publication, so that the Concordat of that year was really without Pontifical authority. Thereupon, he made known to Napoleon his objections, retracted everything contained in the Concordat, rendering it therebynull. This decision of the Sovereign Pontiff only rendered the Emperor all the more furious, and incited him to renew the discomforts of his prisoner. His cardinal advisers were again sent into exile or to prison, while he commanded that the Concordat of 1813 should be everywhere executed without further delay.
RETURN OF THE POPE TO ROME.
But the hour had already sounded for the total ruin of the tyrant. He who had trodden Europe under foot, now discovered Europe armed to meet him. With Germany consumed by a superhuman resolve to be free; with his old generals weary of fighting and struggling for the glory of a single man; with even his own relative, Murat, a partial traitor; with murmurings and threats resounding on all sides, Napoleon was not slow to perceive that his fortunes were in a precarious state. The year went by and battles were fought; some gained, some lost. The great campaign against Russia, with its consequent humiliating retreat had given the signal. The great Conqueror, who had once claimed a kind of sovereignty over a large part of Europe, now found France hardly able to uphold his imperial authority. In his desire to repair some of the wrongs he had perpetrated he liberated the Holy Father, in the beginning of the year 1814. But the repentance came too late. Already the enemy stood before the gates of Paris, and Napoleon learned that the day of his imperial domination was at an end. In his despair he fled to Fontainebleau, and there, in the very same chamber wherein he had confined his spiritual superior, he signed the articles of his abdication (April 6, 1814). His fate was soon sealed by those triumphant powers against which he had so long contended, and he retired a humbler man to his place of exile upon the island of Elba.
RETURN OF PIUS VII.RETURN OF PIUS VII.
Meanwhile Pius VII., who was by this time far on his way to Rome, was waiting at Imola for the final ending of the great tragedy which was taking place in France, and hearing of the downfall of his old-time foe, he hurried on with all dispatch to Rome. He arrived there on May 24, 1814, and made a solemn entrance into the Eternal City, whence five years before, he had been dragged away with so much violence. The joy and enthusiasm of the people, augmented by the memories of recent usurpation and tyranny, were unbounded. It was not alone that Rome had regained her sovereign but the Church also had again her beloved head, and all the Catholic world took part in the triumph of Religion over the unbridled ambition of her enemies.
It is true the storm had not entirely subsided. Napoleon again broke forth from captivity, and the Holy See for a moment trembled lest new outrages might yet be perpetrated against the Church. But before the danger could have been brought to its accomplishment, the newly arisen Napoleon was again overthrown at Waterloo, June 18, 1815, after which he was exiled beyond all hope of return, to the lonely island of St. Helena, where he died on May 5, 1821, after six years of penance.
Peace now settled upon the troubled Church. Religion once more dried the tears of sorrow, and the Pope, restored to the love of his faithful people, began to give his attention to arts nobler than that of war; the raising up of Catholic peoples in the knowledge of that God, Who, after purging them in the land of bondage, had overwhelmed their enemies and brought them to newer and richer prospects in the land of promise.
THE HOLY ALLIANCE.
Pius VII. re-entered his capital May 24, 1814. In the meantime the princes of Europe had remade the map of Europe; but in spite of all hopes of permanent peace, their efforts only served to sow more widely the seeds of trouble and revolution. The Congress of Vienna, in session from November 1, 1814, to June 9, 1815, was, through the triumph it accorded to Protestantism, a triumph for the Revolution. That coalition was termed the Holy Alliance. Never was appellation more misleading, for the work of those princes only compromised the interests of religion, and put back for generations the empire of peace. Religious indifference had become the first article of the international code and the first requisite in the profession of diplomacy.
Pius VII. found the Eternal City despoiled of its artistic treasures, and he hastened to supply the deficiency made by Napoleon. He set to work to reorganize his kingdom. He replenished the impoverished treasury; he published civil, commercial, penal and legal codes, and regulated the taxes, re-established the Society of Jesus, and entered into Concordats with Bavaria, France, Sicily, Piedmont, Russia and Austria. Comparative peace settledupon his domains so that when he closed his eyes in death on August 20, 1823, the fortunes of the Papacy in Italy were apparently secure.
Nevertheless, even in his day, the storm was already rumbling and the first threats were heard of that war which was later to wrest the temporal power from the hands of his successor, Pius IX. In the forests of Italy, in the fastnesses of the Abruzzi, among the woods of Calabria, in the mountains of Sicily and in the caves and valleys of the Appenines, a new spirit was in the mold taking shape.
THE CARBONARI.
The Freemasons, silenced after the defeat of Napoleon, took a new form in the notorious Carbonari, a secret society whose branches were spreading throughout every part of the peninsula. They were called Carbonari, which signifies charcoal-burners, because they held their assemblies in places called Vendite or places for selling coal. Their object was the overthrow of all organized government both in Church and State, and they swore their oaths with the most bloody promises under the most revolting penalties. Like all secret societies they had many degrees, their lowest being formed of young unsuspecting candidates, who were lured into the horrors of the higher grades by professions of loyalty to religion and the promise of quick and certain wealth.
The younger portion of Italy, quickly caught by the bait, was bound by oaths the infraction of which meant death, and finally led on to associations in which revolution and plunder formed the means and end. Pope Pius VII. issued an Encyclical directed against their insidious and dangerous doctrines, which was followed by another from Pope Leo XII. Both documents were enforced throughout the Papal States, and effected some littlerelief; but the disease had gained too great a headway, and even in secret continued to make its progress felt in various centres of the country.
POPE LEO XII.POPE LEO XII.
The efforts of the secret societies in Italy became more pronouncedduring the pontificate of Pope Gregory XVI., when the Carbonari were united with a new association, the Young Italy of Mazzini.
MAZZINI AND YOUNG ITALY.
Joseph Mazzini, born at Genoa in 1810, began to express his revolutionary doctrines in 1830, in theGenoese Indicator, and in theLeghorn Indicator. He was arrested and expelled from Genoa, whence he fled to Marseilles. There he met with three Piedmontese: Bianchi, Santi, and Rimini. These three conspirators furnished him with the idea of a new branch of secret societies, which they called Young Italy. To this nascent association Mazzini gave the motto "For God and the People," giving it to be understood that between God and the people there was to be no intermediary, neither political nor religious.
In accord with the Carbonari in making war upon Catholicism, and inspired by their title, they refused admission into their society to anyone over forty years of age. At first the unity of the peninsula was their apparent end, to which they added hatred of ecclesiastical government, and made the dagger and revolution the means for attaining those purposes.
The Republic appeared to them the only possible mode of government. Nevertheless that preference was not so exclusive but that they could consent to a monarchy as they actually did when they promised to Charles Felix, in 1831, that they would not molest a monarch who would agree to be a protege of the revolution and of the lodges.
POPE PIUS VIII.POPE PIUS VIII.
Exiled to Marseilles, in 1831, Mazzini passed on into Switzerland, where he made disciples of some Polish and German exiles. Thence he went to England, whence he directed the expedition in Savoie. Among the propagators of the Young Italy movement, who gave most sorrow to the heart of the Holy Father, were such apostatesas Achilli, Gavazzi and Gioberti. It is a significant fact that these disloyal ecclesiastics received no real recognition for their treason, and as soon as their services were no longer of use, they were cast aside by those for whom they had betrayed both country and God. There were also some of the nobility who betrayed a most shameful treason. Nearly all of them owed their prestige to the Holy See, but abandoned their benefactor when the promise of power was held out to them by Mazzini.
MAZZINI.MAZZINI.
From his retreat in London Mazzini sent out his messages of hate and revolt. In 1842 he founded a revolutionary sheet called the "Popular Apostolate," a weekly which propagated his doctrines and sent them as a ferment of disorder into Italy.
At the same time, in France, Michelet, Sue and Quinet were attacking the Jesuits; books with the same object were printed in London; and even in Italy, Gioberti was publishing hisModern Jesuit, wherein he ventilated for the benefit of revolutionaries and sectaries the idea of a lay pontificate.