[90] Life prefixed to the Lives of the Saints, vol. i. p. 14. Ed. of 1836.
[91] Centenary of St. Peter, p. 38.
[92] Ibid. p. 34.
[93] Centenary of St. Peter, p. 95.
[94] Vaticanism, p. 155.
Six Secret Commissions preparing—Interrupted by Garibaldi—A Code for the Relations of the Church and Civil Society—Special Sitting with Pope and Antonelli to decide on the Case of Princes—Tales of the Crusaders—English Martyrs—Children on the Altar—Autumn of 1867 to June 1868.
While in the provinces the bishops were kindling enthusiasm for the coming assembly, and for the movement of reconstruction in general, in Rome six Commissions were at work, under the Directing Congregation, making secret preparations for the Council. Each of these Commissions had of course a Cardinal at its head. The first, that for Theology, was under Cardinal Bilio, a monk, and a native of Piedmont, only forty years of age, and but lately raised to the purple.[95] Rightly or wrongly, as Vitelleschi says, he is credited with the principal share in the preparation of the Syllabus. Others, however, are named for the same honour. We ourselves heard a member of the original Congregation for the preparation of the Syllabus assert that it was Passaglia who first suggested it. Passaglia was a great Jesuit theologian, who lost position by declaring against the temporal power. The second Commission, for Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs, was under Cardinal Reisach, a man of sixty-five, an accomplished Bavarian, but so denationalized in manner and spirit, that his countrymen sometimes accused him of affecting to have almost forgotten German. For some years he left Rome to hold high place in his native country. As Archbishop of Munich he did much to supplant the old national faith by the Vatican one, and to unsettle the previously existing relations of Church and State. Under his eye the popular catechism of Canisius was changed. The answer, "The Pope by himself is not infallible," had done good service for centuries; but now it had to make way for a new one; and eventually the whole book was transformed by the French Jesuit Deharbe.[96]