Cardinal Manning relates how diplomatists, who had hoped to see division, were struck as they looked from their galleries, and saw the leaders of the Opposition, one after another, stand up and pronounce their Placet. Friedrich says that the countenances of the Jesuits changed from gloom to delight, when Schwarzenberg, Hohenlohe, Darboy, and others, gave in their votes, and that they manifested a particular interest in that of Hefele. He also says that the gentlemen who were with him in the tribune figuring as theologians, but whom he calls train-bearers, were intensely anxious about the indispensable sunbeams, which, however, he adds, were for that day cut off from the Hall. Just as the Pope entered the assembly, the sunbeams did pass the threshold; and the gentlemen around him cried out, "The sun, the sun!" their eyes dancing for joy. After the Decrees had been passed, the Pope pronounced a short allocution, rejoicing in their unity, and saying, "Our Lord Jesus Christ gave peace to His apostles, and I also, who am His unworthy Vicar, in His name give peace to you." Friedrich says that some French bishops hailed this with clapping of hands, but that, instead of this being general, there were signs of dissatisfaction, and particularly from the galleries. The first statement is confirmed by the Acta Sanctæ Sedis.
Friedrich could hardly catch the formula in which the Pope announced his passing of the Decrees; but it struck him that it was not the same as that prescribed in the Rules; and on receiving the text as passed, he found that a change had been made without any intimation whatever having been given of it. To him the change was nothing, as the new form only said what he knew the previous one meant, although bishops had seriously differed with him for saying so. The Rules prescribe the formula, "We decree, enact, and sanction"; and this was now changed to the more compact and expressive Papistical formula, "We define, and, by apostolic authority confirm." The word "sanction" had a flavour of historic dualism.
The Curialists boasted, after this session, that they had gained three points, and the statement of them shows a clear conception of their own strategy and of the positions to be won:[380] first, the Pope had, for the first time in three hundred and fifty years, proclaimed Decrees in a Council in his own name only, merely mentioning the Council as approving; secondly, the new Rules had been accepted; thirdly, the final clause of the Decrees carried the conclusion that the former dogmatic Decrees of the Popes were accepted as of authority. This last point alone was of prodigious consequence, and vindicates Friedrich's discernment in tracing the Curial system at first sight in these apparently elementary and rather feeble chapters. Only one fortnight earlier, as we have seen, Cardinals and prelates declared that they and the majority of bishops in great nations had taught in direct contradiction to the Bull Unam Sanctam. But from to-day both that Bull and, among others, the Ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV, the father of the Roman Inquisition, were of Divine authority! Or, as Quirinus puts it, "Rules of faith for the whole Catholic world, and thus it will be taught universally in Europe and America, henceforth, that the Pope is absolute master in temporal affairs also; that he can order war or peace, and that every monarch or bishop who does not submit to him, or helps any one separated from him, ought to be deprived of his throne, if not of his life" (p. 471).
The Decrees contain eighteen anathemas! Vitelleschi says, that of those in the cathedral who paid any attention to the proceedings, none seemed ever to reflect that, as Catholics, they would lie down that night with new articles of faith and new declarations (anathemas) weighing on their intellect and conscience. "Authority" teaches men to admit new creeds with awful facility, and to utter anathemas almost as readily as a primitive Christian would have said, God bless you! The Curialists did not exaggerate the substantial victory which had been won, or the practical importance of the three points already specified. The legislative effect of those points upon what little of constitutional arrangements had still been left in the Romish communion was very great. They linked all the past dogmatic Decrees of the Popes to the authority of the Creator of the world. The unfailing interpreter of the view taken by the Court of the position of affairs, M. Veuillot, says (i. 472), "The last paragraph confirms all the Constitutions, and apostolical Decrees, which condemn the errors of the times. Thus have the condemnations pronounced in the Syllabus received the official stamp."[381]
Even the anathemas were pleasant to M. Veuillot's cultured taste. "You have read the eighteen anathemas against errors pronounced in the old form of the sovereignty of the Church." Some had said that there would be no more anathemas, some that they did not want any more. "But there they are, and there they are for eternity. In my view, the work of revolt accomplished during a hundred years falls smitten with old age" (ii. 45, 46).
Not long afterwards, chiding the Figaro, the Gaulois, and other journals, for asking what the Council was doing, he replied, "The Council is making a wide and deep furrow like the grave of a world. You will go down into that furrow, and you will not spring up" (ii. 58). As to the plébiscite then about to be taken in France, he said that he could not vote Yes, because that would be permanently handing oneself over to princes who would not take any engagement to the Church; and he would not say No, for he did not wish to precipitate disasters (ii. 66).
FOOTNOTES:
[369] Documenta, ii. 388.
[370] Tagebuch, p. 283.
[371] The Tractarian Movement.