But it will be objected: “All this, however satisfactory so far as it goes, only proves that Henry IV. attempted a very gross outrage against the church; and we freely admit that the pope could then, as he can, in case of necessity, now, excommunicate from the church. The church would be a sham if he could not. But how about the claim to the right of deposing kings, set up by the popes and carried out by St. Gregory against the emperor of Germany?” We entirely acknowledge the reasonableness of the question, not merely from the Protestant point of view, but from the general standpoint of our own days; and we propose to answer concisely (allotted space allowing nothing else) the question put, though a complete response thereto would require a separate book. Meantime, we refer such as wish a full and expansive treatise on the subject to M. Gosselin’s “Pouvoir du Pape au Moyen-Age.”
This power was not, nor was it ever claimed to be, inherent in the Papacy, but was simply the result of a necessity, alike felt and acknowledged by all in those turbulent and unruly times, for some tribunal of final arbitrament. It had its source in the common consent of all Christendom—in the fact that the popes were, in the language of Count de Maistre, “universally recognized as the delegates of that power from which all authority emanates. The greatest princes looked upon the sacred unction as the sanction and, so to speak, as the complement of their right.” Even the highest of all the monarchs of the middle ages, the German emperor, derived his august character and was regarded as emperor in virtue of the unction and coronation by the pope. It was “the public law of the middle ages,” as Fénelon has well explained; and it is the universal acquiescence in that law which explains the conduct of popes and councils in deposing incompetent or vicious rulers. “In exercising this power,” says M. Gosselin, “the popes but followed and applied the principles received, not merely by the mass of the people but by the most virtuous and enlightened men of the age.” We sometimes nowadays have sense enough to avoid a war by leaving the decision of a question to a convention of arbitrators, as in the case of the Geneva conference; sometimes to a single umpire, as the difficulty about the occupancy of the island of San Juan was submitted to the decision of the late king of Belgium. Several international disputes, which might doubtless otherwise have eventuated in war, have been left to the emperor of Brazil as arbiter. We know very well that the right to bind by such decisions is in no way inherent in the sovereignty of Brazil or of Belgium, but in the fact that mankind agrees to abide by their decision in the matters submitted to them. Now, in those days, while unfortunately, as history shows us but too many proofs, knaves and scoundrels existed as now, yet while feudalism lasted the theory was that civil society was completely swayed by the spirit of Christianity. All the new governments which had sprung up from the débris of the Roman Empire were indebted both for foundation and nurture, during what may be termed their infancy and childhood, to the fostering care of the popes and bishops. Had it not been for the church, mankind would without doubt have relapsed into a state of barbarism. It is not, then, matter of surprise that common consent should, under those circumstances, have vested in the pope the right of deposing a sovereign in cases where no other remedy existed. Our sole remedy nowadays for such evils rests in the power of insurrection, which may or may not be successful, but must, in either case, be the cause of at least as much misery and far more actual bloodshed than the evils it was meant to remedy. There is room extra ecclesiam for difference of opinion on the subject, and minds do, no doubt, honestly differ as to which of the two is the better plan. For our own part, while we utterly disclaim the remotest sympathy with the feudal system, yet we are not prepared to say that it was not the best possible in that age, and should most unhesitatingly give the preference, first, to papal intervention, as being least likely to be biassed, and, second, to any fixed and recognized, fairly impartial tribunal, rather than risk the doubts and undergo the horrors of rebellion, successful or otherwise. Far be it from us to wish to recall the middle ages with their utter disregard for the rights of the people, who, but for the popes, would have had none to put in a word in their behalf; and it was only under the feudal system that the public law of Europe could call for the interference of him whom all then believed the vicegerent of the Almighty. Laws, nationalities, customs, languages, and religion have all changed. What then was legal and desirable, nay, absolutely necessary, is no longer law; and the lapse of whole nations and of large parts of others from the faith of Christ has abrogated a custom which, like all other civil regulations, could but derive its authority from international consent. It may, however, “be doubted whether in a historical light,” to use the words of Darras, “the system of the middle ages was not quite equal to our modern practice.” But this troublesome and invidious duty thus thrown upon the popes was, however, never claimed to be an integral or essential part of their authority, but simply to attach temporarily to the office by law, consent, and necessity. Of course there were then, as there are now, men who imagined that the political system of their day would never change, and that the Holy Roman Empire and the feudal system would last for ever. It is well to remember that there is but one institution that is sure and steadfast among men—the church to which He has promised who can perform.
The right and duty of excommunicating professing Catholic kings and princes is, on the other hand, and always has been, inherent in the Papacy, to be exercised by the pope when all other means have failed, in case of stern necessity and for the good of the church. Such right is inseparable from his office, and can be exercised just as fully from the Catacombs or from a dungeon as from the high altar of St. Peter’s at Rome.
It astonishes us somewhat to find that the mind sufficiently clear to indite the following sentiments should have failed so completely to understand the nature of the struggle over the investitures, and should have seen but through a glass darkly the condition of governments, men, and things requiring the application of his doctrines to practice. Mr. Maury says, and says well:
“It is to be admitted that the intervention of the popes in foreign political affairs in early and mediæval European history was not unfrequently matter of moral necessity. The papal authority constituted for those periods the High Court of International Arbitration. Not seldom the pontiffs stood forth as the solitary champions of right and justice.... We cannot but make ample allowance for their interference; nay, in many cases we must admire it.... In the case of the popes themselves moral necessity must often be allowed to have more than justified their interference in the domestic policy of foreign governments,” etc.
We must hasten through the remainder of Mr. Maury’s article. A great portion of it strikes wide of the mark, having no application to the point at issue, which we understand to be the political rapacity of the “Romish” Church. The sketch of the career of Napoleon, his imprisonment of the pope, the theological opinions of the canaille of generals that the Little Corporal gathered about him, and the action (not of the French people, but) of the rude rabble of the large cities at the time of the Revolution, would seem even to evince that the rapacity existed elsewhere. Again, it would be mere waste of ammunition to argue with an opponent who seriously maintains that gratitude for what he terms “the restoration of the Papacy” ought to have induced Pius VII., or any other pope, to govern the church thenceforward on such principles as would meet the approval of the so-called Holy Alliance. The man who can entertain such a notion has not the first rudimentary idea making toward a conception of what the church of God is, however well he may understand that of Queen Victoria.
Only two further points shall we briefly notice. One is the restoration of the Jesuits by Pius VII.—a fact upon which Mr. Maury lays great stress, as indicating the political rapacity of the church. The order had been suppressed by Pope Clement in 1773, not as having been proved guilty of any wrong whatever, but simply because their existence as an order, under the then circumstances and state of feeling in Europe, seemed to that pope and his council to give not cause but pretext for scandal to a certain portion of nominal Christendom. It is admitted that the prime movers in exciting this enmity against the Jesuits were the infidels in France, the Pombal faction in Portugal, the persons bearing in Spain the same relations to the monarch which were in France held by Madame de Pompadour, and those weak people who believe all that is diligently sounded in their ears from the rostrum or presented to their eyes by the press. Pope Clement deemed it the most prudent course to suppress the order, and he did so. It was their duty to obey, and they obeyed to the letter. Had he been a Protestant archbishop or bishop, would he have been so thoroughly obeyed? Would there even have been a pretence of obedience? Had the Jesuits been the wily knaves they are frequently represented as being, would they have disbanded on the instant? Has any association in history, we will not say so powerful, but even one-tenth part so numerous, so able, and so well disciplined, ever been extinguished by the myrmidons of the most powerful civil government? Had they been Protestants, we should at once have had a new and powerful sect. Had they been merely a conscienceless, oath-bound society, they could have gone on, despite all the civil governments on earth. Being Jesuits, they obeyed the mandate of the Vicar of God. Pius VII. deemed the time opportune for their revival. It may be that his experience of the favor shown to the usurping Napoleon during the period of his own imprisonment, and the manifest tergiversations of nearly all the higher French clergy at that unhappy time, caused him to long for the faithful Jesuits. Of this we know nothing. His right to restore them was just as clear as had been that of Pope Clement to suppress them. We propose neither to go into a eulogy of the Jesuits nor to defend them from the slurs and slanders cast upon them, mostly by those who know little more of them than the name. They need no eulogy from us, and are quite competent to defend themselves by word and pen. Mr. Maury (who seems to be an ardent Jesuit-hater; we know nothing of him but his article) is evidently one of those who fancy that the church is a political party, and that, on gaining an advantage over her opponents, she may bargain to shift principles and suit discipline to those who have been instrumental in bringing about the result. We quite agree with him, however, that, judging by all history, the church does not seem to regard herself in that light. Very many popes have died in exile. For seventy continuous years the head of the church was in captivity at Avignon. Pope Pius VII. was long a prisoner at Savona. For all that we know, the present pontiff may yet have to hide in the Catacombs. But neither in the past has there been, nor will there be found in the future, a pope who for personal duress or temporal domain (however clear his right thereto) will barter away one iota of the sacred deposit of faith and practice. The church leaves it to the politicians to seek foul ends by base means—to bargain that “in case you commit this forgery or that perjury for me, I shall, on attaining power, see that you are not only held guiltless but rewarded.” Were this her way of acting, she would be very unlike her Founder, and certainly would not be the institution with which our Saviour has promised to be till the consummation of the world. Mr. Maury would seem to think that he is making a point in charging the church with being true to her principles, with being changeless, with not giving way to feelings of gratitude (?) so far as, upon occasion, to give up her position as the conservatrix of faith and morals. He repeats the charge, under different forms, sundry times in the course of his article. Does he perchance not know that this is exactly the characteristic of the church in which Catholics glory? Did he never hear of the church before? Does she now come before his mental vision for the first time? One is really tempted to think so from the fact that he speaks of the pope’s styling himself “God’s vicar upon earth,” as though it were a new title never assumed until Pope Pius used it in his encyclical of March, 1814. If it will do Mr. Maury any good or save him future labor in writing, we can inform him that we Catholics would have neither faith nor confidence in a church that could sway and swerve, that allowed herself to be ruled by politicians or by heretics; and that we all believe Pope Leo XIII. to be, like his predecessor St. Peter, “God’s vicar here on earth.” Let him stop the first Catholic boy he meets who attends catechism class, ask him what is the pope, and he will get that answer in so many words.
The other point is this: Mr. Maury takes it very ill that the church should find fault with the Falk laws and the supervision that the German government claims and attempts to exercise over her in that country; while he asserts that no fault is found with the Bavarian government, which (he says) exercises the self-same jurisdiction over the church that Germany is now striving to carry out. The latter part of his statement is untrue. But, admitting that it were true, cannot even Mr. Maury see that there would be all the difference in the world between permitting to a Catholic ruler certain rights of supervision touching ecclesiastical matters, and giving the same rights to infidels, rationalists, transcendentalists, atheists—in any case to non-Catholics? Perhaps we should hardly expect this, since, unless our information be very incorrect, wardens or vestrymen, or both, may be, and often are, in his own sect, not mere non-communicants but of no profession of religion whatever. That such is the case in England we know; and Mr. Thackeray painted from life both the Rev. Charles Honeyman and Lady Whittlesea’s chapel, which is there depicted as a speculation of Sherrick, the Jewish wine-merchant. True, the Bavarian government has adopted a new constitution subsequent to the establishment of its concordat with the Holy See; and we are far from denying that things would be on a very unsatisfactory footing in Bavaria were the reigning house to become Protestant, or the government, by an accidental (and we admit possible) influx of free-thinkers, to determine to give trouble. This, however, has not yet taken place, and the proverb holds that it is unnecessary to greet his satanic majesty till one actually meets him. We doubt not but that any overt act against the freedom of the church will, in that country, be as promptly resented and rendered as thoroughly ineffective as has hitherto been the case in Prussia. All the power and influence of the German government has, so far, been unable to push the so-called Old Catholics into even a decent show of repute; and no Catholic in communion with the pope will ever lend himself to any such thing as the Bismarckian scheme of a German national church, or national church of any other empire, kingdom, or republic. An independent provincial church is to the mind of the Catholic an utter absurdity; and no proposition looking to any such end would for a moment be entertained at Rome. Catholics do not and cannot exist without being in communion with the pope, whosoever or wheresoever he or they may be. It seems grievously to vex Mr. Maury that in no single instance has the church allowed herself to be made, as has the legal sect in England, a mere tool in the hands of the state; and he takes pains to stigmatize what he ironically describes as the “gentle suavity” of Pope Pius and the Cardinal Consalvi, intimating that it was mere stratagem; but he forgets that there is no sort of hypocrisy in doing the best that can be done under given circumstances, providing always that no principle be given up. Even on his own showing the church has under no circumstances abandoned for a moment the principle that she should and must be entirely free from any control of the state in matters spiritual. Were it any one of the little sects that set up such claim for religious freedom as against governmental interference, a cry in its favor would go up along the line from Dan to Beersheba; but in the case of mother church it only furnishes a reason for an article on her political rapacity. Some original genius once remarked that consistency is a jewel. It certainly is very rare; and here is a radiant instance of it on the part of our opponents. The moment that the state presumes to trench upon the domain of conscience we must all obey God rather than man. Usque huc et ne plus ultra. Up to that point we stand ready to act and obey loyally as citizens. Beyond that line we neither can nor will be bound; and they who demand that we should put our consciences in the keeping of Reichstag, Parliament, or Congress know but little of human rights and less of the rightful domain of civil law.
A little reflection might have shown Mr. Maury the absurdity of his statement that Consalvi demanded of the Bavarian government the expulsion of the Protestant population of that country, then amounting to nearly a million. Surely Mr. Maury is joking! In the many centuries during which the popes have had full sway in the Eternal City, not one of them has ever proposed the expulsion of the Jews, a large number of whom have at all times resided in Rome. Mr. Maury represents Cardinal Consalvi as an eminently shrewd man, whereas he must have been little better than an idiot to entertain such an idea, much more to express it in writing, even to the dullest court in Europe. He never did do so. Surely this must be, like several other statements of the writer which we have not time at present to take up, a lapsus pennæ into which haste in writing and zeal for “the good cause” betrayed him. Authority for it we have been utterly unable to find, though the account of the negotiations of that cardinal are in the main given with tolerable fulness in the books at our hand.
That system of religion is surely in a very bad way the hold of which on the minds and consciences of its adherents cannot be maintained without the aid of government; nor does it deserve the name of religion at all when its ministers are such as those must be who owe their appointment to the back-stair intrigues by which men attain political offices. The Roman Curia has shown both wisdom and a high sense of honor in persistently refusing, on principle, to recognize any other than the canonical election of her prelates. But it does seem somewhat hard that her unwillingness to curry favor with the various reigning houses and their ministries should be attributed to political rapacity. So far as the pope is concerned, he was just as much the head of the church under the persecution of Diocletian as in the days of Leo X., and is just as really and effectually the father of all the faithful to-day as on the day when the Papal States were restored to him by Pepin in 768. The minds of men have, however, become so accustomed to acts of injustice that they regard them with comparative indifference. The justice of the pope’s claim to the patrimony of St. Peter is infinitely clearer and of far more ancient standing than that of any sovereign in Christendom to the throne he occupies. Necessary to the existence of the Papacy those states certainly are not, save in the sense that he who is not a temporal sovereign must to a certain extent be a subject, and that an ill-disposed government, under or within control of which the pope may be, will always be in a condition to hamper him, and to put trammels on his intercourse with his people over the entire world. As it may well be doubted whether there ever was a period when the Holy Father was more firmly entrenched in the affections and confidence of his faithful children than now, when despoiled of territory, courtly pomp and splendor—all of which he might have retained had he been willing to stretch principle to compliance with iniquity—so a more unsuitable season could hardly, in the view of any impartial on-looker, have been selected for charging the church with political rapacity. Had she possessed that, or desired its results, her position, however high in a worldly point of view, would hardly have been so honorably glorious in the eyes of her faithful members.