About this time, the King, it was said, thought to ingratiate himself with the Holy See by his cruel persecutions of the Huguenots, but such measures were not calculated to please a man of Odescalchi’s character, and fresh disputes arose. One of the abuses which the Pope had endeavoured to abolish in Rome was the ‘right of asylum,’ as it was called, hitherto claimed by foreign Ambassadors. Not only on their arrival in the imperial city had they a palace assigned them, but quarters for innumerable hangers-on, in several adjacent streets. The Emperor, the King of Spain, and others, had listened to the remonstrances of His Holiness, and waived their claim to these unreasonable privileges; but Louis was glad of a fresh opportunity to oppose the Pope, boasting that he was not in the habit of following the example of others.
Accordingly, he sent his Ambassador, with a considerable armed force, to demand the rights of ‘asylum’ in the name of his royal master. The formidable array brought no fear to the brave heart of Benedetto Odescalchi. ‘They come with horses and chariots,’ he said, ‘but we will walk in the name of the Lord.’ The French emissary was excommunicated, and the Church of St. Louis (the patron saint of France), where he attended mass, was placed under interdict.
Reprisals were now the order of the day. The Papal Nuncio was detained a prisoner in Paris, many French bishops deprived of their canonical institutions, a territory of the Holy See occupied by France; in fact, daggers drawn! But other Powers besides Rome were jealous of the encroachments and arrogance of the French monarch, and Innocent allied himself with them from political motives. He made a friend of Austria, by assisting her with subsidies in the war with Turkey, and he incurred blame from some of the Catholic bystanders by an alliance with the Protestant Prince William of Orange. The plea was, that William had undertaken the command of the Rhine, and would defend not only the rights of the Empire, but also those of the Church, against Louis XIV. Be this as it may, it seems strange that the Pope should perhaps unwittingly have assisted in the elevation of the enemy of James II., to whose son he had stood godfather. But if the head of the Roman Catholic Church proved indirectly instrumental in furthering the Protestant cause in England, the Protestants, on their side, by maintaining the balance of power in Europe, did His Holiness a good turn. Innocent died soon after these events, leaving behind him a character for courage and steadfastness, combined with great humility and gentleness of manners. As we have already said, he was remarkable for the purity of his morals, and made himself very unpopular with the women of all classes by denouncing, in no measured terms, the indecency of dress and laxity of manners, which were (he considered) unusually prevalent in his reign. He was much opposed to the sect of the Quietists, and confirmed the sentence of the Inquisition against their unfortunate founder Molinos, who was imprisoned, and eventually died in the cells of that dread institution. He was but a poor scholar, and his secretaries were obliged to translate or turn into Italian, all Latin documents with which he had to deal.
Innocent XI. was charitable to the poor, and much beloved, especially by his dependants, of whose wellbeing he was most careful. He died in the month of August 1689, and the Roman people flocked round his tomb, invoking him as a saint, and disputing with each other any available relic of their favourite Pontiff.
GREAT STAIRCASE.
