The serious question of excluding all members of the Church but those constituting the Council had to be faced. Cecconi cannot conceal that at Trent the entrance to the Council Hall, during the discussions of the Doctors, was free. Massarellus, the indefatigable secretary of that Council, in his minute of those present at the first session, gives more names of laymen than of archbishops. The insertion of their names means more than that they were in the building—they had seats of honour.[189] The number of the order of priests present at that first sitting far exceeded that of the bishops. True, they had no vote; but they had a most important office, that of discussing points of doctrine, in the presence of the bishops, before the latter themselves began to do so. They were the Bar, the prelates, the Bench. Massarellus himself, secretary from the beginning, was only a doctor, till the Council reached the days of Pius IV, who made him a bishop.[190]
All the dragooning of the middle ages had not taught men that it was right for millions to sit outside in the dark, while a few priests consulted, and determined how their creeds, catechisms, ordination vows, marriage obligations, parental rights, and national duties were to be altered. The vast changes consummated at Trent had not yet done their work in reducing the human mind to servility. The Bible had not been shackled by a General Council. The Press had not been scientifically gagged. Authors and booksellers had not felt the scourge of the Index. Schools and colleges had not been shut up against discussion and free inquiry, in any such degree as was then introduced. Consequently the Western Catholic of that day, though in a sense Roman, was by no means that passive creature of priestly authority into which three centuries of the sway of the Tridentine Decrees, administered by a monarch never checked by a public legislature, have moulded the modern layman.
At Trent the people were present to hear what was said. At the Vatican their political position and religious belief were both to be decided upon by decrees not reformable, like all that men do; but irreformable, as if God had made them. Yet the presence of the people was looked upon as "the interference of persons from without," and this, it was felt, would be "a deplorable inconvenience," notably aggravated by the temper of the times because of the enormous diffusion of the Press. The journals could not be prevented from writing about the Council; but means were sought to keep the subjects under discussion from the knowledge of the "democracy," as Maret calls priests and people. They should learn the tenor of Decrees adopted only when they were ratified (Cecconi, p. 253). To this end, three points were resolved upon: first, the General Congregations (that is, the deliberative sittings) should be altogether private; secondly, the public Sessions (that is, the grand solemnities for adopting and promulgating Decrees already framed and voted) should be open only in the liturgical part, the legislative part being strictly close; thirdly, all the Fathers and officers should be bound to the deepest silence (p. 254).
We are far from saying that the bishops of the time before Trent would have accepted a Roman conclave like this, in lieu of a General Council of the Catholic Church; but if they had done so, the laity of that time, from Emperor to burgher, would not have suffered it. The laity then did not represent the offspring of ten generations successively confined in the Tridentine cribs. Their rights, though roughly defined, were readily asserted, and sturdily maintained.
The Directing Congregation, having now existed for nearly five years, had preordained all that was to come to pass in the Council. It had held fifty-nine formal meetings, very many of which were devoted to the Rules of Procedure. Beyond the purpled Nine, not a soul was ever admitted, save only Monsignor Giannelli, their secretary. Five of the Nine were the destined Presidents of the Council. So that, of the whole College of Cardinals, only four besides the Presidents were in the secrets of this body. Just at a few of the last meetings, Bishop Fessler, the secretary of the Council, was called in. It is not needful to say that the Directing Congregation was in constant official communication with the Pontiff.[191]
FOOTNOTES:
[182] Cocconi, p. 161.
[183] Acta, p. 32. Also Civiltá, December 1869, p. 740. Cecconi, Documenta, lix.
[184] Frond.