Not content with formally vouching, in his title, for his own truthfulness, the Cardinal formally impeaches that of others. Both of these proceedings would be perfectly natural in a priest in Rome, and especially in one attached to the Jesuit school. Had I foreseen the cautious beginning of such habits that was so soon to be made by high authority, certainly I should not have so far yielded to the repugnance one feels to put specimens of priestly imputations into our language—a language which had for ages, up to the date of the Tracts for the Times, been steadily acquiring an antipathy to all the arts of untruthfulness, and consequently to all the forms in which other languages habitually insinuate or openly allege it. But I cannot regret that my story purposely excludes full specimens, and only by force of frequent necessity admits morsels, of the style in which in Rome every shade of untruthfulness, from suppression and equivocation to the worst kinds of perjury and forgery, is on the one hand charged upon heretics, on Liberal Catholics, on statesmen, and is on the other hand in return, and with extreme good will, charged upon bishops, cardinals and popes.
The veracity of Pomponio Leto—that is, as all Italy knows, of the Marchese Francesco Vitelleschi, brother of the late Cardinal Vitelleschi—is openly impugned by Cardinal Manning. We already know, on more points than one, the opinion of Vitelleschi as to the eminent author of the True Story; and retaliation would have been natural had it only been fair. If Vitelleschi wrote English, and if he cared to compare his truthfulness with that of such a competitor, it would be interesting to hear him fairly fight out the question, Which of us two has, to the best of his power, tried just to tell what he knew, inventing nothing and concealing nothing? It does not seem at all certain that the Englishman would bear away from the Italian the palm of straightforwardness. The Cardinal is evidently not aware that certain alleged particulars of the famous Strossmayer scene, which he ascribes to Pomponio Leto, are not in his description of it either in the Italian or in the English version. From where the Cardinal gets them I do not know. But his picture of Schwarzenberg "carried fainting from the ambo to his seat," his idea that Pomponio professes on that day to have been outside the Council door and to have seen "the servants rushing," and his other idea that at the fourth session Pomponio professes to have been inside and consequently forgot that many of those who were outside could see through the great door which was wide open, are all alike. He certainly did not get any of them from Vitelleschi. As it is after stating these errors, that his Eminence cries, "Such melodramatic and mendacious stuff!" we must imagine how Vitelleschi will smile at this new display of certain qualities which did not escape his keen eye.
Professor Friedrich is slightingly spoken of by the Cardinal. Here again retaliation, if fair, would have been natural; for Cardinal Manning has already felt the steel of Friedrich. Judging from my own impression that under the slashes of Friedrich what the Cardinal had employed as if he took it for argument appeared perfectly helpless, I should expect that it the learned professor should think it worth while to try his strength on the sort of history, theology, and logic which the Cardinal thinks may pass in England, they would in his hands, at almost every debatable point, fly to pieces. As to veracity, however, Friedrich has already, on that score, as our story will show, crossed swords with more bishops than one; and whether on that or other matters, certainly he is not the man to turn his back on Cardinal Manning, whose measure he has long ago taken, as, even under the eyes of the Papal police, he did not fear to show.
Cardinal Manning occupies pages with imputations, and with quotations which he apparently thinks warrant the imputations. Does he, or do the witnesses he calls, disprove any of the specific facts alleged? Yes, he does disprove one. Vitelleschi, in describing the great session of the Council, said that Cardinal Corsi and other discontented Cardinals pulled down their red hats over their eyes. Now, Cardinal Manning properly says that on that occasion they had no hats of any colour, meaning that they wore the mitre. Therefore a real blot is hit. And it is curious how exactly this is the same kind of blot as the Jesuits of the Civiltá were able to hit in the early part of Vitelleschi's book, when, like the True Story, it first appeared in a periodical. They clearly convicted the author, then unknown even to them, of saying that in certain solemnities the robes were red, whereas in fact they were white. We must, however, do the Roman Jesuits the justice to say that from this tremendous error they did not attempt to prove that the writer was given to "mendacious stuff," though they did argue that he was wanting in reflection.
But it is a well-known fact that grave matters—very grave matters—were with sufficient particularity alleged against the Pope, against the Presidents, against the Rules of Procedure, against the authorized Press, against the favourites of the Court among the bishops, against the secret way in which "the Council was made beforehand," and above all against the political designs which were entertained; and, one must ask, with what single fact of all these is any manly attempt made to grapple by the Cardinal, or by the bishops whom he cites in his support? Besides these facts, of which some were amusing, some absurd, some discreditable, there were others which for all good men except Papists, in the proper sense, were seriously alarming, and these were alleged by Catholic and Liberal Catholic, by men in opposition and by men in all places of authority up to the highest—by Vitelleschi, by Friedrich, by Veuillot, by Guérin, by Frond and his contributors, by Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, by Hefele, by Kenrick, by Darboy, by Rauscher, by Place, by Dupanloup, by the hundred and thirty bishops who signed the protest against even discussing infallibility, by the groups of bishops who signed that against the Rules of Procedure, by those who signed the solemn one against the new Rules, by those who petitioned for the A B C of deliberative freedom, by the scores who signed the historical petition of April 10, 1870, by those who protested against the unfair and arbitrary attempt of July 5, and by those fifty-five who, the day before the final session, placed in the hands of the Pope their protest, saying that if they voted in the public session they could only repeat, and that with stronger reasons, their previous vote—that is, of Non placet; a protest of which Cardinal Manning has taken a strangely inaccurate and misleading view. Such facts were alleged by La Liberté du Concile, by La Dernière Heure du Concile, by Mamiani, by Bonghi, by Beust, by Daru, by Arnim, by Acton, by Montalembert, by Döllinger; and still more by the Civiltá Cattolica, the Stimmen aus Maria Laach, the Univers, the Monde, and the Unitá Cattolica; and most of all were they embodied in the words and official manifestoes of Pope Pius IX. What one of these alarming or discreditable or equivocal facts is disposed of by the passages which Cardinal Manning in his need has cited? He cites Hefele to prove that people who were outside of the Council told falsehoods as to what passed inside. But with the wonted sequence of his logic, what he proves out of the mouth of Hefele is that people who were inside of the Council sold the secret, though in doing so they incurred the pains of mortal sin. The proof is quite as apposite as many of those relied upon by Cardinal Manning, and it is no wonder that such a habit of reasoning should have landed him where he is. He cites of all men Ketteler. Now supposing that Ketteler was the person to invalidate serious testimony, what particular fact is disproved by the passage cited? The only one it affects to touch is the question as to whether, in substance, the anti-infallibilist doctrine of Döllinger was not also that of the majority of the German bishops. That question is not faced in front. Ketteler only raises a side issue. He denies that on some certain occasion, certain bishops had in a certain way made a statement to that effect. Cardinal Manning has not lived so long in Rome, and learned so much there, without knowing something of the value of such contradictions. But if he means—as, however reluctantly, one must take him to mean—to use Ketteler to prove to Englishmen that the majority of the German bishops were not, before July 1870, opposed to that as a doctrine which is now a dogma of their creed, then let Ketteler by all means stand on one side, but pamphlets, memoranda, speeches, petitions, votes, protests stand on the other. Ketteler is cited against Döllinger, and agreeably to the all but infallible felicity of the Cardinal's logic, about the most definite thing Ketteler says against the Provost is that Janus, for falsification of history, can hardly be compared to anything but the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Had the Cardinal cited the whole body of the German bishops, he might, indeed, with English Catholics have gained some show of authority; but how would it have been with the fellow-countrymen of those prelates? or with any who, like their fellow-countrymen, had, in the two Fulda manifestoes of 1869 and 1870, and in other words and deeds of those mitred diplomatists—words and deeds which cannot be erased—learned at what rate to prize statements signed by their episcopal crosses? There are in Europe few bodies of functionaries who stood in sorer need than did these German bishops of something to rehabilitate the credit of their Yea and Nay; not that even yet it seems to have fallen quite so low as that of their superiors of the Curia; at least, not quite so low in matters of purely personal reputation, when no official obligation exists to make a public impression which is contrary to the facts, and when dissimulation, if practised, arises from a habit partly professional, partly personal, and one sometimes indulged in as an exercise of cleverness. Cardinals hardly do prudently to raise on English soil questions about truthfulness; for the English public will not much longer be content to take information at haphazard or at second-hand, but will go to the fountains, and learn about things in Rome as things in Rome in reality have been.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Theiner, Acta Genuina, i. 686.
[LIST OF WORKS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO AS AUTHORITIES]
The titles and editions being here given, the references in each particular instance will be no longer than is sufficient to identify the work.
Some works cited only once are not here entered, their titles being given at full in the body of the book. The few English writers quoted are not inserted here.