§ 188.8. Canonizations.—When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them. St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX. canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627 canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862, the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons, and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the distinction. The number of doctores ecclesiæ was increased by Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.
§ 188.9. Discoveries of Relics.—The Roman catacombs continued still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon, in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable genuineness of the discovered bones as ex constanti et pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ prodita, pronounced the relics generally perennes fontes, from which the dona cælestia flow forth like brooks among the Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also many other relics “divinitus” have been discovered, as e.g. the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.
§ 188.10. The blood of St. Januarius, a martyr of the age of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans, if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy. Unbelievers venture to suggest that this precioso sangue del taumaturgo S. Gennaro is not blood, but a mixture that becomes liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.
§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians, 10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part in the Leaping Procession at Echternach in Luxemburg, which is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting” sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits, common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times (§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).
§ 188.12. The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.—Even after the suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart (§ [156, 6]) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this exercise, and the revanche movement of A.D. 1870 used this as one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “Dieu, de la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur,” became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a beautiful church du Sacré-Cœur has been erected on Montmartre in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by divine revelation” two hundred years before.
§ 188.13. Ultramontane Amulets.—The Carmelites adopted a brown, the Trinitarians a white, the Theatines a blue, the Servites a black, and the Lazarites a red, scapular, assured by divine visions that the wearing of them was a means of salvation. A tract, entitled “Gnaden und Ablässe des fünffachen Skapuliers,” published by episcopal authority at Münster in 1872, declared that any layman who wore the five scapulars would participate in all the graces and indulgences belonging to them severally. The most useful of all was the Carmelite scapular, impenetrable by bullets, impervious to daggers, rendering falls harmless, stilling stormy seas, quenching fires, healing the possessed, the sick, the wounded, etc.—The Benedictines had no scapulars, but they had Benedict-medals, from which they drew a rich revenue. This amulet first made its appearance in the Bavarian Abbey of Metten. The tract, entitled, “St. Benediktusbüchlein oder die Medaille d. h. Benediktus,” published at Münster in 1876, tells how it cures sicknesses, relieves toothache, stops bleeding at the nose, heals burns, overcomes the craving for drink, protects from attacks of evil spirits, restrains skittish horses, cures sick cattle, clears vineyards of blight, secures the conversion of heretics and godless persons, etc.—In A.D. 1878 there appeared at Mainz, with approval of the bishop, a book in its third edition, entitled, “Der Seraphische Gürtel und dessen wunderbare Reichtümer nach d. Franz. d. päpstl. Hausprälaten Abbé v. Segur,” according to which Sixtus V. in 1585 founded the Archbrotherhood of the Girdle of St. Francis. It also affirms that whoever wears this girdle day and night and repeats the six enjoined paternosters, participates in all the indulgences of the holy land and of all the basilicas and sanctuaries of Rome and Assisi, and is entitled to liberate 1,000 souls a day from purgatory.—Great miracles of healing and preservation from all injuries to body and soul, property and goods, are attributed by the Jesuits to the “holy water of St. Ignatius” (§ 149, 11), the sale of which in Belgium, France, and Switzerland has proved to them a lucrative business. But the mother of God has herself favoured them with a still more powerful miracle-working water in the fountains of Lourdes and Marpingen.
§ 188.14. We give in conclusion a specimen of Ultramontane pulpit eloquence. A Bavarian priest, Kinzelmann, said in a sermon in 1872: “We priests stand as far above the emperor, kings, and princes as the heaven is above the earth.... Angels and archangels stand beneath us, for we can in God’s stead forgive sins. We occupy a position superior to that of the mother of God, who only once bare Christ, whereas we create and beget him every day. Yea, in a sense, we stand above God, who must always and everywhere serve us, and at the consecration must descend from heaven upon the mass,” etc.—An apotheosis of the priesthood worthy of the Middle Ages.
§ 189. The Vatican Council.[548]
Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867, given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date, the Civiltà Cattolica of Rome made distinct statements to the effect that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming of the syllabus (§ [185, 2]), the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal absolutism in the spirit of the bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII. (§ 110, 1), and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The Civiltà had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in him.” When the council opened on the day of the immaculate conception, December 8th, 1869, all conceivable devices of skilful diplomacy were used by the Jesuit Camarilla, and friendly cajoling and violent threatening on the part of the pope, in order to silence or win over, and, in case this could not be done, to stifle and suppress the opposition which even already was not inconsiderable in point of numbers, but far more important in point of moral, theological, and hierarchical influence. The result aimed at was secured. Of the 150 original opponents only fifty dared maintain their opposition to the end, and even they cowardly shrank from a decisive conflict, and wrote from their respective dioceses, as their Catholic faith obliged them to do, notifying their most complete acquiescence.
§ 189.1. Preliminary History of the Council.—When Pius IX. on the centenary of St. Peter made known to the assembled bishops his intention to summon a general council, they expressed their conviction that by the blessing of the immaculate Virgin it would be a powerful means of securing unity, peace, and holiness. The formal summons was issued on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul of the following year, June 29th, 1868. The end for which the council was convened was stated generally as follows: The saving of the church and civil society from all evils threatening them, the thwarting of the endeavours of all who seek the overthrow of church and state, the uprooting of all modern errors and the downfall of all godless enemies of the apostolical chair. In Germany the Catholic General Assembly which met at Bamberg soon after this declared that from this day a new epoch in the world’s history would begin, for “either the salvation of the world would result from this council, or the world is beyond the reach of help.” This hopefulness prevailed throughout the whole Catholic world. Fostered by the utterances of the Civiltà Cattolica, the excitement grew from day to day. The learned bishop in partibus Maret, dean of the theological faculty of Paris, now came forward as an eloquent exponent of the Gallican liberties; even the hitherto so strict Catholic, the Count Montalembert, to the astonishment of everybody, assumed a bold and independent attitude in regard to the council, and energetically protested in a publication of March 7th, 1870, six days before his death, against the intrigues of the Jesuits and the infallibility dogma which it was proposed to authorize. But the greatest excitement was occasioned by the work “Der Papst und das Konzil,” published in Leipzig, 1869, under the pseudonym Janus, of which the real authors were Döllinger, Friedrich, and Huber of Munich, who brought up the heavy artillery of the most comprehensive historical scholarship against the evident intentions of the curia. The German bishops gathered at the tomb of St. Boniface at Fulda in September, 1869, and issued from thence a general pastoral letter to their disturbed flocks, declaring that it was impossible that the council should decide otherwise than in accordance with holy Scripture and the apostolic traditions and what was already written upon the hearts of all believing Catholics. Also the papal secretary, Card. Antonelli, quieted the anxiety of the ambassadors of foreign powers at Rome by the assurance that the Holy See had in view neither the confirming of the syllabus nor the affirming of the dogma of infallibility. In vain did the Bavarian premier, Prince Hohenlohe, insist that the heads of other governments should combine in taking measures to prevent any encroachment of the council upon the rights of the state. The great powers resolved to maintain simply a watchful attitude, and only too late addressed earnest expostulations and threats.