The intention of the Pope is, in spite of the minority, to proceed at once to the publication of the new dogma, and forthwith to hand to every bishop two documents for his signature: (1) A profession of faith containing the article of infallibility; (2) A solemn declaration that the Council has been a free one. So you see into what a position we are brought, and that it does not depend on our own will whether we shall remain in our places or not. He that will not sign will instantly be placed under censure.
According to Vitelleschi, this threat terrified the poor bishops of the Opposition. If they refused to acknowledge the validity of the Council, nothing, as he says, was before them but to resign their Sees. If they meant to impugn the validity of the Council, Rome was not the place in which to do it, and, what is still more significant, they themselves "were not the men to do it."
It proved on the next day that the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the vacant crown of Spain, which had given to France the occasion for a quarrel, had been withdrawn. But it also appeared that Lord Lyons had to reproach the Duke De Gramont with a breach of promise, inasmuch as the Duke had authorized him to assure her Majesty's Government that if the withdrawal of the prince could only be procured the affair would be at an end. It was plain that the long-prophesied attack of France was resolved upon at last. What with the impatience of the majority for the fruits of their victory and the disgust and discouragement of the minority, the sufferings from the heat and the solicitude occasioned by approaching war, the assembly had ceased to be, in any serious sense of the word, deliberative. Amendments literally by the score were now produced and disposed of with a haste which was in shocking contrast with the gravity of the subjects. La Liberté du Concile says that on the all-important chapters on faith there were proposed two hundred and eighty-one amendments. The Fathers were called on to vote them by standing and sitting, and this was done in such haste that they had not even time to re-read them. The Under-Secretary did not read them out. He cried, "Number ten, number fifty, or number seventy-seven," as the case might be, "the committee rejects: those who are in favour of its rejection stand up." The solid majority stood up, and all was over. So in another case he cried out, "Number five or fifteen," adding "The committee accepts: those who are in favour of accepting stand up"; and the same result. "I do not vote," said one bishop, "because not only am I unable to form a conviction, but I am unable even to form a clear idea of what is the point" (Documenta, i. 174). And each minutest point was to be irreformably fixed! We had, says this writer, four hundred quarto pages on the subject of infallibility, including notes, remarks, and all, while only a few days were allowed to study it. So when the Draft Decrees on Faith were for the second time brought out new cast, with a preamble, four chapters, and eighteen canons, twenty-four hours were allowed to prepare to discuss them; and the preparation must be in Latin. Twenty-four hours for an accountable creature of God to prepare himself to say whether he would take a side for or against laying upon himself the obligation to pronounce eighteen curses more against his fellow creatures!
The hope had been flattered all along that no anathema would be attached to the dogma of infallibility. But at the very last Bishop Gasser, of Brixen, one of the keen Curialists, produced the formula enriched with an anathema against any one who should presume to contradict it. Quirinus says that Gasser was unwilling to be left behind by Manning, Deschamps, Dreux-Brézé, and the Spaniards. Finally the whole was submitted to the solemn decision on that very day on which the French Chamber, that had so long voted money for the forces to support the Papacy in Rome, voted five hundred and fifteen millions of francs to break up united Germany once more.
On the morning of July 13 the hour had come. Up to the last it had been asserted that no bishops but two or three would say Non placet. Every form of assurance had been spoken and printed that this would prove to be the case. The Virgin, the Saints, ay, and even the Holy Spirit, had been over and over again pledged to procure this result. At last, Ketteler and Landriot of Rheims made a clever attempt to bring it about by proposing to the Opposition, with which they had seemed to be at one, that they should all vote Placet juxta modum (content on certain conditions).[448] This would have enabled the Court to say that there were no votes of "non-content." The Archbishop of Milan said, "The only befitting course for us who are convinced of the falsehood of the doctrine is to say, No."[449] The Pope, it is said, told Darboy that not above ten would vote Non placet.[450] Certain it is that bets would have been freely taken in Rome the night before that not a dozen would do so. The devout were confident because the Virgin would order it otherwise, and the worldly were confident because they thought the bishops would not be unmindful of their own interests.
The Hall once more received its aged senators. Eighteen centuries called to them to remember what a Church Christ had set up; how pure in principle, how free in regulations, how plain in forms, how simple in organization, how far from pomp or dreams of domination, from cursing, or from use of physical force; how little of a body, how much of a spirit, was that real Church. It was a leaven moving by the force of an inward and self-propagating life to leaven the whole lump, in which for itself it only asked to lie hidden, and by its innate force to determine the quality of the meal, not stooping to design a mould for the shape of the loaves, on a model as irreformable as the patterns of a Hindu artisan. Many bishops had said that they had found themselves called together to gratify one self-asserting man of ordinary gifts, and less than ordinary acquirements, by giving him a diploma as the titular Lord of the world, which would have no practical effect except that of making him dictator of the Church, and bringing them and their people into collision with everything bright and noble, which he, in his infatuation, had set himself to put down. Many of them, at considerable risk to their own interests, were determined to register their solemn No! In spite of all hopes previously entertained, the feeling that the minority were resolved had spread among the majority. Quirinus tells how Deschamps, who had drafted a set of supererogatory anathemas, and had only withdrawn them in face of serious threats from Maret, and who was therefore known as having sought to place every man of the minority in the dilemma between giving an instant affirmative vote, or being immediately outside the Church by anathema, now approached the leaders of the Opposition. "With humble gestures and whining voice," he entreated them to do as Ketteler and Landriot, profesedly belonging to them, had proposed, namely, to vote "Content on certain conditions," and said that really there was a disposition on the part of the authorities to insert qualifications. "The trick was too bare-faced to succeed." Darboy called the attention of the three Cardinals to this attempt to divide the Opposition at the last, and the bishops said to the new Primate of Belgium, on whose head the gifted already saw the mitre kindling into the flame-colour of a hat, "It is unexampled impudence." We shall find hereafter, in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, what would appear to be an allusion to this scene.
The voting then began. It appeared that there were six hundred and one bishops present, showing that many of those who were in the city had stayed away. Antonelli was not there. Of course all the men belonging to Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter were for the Pope. So were nearly all those of the Neapolitan States, and the overwhelming majority from the other portions of Italy; Spain, South America, and the missionary bishops, might be said to be as one man. But to the surprise of every one, several of the Orientals, under the Propaganda as they were, and terrorized as they had been, had the heart to say No. Even poor old Audu, Patriarch of Chaldea, dared to say Non placet, knowing, from his experience by night in the Vatican, to what he might be exposed. Of course Ballerini and Valerga, and other Romans, whose Orientalism went no deeper than their vestments, were Roman still. When the important preliminary votes had been taken by rising and sitting, the Sub-Secretary ascended the pulpit. He called out name after name, each one replying by the words, Placet, Non placet, or Placet juxta modum; that is, Content, Not Content, or Conditionally Content. The vast majority said Placet; but the stateliest of Cardinals, Prince Schwarzenberg, said No. Milan said No; Paris, No; Munich, No; Vienna, No; Gran, the Primatial See of Hungary, No; Lyons, the Primatial See of France, No. In all, no less than eighty-eight living witnesses that day lifted up their testimony, and sent it on to all after-time, that, so far as they knew, the doctrine of Papal infallibility had not been, and was not then, the faith of the Churches which they represented. Nearly all these did represent Churches, many of them the oldest, the most educated, and the most numerous in the Papal world. Maret, who was a bishop in partibus, being among the minority, was like a bird in the wrong flock.
Strange to say, no less than seven Cardinals then present in Rome abstained from voting. The abstentions altogether numbered eighty. Poor Cardinal Guidi, who had been sadly belaboured for his fault, had been forbidden to receive visitors, and had been made miserable by all the arts which priests can practise, and to which priests are exposed, now voted Juxta modum; that is, conditionally content. The number who did the same were sixty-two. A false impression was spread among the Liberal Catholics that these were all adverse to the definition. Not so. Some of them did not think the formula now before them strong enough, and had notable additions to propose. The Contents were, 451; the Non-contents, 88; and the Conditional Contents, 62.[451] The Acta of the Council contain not a syllable of this sitting, any more than of all the others of the General Congregations.
The effect of this vote in Rome was immense. No class of men had counted upon it. Even ardent supporters of the minority had shown a want of any confidence that they would stand fast up to this point. The impression got abroad, for the moment, that not even Pius IX, little delicate as he was, would accept an apotheosis, as it was called, which had been publicly discredited by nearly all the bishops of great Sees, who were in any sense independent of the Bishop of Rome. "According to general belief, especially in Rome," says Vitelleschi (p. 206), "the Church never creates a dogma new in itself; but in defining a dogma, simply attests some belief which has been always and universally professed." The Romans saw that both the "always" and the "universally" were for ever disproved by the vote. They knew how speedily black could be made white, but they did not see how the device could this time succeed. There was the vote, saying what had been the belief of the bishops up to that hour. But probably the Romans soon corrected their first impression by their habitual estimate of Pius IX. They never accuse him of pride, although they always accuse him of vanity and vainglory. A case in which the common voice so sharply draws the distinction is exceedingly rare in public life. He is not above accepting anything that is agreeable. Quirinus will have it that he still declared that the vote of the Opposition would be reversed, and that these misguided men would be so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that they would publicly vote for the right.
From Munich a telegram was sent to Hefele bearing many names, among them that of Reithmayer, announcing universal "joyful sensation" at the vote, and calling for "immovable perseverance," otherwise "incalculable mischief."[452]