After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"—Protector Noster Aspice Deus—and for some time he continued reciting prayers in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (Guérin, p. 76).
The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right, entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for some time.
As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial—the Cardinals Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers deserved half of the ill that was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts, Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching Christ" (p. 55).
The German Jesuit who wrote for the Stimmen said, "The bloodless offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the invisible Head of the Church be present in form of bread. Opposite sits His representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (Neue Folge, vi. p. 162).
This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning, when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India, first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence—
Lo, God is here, let us adore!
At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty with all who take an impression for a reason. The program is in the Acta, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for each minutest move.
The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands; he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (Acta, pp. 204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction, during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer, with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council, and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people. Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The Pontiff recites Quam dilecta, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers trimmed with gold lace. The Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers. Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle; after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed that this was imposing, impressive, divine.
This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne, rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of history had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on which its first beams were beginning to strike—came forward lordly figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each, with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says, "What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma, looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw signs of happy days returning.