THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GENEVA.
I.
In order to understand the events which have lately taken place in Geneva, and those that are preparing there, it is necessary to cast a general glance over the past and present state of the Catholic religion in that little commonwealth.
Most people know what Geneva was prior to the French Revolution: an independent state, separate from the Swiss Cantons, reduced by Calvinism to an aristocratic theocracy, and shorn of those ancient democratic franchises which it had enjoyed before breaking away from Rome. The dominant principle in its customs and legislation was fear and hatred of the proscribed worship. A minute and jealous care was taken to repress the expansion of Catholicism—one exhibition of which was seen in the strict closing of the city gates on the grand festivals of the church, and the fine of ten crowns imposed on those who held intercourse with the Bishop of Annecy on the occasion of his pastoral visits. Under these circumstances, only a small number of Catholics clung with heroic constancy to the ancient faith, and secretly practised their religious duties in the recesses of their houses. There were in 1759 but two hundred and twenty-seven Catholics in Geneva—and in this number even Voltaire and his hangers-on were included.
It was the French Revolution that forced open the gates, up to that period so carefully closed, of this Protestant Rome. Geneva became under the Empire a French department, and the Catholic religion in the persons of the imperial functionaries was officially recognized. Permission to erect a church was granted; but this first move toward a less hostile attitude was not taken without the bitterest opposition from the old Protestant party. In the remodelling of Europe, after Napoleon's downfall, it was found desirable to provide against the absorption of Geneva by uniting it to the Swiss Confederation; but in order to overcome the difficulties of geographical position, and make such an acquisition of territory acceptable to Berne, it became necessary to join to Geneva certain strips of land from the Catholic districts of Gex and Savoy. The Genevans, who looked with dread upon this annexation, strove to assure in any case their own supremacy, but the Catholics found defenders in diplomatic circles, and their cause was protected by the several treaties of Paris, Vienna, and Turin (1814-1816). In virtue of these, all civil and political rights were guaranteed to the new citizens, the Catholic religion was recognized, its exercise in Geneva permitted, religious freedom solemnly pledged to the annexed populations, and the expenses of their public worship assumed by the state.
At this period the Catholics were not over a third of the whole canton; but they rapidly increased, less, indeed, through conversions than by immigration. In 1834, there were 25,000 Protestants and 18,000 Catholics. What was the attitude of the Genevan government then? Power was still in the hands of the old Protestant aristocracy—the strongest and only organized party, and a singular admixture of good qualities and defects. The patrician of Geneva was, indeed, a strange and now fast-disappearing type. Living in his old town surrounded by ramparts, and in his old society even more stringently closed, clad in sombre colors, speaking little and laughing less, vain, stiff in his manners, with a stony cast of countenance, he was devoid of generous sympathy and largeness of heart, without, however, being altogether incapable of a certain pecuniary liberality; benign to his clients, implacable to rivals, marking out in everything a conventional line, and merciless to the one who should cross it; a man of letters, but an enemy to literary liberty, the friend of order, respecting traditions, an ardent patriot, but of a narrow and exclusive patriotism, he was attached more to his caste and party than to his country. Often sincerely pious, this Genevan gentleman of the old school was sometimes a hypocrite and Pharisee; a formalist himself, he was quick to cast the first stone at the transgressors of the law. But what was strongest in this class of men was the Protestant sentiment in its most odious and intolerant shape. Having seen with displeasure the annexation of the Catholic districts, and agreed very unwillingly to the religious liberty insured by treaty, this party found it hard to extinguish its traditional spirit of bigotry. Every movement of vitality on the part of Catholics excited distrust, and looked like a revolt; and proceeding to open acts, it struck successively at the liberty of instruction, the freedom of the pulpit, and the right of endowment. The attempt to enforce civil marriage failed only when Sardinia threatened to intervene. Catholics were eyed with disfavor, and of the thousand servants of the government, only fifty-nine belonged to their creed. Finally, if Protestants were obliged to endure the official existence of the Roman Church, it seemed to them quite proper to try and make it a state affair. They obtained from the Pope in 1819 the transfer of jurisdiction over Geneva from the Archbishop of Chambéry to the Bishop of Lausanne—their secret object being to subject the Catholic clergy to the direct influence of government, through the dependence on the state to which the bishops of Switzerland had long been accustomed, and in particular by using the conciliatory and somewhat weak character of Monseigneur de Lausanne.
In fact, an agreement was drawn up with the bishop, by which the civil power was permitted to interfere in the nomination of pastors, exact from them an oath, publish and circulate episcopal charges. Soon after, a law made the placet obligatory for all documents emanating from the diocesan or papal authorities. A few official honors and some pecuniary advantages were the only compensation made to Catholics for the prejudice done their liberty. These, however, struggled perseveringly against all exertions to enthrall them, and continued in spite of every difficulty to increase and gain strength. This success they owed chiefly to their courageous pastor, the Abbé Vuarin, "an admirable man for a conflict," as his friend Lamennais used to say of him: one whose indefatigable industry, fearlessness, and devotion to duty made every sacrifice light. He travelled Europe in the interests of his flock, and Turin, Berne, Paris, Munich, Rome, heard him defend their cause. He had friends in all places, and corresponded with popes, kings, and the great men of his day; and, during the continual hostilities which he carried on against Protestants, wrote some severe things, for the most part anonymously, but other times under his own name, wherein the only subject of regret is too great fieriness and irony. He used to watch the ballot-boxes while reciting his breviary, which drew from M. de Maistre the remark, "When I see his way of working, it recalls the success of the apostles." M. Vuarin had said, "A priest who is named pastor at Geneva should go, should remain, and should end there"; and, true to his own word, he died there, parish priest, in 1843, having been appointed under the Empire. Before his time, it was only now and then that a cassock ventured to appear in Geneva: at his funeral, two bishops, two hundred priests, and thousands of Catholic laymen defiled through the streets of the old Protestant city.
It turned out, however, that Catholic progress only irritated the intolerant spirit of opposition, and at the centennial jubilee of the Reformation, in 1835, the inflamed passions of the multitude broke out in insults and deeds of violence against the faith of the minority. The Protestant Union, a sort of secret society, was formed to sustain and encourage exclusivism and anti-Catholic feelings; and when a collective address, signed by the clergy of Geneva, denounced the movement to the bishop, the council of state, in retaliation, refused to admit the nomination of any priest who should not have expressed regret for appending his name to the paper. At M. Vuarin's death, Geneva was for several years deprived of the ministrations of his successor, M. Marilley, who had been arrested by the public officers and conducted to the frontier. Such, in 1846, was the position of the church: misunderstood in her spirit, the full measure of her rights withheld, strong only in the energy of her defenders. Then a political change took place, which considerably modified the situation.
In the plain on the other side of the Rhone, facing the steep hill whereon are the dwellings of the Genevan aristocracy, along which are drawn out the narrow streets of the old town, and on the summit of which rise the city hall and St. Peter's church—that Acropolis of Calvinism—extends the democratic and laboring suburb of Saint Gervais. Here for several years a work had been going on whose gravity the ruling class of Geneva did not comprehend. A radical and demagogical party, intimately connected with the revolutionists of other countries, was being organized. Its newspapers, pamphlets, and the affair of "Young Italy" in 1836 revealed its boldness and vigorous action. On the occasion of the Sonderbund disturbances in 1846, the radicals got excited, the Faubourg St. Gervais rose in tumult, and after a sanguinary struggle the conservatives were put down, the old town was occupied by the victorious workmen, and the power of the state passed into the hands of the leaders of the insurrection—M. Fazy and his friends. The extinction of the ancient oligarchy was known to be their object. Catholics had kept aloof from this conflict, feeling little sympathy with the revolutionary passions of the radicals, whose pretext, moreover, for rising had been the aid extended by the Genevan government to their co-religionists of the Sonderbund. But when once in power, the new party, more astute than its predecessor, understood the importance of the Catholic element when it came to a question of votes.