Sepp himself went to Prague to present the document to Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg. The latter read it slowly, thought it over, and said, "It is far too weak. With Rome you must hold very different language from that." In further conversation Sepp said to the Cardinal, "You have in Prague the first canonist in Germany (Schulte), the man who drafted the Austrian Concordat, and surely he can be employed in similar work for the Council." The reply was: "You have in Munich the greatest Catholic theologian in Germany, and the gentlemen in Rome will not hear of his being invited" (Sepp, p. 4).
Large numbers of priests had been returned to the Bavarian Parliament, all burning with zeal against Prussia, and against union under it. In 1868 the clerical agitation had gone so far that, in November of that year, President Badhauser, when closing the Landsrath, addressed the members in unwonted language—
When the government of the country and its organs, the chamber which represents the people, and the new laws, are daily held up to suspicion, mockery, and contempt, when the peasantry are excited against the townspeople, and when men, throwing off all patriotic shame, feed themselves with hopes of foreign intervention, threatening our German warriors with the chassepots, then must every honourable man condemn such proceedings; for the venom daily instilled will, in time, poison the honest country people, as occurrences in Upper Bavaria already show.[161]
Secret associations for Ultramontane objects were formed even among children. Those of the clergy who would have warned the authorities were still kept still by secret terrorism. The meeting of the Council and the necessity of overthrowing Prince Hohenlohe were closely connected with this turmoil. And the Liberals plainly said, "The whole Catholic world is to be fanaticized, to enable the great Catholic powers, after crushing Prussia, as they hope to do, to carry out a grand reaction."[162]
The Vaterland went so far, when Napoleon III took his last plébiscite, as to tell its readers that a French intervention in Germany would soon follow, that it was eagerly looked for, and that all would join France to break the hated yoke of Prussia. Morally, Prussia was already at an end, but it was for France to put an end to her physically. "Who can tell if we shall have any North German Confederation, Zollverein, or Prussian monarchy in 1871?"[163] Similar hopes of great events often pointed to the year of the Council, or the year after. The Civiltá did not scruple to tell Napoleon III that he owed the new plébiscite to Mentana. So far from concealing the Pope's direct action in a question affecting the stability of a throne, his confidential writers exaggerated his influence.
In Austria a struggle had set in against the supernatural order. Laws on civil marriage, education, and registry of baptism were passed by the legislature, and tardily assented to by the Emperor. The Bishop of Linz issued a manifesto saying that he would not acknowledge the new illegitimate laws—of course under the plea of obeying God rather than man. Turning on the Emperor, he said that he had pledged his faith to the Concordat as a man and as a kaiser. Other prelates, in milder language, set Papal above Austrian law. Finally, as we have already seen, on June 22, 1868, the Pope himself laid the new laws under his condemnation.
A Catholic meeting against the school law was being held in the church at Schlanders, and while the curate was making a speech Count Manzano, the local authority, declared the meeting closed. Cries of "Down with him! kill him!" were raised. He was thrown to the ground, beaten on the breast, and barely escaped to the barracks of the gensdarmes.
When the Council was closely approaching, great excitement broke out in Austria against the religious orders. The spark which kindled the blaze was the discovery of a nun confined in the Carmelite convent of Cracow. She had been kept in one cell for twenty years, with incredible privations and in bestial filth. The rage of the public forced the government to go as far as some show of action. Orders were issued for the inspection of convents. Sentences of bishops condemning priests to confinement in ecclesiastical prisons were declared invalid unless the culprit voluntarily consented. The bishops were also required to give in lists of the voluntary prisoners.
These measures were resented as an "insult to the episcopate." The Bishop of Brünn won himself an honourable mention in the Civiltá by a circular in which he repelled the pretensions of the government, refused the list required, and told the superiors of monasteries to pay no heed to the orders. While this second government was set up, beside that of the country, the voice of Rome cheered it on in taking the upper hand. The same voice railed against the constitutional ministers, the parliament, and the laws.