Pius still protected, by a conviction that the plebiscite had been fraudulent, his illusion that only a disreputable minority resented his beneficent government, and the diplomacy of the Quirinal during the next ten years was the least enlightened that could have been devised for securing the slender remaining territory. Many cardinals, and even Antonelli, came to see that a recognition of Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy would be the wiser course, but Pius, supported by the Jesuits (who had founded their Civiltà Cattolica, as an organ of Papal sentiment, in 1850), obstinately refused to temporize. He would have no negotiation with "the robbers," the excommunicated rebels against God. He retained—or the French troops still retained for him—only Rome and the Roman district, and proclaimed that he relied on Catholic Europe to restore his full rights. Years were spent in vain efforts to induce him to surrender his temporal power, or to recognize Victor Emmanuel as his "Vicar" in the kingdom of Italy, and in the meantime the Italian aspiration for Rome as a capital grew stronger, and the Pope's obstinate retention of his temporal possessions was easily represented in an unfavourable light throughout Europe. The cardinals were not indifferent to the offer of 10,000 scudi a year and seats in the Italian Senate; and Antonelli was won by a promise of 3,000,000 scudi and rich gifts for his family. There can be little doubt that the rapid development of anti-clericalism in Italy during the sixties, and the growing disdain of Rome in England and France, would have been materially checked if the Pope had been more sagacious. He dreamed that the Catholic world still shared the crusading fervour of the Middle Ages, and he was insensible of the selfish motives of France, Naples, and Austria.
In the midst of the negotiations he committed the grave blunder of issuing his Encyclical Quanta Cura (December 8, 1864) with the famous accompanying Syllabus, or list of eighty condemned propositions. There is no need to analyze here that mediæval indictment of the modern spirit. Many of the propositions are now commonplaces in the mind of every educated Catholic, and it is precisely their boast that—to use some of the condemned words—the Catholic Church may be reconciled with "progress, liberty, and the new civilization." The pages of the Civiltà Cattolica sufficiently indicate who were the Pope's unhappy inspirers. In brief, the document convinced Europe that Rome insisted on being driven off the path of progress at the point of the bayonet, and in 1866 the French evacuated Rome, leaving the Pope only 2000 mercenary soldiers, who were to don his uniform. When Garibaldi made his third impulsive inroad—the second, in 1862, had been arrested by the Piedmontese—in October, 1867, the French arrested him, but the war of 1870 gave Italy its opportunity. On September 20, 1870, the Italian troops entered the breach in the Roman walls, and the long and romantic story of the temporal power of the Popes was over. By the Law of Guarantees (May 15, 1871) Italy granted the Pope sovereign rights, with an annual income of 3,250,000 lire and an extension of extraterritorial rights to certain Roman palaces. By a final error Pius refused to acknowledge his position, set up the melodramatic fiction of "the Prisoner of the Vatican," and, by forbidding Catholics to take part in the elections of the new kingdom, allowed Italy to drift farther and farther away from his spiritual control.[357]
Meantime the famous Vatican Council had crowned his more purely ecclesiastical work. The idea of summoning the whole Christian world to a second and greater Trent, of healing religious dissensions and uniting religious forces against modernism, had dazzled the imagination of the Pope at Gaeta. His advisers encouraged him, and in 1865 he appointed a commission to discuss the subject. In 1867, when his heart was uplifted by the great gathering at Rome for the celebration of the (supposed) eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter, he announced the council, and in the following year (June 28, 1868) the Bull Æterni Patris invited all Christians—heretic and schismatic, as well as orthodox—to the Vatican Council of 1869. It was opened on December 8th, when 719 members assembled from the Catholic world.
The great issue—the one issue that may be discussed here—was the question of defining the infallibility of the Pope. Here again the Jesuits ardently supported the wish of Pius IX., and a struggle had taken place in the Catholic world for some years. It was known that such devout and influential priests as Newman in England, Bishop Dupanloup and Archbishop Darboy in France, and Bishop Ketteler and Cardinal Schwarzenberg and Döllinger in Germany, opposed the definition, and the greatest care was taken in selecting members of the council whose position did not make them entitled to sit in it. When Newman was proposed from England, Manning (an enthusiastic supporter of the Papal policy) and the Jesuits defeated the project, as Purcell has since established in his life of Manning. When, however, the seven hundred members of the council had assembled, it was realized that between one hundred and fifty and two hundred voters regarded a definition of infallibility as inopportune, and the procedure and control of the council were diplomatically arranged. What Newman called "the aggressive, insolent faction" of the Infallibilists strained every nerve to destroy the opposition. They drew up a petition to the Pope, and Pius was deeply annoyed to find that little over four hundred names appeared at its foot; and of the signatories the majority were prelates who lived at Rome in dependence on the Quirinal.
But the familiar story need not be told again in detail. The debates were prolonged into the broiling summer, in spite of the remonstrances of the northerners, and the Pope's indignation at the minority was freely expressed. When, on July 13th, the vote was taken, 451 voted "Aye," 62 voted a qualified "Aye" (Placet juxta modum), and 88 voted in opposition. Pius wavered, and was disposed to listen to counsels of compromise, but the majority pressed, and the stormy debate continued. The Inopportunists were reduced to silence, and at the final vote, on July 18th, only two voted against the project; though many abstained from voting. Time has thrown a strange light on that historic struggle. On the one hand, it has transpired that the definition was drawn up in such terms that the controversialist could plausibly accommodate it with the known blunders of earlier Popes, and few followed the spirited revolt of Döllinger: on the other hand, the Papacy has from that day to this made no use of its infallibility, in an age of perplexing doubts, and the ardour of the Infallibilists has cooled.
During the following years the Pope sank once more into depression as the situation in Italy engendered grave troubles. Bible Societies and Protestant churches appeared in Italy, even in Rome, and Pius vainly denounced the monstrosity. Bishops dare not apply to the Italian government for their appointments, and had to remain without incomes and palaces. The Jesuits were expelled, and in 1872 a law of dissolution menaced the 8151 members of religious houses in Rome and the provinces. Bavaria refused to publish the Bull Pastor Æternus, and its struggle with the Church extended to Prussia and culminated in the long and bitter Kulturkampf (1872-1887). In France the anti-clerical Liberals gained from year to year on the Catholic reaction which had followed the Commune of 1871, and Gambetta's battle-cry rallied the old forces in alarming numbers. In 1876 (November 6th) Antonelli died, and the grave scandal which disclosed his irregularities gave joy to the enemies of the Papacy. A last gleam of consolation came to the Pope in 1877, when the Catholic world held a magnificent celebration, on June 3d, of his episcopal jubilee. But the aged Pope saw no retreat of the disastrous forces he had encountered, and, after the longest and most calamitous rule in Papal history, he died on February 7, 1878.
Little need be added in regard to his relations with other countries than France and Italy. The record is one of both successes and failures which were misunderstood at Rome: to the modern historian it is the record of the lapse of millions from the Roman allegiance. In the United States forty-four new dioceses were established between 1847 and 1877, yet the American prelates of the time bitterly lament the loss of hundreds of thousands of scattered Catholic immigrants. In England the Romeward movement within the English Church came to an end long before the death of Pius, and the Church made no numerical progress in excess of births and immigration. In Holland the hierarchy was peacefully restored, but in Switzerland there was such tension that the Internuncio was expelled in 1874. Russia severed relations with Rome in 1860: Württemberg (1861) and Baden (1859) signed Concordats with Rome, but found it impossible to maintain them: and the new German Empire was, as I said previously, involved by Bismarck and Falk in a bitter struggle with Rome.
The relations with Catholic countries were little more satisfactory. Sardinia had mortally offended the Quirinal long before the struggle for Italian unity began: by a long series of anti-clerical measures it abolished tithes, laicised education and marriage, expelled the religious orders and confiscated their property, gave freedom of worship to Protestants, and dealt summarily with hostile bishops. Austria had signed in 1855 (August 18th) a Concordat which was favourable to the Church, but the young Francis Joseph, whose education had been carefully directed in the clerical interest, was forced by the storm of opposition to deviate from it. It was abolished in 1870, and four years later laws were passed which the Vatican regarded as anti-clerical. Spain maintained, through its various revolutions, a consistent docility, and was the only country on which the dying eyes of the Pope could dwell with satisfaction. It contracted a favourable Concordat on March 16, 1851, which was supplemented in 1859. Portugal signed a favourable Concordat in 1857. In Latin America on the other hand, the Church suffered grave reverses. Costa Rica and Guatemala (1852), Haiti (1860), Nicaragua (1861), and San Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, and Ecuador (1862) signed satisfactory Concordats, but Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina entered upon anti-clerical ways, and the spirit of revolt against the clergy was spreading throughout Southern and Central America. Not since the days of Leo X. had the Church suffered such grave and widespread defection.
In estimating the character of Pius IX. and his relation to these losses the modern historian has little difficulty. The exaggerations of both his critics and his panegyrists are patent. He was a sincerely religious and zealous man, but the hope once entertained of his canonization (or, at least, beatification) was as absurd as the malevolent attacks on his character from the other side. His intellectual quality must be similarly judged: he had little penetration, no breadth of mind, no power to read aright the symptoms of his age. In considering the fatal obstinacy with which he refused all accommodation in regard to his temporal power, we must carefully bear in mind his religious views, and not merely dwell on his slight capacity for diplomacy or statesmanship. So grave a surrender could not be commended by a few years of revolution except to a man of greater insight and foresight than Pius IX. In sum, he would in years of peace and piety have made an excellent and undistinguished steward of the Papal heritage, but he was very far from having the greatness of mind which the circumstances of the Church required, and the vast organization over which he so long presided emerged still further weakened from its second historical crisis. It had fought Protestantism and lost: it had fought Democracy and Progress and lost. It remained for a wiser Pope to initiate the policy of accommodation.