The poor Pope had exclaimed before he signed the Brief: "Questa soppressione mi darà la morte" (this suppression will kill me.) "After it," says Saint-Priest in his 'Chute des Jésuites,' "he would pace his apartments in agony, crying: 'Mercy! Mercy! They forced me to do it. Compulsus feci.' However, at the last moment his reason returned. He showed his indignation at a proposal made to him even then, to raise some of the enemies of the Society to the cardinalate and drove them from his bedside with loathing.
Bernis, the French ambassador at Rome, wrote to Louis XV that "the Vicar of Christ prayed like the Redeemer for his implacable enemies," and insinuated that he was poisoned. Knowing this d'Alembert warned Frederick II to be on his guard against a similar fate, but the king replied: "There is nothing more false than the story of the poisoning; the truth is that he was profoundly hurt by the coldness manifested by the cardinals and he often reproached himself, for having sacrificed an Order like that of the Jesuits, to satisfy the whim of his rebellious children." Becantini (Storia di Pio VI, i, 31) says: "Nowadays no one believes the story of the poisoning of Clement XIV. Even Bernis who first stood for it, afterwards disavowed it." Cancelleri one of the most distinguished savants of Italy denies the fact; so does Gavani, a bitter enemy of the Church and the Society. Finally, Salcetto the physician of the Apostolic palace, and Adinolfi the Pope's own doctor, in their official report to the majordomo, Archinto, declare it to have been an absolutely natural death and they explain that the corruption which set in was due to the excessive heat that prevailed at the time.
It was even said that the Pope had expressed to the General of the Conventuals, Marzoni, a fear that he had been poisoned. Whereupon Marzoni caused the following statement to be published:
"I, the undersigned Minister General of the Order of the Conventuals of St. Francis, fully aware that by my oath I call the sovereign and true God to witness what I say; and being certain of what I say, I now without any constraint and in the presence of God who knows that I do not lie, do by these words, which are absolutely true, and which I write and trace with my own hand, swear and attest to the whole universe, that never in any circumstance whatever did Clement XIV ever say to me either that he had been poisoned or that he felt the slightest symptom of poison. I swear also that I never said to any one soever that the same Clement XIV assured me in confidence that he had been poisoned or had felt the effects of poison. So help me God.
"Given in the Convent of the Twelve Apostles at Rome July 27, 1775.
"I, Bro. Louis-Maria Marzoni
"Minister General of the Order."
Thus Clement XIV, far from giving peace to the Church, left a heritage of woe to his successor, Angelo Braschi, who was elected Pope on February 15, 1775, and took the name of Pius VI. The new Pope was painfully conscious that an error had been committed by suppressing an Order without trial and without even condemnation, and that a reflection had been cast upon a great number of Pontiffs who had been unstinted in their praise of it, no one more so than Clement's immediate predecessor. The act had also given to the Jansenists a terrific instrument in the implied approval of them by the Sovereign Pontiff. They became more aggressive than ever and organized their forces to introduce their doctrines into Italy itself.
By a curious coincidence the leader of the movement was of the same family as the General of the suppressed Jesuits: Scipio Ricci, the Bishop of Pistoia. Supporting him in the civic world was the Grand Duke of Tuscany who was the brother of Joseph II of Austria. Ricci convened the famous Synod of Pistoia, on July 31, 1786. No doubt July 31 was chosen purposely; it was the feast of St. Ignatius. There were 247 members in attendance, all exclusively Jansenists and regalists. The four Gallican Articles were endorsed and among the measures was that of conferring the right on the civil authority to create matrimonial impediments. It advocated the reduction of all religious orders to one; the abolition of perpetual vows; a vernacular liturgy; the removal of all altars but one from the church; etc. The Acts of the synod were promulgated with the royal imprimatur. Indeed Pius VI found himself compelled to condemn eighty-five of the synod's propositions.
Worse than this was the Febronianism of Austria, which went far beyond the Gallicanism of France or Italy in its rebellious aggressiveness. It maintained that the primacy of Rome had no basis in the authority of Christ; that the papacy was not restricted to Rome, but could be placed anywhere; that Rome was merely a centre with which the individual churches could be united; that the papal power was simply administrative and unifying and not jurisdictional; that the papal power of condemning heresies, confirming episcopal elections, naming coadjutors, transferring and removing bishops, erecting primatial sees, etc., all rested on the False Decretals. It was maintained that the Pope could issue no decrees for the Universal Church, and that even the decrees of general councils were not binding until approved of by the individual churches.
In vain Clement XIV had begged Maria Theresa to check the movement. She was absolutely in the power of her son Joseph II, whose very first ordinances forbade the reception of papal decrees without the government's sanction. The bishops, he ruled, were not to apply to the Pope for faculties; they could not even issue instructions to their own flocks without permission of the civil authority. He established parishes, assigned fast days, determined the number of Masses to be said, and sermons to be preached. He even decided how many candles were to be lighted on the altar; he made marriage a civil contract and abolished ecclesiastical ceremonies.
In the hope that a personal appeal might avail, the Pope determined to make a journey to Vienna to entreat the emperor to desist. He arrived there on March 22, 1782, and was courteously received by Joseph himself, but brutally by his minister, Kaunitz, who forbade any ecclesiastic to present himself in the city while the Pope was there. Pius remained a month in the capital and succeeded only in extracting a promise that nothing would be done against the Faith or the respect due the Holy See. How far the royal word was kept may be inferred from the fact that after accompanying the Pope as far as the Monastery of Marianbrunn Joseph suppressed that establishment an hour after the Pope had resumed his journey to Rome.
In Germany the three ecclesiastical Electors of Mayence, Treves and Cologne with the Archbishop of Salzburg met in a convention at Ems in 1786, and attempted to curtail the powers of the Pope in dealing with bishops. That assembly was also strongly Jansenistic. Thirty-one of its articles were directed against the Pope. Pacca, the papal nuncio, was not even received by the Archbishop of Cologne, and three of the Elector bishops refused to honor his credentials. The famous "Punctation of Ems," which consisted of twenty-three articles, declared that German archbishops were independent of Rome, because of the "False Decretals." They pronounced for an abolition of all direct communication with Rome; all monasteries were to be subject to the bishops; religious orders were to have no superior generals residing outside of Germany; Rome's exclusive power of granting faculties was denied; Papal Bulls were binding only after the bishop of the diocese had given his placet; all Apostolic nunciatures were to be abolished, etc. In brief, the synod, or "Congress" as it was called, aimed at establishing a schismatical church. But the Pope's remarkable letter to the dissidents and the progress of the French Revolution, which was then raging furiously, prevented the application anywhere of the doctrines put forth at the meeting.