§ 185.3. The Overthrow of the Papal States.—In the Peace of Villafranca of 1859, which put an end to the short Austro-French war in Italy, a confederation was arranged of all the Italian princes under the honorary presidency of the pope for drawing up the future constitution of Italy. During the war the Austrians had vacated Bologna, but the French remained in Rome to protect the pope. The revolution now broke out in Romagna. Victor Emanuel, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed dictator for the time over that part of the Papal States and a provisional government was set up. In vain did the pope remind Christendom in an encyclical of the necessity of maintaining his temporal power, in vain did he thunder his excommunicatio major against all who would contribute to its overthrow. A pamphlet war against the temporal power now began, and About’s letters in the Moniteur described with bitter scorn the incapacity of the papal government. In his pamphlet, “Le Pope et le Congrès,” Laguéronnière proposed to restrict the pope’s sovereignty to Rome and its neighbourhood, levy a tax for the support of the papal court on all Catholic nations, and leave Rome undisturbed by political troubles. On December 31st, 1859, Napoleon III. exhorted the pope to yield to the logic of facts and to surrender the provinces that refused any longer to be his. The pope then issued a rescript in which he declared that he could never give up what belonged not to him but to the church. The popular vote in Romagna went almost unanimously for annexation to Sardinia, and this, in spite of the papal ban, was done. A revolution broke out in Umbria and the March of Ancona, and Victor Emanuel without more ado attached these states also to his dominion in A.D. 1860, so that only Rome and the Campagna were retained by the pope, and even these only by means of French support. At the September convention of A.D. 1864 Italy undertook to maintain the papal domain intact, to permit the organization of an independent papal army, and to contribute to the papal treasury; while France was to quit Roman territory within at the latest two years. The pope submitted to what he could not prevent, but still insisted upon his most extreme claims, answered every attempt at conciliation with his stereotyped non possumus, and in A.D. 1866 proclaimed St. Catherine of Siena (§ [112, 4]) patron of the “city.” When the last of the French troops took ship in A.D. 1866 the radical party thought the time had come for freeing Italy from papal rule, and roused the whole land by public proclamation. Garibaldi again put himself at the head of the movement. The Papal State was soon encircled by bands of volunteers, and insurrections broke out even within Rome itself. Napoleon pronounced this a breach of the September convention, and in A.D. 1867 the volunteers were utterly routed by the French at Mentana. The French guarded Civita Vecchia and fortified Rome. But in August, 1870, their own national exigencies demanded the withdrawal of the French troops, and after the battle of Sedan the Italians to a man insisted on having Rome as their capital, and Victor Emanuel acquiesced. The pope sought help far and near from Catholic and non-Catholic powers, but he received only the echo of his own words, non possumus. After a four hours’ cannonade a breach was made in the walls of the eternal city, the white flag appeared on St. Angelo, and amid the shouts of the populace the Italian troops entered on September 20th, 1870. A plebiscite in the papal dominions gave 133,681 votes in favour of annexation and 1,507 against; in Rome alone there were 40,785 for and only 46 against. The king now issued the decree of incorporation; Rome became capital of united Italy and the Quirinal the royal residence.
§ 185.4. The Prisoner of the Vatican, A.D. 1870-1878.—The dethroned papal king could only protest and utter denunciations. No result followed from the adoption of St. Joseph as guardian and patron of the church, nor from the solemn consecration of the whole world to the most sacred heart of Jesus, at the jubilee of June 16th, A.D. 1875. The measures of A.D. 1871, by which Cavour sought to realize his ideal of a “free church in a free state,” were pronounced absurd, cunning, deceitful, and an outrage on the apostles Peter and Paul. By these measures the rights and privileges of a sovereign for all time had been conferred on the pope: the holiness and inviolability of his person, a body-guard, a post and telegraph bureau, free ambassadorial communication with foreign powers, the ex-territoriality of his palace of the Vatican, embracing fifteen large saloons, 11,500 rooms, 236 stairs, 218 corridors, two chapels, several museums, archives, libraries, large beautiful gardens, etc., as also of the Lateran and the summer palace of Castle Gandolpho, with all appurtenances, also an annual income, free from all burdens and taxes, of three and a quarter million francs, equal to the former amount of his revenue, together with unrestricted liberty in the exercise of all ecclesiastical rights of sovereignty and primacy, and the renunciation of all state interference in the disposal of bishoprics and benefices. The right of the inferior clergy to exercise the appellatio ab abusu to a civil tribunal was set aside, and of all civil rights only that of the royal exequatur in the election of bishops, i.e. the mere right of investing the nominee of the curia in the possession of the revenues of his office, was retained.—To the end of his life Pius every year returned the dotation as an insult and injury, and “the starving holy father in prison, who has not where to lay his head,” received three or four times more in Peter’s pence contributed by all Catholic Christendom. Playing the rôle of a prisoner he never passed beyond the precincts of the Vatican. He reached the semi-jubilee of his papal coronation in A.D. 1871, being the first pope who falsified the old saying, Annos Petri non videbit. He rejected the offer of a golden throne and the title of “the great,” but he accepted a Parisian lady’s gift of a golden crown of thorns. In support of the prison myth, straws from the papal cell were sold in Belgium for half a franc per stalk, and for the same price photographs of the pope behind an iron grating. As once on a time the legend arose about the disciple whom Jesus loved that he would not die, so was it once said about the pope; and on his eighty-third birthday, in A.D. 1874, a Roman Jesuit paper, eulogising the moral purity of his life, put the words in his mouth, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” But he himself by constantly renewed rescripts, encyclicals, briefs, allocutions to the cardinals and to numerous deputations from far and near, unweariedly fanned the flame of enthusiasm and fanaticism throughout papal Christendom, and thundered threatening prophecies not only against the Italian, but also against foreign states, for with most of them he lived in open war. A collection of his “Speeches delivered at the Vatican” was published in 1874, commented on by Gladstone in the Contemporary Review for January, 1875, who gives abundant quotations showing papal assumptions, maledictions, abuse and misunderstanding of the Scriptures with which they abound. On the fiftieth anniversary of the pope’s episcopal consecration, in June, 1877, crowds from all lands assembled to offer their congratulations, with costly presents and Peter’s pence amounting to sixteen and a half million francs. He died February 8th, 1878, in the eighty-sixth year of his age and thirty-second of his pontificate.His heirs claimed the unpaid dotations of twenty million lire, but were refused by the courts of law.[543]—His secretary Antonelli, descended from an old brigand family, who from the time of his stay at Gaeta was his evil demon, predeceased him in A.D. 1876. Though the son of a poor herdsman and woodcutter, he left more than a hundred million lire. His natural daughter, to the great annoyance of the Vatican, sought, but without success, in the courts of justice to make good her claims against her father’s greedy brothers.
§ 185.5. Leo XIII.—After only two days’ conclave the Cardinal-archbishop of Perugia, Joachim Pecci, born in A.D. 1810, was proclaimed on February 20th, 1878, as Leo XIII. In autograph letters he intimated his accession to the German and Russian emperors, but not to the king of Italy, and expressed his wish for a good mutual understanding. To the government of the Swiss Cantons he declared his hope that their ancient friendly relations might be restored. At Easter, 1878, he issued an encyclical to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, in which he required of them that they should earnestly entreat the mediation of the “immaculate queen of heaven” and the intercession of St. Joseph, “the heavenly shield of the church,” and also failed not to make prominent the infallibility of the apostolic chair, and to condemn all the errors condemned by his predecessors, emphasizing the necessity of restoring the temporal power of the pope, and confirming and renewing all the protests of his predecessor Pius IX., of sacred memory, against the overthrow of the Papal States. On the first anniversary of his elevation he proclaimed a universal jubilee, with the promise of a complete indulgence. He still persisted in the prison myth of his predecessor, and like him sent back the profferred contribution of his “jailor.” In the conflicts with foreign powers inherited from Pius, as well as in his own, he has employed generally moderate and conciliatory language.—He has not hesitated to take the first step toward a good understanding with his opponents, for which, while persistently maintaining the ancient principles of the papal chair, he makes certain concessions in regard to subordinate matters, always with the design and expectation of seeing them outweighed on the other side by the conservation of all the other hierarchical pretensions of the curial system. It was, however, only in the middle of A.D. 1885 that it became evident that the pope had determined, without allowing any misunderstanding to arise between himself and his cardinals, to break through the trammels of the irreconcilable zealots in the college. And indeed after the conclusion of the German Kulturkampf (§ [197, 13], [15]), brought about by these means, in an allocution with reference thereto addressed to the cardinals in May, 1887, he gave an unexpected expression to his wish and longing in regard to an understanding with the government on the Italian question, which involved an utter renunciation of his predecessor’s dogged Non possumus, the attitude hitherto unfalteringly maintained. “Would that peaceful counsels,” says he, “embracing all our peoples should prevail in Italy also, and that at last once that unhappy difference might be overcome without loss of privilege to the holy see!” Such harmony, indeed, is only possible when the pope “is subjected to no authority and enjoys perfect freedom,” which would cause no loss to Italy, “but would only secure its lasting peace and safety.” That he counts upon the good offices of the German emperor for the effecting of this longed-for restoration of such a modus vivendi with the Italian government, he has clearly indicated in his preliminary communications to the Prussian centre exhorting to peace (§ [197, 14]). The Moniteur de Rome (§ [188, 1]), however, interpreted the words of the pope thus: “Italy would lose nothing materially or politically, if it gave a small corner of its territory to the pope, where he might enjoy actual sovereignty as a guarantee of his spiritual independence.”—On Leo’s contributions to theological science see § [191, 12]; on his attitude to Protestantism and the Eastern Church, see § [175, 2], [4]. He expressed himself against the freemasons in an encyclical of A.D. 1884 with even greater severity than Pius. Consequently the Roman Inquisition issued an instruction to all bishops throughout the Catholic world requiring them to enjoin their clergy in the pulpit and the confessional to make it known that all freemasons are eo ipso excommunicated, and by Catholic associations of every sort, especially by the spread of the third order of St. Francis (§ [186, 2]), the injunction was carried out. At the same time a year’s reprieve was given to the freemasons, during which the Roman heresy laws, which required their children, wives, and relatives to denounce them to all clergy and laymen, were to be suspended. Should the guilty, however, allow this day of grace to pass, these laws were to be again fully enforced, and then it would be only for the pope to absolve them from their terrible sin.
§ 186. Various Orders and Associations.
The order of the Jesuits restored in A.D. 1814 by Pius VII. impregnated all other orders with its spirit, gained commanding influence over Pius IX., made the bishops its agents, and turned the whole Catholic church into a Jesuit institution. An immense number of societies arose aiming at the accomplishment of home mission work, inspired by the Jesuit spirit and carrying out unquestioningly the ultramontane ideas of their leaders. Also zeal for foreign missions on old Jesuit lines revived, and the enthusiasm for martyrdom was due mainly to the same cause.
§ 186.1. The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.—After the suppression of their order by Clement XIV. the Jesuits found refuge mainly among the Redemptorists (§ [165, 2]), whose headquarters were at Vienna, from which they spread through Austria and Bavaria, finding entrance also into Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Holland, and after 1848 into Catholic Prussia, as well as into Hesse and Nassau. The Congregation of the Sacred Heart was founded by ex-Jesuits in Belgium in A.D. 1794, and soon spread in Austria and Bavaria.—The restored Jesuit order was met with a storm of opposition from the liberals. The July revolution of A.D. 1830 drove the Jesuits from France, and when they sought to re-establish themselves, Gregory XVI., under pressure of the government, insisted that their general should abolish the French institutions in A.D. 1845. An important branch of the order had settled in Catholic Switzerland, but the unfavourable issue of the Separated Cantons’ War of 1847 drove its members out of that refuge. The revolution of 1848 threatened the order with extinction, but the papal restoration of A.D. 1850 re-introduced it into most Catholic countries. Since then the sons of Loyola have renewed their youth like the eagle. They have forced their way into all lands, even in those on both sides of the ocean that had by legislative enactments been closed against them, spreading ultramontane views among Catholics, converting Protestants, and disseminating their principles in schools and colleges.Even Pius IX., under whose auspices Aug. Theiner had been allowed, in A.D. 1853, in his “History of the Pontificate of Clement XIV.” to bring against them the heavy artillery drawn from “the secret archives of the Vatican,” again handed over to them the management of public instruction, and surrendered himself even more and more to their influence, so that at last he saw only by their eyes, heard only with their ears, and resolved only according to their will.[544] The founding of the Italian kingdom under the Prince of Sardinia in A.D. 1860 led to their expulsion from all Italy, with the exception of Venice and the remnants of the Papal States. When, in A.D. 1866, Venice also became an Italian province, they migrated thence into the Tyrol and other Austrian provinces, where they enjoyed the blessings of the concordat (§ [198, 2]). Spain, too, on the expulsion of Queen Isabella in A.D. 1868, and even Mexico and several of the States of Central and Southern America, drove out the disciples of Loyola. On the other hand, they made brilliant progress in Germany, especially in Rhenish Hesse and the Catholic provinces of Prussia. But under the new German empire the Reichstag, in A.D. 1872, passed a law suppressing the Jesuits and all similar orders throughout the empire (§ [197, 4]). They were also formally expelled from France in A.D. 1880 (§ [203, 6]). Still, however, in A.D. 1881 the order numbered 11,000 members in five provinces, and according to Bismarck’s calculation in A.D. 1872 their property amounted to 280 million thalers. In A.D. 1853 John Beckx of Belgium was made general. He retired in A.D. 1884 at the age of ninety, Anderlady, a Swiss, having been appointed in A.D. 1883 his colleague and successor.—The hope which was at first widely entertained that Leo XIII. would emancipate himself from the domination of the order seems more and more to be proved a vain delusion. In July, 1886, he issued, on the occasion of a new edition of the institutions of the order, a letter to Anderlady, in which he, in the most extravagant manner, speaks of the order as having performed the most signal services “to the church and society,” and confirms anew everything that his predecessors had said and done in its favour, while expressly and formally he recalls anew anything that any of them had said and done against it.
§ 186.2. Other Orders and Congregations.—After the storms of the revolution religious orders rapidly recovered lost ground. France decreed, on November 2nd, 1789, the abolition of all orders, and cloisters and in 1802, under Napoleon’s auspices, they were also suppressed in the German empire and the friendly princes indemnified with their goods. Yet on grounds of utility Napoleon restored the Lazarists, as well as the Sisters of Mercy, whose scattered remnants he collected in A.D. 1807 in Paris into a general chapter, under the presidency of the empress-mother. But new cloisters in great numbers were erected specially in Belgium and France (in opposition to the law of 1789, which was unrepealed), in Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, etc., as also in England and America. In 1849 there were in Prussia fifty monastic institutes; in 1872 there were 967. In Cologne one in every 215, in Aachen one in every 110, in Münster one in every sixty-one, in Paderborn one in every thirty-three, was a Catholic priest or member of an order. In Bavaria, between 1831 and 1873 the number of cloisters rose from 43 to 628, all, with the exception of some old Benedictine monasteries, inspired and dominated by the Jesuits. Even the Dominicans, originally such determined opponents, are now pervaded by the Jesuit spirit. The restoration of the Trappist order (§ [156, 8]) deserves special mention. On their expulsion from La Trappe in A.D. 1791 the brothers found an asylum in the Canton Freiburg, and when driven thence by the French invasion of A.D. 1798, Paul I. obtained from the czar permission for them to settle in White Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. But expelled from these regions again in A.D. 1800 they wandered through Europe and America, till after Napoleon’s defeat they purchased back the monastery of La Trappe, and made it the centre of a group of new settlements throughout France and beyond it.—Besides regular orders there were also numerous congregations or religious societies with communal life according to a definite but not perpetually binding rule, and without the obligation of seclusion, as well as brotherhoods and sisterhoods without any such rule, which after the restoration of A.D. 1814 in France and after A.D. 1848 in Germany, were formed for the purposes of prayer, charity, education, and such like. From France many of these spread into the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia.—In Spain and Portugal (§ [205, 1], [5]) all orders were repeatedly abolished, subsequently also in Sardinia and even in all Italy (§ [204, 1], [2]), and also in several Romish American states (§ [209, 1], [2]), as also in Prussia and Hesse (§ [197, 8], [15]).Finally the third French Republic has enforced existing laws against all orders and congregations not authorized by the State (§ [203, 6]).—On the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis, in September, 1882, Leo XIII. issued an encyclical declaring the institute of the Franciscan Tertiaries (§ [98, 11]) alone capable of saving human society from all the political and social dangers of the present and future, which had some success at least in Italy.
Of what inhuman barbarity the superiors of cloisters are still capable is shown instar omnium in the horrible treatment of the nun Barbara Ubryk, who, avowedly on account of a breach of her vow of chastity, was confined since A.D. 1848 in the cloister of the Carmelite nuns at Cracow in a dark, narrow cell beside the sewer of the convent, without fire, bed, chair, or table. It was only in A.D. 1869, in consequence of an anonymous communication to the law officers, that she was freed from her prison in a semi-animal condition, quite naked, starved, and covered with filth, and consigned to an asylum. The populace of Cracow, infuriated at such conduct, could be restrained from demolishing all the cloisters only by the aid of the military.
§ 186.3. The Pius Verein.—A society under the name of the Pius Verein was started at Mainz in October, 1848, to further Catholic interests, advocating the church’s independence of the State, the right of the clergy to direct education, etc. At the annual meetings its leading members boasted in grossly exaggerated terms of what had been accomplished and recklessly prophesied of what would yet be achieved. At the twenty-eighth general assembly at Bonn in A.D. 1881, with an attendance of 1,100, the same confident tone was maintained. Windhorst reminded the Prussian government of the purchase of the Sibylline books, and declared that each case of breaking off negotiations raised the price of the peace. Not a tittle of the ultramontane claims would be surrendered. The watchword is the complete restoration of the status quo ante. Baron von Loë, president of the Canisius Verein, concluded his triumphant speech with the summons to raise the membership of the union from 80,000 to 800,000, yea to 8,000,000; then would the time be near when Germany should become again a Catholic land and the church again the leader of the people. At the assembly at Düsseldorf in A.D. 1883, Windhorst declared, amid the enthusiastic applause of all present, that after the absolute abrogation of the May laws the centre would not rest till education was again committed unreservedly to the church. In the assembly at Münster in A.D. 1885, he extolled the pope (notwithstanding all confiscation and imprisoning for the time being) as the governor and lord of the whole world. The thirty-third assembly at Breslau in A.D. 1886, with special emphasis, demanded the recall of all orders, including that of the Jesuits.
§ 186.4. The various German unions gradually fell under ultramontane influences. The Borromeo Society circulated Catholic books inculcating ultramontane views in politics and religion. The Boniface Union, founded by Martin, Bishop of Paderborn, aided needy Catholic congregations in Protestant districts. Other unions were devoted to foreign missions, to work among Germans in foreign lands, etc. In all the universities such societies were formed. In Bavaria patriot peasant associations were set on foot, as a standing army in the conflict of the ultramontane hierarchy with the new German empire. For the same purpose Bishop Ketteler founded in A.D. 1871 the Mainz Catholic Union, which in A.D. 1814 had 90,000 members. The Görres Society of 1876 (§ [188, 1]) and the Canisius Society of 1879 (§ [151, 1]) were meant to promote education on ultramontane lines.—In Italy such societies have striven for the restoration of the temporal power and the supremacy of the church over the State. The unions of France were confederated in A.D. 1870, and this general association holds an annual congress. The several unions were called “œuvres.” The Œuvre du Vœu National, e.g., had the task of restoring penitent France to the “sacred heart of Jesus” (§ [188, 12]); the Œuvre Pontifical made collections of Peter’s pence and for persecuted priests; the Œuvre de Jesus-Ouvrier had to do with the working classes, etc.