The great Pope struggled on until his ninth decade of life had opened. He died on July 20, 1903, leaving his sternly contested inheritance to less skilful hands, marking, with his dying eyes, the onward progress of all the forces he had hailed as disastrous and the advance of "Americanism" (or Modernism) within the Church. His failure must not blind us to the greatness of his personality. He united intellectual breadth and penetration with a high character and a lofty devotion to his work. His weakness was the antiquated and restricted nature of his knowledge and his inheritance of an untenable position. The concessions he made to his age were too tardy, too grudging, and often too obviously opportunist. With equal readiness he wrote a letter of recommendation of a work of canon law (by Marianus de Luca) which advocated the execution of heretics, and he blessed the republics of France and America. But the great theme of his life was that civilization was perishing because it had shaken off the allegiance of Rome, and he lived to see the world "rounding onward to the light" and departing ever farther from its old traditions.
FOOTNOTES:
[358] In a letter to his brother Charles, July 3, 1837, he remarks that he has entered the clergy "in order to carry out the wishes of his father." Catholic lives of Leo XIII., which abound, must be read with discretion. They are even more tendentious than lives of Pius IX., and the best of them—by Mgr. de T'Serclacs (2 vols., 1894), L.K. Goetz (1899), J. de Narfon (1899), Mgr. B. O'Reilly (1903), and P.J. O'Byrne (1903)—are very unreliable. Mr. Justin McCarthy's short Pope Leo XIII. (1896) is a summary of these, and shares their defects. With them should be read Joachim Pecci (1900) by Henri des Houx, for the period before his election, and Le Conclave de Léon XIII. (1887) by Raphael de Cesare: both Catholic writers, but more candid and discriminating. See also Boyer d'Agen, La Jeunesse de Léon XIII. (1896) and Monsignor Joachim Pecci (1910) and works to be mentioned hereafter.
[359] These are chiefly reproduced in the works of Boyer d'Agen.
[360] See the documents in Henri des Houx, pp. 166-7, and Mgr. de T'Serclaes, vol. i., pp. 127-132. Most biographers grossly misrepresent his "promotion." Rome plainly decided that he was not suitable for a nunciature.
[361] His episcopal pronouncements are given in Scelta di Atti episcopali del Cardinale G. Pecci (1879).
[362] He was made cardinal on December 19, 1853.
[363] Mgr. Cataldi, whom he afterwards made his master of ceremonies. H. des Houx (p. 329) observes that, when Cataldi died, his papers were put under seal by Leo's orders and his letters have never been published.
[364] See de Cesare, pp. 138-144.
[365] The losses of the Church are analyzed by the author, and Catholic authority is quoted in most cases, in The Decay of the Church of Rome (2d ed. 1910). In France alone the loss was about 25,000,000. His Papal pronouncements are collected in Leonis XIII. P.M. Acta (17 vols., 1881-1898), SS. D.N. Leonis XIII. allocutiones, etc. (8 vols., 1887-1910), and Discorsi del Summo Pontefice Leone XIII. (1882).