ment, the provisions of which were agreeable to the emperor; but, contrary to a stipulation, he published it before the pope had conferred with his cardinals. This called out a warning from the pope against giving credence to the reports relative to a concordat. Renewed persecution of the pontiff was the result, which terminated at the fall of Napoleon and the triumph of the allies. In 1814, Pius VII. once more entered Rome. The Roman An important consequence of the events connected with the French Revolution was the secularizing of the ecclesiastical states of Germany. They were converted into communities under civil rule. The Rhine provinces were annexed to France. In 1810 the last ecclesiastical state was abolished and changed into a grand-dukedom. Cloisters in Germany. except in Austria, were abolished. During the conflicts of the period, vacant bishoprics remained unfilled. When Germany threw off the yoke of Napoleon, only five old Roman Catholic bishops were living. In process of time concordats were concluded between German princes and the pope, and the vacant ecclesiastical places were filled. In Naples, which was conquered by the French in 1806, and delivered to Joseph Bonaparte, the monastic orders were generally The Roman Catholic Church in Naples and abolished, and their property appropriated by the gov ernment. The principles of the Napoleonic code relative to marriage by civil contract, etc., were so repugnant to the pope that he refused canonical institution to the bishops. In 1808, Joseph became King of Spain. The Inquisition was abolished. In 1809 the cloisters all shared the same fate. The Cortes, which represented the opposite or national party, declared, in 1813, that the Inquisition was incompatible with the civil constitution of the country. In whatever part of Europe the influence of Napoleon was felt, the civil authority was made supreme, the authority of the papacy was curtailed and made subordinate to the rulers of the State, and institutions like monastic establishments, specially characteristic of the middle ages, were swept away. The mediæval was transformed into the modern state. CHAPTER V. THE PAPACY SINCE THE FALL OF NAPOLEON I.: CHRISTIANITY IN THE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. THE fall of Napoleon restored Pius VII. to Rome, and enabled him to resume the exercise of his pontifical authority. He came The absolutist back, an object of universal sympathy, which his patience movement. had merited. The storms of the revolution were over. The papacy now, at the beginning of a new era of European history, was at liberty to elect what policy it would pursue. It is remarkable that three out of the four nations that had conquered Bonaparte, and had thus given freedom to the pope, were not of the Roman Catholic fold. Russia was Greek, England and Prussia were Protestant. Everywhere in Europe there was a longing in the minds of the people for constitutional freedom under the forms of monarchy. This feeling of aversion to arbitrary government was deeply implanted in the French mind. It prevailed in Germany. It was ardently cherished south of the Alps and of the Pyrenees. Unhappily, there set in a strong opposing current in the direction of absolutism. The excesses of the revolutionary period had begotten a horror of everything that savored of republican government. The "throne and the altar" must be reëstablished in their former dignity and strength. The Continental monarchs were united in this sentiment. Russia was bent on putting down movements in favor of freedom with a strong hand. Austria, guided by the counsels of the astute Metternich, was of the same mind. Prussia, after some vacillation, joined hands with her German rival. The Holy Alliance between the three sovereigns, to which the other rulers on the Continent acceded, while it contained a pledge to govern righteously and to promote justice and religion, was based on the old principle of legitimacy-the doctrine that the authority of kings is the direct gift of God, and not derived from their subjects. It was agreed that they should combine to quell popular insurrections wherever they should break out. The papacy espoused the cause of Absolutism. In the middle ages the popes had been considered the champions of the people, and their protectors against the tyranny of secular rulers on the side of and of local ecclesiastics. They had placed themselves at the head of great movements, like the crusades, in which the sentiments and passions of the mass of the people were The Papacy profoundly interested. They had baptized and taken under their own paternal guidance the prevailing martial taste and the popular hatred of the infidel. But now there was a reversal of their position. They were utterly loath to surrender any of the old prerogatives of their station in order to accommodate themselves to the altered condition of the public mind and the new character of European society. Their bitter experiences during the revolutionary era, the recollection of the wild excesses of liberalism, the desire to keep down the spirit of revolt in the papal kingdom, the vindictive and intolerant conservatism of the great body of the zealous supporters of Rome in France and in Southern Europe, were so many additional reasons for taking sides with the dominant reaction against the aspirations and struggles of the people. Parties in the papal curia. In the papal curia there were two parties; the one, that of the zelanti, led by Cardinal Pacca, was for abolishing the French constitution in the Roman state, restoring ecclesiastical property to its former possessors, and for bringing back completely the old order of things, with all its wrongs and evils. The other, the party of the liberali, led by a sagacious man, Cardinal Consalvi, was for retaining beneficent improvements which, during the period of revolution, had been incorporated in the political system. He had but a very moderate degree of success in this praiseworthy effort. Uniformity of administration was, to be sure, preserved; but the offices were taken from laymen and given into the hands of the clergy. In addition to the mischiefs of clerical misgovernment, the restoration of ecclesiastical property cut off a great part of the public revenue, and, besides, involved the creation of a burdensome public debt. The Inquisition and the Index, the old weapons of priestly intolerance, were again brought into use. In relation to the Church at large, Pius VII. adopted an analogous reactionary policy. One of his first measures papal meas- was the issue of a bull, on August 7, 1814, authorizing the revival of the Jesuit order. Nothing could more signally betoken the altered temper of civil and ecclesiastical rulers. The new Jesuits were of a harsh and fanatical temper. They went to work at once to get the education of the young into their hands. They even avowed the loose ethical maxims which, at a former day, had brought on them so heavy a weight of odium. Another The reaction characteristic measure was the publication of a bull, in 1816, in which Bible societies were denounced, and stigmatized as a pest. The governments in Southern Europe showed themselves prompt to cooperate with the Roman curia Reactionary ures. in Southern Europe and France. This was the case in Sardinia, Tuscany, and Naples. In Spain, Ferdinand VII, called back the Jesuits whom his grandfather had expelled, and renewed the tyranny of the Inquisition. The suppressed convents were restored. The reins of government were practically in the hands of the bigoted clergy. Intolerable tyranny provoked a revolt. The Cortes obliged the sovereign to reverse his policy, to drive out the Jesuits, and to abolish the Inquisition. The Holy Alliance now interfered. Louis XVIII., against the advice of the Duke of Wellington, marched French troops into Spain and put down constitutional government. The rigorous measures adopted after that event by the Spanish king did not suffice to satisfy the fanatical party, which rallied about his brother, Don Carlos, and tried to raise him to the throne. In France, the Church, by sending missionary preachers through the land, by means of public religious processions and showy ceremonies of various kinds, and by the invention of new sorts of devotion, such as the worship of the sacred heart of Jesus, strove to reawaken an attachment to the old ecclesiastical system. The priests who had taken the oath prescribed by the National Assembly in 1790, were compelled to do penance or to lose their livings. Mobs were allowed to attack the Protestants in Nismes and in other towns, and hundreds of them were slain. This was in 1815. The government at length interfered, but did not punish the criminals. Colleges and seminaries were established by the Jesuits, and these became more numerous in the next reign. The antipathy which had existed against the Church was rekindled by the proceedings of the reactionary religious party. Liberalism in all its forms was awakened to a new life. The brother of Louis XVIII., the Count of Artois, who went much beyond the king in intolerant bigotry, and was the head of the absolutist party in politics and religion, ascended the throne in 1824. Pius VII. died in 1823, and the death of Consalvi followed soon after. There was no barrier at Rome in the path of papal absolutism. Leo XII. was devoted to the party of the zelanti. His adherents proclaimed the pope supreme over secular rulers. The Jesuits were favored and exalted. Religious ceremonies, including a jubilee at Rome in 1825, were celebrated with ostentatious pomp. Meantime, the papal kingdom was miserably governed. The most of Italy was under the direct or indirect control of the Austrians. Their troops were at hand to stifle the first outbreak of insurrection. The deep popular discontent led to the organization of the Carbonari and other secret societies, the aim of which was Italian liberty and unity. Revival of France. Lamennais sociates. In France, under Charles X., the ruling spirits in the Church were zealously in favor of ultramontane views of the papacy, and treated with hostility and contempt the Gallican theory, liberalism in which it had been the pride and glory of the French Church to maintain. The king was obliged to yield in a degree, and for a time, to the rising forces of liberalism, which was hostile alike to political absolutism and to the control-for example, in matters of education-conceded to the Jesuit reaction. The revolution of 1830 effected a radical change. The government of Louis Philippe put an end to the domination of the clerical party. The Jesuits were deprived of their newly acquired power. The futility of any attempt to reconcile the papacy with the modern spirit of liberty was shown in the abortive experiment made by Lamennais and his associates. De Maistre, a scholar and his as- and diplomatist, a strenuous opponent of the French Revolution, but not unfriendly to monarchy under constitutional restraints, had endeavored, in a series of able writings, to vindicate an extreme theory of the spiritual authority of the pope. He founded his position on the need of order in the intellectual and spiritual world, such as only the autocracy of the pope could secure. His argument resembles that of Hobbes in behalf of despotism in the political sphere. The same tendencies were carried further in France by Lamennais, with Lacordaire, Montalembert, and other associates, in the early days of Louis Philippe. Lamennais contended for the extension of suffrage, freedom of worship, liberty of conscience, and liberty of the press, at the same time that he asserted ultramontane ideas of the pope's spiritual supremacy. This strange combination of opinions was set forth with enthusiasm in a journal, L'Avenir. These doctrines were withstood by the clerical party. They were condemned by Pope Gregory XVI., who, in 1831, succeeded Leo XII. The journal was given up. Lamennais submitted with reluctance and with qualifications. His associates bowed to the papal decision. The generous, but quixotic, effort to harmonize discordant systems fell to the ground. Lacordaire became one of the most impressive preachers in the French Catholic Church. Montalembert did not abandon his liberality of spirit. Catholic At about the time when the clerical reaction in France suffered a decided check by the expulsion of the Bourbons, the Catholic Church gained advantages which it did not owe to the Emancipation papal curia. In Great Britain, Catholic Emancipation released adherents of the Church of Rome from the ob noxious oaths which had been imposed in the times of the Restora in England. |