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Title: The History of Freedom
Author: Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron, 1834-1902
Language: English
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THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM AND OTHER ESSAYS
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANSISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: Acton]
THE
HISTORY OF FREEDOM
AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY
JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON
FIRST BARON ACTON
D.C.L., L.L.D., ETC. ETC. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, Litt.D.
SOMETIME LECTURER IN ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AND
REGINALD VERE LAURENCE, M.A.
FELLOW AND LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
_First Edition 1907_
_Reprinted 1909_
PREFATORY NOTE
The Editors desire to thank the members of the Acton family for their
help and advice during the preparation of this volume and of the volume
of _Historical Essays and Studies_. They have had the advantage of
access to many of Acton's letters, especially those to Döllinger and
Lady Blennerhasset. They have thus been provided with valuable material
for the Introduction. At the same time they wish to take the entire
responsibility for the opinions expressed therein. They are again
indebted to Professor Henry Jackson for valuable suggestions.
This volume consists of articles reprinted from the following journals:
_The Quarterly Review_, _The English Historical Review_, _The Nineteenth
Century_, _The Rambler_, _The Home and Foreign Review_, _The North
British Review_, _The Bridgnorth Journal_. The Editors have to thank Mr.
John Murray, Messrs. Longmans, Kegan Paul, Williams and Norgate, and the
proprietors of _The Bridgnorth Journal_ for their kind permission to
republish these articles, and also the Delegacy of the Clarendon Press
for allowing the reprint of the Introduction to Mr. Burd's edition of
_Il Principe_. They desire to point out that in _Lord Acton and his
Circle_ the article on "The Protestant Theory of Persecution" is
attributed to Simpson: this is an error.
J.N.F.
R.V.L.
_August 24, 1907._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF LORD ACTON _Frontispiece_
CHRONICLE viii
INTRODUCTION ix
I. THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY 1
II. THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN CHRISTIANITY 30
III. SIR ERSKINE MAY'S DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 61
IV. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 101
V. THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION 150
VI. POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH 188
VII. INTRODUCTION TO L.A. BURD'S EDITION OF
IL PRINCIPE BY MACHIAVELLI 212
VIII. MR. GOLDWIN SMITH'S IRISH HISTORY 232
IX. NATIONALITY 270
X. DÖLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER 301
XI. DÖLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK 375
XII. CARDINAL WISEMAN AND THE HOME AND
FOREIGN REVIEW 436
XIII. CONFLICTS WITH ROME 461
XIV. THE VATICAN COUNCIL 492
XV. A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE
AGES. BY HENRY CHARLES LEA 551
XVI. THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH. BY JAMES
BRYCE 575
XVII. HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE AND FRENCH
BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND. BY ROBERT FLINT 588
APPENDIX 597
INDEX 599
CHRONICLE
JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON, born at Naples,
10th January 1834, son of Sir Ferdinand Richard Edward
Dalberg-Acton and Marie de Dalberg, afterwards Countess
Granville.
French school near Paris.
1843-1848. Student at Oscott
" " Edinburgh.
1848-1854. " " Munich University, living with Döllinger.
1855. Visits America in company with Lord Ellesmere.
1858-1862. Becomes editor of _The Rambler_.
1859-1865. M.P. for Carlow.
1862-1864. Founds, edits, and concludes _The Home and Foreign
Review_.
1864. Pius IX. issued _Quanta Cura_, with appended _Syllabus
Errorum_.
1865-1866. M.P. for Bridgnorth
1865. Marries Countess Marie Arco-Valley.
1867-1868. Writes for _The Chronicle_.
1869. Created Baron Acton.
1869-1871. Writes for _North British Review_.
1869-1870. Vatican Council. Acton at Rome. Writes "Letters
of Quirinus" in _alleging Zeitung_.
1872. Honorary degree at Munich.
1874. Letters to _The Times_ on "The Vatican Decrees."
1888. Honorary degree at Cambridge.
1889. " " Oxford.
1890. Honorary Fellow of All Souls'.
1892-1895. Lord-in-Waiting.
1895-1902. Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge
Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.
19th June 1902. Died at Tegernsee.
INTRODUCTION
The two volumes here published contain but a small selection from the
numerous writings of Acton on a variety of topics, which are to be found
scattered through many periodicals of the last half-century. The result
here displayed is therefore not complete. A further selection of nearly
equal quantity might be made, and still much that is valuable in Acton's
work would remain buried. Here, for instance, we have extracted nothing
from the _Chronicle_; and Acton's gifts as a leader-writer remain
without illustration. Yet they were remarkable. Rarely did he show to
better advantage than in the articles and reviews he wrote in that
short-lived rival of the _Saturday Review_. From the two bound volumes
of that single weekly, there might be made a selection which would be of
high interest to all who cared to learn what was passing in the minds of
the most acute and enlightened members of the Roman Communion at one of
the most critical epochs in the history of the papacy. But what could
never be reproduced is the general impression of Acton's many
contributions to the _Rambler_, the _Home and Foreign_, and the _North
British Review_. Perhaps none of his longer and more ceremonious
writings can give to the reader so vivid a sense at once of the range of
Acton's erudition and the strength of his critical faculty as does the
perusal of these short notices. Any one who wished to understand the
personality of Acton could not do better than take the published
Bibliography and read a few of the articles on "contemporary literature"
furnished by him to the three Reviews. In no other way could the reader
so clearly realise the complexity of his mind or the vast number of
subjects which he could touch with the hand of a master. In a single
number there are twenty-eight such notices. His writing before he was
thirty years of age shows an intimate and detailed knowledge of
documents and authorities which with most students is the "hard won and
hardly won" achievement of a lifetime of labour. He always writes as the
student, never as the _littérateur_. Even the memorable phrases which
give point to his briefest articles are judicial, not journalistic. Yet
he treats of matters which range from the dawn of history through the
ancient empires down to subjects so essentially modern as the vast
literature of revolutionary France or the leaders of the romantic
movement which replaced it. In all these writings of Acton those
qualities manifest themselves, which only grew stronger with time, and
gave him a distinct and unique place among his contemporaries. Here is
the same austere love of truth, the same resolve to dig to the bed-rock
of fact, and to exhaust all sources of possible illumination, the same
breadth of view and intensity of inquiring ardour, which stimulated his
studies and limited his productive power. Above all, there is the same
unwavering faith in principles, as affording the only criterion of
judgment amid the ever-fluctuating welter of human passions, political
manoeuvring, and ecclesiastical intrigue. But this is not all. We note
the same value for great books as the source of wisdom, combined with
the same enthusiasm for immediate justice which made Acton the despair
of the mere academic student, an enigma among men of the world, and a
stumbling-block to the politician of the clubs. Beyond this, we find
that certainty and decision of judgment, that crisp concentration of
phrase, that grave and deliberate irony and that mastery of subtlety,
allusion, and wit, which make his interpretation an adventure and his
judgment a sword.
A few instances may be given. In criticising a professor of history
famous in every way rather than as a student, Acton says, "his Lectures
are indeed not entirely unhistorical, for he has borrowed quite
discriminatingly from Tocqueville." Of another writer he says that
"ideas, if they occur to him, he rejects like temptations to sin." Of
Ranke, thinking perhaps also of himself, he declares that "his intimate
knowledge of all the contemporary history of Europe is a merit not
suited to his insular readers." Of a partisan French writer under Louis
Napoleon he says that "he will have a fair grievance if he fails to
obtain from a discriminating government some acknowledgment of the
services which mere historical science will find it hard to appreciate."
Of Laurent he says, that "sometimes it even happens that his information
is not second-hand, and there are some original authorities with which
he is evidently familiar. The ardour of his opinions, so different from
those which have usually distorted history, gives an interest even to
his grossest errors. Mr. Buckle, if he had been able to distinguish a
good book from a bad one, would have been a tolerable imitation of M.
Laurent." Perhaps, however, the most characteristic of these forgotten
judgments is the description of Lord Liverpool and the class which
supported him. Not even Disraeli painting the leader of that party which
he was destined so strangely to "educate" could equal the austere and
accurate irony with which Acton, writing as a student, not as a
novelist, sums up the characteristics of the class of his birth.
Lord Liverpool governed England in the greatest crisis of the war,
and for twelve troubled years of peace, chosen not by the nation, but
by the owners of the land. The English gentry were well content with
an order of things by which for a century and a quarter they had
enjoyed so much prosperity and power. Desiring no change they wished
for no ideas. They sympathised with the complacent respectability of
Lord Liverpool's character, and knew how to value the safe sterility
of his mind. He distanced statesmen like Grenville, Wellesley, and
Canning, not in spite of his inferiority, but by reason of it. His
mediocrity was his merit. The secret of his policy was that he had
none. For six years his administration outdid the Holy Alliance. For
five years it led the liberal movement throughout the world. The
Prime Minister hardly knew the difference. He it was who forced
Canning on the King. In the same spirit he wished his government to
include men who were in favour of the Catholic claims and men who
were opposed to them. His career exemplifies, not the accidental
combination but the natural affinity, between the love of
conservatism and the fear of ideas.
The longer essays republished in these volumes exhibit in most of its
characteristics a personality which even those who disagreed with his
views must allow to have been one of the most remarkable products of
European culture in the nineteenth century. They will show in some
degree how Acton's mind developed in the three chief periods of his
activity, something of the influences which moulded it, a great deal of
its preferences and its antipathies, and nearly all its directing
ideals. During the first period--roughly to be dated from 1855 to
1863--he was hopefully striving, under the influence of Döllinger (his
teacher from the age of seventeen), to educate his co-religionists in
breadth and sympathy, and to place before his countrymen ideals of right
in politics, which were to him bound up with the Catholic faith. The
combination of scientific inquiry with true rules of political justice
he claimed, in a letter to Döllinger, as the aim of the _Home and
Foreign Review_. The result is to be seen in a quarterly, forgotten,
like all such quarterlies to-day, but far surpassing, alike in
knowledge, range, and certainty, any of the other quarterlies,
political, or ecclesiastical, or specialist, which the nineteenth
century produced. There is indeed no general periodical which comes near
to it for thoroughness of erudition and strength of thought, if not for
brilliance and ease; while it touches on topics contemporary and
political in a way impossible to any specialist journal. A comparison
with the _British Critic_ in the religious sphere, with the _Edinburgh_
in the political, will show how in all the weightier matters of learning
and thought, the _Home and Foreign_ (indeed the _Rambler_) was their
superior, while it displayed a cosmopolitan interest foreign to most
English journals.
We need not recapitulate the story so admirably told already by Doctor
Gasquet of the beginning and end of the various journalistic enterprises
with which Acton was connected. So far as he was concerned, however, the
time may be regarded as that of youth and hope.
Next came what must be termed the "fighting period," when he stood forth
as the leader among laymen of the party opposed to that "insolent and
aggressive faction" which achieved its imagined triumph at the Vatican
Council. This period, which may perhaps be dated from the issue of the
Syllabus by Pius IX. in 1864, may be considered to close with the reply
to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on "The Vatican Decrees," and with the
attempt of the famous Cardinal, in whose mind history was identified
with heresy, to drive from the Roman communion its most illustrious
English layman. Part of this story tells itself in the letters published
by the Abbot Gasquet; and more will be known when those to Döllinger are
given to the world.
We may date the third period of Acton's life from the failure of
Manning's attempt, or indeed a little earlier. He had now given up all
attempt to contend against the dominant influence of the Court of Rome,
though feeling that loyalty to the Church of his Baptism, as a living
body, was independent of the disastrous policy of its hierarchy. During
this time he was occupied with the great unrealised project of the
history of liberty or in movements of English politics and in the usual
avocations of a student. In the earlier part of this period are to be
placed some of the best things that Acton ever wrote, such as the
lectures on Liberty, here republished. It is characterised by his
discovery in the "eighties" that Döllinger and he were divided on the
question of the severity of condemnation to be passed on persecutors and
their approvers. Acton found to his dismay that Döllinger (like
Creighton) was willing to accept pleas in arrest of judgment or at least
mitigation of sentence, which the layman's sterner code repudiated.
Finding that he had misunderstood his master, Acton was for a time
profoundly discouraged, declared himself isolated, and surrendered the
outlook of literary work as vain. He found, in fact, that in
ecclesiastical as in general politics he was alone, however much he
might sympathise with others up to a certain point. On the other hand,
these years witnessed a gradual mellowing of his judgment in regard to
the prospects of the Church, and its capacity to absorb and interpret in
a harmless sense the dogma against whose promulgation he had fought so
eagerly. It might also be correct to say that the English element in
Acton came out most strongly in this period, closing as it did with the
Cambridge Professorship, and including the development of the friendship
between himself and Mr. Gladstone.
We have spoken both of the English element in Acton and of his European
importance. This is the only way in which it is possible to present or
understand him. There were in him strains of many races. On his
father's side he was an English country squire, but foreign residence
and the Neapolitan Court had largely affected the family, in addition to
that flavour of cosmopolitan culture which belongs to the more highly
placed Englishmen of the Roman Communion. On his mother's side he was a
member of one of the oldest and greatest families in Germany, which was
only not princely. The Dalbergs, moreover, had intermarried with an
Italian family, the Brignoli. Trained first at Oscott under Wiseman, and
afterwards at Munich under Döllinger, in whose house he lived, Acton by
education as well as birth was a cosmopolitan, while his marriage with
the family of Arco-Valley introduced a further strain of Bavarian
influence into his life. His mother's second marriage with Lord
Granville brought him into connection with the dominant influences of
the great Whig Houses. For a brief period, like many another county
magnate, he was a member of the House of Commons, but he never became
accustomed to its atmosphere. For a longer time he lived at his house in
Shropshire, and was a stately and sympathetic host, though without much
taste for the avocations of country life. His English birth and Whig
surroundings were largely responsible for that intense constitutionalism,
which was to him a religion, and in regard both to ecclesiastical and civil
politics formed his guiding criterion. This explains his detestation of all
forms of absolutism on the one hand, and what he always called
"the revolution" on the other.
It was not, however, the English strain that was most obvious in Acton,
but the German. It was natural that he should become fired under
Döllinger's influence with the ideals of continental scholarship and
exact and minute investigation. He had a good deal of the massive
solidity of the German intellect. He liked, as in the "Letter to a
German Bishop," to make his judgment appear as the culmination of so
much weighty evidence, that it seemed to speak for itself. He had, too,
a little of the German habit of breaking a butterfly upon a wheel, and
at times he makes reading difficult by a more than Teutonic
allusiveness. It was not easy for Acton to bear in mind that the public
is often ignorant of even the names of distinguished scholars, and that
"a European reputation" is sometimes confined to the readers of
specialist publications.
The Italian strain in Acton is apparent in another quality, which is
perhaps his one point of kinship with Machiavelli, the absence of
hesitation from his thought, and of mystery from his writing. Subtle and
ironic as his style is, charged with allusion and weighted with passion,
it is yet entirely devoid both of German sentiment and English
vagueness. There was no haze in his mind. He judges, but does not paint
pictures. It may have been this absence of half-tones in his vein of
thought, and of _chiaroscuro_ in his imagination that made Manning, an
intelligent however hostile critic, speak of "the ruthless talk of
undergraduates."
But however much or little be allowed to the diverse strains of
hereditary influence or outward circumstances, the interest of Acton to
the student lies in his intense individuality. That austerity of moral
judgment, that sense of the greatness of human affairs, and of the vast
issues that lie in action and in thought, was no product of outside
influences, and went beyond what he had learnt from his master
Döllinger. To treat politics as a game, to play with truth or make it
subservient to any cause other than itself, to take trivial views, was
to Acton as deep a crime as to waste in pleasure or futility the hours
so brief given for salvation of the soul would have seemed to Baxter or
Bunyan; indeed, there was an element of Puritan severity in his attitude
towards statesmen both ecclesiastical and civil. He was no "light
half-believer of a casual creed," but had a sense of reality more like
Dante than many moderns.
This, perhaps, it was that drew him ever closer to Mr. Gladstone, while
it made the House of Commons and the daily doings of politicians
uncongenial. There is no doubt that he had learned too well "the secret
of intellectual detachment." Early in his life his shrewd and kindly
stepfather had pointed out to him the danger of losing influence by a
too unrestrained desire to escape worshipping the idols of the
marketplace. There are, it is true, not wanting signs that his view of
the true relations of States and Churches may become one day more
dominant, for it appears as though once more the earlier Middle Ages
will be justified, and religious bodies become the guardians of freedom,
even in the political sphere. Still, a successful career in public life
could hardly be predicted for one who felt at the beginning that "I
agree with nobody, and nobody agrees with me," and towards the close
admitted that he "never had any contemporaries." On the other hand, it
may be questioned whether, in the chief of his self-imposed tasks, he
failed so greatly as at first appeared. If he did not prevent
"infallibility" being decreed, the action of the party of Strossmayer
and Hefele assuredly prevented the form of the decree being so dangerous
as they at first feared. We can only hazard a guess that the mild and
minimising terms of the dogma, especially as they have since been
interpreted, were in reality no triumph to Veuillot and the Jesuits. In
later life Acton seems to have felt that they need not have the
dangerous consequences, both in regard to historical judgments or
political principles, which he had feared from the registered victory of
ultramontane reaction. However this may be, Acton's whole career is
evidence of his detachment of mind, and entire independence even of his
closest associates. It was a matter to him not of taste but of
principle. What mainly marked him out among men was the intense reality
of his faith. This gave to all his studies their practical tone. He had
none of the pedant's contempt for ordinary life, none of the æsthete's
contempt for action as a "little vulgar," and no desire to make of
intellectual pursuits an end in themselves. His scholarship was to him
as practical as his politics, and his politics as ethical as his faith.
Thus his whole life was a unity. All his various interests were inspired
by one unconquered resolve, the aim of securing universally, alike in
Church and in State, the recognition of the paramountcy of principles
over interests, of liberty over tyranny, of truth over all forms of
evasion or equivocation. His ideal in the political world was, as he
said, that of securing _suum cuique_ to every individual or association
of human life, and to prevent any institution, however holy its aims,
acquiring more.
To understand the ardour of his efforts it is necessary to bear in mind
the world into which he was born, and the crises intellectual,
religious, and political which he lived to witness and sometimes to
influence. Born in the early days of the July monarchy, when reform in
England was a novelty, and Catholic freedom a late-won boon, Acton as he
grew to manhood in Munich and in England had presented to his regard a
series of scenes well calculated to arouse a thoughtful mind to
consideration of the deepest problems, both of politics and religion.
What must have been the "long, long thoughts" of a youth, naturally
reflective and acutely observant, as he witnessed the break-up of the
old order in '48 and the years that followed. In the most impressionable
age of life he was driven to contemplate a Europe in solution; the crash
of the kingdoms; the Pope a Liberal, an exile, and a reactionary; the
principle of nationality claiming to supersede all vested rights, and
to absorb and complete the work of '89; even socialism for once striving
to reduce theory to practice, till there came the "saviour of society"
with the _coup d'état_ and a new era of authority and despotism. This
was the outward aspect. In the world of thought he looked upon a period
of moral and intellectual anarchy. Philosopher had succeeded
philosopher, critic had followed critic, Strauss and Baur were names to
conjure with, and Hegel was still unforgotten in the land of his birth.
Materialistic science was in the very heyday of its parvenu and tawdry
intolerance, and historical knowledge in the splendid dawn of that new
world of knowledge, of which Ranke was the Columbus. Everywhere faith
was shaken, and except for a few resolute and unconquered spirits, it
seemed as though its defence were left to a class of men who thought the
only refuge of religion was in obscurity, the sole bulwark of order was
tyranny, and the one support of eternal truth plausible and convenient
fiction. What wonder then that the pupil of Döllinger should exhaust the
intellectual and moral energies of a lifetime, in preaching to those who
direct the affairs of men the paramount supremacy of principle. The
course of the plebiscitary Empire, and that gradual campaign in the
United States by which the will of the majority became identified with
that necessity which knows no law, contributed further to educate his
sense of right in politics, and to augment the distrust of power natural
to a pupil of the great Whigs, of Burke, of Montesquieu, of Madame de
Staël. On the other hand, as a pupil of Döllinger, his religious faith
was deeper than could be touched by the recognition of facts, of which
too many were notorious to make it even good policy to deny the rest;
and he demanded with passion that history should set the follies and the
crimes of ecclesiastical authority in no better light than those of
civil.
We cannot understand Acton aright, if we do not remember that he was an
English Roman Catholic, to whom the penal laws and the exploitation of
Ireland were a burning injustice. They were in his view as foul a blot
on the Protestant establishment and the Whig aristocracy as was the St.
Bartholomew's medal on the memory of Gregory XIII., or the murder of the
duc d'Enghien on the genius of Napoleon, or the burning of Servetus on
the sanctity of Calvin, or the permission of bigamy on the character of
Luther, or the September Massacres on Danton.
Two other tendencies dominant in Germany--tendencies which had and have
a great power in the minds of scholars, yet to Acton, both as a
Christian and a man, seemed corrupting--compelled him to a search for
principles which might deliver him from slavery alike to traditions and
to fashion, from the historian's vice of condoning whatever has got
itself allowed to exist, and from the politician's habit of mere
opportunist acquiescence in popular standards.
First of these is the famous maxim of Schiller, _Die Welt-Geschichte ist
das Welt-Gericht_, which, as commonly interpreted, definitely identifies
success with right, and is based, consciously or unconsciously, on a
pantheistic philosophy. This tendency, especially when envisaged by an
age passing through revolutionary nationalism back to Machiavelli's
ideals and _Realpolitik_, is clearly subversive of any system of public
law or morality, and indeed is generally recognised as such nowadays
even by its adherents.
The second tendency against which Acton's moral sense revolted, had
arisen out of the laudable determination of historians to be sympathetic
towards men of distant ages and of alien modes of thought. With the
romantic movement the early nineteenth century placed a check upon the
habit of despising mediæval ideals, which had been increasing from the
days of the Renaissance and had culminated in Voltaire. Instead of this,
there arose a sentiment of admiration for the past, while the general
growth of historical methods of thinking supplied a sense of the
relativity of moral principles, and led to a desire to condone if not to
commend the crimes of other ages. It became almost a trick of style to
talk of judging men by the standard of their day and to allege the
spirit of the age in excuse for the Albigensian Crusade or the burning
of Hus. Acton felt that this was to destroy the very bases of moral
judgment and to open the way to a boundless scepticism. Anxious as he
was to uphold the doctrine of growth in theology, he allowed nothing for
it in the realm of morals, at any rate in the Christian era, since the
thirteenth century. He demanded a code of moral judgment independent of
place and time, and not merely relative to a particular civilisation. He
also demanded that it should be independent of religion. His reverence
for scholars knew no limits of creed or church, and he desired some body
of rules which all might recognise, independently of such historical
phenomena as religious institutions. At a time when such varied and
contradictory opinions, both within and without the limits of Christian
belief, were supported by some of the most powerful minds and
distinguished investigators, it seemed idle to look for any basis of
agreement beyond some simple moral principles. But he thought that all
men might agree in admitting the sanctity of human life and judging
accordingly every man or system which needlessly sacrificed it. It is
this preaching in season and out of season against the reality of
wickedness, and against every interference with the conscience, that is
the real inspiration both of Acton's life and of his writings.
It is related of Frederick Robertson of Brighton, that during one of
his periods of intellectual perplexity he found that the only rope to
hold fast by was the conviction, "it must be right to do right." The
whole of Lord Acton's career might be summed up in a counterphrase, "it
must be wrong to do wrong." It was this conviction, universally and
unwaveringly applied, and combined with an unalterable faith in Christ,
which gave unity to all his efforts, sustained him in his struggle with
ecclesiastical authority, accounted for all his sympathies, and
accentuated his antipathies, while it at once expanded and limited his
interests. It is this that made his personality so much greater a gift
to the world than any book which he might have written--had he cared
less for the end and more for the process of historical knowledge.
He was interested in knowledge--that it might diminish prejudice and
break down barriers. To a world in which the very bases of civilisation
seemed to be dissolving he preached the need of directing ideals.
Artistic interests were not strong in him, and the decadent pursuit of
culture as a mere luxury had no stronger enemy. Intellectual activity,
apart from moral purpose, was anathema to Acton. He has been censured
for bidding the student of his hundred best books to steel his mind
against the charm of literary beauty and style. Yet he was right. His
list of books was expressly framed to be a guide, not a pleasure; it was
intended to supply the place of University direction to those who could
not afford a college life, and it throws light upon the various strands
that mingled in Acton and the historical, scientific, and political
influences which formed his mind. He felt the danger that lurks in the
charm of literary beauty and style, for he had both as a writer and a
reader a strong taste for rhetoric, and he knew how young minds are apt
to be enchained rather by the persuasive spell of the manner than the
living thought beneath it. Above all, he detested the modern
journalistic craze for novelty, and despised the shallowness which rates
cleverness above wisdom.
In the same way his eulogy of George Eliot has been censured far more
than it has been understood. It was not as an artist superior to all
others that he praised the author of _Daniel Deronda_ and the translator
of Strauss. It was because she supplied in her own person the solution
of the problem nearest to his heart, and redeemed (so far as teaching
went) infidelity in religion from immorality in ethics. It was, above
all, as a constructive teacher of morals that he admired George Eliot,
who might, in his view, save a daily increasing scepticism from its
worst dangers, and preserve morals which a future age of faith might
once more inspire with religious ideals. Here was a writer at the summit
of modern culture, saturated with materialistic science, a convinced and
unchanging atheist, who, in spite of this, proclaimed in all her work
that moral law is binding, and upheld a code of ethics, Christian in
content, though not in foundation.
In the same way his admiration for Mr. Gladstone is to be explained. It
was not his successes so much as his failures that attracted Acton, and
above all, his refusal to admit that nations, in their dealings with one
another, are subject to no law but that of greed. Doubtless one who gave
himself no credit for practical aptitude in public affairs, admired a
man who had gifts that were not his own. But what Acton most admired was
what many condemned. It was because he was not like Lord Palmerston,
because Bismarck disliked him, because he gave back the Transvaal to the
Boers, and tried to restore Ireland to its people, because his love of
liberty never weaned him from loyalty to the Crown, and his politics
were part of his religion, that Acton used of Gladstone language rarely
used, and still more rarely applicable, to any statesman. For this very
reason--his belief that political differences do, while religious
differences do not, imply a different morality--he censured so severely
the generous eulogy of Disraeli, just as in Döllinger's case he blamed
the praise of Dupanloup. For Acton was intolerant of all leniency
towards methods and individuals whom he thought immoral. He could give
quarter to the infidel more easily than to the Jesuit.
We may, of course, deny that Acton was right. But few intelligent
observers can dispute the accuracy of his diagnosis, or deny that more
than anything else the disease of Western civilisation is a general lack
of directing ideals other than those which are included in the gospel of
commercialism. It may surely be further admitted that even intellectual
activity has too much of triviality about it to-day; that if people
despise the schoolmen, it is rather owing to their virtues than their
defects, because impressionism has taken the place of thought, and
brilliancy that of labour. On the other hand, Acton's dream of ethical
agreement, apart from religion, seems further off from realisation than
ever.
Acton, however, wrote for a world which breathed in the atmosphere
created by Kant. His position was something as follows: After the
discovery of facts, a matter of honesty and industry independent of any
opinions, history needs a criterion of judgment by which it may appraise
men's actions. This criterion cannot be afforded by religion, for
religion is one part of the historic process of which we are tracing the
flow. The principles on which all can combine are the inviolable
sanctity of human life, and the unalterable principle of even justice
and toleration. Wherever these are violated our course is clear. Neither
custom nor convenience, neither distance of time nor difference of
culture may excuse or even limit our condemnation. Murder is always
murder, whether it be committed by populace or patricians, by councils
or kings or popes. Had they had their dues, Paolo Sarpi would have been
in Newgate and George I. would have died at Tyburn.
The unbending severity of his judgment, which is sometimes carried to an
excess almost ludicrous, is further explained by another element in his
experience. In his letters to Döllinger and others he more than once
relates how in early life he had sought guidance in the difficult
historical and ethical questions which beset the history of the papacy
from many of the most eminent ultramontanes. Later on he was able to
test their answers in the light of his constant study of original
authorities and his careful investigation of archives. He found that the
answers given him had been at the best but plausible evasions. The
letters make it clear that the harshness with which Acton always
regarded ultramontanes was due to that bitter feeling which arises in
any reflecting mind on the discovery that it has been put off with
explanations that did not explain, or left in ignorance of material
facts.
Liberalism, we must remember, was a religion to Acton--_i.e._ liberalism
as he understood it, by no means always what goes by the name. His
conviction that ultramontane theories lead to immoral politics prompted
his ecclesiastical antipathies. His anger was aroused, not by any
feeling that Papal infallibility was a theological error, but by the
belief that it enshrined in the Church monarchical autocracy, which
could never maintain itself apart from crime committed or condoned. It
was not intellectual error but moral obliquity that was to him here, as
everywhere, the enemy. He could tolerate unbelief, he could not tolerate
sin. Machiavelli represented to him the worst of political principles,
because in the name of the public weal he destroyed the individual's
conscience. Yet he left a loophole in private life for religion, and a
sinning statesman might one day become converted. But when the same
principles are applied, as they have been applied by the Jesuit
organisers of ultramontane reaction (also on occasion by Protestants),
_ad majorem dei gloriam_, it is clear that the soul is corrupted at its
highest point, and the very means of serving God are made the occasion
of denying him. Because for Acton there was no comparison between
goodness and knowledge, and because life was to him more than thought,
because the passion of his life was to secure for all souls the freedom
to live as God would have them live, he hated in the Church the politics
of ultramontanism, and in the State the principles of Machiavelli. In
the same way he denied the legitimacy of every form of government, every
economic wrong, every party creed, which sacrificed to the pleasures or
the safety of the few the righteousness and salvation of the many. His
one belief was the right of every man not to have, but to be, his best.
This fact gives the key to what seems to many an unsolved contradiction,
that the man who said what he did say and fought as he had fought should
yet declare in private that it had never occurred to him to doubt any
single dogma of his Church, and assert in public that communion with it
was "dearer than life itself" Yet all the evidence both of his writings
and his most intimate associates confirms this view. His opposition to
the doctrine of infallibility was ethical and political rather than
theological. As he wrote to Döllinger, the evil lay deeper, and
Vaticanism was but the last triumph of a policy that was centuries old.
Unless he were turned out of her he would see no more reason to leave
the Church of his baptism on account of the Vatican Decrees than on
account of those of the Lateran Council. To the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception he had no hostility. And could not understand Döllinger's
condemnation of it, or reconcile it with his previous utterances. He had
great sympathy with the position of Liberal High Anglicans; but there is
not the slightest reason to suppose that he ever desired to join the
English Church. Even with the old Catholic movement he had no sympathy,
and dissuaded his friends from joining it.[1] All forms of Gallicanism
were distasteful to Acton, and he looked to the future for the victory
of his ideas. His position in the Roman Church symbolises in an acute
form what may be called the soul's tragedy of the whole nineteenth
century, but Acton had not the smallest inclination to follow either
Gavazzi or Lamennais. It was, in truth, the unwavering loyalty of his
churchmanship and his far-reaching historical sense that enabled him to
attack with such vehemence evils which he believed to be accidental and
temporary, even though they might have endured for a millennium. Long
searching of the vista of history preserved Acton from the common danger
of confusing the eternal with what is merely lengthy. To such a mind as
his, it no more occurred to leave the Church because he disapproved some
of its official procedure, than it would to an Englishman to surrender
his nationality when his political opponents came into office. He
distinguished, as he said Froschammer ought to have done, between the
authorities and the authority of the Church. He had a strong belief in
the doctrine of development, and felt that it would prove impossible in
the long run to bind the Christian community to any explanation of the
faith which should have a non-Christian or immoral tendency. He left it
to time and the common conscience to clear the dogma from association
with dangerous political tendencies, for his loyalty to the institution
was too deep to be affected by his dislike of the _Camarilla_ in power.
He not only did not desire to leave the Church, but took pains to make
his confession and receive absolution immediately after his letters
appeared in the _Times_. It must also be stated that so far from
approving Mr. Gladstone's attack on Vaticanism, he did his utmost to
prevent its publication, which he regarded as neither fair nor wise.
It is true that Acton's whole tendency was individualistic, and his
inner respect for mere authority apart from knowledge and judgment was
doubtless small. But here we must remember what he said once of the
political sphere--that neither liberty nor authority is conceivable
except in an ordered society, and that they are both relative to
conditions remote alike from anarchy and tyranny. Doubtless he leaned
away from those in power, and probably felt of Manning as strongly as
the latter wrote of him. Yet his individualism was always active within
the religious society, and never contemplated itself as outside. He
showed no sympathy for any form of Protestantism, except the purely
political side of the Independents and other sects which have promoted
liberty of conscience.
Acton's position as a churchman is made clearer by a view of his
politics. At once an admirer and an adviser of Mr. Gladstone, he
probably helped more than any other single friend to make his leader a
Home Ruler. Yet he was anything but a modern Radical: for liberty was
his goddess, not equality, and he dreaded any single power in a State,
whether it was the King, or Parliament, or People. Neither popes nor
princes, not even Protestant persecutors, did Acton condemn more deeply
than the crimes of majorities and the fury of uncontrolled democracy. It
was not the rule of one or many that was his ideal, but a balance of
powers that might preserve freedom and keep every kind of authority
subject to law. For, as he said, "liberty is not a means to a higher
end, it is itself the highest political end." His preference was,
therefore, not for any sovereign one or number, such as formed the ideal
of Rousseau or the absolutists; but for a monarchy of the English type,
with due representation to the aristocratic and propertied classes, as
well as adequate power to the people. He did not believe in the doctrine
of numbers, and had no sympathy with the cry _Vox populi Vox Dei_; on
the other hand, he felt strongly that the stake in the country argument
really applied with fullest force to the poor, for while political error
means mere discomfort to the rich, it means to the poor the loss of all
that makes life noble and even of life itself. As he said in one of his
already published letters:--
The men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those
who earn them, for laws should be adapted to those who have the
heaviest stake in the country, for whom misgovernment means not
mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want and pain and degradation,
and risk to their own lives and to their children's souls.
While he felt the dangers of Rousseau's doctrine of equality, declaring
that in the end it would be destructive alike of liberty and religion,
he was yet strongly imbued with the need of reconciling some of the
socialists' ideals with the regard due to the principles which he
respected. He was anxious to promote the study of Roscher and the
historical economists, and he seems to have thought that by their means
some solution of the great economic evils of the modern world might be
found, which should avoid injustice either to the capitalist or the
wage-earner. He had a burning hatred of injustice and tyranny, which
made him anxious to see the horrors of the modern proletariat system
mitigated and destroyed; but combined with this there was a very deep
sense of the need of acting on principles universally valid, and a
distrust of any merely emotional enthusiasm which might, in the future,
create more evils than it cured. Acton was, in truth, the incarnation of
the "spirit of Whiggism," although in a very different sense of the
phrase from that in which it became the target for the arrows of
Disraeli's scorn and his mockery of the Venetian constitution. He was
not the Conservative Whig of the "glorious revolution," for to him the
memory of William of Orange might be immortal but was certainly not
pious: yet it was "revolution principles" of which he said that they
were the great gift of England to the world. By this he meant the real
principles by which the events of 1688 could be philosophically
justified, when purged of all their vulgar and interested associations,
raised above their connection with a territorial oligarchy, and based on
reasoned and universal ideals. Acton's liberalism was above all things
historical, and rested on a consciousness of the past. He knew very well
that the roots of modern constitutionalism were mediæval, and declared
that it was the stolid conservatism of the English character, which had
alone enabled it to preserve what other nations had lost in the passion
for autocracy that characterised the men of the Renaissance and the
Reformation. Constitutional government was for him the sole eternal
truth in politics, the rare but the only guardian of freedom. He loved
to trace the growth of the principle of power limiting itself and law
triumphant alike over king, aristocracies, and majorities; and to show
how it arose out of the cruel conflicts of the religious wars and rested
upon the achievements of Constance and the efforts of Basle, and how it
was influenced in expression by the thinkers of the ancient world and
the theologians of the modern, by the politics of Aristotle, by the
maxims of Ulpian and of Gaius, by the theology of St. Thomas and
Ockham, and even by Suarez and Molina.
What Acton feared and hated was the claim of absolutism to crush the
individuality and destroy the conscience of men. It was indifferent to
him whether this claim was exercised by Church or State, by Pope or
Council, or King or Parliament. He felt, however, that it was more
dangerous because more absorbing when exercised in religious matters,
and thus condemned the Protestant theory more deeply than the Catholic
permission of persecution. He also felt that monarchy was more easily
checked than pure democracy, and that the risk of tyranny was greater in
the latter.
Provided that freedom was left to men to do their duty, Acton was not
greatly careful of mere rights. He had no belief in the natural equality
of men, and no dislike of the subordination of classes on the score of
birth. His ideal of freedom as of the Church was in some respects that
of the earlier Middle Ages. He did not object to serfdom, provided that
it safeguarded the elementary rights of the serf to serve God as well as
man. In the great struggle in America, he had no sympathy with the
North, which seemed to him to make majority rule the only measure of
right: and he wrote, if not in favour, at least in palliation, of
slavery. It may be doubted how far he would have used the same language
in later life, but his reasons were in accord with all his general
views. Slavery might be rendered harmless by the State, and some form of
compulsion might be the only way of dealing with child-races, indeed, it
might be merely a form of education no more morally blameworthy than the
legal disabilities of minors. But the absolute state recognising no
limits but its own will, and bound by no rule either of human or Divine
law, appeared to him definitely immoral.
Acton's political conscience was also very broad on the side technically
called moral. No one had higher ideals of purity. Yet he had little
desire to pry into the private morality of kings or politicians. It was
by the presence or absence of _political_ principles that he judged
them. He would have condemned Pope Paul the Fourth more than Rodrigo
Borgia, and the inventor of the "dragonnades" more than his
great-grandson. He did not view personal morality as relevant to
political judgment.
In this, if in nothing else, he agreed with Creighton. His
correspondence with the latter throws his principles into the strongest
light, and forms the best material for a judgment. For it must, we
think, be admitted that he applied these doctrines with a rigidity which
human affairs will not admit, and assumed a knowledge beyond our
capacity. To declare that no one could be in a state of grace who
praised S. Carlo Borromeo, because the latter followed the evil
principle of his day in the matter of persecution, is not merely to make
the historian a hanging judge, but to ignore the great truth that if
crime is always crime, degrees of temptation are widely variable. The
fact is, Acton's desire to maintain the view that "morality is not
ambulatory," led him at times to ignore the complementary doctrine that
it certainly develops, and that the difficulties of statesmen or
ecclesiastics, if they do not excuse, at least at times explain their
less admirable courses. At the very close of his life Acton came to this
view himself. In a pathetic conversation with his son, he lamented the
harshness of some of his judgments, and hoped the example would not be
followed.
Still, Acton, if he erred here, erred on the nobler side. The doctrine
of moral relativity had been overdone by historians, and the principles
of Machiavelli had become so common a cry of politicians, that severe
protest was necessary. The ethics of Nietzsche are the logical
expansion of Machiavelli, and his influence is proof that, in the
long-run, men cannot separate their international code from their
private one. We must remember that Acton lived in a time when, as he
said, the course of history had been "twenty-five times diverted by
actual or attempted crime," and when the old ideals of liberty seemed
swallowed up by the pursuit of gain. To all those who reflect on history
or politics, it was a gain of the highest order that at the very summit
of historical scholarship and profound political knowledge there should
be placed a leader who erred on the unfashionable side, who denied the
statesmen's claim to subject justice to expediency, and opposed the
partisan's attempt to palter with facts in the interest of his creed.
It is these principles which both explain Acton's work as a student, and
make it so difficult to understand. He believed, that as an investigator
of facts the historian must know no passion, save that of a desire to
sift evidence; and his notion of this sifting was of the remorseless
scientific school of Germany, which sometimes, perhaps, expects more in
the way of testimony than human life affords. At any rate, Acton
demanded that the historian must never misconceive the case of the
adversaries of his views, or leave in shade the faults of his own side.
But on the other hand, when he comes to interpret facts or to trace
their relation, his views and even his temperament will affect the
result. It is only the barest outline that can be quite objective. In
Acton's view the historian as investigator is one thing, the historian
as judge another. In an early essay on Döllinger he makes a distinction
of this kind. The reader must bear it in mind in considering Acton's own
writing. Some of the essays here printed, and still more the lectures,
are anything but colourless; they show very distinctly the predilections
of the writer, and it is hardly conceivable that they should have been
written by a defender of absolutism, or even by an old-fashioned Tory.
What Acton really demanded was not the academic aloofness of the pedant
who stands apart from the strife of principles, but the honesty of
purpose which "throws itself into the mind of one's opponents, and
accounts for their mistakes," giving their case the best possible
colouring. For, to be sure of one's ground, one must meet one's
adversaries' strongest arguments, and not be content with merely picking
holes in his armour. Otherwise one's own belief may be at the mercy of
the next clever opponent. The reader may doubt how far Acton succeeded
in his own aim, for there was a touch of intolerance in his hatred of
absolutism, and he believed himself to be divided from his
ecclesiastical and political foes by no mere intellectual difference but
by a moral cleavage. Further, his writing is never half-hearted. His
convictions were certitudes based on continual reading and reflection,
and admitting in his mind of no qualification. He was eminently a
Victorian in his confidence that he was right. He had none of the
invertebrate tendency of mind which thinks it is impartial, merely
because it is undecided, and regards the judicial attitude as that which
refrains from judging. Acton's was not a doubting mind. If he now and
then suspended his judgment, it was as an act of deliberate choice,
because he had made up his mind that the matter could not be decided,
not because he could not decide to make up his mind. Whether he was
right or wrong, he always knew what he thought, and his language was as
exact an expression of his meaning as he could make it. It was true that
his subtle and far-sighted intelligence makes his style now and then
like a boomerang, as when he says of Ranke's method "it is a discipline
we shall all do well to adopt, and also do well to relinquish." Indeed,
it is hardly possible to read a single essay without observing this
marked characteristic. He has been called a "Meredith turned historian,"
and that there is truth in this judgment, any one who sees at once the
difficulty and the suggestiveness of his reviews can bear witness. He
could hardly write the briefest note without stamping his personality
upon it and exhibiting the marks of a very complex culture. But the main
characteristic of his style is that it represents the ideals of a man to
whom every word was sacred. Its analogies are rather in sculpture than
painting. Each paragraph, almost every sentence is a perfectly chiselled
whole, impressive by no brilliance or outside polish, so much as by the
inward intensity of which it is the symbol. Thus his writing is never
fluent or easy, but it has a moral dignity rare and unfashionable.
Acton, indeed, was by no means without a gift of rhetoric, and in the
"Lecture on Mexico," here republished, there is ample evidence of a
power of handling words which should impress a popular audience. It is
in gravity of judgment and in the light he can draw from small details
that his power is most plainly shown. On the other hand, he had a little
of the scholar's love of clinging to the bank, and, as the notes to his
"Inaugural" show, he seems at times too much disposed to use the
crutches of quotation to prop up positions which need no such support.
It was of course the same habit--the desire not to speak before he had
read everything that was relevant, whether in print or manuscript--that
hindered so severely his output. His projected _History of Liberty_ was,
from the first, impossible of achievement. It would have required the
intellects of Napoleon and Julius Cæsar combined, and the lifetime of
the patriarchs, to have executed that project as Acton appears to have
planned it. A _History of Liberty_, beginning with the ancient world and
carried down to our own day, to be based entirely upon original
sources, treating both of the institutions which secured it, the persons
who fought for it, and the ideas which expressed it, and taking note of
all that scholars had written about every several portion of the
subject, was and is beyond the reach of a single man. Probably towards
the close of his life Acton had felt this. The _Cambridge Modern
History_, which required the co-operation of so many specialists, was to
him really but a fragment of this great project.
Two other causes limited Acton's output. Towards the close of the
seventies he began to suspect, and eventually discovered, that he and
Döllinger were not so close together as he had believed. That is to say,
he found that in regard to the crimes of the past, Döllinger's position
was more like that of Creighton than his own--that, while he was willing
to say persecution was always wrong, he was not willing to go so far as
Acton in rejecting every kind of mitigating plea and with mediæval
certainty consigning the persecutors to perdition. Acton, who had as he
thought, learnt all this from Döllinger, was distressed at what seemed
to him the weakness and the sacerdotal prejudice of his master, felt
that he was now indeed alone, and for the time surrendered, as he said,
all views of literary work. This was the time when he had been gathering
materials for a _History of the Council of Trent_. That this cleavage,
coming when it did, had a paralysing effect on Acton's productive energy
is most probable, for it made him feel that he was no longer one of a
school, and was without sympathy and support in the things that lay
nearest his heart.
Another cause retarded production--his determination to know all about
the work of others. Acton desired to be in touch with university life
all over Europe, to be aware, if possible through personal knowledge, of
the trend of investigation and thought of scholars working in all the
cognate branches of his subject. To keep up thoroughly with other
people's work, and do much original writing of one's own, is rarely
possible. At any rate we may say that the same man could not have
produced the essay on German schools of history, and written a _magnum
opus_ of his own.
His life marks what, in an age of minute specialism, must always be at
once the crown and the catastrophe of those who take all knowledge for
their province. His achievement is something different from any book.
Acton's life-work was, in fact, himself. Those who lament what he might
have written as a historian would do well to reflect on the unique
position which he held in the world of letters, and to ask themselves
how far he could have wielded the influence that was his, or held the
standard so high, had his own achievement been greater. Men such as
Acton and Hort give to the world, by their example and disposition, more
than any written volume could convey. In both cases a great part of
their published writings has had, at least in book form, to be
posthumous. But their influence on other workers is incalculable, and
has not yet determined.
To an age doubting on all things, and with the moral basis of its action
largely undermined, Acton gave the spectacle of a career which was as
moving as it was rare. He stood for a spirit of unwavering and even
childlike faith united to a passion for scientific inquiry, and a scorn
of consequences, which at times made him almost an iconoclast. His whole
life was dedicated to one high end, the aim of preaching the need of
principles based on the widest induction and the most penetrating
thought, as the only refuge amid the storm and welter of sophistical
philosophies and ecclesiastical intrigues. The union of faith with
knowledge, and the eternal supremacy of righteousness, this was the
message of Acton to mankind. It may be thought that he sometimes
exaggerated his thesis, that he preached it out of season, that he laid
himself open to the charge of being doctrinaire, and that in fighting
for it he failed to utter the resources of his vast learning. Enough,
however, is left to enable the world to judge what he was. No books ever
do more than that for any man. Those who are nice in comparisons may
weigh against the book lost the man gained. Those who loved him will
know no doubt.
* * * * *
The following document was found among Lord Acton's Papers. It records
in an imaginative form the ideals which he set before him. Perhaps it
forms the most fitting conclusion to this Introduction.
This day's post informed me of the death of Adrian, who was the best
of all men I have known. He loved retirement, and avoided company,
but you might sometimes meet him coming from scenes of sorrow, silent
and appalled, as if he had seen a ghost, or in the darkest corner of
churches, his dim eyes radiant with light from another world. In
youth he had gone through much anxiety and contention; but he lived
to be trusted and honoured. At last he dropped out of notice and the
memory of men, and that part of his life was the happiest.
Years ago, when I saw much of him, most people had not found him out.
There was something in his best qualities themselves that baffled
observation, and fell short of decided excellence. He looked absent
and preoccupied, as if thinking of things he cared not to speak of,
and seemed but little interested in the cares and events of the day.
Often it was hard to decide whether he had an opinion, and when he
showed it, he would defend it with more eagerness and obstinacy than
we liked. He did not mingle readily with others or co-operate in any
common undertaking, so that one could not rely on him socially, or
for practical objects. As he never spoke harshly of persons, so he
seldom praised them warmly, and there was some apparent indifference
and want of feeling. Ill success did not depress, but happy prospects
did not elate him, and though never impatient, he was not actively
hopeful. Facetious friends called him the weather-cock, or Mr.
Facingbothways, because there was no heartiness in his judgments, and
he satisfied nobody, and said things that were at first sight
grossly inconsistent, without attempting to reconcile them. He was
reserved about himself, and gave no explanations, so that he was
constantly misunderstood, and there was a sense of failure, of
disappointment, of perplexity about him.
These things struck me, as well as others, and at first repelled me.
I could see indeed, at the same time, that his conduct was remarkably
methodical, and was guided at every step by an inexhaustible
provision of maxims. He had meditated on every contingency in life,
and was prepared with rules and precepts, which he never disobeyed.
But I doubted whether all this was not artificial,--a contrivance to
satisfy the pride of intellect and establish a cold superiority. In
time I discovered that it was the perfection of a developed
character. He had disciplined his soul with such wisdom and energy as
to make it the obedient and spontaneous instrument of God's will, and
he moved in an orbit of thoughts beyond our reach.
It was part of his religion to live much in the past, to realise
every phase of thought, every crisis of controversy, every stage of
progress the Church has gone through. So that the events and ideas of
his own day lost much of their importance in comparison, were old
friends with new faces, and impressed him less than the multitude of
those that went before. This caused him to seem absent and
indifferent, rarely given to admire, or to expect. He respected other
men's opinions, fearing to give pain, or to tempt with anger by
contradiction, and when forced to defend his own he felt bound to
assume that every one would look sincerely for the truth, and would
gladly recognise it. But he could not easily enter into their motives
when they were mixed, and finding them generally mixed, he avoided
contention by holding much aloof. Being quite sincere, he was quite
impartial, and pleaded with equal zeal for what seemed true, whether
it was on one side or on the other. He would have felt dishonest if
he had unduly favoured people of his own country, his own religion,
or his own party, or if he had entertained the shadow of a prejudice
against those who were against them, and when he was asked why he did
not try to clear himself from misrepresentation, he said that he was
silent both from humility and pride.
At last I understood that what we had disliked in him was his virtue
itself.
J.N.F.
R.V.L.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: There is no foundation for the statement of Canon Meyrick
in his _Reminiscences_, that Acton, had he lived on the Continent, would
have undoubtedly become an Old Catholic. He did very largely live on the
Continent. Nor did even Döllinger, of whom Dr. Meyrick also asserts it,
ever become an adherent of that movement.]
I
THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY[2]
Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the
common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two
thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was
gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature
civilisation; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew
the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress
has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by
lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for
power, and the poor man's craving for food. During long intervals it has
been utterly arrested, when nations were being rescued from barbarism
and from the grasp of strangers, and when the perpetual struggle for
existence, depriving men of all interest and understanding in politics,
has made them eager to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, and
ignorant of the treasure they resigned. At all times sincere friends of
freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities,
that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose
objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is
always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents
just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in
the hour of success. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult
to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true
liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have
wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of
knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws. The history of
institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their
virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that
preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has
passed away.
A few familiar examples from modern politics will explain why it is that
the burden of my argument will lie outside the domain of legislation. It
is often said that our Constitution attained its formal perfection in
1679, when the Habeas Corpus Act was passed. Yet Charles II. succeeded,
only two years later, in making himself independent of Parliament. In
1789, while the States-General assembled at Versailles, the Spanish
Cortes, older than Magna Charta and more venerable than our House of
Commons, were summoned after an interval of generations, but they
immediately prayed the King to abstain from consulting them, and to make
his reforms of his own wisdom and authority. According to the common
opinion, indirect elections are a safeguard of conservatism. But all the
Assemblies of the French Revolution issued from indirect elections. A
restricted suffrage is another reputed security for monarchy. But the
Parliament of Charles X., which was returned by 90,000 electors,
resisted and overthrew the throne; while the Parliament of Louis
Philippe, chosen by a Constitution of 250,000, obsequiously promoted the
reactionary policy of his Ministers, and in the fatal division which, by
rejecting reform, laid the monarchy in the dust, Guizot's majority was
obtained by the votes of 129 public functionaries. An unpaid legislature
is, for obvious reasons, more independent than most of the Continental
legislatures which receive pay. But it would be unreasonable in America
to send a member as far as from here to Constantinople to live for
twelve months at his own expense in the dearest of capital cities.
Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor
of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the
Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from
the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as
Monarchy from Democracy, for he is expected to make 70,000 changes in
the public service; fifty years ago John Quincy Adams dismissed only two
men. The purchase of judicial appointments is manifestly indefensible;
yet in the old French monarchy that monstrous practice created the only
corporation able to resist the king. Official corruption, which would
ruin a commonwealth, serves in Russia as a salutary relief from the
pressure of absolutism. There are conditions in which it is scarcely a
hyperbole to say that slavery itself is a stage on the road to freedom.
Therefore we are not so much concerned this evening with the dead letter
of edicts and of statutes as with the living thoughts of men. A century
ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a
Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the
enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to
question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in
which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the
clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar
beyond the entire administration of many statesmen. It would be easy to
point out a paragraph in St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that
outweighs in influence the Acts of fifty Parliaments, and our cause owes
more to Cicero and Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville, than to the laws of
Lycurgus or the Five Codes of France.
By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in
doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and
majorities, custom and opinion. The State is competent to assign duties
and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere.
Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only
give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the
influences which prevail against temptation,--religion, education, and
the distribution of wealth. In ancient times the State absorbed
authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom.
In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered
others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The
most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is
the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this
definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion; and it
is in the history of the Chosen People, accordingly, that the first
illustrations of my subject are obtained. The government of the
Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority,
but by the unity of race and faith, and founded, not on physical force,
but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was
carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120
families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before
the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community
that it was resisted by Samuel in that momentous protestation and
warning which all the kingdoms of Asia and many of the kingdoms of
Europe have unceasingly confirmed. The throne was erected on a compact;
and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people
that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was
to restore the original purity of the constitution, and to make its
government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions
of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy
against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws,
which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed from
the established authorities, from the king, the priests, and the princes
of the people, to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted
consciences of the masses. Thus the example of the Hebrew nation laid
down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won--the doctrine
of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle
that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development, and
not of essential change; and the principle that all political
authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was
not made by man. The operation of these principles, in unison, or in
antagonism, occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.
The conflict between liberty under divine authority and the absolutism
of human authorities ended disastrously. In the year 622 a supreme
effort was made at Jerusalem to reform and preserve the State. The High
Priest produced from the temple of Jehovah the book of the deserted and
forgotten Law, and both king and people bound themselves by solemn oaths
to observe it. But that early example of limited monarchy and of the
supremacy of law neither lasted nor spread; and the forces by which
freedom has conquered must be sought elsewhere. In the very year 586, in
which the flood of Asiatic despotism closed over the city which had
been, and was destined again to be, the sanctuary of freedom in the
East, a new home was prepared for it in the West, where, guarded by the
sea and the mountains, and by valiant hearts, that stately plant was
reared under whose shade we dwell, and which is extending its invincible
arms so slowly and yet so surely over the civilised world.
According to a famous saying of the most famous authoress of the
Continent, liberty is ancient, and it is despotism that is new. It has
been the pride of recent historians to vindicate the truth of that
maxim. The heroic age of Greece confirms it, and it is still more
conspicuously true of Teutonic Europe. Wherever we can trace the earlier
life of the Aryan nations we discover germs which favouring
circumstances and assiduous culture might have developed into free
societies. They exhibit some sense of common interest in common
concerns, little reverence for external authority, and an imperfect
sense of the function and supremacy of the State. Where the division of
property and labour is incomplete there is little division of classes
and of power. Until societies are tried by the complex problems of
civilisation they may escape despotism, as societies that are
undisturbed by religious diversity avoid persecution. In general, the
forms of the patriarchal age failed to resist the growth of absolute
States when the difficulties and temptations of advancing life began to
tell; and with one sovereign exception, which is not within my scope
to-day, it is scarcely possible to trace their survival in the
institutions of later times. Six hundred years before the birth of
Christ absolutism held unbounded sway. Throughout the East it was
propped by the unchanging influence of priests and armies. In the West,
where there were no sacred books requiring trained interpreters, the
priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were overthrown
their powers passed to aristocracies of birth. What followed, during
many generations, was the cruel domination of class over class, the
oppression of the poor by the rich, and of the ignorant by the wise. The
spirit of that domination found passionate utterance in the verses of
the aristocratic poet Theognis, a man of genius and refinement, who
avows that he longed to drink the blood of his political adversaries.
From these oppressors the people of many cities sought deliverance in
the less intolerable tyranny of revolutionary usurpers. The remedy gave
new shape and energy to the evil. The tyrants were often men of
surprising capacity and merit, like some of those who, in the fourteenth
century, made themselves lords of Italian cities; but rights secured by
equal laws and by sharing power existed nowhere.
From this universal degradation the world was rescued by the most gifted
of the nations. Athens, which like other cities was distracted and
oppressed by a privileged class, avoided violence and appointed Solon to
revise its laws. It was the happiest choice that history records. Solon
was not only the wisest man to be found in Athens, but the most profound
political genius of antiquity; and the easy, bloodless, and pacific
revolution by which he accomplished the deliverance of his country was
the first step in a career which our age glories in pursuing, and
instituted a power which has done more than anything, except revealed
religion, for the regeneration of society. The upper class had possessed
the right of making and administering the laws, and he left them in
possession, only transferring to wealth what had been the privilege of
birth. To the rich, who alone had the means of sustaining the burden of
public service in taxation and war, Solon gave a share of power
proportioned to the demands made on their resources. The poorest classes
were exempt from direct taxes, but were excluded from office. Solon gave
them a voice in electing magistrates from the classes above them, and
the right of calling them to account. This concession, apparently so
slender, was the beginning of a mighty change. It introduced the idea
that a man ought to have a voice in selecting those to whose rectitude
and wisdom he is compelled to trust his fortune, his family, and his
life. And this idea completely inverted the notion of human authority,
for it inaugurated the reign of moral influence where all political
power had depended on moral force. Government by consent superseded
government by compulsion, and the pyramid which had stood on a point was
made to stand upon its base. By making every citizen the guardian of his
own interest Solon admitted the element of Democracy into the State. The
greatest glory of a ruler, he said, is to create a popular government.
Believing that no man can be entirely trusted, he subjected all who
exercised power to the vigilant control of those for whom they acted.
The only resource against political disorders that had been known till
then was the concentration of power. Solon undertook to effect the same
object by the distribution of power. He gave to the common people as
much influence as he thought them able to employ, that the State might
be exempt from arbitrary government. It is the essence of Democracy, he
said, to obey no master but the law. Solon recognised the principle that
political forms are not final or inviolable, and must adapt themselves
to facts; and he provided so well for the revision of his constitution,
without breach of continuity or loss of stability, that for centuries
after his death the Attic orators attributed to him, and quoted by his
name, the whole structure of Athenian law. The direction of its growth
was determined by the fundamental doctrine of Solon, that political
power ought to be commensurate with public service. In the Persian war
the services of the Democracy eclipsed those of the Patrician orders,
for the fleet that swept the Asiatics from the Egean Sea was manned by
the poorer Athenians. That class, whose valour had saved the State and
had preserved European civilisation, had gained a title to increase of
influence and privilege. The offices of State, which had been a monopoly
of the rich, were thrown open to the poor, and in order to make sure
that they should obtain their share, all but the highest commands were
distributed by lot.
Whilst the ancient authorities were decaying, there was no accepted
standard of moral and political right to make the framework of society
fast in the midst of change. The instability that had seized on the
forms threatened the very principles of government. The national beliefs
were yielding to doubt, and doubt was not yet making way for knowledge.
There had been a time when the obligations of public as well as private
life were identified with the will of the gods. But that time had
passed. Pallas, the ethereal goddess of the Athenians, and the Sun god
whose oracles, delivered from the temple between the twin summits of
Parnassus, did so much for the Greek nationality, aided in keeping up a
lofty ideal of religion; but when the enlightened men of Greece learnt
to apply their keen faculty of reasoning to the system of their
inherited belief, they became quickly conscious that the conceptions of
the gods corrupted the life and degraded the minds of the public.
Popular morality could not be sustained by the popular religion. The
moral instruction which was no longer supplied by the gods could not yet
be found in books. There was no venerable code expounded by experts, no
doctrine proclaimed by men of reputed sanctity like those teachers of
the far East whose words still rule the fate of nearly half mankind. The
effort to account for things by close observation and exact reasoning
began by destroying. There came a time when the philosophers of the
Porch and the Academy wrought the dictates of wisdom and virtue into a
system so consistent and profound that it has vastly shortened the task
of the Christian divines. But that time had not yet come.
The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from
the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age
of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the
prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to
absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in
the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the
immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our
philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we
possess. Pericles, who was at the head of the Athenian Government, was
the first statesman who encountered the problem which the rapid
weakening of traditions forced on the political world. No authority in
morals or in politics remained unshaken by the motion that was in the
air. No guide could be confidently trusted; there was no available
criterion to appeal to, for the means of controlling or denying
convictions that prevailed among the people. The popular sentiment as to
what was right might be mistaken, but it was subject to no test. The
people were, for practical purposes, the seat of the knowledge of good
and evil. The people, therefore, were the seat of power.
The political philosophy of Pericles consisted of this conclusion. He
resolutely struck away all the props that still sustained the artificial
preponderance of wealth. For the ancient doctrine that power goes with
land, he introduced the idea that power ought to be so equitably
diffused as to afford equal security to all. That one part of the
community should govern the whole, or that one class should make laws
for another, he declared to be tyrannical. The abolition of privilege
would have served only to transfer the supremacy from the rich to the
poor, if Pericles had not redressed the balance by restricting the right
of citizenship to Athenians of pure descent. By this measure the class
which formed what we should call the third estate was brought down to
14,000 citizens, and became about equal in numbers with the higher
ranks. Pericles held that every Athenian who neglected to take his part
in the public business inflicted an injury on the commonwealth. That
none might be excluded by poverty, he caused the poor to be paid for
their attendance out of the funds of the State; for his administration
of the federal tribute had brought together a treasure of more than two
million sterling. The instrument of his sway was the art of speaking. He
governed by persuasion. Everything was decided by argument in open
deliberation, and every influence bowed before the ascendency of mind.
The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the
predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal
care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make
the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the
highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece. It hardly
survived the great patriot who conceived it; and all history has been
occupied with the endeavour to upset the balance of power by giving the
advantage to money, land, or numbers. A generation followed that has
never been equalled in talent--a generation of men whose works, in
poetry and eloquence, are still the envy of the world, and in history,
philosophy, and politics remain unsurpassed. But it produced no
successor to Pericles, and no man was able to wield the sceptre that
fell from his hand.
It was a momentous step in the progress of nations when the principle
that every interest should have the right and the means of asserting
itself was adopted by the Athenian Constitution. But for those who were
beaten in the vote there was no redress. The law did not check the
triumph of majorities or rescue the minority from the dire penalty of
having been outnumbered. When the overwhelming influence of Pericles was
removed, the conflict between classes raged without restraint, and the
slaughter that befell the higher ranks in the Peloponnesian war gave an
irresistible preponderance to the lower. The restless and inquiring
spirit of the Athenians was prompt to unfold the reason of every
institution and the consequences of every principle, and their
Constitution ran its course from infancy to decrepitude with unexampled
speed.
Two men's lives span the interval from the first admission of popular
influence, under Solon, to the downfall of the State. Their history
furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions
singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and
patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most
religious of the Greeks. They venerated the Constitution which had given
them prosperity, and equality, and freedom, and never questioned the
fundamental laws which regulated the enormous power of the Assembly.
They tolerated considerable variety of opinion and great licence of
speech; and their humanity towards their slaves roused the indignation
even of the most intelligent partisan of aristocracy. Thus they became
the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions.
But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience,
hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs,
exercised its demoralising influence on the illustrious democracy of
Athens. It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be
oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the
masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.
But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no
redemption, no refuge but treason. The humblest and most numerous class
of the Athenians united the legislative, the judicial, and, in part, the
executive power. The philosophy that was then in the ascendant taught
them that there is no law superior to that of the State--the lawgiver is
above the law.
It followed that the sovereign people had a right to do whatever was
within its power, and was bound by no rule of right or wrong but its own
judgment of expediency. On a memorable occasion the assembled Athenians
declared it monstrous that they should be prevented from doing whatever
they chose. No force that existed could restrain them; and they resolved
that no duty should restrain them, and that they would be bound by no
laws that were not of their own making. In this way the emancipated
people of Athens became a tyrant; and their Government, the pioneer of
European freedom, stands condemned with a terrible unanimity by all the
wisest of the ancients. They ruined their city by attempting to conduct
war by debate in the marketplace. Like the French Republic, they put
their unsuccessful commanders to death. They treated their dependencies
with such injustice that they lost their maritime Empire. They plundered
the rich until the rich conspired with the public enemy, and they
crowned their guilt by the martyrdom of Socrates.
When the absolute sway of numbers had endured for near a quarter of a
century, nothing but bare existence was left for the State to lose; and
the Athenians, wearied and despondent, confessed the true cause of their
ruin. They understood that for liberty, justice, and equal laws, it is
as necessary that Democracy should restrain itself as it had been that
it should restrain the Oligarchy. They resolved to take their stand once
more upon the ancient ways, and to restore the order of things which had
subsisted when the monopoly of power had been taken from the rich and
had not been acquired by the poor. After a first restoration had failed,
which is only memorable because Thucydides, whose judgment in politics
is never at fault, pronounced it the best Government Athens had enjoyed,
the attempt was renewed with more experience and greater singleness of
purpose. The hostile parties were reconciled, and proclaimed an
amnesty, the first in history. They resolved to govern by concurrence.
The laws, which had the sanction of tradition, were reduced to a code;
and no act of the sovereign assembly was valid with which they might be
found to disagree. Between the sacred lines of the Constitution which
were to remain inviolate, and the decrees which met from time to time
the needs and notions of the day, a broad distinction was drawn; and the
fabric of a law which had been the work of generations was made
independent of momentary variations in the popular will. The repentance
of the Athenians came too late to save the Republic. But the lesson of
their experience endures for all times, for it teaches that government
by the whole people, being the government of the most numerous and most
powerful class, is an evil of the same nature as unmixed monarchy, and
requires, for nearly the same reasons, institutions that shall protect
it against itself, and shall uphold the permanent reign of law against
arbitrary revolutions of opinion.
* * * * *
Parallel with the rise and fall of Athenian freedom, Rome was employed
in working out the same problems, with greater constructive sense, and
greater temporary success, but ending at last in a far more terrible
catastrophe. That which among the ingenious Athenians had been a
development carried forward by the spell of plausible argument, was in
Rome a conflict between rival forces. Speculative politics had no
attraction for the grim and practical genius of the Romans. They did not
consider what would be the cleverest way of getting over a difficulty,
but what way was indicated by analogous cases; and they assigned less
influence to the impulse and spirit of the moment, than to precedent and
example. Their peculiar character prompted them to ascribe the origin of
their laws to early times, and in their desire to justify the continuity
of their institutions, and to get rid of the reproach of innovation,
they imagined the legendary history of the kings of Rome. The energy of
their adherence to traditions made their progress slow, they advanced
only under compulsion of almost unavoidable necessity, and the same
questions recurred often, before they were settled. The constitutional
history of the Republic turns on the endeavours of the aristocracy, who
claimed to be the only true Romans, to retain in their hands the power
they had wrested from the kings, and of the plebeians to get an equal
share in it. And this controversy, which the eager and restless
Athenians went through in one generation, lasted for more than two
centuries, from a time when the _plebs_ were excluded from the
government of the city, and were taxed, and made to serve without pay,
until, in the year 286, they were admitted to political equality. Then
followed one hundred and fifty years of unexampled prosperity and glory;
and then, out of the original conflict which had been compromised, if
not theoretically settled, a new struggle arose which was without an
issue.
The mass of poorer families, impoverished by incessant service in war,
were reduced to dependence on an aristocracy of about two thousand
wealthy men, who divided among themselves the immense domain of the
State. When the need became intense the Gracchi tried to relieve it by
inducing the richer classes to allot some share in the public lands to
the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of birth and rank had
made a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding. The later
and more selfish aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of
the people was changed by the sterner motives of dispute. The fight for
political power had been carried on with the moderation which is so
honourable a quality of party contests in England. But the struggle for
the objects of material existence grew to be as ferocious as civil
controversies in France. Repulsed by the rich, after a struggle of
twenty-two years, the people, three hundred and twenty thousand of whom
depended on public rations for food, were ready to follow any man who
promised to obtain for them by revolution what they could not obtain by
law.
For a time the Senate, representing the ancient and threatened order of
things, was strong enough to overcome every popular leader that arose,
until Julius Cæsar, supported by an army which he had led in an
unparalleled career of conquest, and by the famished masses which he won
by his lavish liberality, and skilled beyond all other men in the art of
governing, converted the Republic into a Monarchy by a series of
measures that were neither violent nor injurious.
The Empire preserved the Republican forms until the reign of Diocletian;
but the will of the Emperors was as uncontrolled as that of the people
had been after the victory of the Tribunes. Their power was arbitrary
even when it was most wisely employed, and yet the Roman Empire rendered
greater services to the cause of liberty than the Roman Republic. I do
not mean by reason of the temporary accident that there were emperors
who made good use of their immense opportunities, such as Nerva, of whom
Tacitus says that he combined monarchy and liberty, things otherwise
incompatible; or that the Empire was what its panegyrists declared it,
the perfection of Democracy. In truth it was at best an ill-disguised
and odious despotism. But Frederic the Great was a despot; yet he was a
friend to toleration and free discussion. The Bonapartes were despotic;
yet no liberal ruler was ever more acceptable to the masses of the
people than the First Napoleon, after he had destroyed the Republic, in
1805, and the Third Napoleon at the height of his power in 1859. In the
same way, the Roman Empire possessed merits which, at a distance, and
especially at a great distance of time, concern men more deeply than the
tragic tyranny which was felt in the neighbourhood of the Palace. The
poor had what they had demanded in vain of the Republic. The rich fared
better than during the Triumvirate. The rights of Roman citizens were
extended to the people of the provinces. To the imperial epoch belong
the better part of Roman literature and nearly the entire Civil Law; and
it was the Empire that mitigated slavery, instituted religious
toleration, made a beginning of the law of nations, and created a
perfect system of the law of property. The Republic which Cæsar
overthrew had been anything but a free State. It provided admirable
securities for the rights of citizens; it treated with savage disregard
the rights of men; and allowed the free Roman to inflict atrocious
wrongs on his children, on debtors and dependants, on prisoners and
slaves. Those deeper ideas of right and duty, which are not found on the
tables of municipal law, but with which the generous minds of Greece
were conversant, were held of little account, and the philosophy which
dealt with such speculations was repeatedly proscribed, as a teacher of
sedition and impiety.
At length, in the year 155, the Athenian philosopher Carneades appeared
at Rome, on a political mission. During an interval of official business
he delivered two public orations, to give the unlettered conquerors of
his country a taste of the disputations that flourished in the Attic
schools. On the first day he discoursed of natural justice. On the next
he denied its existence, arguing that all our notions of good and evil
are derived from positive enactment. From the time of that memorable
display, the genius of the vanquished held its conquerors in thrall. The
most eminent of the public men of Rome, such as Scipio and Cicero,
formed their minds on Grecian models, and her jurists underwent the
rigorous discipline of Zeno and Chrysippus.
If, drawing the limit in the second century, when the influence of
Christianity becomes perceptible, we should form our judgment of the
politics of antiquity by its actual legislation, our estimate would be
low. The prevailing notions of freedom were imperfect, and the
endeavours to realise them were wide of the mark. The ancients
understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of
liberty. They concentrated so many prerogatives in the State as to leave
no footing from which a man could deny its jurisdiction or assign bounds
to its activity. If I may employ an expressive anachronism, the vice of
the classic State was that it was both Church and State in one. Morality
was undistinguished from religion and politics from morals; and in
religion, morality, and politics there was only one legislator and one
authority. The State, while it did deplorably little for education, for
practical science, for the indigent and helpless, or for the spiritual
needs of man, nevertheless claimed the use of all his faculties and the
determination of all his duties. Individuals and families, associations
and dependencies were so much material that the sovereign power consumed
for its own purposes. What the slave was in the hands of his master, the
citizen was in the hands of the community. The most sacred obligations
vanished before the public advantage. The passengers existed for the
sake of the ship. By their disregard for private interests, and for the
moral welfare and improvement of the people, both Greece and Rome
destroyed the vital elements on which the prosperity of nations rests,
and perished by the decay of families and the depopulation of the
country. They survive not in their institutions, but in their ideas, and
by their ideas, especially on the art of government, they are--
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
To them, indeed, may be tracked nearly all the errors that are
undermining political society--Communism, Utilitarianism, the confusion
between tyranny and authority, and between lawlessness and freedom.
The notion that men lived originally in a state of nature, by violence
and without laws, is due to Critias. Communism in its grossest form was
recommended by Diogenes of Sinope. According to the Sophists, there is
no duty above expediency and no virtue apart from pleasure. Laws are an
invention of weak men to rob their betters of the reasonable enjoyment
of their superiority. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong; and
as there is no greater good than to do evil without fear of retribution,
so there is no worse evil than to suffer without the consolation of
revenge. Justice is the mask of a craven spirit; injustice is worldly
wisdom; and duty, obedience, self-denial are the impostures of
hypocrisy. Government is absolute, and may ordain what it pleases, and
no subject can complain that it does him wrong, but as long as he can
escape compulsion and punishment, he is always free to disobey.
Happiness consists in obtaining power and in eluding the necessity of
obedience; and he that gains a throne by perfidy and murder, deserves to
be truly envied.
Epicurus differed but little from the propounders of the code of
revolutionary despotism. All societies, he said, are founded on contract
for mutual protection. Good and evil are conventional terms, for the
thunderbolts of heaven fall alike on the just and the unjust. The
objection to wrongdoing is not the act, but in its consequences to the
wrongdoer. Wise men contrive laws, not to bind, but to protect
themselves; and when they prove to be unprofitable they cease to be
valid. The illiberal sentiments of even the most illustrious
metaphysicians are disclosed in the saying of Aristotle, that the mark
of the worst governments is that they leave men free to live as they
please.
If you will bear in mind that Socrates, the best of the pagans, knew of
no higher criterion for men, of no better guide of conduct, than the
laws of each country; that Plato, whose sublime doctrine was so near an
anticipation of Christianity that celebrated theologians wished his
works to be forbidden, lest men should be content with them, and
indifferent to any higher dogma--to whom was granted that prophetic
vision of the Just Man, accused, condemned and scourged, and dying on a
Cross--nevertheless employed the most splendid intellect ever bestowed
on man to advocate the abolition of the family and the exposure of
infants; that Aristotle, the ablest moralist of antiquity, saw no harm
in making raids upon a neighbouring people, for the sake of reducing
them to slavery--still more, if you will consider that, among the
moderns, men of genius equal to these have held political doctrines not
less criminal or absurd--it will be apparent to you how stubborn a
phalanx of error blocks the paths of truth; that pure reason is as
powerless as custom to solve the problem of free government; that it
can only be the fruit of long, manifold, and painful experience; and
that the tracing of the methods by which divine wisdom has educated the
nations to appreciate and to assume the duties of freedom, is not the
least part of that true philosophy that studies to
Assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
But, having sounded the depth of their errors, I should give you a very
inadequate idea of the wisdom of the ancients if I allowed it to appear
that their precepts were no better than their practice. While statesmen
and senates and popular assemblies supplied examples of every
description of blunder, a noble literature arose, in which a priceless
treasure of political knowledge was stored, and in which the defects of
the existing institutions were exposed with unsparing sagacity. The
point on which the ancients were most nearly unanimous is the right of
the people to govern, and their inability to govern alone. To meet this
difficulty, to give to the popular element a full share without a
monopoly of power, they adopted very generally the theory of a mixed
Constitution. They differed from our notion of the same thing, because
modern Constitutions have been a device for limiting monarchy; with them
they were invented to curb democracy. The idea arose in the time of
Plato--though he repelled it--when the early monarchies and oligarchies
had vanished, and it continued to be cherished long after all
democracies had been absorbed in the Roman Empire. But whereas a
sovereign prince who surrenders part of his authority yields to the
argument of superior force, a sovereign people relinquishing its own
prerogative succumbs to the influence of reason. And it has in all times
proved more easy to create limitations by the use of force than by
persuasion.
The ancient writers saw very clearly that each principle of government
standing alone is carried to excess and provokes a reaction. Monarchy
hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy
expands into the supremacy of numbers. They therefore imagined that to
restrain each element by combining it with the others would avert the
natural process of self-destruction, and endow the State with perpetual
youth. But this harmony of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy blended
together, which was the ideal of many writers, and which they supposed
to be exhibited by Sparta, by Carthage, and by Rome, was a chimera of
philosophers never realised by antiquity. At last Tacitus, wiser than
the rest, confessed that the mixed Constitution, however admirable in
theory, was difficult to establish and impossible to maintain. His
disheartening avowal is not disowned by later experience.
The experiment has been tried more often than I can tell, with a
combination of resources that were unknown to the ancients--with
Christianity, parliamentary government, and a free press. Yet there is
no example of such a balanced Constitution having lasted a century. If
it has succeeded anywhere it has been in our favoured country and in our
time; and we know not yet how long the wisdom of the nation will
preserve the equipoise. The Federal check was as familiar to the
ancients as the Constitutional. For the type of all their Republics was
the government of a city by its own inhabitants meeting in the public
place. An administration embracing many cities was known to them only in
the form of the oppression which Sparta exercised over the Messenians,
Athens over her Confederates, and Rome over Italy. The resources which,
in modern times, enabled a great people to govern itself through a
single centre did not exist. Equality could be preserved only by
Federalism; and it occurs more often amongst them than in the modern
world. If the distribution of power among the several parts of the State
is the most efficient restraint on monarchy, the distribution of power
among several States is the best check on democracy. By multiplying
centres of government and discussion it promotes the diffusion of
political knowledge and the maintenance of healthy and independent
opinion. It is the protectorate of minorities, and the consecration of
self-government. But although it must be enumerated among the better
achievements of practical genius in antiquity, it arose from necessity,
and its properties were imperfectly investigated in theory.
When the Greeks began to reflect on the problems of society, they first
of all accepted things as they were, and did their best to explain and
defend them. Inquiry, which with us is stimulated by doubt, began with
them in wonder. The most illustrious of the early philosophers,
Pythagoras, promulgated a theory for the preservation of political power
in the educated class, and ennobled a form of government which was
generally founded on popular ignorance and on strong class interests. He
preached authority and subordination, and dwelt more on duties than on
rights, on religion than on policy; and his system perished in the
revolution by which oligarchies were swept away. The revolution
afterwards developed its own philosophy, whose excesses I have
described.
But between the two eras, between the rigid didactics of the early
Pythagoreans and the dissolving theories of Protagoras, a philosopher
arose who stood aloof from both extremes, and whose difficult sayings
were never really understood or valued until our time. Heraclitus, of
Ephesus, deposited his book in the temple of Diana. The book has
perished, like the temple and the worship, but its fragments have been
collected and interpreted with incredible ardour, by the scholars, the
divines, the philosophers, and politicians who have been engaged the
most intensely in the toil and stress of this century. The most renowned
logician of the last century adopted every one of his propositions; and
the most brilliant agitator among Continental Socialists composed a work
of eight hundred and forty pages to celebrate his memory.
Heraclitus complained that the masses were deaf to truth, and knew not
that one good man counts for more than thousands; but he held the
existing order in no superstitious reverence. Strife, he says, is the
source and the master of all things. Life is perpetual motion, and
repose is death. No man can plunge twice into the same current, for it
is always flowing and passing, and is never the same. The only thing
fixed and certain in the midst of change is the universal and sovereign
reason, which all men may not perceive, but which is common to all. Laws
are sustained by no human authority, but by virtue of their derivation
from the one law that is divine. These sayings, which recall the grand
outlines of political truth which we have found in the Sacred Books, and
carry us forward to the latest teaching of our most enlightened
contemporaries, would bear a good deal of elucidation and comment.
Heraclitus is, unfortunately, so obscure that Socrates could not
understand him, and I won't pretend to have succeeded better.
If the topic of my address was the history of political science, the
highest and the largest place would belong to Plato and Aristotle. The
_Laws_ of the one, the _Politics_ of the other, are, if I may trust my
own experience, the books from which we may learn the most about the
principles of politics. The penetration with which those great masters
of thought analysed the institutions of Greece, and exposed their vices,
is not surpassed by anything in later literature; by Burke or Hamilton,
the best political writers of the last century; by Tocqueville or
Roscher, the most eminent of our own. But Plato and Aristotle were
philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent
government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for
liberty; and they resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but
to be content with a strong administration, prudently adapted to make
men prosperous and happy.
Now liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are
excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to
a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is
not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required,
but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society,
and of private life. Increase of freedom in the State may sometimes
promote mediocrity, and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard
useful legislation, diminish the capacity for war, and restrict the
boundaries of Empire. It might be plausibly argued that, if many things
would be worse in England or Ireland under an intelligent despotism,
some things would be managed better; that the Roman Government was more
enlightened under Augustus and Antoninus than under the Senate, in the
days of Marius or of Pompey. A generous spirit prefers that his country
should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than
powerful, prosperous, and enslaved. It is better to be the citizen of a
humble commonwealth in the Alps, without a prospect of influence beyond
the narrow frontier, than a subject of the superb autocracy that
overshadows half of Asia and of Europe. But it may be urged, on the
other side, that liberty is not the sum or the substitute of all the
things men ought to live for; that to be real it must be circumscribed,
and that the limits of circumscription vary; that advancing civilisation
invests the State with increased rights and duties, and imposes
increased burdens and constraint on the subject; that a highly
instructed and intelligent community may perceive the benefit of
compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage, would be thought
unbearable; that liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims
at a point where the public is subject to no restrictions but those of
which it feels the advantage; that a free country may be less capable of
doing much for the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or
the relief of suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting
great emergencies by some sacrifice of individual rights, and some
concentration of power; and that the supreme political object ought to
be sometimes postponed to still higher moral objects. My argument
involves no collision with these qualifying reflections. We are dealing,
not with the effects of freedom, but with its causes. We are seeking out
the influences which brought arbitrary government under control, either
by the diffusion of power, or by the appeal to an authority which
transcends all government, and among those influences the greatest
philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.
It is the Stoics who emancipated mankind from its subjugation to
despotic rule, and whose enlightened and elevated views of life bridged
the chasm that separates the ancient from the Christian state, and led
the way to freedom. Seeing how little security there is that the laws of
any land shall be wise or just, and that the unanimous will of a people
and the assent of nations are liable to err, the Stoics looked beyond
those narrow barriers, and above those inferior sanctions, for the
principles that ought to regulate the lives of men and the existence of
society. They made it known that there is a will superior to the
collective will of man, and a law that overrules those of Solon and
Lycurgus. Their test of good government is its conformity to principles
that can be traced to a higher legislator. That which we must obey, that
to which we are bound to reduce all civil authorities, and to sacrifice
every earthly interest, is that immutable law which is perfect and
eternal as God Himself, which proceeds from His nature, and reigns over
heaven and earth and over all the nations.
The great question is to discover, not what governments prescribe, but
what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the
conscience of mankind. Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian,
neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by
birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth
which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of
God. The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the
voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our
thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we
do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the
heavenly spirit within.
What the teaching of that divine voice is, the philosophers who had
imbibed the sublime ethics of the Porch went on to expound: It is not
enough to act up to the written law, or to give all men their due; we
ought to give them more than their due, to be generous and beneficent,
to devote ourselves for the good of others, seeking our reward in
self-denial and sacrifice, acting from the motive of sympathy and not of
personal advantage. Therefore we must treat others as we wish to be
treated by them, and must persist until death in doing good to our
enemies, regardless of unworthiness and ingratitude. For we must be at
war with evil, but at peace with men, and it is better to suffer than to
commit injustice. True freedom, says the most eloquent of the Stoics,
consists in obeying God. A State governed by such principles as these
would have been free far beyond the measure of Greek or Roman freedom;
for they open a door to religious toleration, and close it against
slavery. Neither conquest nor purchase, said Zeno, can make one man the
property of another.
These doctrines were adopted and applied by the great jurists of the
Empire. The law of nature, they said, is superior to the written law,
and slavery contradicts the law of nature. Men have no right to do what
they please with their own, or to make profit out of another's loss.
Such is the political wisdom of the ancients, touching the foundations
of liberty, as we find it in its highest development, in Cicero, and
Seneca, and Philo, a Jew of Alexandria. Their writings impress upon us
the greatness of the work of preparation for the Gospel which had been
accomplished among men on the eve of the mission of the Apostles. St.
Augustine, after quoting Seneca, exclaims: "What more could a Christian
say than this Pagan has said?" The enlightened pagans had reached nearly
the last point attainable without a new dispensation, when the fulness
of time was come. We have seen the breadth and the splendour of the
domain of Hellenic thought, and it has brought us to the threshold of a
greater kingdom. The best of the later classics speak almost the
language of Christianity, and they border on its spirit.
But in all that I have been able to cite from classical literature,
three things are wanting,--representative government, the emancipation
of the slaves, and liberty of conscience. There were, it is true,
deliberative assemblies, chosen by the people; and confederate cities,
of which, both in Asia and Africa, there were so many leagues, sent
their delegates to sit in Federal Councils. But government by an elected
Parliament was even in theory a thing unknown. It is congruous with the
nature of Polytheism to admit some measure of toleration. And Socrates,
when he avowed that he must obey God rather than the Athenians, and the
Stoics, when they set the wise man above the law, were very near giving
utterance to the principle. But it was first proclaimed and established
by enactment, not in polytheistic and philosophical Greece, but in
India, by Asoka, the earliest of the Buddhist kings, two hundred and
fifty years before the birth of Christ.
Slavery has been, far more than intolerance, the perpetual curse and
reproach of ancient civilisation, and although its rightfulness was
disputed as early as the days of Aristotle, and was implicitly, if not
definitely, denied by several Stoics, the moral philosophy of the Greeks
and Romans, as well as their practice, pronounced decidedly in its
favour. But there was one extraordinary people who, in this as in other
things, anticipated the purer precept that was to come. Philo of
Alexandria is one of the writers whose views on society were most
advanced. He applauds not only liberty but equality in the enjoyment of
wealth. He believes that a limited democracy, purged of its grosser
elements, is the most perfect government, and will extend itself
gradually over all the world. By freedom he understood the following of
God. Philo, though he required that the condition of the slave should be
made compatible with the wants and claims of his higher nature, did not
absolutely condemn slavery. But he has put on record the customs of the
Essenes of Palestine, a people who, uniting the wisdom of the Gentiles
with the faith of the Jews, led lives which were uncontaminated by the
surrounding civilisation, and were the first to reject slavery both in
principle and practice. They formed a religious community rather than a
State, and their numbers did not exceed 4000. But their example
testifies to how great a height religious men were able to raise their
conception of society even without the succour of the New Testament, and
affords the strongest condemnation of their contemporaries.
This, then, is the conclusion to which our survey brings us: There is
hardly a truth in politics or in the system of the rights of man that
was not grasped by the wisest of the Gentiles and the Jews, or that they
did not declare with a refinement of thought and a nobleness of
expression that later writers could never surpass. I might go on for
hours, reciting to you passages on the law of nature and the duties of
man, so solemn and religious that though they come from the profane
theatre on the Acropolis, and from the Roman Forum, you would deem that
you were listening to the hymns of Christian Churches and the discourse
of ordained divines. But although the maxims of the great classic
teachers, of Sophocles, and Plato, and Seneca, and the glorious examples
of public virtue were in the mouths of all men, there was no power in
them to avert the doom of that civilisation for which the blood of so
many patriots and the genius of such incomparable writers had been
wasted in vain. The liberties of the ancient nations were crushed
beneath a hopeless and inevitable despotism, and their vitality was
spent, when the new power came forth from Galilee, giving what was
wanting to the efficacy of human knowledge to redeem societies as well
as men.
It would be presumptuous if I attempted to indicate the numberless
channels by which Christian influence gradually penetrated the State.
The first striking phenomenon is the slowness with which an action
destined to be so prodigious became manifest. Going forth to all
nations, in many stages of civilisation and under almost every form of
government, Christianity had none of the character of a political
apostolate, and in its absorbing mission to individuals did not
challenge public authority. The early Christians avoided contact with
the State, abstained from the responsibilities of office, and were even
reluctant to serve in the army. Cherishing their citizenship of a
kingdom not of this world, they despaired of an empire which seemed too
powerful to be resisted and too corrupt to be converted, whose
institutions, the work and the pride of untold centuries of paganism,
drew their sanctions from the gods whom the Christians accounted devils,
which plunged its hands from age to age in the blood of martyrs, and was
beyond the hope of regeneration and foredoomed to perish. They were so
much overawed as to imagine that the fall of the State would be the end
of the Church and of the world, and no man dreamed of the boundless
future of spiritual and social influence that awaited their religion
among the race of destroyers that were bringing the empire of Augustus
and of Constantine to humiliation and ruin. The duties of government
were less in their thoughts than the private virtues and duties of
subjects; and it was long before they became aware of the burden of
power in their faith. Down almost to the time of Chrysostom, they shrank
from contemplating the obligation to emancipate the slaves.
Although the doctrine of self-reliance and self-denial, which is the
foundation of political economy, was written as legibly in the New
Testament as in the _Wealth of Nations_, it was not recognised until our
age. Tertullian boasts of the passive obedience of the Christians.
Melito writes to a pagan Emperor as if he were incapable of giving an
unjust command; and in Christian times Optatus thought that whoever
presumed to find fault with his sovereign exalted himself almost to the
level of a god. But this political quietism was not universal. Origen,
the ablest writer of early times, spoke with approval of conspiring for
the destruction of tyranny.
After the fourth century the declarations against slavery are earnest
and continual. And in a theological but yet pregnant sense, divines of
the second century insist on liberty, and divines of the fourth century
on equality. There was one essential and inevitable transformation in
politics. Popular governments had existed, and also mixed and federal
governments, but there had been no limited government, no State the
circumference of whose authority had been defined by a force external to
its own. That was the great problem which philosophy had raised, and
which no statesmanship had been able to solve. Those who proclaimed the
assistance of a higher authority had indeed drawn a metaphysical barrier
before the governments, but they had not known how to make it real. All
that Socrates could effect by way of protest against the tyranny of the
reformed democracy was to die for his convictions. The Stoics could only
advise the wise man to hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten
law in his heart. But when Christ said: "Render unto Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's," those words,
spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death,
gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a
sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged;
and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of
freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the
force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme
sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased
to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual
charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal
association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new
authority, gave to liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in
the philosophy or in the constitution of Greece or Rome before the
knowledge of the truth that makes us free.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: An address delivered to the members of the Bridgnorth
Institution at the Agricultural Hall, 26th February 1877.]
II
THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN CHRISTIANITY[3]
When Constantine the Great carried the seat of empire from Rome to
Constantinople he set up in the marketplace of the new capital a
porphyry pillar which had come from Egypt, and of which a strange tale
is told. In a vault beneath he secretly buried the seven sacred emblems
of the Roman State, which were guarded by the virgins in the temple of
Vesta, with the fire that might never be quenched. On the summit he
raised a statue of Apollo, representing himself, and enclosing a
fragment of the Cross; and he crowned it with a diadem of rays
consisting of the nails employed at the Crucifixion, which his mother
was believed to have found at Jerusalem.
The pillar still stands, the most significant monument that exists of
the converted empire; for the notion that the nails which had pierced
the body of Christ became a fit ornament for a heathen idol as soon as
it was called by the name of a living emperor indicates the position
designed for Christianity in the imperial structure of Constantine.
Diocletian's attempt to transform the Roman Government into a despotism
of the Eastern type had brought on the last and most serious persecution
of the Christians; and Constantine, in adopting their faith, intended
neither to abandon his predecessor's scheme of policy nor to renounce
the fascinations of arbitrary authority, but to strengthen his throne
with the support of a religion which had astonished the world by its
power of resistance, and to obtain that support absolutely and without a
drawback he fixed the seat of his government in the East, with a
patriarch of his own creation.
Nobody warned him that by promoting the Christian religion he was tying
one of his hands, and surrendering the prerogative of the Cæsars. As the
acknowledged author of the liberty and superiority of the Church, he was
appealed to as the guardian of her unity. He admitted the obligation; he
accepted the trust; and the divisions that prevailed among the
Christians supplied his successors with many opportunities of extending
that protectorate, and preventing any reduction of the claims or of the
resources of imperialism.
Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church.
According to Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the
emperors the entire plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the
Emperor's pleasure, expressed by edict or by letter, had force of law.
Even in the fervent age of its conversion the Empire employed its
refined civilisation, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the
reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of
the Jewish, the Pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve
as a gilded crutch of absolutism. Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor
all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the
Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity.
Something was wanted beyond all the gifts of reflection and
experience--a faculty of self-government and self-control, developed
like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.
This vital element, which many centuries of warfare, of anarchy, of
oppression had extinguished in the countries that were still draped in
the pomp of ancient civilisation, was deposited on the soil of
Christendom by the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew the
empire of the West.
In the height of their power the Romans became aware of a race of men
that had not abdicated freedom in the hands of a monarch; and the ablest
writer of the empire pointed to them with a vague and bitter feeling
that, to the institutions of these barbarians, not yet crushed by
despotism, the future of the world belonged. Their kings, when they had
kings, did not preside at their councils; they were sometimes elective;
they were sometimes deposed; and they were bound by oath to act in
obedience with the general wish. They enjoyed real authority only in
war. This primitive Republicanism, which admits monarchy as an
occasional incident, but holds fast to the collective supremacy of all
free men, of the constituent authority over all constituted authorities,
is the remote germ of Parliamentary government. The action of the State
was confined to narrow limits; but, besides his position as head of the
State, the king was surrounded by a body of followers attached to him by
personal or political ties. In these, his immediate dependants,
disobedience or resistance to orders was no more tolerated than in a
wife, a child, or a soldier; and a man was expected to murder his own
father if his chieftain required it. Thus these Teutonic communities
admitted an independence of government that threatened to dissolve
society; and a dependence on persons that was dangerous to freedom. It
was a system very favourable to corporations, but offering no security
to individuals. The State was not likely to oppress its subjects; and
was not able to protect them.
The first effect of the great Teutonic migration into the regions
civilised by Rome was to throw back Europe many centuries to a condition
scarcely more advanced than that from which the institutions of Solon
had rescued Athens. Whilst the Greeks preserved the literature, the
arts, and the science of antiquity and all the sacred monuments of early
Christianity with a completeness of which the rended fragments that have
come down to us give no commensurate idea, and even the peasants of
Bulgaria knew the New Testament by heart, Western Europe lay under the
grasp of masters the ablest of whom could not write their names. The
faculty of exact reasoning, of accurate observation, became extinct for
five hundred years, and even the sciences most needful to society,
medicine and geometry, fell into decay, until the teachers of the West
went to school at the feet of Arabian masters. To bring order out of
chaotic ruin, to rear a new civilisation and blend hostile and unequal
races into a nation, the thing wanted was not liberty but force. And for
centuries all progress is attached to the action of men like Clovis,
Charlemagne, and William the Norman, who were resolute and peremptory,
and prompt to be obeyed.
The spirit of immemorial paganism which had saturated ancient society
could not be exorcised except by the combined influence of Church and
State; and the universal sense that their union was necessary created
the Byzantine despotism. The divines of the Empire who could not fancy
Christianity flourishing beyond its borders, insisted that the State is
not in the Church, but the Church in the State. This doctrine had
scarcely been uttered when the rapid collapse of the Western Empire
opened a wider horizon; and Salvianus, a priest at Marseilles,
proclaimed that the social virtues, which were decaying amid the
civilised Romans, existed in greater purity and promise among the Pagan
invaders. They were converted with ease and rapidity; and their
conversion was generally brought about by their kings.
Christianity, which in earlier times had addressed itself to the masses,
and relied on the principle of liberty, now made its appeal to the
rulers, and threw its mighty influence into the scale of authority. The
barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education,
except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the
rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to
men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero,
of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was
felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their
newly founded States. The clergy supplied the means of conducting the
new governments, and were made exempt from taxation, from the
jurisdiction of the civil magistrate, and of the political
administrator. They taught that power ought to be conferred by election;
and the Councils of Toledo furnished the framework of the Parliamentary
system of Spain, which is, by a long interval, the oldest in the world.
But the monarchy of the Goths in Spain, as well as that of the Saxons in
England, in both of which the nobles and the prelates surrounded the
throne with the semblance of free institutions, passed away; and the
people that prospered and overshadowed the rest were the Franks, who had
no native nobility, whose law of succession to the Crown became for one
thousand years the fixed object of an unchanging superstition, and under
whom the feudal system was developed to excess.
Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things. Having no
other source of wealth than the produce of the soil, men depended on the
landlord for the means of escaping starvation; and thus his power became
paramount over the liberty of the subject and the authority of the
State. Every baron, said the French maxim, is sovereign in his own
domain. The nations of the West lay between the competing tyrannies of
local magnates and of absolute monarchs, when a force was brought upon
the scene which proved for a time superior alike to the vassal and his
lord.
In the days of the Conquest, when the Normans destroyed the liberties of
England, the rude institutions which had come with the Saxons, the
Goths, and the Franks from the forests of Germany were suffering decay,
and the new element of popular government afterwards supplied by the
rise of towns and the formation of a middle class was not yet active.
The only influence capable of resisting the feudal hierarchy was the
ecclesiastical hierarchy; and they came into collision, when the process
of feudalism threatened the independence of the Church by subjecting the
prelates severally to that form of personal dependence on the kings
which was peculiar to the Teutonic state.
To that conflict of four hundred years we owe the rise of civil liberty.
If the Church had continued to buttress the thrones of the kings whom it
anointed, or if the struggle had terminated speedily in an undivided
victory, all Europe would have sunk down under a Byzantine or Muscovite
despotism. For the aim of both contending parties was absolute
authority. But although liberty was not the end for which they strove,
it was the means by which the temporal and the spiritual power called
the nations to their aid. The towns of Italy and Germany won their
franchises, France got her States-General, and England her Parliament
out of the alternate phases of the contest; and as long as it lasted it
prevented the rise of divine right. A disposition existed to regard the
crown as an estate descending under the law of real property in the
family that possessed it. But the authority of religion, and especially
of the papacy, was thrown on the side that denied the indefeasible title
of kings. In France what was afterwards called the Gallican theory
maintained that the reigning house was above the law, and that the
sceptre was not to pass away from it as long as there should be princes
of the royal blood of St. Louis. But in other countries the oath of
fidelity itself attested that it was conditional, and should be kept
only during good behaviour; and it was in conformity with the public law
to which all monarchs were held subject, that King John was declared a
rebel against the barons, and that the men who raised Edward III. to the
throne from which they had deposed his father invoked the maxim _Vox
populi Vox Dei_.
And this doctrine of the divine right of the people to raise up and pull
down princes, after obtaining the sanctions of religion, was made to
stand on broader grounds, and was strong enough to resist both Church
and king. In the struggle between the House of Bruce and the House of
Plantagenet for the possession of Scotland and Ireland, the English
claim was backed by the censures of Rome. But the Irish and the Scots
refused it, and the address in which the Scottish Parliament informed
the Pope of their resolution shows how firmly the popular doctrine had
taken root. Speaking of Robert Bruce, they say: "Divine Providence, the
laws and customs of the country, which we will defend till death, and
the choice of the people, have made him our king. If he should ever
betray his principles, and consent that we should be subjects of the
English king, then we shall treat him as an enemy, as the subverter of
our rights and his own, and shall elect another in his place. We care
not for glory or for wealth, but for that liberty which no true man will
give up but with his life." This estimate of royalty was natural among
men accustomed to see those whom they most respected in constant strife
with their rulers. Gregory VII. had begun the disparagement of civil
authorities by saying that they are the work of the devil; and already
in his time both parties were driven to acknowledge the sovereignty of
the people, and appealed to it as the immediate source of power.
Two centuries later this political theory had gained both in
definiteness and in force among the Guelphs, who were the Church party,
and among the Ghibellines, or Imperialists. Here are the sentiments of
the most celebrated of all the Guelphic writers: "A king who is
unfaithful to his duty forfeits his claim to obedience. It is not
rebellion to depose him, for he is himself a rebel whom the nation has a
right to put down. But it is better to abridge his power, that he may be
unable to abuse it. For this purpose, the whole nation ought to have a
share in governing itself; the Constitution ought to combine a limited
and elective monarchy, with an aristocracy of merit, and such an
admixture of democracy as shall admit all classes to office, by popular
election. No government has a right to levy taxes beyond the limit
determined by the people. All political authority is derived from
popular suffrage, and all laws must be made by the people or their
representatives. There is no security for us as long as we depend on the
will of another man." This language, which contains the earliest
exposition of the Whig theory of the revolution, is taken from the works
of St. Thomas Aquinas, of whom Lord Bacon says that he had the largest
heart of the school divines. And it is worth while to observe that he
wrote at the very moment when Simon de Montfort summoned the Commons;
and that the politics of the Neapolitan friar are centuries in advance
of the English statesman's.
The ablest writer of the Ghibelline party was Marsilius of Padua.
"Laws," he said, "derive their authority from the nation, and are
invalid without its assent. As the whole is greater than any part, it is
wrong that any part should legislate for the whole; and as men are
equal, it is wrong that one should be bound by laws made by another. But
in obeying laws to which all men have agreed, all men, in reality,
govern themselves. The monarch, who is instituted by the legislature to
execute its will, ought to be armed with a force sufficient to coerce
individuals, but not sufficient to control the majority of the people.
He is responsible to the nation, and subject to the law; and the nation
that appoints him, and assigns him his duties, has to see that he obeys
the Constitution, and has to dismiss him if he breaks it. The rights of
citizens are independent of the faith they profess; and no man may be
punished for his religion." This writer, who saw in some respects
farther than Locke or Montesquieu, who, in regard to the sovereignty of
the nation, representative government, the superiority of the
legislature over the executive, and the liberty of conscience, had so
firm a grasp of the principles that were to sway the modern world, lived
in the reign of Edward II., five hundred and fifty years ago.
It is significant that these two writers should agree on so many of the
fundamental points which have been, ever since, the topic of
controversy; for they belonged to hostile schools, and one of them would
have thought the other worthy of death. St. Thomas would have made the
papacy control all Christian governments. Marsilius would have had the
clergy submit to the law of the land; and would have put them under
restrictions both as to property and numbers. As the great debate went
on, many things gradually made themselves clear, and grew into settled
convictions. For these were not only the thoughts of prophetic minds
that surpassed the level of contemporaries; there was some prospect that
they would master the practical world. The ancient reign of the barons
was seriously threatened. The opening of the East by the Crusades had
imparted a great stimulus to industry. A stream set in from the country
to the towns, and there was no room for the government of towns in the
feudal machinery. When men found a way of earning a livelihood without
depending for it on the good will of the class that owned the land, the
landowner lost much of his importance, and it began to pass to the
possessors of moveable wealth. The townspeople not only made themselves
free from the control of prelates and barons, but endeavoured to obtain
for their own class and interest the command of the State.
The fourteenth century was filled with the tumult of this struggle
between democracy and chivalry. The Italian towns, foremost in
intelligence and civilisation, led the way with democratic constitutions
of an ideal and generally an impracticable type. The Swiss cast off the
yoke of Austria. Two long chains of free cities arose, along the valley
of the Rhine, and across the heart of Germany. The citizens of Paris got
possession of the king, reformed the State, and began their tremendous
career of experiments to govern France. But the most healthy and
vigorous growth of municipal liberties was in Belgium, of all countries
on the Continent, that which has been from immemorial ages the most
stubborn in its fidelity to the principle of self-government. So vast
were the resources concentrated in the Flemish towns, so widespread was
the movement of democracy, that it was long doubtful whether the new
interest would not prevail, and whether the ascendency of the military
aristocracy would not pass over to the wealth and intelligence of the
men that lived by trade. But Rienzi, Marcel, Artevelde, and the other
champions of the unripe democracy of those days, lived and died in vain.
The upheaval of the middle class had disclosed the need, the passions,
the aspirations of the suffering poor below; ferocious insurrections in
France and England caused a reaction that retarded for centuries the
readjustment of power, and the red spectre of social revolution arose in
the track of democracy. The armed citizens of Ghent were crushed by the
French chivalry; and monarchy alone reaped the fruit of the change that
was going on in the position of classes, and stirred the minds of men.
Looking back over the space of a thousand years, which we call the
Middle Ages, to get an estimate of the work they had done, if not
towards perfection in their institutions, at least towards attaining the
knowledge of political truth, this is what we find: Representative
government, which was unknown to the ancients, was almost universal. The
methods of election were crude; but the principle that no tax was lawful
that was not granted by the class that paid it--that is, that taxation
was inseparable from representation--was recognised, not as the
privilege of certain countries, but as the right of all. Not a prince in
the world, said Philip de Commines, can levy a penny without the consent
of the people. Slavery was almost everywhere extinct; and absolute power
was deemed more intolerable and more criminal than slavery. The right of
insurrection was not only admitted but defined, as a duty sanctioned by
religion. Even the principles of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the method
of the Income Tax, were already known. The issue of ancient politics was
an absolute state planted on slavery. The political produce of the
Middle Ages was a system of states in which authority was restricted by
the representation of powerful classes, by privileged associations, and
by the acknowledgment of duties superior to those which are imposed by
man.
As regards the realisation in practice of what was seen to be good,
there was almost everything to do. But the great problems of principle
had been solved, and we come to the question, How did the sixteenth
century husband the treasure which the Middle Ages had stored up? The
most visible sign of the times was the decline of the religious
influence that had reigned so long. Sixty years passed after the
invention of printing, and thirty thousand books had issued from
European presses, before anybody undertook to print the Greek Testament.
In the days when every State made the unity of faith its first care, it
came to be thought that the rights of men, and the duties of neighbours
and of rulers towards them, varied according to their religion; and
society did not acknowledge the same obligations to a Turk or a Jew, a
pagan or a heretic, or a devil worshipper, as to an orthodox Christian.
As the ascendency of religion grew weaker, this privilege of treating
its enemies on exceptional principles was claimed by the State for its
own benefit; and the idea that the ends of government justify the means
employed was worked into system by Machiavelli. He was an acute
politician, sincerely anxious that the obstacles to the intelligent
government of Italy should be swept away. It appeared to him that the
most vexatious obstacle to intellect is conscience, and that the
vigorous use of statecraft necessary for the success of difficult
schemes would never be made if governments allowed themselves to be
hampered by the precepts of the copy-book.
His audacious doctrine was avowed in the succeeding age by men whose
personal character stood high. They saw that in critical times good men
have seldom strength for their goodness, and yield to those who have
grasped the meaning of the maxim that you cannot make an omelette if you
are afraid to break the eggs. They saw that public morality differs from
private, because no Government can turn the other cheek, or can admit
that mercy is better than justice. And they could not define the
difference or draw the limits of exception; or tell what other standard
for a nation's acts there is than the judgment which Heaven pronounces
in this world by success.
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary
government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of
good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing
the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad
very much alike. Charles V. offered 5000 crowns for the murder of an
enemy. Ferdinand I. and Ferdinand II., Henry III. and Louis XIII., each
caused his most powerful subject to be treacherously despatched.
Elizabeth and Mary Stuart tried to do the same to each other. The way
was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and
institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by
a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the moral
sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the
morality of paganism.
The clergy, who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during
the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now
with the interest of royalty. Attempts had been made to reform the
Church on the Constitutional model; they had failed, but they had united
the hierarchy and the crown against the system of divided power as
against a common enemy. Strong kings were able to bring the spirituality
under subjection in France and Spain, in Sicily and in England. The
absolute monarchy of France was built up in the two following centuries
by twelve political cardinals. The kings of Spain obtained the same
effect almost at a single stroke by reviving and appropriating to their
own use the tribunal of the Inquisition, which had been growing
obsolete, but now served to arm them with terrors which effectually made
them despotic. One generation beheld the change all over Europe, from
the anarchy of the days of the Roses to the passionate submission, the
gratified acquiescence in tyranny that marks the reign of Henry VIII.
and the kings of his time.
The tide was running fast when the Reformation began at Wittenberg, and
it was to be expected that Luther's influence would stem the flood of
absolutism. For he was confronted everywhere by the compact alliance of
the Church with the State; and great part of his country was governed by
hostile potentates who were prelates of the Court of Rome. He had,
indeed, more to fear from temporal than from spiritual foes. The leading
German bishops wished that the Protestant demands should be conceded;
and the Pope himself vainly urged on the Emperor a conciliatory policy.
But Charles V. had outlawed Luther, and attempted to waylay him; and the
Dukes of Bavaria were active in beheading and burning his disciples,
whilst the democracy of the towns generally took his side. But the dread
of revolution was the deepest of his political sentiments; and the gloss
by which the Guelphic divines had got over the passive obedience of the
apostolic age was characteristic of that mediæval method of
interpretation which he rejected. He swerved for a moment in his later
years; but the substance of his political teaching was eminently
conservative, the Lutheran States became the stronghold of rigid
immobility, and Lutheran writers constantly condemned the democratic
literature that arose in the second age of the Reformation. For the
Swiss reformers were bolder than the Germans in mixing up their cause
with politics. Zurich and Geneva were Republics, and the spirit of their
governments influenced both Zwingli and Calvin.
Zwingli indeed did not shrink from the mediæval doctrine that evil
magistrates must be cashiered; but he was killed too early to act either
deeply or permanently on the political character of Protestantism.
Calvin, although a Republican, judged that the people are unfit to
govern themselves, and declared the popular assembly an abuse that ought
to be abolished. He desired an aristocracy of the elect, armed with the
means of punishing not only crime but vice and error. For he thought
that the severity of the mediæval laws was insufficient for the need of
the times; and he favoured the most irresistible weapon which the
inquisitorial procedure put into the hand of the Government, the right
of subjecting prisoners to intolerable torture, not because they were
guilty, but because their guilt could not be proved. His teaching,
though not calculated to promote popular institutions, was so adverse to
the authority of the surrounding monarchs, that he softened down the
expression of his political views in the French edition of his
_Institutes_.
The direct political influence of the Reformation effected less than has
been supposed. Most States were strong enough to control it. Some, by
intense exertion, shut out the pouring flood. Others, with consummate
skill, diverted it to their own uses. The Polish Government alone at
that time left it to its course. Scotland was the only kingdom in which
the Reformation triumphed over the resistance of the State; and Ireland
was the only instance where it failed, in spite of Government support.
But in almost every other case, both the princes that spread their
canvas to the gale and those that faced it, employed the zeal, the
alarm, the passions it aroused as instruments for the increase of power.
Nations eagerly invested their rulers with every prerogative needed to
preserve their faith, and all the care to keep Church and State asunder,
and to prevent the confusion of their powers, which had been the work of
ages, was renounced in the intensity of the crisis. Atrocious deeds were
done, in which religious passion was often the instrument, but policy
was the motive.
Fanaticism displays itself in the masses, but the masses were rarely
fanaticised, and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the
calculations of dispassionate politicians. When the King of France
undertook to kill all the Protestants, he was obliged to do it by his
own agents. It was nowhere the spontaneous act of the population, and in
many towns and in entire provinces the magistrates refused to obey. The
motive of the Court was so far from mere fanaticism that the Queen
immediately challenged Elizabeth to do the like to the English
Catholics. Francis I. and Henry II. sent nearly a hundred Huguenots to
the stake, but they were cordial and assiduous promoters of the
Protestant religion in Germany. Sir Nicholas Bacon was one of the
ministers who suppressed the mass in England. Yet when the Huguenot
refugees came over he liked them so little that he reminded Parliament
of the summary way in which Henry V. at Agincourt dealt with the
Frenchmen who fell into his hands. John Knox thought that every Catholic
in Scotland ought to be put to death, and no man ever had disciples of a
sterner or more relentless temper. But his counsel was not followed.
All through the religious conflict policy kept the upper hand. When the
last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the
nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin
preached and Bellarmine lectured, but Machiavelli reigned. Before the
close of the century three events occurred which mark the beginning of a
momentous change. The massacre of St. Bartholomew convinced the bulk of
Calvinists of the lawfulness of rebellion against tyrants, and they
became advocates of that doctrine in which the Bishop of Winchester had
led the way,[4] and which Knox and Buchanan had received, through their
master at Paris, straight from the mediæval schools. Adopted out of
aversion to the King of France, it was soon put in practice against the
King of Spain. The revolted Netherlands, by a solemn Act, deposed Philip
II., and made themselves independent under the Prince of Orange, who had
been, and continued to be, styled his Lieutenant. Their example was
important, not only because subjects of one religion deposed a monarch
of another, for that had been seen in Scotland, but because, moreover,
it put a republic in the place of a monarchy, and forced the public law
of Europe to recognise the accomplished revolution. At the same time,
the French Catholics, rising against Henry III., who was the most
contemptible of tyrants, and against his heir, Henry of Navarre, who, as
a Protestant, repelled the majority of the nation, fought for the same
principles with sword and pen.
Many shelves might be filled with the books which came out in their
defence during half a century, and they include the most comprehensive
treatises on laws ever written. Nearly all are vitiated by the defect
which disfigured political literature in the Middle Ages. That
literature, as I have tried to show, is extremely remarkable, and its
services in aiding human progress are very great. But from the death of
St. Bernard until the appearance of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_, there
was hardly a writer who did not make his politics subservient to the
interest of either Pope or King. And those who came after the
Reformation were always thinking of laws as they might affect Catholics
or Protestants. Knox thundered against what he called _the Monstrous
Regiment of Women_, because the Queen went to mass, and Mariana praised
the assassin of Henry III. because the King was in league with
Huguenots. For the belief that it is right to murder tyrants, first
taught among Christians, I believe, by John of Salisbury, the most
distinguished English writer of the twelfth century, and confirmed by
Roger Bacon, the most celebrated Englishman of the thirteenth, had
acquired about this time a fatal significance. Nobody sincerely thought
of politics as a law for the just and the unjust, or tried to find out a
set of principles that should hold good alike under all changes of
religion. Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_ stands almost alone among the
works I am speaking of, and is still read with admiration by every
thoughtful man as the earliest and one of the finest prose classics in
our language. But though few of the others have survived, they
contributed to hand down masculine notions of limited authority and
conditional obedience from the epoch of theory to generations of free
men. Even the coarse violence of Buchanan and Boucher was a link in the
chain of tradition that connects the Hildebrandine controversy with the
Long Parliament, and St. Thomas with Edmund Burke.
That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine
right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right,
was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe
languished. But although the knowledge of this truth might become an
element of salutary destruction, it could give little aid to progress
and reform. Resistance to tyranny implied no faculty of constructing a
legal government in its place. Tyburn tree may be a useful thing, but it
is better still that the offender should live for repentance and
reformation. The principles which discriminate in politics between good
and evil, and make States worthy to last, were not yet found.
The French philosopher Charron was one of the men least demoralised by
party spirit, and least blinded by zeal for a cause. In a passage almost
literally taken from St. Thomas, he describes our subordination under a
law of nature, to which all legislation must conform; and he ascertains
it not by the light of revealed religion, but by the voice of universal
reason, through which God enlightens the consciences of men. Upon this
foundation Grotius drew the lines of real political science. In
gathering the materials of international law, he had to go beyond
national treaties and denominational interests for a principle embracing
all mankind. The principles of law must stand, he said, even if we
suppose that there is no God. By these inaccurate terms he meant that
they must be found independently of revelation. From that time it became
possible to make politics a matter of principle and of conscience, so
that men and nations differing in all other things could live in peace
together, under the sanctions of a common law. Grotius himself used his
discovery to little purpose, as he deprived it of immediate effect by
admitting that the right to reign may be enjoyed as a freehold, subject
to no conditions.
When Cumberland and Pufendorf unfolded the true significance of his
doctrine, every settled authority, every triumphant interest recoiled
aghast. None were willing to surrender advantages won by force or skill,
because they might be in contradiction, not with the Ten Commandments,
but with an unknown code, which Grotius himself had not attempted to
draw up, and touching which no two philosophers agreed. It was manifest
that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of
conscience rather than of might or expediency, must regard their
adversaries as men without principle, that the controversy between them
would perpetually involve morality, and could not be governed by the
plea of good intentions, which softens down the asperities of religious
strife. Nearly all the greatest men of the seventeenth century
repudiated the innovation. In the eighteenth, the two ideas of Grotius,
that there are certain political truths by which every State and every
interest must stand or fall, and that society is knit together by a
series of real and hypothetical contracts, became, in other hands, the
lever that displaced the world. When, by what seemed the operation of an
irresistible and constant law, royalty had prevailed over all enemies
and all competitors, it became a religion. Its ancient rivals, the baron
and the prelate, figured as supporters by its side. Year after year, the
assemblies that represented the self-government of provinces and of
privileged classes, all over the Continent, met for the last time and
passed away, to the satisfaction of the people, who had learned to
venerate the throne as the constructor of their unity, the promoter of
prosperity and power, the defender of orthodoxy, and the employer of
talent.
The Bourbons, who had snatched the crown from a rebellious democracy,
the Stuarts, who had come in as usurpers, set up the doctrine that
States are formed by the valour, the policy, and the appropriate
marriages of the royal family; that the king is consequently anterior to
the people, that he is its maker rather than its handiwork, and reigns
independently of consent. Theology followed up divine right with passive
obedience. In the golden age of religious science, Archbishop Ussher,
the most learned of Anglican prelates, and Bossuet, the ablest of the
French, declared that resistance to kings is a crime, and that they may
lawfully employ compulsion against the faith of their subjects. The
philosophers heartily supported the divines. Bacon fixed his hope of all
human progress on the strong hand of kings. Descartes advised them to
crush all those who might be able to resist their power. Hobbes taught
that authority is always in the right. Pascal considered it absurd to
reform laws, or to set up an ideal justice against actual force. Even
Spinoza, who was a Republican and a Jew, assigned to the State the
absolute control of religion.
Monarchy exerted a charm over the imagination, so unlike the
unceremonious spirit of the Middle Ages, that, on learning the execution
of Charles I., men died of the shock; and the same thing occurred at the
death of Louis XVI. and of the Duke of Enghien. The classic land of
absolute monarchy was France. Richelieu held that it would be impossible
to keep the people down if they were suffered to be well off. The
Chancellor affirmed that France could not be governed without the right
of arbitrary arrest and exile; and that in case of danger to the State
it may be well that a hundred innocent men should perish. The Minister
of Finance called it sedition to demand that the Crown should keep
faith. One who lived on intimate terms with Louis XIV. says that even
the slightest disobedience to the royal will is a crime to be punished
with death. Louis employed these precepts to their fullest extent. He
candidly avows that kings are no more bound by the terms of a treaty
than by the words of a compliment; and that there is nothing in the
possession of their subjects which they may not lawfully take from them.
In obedience to this principle, when Marshal Vauban, appalled by the
misery of the people, proposed that all existing imposts should be
repealed for a single tax that would be less onerous, the King took his
advice, but retained all the old taxes whilst he imposed the new. With
half the present population, he maintained an army of 450,000 men;
nearly twice as large as that which the late Emperor Napoleon assembled
to attack Germany. Meanwhile the people starved on grass. France, said
Fénelon, is one enormous hospital. French historians believe that in a
single generation six millions of people died of want. It would be easy
to find tyrants more violent, more malignant, more odious than Louis
XIV., but there was not one who ever used his power to inflict greater
suffering or greater wrong; and the admiration with which he inspired
the most illustrious men of his time denotes the lowest depth to which
the turpitude of absolutism has ever degraded the conscience of Europe.
The Republics of that day were, for the most part, so governed as to
reconcile men with the less opprobrious vices of monarchy. Poland was a
State made up of centrifugal forces. What the nobles called liberty was
the right of each of them to veto the acts of the Diet, and to persecute
the peasants on his estates--rights which they refused to surrender up
to the time of the partition, and thus verified the warning of a
preacher spoken long ago: "You will perish, not by invasion or war, but
by your infernal liberties." Venice suffered from the opposite evil of
excessive concentration. It was the most sagacious of Governments, and
would rarely have made mistakes if it had not imputed to others motives
as wise as its own, and had taken account of passions and follies of
which it had little cognisance. But the supreme power of the nobility
had passed to a committee, from the committee to a Council of Ten, from
the Ten to three Inquisitors of State; and in this intensely centralised
form it became, about the year 1600, a frightful despotism. I have shown
you how Machiavelli supplied the immoral theory needful for the
consummation of royal absolutism; the absolute oligarchy of Venice
required the same assurance against the revolt of conscience. It was
provided by a writer as able as Machiavelli, who analysed the wants and
resources of aristocracy, and made known that its best security is
poison. As late as a century ago, Venetian senators of honourable and
even religious lives employed assassins for the public good with no more
compunction than Philip II. or Charles IX.
The Swiss Cantons, especially Geneva, profoundly influenced opinion in
the days preceding the French Revolution, but they had had no part in
the earlier movement to inaugurate the reign of law. That honour belongs
to the Netherlands alone among the Commonwealths. They earned it, not by
their form of government, which was defective and precarious, for the
Orange party perpetually plotted against it, and slew the two most
eminent of the Republican statesmen, and William III. himself intrigued
for English aid to set the crown upon his head; but by the freedom of
the press, which made Holland the vantage-ground from which, in the
darkest hour of oppression, the victims of the oppressors obtained the
ear of Europe.
The ordinance of Louis XIV., that every French Protestant should
immediately renounce his religion, went out in the year in which James
II. became king. The Protestant refugees did what their ancestors had
done a century before. They asserted the deposing power of subjects over
rulers who had broken the original contract between them, and all the
Powers, excepting France, countenanced their argument, and sent forth
William of Orange on that expedition which was the faint dawn of a
brighter day.
It is to this unexampled combination of things on the Continent, more
than to her own energy, that England owes her deliverance. The efforts
made by the Scots, by the Irish, and at last by the Long Parliament to
get rid of the misrule of the Stuarts had been foiled, not by the
resistance of Monarchy, but by the helplessness of the Republic. State
and Church were swept away; new institutions were raised up under the
ablest ruler that had ever sprung from a revolution; and England,
seething with the toil of political thought, had produced at least two
writers who in many directions saw as far and as clearly as we do now.
But Cromwell's Constitution was rolled up like a scroll; Harrington and
Lilburne were laughed at for a time and forgotten, the country confessed
the failure of its striving, disavowed its aims, and flung itself with
enthusiasm, and without any effective stipulations, at the feet of a
worthless king.
If the people of England had accomplished no more than this to relieve
mankind from the pervading pressure of unlimited monarchy, they would
have done more harm than good. By the fanatical treachery with which,
violating the Parliament and the law, they contrived the death of King
Charles, by the ribaldry of the Latin pamphlet with which Milton
justified the act before the world, by persuading the world that the
Republicans were hostile alike to liberty and to authority, and did not
believe in themselves, they gave strength and reason to the current of
Royalism, which, at the Restoration, overwhelmed their work. If there
had been nothing to make up for this defect of certainty and of
constancy in politics England would have gone the way of other nations.
At that time there was some truth in the old joke which describes the
English dislike of speculation by saying that all our philosophy
consists of a short catechism in two questions: "What is mind? No
matter. What is matter? Never mind." The only accepted appeal was to
tradition. Patriots were in the habit of saying that they took their
stand upon the ancient ways, and would not have the laws of England
changed. To enforce their argument they invented a story that the
constitution had come from Troy, and that the Romans had allowed it to
subsist untouched. Such fables did not avail against Strafford; and the
oracle of precedent sometimes gave responses adverse to the popular
cause. In the sovereign question of religion, this was decisive, for the
practice of the sixteenth century, as well as of the fifteenth,
testified in favour of intolerance. By royal command, the nation had
passed four times in one generation from one faith to another, with a
facility that made a fatal impression on Laud. In a country that had
proscribed every religion in turn, and had submitted to such a variety
of penal measures against Lollard and Arian, against Augsburg and Rome,
it seemed there could be no danger in cropping the ears of a Puritan.
But an age of stronger conviction had arrived; and men resolved to
abandon the ancient ways that led to the scaffold and the rack, and to
make the wisdom of their ancestors and the statutes of the land bow
before an unwritten law. Religious liberty had been the dream of great
Christian writers in the age of Constantine and Valentinian, a dream
never wholly realised in the Empire, and rudely dispelled when the
barbarians found that it exceeded the resources of their art to govern
civilised populations of another religion, and unity of worship was
imposed by laws of blood and by theories more cruel than the laws. But
from St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose down to Erasmus and More, each age
heard the protest of earnest men in behalf of the liberty of conscience,
and the peaceful days before the Reformation were full of promise that
it would prevail.
In the commotion that followed, men were glad to get tolerated
themselves by way of privilege and compromise, and willingly renounced
the wider application of the principle. Socinus was the first who, on
the ground that Church and State ought to be separated, required
universal toleration. But Socinus disarmed his own theory, for he was a
strict advocate of passive obedience.
The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil,
and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a
discovery reserved for the seventeenth century. Many years before the
names of Milton and Taylor, of Baxter and Locke were made illustrious by
their partial condemnation of intolerance, there were men among the
Independent congregations who grasped with vigour and sincerity the
principle that it is only by abridging the authority of States that the
liberty of Churches can be assured. That great political idea,
sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure
the liberties of others as their own, and to defend them for the love of
justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of
what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years.
The cause of religion, even under the unregenerate influence of worldly
passion, had as much to do as any clear notions of policy in making
this country the foremost of the free. It had been the deepest current
in the movement of 1641, and it remained the strongest motive that
survived the reaction of 1660.
The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly
represented the statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors
of modern liberty. It is humiliating to trace a political lineage to
Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of the French king; to Lord
Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as absolute
monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood
shed by the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the
plot must be supported even if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his
comrades to perish on an expedition which he had betrayed to the French;
to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more spiritual than
the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and
persecution; or even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting
taxes belonged to no country but his own. Defoe affirms that from the
time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never knew a politician who
truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the
statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the
cause of progress for a century.
When the purport of the secret treaty became suspected by which Louis
XIV. pledged himself to support Charles II. with an army for the
destruction of Parliament, if Charles would overthrow the Anglican
Church, it was found necessary to make concession to the popular alarm.
It was proposed that whenever James should succeed, great part of the
royal prerogative and patronage should be transferred to Parliament. At
the same time, the disabilities of Nonconformists and Catholics would
have been removed. If the Limitation Bill, which Halifax supported with
signal ability, had passed, the monarchical constitution would have
advanced, in the seventeenth century, farther than it was destined to do
until the second quarter of the nineteenth. But the enemies of James,
guided by the Prince of Orange, preferred a Protestant king who should
be nearly absolute, to a constitutional king who should be a Catholic.
The scheme failed. James succeeded to a power which, in more cautious
hands, would have been practically uncontrolled, and the storm that cast
him down gathered beyond the sea.
By arresting the preponderance of France, the Revolution of 1688 struck
the first real blow at Continental despotism. At home it relieved
Dissent, purified justice, developed the national energies and
resources, and ultimately, by the Act of Settlement, placed the crown in
the gift of the people. But it neither introduced nor determined any
important principle, and, that both parties might be able to work
together, it left untouched the fundamental question between Whig and
Tory. For the divine right of kings it established, in the words of
Defoe, the divine right of freeholders; and their domination extended
for seventy years, under the authority of John Locke, the philosopher of
government by the gentry. Even Hume did not enlarge the bounds of his
ideas; and his narrow materialistic belief in the connection between
liberty and property captivated even the bolder mind of Fox.
By his idea that the powers of government ought to be divided according
to their nature, and not according to the division of classes, which
Montesquieu took up and developed with consummate talent, Locke is the
originator of the long reign of English institutions in foreign lands.
And his doctrine of resistance, or, as he finally termed it, the appeal
to Heaven, ruled the judgment of Chatham at a moment of solemn
transition in the history of the world. Our Parliamentary system,
managed by the great revolution families, was a contrivance by which
electors were compelled, and legislators were induced to vote against
their convictions; and the intimidation of the constituencies was
rewarded by the corruption of their representatives. About the year 1770
things had been brought back, by indirect ways, nearly to the condition
which the Revolution had been designed to remedy for ever. Europe seemed
incapable of becoming the home of free States. It was from America that
the plain ideas that men ought to mind their own business, and that the
nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State,--ideas long
locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin
folios,--burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined
to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man. Whether the British
legislature had a constitutional right to tax a subject colony was hard
to say, by the letter of the law. The general presumption was immense on
the side of authority; and the world believed that the will of the
constituted ruler ought to be supreme, and not the will of the subject
people. Very few bold writers went so far as to say that lawful power
may be resisted in cases of extreme necessity. But the colonisers of
America, who had gone forth not in search of gain, but to escape from
laws under which other Englishmen were content to live, were so
sensitive even to appearances that the Blue Laws of Connecticut forbade
men to walk to church within ten feet of their wives. And the proposed
tax, of only £12,000 a year, might have been easily borne. But the
reasons why Edward I. and his Council were not allowed to tax England
were reasons why George III. and his Parliament should not tax America.
The dispute involved a principle, namely, the right of controlling
government. Furthermore, it involved the conclusion that the Parliament
brought together by a derisive election had no just right over the
unrepresented nation, and it called on the people of England to take
back its power. Our best statesmen saw that whatever might be the law,
the rights of the nation were at stake. Chatham, in speeches better
remembered than any that have been delivered in Parliament, exhorted
America to be firm. Lord Camden, the late Chancellor, said: "Taxation
and representation are inseparably united. God hath joined them. No
British Parliament can separate them."
From the elements of that crisis Burke built up the noblest political
philosophy in the world. "I do not know the method," said he, "of
drawing up an indictment against a whole people. The natural rights of
mankind are indeed sacred things, and if any public measure is proved
mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that
measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. Only a
sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and
administration, should dictate." In this way, just a hundred years ago,
the opportune reticence, the politic hesitancy of European
statesmanship, was at last broken down; and the principle gained ground,
that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot
control. The Americans placed it at the foundation of their new
government. They did more; for having subjected all civil authorities to
the popular will, they surrounded the popular will with restrictions
that the British legislature would not endure.
During the revolution in France the example of England, which had been
held up so long, could not for a moment compete with the influence of a
country whose institutions were so wisely framed to protect freedom even
against the perils of democracy. When Louis Philippe became king, he
assured the old Republican, Lafayette, that what he had seen in the
United States had convinced him that no government can be so good as a
Republic. There was a time in the Presidency of Monroe, about fifty-five
years ago, which men still speak of as "the era of good feeling," when
most of the incongruities that had come down from the Stuarts had been
reformed, and the motives of later divisions were yet inactive. The
causes of old-world trouble,--popular ignorance, pauperism, the glaring
contrast between rich and poor, religious strife, public debts, standing
armies and war,--were almost unknown. No other age or country had solved
so successfully the problems that attend the growth of free societies,
and time was to bring no further progress.
But I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the
beginning of my task. In the ages of which I have spoken, the history of
freedom was the history of the thing that was not. But since the
Declaration of Independence, or, to speak more justly, since the
Spaniards, deprived of their king, made a new government for themselves,
the only known forms of liberty, Republics and Constitutional Monarchy,
have made their way over the world. It would have been interesting to
trace the reaction of America on the Monarchies that achieved its
independence; to see how the sudden rise of political economy suggested
the idea of applying the methods of science to the art of government;
how Louis XVI., after confessing that despotism was useless, even to
make men happy by compulsion, appealed to the nation to do what was
beyond his skill, and thereby resigned his sceptre to the middle class,
and the intelligent men of France, shuddering at the awful recollections
of their own experience, struggled to shut out the past, that they might
deliver their children from the prince of the world and rescue the
living from the clutch of the dead, until the finest opportunity ever
given to the world was thrown away, because the passion for equality
made vain the hope of freedom.
And I should have wished to show you that the same deliberate rejection
of the moral code which smoothed the paths of absolute monarchy and of
oligarchy, signalised the advent of the democratic claim to unlimited
power,--that one of its leading champions avowed the design of
corrupting the moral sense of men, in order to destroy the influence of
religion, and a famous apostle of enlightenment and toleration wished
that the last king might be strangled with the entrails of the last
priest. I would have tried to explain the connection between the
doctrine of Adam Smith, that labour is the original source of all
wealth, and the conclusion that the producers of wealth virtually
compose the nation, by which Sieyès subverted historic France; and to
show that Rousseau's definition of the social compact as a voluntary
association of equal partners conducted Marat, by short and unavoidable
stages, to declare that the poorer classes were absolved, by the law of
self-preservation, from the conditions of a contract which awarded to
them misery and death; that they were at war with society, and had a
right to all they could get by exterminating the rich, and that their
inflexible theory of equality, the chief legacy of the Revolution,
together with the avowed inadequacy of economic science to grapple with
problems of the poor, revived the idea of renovating society on the
principle of self-sacrifice, which had been the generous aspiration of
the Essenes and the early Christians, of Fathers and Canonists and
Friars, of Erasmus, the most celebrated precursor of the Reformation, of
Sir Thomas More, its most illustrious victim, and of Fénelon, the most
popular of bishops, but which, during the forty years of its revival,
has been associated with envy and hatred and bloodshed, and is now the
most dangerous enemy lurking in our path.
Last, and most of all, having told so much of the unwisdom of our
ancestors, having exposed the sterility of the convulsion that burned
what they adored, and made the sins of the Republic mount up as high as
those of the monarchy, having shown that Legitimacy, which repudiated
the Revolution, and Imperialism, which crowned it, were but disguises of
the same element of violence and wrong, I should have wished, in order
that my address might not break off without a meaning or a moral, to
relate by whom, and in what connection, the true law of the formation of
free States was recognised, and how that discovery, closely akin to
those which, under the names of development, evolution, and continuity,
have given a new and deeper method to other sciences, solved the ancient
problem between stability and change, and determined the authority of
tradition on the progress of thought; how that theory, which Sir James
Mackintosh expressed by saying that Constitutions are not made, but
grow; the theory that custom and the national qualities of the governed,
and not the will of the government, are the makers of the law; and
therefore that the nation, which is the source of its own organic
institutions, should be charged with the perpetual custody of their
integrity, and with the duty of bringing the form into harmony with the
spirit, was made, by the singular co-operation of the purest
Conservative intellect with red-handed revolution, of Niebuhr with
Mazzini, to yield the idea of nationality, which, far more than the idea
of liberty, has governed the movement of the present age.
I do not like to conclude without inviting attention to the impressive
fact that so much of the hard fighting, the thinking, the enduring that
has contributed to the deliverance of man from the power of man, has
been the work of our countrymen, and of their descendants in other
lands. We have had to contend, as much as any people, against monarchs
of strong will and of resources secured by their foreign possession,
against men of rare capacity, against whole dynasties of born tyrants.
And yet that proud prerogative stands out on the background of our
history. Within a generation of the Conquest, the Normans were compelled
to recognise, in some grudging measure, the claims of the English
people. When the struggle between Church and State extended to England,
our Churchmen learned to associate themselves with the popular cause;
and, with few exceptions, neither the hierarchical spirit of the foreign
divines, nor the monarchical bias peculiar to the French, characterised
the writers of the English school. The Civil Law, transmitted from the
degenerate Empire to be the common prop of absolute power, was excluded
from England. The Canon Law was restrained, and this country never
admitted the Inquisition, nor fully accepted the use of torture which
invested Continental royalty with so many terrors. At the end of the
Middle Ages foreign writers acknowledged our superiority, and pointed to
these causes. After that, our gentry maintained the means of local
self-government such as no other country possessed. Divisions in
religion forced toleration. The confusion of the common law taught the
people that their best safeguard was the independence and the integrity
of the judges.
All these explanations lie on the surface, and are as visible as the
protecting ocean; but they can only be successive effects of a constant
cause which must lie in the same native qualities of perseverance,
moderation, individuality, and the manly sense of duty, which give to
the English race its supremacy in the stern art of labour, which has
enabled it to thrive as no other can on inhospitable shores, and which
(although no great people has less of the bloodthirsty craving for glory
and an army of 50,000 English soldiers has never been seen in battle)
caused Napoleon to exclaim, as he rode away from Waterloo, "It has
always been the same since Crecy."
Therefore, if there is reason for pride in the past, there is more for
hope in the time to come. Our advantages increase, while other nations
fear their neighbours or covet their neighbours' goods. Anomalies and
defects there are, fewer and less intolerable, if not less flagrant than
of old.
But I have fixed my eyes on the spaces that Heaven's light illuminates,
that I may not lay too heavy a strain on the indulgence with which you
have accompanied me over the dreary and heart-breaking course by which
men have passed to freedom; and because the light that has guided us is
still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van
of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the
future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same
thing that shall be.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: An address delivered to the members of the Bridgnorth
Institution at the Agricultural Hall, 28th May 1877.]
[Footnote 4: [Poynet, in his _Treatise on Political Power_.]]
III
SIR ERSKINE MAY'S DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE[5]
Scarcely thirty years separate the Europe of Guizot and Metternich from
these days of universal suffrage both in France and in United Germany;
when a condemned insurgent of 1848 is the constitutional Minister of
Austria; when Italy, from the Alps to the Adriatic, is governed by
friends of Mazzini; and statesmen who recoiled from the temerities of
Peel have doubled the electoral constituency of England. If the
philosopher who proclaimed the law that democratic progress is constant
and irrepressible had lived to see old age, he would have been startled
by the fulfilment of his prophecy. Throughout these years of
revolutionary change Sir Thomas Erskine May has been more closely and
constantly connected with the centre of public affairs than any other
Englishman, and his place, during most of the time, has been at the
table of the House of Commons, where he has sat, like Canute, and
watched the rising tide. Few could be better prepared to be the
historian of European Democracy than one who, having so long studied the
mechanism of popular government in the most illustrious of assemblies at
the height of its power, has written its history, and taught its methods
to the world.
It is not strange that so delicate and laborious a task should have
remained unattempted. Democracy is a gigantic current that has been fed
by many springs. Physical and spiritual causes have contributed to
swell it. Much has been done by economic theories, and more by economic
laws. The propelling force lay sometimes in doctrine and sometimes in
fact, and error has been as powerful as truth. Popular progress has been
determined at one time by legislation, at others by a book, an
invention, or a crime; and we may trace it to the influence of Greek
metaphysicians and Roman jurists, of barbarian custom and ecclesiastical
law, of the reformers who discarded the canonists, the sectaries who
discarded the reformers, and the philosophers who discarded the sects.
The scene has changed, as nation succeeded nation, and during the most
stagnant epoch of European life the new world stored up the forces that
have transformed the old.
A history that should pursue all the subtle threads from end to end
might be eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and
conciliation. Few discoveries are more irritating than those which
expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis
would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions,
would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political
alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all
the passion of social and religious strife. Sir Erskine May writes for
all who take their stand within the broad lines of our constitution. His
judgment is averse from extremes. He turns from the discussion of
theories, and examines his subject by the daylight of institutions,
believing that laws depend much on the condition of society, and little
on notions and disputations unsupported by reality. He avows his
disbelief even in the influence of Locke, and cares little to inquire
how much self-government owes to Independency, or equality to the
Quakers; and how democracy was affected by the doctrine that society is
founded on contract, that happiness is the end of all government, or
labour the only source of wealth; and for this reason, because he always
touches ground, and brings to bear, on a vast array of sifted fact, the
light of sound sense and tried experience rather than dogmatic precept,
all men will read his book with profit, and almost all without offence.
Although he does not insist on inculcating a moral, he has stated in his
introductory pages the ideas that guide him; and, indeed, the reader who
fails to recognise the lesson of the book in every chapter will read in
vain. Sir Erskine May is persuaded that it is the tendency of modern
progress to elevate the masses of the people, to increase their part in
the work and the fruit of civilisation, in comfort and education, in
self-respect and independence, in political knowledge and power. Taken
for a universal law of history, this would be as visionary as certain
generalisations of Montesquieu and Tocqueville; but with the necessary
restrictions of time and place, it cannot fairly be disputed. Another
conclusion, supported by a far wider induction, is that democracy, like
monarchy, is salutary within limits and fatal in excess; that it is the
truest friend of freedom or its most unrelenting foe, according as it is
mixed or pure; and this ancient and elementary truth of constitutional
government is enforced with every variety of impressive and suggestive
illustration from the time of the Patriarchs down to the revolution
which, in 1874, converted federal Switzerland into an unqualified
democracy governed by the direct voice of the entire people.
The effective distinction between liberty and democracy, which has
occupied much of the author's thoughts, cannot be too strongly drawn.
Slavery has been so often associated with democracy, that a very able
writer pronounced it long ago essential to a democratic state; and the
philosophers of the Southern Confederation have urged the theory with
extreme fervour. For slavery operates like a restricted franchise,
attaches power to property, and hinders Socialism, the infirmity that
attends mature democracies. The most intelligent of Greek tyrants,
Periander, discouraged the employment of slaves; and Pericles designates
the freedom from manual labour as the distinguishing prerogative of
Athens. At Rome a tax on manumissions immediately followed the
establishment of political equality by Licinius. An impeachment of
England for having imposed slavery on America was carefully expunged
from the Declaration of Independence; and the French Assembly, having
proclaimed the Rights of Man, declared that they did not extend to the
colonies. The abolition controversy has made everybody familiar with
Burke's saying, that men learn the price of freedom by being masters of
slaves.
From the best days of Athens, the days of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and
Socrates, a strange affinity has subsisted between democracy and
religious persecution. The bloodiest deed committed between the wars of
religion and the revolution was due to the fanaticism of men living
under the primitive republic in the Rhætian Alps; and of six democratic
cantons only one tolerated Protestants, and that after a struggle which
lasted the better part of two centuries. In 1578 the fifteen Catholic
provinces would have joined the revolted Netherlands but for the furious
bigotry of Ghent; and the democracy of Friesland was the most intolerant
of the States. The aristocratic colonies in America defended toleration
against their democratic neighbours, and its triumph in Rhode Island and
Pennsylvania was the work not of policy but of religion. The French
Republic came to ruin because it found the lesson of religious liberty
too hard to learn. Down to the eighteenth century, indeed, it was
understood in monarchies more often than in free commonwealths.
Richelieu acknowledged the principle whilst he was constructing the
despotism of the Bourbons; so did the electors of Brandenburg, at the
time when they made themselves absolute; and after the fall of
Clarendon, the notion of Indulgence was inseparable from the design of
Charles II. to subvert the constitution.
A government strong enough to act in defiance of public feeling may
disregard the plausible heresy that prevention is better than
punishment, for it is able to punish. But a government entirely
dependent on opinion looks for some security what that opinion shall be,
strives for the control of the forces that shape it, and is fearful of
suffering the people to be educated in sentiments hostile to its
institutions. When General Grant attempted to grapple with polygamy in
Utah, it was found necessary to pack the juries with Gentiles; and the
Supreme Court decided that the proceedings were illegal, and that the
prisoners must be set free. Even the murderer Lee was absolved, in 1875,
by a jury of Mormons.
Modern democracy presents many problems too various and obscure to be
solved without a larger range of materials than Tocqueville obtained
from his American authorities or his own observation. To understand why
the hopes and the fears that it excites have been always inseparable, to
determine under what conditions it advances or retards the progress of
the people and the welfare of free states, there is no better course
than to follow Sir Erskine May upon the road which he has been the first
to open.
In the midst of an invincible despotism, among paternal, military, and
sacerdotal monarchies, the dawn rises with the deliverance of Israel out
of bondage, and with the covenant which began their political life. The
tribes broke up into smaller communities, administering their own
affairs under the law they had sworn to observe, but which there was no
civil power to enforce. They governed themselves without a central
authority, a legislature, or a dominant priesthood; and this polity,
which, under the forms of primitive society, realised some aspirations
of developed democracy, resisted for above three hundred years the
constant peril of anarchy and subjugation. The monarchy itself was
limited by the same absence of a legislative power, by the submission of
the king to the law that bound his subjects, by the perpetual appeal of
prophets to the conscience of the people as its appointed guardian, and
by the ready resource of deposition. Later still, in the decay of the
religious and national constitution, the same ideas appeared with
intense energy, in an extraordinary association of men who lived in
austerity and self-denial, rejected slavery, maintained equality, and
held their property in common, and who constituted in miniature an
almost perfect Republic. But the Essenes perished with the city and the
Temple, and for many ages the example of the Hebrews was more
serviceable to authority than to freedom. After the Reformation, the
sects that broke resolutely with the traditions of Church and State as
they came down from Catholic times, and sought for their new
institutions a higher authority than custom, reverted to the memory of a
commonwealth founded on a voluntary contract, on self-government,
federalism, equality, in which election was preferred to inheritance,
and monarchy was an emblem of the heathen; and they conceived that there
was no better model for themselves than a nation constituted by
religion, owning no lawgiver but Moses, and obeying no king but God.
Political thought had until then been guided by pagan experience.
Among the Greeks, Athens, the boldest pioneer of republican discovery,
was the only democracy that prospered. It underwent the changes that
were the common lot of Greek society, but it met them in a way that
displayed a singular genius for politics. The struggle of competing
classes for supremacy, almost everywhere a cause of oppression and
bloodshed, became with them a genuine struggle for freedom; and the
Athenian constitution grew, with little pressure from below, under the
intelligent action of statesmen who were swayed by political reasoning
more than by public opinion. They avoided violent and convulsive change,
because the rate of their reforms kept ahead of the popular demand.
Solon, whose laws began the reign of mind over force, instituted
democracy by making the people, not indeed the administrators, but the
source of power. He committed the Government not to rank or birth, but
to land; and he regulated the political influence of the landowners by
their share in the burdens of the public service. To the lower class,
who neither bore arms nor paid taxes, and were excluded from the
Government, he granted the privilege of choosing and of calling to
account the men by whom they were governed, of confirming or rejecting
the acts of the legislature and the judgments of the courts. Although he
charged the Areopagus with the preservation of his laws, he provided
that they might be revised according to need; and the ideal before his
mind was government by all free citizens. His concessions to the popular
element were narrow, and were carefully guarded. He yielded no more than
was necessary to guarantee the attachment of the whole people to the
State. But he admitted principles that went further than the claims
which he conceded. He took only one step towards democracy, but it was
the first of a series.
When the Persian wars, which converted aristocratic Athens into a
maritime state, had developed new sources of wealth and a new
description of interests, the class which had supplied many of the ships
and most of the men that had saved the national independence and founded
an empire, could not be excluded from power. Solon's principle, that
political influence should be commensurate with political service, broke
through the forms in which he had confined it, and the spirit of his
constitution was too strong for the letter. The fourth estate was
admitted to office, and in order that its candidates might obtain their
share, and no more than their share, and that neither interest nor
numbers might prevail, many public functionaries were appointed by lot.
The Athenian idea of a Republic was to substitute the impersonal
supremacy of law for the government of men. Mediocrity was a safeguard
against the pretensions of superior capacity, for the established order
was in danger, not from the average citizens, but from men, like
Miltiades, of exceptional renown. The people of Athens venerated their
constitution as a gift of the gods, the source and title of their power,
a thing too sacred for wanton change. They had demanded a code, that the
unwritten law might no longer be interpreted at will by Archons and
Areopagites; and a well-defined and authoritative legislation was a
triumph of the democracy.
So well was this conservative spirit understood, that the revolution
which abolished the privileges of the aristocracy was promoted by
Aristides and completed by Pericles, men free from the reproach of
flattering the multitude. They associated all the free Athenians with
the interest of the State, and called them, without distinction of
class, to administer the powers that belonged to them. Solon had
threatened with the loss of citizenship all who showed themselves
indifferent in party conflicts, and Pericles declared that every man who
neglected his share of public duty was a useless member of the
community. That wealth might confer no unfair advantage, that the poor
might not take bribes from the rich, he took them into the pay of the
State during their attendance as jurors. That their numbers might give
them no unjust superiority, he restricted the right of citizenship to
those who came from Athenian parents on both sides; and thus he expelled
more than 4000 men of mixed descent from the Assembly. This bold
measure, which was made acceptable by a distribution of grain from Egypt
among those who proved their full Athenian parentage, reduced the fourth
class to an equality with the owners of real property. For Pericles, or
Ephialtes--for it would appear that all their reforms had been carried
in the year 460, when Ephialtes died--is the first democratic statesman
who grasped the notion of political equality. The measures which made
all citizens equal might have created a new inequality between classes,
and the artificial privilege of land might have been succeeded by the
more crushing preponderance of numbers. But Pericles held it to be
intolerable that one portion of the people should be required to obey
laws which others have the exclusive right of making; and he was able,
during thirty years, to preserve the equipoise, governing by the general
consent of the community, formed by free debate. He made the undivided
people sovereign; but he subjected the popular initiative to a court of
revision, and assigned a penalty to the proposer of any measure which
should be found to be unconstitutional. Athens, under Pericles, was the
most successful Republic that existed before the system of
representation; but its splendour ended with his life.
The danger to liberty from the predominance either of privilege or
majorities was so manifest, that an idea arose that equality of fortune
would be the only way to prevent the conflict of class interests. The
philosophers, Phaleas, Plato, Aristotle, suggested various expedients to
level the difference between rich and poor. Solon had endeavoured to
check the increase of estates; and Pericles had not only strengthened
the public resources by bringing the rich under the control of an
assembly in which they were not supreme, but he had employed those
resources in improving the condition and the capacity of the masses. The
grievance of those who were taxed for the benefit of others was easily
borne so long as the tribute of the confederates filled the treasury.
But the Peloponnesian war increased the strain on the revenue and
deprived Athens of its dependencies. The balance was upset; and the
policy of making one class give, that another might receive, was
recommended not only by the interest of the poor, but by a growing
theory, that wealth and poverty make bad citizens, that the middle class
is the one most easily led by reason, and that the way to make it
predominate is to depress whatever rises above the common level, and to
raise whatever falls below it. This theory, which became inseparable
from democracy, and contained a force which alone seems able to destroy
it, was fatal to Athens, for it drove the minority to treason. The glory
of the Athenian democrats is, not that they escaped the worst
consequences of their principle, but that, having twice cast out the
usurping oligarchy, they set bounds to their own power. They forgave
their vanquished enemies; they abolished pay for attendance in the
assembly; they established the supremacy of law by making the code
superior to the people; they distinguished things that were
constitutional from things that were legal, and resolved that no
legislative act should pass until it had been pronounced consistent with
the constitution.
The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection
of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A
State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000,
and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting,
is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its
quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of
right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the
credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a
very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no
gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If
nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no
moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of
life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had
the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny
oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no
limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the
Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased,
and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the
democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that
is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they
provoked.
The disciples of Socrates obtained the ear of posterity. Their testimony
against the government that put the best of citizens to death is
enshrined in writings that compete with Christianity itself for
influence on the opinions of men. Greece has governed the world by her
philosophy, and the loudest note in Greek philosophy is the protest
against Athenian democracy. But although Socrates derided the practice
of leaving the choice of magistrates to chance, and Plato admired the
bloodstained tyrant Critias, and Aristotle deemed Theramenes a greater
statesman than Pericles, yet these are the men who laid the first stones
of a purer system, and became the lawgivers of future commonwealths.
The main point in the method of Socrates was essentially democratic. He
urged men to bring all things to the test of incessant inquiry, and not
to content themselves with the verdict of authorities, majorities, or
custom; to judge of right and wrong, not by the will or sentiment of
others, but by the light which God has set in each man's reason and
conscience. He proclaimed that authority is often wrong, and has no
warrant to silence or to impose conviction. But he gave no warrant to
resistance. He emancipated men for thought, but not for action. The
sublime history of his death shows that the superstition of the State
was undisturbed by his contempt for its rulers.
Plato had not his master's patriotism, nor his reverence for the civil
power. He believed that no State can command obedience if it does not
deserve respect; and he encouraged citizens to despise their government
if they were not governed by wise men. To the aristocracy of
philosophers he assigned a boundless prerogative; but as no government
satisfied that test, his plea for despotism was hypothetical. When the
lapse of years roused him from the fantastic dream of his Republic, his
belief in divine government moderated his intolerance of human freedom.
Plato would not suffer a democratic polity; but he challenged all
existing authorities to justify themselves before a superior tribunal;
he desired that all constitutions should be thoroughly remodelled, and
he supplied the greatest need of Greek democracy, the conviction that
the will of the people is subject to the will of God, and that all civil
authority, except that of an imaginary state, is limited and
conditional. The prodigious vitality of his writings has kept the
glaring perils of popular government constantly before mankind; but it
has also preserved the belief in ideal politics and the notion of
judging the powers of this world by a standard from heaven. There has
been no fiercer enemy of democracy; but there has been no stronger
advocate of revolution.
In the _Ethics_ Aristotle condemns democracy, even with a property
qualification, as the worst of governments. But near the end of his
life, when he composed his _Politics_, he was brought, grudgingly, to
make a memorable concession. To preserve the sovereignty of law, which
is the reason and the custom of generations, and to restrict the realm
of choice and change, he conceived it best that no class of society
should preponderate, that one man should not be subject to another, that
all should command and all obey. He advised that power should be
distributed to high and low; to the first according to their property,
to the others according to numbers; and that it should centre in the
middle class. If aristocracy and democracy were fairly combined and
balanced against each other, he thought that none would be interested to
disturb the serene majesty of impersonal government. To reconcile the
two principles, he would admit even the poorer citizens to office and
pay them for the discharge of public duties; but he would compel the
rich to take their share, and would appoint magistrates by election and
not by lot. In his indignation at the extravagance of Plato, and his
sense of the significance of facts, he became, against his will, the
prophetic exponent of a limited and regenerated democracy. But the
_Politics_, which, to the world of living men, is the most valuable of
his works, acquired no influence on antiquity, and is never quoted
before the time of Cicero. Again it disappeared for many centuries; it
was unknown to the Arabian commentators, and in Western Europe it was
first brought to light by St. Thomas Aquinas, at the very time when an
infusion of popular elements was modifying feudalism, and it helped to
emancipate political philosophy from despotic theories and to confirm it
in the ways of freedom.
The three generations of the Socratic school did more for the future
reign of the people than all the institutions of the States of Greece.
They vindicated conscience against authority, and subjected both to a
higher law; and they proclaimed that doctrine of a mixed constitution,
which has prevailed at last over absolute monarchy, and still has to
contend against extreme Republicans and Socialists, and against the
masters of a hundred legions. But their views of liberty were based on
expediency, not on justice. They legislated for the favoured citizens of
Greece, and were conscious of no principle that extended the same rights
to the stranger and the slave. That discovery, without which all
political science was merely conventional, belongs to the followers of
Zeno.
The dimness and poverty of their theological speculation caused the
Stoics to attribute the government of the universe less to the uncertain
design of gods than to a definite law of nature. By that law, which is
superior to religious traditions and national authorities, and which
every man can learn from a guardian angel who neither sleeps nor errs,
all are governed alike, all are equal, all are bound in charity to each
other, as members of one community and children of the same God. The
unity of mankind implied the existence of rights and duties common to
all men, which legislation neither gives nor takes away. The Stoics held
in no esteem the institutions that vary with time and place, and their
ideal society resembled a universal Church more than an actual State. In
every collision between authority and conscience they preferred the
inner to the outer guide; and, in the words of Epictetus, regarded the
laws of the gods, not the wretched laws of the dead. Their doctrine of
equality, of fraternity, of humanity; their defence of individualism
against public authority; their repudiation of slavery, redeemed
democracy from the narrowness, the want of principle and of sympathy,
which are its reproach among the Greeks. In practical life they
preferred a mixed constitution to a purely popular government.
Chrysippus thought it impossible to please both gods and men; and Seneca
declared that the people is corrupt and incapable, and that nothing was
wanting, under Nero, to the fulness of liberty, except the possibility
of destroying it. But their lofty conception of freedom, as no
exceptional privilege but the birthright of mankind, survived in the law
of nations and purified the equity of Rome.
Whilst Dorian oligarchs and Macedonian kings crushed the liberties of
Greece, the Roman Republic was ruined, not by its enemies, for there was
no enemy it did not conquer, but by its own vices. It was free from many
causes of instability and dissolution that were active in Greece--the
eager quickness, the philosophic thought, the independent belief, the
pursuit of unsubstantial grace and beauty. It was protected by many
subtle contrivances against the sovereignty of numbers and against
legislation by surprise. Constitutional battles had to be fought over
and over again; and progress was so slow, that reforms were often voted
many years before they could be carried into effect. The authority
allowed to fathers, to masters, to creditors, was as incompatible with
the spirit of freedom as the practice of the servile East. The Roman
citizen revelled in the luxury of power; and his jealous dread of every
change that might impair its enjoyment portended a gloomy oligarchy. The
cause which transformed the domination of rigid and exclusive patricians
into the model Republic, and which out of the decomposed Republic built
up the archetype of all despotism, was the fact that the Roman
Commonwealth consisted of two States in one. The constitution was made
up of compromises between independent bodies, and the obligation of
observing contracts was the standing security for freedom. The plebs
obtained self-government and an equal sovereignty, by the aid of the
tribunes of the people, the peculiar, salient, and decisive invention of
Roman statecraft. The powers conferred on the tribunes, that they might
be the guardians of the weak, were ill defined, but practically were
irresistible. They could not govern, but they could arrest all
government. The first and the last step of plebeian progress was gained
neither by violence nor persuasion, but by seceding; and, in like
manner, the tribunes overcame all the authorities of the State by the
weapon of obstruction. It was by stopping public business for five years
that Licinius established democratic equality. The safeguard against
abuse was the right of each tribune to veto the acts of his colleagues.
As they were independent of their electors, and as there could hardly
fail to be one wise and honest man among the ten, this was the most
effective instrument for the defence of minorities ever devised by man.
After the Hortensian law, which in the year 286 gave to the plebeian
assembly co-ordinate legislative authority, the tribunes ceased to
represent the cause of a minority, and their work was done.
A scheme less plausible or less hopeful than one which created two
sovereign legislatures side by side in the same community would be hard
to find. Yet it effectually closed the conflict of centuries, and gave
to Rome an epoch of constant prosperity and greatness. No real division
subsisted in the people, corresponding to the artificial division in the
State. Fifty years passed away before the popular assembly made use of
its prerogative, and passed a law in opposition to the senate. Polybius
could not detect a flaw in the structure as it stood. The harmony seemed
to be complete, and he judged that a more perfect example of composite
government could not exist. But during those happy years the cause which
wrought the ruin of Roman freedom was in full activity; for it was the
condition of perpetual war that brought about the three great changes
which were the beginning of the end--the reforms of the Gracchi, the
arming of the paupers, and the gift of the Roman suffrage to the people
of Italy.
Before the Romans began their career of foreign conquest they possessed
an army of 770,000 men; and from that time the consumption of citizens
in war was incessant. Regions once crowded with the small freeholds of
four or five acres, which were the ideal unit of Roman society and the
sinew of the army and the State, were covered with herds of cattle and
herds of slaves, and the substance of the governing democracy was
drained. The policy of the agrarian reform was to reconstitute this
peasant class out of the public domains, that is, out of lands which the
ruling families had possessed for generations, which they had bought and
sold, inherited, divided, cultivated, and improved. The conflict of
interests that had so long slumbered revived with a fury unknown in the
controversy between the patricians and the plebs. For it was now a
question not Of equal rights but of subjugation. The social restoration
of democratic elements could not be accomplished without demolishing the
senate; and this crisis at last exposed the defect of the machinery and
the peril of divided powers that were not to be controlled or
reconciled. The popular assembly, led by Gracchus, had the power of
making laws; and the only constitutional check was, that one of the
tribunes should be induced to bar the proceedings. Accordingly, the
tribune Octavius interposed his veto. The tribunician power, the most
sacred of powers, which could not be questioned because it was founded
on a covenant between the two parts of the community and formed the
keystone of their union, was employed, in opposition to the will of the
people, to prevent a reform on which the preservation of the democracy
depended. Gracchus caused Octavius to be deposed. Though not illegal,
this was a thing unheard of, and it seemed to the Romans a sacrilegious
act that shook the pillars of the State, for it was the first
significant revelation of democratic sovereignty. A tribune might burn
the arsenal and betray the city, yet he could not be called to account
until his year of office had expired. But when he employed against the
people the authority with which they had invested him, the spell was
dissolved. The tribunes had been instituted as the champions of the
oppressed, when the plebs feared oppression. It was resolved that they
should not interfere on the weaker side when the democracy were the
strongest. They were chosen by the people as their defence against the
aristocracy. It was not to be borne that they should become the agents
of the aristocracy to make them once more supreme. Against a popular
tribune, whom no colleague was suffered to oppose, the wealthy classes
were defenceless. It is true that he held office, and was inviolable,
only for a year. But the younger Gracchus was re-elected. The nobles
accused him of aiming at the crown. A tribune who should be practically
irremovable, as well as legally irresistible, was little less than an
emperor. The senate carried on the conflict as men do who fight, not for
public interests but for their own existence. They rescinded the
agrarian laws. They murdered the popular leaders. They abandoned the
constitution to save themselves, and invested Sylla with a power beyond
all monarchs, to exterminate their foes. The ghastly conception of a
magistrate legally proclaimed superior to all the laws was familiar to
the stern spirit of the Romans. The decemvirs had enjoyed that arbitrary
authority; but practically they were restrained by the two provisions
which alone were deemed efficacious in Rome, the short duration of
office, and its distribution among several colleagues. But the
appointment of Sylla was neither limited nor divided. It was to last as
long as he chose. Whatever he might do was right; and he was empowered
to put whomsoever he pleased to death, without trial or accusation. All
the victims who were butchered by his satellites suffered with the full
sanction of the law.
When at last the democracy conquered, the Augustan monarchy, by which
they perpetuated their triumph, was moderate in comparison with the
licensed tyranny of the aristocratic chief. The Emperor was the
constitutional head of the Republic, armed with all the powers requisite
to master the senate. The instrument which had served to cast down the
patricians was efficient against the new aristocracy of wealth and
office. The tribunician power, conferred in perpetuity, made it
unnecessary to create a king or a dictator. Thrice the senate proposed
to Augustus the supreme power of making laws. He declared that the power
of the tribunes already supplied him with all that he required. It
enabled him to preserve the forms of a simulated republic. The most
popular of all the magistracies of Rome furnished the marrow of
Imperialism. For the Empire was created, not by usurpation, but by the
legal act of a jubilant people, eager to close the era of bloodshed and
to secure the largess of grain and coin, which amounted, at last, to
900,000 pounds a year. The people transferred to the Emperor the
plenitude of their own sovereignty. To limit his delegated power was to
challenge their omnipotence, to renew the issue between the many and the
few which had been decided at Pharsalus and Philippi. The Romans upheld
the absolutism of the Empire because it was their own. The elementary
antagonism between liberty and democracy, between the welfare of
minorities and the supremacy of masses, became manifest. The friend of
the one was a traitor to the other. The dogma, that absolute power may,
by the hypothesis of a popular origin, be as legitimate as
constitutional freedom, began, by the combined support of the people and
the throne, to darken the air.
Legitimate, in the technical sense of modern politics, the Empire was
not meant to be. It had no right or claim to subsist apart from the will
of the people. To limit the Emperor's authority was to renounce their
own; but to take it away was to assert their own. They gave the Empire
as they chose. They took it away as they chose. The Revolution was as
lawful and as irresponsible as the Empire. Democratic institutions
continued to develop. The provinces were no longer subject to an
assembly meeting in a distant capital. They obtained the privileges of
Roman citizens. Long after Tiberius had stripped the inhabitants of Rome
of their electoral function, the provincials continued in undisturbed
enjoyment of the right of choosing their own magistrates. They governed
themselves like a vast confederation of municipal republics; and, even
after Diocletian had brought in the forms as well as the reality of
despotism, provincial assemblies, the obscure germ of representative
institutions, exercised some control over the Imperial officers.
But the Empire owed the intensity of its force to the popular fiction.
The principle, that the Emperor is not subject to laws from which he can
dispense others, _princeps legibus solutus_, was interpreted to imply
that he was above all legal restraint. There was no appeal from his
sentence. He was the living law. The Roman jurists, whilst they adorned
their writings with the exalted philosophy of the Stoics, consecrated
every excess of Imperial prerogative with those famous maxims which have
been balm to so many consciences and have sanctioned so much wrong; and
the code of Justinian became the greatest obstacle, next to feudalism,
with which liberty had to contend.
Ancient democracy, as it was in Athens in the best days of Pericles, or
in Rome when Polybius described it, or even as it is idealised by
Aristotle in the Sixth Book of his _Politics_, and by Cicero in the
beginning of the Republic, was never more than a partial and insincere
solution of the problem of popular government. The ancient politicians
aimed no higher than to diffuse power among a numerous class. Their
liberty was bound up with slavery. They never attempted to found a free
State on the thrift and energy of free labour. They never divined the
harder but more grateful task that constitutes the political life of
Christian nations.
By humbling the supremacy of rank and wealth; by forbidding the State to
encroach on the domain which belongs to God; by teaching man to love his
neighbour as himself; by promoting the sense of equality; by condemning
the pride of race, which was a stimulus of conquest, and the doctrine of
separate descent, which formed the philosopher's defence of slavery; and
by addressing not the rulers but the masses of mankind, and making
opinion superior to authority, the Church that preached the Gospel to
the poor had visible points of contact with democracy. And yet
Christianity did not directly influence political progress. The ancient
watchword of the Republic was translated by Papinian into the language
of the Church: "Summa est ratio quæ pro religione fiat:" and for eleven
hundred years, from the first to the last of the Constantines, the
Christian Empire was as despotic as the pagan.
Meanwhile Western Europe was overrun by men who in their early home had
been Republicans. The primitive constitution of the German communities
was based on association rather than on subordination. They were
accustomed to govern their affairs by common deliberation, and to obey
authorities that were temporary and defined. It is one of the desperate
enterprises of historical science to trace the free institutions of
Europe and America, and Australia, to the life that was led in the
forests of Germany. But the new States were founded on conquest, and in
war the Germans were commanded by kings. The doctrine of
self-government, applied to Gaul and Spain, would have made Frank and
Goth disappear in the mass of the conquered people. It needed all the
resources of a vigorous monarchy, of a military aristocracy, and of a
territorial clergy, to construct States that were able to last. The
result was the feudal system, the most absolute contradiction of
democracy that has coexisted with civilisation.
The revival of democracy was due neither to the Christian Church nor to
the Teutonic State, but to the quarrel between them. The effect followed
the cause instantaneously. As soon as Gregory VII. made the Papacy
independent of the Empire, the great conflict began; and the same
pontificate gave birth to the theory of the sovereignty of the people.
The Gregorian party argued that the Emperor derived his crown from the
nation, and that the nation could take away what it had bestowed. The
Imperialists replied that nobody could take away what the nation had
given. It is idle to look for the spark either in flint or steel. The
object of both parties was unqualified supremacy. Fitznigel has no more
idea of ecclesiastical liberty than John of Salisbury of political.
Innocent IV. is as perfect an absolutist as Peter de Vineis. But each
party encouraged democracy in turn, by seeking the aid of the towns;
each party in turn appealed to the people, and gave strength to the
constitutional theory. In the fourteenth century English Parliaments
judged and deposed their kings, as a matter of right; the Estates
governed France without king or noble; and the wealth and liberties of
the towns, which had worked out their independence from the centre of
Italy to the North Sea, promised for a moment to transform European
society. Even in the capitals of great princes, in Rome, in Paris, and,
for two terrible days, in London, the commons obtained sway. But the
curse of instability was on the municipal republics. Strasburg,
according to Erasmus and Bodin, the best governed of all, suffered from
perpetual commotions. An ingenious historian has reckoned seven thousand
revolutions in the Italian cities. The democracies succeeded no better
than feudalism in regulating the balance between rich and poor. The
atrocities of the Jacquerie, and of Wat Tyler's rebellion, hardened the
hearts of men against the common people. Church and State combined to
put them down. And the last memorable struggles of mediæval liberty--the
insurrection of the Comuneros in Castile, the Peasants' War in Germany,
the Republic of Florence, and the Revolt of Ghent--were suppressed by
Charles V. in the early years of the Reformation.
The middle ages had forged a complete arsenal of constitutional maxims:
trial by jury, taxation by representation, local self-government,
ecclesiastical independence, responsible authority. But they were not
secured by institutions, and the Reformation began by making the dry
bones more dry. Luther claimed to be the first divine who did justice to
the civil power. He made the Lutheran Church the bulwark of political
stability, and bequeathed to his disciples the doctrine of divine right
and passive obedience. Zwingli, who was a staunch republican, desired
that all magistrates should be elected, and should be liable to be
dismissed by their electors; but he died too soon for his influence, and
the permanent action of the Reformation on democracy was exercised
through the Presbyterian constitution of Calvin.
It was long before the democratic element in Presbyterianism began to
tell. The Netherlands resisted Philip II. for fifteen years before they
took courage to depose him, and the scheme of the ultra-Calvinist
Deventer, to subvert the ascendency of the leading States by the
sovereign action of the whole people, was foiled by Leicester's
incapacity, and by the consummate policy of Barnevelt. The Huguenots,
having lost their leaders in 1572, reconstituted themselves on a
democratic footing, and learned to think that a king who murders his
subjects forfeits his divine right to be obeyed. But Junius Brutus and
Buchanan damaged their credit by advocating regicide; and Hotoman, whose
_Franco-Gallia_ is the most serious work of the group, deserted his
liberal opinions when the chief of his own party became king. The most
violent explosion of democracy in that age proceeded from the opposite
quarter. When Henry of Navarre became the next heir to the throne of
France, the theory of the deposing power, which had proved ineffectual
for more than a century, awoke with a new and more vigorous life.
One-half of the nation accepted the view, that they were not bound to
submit to a king they would not have chosen. A Committee of Sixteen made
itself master of Paris, and, with the aid of Spain, succeeded for years
in excluding Henry from his capital. The impulse thus given endured in
literature for a whole generation, and produced a library of treatises
on the right of Catholics to choose, to control, and to cashier their
magistrates. They were on the losing side. Most of them were
bloodthirsty, and were soon forgotten. But the greater part of the
political ideas of Milton, Locke, and Rousseau, may be found in the
ponderous Latin of Jesuits who were subjects of the Spanish Crown, of
Lessius, Molina, Mariana, and Suarez.
The ideas were there, and were taken up when it suited them by extreme
adherents of Rome and of Geneva; but they produced no lasting fruit
until, a century after the Reformation, they became incorporated in new
religious systems. Five years of civil war could not exhaust the
royalism of the Presbyterians, and it required the expulsion of the
majority to make the Long Parliament abandon monarchy. It had defended
the constitution against the crown with legal arts, defending precedent
against innovation, and setting up an ideal in the past which, with all
the learning of Selden and of Prynne, was less certain than the Puritan
statesmen supposed. The Independents brought in a new principle.
Tradition had no authority for them, and the past no virtue. Liberty of
conscience, a thing not to be found in the constitution, was more prized
by many of them than all the statutes of the Plantagenets. Their idea
that each congregation should govern itself abolished the force which is
needed to preserve unity, and deprived monarchy of the weapon which made
it injurious to freedom. An immense revolutionary energy resided in
their doctrine, and it took root in America, and deeply coloured
political thought in later times. But in England the sectarian democracy
was strong only to destroy. Cromwell refused to be bound by it; and John
Lilburne, the boldest thinker among English democrats, declared that it
would be better for liberty to bring back Charles Stuart than to live
under the sword of the Protector.
Lilburne was among the first to understand the real conditions of
democracy, and the obstacle to its success in England. Equality of power
could not be preserved, except by violence, together with an extreme
inequality of possessions. There would always be danger, if power was
not made to wait on property, that property would go to those who had
the power. This idea of the necessary balance of property, developed by
Harrington, and adopted by Milton in his later pamphlets, appeared to
Toland, and even to John Adams, as important as the invention of
printing, or the discovery of the circulation of the blood. At least it
indicates the true explanation of the strange completeness with which
the Republican party had vanished, a dozen years after the solemn trial
and execution of the King. No extremity of misgovernment was able to
revive it. When the treason of Charles II. against the constitution was
divulged, and the Whigs plotted to expel the incorrigible dynasty, their
aspirations went no farther than a Venetian oligarchy, with Monmouth for
Doge. The Revolution of 1688 confined power to the aristocracy of
freeholders. The conservatism of the age was unconquerable.
Republicanism was distorted even in Switzerland, and became in the
eighteenth century as oppressive and as intolerant as its neighbours.
In 1769, when Paoli fled from Corsica, it seemed that, in Europe at
least, democracy was dead. It had, indeed, lately been defended in books
by a man of bad reputation, whom the leaders of public opinion treated
with contumely, and whose declamations excited so little alarm that
George III. offered him a pension. What gave to Rousseau a power far
exceeding that which any political writer had ever attained was the
progress of events in America. The Stuarts had been willing that the
colonies should serve as a refuge from their system of Church and State,
and of all their colonies the one most favoured was the territory
granted to William Penn. By the principles of the Society to which he
belonged, it was necessary that the new State should be founded on
liberty and equality. But Penn was further noted among Quakers as a
follower of the new doctrine of Toleration. Thus it came to pass that
Pennsylvania enjoyed the most democratic constitution in the world, and
held up to the admiration of the eighteenth century an almost solitary
example of freedom. It was principally through Franklin and the Quaker
State that America influenced political opinion in Europe, and that the
fanaticism of one revolutionary epoch was converted into the rationalism
of another. American independence was the beginning of a new era, not
merely as a revival of Revolution, but because no other Revolution ever
proceeded from so slight a cause, or was ever conducted with so much
moderation. The European monarchies supported it. The greatest statesmen
in England averred that it was just. It established a pure democracy;
but it was democracy in its highest perfection, armed and vigilant, less
against aristocracy and monarchy than against its own weakness and
excess. Whilst England was admired for the safeguards with which, in the
course of many centuries, it had fortified liberty against the power of
the crown, America appeared still more worthy of admiration for the
safeguards which, in the deliberations of a single memorable year, it
had set up against the power of its own sovereign people. It resembled
no other known democracy, for it respected freedom, authority, and law.
It resembled no other constitution, for it was contained in half a dozen
intelligible articles. Ancient Europe opened its mind to two new
ideas--that Revolution with very little provocation may be just; and
that democracy in very large dimensions may be safe.
Whilst America was making itself independent, the spirit of reform had
been abroad in Europe. Intelligent ministers, like Campomanes and
Struensee, and well-meaning monarchs, of whom the most liberal was
Leopold of Tuscany, were trying what could be done to make men happy by
command. Centuries of absolute and intolerant rule had bequeathed abuses
which nothing but the most vigorous use of power could remove. The age
preferred the reign of intellect to the reign of liberty. Turgot, the
ablest and most far-seeing reformer then living, attempted to do for
France what less gifted men were doing with success in Lombardy, and
Tuscany, and Parma. He attempted to employ the royal power for the good
of the people, at the expense of the higher classes. The higher classes
proved too strong for the crown alone; and Louis XVI. abandoned internal
reforms in despair, and turned for compensation to a war with England
for the deliverance of her American Colonies. When the increasing debt
obliged him to seek heroic remedies, and he was again repulsed by the
privileged orders, he appealed at last to the nation. When the
States-General met, the power had already passed to the middle class,
for it was by them alone that the country could be saved. They were
strong enough to triumph by waiting. Neither the Court, nor the nobles,
nor the army, could do anything against them. During the six months from
January 1789 to the fall of the Bastille in July, France travelled as
far as England in the six hundred years between the Earl of Leicester
and Lord Beaconsfield. Ten years after the American alliance, the Rights
of Man, which had been proclaimed at Philadelphia, were repeated at
Versailles. The alliance had borne fruit on both sides of the Atlantic,
and for France, the fruit was the triumph of American ideas over
English. They were more popular, more simple, more effective against
privilege, and, strange to say, more acceptable to the King. The new
French constitution allowed no privileged orders, no parliamentary
ministry, no power of dissolution, and only a suspensive veto. But the
characteristic safeguards of the American Government were rejected:
Federalism, separation of Church and State, the Second Chamber, the
political arbitration of the supreme judicial body. That which weakened
the Executive was taken: that which restrained the Legislature was left.
Checks on the crown abounded; but should the crown be vacant, the powers
that remained would be without a check. The precautions were all in one
direction. Nobody would contemplate the contingency that there might be
no king. The constitution was inspired by a profound disbelief in Louis
XVI. and a pertinacious belief in monarchy. The assembly voted without
debate, by acclamation, a Civil List three times as large as that of
Queen Victoria. When Louis fled, and the throne was actually vacant,
they brought him back to it, preferring the phantom of a king who was a
prisoner to the reality of no king at all.
Next to this misapplication of American examples, which was the fault of
nearly all the leading statesmen, excepting Mounier, Mirabeau, and
Sieyès, the cause of the Revolution was injured by its religious policy.
The most novel and impressive lesson taught by the fathers of the
American Republic was that the people, and not the administration,
should govern. Men in office were salaried agents, by whom the nation
wrought its will. Authority submitted to public opinion, and left to it
not only the control, but the initiative of government. Patience in
waiting for a wind, alacrity in catching it, the dread of exerting
unnecessary influence, characterise the early presidents. Some of the
French politicians shared this view, though with less exaggeration than
Washington. They wished to decentralise the government, and to obtain,
for good or evil, the genuine expression of popular sentiment. Necker
himself, and Buzot, the most thoughtful of the Girondins, dreamed of
federalising France. In the United States there was no current of
opinion, and no combination of forces, to be seriously feared. The
government needed no security against being propelled in a wrong
direction. But the French Revolution was accomplished at the expense of
powerful classes. Besides the nobles, the Assembly, which had been made
supreme by the accession of the clergy, and had been led at first by
popular ecclesiastics, by Sieyès, Talleyrand, Cicé, La Luzerne, made an
enemy of the clergy. The prerogative could not be destroyed without
touching the Church. Ecclesiastical patronage had helped to make the
crown absolute. To leave it in the hands of Louis and his ministers was
to renounce the entire policy of the constitution. To disestablish, was
to make it over to the Pope. It was consistent with the democratic
principle to introduce election into the Church. It involved a breach
with Rome; but so, indeed, did the laws of Joseph II., Charles III., and
Leopold. The Pope was not likely to cast away the friendship of France,
if he could help it; and the French clergy were not likely to give
trouble by their attachment to Rome. Therefore, amid the indifference of
many, and against the urgent, and probably sincere, remonstrances of
Robespierre and Marat, the Jansenists, who had a century of persecution
to avenge, carried the Civil Constitution. The coercive measures which
enforced it led to the breach with the King, and the fall of the
monarchy; to the revolt of the provinces, and the fall of liberty. The
Jacobins determined that public opinion should not reign, that the State
should not remain at the mercy of powerful combinations. They held the
representatives of the people under control, by the people itself. They
attributed higher authority to the direct than to the indirect voice of
the democratic oracle. They armed themselves with power to crush every
adverse, every independent force, and especially to put down the
Church, in whose cause the provinces had risen against the capital. They
met the centrifugal federalism of the friends of the Gironde by the most
resolute centralisation. France was governed by Paris; and Paris by its
municipality and its mob. Obeying Rousseau's maxim, that the people
cannot delegate its power, they raised the elementary constituency above
its representatives. As the greatest constituent body, the most numerous
accumulation of primary electors, the largest portion of sovereignty,
was in the people of Paris, they designed that the people of Paris
should rule over France, as the people of Rome, the mob as well as the
senate, had ruled, not ingloriously, over Italy, and over half the
nations that surround the Mediterranean. Although the Jacobins were
scarcely more irreligious than the Abbé Sieyès or Madame Roland,
although Robespierre wanted to force men to believe in God, although
Danton went to confession and Barère was a professing Christian, they
imparted to modern democracy that implacable hatred of religion which
contrasts so strangely with the example of its Puritan prototype.
The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to
liberty was its theory of equality. Liberty was the watchword of the
middle class, equality of the lower. It was the lower class that won the
battles of the third estate; that took the Bastille, and made France a
constitutional monarchy; that took the Tuileries, and made France a
Republic. They claimed their reward. The middle class, having cast down
the upper orders with the aid of the lower, instituted a new inequality
and a privilege for itself. By means of a taxpaying qualification it
deprived its confederates of their vote. To those, therefore, who had
accomplished the Revolution, its promise was not fulfilled. Equality did
nothing for them. The opinion, at that time, was almost universal, that
society is founded on an agreement which is voluntary and conditional,
and that the links which bind men to it are terminable, for sufficient
reason, like those which subject them to authority. From these popular
premises the logic of Marat drew his sanguinary conclusions. He told
the famished people that the conditions on which they had consented to
bear their evil lot, and had refrained from violence, had not been kept
to them. It was suicide, it was murder, to submit to starve and to see
one's children starving, by the fault of the rich. The bonds of society
were dissolved by the wrong it inflicted. The state of nature had come
back, in which every man had a right to what he could take. The time had
come for the rich to make way for the poor. With this theory of
equality, liberty was quenched in blood, and Frenchmen became ready to
sacrifice all other things to save life and fortune.
Twenty years after the splendid opportunity that opened in 1789, the
reaction had triumphed everywhere in Europe; ancient constitutions had
perished as well as new; and even England afforded them neither
protection nor sympathy. The liberal, at least the democratic revival,
came from Spain. The Spaniards fought against the French for a king, who
was a prisoner in France. They gave themselves a constitution, and
placed his name at the head of it. They had a monarchy, without a king.
It required to be so contrived that it would work in the absence,
possibly the permanent absence, of the monarch. It became, therefore, a
monarchy only in name, composed, in fact, of democratic forces. The
constitution of 1812 was the attempt of inexperienced men to accomplish
the most difficult task in politics. It was smitten with sterility. For
many years it was the standard of abortive revolutions among the
so-called Latin nations. It promulgated the notion of a king who should
flourish only in name, and should not even discharge the humble function
which Hegel assigns to royalty, of dotting i's for the people.
The overthrow of the Cadiz constitution, in 1823, was the supreme
triumph of the restored monarchy of France. Five years later, under a
wise and liberal minister, the Restoration was advancing fairly on the
constitutional paths, when the incurable distrust of the Liberal party
defeated Martignac, and brought in the ministry of extreme royalists
that ruined the monarchy. In labouring to transfer power from the class
which the Revolution had enfranchised to those which it had overthrown,
Polignac and La Bourdonnaie would gladly have made terms with the
working men. To break the influence of intellect and capital by means of
universal suffrage, was an idea long and zealously advocated by some of
their supporters. They had not foresight or ability to divide their
adversaries, and they were vanquished in 1830 by the united democracy.
The promise of the Revolution of July was to reconcile royalists and
democrats. The King assured Lafayette that he was a republican at heart;
and Lafayette assured France that Louis Philippe was the best of
republics. The shock of the great event was felt in Poland, and Belgium,
and even in England. It gave a direct impulse to democratic movements in
Switzerland.
Swiss democracy had been in abeyance since 1815. The national will had
no organ. The cantons were supreme; and governed as inefficiently as
other governments under the protecting shade of the Holy Alliance. There
was no dispute that Switzerland called for extensive reforms, and no
doubt of the direction they would take. The number of the cantons was
the great obstacle to all improvement. It was useless to have
twenty-five governments in a country equal to one American State, and
inferior in population to one great city. It was impossible that they
should be good governments. A central power was the manifest need of the
country. In the absence of an efficient federal power, seven cantons
formed a separate league for the protection of their own interests.
Whilst democratic ideas were making way in Switzerland, the Papacy was
travelling in the opposite direction, and showing an inflexible
hostility for ideas which are the breath of democratic life. The growing
democracy and the growing Ultramontanism came into collision. The
Sonderbund could aver with truth that there was no safety for its rights
under the Federal Constitution. The others could reply, with equal
truth, that there was no safety for the constitution with the
Sonderbund. In 1847, it came to a war between national sovereignty and
cantonal sovereignty. The Sonderbund was dissolved, and a new Federal
Constitution was adopted, avowedly and ostensibly charged with the duty
of carrying out democracy, and repressing the adverse influence of Rome.
It was a delusive imitation of the American system. The President was
powerless. The Senate was powerless. The Supreme Court was powerless.
The sovereignty of the cantons was undermined, and their power centred
in the House of Representatives. The Constitution of 1848 was a first
step towards the destruction of Federalism. Another and almost a final
step in the direction of centralisation was taken in 1874. The railways,
and the vast interests they created, made the position of the cantonal
governments untenable. The conflict with the Ultramontanes increased the
demand for vigorous action; and the destruction of State Rights in the
American war strengthened the hands of the Centralists. The Constitution
of 1874 is one of the most significant works of modern democracy. It is
the triumph of democratic force over democratic freedom. It overrules
not only the Federal principle, but the representative principle. It
carries important measures away from the Federal Legislature to submit
them to the votes of the entire people, separating decision from
deliberation. The operation is so cumbrous as to be generally
ineffective. But it constitutes a power such as exists, we believe,
under the laws of no other country. A Swiss jurist has frankly expressed
the spirit of the reigning system by saying, that the State is the
appointed conscience of the nation.
The moving force in Switzerland has been democracy relieved of all
constraint, the principle of putting in action the greatest force of the
greatest number. The prosperity of the country has prevented
complications such as arose in France. The ministers of Louis Philippe,
able and enlightened men, believed that they would make the people
prosper if they could have their own way, and could shut out public
opinion. They acted as if the intelligent middle class was destined by
heaven to govern. The upper class had proved its unfitness before 1789;
the lower class, since 1789. Government by professional men, by
manufacturers and scholars, was sure to be safe, and almost sure to be
reasonable and practical. Money became the object of a political
superstition, such as had formerly attached to land, and afterwards
attached to labour. The masses of the people, who had fought against
Marmont, became aware that they had not fought for their own benefit.
They were still governed by their employers.
When the King parted with Lafayette, and it was found that he would not
only reign but govern, the indignation of the republicans found a vent
in street fighting. In 1836, when the horrors of the infernal machine
had armed the crown with ampler powers, and had silenced the republican
party, the term Socialism made its appearance in literature.
Tocqueville, who was writing the philosophic chapters that conclude his
work, failed to discover the power which the new system was destined to
exercise on democracy. Until then, democrats and communists had stood
apart. Although the socialist doctrines were defended by the best
intellects of France, by Thierry, Comte, Chevalier, and Georges Sand,
they excited more attention as a literary curiosity than as the cause of
future revolutions. Towards 1840, in the recesses of secret societies,
republicans and socialists coalesced. Whilst the Liberal leaders,
Lamartine and Barrot, discoursed on the surface concerning reform, Ledru
Rollin and Louis Blanc were quietly digging a grave for the monarchy,
the Liberal party, and the reign of wealth. They worked so well, and the
vanquished republicans recovered so thoroughly, by this coalition, the
influence they had lost by a long series of crimes and follies, that, in
1848, they were able to conquer without fighting. The fruit of their
victory was universal suffrage.
From that time the promises of socialism have supplied the best energy
of democracy. Their coalition has been the ruling fact in French
politics. It created the "saviour of society," and the Commune; and it
still entangles the footsteps of the Republic. It is the only shape in
which democracy has found an entrance into Germany. Liberty has lost its
spell; and democracy maintains itself by the promise of substantial
gifts to the masses of the people.
Since the Revolution of July and the Presidency of Jackson gave the
impulse which has made democracy preponderate, the ablest political
writers, Tocqueville, Calhoun, Mill, and Laboulaye, have drawn, in the
name of freedom, a formidable indictment against it. They have shown
democracy without respect for the past or care for the future,
regardless of public faith and of national honour, extravagant and
inconstant, jealous of talent and of knowledge, indifferent to justice
but servile towards opinion, incapable of organisation, impatient of
authority, averse from obedience, hostile to religion and to established
law. Evidence indeed abounds, even if the true cause be not proved. But
it is not to these symptoms that we must impute the permanent danger and
the irrepressible conflict. As much might be made good against monarchy,
and an unsympathising reasoner might in the same way argue that religion
is intolerant, that conscience makes cowards, that piety rejoices in
fraud. Recent experience has added little to the observations of those
who witnessed the decline after Pericles, of Thucydides, Aristophanes,
Plato, and of the writer whose brilliant tract against the Athenian
Republic is printed among the works of Xenophon. The manifest, the
avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or
aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, with
an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to
override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and
deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free
play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that
none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall
be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic
principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not
like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what
it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man's free
will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free
will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing. Religious
toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation, jealousy of
State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of safeguards,
when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands of the
people. Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority
above, but absolute, without independence below; to be its own master,
not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new
one, who may be flattered and deceived, but whom it is impossible to
corrupt or to resist, and to whom must be rendered the things that are
Cæsar's and also the things that are God's. The enemy to be overcome is
no longer the absolutism of the State, but the liberty of the subject.
Nothing is more significant than the relish with which Ferrari, the most
powerful democratic writer since Rousseau, enumerates the merits of
tyrants, and prefers devils to saints in the interest of the community.
For the old notions of civil liberty and of social order did not benefit
the masses of the people. Wealth increased, without relieving their
wants. The progress of knowledge left them in abject ignorance. Religion
flourished, but failed to reach them. Society, whose laws were made by
the upper class alone, announced that the best thing for the poor is not
to be born, and the next best, to die in childhood, and suffered them to
live in misery and crime and pain. As surely as the long reign of the
rich has been employed in promoting the accumulation of wealth, the
advent of the poor to power will be followed by schemes for diffusing
it. Seeing how little was done by the wisdom of former times for
education and public health, for insurance, association, and savings,
for the protection of labour against the law of self-interest, and how
much has been accomplished in this generation, there is reason in the
fixed belief that a great change was needed, and that democracy has not
striven in vain. Liberty, for the mass, is not happiness; and
institutions are not an end but a means. The thing they seek is a force
sufficient to sweep away scruples and the obstacle of rival interests,
and, in some degree, to better their condition. They mean that the
strong hand that heretofore has formed great States, protected
religions, and defended the independence of nations, shall help them by
preserving life, and endowing it for them with some, at least, of the
things men live for. That is the notorious danger of modern democracy.
That is also its purpose and its strength. And against this threatening
power the weapons that struck down other despots do not avail. The
greatest happiness principle positively confirms it. The principle of
equality, besides being as easily applied to property as to power,
opposes the existence of persons or groups of persons exempt from the
common law, and independent of the common will; and the principle, that
authority is a matter of contract, may hold good against kings, but not
against the sovereign people, because a contract implies two parties.
If we have not done more than the ancients to develop and to examine the
disease, we have far surpassed them in studying the remedy. Besides the
French Constitution of the year III., and that of the American
Confederates,--the most remarkable attempts that have been made since
the archonship of Euclides to meet democratic evils with the antidotes
which democracy itself supplies,--our age has been prolific in this
branch of experimental politics.
Many expedients have been tried, that have been evaded or defeated. A
divided executive, which was an important phase in the transformation of
ancient monarchies into republics, and which, through the advocacy of
Condorcet, took root in France, has proved to be weakness itself.
The constitution of 1795, the work of a learned priest, confined the
franchise to those who should know how to read and write; and in 1849
this provision was rejected by men who intended that the ignorant voter
should help them to overturn the Republic. In our time no democracy
could long subsist without educating the masses; and the scheme of
Daunou is simply an indirect encouragement to elementary instruction.
In 1799 Sieyès suggested to Bonaparte the idea of a great Council, whose
function it should be to keep the acts of the Legislature in harmony
with the constitution--a function which the _Nomophylakes_ discharged at
Athens, and the Supreme Court in the United States, and which produced
the Sénat Conservateur, one of the favourite implements of Imperialism.
Sieyès meant that his Council should also serve the purpose of a gilded
ostracism, having power to absorb any obnoxious politician, and to
silence him with a thousand a year.
Napoleon the Third's plan of depriving unmarried men of their votes
would have disfranchised the two greatest Conservative classes in
France, the priest and the soldier.
In the American constitution it was intended that the chief of the
executive should be chosen by a body of carefully selected electors. But
since, in 1825, the popular candidate succumbed to one who had only a
minority of votes, it has become the practice to elect the President by
the pledged delegates of universal suffrage.
The exclusion of ministers from Congress has been one of the severest
strains on the American system; and the law which required a majority of
three to one enabled Louis Napoleon to make himself Emperor. Large
constituencies make independent deputies; but experience proves that
small assemblies, the consequence of large constituencies, can be
managed by Government.
The composite vote and the cumulative vote have been almost universally
rejected as schemes for baffling the majority. But the principle of
dividing the representatives equally between population and property has
never had fair play. It was introduced by Thouret into the constitution
of 1791. The Revolution made it inoperative; and it was so manipulated
from 1817 to 1848 by the fatal dexterity of Guizot as to make opinion
ripe for universal suffrage.
Constitutions which forbid the payment of deputies and the system of
imperative instructions, which deny the power of dissolution, and make
the Legislature last for a fixed term, or renew it by partial
re-elections, and which require an interval between the several debates
on the same measure, evidently strengthen the independence of the
representative assembly. The Swiss veto has the same effect, as it
suspends legislation only when opposed by a majority of the whole
electoral body, not by a majority of those who actually vote upon it.
Indirect elections are scarcely anywhere in use out of Germany, but they
have been a favourite corrective of democracy with many thoughtful
politicians. Where the extent of the electoral district obliges
constituents to vote for candidates who are unknown to them, the
election is not free. It is managed by wire-pullers, and by party
machinery, beyond the control of the electors. Indirect election puts
the choice of the managers into their hands. The objection is that the
intermediate electors are generally too few to span the interval between
voters and candidates, and that they choose representatives not of
better quality, but of different politics. If the intermediate body
consisted of one in ten of the whole constituency, the contact would be
preserved, the people would be really represented, and the ticket system
would be broken down.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or
rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force
or fraud, in carrying elections. To break off that point is to avert the
danger. The common system of representation perpetuates the danger.
Unequal electorates afford no security to majorities. Equal electorates
give none to minorities. Thirty-five years ago it was pointed out that
the remedy is proportional representation. It is profoundly democratic,
for it increases the influence of thousands who would otherwise have no
voice in the government; and it brings men more near an equality by so
contriving that no vote shall be wasted, and that every voter shall
contribute to bring into Parliament a member of his own opinions. The
origin of the idea is variously claimed for Lord Grey and for
Considérant. The successful example of Denmark and the earnest advocacy
of Mill gave it prominence in the world of politics. It has gained
popularity with the growth of democracy, and we are informed by M.
Naville that in Switzerland Conservatives and Radicals combined to
promote it.
Of all checks on democracy, federalism has been the most efficacious and
the most congenial; but, becoming associated with the Red Republic, with
feudalism, with the Jesuits, and with slavery, it has fallen into
disrepute, and is giving way to centralism. The federal system limits
and restrains the sovereign power by dividing it, and by assigning to
Government only certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing
not only the majority but the power of the whole people, and it affords
the strongest basis for a second chamber, which has been found the
essential security for freedom in every genuine democracy.
The fall of Guizot discredited the famous maxim of the Doctrinaires,
that Reason is sovereign, and not king or people; and it was further
exposed to the scoffer by the promise of Comte that Positivist
philosophers shall manufacture political ideas, which no man shall be
permitted to dispute. But putting aside international and criminal law,
in which there is some approach to uniformity, the domain of political
economy seems destined to admit the rigorous certainty of science.
Whenever that shall be attained, when the battle between Economists and
Socialists is ended, the evil force which Socialism imparts to democracy
will be spent. The battle is raging more violently than ever, but it has
entered into a new phase, by the rise of a middle party. Whether that
remarkable movement, which is promoted by some of the first economists
in Europe, is destined to shake the authority of their science, or to
conquer socialism, by robbing it of that which is the secret of its
strength, it must be recorded here as the latest and the most serious
effort that has been made to disprove the weighty sentence of Rousseau,
that democracy is a government for gods, but unfit for man.
We have been able to touch on only a few of the topics that crowd Sir
Erskine May's volumes. Although he has perceived more clearly than
Tocqueville the contact of democracy with socialism, his judgment is
untinged with Tocqueville's despondency, and he contemplates the
direction of progress with a confidence that approaches optimism. The
notion of an inflexible logic in history does not depress him, for he
concerns himself with facts and with men more than with doctrines, and
his book is a history of several democracies, not of democracy. There
are links in the argument, there are phases of development which he
leaves unnoticed, because his object has not been to trace out the
properties and the connection of ideas, but to explain the results of
experience. We should consult his pages, probably, without effect, if we
wished to follow the origin and sequence of the democratic dogmas, that
all men are equal; that speech and thought are free; that each
generation is a law to itself only; that there shall be no endowments,
no entails, no primogeniture; that the people are sovereign; that the
people can do no wrong. The great mass of those who, of necessity, are
interested in practical politics have no such antiquarian curiosity.
They want to know what can be learned from the countries where the
democratic experiments have been tried; but they do not care to be told
how M. Waddington has emended the _Monumentum Ancyranum_, what
connection there was between Mariana and Milton, or between Penn and
Rousseau, or who invented the proverb _Vox Populi Vox Dei_. Sir Erskine
May's reluctance to deal with matters speculative and doctrinal, and to
devote his space to the mere literary history of politics, has made his
touch somewhat uncertain in treating of the political action of
Christianity, perhaps the most complex and comprehensive question that
can embarrass a historian. He disparages the influence of the mediæval
Church on nations just emerging from a barbarous paganism, and he exalts
it when it had become associated with despotism and persecution. He
insists on the liberating action of the Reformation in the sixteenth
century, when it gave a stimulus to absolutism; and he is slow to
recognise, in the enthusiasm and violence of the sects in the
seventeenth, the most potent agency ever brought to bear on democratic
history. The omission of America creates a void between 1660 and 1789,
and leaves much unexplained in the revolutionary movement of the last
hundred years, which is the central problem of the book. But if some
things are missed from the design, if the execution is not equal in
every part, the praise remains to Sir Erskine May, that he is the only
writer who has ever brought together the materials for a comparative
study of democracy, that he has avoided the temper of party, that he has
shown a hearty sympathy for the progress and improvement of mankind, and
a steadfast faith in the wisdom and the power that guide it.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: _The Quarterly Review_, January 1878.]
IV
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW[6]
The way in which Coligny and his adherents met their death has been
handed down by a crowd of trustworthy witnesses, and few things in
history are known in more exact detail. But the origin and motives of
the tragedy, and the manner of its reception by the opinion of Christian
Europe, are still subject to controversy. Some of the evidence has been
difficult of access, part is lost, and much has been deliberately
destroyed. No letters written from Paris at the time have been found in
the Austrian archives. In the correspondence of thirteen agents of the
House of Este at the Court of Rome, every paper relating to the event
has disappeared. All the documents of 1572, both from Rome and Paris,
are wanting in the archives of Venice. In the Registers of many French
towns the leaves which contained the records of August and September in
that year have been torn out. The first reports sent to England by
Walsingham and by the French Government have not been recovered. Three
accounts printed at Rome, when the facts were new, speedily became so
rare that they have been forgotten. The Bull of Gregory XIII. was not
admitted into the official collections; and the reply to Muretus has
escaped notice until now. The letters of Charles IX. to Rome, with the
important exception of that which he wrote on the 24th _of_ August, have
been dispersed and lost The letters of Gregory XIII. to France have
never been seen by persons willing to make them public. In the absence
of these documents the most authentic information is that which is
supplied by the French Ambassador and by the Nuncio. The despatches of
Ferralz, describing the attitude of the Roman court, are extant, but
have not been used. Those of Salviati have long been known.
Chateaubriand took a copy when the papal archives were at Paris, and
projected a work on the events with which they are concerned. Some
extracts were published, with his consent, by the continuator of
Mackintosh; and a larger selection, from the originals in the Vatican,
appeared in Theiner's _Annals of Gregory XIII_. The letters written
under Pius V. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner, moreover,
has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The criterion of
relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of the
unpublished portions of Salviati's correspondence, which were
transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal
importance not previously consulted, determine several doubtful
questions of policy and design.
The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their
prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many
years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most
valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the
period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided
Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly
confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet
dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the
attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and
system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the
Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to
serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature
Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by
violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in
Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant.
In France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the
German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had
been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it
in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast
dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and
Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they
could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict
it. Trusting to the maxim, "Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," they
insisted that liberty should extend to those whom the Reformers would
have exterminated.[7] The Polish Protestants, in spite of their
dissensions, formed themselves into one great party. When the death of
the last of the Jagellons, on the 7th of July 1572, made the monarchy
elective, they were strong enough to enforce their conditions on the
candidates; and it was thought that they would be able to decide the
election, and obtain a king of their own choosing. Alva's reign of
Terror had failed to pacify the Low Countries, and he was about to
resign the hopeless task to an incapable successor. The taking of the
Brill in April was the first of those maritime victories which led to
the independence of the Dutch. Mons fell in May; and in July the
important province of Holland declared for the Prince of Orange. The
Catholics believed that all was lost if Alva remained in command.[8]
The decisive struggle was in France. During the minority of Charles IX.
persecution had given way to civil war, and the Regent, his mother, had
vainly striven, by submitting to neither party, to uphold the authority
of the Crown. She checked the victorious Catholics, by granting to the
Huguenots terms which constituted them, in spite of continual disaster
in the field, a vast and organised power in the State. To escape their
influence it would have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip
II., and to accept protection which would have made France subordinate
to Spain. Philip laboured to establish such an alliance; and it was to
promote this scheme that he sent his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to meet
her mother at Bayonne. In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to
Catherine touching the manner of her death which made it hard to listen
to friendly overtures from her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an
unscrupulous instrument of his master's will, afterwards accused him of
having poisoned his wife. "On parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour
avoir été advancée," says Brantôme. After the massacre of the
Protestants, the ambassador at Venice, a man distinguished as a jurist
and a statesman, reproached Catherine with having thrown France into the
hands of him in whom the world recognised her daughter's murderer.
Catherine did not deny the truth of the report. She replied that she was
"bound to think of her sons in preference to her daughters, that the
foul-play was not fully proved, and that if it were it could not be
avenged so long as France was weakened by religious discord."[9] She
wrote as she could not have written if she had been convinced that the
suspicion was unjust.
When Charles IX. began to be his own master he seemed resolved to follow
his father and grandfather in their hostility to the Spanish Power. He
wrote to a trusted servant that all his thoughts were bent on thwarting
Philip.[10] While the Christian navies were fighting at Lepanto, the
King of France was treating with the Turks. His menacing attitude in the
following year kept Don Juan in Sicilian waters, and made his victory
barren for Christendom. Encouraged by French protection, Venice withdrew
from the League. Even in Corsica there was a movement which men
interpreted as a prelude to the storm that France was raising against
the empire of Spain. Rome trembled in expectation of a Huguenot invasion
of Italy; for Charles was active in conciliating the Protestants both
abroad and at home. He married a daughter of the tolerant Emperor
Maximilian II.; and he carried on negotiations for the marriage of his
brother with Queen Elizabeth, not with any hope of success, but in order
to impress public opinion.[11] He made treaties of alliance, in quick
succession, with England, with the German Protestants, and with the
Prince of Orange. He determined that his brother Anjou, the champion of
the Catholics, of whom it was said that he had vowed to root out the
Protestants to a man,[12] should be banished to the throne of Poland.
Disregarding the threats and entreaties of the Pope, he gave his sister
in marriage to Navarre. By the peace of St. Germains the Huguenots had
secured, within certain limits, freedom from persecution and the liberty
of persecuting; so that Pius V. declared that France had been made the
slave of heretics. Coligny was now the most powerful man in the kingdom.
His scheme for closing the civil wars by an expedition for the conquest
of the Netherlands began to be put in motion. French auxiliaries
followed Lewis of Nassau into Mons; an army of Huguenots had already
gone to his assistance; another was being collected near the frontier,
and Coligny was preparing to take the command in a war which might
become a Protestant crusade, and which left the Catholics no hope of
victory. Meanwhile many hundreds of his officers followed him to Paris,
to attend the wedding which was to reconcile the factions, and cement
the peace of religion.
In the midst of those lofty designs and hopes, Coligny was struck down.
On the morning of the 22nd of August he was shot at and badly wounded.
Two days later he was killed; and a general attack was made on the
Huguenots of Paris. It lasted some weeks, and was imitated in about
twenty places. The chief provincial towns of France were among them.
Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a
measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived
Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the
control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more
than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the
beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it
was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said
that the survivors were abjuring by thousands,[13] that the children of
the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted
to absolution and communion were nevertheless put to death.[14] Men who
were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a
religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment;[15]
and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite
no horror after the scenes in France.
Contemporaries were persuaded that the Huguenots had been flattered and
their policy adopted only for their destruction, and that the murder of
Coligny and his followers was a long premeditated crime. Catholics and
Protestants vied with each other in detecting proofs of that which they
variously esteemed a sign of supernatural inspiration or of diabolical
depravity. In the last forty years a different opinion has prevailed. It
has been deemed more probable, more consistent with testimony and with
the position of affairs at the time, that Coligny succeeded in acquiring
extraordinary influence over the mind of Charles, that his advice really
predominated, and that the sanguinary resolution was suddenly embraced
by his adversaries as the last means of regaining power. This opinion is
made plausible by many facts. It is supported by several writers who
were then living, and by the document known as the Confession of Anjou.
The best authorities of the present day are nearly unanimous in
rejecting premeditation.
The evidence on the opposite side is stronger than they suppose. The
doom which awaited the Huguenots had been long expected and often
foretold. People at a distance, Monluc in Languedoc, and the Protestant
Mylius in Italy, drew the same inference from the news that came from
the court. Strangers meeting on the road discussed the infatuation of
the Admiral.[16] Letters brought from Rome to the Emperor the
significant intimation that the birds were all caged, and now was the
time to lay hands on them.[17] Duplessis-Mornay, the future chief of the
Huguenots, was so much oppressed with a sense of coming evil, that he
hardly ventured into the streets on the wedding-day. He warned the
Admiral of the general belief among their friends that the marriage
concealed a plot for their ruin, and that the festivities would end in
some horrible surprise.[18] Coligny was proof against suspicion. Several
of his followers left Paris, but he remained unmoved. At one moment the
excessive readiness to grant all his requests shook the confidence of
his son-in-law Téligny; but the doubt vanished so completely that
Téligny himself prevented the flight of his partisans after the attempt
on the Admiral's life. On the morning of the fatal day, Montgomery sent
word to Walsingham that Coligny was safe under protection of the King's
Guards, and that no further stir was to be apprehended.[19]
For many years foreign advisers had urged Catherine to make away with
these men. At first it was computed that half a dozen victims would be
enough.[20] That was the original estimate of Alva, at Bayonne.[21] When
the Duke of Ferrara was in France, in 1564, he proposed a larger
measure, and he repeated this advice by the mouth of every agent whom he
sent to France.[22] After the event, both Alva and Alfonso reminded
Catherine that she had done no more than follow their advice.[23] Alva's
letter explicitly confirms the popular notion which connects the
massacre with the conference of Bayonne; and it can no longer now be
doubted that La Roche-sur-Yon, on his deathbed, informed Coligny that
murderous resolutions had been taken on that occasion.[24] But the
Nuncio, Santa Croce, who was present, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo that
the Queen had indeed promised to punish the infraction of the Edict of
Pacification, but that this was a very different thing from undertaking
to extirpate heresy. Catherine affirmed that in this way the law could
reach all the Huguenot ministers; and Alva professed to believe her.[25]
Whatever studied ambiguity of language she may have used, the action of
1572 was uninfluenced by deliberations which were seven years old.
During the spring and summer the Tuscan agents diligently prepared their
master for what was to come. Petrucci wrote on the 19th of March that,
for a reason which he could not trust to paper, the marriage would
certainly take place, though not until the Huguenots had delivered up
their strongholds. Four weeks later Alamanni announced that the Queen's
pious design for restoring unity of faith would, by the grace of God, be
speedily accomplished. On the 9th of August Petrucci was able to report
that the plan arranged at Bayonne was near execution.[26] Yet he was not
fully initiated. The Queen afterwards assured him that she had confided
the secret to no foreign resident except the Nuncio,[27] and Petrucci
resentfully complains that she had also consulted the Ambassador of
Savoy. Venice, like Florence and Savoy, was not taken by surprise. In
February the ambassador Contarini explained to the Senate the specious
tranquillity in France, by saying that the Government reckoned on the
death of the Admiral or the Queen of Navarre to work a momentous
change.[28] Cavalli, his successor, judged that a business so grossly
mismanaged showed no signs of deliberation.[29] There was another
Venetian at Paris who was better informed. The Republic was seeking to
withdraw from the league against the Turks; and her most illustrious
statesman, Giovanni Michiel, was sent to solicit the help of France in
negotiating peace.[30] The account which he gave of his mission has been
pronounced by a consummate judge of Venetian State-Papers the most
valuable report of the sixteenth century.[31] He was admitted almost
daily to secret conference with Anjou, Nevers, and the group of Italians
on whom the chief odium rests; and there was no counsellor to whom
Catherine more willingly gave ear.[32] Michiel affirms that the
intention had been long entertained, and that the Nuncio had been
directed to reveal it privately to Pius V.[33]
Salviati was related to Catherine, and had gained her good opinion as
Nuncio in the year 1570. The Pope had sent him back because nobody
seemed more capable of diverting her and her son from the policy which
caused so much uneasiness at Rome.[34] He died many years later, with
the reputation of having been one of the most eminent Cardinals at a
time when the Sacred College was unusually rich in talent. Personally,
he had always favoured stern measures of repression. When the Countess
of Entremont was married to Coligny, Salviati declared that she had made
herself liable to severe penalties by entertaining proposals of marriage
with so notorious a heretic, and demanded that the Duke of Savoy should,
by all the means in his power, cause that wicked bride to be put out of
the way.[35] When the peace of St. Germains was concluded, he assured
Charles and Catherine that their lives were in danger, as the Huguenots
were seeking to pull down the throne as well as the altar. He believed
that all intercourse with them was sinful, and that the sole remedy was
utter extermination by the sword. "I am convinced," he wrote, "that it
will come to this." "If they do the tenth part of what I have advised,
it will be well for them."[36] After an audience of two hours, at which
he had presented a letter from Pius V., prophesying the wrath of Heaven,
Salviati perceived that his exhortations made some impression. The King
and Queen whispered to him that they hoped to make the peace yield such
fruit that the end would more than countervail the badness of the
beginning; and the King added, in strict confidence, that his plan was
one which, once told, could never be executed.[37] This might have been
said to delude the Nuncio; but he was inclined on the whole to believe
that it was sincerely meant. The impression was confirmed by the
Archbishop of Sens, Cardinal Pellevé, who informed him that the Huguenot
leaders were caressed at Court in order to detach them from their party,
and that after the loss of their leaders it would not take more than
three days to deal with the rest.[38] Salviati on his return to France
was made aware that his long-deferred hopes were about to be fulfilled.
He shadowed it forth obscurely in his despatches. He reported that the
Queen allowed the Huguenots to pass into Flanders, believing that the
admiral would become more and more presumptuous until he gave her an
opportunity of retribution; for she excelled in that kind of intrigue.
Some days later he knew more, and wrote that he hoped soon to have good
news for his Holiness.[39] At the last moment his heart misgave him. On
the morning of the 21st of August the Duke of Montpensier and the
Cardinal of Bourbon spoke with so much unconcern, in his presence, of
what was then so near, that he thought it hardly possible the secret
could be kept.[40]
The foremost of the French prelates was the Cardinal of Lorraine. He had
held a prominent position at the council of Trent; and for many years he
had wielded the influence of the House of Guise over the Catholics of
France. In May 1572 he went to Rome; and he was still there when the
news came from Paris in September. He at once made it known that the
resolution had been taken before he left France, and that it was due to
himself and his nephew, the Duke of Guise.[41] As the spokesman of the
Gallican Church in the following year he delivered a harangue to Charles
IX., in which he declared that Charles had eclipsed the glory of
preceding kings by slaying the false prophets, and especially by the
holy deceit and pious dissimulation with which he had laid his
plans.[42]
There was one man who did not get his knowledge from rumour, and who
could not be deceived by lies. The King's confessor, Sorbin, afterwards
Bishop of Nevers, published in 1574 a narrative of the life and death of
Charles IX. He bears unequivocal testimony that that clement and
magnanimous act, for so he terms it, was resolved upon beforehand, and
he praises the secrecy as well as the justice of his hero.[43]
Early in the year a mission of extraordinary solemnity had appeared in
France. Pius V., who was seriously alarmed at the conduct of Charles,
had sent the Cardinal of Alessandria as Legate to the Kings of Spain and
Portugal, and directed him, in returning, to visit the Court at Blois.
The Legate was nephew to the Pope, and the man whom he most entirely
trusted.[44] His character stood so high that the reproach of nepotism
was never raised by his promotion. Several prelates destined to future
eminence attended him. His chief adviser was Hippolyto Aldobrandini,
who, twenty years later, ascended the papal chair as Clement VIII. The
companion whose presence conferred the greatest lustre on the mission
was the general of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, the holiest of the
successors of Ignatius, and the most venerated of men then living.
Austerities had brought him to the last stage of weakness; and he was
sinking under the malady of which he was soon to die. But it was
believed that the words of such a man, pleading for the Church, would
sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of the Legate's
journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring France
into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was summoned
back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped nothing but
refusals, and that he went away disappointed.[45] The jeers of the
Protestants pursued him.[46] But it was sufficiently certain beforehand
that France could not plunge into a Turkish war.[47] The real business
of the Legate, besides proposing a Catholic husband for the Princess,
was to ascertain the object of the expedition which was fitting out in
the Western ports. On both points he had something favourable to report.
In his last despatch, dated Lyons, the 6th of March, he wrote that he
had failed to prevent the engagement with Navarre, but that he had
something for the Pope's private ear, which made his journey not
altogether unprofitable.[48] The secret was soon divulged in Italy. The
King had met the earnest remonstrances of the Legate by assuring him
that the marriage afforded the only prospect of wreaking vengeance on
the Huguenots: the event would show; he could say no more, but desired
his promise to be carried to the Pope. It was added that he had
presented a ring to the Legate, as a pledge of sincerity, which the
Legate refused. The first to publish this story was Capilupi, writing
only seven months later. It was repeated by Folieta,[49] and is given
with all details by the historians of Pius V.--Catena and Gabuzzi.
Catena was secretary to the Cardinal of Alessandria as early as July
1572, and submitted his work to him before publication.[50] Gabuzzi
wrote at the instance of the same Cardinal, who supplied him with
materials; and his book was examined and approved by Borghese,
afterwards Paul V. Both the Cardinal of Alessandria and Paul V.,
therefore, were instrumental in causing it to be proclaimed that the
Legate was acquainted in February 1572 with the intention which the King
carried out in August.
The testimony of Aldobrandini was given still more distinctly, and with
greater definiteness and authority. When he was required, as Pope, to
pronounce upon the dissolution of the ill-omened marriage, he related to
Borghese and other Cardinals what had passed in that interview between
the Legate and the King, adding that, when the report of the massacre
reached Rome, the Cardinal exclaimed: "God be praised! the King of
France has kept his word." Clement referred D'Ossat to a narrative of
the journey which he had written himself, and in which those things
would be found.[51] The clue thus given has been unaccountably
neglected, although the Report was known to exist. One copy is mentioned
by Giorgi; and Mazzuchelli knew of another. Neither of them had read it;
for they both ascribe it to Michele Bonelli, the Cardinal of
Alessandria. The first page would have satisfied them that it was not
his work. Clement VIII. describes the result of the mission to Blois in
these words: "Quae rationes eo impulerunt regem ut semel apprehensa manu
Cardinalis in hanc vocem proruperit: Significate Pontifici illumque
certum reddite me totum hoc quod circa id matrimonium feci et facturus
sum, nulla alia de causa facere, quam ulciscendi inimicos Dei et hujus
regni, et puniendi tam infidos rebelles, ut eventus ipse docebit, nec
aliud vobis amplius significare possum. Quo non obstante semper
Cardinalis eas subtexuit difficultates quas potuit, objiciens regi
possetne contrahi matrimonium a fidele cum infidele, sitve dispensatio
necessaria; quod si est nunquam Pontificem inductum iri ut illam
concedat. Re ipsa ita in suspenso relicta discedendum esse putavit, cum
jam rescivisset qua de causa naves parabantur, qui apparatus contra
Rocellam tendebant."
The opinion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and
unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the
only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of
the Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it
as her last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could
not resort to it while her son was virtually a minor.[52] She suggested
the idea to him in 1570. In that year he gave orders that the Huguenots
should be slaughtered at Bourges. The letter is preserved in which La
Chastre spurned the command: "If the people of Bourges learn that your
Majesty takes pleasure in such tragedies, they will repeat them often.
If these men must die, let them first be tried; but do not reward my
services and sully my reputation by such a stain."[53]
In the autumn of 1571 Coligny came to Blois. Walsingham suspected, and
was afterwards convinced that the intention to kill him already existed.
The Pope was much displeased by his presence at Court; but he received
assurances from the ambassador which satisfied him. It was said at the
time that he at first believed that Coligny was to be murdered, but that
he soon found that there was no such praiseworthy design.[54]
In December the King knew that, when the moment came, the burghers of
Paris would not fail him. Marcel, the Prévôt des Marchands, told him
that the wealth was driven out of the country by the Huguenots: "The
Catholics will bear it no longer.... Let your Majesty look to it. Your
crown is at stake, Paris alone can save it."[55] By the month of
February 1572 the plan had assumed a practical shape. The political idea
before the mind of Charles was the same by which Richelieu afterwards
made France the first Power in the world; to repress the Protestants at
home, and to encourage them abroad. No means of effectual repression was
left but murder. But the idea of raising up enemies to Spain by means of
Protestantism was thoroughly understood. The Huguenots were allowed to
make an expedition to aid William of Orange. Had they gained some
substantial success, the Government would have followed it up, and the
scheme of Coligny would have become for the moment the policy of France.
But the Huguenot commander Genlis was defeated and taken. Coligny had
had his chance. He had played and lost. It was useless now to propose
his great venture against the King of Spain.[56]
Philip II. perfectly understood that this event was decisive. When the
news came from Hainaut, he sent to the Nuncio Castagna to say that the
King of France would gain more than himself by the loss of so many brave
Protestants, and that the time was come for him, with the aid of the
people of Paris, to get rid of Coligny and the rest of his enemies.[57]
It appears from the letters of Salviati that he also regarded the
resolution as having been finally taken after the defeat of Genlis.
The Court had determined to enforce unity of faith in France. An edict
of toleration was issued for the purpose of lulling the Huguenots; but
it was well known that it was only a pretence.[58] Strict injunctions
were sent into the provinces that it should not be obeyed;[59] and
Catherine said openly to the English envoy, "My son will have exercise
but of one Religion in his Realm." On the 26th the King explained his
plan to Mondoucet, his agent at Brussels: "Since it has pleased God to
bring matters to the point they have now reached, I mean to use the
opportunity to secure a perpetual repose in my kingdom, and to do
something for the good of all Christendom. It is probable that the
conflagration will spread to every town in France, and that they will
follow the example of Paris, and lay hands on all the Protestants.... I
have written to the governors to assemble forces in order to cut to
pieces those who may resist."[60] The great object was to accomplish the
extirpation of Protestantism in such a way as might leave intact the
friendship with Protestant States. Every step was governed by this
consideration; and the difficulty of the task caused the inconsistencies
and the vacillation that ensued. By assassinating Coligny alone it was
expected that such an agitation would be provoked among his partisans
as would make it appear that they were killed by the Catholics in
self-defence. Reports were circulated at once with that object. A letter
written on the 23rd states that, after the Admiral was wounded on the
day before, the Huguenots assembled at the gate of the Louvre, to avenge
him on the Guises as they came out.[61] And the first explanation sent
forth by the Government on the 24th was to the effect that the old feud
between the Houses of Guise and of Châtillon had broken out with a fury
which it was impossible to quell. This fable lasted only for a single
day. On the 25th Charles writes that he has begun to discover traces of
a Huguenot conspiracy;[62] and on the following day this was publicly
substituted for the original story. Neither the vendetta of the Guises
nor the conspiracy at Paris could be made to explain the massacre in the
provinces. It required to be so managed that the King could disown it;
Salviati describes the plan of operations. It was intended that the
Huguenots should be slaughtered successively by a series of spontaneous
outbreaks in different parts of the country. While Rochelle held out, it
was dangerous to proceed with a more sweeping method.[63] Accordingly,
no written instructions from the King are in existence; and the
governors were expressly informed that they were to expect none.[64]
Messengers went into the provinces with letters requiring that the
verbal orders which they brought should be obeyed.[65] Many governors
refused to act upon directions so vague and so hard to verify. Burgundy
was preserved in this way. Two gentlemen arrived with letters of
recommendation from the King, and declared his commands. They were
asked to put them on paper; but they refused to give in writing what
they had received by word of mouth. Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, the
most ignoble of the instruments in this foul deed, complained that the
intimation of the royal wishes sent to him was obscure and
insufficient.[66] He did not do his work thoroughly, and incurred the
displeasure of the King. The orders were complicated as well as obscure.
The public authorities were required to collect the Huguenots in some
prison or other safe place, where they could be got at by hired bands of
volunteer assassins. To screen the King it was desirable that his
officers should not superintend the work themselves. Mandelot, having
locked the gates of Lyons, and shut up the Huguenots together, took
himself out of the way while they were being butchered. Carouge, at
Rouen, received a commission to visit the other towns in his province.
The magistrates implored him to remain, as nobody, in his absence, could
restrain the people. When the King had twice repeated his commands,
Carouge obeyed; and five hundred Huguenots perished.[67]
It was thought unsafe even for the King's brother to give distinct
orders under his own hand. He wrote to his lieutenant in Anjou that he
had commissioned Puygaillard to communicate with him on a matter which
concerned the King's service and his own, and desired that his orders
should be received as if they came directly from himself. They were,
that every Huguenot in Angers, Saumur, and the adjoining country should
be put to death without delay and without exception.[68] The Duke of
Montpensier himself sent the same order to Brittany; but it was
indignantly rejected by the municipality of Nantes.
When reports came in of the manner in which the event had been received
in foreign countries, the Government began to waver, and the sanguinary
orders were recalled. Schomberg wrote from Germany that the Protestant
allies were lost unless they could be satisfied that the King had not
decreed the extermination of their brethren.[69] He was instructed to
explain the tumult in the provinces by the animosity bequeathed by the
wars of religion.[70] The Bishop of Valence was intriguing in Poland on
behalf of Anjou. He wrote that his success had been made very doubtful,
and that, if further cruelties were perpetrated, ten millions of gold
pieces would not bribe the venal Poles. He advised that a counterfeit
edict, at least, should be published.[71] Charles perceived that he
would be compelled to abandon his enterprise, and set about appeasing
the resentment of the Protestant Powers. He promised that an inquiry
should be instituted, and the proofs of the conspiracy communicated to
foreign Governments. To give a judicial aspect to the proceedings, two
prominent Huguenots were ceremoniously hanged. When the new ambassador
from Spain praised the long concealment of the plan, Charles became
indignant.[72] It was repeated everywhere that the thing had been
arranged with Rome and Spain; and he was especially studious that there
should be no symptoms of a private understanding with either power.[73]
He was able to flatter himself that he had at least partially succeeded.
If he had not exterminated his Protestant subjects, he had preserved his
Protestant allies. William the Silent continued to solicit his aid;
Elizabeth consented to stand godmother to the daughter who was born to
him in October; he was allowed to raise mercenaries in Switzerland; and
the Polish Protestants agreed to the election of his brother. The
promised evidence of the Huguenot conspiracy was forgotten; and the King
suppressed the materials which were to have served for an official
history of the event.[74]
Zeal for religion was not the motive which inspired the chief authors of
this extraordinary crime. They were trained to look on the safety of the
monarchy as the sovereign law, and on the throne as an idol that
justified sins committed in its worship. At all times there have been
men, resolute and relentless in the pursuit of their aims, whose ardour
was too strong to be restricted by moral barriers or the instinct of
humanity. In the sixteenth century, beside the fanaticism of freedom,
there was an abject idolatry of power; and laws both human and divine
were made to yield to the intoxication of authority and the reign of
will. It was laid down that kings have the right of disposing of the
lives of their subjects, and may dispense with the forms of justice. The
Church herself, whose supreme pontiff was now an absolute monarch, was
infected with this superstition. Catholic writers found an opportune
argument for their religion in the assertion that it makes the prince
master of the consciences as well as the bodies of the people, and
enjoins submission even to the vilest tyranny.[75] Men whose lives were
precious to the Catholic cause could be murdered by royal command,
without protest from Rome. When the Duke of Guise, with the Cardinal his
brother, was slain by Henry III., he was the most powerful and devoted
upholder of Catholicism in France. Sixtus V. thundered against the
sacrilegious tyrant who was stained with the blood of a prince of the
Church; but he let it be known very distinctly that the death of the
Duke caused him little concern.[76]
Catherine was the daughter of that Medici to whom Machiavelli had
dedicated his _Prince_. So little did religion actuate her conduct that
she challenged Elizabeth to do to the Catholics of England what she
herself had done to the Protestants of France, promising that if they
were destroyed there would be no loss of her good will.[77] The levity
of her religious feelings appears from her reply when asked by Gomicourt
what message he should take to the Duke of Alva: "I must give you the
answer of Christ to the disciples of St. John, 'Ite et nuntiate quae
vidistis et audivistis; caeci vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi
mundantur.'" And she added, "Beatus qui non fuerit in me
scandalizatus."[78]
If mere fanaticism had been their motive, the men who were most active
in the massacre would not have spared so many lives. While Guise was
galloping after Ferrières and Montgomery, who had taken horse betimes,
and made for the coast, his house at Paris was crowded with families
belonging to the proscribed faith, and strangers to him. A young girl
who was amongst them has described his return, when he sent for the
children, spoke to them kindly, and gave orders that they should be well
treated as long as his roof sheltered them.[79] Protestants even spoke
of him as a humane and chivalrous enemy.[80] Nevers was considered to
have disgraced himself by the number of those whom he enabled to
escape.[81] The Nuncio was shocked at their ill-timed generosity. He
reported to Rome that the only one who had acted in the spirit of a
Christian, and had refrained from mercy, was the King; while the other
princes, who pretended to be good Catholics, and to deserve the favour
of the Pope, had striven, one and all, to save as many Huguenots as they
could.[82]
The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs
and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not
so strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no
present injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable
perversion of moral sense wrought by a distorted piety.
Philip II., who had long suspected the court of France, was at once
relieved from the dread which had oppressed him, and betrayed an excess
of joy foreign to his phlegmatic nature.[83] He immediately sent six
thousand crowns to the murderer of Coligny.[84] He persuaded himself
that the breach between France and her allies was irreparable, that
Charles would now be driven to seek his friendship, and that the
Netherlands were out of danger.[85] He listened readily to the French
ambassador, who assured him that his court had never swerved from the
line of Catholic policy, but had intended all along to effect this great
change.[86] Ayamonte carried his congratulations to Paris, and pretended
that his master had been in the secret. It suited Philip that this
should be believed by Protestant princes, in order to estrange them
still more from France; but he wrote on the margin of Ayamonte's
instructions, that it was uncertain how long previously the purpose had
subsisted.[87] Juan and Diego de Zuñiga, his ambassadors at Rome and at
Paris, were convinced that the long display of enmity to Spain was
genuine, that the death of Coligny had been decided at the last moment,
and that the rest was not the effect of design.[88] This opinion found
friends at first in Spain. The General of the Franciscans undertook to
explode it. He assured Philip that he had seen the King and the
Queen-mother two years before, and had found them already so intent on
the massacre that he wondered how anybody could have the courage to
detract from their merit by denying it.[89] This view generally
prevailed in Spain. Mendoça knows not which to admire more, the loyal
and Catholic inhabitants of Paris, or Charles, who justified his title
of the most Christian King by helping with his own hands to slaughter
his subjects.[90] Mariana witnessed the carnage, and imagined that it
must gladden every Catholic heart. Other Spaniards were gratified to
think that it had been contrived with Alva at Bayonne.
Alva himself did not judge the event by the same light as Philip. He
also had distrusted the French Government; but he had not feared it
during the ascendency of the Huguenots. Their fall appeared to him to
strengthen France. In public he rejoiced with the rest. He complimented
Charles on his valour and his religion, and claimed his own share of
merit. But he warned Philip that things had not changed favourably for
Spain, and that the King of France was now a formidable neighbour.[91]
For himself, he said, he never would have committed so base a deed.
The seven Catholic Cantons had their own reason for congratulation.
Their countrymen had been busy actors on the scene; and three soldiers
of the Swiss guard of Anjou were named as the slayers of the
Admiral.[92] On the 2nd of October they agreed to raise 6000 men for the
King's service. At the following Diet they demanded the expulsion of
the fugitive Huguenots who had taken refuge in the Protestant parts of
the Confederation. They made overtures to the Pope for a secret alliance
against their Confederates.[93]
In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale
destruction was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act. Even the
sage Venetians were constrained to celebrate it with a procession. The
Grand Duke Cosmo had pointed out two years before that an insidious
peace would afford excellent opportunities of extinguishing
Protestantism; and he derived inexpressible consolation from the heroic
enterprise.[94] The Viceroy of Naples, Cardinal Granvelle, received the
tidings coldly. He was surprised that the event had been so long
postponed, and he reproved the Cardinal of Lorraine for the
unstatesmanlike delay.[95] The Italians generally were excited to warmer
feelings. They saw nothing to regret but the death of certain Catholics
who had been sacrificed to private revenge. Profane men approved the
skill with which the trap was laid; and pious men acknowledged the
presence of a genuine religious spirit in the French court.[96] The
nobles and the Parisian populace were admired for their valour in
obeying the sanctified commands of the good King. One fervent enthusiast
praises God for the heavenly news, and also St. Bartholomew for having
lent his extremely penetrating knife for the salutary sacrifice.[97] A
month after the event the renowned preacher Panigarola delivered from
the pulpit a panegyric on the monarch who had achieved what none had
ever heard or read before, by banishing heresy in a single day, and by a
single word, from the Christian land of France.[98]
The French churches had often resounded with furious declamations; and
they afterwards rang with canticles of unholy joy. But the French clergy
does not figure prominently in the inception or the execution of the
sanguinary decree. Conti, a contemporary indeed, but too distant for
accurate knowledge, relates that the parish priest went round, marking
with a white cross the dwellings of the people who were doomed.[99] He
is contradicted by the municipal Registers of Paris.[100] Morvilliers,
Bishop of Orleans, though he had resigned the seals which he received
from L'Hôpital, still occupied the first place at the royal council. He
was consulted at the last moment, and it is said that he nearly fainted
with horror. He recovered, and gave his opinion with the rest. He is the
only French prelate, except the cardinals, whose complicity appears to
be ascertained. But at Orleans, where the bloodshed was more dreadful in
proportion than at Paris, the signal is said to have been given, not by
the bishop, but by the King's preacher, Sorbin.
Sorbin is the only priest of the capital who is distinctly associated
with the act of the Government. It was his opinion that God has ordained
that no mercy shall be shown to heretics, that Charles was bound in
conscience to do what he did, and that leniency would have been as
censurable in his case as precipitation was in that of Theodosius. What
the Calvinists called perfidy and cruelty seemed to him nothing but
generosity and kindness.[101] These were the sentiments of the man from
whose hands Charles IX. received the last consolations of his religion.
It has been related that he was tortured in his last moments with
remorse for the blood he had shed. His spiritual adviser was fitted to
dispel such scruples. He tells us that he heard the last confession of
the dying King, and that his most grievous sorrow was that he left the
work unfinished.[102] In all that bloodstained history there is nothing
more tragic than the scene in which the last words preparing the soul
for judgment were spoken by such a confessor as Sorbin to such a
penitent as Charles.
Edmond Auger, one of the most able and eloquent of the Jesuits, was at
that time attracting multitudes by his sermons at Bordeaux. He denounced
with so much violence the heretics and the people in authority who
protected them, that the magistrates, fearing a cry for blood, proposed
to silence or to moderate the preacher. Montpezat, Lieutenant of
Guienne, arrived in time to prevent it. On the 30th of September he
wrote to the King that he had done this, and that there were a score of
the inhabitants who might be despatched with advantage. Three days
later, when he was gone, more than two hundred Huguenots were
murdered.[103]
Apart from these two instances it is not known that the clergy
interfered in any part of France to encourage the assassins.
The belief was common at the time, and is not yet extinct, that the
massacre had been promoted and sanctioned by the Court of Rome. No
evidence of this complicity, prior to the event, has ever been produced;
but it seemed consistent with what was supposed to have occurred in the
affair of the dispensation. The marriage of Margaret of Valois with the
King of Navarre was invalid and illicit in the eyes of the Church; and
it was known that Pius V. had sworn that he would never permit it. When
it had been celebrated by a Cardinal, in the presence of a splendid
court, and no more was heard of resistance on the part of Rome, the
world concluded that the dispensation had been obtained. De Thou says,
in a manuscript note, that it had been sent, and was afterwards
suppressed by Salviati; and the French bishop, Spondanus, assigns the
reasons which induced Gregory XIII. to give way.[104] Others affirmed
that he had yielded when he learned that the marriage was a snare, so
that the massacre was the price of the dispensation.[105] The Cardinal
of Lorraine gave currency to the story. As he caused it to be understood
that he had been in the secret, it seemed probable that he had told the
Pope; for they had been old friends.[106] In the commemorative
inscription which he put up in the Church of St. Lewis he spoke of the
King's gratitude to the Holy See for its assistance and for its advice
in the matter--"consiliorum ad eam rem datorum." It is probable that he
inspired the narrative which has contributed most to sustain the
imputation.
Among the Italians of the French faction who made it their duty to
glorify the act of Charles IX., the Capilupi family was conspicuous.
They came from Mantua, and appear to have been connected with the French
interest through Lewis Gonzaga, who had become by marriage Duke of
Nevers, and one of the foremost personages in France. Hippolyto
Capilupi, Bishop of Fano, and formerly Nuncio at Venice, resided at
Rome, busy with French politics and Latin poetry. When Charles refused
to join the League, the Bishop of Fano vindicated his neutrality in a
letter to the Duke of Urbino.[107] When he slew the Huguenots, the
Bishop addressed him in verse,--
Fortunate puer, paret cui Gallica tellus,
Quique vafros ludis pervigil arte viros,
Ille tibi debet, toti qui praesidet Orbi,
Cui nihil est cordi religione prius....
Qui tibi saepe dolos struxit, qui vincla paravit,
Tu puer in laqueos induis arte senem....
Nunc florent, tolluntque caput tua lilia, et astris
Clarius hostili tincta cruore micant.[108]
Camillo Capilupi, a nephew of the Mantuan bard, held office about the
person of the Pope, and was employed on missions of consequence.[109] As
soon as the news from Paris reached Rome he drew up the account which
became so famous under the title of _Lo Stratagemma di Carlo IX_. The
dedication is dated the 18th of September 1572.[110] This tract was
suppressed, and was soon so rare that its existence was unknown in 1574
to the French translator of the second edition. Capilupi republished his
book with alterations, and a preface dated the 22nd of October. The
substance and purpose of the two editions is the same. Capilupi is not
the official organ of the Roman court: he was not allowed to see the
letters of the Nuncio. He wrote to proclaim the praises of the King of
France and the Duke of Nevers. At that moment the French party in Rome
was divided by the quarrel between the ambassador Ferralz and the
Cardinal of Lorraine, who had contrived to get the management of French
affairs into his own hands.[111] Capilupi was on the side of the
Cardinal, and received information from those who were about him. The
chief anxiety of these men was that the official version which
attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no
credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his
participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher
in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the
authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim
to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between
them for the first and largest share in the gratitude of the Holy See.
Lorraine prevailed with the Pope, who not only loaded him with honours,
but rewarded him with benefices worth 4000 crowns a year for his nephew,
and a gift of 20,000 crowns for his son. But he found that he had fallen
into disgrace at Paris, and feared for his position at Rome.[112] In
these circumstances Capilupi's book appeared, and enumerated a series of
facts proving that the Cardinal was cognisant of the royal design. It
adds little to the evidence of premeditation. Capilupi relates that
Santa Croce, returning from France, had assured Pius V., in the name of
Catherine, that she intended one day to entrap Coligny, and to make a
signal butchery of him and his adherents, and that letters in which the
Queen renewed this promise to the Pope had been read by credible
witnesses. Santa Croce was living, and did not contradict the statement.
The _Stratagemma_ had originally stated that Lorraine had informed
Sermoneta of the project soon after he arrived at Rome. In the reprint
this passage was omitted. The book had, therefore, undergone a censorial
revision, which enhances the authenticity of the final narrative.
Two other pieces are extant, which were printed at the Stamperia
Camerale, and show what was believed at Rome. One is in the shape of a
letter written at Lyons in the midst of scenes of death, and describing
what the author had witnessed on the spot, and what he heard from
Paris.[113] He reports that the King had positively commanded that not
one Huguenot should escape, and was overjoyed at the accomplishment of
his orders. He believes the thing to have been premeditated, and
inspired by Divine justice. The other tract is remarkable because it
strives to reconcile the pretended conspiracy with the hypothesis of
premeditation.[114] There were two plots which went parallel for months.
The King knew that Coligny was compassing his death, and deceived him by
feigning to enter into his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries;
and Coligny, allowing himself to be overreached, summoned his friends to
Paris, for the purpose of killing Charles, on the 23rd of August. The
writer expects that there will soon be no Huguenots in France. Capilupi
at first borrowed several of his facts, which he afterwards corrected.
The real particulars relative to the marriage are set forth minutely in
the correspondence of Ferralz; and they absolutely contradict the
supposition of the complicity of Rome.[115] It was celebrated in
flagrant defiance of the Pope, who persisted in refusing the
dispensation, and therefore acted in a way which could only serve to
mar the plot. The accusation has been kept alive by his conduct after
the event. The Jesuit who wrote his life by desire of his son, says that
Gregory thanked God in private, but that in public he gave signs of a
tempered joy.[116] But the illuminations and processions, the singing of
Te Deum and the firing of the castle guns, the jubilee, the medal, and
the paintings whose faded colours still vividly preserve to our age the
passions of that day, nearly exhaust the modes by which a Pope could
manifest delight.
Charles IX. and Salviati both wrote to Rome on St. Bartholomew's Day;
and the ambassador's nephew, Beauville, set off with the tidings. They
were known before he arrived. On the 27th, Mandelot's secretary
despatched a secret messenger from Lyons with orders to inform the Pope
that the Huguenot leaders were slain, and that their adherents were to
be secured all over France. The messenger reached Rome on the 2nd of
September, and was immediately carried to the Pope by the Cardinal of
Lorraine. Gregory rewarded him for the welcome intelligence with a
present of a hundred crowns, and desired that Rome should be at once
illuminated. This was prevented by Ferralz, who tried the patience of
the Romans by declining their congratulations as long as he was not
officially informed.[117] Beauville and the courier of the Nuncio
arrived on the 5th. The King's letter, like all that he wrote on the
first day, ascribed the outbreak to the old hatred between the rival
Houses, and to the late attempt on the Admiral's life. He expressed a
hope that the dispensation would not now be withheld, but left all
particulars to Beauville, whose own eyes had beheld the scene.[118]
Beauville told his story, and repeated the King's request; but Gregory,
though much gratified with what he heard, remained inflexible.[119]
Salviati had written on the afternoon of the 24th. He desired to fling
himself at the Pope's feet to wish him joy. His fondest hopes had been
surpassed. Although he had known what was in store for Coligny, he had
not expected that there would be energy and prudence to seize the
occasion for the destruction of the rest. A new era had commenced; a new
compass was required for French affairs. It was a fair sight to see the
Catholics in the streets wearing white crosses, and cutting down
heretics; and it was thought that, as fast as the news spread, the same
thing would be done in all the towns of France.[120] This letter was
read before the assembled Cardinals at the Venetian palace, and they
thereupon attended the Pope to a Te Deum in the nearest church.[121]
The guns of St. Angelo were fired in the evening, and the city was
illuminated for three nights. To disregard the Pope's will in this
respect would have savoured of heresy. Gregory XIII. exclaimed that the
massacre was more agreeable to him than fifty victories of Lepanto. For
some weeks the news from the French provinces sustained the rapture and
excitement of the Court.[122] It was hoped that other countries would
follow the example of France; the Emperor was informed that something of
the same kind was expected of him.[123] On the 8th of September the Pope
went in procession to the French Church of St. Lewis, where
three-and-thirty Cardinals attended at a mass of thanksgiving. On the
11th he proclaimed a jubilee. In the Bull he said that forasmuch as God
had armed the King of France to inflict vengeance on the heretics for
the injuries done to religion, and to punish the leaders of the
rebellion which had devastated his kingdom, Catholics should pray that
he might have grace to pursue his auspicious enterprise to the end, and
so complete what he had begun so well.[124] Before a month had passed
Vasari was summoned from Florence to decorate the hall of kings with
paintings of the massacre.[125] The work was pronounced his masterpiece;
and the shameful scene may still be traced upon the wall, where, for
three centuries, it has insulted every pontiff that entered the Sixtine
Chapel.
The story that the Huguenots had perished because they were detected
plotting the King's death was known at Rome on the 6th of September.
While the sham edict and the imaginary trial served to confirm it in the
eyes of Europe, Catherine and her son took care that it should not
deceive the Pope. They assured him that they meant to disregard the
edict. To excuse his sister's marriage, the King pleaded that it had
been concluded for no object but vengeance; and he promised that there
would soon be not a heretic in the country.[126] This was corroborated
by Salviati. As to the proclaimed toleration, he knew that it was a
device to disarm foreign enmity, and prevent a popular commotion. He
testified that the Queen spoke truly when she said that she had confided
to him, long before, the real purpose of her daughter's
engagement.[127] He exposed the hollow pretence of the plot. He
announced that its existence would be established by formalities of law,
but added that it was so notoriously false that none but an idiot could
believe in it.[128] Gregory gave no countenance to the official
falsehood. At the reception of the French ambassador, Rambouillet, on
the 23rd of December, Muretus made his famous speech. He said that there
could not have been a happier beginning for a new pontificate, and
alluded to the fabulous plot in the tone exacted of French officials.
The Secretary, Boccapaduli, replying in behalf of the Pope, thanked the
King for destroying the enemies of Christ; but strictly avoided the
conventional fable.[129]
Cardinal Orsini went as Legate to France. He had been appointed in
August, and he was to try to turn the King's course into that line of
policy from which he had strayed under Protestant guidance. He had not
left Rome when the events occurred which altered the whole situation.
Orsini was now charged with felicitations, and was to urge Charles not
to stop half-way.[130] An ancient and obsolete ceremonial was suddenly
revived; and the Cardinals accompanied him to the Flaminian gate.[131]
This journey of Orsini, and the pomp with which it was surrounded, were
exceedingly unwelcome at Paris. It was likely to be taken as proof of
that secret understanding with Rome which threatened to rend the
delicate web in which Charles was striving to hold the confidence of
the Protestant world.[132] He requested that the Legate might be
recalled; and the Pope was willing that there should be some delay.
While Orsini tarried on his way, Gregory's reply to the announcement of
the massacre arrived at Paris. It was a great consolation to himself, he
said, and an extraordinary grace vouchsafed to Christendom. But he
desired, for the glory of God and the good of France, that the Huguenots
should be extirpated utterly; and with that view he demanded the
revocation of the edict. When Catherine knew that the Pope was not yet
satisfied, and sought to direct the actions of the King, she could
hardly restrain her rage. Salviati had never seen her so furious. The
words had hardly passed his lips when she exclaimed that she wondered at
such designs, and was resolved to tolerate no interference in the
government of the kingdom. She and her son were Catholics from
conviction, and not through fear or influence. Let the Pope content
himself with that.[133] The Nuncio had at once foreseen that the court,
after crushing the Huguenots, would not become more amenable to the
counsels of Rome. He wrote, on the very day of St. Bartholomew, that the
King would be very jealous of his authority, and would exact obedience
from both sides alike.
At this untoward juncture Orsini appeared at Court. To Charles, who had
done so much, it seemed unreasonable that he should be asked for more.
He represented to Orsini that it was impossible to eradicate all the
remnants of a faction which had been so strong. He had put seventy
thousand Huguenots to the sword; and, if he had shown compassion to the
rest, it was in order that they might become good Catholics.[134]
The hidden thoughts which the Court of Rome betrayed by its conduct on
this memorable occasion have brought upon the Pope himself an amount of
hatred greater than he deserved. Gregory XIII. appears as a pale figure
between the two strongest of the modern Popes, without the intense zeal
of the one and the ruthless volition of the other. He was not prone to
large conceptions or violent resolutions. He had been converted late in
life to the spirit of the Tridentine Reformation; and when he showed
rigour it was thought to be not in his character, but in the counsels of
those who influenced him.[135] He did not instigate the crime, nor the
atrocious sentiments that hailed it. In the religious struggle a frenzy
had been kindled which made weakness violent, and turned good men into
prodigies of ferocity; and at Rome, where every loss inflicted on
Catholicism and every wound was felt, the belief that, in dealing with
heretics, murder is better than toleration prevailed for half a century.
The predecessor of Gregory had been Inquisitor-General. In his eyes
Protestants were worse than Pagans, and Lutherans more dangerous than
other Protestants.[136] The Capuchin preacher, Pistoja, bore witness
that men were hanged and quartered almost daily at Rome;[137] and Pius
declared that he would release a culprit guilty of a hundred murders
rather than one obstinate heretic.[138] He seriously contemplated razing
the town of Faenza because it was infested with religious error, and he
recommended a similar expedient to the King of France.[139] He adjured
him to hold no intercourse with the Huguenots, to make no terms with
them, and not to observe the terms he had made. He required that they
should be pursued to the death, that not one should be spared under any
pretence, that all prisoners should suffer death.[140] He threatened
Charles with the punishment of Saul when he forebore to exterminate the
Amalekites.[141] He told him that it was his mission to avenge the
injuries of the Lord, and that nothing is more cruel than mercy to the
impious.[142] When he sanctioned the murder of Elizabeth he proposed
that it should be done in execution of his sentence against her.[143] It
became usual with those who meditated assassination or regicide on the
plea of religion to look upon the representatives of Rome as their
natural advisers. On the 21st of January 1591, a young Capuchin came, by
permission of his superiors, to Sega, Bishop of Piacenza, then Nuncio at
Paris. He said that he was inflamed with the desire of a martyr's death;
and having been assured by divines that it would be meritorious to kill
that heretic and tyrant, Henry of Navarre, he asked to be dispensed from
the rule of his Order while he prepared his measures and watched his
opportunity. The Nuncio would not do this without authority from Rome;
but the prudence, courage, and humility which he discerned in the friar
made him believe that the design was really inspired from above. To make
this certain, and to remove all scruples, he submitted the matter to the
Pope, and asked his blessing upon it, promising that whatever he decided
should be executed with all discretion.[144]
The same ideas pervaded the Sacred College under Gregory. There are
letters of profuse congratulation by the Cardinals of Lorraine, Este,
and Pellevé. Bourbon was an accomplice before the fact. Granvelle
condemned not the act but the delay. Delfino and Santorio approved. The
Cardinal of Alessandria had refused the King's gift at Blois, and had
opposed his wishes at the conclave. Circumstances were now so much
altered that the ring was offered to him again, and this time it was
accepted.[145] The one dissentient from the chorus of applause is said
to have been Montalto. His conduct when he became Pope makes it very
improbable; and there is no good authority for the story. But Leti has
it, who is so far from a panegyrist that it deserves mention.
The theory which was framed to justify these practices has done more
than plots and massacres to cast discredit on the Catholics. This theory
was as follows: Confirmed heretics must be rigorously punished whenever
it can be done without the probability of greater evil to religion.
Where that is feared, the penalty may be suspended or delayed for a
season, provided it be inflicted whenever the danger is past.[146]
Treaties made with heretics, and promises given to them must not be
kept, because sinful promises do not bind, and no agreement is lawful
which may injure religion or ecclesiastical authority. No civil power
may enter into engagements which impede the free scope of the Church's
law.[147] It is part of the punishment of heretics that faith shall not
be kept with them.[148] It is even mercy to kill them that they may sin
no more.[149]
Such were the precepts and the examples by which the French Catholics
learned to confound piety and ferocity, and were made ready to immolate
their countrymen. During the civil war an association was formed in the
South for the purpose of making war upon the Huguenots; and it was
fortified by Pius V. with blessings and indulgences. "We doubt not," it
proclaimed, "that we shall be victorious over these enemies of God and
of all humankind; and if we fall, our blood will be as a second baptism,
by which, without impediment, we shall join the other martyrs
straightway in heaven."[150] Monluc, who told Alva at Bayonne that he
had never spared an enemy, was shot through the face at the siege of
Rabasteins. Whilst he believed that he was dying, they came to tell him
that the place was taken. "Thank God!" he said, "that I have lived long
enough to behold our victory; and now I care not for death. Go back, I
beseech you, and give me a last proof of friendship, by seeing that not
one man of the garrison escapes alive."[151] When Alva had defeated and
captured Genlis, and expected to make many more Huguenot prisoners in
the garrison of Mons, Charles IX. wrote to Mondoucet "that it would be
for the service of God, and of the King of Spain, that they should die.
If the Duke of Alva answers that this is a tacit request to have all the
prisoners cut to pieces, you will tell him that that is what he must do,
and that he will injure both himself and all Christendom if he fails to
do it."[152] This request also reached Alva through Spain. Philip wrote
on the margin of the despatch that, if he had not yet put them out of
the world, he must do so immediately, as there could be no reason for
delay.[153] The same thought occurred to others. On the 22nd of July
Salviati writes that it would be a serious blow to the faction if Alva
would kill his prisoners; and Granvelle wrote that, as they were all
Huguenots, it would be well to throw them all into the river.[154]
Where these sentiments prevailed, Gregory XIII. was not alone in
deploring that the work had been but half done. After the first
explosion of gratified surprise men perceived that the thing was a
failure, and began to call for more. The clergy of Rouen Cathedral
instituted a procession of thanksgiving, and prayed that the King might
continue what he had so virtuously begun, until all France should
profess one faith.[155] There are signs that Charles was tempted at one
moment, during the month of October, to follow up the blow.[156] But he
died without pursuing the design; and the hopes were turned to his
successor. When Henry III. passed through Italy on his way to assume the
crown, there were some who hoped that the Pope would induce him to set
resolutely about the extinction of the Huguenots. A petition was
addressed to Gregory for this purpose, in which the writer says that
hitherto the French court has erred on the side of mercy, but that the
new king might make good the error if rejecting that pernicious maxim
that noble blood spilt weakens a kingdom, he would appoint an execution
which would be cruel only in appearance, but in reality glorious and
holy, and destroy the heretics totally, sparing neither life nor
property.[157] Similar exhortations were addressed from Rome to Henry
himself by Muzio, a layman who had gained repute, among other things, by
controversial writings, of which Pius V. said that they had preserved
the faith in whole districts, and who had been charged with the task of
refuting the Centuriators. On the 17th of July 1574, Muzio wrote to the
King that all Italy waited in reliance on his justice and valour, and
besought him to spare neither old nor young, and to regard neither rank
nor ties of blood.[158] These hopes also were doomed to disappointment;
and a Frenchman, writing in the year of Henry's death, laments over the
cruel clemency and inhuman mercy that reigned on St. Bartholomew's
Day.[159]
This was not the general opinion of the Catholic world. In Spain and
Italy, where hearts were hardened and consciences corrupted by the
Inquisition; in Switzerland, where the Catholics lived in suspicion and
dread of their Protestant neighbours; among ecclesiastical princes in
Germany, whose authority waned as fast as their subjects abjured their
faith, the massacre was welcomed as an act of Christian fortitude. But
in France itself the great mass of the people was struck with
consternation.[160] "Which maner of proceedings," writes Walsingham on
the 13th of September, "is by the Catholiques themselves utterly
condemned, who desire to depart hence out of this country, to quit
themselves of this strange kind of government, for that they see here
none can assure themselves of either goods or life." Even in places
still steeped in mourning for the atrocities suffered at the hands of
Huguenots during the civil war, at Nîmes, for instance, the King's
orders produced no act of vengeance. At Carcassonne, the ancient seat of
the Inquisition, the Catholics concealed the Protestants in their
houses.[161] In Provence, the news from Lyons and the corpses that came
down in the poisoned waters of the Rhone awakened nothing but horror and
compassion.[162] Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham that in England
"the minds of the most number are much alienated from that nation, even
of the very Papists."[163] At Rome itself Zuñiga pronounced the
treachery of which the French were boasting unjustifiable, even in the
case of heretics and rebels;[164] and it was felt as an outrage to
public opinion when the murderer of Coligny was presented to the
Pope.[165] The Emperor was filled with grief and indignation. He said
that the King and Queen-mother would live to learn that nothing could
have been more iniquitously contrived or executed: his uncle Charles V.,
and his father Ferdinand, had made war on the Protestants, but they had
never been guilty of so cruel an act.[166] At that moment Maximilian was
seeking the crown of Poland for his son; and the events in France were a
weapon in his hands against his rival, Anjou. Even the Czar of Muscovy,
Ivan the Terrible, replying to his letters, protested that all Christian
princes must lament the barbarous and needless shedding of so much
innocent blood. It was not the rivalry of the moment that animated
Maximilian. His whole life proves him to have been an enemy of violence
and cruelty; and his celebrated letter to Schwendi, written long after,
shows that his judgment remained unchanged. It was the Catholic Emperor
who roused the Lutheran Elector of Saxony to something like resentment
of the butchery in France.[167]
For the Lutherans were not disposed to recognise the victims of Charles
IX. as martyrs for the Protestant cause. During the wars of religion
Lutheran auxiliaries were led by a Saxon prince, a margrave of Baden,
and other German magnates, to aid the Catholic forces in putting down
the heresy of Calvin. These feelings were so well known that the French
Government demanded of the Duke of Wirtemberg the surrender of the
Huguenots who had fled into his dominions.[168] Lutheran divines
flattered themselves at first with the belief that it was the
Calvinistic error, not the Protestant truth, that had invited and
received the blow.[169] The most influential of them, Andreæ, declared
that the Huguenots were not martyrs but rebels, who had died not for
religion but sedition; and he bade the princes beware of the contagion
of their spirit, which had deluged other lands with blood. When
Elizabeth proposed a league for the defence of Protestantism, the North
German divines protested against an alliance with men whose crime was
not only religious error but blasphemous obstinacy, the root of many
dreadful heresies. The very proposal, they said, argued a disposition to
prefer human succour rather than the word of God.[170] When another
invitation came from Henry of Navarre, the famous divine Chemnitz
declared union with the disciples of Calvin a useless abomination.[171]
The very men whose own brethren had perished in France were not hearty
or unanimous in execrating the deed.[172] There were Huguenots who
thought that their party had brought ruin on itself, by provoking its
enemies, and following the rash counsels of ambitious men.[173] This
was the opinion of their chief, Theodore Beza, himself. Six weeks
before, he wrote that they were gaining in numbers but losing in
quality, and he feared lest, after destroying superstition, they should
destroy religion: "Valde metuo ne superstitioni successerit
impietas."[174] And afterwards he declared that nobody who had known the
state of the French Protestants could deny that it was a most just
judgment upon them.[175]
Beza held very stringent doctrines touching the duty of the civil
magistrate to repress religious error. He thought that heresy is worse
than murder, and that the good of society requires no crime to be more
severely punished.[176] He declared toleration contrary to revealed
religion and the constant tradition of the Church, and taught that
lawful authority must be obeyed, even by those whom it persecutes. He
expressly recognised this function in Catholic States, and urged
Sigismund not to rest until he had got rid of the Socinians in
Poland;[177] but he could not prevail against the vehement resistance of
Cardinal Hosius. It was embarrassing to limit these principles when they
were applied against his own Church. For a moment Beza doubted whether
it had not received its death-blow in France. But he did not qualify the
propositions which were open to be interpreted so fatally,[178] or deny
that his people, by their vices, if not by their errors, had deserved
what they had suffered.
The applause which greeted their fate came not from the Catholics
generally, nor from the Catholics alone. While the Protestants were
ready to palliate or excuse it, the majority of the Catholics who were
not under the direct influence of Madrid or Rome recognised the
inexpiable horror of the crime. But the desire to defend what the Pope
approved survived sporadically, when the old fierceness of dogmatic
hatred was extinct. A generation passed without any perceptible change
in the judgment of Rome. It was a common charge against De Thou that he
had condemned the blameless act of Charles IX. The blasphemies of the
Huguenots, said one of his critics, were more abominable than their
retribution.[179] His History was put on the Index; and Cardinal
Barberini let him know that he was condemned because he not only
favoured Protestants to the detriment of Catholics, but had even
disapproved the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.[180] Eudæmon-Johannes, the
friend of Bellarmine, pronounces it a pious and charitable act, which
immortalised its author.[181] Another Jesuit, Bompiani, says that it was
grateful to Gregory, because it was likely to relieve the Church.[182]
The well-known apology for Charles IX. by Naudé is based rather on
political than religious grounds; but his contemporary Guyon, whose
History of Orleans is pronounced by the censors full of sound doctrine
and pious sentiment, deems it unworthy of Catholics to speak of the
murder of heretics as if it were a crime, because, when done under
lawful authority, it is a blessed thing.[183] When Innocent XI. refused
to approve the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Frenchmen wondered
that he should so far depart from the example which was kept before him
by one of the most conspicuous ornaments of his palace.[184] The old
spirit was decaying fast in France, and the superb indignation of
Bossuet fairly expresses the general opinion of his time. Two works were
published on the medals of the Popes, by a French and an Italian writer.
The Frenchman awkwardly palliates the conduct of Gregory XIII.; the
Italian heartily defends it.[185] In Italy it was still dangerous
ground. Muratori shrinks from pronouncing on the question,[186] while
Cienfuegos, a Jesuit whom his Order esteemed one of the most
distinguished Cardinals of the day, judges that Charles IX. died too
soon for his fame.[187] Tempesti, who lived under the enlightened rule
of Benedict XIV., accuses Catherine of having arrested the slaughter, in
order that some cause should remain to create a demand for her
counsels.[188] The German Jesuit Biner and the Papal historian Piatti,
just a century ago, are among the last downright apologists.[189]
Then there was a change. A time came when the Catholics, having long
relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had
been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously
explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now
prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and
restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and
that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to
say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at
Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A
swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were
insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with
religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a
reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted
with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard
that it was over.[190] These things were repeated so often that they
have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of
speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in
their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was
pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church,
which were published only last year,[191] he said that the Catholics, as
such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest
shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope
that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his
thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved.[192] Such things
will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit
that gives dignity and worth to history.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: _North British Review_, Oct. 1869.]
[Footnote 7: Satius fore ducebam, si minus profligari possent omnes, ut
ferrentur omnes, quo mordentes et comedentes invicem, consumerentur ab
invicem (Hosius to Karnkowsky, Feb. 26, 1568).]
[Footnote 8: The Secretary of Medina Celi to Çayas, June 24, 1572
(_Correspondance de Philippe II._, ii. 264).]
[Footnote 9: Quant à ce qui me touche à moy en particulier, encores que
j'ayme unicquement tous mes enffans, je veulx préférer, comme il est
bien raysonnable, les filz aux filles; et pour le regard de ce que me
mandez de celluy qui a faict mourir ma fille, c'est chose que l'on ne
tient point pour certaine, et où elle le seroit, le roy monsieur mondit
filz n'en pouvoit faire la vengence en l'estat que son royaulme estoit
lors; mais à présent qu'il est tout uni, il aura assez de moien et de
forces pour sen ressentir quant l'occasion s'en présentera (Catherine to
Du Ferrier, Oct. 1, 1572; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 15,555). The despatches of
Fourquevaulx from Madrid, published by the Marquis Du Prat in the
_Histoire d' Elisabeth de Valois_, do not confirm the rumour.]
[Footnote 10: Toutes mes fantaisies sont bandées pour m'opposer à la
grandeur des Espagnols, et délibère m'y conduire le plus dextrement
qu'il me sera possible (Charles IX. to Noailles, May 2, 1572; Noailles,
_Henri de Valois_, i. 8).]
[Footnote 11: Il fault, et je vous prie ne faillir, quand bien il seroit
du tout rompu, et que verriés qu'il n'y auroit nulle espérance, de
trouver moyen d'en entrettenir toujours doucement le propos, d'ici à
quelque temps; car cella ne peut que bien servir à establir mes affaires
et aussy pour ma réputation (Charles IX. to La Mothe, Aug. 9, 1572;
_Corr. de La Mothe_, vii. 311).]
[Footnote 12: This is stated both by his mother and by the Cardinal of
Lorraine (Michelet, _La Ligue_, p. 26).]
[Footnote 13: In reliqua Gallia fuit et est incredibilis defectio, quae
tamen usque adeo non pacavit immanes illas feras, ut etiam eos qui
defecerunt (qui pene sunt innumerabiles) semel ad internecionem una cum
integris familiis trucidare prorsus decreverint (Beza, Dec. 3, 1572;
_Ill. vir. Epp. Sel._, p. 621, 1617).]
[Footnote 14: Languet to the Duke of Saxony, Nov. 30, 1572 (_Arcana_,
sec. xvi. 183).]
[Footnote 15: Vidi et cum dolore intellexi lanienam illam Gallicam
perfidissimam et atrocissimam plurimos per Germaniam ita offendisse, ut
jam etiam de veritate nostrae Religionis et doctrinae dubitare
incoeperint (Bullinger to Wittgenstein, Feb. 23, 1573; Friedländer,
_Beiträge zur rel. Gesch._, p. 254).]
[Footnote 16: De Thou, _Mémoires_, p. 9.]
[Footnote 17: Il me dist qu'on luy avoist escript de Rome, n'avoit que
trois semaines ou environ, sur le propos des noces du roy de Navarre en
ces propres termes; Que à ceste heure que tous les oiseaux estoient en
cage, on les pouvoit prendre tous ensemble (Vulcob to Charles IX., Sept.
26, 1572; Noailles, iii. 214).]
[Footnote 18: _Mémoires de Duplessis-Mornay_, i. 38; Ambert,
_Duplessis-Mornay_, p. 38.]
[Footnote 19: Digges, _Compleat Ambassador_, pp. 276, 255.]
[Footnote 20: Correr, _Relazione_; Tommaseo, ii. 116.]
[Footnote 21: He said to Catherine: Que quando quisiesen usar de otro y
averlo, con no mas personas que con cinc o seys que son el cabo de todo
esto, los tomasen a su mano y les cortasen las cabeças (Alva to Philip
II., June 21, 1565; _Papiers de Granvelle_, ix. 298).]
[Footnote 22: Ci rallegriamo con la maestà sua con tutto l' affetto
dell' animo, ch' ella habbia presa quella risolutione cosi
opportunamente sopra la quale noi stesso l' ultima volta che fummo in
Francia parlammo con la Regina Madre.... Dipoi per diversi gentilhuomini
che in varie occorrenze habbiamo mandato in corte siamo instati nel
suddetto ricordo (Alfonso II. to Fogliani, Sept. 13, 1572; Modena
Archives).]
[Footnote 23: Muchas vezes me ha accordado de aver dicho a Su Mag. esto
mismo en Bayona, y de lo que mi offrecio, y veo que ha muy bien
desempeñado su palabra (Alva to Zuñiga, Sept. 9, 1572; Coquerel, _La St.
Barthélemy_, p. 12).]
[Footnote 24: Kluckhohn, _Zur Geschichte des angeblichen Bündnisses von
Bayonne_, p. 36, 1868.]
[Footnote 25: Il signor duca di Alva ... mi disse, che come in questo
abboccamento negotio alcuno non havevano trattato, ne volevano trattare,
altro che della religione, cosi la lor differenza era nata per questo,
perchè non vedeva che la regina ci pigliasse risolutione a modo suo ne
de altro, che di buone parole ben generali.... È stato risoluto che alla
tornata in Parigi si farà una ricerca di quelli che hanno contravenuto
all' editto, e si castigaranno; nel che dice S.M. che gli Ugonotti ci
sono talmente compresi, che spera con questo mezzo solo cacciare i
Ministri di Francia.... Il Signor Duca di Alva si satisfa piu di questa
deliberatione di me, perchè io non trovo che serva all' estirpation
dell' heresia il castigar quelli che hanno contravenuto all' editto
(Santa Croce to Borromeo, Bayonne, July 1, 1565, MS.).]
[Footnote 26: Desjardins, _Négociations avec la Toscane_, iii. 756, 765,
802.]
[Footnote 27: Io non no fatto intendere cosa alcuna a nessuno principe;
ho ben parlato al nunzio solo (Desp. Aug. 31; Desjardins, iii. 828).]
[Footnote 28: Alberi, _Relazioni Venete_, xii. 250.]
[Footnote 29: Alberi, xii. 328.]
[Footnote 30: Son principal but et dessein estoit de sentir quelle
espérance ilz pourroient avoir de parvenir à la paix avec le G.S. dont
il s'est ouvert et a demandé ce qu'il en pouvoit espérer et attendre
(Charles IX. to Du Ferrier, Sept. 28, 1572; Charrière, _Négociations
dans le Levant_, iii. 310).]
[Footnote 31: Ranke, _Französische Geschichte_, v. 76.]
[Footnote 32: Digges, p. 258; Cosmi, _Memorie di Morosini_, p. 26.]
[Footnote 33: Alberi, xii. 294.]
[Footnote 34: Mittit eo Antonium Mariam Salviatum, reginae affinem eique
pergratum, qui eam in officio contineat (Cardinal of Vercelli, _Comment.
de Rebus Gregorii_ XIII.; Ranke, _Päpste_, App. 85).]
[Footnote 35: Desp. Aug. 30, 1570.]
[Footnote 36: Oct. 14, 1570.]
[Footnote 37: Sept. 24, 1570.]
[Footnote 38: Nov. 28, 1570.]
[Footnote 39: Quando scrissi ai giorni passati alla S.V. Illma in
cifra, che l'ammiraglio s' avanzava troppo et che gli darebbero su l'
unge, gia mi ero accorto, che non lo volevano più tollerare, et molto
più mi confermai nell' opinione, quando con caratteri ordinarii glie
scrivevo che speravo di dover haver occasione di dar qualche buona nova
a Sua Beatitudine, benchè mai havrei creduto la x. parte di quello, che
al presente veggo con gli occhi (Desp. Aug. 24; Theiner, _Annales_, i.
329).]
[Footnote 40: Che molti siano stati consapevoli del fatto è necessario,
potendogli dizer che a 21 la mattina, essendo col Cardinal di Borbone et
M. de Montpensier, viddi che ragionavano si domesticamente di quello che
doveva seguire, che in me medesimo restando confuso, conobbi che la
prattica andava gagliarda, e piutosto disperai di buon fine che
altrimente (same Desp.; Mackintosh, _History of England_, ii. 355).]
[Footnote 41: Attribuisce a se, et al nipote, et a casa sua, la morte
del' ammiraglio, gloriandosene assai (Desp. Oct. 1; Theiner, p. 331).
The Emperor told the French ambassador "que, depuis les choses avenues,
on lui avoit mandé de Rome que Mr. le Cardinal de Lorraine avoit dit que
tout le fait avoit esté délibéré avant qu'il partist de France" (Vulcob
to Charles IX., Nov. 8; Groen van Prinsterer, _Archives de Nassau_, iv.
App. 22).]
[Footnote 42: Marlot, _Histoire de Reims_, iv. 426. This language
excited the surprise of Dale, Walsingham's successor (Mackintosh, iii.
226).]
[Footnote 43: _Archives Curieuses_, viii. 305.]
[Footnote 44: Egli solo tra tutti gli altri è solito particolarmente di
sostenere le nostre fatiche.... Essendo partecipe di tutti i nostri
consigli, et consapevole de segreti dell' intimo animo nostro (Pius V.
to Philip II., June 20, 1571; Zucchi, _Idea del Segretario_, i. 544).]
[Footnote 45: Serranus, _Commentarii_, iv. 14; Davila, ii. 104.]
[Footnote 46: Digges, p. 193.]
[Footnote 47: Finis hujus legationis erat non tam suadere Regi ut foedus
cum aliis Christianis principibus iniret (id nempe notum erat
impossibile illi regno esse); sed ut rex ille praetermissus non
videretur, et revera ut sciretur quo tenderent Gallorum cogitationes.
Non longe nempe a Rocella naves quasdam praegrandes instruere et armare
coeperat Philippus Strozza praetexens velle ad Indias a Gallis inventas
navigare (_Relatio gestorum in Legatione Card. Alexandrini MS._).]
[Footnote 48: Con alcuni particulari che io porto, de' quali
ragguaglierò N. Signore a bocca, posso dire di non partirmi affatto mal
espedito (Ranke, _Zeitschrift_, iii. 598). Le temps et les effectz luy
témoigneront encores d'advantage (_Mémoire baillé au légat Alexandrin_,
Feb. 1572; Bib. Imp. F. Dupuy, 523).]
[Footnote 49: _De Sacro Foedere, Graevius Thesaurus_, i. 1038.]
[Footnote 50: Catena, _Vita di Pio V._, p. 197; Gabutius, _Vita Pii V._,
p. 150, and the Dedication.]
[Footnote 51: D'Ossat to Villeroy, Sept. 22, 1599; _Lettres_, iii. 503.
An account of the Legate's journey was found by Mendham among Lord
Guildford's manuscripts, and is described in the Supplement to his life
of Pius V., p. 13. It is written by the Master of Ceremonies, and
possesses no interest. The _Relatio_ already quoted, which corresponds
to the description given by Clement VIII. of his own work, is among the
manuscripts of the Marquis Capponi, No. 164.]
[Footnote 52: Vuol andar con ogni quiete et dissimulatione, fin che il
Rè suo figliolo sia in età (Santa Croce, Desp. June 27, 1563; _Lettres
du Card. Santa Croce_, p. 243).]
[Footnote 53: La Chastre to Charles IX., Jan. 21, 1570; Raynal,
_Histoire du Berry_, iv. 105; Lavallée, _Histoire des Français_, ii.
478. Both Raynal and Lavallée had access to the original.]
[Footnote 54: Il Papa credeva che la pace fatta, e l'aver consentito il
Rè che l'Ammiraglio venisse in corte, fusse con disegno di ammazzarlo;
ma accortosi come passa il fatto, non ha creduto che nel Rè Nostro sia
quella brava resoluzione (Letter of Nov. 28, 1571; Desjardins, iii.
732). Pour le regard de M. l'Admiral, je n'ay failly de luy faire
entendre ce que je devois, suyvant ce qu'il a pleu à V.M. me commander,
dont il est demeuré fort satisfaict (Ferralz to Charles IX., Dec. 25,
1571; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16,039; Walsingham to Herbert, Oct. 10, 1571; to
Smith, Nov. 26, 1572; Digges, p. 290).]
[Footnote 55: Marcel to Charles IX., December 20, 1571; _Cabinet
Historique_, ii. 253.]
[Footnote 56: Le Roy estoit d'intelligence, ayant permis à ceux de la
Religion de l'assister, et, cas advenant que leurs entreprises
succédassent, qu'il les favoriserait ouvertement ... Genlis, menant un
secours dans Mons, fut défait par le duc d'Alve, qui avoit comme investi
la ville. La journée de Saint-Barthélemi se résolut (Bouillon,
_Mémoires_, p. 9).]
[Footnote 57: Si potria distruggere il resto, maxime che l'ammiraglio si
trova in Parigi, populo Catholico et devoto del suo Rè, dove potria se
volesse facilmente levarselo dinnanzi per sempre (Castagna, Desp. Aug.
5, 1572; Theiner, i. 327).]
[Footnote 58: _Mémoires de Claude Haton_, 687.]
[Footnote 59: En quelque sorte que ce soit ledict Seigneur est résollu
faire vivre ses subjectz en sa religion, et ne permettre jamais ny
tollérer, quelque chose qui puisse advenir, qu'il n'y ait aultre forme
ny exercice de religion en son royaulme que de la catholique
(Instruction for the Governors of Normandy, Nov. 3, 1572; La Mothe, vii.
390).]
[Footnote 60: Charles IX. to Mondoucet, Aug. 26, 1572; _Compte Rendu de
la Commission Royale d' Histoire_, 2e Série, iv. 327.]
[Footnote 61: Li Ugonotti si ridussero alla porta del Louvre, per
aspettare che Mons. di Guisa e Mons. d'Aumale uscissero per ammazzarli
(Borso Trotti, Desp. Aug. 23; Modena Archives).]
[Footnote 62: L'on a commencé à descouvrir la conspiration que ceux de
la religion prétendue réformée avoient faicte contre moy mesmes, ma mère
et mes frères (Charles IX. to La Mothe, Aug. 25; La Mothe, vii. 325).]
[Footnote 63: Desp. Sept. 19, 1572.]
[Footnote 64: Il ne fault pas attendre d'en avoir d'autre commandement
du Roy ne de Monseigneur, car ils ne vous en feront point (Puygaillard
to Montsoreau, Aug. 26, 1572; Mourin, _La Réforme en Anjou_, p. 106).]
[Footnote 65: Vous croirez le présent porteur de ce que je luy ay donné
charge de vous dire (Charles IX. to Mandelot, Aug. 24, 1572; _Corr. de
Charles IX. avec Mandelot_, p. 42).]
[Footnote 66: Je n'en ay aucune coulpe, n'ayant sceu quelle estoit la
volunté que par umbre, encores bien tard et à demy (Mandelot to Charles
IX., Sept. 17, p. 73).]
[Footnote 67: Floquet, _Histoire du Parlement de Normandie_, iii. 121.]
[Footnote 68: Anjou to Montsoreau, Aug. 26; Mourin, p. 107; Falloux,
_Vie de Pie V._, i. 358; Port, _Archives de la Mairie d'Angers_, pp. 41,
42.]
[Footnote 69: Schomberg to Brulart, Oct. 10, 1572; Capefigue, _La
Réforme_, iii. 264.]
[Footnote 70: Instructions for Schomberg, Feb. 15, 1573; Noailles, iii.
305.]
[Footnote 71: Monluc to Brulart, Nov. 20, 1572; Jan. 20, 1573: to
Charles IX., Jan. 22, 1573; Noailles, iii. 218, 223, 220.]
[Footnote 72: Charles IX. to St. Goard, Jan. 20, 1573; Groen, iv. App.
29.]
[Footnote 73: Letter from Paris in Strype's _Life of Parker_, iii. 110;
"Tocsain contre les Massacreurs," _Archives Curieuses_, vii. 7.]
[Footnote 74: Afin que ce que vous avez dressé des choses passées à la
Saint-Barthélemy ne puisse être publié parmi le peuple, et mêmement
entre les étrangers, comme il y en a plusieurs qui se mêlent d'écrire et
qui pourraient prendre occasion d'y répondre, je vous prie qu'il n'en
soit rien imprimé ni en français ni en Latin, mais si vous en avez
retenu quelque chose, le garder vers vous (Charles IX. to the President
de Cély, March 24, 1573; _Revue Rétrospective_, 2 Série. iii. 195).]
[Footnote 75: Botero, _Della Ragion di Stato_, 92. A contemporary says
that the Protestants were cut to pieces out of economy, "pour afin
d'éviter le coust des exécutions qu'il eust convenu payer pour les faire
pendre"; and that this was done "par permission divine" (_Relation des
troubles de Rouen par un témoin oculaire_, ed. Pottier, 36, 46).]
[Footnote 76: Del resto poco importerebbe a Roma (Card. Montalto to
Card. Morosini; Tempesti, _Vita di Sisto V._, ii. 116).]
[Footnote 77: Quand ce seroit contre touts les Catholiques, que nous ne
nous en empescherions, ny altérerions aucunement l'amitié d'entre elle
et nous (Catherine to La Mothe, Sept. 13, 1572; La Mothe, vii. 349).]
[Footnote 78: Alva's Report; _Bulletins de l'Académie de Bruxelles_, ix.
564.]
[Footnote 79: Jean Diodati, _door Schotel_, 88.]
[Footnote 80: _OEuvres de Brantôme_, ed. Lalanne, iv. 38.]
[Footnote 81: Otros que salvò el Duque de Nevers con harto vituperio
suyo (Cabrera de Cordova, _Felipe Segundo_, p. 722).]
[Footnote 82: Il Rè Christianissimo in tutti questi accidenti, in luogo
di giudicio e di valore ha mostrato animo christiano, con tutto habbia
salvato alcuno. Ma li altri principi che fanno gran professione di
Cattolici et di meritar favori e gratie del papa hanno poi con estrema
diligenza cercato a salvare quelli più di Ugonotti che hanno potuto, e
se non gli nomino particolarmente, non si maravigli, per che
indiferentemente tutti hanno fatto a un modo (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 2,
1572).]
[Footnote 83: Estque dictu mirum, quantopere Regem exhilaravit nova
Gallica (Hopperus to Viglius, Madrid, Sept. 7, 1572; _Hopperi Epp._
360).]
[Footnote 84: Ha avuto, con questa occasione, dal Rè di Spagna, sei mila
scudi a conto della dote di sua moglie e a richiesta di casa di Guise
(Petrucci, Desp. Sept. 16, 1572; Desjardins, iii. 838). On the 27th of
December 1574, the Cardinal of Guise asks Philip for more money for the
same man (Bouillé, _Histoire des Ducs de Guise_, ii. 505).]
[Footnote 85: Siendo cosa clara que, de hoy mas, ni los protestantes de
Alemania, ni la reyna de Inglaterra se fiaran dél (Philip to Alva, Sept.
18, 1572; _Bulletins de Bruxelles_, xvi. 255).]
[Footnote 86: St. Goard to Charles IX., Sept. 12, 1572; Groen, iv. App.
12; Raumer, _Briefe aus Paris_, i. 191.]
[Footnote 87: _Archives de l'Empire_, K. 1530, B. 34, 299.]
[Footnote 88: Zuñiga to Alva, Aug. 31, 1572: No fue caso pensado sino
repentino (_Archives de l'Empire_, K. 1530, B. 34, 66).]
[Footnote 89: St. Goard to Catherine, Jan. 6, 1573; Groen, iv. App. 28.]
[Footnote 90: _Comment. de B. de Mendoça_, i. 344.]
[Footnote 91: Alva to Philip, Oct. 13, 1572; _Corr. de Philippe II._,
ii. 287. On the 23rd of August Zuñiga wrote to Philip that he hoped that
Coligny would recover from his wound, because, if he should die, Charles
would be able to obtain obedience from all men (_Archives de l'Empire_,
K. 1530, B. 34, 65).]
[Footnote 92: _Bulletins de la Société pour l'Histoire du Protestantisme
Français_, viii. 292.]
[Footnote 93: _Eidgenössische Abschiede_, iv. 2, 501, 503, 506, 510.]
[Footnote 94: Cosmo to Camaiani, Oct. 6, 1570 (Cantù, _Gli Eretici
d'Italia_, iii. 15); Cosmo to Charles IX., Sept. 4, 1572 (Gachard,
_Rapport sur les Archives de Lille_, 199).]
[Footnote 95: Grappin, _Mémoire Historique sur le Card. de Granvelle_,
73.]
[Footnote 96: Bardi, _Età del Mondo_, 1581, iv. 2011; Campana, _Historie
del Mondo_, 1599, i. 145; B.D. da Fano, _Aggiunte all' Historie di
Mambrino Roseo_, 1583, v. 252; Pellini, _Storia di Perugia_, vol. iii.
MS.]
[Footnote 97: Si è degnato di prestare alli suoi divoti il suo
taglientissimo coltello in cosi salutifero sacrificio (Letter of Aug.
26; Alberi, _Vita di Caterina de' Medici_, 401).]
[Footnote 98: Labitte, _Démocratie chez les Prédicateurs de la Ligue_,
10.]
[Footnote 99: Natalis Comes, _Historiae sui temporis_, 512.]
[Footnote 100: Capefigue, iii. 150.]
[Footnote 101: Pourront-ils arguer de trahison le feu roy, qu'ils
blasphèment luy donnant le nom de tyran, veu qu'il n'a rien entrepris et
exécuté que ce qu'il pouvoit faire par l'expresse parole de Dieu ...
Dieu commande qu'on ne pardonne en façon que ce soit aux inventeurs ou
sectateurs de nouvelles opinions ou hérésies.... Ce que vous estimez
cruauté estre plutôt vraye magnanimité et doulceur (Sorbin, _Le Vray
resveille-matin des Calvinistes_, 1576, pp. 72, 74, 78).]
[Footnote 102: Il commanda à chacun de se retirer au cabinet et à moy de
m'asseoir au chevet de son lict, tant pour ouyr sa confession, et luy
donner ministérialement absolution de ses péchez, que aussi pour le
consoler durant et après la messe (Sorbin, _Vie de Charles IX.; Archives
Curieuses_, viii. 287). Est très certain que le plus grand regret qu'il
avoit à l'heure de sa mort estoit de ce qu'il voyoit l'idole Calvinesque
n'estre encores du tout chassée (_Vray resveille-matin_, 88).]
[Footnote 103: The charge against the clergy of Bordeaux is brought by
D'Aubigné (_Histoire Universelle_, ii. 27) and by De Thou. De Thou was
very hostile to the Jesuits, and his language is not positive. D'Aubigné
was a furious bigot. The truth of the charge would not be proved,
without the letters of the President L'Agebaston and of the Lieutenant
Montpezat: "Quelques prescheurs se sont par leurs sermons (ainsi que
dernièrement j'ai escript plus amplement à votre majesté) estudié de
tout leur pouvoir de troubler ciel et terre, et conciter le peuple à
sédition, et en ce faisant à passer par le fil de l'espée tous ceulx de
la prétendue religion réformée.... Après avoir des le premier et
deuxième de ceste mois fait courrir un bruit sourd que vous, Sire, aviez
envoyé nom par nom un rolle signé de votre propre main au Sieur de
Montferaud, pour par voie de fait et sans aultre forme de justice,
mettre à mort quarante des principaulx de cette ville...." (L'Agebaston
to Charles IX., Oct. 7, 1572; Mackintosh, iii. 352). "J'ai trouvé que
messieurs de la cour de parlement avoyent arresté que Monsieur Edmond,
prescheur, seroit appellé en ladicte court pour luy faire des
remonstrances sur quelque langaige qu'il tenoit en ses sermons, tendant
à sédition, à ce qu'ils disoyent. Ce que j'ay bien voullu empescher,
craignant que s'il y eust esté appellé cella eust animé plusieurs des
habitants et estre cause de quelque émotion, ce que j'eusse voluntiers
souffert quant j'eusse pansé qu'il n'y en eust qu'une vingtaine de
despéchés" (Montpezat to Charles IX., Sept. 30., 1572; _Archives de la
Gironde_, viii. 337).]
[Footnote 104: _Annal. Baronii Contin._ ii. 734; Bossuet says: "La
dispense vint telle qu'on la pouvoit désirer" (_Histoire de France_, p.
820).]
[Footnote 105: Ormegregny, _Réflexions sur la Politique de France_, p.
121.]
[Footnote 106: De Thou, iv. 537.]
[Footnote 107: Charrière, iii. 154.]
[Footnote 108: _Carmina Ill. Poetarum Italorum_, iii. 212, 216.]
[Footnote 109: Tiepolo, Desp. Aug. 6, 1575; Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_,
i. 111.]
[Footnote 110: Parendomi, che sia cosa, la quale possa apportar piacere,
e utile al mondo, si per la qualità del soggetto istesso, come anco per
l'eleganza, e bello ordine con che viene cosi leggiadramente descritto
questo nobile, e glorioso fatto ... a fine che una cosi egregia attione
non resti defraudata dell' honor, che merita (The editor, Gianfrancesco
Ferrari, to the reader).]
[Footnote 111: Huc accedit, Oratorem Sermi Regis Galliae, et impulsu
inimicorum saepedicti Domini Cardinalis, et quia summopere illi
displicuit, quod superioribus mensibus Illma Sua Dominatio operam
dedisset, hoc sibi mandari, ut omnia Regis negotia secum communicaret,
nullam praetermisisse occasionem ubi ei potuit adversari (Cardinal
Delfino to the Emperor, Rome, Nov. 29, 1572; Vienna Archives).]
[Footnote 112: Fà ogni favor et gratia gli addimanda il Cardinale di
Lorena, il consiglio del quale usa in tutte le più importanti
negotiationi l' occorre di haver a trattar (Cusano to the Emperor, Rome,
Sept. 27, 1572).--Conscia igitur Sua Dominatio Illma quorundam
arcanorum Regni Galliae, creato Pontifice sibi in Concilio Tridentino
cognito et amico, statuit huc se recipere, ut privatis suis rebus
consuleret, et quia tunc foederati contra Thurcam, propter suspicionem
Regi Catholico injectam de Orangio, et Gallis, non admodum videbantur
concordes, et non multo post advenit nuncius mortis Domini de Colligni,
et illius asseclarum; Pontifex justa de causa existimavit dictum Illmum
Cardinalem favore et gratia sua merito esse complectendum. Evenit
postmodum, ut ad Serenissimam Reginam Galliarum deferretur, bonum hunc
Dominum jactasse se, quod particeps fuerit consiliorum contra dictum
Colligni; id quod illa Serenissima Domina iniquo animo tulit, quae
neminem gloriae socium vult habere; sibi enim totam vendicat, quod sola
talis facinoris auctor, et Dux extiterit. Idcirco commorationem ipsius
Lotharingiae in hac aula improbare, ac reprehendere aggressa est. Haec
cum ille Illustrissimus Cardinalis perceperit, oblata sibi occasione
utens, exoravit a Sua Sanctitate gratuitam expeditionem quatuor millia
scutorum reditus pro suo Nepote, et 20 millia pro filio praeter
sollicitationem, quam prae se fert, ut dictus Nepos in Cardinalium
numerum cooptetur.... Cum itaque his de causis authoritas hujus Domini
in Gallia imminuta videatur, ipseque praevideat, quanto in Gallia
minoris aestimabitur, tanto minori etiam loco hic se habitum id, statuit
optimo judicio, ac pro eo quod suae existimacioni magis conducit, in
Galliam reverti (Delfino, _ut supra_, both in the Vienna Archives).]
[Footnote 113: _Intiera Relatione della Morte dell' Ammiraglio._]
[Footnote 114: _Ragguaglio degli ordini et modi tenuti dalla Majesta
Christianissima nella distruttione della setta degli Ugonotti Con la
morte dell' Ammiraglio_, etc.]
[Footnote 115: Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16, 139.]
[Footnote 116: Maffei, _Annali di Gregorio XIII._, i. 34.]
[Footnote 117: La nouvelle qui arriva le deuxième jour du présent par
ung courrier qui estoit depesché secrétememt de Lyon par ung nommé
Danes, secrétaire de M. de Mandelot ... à ung commandeur de Sainct
Anthoine, nommé Mr. de Gou, il luy manda qu'il allast advertir le Pape,
pour en avoir quelque présant ou bienfaict, de la mort de tous les chefs
de ceulx de la religion prétendue refformée, et de tous les Huguenotz de
France, et que V.M. avoit mandé et commandé à tous les gouverneurs de se
saisir de tous iceulx huguenotz en leurs gouvernemens; ceste nouvelle,
Sire, apporta si grand contentement a S.S., que sans ce que je luy
remonstray lors me trouvant sur le lieu, en presence de Monseigneur le
C1 de Lorraine, qu'elle devoit attendre ce que V.M. m'en manderoit et
ce que son nonce luy en escriroit, elle en vouloit incontinent faire des
feux de joye.... Et pour ce que je ne voulois faire ledict feu de joye
la première nuict que ledit courrier envoyé par ledict Danes feust
arrivé, ny en recevoir les congratulations que l'on m'en envoyoit faire,
que premièrement je n'eusse eu nouvelles de V.M. pour sçavoir et sa
voulanté et comme je m'avoys a conduire, aucuns commençoient desjà de
m'en regarder de maulvais oeills (Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept.
11, 1572; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16,040). Al corriero che porto tal nuova
Nostro Signore diede 100 Scudi oltre li 200 che hebbe dall'
Illustrissimo Lorena, che con grandissima allegrezza se n'ando subito a
dar tal nuova per allegrarsene con Sua Santita (Letter from Rome to the
Emperor, Sept. 6, 1572; Vienna Archives).]
[Footnote 118: Charles IX. to Ferralz, Aug. 24, 1572; Mackintosh, iii.
348.]
[Footnote 119: Elle fust merveilheusement ayse d'entendre le discours
que mondit neueu de Beauville luy en feist. Lequel, après luy avoir
conté le susdit affayre, supplia sadicte Saincteté, suyvant la charge
expresse qu'il avoit de V.M. de vouloir concéder, pour le fruict de
ceste allegresse, la dispense du mariage du roy et royne de Navarre,
datée de quelques jours avant que les nopces en feussent faictes,
ensemble l'absolution pour Messeigneurs les Cardinaux de Bourbon et de
Ramboilhet, et pour tous les aultres evesques et prélatz qui y avoient
assisté.... Il nous feit pour fin response qu'il y adviseroit (Ferralz,
_ut supra_).]
[Footnote 120: Pensasi che per tutte le citta di Francia debba seguire
il simile, subitoche arrivi la nuova dell' esecutione di Parigi.... A
N.S. mi faccia gratia di basciar i piedi in nome mio, col quale mi
rallegro con le viscere del cuore che sia piaciuto alla Dio. Mtà. d'
incaminar nel principio del suo pontificato si felicemente e
honoratamente le cose di questo regno, havendo talmente havuto in
protettione il Rè e Regina Madre che hanno saputo e potuto sbarrare
queste pestifere radici con tanta prudenza, in tempo tanto opportuno,
che tutti lor ribelli erano sotto chiave in gabbia (Salviati, Desp. Aug.
24; Theiner, i. 329; Mackintosh, iii. 355).]
[Footnote 121: Sexta Septembris, mane, in Senatu Pontificis et
Cardinalium lectae sunt literae a legato Pontificio e Gallia scriptae,
admiralium et Huguenotos, destinata Regis voluntate atque consensu,
trucidatos esse. Ea re in eodem Senatu decretum esse, ut inde recta
Pontifex cum Cardinalibus in aedem D. Marci concederet, Deoque Opt. Max.
pro tanto beneficio Sedi Romanae orbique Christiano collato gratias
solemni more ageret (_Scriptum Roma missum_ in Capilupi, 1574, p. 84).
Quia Die 2a praedicti mensis Septembris Smus D.N. certior factus
fuerat Colignium Franciae Ammiralium a populo Parisien occisum fuisse et
cum eo multos ex Ducibus et primoribus Ugonotarum haereticorum eius
sequacibus Rege ipso Franciae approbante, ex quo spes erat
tranquillitatem in dicto Regno redituram expulsis haereticis, idcirco
Stas Sua expleto concistorio descendit ad ecclesiam Sancti Marci,
praecedente cruce et sequentibus Cardinalibus et genuflexus ante altare
maius, ubi positum fuerat sanctissimum Sacramentum, oravit gratias Deo
agens, et inchoavit cantando hymnum Te Deum (_Fr. Mucantii Diaria_, B.M.
Add. MSS. 26,811).]
[Footnote 122: Après quelques autres discours qu'il me feist sur le
contentement que luy et le collége des Cardinaux avoient receu de
ladicte execution faicte et des nouvelles qui journellement arrivoient
en ceste court de semblables exécutions que l'on a faicte et font encore
en plusieurs villes de vostre royaume, qui, à dire la vérité, sont les
nouvelles les plus agréables que je pense qu'on eust sceu apporter en
ceste ville, sadicte Saincteté pour fin me commanda de vous escrire que
cest évènement luy a esté cent fois plus agréable que cinquante
victoires semblables à celle que ceulx de la ligue obtindrent l'année
passée contre le Turcq, ne voulant oublier vous dire, Sire, les
commandemens estroictz qu'il nous feist à tous, mesmement aux françois
d'en faire feu de joye, et qui ne l'eust faict eust mal senty de la foy
(Ferralz, _ut supra_).]
[Footnote 123: Tutta Roma stà in allegria di tal fatto et frà i più
grandi si dice, che 'l Rè di Francia ha insegnato alli Principi
christiani ch' hanno de simili vassalli nè stati loro a liberarsene, et
dicono che vostra Maestà Cesara dovrebbe castigare il conte Palatino
tanto nemico della Serenissima casa d' Austria, et della Religione
cattolica, come l'anni passati fece contra il Duca di Sassonia tiene
tuttavia prigione, che a un tempo vendicarebbe le tante ingiurie ha
fatto detto Palatino alla Chiesa di Dio, et poveri Christiani, et alla
Maestà Vostra et sua Casa Serenissima sprezzando li suoi editti et
commandamenti, et privarlo dell' elettione dell'Imperio et darlo al Duca
di Baviera (Cusano to the Emperor, Rome, Sept. 6, 1572; Vienna
Archives).]
[Footnote 124: The Bull, as published in Paris, is printed by Strype
(_Life of Parker_, iii. 197). La prima occasione che a ciò lo mosse fù
per lo stratagemma fatto da Carlo Nono Christianissimo Rè di Francia
contra Coligno Ammiraglio, capo d' Ugonotti, et suoi seguaci, tagliati a
pezzi in Parigi (Ciappi, _Vita di Gregorio XIII._, 1596, p. 63).]
[Footnote 125: Vasari to Borghini, Oct. 5, 1572; March 5, 1573; to
Francesco Medici, Nov. 17, 1572; Gaye, _Carteggio d' Artisti_, iii. 328,
366, 341.]
[Footnote 126: Indubitatamente non si osservarà interamente, havendomi
in questo modo, punto che torno dall' audienza promesso il Rè,
imponendomi di darne conto in suo nome a Nostro Signore, di volere in
breve tempo liberare il Regno dalli Ugonotti.... Mi ha parlato della
dispensa, escusandosi non haver fatto il Parentado per ultro, che per
liberarsi da suoi inimici (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 3, Sept. 2, Oct. 11,
1572).]
[Footnote 127: Si vede che l' editto non essendo osservato ne da popoli,
ne dal principe, non è per pigliar piede (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 4). Qual
Regina in progresso di tempo intende pur non solo di revocare tal
editto, ma per mezzo della giustitia di restituir la fede cattolica
nell' antica osservanza, parendogli che nessuno ne debba dubitare
adesso, che hanno fatto morire l' ammiraglio con tanti altri huomini di
valore, conforme ai raggionamenti altre volte havuti con esso meco
essendo a Bles, et trattando del parentado di Navarra, et dell' altre
cose che correvano in quei tempi, il che essendo vero, ne posso rendere
testimonianza, e a Nostro Signore e a tutto il mondo (Aug. 27; Theiner,
i. 329, 330).]
[Footnote 128: Desp. Sept. 2, 1572.]
[Footnote 129: The reply of Boccapaduli is printed in French, with the
translation of the oration of Muretus, Paris, 1573.]
[Footnote 130: Troverà le cose cosi ben disposte, che durarà poca
fattica in ottener quel tanto si desidera per Sua Beatitudine, anzi
haverà più presto da ringratiar quella Maestà Christianissima di cosi
buona et sant' opera, ha fatto far, che da durare molta fatica in
persuaderli l' unione con la Santa Chiesa Romana (Cusano to the Emperor,
Rome, Sept. 6). Sereno (_Comment. della guerra di Cipro_, p. 329)
understands the mission in the same light.]
[Footnote 131: Omnes mulas ascendentes cappis et galeris pontificalibus
induti associarunt Rmum D. Cardinalem Ursinum Legatum usque ad portam
Flaminiam et extra eam ubi factis multis reverentiis eum ibi
reliquerunt, juxta ritum antiquum in ceremoniali libro descriptum qui
longo tempore intermissus fuerat, ita Pontifice iubente in Concistorio
hodierno (_Mucantii Diaria_). Ista associatio fuit determinata in
Concistorio vocatis X. Cardinalibus et ex improviso exequuti fuimus (_C.
Firmani Diaria_, B.M. Add. MSS. 8448).]
[Footnote 132: Mette in consideratione alla Santità Sua che havendo
deputato un Legato apostolico sù la morte dell' ammiraglio, et altri
capi Ugonotti, ha fatti ammazzare a Parigi, saria per metterla in molto
sospetto et diffidenza delli Principi Protestanti, et della Regina d'
Inghilterra, ch' ella fosse d' accordo con la sede Apostolica, et
Principi Cattolici per farli guerra, i quali cerca d' acquettar con
accertarli tutti, che non ha fatto ammazzar l' ammiraglio et suoi
seguaci per conto della Religione (Cusano to the Emperor, Sept. 27).]
[Footnote 133: Salviati, Desp. Sept. 22, 1572.]
[Footnote 134: Charles IX. to S. Goard, Oct. 5, 1572; Charrière, iii.
330. Ne poteva esser bastante segno l' haver egli doppo la morte dell'
Ammiraglio fatto un editto, che in tutti i luoghi del suo regno fossero
posti a fil di spada quanti heretici vi si trovassero, onde in pochi
giorni n' erano stati ammazzati settanta milla e d' avantaggio
(Cicarelli, _Vita di Gregori XIII._; Platina, _Vite de' Pontefici_,
1715, 592).]
[Footnote 135: Il tengono quasiche in filo et il necessitano a far cose
contra la sua natura e la sua volontà perche S. Sta è sempre stato di
natura piacevole e dolce (_Relatione di Gregorio XIII._; Ranke,
_Päpste_, App. 80). Faict Cardinal par le pape Pie IV., le 12e de Mars
1559, lequel en le créant, dit qu'il n'avoit créé un cardinal ains un
pape (Ferralz to Charles IX., May 14, 1572).]
[Footnote 136: Smus Dominus Noster dixit nullam concordiam vel pacem
debere nec posse esse inter nos et hereticos, et cum eis nullum foedus
ineundum et habendum ... verissimum est deteriores esse haereticos
gentilibus, eo quod sunt adeo perversi et obstinati, ut propemodum
infideles sint (_Acta Concistoralia_, June 18, 1571; Bib. Imp. F. Lat.
12, 561).]
[Footnote 137: Ogni giorno faceva impiccare e squartare ora uno, ora un
altro (Cantù, ii. 410).]
[Footnote 138: _Legazioni di Serristori_, 436, 443.]
[Footnote 139: Elle desire infiniment que vostre Majesté face quelque
ressentement plus qu'elle n'a faict jusques à ceste heure contre ceux
qui lui font la guerre, comme de raser quelques-unes de leurs
principales maisons pour une perpétuelle mémoyre (Rambouillet to Charles
IX., Rome, Jan. 17, 1569; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 17,989).]
[Footnote 140: Pius V. to Catherine, April 13, 1569.]
[Footnote 141: Pius V. to Charles IX., March 28, 1569.]
[Footnote 142: Sa Saincteté m'a dict que j'escrive à vostre majesté que
icelle se souvienne qu'elle combat pour la querelle de Dieu, et que
ceste à elle de faire ses vengeances (Rambouillet to Charles IX., Rome,
March 14, 1569; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16,039). Nihil est enim ea pietate
misericordiaque crudelius, quae in impios et ultima supplicia meritos
confertur (Pius V. to Charles IX., Oct. 20, 1569).]
[Footnote 143: _Correspondance de Philippe II._, ii. 185.]
[Footnote 144: Inspirato più d' un anno fa di esporre la vita al
martirio col procurare la liberatione della religione, et delle patria
per mezzo della morte del tiranno, et assicurato da Theologi che il
fatto saria stato meritorio, non ne haveva con tutto ciò mai potuto
ottenere da superiori suoi la licenza o dispensa.... Io quantunque mi
sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humiltà, prudenza, spirito et core
che arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente piuttosto che
temerità o legerezza, non cognoscendo tuttavia di potergliela concedere
l' ho persuaso a tornarsene nel suo covento raccommandarsi a Dio et
attendere all' obbedienza delli suoi superiori finchè io attendessi
dallo assenso o ripulsa del Papa che haverei interpellato per la sua
santa beneditione, se questo spirito sia veramente da Dio donde si potrà
conjetturare che sia venendo approvato da Sua Stà, e perciò sarà più
sicuro da essere eseguito.... Resta hora che V.S. Illma mi favorisca di
communicare a S.B. il caso, et scrivermene come la supplico quanto prima
per duplicate et triplicate lettere la sua santa determinatione
assicurandosi che per quanto sarà in me il negotio sarà trattato con la
debita circumspetione (Sega, Desp. Paris, Jan. 23, 1591; deciphered in
Rome, March 26).]
[Footnote 145: Ferralz to Charles IX., Nov. 18, Dec. 23, 1572.]
[Footnote 146: De Castro, _De Justa Haeret. Punitione_, 1547, p. 119.
Iure Divino obligantur eos extirpare, si absque maiori incommodo possint
(Lancelottus, _Haereticum quare per Catholicum quia_, 1615, p. 579). Ubi
quid indulgendum sit, ratio semper exacta habeatur, an Religioni
Ecclesiae, et Reipublicae quid vice mutua accedat quod majoris sit
momenti, et plus prodesse possit (Pamelius, _De Relig. diversis non
admittendis_, 1589, p. 159). Contagium istud sic grassatum est, ut
corrupta massa non ferat antiquissimas leges, severitasque tantisper
remittenda sit (Possevinus, _Animadv. in Thuanum_; Zachariae, _Iter
Litterarium_, p. 321).]
[Footnote 147: Principi saeculari nulla ratione permissum est,
haereticis licentiam tribuere haereses suas docendi, atque adeo
contractus ille iniustus.... Si quid Princeps saecularis attentet in
praeiudicium Ecclesiasticae potestatis, aut contra eam aliquid statuat
et paciscatur, pactum illud nullum futurum (R. Sweertii, _De Fide
Haereticis servanda_, 1611, p. 36).]
[Footnote 148: Ad poenam quoque pertinet et odium haereticorum quod
fides illis data servanda non sit (Simancha, _Inst. Cath._ pp. 46, 52).]
[Footnote 149: Si nolint converti, expedit eos citius tollere e medio,
ne gravius postea damnentur, unde non militat contra mansuetudinem
christianam, occidere Haereticos, quin potius est opus maximae
misericordiae (Lancelottus, p. 579).]
[Footnote 150: De Rozoy, _Annales de Toulouse_, iii. 65.]
[Footnote 151: Alva to Philip, June 5, 1565; _Pap. de Granvelle_, ix.
288; _Comment. de Monluc_, iii. 425.]
[Footnote 152: Charles IX. to Mondoucet, Aug. 31, 1572; _Compte Rendu_,
iv, 349.]
[Footnote 153: _Bulletins de Bruxelles_, xvi. 256.]
[Footnote 154: Granvelle to Morillon, Sept. 11, 1572; Michelet, p. 475.]
[Footnote 155: Floquet, iii. 137.]
[Footnote 156: Walsingham to Smith, Nov. 1, 1572; Digges, p. 279. Ita
enim statutum ab illis fuit die 27 Octobris (Beza, Dec. 3, 1572; _Ill.
vir. Epp. Sel._ 621). La Mothe, v. 164; Faustino Tasso, _Historie de
nostri tempi_, 1583, p. 343.]
[Footnote 157: _Discorso di Monsignor Terracina à Gregorio XIII.;
Thesauri Politici Contin._ 1618, pp. 73-76.]
[Footnote 158: Infin che ne viverà grande, o picciolo di loro, mai non
le mancheranno insidie (_Lettere del Muzio_, 1590, p. 232).]
[Footnote 159: Coupez, tronquez, cisaillez, ne pardonnez à parens ny
amis, princes et subiets, ny à quelque personne de quelque condition
qu'ils soient (D'Orléans, _Premier advertissement des Catholiques
Anglois aux François Catholiques_, 1590, p. 13). The notion that Charles
had displayed an extreme benignity recurs in many books: "Nostre Prince
a surpassé tout mesure de clémence" (Le Frère de Laval _Histoire des
Troubles_, 1576, p. 527).]
[Footnote 160: Serranus, _Comment._ iv. 51.]
[Footnote 161: Bouges, _Histoire de Carcassonne_, p. 343.]
[Footnote 162: _Sommaire de la Félonie commise á Lyon._ A contemporary
tract reprinted by Gonon, 1848, p. 221.]
[Footnote 163: On this point Smith may be trusted rather than Parker
(_Correspondence_, p. 399).]
[Footnote 164: _Bulletins de Bruxelles_, xvi. 249.]
[Footnote 165: Qui è venuto quello che dette l' archibusata all'
ammiraglio di Francia, et è stato condotto dal Cardinal di Lorena et
dall' Ambasciator di Francia, al papa. A molti non è piaciuto che costui
sia venuto in Roma (Prospero Count Arco to the Emperor, Rome, Nov. 15,
1572; Vienna Archives).]
[Footnote 166: Zuñiga to Philip, March 4, 1573; _Arch. de l'Empire_, K.
1531, B. 35, 70. Zuñiga heard it from Lorraine.]
[Footnote 167: Et est toute la dispute encores sur les derniers
évènemens de la France, contre lesquels l'Electeur est beaucoup plus
aigre qu'il n'estoyt à mon aultre voyage, depuys qu'il a esté en
l'escole à Vienne (Schomberg to Brulart, May 12, 1573; Groen, iv. App.
76).]
[Footnote 168: Sattler, _Geschichte von Würtemberg_, v. 23.]
[Footnote 169: Audio quosdam etiam nostralium theologorum cruentam istam
nuptiarum feralium celebrationem pertinaciae Gallorum in semel recepta
de sacramentalibus mysteriis sententia acceptam referre et praeter illos
pati neminem somniare (Steinberger to Crato, Nov. 23, 1572; Gillet,
_Craio von Crafftheim_, ii. 519).]
[Footnote 170: Heppe, _Geschichte des deutschen Protestantismus_, iv.
37, 47, 49.]
[Footnote 171: Hachfeld, _Martin Chemnitz_, p. 137.]
[Footnote 172: Sunt tamen qui hoc factum et excusare et defendere
tentant (Bullinger to Hotoman, Oct. 11, 1572; Hotoman, _Epis._ 35).]
[Footnote 173: Nec dubium est melius cum ipsis actum fuisse, si
quemadmodum a principio instituerant, cum disciplinam ecclesiasticam
inroduxere, viros modestos et piae veraeque reformationis cupidos tantum
in suos coetus admisissent, reiectis petulantibus et fervidis ingeniis,
quae eos in diros tumultus, et inextricabilia mala coniecerunt
(Dinothus, _De Bello Civili_, 1582, p. 243).]
[Footnote 174: Beza to Tilius, July 5, 1572; _Ill. vir. Epp. Sel._ 607.]
[Footnote 175: Quoties autem ego haec ipse praedixi! quoties praemonui!
Sed sic Deo visum est, iustissimis de causis irato, et tamen servatori
(Beza to Tilius, Sept. 10, 1572, 614). Nihil istorum non iustissimo
iudicio accidere necesse est fateri, qui Galliarum statum norunt (Beza
to Crato, Aug. 26. 1573; Gillet, ii. 521).]
[Footnote 176: Ut mihi quidem magis absurde facere videantur quam si
sacrilegas parricidas puniendos negarent, quum sint istis omnibus
haeretici infinitis partibus deteriores.... In nullos unquam homines
severius quam in haereticos, blasphemos et impios debet animadvertere
(_De Haereticis puniendis_, Tract. Theol. i. 143, 152).]
[Footnote 177: _Epist. Theolog._ 1575, p. 338.]
[Footnote 178: Beza to Wittgenstein, Pentecost, 1583; Friedländer, 143.]
[Footnote 179: Lobo de Silveis to De Thou, July 7, 1616; _Histoire_, xv.
371; J.B. Gallus, _Ibid._ p. 435.]
[Footnote 180: Le Cardinal Barberini, que je tiens pour Serviteur du
Roy, a parlé franchement sur ceste affaire, et m'a dit qu'il croyoit
presqu'impossible qu'il se trouve jamais remede, si vous ne la voulez
recommencer; disant que depuis le commencement jusqu'à la fin vous vous
estes monstré du tout passionné contre ce qui est de l'honneur et de la
grandeur de l'Église, qu'il se trouvera dans vostre histoire que vous ne
parlez jamais des Catholiques qu'avec du mépris et de la louange de ceux
de la religion; que mesme vous avez blasmé ce que feu Monsieur le
président de Thou vostre père avoit approuvé, qui est la S. Barthelemy
(De Brèves to De Thou, Rome, Feb. 18, 1610; Bib. Imp. F. Dupuy, 812).]
[Footnote 181: Crudelitatisne tu esse ac non clementiae potius,
pietatisque putas? (_Resp. ad Ep. Casauboni_, 1612, p. 118).]
[Footnote 182: Quae res uti Catholicae Religioni sublevandae opportuna,
ita maxime jucunda Gregorio accidit (_Hist. Pontif. Gregori XIII._, p.
30).]
[Footnote 183: _Histoire d'Orléans_, pp. 421, 424.]
[Footnote 184: Germain to Bretagne, Rome, Dec. 24, 1685; Valery,
_Corresp. de Mabillon_, i. 192.]
[Footnote 185: Du Molinet, _Hist. S. Pont. per Numismata_, 1679, 93;
Buorranni, _Numismata Pontificum_, i. 336.]
[Footnote 186: _Annali d'Italia_ ad ann. 1572.]
[Footnote 187: Si huviera respirado mas tiempo, huviera dado a entender
al mundo, que avia Rey en la Francia, y Dios en Israel (_Vida de S.
Francisco De Borja_, 446).]
[Footnote 188: _Vita di Sisto V._, i. 119.]
[Footnote 189: Quo demum res evaderent, si Regibus non esset integrum,
in rebelles, subditos, quietisque publicae turbatores animadvertere?
(_Apparatus Eruditionis_, vii. 503; Piatti, _Storia de' Pontefici XI._,
p. 271).]
[Footnote 190: Per le notizie che ricevette della cessata strage
(Moroni, _Dizionario di Erudizione Ecclesiastica_, xxxii. 298).]
[Footnote 191: [1868.]]
[Footnote 192: _Kirchengeschichte_, iii. 211.]
V
THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION[193]
The manner in which Religion influences State policy is more easily
ascertained in the case of Protestantism than in that of the Catholic
Church: for whilst the expression of Catholic doctrines is authoritative
and unvarying, the great social problems did not all arise at once, and
have at various times received different solutions. The reformers failed
to construct a complete and harmonious code of doctrine; but they were
compelled to supplement the new theology by a body of new rules for the
guidance of their followers in those innumerable questions with regard
to which the practice of the Church had grown out of the experience of
ages. And although the dogmatic system of Protestantism was not
completed in their time, yet the Protestant spirit animated them in
greater purity and force than it did any later generation. Now, when a
religion is applied to the social and political sphere, its general
spirit must be considered, rather than its particular precepts. So that
in studying the points of this application in the case of Protestantism,
we may consult the writings of the reformers with greater confidence
than we could do for an exposition of Protestant theology; and accept
them as a greater authority, because they agree more entirely among
themselves. We can be more sure that we have the true Protestant opinion
in a political or social question on which all the reformers are agreed,
than in a theological question on which they differ; for the concurrent
opinion must be founded on an element common to all, and therefore
essential. If it should further appear that this opinion was injurious
to their actual interests, and maintained at a sacrifice to themselves,
we should then have an additional security for its necessary connection
with their fundamental views.
The most important example of this law is the Protestant theory of
toleration. The views of the reformers on religious liberty are not
fragmentary, accidental opinions, unconnected with their doctrines, or
suggested by the circumstances amidst which they lived; but the product
of their theological system, and of their ideas of political and
ecclesiastical government. Civil and religious liberty are so commonly
associated in people's mouths, and are so rare in fact, that their
definition is evidently as little understood as the principle of their
connection. The point at which they unite, the common root from which
they derive their sustenance, is the right of self-government. The
modern theory, which has swept away every authority except that of the
State, and has made the sovereign power irresistible by multiplying
those who share it, is the enemy of that common freedom in which
religious freedom is included. It condemns, as a State within the State,
every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its
own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it
emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to transfer
them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the
individual, because it is only in the individual that liberty can be
separated from authority, and the right of conditional obedience
deprived of the security of a limited command. Under its sway,
therefore, every man may profess his own religion more or less freely;
but his religion is not free to administer its own laws. In other words,
religious profession is free, but Church government is controlled. And
where ecclesiastical authority is restricted, religious liberty is
virtually denied.
For religious liberty is not the negative right of being without any
particular religion, just as self-government is not anarchy. It is the
right of religious communities to the practice of their own duties, the
enjoyment of their own constitution, and the protection of the law,
which equally secures to all the possession of their own independence.
Far from implying a general toleration, it is best secured by a limited
one. In an indifferent State, that is, in a State without any definite
religious character (if such a thing is conceivable), no ecclesiastical
authority could exist. A hierarchical organisation would not be
tolerated by the sects that have none, or by the enemies of all definite
religion; for it would be in contradiction to the prevailing theory of
atomic freedom. Nor can a religion be free when it is alone, unless it
makes the State subject to it. For governments restrict the liberty of
the favoured Church, by way of remunerating themselves for their service
in preserving her unity. The most violent and prolonged conflicts for
religious freedom occurred in the Middle Ages between a Church which was
not threatened by rivals and States which were most attentive to
preserve her exclusive predominance. Frederic II., the most tyrannical
oppressor of the Church among the German emperors, was the author of
those sanguinary laws against heresy which prevailed so long in many
parts of Europe. The Inquisition, which upheld the religious unity of
the Spanish nation, imposed the severest restrictions on the Spanish
Church; and in England conformity has been most rigorously exacted by
those sovereigns who have most completely tyrannised over the
Established Church. Religious liberty, therefore, is possible only where
the co-existence of different religions is admitted, with an equal right
to govern themselves according to their own several principles.
Tolerance of error is requisite for freedom; but freedom will be most
complete where there is no actual diversity to be resisted, and no
theoretical unity to be maintained, but where unity exists as the
triumph of truth, not of force, through the victory of the Church, not
through the enactment of the State.
This freedom is attainable only in communities where rights are sacred,
and where law is supreme. If the first duty is held to be obedience to
authority and the preservation of order, as in the case of aristocracies
and monarchies of the patriarchal type, there is no safety for the
liberties either of individuals or of religion. Where the highest
consideration is the public good and the popular will, as in
democracies, and in constitutional monarchies after the French pattern,
majority takes the place of authority; an irresistible power is
substituted for an idolatrous principle, and all private rights are
equally insecure. The true theory of freedom excludes all absolute power
and arbitrary action, and requires that a tyrannical or revolutionary
government shall be coerced by the people; but it teaches that
insurrection is criminal, except as a corrective of revolution and
tyranny. In order to understand the views of the Protestant reformers on
toleration, they must be considered with reference to these points.
While the Reformation was an act of individual resistance and not a
system, and when the secular Powers were engaged in supporting the
authority of the Church, the authors of the movement were compelled to
claim impunity for their opinions, and they held language regarding the
right of governments to interfere with religious belief which resembles
that of friends of toleration. Every religious party, however exclusive
or servile its theory may be, if it is in contradiction with a system
generally accepted and protected by law, must necessarily, at its first
appearance, assume the protection of the idea that the conscience is
free.[194] Before a new authority can be set up in the place of one that
exists, there is an interval when the right of dissent must be
proclaimed. At the beginning of Luther's contest with the Holy See
there was no rival authority for him to appeal to. No ecclesiastical
organism existed, the civil power was not on his side, and not even a
definite system had yet been evolved by controversy out of his original
doctrine of justification. His first efforts were acts of hostility, his
exhortations were entirely aggressive, and his appeal was to the masses.
When the prohibition of his New Testament confirmed him in the belief
that no favour was to be expected from the princes, he published his
book on the Civil Power, which he judged superior to everything that had
been written on government since the days of the Apostles, and in which
he asserts that authority is given to the State only against the wicked,
and that it cannot coerce the godly. "Princes," he says, "are not to be
obeyed when they command submission to superstitious errors, but their
aid is not to be invoked in support of the Word of God."[195] Heretics
must be converted by the Scriptures, and not by fire, otherwise the
hangman would be the greatest doctor.[196] At the time when this was
written Luther was expecting the bull of excommunication and the ban of
the empire, and for several years it appeared doubtful whether he would
escape the treatment he condemned. He lived in constant fear of
assassination, and his friends amused themselves with his terrors. At
one time he believed that a Jew had been hired by the Polish bishops to
despatch him; that an invisible physician was on his way to Wittenberg
to murder him; that the pulpit from which he preached was impregnated
with a subtle poison.[197] These alarms dictated his language during
those early years. It was not the true expression of his views, which he
was not yet strong enough openly to put forth.[198]
The Zwinglian schism, the rise of the Anabaptists, and the Peasants' War
altered the aspect of affairs. Luther recognised in them the fruits of
his theory of the right of private judgment and of dissent,[199] and the
moment had arrived to secure his Church against the application of the
same dissolving principles which had served him to break off from his
allegiance to Rome.[200] The excesses of the social war threatened to
deprive the movement of the sympathy of the higher classes, especially
of the governments; and with the defeat of the peasants the popular
phase of the Reformation came to an end on the Continent. "The devil,"
Luther said, "having failed to put him down by the help of the Pope, was
seeking his destruction through the preachers of treason and
blood."[201] He instantly turned from the people to the princes;[202]
impressed on his party that character of political dependence, and that
habit of passive obedience to the State, which it has ever since
retained, and gave it a stability it could never otherwise have
acquired. In thus taking refuge in the arms of the civil power,
purchasing the safety of his doctrine by the sacrifice of its freedom,
and conferring on the State, together with the right of control, the
duty of imposing it at the point of the sword, Luther in reality
reverted to his original teaching.[203] The notion of liberty, whether
civil or religious, was hateful to his despotic nature, and contrary to
his interpretation of Scripture. As early as 1519 he had said that even
the Turk was to be reverenced as an authority.[204] The demoralising
servitude and lawless oppression which the peasants endured, gave them,
in his eyes, no right to relief; and when they rushed to arms, invoking
his name as their deliverer, he exhorted the nobles to take a merciless
revenge.[205] Their crime was, that they were animated by the sectarian
spirit, which it was the most important interest of Luther to suppress.
The Protestant authorities throughout Southern Germany were perplexed by
their victory over the Anabaptists. It was not easy to show that their
political tenets were revolutionary, and the only subversive portion of
their doctrine was that they held, with the Catholics, that the State is
not responsible for religion.[206] They were punished, therefore,
because they taught that no man ought to suffer for his faith. At
Nuremberg the magistrates did not know how to proceed against them. They
seemed no worse than the Catholics, whom there was no question at that
time of exterminating. The celebrated Osiander deemed these scruples
inconsistent. The Papists, he said, ought also to be suppressed; and so
long as this was not done, it was impossible to proceed to extremities
against the Anabaptists, who were no worse than they. Luther also was
consulted, and he decided that they ought not to be punished unless they
refused to conform at the command of the Government.[207] The Margrave
of Brandenburg was also advised by the divines that a heretic who could
not be converted out of Scripture might be condemned; but that in his
sentence nothing should be said about heresy, but only about sedition
and murderous intent, though he should be guiltless of these.[208] With
the aid of this artifice great numbers were put to death.
Luther's proud and ardent spirit despised such pretences. He had cast
off all reserve, and spoke his mind openly on the rights and duties of
the State towards the Church and the people. His first step was to
proclaim it the office of the civil power to prevent abominations.[209]
He provided no security that, in discharging this duty, the sovereign
should be guided by the advice of orthodox divines;[210] but he held the
duty itself to be imperative. In obedience to the fundamental principle,
that the Bible is the sole guide in all things, he defined the office
and justified it by scriptural precedents. The Mosaic code, he argued,
awarded to false prophets the punishment of death, and the majesty of
God is not to be less deeply reverenced or less rigorously vindicated
under the New Testament than under the Old; in a more perfect revelation
the obligation is stronger. Those who will not hear the Church must be
excluded from the communion; but the civil power is to intervene when
the ecclesiastical excommunication has been pronounced, and men must be
compelled to come in. For, according to the more accurate definition of
the Church which is given in the Confession of Schmalkald, and in the
Apology of the Confession of Augsburg, excommunication involves
damnation. There is no salvation to be hoped for out of the Church, and
the test of orthodoxy against the Pope, the devil, and all the world, is
the dogma of justification by faith.[211]
The defence of religion became, on this theory, not only the duty of the
civil power, but the object of its institution. Its business was solely
the coercion of those who were out of the Church. The faithful could not
be the objects of its action; they did of their own accord more than any
laws required. "A good tree," says Luther, "brings forth good fruit by
nature, without compulsion; is it not madness to prescribe laws to an
apple-tree that it shall bear apples and not thorns?"[212] This view
naturally proceeded from the axiom of the certainty of the salvation of
all who believe in the Confession of Augsburg.[213] It is the most
important element in Luther's political system, because, while it made
all Protestant governments despotic, it led to the rejection of the
authority of Catholic governments. This is the point where Protestant
and Catholic intolerance meet. If the State were instituted to promote
the faith, no obedience could be due to a State of a different faith.
Protestants could not conscientiously be faithful subjects of Catholic
Powers, and they could not therefore be tolerated. Misbelievers would
have no rights under an orthodox State, and a misbelieving prince would
have no authority over orthodox subjects. The more, therefore, Luther
expounded the guilt of resistance and the Divine sanction of authority,
the more subversive his influence became in Catholic countries. His
system was alike revolutionary, whether he defied the Catholic powers or
promoted a Protestant tyranny. He had no notion of political right. He
found no authority for such a claim in the New Testament, and he held
that righteousness does not need to exhibit itself in works.
It was the same helpless dependence on the letter of Scripture which led
the reformers to consequences more subversive of Christian morality than
their views on questions of polity. When Carlstadt cited the Mosaic law
in defence of polygamy, Luther was indignant. If the Mosaic law is to
govern everything, he said, we should be compelled to adopt
circumcision.[214] Nevertheless, as there is no prohibition of polygamy
in the New Testament, the reformers were unable to condemn it. They did
not forbid it as a matter of Divine law, and referred it entirely to the
decision of the civil legislator.[215] This, accordingly was the view
which guided Luther and Melanchthon in treating the problem, the
ultimate solution of which was the separation of England from the
Church.[216] When the Landgrave Philip afterwards appealed to this
opinion, and to the earlier commentaries of Luther, the reformers were
compelled to approve his having two wives. Melanchthon was a witness at
the wedding of the second, and the only reservation was a request that
the matter should not be allowed to get abroad.[217] It was the same
portion of Luther's theology, and the same opposition to the spirit of
the Church in the treatment of Scripture, that induced him to believe in
astrology and to ridicule the Copernican system.[218]
His view of the authority of Scripture and his theory of justification
both precluded him from appreciating freedom. "Christian freedom," he
said, "consists in the belief that we require no works to attain piety
and salvation."[219] Thus he became the inventor of the theory of
passive obedience, according to which no motives or provocation can
justify a revolt; and the party against whom the revolt is directed,
whatever its guilt may be, is to be preferred to the party revolting,
however just its cause.[220] In 1530 he therefore declared that the
German princes had no right to resist the Emperor in defence of their
religion. "It was the duty of a Christian," he said, "to suffer wrong,
and no breach of oath or of duty could deprive the Emperor of his right
to the unconditional obedience of his subjects."[221] Even the empire
seemed to him a despotism, from his scriptural belief that it was a
continuation of the last of the four monarchies.[222] He preferred
submission, in the hope of seeing a future Protestant Emperor, to a
resistance which might have dismembered the empire if it had succeeded,
and in which failure would have been fatal to the Protestants; and he
was always afraid to draw the logical consequences of his theory of the
duty of Protestants towards Catholic sovereigns. In consequence of this
fact, Ranke affirms that the great reformer was also one of the greatest
conservatives that ever lived; and his biographer, Jürgens, makes the
more discriminating remark that history knows of no man who was at once
so great an insurgent and so great an upholder of order as he.[223]
Neither of these writers understood that the same principle lies at the
root both of revolution and of passive obedience, and that the
difference is only in the temper of the person who applies it, and in
the outward circumstances.
Luther's theory is apparently in opposition to Protestant interests, for
it entitles Catholicism to the protection of Catholic Powers. He
disguised from himself this inconsistency, and reconciled theory with
expediency by the calculation that the immense advantages which his
system offered to the princes would induce them all to adopt it. For,
besides the consolatory doctrine of justification,--"a doctrine
original, specious, persuasive, powerful against Rome, and wonderfully
adapted, as if prophetically, to the genius of the times which were to
follow,"[224]--he bribed the princes with the wealth of the Church,
independence of ecclesiastical authority, facilities for polygamy, and
absolute power. He told the peasants not to take arms against the Church
unless they could persuade the Government to give the order; but
thinking it probable, in 1522, that the Catholic clergy would, in spite
of his advice, be exterminated by the fury of the people, he urged the
Government to suppress them, because what was done by the constituted
authority could not be wrong.[225] Persuaded that the sovereign power
would be on his side, he allowed no limits to its extent. It is absurd,
he says, to imagine that, even with the best intentions, kings can avoid
committing occasional injustice; they stand, therefore, particularly in
need--not of safeguards against the abuse of power, but--of the
forgiveness of sins.[226] The power thus concentrated in the hands of
the rulers for the guardianship of the faith, he wished to be used with
the utmost severity against unregenerate men, in whom there was neither
moral virtue nor civil rights, and from whom no good could come until
they were converted. He therefore required that all crimes should be
most cruelly punished and that the secular arm should be employed to
convert where it did not destroy. The idea of mercy tempering justice he
denounced as a Popish superstition.[227]
The chief object of the severity thus recommended was, of course,
efficaciously to promote the end for which Government itself was held to
be instituted. The clergy had authority over the conscience, but it was
thought necessary that they should be supported by the State with the
absolute penalties of outlawry, in order that error might be
exterminated, although it was impossible to banish sin.[228] No
Government, it was maintained, could tolerate heresy without being
responsible for the souls that were seduced by it;[229] and as Ezechiel
destroyed the brazen serpent to prevent idolatry, the mass must be
suppressed, for the mass was the worst kind of idolatry.[230] In 1530,
when it was proposed to leave the matters in dispute to the decision of
the future Council, Luther declared that the mass and monastic life
could not be tolerated in the meantime, because it was unlawful to
connive at error.[231] "It will lie heavy on your conscience," he writes
to the Duke of Saxony, "if you tolerate the Catholic worship; for no
secular prince can permit his subjects to be divided by the preaching
of opposite doctrines. The Catholics have no right to complain, for they
do not prove the truth of their doctrine from Scripture, and therefore
do not conscientiously believe it."[232] He would tolerate them only if
they acknowledged themselves, like the Jews, enemies of Christ and of
the Emperor, and consented to exist as outcasts of society.[233]
"Heretics," he said, "are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned
unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue
the evil to its source, and bathe their hands in the blood of the
Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is a devil in disguise."[234]
The persecuting principles which were involved in Luther's system, but
which he cared neither to develop, to apply, nor to defend, were formed
into a definite theory by the colder genius of Melanchthon. Destitute of
Luther's confidence in his own strength, and in the infallible success
of his doctrine, he clung more eagerly to the hope of achieving victory
by the use of physical force. Like his master he too hesitated at first,
and opposed the use of severe measures against the Zwickau prophets; but
when he saw the development of that early germ of dissent, and the
gradual dissolution of Lutheran unity, he repented of his ill-timed
clemency.[235] He was not deterred from asserting the duty of
persecution by the risk of putting arms into the hands of the enemies of
the Reformation. He acknowledged the danger, but he denied the right.
Catholic powers, he deemed, might justly persecute, but they could only
persecute error. They must apply the same criterion which the Lutherans
applied, and then they were justified in persecuting those whom the
Lutherans also proscribed. For the civil power had no right to proscribe
a religion in order to save itself from the dangers of a distracted and
divided population. The judge of the fact and of the danger must be, not
the magistrate, but the clergy.[236] The crime lay, not in dissent, but
in error. Here, therefore, Melanchthon repudiated the theory and
practice of the Catholics, whose aid he invoked; for all the intolerance
in the Catholic times was founded on the combination of two ideas--the
criminality of apostasy, and the inability of the State to maintain its
authority where the moral sense of a part of the community was in
opposition to it. The reformers, therefore, approved the Catholic
practice of intolerance, and even encouraged it, although their own
principles of persecution were destitute not only of connection, but
even of analogy, with it. By simply accepting the inheritance of the
mediæval theory of the religious unity of the empire, they would have
been its victims. By asserting that persecution was justifiable only
against error, that is, only when purely religious, they set up a shield
for themselves, and a sword against those sects for whose destruction
they were more eager than the Catholics. Whether we refer the origin of
Protestant intolerance to the doctrines or to the interests of the
Reformation, it appears totally unconnected with the tradition of
Catholic ages, or the atmosphere of Catholicism. All severities
exercised by Catholics before that time had a practical motive; but
Protestant persecution was based on a purely speculative foundation, and
was due partly to the influence of Scripture examples, partly to the
supposed interests of the Protestant party. It never admitted the
exclusion of dissent to be a political right of the State, but
maintained the suppression of error to be its political duty. To say,
therefore, that the Protestants learnt persecution from the Catholics,
is as false as to say that they used it by way of revenge. For they
founded it on very different and contradictory grounds, and they
admitted the right of the Catholics to persecute even the Protestant
sects.
Melanchthon taught that the sects ought to be put down by the sword, and
that any individual who started new opinions ought to be punished with
death.[237] He carefully laid down that these severities were requisite,
not in consideration of the danger to the State, nor of immoral
teaching, nor even of such differences as would weaken the authority or
arrest the action of the ecclesiastical organisation, but simply on
account of a difference, however slight, in the theologumena of
Protestantism.[238] Thamer, who held the possibility of salvation among
the heathen; Schwenkfeld, who taught that not the written Word, but the
internal illumination of grace in the soul was the channel of God's
influence on man; the Zwinglians, with their error on the Eucharist, all
these met with no more favour than the fanatical Anabaptists.[239] The
State was held bound to vindicate the first table of the law with the
same severity as those commandments on which civil society depends for
its existence. The government of the Church being administered by the
civil magistrates, it was their office also to enforce the ordinances of
religion; and the same power whose voice proclaimed religious orthodoxy
and law held in its hand the sword by which they were enforced. No
religious authority existed except through the civil power.[240] The
Church was merged in the State; but the laws of the State, in return,
were identified with the commandments of religion.[241]
In accordance with these principles, the condemnation of Servetus by a
civil tribunal, which had no authority over him, and no jurisdiction
over his crime--the most aggressive and revolutionary act, therefore,
that is conceivable in the casuistry of persecution--was highly approved
by Melanchthon. He declared it a most useful example for all future
ages, and could not understand that there should be any who did not
regard it in the same favourable light.[242] It is true that Servetus,
by denying the divinity of Christ, was open to the charge of blasphemy
in a stricter sense than that in which the reformers generally applied
it. But this was not the case with the Catholics. They did not
represent, like the sects, an element of dissolution in Protestantism,
and the bulk of their doctrine was admitted by the reformers. They were
not in revolt against existing authority; they required no special
innovations for their protection; they demanded only that the change of
religion should not be compulsory. Yet Melanchthon held that they too
were to be proscribed, because their worship was idolatrous.[243] In
doing this he adopted the principle of aggressive intolerance, which was
at that time new to the Christian world; and which the Popes and
Councils of the Catholic Church had condemned when the zeal of laymen
had gone beyond the lawful measure. In the Middle Ages there had been
persecution far more sanguinary than any that has been inflicted by
Protestants. Various motives had occasioned it and various arguments had
been used in its defence. But the principle on which the Protestants
oppressed the Catholics was new. The Catholics had never admitted the
theory of absolute toleration, as it was defined at first by Luther, and
afterwards by some of the sects. In principle, their tolerance differed
from that of the Protestants as widely as their intolerance. They had
exterminated sects which, like the Albigenses, threatened to overturn
the fabric of Christian society. They had proscribed different
religions where the State was founded on religious unity, and where this
unity formed an integral part of its laws and administration. They had
gone one step further, and punished those whom the Church condemned as
apostates; thereby vindicating, not, as in the first case, the moral
basis of society, nor, as in the second, the religious foundation of the
State, but the authority of the Church and the purity of her doctrine,
on which they relied as the pillar and bulwark of the social and
political order. Where a portion of the inhabitants of any country
preferred a different creed, Jew, Mohammedan, heathen, or schismatic,
they had been generally tolerated, with enjoyment of property and
personal freedom, but not with that of political power or autonomy. But
political freedom had been denied them because they did not admit the
common ideas of duty which were its basis. This position, however, was
not tenable, and was the source of great disorders. The Protestants, in
like manner, could give reasons for several kinds of persecution. They
could bring the Socinians under the category of blasphemers; and
blasphemy, like the ridicule of sacred things, destroys reverence and
awe, and tends to the destruction of society. The Anabaptists, they
might argue, were revolutionary fanatics, whose doctrines were
subversive of the civil order; and the dogmatic sects threatened the
ruin of ecclesiastical unity within the Protestant community itself. But
by placing the necessity of intolerance on the simple ground of
religious error, and in directing it against the Church which they
themselves had abandoned, they introduced a purely subjective test, and
a purely revolutionary system. It is on this account that the _tu
quoque_, or retaliatory argument, is inadmissible between Catholics and
Protestants. Catholic intolerance is handed down from an age when unity
subsisted, and when its preservation, being essential for that of
society, became a necessity of State as well as a result of
circumstances. Protestant intolerance, on the contrary was the peculiar
fruit of a dogmatic system in contradiction with the facts and
principles on which the intolerance actually existing among Catholics
was founded. Spanish intolerance has been infinitely more sanguinary
than Swedish; but in Spain, independently of the interests of religion,
there were strong political and social reasons to justify persecution
without seeking any theory to prop it up; whilst in Sweden all those
practical considerations have either been wanting, or have been opposed
to persecution, which has consequently had no justification except the
theory of the Reformation. The only instance in which the Protestant
theory has been adopted by Catholics is the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.
Towards the end of his life, Melanchthon, having ceased to be a strict
Lutheran, receded somewhat from his former uncompromising position, and
was adverse to a strict scrutiny into minor theological differences. He
drew a distinction between errors that required punishment and
variations that were not of practical importance.[244] The English
Calvinists who took refuge in Germany in the reign of Mary Tudor were
ungraciously received by those who were stricter Lutherans than
Melanchthon. He was consulted concerning the course to be adopted
towards the refugees, and he recommended toleration. But both at Wesel
and at Frankfort his advice was, to his great disgust, overruled.[245]
The severities of the Protestants were chiefly provoked by the
Anabaptists, who denied the lawfulness of civil government, and strove
to realise the kingdom of God on earth by absorbing the State in the
Church.[246] None protested more loudly than they against the Lutheran
intolerance, or suffered from it more severely. But while denying the
spiritual authority of the State, they claimed for their religious
community a still more absolute right of punishing error by death.
Though they sacrificed government to religion, the effect was the same
as that of absorbing the Church in the State. In 1524 Münzer published a
sermon, in which he besought the Lutheran princes to extirpate
Catholicism. "Have no remorse," he says; "for He to whom all power is
given in heaven and on earth means to govern alone."[247] He demanded
the punishment of all heretics, the destruction of all who were not of
his faith, and the institution of religious unity. "Do not pretend," he
says, "that the power of God will accomplish it without the use of your
sword, or it will grow rusty in the scabbard. The tree that bringeth not
forth good fruit must be cut down and cast into the fire." And
elsewhere, "the ungodly have no right to live, except so far as the
elect choose to grant it them."[248] When the Anabaptists were supreme
at Münster, they exhibited the same intolerance. At seven in the morning
of Friday, 27th February 1534, they ran through the streets crying,
"Away with the ungodly!" Breaking into the houses of those who refused
their baptism, they drove the men out of the town, and forcibly
rebaptized the women who remained behind.[249] Whilst, therefore, the
Anabaptists were punished for questioning the authority of the
Lutherans in religious matters, they practically justified their
persecution by their own intolerant doctrines. In fact, they carried the
Protestant principles of persecution to an extreme. For whereas the
Lutherans regarded the defence of truth and punishment of error as
being, in part, the object of the institution of civil government, they
recognised it as an advantage by which the State was rewarded for its
pains; but the Anabaptists repudiated the political element altogether,
and held that error should be exterminated solely for the sake of truth,
and at the expense of all existing States.
Bucer, whose position in the history of the Reformation is so peculiar,
and who differed in important points from the Saxon leaders, agreed with
them on the necessity of persecuting. He was so anxious for the success
of Protestantism, that he was ready to sacrifice and renounce important
doctrines, in order to save the appearance of unity;[250] but those
opinions in which he took so little dogmatic interest, he was resolved
to defend by force. He was very much dissatisfied with the reluctance of
the Senate of Strasburg to adopt severe measures against the Catholics.
His colleague Capito was singularly tolerant; for the feeling of the
inhabitants was not decidedly in favour of the change.[251] But Bucer,
his biographer tells us, was, in spite of his inclination to mediate,
not friendly to this temporising system; partly because he had an
organising intellect, which relied greatly on practical discipline to
preserve what had been conquered, and on restriction of liberty to be
the most certain security for its preservation; partly because he had a
deep insight into the nature of various religious tendencies, and was
justly alarmed at their consequences for Church and State.[252] This
point in the character of Bucer provoked a powerful resistance to his
system of ecclesiastical discipline, for it was feared that he would
give to the clergy a tyrannical power.[253] It is true that the
demoralisation which ensued on the destruction of the old ecclesiastical
authority rendered a strict attention on the part of the State to the
affairs of religion highly necessary.[254] The private and confidential
communications of the German reformers give a more hideous picture of
the moral condition of the generation which followed the Reformation
than they draw in their published writings of that which preceded it. It
is on this account that Bucer so strongly insisted on the necessity of
the interference of the civil power in support of the discipline of the
Church.
The Swiss reformers, between whom and the Saxons Bucer forms a
connecting link, differ from them in one respect, which greatly
influenced their notions of government. Luther lived under a monarchy
which was almost absolute, and in which the common people, who were of
Slavonic origin, were in the position of the most abject servitude; but
the divines of Zürich and Bern were republicans. They did not therefore
entertain his exalted views as to the irresistible might of the State;
and instead of requiring as absolute a theory of the indefectibility of
the civil power as he did, they were satisfied with obtaining a
preponderating influence for themselves. Where the power was in hands
less favourable to their cause, they had less inducement to exaggerate
its rights.
Zwingli abolishes both the distinction between Church and State and the
notion of ecclesiastical authority. In his system the civil rulers
possess the spiritual functions; and, as their foremost duty is the
preservation and promotion of the true religion, it is their business to
preach. As magistrates are too much occupied with other things, they
must delegate the ministry of the word to preachers, for whose orthodoxy
they have to provide. They are bound to establish uniformity of
doctrine, and to defend it against Papists and heretics. This is not
only their right, but their duty; and not only their duty, but the
condition on which they retain office.[255] Rulers who do not act in
accordance with it are to be dismissed. Thus Zwingli combined
persecution and revolution in the same doctrine. But he was not a
fanatical persecutor, and his severity was directed less against the
Catholics than against the Anabaptists,[256] whose prohibition of all
civil offices was more subversive of order in a republic than in a
monarchy. Even, however, in the case of the Anabaptists the special
provocation was--not the peril to the State, nor the scandal of their
errors, but--the schism which weakened the Church.[257] The punishment
of heresy for the glory of God was almost inconsistent with the theory
that there is no ecclesiastical power. It was not so much provoked in
Zürich as elsewhere, because in a small republican community, where the
governing body was supreme over both civil and religious affairs,
religious unity was a matter of course. The practical necessity of
maintaining unity put out of sight the speculative question of the guilt
and penalty of error.
Soon after Zwingli's death, Leo Judæ called for severer measures against
the Catholics, expressly stating, however, that they did not deserve
death. "Excommunication," he said, "was too light a punishment to be
inflicted by the State which wields the sword, and the faults in
question were not great enough to involve the danger of death."[258]
Afterwards he fell into doubts as to the propriety of severe measures
against dissenters, but his friends Bullinger and Capito succeeded in
removing his scruples, and in obtaining his acquiescence in that
intolerance, which was, says his biographer, a question of life and
death for the Protestant Church.[259] Bullinger took, like Zwingli, a
more practical view of the question than was common in Germany. He
thought it safer strictly to exclude religious differences than to put
them down with fire and sword; "for in this case," he says, "the victims
compare themselves to the early martyrs, and make their punishment a
weapon of defence."[260] He did not, however, forbid capital punishment
in cases of heresy. In the year 1535 he drew up an opinion on the
treatment of religious error, which is written in a tone of great
moderation. In this document he says "that all sects which introduce
division into the Church must be put down, and not only such as, like
the Anabaptists, threaten to subvert society, for the destruction of
order and unity often begins in an apparently harmless or imperceptible
way. The culprit should be examined with gentleness. If his disposition
is good he will not refuse instruction; if not, still patience must be
shown until there is no hope of converting him. Then he must be treated
like other malefactors, and handed over to the torturer and the
executioner."[261] After this time there were no executions for religion
in Zürich, and the number, even in the lifetime of Zwingli, was less
considerable than in many other places. But it was still understood that
confirmed heretics would be put to death. In 1546, in answer to the
Pope's invitation to the Council of Trent, Bullinger indignantly
repudiates the insinuation that the Protestant cantons were heretical,
"for, by the grace of God, we have always punished the vices of heresy
and sodomy with fire, and have looked upon them, and still look upon
them, with horror."[262] This accusation of heresy inflamed the zeal of
the reformers against heretics, in order to prove to the Catholics that
they had no sympathy with them. On these grounds Bullinger recommended
the execution of Servetus. "If the high Council inflicts on him the fate
due to a worthless blasphemer, all the world will see that the people of
Geneva hate blasphemers, and that they punish with the sword of justice
heretics who are obstinate in their heresy.... Strict fidelity and
vigilance are needed, because our churches are in ill repute abroad, as
if we were heretics and friends of heresy. Now God's holy providence has
furnished an opportunity of clearing ourselves of this evil
suspicion."[263] After the event he advised Calvin to justify it, as
there were some who were taken aback. "Everywhere," he says, "there are
excellent men who are convinced that godless and blaspheming men ought
not only to be rebuked and imprisoned, but also to be put to death....
How Servetus could have been spared I cannot see."[264]
The position of OEcolampadius in reference to these questions was
altogether singular and exceptional. He dreaded the absorption of the
ecclesiastical functions by the State, and sought to avoid it by the
introduction of a council of twelve elders, partly magistrates, partly
clergy, to direct ecclesiastical affairs. "Many things," he said, "are
punished by the secular power less severely than the dignity of the
Church demands. On the other hand, it punishes the repentant, to whom
the Church shows mercy. Either it blunts the edge of its sword by not
punishing the guilty, or it brings some hatred on the Gospel by
severity."[265] But the people of Basel were deaf to the arguments of
the reformer, and here, as elsewhere, the civil power usurped the office
of the Church. In harmony with this jealousy of political interference,
OEcolampadius was very merciful to the Anabaptists. "Severe penalties,"
he said, "were likely to aggravate the evil; forgiveness would hasten
the cure."[266] A few months later, however, he regretted this leniency.
"We perceive," he writes to a friend, "that we have sometimes shown too
much indulgence; but this is better than to proceed tyrannically, or to
surrender the keys of the Church."[267] Whilst, on the other hand, he
rejoiced at the expulsion of the Catholics, he ingeniously justified the
practice of the Catholic persecutors. "In the early ages of the Church,
when the divinity of Christ manifested itself to the world by miracles,
God incited the Apostles to treat the ungodly with severity. When the
miracles ceased, and the faith was universally adopted, He gained the
hearts of princes and rulers, so that they undertook to protect with the
sword the gentleness and patience of the Church. They rigorously
resisted, in fulfilment of the duties of their office, the contemners of
the Church."[268] "The clergy," he goes on to say, "became tyrannical
because they usurped to themselves a power which they ought to have
shared with others; and as the people dread the return of this tyranny
of ecclesiastical authority, it is wiser for the Protestant clergy to
make no use of the similar power of excommunication which is intrusted
to them."
Calvin, as the subject of an absolute monarch, and the ruling spirit in
a republic, differed both from the German and the Swiss reformers in his
idea of the State both in its object and in its duty towards the Church.
An exile from his own country, he had lost the associations and habits
of monarchy, and his views of discipline as well as doctrine were
matured before he took up his abode in Switzerland.[269] His system was
not founded on existing facts; it had no roots in history, but was
purely ideal, speculative, and therefore more consistent and inflexible
than any other. Luther's political ideas were bounded by the horizon of
the monarchical absolutism under which he lived. Zwingli's were
influenced by the democratic forms of his native country, which gave to
the whole community the right of appointing the governing body. Calvin,
independent of all such considerations, studied only how his doctrine
could best be realised, whether through the instrumentality of existing
authorities, or at their expense. In his eyes its interests were
paramount, their promotion the supreme duty, opposition to them an
unpardonable crime. There was nothing in the institutions of men, no
authority, no right, no liberty, that he cared to preserve, or towards
which he entertained any feelings of reverence or obligation.
His theory made the support of religious truth the end and office of the
State,[270] which was bound therefore to protect, and consequently to
obey, the Church, and had no control over it. In religion the first and
highest thing was the dogma: the preservation of morals was one
important office of government; but the maintenance of the purity of
doctrine was the highest. The result of this theory is the institution
of a pure theocracy. If the elect were alone upon the earth, Calvin
taught, there would be no need of the political order, and the
Anabaptists would be right in rejecting it;[271] but the elect are in a
minority; and there is the mass of reprobates who must be coerced by the
sword, in order that all the world may be made subject to the truth, by
the conquerors imposing their faith upon the vanquished.[272] He wished
to extend religion by the sword, but to reserve death as the punishment
of apostasy; and as this law would include the Catholics, who were in
Calvin's eyes apostates from the truth, he narrowed it further to those
who were apostates from the community. In this way, he said, there was
no pretext given to the Catholics to retaliate.[273] They, as well as
the Jews and Mohammedans, must be allowed to live: death was only the
penalty of Protestants who relapsed into error; but to them it applied
equally whether they were converted to the Church or joined the sects
and fell into unbelief. Only in cases where there was no danger of his
words being used against the Protestants, and in letters not intended
for publication, he required that Catholics should suffer the same
penalties as those who were guilty of sedition, on the ground that the
majesty of God must be as strictly avenged as the throne of the
king.[274]
If the defence of the truth was the purpose for which power was
intrusted to princes, it was natural that it should be also the
condition on which they held it. Long before the revolution of 1688,
Calvin had decided that princes who deny the true faith, "abdicate"
their crowns, and are no longer to be obeyed;[275] and that no oaths are
binding which are in contradiction to the interests of Protestantism.[276]
He painted the princes of his age in the blackest colours,[277] and
prayed to God for their destruction;[278] though at the same time he
condemned all rebellion on the part of his friends, so long as there were
great doubts of their success.[279] His principles, however, were often
stronger than his exhortations, and he had difficulty in preventing murders
and seditious movements in France,[280] When he was dead, nobody prevented
them, and it became clear that his system, by subjecting the civil power
to the service of religion, was more dangerous to toleration than Luther's
plan of giving to the State supremacy over the Church.
Calvin was as positive as Luther in asserting the duty of obedience to
rulers irrespective of their mode of government[281] He constantly
declared that tyranny was not to be resisted on political grounds; that
no civil rights could outweigh the divine sanction of government; except
in cases where a special office was appointed for the purpose. Where
there was no such office--where, for instance, the estates of the realm
had lost their independence--there was no protection. This is one of the
most important and essential characteristics of the politics of the
reformers. By making the protection of their religion the principal
business of government, they put out of sight its more immediate and
universal duties, and made the political objects of the State disappear
behind its religious end. A government was to be judged, in their eyes,
only by its fidelity to the Protestant Church. If it fulfilled those
requirements, no other complaints against it could be entertained. A
tyrannical prince could not be resisted if he was orthodox; a just
prince could be dethroned if he failed in the more essential condition
of faith. In this way Protestantism became favourable at once to
despotism and to revolution, and was ever ready to sacrifice good
government to its own interests. It subverted monarchies, and, at the
same time, denounced those who, for political causes, sought their
subversion; but though the monarchies it subverted were sometimes
tyrannical, and the seditions it prevented sometimes revolutionary, the
order it defended or sought to establish was never legitimate and free,
for it was always invested with the function of religious
proselytism,[282] and with the obligation of removing every traditional,
social, or political right or power which could oppose the discharge of
that essential duty.
The part Calvin had taken in the death of Servetus obliged him to
develop more fully his views on the punishment of heresy. He wrote a
short account of the trial,[283] and argued that governments are bound
to suppress heresy, and that those who deny the justice of the
punishment, themselves deserve it.[284] The book was signed by all the
clergy of Geneva, as Calvin's compurgators. It was generally considered
a failure; and a refutation appeared, which was so skilful as to produce
a great sensation in the Protestant world.[285] This famous tract, now
of extreme rarity, did not, as has been said, "contain the pith of those
arguments which have ultimately triumphed in almost every part of
Europe;" nor did it preach an unconditional toleration.[286] But it
struck hard at Calvin by quoting a passage from the first edition of his
_Institutes_, afterwards omitted, in which he spoke for toleration.
"Some of those," says the author, "whom we quote have subsequently
written in a different spirit. Nevertheless, we have cited the earlier
opinion as the true one, as it was expressed under the pressure of
persecution,"[287] The first edition, we are informed by Calvin himself,
was written for the purpose of vindicating the Protestants who were put
to death, and of putting a stop to the persecution. It was anonymous,
and naturally dwelt on the principles of toleration.
Although this book did not denounce all intolerance, and although it was
extremely moderate, Calvin and his friends were filled with horror.
"What remains of Christianity," exclaimed Beza, "if we silently admit
what this man has expectorated in his preface?... Since the beginning of
Christianity no such blasphemy was ever heard."[288] Beza undertook to
defend Calvin in an elaborate work,[289] in which it was easy for him to
cite the authority of all the leading reformers in favour of the
practice of putting heretics to death, and in which he reproduced all
the arguments of those who had written on the subject before him. More
systematic than Calvin, he first of all excludes those who are not
Christians--the Jews, Turks, and heathen--whom his inquiry does not
touch; "among Christians," he proceeds to say, "some are schismatics,
who sin against the peace of the Church, or disbelievers, who reject her
doctrine. Among these, some err in all simplicity; and if their error is
not very grave, and if they do not seduce others, they need not be
punished."[290] "But obstinate heretics are far worse than parricides,
and deserve death, even if they repent."[291] "It is the duty of the
State to punish them, for the whole ecclesiastical order is upheld by
the political."[292] In early ages this power was exercised by the
temporal sovereigns; they convoked councils, punished heretics,
promulgated dogmas. The Papacy afterwards arose, in evil times, and was
a great calamity; but it was preferable a hundred times to the anarchy
which was defended under the name of merciful toleration.
The circumstances of the condemnation of Servetus make it the most
perfect and characteristic example of the abstract intolerance of the
reformers. Servetus was guilty of no political crime; he was not an
inhabitant of Geneva, and was on the point of leaving it, and nothing
immoral could be attributed to him. He was not even an advocate of
absolute toleration.[293] The occasion of his apprehension was a dispute
between a Catholic and a Protestant, as to which party was most zealous
in suppressing egregious errors. Calvin, who had long before declared
that if Servetus came to Geneva he should never leave it alive,[294] did
all he could to obtain his condemnation by the Inquisition at Vienne. At
Geneva he was anxious that the sentence should be death,[295] and in
this he was encouraged by the Swiss churches, but especially by Beza,
Farel, Bullinger, and Peter Martyr.[296] All the Protestant authorities,
therefore, agreed in the justice of putting a writer to death in whose
case all the secondary motives of intolerance were wanting. Servetus was
not a party leader. He had no followers who threatened to upset the
peace and unity of the Church. His doctrine was speculative, without
power or attraction for the masses, like Lutheranism; and without
consequences subversive of morality, or affecting in any direct way the
existence of society, like Anabaptism.[297] He had nothing to do with
Geneva, and his persecutors would have rejoiced if he had been put to
death elsewhere. "Bayle," says Hallam,[298] "has an excellent remark on
this controversy." Bayle's remark is as follows: "Whenever Protestants
complain, they are answered by the right which Calvin and Beza
recognised in magistrates; and to this day there has been nobody who has
not failed pitiably against this _argumentum ad hominem_."
No question of the merits of the Reformation or of persecution is
involved in an inquiry as to the source and connection of the opinions
on toleration held by the Protestant reformers. No man's sentiments on
the rightfulness of religious persecution will be affected by the
theories we have described, and they have no bearing whatever on
doctrinal controversy. Those who--in agreement with the principle of the
early Church, that men are free in matters of conscience--condemn all
intolerance, will censure Catholics and Protestants alike. Those who
pursue the same principle one step farther and practically invert it, by
insisting on the right and duty not only of professing but of extending
the truth, must, as it seems to us, approve the conduct both of
Protestants and Catholics, unless they make the justice of the
persecution depend on the truth of the doctrine defended, in which case
they will divide on both sides. Such persons, again, as are more
strongly impressed with the cruelty of actual executions than with the
danger of false theories, may concentrate their indignation on the
Catholics of Languedoc and Spain; while those who judge principles, not
by the accidental details attending their practical realisation, but by
the reasoning on which they are founded, will arrive at a verdict
adverse to the Protestants. These comparative inquiries, however, have
little serious interest. If we give our admiration to tolerance, we must
remember that the Spanish Moors and the Turks in Europe have been more
tolerant than the Christians; and if we admit the principle of
intolerance, and judge its application by particular conditions, we are
bound to acknowledge that the Romans had better reason for persecution
than any modern State, since their empire was involved in the decline of
the old religion, with which it was bound up, whereas no Christian
polity has been subverted by the mere presence of religious dissent. The
comparison is, moreover, entirely unreasonable, for there is nothing in
common between Catholic and Protestant intolerance. The Church began
with the principle of liberty, both as her claim and as her rule; and
external circumstances forced intolerance upon her, after her spirit of
unity had triumphed, in spite both of the freedom she proclaimed and of
the persecutions she suffered. Protestantism set up intolerance as an
imperative precept and as a part of its doctrine, and it was forced to
admit toleration by the necessities of its position, after the rigorous
penalties it imposed had failed to arrest the process of internal
dissolution.[299]
At the time when this involuntary change occurred the sects that caused
it were the bitterest enemies of the toleration they demanded. In the
same age the Puritans and the Catholics sought a refuge beyond the
Atlantic from the persecution which they suffered together under the
Stuarts. Flying for the same reason, and from the same oppression, they
were enabled respectively to carry out their own views in the colonies
which they founded in Massachusetts and Maryland, and the history of
those two States exhibits faithfully the contrast between the two
Churches. The Catholic emigrants established, for the first time in
modern history, a government in which religion was free, and with it the
germ of that religious liberty which now prevails in America. The
Puritans, on the other hand, revived with greater severity the penal
laws of the mother country. In process of time the liberty of conscience
in the Catholic colony was forcibly abolished by the neighbouring
Protestants of Virginia; while on the borders of Massachusetts the new
State of Rhode Island was formed by a party of fugitives from the
intolerance of their fellow-colonists.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 193: _The Rambler_, March 1862.]
[Footnote 194: "Le vrai principe de Luther est celui-ci: La volonté est
esclave par nature.... Le libre examen a été pour Luther un moyen et non
un principe. Il s'en est servi, et était contraint de s'en servir pour
établir son vrai principe, qui était la toute-puissance de la foi et de
la grâce.... C'est ainsi que le libre examen s'imposa au Protestantisme.
L'accessoire devint le principal, et la forme dévora plus ou moins le
fond" (Janet, _Histoire de la Philosophie Morale_, ii. 38. 39).]
[Footnote 195: "If they prohibit true doctrine, and punish their
subjects for receiving the entire sacrament, as Christ ordained it,
compel the people to idolatrous practices, with masses for the dead,
indulgences, invocation of saints, and the like, in these things they
exceed their office, and seek to deprive God of the obedience due to
Him. For God requires from us this above all, that we hear His Word, and
follow it; but where the Government desires to prevent this, the
subjects must know that they are not bound to obey it" (Luther's
_Werke_, xiii. 2244). "Non est, mi Spalatine, principum et istius
saeculi Pontificum tueri verbum Dei, nec ea gratia ullorum peto
praesidium" (Luther's _Briefe_, ed. De Wette, i. 521, Nov. 4, 1520). "I
will compel and urge by force no man; for the faith must be voluntary
and not compulsory, and must be adopted without violence" ("Sermonen an
Carlstadt," _Werke_, xx. 24, 1522).]
[Footnote 196: "Schrift an den christlichen Adel" (_Werke_, x. 574, June
1520). His proposition, _Haereticos comburi esse contra voluntatem
spiritus_, was one of those condemned by Leo X. as pestilent,
scandalous, and contrary to Christian charity.]
[Footnote 197: "Nihil non tentabunt Romanenses, nec potest satis
Huttenus me monere, adeo mihi de veneno timet" (De Wette, i. 487).
"Etiam inimici mei quidam miserti per amicos ex Halberstadio fecerunt
moneri me: esse quemdam doctorem medicinae, qui arte magica factus pro
libito invisibilis, quemdam occidit, mandatum habentem et occidendi
Lutheri, venturumque ad futuram Dominicam ostensionis reliquiarum: valde
hoc constanter narratur" (De Wette, i. 441). "Est hic apud nos Judaeus
Polonus, missus sub pretio 2000 aureorum, ut me veneno perdat, ab amicis
per literas mihi proditus. Doctor est medicinae, et nihil non audere et
facere paratus incredibili astutia et agilitate" (De Wette, ii. 616).
See also Jarcke, _Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation_, p. 176.]
[Footnote 198: "Multa ego premo et causa principis et universitatis
nostrae cohibeo, quae (si alibi essem) evomerem in vastatricem
Scripturae et Ecclesiae Romanae.... Timeo miser, ne forte non sim dignus
pati et occidi pro tali causa: erit ista felicitas meliorum hominum, non
tam foedi peccatoris. Dixi tibi semper me paratum esse cedere loco, si
qua ego principi ill. viderer periculo hic vivere. Aliquando certe
moriendum est, quanquam jam edita vernacula quadam apologia satis aduler
Romanae Ecclesiae et Pontifici, si quid forte id prosit" (De Wette, i.
260, 261). "Ubi periculum est, ne iis protectoribus tutus saevius in
Romanenses sim grassaturus, quam si sub principis imperio publicis
militarem officiis docendi.... Ego vicissim, nisi ignem habere nequeam
damnabo, publiceque concremabo jus pontificium totum, id est, lernam
illam haeresium; et finem habebit humilitatis exhibitae hactenusque
frustratae observantia qua nolo amplius inflari hostes Evangelii"
(_Ibid._ pp. 465, 466, July 10, 1520).]
[Footnote 199: "Out of the Gospel and divine truth come devilish lies;
... from the blood in our body comes corruption; out of Luther come
Müntzer, and rebels, Anabaptists, Sacramentarians, and false brethren"
(_Werke_, i. 75).]
[Footnote 200: "Habemus," wrote Erasmus, "fructum tui spiritus.... Non
agnoscis hosce seditiosos, opinor, sed illi te agnoscunt ... nec tamen
efficis quominus credant homines per tuos libellos ... pro libertare
evangelica, contra tyrannidem humanam, hisce tumultibus fuisse datam
occasionem." "And who will deny," adds a Protestant classic, "that the
fault was partly owing to them?" (Planck, _Geschichte der
protestantischen Kirche_, ii, 183).]
[Footnote 201: "Ich sehe das wohl, dass der Teufel, so er mich bisher
nicht hat mögen umbringen durch den Pabst, sucht er mich durch die
blutdürstigen Mordpropheten und Rottengeisten, so unter euch sind, zu
vertilgen und auffressen" (_Werke_, xvi. 77).]
[Footnote 202: Schenkel. _Wesen des Protestantismus_, iii. 348, 351;
Hagen, _Geist der Reformation_, ii. 146, 151; Menzel, _Neuere Geschichte
der Deutschen_, i. 115.]
[Footnote 203: See the best of his biographies, Jürgens, _Luther's
Leben_, iii. 601.]
[Footnote 204: "Quid hoc ad me? qui sciam etiam Turcam honorandum et
ferendum potestatis gratia. Quia certus sum non nisi volente Deo ullam
potestatem consistere" (De Wette, i. 236).]
[Footnote 205: "I beg first of all that you will not help to mollify
Count Albert in these matters, but let him go on as he has begun....
Encourage him to go on briskly, to leave things in the hands of God, and
obey His divine command to wield the sword as long as he can." "Do not
allow yourselves to be much disturbed, for it will redound to the
advantage of many souls that will be terrified by it, and preserved."
"If there are innocent persons amongst them, God will surely save and
preserve them, as He did with Lot and Jeremiah. If He does not, then
they are certainly not innocent.... We must pray for them that they
obey, otherwise this is no time for compassion; just let the guns deal
with them." "Sentio melius esse omnes rusticos caedi quam principes et
magistratus, eo quod rustici sine autoritate Dei gladium accipiunt. Quam
nequitiam Satanae sequi non potest nisi mera Satanica vastitas regni
Dei, et mundi principes etsi excedunt, tamen gladium autoritate Dei
gerunt. Ibi utrumque regnum consistere potest, quare nulla misericordia,
nulla patientia rusticis debetur, sed ira et indignatio Dei et hominum"
(De Wette, ii. 653, 655, 666, 669, 671).]
[Footnote 206: "Wir lehren die christlich Obrigkeit möge nicht nur,
sondern solle auch sich der Religion und Glaubenssachen mit Ernst
annehmen; davon halten die Wiedertäufer steif das Widerspiel, welches
sie auch zum Theil gemein haben mit den Prälaten der römischen Kirche"
(Declaration of the Protestants, quoted in Jörg, _Deutschland von 1522
bis 1526_, p. 709).]
[Footnote 207: "As to your question, how they are to be punished, I do
not consider them blasphemers, but regard them in the light of the
Turks, or deluded Christians, whom the civil power has not to punish, at
least bodily. But if they refuse to acknowledge and to obey the civil
authority, then they forfeit all they have and are, for then sedition
and murder are certainly in their hearts" (De Wette, ii. 622; Osiander's
opinion in Jörg, p. 706).]
[Footnote 208: "Dass in dem Urtheil und desselben öffentlicher
Verkündigung keines Irrthums oder Ketzereien ... sondern allein der
Aufruhr und fürgenommenen Morderei, die ihm doch laut seiner Urgicht nie
lieb gewesen, gedacht werde" (Jörg, p. 708).]
[Footnote 209: "Principes nostri non cogunt ad fidem et Evangelion, sed
cohibent externas abominationes" (De Wette, iii. 50). "Wenn die
weltliche Obrigkeit die Verbrechen wider die zweite Gesetzestafel
bestrafen, und aus der menschlichen Gesellschaft tilgen solle, wie
vielmehr denn die Verbrechen wider die erste?" (Luther, _apud_ Bucholtz,
_Geschichte Ferdinands I._, iii. 571).]
[Footnote 210: Planck, iv. 61, explains why this was not thought of.]
[Footnote 211: Linde, _Staatskirche_, p. 23. "Der Papst sammt seinem
Haufen glaubt nicht; darum bekennen wir, er werde nicht selig, das ist
verdammt werden" (_Table-Talk_, ii. 350).]
[Footnote 212: Kaltenborn, _Vorläufer des Grotius_, 208.]
[Footnote 213: Möhler, _Symbolik_, 428.]
[Footnote 214: "Quodsi unam legem Mosi cogimur servare, eadem ratione et
circumcidemur, et totam legem servare oportebit.... Nunc vero non sumus
amplius sub lege Mosi, sed subjecti legibus civilibus in talibus rebus"
(Luther to Barnes, Sept. 5, 1531; De Wette, iv. 296).]
[Footnote 215: "All things that we find done by the patriarchs in the
Old Testament ought to be free and not forbidden. Circumcision is
abolished, but not so that it would be a sin to perform it, but
optional, neither sinful nor acceptable.... In like manner it is not
forbidden that a man should have more than one wife. Even at the present
day I could not prohibit it; but I would not recommend it" (Commentary
on Genesis, 1528; see Jarcke, _Studien_, p. 108). "Ego sane fateor, me
non posse prohibere, siquis plures velit uxores ducere, nec repugnat
sacris literis: verum tamen apud Christianos id exempli nollem primo
introduci, apud quos decet etiam ea intermittere, quae licita sunt, pro
vitando scandalo, et pro honestate vitae" (De Wette, ii. 459, Jan. 13,
1524). "From these instances of bigamy (Lamech, Jacob) no rule can be
drawn for our times; and such examples have no power with us Christians,
for we live under our authorities, and are subject to our civil laws"
(_Table-Talk_, v. 64).]
[Footnote 216: "Antequam tale repudium, probarem potius regi permitterem
alteram reginam quoque ducere, et exemplo patrum et regum duas simul
uxores seu reginas habere.... Si peccavit ducendo uxorem fratris mortui,
peccavit in legem humanam seu civilem; si autem repudiaverit, peccabit
in legem mere divinam" (De Wette, iv. 296). "Haud dubio rex Angliae
uxorem fratris mortui ductam retinere potest ... docendus quod has res
politicas commiserit Deus magistratibus, neque nos alligaverit ad
Moisen.... Si vult rex successioni prospicere, quanto satius est, id
facere sine infamia prioris conjugii. Ac potest id fieri sine ullo
periculo conscientiae cujuscunque aut famae per polygamiam. Etsi enim
non velim concedere polygamiam vulgo, dixi enim supra, nos non ferre
leges, tamen in hoc casu propter magnam utilitatem regni, fortassis
etiam propter conscientiam regis, ita pronuncio: tutissimum esse regi,
si ducat secundam uxorem, priore non abjecta, quia certum est polygamiam
non esse prohibitam jure divino, nec res est omnino inusitata"
(_Melanthonis Opera_, ed. Bretschneider, ii. 524, 526). "Nolumus esse
auctores divortii, cum conjugium cum jure divino non pugnet. Hi, qui
diversum pronunciant, terribiliter exaggerant et exasperant jus divinum.
Nos contra exaggeramus in rebus politicis auctoritatem magistratus, quae
profecto non est levis, multaque justa sunt propter magistratus
auctoritatem, quae alioqui in dubium vocantur" (Melanchthon to Bucer,
Bretschneider, ii. 552).]
[Footnote 217: "Suadere non possumus ut introducatur publice et velut
lege sanciatur permissio, plures quam unam uxores ducendi.... Primum
ante omnia cavendum, ne haec res inducatur in orbem ad modum legis, quam
sequendi libera omnibus sit potestas. Deinde considerare dignetur vestra
celsitudo scandalum, nimirum quod Evangelio hostes exclamaturi sint, nos
similes esse Anabaptistis, qui plures simul duxerunt uxores" (De Wette,
v. 236. Signed by Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer).]
[Footnote 218: "He that would appear wise will not be satisfied with
anything that others do; he must do something for himself, and that must
be better than anything. This fool (Copernicus) wants to overturn the
whole science of astronomy. But, as the holy Scriptures tell us, Joshua
told the sun to stand still, and not the earth" (_Table-Talk_, iv.
575).]
[Footnote 219: "Das ist die christliche Freiheit, der einige Glaube, der
da macht, nicht dass wir müssig gehen oder übel thun mögen, sondern dass
wir keines Werks bedürfen, die Frömmigkeit und Seligkeit zu erlangen"
(_Sermon von der Freiheit_). A Protestant historian, who quotes this
passage, goes on to say: "On the other hand, the body must be brought
under discipline by every means, in order that it may obey and not
burden the inner man. Outward servitude, therefore, assists the progress
towards internal freedom" (Bensen, _Geschichte des Bauernkriegs_, 269.)]
[Footnote 220: _Werke_, x. 413.]
[Footnote 221: "According to Scripture, it is by no means proper that
one who would be a Christian should set himself against his superiors,
whether by God's permission they act justly or unjustly. But a Christian
must suffer violence and wrong, especially from his superiors.... As the
emperor continues emperor, and princes, though they transgress all God's
commandments, yea, even if they be heathen, so they do even when they do
not observe their oath and duty.... Sin does not suspend authority and
allegiance" (De Wette, iii. 560).]
[Footnote 222: Ranke, _Reformation_, iii. 183.]
[Footnote 223: Ranke, iv. 7; Jürgens, iii. 601.]
[Footnote 224: Newman, _Lectures on Justification_, p. 386.]
[Footnote 225: "Was durch ordentliche Gewalt geschieht, ist nicht für
Aufruhr zu halten" (Bensen, p. 269; Jarcke, _Studien_, p. 312; Janet,
ii. 40).]
[Footnote 226: "Princes, and all rulers and governments, however pious
and God-fearing they may be, cannot be without sin in their office and
temporal administration.... They cannot always be so exactly just and
successful as some wiseacres suppose; therefore they are above all in
need of the forgiveness of sins" (see Kaltenborn, p. 209).]
[Footnote 227: "Of old, under the Papacy, princes and lords, and all
judges, were very timid in shedding blood, and punishing robbers,
murderers, thieves, and all manner of evil-doers; for they knew not how
to distinguish a private individual who is not in office from one in
office, charged with the duty of punishing.... The executioner had
always to do penance, and to apologise beforehand to the convicted
criminal for what he was going to do to him, just as if it was sinful
and wrong." "Thus they were persuaded by monks to be gracious,
indulgent, and peaceable. But authorities, princes and lords ought not
to be merciful" (_Table-Talk_, iv. 159, 160).]
[Footnote 228: "Den weltlichen Bann sollten Könige und Kaiser wieder
aufrichten, denn wir können ihn jetzt nicht anrichten.... Aber so wir
nicht können die Sünde des Lebens bannen und strafen, so bannen wir doch
die Sünde der Lehre" (Bruns, _Luther's Predigten_, 63).]
[Footnote 229: "Wo sie solche Rottengeister würden zulassen und leiden,
so sie es doch wehren und vorkommen können, würden sie ihre Gewissen
gräulich beschweren, und vielleicht nimmermehr widder stillen können,
nicht allein der Seelen halben, die dadurch verführt und verdammt werden
... sondern auch der gauzen heiligen Kirchen halben" (De Wette, iv.
355).]
[Footnote 230: "Nu ist alle Abgötterey gegen die Messe ein geringes" (De
Wette, v. 191; sec. iv. 307)]
[Footnote 231: Bucholtz, iii. 570.]
[Footnote 232: "Sie aber verachten die Schrift muthwilliglich, darum
wären sie billig aus der einigen Ursach zu stillen, oder nicht zu
leiden" (De Wette, iii. 90).]
[Footnote 233: "Wollen sie aber wie die Juden seyn, nicht Christen
heissen, noch Kaisers Glieder, sondern sich lassen Christus und Kaisers
Feinde nennen, wie die Juden; wohlan, so wollen wir's auch leiden, dass
sie in ihren Synagogen, wie die Juden, verschlossen lästern, so lang sie
wollen" (De Wette, iv. 94).]
[Footnote 234: Riffel, _Kirchengeschichte_, ii. 9; _Table-Talk_, iii.
175.]
[Footnote 235: "Ego ab initio, cum primum caepi nosse Ciconiam et
Ciconiae factionem, unde hoc totum genus Anabaptistarum exortum est, fui
stulte clemens. Sentiebant enim et alii haereticos non esse ferro
opprimendos. Et tunc dux Fridericus vehementer iratus erat Ciconiae: ac
nisi a nobis tectus esset, fuisset de homine furioso et perdite malo
sumtum supplicium. Nunc me ejus clementiae non parum poenitet....
Brentius nimis clemens est" (Bretschneider, ii. 17, Feb. 1530).]
[Footnote 236: "Sed objiciunt exemplum nobis periculosum: si haec
pertinent ad magistratus, quoties igitur magistratus judicabit aliquos
errare, saeviet in eos. Caesar igitur debet nos opprimere, quoniam ita
judicat nos errare. Respondeo: certe debet errores et prohibere et
punire.... Non est enim solius Caesaris cognitio, sicut in urbibus haec
cognitio non est tantum magistratus prophani, sed est doctorum. Viderit
igitur magistratus ut recte judicet" (Bretschneider, ii. 712).
"Deliberent igitur principes, non cum tyrannis, non cum pontificibus,
non cum hypocritis, monachis aut aliis, sed cum ipsa Evangelii voce, cum
probatis scriptoribus" (Bretschneider, iii. 254).]
[Footnote 237: "Quare ita sentias, magistratum debere uti summa
severitate in coercendis hujusmodi spiritibus.... Sines igitur novis
exemplis timorem incuti multitudini ... ad haec notae tibi sint causae
seditionum, quas gladio prohiberi oportet.... Propterea sentio de his
qui etiamsi non defendunt seditiosos articulos, habent manifeste
blasphemos, quod interfici a magistratu debeant" (ii. 17, 18). "De
Anabaptistis tulimus hic in genere sententiam: quia constat sectam
diabolicam esse, non esse tolerandam: dissipari enim ecclesias per eos,
cum ipsi nullam habeant certam doctrinam.... Ideo in capita factionum in
singulis locis ultima supplicia constituenda esse judicavimus" (ii.
549). "It is clear that it is the duty of secular government to punish
blasphemy, false doctrine, and heresy, on the bodies of those who are
guilty of them.... Since it is evident that there are gross errors in
the articles of the Anabaptist sect, we conclude that in this case the
obstinate ought to be punished with death" (iii. 199). "Propter hanc
causam Deus ordinavit politias ut Evangelium propagari possit ... nec
revocamus politiam Moysi, sed lex moralis perpetua est omnium aetatum
... quandocumque constat doctrinam esse impiam, nihil dubium est quin
sanior pars Ecclesiae debeat malos pastores removere et abolere impios
cultus. Et hanc emendationem praecipue adjuvare debent magistratus,
tanquam potiora membra Ecclesiae" (iii. 242, 244). "Thammerus, qui
Mahometicas seu Ethnicas opiniones spargit, vagatur in dioecesi
Mindensi, quem publicis suppliciis adficere debebant.... Evomuit
blasphemias, quae refutandae sunt non tantum disputatione aut scriptis,
sed etiam justo officio pii magistratus" (ix. 125, 131).]
[Footnote 238: "Voco autem blasphemos qui articulos habent, qui proprie
non pertinent ad civilem statum, sed continent [Greek: theôrias] ut de
divinitate Christi et similes. Etsi enim gradus quidam sunt, tamen huc
etiam refero baptismum infantum.... Quia magistratui commissa est tutela
totius legis, quod attinet ad externam disciplinam et externa facta.
Quare delicta externa contra primam tabulam prohibere ac punire
debet.... Quare non solum concessum est, sed etiam mandatum est
magistratui, impias doctrinas abolere, et tueri pias in suis ditionibus"
(ii. 711). "Ecclesiastica potestas tantum judicat et excommunicat
haereticos, non occidit. Sed potestas civilis debet constituere poenas
et supplicia in haereticos, sicut in blasphemos constituit supplicia....
Non enim plectitur fides, sed haeresis" (xii. 697).]
[Footnote 239: "Notum est etiam, quosdam tetra et [Greek: dysphéma]
dixisse de sanguine Christi, quos puniri oportuit, et propter gloriam
Christi, et exempli causa" (viii. 553). "Argumentatur ille praestigiator
(Schwenkfeld), verbum externum non esse medium, quo Deus est efficax.
Talis sophistica principum severitate compescenda erat" (ix. 579).]
[Footnote 240: "The office of preacher is distinct from that of
governor, yet both have to contribute to the praise of God. Princes are
not only to protect the goods and bodily life of their subjects, but the
principal function is to promote the honour of God, and to prevent
idolatry and blasphemy" (iii. 199). "Errant igitur magistratus, qui
divellunt gubernationem a fine, et se tantum pacis ac ventris custodes
esse existimant.... At si tantum venter curandus esset, quid differrent
principes ab armentariis? Nam longe aliter sentiendum est. Politias
divinitus admirabili sapientia et bonitate constitutas esse, non tantum
ad quaerenda et fruenda ventris bona, sed multo magis, ut Deus in
societate innotescat, ut aeterna bona quaerantur" (iii. 246).]
[Footnote 241: "Neque illa barbarica excusatio audienda est, leges illas
pertinere ad politiam Mosaicam, non ad nostram. Ut Decalogus ipse ad
omnes pertinet, ita judex ubique omnia Decalogi officia in externa
disciplina tueatur" (viii. 520).]
[Footnote 242: "Legi scriptum tuum, in quo refutasti luculenter
horrendas Serveti blasphemias, ac filio Dei gratias ago, qui fuit
[Greek: brabeutês] hujus tui agonis. Tibi quoque Ecclesia et nunc et ad
posteros gratitudinem debet et debebit. Tuo judicio prorsus adsentior.
Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus juste fecisse, quod hominem
blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt" (Melanchthon to Calvin,
Bretschneider, viii. 362). "Judico etiam Senatum Genevensem recte
fecisse, quod hominem pertinacem et non omissurum blasphemias sustulit.
Ac miratus sum, esse, qui severitatem illam improbent" (viii. 523).
"Dedit vero et Genevensis reip. magistratus ante annos quatuor punitae
insanabilis blasphemiae adversus filium Dei, sublato Serveto Arragone
pium et memorabile ad omnem posteritatem exemplum" (ix. 133).]
[Footnote 243: "Abusus missae per magistratus debet tolli. Non aliter,
atque sustulit aeneum serpentem Ezechias, aut excelsa demolitus est
Josias" (i. 480). "Politicis magistratibus severissime mandatum est, ut
suo quisque loco manibus et armis tollant statuas, ad quas fiunt hominum
concursus et invocationes, et puniant suppliciis corporum insanabiles,
qui idolorum cultum pertinaciter retinent, aut blasphemias serunt" (ix.
77).]
[Footnote 244: "If the French and English community at Frankfort shared
the errors of Servetus or Thamer, or other enemies of the Symbols, or
the errors of the Anabaptists on infant baptism, against the authority
of the State, etc., I should faithfully advise and strongly recommend
that they should be soon driven away; for the civil power is bound to
prevent and to punish proved blasphemy and sedition. But I find that
this community is orthodox in the symbolical articles on the Son of God,
and in other articles of the Symbol.... If the faith of the citizens in
every town were inquired into, what trouble and confusion would not
arise in many countries and towns!" (ix. 179).]
[Footnote 245: Schmidt, _Philipp Melanchthon_, p. 640. His exhortations
to the Landgrave to put down the Zwinglians are characteristic: "The
Zwinglians, without waiting for the Council, persecute the Papists and
the Anabaptists; why must it be wrong for others to prohibit their
indefensible doctrine independent of the Council?" Philip replied:
"Forcibly, to prohibit a doctrine which neither contradicts the articles
of faith nor encourages sedition, I do not think right.... When Luther
began to write and to preach, he admonished and instructed the
Government that it had no right to forbid books or to prevent preaching,
and that its office did not extend so far, but that it had only to
govern the body and goods.... I had not heard before that the Zwinglians
persecute the Papists; but if they abolish abuses, it is not unjust, for
the Papists wish to deserve heaven by their works, and so blaspheme the
Son of God. That they should persecute the Anabaptists is also not
wrong, for their doctrine is in part seditious." The divines answered:
"If by God's grace our true and necessary doctrine is tolerated as it
has hitherto been by the emperor, though reluctantly, we think that we
ought not to prevent it by undertaking the defence of the Zwinglian
doctrine, if that should not be tolerated. ... As to the argument that
we ought to spare the people while persecuting the leaders, our answer
is, that it is not a question of persons, but only of doctrine, whether
it be true or false" (Correspondence of Brenz and Melanchthon with
Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Bretschneider, ii. 95, 98, 101).]
[Footnote 246: Hardwicke, _Reformation_, p. 274.]
[Footnote 247: Seidemann, _Thomas Münzer_, p. 35.]
[Footnote 248: Schenkel, iii. 381.]
[Footnote 249: Heinrich Grosbeck's _Bericht_, ed. Cornelius, 19.]
[Footnote 250: Herzog, _Encyclopädie für protestantische Theologie_, ii.
418.]
[Footnote 251: Bussierre, _Establissement du Protestantisme en Alsace_,
p. 429.]
[Footnote 252: Baum, _Capito und Butzer_, p. 489.]
[Footnote 253: Baum, p. 492; Erbkam, _Protestantische Sekten_, p. 581.]
[Footnote 254: Ursinus writes to Bullinger: "Liberavit nos Deus ab
idolatria: succedit licentia infinita et horribilis divini nominis,
ecclesiae doctrinae purioris et sacramentorum prophanatio et sub pedibus
porcorum et canum, conniventibus atque utinam non defendentibus iis qui
prohibere suo loco debebant, conculcatio" (Sudhoff, _Olevianus und
Ursinus_, p. 340).]
[Footnote 255: "Adserere audemus, neminem magistratum recte gerere ne
posse quidem, nisi Christianus sit" (Zuingli, _Opera_, iii. 296). "If
they shall proceed in an unbrotherly way, and against the ordinance of
Christ, then let them be deposed, in God's name" (Schenkel, iii. 362).]
[Footnote 256: Christoffel, _Huldreich Zwingli_, p. 251.]
[Footnote 257: Zwingli's advice to the Protestants of St. Gall, in
Pressel, _Joachim Vadian_, p. 45.]
[Footnote 258: Pestalozzi, _Heinrich Bullinger_, p. 95.]
[Footnote 259: _Ibid._, _Leo Judä_, p. 50.]
[Footnote 260: Pestalozzi, _Heinrich Bullinger_, p. 146.]
[Footnote 261: _Ibid._ p. 149.]
[Footnote 262: _Ibid._ p. 270.]
[Footnote 263: Pestalozzi, _Heinrich Bullinger_, p. 426.]
[Footnote 264: In the year 1555 he writes to Socinus: "I too am of
opinion that heretical men must be cut off with the spiritual sword....
The Lutherans at first did not understand that sectaries must be
restrained and punished, but after the fall of Münster, when thousands
of poor misguided men, many of them orthodox, had perished, they were
compelled to admit that it is wiser and better for the Government not
only to restrain wrong-headed men, but also, by putting to death a few
that deserve it, to protect thousands of inhabitants" (_Ibid._ p. 428).]
[Footnote 265: Herzog, _Leben Oekolampads_, ii 197.]
[Footnote 266: _Ibid._ p. 189.]
[Footnote 267: _Ibid._ p. 206.]
[Footnote 268: Herzog, _Leben Oekolampads_, ii. 195. Herzog finds an
excuse for the harsh treatment of the Lutherans at Basel in the still
greater severity of the Lutheran Churches against the followers of the
Swiss reformation (_Ibid._ 213).]
[Footnote 269: Hundeshagen, _Conflikte des Zwinglianismus und
Calvinismus_, 41.]
[Footnote 270: "Huc spectat (politia) ... ne idololatria, ne in Dei
nomen sacrilegia, ne adversus ejus veritatem blasphemiae aliaeque
religionis offensiones publice emergant ac in populum spargantur....
Politicam ordinationem probo, quae in hoc incumbit, ne vera religio,
quae Dei lege continetur, palam, publicisque sacrilegiis impune
violetur" (_Institutio Christianae Religionis_, ed. Tholuck, ii. 477).
"Hoc ergo summopere requiritur a regibus, ut gladio quo praediti sunt
utuntur ad cultum Dei asserendum" (_Praelectiones in Prophetas, Opera_,
v. 233, ed. 1667).]
[Footnote 271: "Huic etiam colligere promptum est, quam stulta fuerit
imaginatio eorum qui volebant usum gladii tollere e mundo, Evangelii
praetextu. Scimus Anabaptistas fuisse tumultuatos, quasi totus ordo
politicus repugnaret Christi regno, quia regnum Christi continetur sola
doctrina; deinde nulla futura sit vis. Hoc quidem verum esset, si
essemus in hoc mundo angeli: sed quemadmodum jam dixi, exiguus est
piorum numerus: ideo necesse est reliquam turbam cohiberi violento
freno: quia permixti sunt filii Dei vel saevis belluis, vel vulpibus et
fraudulentis hominibus" (_Pr. in Michaeam_, v. 310). "In quo non suam
modo inscitiam, sed diabolicum fastum produnt, dum perfectionem sibi
arrogant; cujus ne centesima quidem pars in illis conspicitur"
(_Institutio_, ii. 478).]
[Footnote 272: "Tota igitur excellentia, tota dignitas, tota potentia
Ecclesiae debet huc referri, ut omnia subjaceant Deo, et quicquid erit
in gentibus hoc totum sit sacrum, ut scilicet cultus Dei tam apud
victores quam apud victos vigeat" (_Pr. in Michaeam_, v. 317).]
[Footnote 273: "Ita tollitur offensio, quae multos imperitos fallit, dum
metuunt ne hoc praetextu ad saeviendum armentur Papae carnifices."
Calvin was warned by experience of the imprudence of Luther's language.
"In Gallis proceres in excusanda saevitia immani allegant autoritatem
Lutheri" (Melanchthon. _Opera_, v. 176).]
[Footnote 274: "Vous avez deux espèces de mutins qui se sont eslevez
entre le roy et l'estat du royaume: Les uns sont gens fantastiques, qui
soubs couleur de l'évangile vouldroient mettre tout en confusion. Les
aultres sont gens obstinés aux superstitions de l'Antéchrist de Rome.
Tous ensemble méritent bien d'estre réprimés par le glayve qui vous est
commis, veu qu'ils s'attaschent non seulement au roy, mais à Dieu qui
l'a assis au siège royal" (Calvin to Somerset, Oct. 22, 1540: _Lettres
de Calvin_, ed. Bonnet, i. 267. See also Henry, _Leben Calvins_, ii.
Append. 30).]
[Footnote 275: "Abdicant enim se potestate terreni principes dum
insurgunt contra Deum: imo indigni sunt qui censeantur in hominum
numero. Potius ergo conspuere oportet in ipsorum capita, quam illis
parere, ubi ita proterviunt ut velint etiam spoliare Deum jure suo, et
quasi occupare solium ejus, acsi possent eum a coelo detrahere" (_Pr. in
Danielem_, v. 91).]
[Footnote 276: "Quant au serment qu'on vous a contraincte de faire,
comme vous avez failli et offensé Dieu en le faisant, aussi n'estes-vous
tenue de le garder" (Calvin to the Duchess of Ferrara, _Bonnet_, ii.
338). She had taken an oath, at her husband's death, that she would not
correspond with Calvin.]
[Footnote 277: "In aulis regum videmus primas teneri a bestiis. Nam
hodie, ne repetamus veteres historias, ut reges fere omnes fatui sunt ac
bruti, ita etiam sunt quasi equi et asini brutorum animalium.... Reges
sunt hodie fere mancipia" (_Pr. in Danielem_, v. 82). "Videmus enim ut
hodie quoque pro sua libidine commoveant totum orbem principes; quia
produnt alii aliis innoxios populus, et exercent foedam nundinationem,
dum quisque commodum suum venatur, et sine ullo pudore, tantum ut augeat
suam potentiam, alios tradit in manum inimici" (_Pr. in Nahum_, v. 363).
"Hodie pudet reges aliquid prae se ferre humanum, sed omnes gestus
accommodant ad tyrannidem" (_Pr. in Jeremiam_, v. 257).]
[Footnote 278: "Sur ce que je vous avais allégué, quo David nous
instruict par son exemple de haïr les ennemis de Dieu, vous respondez
que c'estoit pour ce temps-là duquel sous la loi de rigueur il estoit
permis de haïr les ennemis. Or, madame, ceste glose seroit pour
renverser toute l'Escriture, et partant il la fault fuir comme une peste
mortelle.... Combien que j'aye tousjours prié Dieu de luy faire mercy,
si est-ce que j'ay souvent désiré que Dieu mist la main sur luy (Guise)
pour en deslivrer son Eglise, s'il ne le vouloit convertir" (Calvin to
the Duchess of Ferrara, _Bonnet_, ii. 551). Luther was in this respect
equally unscrupulous: "This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death, we
must kill him with our prayers; for he will be an evil man" (MS. quoted
in Döllinger, _Reformation_, iii, 266).]
[Footnote 279: "Quod de praepostero nostrorum fervore scribis,
verissimum est, neque tamen ulla occurrit moderandi ratio, quia sanis
consiliis non obtemperant. Passim denuntio, si judex essem me non minus
severe in rabioso, istos impetus vindicaturum, quam rex suis edictis
mandat. Pergendum nihilominus, quando nos Deus voluit stultis esse
debitores" (Calvin to Beza; Henry, _Leben Calvins_, iii. Append. 164).]
[Footnote 280: "Il n'a tenu qu'à moi que, devant la guerre, gens de
faict et d'exécution ne se soyent efforcez de l'exterminer du monde
(Guise) lesquels ont esté retenus par ma seule exhortation."--_Bonnet_,
ii. 553.]
[Footnote 281: "Hoc nobis si assidue ob animos et oculos obversetur,
eodem decreto constitui etiam nequissimos reges, quo regum auctoritas
statuitur; nunquam in animum nobis seditiosae illae cogitationes
venient, tractandum esse pro meritis regem nec aequum esse, ut subditos
ei nos praestemus, qui vicissim regem nobis se non praestet.... De
privatis hominibus semper loquor. Nam si qui nunc sint populares
magistratus ad moderandam regum libidinem constituti (quales olim erant
... ephori ... tribuni ... demarchi: et qua etiam forte potestate, ut
nunc res habent, funguntur in singulis regnis tres ordines, quum
primarios conventus peragunt) ... illos ferocienti regum licentiae pro
officio intercedere non veto" (_Institutio_, ii. 493, 495).]
[Footnote 282: "Quum ergo ita licentiose omnia sibi permittent
(Donatistae), volebant tamen impune manere sua scelera: et in primis
tenebant hoc principium: non esse poenas sumendas, si quis ab aliis
dissideret in religionis doctrina: quemadmodum hodie videmus quosdam de
hac re nimis cupide contendere. Certum est quid cupiant. Nam si quis
ipsos respiciat, sunt impii Dei contemptores: saltem vellent nihil
certum esse in religione; ideo labefactare, et quantum in se est etiam
convellere nituntur omnia pietatis principia. Ut ergo liceat ipsis
evomere virus suum, ideo tantopere litigant pro impunitate, et negant
poenas de haereticis et blasphemis sumendas esse" (_Pr. in Danielem_, v.
51).]
[Footnote 283: "Defensio Orthodoxae Fidei ... ubi ostenditur Haereticos
jure gladii coercendos esse," 1554.]
[Footnote 284: "Non modo liberum esse magistratibus poenas sumere de
coelestis doctrinae corruptoribus, sed divinitus esse mandatum, ut
pestiferis erroribus impunitatem dare nequeant, quin desciscant ab
officii sui fide.... Nunc vero quisquis haereticis et blasphemis injuste
paenam infligi contenderet, sciens et volens se obstringet blasphemiae
reatu.... Ubi a suis fundamentis convellitur religio, detestandae in
Deum blasphemiae proferuntur, impiis et pestiferis dogmatibus in exitium
rapiuntur animae; denique ubi palam defectio ab unico Deo puraque
doctrina tentatur, ad extremum illud remedium descendere necesse" (see
Schenkel, iii. 389; Dyer, _Life of Calvin_, p. 354; Henry, iii. 234).]
[Footnote 285: _De Haereticis an sint persequendi_, Magdeburgi, 1554.
Chataillon, to whom it is generally attributed, was not the author (see
Heppe, _Theodor Beza_, p. 37).]
[Footnote 286: Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, ii. 81; Schlosser, _Leben
des Beza_, p. 55. This is proved by the following passage from the
dedication: "This I say not to favour the heretics, whom I abhor, but
because there are here two dangerous rocks to be avoided. In the first
place, that no man should be deemed a heretic when he is not ... and
that the real rebel be distinguished from the Christian who, by
following the teaching and example of his Master, necessarily causes
separation from the wicked and unbelieving. The other danger is, lest
the real heretics be not more severely punished than the discipline of
the Church requires" (Baum, _Theodor Beza_, i. 215).]
[Footnote 287: "Multis piis hominibus in Gallia exustis grave passim
apud Germanos odium ignes illi excitaverant, sparsi sunt, ejus
restinguendi causa, improbi ac mendaces libelli, non alios tam
crudeliter tractari, quam Anabaptistas ac turbulentos homines, qui
perversis deliriis non religionem modo sed totum ordinem politicum
convellerent.... Haec mihi edendae Institutionis causa fuit, primum ut
ab injusta contumelia vindicarem fratres meos, quorum mors pretiosa erat
in conspectu Domini; deinde quum multis miseris eadem visitarent
supplicia, pro illis dolor saltem aliquis et sollicitudo exteras gentes
tangeret" (_Praefatio in Psalmos._ See "Historia Litteraria de Calvini
Institutione." in _Scrinium Antiquarium_, ii. 452).]
[Footnote 288: Baum, i. 206. "Telles gens," says Calvin, "seroient
contents qu'il n'y eust ne loy, ne bride au monde. Voilà pourquoy ils
ont basti ce beau libvre _De non comburendis Haereticis_, où ils out
falsifié les noms tant des villes que des personnes, non pour aultre
cause sinon pource que le dit livre est farcy de blasphèmes
insupportables" (Bonnet, ii. 18).]
[Footnote 289: _De Haereticis a civili Magistratu puniendis_, 1554.]
[Footnote 290: "Absit autem a nobis, ut in eos, qui vel simplicitate
peccant, sine aliorum pernicie et insigni blasphemia, vel in explicando
quopiam Scripturae loco dissident a recepta opinione, magistratum
armemus" (_Tractatus Theologici_, i. 95).]
[Footnote 291: This was sometimes the practice in Catholic countries,
where heresy was equivalent to treason. Duke William of Bavaria ordered
obstinate Anabaptists to be burnt; those who recanted to be beheaded.
"Welcher revocir, den soll man köpfen; welcher nicht revocir, den soll
man brennen" (Jörg, p. 717).]
[Footnote 292: "Ex quibus omnibus una conjunctio efficitur, istos quibus
haeretici videntur non esse puniendi, opinionem in Ecclesiam Dei conari
longe omnium pestilentissimam invehere et ex diametro repugnantem
doctrinae primum a Deo Patre proditae, deinde a Christo instauratae, ab
universa denique Ecclesia orthodoxa perpetuo consensu usurpatae, ut mihi
quidem magis absurde facere videantur quam si sacrilegas aut parricidas
puniendos negarent, quum sint istis omnibus haeretici infinitis partibus
deteriores" (_Tract. Theol._ i. 143).]
[Footnote 293: "Verum est quod correctione non exspectata Ananiam et
Sapphiram occidit Petrus. Quia Spiritus Sanctus tunc maxime vigens, quem
spreverant, docebat esse incorrigibiles, in malitia obstinatos. Hoc
crimen est morte simpliciter dignum et apud Deum et apud homines. In
aliis autem criminibus, ubi Spiritus Sanctus speciale quid non docet,
ubi non est inveterata malitia, aut obstinatio certa non apparet aut
atrocitas magna, correctionem per alias castigationes sperare potius
debemus" (Servetus, _Restitutio Christianismi_, 656; Henry, iii. 235).]
[Footnote 294: "Nam si venerit, modo valeat mea authoritas, vivum exire
nunquam patiar" (Calvin to Farel, in Henry, iii. Append. 65; Audin, _Vie
de Calvin_, ii. 314; Dyer, 544).]
[Footnote 295: "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium; poenae vero
atrocitatem remitti cupio" (Calvin to Farel, Henry, iii. 189). Dr. Henry
makes no attempt to clear Calvin of the imputation of having caused the
death of Servetus. Nevertheless he proposed, some years later, that the
three-hundredth anniversary of the execution should be celebrated in the
Church of Geneva by a demonstration. "It ought to declare itself in a
body, in a manner worthy of our principles, admitting that in past times
the authorities of Geneva were mistaken, loudly proclaiming toleration,
which is truly the crown of our Church, and paying due honour to Calvin,
because he had no hand in the business (parcequ'il n'a pas trempé dans
cette affaire), of which he has unjustly borne the whole burden." The
impudence of this declaration is surpassed by the editor of the French
periodical from which we extract it. He appends to the words in our
parenthesis the following note: "We underline in order to call attention
to this opinion of Dr. Henry, who is so thoroughly acquainted with the
whole question" (_Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme
Français_, ii. 114).]
[Footnote 296: "Qui scripserunt de non plectendis haereticis, semper
mihi visi sunt non parum errare" (Farel to Blaarer, Henry, iii. 202).
During the trial he wrote to Calvin: "If you desire to diminish the
horrible punishment, you will act as a friend towards your most
dangerous enemy. If I were to seduce anybody from the true faith, I
should consider myself worthy of death; I cannot judge differently of
another than of myself" (Schmidt, _Farel und Viret_, p. 33).
Before sentence was pronounced Bullinger wrote to Beza: "Quid vero
amplissimus Senatus Genevensis ageret cum blasphemo illo nebulone
Serveto. Si sapit et officium suum facit, caedit, ut totus orbis videat
Genevam Christi gloriam cupere servatam" (Baum, i. 204). With reference
to Socinus he wrote: "Sentio ego spirituali gladio abscindendos esse
homines haereticos" (Henry, iii. 225).
Peter Martyr Vermili also gave in his adhesion to Calvin's policy: "De
Serveto Hispano, quid aliud dicam non habeo, nisi eum fuisse genuinum
Diaboli filium, cujus pestifera et detestanda doctrina undique
profliganda est, neque magistratus, qui de illo supplicium extremum
sumpsit, accusandus est, cum emendationis nulla indiçia in eo possent
deprehendi, illiusque blasphemiae omnino intolerabiles essent" (_Loci
Communes_, 1114. See Schlosser, _Leben des Beza und des Peter Martyr
Vermili_, 512).
Zanchi, who at the instigation of Bullinger also published a treatise,
_De Haereticis Coercendis_, says of Beza's work: "Non poterit non
probari summopere piis omnibus. Satis superque respondit quidem ille
novis istis academicis, ita ut supervacanea et inutilis omnino videatur
mea tractatio" (Baum, i. 232).]
[Footnote 297: "The trial of Servetus," says a very ardent Calvinist,
"is illegal only in one point--the crime, if crime there be, had not
been committed at Geneva; but long before the Councils had usurped the
unjust privilege of judging strangers stopping at Geneva, although the
crimes they were accused of had not been committed there" (Haag, _La
France Protestante_, iii. 129).]
[Footnote 298: _Literature of Europe_, ii. 82.]
[Footnote 299: This is the ground taken by two Dutch divines in answer
to the consultation of John of Nassau in 1579: "Neque in imperio, neque
in Galliis, neque in Belgio speranda esset unquam libertas in externo
religionis exercitio nostris ... si non diversarum religionum exercitia
in una eademque provincia toleranda.... Sic igitur gladio adversus nos
armabimus Pontificios, si hanc hypothesin tuebimur, quod exercitium
religionis alteri parti nullum prorsus relinqui debeat" (_Scrinium
Antiquarium_, i. 335).]
VI
POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH[300]
There is, perhaps, no stronger contrast between the revolutionary times
in which we live and the Catholic ages, or even the period of the
Reformation, than in this: that the influence which religious motives
formerly possessed is now in a great measure exercised by political
opinions. As the theory of the balance of power was adopted in Europe as
a substitute for the influence of religious ideas, incorporated in the
power of the Popes, so now political zeal occupies the place made vacant
by the decline of religious fervour, and commands to an almost equal
extent the enthusiasm of men. It has risen to power at the expense of
religion, and by reason of its decline, and naturally regards the
dethroned authority with the jealousy of a usurper. This revolution in
the relative position of religious and political ideas was the
inevitable consequence of the usurpation by the Protestant State of the
functions of the Church, and of the supremacy which, in the modern
system of government, it has assumed over her. It follows also that the
false principles by which religious truth was assailed have been
transferred to the political order, and that here, too, Catholics must
be prepared to meet them; whilst the objections made to the Church on
doctrinal grounds have lost much of their attractiveness and effect, the
enmity she provokes on political grounds is more intense. It is the same
old enemy with a new face. No reproach is more common, no argument
better suited to the temper of these times, than those which are
founded on the supposed inferiority or incapacity of the Church in
political matters. As her dogma, for instance, is assailed from opposite
sides,--as she has had to defend the divine nature of Christ against the
Ebionites, and His humanity against Docetism, and was attacked both on
the plea of excessive rigorism and excessive laxity (Clement Alex.,
_Stromata_, iii. 5),--so in politics she is arraigned on behalf of the
political system of every phase of heresy. She was accused of favouring
revolutionary principles in the time of Elizabeth and James I., and of
absolutist tendencies under James II. and his successors. Since
Protestant England has been divided into two great political parties,
each of these reproaches has found a permanent voice in one of them.
Whilst Tory writers affirm that the Catholic religion is the enemy of
all conservatism and stability, the Liberals consider it radically
opposed to all true freedom.
"What are we to think," says the _Edinburgh Review_ (vol. ciii. p.
586), "of the penetration or the sincerity of a man who professes to
study and admire the liberties of England and the character of her
people, but who does not see that English freedom has been nurtured
from the earliest times by resistance to Papal authority, and
established by the blessing of a reformed religion? That is, under
Heaven, the basis of all the rights we possess; and the weight we
might otherwise be disposed to concede to M. de Montalembert's
opinions on England is materially lessened by the discovery that,
after all, he would, if he had the power, place this free country
under that spiritual bondage which broods over the empires of Austria
or of Spain."
On the other hand, let us hearken to the Protestant eloquence of the
_Quarterly Review_ (vol. xcii. p. 41):--
Tyranny, fraud, base adulation, total insensibility, not only to the
worth of human freedom, but to the majesty of law and the sacredness
of public and private right; these are the malignant and deadly
features which we see stamped upon the conduct of the Roman
hierarchy.
Besides which, we have the valuable opinion of Lord Derby, which no
Catholic, we should suppose, east of the Shannon has forgotten, that
Catholicism is "religiously corrupt, and politically dangerous." Lord
Macaulay tells us that it exclusively promoted the power of the Crown;
Ranke, that it favours revolution and regicide. Whilst the Belgian and
Sardinian Liberals accuse the Church of being the enemy of
constitutional freedom, the celebrated Protestant statesman, Stahl,
taunts her with the reproach of being the sole support and pillar of the
Belgian constitution. Thus every error pronounces judgment on itself
when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
Among Catholics the state of opinion on these questions, whether it be
considered the result of unavoidable circumstances, or a sign of
ingenious accommodation, or a thing to be deplored, affords at least a
glaring refutation of the idea that we are united, for good or for evil,
in one common political system. The Church is vindicated by her
defenders, according to their individual inclinations, from the opposite
faults imputed to her; she is lauded, according to circumstances, for
the most contradictory merits, and her authority is invoked in exclusive
support of very various systems. O'Connell, Count de Montalembert,
Father Ventura, proclaim her liberal, constitutional, not to say
democratic, character; whilst such writers as Bonald and Father
Taparelli associate her with the cause of absolute government. Others
there are, too, who deny that the Church has a political tendency or
preference of any kind; who assert that she is altogether independent
of, and indifferent to, particular political institutions, and, while
insensible to their influence, seeks to exercise no sort of influence
over them. Each view may be plausibly defended, and the inexhaustible
arsenal of history seems to provide impartially instances in
corroboration of each. The last opinion can appeal to the example of the
Apostles and the early Christians, for whom, in the heathen empire, the
only part was unconditional obedience. This is dwelt upon by the early
apologists: "Oramus etiam pro imperatoribus, pro ministris eorum et
potestatibus, pro statu saeculi, pro rerum quiete, pro mora finis."[301]
It has the authority, too, of those who thought with St. Augustine that
the State had a sinful origin and character: "Primus fuit terrenae
civitatis conditor fratricida."[302] The Liberals, at the same time, are
strong in the authority of many scholastic writers, and of many of the
older Jesuit divines, of St. Thomas and Suarez, Bellarmine, and Mariana.
The absolutists, too, countenanced by Bossuet and the Gallican Church,
and quoting amply from the Old Testament, can point triumphantly to the
majority of Catholic countries in modern times. All these arguments are
at the same time serviceable to our adversaries; and those by which one
objection is answered help to fortify another.
The frequent recurrence of this sort of argument which appears to us as
treacherous for defence as it is popular as a weapon of attack, shows
that no very definite ideas prevail on the subject, and makes it
doubtful whether history, which passes sentence on so many theories, is
altogether consistent with any of these. Nevertheless it is obviously an
inquiry of the greatest importance, and one on which controversy can
never entirely be set at rest; for the relation of the spiritual and the
secular power is, like that of speculation and revelation, of religion
and nature, one of those problems which remain perpetually open, to
receive light from the meditations and experience of all ages, and the
complete solution of which is among the objects, and would be the end,
of all history.
At a time when the whole system of ecclesiastical government was under
discussion, and when the temporal power was beginning to predominate
over the Church in France, the greatest theologian of the age made an
attempt to apply the principles of secular polity to the Church.
According to Gerson (_Opera_, ii. 254), the fundamental forms into which
Aristotle divides all government recur in the ecclesiastical system. The
royal power is represented in the Papacy, the aristocracy by the
college of cardinals, whilst the councils form an ecclesiastical
democracy (_timocratia_). Analogous to this is the idea that the
constitution of the Church served as the model of the Christian States,
and that the notion of representation, for instance, was borrowed from
it. But it is not by the analogy of her own forms that the Church has
influenced those of the State; for in reality there is none subsisting
between them, and Gerson's adoption of a theory of Grecian origin proves
that he scarcely understood the spirit of that mediæval polity which, in
his own country especially, was already in its decay. For not only is
the whole system of government, whether we consider its origin, its end,
or its means absolutely and essentially different, but the temporal
notion of power is altogether unknown in the Church. "Ecclesia subjectos
non habet ut servos, sed ut filios."[303] Our Lord Himself drew the
distinction: "Reges gentium dominantur eorum; et qui potestatem habent
super eos, benefici vocantur. Vos autem non sic: sed qui major est in
vobis, fiat sicut minor; et qui praedecessor, sicut minor" (Luc. xxii.
25, 26). The supreme authority is not the will of the rulers, but the
law of the Church, which binds those who are its administrators as
strictly as those who have only to obey it. No human laws were ever
devised which could so thoroughly succeed in making the arbitrary
exercise of power impossible, as that prodigious system of canon law
which is the ripe fruit of the experience and the inspiration of
eighteen hundred years. Nothing can be more remote from the political
notions of monarchy than the authority of the Pope. With even less
justice can it be said that there is in the Church an element of
aristocracy, the essence of which is the possession of hereditary
personal privileges. An aristocracy of merit and of office cannot, in a
political sense, legitimately bear the name. By baptism all men are
equal before the Church. Yet least of all can anything be detected
corresponding to the democratic principle, by which all authority
resides in the mass of individuals, and which gives to each one equal
rights. All authority in the Church is delegated, and recognises no such
thing as natural rights.
This confusion of the ideas belonging to different orders has been
productive of serious and dangerous errors. Whilst heretics have raised
the episcopate to a level with the papacy, the priesthood with the
episcopate, the laity with the clergy, impugning successively the
primacy, the episcopal authority, and the sacramental character of
orders, the application of ideas derived from politics to the system of
the Church led to the exaggeration of the papal power in the period
immediately preceding the Reformation, to the claim of a permanent
aristocratic government by the Council of Basel, and to the democratic
extravagance of the Observants in the fourteenth century.
If in the stress of conflicting opinions we seek repose and shelter in
the view that the kingdom of God is not of this world; that the Church,
belonging to a different order, has no interest in political forms,
tolerates them all, and is dangerous to none; if we try to rescue her
from the dangers of political controversy by this method of retreat and
evasion, we are compelled to admit her inferiority, in point of temporal
influence, to every other religious system. Every other religion
impresses its image on the society that professes it, and the government
always follows the changes of religion. Pantheism and Polytheism,
Judaism and Islamism, Protestantism, and even the various Protestant as
well as Mahometan sects, call forth corresponding social and political
forms. All power is from God, and is exercised by men in His stead. As
men's notions are, therefore, in respect to their position towards God,
such must their notion of temporal power and obedience also be. The
relation of man to man corresponds with his relations to God--most of
all his relations towards the direct representative of God.
The view we are discussing is one founded on timidity and a desire of
peace. But peace is not a good great enough to be purchased by such
sacrifices. We must be prepared to do battle for our religious system in
every other sphere as well as in that of doctrine. Theological error
affects men's ideas on all other subjects, and we cannot accept in
politics the consequences of a system which is hateful to us in its
religious aspect. These questions cannot be decided by mere reasoning,
but we may obtain some light by inquiring of the experience of history;
our only sure guide is the example of the Church herself.
"Insolentissima est insania, non modo disputare, contra id quod videmus
universam ecclesiam credere sed etiam contra id quod videmus eam facere.
Fides enim ecclesiae non modo regula est fidei nostrae, sed etiam
actiones ipsius actionum nostrarum, consuetudo ipsius consuetudinis quam
observare debemus."[304]
The Church which our Lord came to establish had a twofold mission to
fulfil. Her system of doctrine, on the one hand, had to be defined and
perpetually maintained. But it was also necessary that it should prove
itself more than a mere matter of theory,--that it should pass into
practice, and command the will as well as the intellect of men. It was
necessary not only to restore the image of God in man, but to establish
the divine order in the world. Religion had to transform the public as
well as the private life of nations, to effect a system of public right
corresponding with private morality and without which it is imperfect
and insecure. It was to exhibit and confirm its victory and to
perpetuate its influence by calling into existence, not only works of
private virtue, but institutions which are the product of the whole life
of nations, and bear an unceasing testimony to their religious
sentiments. The world, instead of being external to the Church, was to
be adopted by her and imbued with her ideas. The first, the doctrinal or
intellectual part of the work, was chiefly performed in the Roman
empire, in the midst of the civilisation of antiquity and of that
unparalleled intellectual excitement which followed the presence of
Christ on earth. There the faith was prepared for the world whilst the
world was not yet ready to receive it. The empire in which was
concentrated all the learning and speculation of ancient times was by
its intellectual splendour, and in spite, we might even say by reason,
of its moral depravity, the fit scene of the intellectual establishment
of Christianity. For its moral degradation ensured the most violent
antipathy and hostility to the new faith; while the mental cultivation
of the age ensured a very thorough and ingenious opposition, and
supplied those striking contrasts which were needed for the full
discussion and vigorous development of the Christian system. Nowhere
else, and at no other period, could such advantages have been found.
But for the other, equally essential part of her work the Church met
with an insurmountable obstacle, which even the official conversion of
the empire and all the efforts of the Christian emperors could not
remove. This obstacle resided not so much in the resistance of paganism
as a religion, as in the pagan character of the State. It was from a
certain political sagacity chiefly that the Romans, who tolerated all
religions,[305] consistently opposed that religion which threatened
inevitably to revolutionise a state founded on a heathen basis. It
appeared from the first a pernicious superstition ("exitiabilem
superstitionem," Tacit. _Annal._ xv. 44), that taught its followers to
be bad subjects ("exuere patriam," Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 5), and to be
constantly dissatisfied ("quibus praesentia semper tempora cum enormi
libertate displicent," Vopiscus, _Vit. Saturn._ 7). This hostility
continued in spite of the protestations of every apologist, and of the
submissiveness and sincere patriotism of the early Christians. They were
so far from recognising what their enemies so vaguely felt, that the
empire could not stand in the presence of the new faith, that it was the
common belief amongst them, founded perhaps on the words of St. Paul, 2
Thess. ii. 7,[306] that the Roman empire would last to the end of the
world.[307]
The persecution of Julian was caused by the feeling of the danger which
menaced the pagan empire from the Christian religion. His hostility was
not founded on his attachment to the old religion of Rome, which he did
not attempt to save. He endeavoured to replace it by a new system which
was to furnish the State with new vigour to withstand the decay of the
old paganism and the invasion of Christianity. He felt that the old
religious ideas in which the Roman State had grown up had lost their
power, and that Rome could only be saved by opposing at all hazards the
new ideas. He was inspired rather with a political hatred of
Christianity than with a religious love of paganism. Consequently
Christianity was the only religion he could not tolerate. This was the
beginning of the persecution of the Church on principles of liberalism
and religious toleration, on the plea of political necessity, by men who
felt that the existing forms of the State were incompatible with her
progress. It is with the same feeling of patriotic aversion for the
Church that Symmachus says (_Epist._ x. 61): "We demand the restoration
of that religion which has so long been beneficial to the State ... of
that worship which has subdued the universe to our laws, of those
sacrifices which repulsed Hannibal from our walls and the Gauls from the
Capitol."
Very soon after the time of Constantine it began to appear that the
outward conversion of the empire was a boon of doubtful value to
religion. "Et postquam ad Christianos principes venerint, potentia
quidem et divitiis major sed virtutibus minor facta est," says St.
Jerome (in _Vita Malchi_). The zeal with which the emperors applied the
secular arm for the promotion of Christianity was felt to be
incompatible with its spirit and with its interest as well. "Religion,"
says Lactantius (_Inst. Div._ v. 19), "is to be defended by exhorting,
not by slaying, not by severity, but by patience; not by crime, but by
faith: _... nihil enim est tam voluntarium quam religio_."[308] "Deus,"
says St. Hilary of Poitiers ("ad Constantium," _Opp._ i. p. 1221 C),
"obsequio non eget necessario, non requirit coactam confessionem."[309]
St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom protest in like manner against
the intemperate proselytism of the day.[310] For the result which
followed the general adoption of Christianity threw an unfavourable
light on the motives which had caused it. It became evident that the
heathen world was incapable of being regenerated, that the weeds were
choking the good seed. The corruption increased in the Church to such a
degree that the Christians, unable to divest themselves of the Roman
notion of the _orbis terrarum_, deemed the end of the world at hand. St.
Augustine (_sermo_ cv.) rebukes this superstitious fear: "Si non manet
civitas quae nos carnaliter genuit, manet quae nos spiritualiter genuit.
Numquid (Dominus) dormitando aedificium suum perdidit, aut non
custodiendo hostes admisit?... Quid expavescis quia pereunt regna
terrena? Ideo tibi coeleste promissum est, ne cum terrenis perires....
Transient quae fecit ipse Deus; quanto citius quod condidit Romulus....
Non ergo deficiamus, fratres: finis erit terrenis omnibus regnis."[311]
But even some of the fathers themselves were filled with despair at the
spectacle of the universal demoralisation: "Totius mundi una vox
Christus est ... Horret animus temporum nostrorum ruinas persequi....
Romanus orbis ruit, et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur....
Nostris peccatis barbari fortes sunt. Nostris vitiis Romanus superatur
exercitus.... Nec amputamus causas morbi, ut morbus pariter
auferatur.... Orbis terrarum ruit, in nobis peccata non ruunt."[312] St.
Ambrose announces the end still more confidently: "Verborum coelestium
nulli magis quam nos testes sumus, quos mundi finis invenit.... Quia in
occasu saeculi sumus, praecedunt quaedam aegritudines mundi."[313] Two
generations later Salvianus exclaims: "Quid est aliud paene omnis coetus
Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum?"[314] And St. Leo declares, "Quod
temporibus nostris auctore diabolo sic vitiata sunt omnia, ut paene
nihil sit quod absque idolatria transigatur."[315]
When, early in the fifth century, the dismemberment of the Western
empire commenced, it was clear that Christianity had not succeeded in
reforming the society and the polity of the ancient world. It had
arrested for a time the decline of the empire, but after the Arian
separation it could not prevent its fall. The Catholics could not
dissociate the interests of the Church and those of the Roman State, and
looked with patriotic as well as religious horror at the barbarians by
whom the work of destruction was done. They could not see that they had
come to build up as well as to destroy, and that they supplied a field
for the exercise of all that influence which had failed among the
Romans. It was very late before they understood that the world had run
but half its course; that a new skin had been prepared to contain the
new wine; and that the barbarous tribes were to justify their claim to
the double inheritance of the faith and of the power of Rome. There were
two principal things which fitted them for their vocation. The Romans
had been unable to be the instruments of the social action of
Christianity on account of their moral depravity. It was precisely for
those virtues in which they were most deficient that their barbarous
enemies were distinguished. Salvianus expresses this in the following
words (_De Gubern. Dei_, vii. 6): "Miramur si terrae ... nostrorum
omnium a Deo barbaris datae sunt, cum eas quae Romani polluerant
fornicatione, nunc mundent barbari castitate?"[316] Whilst thus their
habits met half-way the morality of the Christian system, their
mythology, which was the very crown and summit of all pagan religions,
predisposed them in like manner for its adoption, by predicting its own
end, and announcing the advent of a system which was to displace its
gods. "It was more than a mere worldly impulse," says a famous northern
divine, "that urged the northern nations to wander forth, and to seek,
like birds of passage, a milder clime." We cannot, however, say more on
the predisposition for Christianity of that race to whose hands its
progress seems for ever committed, or on the wonderful facility with
which the Teutonic invaders accepted it, whether presented to them in
the form of Catholicism or of Arianism.[317] The great marvel in their
history, and their chief claim to the dominion of the world, was, that
they had preserved so long, in the bleak regions in which the growth of
civilisation was in every way retarded, the virtues together with the
ignorance of the barbarous State.
At a time when Arianism was extinct in the empire, it assumed among the
Teutonic tribes the character of a national religion, and added a
theological incitement to their animosity against the Romans. The Arian
tribes, to whom the work of destruction was committed, did it
thoroughly. But they soon found that their own preservation depended on
their submission to the Church. Those that persisted in their heresy
were extirpated. The Lombards and Visigoths saved themselves by a tardy
conversion from the fate with which they were threatened so long, as
their religion estranged them from the Roman population, and cut them
off from the civilisation of which the Church was already the only
guardian. For centuries the pre-eminence in the West belonged to that
race which alone became Catholic at once, and never swerved from its
orthodoxy. It is a sense of the importance of this fidelity which
dictated the well-known preamble of the Salic law: "Gens Francorum
inclita, Deo auctore condita, ad Catholicam fidem conversa et immunis ab
haeresi," etc.[318]
Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark Ages, in
which were laid the foundations of all the happiness that has been since
enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved, by men. The
good seed, from which a new Christian civilisation sprang, was striking
root in the ground. Catholicism appeared as the religion of masses. In
those times of simple faith there was no opportunity to call forth an
Augustine or an Athanasius. It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but
sanctity was at no time so general. The holy men of the first centuries
shine with an intense brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding
corruption. Legions of saints--individually for the most part obscure,
because of the atmosphere of light around them--throng the five
illiterate centuries, from the close of the great dogmatic controversies
to the rise of a new theology and the commencement of new contests with
Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard. All the manifestations of the Catholic
spirit in those days bear a character of vastness and popularity. A
single idea--the words of one man--electrified hundreds of thousands. In
such a state of the world, the Christian ideas were able to become
incarnate, so to speak, in durable forms, and succeeded in animating
the political institutions as well as the social life of the nations.
The facility with which the Teutonic ideas of Government shaped
themselves to the mould of the new religion, was the second point in
which that race was so peculiarly adapted for the position it has ever
since occupied towards Christianity. They ceased to be barbarians only
in becoming Christians. Their political system was in its infancy, and
was capable of being developed variously, according to the influences it
might undergo. There was no hostile civilisation to break down, no
traditions to oppose which were bound up with the recollections of the
national greatness. The State is so closely linked with religion, that
no nation that has changed its religion has ever survived in its old
political form. In Rome it had proved to be impossible to alter the
system, which for a thousand years had animated every portion of the
State; it was incurably pagan. The conversion of the people and the
outward alliance with the Church could not make up for this
inconsistency.
But the Teutonic race received the Catholic ideas wholly and without
reserve. There was no region into which they failed to penetrate. The
nation was collectively Catholic, as well as individually. The union of
the Church with the political system of the Germans was so complete,
that when Hungary adopted the religion of Rome, it adopted at the same
time, as a natural consequence, the institutions of the empire. The
ideas of Government which the barbarians carried with them into every
land which they conquered were always in substance the same. The
_Respublica Christiana_ of the Middle Ages, consisting of those States
in which the Teutonic element combined with the Catholic system, was
governed by nearly the same laws. The mediæval institutions had this
also in common, that they grew up everywhere under the protection and
guidance of the Church; and whilst they subsisted in their integrity,
her influence in every nation, and that of the Pope over all the
nations, attained their utmost height. In proportion as they have since
degenerated or disappeared, the political influence of religion has
declined. As we have seen that the Church was baffled in the full
performance of her mission before Europe was flooded by the great
migration, so it may be said that she has never permanently enjoyed her
proper position and authority in any country where it did not penetrate.
No other political system has yet been devised, which was consistent
with the full development and action of Catholic principles, but that
which was constructed by the northern barbarians who destroyed the
Western empire.
From this it does not seem too much to conclude, that the Catholic
religion tends to inspire and transform the public as well as the
private life of men; that it is not really master of one without some
authority over the other. Consequently, where the State is too powerful
by long tradition and custom, or too far gone in corruption, to admit of
the influence of religion, it can only prevail by ultimately destroying
the political system. This helps us to understand the almost
imperceptible progress of Christianity against Mahometanism, and the
slowness of its increase in China, where its growth must eventually
undermine the whole fabric of government. On the other hand, we know
with what ease comparatively savage tribes--as the natives of California
and Paraguay--were converted to a religion which first initiated them in
civilisation and government. There are countries in which the natural
conditions are yet wanting for the kingdom of grace. There is a fulness
of time for every nation--a time at which it first becomes capable of
receiving the faith.[319] It is not harder to believe that certain
political conditions are required to make a nation fit for conversion
than that a certain degree of intellectual development is indispensable;
that the language, for instance, must have reached a point which that of
some nations has not attained before it is capable of conveying the
truths of Christianity.
We cannot, therefore, admit that political principles are a matter of
utter indifference to the Church. To what sort of principles it is that
she inclines may be indicated by a single example. The Christian notion
of conscience imperatively demands a corresponding measure of personal
liberty. The feeling of duty and responsibility to God is the only
arbiter of a Christian's actions. With this no human authority can be
permitted to interfere. We are bound to extend to the utmost, and to
guard from every encroachment, the sphere in which we can act in
obedience to the sole voice of conscience, regardless of any other
consideration. The Church cannot tolerate any species of government in
which this right is not recognised. She is the irreconcilable enemy of
the despotism of the State, whatever its name or its forms may be, and
through whatever instruments it may be exercised. Where the State allows
the largest amount of this autonomy, the subject enjoys the largest
measure of freedom, and the Church the greatest legitimate influence.
The republics of antiquity were as incapable as the Oriental despotisms
of satisfying the Christian notion of freedom, or even of subsisting
with it. The Church has succeeded in producing the kind of liberty she
exacts for her children only in those States which she has herself
created or transformed. Real freedom has been known in no State that did
not pass through her mediæval action. The history of the Middle Ages is
the history of the gradual emancipation of man from every species of
servitude, in proportion as the influence of religion became more
penetrating and more universal. The Church could never abandon that
principle of liberty by which she conquered pagan Rome. The history of
the last three centuries exhibits the gradual revival of declining
slavery, which appears under new forms of oppression as the authority of
religion has decreased. The efforts of deliverance have been violent and
reactionary, the progress of dependence sure and inevitable. The
political benefits of the mediæval system have been enjoyed by no nation
which is destitute of Teutonic elements. The Slavonic races of the
north-east, the Celtic tribes of the north-west, were deprived of them.
In the centre of mediæval civilisation, the republic of Venice, proud of
its unmixed descent from the Romans, was untouched by the new blood, and
that Christian people failed to obtain a Christian government. Where the
influence of the ideas which prevailed in those times has not been felt,
the consequence has been the utmost development of extreme principles,
such as have doomed Asia for so many ages to perpetual stagnation, and
America to endless heedless change. It is a plain fact, that that kind
of liberty which the Church everywhere and at all times requires has
been attained hitherto only in States of Teutonic origin. We need hardly
glance at the importance of this observation in considering the
missionary vocation of the English race in the distant regions it has
peopled and among the nations it has conquered; for, in spite of its
religious apostasy, no other country has preserved so pure that idea of
liberty which gave to religion of old its power in Europe, and is still
the foundation of the greatness of England. Other nations that have
preserved more faithfully their allegiance to the Church have more
decidedly broken with those political traditions, without which the
action of the Church is fettered.
It is equally clear that, in insisting upon one definite principle in
all government, the Church has at no time understood that it could be
obtained only by particular political forms. She attends to the
substance, not to the form, in politics. At various times she has
successively promoted monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; and at
various times she has been betrayed by each. The three fundamental forms
of all government are founded on the nature of things. Sovereignty must
reside with an individual, or with a minority, or with the majority. But
there are seasons and circumstances where one or the other is
impossible, where one or the other is necessary; and in a growing nation
they cannot always remain in the same relative proportions. Christianity
could neither produce nor abolish them. They are all compatible with
liberty and religion, and are all liable to diverge into tyranny by the
exclusive exaggeration of their principle. It is this exaggeration that
has ever been the great danger to religion and to liberty, and the
object of constant resistance, the source of constant suffering for the
Church.
Christianity introduced no new forms of government, but a new spirit,
which totally transformed the old ones. The difference between a
Christian and a pagan monarchy, or between a Christian and a rationalist
democracy, is as great, politically, as that between a monarchy and a
republic. The Government of Athens more nearly resembled that of Persia
than that of any Christian republic, however democratic. If political
theorists had attended more to the experience of the Christian Ages, the
Church and the State would have been spared many calamities.
Unfortunately, it has long been the common practice to recur to the
authority of the Greeks and the Jews. The example of both was equally
dangerous; for in the Jewish as in the Gentile world, political and
religious obligations were made to coincide; in both, therefore,--in the
theocracy of the Jews as in the [Greek: politeia] of the Greeks,--the
State was absolute. Now it is the great object of the Church, by keeping
the two spheres permanently distinct,--by rendering to Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's--to make all
absolutism, of whatever kind, impossible.
As no form of government is in itself incompatible with tyranny, either
of a person or a principle, nor necessarily inconsistent with liberty,
there is no natural hostility or alliance between the Church and any one
of them. The same Church which, in the confusion and tumult of the great
migrations, restored authority by raising up and anointing kings, held
in later times with the aristocracy of the empire, and called into
existence the democracies of Italy. In the eighth century she looked to
Charlemagne for the reorganisation of society; in the eleventh she
relied on the people to carry out the reformation of the clergy. During
the first period of the Middle Ages, when social and political order had
to be reconstructed out of ruins, the Church everywhere addresses
herself to the kings, and seeks to strengthen and to sanctify their
power. The royal as well as the imperial dignity received from her their
authority and splendour. Whatever her disputes on religious grounds with
particular sovereigns, such as Lothar, she had in those ages as yet no
contests with the encroachments of monarchical power. Later on in the
Middle Ages, on the contrary, when the monarchy had prevailed almost
everywhere, and had strengthened itself beyond the limits of feudal
ideas by the help of the Roman law and of the notions of absolute power
derived from the ancients, it stood in continual conflict with the
Church. From the time of Gregory VII., all the most distinguished
pontiffs were engaged in quarrels with the royal and imperial power,
which resulted in the victory of the Church in Germany and her defeat in
France. In this resistance to the exaggeration of monarchy, they
naturally endeavoured to set barriers to it by promoting popular
institutions, as the Italian democracies and the aristocratic republics
of Switzerland, and the capitulations which in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries were imposed on almost every prince. Times had
greatly changed when a Pope declared his amazement at a nation which
bore in silence the tyranny of their king.[320] In modern times the
absolute monarchy in Catholic countries has been, next to the
Reformation, the greatest and most formidable enemy of the Church. For
here she again lost in great measure her natural influence. In France,
Spain, and Germany, by Gallicanism, Josephism, and the Inquisition, she
came to be reduced to a state of dependence, the more fatal and
deplorable that the clergy were often instrumental in maintaining it.
All these phenomena were simply an adaptation of Catholicism to a
political system incompatible with it in its integrity; an artifice to
accommodate the Church to the requirements of absolute government, and
to furnish absolute princes with a resource which was elsewhere supplied
by Protestantism. The consequence has been, that the Church is at this
day more free under Protestant than under Catholic governments--in
Prussia or England than in France or Piedmont, Naples or Bavaria.
As we have said that the Church commonly allied herself with the
political elements which happened to be insufficiently represented, and
to temper the predominant principle by encouraging the others, it might
seem hardly unfair to conclude that that kind of government in which
they are all supposed to be combined,--"aequatum et temperatum ex tribus
optimis rerum publicarum modis" (Cicero, _Rep._ i. 45),--must be
particularly suited to her. Practically--and we are not here pursuing a
theory--this is a mere fallacy. If we look at Catholic countries, we
find that in Spain and Piedmont the constitution has served only to
pillage, oppress, and insult the Church; whilst in Austria, since the
empire has been purified in the fiery ordeal of the revolution, she is
free, secure, and on the highroad of self-improvement. In constitutional
Bavaria she has but little protection against the Crown, or in Belgium
against the mob. The royal power is against her in one place, the
popular element in the other. Turning to Protestant countries, we find
that in Prussia the Church is comparatively free; whilst the more
popular Government of Baden has exhibited the most conspicuous instance
of oppression which has occurred in our time. The popular Government of
Sweden, again, has renewed the refusal of religious toleration at the
very time when despotic Russia begins to make a show, at least, of
conceding it. In the presence of these facts, it would surely be absurd
to assume that the Church must look with favour on the feeble and
transitory constitutions with which the revolution has covered half the
Continent. It does not actually appear that she has derived greater
benefits from them than she may be said to have done from the revolution
itself, which in France, for instance in 1848, gave to the Church, at
least for a season, that liberty and dignity for which she had struggled
in vain during the constitutional period which had preceded.
The political character of our own country bears hardly more resemblance
to the Liberal Governments of the Continent,--which have copied only
what is valueless in our institutions,--than to the superstitious
despotism of the East, or to the analogous tyranny which in the Far West
is mocked with the name of freedom. Here, as elsewhere, the progress of
the constitution, which it was the work of the Catholic Ages to build
up, on the principles common to all the nations of the Teutonic stock,
was interrupted by the attraction which the growth of absolutism abroad
excited, and by the Reformation's transferring the ecclesiastical power
to the Crown. The Stuarts justified their abuse of power by the same
precepts and the same examples by which the Puritans justified their
resistance to it. The liberty aimed at by the Levellers was as remote
from that which the Middle Ages had handed down, as the power of the
Stuarts from the mediæval monarchy. The Revolution of 1688 destroyed one
without favouring the other. Unlike the rebellion against Charles I.,
that which overthrew his son did not fall into a contrary extreme. It
was a restoration in some sort of the principles of government, which
had been alternately assailed by absolute monarchy and by a fanatical
democracy. But, as it was directed against the abuse of kingly and
ecclesiastical authority, neither the Crown nor the established Church
recovered their ancient position; and a jealousy of both has ever since
subsisted. There can be no question but that the remnants of the old
system of polity--the utter disappearance of which keeps the rest of
Christendom in a state of continual futile revolution--exist more
copiously in this country than in any other. Instead of the revolutions
and the religious wars by which, in other Protestant countries,
Catholics have obtained toleration, they have obtained it in England by
the force of the very principles of the constitution. "I should think
myself inconsistent," says the chief expounder of our political system,
"in not applying my ideas of civil liberty to religious." And speaking
of the relaxation of the penal laws, he says: "To the great liberality
and enlarged sentiments of those who are the furthest in the world from
you in religious tenets, and the furthest from acting with the party
which, it is thought, the greater part of the Roman Catholics are
disposed to espouse, it is that you owe the whole, or very nearly the
whole, of what has been done both here and in Ireland."[321] The danger
which menaces the continuance of our constitution proceeds simply from
the oblivion of those Christian ideas by which it was originally
inspired. It should seem that it is the religious as well as the
political duty of Catholics to endeavour to avert this peril, and to
defend from the attacks of the Radicals and from the contempt of the
Tories the only constitution which bears some resemblance to those of
Catholic times, and the principles which are almost as completely
forgotten in England as they are misunderstood abroad. If three
centuries of Protestantism have not entirely obliterated the ancient
features of our government, if they have not been so thoroughly barren
of political improvement as some of its enemies would have us
believe,--there is surely nothing to marvel at, nothing at which we may
rejoice. Protestants may well have, in some respects, the same
terrestrial superiority over Catholics that the Gentiles had over the
people of God. As, at the fall of paganism, the treasures it had
produced and accumulated during two thousand years became the spoils of
the victor,--when the day of reckoning shall come for the great modern
apostasy, it will surrender all that it has gathered in its diligent
application to the things of this world; and those who have remained in
the faith will have into the bargain those products of the Protestant
civilisation on which its claims of superiority are founded.
When, therefore, in the political shipwreck of modern Europe, it is
asked which political form of party is favoured by the Church, the only
answer we can give is, that she is attached to none; but that though
indifferent to existing forms, she is attached to a spirit which is
nearly extinct. Those who, from a fear of exposing her to political
animosity, would deny this, forget that the truth is as strong against
political as against religious error, and shut their eyes to the only
means by which the political regeneration of the modern world is a
possibility. For the Catholic religion alone will not suffice to save
it, as it was insufficient to save the ancient world, unless the
Catholic idea equally manifests itself in the political order. The
Church alone, without influence on the State, is powerless as a security
for good government. It is absurd to pretend that at the present day
France, or Spain, or Naples, are better governed than England, Holland,
or Prussia. A country entirely Protestant may have more Catholic
elements in its government than one where the population is wholly
Catholic. The State which is Catholic _par excellence_ is a by-word for
misgovernment, because the orthodoxy and piety of its administrators are
deemed a substitute for a better system. The demand for a really
Catholic system of government falls with the greatest weight of reproach
on the Catholic States.
Yet it is important to remember that in the ages of faith the same unity
prevailed in political ideas, and that the civil as well as the
religious troubles of our time are in great measure due to the
Reformation. It is common to advise Catholics to make up their minds to
accept the political doctrines of the day; but it would be more to the
purpose to recall the ideas of Catholic times. It is not in the results
of the political development of the last three centuries that the Church
can place her trust; neither in absolute monarchy, nor in the
revolutionary liberalism, nor in the infallible constitutional scheme.
She must create anew or revive her former creations, and instil a new
life and spirit into those remains of the mediæval system which will
bear the mark of the ages when heresy and unbelief, Roman law, and
heathen philosophy, had not obscured the idea of the Christian State.
These remains are to be found, in various stages of decay, in every
State,--with the exception, perhaps, of France,--that grew out of the
mediæval civilisation. Above all they will be found in the country
which, in the midst of its apostasy, and in spite of so much guilt
towards religion, has preserved the Catholic forms in its Church
establishment more than any other Protestant nation, and the Catholic
spirit in her political institutions more than any Catholic nation. To
renew the memory of the times in which this spirit prevailed in Europe,
and to preserve the remains of it, to promote the knowledge of what is
lost, and the desire of what is most urgently needed,--is an important
service and an important duty which it behoves us to perform. We are
greatly mistaken if these are not reflections which force themselves on
every one who carefully observes the political history of the Church in
modern Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 300: _The Rambler_, 1858.]
[Footnote 301: Tertullian, _Apologeticum_, 39; see also 30, 32. "We pray
also for the emperors, for the ministers of their Government, for the
State, for the peace of the world, for the delay of the last day."]
[Footnote 302: _De Civil. Dei_, xv. 5. "The fratricide was the first
founder of the secular State."]
[Footnote 303: "The Church reckons her subjects not as her servants but
as her children."]
[Footnote 304: "It is the maddest insolence, not only to dispute against
that which we see the universal Church believing, but also against what
we see her doing. For not only is the faith of the Church the rule of
our faith, but also her actions of ours, and her customs of that which
we ought to observe" (Morinus, _Comment. de Discipl. in administ.
Poenitentiae_, Preface).]
[Footnote 305: "Apud vos quodvis colere jus est Deum verum" (Tertullian,
_Apolog._ xxiv.).]
[Footnote 306: August. _de Civ. Dei_, xx. 19. 3.]
[Footnote 307: "Christianus nullius est hostis, nedum imperatoris, quem
... necesse est ut ... salvum velit cum toto Romano imperio quousque
saeculum stabit; tamdiu enim stabit" (Tert. _ad Scapulam_, 2). "Cum
caput illud orbis occiderit et [Greek: rhym] esse coeperit, quod
Sibyllae fore aiunt, quis dubitet venisse jam finem rebus humanis
orbique terrarum?" (Lactantius, _Inst. Div._ vii. 25). "Non prius veniet
Christus, quam regni Romani defectio fiat" (Ambrose _ad ep._ i. _ad
Thess._).]
[Footnote 308: "There is nothing so voluntary as religion."]
[Footnote 309: "God does not want unwilling worship, nor does he require
a forced repentance."]
[Footnote 310: Athanas. i. 363 B and 384 C [Greek: mhê hanagkhazein
halla peithein] "not compulsion, but persuasion" (Chrysost. ii. 540 A
and C).]
[Footnote 311: "If the State of which we are the secular children passes
away, that of which we are spiritual children passes not. Has God gone
to sleep and let the house be destroyed, or let in the enemy through
want of watchfulness? Why fearest thou when earthly kingdoms fall?
Heaven is promised thee, that thou mightest not fall with them. The
works of God Himself shall pass: how much sooner the works of Romulus!
Let us not quail, my brethren: all earthly kingdoms must come to an
end."]
[Footnote 312: "The cry of the whole world is 'Christ.' The mind is
horrified in reviewing the ruins of our age. The Roman world is falling,
and yet our stiff neck is not bent. The barbarians' strength is in our
sins; the defeat of the Roman armies in our vices. We will not cut off
the occasions of the malady, that the malady may be healed. The world is
falling, but in us there is no falling off from sin" (St. Jerome, _ep.
35, ad Heliodorum_; _ep. 98, ad Gaudentium_).]
[Footnote 313: "None are better witnesses of the words of heaven than
we, on whom the end of the world has come. We assist at the world's
setting, and diseases precede its dissolution" (_Expos. Ep. sec. Lucam_,
x.).]
[Footnote 314: "What is well-nigh all Christendom but a sink of
iniquity?" (_De Gub. Dei_, iii. 9).]
[Footnote 315: "In our age the devil has so defiled everything that
scarcely a thing is done without idolatry."]
[Footnote 316: "Do we wonder that God has granted all our lands to the
barbarians, when they now purify by their chastity the places which the
Romans had polluted with their debauchery?"]
[Footnote 317: Pope Anastasius writes to Clovis: "Sedes Petri in tanta
occasione non potest non laetari, cum plenitudinem gentium intuetur ad
eam veloci gradu concurrere" (Bouquet, iv. 50).]
[Footnote 318: "The noble people of the Franks, founded by God,
converted to the Catholic faith, and free from heresy."]
[Footnote 319: "Vetati sunt a Spiritu sancto loqui verbum Dei in Asia
... Tentabant ire in Bithyniam, et non permisit eos spiritus Jesu"
(_Acts_ xvi. 6, 7).]
[Footnote 320: Innocent IV. wrote in 1246 to the Sicilians: "In omnem
terram vestrae sonus tribulationis exivit ... multis pro miro vehementi
ducentibus, quod pressi tam dirae servitutis opprobrio, et personarum ac
rerum gravati multiplici detrimento, neglexeritis habere concilium, per
quod vobis, sicut gentibus caeteris, aliqua provenirent solatia
libertatis ... super hoc apud sedem apostolicam vos excusante
formidine.... Cogitate itaque corde vigili, ut a collo vestrae
servitutis catena decidat, et universitas vestra in libertatis et
quietis gaudio reflorescat; sitque ubertate conspicuum, ita divina
favente potentia secura sit libertate decorum" (Raynaldus, _Ann._ ad
ann. 1246).]
[Footnote 321: Burke's _Works_, i. 391, 404.]
VII
INTRODUCTION TO L.A. BURD'S EDITION OF IL PRINCIPE BY MACHIAVELLI
Mr. Burd has undertaken to redeem our long inferiority in Machiavellian
studies, and it will, I think, be found that he has given a more
completely satisfactory explanation of _The Prince_ than any country
possessed before. His annotated edition supplies all the solvents of a
famous problem in the history of Italy and the literature of politics.
In truth, the ancient problem is extinct, and no reader of this volume
will continue to wonder how so intelligent and reasonable a man came to
propose such flagitious counsels. When Machiavelli declared that
extraordinary objects cannot be accomplished under ordinary rules, he
recorded the experience of his own epoch, but also foretold the secret
of men since born. He illustrates not only the generation which taught
him, but the generations which he taught, and has no less in common with
the men who had his precepts before them than with the Viscontis,
Borgias, and Baglionis who were the masters he observed. He represents
more than the spirit of his country and his age. Knowledge,
civilisation, and morality have increased; but three centuries have
borne enduring witness to his political veracity. He has been as much
the exponent of men whom posterity esteems as of him whose historian
writes: "Cet homme que Dieu, après l'avoir fait si grand, avait fait bon
aussi, n'avait rien de la vertu." The authentic interpreter of
Machiavelli, the _Commentarius Perpetuus_ of the _Discorsi_ and _The
Prince_, is the whole of later history.
Michelet has said: "Rapportons-nous-en sur ceci à quelqu'un qui fut bien
plus Machiavéliste que Machiavel, à la republique de Venise." Before his
day, and long after, down almost to the time when a price was set on the
heads of the Pretender and of Pontiac, Venice employed assassins. And
this was not the desperate resource of politicians at bay, but the
avowed practice of decorous and religious magistrates. In 1569 Soto
hazards an impersonal doubt whether the morality of the thing was sound:
"Non omnibus satis probatur Venetorum mos, qui cum complures a patria
exules habeant condemnatos, singulis facultatem faciunt, ut qui alium
eorum interfecerit, vita ac libertate donetur." But his sovereign
shortly after obtained assurance that murder by royal command was
unanimously approved by divines: "A los tales puede el Principe
mandarlos matar, aunque esten fuera de su distrito y reinos.--Sin ser
citado, secretamente se le puede quitar la vita.--Esta es doctrina comun
y cierta y recevida de todos los theologos." When the King of France, by
despatching the Guises, had restored his good name in Europe, a
Venetian, Francesco da Molino, hoped that the example would not be
thrown away on the Council of Ten: "Permeti sua divina bontà che questo
esempio habbi giovato a farlo proceder come spero con meno fretta e più
sodamente a cose tali e d' importanza." Sarpi, their ablest writer,
their official theologian, has a string of maxims which seem to have
been borrowed straight from the Florentine predecessor: "Proponendo cosa
in apparenza non honesta, scusarla come necessaria, come praticata da
altri, come propria al tempo, che tende a buon fine, et conforme all'
opinione de' molti.--La vendetta non giova se non per fugir lo
sprezzo.--Ogn'huomo ha opinione che il mendacio sia buono in ragion di
medicina, et di far bene a far creder il vero et utile con premesse
false." One of his countrymen, having examined his writings, reports: "I
ricordi di questo grand' uomo furono più da politico che da christiano."
To him was attributed the doctrine of secret punishment, and the use of
poison against public enemies: "In casi d' eccessi incorrigibili si
punissero secretamente, a fine che il sangue patrizio non resti
profanato.--Il veleno deve esser l' unico mezzo per levarli dal mondo,
quando alla giustizia non complisse farli passare sotto la manaia del
carnefice." Venice, otherwise unlike the rest of Europe, was, in this
particular, not an exception.
Machiavelli enjoyed a season of popularity even at Rome. The Medicean
popes refused all official employment to one who had been the brain of a
hostile government; but they encouraged him to write, and were not
offended by the things he wrote for them. Leo's own dealings with the
tyrant of Perugia were cited by jurists as a suggestive model for men
who have an enemy to get rid of. Clement confessed to Contarini that
honesty would be preferable, but that honest men get the worst of it:
"Io cognosco certo che voi dicete il vero, et che ad farla da homo da
bene, et a far il debito, seria proceder come mi aricordate; ma
bisognerebbe trovar la corrispondentia. Non vedete che il mondo è
ridutto a un termine che colui il qual è più astuto et cum più trame fa
il fatto suo, è più laudato, et estimato più valente homo, et più
celebrato, et chi fa il contrario vien detto di esso; quel tale è una
bona persona, ma non val niente? Et se ne sta cum quel titulo solo di
bona persona.--Chi va bonamente vien trata da bestia." Two years after
this speech the astute Florentine authorised _The Prince_ to be
published at Rome.
It was still unprinted when Pole had it pressed on his attention by
Cromwell, and Brosch consequently suspects the story. Upon the death of
Clement, Pole opened the attack; but it was not pursued during the
reaction against things Medicean which occupied the reign of Farnese.
Machiavelli was denounced to the Inquisition on the 11th of November
1550, by Muzio, a man much employed in controversy and literary
repression, who, knowing Greek, was chosen by Pius V. for the work
afterwards committed to Baronius: "Senza rispetto alcuno insegna a non
servar ne fede, ne charità, ne religione; et dice che di queste cosi,
gli huomini se ne debbono servire per parer buoni, et per le grandezze
temporali, alle quali quando non servono non se ne dee fare stima. Et
non è questo peggio che heretica dottrina? Vedendosi che ciò si
comporta, sono accetate come opere approvate dalla Santa Madre chiesa."
Muzio, who at the same time recommended the _Decamerone_, was not acting
from ethical motives. His accusation succeeded. When the Index was
instituted, in 1557, Machiavelli was one of the first writers condemned,
and he was more rigorously and implacably condemned than anybody else.
The Trent Commissioners themselves prepared editions of certain
prohibited authors, such as Clarius and Flaminius; Guicciardini was
suffered to appear with retrenchments; and the famous revision of
Boccaccio was carried out in 1573. This was due to the influence of
Victorius, who pleaded in vain for a castigated text of Machiavelli. He
continued to be specially excepted when permission was given to read
forbidden books. Sometimes there were other exceptions, such as
Dumoulin, Marini, or Maimbourg; but the exclusion of Machiavelli was
permanent, and when Lucchesini preached against him at the Gesù, he had
to apply to the Pope himself for licence to read him. Lipsius was
advised by his Roman censors to mix a little Catholic salt in his
Machiavellism, and to suppress a seeming protest against the universal
hatred for a writer _qui misera qua non manu hodie vapulat_. One of the
ablest but most contentious of the Jesuits, Raynaud, pursued his memory
with a story like that with which Tronchin improved the death of
Voltaire: "Exitus impiissimi nebulonis metuendus est eius aemulatoribus,
nam blasphemans evomuit reprobum spiritum."
In spite of this notorious disfavour, he has been associated with the
excesses of the religious wars. The daughter of the man to whom he
addressed _The Prince_ was Catharine of Medici, and she was reported to
have taught her children "surtout des traictz de cet athée Machiavel."
Boucher asserted that Henry III. carried him in his pocket: "qui
perpetuus ei in sacculo atque manibus est"; and Montaigne confirms the
story when he says: "Et dict on, de ce temps, que Machiavel est encores
ailleurs en crédit." The pertinently appropriate quotation by which the
Queen sanctified her murderous resolve was supplied, not by her father's
rejected and discredited monitor, but by a bishop at the Council of
Trent, whose sermons had just been published: "Bisogna esser severo et
acuto, non bisogna esser clemente; è crudeltà l' esser pietoso, è pietà
l' esser crudele." And the argument was afterwards embodied in the
_Controversies_ of Bellarmin: "Haereticis obstinatis beneficium est,
quod de hac vita tollantur, nam quo diutius vivunt, eo plures errores
excogitant; plures pervertunt, et majorem sibi damnationem acquirunt."
The divines who held these doctrines received them through their own
channels straight from the Middle Ages. The germ theory, that the wages
of heresy is death, was so expanded as to include the rebel, the
usurper, the heterodox or rebellious town, and it continued to develop
long after the time of Machiavelli. At first it had been doubtful
whether a small number of culprits justified the demolition of a city:
"Videtur quod si aliqui haeretici sunt in civitate potest exuri tota
civitas." Under Gregory XIII. the right is asserted unequivocally:
"Civitas ista potest igne destrui, quando in ea plures sunt haeretici."
In case of sedition, fire is a less suitable agent: "Propter rebellionem
civitas quandoque supponitur aratro et possunt singuli decapitari." As
to heretics the view was: "Ut hostes latronesque occidi possunt etiamsi
sunt clerici." A king, if he was judged a usurper, was handed over to
extinction: "Licite potest a quolibet de populo occidi, pro libertate
populi, quando non est recursus ad superiorem, a quo possit iustitia
fieri." Or, in the words of the scrupulous Soto: "Tunc quisque ius habet
ipsum extinguendi." To the end of the seventeenth century theologians
taught: "Occidatur, seu occidendus proscribatur, quando non alitur
potest haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae."
This was not mere theory, or the enforced logic of men in thrall to
mediæval antecedents. Under the most carnal and unchristian king, the
Vaudois of Provence were exterminated in the year 1545, and Paul Sadolet
wrote as follows to Cardinal Farnese just before and just after the
event: "Aggionta hora questa instantia del predetto paese di Provenza a
quella che da Mons. Nuntio s'era fatta a Sua Maestà Christianissima a
nome di Sua Beatitudine et di Vostra Reverendissima Signoria, siamo in
ferma speranza, che vi si debbia pigliare qualche bono expediente et
farci qualche gagliarda provisione.--È seguito, in questo paese, quel
tanto desiderato et tanto necessario effetto circa le cose di Cabrieres,
che da vostra Signoria Reverendissima è stato si lungamente ricordato et
sollicitato et procurato." Even Melanchthon was provoked by the death of
Cromwell to exclaim that there is no better deed than the slaughter of a
tyrant; "Utinam Deus alicui forti viro hanc mentem inserat!" And in 1575
the Swedish bishops decided that it would be a good work to poison their
king in a basin of soup--an idea particularly repugnant to the author of
_De Rege et Regis Institutione_. Among Mariana's papers I have seen the
letter from Paris describing the murder of Henry III., which he turned
to such account in the memorable sixth chapter: "Communicò con sus
superiores, si peccaria mortalmente un sacerdote que matase a un tirano.
Ellos le diceron que non era pecado, mas que quedaria irregular. Y no
contentandose con esto, ni con las disputas que avia de ordinario en la
Sorbona sobre la materia, continuando siempre sus oraciones, lo preguntò
a otros theologos, que le afirmavan lo mismo; y con esto se resolviò
enteramente de executarlo. Por el successo es de collegir que tuvo el
fraile alguna revelacion de Nuestro Señor en particular, y inspiracion
para executar el caso." According to Maffei, the Pope's biographer, the
priests were not content with saying that killing was no sin: "Cum illi
posse, nec sine magno quidem merito censuissent." Regicide was so
acceptable a work that it seemed fitly assigned to a divine
interposition.
When, on the 21st of January 1591, a youth offered his services to make
away with Henry IV., the Nuncio remitted the matter to Rome:
"Quantunque mi sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humilità, prudenza,
spirito et cose che arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente
piuttosto che temerità e leggerezza." In a volume which, though recent,
is already rare, the Foreign Office published D'Avaux's advice to treat
the Protestants of Ireland much as William treated the Catholics of
Glencoe; and the argument of the Assassination Plot came originally from
a Belgian seminary. There were at least three men living far into the
eighteenth century who defended the massacre of St. Bartholomew in their
books; and it was held as late as 1741 that culprits may be killed
before they are condemned: "Etiam ante sententiam impune occidi possunt,
quando de proximo erant banniendi, vel quando eorum delictum est
notorium, grave, et pro quo poena capitis infligenda esset."
Whilst these principles were current in religion as well as in society,
the official censures of the Church and the protests of every divine
since Catharinus were ineffectual. Much of the profaner criticism
uttered by such authorities as the Cardinal de Retz, Voltaire, Frederic
the Great, Daunou, and Mazzini is not more convincing or more real.
Linguet was not altogether wrong in suggesting that the assailants knew
Machiavelli at second hand: "Chaque fois que je jette les yeux sur les
ouvrages de ce grand génie, je ne saurais concevoir, je l'avoue, la
cause du décri où il est tombé. Je soupçonne fortement que ses plus
grands ennemis sont ceux qui ne l'ont pas lu." Retz attributed to him a
proposition which is not in his writings. Frederic and Algernon Sidney
had read only one of his books, and Bolingbroke, a congenial spirit, who
quotes him so often, knew him very little. Hume spoils a serious remark
by a glaring eighteenth-century comment: "There is scarcely any maxim in
_The Prince_ which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted. The
errors of this politician proceeded, in a great measure, from his having
lived in too early an age of the world to be a good judge of political
truth." Bodin had previously written: "Il n'a jamais sondé le gué de la
science politique." Mazzini complains of his _analisi cadaverica ed
ignoranza della vita_; and Barthélemy St Hilaire, verging on paradox,
says: "On dirait vraiment que l'histoire ne lui a rien appris, non plus
que la conscience." That would be more scientific treatment than the
common censure of moralists and the common applause of politicians. It
is easier to expose errors in practical politics than to remove the
ethical basis of judgments which the modern world employs in common with
Machiavelli.
By plausible and dangerous paths men are drawn to the doctrine of the
justice of History, of judgment by results, the nursling of the
nineteenth century, from which a sharp incline leads to _The Prince_.
When we say that public life is not an affair of morality, that there is
no available rule of right and wrong, that men must be judged by their
age, that the code shifts with the longitude, that the wisdom which
governs the event is superior to our own, we carry obscurely tribute to
the system which bears so odious a name. Few would scruple to maintain
with Mr. Morley that the equity of history requires that we shall judge
men of action by the standards of men of action; or with Retz: "Les
vices d'un archevêque peuvent être, dans une infinité de rencontres, les
vertus d'un chef de parti." The expounder of Adam Smith to France, J.B.
Say, confirms the ambitious coadjutor: "Louis XIV. et son despotisme et
ses guerres n'ont jamais fait le mal qui serait résulté des conseils de
ce bon Fénelon, l'apôtre et le martyr de la vertu et du bien des
hommes." Most successful public men deprecate what Sir Henry Taylor
calls much weak sensibility of conscience, and approve Lord Grey's
language to Princess Lieven: "I am a great lover of morality, public and
private; but the intercourse of nations cannot be strictly regulated by
that rule." While Burke was denouncing the Revolution, Walpole wrote:
"No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not
go the lengths that may be necessary." All which had been formerly
anticipated by Pole: "Quanto quis privatam vitam agens Christi similior
erit tanto minus aptus ad regendum id munus iudicio hominum
existimabitur." The main principle of Machiavelli is asserted by his
most eminent English disciple: "It is the solecism of power to think, to
command the end, and yet not to endure the means." And Bacon leads up to
the familiar Jesuit: "Cui licet finis, illi et media permissa sunt."
The austere Pascal has said: "On ne voit rien de juste ou d'injuste qui
ne change de qualité en changeant de climat" (the reading _presque_ rien
was the precaution of an editor). The same underlying scepticism is
found not only in philosophers of the Titanic sort, to whom remorse is a
prejudice of education, and the moral virtues are "the political
offspring which flattery begat upon pride," but among the masters of
living thought. Locke, according to Mr. Bain, holds that we shall
scarcely find any rule of morality, excepting such as are necessary to
hold society together, and these too with great limitations, but what is
somewhere or other set aside, and an opposite established by whole
societies of men. Maine de Biran extracts this conclusion from the
_Esprit des Lois_: "Il n'y a rien d'absolu ni dans la religion, ni dans
la morale, ni, à plus forte raison, dans la politique." In the
mercantile economists Turgot detects the very doctrine of Helvetius: "Il
établit qu'il n'y a pas lieu à la probité entre les nations, d'où
suivroit que la monde doit être éternellement un coupe-gorge. En quoi il
est bien d'accord avec les panégyristes de Colbert."
These things survive, transmuted, in the edifying and popular epigram:
"Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." Lacordaire, though he spoke so
well of "L'empire et les ruses de la durée," recorded his experience in
these words: "J'ai toujours vu Dieu se justifier à la longue." Reuss, a
teacher of opposite tendency and greater name, is equally consoling:
"Les destinées de l'homme s'accomplissent ici-bas; la justice de Dieu
s'exerce et se manifeste sur cette terre." In the infancy of exact
observation Massillon could safely preach that wickedness ends in
ignominy: "Dieu aura son tour." The indecisive Providentialism of
Bossuet's countrymen is shared by English divines.
"Contemporaries," says Hare, "look at the agents, at their motives and
characters; history looks rather at the acts and their consequences."
Thirlwall hesitates to say that whatever is, is best; "but I have a
strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of
tendency is toward good." And Sedgwick, combining induction with
theology, writes: "If there be a superintending Providence, and if His
will be manifested by general laws, operating both on the physical and
moral world, then must a violation of those laws be a violation of His
will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery."
Apart from the language of Religion, an optimism ranging to the bounds
of fatalism is the philosophy of many, especially of historians: "Le
vrai, c'est, en toutes choses, le fait." Sainte-Beuve says: "Il y a dans
tout fait général et prolongé une puissance de démonstration
insensible"; and Scherer describes progress as "une espèce de logique
objective et impersonelle qui résout les questions sans appel." Ranke
has written: "Der beste Prüfstein ist die Zeit"; and Sybel explains that
this was not a short way out of confusion and incertitude, but a
profound generalisation: "Ein Geschlecht, ein Volk löst das andere ab,
und der Lebende hat Recht." A scholar of a different school and fibre,
Stahr the Aristotelian, expresses the same idea: "Die Geschichte soll
die Richtigkeit des Denkens bewähren." Richelieu's maxim: "Les grands
desseins et notables entreprises ne se vérifient jamais autrement que
par le succès"; and Napoleon's: "Je ne juge les hommes que par les
résultats," are seriously appropriated by Fustel de Coulanges: "Ce qui
caractérise le véritable homme d'état, c'est le succès, on le reconnaît
surtout à ce signe, qu'il réussit." One of Machiavelli's gravest critics
applied it to him: "Die ewige Aufgabe der Politik bleibt unter den
gegebenen Verhältnissen und mit den vorhandenen Mitteln etwas zu
erreichen. Eine Politik die das verkennt, die auf den Erfolg verzichtet,
sich auf eine theoretische Propaganda, auf ideale Gesichtspunkte
beschränkt, von einer verlorenen Gegenwart an eine künftige
Gerechtigkeit appellirt, ist keine Politik mehr." One of the mediæval
pioneers, Stenzel, delivered a formula of purest Tuscan cinquecento:
"Was bei anderen Menschen gemeine Schlechtigkeit ist, erhält, bei den
ungewöhnlichen Geistern, den Stempel der Grösse, der selbst dem
Verbrechen sich aufdrückt. Der Maassstab ist anders; denn das
Ausserordentliche lässt sich nur durch Ausserordentliches bewirken."
Treitschke habitually denounces the impotent Doctrinaires who do not
understand "dass der Staat Macht ist und der Welt des Willens angehört,"
and who know not how to rise "von der Politik des Bekenntnisses zu der
Politik der That." Schäfer, though a less pronounced partisan, derides
Macaulay for thinking that human happiness concerns political science:
"Das Wesen des Staates ist die Macht, und die Politik die Kunst ihn zu
erhalten." Rochau's _Realpolitik_ was a treatise in two volumes written
to prove "dass der Staat durch seine Selbsterhaltung das oberste Gebot
der Sittlichkeit erfüllt." Wherefore, nobody finds fault when a State in
its decline is subjugated by a robust neighbour. In one of those telling
passages which moved Mr. Freeman to complain that he seems unable to
understand that a small State can have any rights, or that a generous or
patriotic sentiment can find a place anywhere except in the breast of a
fool, Mommsen justifies the Roman conquests: "Kraft des Gesetzes dass
das zum Staat entwickelte Volk die politisch unmündigen, das civilisirte
die geistig unmündigen in sich auflöst." The same idea was imparted into
the theory of ethics by Kirchmann, and appears, with a sobering touch,
in the _Geschichte Jesu_ of Hase, the most popular German divine: "Der
Einzelne wird nach der Grösse seiner Ziele, nach den Wirkungen seiner
Thaten für das Wohl der Völker gemessen, aber nicht nach dem Maasse der
Moral und des Rechts.--Vom Leben im Geiste seiner Zeit hängt nicht der
sittliche Werth eines Menschen, aber seine geschichtliche Wirksamkeit
ab." Rümelin, both in politics and literature the most brilliant Suabian
of his time, and a strenuous adversary of Machiavelli, wrote thus in
1874: "Für den Einzelnen im Staat gilt das Princip der Selbsthingabe,
für den Staat das der Selbstbehauptung. Der Einzelne dient dem Recht;
der Staat handhabt, leitet und schafft dasselbe. Der Einzelne ist nur
ein flüchtiges Glied in dem sittlichen Ganzen; der Staat ist, wenn nicht
dieses Ganze selbst, doch dessen reale, ordnende Macht; er ist
unsterblich und sich selbst genug.--Die Erhaltung des Staats
rechtfertigt jedes Opfer und steht über jedem Gebot." Nefftzer, an
Alsatian borderer, says: "Le devoir suprême des individus est de se
dévouer, celui des nations est de se conserver, et se confond par
conséquent avec leur intérêt." Once, in a mood of pantheism, Renan
wrote: "L'humanité a tout fait, et, nous voulons le croire, tout bien
fait." Or, as Michelet abridges the _Scienza Nuova_: "L'humanité est son
oeuvre à elle-même. Dieu agit sur elle, mais par elle." Mr. Leslie
Stephen thus lays down the philosophy of history according to Carlyle,
"that only succeeds which is based on divine truth, and permanent
success therefore proves the right, as the effect proves the cause."
Darwin, having met Carlyle, notes that "in his eyes might was right,"
and adds that he had a narrow and unscientific mind; but Mr. Goldwin
Smith discovers the same lesson: "History, of itself, if observed as
science observes the facts of the physical world, can scarcely give man
any principle or any object of allegiance, unless it be success." Dr.
Martineau attributes this doctrine to Mill: "Do we ask what determines
the moral quality of actions? We are referred, not to their spring, but
to their consequences." Jeremy Bentham used to relate how he found the
greatest happiness principle in 1768, and gave a shilling for it, at the
corner of Queen's College. He found it in Priestley, and he might have
gone on finding it in Beccaria and Hutcheson, all of whom trace their
pedigree to the _Mandragola_: "Io credo che quello sia bene che facci
bene a' più, e che i più se ne contentino." This is the centre of unity
in all Machiavelli, and gives him touch, not with unconscious imitators
only, but with the most conspicuous race of reasoners in the century.
English experience has not been familiar with a line of thought plainly
involving indulgence to Machiavelli. Dugald Stewart raises him high, but
raises him for a heavy fall: "No writer, certainly, either in ancient or
in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater
variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant gifts
and attainments.--To his maxims the royal defenders of the Catholic
faith have been indebted for the spirit of that policy which they have
uniformly opposed to the innovations of the reformers." Hallam indeed
has said: "We continually find a more flagitious and undisguised
abandonment of moral rules for the sake of some idol of a general
principle than can be imputed to _The Prince_ of Machiavel." But the
unaccustomed hyperbole had been hazarded a century before in the
obscurity of a Latin dissertation by Feuerlein: "Longe detestabiliores
errores apud alios doctores politicos facile invenias, si eidem
rigorosae censurae eorum scripta subiicienda essent." What has been,
with us, the occasional aphorism of a masterful mind, encountered
support abroad in accredited systems, and in a vast and successful
political movement. The recovery of Machiavelli has been essentially the
product of causes operating on the Continent.
When Hegel was dominant to the Rhine, and Cousin beyond it, the
circumstances favoured his reputation. For Hegel taught: "Der Gang der
Weltgeschichte steht ausserhalb der Tugend, des Lasters, und der
Gerechtigkeit." And the great eclectic renewed, in explicit language,
the worst maxim of the _Istorie Fiorentine_: "L'apologie d'un siècle est
dans son existence, car son existence est un arrêt et un jugement de
Dieu même, ou l'histoire n'est qu'une fastasmagorie insignifiante.--Le
caractère propre, le signe d'un grand homme, c'est qu'il réussit.--Ou
nul guerrier ne doit être appelé grand homme, ou, s'il est grand, il
faut l'absoudre, et absoudre en masse tout ce qu'il a fait.--Il faut
prouver que le vainqueur non seulement sert la civilisation, mais qu'il
est meilleur, plus moral, et que c'est pour cela qu'il est vainqueur.
Maudire la puissance (j'entends une puissance longue et durable) c'est
blasphémer l'humanité."
This primitive and everlasting problem assumed a peculiar shape in
theological controversy. The Catholic divines urged that prosperity is a
sign by which, even in the militant period, the true Church may be
known; coupling _Felicitas Temporalis illis collata qui ecclesiam
defenderunt_ with _Infelix exitus eorum qui ecclesiam oppugnant_. Le
Blanc de Beaulieu, a name famous in the history of pacific disputation,
holds the opposite opinion: "Crucem et perpessiones esse potius
ecclesiae notam, nam denunciatum piis in verbo Dei fore ut in hoc mundo
persecutionem patiantur, non vero ut armis sint adversariis suis
superiores." Renan, outbidding all, finds that honesty is the worst
policy: "En général, dans l'histoire, l'homme est puni de ce qu'il fait
de bien, et récompensée de ce qu'il fait de mal.--L'histoire est tout le
contraire de la vertu récompensée."
The national movement which united, first Italy and then Germany, opened
a new era for Machiavelli. He had come down, laden with the distinctive
reproach of abetting despotism; and the men who, in the seventeenth
century, levelled the course of absolute monarchy, were commonly known
as _novi politici et Machiavellistae_. In the days of Grotius they are
denounced by Besold: "Novi politici, ex Italia redeuntes qui quavis
fraude principibus a subditis pecuniam extorquere fas licitumque esse
putant, Machiavelli plerumque praeceptis et exemplis principum, quorum
rationes non capiunt, ad id abutentes." But the immediate purpose with
which Italians and Germans effected the great change in the European
constitution was unity, not liberty. They constructed, not securities,
but forces. Machiavelli's time had come. The problems once more were his
own: and in many forward and resolute minds the spirit also was his, and
displayed itself in an ascending scale of praise. He was simply a
faithful observer of facts, who described the fell necessity that
governs narrow territories and unstable fortunes; he discovered the true
line of progress and the law of future society; he was a patriot, a
republican, a Liberal, but above all this, a man sagacious enough to
know that politics is an inductive science. A sublime purpose justifies
him, and he has been wronged by dupes and fanatics, by irresponsible
dreamers and interested hypocrites.
The Italian Revolution, passing from the Liberal to the national stage,
at once adopted his name and placed itself under his invocation. Count
Sclopis, though he declared him _Penseur profond, écrivain admirable_,
deplored this untimely preference: "Il m'a été pénible de voir le
gouvernement provisoire de la Tuscane, en 1859, le lendemain du jour où
ce pays recouvrait sa liberté, publier un décret, portant qu'une édition
complète des oeuvres de Machiavel serait faite aux frais de l'état." The
research even of our best masters, Villari and Tommasini, is prompted by
admiration. Ferrari, who comes so near him in many qualities of the
intellect, proclaims him the recorder of fate: "Il décrit les rôles que
la fatalité distribue aux individus et aux masses dans ces moments
funestes et glorieux où ils sont appelés à changer la loi et la foi des
nations." His advice, says La Farina, would have saved Italy. Canello
believes that he is disliked because he is mistaken for a courtier:
"L'orrore e l' antipatia che molti critici hanno provato per il
Machiavelli son derivati dal pensare che tutti i suoi crudi insegnamenti
fossero solo a vantaggio del Principe." One biographer, Mordenti, exalts
him as the very champion of conscience: "Risuscitando la dignità dell'
umana coscienza, ne affermò l' esistenza in faccia alla ragione." He
adds, more truly, "È uno dei personaggi del dramma che si va svolgendo
nell' età nostra."
That is the meaning of Laurent when he says that he has imitators but no
defenders: "Machiavel ne trouve plus un seul partisan au XIXe
siècle.--La postérité a voué son nom à l'infamie, tout en pratiquant sa
doctrine." His characteristic universality has been recognised by
Baudrillart: "En exprimant ce mauvais côté, mais ce mauvais côté, hélas,
éternel! Machiavel n'est plus seulement le publiciste de son pays et de
son temps; it est le politique de tous les siècles.--S'il fait tout
dépendre de la puissance individuelle, et de ses facultés de force,
d'habileté de ruse, c'est que, plus le théâtre se rétrécit, plus l'homme
influe sur la marche des évènements." Matter finds the same merits which
are applauded by the Italians: "Il a plus innové pour la liberté que
pour le despotisme, car autour de lui la liberté était inconnue, tandis
que le despotisme lui posait partout." And his reviewer, Longpérier,
pronounces the doctrine "parfaitement appropriée aux états d'Italie."
Nourrisson, with Fehr, one of the few religious men who still have a
good word for the Secretary, admires his sincerity: "_Le Prince_ est un
livre de bonne foi, où l'auteur, sans songer à mal, n'a fait que
traduire en maximes les pratiques habituelles à ses contemporains."
Thiers, though he surrendered _The Prince_, clung to the _Discorsi_--the
_Discorsi_, with the pointed and culminating text produced by Mr. Burd.
In the archives of the ministry he might have found how the idea struck
his successful predecessor, Vergennes: "Il est des choses plus fortes
que les hommes, et les grands intérêts des nations sont de ce genre, et
doivent par conséquent l'emporter sur la façon de penser de quelques
particuliers."
Loyalty to Frederic the Great has not restrained German opinion, and
philosophers unite with historians in rejecting his youthful moralities.
Zimmerman wonders what would have become of Prussia if the king had
practised the maxims of the crown prince; and Zeller testifies that the
_Anti-Machiavel_ was not permitted to influence his reign: "Wird man
doch weder in seiner Staatsleitung noch in seinen politischen
Grundsätzen etwas von dem vermissen, worauf die Ueberlegenheit einer
gesunden Realpolitik allem liberalen oder conservativen, radikalen oder
legitimistischen, Doktrinarismus gegenüber beruht." Ahrens and
Windelband insist on the virtue of a national government: "Der Staat ist
sich selbst genug, wenn er in einer Nation wurzelt,--das ist der
Grundgedanke Machiavelli's." Kirchmann celebrates the emancipation of
the State from the moral yoke: "Man hat Machiavelli zwar in der Theorie
bekämpft, allein die Praxis der Staaten hat seine Lehren immer
eingehalten.--Wenn seine Lehre verletzt, so kommt diess nur von der
Kleinheit der Staaten und Fürsten, auf die er sie verwendet.--Es spricht
nur für seine tiefe Erkenntniss des Staatswesens, dass er die
Staatsgewalt nicht den Regeln der Privatmoral unterwirft, sondern selbst
vor groben Verletzungen dieser Moral durch den Fürsten nicht
zurückschreckt, wenn das Wohl des Ganzen und die Freiheit des
Vaterlandes nicht anders vorbereitet und vermittelt werden kann." In
Kuno Fischer's progress through the systems of metaphysics Machiavelli
appears at almost every step; his influence is manifest to Dr. Abbott
throughout the whole of Bacon's political writings; Hobbes followed up
his theory to the conclusions which he abstained from; Spinoza gave him
the benefit of a liberal interpretation; Leibniz, the inventor of the
acquiescent doctrine which Bolingbroke transmitted to the _Essay on
Man_, said that he drew a good likeness of a bad prince; Herder reports
him to mean that a rogue need not be a fool; Fichte frankly set himself
to rehabilitate him. In the end, the great master of modern philosophy
pronounces in his favour, and declares it absurd to robe a prince in the
cowl of a monk: "Ein politischer Denker und Künstler dessen erfahrener
und tiefer Verstand aus den geschichtlich gegebenen Verhältnissen
besser, als aus den Grundsätzen der Metaphysik, die politischen
Nothwendigkeiten, den Charakter, die Bildung und Aufgabe weltlicher
Herrschaft zu begreifen wusste.--Da man weiss, dass politische
Machtfragen nie, am Wenigsten in einem verderbten Volke, mit den Mitteln
der Moral zu lösen sind, so ist es unverständig, das Buch vom Fürsten zu
verschreien. Machiavelli hatte einen Herrscher zu schildern, keinen
Klosterbruder."
Ranke was a grateful student of Fichte when he spoke of Machiavelli as a
meritorious writer, maligned by people who could not understand him:
"Einem Autor von höchstem Verdienst, und der keineswegs ein böser
Mensch war.--Die falsche Auffassung des _Principe_ beruht eben darauf,
dass man die Lehren Machiavells als allgemeine betrachtet, während sie
bloss Anweisungen für einen bestimmten Zweck sind." To Gervinus, in
1853, he is "der grosse Seher," the prophet of the modern world: "Er
errieth den Geist der neuern Geschichte." Gervinus was a democratic
Liberal, and, taken with Gentz from another quarter, he shows how widely
the elements of the Machiavellian restoration were spread over Europe.
Gentz had not forgotten his classics in the service of Austria when he
wrote to a friend: "Wenn selbst das Recht je verletzt werden darf, so
geschehe es, um die rechtmässige Macht zu erhalten; in allem Uebrigen
herrsche es unbedingt" Twesten is as well persuaded as Machiavelli that
the world cannot be governed "con Pater nostri in mano," and he deemed
that patriotism atoned for his errors: "Dass der weltgeschichtliche
Fortschritt nicht mit Schonung und Gelindigkeit, nicht in den Formen des
Rechts vollzogen werden könnte, hat die Geschichte aller Länder
bestätigt.--Auch Machiavellis Sünden mögen wir als gesühnt betrachten,
durch das hochsinnige Streben für das Grosse und das Ansehen seines
Volkes." One censor of Frederic, Boretius, makes him answerable for a
great deal of presuming criticism: "Die Gelehrten sind bis heute in
ihrem Urtheil über Machiavelli nicht einig, die öffentliche Meinung ist
hierin glücklicher.--Die öffentliche Meinung kann sich für alle diese
Weisheit beim alten Fritz bedanken." On the eve of the campaign in
Bohemia, Herbst pointed out that Machiavelli, though previously a
republican, sacrificed liberty to unity: "Der Einheit soll die innere
Freiheit--Machiavelli war kurz zuvor noch begeisterter Anhänger der
Republik--geopfert werden." According to Feuerlein the heart of the
writer was loyal, but the conditions of the problem were inexorable; and
Klein detects in _The Prince_, and even in the _Mandragola_, "die
reformatorische Absicht eines Sittenspiegels." Chowanetz wrote a book to
hold up Machiavelli as a teacher of all ages, but especially of our own:
"Die Absicht aber, welche Machiavel mit seinem Buche verband, ist
trefflich für alle Zeiten." And Weitzel hardly knows a better writer, or
one less worthy of an evil name: "Im Interesse der Menschheit und
gesetzmässiger Verfassungen kann kaum ein besseres Werk geschrieben
werden.--Wohl ist mancher in der Geschichte, wie in der Tradition der
Völker, auf eine unschuldige Weise um seinen verdienten, oder zu einem
unverdienten Rufe gekommen, aber keiner vielleicht unschuldiger als
Machiavelli."
These are remote and forgotten names. Stronger men of the imperial epoch
have resumed the theme with better means of judging, and yet with no
harsher judgment. Hartwig sums up his penetrating and severe analysis by
confessing that the world as Machiavelli saw it, without a conscience,
is the real world of history as it is: "Die Thatsachen selbst scheinen
uns das Geheimniss ihrer Existenz zu verrathen; wir glauben vor uns die
Fäden sich verknüpfen und verschlingen zu sehen, deren Gewebe die
Weltgeschichte ist." Gaspary thinks that he hated iniquity, but that he
knew of no righteousness apart from the State: "Er lobte mit Wärme das
Gute und tadelte mit Abscheu das Böse; aber er studirte auch dieses mit
Interesse.--Er erkennt eben keine Moral, wie keine Religion, über dem
Staate, sondern nur in demselben; die Menschen sind von Natur schlecht,
die Gesetze machen sie gut.--Wo es kein Gericht giebt, bei dem man
klagen könnte, wie in den Handlungen der Fürsten, betrachtet man immer
das Ende." The common opinion is expressed by Baumgarten in his _Charles
the Fifth_, that the grandeur of the purpose assures indulgence to the
means proposed: "Wenn die Umstände zum Wortbruch, zur Grausamkeit,
Habgier, Lüge treiben, so hat man sich nicht etwa mit Bedauern, dass die
Not dazu zwinge, sondern schlechtweg, weil es eben politisch zweckmässig
ist und ohne alles Bedenken so zu verhalten.--Ihre Deduktionen sind uns
unerträglich, wenn wir nicht sagen können: alle diese schrecklichen
Dinge empfahl Machiavelli, weil er nur durch sie die Befreiung seines
Vaterlandes zu erreichen hoffte. Dieses erhabene Ziel macht uns die
fürchterlichen Mittel annehmbar, welche Machiavelli seinem Fürsten
empfiehlt." Hillebrand was a more international German; he had swum in
many European waters, and wrote in three languages. He is scarcely less
favourable in his interpretation: "Cette dictature, il ne faut jamais le
perdre de vue, ne serait jamais que transitoire, et devrait faire place
à un gouvernement libre dès que la grande réforme nationale et sociale
serait accomplie.--Il a parfaitement conscience du mal. L'atmosphère
ambiante de son siècle et de son pays n'a nullement oblitéré son sens
moral--Il a si bien conscience de l'énormité de ces crimes, qu'il la
condamne hautement lorsque la dernière nécessité ne les impose pas."
Among these utterances of capable and distinguished men, it will be seen
that some are partially true, and others, without a particle of truth,
are at least representative and significant, and serve to bring
Machiavelli within fathomable depth. He is the earliest conscious and
articulate exponent of certain living forces in the present world.
Religion, progressive enlightenment, the perpetual vigilance of public
opinion, have not reduced his empire, or disproved the justice of his
conception of mankind. He obtains a new lease of life from causes that
are still prevailing, and from doctrines that are apparent in politics,
philosophy, and science. Without sparing censure, or employing for
comparison the grosser symptoms of the age, we find him near our common
level, and perceive that he is not a vanishing type, but a constant and
contemporary influence. Where it is impossible to praise, to defend, or
to excuse, the burden of blame may yet be lightened by adjustment and
distribution, and he is more rationally intelligible when illustrated by
lights falling not only from the century he wrote in, but from our own,
which has seen the course of its history twenty-five times diverted by
actual or attempted crime.
VIII
MR. GOLDWIN SMITH'S IRISH HISTORY[322]
When Macaulay republished his Essays from the _Edinburgh Review_, he had
already commenced the great work by which his name will be remembered;
and he had the prudence to exclude from the collection his early paper
on the art of historical writing. In the maturity of his powers, he was
rightly unwilling to bring into notice the theories of his youth. At a
time when he was about to claim a place among the first historians, it
would have been injudicious to remind men of the manner in which he had
described the objects of his emulation or of his rivalry--how in his
judgment the speeches of Thucydides violate the decencies of fiction,
and give to his book something of the character of the Chinese
pleasure-grounds, whilst his political observations are very
superficial; how Polybius has no other merit than that of a faithful
narrator of facts; and how in the nineteenth century, from the practice
of distorting narrative in conformity with theory, "history proper is
disappearing." But in that essay, although the judgments are puerile,
the ideal at which the writer afterwards aimed is distinctly drawn, and
his own character is prefigured in the description of the author of a
history of England as it ought to be, who "gives to truth those
attractions which have been usurped by fiction," "intersperses the
details which are the charm of historical romances," and "reclaims those
materials which the novelist has appropriated."
Mr. Goldwin Smith, like Macaulay, has written on the study of history,
and he has been a keen critic of other historians before becoming one
himself. It is a bold thing for a man to bring theory so near to
execution, and, amidst dispute on his principles and resentment at his
criticism, to give an opportunity of testing his theories by his own
practice, and of applying his own canons to his performance. It reminds
us of the professor of Cologne, who wrote the best Latin poem of modern
times, as a model for his pupils; and of the author of an attack on
Dryden's _Virgil_, who is styled by Pope the "fairest of critics,"
"because," says Johnson, "he exhibited his own version to be compared
with that which he condemned." The work in which the professor of
history and critic of historians teaches by example is not unworthy of
his theory, whilst some of its defects may be explained by it.
The point which most closely connects Mr. Goldwin Smith's previous
writings with his _Irish History_ is his vindication of a moral code
against those who identify moral with physical laws, who consider the
outward regularity with which actions are done to be the inward reason
why they must be done, and who conceive that all laws are opposed to
freedom. In his opposition to this materialism, he goes in one respect
too far, in another not far enough.
On the one hand, whilst defending liberty and morality, he has not
sufficient perception of the spiritual element; and on the other, he
seems to fear that it would be a concession to his antagonists to dwell
on the constant laws by which nature asserts herself, and on the
regularity with which like causes produce like effects. Yet it is on the
observation of these laws that political, social, and economical science
rests; and it is by the knowledge of them that a scientific historian is
guided in grouping his matter. In this he differs from the artist, whose
principle of arrangement is drawn from himself, not from external
nature; and from the annalist, who has no arrangement, since he sees,
not the connection, but the succession of events. Facts are intelligible
and instructive,--or, in other words, history exhibits truths as well
as facts,--when they are seen not merely as they follow, but as they
correspond; not merely as they have happened, but as they are
paralleled. The fate of Ireland is to be understood not simply from the
light of English and Irish history, but by the general history of other
conquests, colonies, dependencies, and establishments. In this sort of
illustration by analogy and contrast Mr. Goldwin Smith is particularly
infelicitous. Nor does Providence gain what science loses by his
treatment of history. He rejects materialism, but he confines his view
to motives and forces which are purely human.
The Catholic Church receives, therefore, very imperfect measure at his
hands. Her spiritual character and purpose he cannot discern behind the
temporal instruments and appendages of her existence; he confounds
authority with influence, devotion with bigotry, power with force of
arms, and estimates the vigour and durability of Catholicism by
criterions as material as those of the philosophers he has so vehemently
and so ably refuted. Most Protestant writers fail in approbation; he
fails in appreciation. It is not so much a religious feeling that makes
him unjust, as a way of thinking which, in great measure, ignores the
supernatural, and therefore precludes a just estimate of religion in
general, and of Catholicism in particular. Hence he is unjust rather to
the nature than to the actions of the Church. He caricatures more than
he libels her. He is much less given to misrepresentation and calumny
than Macaulay, but he has a less exalted idea of the history and
character of Catholicism. As he underrates what is divine, so he has no
very high standard for the actions of men, and he is liberal in
admitting extenuating circumstances. Though he never suspends the
severity of his moral judgment in consideration of the purpose or the
result, yet he is induced by a variety of arguments to mitigate its
rigour. In accordance with the theory he has formerly developed, he is
constantly sitting in judgment; and he discusses the morality of men and
actions far oftener than history--which has very different problems to
solve--either requires or tolerates. De Maistre says that in our time
compassion is reserved for the guilty. Mr. Goldwin Smith is a merciful
judge, whose compassion generally increases in proportion to the
greatness of the culprit; and he has a sympathy for what is done in the
grand style, which balances his hatred of what is wrongly done.
It would not be fair to judge of an author's notion and powers of
research by a hasty and popular production. Mr. Goldwin Smith has
collected quite enough information for the purpose for which he has used
it, and he has not failed through want of industry. The test of solidity
is not the quantity read, but the mode in which the knowledge has been
collected and used. Method, not genius, or eloquence, or erudition,
makes the historian. He may be discovered most easily by his use of
authorities. The first question is, whether the writer understands the
comparative value of sources of information, and has the habit of giving
precedence to the most trustworthy informant. There are some vague
indications that Mr. Goldwin Smith does not understand the importance of
this fundamental rule. In his Inaugural Lecture, published two years
ago, the following extravagant sentence occurs: "Before the Revolution,
the fervour and the austerity of Rousseau had cast out from good society
the levity and sensuality of Voltaire" (p. 15). This view--which he
appears to have abandoned, for in his _Irish History_ he tells us that
France "has now become the eldest daughter of Voltaire"--he supports by
a reference to an abridgment of French history, much and justly esteemed
in French schools, but, like all abridgments, not founded on original
knowledge, and disfigured by exaggeration in the colouring. Moreover,
the passage he refers to has been misinterpreted. In the _Irish History_
Mr. Goldwin Smith quotes, for the character of the early Celts, without
any sufficient reason, another French historian, Martin, who has no
great authority, and the younger Thierry, who has none at all. This is a
point of very little weight by itself; but until our author vindicates
his research by other writings, it is not in his favour.
The defects of Mr. Goldwin Smith's historic art, his lax criticism, his
superficial acquaintance with foreign countries, his occasional
proneness to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of rhetorical effect, his
aversion for spiritual things, are all covered by one transcendent
merit, which, in a man of so much ability, promises great results.
Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest
in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor
pardoned,--the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.
The absence of a definite didactic purpose is the only security for the
good faith of a historian. This most rare virtue Mr. Goldwin Smith
possesses in a high degree. He writes to tell the truths he finds, not
to prove the truths which he believes. In character and design he is
eminently truthful and fair, though not equally so in execution. His
candour never fails him, and he is never betrayed by his temper; yet his
defective knowledge of general history, and his crude notions of the
Church, have made him write many things which are untrue, and some which
are unjust. Prejudice is in all men of such early growth, and so
difficult to eradicate, that it becomes a misfortune rather than a
reproach, especially if it is due to ignorance and not to passion, and
if it has not its seat in the will. In the case of Mr. Goldwin Smith it
is of the curable and harmless kind. The fairness of his intention is
far beyond his knowledge. When he is unjust, it is not from hatred;
where he is impartial, it is not always from the copiousness of his
information. His prejudices are of a nature which his ability and
honesty will in time inevitably overcome.
The general result and moral of his book is excellent. He shows that the
land-question has been from the beginning the great difficulty in
Ireland; and he concludes with a condemnation of the Established Church,
and a prophecy of its approaching fall. The weakness of Ireland and the
guilt of England are not disguised; and the author has not written to
stimulate the anger of one nation or to attenuate the remorse of the
other. To both he gives wise and statesman-like advice, that may soon be
very opportune. The first American war was the commencement of the
deliverance of Ireland, and it may be that a new American war will
complete the work of regeneration which the first began. Agreeing as we
do with the policy of the author, and admiring the spirit of his book,
we shall not attempt either to enforce or to dispute his conclusions,
and we shall confine our remarks to less essential points on which he
appears to us in the wrong.
There are several instances of inaccuracy and negligence which, however
trivial in themselves, tend to prove that the author is not always very
scrupulous in speaking of things he has not studied. A purist so severe
as to write "Kelt" for "Celt" ought not to call Mercury, originally a
very different personage from Hermes, one of "the legendary authors of
Greek civilisation" (p. 43); and we do not believe that anybody who had
read the writings of the two primates could call Bramhall "an inferior
counterpart of Laud" (p. 105). In a loftier mood, and therefore
apparently with still greater license, Mr. Goldwin Smith declares that
"the glorious blood of Orange could scarcely have run in a low
persecutor's veins" (p. 123). The blood of Orange ran in the veins of
William the Silent, the threefold hypocrite, who confessed Catholicism
whilst he hoped to retain his influence at court, Lutheranism when there
was a chance of obtaining assistance from the German princes, Calvinism
when he was forced to resort to religion in order to excite the people
against the crown, and who persecuted the Protestants in Orange and the
Catholics in Holland. These, however, are matters of no consequence
whatever in a political history of Ireland; but we find ourselves at
issue with the author on the important question of political freedom.
"Even the highly civilised Kelt of France, familiar as he is with
theories of political liberty, seems almost incapable of sustaining
free institutions. After a moment of constitutional government, he
reverts, with a bias which the fatalist might call irresistible, to
despotism in some form" (p. 18). The warning so frequently uttered by
Burke in his last years, to fly from the liberty of France, is still
more needful now that French liberty has exhibited itself in a far more
seductive light. The danger is more subtle, when able men confound
political forms with popular rights. France has never been governed by a
Constitution since 1792, if by a Constitution is meant a definite rule
and limitation of the governing power. It is not that the French failed
to preserve the forms of parliamentary government, but that those forms
no more implied freedom than the glory which the Empire has twice given
in their stead. It is a serious fault in our author that he has not
understood so essential a distinction. Has he not read the _Rights of
Man_, by Tom Paine?--
It is not because a part of the government is elective that makes it
less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a
parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes
separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for
despotism.[323]
Napoleon once consulted the cleverest among the politicians who served
him, respecting the durability of some of his institutions. "Ask
yourself," was the answer, "what it would cost you to destroy them. If
the destruction would cost no effort, you have created nothing; for
politically, as well as physically, only that which resists endures." In
the year 1802 the same great writer said: "Nothing is more pernicious in
a monarchy than the principles and the forms of democracy, for they
allow no alternative, but despotism and revolutions." With the
additional experience of half a century, a writer not inferior to the
last repeats exactly the same idea:--
Of all societies in the world, those which will always have most
difficulty in permanently escaping absolute government will be
precisely those societies in which aristocracy is no more, and can
no more be.[324]
French constitutionalism was but a form by which the absence of
self-government was concealed. The State was as despotic under Villèle
or Guizot as under either of the Bonapartes. The Restoration fenced
itself round with artificial creations, having no root in the condition
or in the sympathies of the people; these creations simply weakened it
by making it unpopular. The hereditary peerage was an anomaly in a
country unused to primogeniture, and so was the revival, in a nation of
sceptics, of the Gallican union between Church and State. The monarchy
of July, which was more suited to the nature of French society, and was
thus enabled to crush a series of insurrections, was at last forced, by
its position and by the necessity of self-preservation, to assume a very
despotic character. After the fortifications of Paris were begun, a
tendency set in which, under a younger sovereign, would have led to a
system hardly distinguishable from that which now prevails; and there
are princes in the House of Orleans whose government would develop the
principle of democracy in a manner not very remote from the institutions
of the second Empire. It is liberalism more than despotism that is
opposed to liberty in France; and it is a most dangerous error to
imagine that the Governments of the French Charter really resemble ours.
There are States without any parliament at all, whose principles and
fundamental institutions are in much closer harmony with our system of
autonomy. Mr. Goldwin Smith sees half the truth, that there is something
in the French nation which incapacitates it for liberty; but he does not
see that what they have always sought, and sometimes enjoyed, is not
freedom; that their liberty must diminish in proportion as their ideal
is attained; and that they are not yet familiar with the theory of
political rights. With this false notion of what constitutes liberty, it
is not surprising that he should repeatedly dwell on its connection
with Protestantism, and talk of "the political liberty which
Protestantism brought in its train" (p. 120). Such phrases may console a
Protestant reader of a book fatal to the Protestant ascendency in
Ireland; but as there are no arguments in support of them, and as they
are strangely contradicted by the facts in the context, Mr. Goldwin
Smith resorts to the ingenious artifice of calling to mind as many ugly
stories about Catholics as he can. The notion constantly recurs that,
though the Protestants were very wicked in Ireland, it was against their
principles and general practice, and is due to the Catholics, whose
system naturally led them to be tyrannical and cruel, and thus provoked
retaliation. Mr. Smith might have been reminded by Peter Plymley that
when Protestantism has had its own way it has uniformly been averse to
freedom: "What has Protestantism done for liberty in Denmark, in Sweden,
throughout the north of Germany, and in Prussia?"--not much less than
democracy has done in France. An admirer of the constitutions of 1791,
1814, or 1830 may be excused if he is not very severe on the absolutism
of Protestant countries.
Mr. Goldwin Smith mistakes the character of the invasion of Ireland
because he has not understood the relative position of the civilisation
of the two countries at the time when it occurred. That of the Celts was
in many respects more refined than that of the Normans. The Celts are
not among the progressive, initiative races, but among those which
supply the materials rather than the impulse of history, and are either
stationary or retrogressive. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and
the Teutons are the only makers of history, the only authors of
advancement. Other races possessing a highly developed language, a
copious literature, a speculative religion, enjoying luxury and art,
attain to a certain pitch of cultivation which they are unable either to
communicate or to increase. They are a negative element in the world;
sometimes the barrier, sometimes the instrument, sometimes the material
of those races to whom it is given to originate and to advance. Their
existence is either passive, or reactionary and destructive, when, after
intervening like the blind forces of nature, they speedily exhibit their
uncreative character, and leave others to pursue the course to which
they have pointed. The Chinese are a people of this kind. They have long
remained stationary, and succeeded in excluding the influences of
general history. So the Hindoos; being Pantheists, they have no history
of their own, but supply objects for commerce and for conquest. So the
Huns, whose appearance gave a sudden impetus to a stagnant world. So the
Slavonians, who tell only in the mass, and whose influence is
ascertainable sometimes by adding to the momentum of active forces,
sometimes by impeding through inertness the progress of mankind.
To this class of nations also belong the Celts of Gaul. The Roman and
the German conquerors have not altered their character as it was drawn
two thousand years ago. They have a history, but it is not theirs; their
nature remains unchanged, their history is the history of the invaders.
The revolution was the revival of the conquered race, and their reaction
against the creations of their masters. But it has been cunning only to
destroy; it has not given life to one constructive idea, or durability
to one new institution; and it has exhibited to the world an
unparalleled political incapacity, which was announced by Burke, and
analysed by Tocqueville, in works which are the crowning pieces of two
great literatures.
The Celts of these islands, in like manner, waited for a foreign
influence to set in action the rich treasure which in their own hands
could be of no avail. Their language was more flexible, their poetry and
music more copious, than those of the Anglo-Normans. Their laws, if we
may judge from those of Wales, display a society in some respects highly
cultivated. But, like the rest of that group of nations to which they
belong, there was not in them the incentive to action and progress which
is given by the consciousness of a part in human destiny, by the
inspiration of a high idea, or even by the natural development of
institutions. Their life and literature were aimless and wasteful.
Without combination or concentration, they had no star to guide them in
an onward course; and the progress of dawn into day was no more to them
than to the flocks and to the forests.
Before the Danish wars, and the decay, which is described by St. Bernard
in terms which must not be taken quite literally, had led to the English
invasion, there was probably as much material, certainly as much
spiritual, culture in Ireland as in any country in the West; but there
was not that by whose sustaining force alone these things endure, by
which alone the place of nations in history is determined--there was no
political civilisation. The State did not keep pace with the progress of
society. This is the essential and decisive inferiority of the Celtic
race, as conspicuous among the Irish in the twelfth century as among the
French in our own. They gave way before the higher political aptitude of
the English.
The issue of an invasion is generally decided by this political
aptitude, and the consequences of conquest always depend on it.
Subjection to a people of a higher capacity for government is of itself
no misfortune; and it is to most countries the condition of their
political advancement. The Greeks were more highly cultivated than the
Romans, the Gauls than the Franks; yet in both cases the higher
political intelligence prevailed. For a long time the English had,
perhaps, no other superiority over the Irish; yet this alone would have
made the conquest a great blessing to Ireland, but for the separation of
the races. Conquering races necessarily bring with them their own system
of government, and there is no other way of introducing it. A nation can
obtain political education only by dependence on another. Art,
literature, and science may be communicated by the conquered to the
conqueror; but government can be taught only by governing, therefore
only by the governors; politics can only be learnt in this school. The
most uncivilised of the barbarians, whilst they slowly and imperfectly
learned the arts of Rome, at once remodelled its laws. The two kinds of
civilisation, social and political, are wholly unconnected with each
other. Either may subsist, in high perfection, alone. Polity grows like
language, and is part of a people's nature, not dependent on its will.
One or the other can be developed, modified, corrected; but they cannot
be subverted or changed by the people itself without an act of suicide.
Organic change, if it comes at all, must come from abroad. Revolution is
a malady, a frenzy, an interruption of the nation's growth, sometimes
fatal to its existence, often to its independence. In this case
revolution, by making the nation subject to others, may be the occasion
of a new development. But it is not conceivable that a nation should
arbitrarily and spontaneously cast off its history, reject its
traditions, abrogate its law and government, and commence a new
political existence.
Nothing in the experience of ages, or in the nature of man, allows us to
believe that the attempt of France to establish a durable edifice on the
ruins of 1789, without using the old materials, can ever succeed, or
that she can ever emerge from the vicious circle of the last seventy
years, except by returning to the principle which she then repudiated,
and by admitting, that if States would live, they must preserve their
organic connection with their origin and history, which are their root
and their stem; that they are not voluntary creations of human wisdom;
and that men labour in vain who would construct them without
acknowledging God as the artificer.
Theorists who hold it to be a wrong that a nation should belong to a
foreign State are therefore in contradiction with the law of civil
progress. This law, or rather necessity, which is as absolute as the law
that binds society together, is the force which makes us need one
another, and only enables us to obtain what we need on terms, not of
equality, but of dominion and subjection, in domestic, economic, or
political relations. The political theory of nationality is in
contradiction with the historic nation. Since a nation derives its ideas
and instincts of government, as much as its temperament and its
language, from God, acting through the influences of nature and of
history, these ideas and instincts are originally and essentially
peculiar to it, and not separable from it; they have no practical value
in themselves when divided from the capacity which corresponds to them.
National qualities are the incarnations of political ideas. No people
can receive its government from another without receiving at the same
time the ministers of government. The workman must travel with the work.
Such changes can only be accomplished by submission to a foreign State,
or to another race. Europe has seen two great instances of such
conquests, extending over centuries,--the Roman Empire, and the
settlement of the barbarians in the West. This it is which gives unity
to the history of the Middle Ages. The Romans established a universal
empire by subjecting all countries to the authority of a single power.
The barbarians introduced into all a single system of law, and thus
became the instrument of a universal Church. The same spirit of freedom,
the same notions of the State, pervade all the _Leges Barbarorum_, and
all the polities they founded in Europe and Asia. They differ widely in
the surrounding conditions, in the state of society, in the degree of
advancement, in almost all external things. The principle common to them
all is to acknowledge the freedom of the Church as a corporation and a
proprietor, and in virtue of the principle of self-government to allow
religion to develop her influence in the State. The great migration
which terminated in the Norman conquests and in the Crusades gave the
dominion of the Latin world to the Teutonic chivalry, and to the Church
her proper place. All other countries sank into despotism, into schism,
and at last into barbarism, under the Tartars or the Turks. The union
between the Teutonic races and the Holy See was founded on their
political qualities more than on their religious fervour. In modern
times, the most pious Catholics have often tyrannised over the Church.
In the Middle Ages her liberty was often secured and respected where her
spiritual injunctions were least obeyed.
The growth of the feudal system coinciding with the general decay of
morals led, in the eleventh century, to new efforts of the Church to
preserve her freedom. The Holy See was delivered from the Roman factions
by the most illustrious of the emperors, and a series of German Popes
commenced the great reform. Other princes were unwilling to submit to
the authority of the imperial nominees, and the kings of France and
Castile showed symptoms of resistance, in which they were supported by
the heresy of Berengarius. The conduct of Henry IV. delivered the Church
from the patronage of the Empire, whilst the Normans defended her
against the Gallican tendencies and the feudal tyranny. In Sicily, the
Normans consented to hold their power from the Pope; and in Normandy,
Berengarius found a successful adversary, and the King of France a
vassal who compelled him to abandon his designs. The chaplain of the
Conqueror describes his government in terms which show how singularly it
fulfilled the conditions which the Church requires. He tells us that
William established in Normandy a truly Christian order; that every
village, town, and castle enjoyed its own privileges; and that, while
other princes either forbade the erection of churches or seized their
endowments, he left his subjects free to make pious gifts. In his reign
and by his conduct the word "bigot" ceased to be a term of reproach, and
came to signify what we now should call "ultramontane." He was the
foremost of those Normans who were called by the Holy See to reclaim
what was degenerate, and to renovate the declining States of the North.
Where the Church addressed herself to the conversion of races of purely
Teutonic origin, as in Scandinavia, her missionaries achieved the work.
In other countries, as in Poland and Hungary, political dependence on
the Empire was the channel and safeguard of her influence. The Norman
conquest of England and of Ireland differs from all of these. In both
islands the faith had been freely preached, adopted, and preserved. The
rulers and the people were Catholic. The last Saxon king who died
before the Conquest was a saint. The last archbishop of Dublin appointed
before the invasion was a saint. Neither of the invasions can be
explained simply by the demoralisation of the clergy, or by the
spiritual destitution of the people.
Catholicism spreads among the nations, not only as a doctrine, but as an
institution. "The Church," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "is not a disembodied
spirit, but a spirit embodied in human society." Her teaching is
directed to the inner man, and is confined to the social order; but her
discipline touches on the political. She cannot permanently ignore the
acts and character of the State, or escape its notice. Whilst she
preaches submission to authorities ordained by God, her nature, not her
interest, compels her to exert an involuntary influence upon them. The
jealousy so often exhibited by governments is not without reason, for
the free action of the Church is the test of the free constitution of
the State; and without such free constitution there must necessarily
ensue either persecution or revolution. Between the settled organisation
of Catholicism and every form of arbitrary power, there is an
incompatibility which must terminate in conflict. In a State which
possesses no security for authority or freedom, the Church must either
fight or succumb. Now, as authority and freedom, the conditions of her
existence, can only be obtained through the instrumentality of certain
nations, she depends on the aid of these nations. Religion alone cannot
civilise men, or secure its own conquest. It promotes civilisation where
it has power; but it has not power where its way is not prepared. Its
civilising influence is chiefly indirect, and acts by its needs and
wants as much as by the fulness of its ideas. So Christianity extends
itself by the aid of the secular power, relying, not on the victories of
Christian arms, but on the progress of institutions and ideas that
harmonise with ecclesiastical freedom. Hence, those who have most
actively served the interests of the Church are not always those who
have been most faithful to her doctrines. The work which the Goth and
the Frank had done on the continent of Europe the Normans came to do in
England, where it had been done before but had failed, and in Ireland,
where neither Roman nor German influences had entered.
Thus the theory of nationality, unknown to Catholic ages, is
inconsistent both with political reason and with Christianity, which
requires the dominion of race over race, and whose path was made
straight by two universal empires. The missionary may outstrip, in his
devoted zeal, the progress of trade or of arms; but the seed that he
plants will not take root, unprotected by those ideas of right and duty
which first came into the world with the tribes who destroyed the
civilisation of antiquity, and whose descendants are in our day carrying
those ideas to every quarter of the world. It was as impossible to
realise in Ireland the mediæval notions of ecclesiastical liberty
without a great political reform, as to put an end to the dissolution of
society and the feuds of princes without the authority of a supreme
lord.
There is one institution of those days to which Mr. Goldwin Smith has
not done entire justice.
It is needless to say that the Eric, or pecuniary composition for
blood, in place of capital or other punishment, which the Brehon law
sanctioned, is the reproach of all primitive codes, and of none. It
is the first step from the license of savage revenge to the ordered
justice of a regular law (p. 41).
Pecuniary composition for blood belongs to an advanced period of defined
and regular criminal jurisprudence. In the lowest form of civil society,
when the State is not yet distinct from the family, the family is
compelled to defend itself; and the only protection of society is the
vendetta. It is the private right of self-defence combined with the
public office of punishment, and therefore not only a privilege but an
obligation. The whole family is bound to avenge the injury; but the duty
rests first of all with the heir. Precedency in the office of avenger is
naturally connected with a first claim in inheritance; and the
succession to property is determined by the law of revenge. This leads
both to primogeniture, because the eldest son is most likely to be
capable of punishing the culprit; and, for the same reason, to
modifications of primogeniture, by the preference of the brother before
the grandson, and of the male line before the female. A practice which
appears barbarous is, therefore, one of the foundations of civilisation,
and the origin of some of the refinements of law. In this state of
society there is no distinction between civil and criminal law; an
injury is looked upon as a private wrong, not, as religion considers it,
a sin, or, as the State considers it, a crime.
Something very similar occurs in feudal society. Here all the barons
were virtually equal to each other, and without any superior to punish
their crimes or to avenge their wrongs. They were, therefore, compelled
to obtain safety or reparation, like sovereigns, by force of arms. What
war is among States, the feud is in feudal society, and the vengeance of
blood in societies not yet matured into States--a substitute for the
fixed administration of justice.
The assumption of this duty by the State begins with the recognisance of
acts done against the State itself. At first, political crimes alone are
visited with a public penalty; private injuries demand no public
expiation, but only satisfaction of the injured party. This appears in
its most rudimentary form in the _lex talionis_. Society requires that
punishment should be inflicted by the State, in order to prevent
continual disorders. If the injured party could be satisfied, and his
duty fulfilled without inflicting on the criminal an injury
corresponding to that which he had done, society was obviously the
gainer. At first it was optional to accept or to refuse satisfaction;
afterwards it was made obligatory.
Where property was so valuable that its loss was visited on the life or
limb of the robber, and injuries against property were made a question
of life and death, it soon followed that injury to life could be made a
question of payment. To expiate robbery by death, and to expiate murder
by the payment of a fine, are correlative ideas. Practically this
custom often told with a barbarous inequality against those who were too
poor to purchase forgiveness; but it was otherwise both just and humane
in principle, and it was generally encouraged by the Church. For in her
eyes the criminal was guilty of an act of which it was necessary that he
should repent; this made her desire, not his destruction, but his
conversion. She tried, therefore, to save his life, and to put an end to
revenge, mutilation, and servitude; and for all this the alternative was
compensation. This purpose was served by the right of asylum. The Church
surrendered the fugitive only on condition that his life and person
should be spared in consideration of a lawful fine, which she often paid
for him herself. "Concedatur ei vita et omnia membra. Emendat autem
causam in quantum potuerit," says a law of Charlemagne, given in the
year 785, when the influence of religion on legislation was most
powerful in Europe.
No idea occurs more frequently in the work we are reviewing than that of
the persecuting character of the Catholic Church; it is used as a
perpetual apology for the penal laws in Ireland:--
"When the Catholics writhe under this wrong, let them turn their eyes
to the history of Catholic countries, and remember that, while the
Catholic Church was stripped of her endowments and doomed to
political degradation by Protestant persecutors in Ireland, the
Protestant churches were exterminated with fire and sword by Catholic
persecutors in France, Austria, Flanders, Italy, and Spain" (p. 92).
He speaks of Catholicism as "a religion which all Protestants
believed to be idolatrous, and knew by fearful experience to be
persecuting" (p. 113). "It would not be difficult to point to
persecuting laws more sanguinary than these. Spain, France, and
Austria will at once supply signal examples.... That persecution was
the vice of an age and not only of a particular religion, that it
disgraced Protestantism as well as Catholicism, is true. But no one
who reads the religious history of Europe with an open mind can fail
to perceive that the persecutions carried on by Protestants were far
less bloody and less extensive than those carried on by Catholics;
that they were more frequently excusable as acts of retaliation; that
they arose more from political alarm, and less from the spirit of the
religion; and that the temper of their authors yielded more rapidly
to the advancing influence of humanity and civilisation" (pp. 127.
129).
All these arguments are fallacies; but as the statements at the same
time are full of error, we believe that the author is wrong because he
has not studied the question, not because he has designed to
misrepresent it. The fact that he does not distinguish from each other
the various kinds and occasions of persecution, proves that he is wholly
ignorant of the things with which it is connected.
Persecution is the vice of particular religions, and the misfortune of
particular stages of political society. It is the resource by which
States that would be subverted by religious liberty escape the more
dangerous alternative of imposing religious disabilities. The exclusion
of a part of the community by reason of its faith from the full benefit
of the law is a danger and disadvantage to every State, however highly
organised its constitution may otherwise be. But the actual existence of
a religious party differing in faith from the majority is dangerous only
to a State very imperfectly organised. Disabilities are always a danger.
Multiplicity of religions is only dangerous to States of an inferior
type. By persecution they rid themselves of the peculiar danger which
threatens them, without involving themselves in a system universally
bad. Persecution comes naturally in a certain period of the progress of
society, before a more flexible and comprehensive system has been
introduced by that advance of religion and civilisation whereby
Catholicism gradually penetrates into hostile countries, and Christian
powers acquire dominion over infidel populations. Thus it is the token
of an epoch in the political, religious, and intellectual life of
mankind, and it disappears with its epoch, and with the advance of the
Church militant in her Catholic vocation. Intolerance of dissent and
impatience of contradiction are a characteristic of youth. Those that
have no knowledge of the truth that underlies opposite opinions, and no
experience of their consequent force, cannot believe that men are
sincere in holding them. At a certain point of mental growth, tolerance
implies indifference, and intolerance is inseparable from sincerity.
Thus intolerance, in itself a defect, becomes in this case a merit.
Again, although the political conditions of intolerance belong to the
youth and immaturity of nations, the motives of intolerance may at any
time be just and the principle high. For the theory of religious unity
is founded on the most elevated and truest view of the character and
function of the State, on the perception that its ultimate purpose is
not distinct from that of the Church. In the pagan State they were
identified; in the Christian world the end remains the same, but the
means are different.
The State aims at the things of another life but indirectly. Its course
runs parallel to that of the Church; they do not converge. The direct
subservience of the State to religious ends would imply despotism and
persecution just as much as the pagan supremacy of civil over religious
authority. The similarity of the end demands harmony in the principles,
and creates a decided antagonism between the State and a religious
community whose character is in total contradiction with it. With such
religions there is no possibility of reconciliation. A State must be at
open war with any system which it sees would prevent it from fulfilling
its legitimate duties. The danger, therefore, lies not in the doctrine,
but in the practice. But to the pagan and to the mediæval State, the
danger was in the doctrine. The Christians were the best subjects of the
emperor, but Christianity was really subversive of the fundamental
institutions of the Roman Empire. In the infancy of the modern States,
the civil power required all the help that religion could give in order
to establish itself against the lawlessness of barbarism and feudal
dissolution. The existence of the State at that time depended on the
power of the Church. When, in the thirteenth century, the Empire
renounced this support, and made war on the Church, it fell at once into
a number of small sovereignties. In those cases persecution was
self-defence. It was wrongly defended as an absolute, not as a
conditional principle; but such a principle was false only as the modern
theory of religious liberty is false. One was a wrong generalisation
from the true character of the State; the other is a true conclusion
from a false notion of the State. To say that because of the union
between Church and State it is right to persecute would condemn all
toleration; and to say that the objects of the State have nothing to do
with religion, would condemn all persecution. But persecution and
toleration are equally true in principle, considered politically; only
one belongs to a more highly developed civilisation than the other. At
one period toleration would destroy society; at another, persecution is
fatal to liberty. The theory of intolerance is wrong only if founded
absolutely upon religious motives; but even then the practice of it is
not necessarily censurable. It is opposed to the Christian spirit, in
the same manner as slavery is opposed to it. The Church prohibits
neither intolerance nor slavery, though in proportion as her influence
extends, and civilisation advances, both gradually disappear.
Unity and liberty are the only legitimate principles on which the
position of a Church in a State can be regulated, but the distance
between them is immeasurable, and the transition extremely difficult. To
pass from religious unity to religious liberty is to effect a complete
inversion in the character of the State, a change in the whole spirit of
legislation, and a still greater revolution in the minds and habits of
men. So great a change seldom happens all at once. The law naturally
follows the condition of society, which does not suddenly change. An
intervening stage from unity to liberty, a compromise between toleration
and persecution, is a common but irrational, tyrannical, and impolitic
arrangement. It is idle to talk of the guilt of persecution, if we do
not distinguish the various principles on which religious dissent can be
treated by the State. The exclusion of other religions--- the system of
Spain, of Sweden, of Mecklenburg, Holstein, and Tyrol--is reasonable in
principle, though practically untenable in the present state of European
society. The system of expulsion or compulsory conformity, adopted by
Lewis XIV. and the Emperor Nicholas, is defensible neither on religious
nor political grounds. But the system applied to Ireland, which uses
religious disabilities for the purpose of political oppression,[325]
stands alone in solitary infamy among the crimes and follies of the
rulers of men.
The acquisition of real definite freedom is a very slow and tardy
process. The great social independence enjoyed in the early periods of
national history is not yet political freedom. The State has not yet
developed its authority, or assumed the functions of government. A
period follows when all the action of society is absorbed by the ruling
power, when the license of early times is gone, and the liberties of a
riper age are not yet acquired. These liberties are the product of a
long conflict with absolutism, and of a gradual development, which, by
establishing definite rights revives in positive form the negative
liberty of an unformed society. The object and the result of this
process is the organisation of self-government, the substitution of
right for force, of authority for power, of duty for necessity, and of a
moral for a physical relation between government and people. Until this
point is reached, religious liberty is an anomaly. In a State which
possesses all power and all authority there is no room for the autonomy
of religious communities. Those States, therefore, not only refuse
liberty of conscience, but deprive the favoured Church of ecclesiastical
freedom. The principles of religious unity and liberty are so opposed
that no modern State has at once denied toleration and allowed freedom
to its established Church. Both of these are unnatural in a State which
rejects self-government, the only secure basis of all freedom, whether
religious or political. For religious freedom is based on political
liberty; intolerance, therefore, is a political necessity against all
religions which threaten the unity of faith in a State that is not free,
and in every State against those religions which threaten its existence.
Absolute intolerance belongs to the absolute State; special persecution
may be justified by special causes in any State. All mediæval
persecution is of the latter kind, for the sects against which it was
directed were revolutionary parties. The State really defended, not its
religious unity, but its political existence.
If the Catholic Church was naturally inclined to persecute, she would
persecute in all cases alike, when there was no interest to serve but
her own. Instead of adapting her conduct to circumstances, and accepting
theories according to the character of the time, she would have
developed a consistent theory out of her own system, and would have been
most severe when she was most free from external influences, from
political objects, or from temporary or national prejudices. She would
have imposed a common rule of conduct in different countries in
different ages, instead of submitting to the exigencies of each time and
place. Her own rule of conduct never changed. She treats it as a crime
to abandon her, not to be outside her. An apostate who returns to her
has a penance for his apostasy; a heretic who is converted has no
penance for his heresy. Severity against those who are outside her fold
is against her principles. Persecution is contrary to the nature of a
universal Church; it is peculiar to the national Churches.
While the Catholic Church by her progress in freedom naturally tends to
push the development of States beyond the sphere where they are still
obliged to preserve the unity of religion, and whilst she extends over
States in all degrees of advancement, Protestantism, which belongs to a
particular age and state of society, which makes no claim to
universality, and which is dependent on political connection, regards
persecution, not as an accident, but as a duty.
Wherever Protestantism prevailed, intolerance became a principle of
State, and was proclaimed in theory even where the Protestants were in a
minority, and where the theory supplied a weapon against themselves. The
Reformation made it a general law, not only against Catholics by way of
self-defence or retaliation, but against all who dissented from the
reformed doctrines, whom it treated, not as enemies, but as
criminals,--against the Protestant sects, against Socinians, and against
atheists. It was not a right, but a duty; its object was to avenge God,
not to preserve order. There is no analogy between the persecution which
preserves and the persecution which attacks; or between intolerance as a
religious duty, and intolerance as a necessity of State. The Reformers
unanimously declared persecution to be incumbent on the civil power; and
the Protestant Governments universally acted upon their injunctions,
until scepticism escaped the infliction of penal laws and condemned
their spirit.
Doubtless, in the interest of their religion, they acted wisely. Freedom
is not more decidedly the natural condition of Catholicism than
intolerance is of Protestantism; which by the help of persecution
succeeded in establishing itself in countries where it had no root in
the affections of the people, and in preserving itself from the internal
divisions which follow free inquiry. Toleration has been at once a cause
and an effect of its decline. The Catholic Church, on the other hand,
supported the mediæval State by religious unity, and has saved herself
in the modern State by religious freedom. No longer compelled to devise
theories in justification of a system imposed on her by the exigencies
of half-organised societies, she is enabled to revert to a policy more
suited to her nature and to her most venerable traditions; and the
principle of liberty has already restored to her much of that which the
principle of unity took away. It was not, as our author imagines (p.
119), by the protection of Lewis XIV. that she was formidable; nor is it
true that in consequence of the loss of temporalities, "the chill of
death is gathering round the heart of the great theocracy" (p. 94); nor
that "the visible decline of the papacy" is at hand because it no longer
wields "the more efficacious arms of the great Catholic monarchies" (p.
190).
The same appeal to force, the same principles of intolerance which
expelled Catholicism from Protestant countries, gave rise in Catholic
countries to the growth of infidelity. The Revolutions of 1789 in
France, and of 1859 in Italy, attest the danger of a practice which
requires for its support the doctrines of another religion, or the
circumstances of a different age. Not till the Church had lost those
props in which Mr. Goldwin Smith sees the secret of her power, did she
recover her elasticity and her expansive vigour. Catholics may have
learnt this truth late, but Protestants, it appears, have yet to learn
it.
In one point Mr. Goldwin Smith is not so very far from the views of the
Orange party. He thinks, indeed, that the Church is no longer dangerous,
and would not therefore have Catholics maltreated; but this is due, not
to her merits, but to her weakness.
Popes might now be as willing as ever, if they had the power, to step
between a Protestant State and the allegiance of its subjects (p.
190).
Mr. Smith seems to think that the Popes claim the same authority over
the rulers of a Protestant State that they formerly possessed over the
princes of Catholic countries. Yet this political power of the Holy See
was never a universal right of jurisdiction over States, but a special
and positive right, which it is as absurd to censure as to fear or to
regret at the present time. Directly, it extended only over territories
which were held by feudal tenure of the Pope, like the Sicilian
monarchy. Elsewhere the authority was indirect, not political but
religious, and its political consequences were due to the laws of the
land. The Catholic countries would no more submit to a king not of their
communion than Protestant countries, England for instance, or Denmark.
This is as natural and inevitable in a country where the whole
population is of one religion, as it is artificial and unjust in a
country where no sort of religious unity prevails, and where such a law
might compel the sovereign to be of the religion of the minority.
At any rate, nobody who thinks it reasonable that any prince abandoning
the Established Church should forfeit the English throne, can complain
of a law which compelled the sovereign to be of the religion, not of a
majority, but of the whole of his subjects. The idea of the Pope
stepping between a State and the allegiance of its subjects is a mere
misapprehension. The instrument of his authority is the law, and the law
resides in the State. The Pope could intervene, therefore, only between
the State and the occupant of the throne; and his intervention
suspended, not the duty of obeying, but the right of governing. The line
on which his sentence ran separated, not the subjects from the State,
but the sovereign from the other authorities. It was addressed to the
nation politically organised against the head of the organism, not to
the mass of individual subjects against the constituted authorities.
That such a power was inconsistent with the modern notion of sovereignty
is true; but it is also true that this notion is as much at variance
with the nature of ecclesiastical authority as with civil liberty. The
Roman maxim, _princeps legibus solutus_, could not be admitted by the
Church; and an absolute prince could not properly be invested in her
eyes with the sanctity of authority, or protected by the duty of
submission. A moral, and _à fortiori_ a spiritual, authority moves and
lives only in an atmosphere of freedom.
There are, however, two things to be considered in explanation of the
error into which our author and so many others have fallen. Law follows
life, but not with an equal pace. There is a time when it ceases to
correspond to the existing order of things, and meets an invincible
obstacle in a new society. The exercise of the mediæval authority of the
Popes was founded on the religious unity of the State, and had no basis
in a divided community. It was not easy in the period of transition to
tell when the change took place, and at what moment the old power lost
its efficacy; no one could foresee its failure, and it still remained
the legal and recognised means of preventing the change. Accordingly, it
was twice tried during the wars of religion, in France with success, in
England with disastrous effects. It is a universal rule that a right is
not given up until the necessity of its surrender is proved. But the
real difficulty arises, not from the mode in which the power was
exercised, but from the way in which it was defended. The mediæval
writers were accustomed to generalise; they disregarded particular
circumstances, and they were generally ignorant of the habits and ideas
of their age. Living in the cloister, and writing for the school, they
were unacquainted with the polity and institutions around them, and
sought their authorities and examples in antiquity, in the speculations
of Aristotle, and the maxims of the civil law. They gave to their
political doctrines as abstract a form, and attributed to them as
universal an application, as the modern absolutists or the more recent
liberals. So regardless were they of the difference between ancient
times and their own, that the Jewish chronicles, the Grecian
legislators, and the Roman code supplied them indifferently with rules
and instances; they could not imagine that a new state of things would
one day arise in which their theories would be completely obsolete.
Their definitions of right and law are absolute in the extreme, and seem
often to admit of no qualification. Hence their character is essentially
revolutionary, and they contradict both the authority of law and the
security of freedom. It is on this contradiction that the common notion
of the danger of ecclesiastical pretensions is founded. But the men who
take alarm at the tone of the mediæval claims judge them with a theory
just as absolute and as excessive. No man can fairly denounce imaginary
pretensions in the Church of the nineteenth century, who does not
understand that rights which are now impossible may have been
reasonable and legitimate in the days when they were actually exercised.
The zeal with which Mr. Goldwin Smith condemns the Irish establishment
and the policy of the ascendency is all the more meritorious because he
has no conception of the amount of iniquity involved in them.
The State Church of Ireland, however anomalous and even scandalous
its position may be as the Church of a dominant minority upheld by
force in the midst of a hostile people, does not, in truth, rest on a
principle different from that of other State Churches. To justify the
existence of any State Church, it must be assumed as an axiom that
the State is the judge of religious truth; and that it is bound to
impose upon its subjects, or at least to require them as a community
to maintain, the religion which it judges to be true (p. 91).
No such analogy in reality subsists as is here assumed. There is a great
difference between the Irish and the English establishment; but even the
latter has no similarity of principle with the Catholic establishments
of the continent.
The fundamental distinction is, that in one case the religion of the
people is adopted by the State, whilst in the other the State imposes a
religion on the people. For the political justification of Catholic
establishments, no more is required than the theory that it is just that
the religion of a country should be represented in, and protected by,
its government. This is evidently and universally true; for the moral
basis which human laws require can only be derived from an influence
which was originally religious as well as moral. The unity of moral
consciousness must be founded on a precedent unity of spiritual belief.
According to this theory, the character of the nation determines the
forms of the State. Consequently it is a theory consistent with freedom.
But Protestant establishments, according to our author's definition,
which applies to them, and to them alone, rest on the opposite theory,
that the will of the State is independent of the condition of the
community; and that it may, or indeed must, impose on the nation a faith
which may be that of a minority, and which in some cases has been that
of the sovereign alone. According to the Catholic view, government may
preserve in its laws, and by its authority, the religion of the
community; according to the Protestant view it may be bound to change
it. A government which has power to change the faith of its subjects
must be absolute in other things; so that one theory is as favourable to
tyranny as the other is opposed to it. The safeguard of the Catholic
system of Church and State, as contrasted with the Protestant, was that
very authority which the Holy See used to prevent the sovereign from
changing the religion of the people, by deposing him if he departed from
it himself. In most Catholic countries the Church preceded the State;
some she assisted to form; all she contributed to sustain. Throughout
Western Europe Catholicism was the religion of the inhabitants before
the new monarchies were founded. The invaders, who became the dominant
race and the architects of a new system of States, were sooner or later
compelled, in order to preserve their dominion, to abandon their pagan
or their Arian religion, and to adopt the common faith of the immense
majority of the people. The connection between Church and State was
therefore a natural, not an arbitrary, institution; the result of the
submission of the Government to popular influence, and the means by
which that influence was perpetuated. No Catholic Government ever
imposed a Catholic establishment on a Protestant community, or destroyed
a Protestant establishment. Even the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
the greatest wrong ever inflicted on the Protestant subjects of a
Catholic State, will bear no comparison with the establishment of the
religion of a minority. It is a far greater wrong than the most severe
persecution, because persecution may be necessary for the preservation
of an existing society, as in the case of the early Christians and of
the Albigenses; but a State Church can only be justified by the
acquiescence of the nation. In every other case it is a great social
danger, and is inseparable from political oppression.
Mr. Goldwin Smith's vision is bounded by the Protestant horizon. The
Irish establishment has one great mark in common with the other
Protestant establishments,--that it is the creature of the State, and an
instrument of political influence. They were all imposed on the nation
by the State power, sometimes against the will of the people, sometimes
against that of the Crown. By the help of military power and of penal
laws, the State strove to provide that the Established Church should not
be the religion of the minority. But in Ireland the establishment was
introduced too late--when Protestantism had spent its expansive force,
and the attraction of its doctrine no longer aided the efforts of the
civil power. Its position was false from the beginning, and obliged it
to resort to persecution and official proselytism in order to put an end
to the anomaly. Whilst, therefore, in all cases, Protestantism became
the Established Church by an exercise of authority tyrannical in itself,
and possible only from the absolutism of the ruling power, in Ireland
the tyranny of its institution was perpetuated in the system by which it
was upheld, and in the violence with which it was introduced; and this
tyranny continues through all its existence. It is the religion of the
minority, the church of an alien State, the cause of suffering and of
disturbance, an instrument, a creature, and a monument of conquest and
of tyranny. It has nothing in common with Catholic establishments, and
none of those qualities which, in the Anglican Church, redeem in part
the guilt of its origin. This is not, however, the only point on which
our author has mistaken the peculiar and enormous character of the evils
of Ireland.
With the injustice which generally attends his historical parallels, he
compares the policy of the Orange faction to that of the Jacobins in
France.
The ferocity of the Jacobins was in a slight degree redeemed by their
fanaticism. Their objects were not entirely selfish. They murdered
aristocrats, not only because they hated and feared them, but because
they wildly imagined them to stand in the way of the social and
political millennium, which, according to Rousseau, awaited the
acceptance of mankind (p. 175).
No comparison can be more unfair than one which places the pitiless
fanaticism of an idea in the same line with the cruelty inspired by a
selfish interest. The Reign of Terror is one of the most portentous
events in history, because it was the consistent result of the simplest
and most acceptable principle of the Revolution; it saved France from
the coalition, and it was the greatest attempt ever made to mould the
form of a society by force into harmony with a speculative form of
Government. An explanation which treats self-interest as its primary
motive, and judges other elements as merely qualifying it, is
ludicrously inadequate.
The Terrorism of Robespierre was produced by the theory of equality,
which was not a mere passion, but a political doctrine, and at the same
time a national necessity. Political philosophers who, since the time of
Hobbes, derive the State from a social compact, necessarily assume that
the contracting parties were equal among themselves. By nature,
therefore, all men possess equal rights, and a right to equality. The
introduction of the civil power and of private property brought
inequality into the world. This is opposed to the condition and to the
rights of the natural state. The writers of the eighteenth century
attributed to this circumstance the evils and sufferings of society. In
France, the ruin of the public finances and the misery of the lower
orders were both laid at the door of the classes whose property was
exempt from taxation. The endeavours of successive ministers--of Turgot,
Necker, and Calonne--to break down the privileges of the aristocracy and
of the clergy were defeated by the resistance of the old society. The
Government attempted to save itself by obtaining concessions from the
Notables, but without success, and then the great reform which the State
was impotent to carry into execution was effected by the people. The
destruction of the aristocratic society, which the absolute monarchy had
failed to reform, was the object and the triumph of the Revolution; and
the Constitution of 1791 declared all men equal, and withdrew the
sanction of the law from every privilege.
This system gave only an equality in civil rights, a political equality
such as already subsisted in America; but it did not provide against the
existence or the growth of those social inequalities by which the
distribution of political power might be affected. But the theory of the
natural equality of mankind understands equal rights as rights to equal
things in the State, and requires not only an abstract equality of
rights, but a positive equality of power. The varieties of condition
caused by civilisation were so objectionable in the eyes of this school,
that Rousseau wrote earnest vindications of natural society, and
condemned the whole social fabric of Europe as artificial, unnatural,
and monstrous. His followers laboured to destroy the work of history and
the influence of the past, and to institute a natural, reasonable order
of things which should dispose all men on an equal level, which no
disparity of wealth or education should be permitted to disturb. There
were, therefore, two opinions in the revolutionary party. Those who
overthrew the monarchy, established the republic, and commenced the war,
were content with having secured political and legal equality, and
wished to leave the nation in the enjoyment of those advantages which
fortune distributes unequally. But the consistent partisans of equality
required that nothing should be allowed to raise one man above another.
The Girondists wished to preserve liberty, education, and property; but
the Jacobins, who held that an absolute equality should be maintained by
the despotism of the government over the people, interpreted more justly
the democratic principles which were common to both parties; and,
fortunately for their country, they triumphed over their illogical and
irresolute adversaries. "When the revolutionary movement was once
established," says De Maistre, "nothing but Jacobinism could save
France."
Three weeks after the fall of the Gironde, the Constitution of 1793, by
which a purely ideal democracy was instituted, was presented to the
French people. Its adoption exactly coincides with the supremacy of
Robespierre in the Committee of Public Safety, and with the inauguration
of the Reign of Terror. The danger of invasion made the new tyranny
possible, but the political doctrine of the Jacobins made it necessary.
Robespierre explains the system in his report on the principles of
political morality, presented to the Convention at the moment of his
greatest power:--
If the principle of a popular government in time of peace is virtue,
its principle during revolution is virtue and terror combined:
virtue, without which terror is pernicious; terror, without which
virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but rapid, severe, inflexible
justice; therefore a product of virtue. It is not so much a principle
in itself, as a consequence of the universal principle of democracy
in its application to the urgent necessities of the country.
This is perfectly true. Envy, revenge, fear, were motives by which
individuals were induced or enabled to take part in the administration
of such a system; but its introduction was not the work of passion, but
the inevitable result of a doctrine. The democratic Constitution
required to be upheld by violence, not only against foreign arms, but
against the state of society and the nature of things. The army could
not be made its instrument, because the rulers were civilians, and
feared, beyond all things, the influence of military officers in the
State. Officers were frequently arrested and condemned as traitors,
compelled to seek safety in treason, watched and controlled by members
of the Convention. In the absence of a military despotism, the
revolutionary tribunal was the only resource.
The same theory of an original state of nature, from which the principle
of equality was deduced, also taught men where they might find the
standard of equality; as civilisation, by means of civil power,
education, and wealth, was the source of corruption, the purity of
virtue was to be found in the classes which had been least exposed to
those disturbing causes. Those who were least tainted by the temptations
of civilised society remained in the natural state. This was the
definition of the new notion of the people, which became the measure of
virtue and of equality. The democratic theory required that the whole
nation should be reduced to the level of the lower orders in all those
things in which society creates disparity, in order to be raised to the
level of that republican virtue which resides among those who have
retained a primitive simplicity by escaping the influence of
civilisation.
The form of government and the condition of society must always
correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
It was necessary that it should exist if the Constitution was to stand,
and if the great ideal of popular enthusiasm was ever to be realised.
The Revolution had begun by altering the social condition of the
country; the correction of society by the State had already commenced.
It did not, therefore, seem impossible to continue it until the nation
should be completely remodelled in conformity with the new principles.
The system before which the ancient monarchy had fallen, which was so
fruitful of marvels, which was victorious over a more formidable
coalition than that which had humbled Lewis XIV., was deemed equal to
the task of completing the social changes which had been so extensively
begun, and of moulding France according to the new and simple pattern.
The equality which was essential to the existence of the new form of
government did not in fact exist. Privilege was abolished, but influence
remained. All the inequality founded on wealth, education, ability,
reputation, even on the virtues of a code different from that of
republican morality, presented obstacles to the establishment of the new
_régime_, and those who were thus distinguished were necessarily enemies
of the State. With perfect reason, all that rose above the common level,
or did not conform to the universal rule, was deemed treasonable. The
difference between the actual society and the ideal equality was so
great that it could be removed only by violence. The great mass of those
who perished were really, either by attachment or by their condition, in
antagonism with the State. They were condemned, not for particular
acts, but for their position, or for acts which denoted, not so much a
hostile design, as an incompatible habit. By the _loi des suspects_,
which was provoked by this conflict between the form of government and
the real state of the country, whole classes, rather than ill-disposed
individuals, were declared objects of alarm. Hence the proscription was
wholesale. Criminals were judged and executed in categories; and the
merits of individual cases were, therefore, of little account. For this
reason, leading men of ability, bitterly hostile to the new system, were
saved by Danton; for it was often indifferent who were the victims,
provided the group to which they belonged was struck down. The question
was not, what crimes has the prisoner committed? but, does he belong to
one of those classes whose existence the Republic cannot tolerate? From
this point of view, there were not so many unjust judgments pronounced,
at least in Paris, as is generally believed. It was necessary to be
prodigal of blood, or to abandon the theory of liberty and equality,
which had commanded, for a whole generation, the enthusiastic devotion
of educated men, and for the truth of which thousands of its believers
were ready to die. The truth of that doctrine was tested by a terrible
alternative; but the fault lay with those who believed it, not
exclusively with those who practised it. There were few who could
administer such a system without any other motive but devotion to the
idea, or who could retain the coolness and indifference of which St.
Just is an extraordinary example. Most of the Terrorists were swayed by
fear for themselves, or by the frenzy which is produced by familiarity
with slaughter. But this is of small account. The significance of that
sanguinary drama lies in the fact, that a political abstraction was
powerful enough to make men think themselves right in destroying masses
of their countrymen in the attempt to impose it on their country. The
horror of that system and its failure have given vitality to the
communistic theory. It was unreasonable to attack the effect instead of
the cause, and cruel to destroy the proprietor, while the danger lay in
the property. For private property necessarily produces that inequality
which the Jacobin theory condemned; and the Constitution of 1793 could
not be maintained by Terrorism without Communism, by proscribing the
rich while riches were tolerated. The Jacobins were guilty of
inconsistency in omitting to attack inequality in its source. Yet no man
who admits their theory has a right to complain of their acts. The one
proceeded from the other with the inflexible logic of history. The Reign
of Terror was nothing else than the reign of those who conceive that
liberty and equality can coexist.
One more quotation will sufficiently justify what we have said of the
sincerity and ignorance which Mr. Goldwin Smith shows in his remarks on
Catholic subjects. After calling the Bull of Adrian IV. "the
stumbling-block and the despair of Catholic historians," he proceeded to
say:--
Are Catholics filled with perplexity at the sight of infallibility
sanctioning rapine? They can scarcely be less perplexed by the title
which infallibility puts forward to the dominion of Ireland.... But
this perplexity arises entirely from the assumption, which may be an
article of faith, but is not an article of history, that the
infallible morality of the Pope has never changed (pp. 46, 47).
It is hard to understand how a man of honour and ability can entertain
such notions of the character of the Papacy as these words imply, or
where he can have found authorities for so monstrous a caricature. We
will only say that infallibility is no attribute of the political system
of the Popes, and that the Bulls of Adrian and Alexander are not
instances of infallible morality.
Great as the errors which we have pointed out undoubtedly are, the book
itself is of real value, and encourages us to form sanguine hopes of the
future services of its author to historical science, and ultimately to
religion. We are hardly just in complaining of Protestant writers who
fail to do justice to the Church. There are not very many amongst
ourselves who take the trouble to ascertain her real character as a
visible institution, or to know how her nature has been shown in her
history. We know the doctrine which she teaches; we are familiar with
the outlines of her discipline. We know that sanctity is one of her
marks, and that beneficence has characterised her influence. In a
general way we are confident that historical accusations are as false as
dogmatic attacks, and most of us have some notion of the way in which
the current imputations are to be met. But as to her principles of
action in many important things, how they have varied in course of time,
what changes have been effected by circumstances, and what rules have
never been broken,--few are at the pains to inquire. As adversaries
imagine that in exposing a Catholic they strike Catholicism, and that
the defects of the men are imperfections in the institution and a proof
that it is not divine, so we grow accustomed to confound in our defence
that which is defective and that which is indefectible, and to discover
in the Church merits as self-contradictory as are the accusations of her
different foes. At one moment we are told that Catholicism teaches
contempt, and therefore neglect of wealth; at another, that it is false
to say that the Church does not promote temporal prosperity. If a great
point is made against persecution, it will be denied that she is
intolerant, whilst at another time it will be argued that heresy and
unbelief deserve to be punished.
We cannot be surprised that Protestants do not know the Church better
than we do ourselves, or that, while we allow no evil to be spoken of
her human elements, those who deem her altogether human should discover
in her the defects of human institutions. It is intensely difficult to
enter into the spirit of a system not our own. Particular principles and
doctrines are easily mastered; but a system answering all the spiritual
cravings, all the intellectual capabilities of man, demands more than a
mere mental effort,--a submission of the intellect, an act of faith, a
temporary suspension of the critical faculty. This applies not merely
to the Christian religion, with its unfathomable mysteries and its
inexhaustible fund of truth, but to the fruits of human speculation.
Nobody has ever succeeded in writing a history of philosophy without
incurring either the reproach that he is a mere historian, incapable of
entering into the genius of any system, or a mere metaphysician, who can
discern in all other philosophies only the relation they bear to his
own. In religion the difficulty is greater still, and greatest of all
with Catholicism. For the Church is to be seen, not in books, but in
life. No divine can put together the whole body of her doctrine; no
canonist the whole fabric of her law; no historian the infinite
vicissitudes of her career. The Protestant who wishes to be informed on
all these things can be advised to rely on no one manual, on no
encyclopædia of her deeds and of her ideas; if he seeks to know what
these have been, he must be told to look around. And to one who surveys
her teaching and her fortunes through all ages and all lands, ignorant
or careless of that which is essential, changeless, and immortal in her,
it will not be easy to discern through so much outward change a regular
development, amid such variety of forms the unchanging substance, in so
many modifications fidelity to constant laws; or to recognise, in a
career so chequered with failure, disaster, and suffering, with the
apostasy of heroes, the weakness of rulers, and the errors of doctors,
the unfailing hand of a heavenly Guide.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 322: _The Rambler_, March 1862.]
[Footnote 323: _Works_, ii. 47. This is one of the passages which,
seventy years ago, were declared to be treasonable. We trust we run no
risk in confessing that we entirely agree with it.]
[Footnote 324: Tocqueville, _L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution_, Préface,
p. xvi.]
[Footnote 325: "From what I have observed, it is pride, arrogance, and a
spirit of domination, and not a bigoted spirit of religion, that has
caused and kept up those oppressive statutes. I am sure I have known
those who have oppressed Papists in their civil rights exceedingly
indulgent to them in their religious ceremonies, and who really wished
them to continue Catholics, in order to furnish pretences for
oppression. These persons never saw a man (by converting) escape out of
their power but with grudging and regret" (Burke. "On the Penal Laws
against Irish Catholics," _Works_, iv. 505).
"I vow to God, I would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate
death for opinions I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his
opinions at once, than to fret him into a feverish being tainted with
the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground,
an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, and corrupting all
about him" (Speech at Bristol, _ibid._ iii. 427).]
IX
NATIONALITY[326]
Whenever great intellectual cultivation has been combined with that
suffering which is inseparable from extensive changes in the condition
of the people, men of speculative or imaginative genius have sought in
the contemplation of an ideal society a remedy, or at least a
consolation, for evils which they were practically unable to remove.
Poetry has always preserved the idea, that at some distant time or
place, in the Western islands or the Arcadian region, an innocent and
contented people, free from the corruption and restraint of civilised
life, have realised the legends of the golden age. The office of the
poets is always nearly the same, and there is little variation in the
features of their ideal world; but when philosophers attempt to admonish
or reform mankind by devising an imaginary state, their motive is more
definite and immediate, and their commonwealth is a satire as well as a
model. Plato and Plotinus, More and Campanella, constructed their
fanciful societies with those materials which were omitted from the
fabric of the actual communities, by the defects of which they were
inspired. The Republic, the Utopia, and the City of the Sun were
protests against a state of things which the experience of their authors
taught them to condemn, and from the faults of which they took refuge in
the opposite extremes. They remained without influence, and have never
passed from literary into political history, because something more than
discontent and speculative ingenuity is needed in order to invest a
political idea with power over the masses of mankind. The scheme of a
philosopher can command the practical allegiance of fanatics only, not
of nations; and though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated
outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a
settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of
happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.
The history of religion furnishes a complete illustration. Between the
later mediæval sects and Protestantism there is an essential difference,
that outweighs the points of analogy found in those systems which are
regarded as heralds of the Reformation, and is enough to explain the
vitality of the last in comparison with the others. Whilst Wycliffe and
Hus contradicted certain particulars of the Catholic teaching, Luther
rejected the authority of the Church, and gave to the individual
conscience an independence which was sure to lead to an incessant
resistance. There is a similar difference between the Revolt of the
Netherlands, the Great Rebellion, the War of Independence, or the rising
of Brabant, on the one hand, and the French Revolution on the other.
Before 1789, insurrections were provoked by particular wrongs, and were
justified by definite complaints and by an appeal to principles which
all men acknowledged. New theories were sometimes advanced in the cause
of controversy, but they were accidental, and the great argument against
tyranny was fidelity to the ancient laws. Since the change produced by
the French Revolution, those aspirations which are awakened by the evils
and defects of the social state have come to act as permanent and
energetic forces throughout the civilised world. They are spontaneous
and aggressive, needing no prophet to proclaim, no champion to defend
them, but popular, unreasoning, and almost irresistible. The Revolution
effected this change, partly by its doctrines, partly by the indirect
influence of events. It taught the people to regard their wishes and
wants as the supreme criterion of right. The rapid vicissitudes of
power, in which each party successively appealed to the favour of the
masses as the arbiter of success, accustomed the masses to be arbitrary
as well as insubordinate. The fall of many governments, and the frequent
redistribution of territory, deprived all settlements of the dignity of
permanence. Tradition and prescription ceased to be guardians of
authority; and the arrangements which proceeded from revolutions, from
the triumphs of war, and from treaties of peace, were equally regardless
of established rights. Duty cannot be dissociated from right, and
nations refuse to be controlled by laws which are no protection.
In this condition of the world, theory and action follow close upon each
other, and practical evils easily give birth to opposite systems. In the
realms of free-will, the regularity of natural progress is preserved by
the conflict of extremes. The impulse of the reaction carries men from
one extremity towards another. The pursuit of a remote and ideal object,
which captivates the imagination by its splendour and the reason by its
simplicity, evokes an energy which would not be inspired by a rational,
possible end, limited by many antagonistic claims, and confined to what
is reasonable, practicable, and just. One excess or exaggeration is the
corrective of the other, and error promotes truth, where the masses are
concerned, by counterbalancing a contrary error. The few have not
strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to
be moved by truth unmixed. Where the disease is various, no particular
definite remedy can meet the wants of all. Only the attraction of an
abstract idea, or of an ideal state, can unite in a common action
multitudes who seek a universal cure for many special evils, and a
common restorative applicable to many different conditions. And hence
false principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just
aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social
life of nations.
Theories of this kind are just, inasmuch as they are provoked by
definite ascertained evils, and undertake their removal. They are useful
in opposition, as a warning or a threat, to modify existing things, and
keep awake the consciousness of wrong. They cannot serve as a basis for
the reconstruction of civil society, as medicine cannot serve for food;
but they may influence it with advantage, because they point out the
direction, though not the measure, in which reform is needed. They
oppose an order of things which is the result of a selfish and violent
abuse of power by the ruling classes, and of artificial restriction on
the natural progress of the world, destitute of an ideal element or a
moral purpose. Practical extremes differ from the theoretical extremes
they provoke, because the first are both arbitrary and violent, whilst
the last, though also revolutionary, are at the same time remedial. In
one case the wrong is voluntary, in the other it is inevitable. This is
the general character of the contest between the existing order and the
subversive theories that deny its legitimacy. There are three principal
theories of this kind, impugning the present distribution of power, of
property, and of territory, and attacking respectively the aristocracy,
the middle class, and the sovereignty. They are the theories of
equality, communism, and nationality. Though sprung from a common
origin, opposing cognate evils, and connected by many links, they did
not appear simultaneously. Rousseau proclaimed the first, Baboeuf the
second, Mazzini the third; and the third is the most recent in its
appearance, the most attractive at the present time, and the richest in
promise of future power.
In the old European system, the rights of nationalities were neither
recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. The interest of
the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the
frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without any
reference to popular desires. Where all liberties were suppressed, the
claims of national independence were necessarily ignored, and a
princess, in the words of Fénelon, carried a monarchy in her wedding
portion. The eighteenth century acquiesced in this oblivion of corporate
rights on the Continent, for the absolutists cared only for the State,
and the liberals only for the individual. The Church, the nobles, and
the nation had no place in the popular theories of the age; and they
devised none in their own defence, for they were not openly attacked.
The aristocracy retained its privileges, and the Church her property;
and the dynastic interest, which overruled the natural inclination of
the nations and destroyed their independence, nevertheless maintained
their integrity. The national sentiment was not wounded in its most
sensitive part. To dispossess a sovereign of his hereditary crown, and
to annex his dominions, would have been held to inflict an injury upon
all monarchies, and to furnish their subjects with a dangerous example,
by depriving royalty of its inviolable character. In time of war, as
there was no national cause at stake, there was no attempt to rouse
national feeling. The courtesy of the rulers towards each other was
proportionate to the contempt for the lower orders. Compliments passed
between the commanders of hostile armies; there was no bitterness, and
no excitement; battles were fought with the pomp and pride of a parade.
The art of war became a slow and learned game. The monarchies were
united not only by a natural community of interests, but by family
alliances. A marriage contract sometimes became the signal for an
interminable war, whilst family connections often set a barrier to
ambition. After the wars of religion came to an end in 1648, the only
wars were those which were waged for an inheritance or a dependency, or
against countries whose system of government exempted them from the
common law of dynastic States, and made them not only unprotected but
obnoxious. These countries were England and Holland, until Holland
ceased to be a republic, and until, in England, the defeat of the
Jacobites in the forty-five terminated the struggle for the Crown. There
was one country, however, which still continued to be an exception; one
monarch whose place was not admitted in the comity of kings.
Poland did not possess those securities for stability which were
supplied by dynastic connections and the theory of legitimacy, wherever
a crown could be obtained by marriage or inheritance. A monarch without
royal blood, a crown bestowed by the nation, were an anomaly and an
outrage in that age of dynastic absolutism. The country was excluded
from the European system by the nature of its institutions. It excited a
cupidity which could not be satisfied. It gave the reigning families of
Europe no hope of permanently strengthening themselves by intermarriage
with its rulers, or of obtaining it by bequest or by inheritance. The
Habsburgs had contested the possession of Spain and the Indies with the
French Bourbons, of Italy with the Spanish Bourbons, of the empire with
the house of Wittelsbach, of Silesia with the house of Hohenzollern.
There had been wars between rival houses for half the territories of
Italy and Germany. But none could hope to redeem their losses or
increase their power in a country to which marriage and descent gave no
claim. Where they could not permanently inherit they endeavoured, by
intrigues, to prevail at each election, and after contending in support
of candidates who were their partisans, the neighbours at last appointed
an instrument for the final demolition of the Polish State. Till then no
nation had been deprived of its political existence by the Christian
Powers, and whatever disregard had been shown for national interests and
sympathies, some care had been taken to conceal the wrong by a
hypocritical perversion of law. But the partition of Poland was an act
of wanton violence, committed in open defiance not only of popular
feeling but of public law. For the first time in modern history a great
State was suppressed, and a whole nation divided among its enemies.
This famous measure, the most revolutionary act of the old absolutism,
awakened the theory of nationality in Europe, converting a dormant right
into an aspiration, and a sentiment into a political claim. "No wise or
honest man," wrote Edmund Burke, "can approve of that partition, or can
contemplate it without prognosticating great mischief from it to all
countries at some future time."[327] Thenceforward there was a nation
demanding to be united in a State,--a soul, as it were, wandering in
search of a body in which to begin life over again; and, for the first
time, a cry was heard that the arrangement of States was unjust--that
their limits were unnatural, and that a whole people was deprived of its
right to constitute an independent community. Before that claim could be
efficiently asserted against the overwhelming power of its
opponents,--before it gained energy, after the last partition, to
overcome the influence of long habits of submission, and of the contempt
which previous disorders had brought upon Poland,--the ancient European
system was in ruins, and a new world was rising in its place.
The old despotic policy which made the Poles its prey had two
adversaries,--the spirit of English liberty, and the doctrines of that
revolution which destroyed the French monarchy with its own weapons; and
these two contradicted in contrary ways the theory that nations have no
collective rights. At the present day, the theory of nationality is not
only the most powerful auxiliary of revolution, but its actual substance
in the movements of the last three years. This, however, is a recent
alliance, unknown to the first French Revolution. The modern theory of
nationality arose partly as a legitimate consequence, partly as a
reaction against it. As the system which overlooked national division
was opposed by liberalism in two forms, the French and the English, so
the system which insists upon them proceeds from two distinct sources,
and exhibits the character either of 1688 or of 1789. When the French
people abolished the authorities under which it lived, and became its
own master, France was in danger of dissolution: for the common will is
difficult to ascertain, and does not readily agree. "The laws," said
Vergniaud, in the debate on the sentence of the king, "are obligatory
only as the presumptive will of the people, which retains the right of
approving or condemning them. The instant it manifests its wish the work
of the national representation, the law, must disappear." This doctrine
resolved society into its natural elements, and threatened to break up
the country into as many republics as there were communes. For true
republicanism is the principle of self-government in the whole and in
all the parts. In an extensive country, it can prevail only by the union
of several independent communities in a single confederacy, as in
Greece, in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, and in America; so that a
large republic not founded on the federal principle must result in the
government of a single city, like Rome and Paris, and, in a less degree,
Athens, Berne, and Amsterdam; or, in other words, a great democracy must
either sacrifice self-government to unity, or preserve it by federalism.
The France of history fell together with the French State, which was the
growth of centuries. The old sovereignty was destroyed. The local
authorities were looked upon with aversion and alarm. The new central
authority needed to be established on a new principle of unity. The
state of nature, which was the ideal of society, was made the basis of
the nation; descent was put in the place of tradition, and the French
people was regarded as a physical product: an ethnological, not
historic, unit. It was assumed that a unity existed separate from the
representation and the government, wholly independent of the past, and
capable at any moment of expressing or of changing its mind. In the
words of Sieyès, it was no longer France, but some unknown country to
which the nation was transported. The central power possessed authority,
inasmuch as it obeyed the whole, and no divergence was permitted from
the universal sentiment. This power, endowed with volition, was
personified in the Republic One and Indivisible. The title signified
that a part could not speak or act for the whole,--that there was a
power supreme over the State, distinct from, and independent of, its
members; and it expressed, for the first time in history, the notion of
an abstract nationality. In this manner the idea of the sovereignty of
the people, uncontrolled by the past, gave birth to the idea of
nationality independent of the political influence of history. It sprang
from the rejection of the two authorities,--of the State and of the
past. The kingdom of France was, geographically as well as politically,
the product of a long series of events, and the same influences which
built up the State formed the territory. The Revolution repudiated alike
the agencies to which France owed her boundaries and those to which she
owed her government. Every effaceable trace and relic of national
history was carefully wiped away,--the system of administration, the
physical divisions of the country, the classes of society, the
corporations, the weights and measures, the calendar. France was no
longer bounded by the limits she had received from the condemned
influence of her history; she could recognise only those which were set
by nature. The definition of the nation was borrowed from the material
world, and, in order to avoid a loss of territory, it became not only an
abstraction but a fiction.
There was a principle of nationality in the ethnological character of
the movement, which is the source of the common observation that
revolution is more frequent in Catholic than in Protestant countries. It
is, in fact, more frequent in the Latin than in the Teutonic world,
because it depends partly on a national impulse, which is only awakened
where there is an alien element, the vestige of a foreign dominion, to
expel. Western Europe has undergone two conquests--one by the Romans and
one by the Germans, and twice received laws from the invaders. Each time
it rose again against the victorious race; and the two great reactions,
while they differ according to the different characters of the two
conquests, have the phenomenon of imperialism in common. The Roman
republic laboured to crush the subjugated nations into a homogeneous and
obedient mass; but the increase which the proconsular authority obtained
in the process subverted the republican government, and the reaction of
the provinces against Rome assisted in establishing the empire The
Cæsarean system gave an unprecedented freedom to the dependencies, and
raised them to a civil equality which put an end to the dominion of race
over race and of class over class. The monarchy was hailed as a refuge
from the pride and cupidity of the Roman people; and the love of
equality, the hatred of nobility, and the tolerance of despotism
implanted by Rome became, at least in Gaul, the chief feature of the
national character. But among the nations whose vitality had been broken
down by the stern republic, not one retained the materials necessary to
enjoy independence, or to develop a new history. The political faculty
which organises states and finds society in a moral order was exhausted,
and the Christian doctors looked in vain over the waste of ruins for a
people by whose aid the Church might survive the decay of Rome. A new
element of national life was brought to that declining world by the
enemies who destroyed it. The flood of barbarians settled over it for a
season, and then subsided; and when the landmarks of civilisation
appeared once more, it was found that the soil had been impregnated with
a fertilising and regenerating influence, and that the inundation had
laid the germs of future states and of a new society. The political
sense and energy came with the new blood, and was exhibited in the power
exercised by the younger race upon the old, and in the establishment of
a graduated freedom. Instead of universal equal rights, the actual
enjoyment of which is necessarily contingent on, and commensurate with,
power, the rights of the people were made dependent on a variety of
conditions, the first of which was the distribution of property. Civil
society became a classified organism instead of a formless combination
of atoms, and the feudal system gradually arose.
Roman Gaul had so thoroughly adopted the ideas of absolute authority and
undistinguished equality during the five centuries between Cæsar and
Clovis, that the people could never be reconciled to the new system.
Feudalism remained a foreign importation, and the feudal aristocracy an
alien race, and the common people of France sought protection against
both in the Roman jurisprudence and the power of the crown. The
development of absolute monarchy by the help of democracy is the one
constant character of French history. The royal power, feudal at first,
and limited by the immunities and the great vassals, became more
popular as it grew more absolute; while the suppression of aristocracy,
the removal of the intermediate authorities, was so particularly the
object of the nation, that it was more energetically accomplished after
the fall of the throne. The monarchy which had been engaged from the
thirteenth century in curbing the nobles, was at last thrust aside by
the democracy, because it was too dilatory in the work, and was unable
to deny its own origin and effectually ruin the class from which it
sprang. All those things which constitute the peculiar character of the
French Revolution,--the demand for equality, the hatred of nobility and
feudalism, and of the Church which was connected with them, the constant
reference to pagan examples, the suppression of monarchy, the new code
of law, the breach with tradition, and the substitution of an ideal
system for everything that had proceeded from the mixture and mutual
action of the races,--all these exhibit the common type of a reaction
against the effects of the Frankish invasion. The hatred of royalty was
less than the hatred of aristocracy; privileges were more detested than
tyranny; and the king perished because of the origin of his authority
rather than because of its abuse. Monarchy unconnected with aristocracy
became popular in France, even when most uncontrolled; whilst the
attempt to reconstitute the throne, and to limit and fence it with its
peers, broke down, because the old Teutonic elements on which it
relied--hereditary nobility, primogeniture, and privilege--were no
longer tolerated. The substance of the ideas of 1789 is not the
limitation of the sovereign power, but the abrogation of intermediate
powers. These powers, and the classes which enjoyed them, come in Latin
Europe from a barbarian origin; and the movement which calls itself
liberal is essentially national. If liberty were its object, its means
would be the establishment of great independent authorities not derived
from the State, and its model would be England. But its object is
equality; and it seeks, like France in 1789, to cast out the elements of
inequality which were introduced by the Teutonic race. This is the
object which Italy and Spain have had in common with France, and herein
consists the natural league of the Latin nations.
This national element in the movement was not understood by the
revolutionary leaders. At first, their doctrine appeared entirely
contrary to the idea of nationality. They taught that certain general
principles of government were absolutely right in all States; and they
asserted in theory the unrestricted freedom of the individual, and the
supremacy of the will over every external necessity or obligation. This
is in apparent contradiction to the national theory, that certain
natural forces ought to determine the character, the form, and the
policy of the State, by which a kind of fate is put in the place of
freedom. Accordingly the national sentiment was not developed directly
out of the revolution in which it was involved, but was exhibited first
in resistance to it, when the attempt to emancipate had been absorbed in
the desire to subjugate, and the republic had been succeeded by the
empire. Napoleon called a new power into existence by attacking
nationality in Russia, by delivering it in Italy, by governing in
defiance of it in Germany and Spain. The sovereigns of these countries
were deposed or degraded; and a system of administration was introduced
which was French in its origin, its spirit, and its instruments. The
people resisted the change. The movement against it was popular and
spontaneous, because the rulers were absent or helpless; and it was
national, because it was directed against foreign institutions. In
Tyrol, in Spain, and afterwards in Prussia, the people did not receive
the impulse from the government, but undertook of their own accord to
cast out the armies and the ideas of revolutionised France. Men were
made conscious of the national element of the revolution by its
conquests, not in its rise. The three things which the Empire most
openly oppressed--religion, national independence, and political
liberty--united in a short-lived league to animate the great uprising by
which Napoleon fell. Under the influence of that memorable alliance a
political spirit was called forth on the Continent, which clung to
freedom and abhorred revolution, and sought to restore, to develop, and
to reform the decayed national institutions. The men who proclaimed
these ideas, Stein and Görres, Humboldt, Müller, and De Maistre,[328]
were as hostile to Bonapartism as to the absolutism of the old
governments, and insisted on the national rights, which had been invaded
equally by both, and which they hoped to restore by the destruction of
the French supremacy. With the cause that triumphed at Waterloo the
friends of the Revolution had no sympathy, for they had learned to
identify their doctrine with the cause of France. The Holland House
Whigs in England, the Afrancesados in Spain, the Muratists in Italy, and
the partisans of the Confederation of the Rhine, merging patriotism in
their revolutionary affections, regretted the fall of the French power,
and looked with alarm at those new and unknown forces which the War of
Deliverance had evoked, and which were as menacing to French liberalism
as to French supremacy.
But the new aspirations for national and popular rights were crushed at
the restoration. The liberals of those days cared for freedom, not in
the shape of national independence, but of French institutions; and they
combined against the nations with the ambition of the governments. They
were as ready to sacrifice nationality to their ideal as the Holy
Alliance was to the interests of absolutism. Talleyrand indeed declared
at Vienna that the Polish question ought to have precedence over all
other questions, because the partition of Poland had been one of the
first and greatest causes of the evils which Europe had suffered; but
dynastic interests prevailed. All the sovereigns represented at Vienna
recovered their dominions, except the King of Saxony, who was punished
for his fidelity to Napoleon; but the States that were unrepresented in
the reigning families--Poland, Venice, and Genoa--were not revived, and
even the Pope had great difficulty in recovering the Legations from the
grasp of Austria. Nationality, which the old _régime_ had ignored, which
had been outraged by the revolution and the empire, received, after its
first open demonstration, the hardest blow at the Congress of Vienna.
The principle which the first partition had generated, to which the
revolution had given a basis of theory, which had been lashed by the
empire into a momentary convulsive effort, was matured by the long error
of the restoration into a consistent doctrine, nourished and justified
by the situation of Europe.
The governments of the Holy Alliance devoted themselves to suppress with
equal care the revolutionary spirit by which they had been threatened,
and the national spirit by which they had been restored. Austria, which
owed nothing to the national movement, and had prevented its revival
after 1809, naturally took the lead in repressing it. Every disturbance
of the final settlements of 1815, every aspiration for changes or
reforms, was condemned as sedition. This system repressed the good with
the evil tendencies of the age; and the resistance which it provoked,
during the generation that passed away from the restoration to the fall
of Metternich, and again under the reaction which commenced with
Schwarzenberg and ended with the administrations of Bach and Manteuffel,
proceeded from various combinations of the opposite forms of liberalism.
In the successive phases of that struggle, the idea that national claims
are above all other rights gradually rose to the supremacy which it now
possesses among the revolutionary agencies.
The first liberal movement, that of the Carbonari in the south of
Europe, had no specific national character, but was supported by the
Bonapartists both in Spain and Italy. In the following years the
opposite ideas of 1813 came to the front, and a revolutionary movement,
in many respects hostile to the principles of revolution, began in
defence of liberty, religion, and nationality. All these causes were
united in the Irish agitation, and in the Greek, Belgian, and Polish
revolutions. Those sentiments which had been insulted by Napoleon, and
had risen against him, rose against the governments of the restoration.
They had been oppressed by the sword, and then by the treaties. The
national principle added force, but not justice, to this movement,
which, in every case but Poland, was successful. A period followed in
which it degenerated into a purely national idea, as the agitation for
repeal succeeded emancipation, and Panslavism and Panhellenism arose
under the auspices of the Eastern Church. This was the third phase of
the resistance to the settlement of Vienna, which was weak, because it
failed to satisfy national or constitutional aspirations, either of
which would have been a safeguard against the other, by a moral if not
by a popular justification. At first, in 1813, the people rose against
their conquerors, in defence of their legitimate rulers. They refused to
be governed by usurpers. In the period between 1825 and 1831, they
resolved that they would not be misgoverned by strangers. The French
administration was often better than that which it displaced, but there
were prior claimants for the authority exercised by the French, and at
first the national contest was a contest for legitimacy. In the second
period this element was wanting. No dispossessed princes led the Greeks,
the Belgians, or the Poles. The Turks, the Dutch, and the Russians were
attacked, not as usurpers, but as oppressors,--because they misgoverned,
not because they were of a different race. Then began a time when the
text simply was, that nations would not be governed by foreigners. Power
legitimately obtained, and exercised with moderation, was declared
invalid. National rights, like religion, had borne part in the previous
combinations, and had been auxiliaries in the struggles for freedom, but
now nationality became a paramount claim, which was to assert itself
alone, which might put forward as pretexts the rights of rulers, the
liberties of the people, the safety of religion, but which, if no such
union could be formed, was to prevail at the expense of every other
cause for which nations make sacrifices.
Metternich is, next to Napoleon, the chief promoter of this theory; for
the anti-national character of the restoration was most distinct in
Austria, and it is in opposition to the Austrian Government that
nationality grew into a system. Napoleon, who, trusting to his armies,
despised moral forces in politics, was overthrown by their rising.
Austria committed the same fault in the government of her Italian
provinces. The kingdom of Italy had united all the northern part of the
Peninsula in a single State; and the national feelings, which the French
repressed elsewhere, were encouraged as a safeguard of their power in
Italy and in Poland. When the tide of victory turned, Austria invoked
against the French the aid of the new sentiment they had fostered.
Nugent announced, in his proclamation to the Italians, that they should
become an independent nation. The same spirit served different masters,
and contributed first to the destruction of the old States, then to the
expulsion of the French, and again, under Charles Albert, to a new
revolution. It was appealed to in the name of the most contradictory
principles of government, and served all parties in succession, because
it was one in which all could unite. Beginning by a protest against the
dominion of race over race, its mildest and least-developed form, it
grew into a condemnation of every State that included different races,
and finally became the complete and consistent theory, that the State
and the nation must be co-extensive. "It is," says Mr. Mill, "in general
a necessary condition of free institutions, that the boundaries of
governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities."[329]
The outward historical progress of this idea from an indefinite
aspiration to be the keystone of a political system, may be traced in
the life of the man who gave to it the element in which its strength
resides,--Giuseppe Mazzini. He found Carbonarism impotent against the
measures of the governments, and resolved to give new life to the
liberal movement by transferring it to the ground of nationality. Exile
is the nursery of nationality, as oppression is the school of
liberalism; and Mazzini conceived the idea of Young Italy when he was a
refugee at Marseilles. In the same way, the Polish exiles are the
champions of every national movement; for to them all political rights
are absorbed in the idea of independence, which, however they may differ
with each other, is the one aspiration common to them all. Towards the
year 1830 literature also contributed to the national idea. "It was the
time," says Mazzini, "of the great conflict between the romantic and the
classical school, which might with equal truth be called a conflict
between the partisans of freedom and of authority." The romantic school
was infidel in Italy, and Catholic in Germany; but in both it had the
common effect of encouraging national history and literature, and Dante
was as great an authority with the Italian democrats as with the leaders
of the mediæval revival at Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. But neither the
influence of the exiles, nor that of the poets and critics of the new
party, extended over the masses. It was a sect without popular sympathy
or encouragement, a conspiracy founded not on a grievance, but on a
doctrine; and when the attempt to rise was made in Savoy, in 1834, under
a banner with the motto "Unity, Independence, God and Humanity," the
people were puzzled at its object, and indifferent to its failure. But
Mazzini continued his propaganda, developed his _Giovine Italia_ into a
_Giovine Europa_, and established in 1847 the international league of
nations. "The people," he said, in his opening address, "is penetrated
with only one idea, that of unity and nationality.... There is no
international question as to forms of government, but only a national
question."
The revolution of 1848, unsuccessful in its national purpose, prepared
the subsequent victories of nationality in two ways. The first of these
was the restoration of the Austrian power in Italy, with a new and more
energetic centralisation, which gave no promise of freedom. Whilst that
system prevailed, the right was on the side of the national aspirations,
and they were revived in a more complete and cultivated form by Manin.
The policy of the Austrian Government, which failed during the ten years
of the reaction to convert the tenure by force into a tenure by right,
and to establish with free institutions the condition of allegiance,
gave a negative encouragement to the theory. It deprived Francis Joseph
of all active support and sympathy in 1859, for he was more clearly
wrong in his conduct than his enemies in their doctrines. The real cause
of the energy which the national theory has acquired is, however, the
triumph of the democratic principle in France, and its recognition by
the European Powers. The theory of nationality is involved in the
democratic theory of the sovereignty of the general will. "One hardly
knows what any division of the human race should be free to do, if not
to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings
they choose to associate themselves."[330] It is by this act that a
nation constitutes itself. To have a collective will, unity is
necessary, and independence is requisite in order to assert it. Unity
and nationality are still more essential to the notion of the
sovereignty of the people than the cashiering of monarchs, or the
revocation of laws. Arbitrary acts of this kind may be prevented by the
happiness of the people or the popularity of the king, but a nation
inspired by the democratic idea cannot with consistency allow a part of
itself to belong to a foreign State, or the whole to be divided into
several native States. The theory of nationality therefore proceeds from
both the principles which divide the political world,--from legitimacy,
which ignores its claims, and from the revolution, which assumes them;
and for the same reason it is the chief weapon of the last against the
first.
In pursuing the outward and visible growth of the national theory we are
prepared for an examination of its political character and value. The
absolutism which has created it denies equally that absolute right of
national unity which is a product of democracy, and that claim of
national liberty which belongs to the theory of freedom. These two views
of nationality, corresponding to the French and to the English systems,
are connected in name only, and are in reality the opposite extremes of
political thought. In one case, nationality is founded on the perpetual
supremacy of the collective will, of which the unity of the nation is
the necessary condition, to which every other influence must defer, and
against which no obligation enjoys authority, and all resistance is
tyrannical. The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in
defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and
of existing rights. It overrules the rights and wishes of the
inhabitants, absorbing their divergent interests in a fictitious unity;
sacrifices their several inclinations and duties to the higher claim of
nationality, and crushes all natural rights and all established
liberties for the purpose of vindicating itself.[331] Whenever a single
definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the
advantage of a class, the safety or the power of the country, the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any
speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute.
Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public
authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and
provokes no sincere opposition. In supporting the claims of national
unity, governments must be subverted in whose title there is no flaw,
and whose policy is beneficent and equitable, and subjects must be
compelled to transfer their allegiance to an authority for which they
have no attachment, and which may be practically a foreign domination.
Connected with this theory in nothing except in the common enmity of the
absolute state, is the theory which represents nationality as an
essential, but not a supreme element in determining the forms of the
State. It is distinguished from the other, because it tends to diversity
and not to uniformity, to harmony and not to unity; because it aims not
at an arbitrary change, but at careful respect for the existing
conditions of political life, and because it obeys the laws and results
of history, not the aspirations of an ideal future. While the theory of
unity makes the nation a source of despotism and revolution, the theory
of liberty regards it as the bulwark of self-government, and the
foremost limit to the excessive power of the State. Private rights,
which are sacrificed to the unity, are preserved by the union of
nations. No power can so efficiently resist the tendencies of
centralisation, of corruption, and of absolutism, as that community
which is the vastest that can be included in a State, which imposes on
its members a consistent similarity of character, interest, and opinion,
and which arrests the action of the sovereign by the influence of a
divided patriotism. The presence of different nations under the same
sovereignty is similar in its effect to the independence of the Church
in the State. It provides against the servility which flourishes under
the shadow of a single authority, by balancing interests, multiplying
associations, and giving to the subject the restraint and support of a
combined opinion. In the same way it promotes independence by forming
definite groups of public opinion, and by affording a great source and
centre of political sentiments, and of notions of duty not derived from
the sovereign will. Liberty provokes diversity, and diversity preserves
liberty by supplying the means of organisation. All those portions of
law which govern the relations of men with each other, and regulate
social life, are the varying result of national custom and the creation
of private society. In these things, therefore, the several nations
will differ from each other; for they themselves have produced them, and
they do not owe them to the State which rules them all. This diversity
in the same State is a firm barrier against the intrusion of the
government beyond the political sphere which is common to all into the
social department which escapes legislation and is ruled by spontaneous
laws. This sort of interference is characteristic of an absolute
government, and is sure to provoke a reaction, and finally a remedy.
That intolerance of social freedom which is natural to absolutism is
sure to find a corrective in the national diversities, which no other
force could so efficiently provide. The co-existence of several nations
under the same State is a test, as well as the best security of its
freedom. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and,
as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a
state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal
of modern liberalism.
The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a
condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society.
Inferior races are raised by living in political union with races
intellectually superior. Exhausted and decaying nations are revived by
the contact of a younger vitality. Nations in which the elements of
organisation and the capacity for government have been lost, either
through the demoralising influence of despotism, or the disintegrating
action of democracy, are restored and educated anew under the discipline
of a stronger and less corrupted race. This fertilising and regenerating
process can only be obtained by living under one government. It is in
the cauldron of the State that the fusion takes place by which the
vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be
communicated to another. Where political and national boundaries
coincide, society ceases to advance, and nations relapse into a
condition corresponding to that of men who renounce intercourse with
their fellow-men. The difference between the two unites mankind not only
by the benefits it confers on those who live together, but because it
connects society either by a political or a national bond, gives to
every people an interest in its neighbours, either because they are
under the same government or because they are of the same race, and thus
promotes the interests of humanity, of civilisation, and of religion.
Christianity rejoices at the mixture of races, as paganism identifies
itself with their differences, because truth is universal, and errors
various and particular. In the ancient world idolatry and nationality
went together, and the same term is applied in Scripture to both. It was
the mission of the Church to overcome national differences. The period
of her undisputed supremacy was that in which all Western Europe obeyed
the same laws, all literature was contained in one language, and the
political unity of Christendom was personified in a single potentate,
while its intellectual unity was represented in one university. As the
ancient Romans concluded their conquests by carrying away the gods of
the conquered people, Charlemagne overcame the national resistance of
the Saxons only by the forcible destruction of their pagan rites. Out of
the mediæval period, and the combined action of the German race and the
Church, came forth a new system of nations and a new conception of
nationality. Nature was overcome in the nation as well as in the
individual. In pagan and uncultivated times, nations were distinguished
from each other by the widest diversity, not only in religion, but in
customs, language, and character. Under the new law they had many things
in common; the old barriers which separated them were removed, and the
new principle of self-government, which Christianity imposed, enabled
them to live together under the same authority, without necessarily
losing their cherished habits, their customs, or their laws. The new
idea of freedom made room for different races in one State. A nation was
no longer what it had been to the ancient world,--the progeny of a
common ancestor, or the aboriginal product of a particular region,--a
result of merely physical and material causes,--but a moral and
political being; not the creation of geographical or physiological
unity, but developed in the course of history by the action of the
State. It is derived from the State, not supreme over it. A State may in
course of time produce a nationality; but that a nationality should
constitute a State is contrary to the nature of modern civilisation. The
nation derives its rights and its power from the memory of a former
independence.
The Church has agreed in this respect with the tendency of political
progress, and discouraged wherever she could the isolation of nations;
admonishing them of their duties to each other, and regarding conquest
and feudal investiture as the natural means of raising barbarous or
sunken nations to a higher level. But though she has never attributed to
national independence an immunity from the accidental consequences of
feudal law, of hereditary claims, or of testamentary arrangements, she
defends national liberty against uniformity and centralisation with an
energy inspired by perfect community of interests. For the same enemy
threatens both; and the State which is reluctant to tolerate
differences, and to do justice to the peculiar character of various
races, must from the same cause interfere in the internal government of
religion. The connection of religious liberty with the emancipation of
Poland or Ireland is not merely the accidental result of local causes;
and the failure of the Concordat to unite the subjects of Austria is the
natural consequence of a policy which did not desire to protect the
provinces in their diversity and autonomy, and sought to bribe the
Church by favours instead of strengthening her by independence. From
this influence of religion in modern history has proceeded a new
definition of patriotism.
The difference between nationality and the State is exhibited in the
nature of patriotic attachment. Our connection with the race is merely
natural or physical, whilst our duties to the political nation are
ethical. One is a community of affections and instincts infinitely
important and powerful in savage life, but pertaining more to the animal
than to the civilised man; the other is an authority governing by laws,
imposing obligations, and giving a moral sanction and character to the
natural relations of society. Patriotism is in political life what faith
is in religion, and it stands to the domestic feelings and to
home-sickness as faith to fanaticism and to superstition. It has one
aspect derived from private life and nature, for it is an extension of
the family affections, as the tribe is an extension of the family. But
in its real political character, patriotism consists in the development
of the instinct of self-preservation into a moral duty which may involve
self-sacrifice. Self-preservation is both an instinct and a duty,
natural and involuntary in one respect, and at the same time a moral
obligation. By the first it produces the family; by the last the State.
If the nation could exist without the State, subject only to the
instinct of self-preservation, it would be incapable of denying,
controlling, or sacrificing itself; it would be an end and a rule to
itself. But in the political order moral purposes are realised and
public ends are pursued to which private interests and even existence
must be sacrificed. The great sign of true patriotism, the development
of selfishness into sacrifice, is the product of political life. That
sense of duty which is supplied by race is not entirely separated from
its selfish and instinctive basis; and the love of country, like married
love, stands at the same time on a material and a moral foundation. The
patriot must distinguish between the two causes or objects of his
devotion. The attachment which is given only to the country is like
obedience given only to the State--a submission to physical influences.
The man who prefers his country before every other duty shows the same
spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the State. They both
deny that right is superior to authority.
There is a moral and political country, in the language of Burke,
distinct from the geographical, which may be possibly in collision with
it The Frenchmen who bore arms against the Convention were as patriotic
as the Englishmen who bore arms against King Charles, for they
recognised a higher duty than that of obedience to the actual
sovereign. "In an address to France," said Burke, "in an attempt to
treat with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is
impossible we should mean the geographical, we must always mean the
moral and political, country.... The truth is, that France is out of
itself--the moral France is separated from the geographical. The master
of the house is expelled, and the robbers are in possession. If we look
for the corporate people of France, existing as corporate in the eye and
intention of public law (that corporate people, I mean, who are free to
deliberate and to decide, and who have a capacity to treat and
conclude), they are in Flanders and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain,
Italy, and England. There are all the princes of the blood, there are
all the orders of the State, there are all the parliaments of the
kingdom.... I am sure that if half that number of the same description
were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly anything that I
should call the people of England."[332] Rousseau draws nearly the same
distinction between the country to which we happen to belong and that
which fulfils towards us the political functions of the State. In the
_Emile_ he has a sentence of which it is not easy in a translation to
convey the point: "Qui n'a pas une patrie a du moins un pays." And in
his tract on Political Economy he writes: "How shall men love their
country if it is nothing more for them than for strangers, and bestows
on them only that which it can refuse to none?" It is in the same sense
he says, further on, "La patrie ne peut subsister sans la liberté."[333]
The nationality formed by the State, then, is the only one to which we
owe political duties, and it is, therefore, the only one which has
political rights. The Swiss are ethnologically either French, Italian,
or German; but no nationality has the slightest claim upon them, except
the purely political nationality of Switzerland. The Tuscan or the
Neapolitan State has formed a nationality, but the citizens of Florence
and of Naples have no political community with each other. There are
other States which have neither succeeded in absorbing distinct races in
a political nationality, nor in separating a particular district from a
larger nation. Austria and Mexico are instances on the one hand, Parma
and Baden on the other. The progress of civilisation deals hardly with
the last description of States. In order to maintain their integrity
they must attach themselves by confederations, or family alliances, to
greater Powers, and thus lose something of their independence. Their
tendency is to isolate and shut off their inhabitants, to narrow the
horizon of their views, and to dwarf in some degree the proportions of
their ideas. Public opinion cannot maintain its liberty and purity in
such small dimensions, and the currents that come from larger
communities sweep over a contracted territory. In a small and
homogeneous population there is hardly room for a natural classification
of society, or for inner groups of interests that set bounds to
sovereign power. The government and the subjects contend with borrowed
weapons. The resources of the one and the aspirations of the other are
derived from some external source, and the consequence is that the
country becomes the instrument and the scene of contests in which it is
not interested. These States, like the minuter communities of the Middle
Ages, serve a purpose, by constituting partitions and securities of
self-government in the larger States; but they are impediments to the
progress of society, which depends on the mixture of races under the
same governments.
The vanity and peril of national claims founded on no political
tradition, but on race alone, appear in Mexico. There the races are
divided by blood, without being grouped together in different regions.
It is, therefore, neither possible to unite them nor to convert them
into the elements of an organised State. They are fluid, shapeless, and
unconnected, and cannot be precipitated, or formed into the basis of
political institutions. As they cannot be used by the State, they cannot
be recognised by it; and their peculiar qualities, capabilities,
passions, and attachments are of no service, and therefore obtain no
regard. They are necessarily ignored, and are therefore perpetually
outraged. From this difficulty of races with political pretensions, but
without political position, the Eastern world escaped by the institution
of castes. Where there are only two races there is the resource of
slavery; but when different races inhabit the different territories of
one Empire composed of several smaller States, it is of all possible
combinations the most favourable to the establishment of a highly
developed system of freedom. In Austria there are two circumstances
which add to the difficulty of the problem, but also increase its
importance. The several nationalities are at very unequal degrees of
advancement, and there is no single nation which is so predominant as to
overwhelm or absorb the others. These are the conditions necessary for
the very highest degree of organisation which government is capable of
receiving. They supply the greatest variety of intellectual resource;
the perpetual incentive to progress, which is afforded not merely by
competition, but by the spectacle of a more advanced people; the most
abundant elements of self-government, combined with the impossibility
for the State to rule all by its own will; and the fullest security for
the preservation of local customs and ancient rights. In such a country
as this, liberty would achieve its most glorious results, while
centralisation and absolutism would be destruction.
The problem presented to the government of Austria is higher than that
which is solved in England, because of the necessity of admitting the
national claims. The parliamentary system fails to provide for them, as
it presupposes the unity of the people. Hence in those countries in
which different races dwell together, it has not satisfied their
desires, and is regarded as an imperfect form of freedom. It brings out
more clearly than before the differences it does not recognise, and thus
continues the work of the old absolutism, and appears as a new phase of
centralisation. In those countries, therefore, the power of the imperial
parliament must be limited as jealously as the power of the crown, and
many of its functions must be discharged by provincial diets, and a
descending series of local authorities.
The great importance of nationality in the State consists in the fact
that it is the basis of political capacity. The character of a nation
determines in great measure the form and vitality of the State. Certain
political habits and ideas belong to particular nations, and they vary
with the course of the national history. A people just emerging from
barbarism, a people effete from the excesses of a luxurious
civilisation, cannot possess the means of governing itself; a people
devoted to equality, or to absolute monarchy, is incapable of producing
an aristocracy; a people averse to the institution of private property
is without the first element of freedom. Each of these can be converted
into efficient members of a free community only by the contact of a
superior race, in whose power will lie the future prospects of the
State. A system which ignores these things, and does not rely for its
support on the character and aptitude of the people, does not intend
that they should administer their own affairs, but that they should
simply be obedient to the supreme command. The denial of nationality,
therefore, implies the denial of political liberty.
The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory
of nationality. By making the State and the nation commensurate with
each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject condition all
other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit
them to an equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State,
because the State would then cease to be national, which would be a
contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore,
to the degree of humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which
claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are
exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a
condition of dependence.
If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral
duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those
states are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and
Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without
oppressing them. Those in which no mixture of races has occurred are
imperfect; and those in which its effects have disappeared are decrepit.
A State which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself;
a State which labours to neutralise, to absorb, or to expel them,
destroys its own vitality; a State which does not include them is
destitute of the chief basis of self-government The theory of
nationality, therefore, is a retrograde step in history. It is the most
advanced form of the revolution, and must retain its power to the end of
the revolutionary period, of which it announces the approach. Its great
historical importance depends on two chief causes.
First, it is a chimera. The settlement at which it aims is impossible.
As it can never be satisfied and exhausted, and always continues to
assert itself, it prevents the government from ever relapsing into the
condition which provoked its rise. The danger is too threatening, and
the power over men's minds too great, to allow any system to endure
which justifies the resistance of nationality. It must contribute,
therefore, to obtain that which in theory it condemns,--the liberty of
different nationalities as members of one sovereign community. This is a
service which no other force could accomplish; for it is a corrective
alike of absolute monarchy, of democracy, and of constitutionalism, as
well as of the centralisation which is common to all three. Neither the
monarchical, nor the revolutionary, nor the parliamentary system can do
this; and all the ideas which have excited enthusiasm in past times are
impotent for the purpose except nationality alone.
And secondly, the national theory marks the end of the revolutionary
doctrine and its logical exhaustion. In proclaiming the supremacy of the
rights of nationality, the system of democratic equality goes beyond its
own extreme boundary, and falls into contradiction with itself. Between
the democratic and the national phase of the revolution, socialism had
intervened, and had already carried the consequences of the principle to
an absurdity. But that phase was passed. The revolution survived its
offspring, and produced another further result. Nationality is more
advanced than socialism, because it is a more arbitrary system. The
social theory endeavours to provide for the existence of the individual
beneath the terrible burdens which modern society heaps upon labour. It
is not merely a development of the notion of equality, but a refuge from
real misery and starvation. However false the solution, it was a
reasonable demand that the poor should be saved from destruction; and if
the freedom of the State was sacrificed to the safety of the individual,
the more immediate object was, at least in theory, attained. But
nationality does not aim either at liberty or prosperity, both of which
it sacrifices to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould
and measure of the State. Its course will be marked with material as
well as moral ruin, in order that a new invention may prevail over the
works of God and the interests of mankind. There is no principle of
change, no phase of political speculation conceivable, more
comprehensive, more subversive, or more arbitrary than this. It is a
confutation of democracy, because it sets limits to the exercise of the
popular will, and substitutes for it a higher principle. It prevents not
only the division, but the extension of the State, and forbids to
terminate war by conquest, and to obtain a security for peace. Thus,
after surrendering the individual to the collective will, the
revolutionary system makes the collective will subject to conditions
which are independent of it, and rejects all law, only to be controlled
by an accident.
Although, therefore, the theory of nationality is more absurd and more
criminal than the theory of socialism, it has an important mission in
the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of two
forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom,--the absolute
monarchy and the revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 326: _Home and Foreign Review_, July 1862.]
[Footnote 327: "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority," _Works_,
v. 112.]
[Footnote 328: There are some remarkable thoughts on nationality in the
State Papers of the Count de Maistre: "En premier lieu les nations sont
quelque chose dans le monde, il n'est pas permis de les compter pour
rien, de les affliger dans leurs convenances, dans leurs affections,
dans leurs intérêts les plus chers.... Or le traité du 30 mai anéantit
complétement la Savoie; il divise l'indivisible; il partage en trois
portions une malheureuse nation de 400,000 hommes, une par la langue,
une par la religion, une par le caractère, une par l'habitude invétérée,
une enfin par les limites naturelles.... L'union des nations ne souffre
pas de difficultés sur la carte géographique; mais dans la réalité,
c'est autre chose; il y a des nations _immiscibles_.... Je lui parlai
par occasion de l'esprit italien qui s'agite dans ce moment; il (Count
Nesselrode) me répondit: 'Oui, Monsieur; mais cet esprit est un grand
mal, car il peut gêner les arrangements de l'Italie.'" (_Correspondance
Diplomatique de J. de Maistre_, ii. 7, 8, 21, 25). In the same year,
1815, Görres wrote: "In Italien wie allerwärts ist das Volk gewecht; es
will etwas grossartiges, es will Ideen haben, die, wenn es sie auch
nicht ganz begreift, doch einen freien unendlichen Gesichtskreis seiner
Einbildung eröffnen. ... Es ist reiner Naturtrieb, dass ein Volk, also
scharf und deutlich in seine natürlichen Gränzen eingeschlossen, aus der
Zerstreuung in die Einheit sich zu sammeln sucht." (_Werke_, ii. 20).]
[Footnote 329: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 298.]
[Footnote 330: Mill's _Considerations_, p. 296.]
[Footnote 331: "Le sentiment d'indépendance nationale est encore plus
général et plus profondément gravé dans le coeur des peuples que l'amour
d'une liberté constitutionnelle. Les nations les plus soumises au
despotisme éprouvent ce sentiment avec autant de vivacité que les
nations libres; les peuples les plus barbares le sentent même encore
plus vivement que les nations policées" (_L'Italie au Dix-neuvième
Siècle_, p. 148, Paris, 1821).]
[Footnote 332: Burke's "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies" (_Works_,
v. 26, 29, 30).]
[Footnote 333: _OEuvres_, i. 593, 595, ii. 717. Bossuet, in a passage of
great beauty on the love of country, does not attain to the political
definition of the word: "La société humaine demande qu'on aime la terre
où l'on habite ensemble, ou la regarde comme une mère et une nourrice
commune.... Les hommes en effet se sentent liés par quelque chose de
fort, lorsqu'ils songent, que la même terre qui les a portés et nourris
étant vivants, les recevra dans son sein quand ils seront morts"
("Politique tirée de l'Ecriture Sainte," _OEuvres_, x. 317).]
X
DÖLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER[334]
After half a year's delay, Dr. Döllinger has redeemed his promise to
publish the text of those lectures which made so profound a sensation in
the Catholic world.[335] We are sorry to find that the report which fell
into our hands at the time, and from which we gave the account that
appeared in our May Number, was both defective and incorrect; and we
should further regret that we did not follow the example of those
journals which abstained from comment so long as no authentic copy was
accessible, if it did not appear that, although the argument of the
lecturer was lost, his meaning was not, on the whole, seriously
misrepresented. Excepting for the sake of the author, who became the
object, and of those who unfortunately made themselves the organs, of so
much calumny, it is impossible to lament the existence of the erroneous
statements which have caused the present publication. Intending at first
to prefix an introduction to the text of his lectures, the Professor has
been led on by the gravity of the occasion, the extent of his subject,
and the abundance of materials, to compose a book of 700 pages. Written
with all the author's perspicuity of style, though without his usual
compression; with the exhaustless information which never fails him, but
with an economy of quotation suited to the general public for whom it is
designed, it betrays the circumstances of its origin. Subjects are
sometimes introduced out of their proper place and order; and there are
occasional repetitions, which show that he had not at starting fixed the
proportions of the different parts of his work. This does not, however,
affect the logical sequence of the ideas, or the accuracy of the
induction. No other book contains--no other writer probably could
supply--so comprehensive and so suggestive a description of the state of
the Protestant religion, or so impartial an account of the causes which
have brought on the crisis of the temporal power.
The _Symbolik_ of Möhler was suggested by the beginning of that movement
of revival and resuscitation amongst the Protestants, of which Döllinger
now surveys the fortunes and the result. The interval of thirty years
has greatly altered the position of the Catholic divines towards their
antagonists. Möhler had to deal with the ideas of the Reformation, the
works of the Reformers, and the teaching of the confessions; he had to
answer in the nineteenth century the theology of the sixteenth. The
Protestantism for which he wrote was a complete system, antagonistic to
the whole of Catholic theology, and he confuted the one by comparing it
with the other, dogma for dogma. But that of which Döllinger treats has
lost, for the most part, those distinctive doctrines, not by the growth
of unbelief, but in consequence of the very efforts which its most
zealous and religious professors have made to defend and to redeem it.
The contradictions and errors of the Protestant belief were formerly the
subject of controversy with its Catholic opponents, but now the
controversy is anticipated and prevented by the undisguised admissions
of its desponding friends. It stands no longer as a system consistent,
complete, satisfying the judgment and commanding the unconditional
allegiance of its followers, and fortified at all points against
Catholicism; but disorganised as a church, its doctrines in a state of
dissolution, despaired of by its divines, strong and compact only in its
hostility to Rome, but with no positive principle of unity, no ground of
resistance, nothing to have faith in but the determination to reject
authority. This, therefore, is the point which Döllinger takes up.
Reducing the chief phenomena of religious and social decline to the one
head of failing authority, he founds on the state of Protestantism the
apology of the Papacy. He abandons to the Protestant theology the
destruction of the Protestant Church, and leaves its divines to confute
and abjure its principles in detail, and to arrive by the exhaustion of
the modes of error, through a painful but honourable process, at the
gates of truth; he meets their arguments simply by a chapter of
ecclesiastical history, of which experience teaches them the force; and
he opposes to their theories, not the discussions of controversial
theology, but the character of a single institution. The opportunity he
has taken to do this, the assumed coincidence between the process of
dissolution among the Protestants and the process of regeneration in the
Court of Rome, is the characteristic peculiarity of the book. Before we
proceed to give an analysis of its contents, we will give some extracts
from the Preface, which explains the purpose of the whole, and which is
alone one of the most important contributions to the religious
discussions of the day.
This book arose from two out of four lectures which were delivered in
April this year. How I came to discuss the most difficult and
complicated question of our time before a very mixed audience, and in
a manner widely different from that usually adopted, I deem myself
bound to explain. It was my intention, when I was first requested to
lecture, only to speak of the present state of religion in general,
with a comprehensive view extending over all mankind. It happened,
however, that from those circles which had given the impulse to the
lectures, the question was frequently put to me, how the position of
the Holy See, the partly consummated, partly threatening, loss of its
secular power is to be explained. What answer, I was repeatedly
asked, is to be given to those out of the Church who point with
triumphant scorn to the numerous Episcopal manifestoes, in which the
States of the Church are declared essential and necessary to her
existence although the events of the last thirty years appear with
increasing distinctness to announce their downfall? I had found the
hope often expressed in newspapers, books, and periodicals, that
after the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes, the Church
herself would not escape dissolution. At the same time, I was struck
by finding in the memoirs of Chateaubriand that Cardinal Bernetti,
Secretary of State to Leo XII., had said, that if he lived long,
there was a chance of his beholding the fall of the temporal power of
the Papacy. I had also read, in the letter of a well-informed and
trustworthy correspondent from Paris, that the Archbishop of Rheims
had related on his return from Rome that Pius IX. had said to him, "I
am under no illusions, the temporal power must fall. Goyon will
abandon me; I shall then disband my remaining troops. I shall
excommunicate the king when he enters the city; and shall calmly
await my death."
I thought already, in April, that I could perceive, what has become
still more clear in October, that the enemies of the secular power of
the Papacy are determined, united, predominant, and that there is
nowhere a protecting power which possesses the will, and at the same
time the means, of averting the catastrophe. I considered it
therefore probable that an interruption of the temporal dominion
would soon ensue--an interruption which, like others before it, would
also come to an end, and would be followed by a restoration. I
resolved, therefore, to take the opportunity, which the lectures gave
me, to prepare the public for the coming events, which already cast
their shadows upon us, and thus to prevent the scandals, the doubt,
and the offence which must inevitably arise if the States of the
Church should pass into other hands, although the pastorals of the
Bishops had so energetically asserted that they belonged to the
integrity of the Church. I meant, therefore, to say, the Church by
her nature can very well exist, and did exist for seven centuries,
without the territorial possessions of the Popes; afterwards this
possession became necessary, and, in spite of great changes and
vicissitudes, has discharged in most cases its function of serving as
a foundation for the independence and freedom of the Popes. As long
as the present state and arrangement of Europe endures, we can
discover no other means to secure to the Holy See its freedom, and
with it the confidence of all. But the knowledge and the power of God
reach farther than ours, and we must not presume to set bounds to the
Divine wisdom and omnipotence, or to say to it, In this way and no
other! Should, nevertheless, the threatening consummation ensue, and
should the Pope be robbed of his land, one of three eventualities
will assuredly come to pass. Either the loss of the State is only
temporary, and the territory will revert, after some intervening
casualties, either whole or in part, to its legitimate sovereign; or
Providence will bring about, by ways unknown to us, and combinations
which we cannot divine, a state of things in which the object,
namely, the independence and free action of the Holy See, will be
attained without the means which have hitherto served; or else we are
approaching great catastrophes in Europe, the doom of the whole
edifice of the present social order,--events of which the ruin of the
Roman State is only the precursor and the herald.
The reasons for which, of these three possibilities, I think the
first the most probable, I have developed in this book. Concerning
the second alternative, there is nothing to be said; it is an
unknown, and therefore, indescribable, quantity. Only we must retain
it against certain over-confident assertions which profess to know
the secret things to come, and, trespassing on the divine domain,
wish to subject the Future absolutely to the laws of the immediate
Past. That the third possibility must also be admitted, few of those
who studiously observe the signs of the time will dispute. One of the
ablest historians and statesmen--Niebuhr--wrote on the 5th October
1830: "If God does not miraculously aid, a destruction is in store
for us such as the Roman world underwent in the middle of the third
century--destruction of prosperity, of freedom, of civilisation, and
of literature." And we have proceeded much farther on the inclined
plane since then. The European Powers have overturned, or have
allowed to be overturned, the two pillars of their existence,--the
principle of legitimacy, and the public law of nations. Those
monarchs who have made themselves the slaves of the Revolution, to do
its work, are the active agents in the historical drama; the others
stand aside as quiet spectators, in expectation of inheriting
something, like Prussia and Russia, or bestowing encouragement and
assistance, like England; or as passive invalids, like Austria and
the sinking empire of Turkey. But the Revolution is a permanent
chronic disease, breaking out now in one place, now in another,
sometimes seizing several members together. The Pentarchy is
dissolved; the Holy Alliance, which, however defective or open to
abuse, was one form of political order, is buried; the right of might
prevails in Europe. Is it a process of renovation or a process of
dissolution in which European society is plunged? I still think the
former; but I must, as I have said, admit the possibility of the
other alternative. If it occurs, then, when the powers of destruction
have done their work, it will be the business of the Church at once
to co-operate actively in the reconstruction of social order out of
the ruins, both as a connecting civilising power, and as the
preserver and dispenser of moral and religious tradition. And thus
the Papacy, with or without territory, has its own function and its
appointed mission.
These, then, were the ideas from which I started; and it may be
supposed that my language concerning the immediate fate of the
temporal power of the Pope necessarily sounded ambiguous, that I
could not well come with the confidence which is given to
other--perhaps more far-sighted--men before my audience, and say,
Rely upon it, the States of the Church--the land from Radicofani to
Ceperano, from Ravenna to Cività Vecchia, shall and must and will
invariably remain to the Popes. Heaven and earth shall pass away
before the Roman State shall pass away. I could not do this, because
I did not at that time believe it, nor do I now; but am only
confident that the Holy See will not be permanently deprived of the
conditions necessary for the fulfilment of its mission. Thus the
substance of my words was this: Let no one lose faith in the Church
if the secular principality of the Pope should disappear for a
season, or for ever. It is not essence, but accident; not end, but
means; it began late; it was formerly something quite different from
what it is now. It justly appears to us indispensable, and as long as
the existing order lasts in Europe, it must be maintained at any
price; or if it is violently interrupted, it must be restored. But a
political settlement of Europe is conceivable in which it would be
superfluous, and then it would be an oppressive burden. At the same
time I wished to defend Pope Pius IX. and his government against many
accusations, and to point out that the inward infirmities and
deficiencies which undeniably exist in the country, by which the
State has been reduced to so deplorable a condition of weakness and
helplessness, were not attributable to him: that, on the contrary, he
has shown, both before and since 1848, the best will to reform; and
that by him, and under him, much has been really improved.
The newspaper reports, written down at home from memory, gave but an
inaccurate representation of a discourse which did not attempt in the
usual way to cut the knot, but which, with buts and ifs, and
referring to certain elements in the decision which are generally
left out of the calculation, spoke of an uncertain future, and of
various possibilities. This was not to be avoided. Any reproduction
which was not quite literal must, in spite of the good intentions of
the reporter, have given rise to false interpretations. When,
therefore, one of the most widely read papers reported the first
lecture, without any intentional falsification, but with omissions
which altered the sense and the tendency of my words, I immediately
proposed to the conductors to print my manuscript; but this offer was
declined. In other accounts in the daily press, I was often unable to
recognise my ideas; and words were put into my mouth which I had
never uttered. And here I will admit that, when I gave the lectures,
I did not think that they would be discussed by the press, but
expected that, like others of the same kind, they would at most be
mentioned in a couple of words, _in futuram oblivionem_. Of the
controversy which sprang up at once, in separate works and in
newspaper articles, in Germany, France, England, Italy, and even in
America, I shall not speak. Much of it I have not read. The writers
often did not even ask themselves whether the report which accident
put into their hands, and which they carelessly adopted, was at all
accurate. But I must refer to an account in one of the most popular
English periodicals, because I am there brought into a society to
which I do not belong. The author of an article in the July Number of
the _Edinburgh Review_ ... appeals to me, misunderstanding the drift
of my words, and erroneously believing that I had already published
an apology of my orthodoxy.... A sharp attack upon me in the _Dublin
Review_ I know only from extracts in English papers; but I can see
from the vehemence with which the writer pronounces himself against
liberal institutions, that, even after the appearance of this book, I
cannot reckon on coming to an understanding with him, ...
The excitement which was caused by my lectures, or rather by the
accounts of them in the papers, had this advantage, that it brought
to light, in a way which to many was unexpected, how widely, how
deeply, and how firmly the attachment of the people to the See of St
Peter is rooted. For the sake of this I was glad to accept all the
attacks and animosity which fell on me in consequence. But why, it
will be asked--and I have been asked innumerable times--why not cut
short misunderstandings by the immediate publication of the lectures,
which must, as a whole, have been written beforehand? why wait for
five months? For this I had two reasons: first, it was not merely a
question of misunderstanding. Much of what I had actually said had
made an unpleasant impression in many quarters, especially among our
optimists. I should, therefore, with my bare statements, have become
involved in an agitating discussion in pamphlets and newspapers, and
that was not an attractive prospect. The second reason was this: I
expected that the further progress of events in Italy, the
irresistible logic of facts, would dispose minds to receive certain
truths. I hoped that people would learn by degrees, in the school of
events, that it is not enough always to be reckoning with the figures
"revolution," "secret societies," "Mazzinism," "Atheism," or to
estimate things only by the standard supplied by the "Jew of Verona,"
but that other factors must be admitted into the calculation; for
instance, the condition of the Italian clergy, and its position
towards the laity, I wished, therefore, to let a few months go by
before I came before the public. Whether I judged rightly, the
reception of this book will show.
I thoroughly understand those who think it censurable that I should
have spoken in detail of situations and facts which are gladly
ignored, or touched with a light and hasty hand, and that especially
at the present crisis. I myself was restrained for ten years by these
considerations, in spite of the feeling which urged me to speak on
the question of the Roman government, and it required the
circumstances I have described, I may almost say, to compel me to
speak publicly on the subject. I beg of these persons to weigh the
following points. First, when an author openly exposes a state of
things already abundantly discussed in the press, if he draws away
the necessarily very transparent covering from the gaping wounds
which are not on the Church herself, but on an institution nearly
connected with her, and whose infirmities she is made to feel, it may
fairly be supposed that he does it, in agreement with the example of
earlier friends and great men of the Church, only to show the
possibility and the necessity of the cure, in order, so far as in him
lies, to weaken the reproach that the defenders of the Church see
only the mote in the eyes of others, not the beam in their own, and
with narrow-hearted prejudice endeavour to soften, or to dissimulate,
or to deny every fact which is or which appears unfavourable to their
cause. He does it in order that it may be understood that where the
powerlessness of men to effect a cure becomes manifest, God
interposes in order to sift on His threshing-floor the chaff from
the wheat, and to consume it with the fire of the catastrophes which
are only His judgments and remedies. Secondly, I could not, as a
historian, present the effects without going back to their causes;
and it was therefore my duty, as it is that of every religious
inquirer and observer, to try to contribute something to the
_Theodicée_. He that undertakes to write on such lofty interests,
which nearly affect the weal and woe of the Church, cannot avoid
examining and displaying the wisdom and justice of God in the conduct
of terrestrial events regarding them. The fate which has overtaken
the Roman States must above all be considered in the light of a
Divine ordinance for the advantage of the Church. Seen by that light,
it assumes the character of a trial, which will continue until the
object is attained, and the welfare of the Church so far secured.
It seemed evident to me, that as a new order of things in Europe lies
in the design of Providence, the disease, through which for the last
half-century the States of the Church unquestionably have passed,
might be the transition to a new form. To describe this malady
without overlooking or concealing any of the symptoms was, therefore,
an undertaking which I could not avoid. The disease has its source in
the inward contradiction and discord of the institutions and
conditions of the government; for the modern French institutions
stand there, without any reconciling qualifications, besides those of
the mediæval hierarchy. Neither of these elements is strong enough to
expel the other; and either of them would, if it prevailed alone, be
again a form of disease. Yet, in the history of the last few years I
recognise symptoms of convalescence, however feeble, obscure, and
equivocal its traces may appear. What we behold is not death or
hopeless decay, it is a purifying process, painful, consuming,
penetrating bone and marrow,--such as God inflicts on His chosen
persons and institutions. There is abundance of dross, and time is
necessary before the gold can come pure out of the furnace. In the
course of this process it may happen that the territorial dominion
will be interrupted, that the State may be broken up or pass into
other hands; but it will revive, though perhaps in another form, and
with a different kind of government. In a word, _sanabilibus
laboramus malis_--that is what I wished to show; that, I believe, I
have shown. Now, and for the last forty years, the condition of the
Roman States is the heel of Achilles of the Catholic Church, the
standing reproach for adversaries throughout the world, and a
stumbling-block for thousands. Not as though the objections, which
are founded on the fact of this transitory disturbance and discord in
the social and political sphere, possessed any weight in a
theological point of view, but it cannot be denied that they are of
incalculable influence on the disposition of the world external to
the Church.
Whenever a state of disease has appeared in the Church, there has
been but one method of cure,--that of an awakened, renovated, healthy
consciousness and of an enlightened public opinion in the Church.
The goodwill of the ecclesiastical rulers and heads has not been able
to accomplish the cure, unless sustained by the general sense and
conviction of the clergy and of the laity. The healing of the great
malady of the sixteenth century, the true internal reformation of the
Church, only became possible when people ceased to disguise or to
deny the evil, and to pass it by with silence and concealment,--when
so powerful and irresistible a public opinion had formed itself in
the Church, that its commanding influence could no longer be evaded.
At the present day, what we want is the whole truth, not merely the
perception that the temporal power of the Pope is required by the
Church,--for that is obvious to everybody, at least out of Italy, and
everything has been said that can be said about it; but also the
knowledge of the conditions under which this power is possible for
the future. The history of the Popes is full of instances where their
best intentions were not fulfilled, and their strongest resolutions
broke down, because the interests of a firmly compacted class
resisted like an impenetrable hedge of thorns. Hadrian VI. was fully
resolved to set about the reformation in earnest; and yet he achieved
virtually nothing, and felt himself, though in possession of supreme
power, altogether powerless against the passive resistance of all
those who should have been his instruments in the work. Only when
public opinion, even in Italy, and in Rome itself, was awakened,
purified, and strengthened; when the cry for reform resounded
imperatively on every side,--then only was it possible for the Popes
to overcome the resistance in the inferior spheres, and gradually,
and step by step, to open the way for a more healthy state. May,
therefore, a powerful, healthy, unanimous public opinion in Catholic
Europe come to the aid of Pius IX.!...
Concerning another part of this book I have a few words to say. I
have given a survey of all the Churches and ecclesiastical
communities now existing. The obligation of attempting this presented
itself to me, because I had to explain both the universal importance
of the Papacy as a power for all the world, and the things which it
actually performs. This could not be done fully without exhibiting
the internal condition of the Churches which have rejected it, and
withdrawn from its influence. It is true that the plan increased
under my hands, and I endeavoured to give as clear a picture as
possible of the development which has accomplished itself in the
separated Churches since the Reformation, and through it, in
consequence of the views and principles which had been once for all
adopted. I have, therefore, admitted into my description no feature
which is not, in my opinion, an effect, a result, however remote, of
those principles and doctrines. There is doubtless room for
discussion in detail upon this point, and there will unavoidably be a
decided opposition to this book, if it should be noticed beyond the
limits of the Church to which I belong. I hope that there also the
justice will be done me of believing that I was far from having any
intention of offending; that I have only said what must be said, if
we would go to the bottom of these questions; that I had to do with
institutions which, because of the dogmas and principles from which
they spring, must, like a tree that is nailed to a wall, remain in
one position, however unnatural it may be. I am quite ready to admit
that, on the opposite side, the men are often better than the system
to which they are, or deem themselves, attached; and that, on the
contrary, in the Church the individuals are, on the average, inferior
in theory and in practice to the system under which they live....
The union of the two religions, which would be socially and
politically the salvation of Germany and of Europe, is not possible
at present; first because the greater, more active, and more
influential portion of the German Protestants do not desire it, for
political or religious reasons, in any form or under any practicable
conditions. It is impossible, secondly, because negotiations
concerning the mode and the conditions of union can no longer be
carried on. For this, plenipotentiaries on both sides are required;
and these only the Catholic Church is able to appoint, by virtue of
her ecclesiastical organisation, not the Protestants....
Nevertheless, theologically, Protestants and Catholics have come
nearer each other; for those capital doctrines, those articles with
which the Church was to stand or fall, for the sake of which the
Reformers declared separation from the Catholic Church to be
necessary, are now confuted and given up by Protestant theology, or
are retained only nominally, whilst other notions are connected with
the words.... Protestant theology is at the present day less hostile,
so to speak, than the theologians. For whilst theology has levelled
the strongest bulwarks and doctrinal barriers which the Reformation
had set up to confirm the separation, the divines, instead of viewing
favourably the consequent facilities for union, often labour, on the
contrary, to conceal the fact, or to provide new points of
difference. Many of them probably agree with Stahl of Berlin, who
said, shortly before his death, "Far from supposing that the breach
of the sixteenth century can be healed, we ought, if it had not
already occurred, to make it now." This, however, will not continue;
and a future generation, perhaps that which is even now growing up,
will rather adopt the recent declaration of Heinrich Leo, "In the
Roman Catholic Church a process of purification has taken place since
Luther's day; and if the Church had been in the days of Luther what
the Roman Catholic Church in Germany actually is at present, it would
never have occurred to him to assert his opposition so energetically
as to bring about a separation." Those who think thus will then be
the right men and the chosen instruments for the acceptable work of
the reconciliation of the Churches, and the true unity of Germany.
Upon the day when, on both sides, the conviction shall arise vivid
and strong that Christ really desires the unity of His Church, that
the division of Christendom, the multiplicity of Churches, is
displeasing to God, that he who helps to prolong the situation must
answer for it to the Lord,--on that day four-fifths of the
traditional polemics of the Protestants against the Church will with
one blow be set aside, like chaff and rubbish; for four-fifths
consist of misunderstandings, logomachies, and wilful falsifications,
or relate to personal, and therefore accidental, things, which are
utterly insignificant where only principles and dogmas are at stake.
On that day, also, much will be changed on the Catholic side.
Thenceforward the character of Luther and the Reformers will no more
be dragged forward in the pulpit. The clergy, mindful of the saying,
_interficite errores, diligite homines_, will always conduct
themselves towards members of other Churches in conformity with the
rules of charity, and will therefore assume, in all cases where there
are no clear proofs to the contrary, the _bona fides_ of opponents.
They will never forget that no man is convinced and won over by
bitter words and violent attacks, but that every one is rather
repelled by them. Warned by the words of the Epistle to the Romans
(xiv, 13), they will be more careful than heretofore to give to their
separate brethren no scandal, no grounds of accusation against the
Church. Accordingly, in popular instruction and in religious life,
they will always make the great truths of salvation the centre of all
their teaching: they will not treat secondary things in life and
doctrine as though they were of the first importance; but, on the
contrary, they will keep alive in the people the consciousness that
such things are but means to an end, and are only of inferior
consequence and subsidiary value.
Until that day shall dawn upon Germany, it is our duty as Catholics,
in the words of Cardinal Diepenbrock, "to bear the religious
separation in a spirit of penance for guilt incurred in common." We
must acknowledge that here also God has caused much good as well as
much evil to proceed from the errors of men, from the contests and
passions of the sixteenth century; that the anxiety of the German
nation to see the intolerable abuses and scandals in the Church
removed was fully justified, and sprang from the better qualities of
our people, and from their moral indignation at the desecration and
corruption of holy things, which were degraded to selfish and
hypocritical purposes.
We do not refuse to admit that the great separation, and the storms
and sufferings connected with it, was an awful judgment upon Catholic
Christendom, which clergy and laity had but too well deserved--a
judgment which has had an improving and salutary effect. The great
conflict of intellects has purified the European atmosphere, has
impelled the human mind on to new courses, and has promoted a rich
scientific and literary life. Protestant theology, with its restless
spirit of inquiry, has gone along by the side of the Catholic,
exciting and awakening, warning and vivifying; and every eminent
Catholic divine in Germany will gladly admit that he owes much to the
writings of Protestant scholars.
We must also acknowledge that in the Church the rust of abuses and of
a mechanical superstition is always forming afresh; that the
spiritual in religion is sometimes materialised, and therefore
degraded, deformed, and applied to their own loss, by the servants of
the Church, through their indolence and want of intelligence, and by
the people, through their ignorance. The true spirit of reform most,
therefore, never depart from the Church, but must periodically break
out with renovating strength, and penetrate the mind and the will of
the clergy. In this sense we do not refuse to admit the justice of a
call to penance, when it proceeds from those who are not of us,--that
is, of a warning carefully to examine our religious life and pastoral
conduct, and to remedy what is found defective.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that the separation did not
ensue in consequence of the abuses of the Church. For the duty and
necessity of removing these abuses has always been recognised; and
only the difficulty of the thing, the not always unjustifiable fear
lest the wheat should be pulled up with the tares, prevented for a
time the Reformation, which was accomplished in the Church and
through her. Separation on account merely of abuses in ecclesiastical
life, when the doctrine is the same, is rejected as criminal by the
Protestants as well as by us. It is, therefore, for doctrine's sake
that the separation occurred; and the general discontent of the
people, the weakening of ecclesiastical authority by the existence of
abuses, only facilitated the adoption of the new doctrines. But now
on one side some of these defects and evils in the life of the Church
have disappeared; the others have greatly diminished since the
reforming movement; and on the other side, the principal doctrines
for which they separated, and on the truth of which, and their
necessity for salvation, the right and duty of secession was based,
are given up by Protestant science, deprived of their Scriptural
basis by exegesis, or at least made very uncertain by the opposition
of the most eminent Protestant divines. Meanwhile we live in hopes,
comforting ourselves with the conviction that history, or that
process of development in Europe which is being accomplished before
our eyes, as well in society and politics as in religion, is the
powerful ally of the friends of ecclesiastical union; and we hold out
our hands to Christians on the other side for a combined war of
resistance against the destructive movements of the age.
There are two circumstances which make us fear that the work will not be
received in the spirit in which it is written, and that its object will
not immediately be attained. The first of these is the extraordinary
effect which was produced by the declaration which the author made on
the occasion of the late assembly of the Catholic associations of
Germany at Munich. He stated simply, what is understood by every
Catholic out of Italy, and intelligible to every reasonable Protestant,
that the freedom of the Church imperatively requires that, in order to
protect the Pope from the perils which menace him, particularly in our
age, he should possess a sovereignty not merely nominal, and that his
right to his dominions is as good as that of all other legitimate
sovereigns. In point of fact, this expression of opinion, which occurs
even in the garbled reports of the lectures, leaves all those questions
on which it is possible for serious and dispassionate men to be divided
entirely open. It does not determine whether there was any excuse for
the disaffection of the Papal subjects; whether the security afforded by
a more extensive dominion is greater than the increased difficulty of
administration under the conditions inherited from the French
occupation; whether an organised system of tribute or domains might be
sufficient, in conjunction with a more restricted territory; whether the
actual loss of power is or is not likely to improve a misfortune for
religion. The storm of applause with which these words, simply
expressing that in which all agree, were received, must have suggested
to the speaker that his countrymen in general are unprepared to believe
that one, who has no other aspiration in his life and his works than the
advancement of the Catholic religion, can speak without a reverent awe
of the temporal government, or can witness without dismay its impending
fall. They must have persuaded themselves that not only the details, but
the substance of his lectures had been entirely misreported, and that
his views were as free from novelty as destitute of offence. It is hard
to believe that such persons will be able to reconcile themselves to the
fearless and straightforward spirit in which the first of Church
historians discusses the history of his own age.
Another consideration, almost equally significant with the attitude of
the great mass of Catholics, is the silence of the minority who agree
with Döllinger. Those earnest Catholics who, in their Italian
patriotism, insist on the possibility of reconciling the liberty of the
Holy See with the establishment of an ideal unity, Passaglia, Tosti,
the followers of Gioberti, and the disciples of Rosmini, have not
hesitated to utter openly their honest but most inconceivable
persuasion. But on the German side of the Alps, where no political
agitation affects the religious judgment, or drives men into disputes,
those eminent thinkers who agree with Döllinger are withheld by various
considerations from publishing their views. Sometimes it is the
hopelessness of making an impression, sometimes the grave inconvenience
of withstanding the current of opinion that makes them keep silence; and
their silence leaves those who habitually follow them not only without
means of expressing their views, but often without decided views to
express. The same influences which deprive Döllinger of the open support
of these natural allies will impede the success of his work, until
events have outstripped ideas, and until men awake to the discovery that
what they refused to anticipate or to prepare for, is already
accomplished.
Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when
they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge. One source of the
difficulty of which we are speaking is as much a defect of faith as a
defect of knowledge. Just as it is difficult for some Catholics to
believe that the supreme spiritual authority on earth could ever be in
unworthy hands, so they find it hard to reconcile the reverence due to
the Vicar of Christ, and the promises made to him, with the
acknowledgment of intolerable abuses in his temporal administration. It
is a comfort to make the best of the case, to draw conclusions from the
exaggerations, the inventions, and the malice of the accusers against
the justice of the accusation, and in favour of the accused. It is a
temptation to our weakness and to our consciences to defend the Pope as
we would defend ourselves--with the same care and zeal, with the same
uneasy secret consciousness that there are weak points in the case which
can best be concealed by diverting attention from them. What the defence
gains in energy it loses in sincerity; the cause of the Church, which is
the cause of truth, is mixed up and confused with human elements, and
is injured by a degrading alliance. In this way even piety may lead to
immorality, and devotion to the Pope may lead away from God.
The position of perpetual antagonism to a spirit which we abhor; the
knowledge that the clamour against the temporal power is, in very many
instances, inspired by hatred of the spiritual authority; the
indignation at the impure motives mixed up with the movement--all these
things easily blind Catholics to the fact that our attachment to the
Pope as our spiritual Head, our notion that his civil sovereignty is a
safeguard of his freedom, are the real motives of our disposition to
deny the truth of the accusations made against his government. It is
hard to believe that imputations which take the form of insults, and
which strike at the Church through the State, are well founded, and to
distinguish the design and the occasion from the facts. It is, perhaps,
more than we can expect of men, that, after defending the Pope as a
sovereign, because he is a pontiff, and adopting against his enemies the
policy of unconditional defence, they will consent to adopt a view which
corroborates to a great extent the assertions they have combated, and
implicitly condemns their tactics. It is natural to oppose one extreme
by another; and those who avoid both easily appear to be capitulating
with error. The effects of this spirit of opposition are not confined to
those who are engaged in resisting the No-popery party in England, or
the revolution in Italy. The fate of the temporal power hangs neither on
the Italian ministry nor on English influence, but on the decision of
the Emperor of the French; and the loudest maintainers of the rights of
the Holy See are among that party who have been the most zealous
adversaries of the Imperial system. The French Catholics behold in the
Roman policy of the emperor a scheme for obtaining over the Church a
power of which they would be the first victims. Their religious freedom
is in jeopardy while he has the fate of the Pope in his hands. That
which is elsewhere simply a manifestation of opinion and a moral
influence is in France an active interference and a political power.
They alone among Catholic subjects can bring a pressure to bear on him
who has had the initiative in the Italian movement. They fear by silence
to incur a responsibility for criminal acts. For them it is a season for
action, and the time has not yet come when they can speak with judicial
impartiality, or with the freedom of history, or determine how far, in
the pursuit of his ambitious ends, Napoleon III. is the instrument of
Providence, or how far, without any merit of his own, he is likely to
fulfil the expectations of those who see in him a new Constantine.
Whilst they maintain this unequal war, they naturally identify the
rights of the Church with her interests; and the wrongs of the Pope are
before their eyes so as to eclipse the realities of the Roman
government. The most vehement and one-sided of those who have dwelt
exclusively on the crimes of the Revolution and the justice of the Papal
cause, the Bishop of Orleans for instance, or Count de Montalembert,
might without inconsistency, and doubtless would without hesitation,
subscribe to almost every word in Döllinger's work; but in the position
they have taken they would probably deem such adhesion a great
rhetorical error, and fatal to the effect of their own writings. There
is, therefore, an allowance to be made, which is by no means a reproach,
for the peculiar situation of the Catholics in France.
When Christine of Sweden was observed to gaze long and intently at the
statue of Truth in Rome, a court-like prelate observed that this
admiration for Truth did her honour, as it was seldom shared by persons
in her station. "That," said the Queen, "is because truths are not all
made of marble." Men are seldom zealous for an idea in which they do not
perceive some reflection of themselves, in which they have not embarked
some portion of their individuality, or which they cannot connect with
some subjective purpose of their own. It is often more easy to
sympathise with a person in whose opposite views we discern a weakness
corresponding to our own, than with one who unsympathetically avoids to
colour the objectivity of truth, and is guided in his judgment by
facts, not by wishes. We endeavoured not many months ago to show how
remote the theology of Catholic Germany is in its scientific spirit from
that of other countries, and how far asunder are science and policy. The
same method applied to the events of our own day must be yet more
startling, and for a time we can scarcely anticipate that the author of
this work will escape an apparent isolation between the reserve of those
who share his views, but are not free to speak, and the foregone
conclusions of most of those who have already spoken. But a book which
treats of contemporary events in accordance with the signs of the time,
not with the aspirations of men, possesses in time itself an invincible
auxiliary. When the lesson which this great writer draws from the
example of the mediæval Popes has borne its fruit; when the purpose for
which he has written is attained, and the freedom of the Holy See from
revolutionary aggression and arbitrary protection is recovered by the
heroic determination to abandon that which in the course of events has
ceased to be a basis of independence--he will be the first, but no
longer the only, proclaimer of new ideas, and he will not have written
in vain.
The Christian religion, as it addresses and adapts itself to all
mankind, bears towards the varieties of national character a relation of
which there was no example in the religions of antiquity, and which
heresy repudiates and inevitably seeks to destroy. For heresy, like
paganism, is national, and dependent both on the particular disposition
of the people and on the government of the State. It is identified with
definite local conditions, and moulded by national and political
peculiarities. Catholicity alone is universal in its character and
mission, and independent of those circumstances by which States are
established, and nations are distinguished from each other. Even Rome
had not so far extended her limits, nor so thoroughly subjugated and
amalgamated the races that obeyed her, as to secure the Church from the
natural reaction of national spirit against a religion which claimed a
universality beyond even that of the Imperial power. The first and most
terrible assault of ethnicism was in Persia, where Christianity appeared
as a Roman, and therefore a foreign and a hostile, system. As the Empire
gradually declined, and the nationalities, no longer oppressed beneath a
vigorous central force, began to revive, the heresies, by a natural
affinity, associated themselves with them. The Donatist schism, in which
no other country joined, was an attempt of the African people to
establish a separate national Church. Later on, the Egyptians adopted
the Monophysite heresy as the national faith, which has survived to this
day in the Coptic Church. In Armenia similar causes produced like
effects.
In the twelfth century--not, as is commonly supposed, in the time of
Photius and Cerularius, for religious communion continued to subsist
between the Latins and the Greeks at Constantinople till about the time
of Innocent III., but after the Crusades had embittered the antagonism
between East and West--another great national separation occurred. In
the Eastern Empire the communion with Rome was hateful to the two chief
authorities. The patriarch was ambitious to extend his own absolute
jurisdiction over the whole Empire, the emperor wished to increase that
power as the instrument of his own: out of this threefold combination of
interests sprang the Byzantine system. It was founded on the
ecclesiastical as well as civil despotism of the emperor, and on the
exclusive pride of the people in its nationality; that is, on those
things which are most essentially opposed to the Catholic spirit, and to
the nature of a universal Church. In consequence of the schism, the
sovereign became supreme over the canons of the Church and the laws of
the State; and to this imperial papacy the Archbishop of Thessalonica,
in the beginning of the fifteenth century, justly attributes the ruin
and degradation of the Empire. Like the Eastern schism, the schism of
the West in the fourteenth century arose from the predominance of
national interests in the Church: it proceeded from the endeavour to
convert the Holy See into a possession of the French people and a
subject of the French crown. Again, not long after, the Hussite
revolution sprang from the union of a new doctrine with the old
antipathy of the Bohemians for the Germans, which had begun in times
when the boundaries of Christianity ran between the two nations, and
which led to a strictly national separation, which has not yet exhausted
its political effects. Though the Reformation had not its origin in
national feelings, yet they became a powerful instrument in the hands of
Luther, and ultimately prevailed over the purely theological elements of
the movement.
The Lutheran system was looked on by the Germans with patriotic pride as
the native fruit, and especial achievement of the genius of their
country, and it was adopted out of Germany only by the kindred races of
Scandinavia. In every other land to which it has been transplanted by
the migrations of this century, Lutheranism appears as eradicated from
its congenial soil, loses gradually its distinctive features, and
becomes assimilated to the more consolatory system of Geneva. Calvinism
exhibited from the first no traces of the influence of national
character, and to this it owes its greater extension; whilst in the
third form of Protestantism, the Anglican Church, nationality is the
predominant characteristic. In whatever country and in whatever form
Protestantism has prevailed, it has always carried out the principle of
separation and local limitation by seeking to subject itself to the
civil power, and to confine the Church within the jurisdiction of the
State. It is dependent not so much on national character as on political
authority, and has grafted itself rather on the State than on the
people. But the institution which Christ founded in order to collect all
nations together in one fold under one shepherd, while tolerating and
respecting the natural historical distinctions of nations and of States,
endeavours to reconcile antagonism, and to smooth away barriers between
them, instead of estranging them by artificial differences, and erecting
new obstacles to their harmony. The Church can neither submit as a
whole to the influence of a particular people, nor impose on one the
features or the habits of another; for she is exalted in her catholicity
above the differences of race, and above the claims of political power.
At once the most firm and the most flexible institution in the world,
she is all things to all nations--educating each in her own spirit,
without violence to its nature, and assimilating it to herself without
prejudice to the originality of its native character. Whilst she thus
transforms them, not by reducing them to a uniform type, but by raising
them towards a common elevation, she receives from them services in
return. Each healthy and vigorous nation that is converted is a dynamic
as well as a numerical increase in the resources of the Church, by
bringing an accession of new and peculiar qualities, as well as of
quantity and numbers. So far from seeking sameness, or flourishing only
in one atmosphere, she is enriched and strengthened by all the varieties
of national character and intellect. In the mission of the Catholic
Church, each nation has its function, which its own position and nature
indicate and enable it to fulfil. Thus the extinct nations of antiquity
survive in the beneficial action they continue to exert within her, and
she still feels and acknowledges the influence of the African or of the
Cappadocian mind.
The condition of this immunity from the predominant influence of
national and political divisions, and of this indifference to the
attachment of particular States and races,--the security of unity and
universality,--consists in the existence of a single, supreme,
independent head. The primacy is the bulwark, or rather the
corner-stone, of Catholicism; without it, there would be as many
churches as there are nations or States. Not one of those who have
denounced the Papacy as a usurpation has ever attempted to show that the
condition which its absence necessarily involves is theologically
desirable, or that it is the will of God. It remains the most radical
and conspicuous distinction between the Catholic Church and the sects.
Those who attempt to do without it are compelled to argue that there is
no earthly office divinely appointed for the government of the Church,
and that nobody has received the mission to conduct ecclesiastical
affairs, and to preserve the divine order in religion. The several local
churches may have an earthly ruler, but for the whole Church of Christ
there is no such protection. Christ, therefore, is the only head they
acknowledge, and they must necessarily declare separation, isolation,
and discord to be a principle and the normal condition of His Church.
The rejection of the primacy of St. Peter has driven men on to a
slippery course, where all the steps are downwards. The Greeks first
proclaimed that they recognised no Pope, that each patriarch ruled over
a portion of the Church. The Anglicans rejected both Pope and patriarch,
and admitted no ecclesiastical order higher than the Episcopate. Foreign
Protestanism refused to tolerate even bishops, or any authority but the
parish clergy under the supremacy of the ruler of the land. Then the
sects abolished the local jurisdiction of the parish clergy, and
retained only preachers. At length the ministry was rejected as an
office altogether, and the Quakers made each individual his own prophet,
priest, and doctor.
The Papacy, that unique institution, the Crown of the Catholic system,
exhibits in its history the constant working of that law which is at the
foundation of the life of the Church, the law of continuous organic
development. It shared the vicissitudes of the Church, and had its part
in everything which influences the course and mode of her existence. In
early times it grew in silence and obscurity, its features were rarely
and imperfectly distinguishable; but even then the Popes exerted their
authority in all directions, and while the wisdom with which it was
exercised was often questioned, the right itself was undisputed. So long
as the Roman Empire upheld in its strong framework and kept together the
Church, which was confined mostly within its bounds, and checked with
the stern discipline of a uniform law the manifestations of national and
local divergence, the interference of the Holy See was less frequently
required, and the reins of Church government did not need to be tightly
drawn. When a new order of States emerged from the chaos of the great
migration, the Papacy, which alone stood erect amid the ruins of the
empire, became the centre of a new system and the moderator of a new
code. The long contest with the Germanic empire exhausted the political
power both of the empire and of the Papacy, and the position of the Holy
See, in the midst of a multitude of equal States, became more difficult
and more unfavourable. The Popes were forced to rely on the protection
of France, their supremacy over the States was at an end, and the
resistance of the nations commenced. The schism, the opposition of the
general Councils, the circumstances which plunged the Holy See into the
intrigues of Italian politics, and at last the Reformation, hastened the
decline of that extensive social and political power, the echoes and
reminiscences of which occasioned disaster and repulse whenever an
attempt was made to exercise it Ever since the Tridentine age, the Popes
have confined themselves more and more exclusively to the religious
domain; and here the Holy See is as powerful and as free at the present
day as at any previous period of its history. The perils and the
difficulties which surround it arise from temporal concerns,--from the
state of Italy, and from the possessions of the pontifical dominions.
As the Church advances towards fulness and maturity in her forms,
bringing forward her exhaustless resources, and calling into existence a
wealth of new elements,--societies, corporations, and institutions,--so
is the need more deeply felt for a powerful supreme guide to keep them
all in health and harmony, to direct them in their various spheres, and
in their several ways towards the common ends and purposes of all, and
thus to provide against decay, variance, and confusion. Such an office
the Primacy alone can discharge, and the importance of the Papacy
increases as the organisation of the Church is more complete. One of its
most important but most delicate duties is to act as an independent,
impartial, and dispassionate mediator between the churches and the
governments of the different States, and between the conflicting claims
and contradictory idiosyncrasies of the various nations. Yet, though the
Papacy is so obviously an essential part of a Church whose mission is to
all mankind, it is the chosen object of attack both to enemies of
Catholicism and to discontented Catholics. Serious and learned men
complain of its tyranny, and say that it claims universal dominion, and
watches for an opportunity of obtaining it; and yet, in reality, there
is no power on earth whose action is restricted by more sacred and
irresistible bonds than that of the Holy See. It is only by the closest
fidelity to the laws and tradition of the Church that the Popes are able
to secure the obedience and the confidence of Catholics. Pius VII., who,
by sweeping away the ancient church of France, and depriving
thirty-seven protesting bishops of their sees, committed the most
arbitrary act ever done by a Pope, has himself described the rules which
guided the exercise of his authority:--
The nature and constitution of the Catholic Church impose on the
Pope, who is the head of the Church, certain limits which he cannot
transgress.... The Bishops of Rome have never believed that they
could tolerate any alteration in those portions of the discipline
which are directly ordained by Jesus Christ; or in those which, by
their nature, are connected with dogma, or in those which heretics
assail in support of their innovations.
The chief points urged against the ambition of Rome are the claim of the
deposing Power, according to the theory that all kinds of power are
united in the Church, and the protest against the Peace of Westphalia,
the basis of the public law and political order of modern Europe. It is
enough to cite one of the many authorities which may be cited in
refutation of the first objection. Cardinal Antonelli, Prefect of
Propaganda, states in his letter to the Irish bishops, 1791, that "the
See of Rome has never taught that faith is not to be kept with those of
another religion, or that an oath sworn to kings who are separated from
the Catholic communion may be broken, or that the Pope is permitted to
touch their temporal rights and possessions." The Bull in which Boniface
VIII. set up the theory of the supremacy of the spiritual over the
secular power was retracted soon after his death.
The protest of Innocent X. against the Peace of Westphalia is one of the
glories of the Papacy. That peace was concluded on an unchristian and
tyrannical principle, introduced by the Reformation, that the subjects
may be compelled to follow the religion of the ruler. This was very
different in principle and in effect from the intolerance of the ages of
faith, when prince and people were members of one religion, and all were
agreed that no other could be permitted in the State. Every heresy that
arose in the Middle Ages involved revolutionary consequences, and would
inevitably have overthrown State and society, as well as Church,
wherever it prevailed. The Albigenses, who provoked the cruel
legislation against heretics, and who were exterminated by fire and
sword, were the Socialists of those days. They assailed the fundamental
institutions of society, marriage, family, and property, and their
triumph would have plunged Europe into the barbarism and licence of
pagan times. The principles of the Waldenses and the Lollards were
likewise incompatible with European civilisation. In those days the law
relating to religion was the same for all. The Pope as well as the king
would have lost his crown if he had fallen into heresy. During a
thousand years, from the fall of Rome to the appearance of Luther, no
Catholic prince ever made an attempt to introduce a new religion into
his dominions, or to abandon the old. But the Reformation taught that
this was the supreme duty of princes; whilst Luther declared that in
matters of faith the individual is above every authority, and that a
child could understand the Scriptures better than Popes or Councils, he
taught at the same time, with an inconsistency which he never attempted
to remove, that it is the duty of the civil power to exterminate popery,
to set up the Gospel, and to suppress every other religion.
The result was a despotism such as the world had never seen. It was
worse than the Byzantine system; for there no attempt was made to change
the faith of the people. The Protestant princes exercised an
ecclesiastical authority more arbitrary than the Pope had ever
possessed; for the papal authority can only be used to maintain an
existing doctrine, whilst theirs was aggressive and wholly unlimited.
Possessing the power to command, and to alter in religion, they
naturally acquired by degrees a corresponding absolutism in the civil
order. The consistories, the office by which the sovereign ruled the
Church, were the commencement of bureaucratic centralisation. A great
lawyer of those days says, that after the treaties of Westphalia had
recognised the territorial supremacy over religion, the business of
administration in the German States increased tenfold. Whilst that
system remained in its integrity, there could be no peaceful
neighbourhood between Catholics and Protestants. From this point of
view, the protest of the Pope was entirely justified. So far from having
been made in the spirit of the mediæval authority, which would have been
fatal to the work of the Congress, it was never used by any Catholic
prince to invalidate the treaties. They took advantage of the law in
their own territories to exercise the _jus reformandi_. It was not
possible for them to tolerate a body which still refused to tolerate the
Catholic religion by the side of its own, which accordingly eradicated
it wherever it had the means, and whose theory made the existence of
every religion depend on the power and the will of the sovereign. A
system which so resolutely denied that two religions could coexist in
the same State, put every attempt at mutual toleration out of the
question. The Reformation was a great movement against the freedom of
conscience--an effort to subject it to a new authority, the arbitrary
initiative of a prince who might differ in religion from all his
subjects. The extermination of obstinate Catholics was a matter of
course; Melanchthon insisted that the Anabaptists should be put to
death, and Beza was of opinion that Anti-Trinitarians ought to be
executed, even after recantation. But no Lutheran could complain when
the secular arm converted him into a Calvinist. "Your conscience is in
error," he would say, "but under the circumstances you are not only
justified, but compelled, on my own principles, to act as you do."[336]
The resistance of the Catholic Governments to the progress of a religion
which announced that it would destroy them as soon as it had the power,
was an instinct of self-preservation. No Protestant divine denied or
disguised the truth that his party sought the destruction of
Catholicism, and would accomplish it whenever they could. The
Calvinists, with their usual fearless consistency, held that as civil
and ecclesiastical power must be in the same hands, no prince had any
right to govern who did not belong to them. Even in the Low Countries,
where other sects were free, and the notion of unity abandoned, the
Catholics were oppressed.
This new and aggressive intolerance infected even Catholic countries,
where there was neither, as in Spain, religious unity to be preserved;
nor, as in Austria, a menacing danger to be resisted. For in Spain the
persecution of the Protestants might be defended on the mediæval
principle of unity, whilst under Ferdinand II. it was provoked in the
hereditary dominions by the imminent peril which threatened to dethrone
the monarch, and to ruin every faithful Catholic. But in France the
Protestant doctrine that every good subject must follow the religion of
his king grew out of the intensity of personal absolutism. At the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the official argument was the will of
the sovereign--an argument which in Germany had reigned so triumphantly
that a single town, which had ten times changed masters, changed its
religion ten times in a century. Bayle justly reproaches the Catholic
clergy of France with having permitted, and even approved, a proceeding
so directly contrary to the spirit of their religion, and to the wishes
of the Pope. A convert, who wrote a book to prove that Huguenots were in
conscience bound to obey the royal edict which proscribed their worship,
met with applause a hundred years later. This fault of the French clergy
was expiated in the blood of their successors.
The excess of evil led to its gradual cure. In England Protestantism
lost its vigour after the victory over the Catholic dynasty; religion
faded away, and with it that religious zeal which leads to persecution:
when the religious antagonism was no longer kept alive by a political
controversy, the sense of right and the spirit of freedom which belongs
to the Anglo-Saxon race accomplished the work which indifference had
begun. In Germany the vitality of the Lutheran theology expired after it
had lasted for about two hundred years. The intellectual contradictions
and the social consequences of the system had become intolerable to the
German mind. Rationalism had begun to prevail, when Frederick II.
declared that his subjects should work out their salvation in their own
way. That generation of men, who looked with contempt on religious zeal,
looked with horror on religious persecution. The Catholic Church, which
had never taught that princes are supreme over the religion of their
subjects, could have no difficulty in going along with public opinion
when it disapproved of compulsion in matters of conscience. It was
natural that in the new order of things, when Christendom had lost its
unity, and Protestantism its violence, she should revert to the position
she occupied of old, when she admitted other religions to equal rights
with herself, and when men like St. Ambrose, St. Martin, and St. Leo
deprecated the use of violence against heretics. Nevertheless, as the
preservation of morality depends on the preservation of faith, both
alike are in the interest and within the competence of the State. The
Church of her own strength is not strong enough to resist the advance of
heresy and unbelief. Those enemies find an auxiliary in the breast of
every man whose weakness and whose passions repel him from a Church
which imposes such onerous duties on her members. But it is neither
possible to define the conditions without which liberty must be fatal to
the State, nor the limits beyond which protection and repression become
tyrannical, and provoke a reaction more terrible than the indifference
of the civil power. The events of the last hundred years have tended in
most places to mingle Protestants and Catholics together, and to break
down the social and political lines of demarcation between them; and
time will show the providential design which has brought about this
great change.
These are the subjects treated in the first two chapters on "The Church
and the Nations," and on the Papacy in connection with the universality
of Catholicism, as contrasted with the national and political dependence
of heresy. The two following chapters pursue the topic farther in a
general historical retrospect, which increases in interest and
importance as it proceeds from the social to the religious purpose and
influence of the Papacy, and from the past to the present time. The
third chapter, "The Churches and Civil Liberty," examines the effects of
Protestantism on civil society. The fourth, entitled "The Churches
without a Pope," considers the actual theological and religious fruits
of separation from the visible Head of the Church.
The independence of the Church, through that of her Supreme Pontiff, is
as nearly connected with political as with religious liberty, since the
ecclesiastical system which rejects the Pope logically leads to
arbitrary power. Throughout the north of Europe--in Sweden and Denmark,
in Mecklenburg and Pomerania, in Prussia, Saxony, and Brunswick--the
power which the Reformation gave to the State introduced an unmitigated
despotism. Every security was removed which protected the people
against the abuse of the sovereign power, and the lower against the
oppression of the upper class. The crown became, sooner or later,
despotic; the peasantry, by a long series of enactments, extending to
the end of the seventeenth century, was reduced to servitude; the
population grew scanty, and much of the land went out of cultivation.
All this is related by the Protestant historians and divines, not in the
tone of reluctant admission, but with patriotic indignation,
commensurate with the horrors of the truth. In all these countries
Lutheran unity subsisted. If Calvinism had ever succeeded in obtaining
an equal predominance in the Netherlands, the power of the House of
Orange would have become as despotic as that of the Danish or the
Prussian sovereigns. But its triumph was impeded by sects, and by the
presence of a large Catholic minority, destitute indeed of political
rights or religious freedom, but for that very reason removed from the
conflicts of parties, and therefore an element of conservatism, and a
natural ally of those who resisted the ambition of the Stadtholders. The
absence of religious unity baffled their attempts to establish arbitrary
power on the victory of Calvinism, and upheld, in conjunction with the
brilliant policy abroad, a portion of the ancient freedom. In Scotland,
the other home of pure Calvinism, where intolerance and religious
tyranny reached a pitch equalled only among the Puritans in America, the
perpetual troubles hindered the settlement of a fixed political system,
and the restoration of order after the union with England stripped the
Presbyterian system of its exclusive supremacy, and opened the way for
tolerance and freedom.
Although the political spirit of Anglicanism was as despotic as that of
every other Protestant system, circumstances prevented its full
development. The Catholic Church had bestowed on the English the great
elements of their political prosperity,--the charter of their liberties,
the fusion of the races, and the abolition of villeinage,--that is,
personal and general freedom, and national unity. Hence the people were
so thoroughly impregnated with Catholicism that the Reformation was
imposed on them by foreign troops in spite of an armed resistance; and
the imported manufacture of Geneva remained so strange and foreign to
them, that no English divine of the sixteenth century enriched it with a
single original idea. The new Church, unlike those of the Continent, was
the result of an endeavour to conciliate the Catholic disposition of the
people, by preserving as far as possible the externals to which they
were attached; whilst the queen--who was a Protestant rather by policy
than by conviction--desired no greater change than was necessary for her
purpose. But the divines whom she placed at the head of the new Church
were strict Calvinists, and differed from the Puritans only in their
submission to the court. The rapidly declining Catholic party accepted
Anglicanism as the lesser evil; while zealous Protestants deemed that
the outward forms ought to correspond to the inward substance, and that
Calvinistic doctrines required a Calvinistic constitution. Until the end
of the century there was no Anglican theology; and the attempt to devise
a system in harmony with the peculiar scheme and design of the
institution, began with Hooker. The monarch was absolute master in the
Church, which had been established as an instrument of royal influence;
and the divines acknowledged his right by the theory of passive
obedience. The consistent section of the Calvinists was won over, for a
time, by the share which the gentry obtained in the spoils of the
Church, and by the welcome concession of the penal laws against her,
until at last they found that they had in their intolerance been forging
chains for themselves. One thing alone, which our national jurists had
recognised in the fifteenth century as the cause and the sign of our
superiority over foreign States--the exclusion of the Roman code, and
the unbroken preservation of the common law--kept England from sinking
beneath a despotism as oppressive as that of France or Sweden.
As the Anglican Church under James and Charles was the bulwark of
arbitrary power, the popular resistance took the form of ecclesiastical
opposition. The Church continued to be so thoroughly committed to the
principle of unconditional submission to the power from which it derived
its existence, that James II. could reckon on this servile spirit as a
means of effecting the subversion of the Establishment; and Defoe
reproached the bishops with having by their flattery led on the king,
whom they abandoned in the moment of his need. The Revolution, which
reduced the royal prerogative, removed the oppressiveness of the royal
supremacy. The Established Church was not emancipated from the crown,
but the Nonconformists were emancipated from the tyranny of the
Established Church. Protestantism, which in the period of its power
dragged down by its servility the liberties of the nation, did
afterwards, in its decay and disorganisation, by the surrender of its
dogmatic as well as of its political principle, promote their recovery
and development. It lost its oppressiveness in proportion as it lost its
strength, and it ceased to be tyrannical when divines had been forced to
give up its fundamental doctrine, and when its unity had been dissolved
by the sects. The revival of those liberties which, in the Middle Ages,
had taken root under the influence of the Church, coincided with the
progress of the Protestant sects, and with the decay of the penal laws.
The contrast between the political character of those countries in which
Protestantism integrally prevailed, and that of those in which it was
divided against itself, and could neither establish its system nor work
out its consequences, is as strongly marked as the contrast between the
politics of Catholic times and those which were introduced by the
Reformation. The evil which it wrought in its strength was turned to
good by its decline.
Such is the sketch of the effects of the Protestant apostasy in the
political order, considered chiefly in relation to the absence of a
supreme ecclesiastical authority independent of political control. It
would require far more space to exhibit the positive influence of
heretical principles on the social foundations of political life; and
the picture would not be complete without showing the contrast exhibited
by Catholic States, and tracing their passage from the mediæval system
under the influence of the reaction against the Reformation. The third
chapter covers only a portion of this extensive subject; but it shows
the action of the new mode of ecclesiastical government upon the civil
order, and proves that the importance of the Papacy is not confined to
its religious sphere. It thus prepares the way for the subject discussed
in the fourth chapter,--the most comprehensive and elaborate in the
book.
Dr. Döllinger begins his survey of the churches that have renounced the
Pope with those of the Eastern schism. The Patriarch of Constantinople,
whose ecclesiastical authority is enormous, and whose opportunities of
extorting money are so great that he is generally deposed at the end of
two or three years, in order that many may succeed each other in the
enjoyment of such advantages, serves not as a protection, but as an
instrument for the oppression of the Christians. The Greek clergy have
been the chief means by which the Turks have kept down both the Greek
and the Slavonic population, and the Slavs are by degrees throwing off
their influence. Submission to the civil power is so natural in
communities separated from the Universal Church, that the Greeks look up
to the Turkish authorities as arbiters in ecclesiastical matters. When
there was a dispute between Greeks and Armenians respecting the mixture
of water with the wine in the chalice, the question was referred for
decision to the proper quarter, and the Reis Effendi decided that, wine
being condemned by the Koran, water alone might be used. Yet to this
pusillanimous and degenerate Church belong the future of European
Turkey, and the inheritance of the sinking power of the Turks. The
vitality of the dominant race is nearly exhausted, and the
Christians--on whose pillage they live--exceed them, in increasing
proportions, in numbers, prosperity, intelligence, and enterprise.
The Hellenic Church, obeying the general law of schismatical
communities, has exchanged the authority of the patriarch for that of
the crown, exercised through a synod, which is appointed on the Russian
model by the Government. The clergy, disabled for religious purposes by
the necessity of providing for their families, have little education and
little influence, and have no part in the revival of the Grecian
intellect. But the people are attached to their ecclesiastical system,
not for religion's sake, for infidelity generally accompanies education,
but as the defence of their nationality.
In Russia the Catholic Church is considered heretical because of her
teaching on the procession of the Holy Ghost, and schismatical in
consequence of the claims of the Pope. In the doctrine of purgatory
there is no essential difference; and on this point an understanding
could easily be arrived at, if none had an interest in widening the
breach. In the seventeenth century, the Russian Church retained so much
independence that the Metropolitan of Kiev could hold in check the power
of the Czar, and the clergy were the mediators between the people and
the nobles or the crown. This influence was swept away by the despotism
of Peter the Great; and under Catherine II. the property of the Church
was annexed to the crown lands, in order, it was said, to relieve the
clergy of the burden of administration. Yet even now the Protestant
doctrine that the sovereign is supreme in all matters of religion has
not penetrated among the Russians. But though the Czar does not possess
this authority over the national Church, of which he is a member, the
Protestant system has conceded it to him in the Baltic provinces. Not
only are all children of mixed marriages between Protestants and
schismatics brought up in the religion of the latter, by which the
gradual decline of Protestanism is provided for, but conversions to
Protestanism, even of Jews, Mohammedans, and heathens, are forbidden;
and, in all questions of doctrine or of liturgy, the last appeal is to
the emperor. The religious despotism usually associated with the Russian
monarchy subsists only for the Protestants.
The Russian Church is dumb; the congregation does not sing, the priest
does not preach. The people have no prayer-books, and are therefore
confined to the narrow circle of their own religious ideas. Against the
cloud of superstition which naturally gathers in a religion of
ceremonies, destitute of the means of keeping alive or cultivating the
religious sentiments of the people, there is no resource. In spite of
the degeneracy of their clergy, which they are unable to feel, the
Russians cling with patriotic affection to their Church, and identify
its progress and prosperity with the increase of their empire. As it is
an exclusively national institution, every war may become a war of
religion, and it is the attachment to the Church which creates the
longing and the claim to possess the city from which it came. From the
Church the empire derives its tendency to expand, and the Czar the hopes
of that universal dominion which was promised to him by the Synod of
Moscow in 1619, and for which a prayer was then appointed. The
schismatical clergy of Eastern Europe are the channel of Russian
influence, the pioneers of Russian aggression. The political dependence
of the Church corresponds to its political influence; subserviency is
the condition of the power it possesses. The certificate of Easter
confession and communion is required for every civil act, and is
consequently an object of traffic. In like manner, the confessor is
bound to betray to the police all the secrets of confession which affect
the interest of the Government. In this deplorable state of corruption,
servitude, and decay within, and of threatening hostility to Christian
civilisation abroad, the Russian Church pays the penalty of its
Byzantine descent.
The Established Church and the sects in England furnish few
opportunities of treating points which would be new to our readers.
Perhaps the most suggestive portion is the description of the effects of
Protestantism on the character and condition of the people. The plunder
and oppression of the poor has everywhere followed the plunder of the
Church, which was the guardian and refuge of the poor. The charity of
the Catholic clergy aimed not merely at relieving, but at preventing
poverty. It was their object not only to give alms, but to give to the
lower orders the means of obtaining a livelihood. The Reformation at
once checked alms-giving; so that, Selden says, in places where twenty
pounds a year had been distributed formerly, not a handful of meal was
given away in his time, for the wedded clergy could not afford it. The
confiscation of the lands where thousands had tilled the soil under the
shadow of the monastery or the Church, was followed by a new system of
cultivation, which deprived the peasants of their homes. The sheep, men
said, were the cause of all the woe; and whole towns were pulled down to
make room for them. The prelates of the sixteenth century lament the
decline of charity since the Catholic times; and a divine attributed the
growing selfishness and harshness to the doctrine of justification by
faith. The alteration in the condition of the poor was followed by
severe enactments against vagrancy; and the Protestant legislature,
after creating a proletariate, treated it as a crime. The conversion of
Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath cut off the holiday amusements and soured
the cheerfulness of the population. Music, singing, and dancing, the
favourite relaxation of a contented people, disappeared, and, especially
after the war in the Low Countries, drunkenness began to prevail among a
nation which in earlier times had been reckoned the most sober of
Northern Europe. The institution which introduced these changes has
become a State, not a national Church, whose services are more attended
by the rich than by the poor.
After describing the various parties in the Anglican system, the decay
of its divinity, and the general aversion to theological research,
Döllinger concludes that its dissolution is a question of time. No State
Church can long subsist in modern society which professes the religion
of the minority. Whilst the want of a definite system of doctrine,
allowing every clergyman to be the mouthpiece, not of a church, but of a
party, drives an increasing portion of the people to join the sects
which have a fixed doctrine and allow less independence to their
preachers, the great danger which menaces the Church comes from the
State itself. The progress of dissent and of democracy in the
legislature will make the Church more and more entirely dependent on the
will of the majority, and will drive the best men from the communion of
a servile establishment. The rise and fortunes of Methodism are related
with peculiar predilection by the author, who speaks of John Wesley as
the greatest intellect English Protestantism has produced, next to
Baxter.
The first characteristic of Scottish Presbyterianism is the absence of a
theology. The only considerable divines that have appeared in Scotland
since the Reformation, Leighton and Forbes, were prelates of the
Episcopal Church. Calvinism was unable to produce a theological
literature, in spite of the influence of English writers, of the example
of Holland, and of the great natural intelligence of the Scots. "Their
theology," says a distinguished Lutheran divine, "possesses no system of
Christian ethics." This Döllinger attributes to the strictness with
which they have held to the doctrine of imputation, which is
incompatible with any system of moral theology. In other countries it
was the same; where that doctrine prevailed, there was no ethical
system, and where ethics were cultivated, the doctrine was abandoned.
For a century after Luther, no moral theology was written in Germany.
The first who attempted it, Calixtus, gave up the Lutheran doctrine. The
Dutch historians of Calvinism in the Netherlands record, in like manner,
that there the dread of a collision with the dogma silenced the teaching
of ethics both in literature and at the universities. Accordingly, all
the great Protestant moralists were opposed to the Protestant doctrine
of justification. In Scotland the intellectual lethargy of churchmen is
not confined to the department of ethics; and Presbyterianism only
prolongs its existence by suppressing theological writing, and by
concealing the contradictions which would otherwise bring down on the
clergy the contempt of their flocks.
Whilst Scotland has clung to the original dogma of Calvin, at the price
of complete theological stagnation, the Dutch Church has lost its
primitive orthodoxy in the progress of theological learning. Not one of
the several schools into which the clergy of the Netherlands are divided
has remained faithful to the five articles of the synod of Dortrecht,
which still command so extensive an allegiance in Great Britain and
America. The conservative party, headed by the statesman and historian,
Groen van Prinsterer, who holds fast to the theology which is so closely
interwoven with the history of his country and with the fortunes of the
reigning house, and who invokes the aid of the secular arm in support of
pure Calvinism, is not represented at the universities. For all the
Dutch divines know that the system cannot be revived without sacrificing
the theological activity by which it has been extinguished. The old
confessional writings have lost their authority; and the general synod
of 1854 decided that, "as it is impossible to reconcile all opinions and
wishes, even in the shortest confession, the Church tolerates divergence
from the symbolical books." The only unity, says Groen, consists in
this, that all the preachers are paid out of the same fund. The bulk of
the clergy are Arminians or Socinians. From the spectacle of the Dutch
Church, Dr. Döllinger comes to the following result: first, that without
a code of doctrine laid down in authoritative confessions of faith, the
Church cannot endure; secondly, that the old confessional writings
cannot be maintained, and are universally given up; and thirdly, that it
is impossible to draw up new ones.
French Protestantism suffered less from the Revolution than the Catholic
Church, and was treated with tenderness, and sometimes with favour. The
dissolution of Continental Protestantism began in France. Before their
expulsion in 1685, the French divines had cast off the yoke of the
Dortrecht articles, and in their exile they afterwards promoted the
decline of Calvinism in the Netherlands. The old Calvinistic tradition
has never been restored, the works of the early writers are forgotten,
no new theological literature has arisen, and the influence of Germany
has borne no considerable fruit. The evangelical party, or Methodists,
as they are called, are accused by the rest of being the cause of their
present melancholy state. The rationalism of the _indifférens_ generally
prevails among the clergy, either in the shape of the naturalism of the
eighteenth century (Coquerel), or in the more advanced form of modern
criticism, as it is carried out by the faculty of Strasburg, with the
aid of German infidelity. Payment by the State and hatred of Catholicism
are the only common marks of French Protestant divines. They have no
doctrine, no discipline, no symbol, no theology. Nobody can define the
principle or the limits of their community.
The Calvinism of Switzerland has been ruined in its doctrine by the
progress of theology, and in its constitution by the progress of
democracy. In Geneva the Church of Calvin fell in the revolutions of
1841 and 1846. The symbolical books are abolished; the doctrine is based
on the Bible; but the right of free inquiry is granted to all; the
ruling body consists of laymen. "The faith of our fathers," says Merle
d'Aubigné, "counts but a small group of adherents amongst us." In the
canton of Vaud, where the whole ecclesiastical power was in the hands of
the Government, the yoke of the democracy became insupportable, and the
excellent writer, Vinet, seceded with 180 ministers out of 250. The
people of Berne are among the most bitter enemies of Catholicism in
Europe. Their fanaticism crushed the Sonderbund; but the recoil drove
them towards infidelity, and hastened the decrease of devotion and of
the influence of the clergy. None of the German Swiss, and few of the
French, retain in its purity the system of Calvin. The unbelief of the
clergy lays the Church open to the attacks of a Cæsaro-papistic
democracy. A Swiss Protestant divine said recently: "Only a Church with
a Catholic organisation could have maintained itself without a most
extraordinary descent of the Holy Spirit against the assaults of
Rationalism." "What we want," says another, "in order to have a free
Church, is pastors and flocks; dogs and wolves there are in plenty."
In America it is rare to find people who are openly irreligious. Except
some of the Germans, all Protestants generally admit the truth of
Christianity and the authority of Scripture. But above half of the
American population belongs to no particular sect, and performs no
religious functions. This is the result of the voluntary principle, of
the dominion of the sects, and of the absence of an established Church,
to receive each individual from his birth, to adopt him by baptism, and
to bring him up in the atmosphere of a religious life. The majority of
men will naturally take refuge in indifference and neutrality from the
conflict of opinions, and will persuade themselves that where there are
so many competitors, none can be the lawful spouse. Yet there is a
blessing on everything that is Christian, which can never be entirely
effaced or converted into a curse. Whatever the imperfections of the
form in which it exists, the errors mixed up with it, or the degrading
influence of human passion, Christianity never ceases to work
immeasurable social good. But the great theological characteristic of
American Protestantism is the absence of the notion of the Church. The
prevailing belief is, that in times past there was always a war of
opinions and of parties, that there never was one unbroken vessel, and
that it is necessary, therefore, to put up with fragments, one of which
is nearly as good as another. Sectarianism, it is vaguely supposed, is
the normal condition of religion. Now a sect is, by its very nature,
instinctively adverse to a scientific theology; it feels that it is
short-lived, without a history, and unconnected with the main stream of
ecclesiastical progress, and it is inspired with hatred and with
contempt for the past, for its teaching and its writings. Practically,
sectaries hold that a tradition is the more surely to be rejected the
older it is, and the more valuable in proportion to the lateness of its
origin. As a consequence of the want of roots in the past, and of the
thirst for novelty, the history of those sects which are not sunk in
lethargy consists in sudden transitions to opposite extremes. In the
religious world ill weeds grow apace; and those communities which strike
root, spring up, and extend most rapidly are the least durable and the
least respectable. The sects of Europe were transplanted into America:
but there the impatience of authority, which is the basis of social and
political life, has produced in religion a variety and a multiplicity,
of Which Europe has no experience.
Whilst these are the fruits of religious liberty and ecclesiastical
independence among a people generally educated, the Danish monarchy
exhibits unity of faith strictly maintained by keeping the people under
the absolute control of the upper class, on whose behalf the Reformation
was introduced, and in a state of ignorance corresponding to their
oppression. Care was taken that they should not obtain religious
instruction, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century the
celebrated Bishop Pontoppidan says, "an almost heathen blindness
pervades the land." About the same time the Norwegian prelates declared,
in a petition to the King of Denmark: "If we except a few children of
God, there is only this difference between us and our heathen ancestors,
that we bear the name of Christians." The Danish Church has given no
signs of life, and has shown no desire for independence since the
Reformation; and in return for this submissiveness, the Government
suppressed every tendency towards dissent. Things were not altered when
the tyranny of the nobles gave way to the tyranny of the crown; but when
the revolution of 1848 had given the State a democratic basis, its
confessional character was abrogated, and whilst Lutheranism was
declared the national religion, conformity was no longer exacted. The
king is still the head of the Church, and is the only man in Denmark who
must be a Lutheran. No form of ecclesiastical government suitable to the
new order of things has yet been devised, and the majority prefer to
remain in the present provisional state, subject to the will of a
Parliament, not one member of which need belong to the Church which it
governs. Among the clergy, those who are not Rationalists follow the
lead of Grundtvig. During many years this able man has conducted an
incessant resistance against the progress of unbelief and of the German
influence, and against the Lutheran system, the royal supremacy, and the
parochial constitution. Not unlike the Tractarians, he desires the
liberty of establishing a system which shall exclude Lutheranism,
Rationalism, and Erastianism; and he has united in his school nearly all
who profess positive Christianity in Denmark. In Copenhagen, out of
150,000 inhabitants, only 6000 go regularly to church. In Altona, there
is but one church for 45,000 people. In Schleswig the churches are few
and empty. "The great evil," says a Schleswig divine, "is not the
oppression which falls on the German tongue, but the irreligion and
consequent demoralisation which Denmark has imported into Schleswig. A
moral and religious tone is the exception, not the rule, among the
Danish clergy."
The theological literature of Sweden consists almost entirely of
translations from the German. The clergy, by renouncing study, have
escaped Rationalism, and remain faithful to the Lutheran system. The
king is supreme in spirituals, and the Diet discusses and determines
religious questions. The clergy, as one of the estates, has great
political influence, but no ecclesiastical independence. No other
Protestant clergy possesses equal privileges or less freedom. It is
usual for the minister after the sermon to read out a number of trivial
local announcements, sometimes half an hour long; and in a late Assembly
the majority of the bishops pronounced in favour of retaining this
custom, as none but old women and children would come to church for the
service alone.
In no other country in Europe is the strict Lutheran system preached but
in Sweden. The doctrine is preserved, but religion is dead, and the
Church is as silent and as peaceful as the churchyard. The Church is
richly endowed; there are great universities, and Swedes are among the
foremost in almost every branch of science, but no Swedish writer has
ever done anything for religious thought. The example of Denmark and its
Rationalist clergy brought home to them the consequences of theological
study. In one place the old system has been preserved, like a frail and
delicate curiosity, by excluding the air of scientific inquiry, whilst
in the other Lutheranism is decomposing under its influence. In Norway,
where the clergy have no political representation, religious liberty was
established in 1844.
Throughout the north of Europe the helpless decline of Protestantism is
betrayed by the numerical disproportion of preachers to the people.
Norway, with a population of 1,500,000, thinly scattered over a very
large territory, has 485 parishes, with an average of 3600 souls apiece.
But the clergy are pluralists, and as many as five parishes are often
united under a single incumbent. Holstein has only 192 preachers for an
almost exclusively Lutheran population of 544,000. In Schleswig many
parishes have been deserted because they were too poor to maintain a
clergyman's family. Sometimes there are only two ministers for 13,000
persons. In the Baltic provinces the proportion is one to 4394. In this
way the people have to bear the burden of a clergy with families to
support.
The most brilliant and important part of this chapter is devoted to the
state of Protestantism in the author's native country. He speaks with
the greatest authority and effect when he comes near home, describes the
opinions of men who have been his rivals in literature, or his
adversaries in controversy, and touches on discussions which his own
writings have influenced. There is a difference also in the tone. When
he speaks of the state of other countries, with which he has made
himself acquainted as a traveller, or through the writings of others, he
preserves the calmness and objectivity of a historian, and adds few
reflections to the simple description of facts. But in approaching the
scenes and the thoughts of his own country, the interests and the most
immediate occupations of his own life, the familiarity of long
experience gives greater confidence, warmth, and vigour to his touch;
the historian gives way to the divine, and the narrative sometimes
slides into theology. Besides the position of the author, the
difference of the subject justifies a change in the treatment. The
examination of Protestantism in the rest of the world pointed with
monotonous uniformity to a single conclusion. Everywhere there was the
same spectacle and the same alternative: either religion sacrificed to
the advancement of learning, or learning relinquished for the
preservation of religion. Everywhere the same antagonism between
intellectual progress and fidelity to the fundamental doctrines of
Protestantism: either religion has become stark and stagnant in States
which protect unity by the proscription of knowledge, or the progress of
thought and inquiry has undermined belief in the Protestant system, and
driven its professors from one untenable position to another, or the
ascendency of the sectarian spirit has been equally fatal to its
dogmatic integrity and to its intellectual development. But in the home
of the Reformation a league has been concluded in our time between
theology and religion, and many schools of Protestant divines are
labouring, with a vast expenditure of ability and learning, to devise,
or to restore, with the aid of theological science, a system of positive
Christianity. Into this great scene of intellectual exertion and
doctrinal confusion the leading adversary of Protestantism in Germany
conducts his readers, not without sympathy for the high aims which
inspire the movement, but with the almost triumphant security which
belongs to a Church possessing an acknowledged authority, a definite
organisation, and a system brought down by tradition from the apostolic
age. Passing by the schools of infidelity, which have no bearing on the
topic of his work, he addresses himself to the believing Protestantism
of Germany, and considers its efforts to obtain a position which may
enable it to resist unbelief without involving submission to the Church.
The character of Luther separates the German Protestants from those of
other countries. His was the master-spirit, in whom his contemporaries
beheld the incarnation of the genius of their nation. In the strong
lineaments of his character they recognised, in heroic proportions, the
reflection of their own; and thus his name has survived, not merely as
that of a great man, the mightiest of his age, but as the type of a
whole period in the history of the German people, the centre of a new
world of ideas, the personification of those religious and ethical
opinions which the country followed, and whose influence even their
adversaries could not escape. His writings have long ceased to be
popular, and are read only as monuments of history; but the memory of
his person has not yet grown dim. His name is still a power in his own
country, and from its magic the Protestant doctrine derives a portion of
its life. In other countries men dislike to be described by the name of
the founder of their religious system, but in Germany and Sweden there
are thousands who are proud of the name of Lutheran.
The results of his system prevail in the more influential and
intelligent classes, and penetrate the mass of the modern literature of
Germany. The Reformation had introduced the notion that Christianity was
a failure, and had brought far more suffering than blessings on mankind;
and the consequences of that movement were not calculated to impress
educated men with the belief that things were changed for the better, or
that the reformers had achieved the work in which the Apostles were
unsuccessful. Thus an atmosphere of unbelief and of contempt for
everything Christian gradually arose, and Paganism appeared more
cheerful, more human, and more poetical than the repulsive Galilean
doctrine of holiness and privation. This spirit still governs the
educated class. Christianity is abominated both in life and in
literature, even under the form of believing Protestantism.
In Germany theological study and the Lutheran system subsisted for two
centuries together. The controversies that arose from time to time
developed the theory, but brought out by degrees its inward
contradictions. The danger of biblical studies was well understood, and
the Scriptures were almost universally excluded from the universities in
the seventeenth century; but in the middle of the eighteenth Bengel
revived the study of the Bible, and the dissolution of the Lutheran
doctrine began. The rise of historical learning hastened the process.
Frederic the Great says of himself, that the notion that the history of
the Church is a drama, conducted by rogues and hypocrites, at the
expense of the deceived masses, was the real cause of his contempt for
the Christian religion. The Lutheran theology taught, that after the
Apostolic age God withdrew from the Church, and abandoned to the devil
the office which, according to the Gospel, was reserved for the Holy
Spirit. This diabolical millennium lasted till the appearance of Luther.
As soon, therefore, as the reverence for the symbolical books began to
wane, the belief in the divine foundation departed with the belief in
the divine guidance of the Church, and the root was judged by the stem,
the beginning by the continuation. As research went on, unfettered now
by the authorities of the sixteenth century, the clergy became
Rationalists, and stone after stone of the temple was carried away by
its own priests. The infidelity which at the same time flourished in
France, did not, on the whole, infect the priesthood. But in Germany it
was the divines who destroyed religion, the pastors who impelled their
flocks to renounce the Christian faith.
In 1817 the Prussian Union added a new Church to the two original forms
of Protestantism. But strict Calvinism is nearly extinct in Germany, and
the old Lutheran Church itself has almost disappeared. It subsists, not
in any definite reality, but only in the aspirations of certain divines
and jurists. The purpose of the union was to bring together, in
religious communion, the reigning family of Prussia, which had adopted
Calvinism in 1613, and the vast Lutheran majority among the people. It
was to be, in the words of the king, a merely ritual union, not an
amalgamation of dogmas. In some places there was resistance, which was
put down by military execution. Some thousands emigrated to America; but
the public press applauded the measures, and there was no general
indignation at their severity. The Lutherans justly perceived that the
union would promote religious indifference; but at the accession of the
late king there came a change; religious faith was once more sought
after, believing professors were appointed in almost all the German
universities, after the example of Prussia; Jena and Giessen alone
continued to be seats of Rationalism. As soon as theology had begun to
recover a more religious and Christian character, two very divergent
tendencies manifested themselves. Among the disciples of Schleiermacher
and of Neander a school of unionists arose who attempted a conciliatory
intermediate theology. At the same time a strictly Lutheran theology
flourished at the universities of Erlangen, Leipzig, Rostock, and
Dorpat, which sought to revive the doctrine of the sixteenth century,
clothed in the language of the nineteenth. But for men versed in
Scripture theology this was an impossible enterprise, and it was
abandoned by the divines to a number of parochial clergymen, who are
represented in literature by Rudelbach, and who claim to be the only
surviving Protestants whom Luther would acknowledge as his sons and the
heirs of his spirit.
The Lutheran divines and scholars formed the new Lutheran party,[337]
whose most illustrious lay champion was the celebrated Stahl. They
profess the Lutheran doctrine of justification, but reject the notion of
the invisible Church and the universal priesthood. Holding to the divine
institution of the offices of the Church, in opposition to the view
which refers them to the congregation, they are led to assume a
sacrament of orders, and to express opinions on ordination, sacraments,
and sacrifice, which involve them in the imputation of Puseyism, or even
of Catholicism. As they remain for the most part in the State Church,
there is an open war between their confessional spirit and the
syncretism of the union. In 1857 the Evangelical Alliance met at Berlin
in order to strengthen the unionist principles, and to testify against
these Pharisees. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians--sects
connected by nothing but a common hatred of Catholicism--were greeted
by the union divines as bone of their bone, and welcome allies in the
contest with an exclusive Lutheranism and with Rome. The confusion in
the minds of the people was increased by this spectacle. The union
already implied that the dogma of the Lord's Supper, on which Lutherans
and Calvinists disagree, was uncertain, and therefore not essential. The
alliance of so many denominations added baptism to the list of things
about which nothing is positively known. The author of this measure was
Bunsen, who was full of the idea of uniting all Protestant sects in a
union against the Catholic Church and catholicising tendencies.
For the last fifteen years there has been an active agitation for the
improvement of the Church among the Protestant divines. The first
question that occupies and divides them is that of Church government and
the royal Episcopate, which many deem the chief cause of the
ecclesiastical decay. The late King of Prussia, a zealous and
enlightened friend of the Protestant Church, declared that "the
territorial system and the Episcopal authority of the sovereign are of
such a nature that either of them would alone be enough to kill the
Church if the Church was mortal," and that he longed to be able to
abdicate his rights into the hands of the bishops. In other countries,
as in Baden, a new system has been devised, which transfers political
constitutionalism to the Church, and makes it a community, not of those
who believe in Christ, but, in the words of the Government organ, of
those who believe in a moral order. Hopes were entertained that the
introduction of Synods would be an improvement, and in 1856 and 1857 a
beginning was made at Berlin; but it was found that the existence of
great evils and disorders in the Church, which had been a secret of the
initiated, would be published to the world, and that government by
majorities, the ecclesiastical democracy which was Bunsen's ideal, would
soon destroy every vestige of Christianity.
In their doctrinal and theological literature resides at the present day
the strength and the renown of the Protestants; for a scientific
Protestant theology exists only in Germany. The German Protestant Church
is emphatically a Church of theologians; they are its only authority,
and, through the princes, its supreme rulers. Its founder never really
divested himself of the character of a professor, and the Church has
never emancipated itself from the lecture-room: it teaches, and then
disappears. Its hymns are not real hymns, but versified theological
dissertations, or sermons in rhyme. Born of the union of princes with
professors, it retains the distinct likeness of both its parents, not
altogether harmoniously blended; and when it is accused of worldliness,
of paleness of thought, of being a police institution rather than a
Church, that is no more than to say that the child cannot deny its
parentage.
Theology has become believing in Germany, but it is very far from being
orthodox. No writer is true to the literal teaching of the symbolical
books, and for a hundred years the pure doctrine of the sixteenth
century has never been heard. No German divine could submit to the
authority of the early articles and formulas without hypocrisy and
violence to his conscience, and yet they have nothing else to appeal to.
That the doctrine of justification by faith only is the principal
substance of the symbolical writings, the centre of the antagonism
against the Catholic Church, all are agreed. The neo-Lutherans proclaim
it "the essence and treasure of the Reformation," "the doctrine of which
every man must have a clear and vivid comprehension who would know
anything of Christianity," "the banner which must be unfurled at least
once in every sermon," "the permanent death that gnaws the bones of
Catholics," "the standard by which the whole of the Gospel must be
interpreted, and every obscure passage explained," and yet this article
of a standing or falling Church, on the strength of which Protestants
call themselves evangelical, is accepted by scarcely one of their more
eminent divines, even among the Lutherans. The progress of biblical
studies is too great to admit of a return to the doctrine which has
been exploded by the advancement of religious learning. Dr. Döllinger
gives a list (p. 430) of the names of the leading theologians, by all of
whom it has been abandoned. Yet it was for the sake of this fundamental
and essential doctrine that the epistle of St. James was pronounced an
epistle of straw, that the Augsburg Confession declared it to have been
the belief of St Augustine, and that when the author of the Confession
had for very shame omitted this falsehood in the published edition, the
passage was restored after his death. For its sake Luther deliberately
altered the sense of several passages in the Bible, especially in the
writings of St. Paul. To save this doctrine, which was unknown to all
Christian antiquity, the breach was made with all ecclesiastical
tradition, and the authority of the dogmatic testimony of the Church in
every age was rejected. While the contradiction between the Lutheran
doctrine and that of the first centuries was disguised before the laity,
it was no secret among the Reformers. Melanchthon confessed to Brenz
that in the Augsburg Confession he had lied. Luther admitted that his
theory was new, and sought in consequence to destroy the authority of
the early Fathers and Councils. Calvin declared that the system was
unknown to tradition. All these men and their disciples, and the whole
of the Lutheran and Calvinistic theology of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, professed to find their doctrine of imputation
laid down distinctly in the Bible. The whole modern scientific theology
of the Protestants rejects both the doctrine and the Lutheran exegesis
of the passages in question. But it is the supreme evangelical
principle, that the Scripture is perfectly clear and sufficient on all
fundamental points. Yet the point on which this great divergence
subsists is a doctrine which is decisive for the existence of the
Church, and most important in its practical influence on life. The whole
edifice of the Protestant Church and theology reposes therefore on two
principles, one material, the other formal--the doctrine of imputation,
and the sufficiency of the Bible. But the material principle is given up
by exegesis and by dogmatic theology; and as to the formal principle,
for the sufficiency of the Bible, or even for the inspiration of the
writings of the disciples of the Apostles, not the shadow of a
scriptural argument can be adduced. The significance of this great fact
is beginning to make its way. "Whilst Rationalism prevailed," says a
famous Lutheran divine, "we could impute to its action that our churches
were deserted and empty. But now that Christ crucified is everywhere
preached, and no serious effect is to be observed, it is necessary to
abandon this mistake, and not to conceal from ourselves that preaching
is unable to revive religious life."
The religious indifference of the educated classes is the chief security
for the existence of the Protestant Church. If they were to take an
interest in matters of worship and doctrine, and to inform themselves as
to the present relation of theological science to the teaching of the
pulpit, the day of discovery and exposure would come, and confidence in
the Church would be at an end. The dishonesty of Luther in those very
things on which the Reformation depended could not be concealed from
them. In Prussia there was a conscientious clergyman who taught his
parishioners Greek, and then showed them all the passages, especially in
the Epistles of St. Paul, which were intentionally altered in the
translation. But one of the Protestant leaders impresses on the clergy
the danger of allowing the people to know that which ought to be kept a
secret among the learned. At most, he says, it may be necessary to admit
that the translation is not perspicuous. The danger of this discovery
does not, however, appear to be immediate, for no book is less familiar
to the laity than the Bible. "There is scarcely one Christian family in
a hundred," says Tholuck, "in which the Holy Scriptures are read." In
the midst of this general downfall of Christianity, in spite of the
great efforts of Protestants, some take refuge in the phrase of an
invisible Church, some in a Church of the future. Whilst there exists a
real, living, universal Church, with a settled system and means of
salvation, the invisible Church is offered in her stead, wrapped up in
the swaddling clothes of rhetoric, like the stone which Rhea gave her
husband instead of the child. In a novel of Jean Paul, a Swedish
clergyman is advised in the middle of winter to walk about with a bit of
orange-sugar in his mouth, in order to realise with all his senses the
sunny climes of the South. It requires as much imagination to realise
the Church by taking a "spiritual league" into one's mouth.
Another acknowledgment, that the Church has become estranged from the
people, and subsists only as a ruin of a past age, is the widely spread
hope of a new Pentecost. Eminent theologians speak of it as the only
conceivable salvation, though there is no such promise in Scripture, no
example in history of a similar desire. They rest their only hope in a
miracle, such as has not happened since the Apostles, and thereby
confess that, in the normal process of religious life by which Christ
has guided His Church till now, their cause is lost. A symptom of the
same despair is the rise of chiliastic aspirations, and the belief in
the approaching end of the world. To this party belongs the present
minister of public worship and education in Berlin. Shortly before his
appointment he wrote: "Both Church and State must perish in their
earthly forms, that the kingdom of Christ may be set up over all
nations, that the bride of the Lamb, the perfect community, the new
Jerusalem, may descend from heaven." Not long before this was published
another Prussian statesman, Bunsen, had warned his Protestant readers to
turn away from false prophets, who announce the end of the world because
they have come to the end of their own wisdom.
In the midst of this desperate weakness, although Catholics and
Protestants are so mixed up with each other that toleration must soon be
universal throughout Germany, the thoughts of the Protestants are yet
not turned towards the Catholic Church; they still show a bitter
animosity against her, and the reproach of Catholic tendencies has for
twenty years been the strongest argument against every attempt to
revive religion and worship. The attitude of Protestantism towards Rome,
says Stahl, is that of the Borghese gladiator. To soften this spirit of
animosity the only possible resource is to make it clear to all
Protestants who still hold to Christianity, what their own internal
condition is, and what they have come to by their rejection of the unity
and the authority which the Catholic Church possesses in the Holy See.
Having shown the value of the Papacy by the results which have ensued on
its rejection, Döllinger proceeds, with the same truth and impartiality,
to trace the events which have injured the influence and diminished the
glory and attractiveness of the Holy See, and have converted that which
should be the safeguard of its spiritual freedom into a calamity and a
dishonour in the eyes of mankind. It seems as though he wished to point
out, as the moral to be learnt from the present condition of the
religious world, that there is a coincidence in time and in providential
purpose between the exhaustion and the despair at which enlightened
Protestantism has arrived, from the failure of every attempt to organise
a form of church government, to save the people from infidelity, and to
reconcile theological knowledge with their religious faith,--between
this and that great drama which, by destroying the bonds which linked
the Church to an untenable system, is preparing the restoration of the
Holy See to its former independence, and to its just influence over the
minds of men.
The Popes, after obtaining a virtual independence under the Byzantine
sceptre, transferred their allegiance to the revived empire of the West.
The line between their authority and that of the emperor in Rome was
never clearly drawn. It was a security for the freedom and regularity of
the election, which was made by the lay as well as ecclesiastical
dignitaries of the city, that it should be subject to the imperial
ratification; but the remoteness of the emperors, and the inconvenience
of delay, caused this rule to be often broken. This prosperous period
did not long continue. When the dynasty of Charlemagne came to an end,
the Roman clergy had no defence against the nobles, and the Romans did
all that men could do to ruin the Papacy. There was little remaining of
the state which the Popes had formed in conjunction with the emperors.
In the middle of the tenth century the Exarchate and the Pentapolis were
in the power of Berengarius, and Rome in the hands of the Senator
Alberic. Alberic, understanding that a secular principality could not
last long, obtained the election of his son Octavian, who became Pope
John XII. Otho the Great, who had restored the empire, and claimed to
exercise its old prerogative, deposed the new Pope; and when the Romans
elected another, sent him also into exile beyond the Alps. For a whole
century after this time there was no trace of freedom of election.
Without the emperor, the Popes were in the hands of the Roman factions,
and dependence on the emperor was better for the Church than dependence
on the nobles. The Popes appointed under the influence of the prelates,
who were the ecclesiastical advisers of the Imperial Government, were
preferable to the nominees of the Roman chiefs, who had no object or
consideration but their own ambition, and were inclined to speculate on
the worthlessness of their candidates. During the first half of the
eleventh century they recovered their predominance, and the deliverance
of the Church came once more from Germany. A succession of German Popes,
named by the emperor, opened the way for the permanent reform which is
associated with the name of Gregory VII. Up to this period the security
of the freedom of the Holy See was the protection of the emperor, and
Gregory was the last Pope who asked for the imperial confirmation.
Between the middle of the ninth century and the middle of the eleventh
the greater part of the Roman territory had passed into the hands of
laymen. Some portions were possessed by the emperor, some by the great
Italian families, and the revenues of the Pope were derived from the
tribute of his vassals. Sylvester II. complains that this was very
small, as the possessions of the Church had been given away for very
little. Besides the tribute, the vassals owed feudal service to the
Pope; but the government was not in his hands, and the imperial
suzerainty remained. The great families had obtained from the Popes of
their making such extensive grants that there was little remaining, and
Otho III. tried to make up for it by a new donation. The loss of the
patrimonies in Southern Italy established a claim on the Norman
conquerors, and they became papal vassals for the kingdom of Sicily. But
throughout the twelfth century the Popes had no firm basis of their
power in Italy. They were not always masters of Rome, and there was not
a single provincial town they could reckon on. Seven Popes in a hundred
years sought a refuge in France; two remained at Verona. The donation of
Matilda was disputed by the emperors, and brought no material accession
of territory, until Innocent III., with his usual energy, secured to the
Roman Church the south of Tuscany. He was the first Pope who governed a
considerable territory, and became the real founder of the States of the
Church. Before him, the Popes had possessions for which they claimed
tribute and service, but no State that they administered. Innocent
obtained the submission of Benevento and Romagna. He left the towns to
govern themselves by their own laws, demanding only military aid in case
of need, and a small tribute, which was not always exacted; Viterbo, for
instance, paid nothing until the fifteenth century.
The contest with Frederic II. stripped the Holy See of most of these
acquisitions. In many cases its civil authority was no longer
acknowledged; in many it became a mere title of honour, while the real
power had passed into the hands of the towns or of the nobles, sometimes
into those of the bishops. Rudolph of Habsburg restored all that had
been lost, and surrendered the imperial claims. But while the German
influence was suspended, the influence of France prevailed over the
Papacy; and during the exile at Avignon the Popes were as helpless as if
they had possessed not an acre of their own in Italy. It was during
their absence that the Italian Republics fell under the tyrannies, and
their dominions were divided among a swarm of petty princes. The famous
expedition of Cardinal Albornoz put an end to these disorders. He
recovered the territories of the Church, and became, by the Ægidian
Constitutions, which survived for ages, the legislator of Romagna. In
1376 eighty towns rose up in the space of three days, declared
themselves free, or recalled the princes whom Albornoz had expelled.
Before they could be reduced, the schism broke out, and the Church
learnt the consequences of the decline of the empire, and the
disappearance of its advocacy and protectorate over the Holy See.
Boniface IX. sold to the republics and the princes, for a sum of money
and an annual tribute, the ratification of the rights which they had
seized.
The first great epoch in the history of the temporal power after the
schism is the election of Eugenius IV. He swore to observe a statute
which had been drawn up in conclave, by which all vassals and officers
of State were to swear allegiance to the College of Cardinals in
conjunction with the Pope. As he also undertook to abandon to the
cardinals half the revenue, he shared in fact his authority with them.
This was a new form of government, and a great restriction of the papal
power; but it did not long endure.
The centrifugal tendency, which broke up Italy into small
principalities, had long prevailed, when at last the Popes gave way to
it. The first was Sixtus IV., who made one of his nephews lord of Imola,
and another of Sinigaglia. Alexander VI. subdued all the princes in the
States of the Church except the Duke of Montefeltro, and intended to
make the whole an hereditary monarchy for his son. But Julius II.
recovered all these conquests for the Church, added new ones to them,
and thus became, after Innocent III. and Albornoz, the third founder of
the Roman State. The age which beheld this restoration was marked in
almost every country by the establishment of political unity on the
ruins of the mediæval independence, and of monarchical absolutism at
the expense of mediæval freedom. Both of these tendencies asserted
themselves in the States of the Church. The liberties of the towns were
gradually destroyed. This was accomplished by Clement VII. in Ancona, in
1532; by Paul III. in Perugia, in 1540. Ravenna, Faenza, Jesi had, under
various pretexts, undergone the same fate. By the middle of the
sixteenth century all resistance was subdued. In opposition, however, to
this centralising policy, the nepotism introduced by Sixtus IV. led to
dismemberment. Paul III. gave Parma and Piacenza to his son Pier Luigi
Farnese, and the duchy was lost to the Holy See for good. Paul IV. made
a similar attempt in favour of his nephew Caraffa, but he was put to
death under Pius IV.; and this species of nepotism, which subsisted at
the expense of the papal territory, came to an end. Pius V. forbade,
under pain of excommunication, to invest any one with a possession of
the Holy See, and this law was extended even to temporary concessions.
In the eighteenth century a time came when the temporal power was a
source of weakness, and a weapon by which the courts compelled the Pope
to consent to measures he would otherwise never have approved. It was
thus that the suppression of the Jesuits was obtained from Clement XIV.
Under his successors the world had an opportunity of comparing the times
when Popes like Alexander III. or Innocent IV. governed the Church from
their exile, and now, when men of the greatest piety and
conscientiousness virtually postponed their duty as head of the Church
to their rights as temporal sovereigns, and, like the senators of old,
awaited the Gauls upon their throne. There is a lesson not to be
forgotten in the contrast between the policy and the fate of the great
mediæval pontiffs, who preserved their liberty by abandoning their
dominions, and that of Pius VI. and Pius VII., who preferred captivity
to flight.
The nepotism of Urban VIII. brought on the war of Castro, and in its
train increase of debt, of taxes, impoverishment of the State, and the
odious union of spiritual with temporal arms, which became a permanent
calamity for the Holy See. This attachment to the interest of their
families threw great discredit on the Popes, who were dishonoured by the
faults, the crimes, and the punishment of their relatives. But since the
death of Alexander VIII., in 1691, even that later form of nepotism
which aimed at wealth only, not at political power, came to an end, and
has never reappeared except in the case of the Braschi. The nepotism of
the cardinals and prelates has survived that of the Popes. If the
statute of Eugenius IV. had remained in force, the College of Cardinals
would have formed a wholesome restraint in the temporal government, and
the favouritism of the papal relations would have been prevented. But
the Popes acted with the absolute power which was in the spirit of the
monarchies of that age. When Paul IV. announced to the Sacred College
that he had stripped the house of Colonna of its possessions to enrich
his nephew, and that he was at war with Spain, they listened in silence,
and have been passive ever since. No European sovereignty enjoyed so
arbitrary an authority. Under Julius II. the towns retained considerable
privileges, and looked on their annexation to the Papal State as a
deliverance from their former oppressors. Machiavelli and Guicciardini
say that the Popes required neither to defend nor to administer their
dominions, and that the people were content in the enjoyment of their
autonomy. In the course of the sixteenth century the administration was
gradually centralised in Rome, and placed in the hands of ecclesiastics.
Before 1550 the governors were ordinarily laymen, but the towns
themselves preferred to be governed by prelates. By the close of the
century the independence of the corporations had disappeared; but the
centralisation, though complete, was not vigorous, and practically the
towns and the barons, though not free, were not oppressed.
The modern system of government in the Roman States originated with
Sixtus V. He introduced stability and regularity in the administration,
and checked the growth of nepotism, favouritism, and arbitrary power, by
the creation of permanent congregations. In connection with this measure
the prelates became the upper class of official persons in the State,
and were always expected to be men of fortune. A great burden for the
country was the increase of offices, which were created only to be sold.
No important duties and no fixed salary were attached to them, and the
incumbent had to rely on fees and extortion. In the year 1470 there were
650 places of this kind. In eighty years they had increased to 3500. The
theory was, that the money raised by the sale of places saved the people
from the imposition of new taxes. Innocent XII., in 1693, put an end to
this traffic; but it had continued so long that the ill-effects
survived.
There was a great contrast between the ecclesiastical administration,
which exhibited a dignified stability, resting on fixed rules and
ancient traditions, and the civil government, which was exposed to
continual fluctuation by the change of persons, of measures, and of
systems; for few Popes continued the plans of their predecessors. The
new Pontiff commenced his reign generally with a profound sense of the
abuses and of the discontent which prevailed before his elevation, and
naturally sought to obtain favour and improvement by opposite measures.
In the cultivation of the Roman Campagna, for instance, it was observed
that each Pope followed a different system, so that little was
accomplished. The persons were almost always changed by the new Pope, so
that great offices rarely remained long in the same hands. The Popes
themselves were seldom versed in affairs of State, and therefore
required the assistance of statesmen of long experience. In the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, when the election was free
from outward influence, men were generally chosen who had held under one
or two Popes the highest office of state,--Gregory VII., Urban II.,
Gelasius II., Lucius II., Alexander III., Gregory VIII., Gregory IX.,
Alexander IV. But in modern times it has been the rule that the
Secretary of State should not be elected, and that the new Pope should
dismiss the heads of the administration. Clement IX. was the first who
gave up this practice, and retained almost all those who had been
employed under his predecessor.
The burdens of the State increased far beyond its resources from the aid
which the Popes gave to the Catholic Powers, especially in the Turkish
wars. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the debt amounted to
12,242,620 _scudi_, and the interest absorbed three-fourths of the whole
income. In 1655 it had risen to 48,000,000 _scudi_. The financial
administration was secret, free from the control of public accounts, and
the _Tesoriere_, being necessarily a cardinal, was irresponsible. There
was no industry in the towns; they remained for the most part small and
poor; almost all articles of common use were imported, and the country
had little to give in exchange. All the interest of the public debt went
to foreign creditors. As early as 1595 the discontent was very great,
and so many emigrated, in order to escape the heavy burdens, that
Cardinal Sacchetti said, in 1664, that the population was reduced by
one-half. In the year 1740 the president De Brosses found the Roman
Government the most defective but the mildest in Europe. Becattini, in
his panegyrical biography of Pius VI., declares that it was the worst
after that of Turkey. There were none of those limitations which in
other countries restrained the power of the monarch, no fundamental
laws, no coronation oath, no binding decrees of predecessors, no
provincial estates, no powerful corporations. But, in reality, this
unlimited absolutism was softened by custom, and by great indulgence
towards individuals.
When Consalvi adopted the French institutions, he did not understand
that an absolute government is intolerable, and must sink under the
weight of its responsibility, unless it recognises the restraint of
custom and tradition, and of subordinate, but not dependent forces. The
unity and uniformity he introduced were destructive. He restored none
of the liberties of the towns, and confided the administration to
ecclesiastics superficially acquainted with law, and without knowledge
of politics or of public economy. In the ecclesiastical States of
Germany, the civil and religious departments were separate; and it is as
wrong to say that the double position of the head must repeat itself
throughout the administration, as to say that a king, because he is the
head of the army as well as of the civil government, ought to mix the
two spheres throughout the State. It would, in reality, be perfectly
possible to separate the political and ecclesiastical authorities.
Leo XII. attempted to satisfy the _Zelanti_, the adversaries of
Consalvi, by restoring the old system. He abolished the provincial
Councils, revived the Inquisition, and subjected official honesty and
public morality to a strict espionage. Leo saw the error of Consalvi,
but mistook the remedy; and his government was the most unpopular that
had been seen for a century. Where the laity are excluded from the
higher offices, and the clergy enjoy the monopoly of them, that moral
power which modern bureaucracy derives from the corporate spirit, and
the feelings of honour which it inspires, cannot subsist. One class
becomes demoralised by its privileged position, the other by its limited
prospects and insufficient pay. Leo tried to control them by the
_congregazione di vigilanze_, which received and examined all charges
against official persons; but it was suppressed by his successor.
The famous Memorandum of the Powers, 31st May 1831, recommended the
admission of the laity to all secular offices, the restoration of the
provincial Councils, and the introduction of elective communal Councils
with the power of local government; and finally, a security against the
changes incident to an elective sovereignty. The historian Coppi, who
was charged to draw up a plan of reform in reply to these demands,
relates that the Pope and the majority of the cardinals rejected every
serious change, and were resolved to uphold the old principles, and to
concede nothing to the lay party, "because, if anything was voluntarily
conceded, there would be no right of recalling it afterwards." Two
things in particular it was determined not to grant--elective Councils
in the towns and provinces, and a lay Council of State beside the Sacred
College. In a general way, vague reforms were promised; but the promise
was not redeemed. Austria would not tolerate any liberal concessions in
Italy which were in contradiction with her own system and her own
interests; thus all Italian aspirations for reforms were concentrated in
the wish to get rid of the foreign yoke, and Austria never succeeded in
forming a party amongst the Italians favourable to her power. Yet
Gregory XVI. knew that great changes were needed. In 1843 he said:--
The civil administration requires a great reform. I was too old when
I was elected; I did not expect to live so long, and had not the
courage to begin the undertaking. For whoever begins, must accomplish
it. I have now only a few more years to live; perhaps only a few
days. After me they will choose a young Pope, whose mission it will
be to perform the act, without which it is impossible to go on.
The Austrian occupation caused the Roman Government to be identified
with the foreign supremacy, and transferred to it the hatred of the
patriots. The disaffection of the subjects of the Pope had deeper
motives. Except the clergy, that overshadows all, there are no distinct
orders in the society of the Roman State; no country nobility, no
wealthy class of peasant proprietors; nothing but the population of the
towns, and a degenerate class of patricians. These were generally
hostile to the ecclesiastical system. The offices are so distributed,
that the clergy govern, and the laity are their instruments. In the
principal departments, no amount of services or ability could raise a
layman above a certain level, beyond which younger and less competent
ecclesiastics were promoted over his head. This subordination, which led
to a regular dependence of the lay officials on the prelates, drove the
best men away from the service of the State, and disposed the rest to
long for a government which should throw open to them the higher prizes
of their career. Even the country people, who were never tainted with
the ideas of the secret societies, were not always well affected.
It is more difficult for a priest than for a layman to put aside his
private views and feelings in the administration of justice. He is the
servant and herald of grace, of forgiveness, of indulgence, and easily
forgets that in human concerns the law is inexorable, that favour to one
is often injury to many or to all, and that he has no right to place his
own will above the law. He is still more disqualified for the direction
of the police, which, in an absolute State and in troubled times, uses
its unlimited power without reference to Christian ideas, leaves
unpunished acts which are grievous sins, and punishes others which in a
religious point of view are innocent. It is hard for the people to
distinguish clearly the priestly character from the action of its bearer
in the administration of police. The same indifference to the strict
letter of the law, the same confusion between breaches of divine and of
human ordinances, led to a practice of arbitrary imprisonment, which
contrasts painfully with the natural gentleness of a priestly
government. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison without a trial or
even an examination; only on suspicion, and kept there more than a year
for greater security.
The immunities of the clergy were as unpopular as their power. The laws
and decrees of the Pope as a temporal sovereign were not held to be
binding on them unless it was expressly said, or was clear from the
context, that they were given also in his character of Head of the
Church. Ecclesiastics were tried before their own tribunals, and had the
right to be more lightly punished than laymen for the same delinquency.
Those events in the life of Achilli, which came out at his trial, had
not only brought down on him no severe punishment, but did not stand in
the way of his promotion. With all these privileges, the bulk of the
Roman clergy had little to do; little was expected of them, and their
instruction was extremely deficient.
At the end of the pontificate of Gregory XVI. the demand for reforms was
loud and universal, and men began to perceive that the defects of the
civil government were undermining the religious attachment of the
people. The conclave which raised Pius IX. to the Papal throne was the
shortest that had occurred for near three hundred years. The necessity
of choosing a Pontiff disposed to understand and to satisfy the pressing
requirements of the time, made it important to hasten matters in order
to escape the interference of Austria. It was expected that Cardinal
Gizzi or Cardinal Mastai would be elected. The latter had been pointed
out by Gregory XVI. as his fittest successor, and he made Gizzi
Secretary of State. The first measure of the new reign, the amnesty,
which, as Metternich said, threw open the doors of the house to the
professional robbers, was taken not so much as an act of policy, as
because the Pope was resolved to undo an accumulation of injustice. The
reforms which followed soon made Pius the most popular of Italian
princes, and all Catholics rejoiced that the reconciliation of the
Papacy with modern freedom was at length accomplished, and that the
shadow which had fallen on the priesthood throughout the world was
removed with the abuses in the Roman Government. The Constitution was,
perhaps, an inevitable though a fatal necessity. "The Holy Father must
fall," said his minister, "but at least he will fall with honour." The
preliminary conditions of constitutional life were wanting--habits of
self-government in the towns and provinces, security from the vexations
of the police, separation of spiritual and temporal jurisdiction. It
could not be but that the existence of an elective chamber must give to
the lay element a preponderance in the State, whilst in the
administration the contrary position was maintained. There could be no
peaceful solution of this contradiction, and it is strange that the
cardinals, who were unanimously in favour of the statute, should not
have seen that it would lead to the destruction of the privileges of the
clergy. But in the allocution of 20th April 1849, the Pope declared that
he had never intended to alter the character of his government; so that
he must have thought the old system of administration by ecclesiastics
compatible with the working of the new Constitution. At his return from
exile all his advisers were in favour of abrogating all the concessions
of the first years of his reign. Balbo and Rosmini visited him at Gaeta,
to plead for the Constitution, but they obtained nothing. Pius IX. was
persuaded that every concession would be a weapon in the hands of the
Radicals. A lay _consulta_ gave to the laity a share of the supreme
government; but the chief offices and the last decision remained, as
before, in the hands of the prelates. Municipal reforms were promised.
In general the old defects continued, and the old discontent was not
conciliated.
It is manifest that Constitutionalism, as it is ordinarily understood,
is not a system which can be applied to the States of the Church. It
could not be tolerated that a warlike faction, by refusing supplies,
should compel the Pope to go to war with a Christian nation, as they
sought to compel him to declare war against Austria in 1848. His
sovereignty must be real, not merely nominal. It makes no difference
whether he is in the power of a foreign State or of a parliamentary
majority. But real sovereignty is compatible with a participation of the
people in legislation, the autonomy of corporations, a moderate freedom
of the press, and the separation of religion and police.
Recent events would induce one to suppose that the enormous power of the
press and of public opinion, which it forms and reflects, is not
understood in Rome. In 1856 the Inquisitor at Ancona issued an edict,
threatening with the heaviest censures all who should omit to denounce
the religious or ecclesiastical faults of their neighbours, relatives,
or superiors; and in defiance of the general indignation, and of the
despondency of those who, for the sake of religion, desired reforms in
the States of the Church, the _Civilta Cattolica_ declared that the
Inquisitor had done his duty. Such cases as this, and those of Achilli
and Mortara, weighed more heavily in the scale in which the Roman State
is weighed than a lost battle. Without discussing the cases themselves,
it is clear what their influence has been on public opinion, with which
it is more important at the present day to treat than with the
governments which depend on it. This branch of diplomacy has been
unfortunately neglected, and hence the Roman Government cannot rely on
lay support.
After describing the evils and disorders of the State, which the Pope so
deeply felt that he put his own existence in peril, and inflamed half of
Europe with the spirit of radical change in the attempt to remove them,
Dr. Döllinger contrasts, with the gloomy picture of decay and failure,
the character of the Pontiff who attempted the great work of reform.
Nevertheless, the administration of Pius IX. is wise, benevolent,
indulgent, thrifty, attentive to useful institutions and
improvements. All that proceeds from Pius IX. personally is worthy of
a head of the Church--elevated, liberal in the best sense of the
term. No sovereign spends less on his court and his own private
wants. If all thought and acted as he does, his would be a model
State. Both the French and the English envoys affirm that the
financial administration had improved, that the value of the land was
increasing, agriculture flourishing, and that many symptoms of
progress might be observed. Whatever can be expected of a monarch
full of affection for his people, and seeking his sole recreation in
works of beneficence, Pius richly performs. _Pertransiit
benefaciendo_,--words used of one far greater,--are simply the truth
applied to him. In him we can clearly perceive how the Papacy, even
as a temporal state, might, so far as the character of the prince is
concerned, through judicious elections, be the most admirable of
human institutions. A man in the prime of life, after an
irreproachable youth and a conscientious discharge of Episcopal
duties, is elevated to the highest dignity and to sovereign power. He
knows nothing of expensive amusements; he has no other passion but
that of doing good, no other ambition but to be beloved by his
subjects. His day is divided between prayer and the labours of
government; his relaxation is a walk in the garden, a visit to a
church, a prison, or a charitable institution. Free from personal
desires and from terrestrial bonds, he has no relatives, no
favourites to provide for. For him the rights and powers of his
office exist only for the sake of its duties.... Grievously outraged,
injured, rewarded with ingratitude, he has never harboured a thought
of revenge, never committed an act of severity, but ever forgiven and
ever pardoned. The cup of sweetness and of bitterness, the cup of
human favour and of human aversion, he has not only tasted, but
emptied to the dregs; he heard them cry "Hosannah!" and soon after
"Crucifige!" The man of his confidence, the first intellectual power
of his nation, fell beneath the murderer's knife; the bullet of an
insurgent struck down the friend by his side. And yet no feeling of
hatred, no breath of anger could ever obscure, even for a moment, the
spotless mirror of his soul. Untouched by human folly, unmoved by
human malice, he proceeds with a firm and regular step on his way,
like the stars of heaven.
Such I have seen the action of this Pope in Rome, such it has been
described to me by all, whether near him or afar; and if he now seems
to be appointed to pass through all the painful and discouraging
experience which can befall a monarch, and to continue to the end the
course of a prolonged martyrdom, he resembles in this, as in so many
other things, the sixteenth Louis; or rather; to go up higher, he
knows that the disciple is not above the Master, and that the pastor
of a church, whose Lord and Founder died upon the cross, cannot
wonder and cannot refuse that the cross should be laid also upon him
(pp. 624-627).
It is a common opinion, that the Pope, as a sovereign, is bound by the
common law to the forms and ideas of the Middle Ages; and that in
consequence of the progress of society, of the difference between the
thirteenth century and the nineteenth, there is an irreconcilable
discord between the Papacy and the necessities of civil government. All
Catholics are bound to oppose this opinion. Only that which is of Divine
institution is unchangeable through all time. But the sovereignty of the
Popes is extremely elastic, and has already gone through many forms. No
contrast can be stronger than that between the use which the Popes made
of their power in the thirteenth or the fifteenth century, and the
system of Consalvi. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt, that it
will now, after a violent interruption, assume the form best adapted to
the character of the age and the requirements of the Italian people.
There is nothing chimerical in the vision of a new order of things, in
which the election shall fall on men in the prime of their years and
their strength; in which the people shall be reconciled to their
government by free institutions and a share in the conduct of their own
concerns, and the upper classes satisfied by the opening of a suitable
career in public affairs. Justice publicly and speedily administered
would obtain the confidence of the people; the public service would be
sustained by an honourable _esprit de corps_; the chasm between laity
and priesthood would be closed by equality in rights and duties; the
police would not rely on the help of religion, and religion would no
longer drag itself along on the crutches of the police. The integrity of
the Papal States would be under the joint guardianship of the Powers,
who have guaranteed even the dominions of the Sultan; and the Pope would
have no enemies to fear, and his subjects would be delivered from the
burden of military service and of a military budget.
Religious liberty is not, as the enemies of the Holy See declare, and
some even of its friends believe, an insurmountable difficulty. Events
often cut the knots which appear insoluble to theory. Attempts at
proselytising have not hitherto succeeded among the subjects of the
Pope; but if it had been otherwise, would it have been possible for the
Inquisition to proceed against a Protestant? The agitation that must
have ensued would be a welcome opportunity to put an end to what remains
of the temporal power. It is true that the advance of Protestantism in
Italy would raise up a barrier between the Pope and his subjects; but no
such danger is to be apprehended. At the time when the doctrines of the
Reformation exercised an almost magical power over mankind, they never
took root in Italy beyond a few men of letters; and now that their power
of attraction and expansion has long been exhausted, neither Sardinian
policy nor English gold will succeed in seducing the Italians to them.
The present position of helpless and humiliating dependence will not
long endure. The determination of the Piedmontese Government to annex
Rome is not more certain than the determination of the Emperor Napoleon
to abrogate the temporal power. Pius IX. would enjoy greater security in
Turkey than in the hands of a State which combines the tyranny of the
Convention, the impudent sophistry of a government of advocates, and the
ruthless brutality of military despotism. Rather than trust to Piedmont,
may Pius IX. remember the example of his greatest predecessors, who,
relying on the spiritual might of the Papacy, sought beyond the Alps the
freedom which Italy denied to them. The Papacy has beheld the rise and
the destruction of many thrones, and will assuredly outlive the kingdom
of Italy, and other monarchies besides. It can afford to wait; _patiens
quia æternus_. The Romans need the Pope more than the Pope needs Rome.
Above the Catacombs, among the Basilicas, beside the Vatican, there is
no place for a tribune or for a king. We shall see what was seen in the
fourteenth century: envoys will come from Rome to entreat the Pope to
return to his faithful city.
Whilst things continue as they are, the emperor can, by threatening to
withdraw his troops, compel the Pope to consent to anything not actually
sinful. Such a situation is alarming in the highest degree for other
countries. But for the absolute confidence that all men have in the
fidelity and conscientiousness of the present Pope, and for the
providential circumstance that there is no ecclesiastical complication
which the French Government could use for its own ends, it would not be
tolerated by the rest of the Catholic world. Sooner or later these
conditions of security will disappear, and the interest of the Church
demands that before that happens, the peril should be averted, even by a
catastrophe.
The hostility of the Italians themselves to the Holy See is the tragic
symptom of the present malady. In other ages, when it was assailed, the
Italians were on its side, or at least were neutral. Now they require
the destruction of the temporal power, either as a necessary sacrifice
for the unity and greatness of their country, or as a just consequence
of incurable defects. The time will come, however, when they will be
reconciled with the Papacy, and with its presence as a Power among them.
It was the dependence of the Pope on the Austrian arms, and his
identification in popular opinion with the cause of the detested
foreigner, that obscured his lofty position as the moral bulwark and
protector of the nation. For 1500 years the Holy See was the pivot of
Italian history, and the source of the Italian influence in Europe. The
nation and the See shared the same fortunes, and grew powerful or feeble
together. It was not until the vices of Alexander VI. and his
predecessors had destroyed the reverence which was the protection of
Italy, that she became the prey of the invaders. None of the great
Italian historians has failed to see that they would ruin themselves in
raising their hands against Rome. The old prophecy of the _Papa
Angelico_, of an Angel Pope, who was to rise up to put an end to discord
and disorder, and to restore piety and peace and happiness in Italy, was
but the significant token of the popular belief that the Papacy and the
nation were bound up together, and that one was the guardian of the
other. That belief slumbers, now that the idea of unity prevails, whilst
the Italians are attempting to put the roof on a building without walls
and without foundations, but it will revive again, when centralisation
is compelled to yield to federalism, and the road to the practicable has
been found in the search after impossibilities.
The tyrannical character of the Piedmontese Government, its contempt for
the sanctity of public law, the principles on which it treats the clergy
at home, and the manner in which it has trampled on the rights of the
Pope and the interests of religion, the perfidy and despotism it
exhibits, render it impossible that any securities it may offer to the
Pope can possess a real value. Moreover, in the unsettled state of the
kingdom, the uncertain succession of parties, and the fluctuation of
power, whatever guarantee is proposed by the ministry, there is nobody
to guarantee the guarantor. It is a system without liberty and without
stability; and the Pope can never be reconciled to it, or become a
dweller in the new Italian kingdom.
If he must choose between the position of a subject and of an exile, he
is at home in the whole Catholic world, and wherever he goes he will be
surrounded by children who will greet him as their father. It may become
an inevitable, but it must always be a heroic resolution. The court and
the various congregations for the administration of the affairs of the
Church are too numerous to be easily moved. In former times the
machinery was more simple, and the whole body of the pontifical
government could be lodged in a single French monastery. The absence of
the Pope from Rome will involve great difficulties and annoyance; but it
is a lesser evil than a surrender of principle, which cannot be
recalled.
To remove the Holy See to France would, under present circumstances, be
an open challenge to a schism, and would afford to all who wish to
curtail the papal rights, or to interrupt the communication between the
Pope and the several churches, the most welcome pretexts, and it would
put arms in the hands of governments that wish to impede the action of
his authority within their States.
The conclusion of the book is as follows:--
If the Court of Rome should reside for a time in Germany, the Roman
prelates will doubtless be agreeably surprised to discover that our
people is able to remain Catholic and religious without the
leading-strings of a police, and that its religious sentiments are a
better protection to the Church than the episcopal _carceri_, which,
thank God, do not exist. They will learn that the Church in Germany
is able to maintain herself without the Holy Office; that our
bishops, although, or because, they use no physical compulsion, are
reverenced like princes by the people, that they are received with
triumphal arches, that their arrival in a place is a festival for the
inhabitants. They will see how the Church with us rests on the broad,
strong, and healthy basis of a well-organised system of pastoral
administration and of popular religious instruction. They will
perceive that we Catholics have maintained for years the struggle for
the deliverance of the Church from the bonds of bureaucracy
straightforwardly and without reservation; that we cannot entertain
the idea of denying to the Italians what we have claimed for
ourselves; and that therefore we are far from thinking that it is
anywhere an advantage to fortify the Church with the authority of the
police and with the power of the secular arm. Throughout Germany we
have been taught by experience the truth of Fénelon's saying, that
the spiritual power must be carefully kept separate from the civil,
because their union is pernicious. They will find, further, that the
whole of the German clergy is prepared to bless the day when it shall
learn that the free sovereignty of the Pope is assured, without
sentence of death being still pronounced by ecclesiastics, without
priests continuing to discharge the functions of treasury-clerks or
police directors, or to conduct the business of the lottery. And,
finally, they will convince themselves that all the Catholics of
Germany will stand up as one man for the independence of the Holy
See, and the legitimate rights of the Pope; but that they are no
admirers of a form of government of very recent date, which is, in
fact, nothing else than the product of the mechanical polity of
Napoleon combined with a clerical administration. And this
information will bear good fruit when the hour shall strike for the
return, and restitution shall be made....
Meanwhile Pius IX. and the men of his Council will "think upon the
days of old, and have in their minds the eternal years." They will
read the future in the earlier history of the Papacy, which has
already seen many an exile and many a restoration. The example of the
resolute, courageous Popes of the Middle Ages will light the way. It
is no question now of suffering martyrdom, of clinging to the tombs
of the Apostles, or of descending into the catacombs; but of quitting
the land of bondage, in order to exclaim on a free soil, "Our bonds
are broken, and we are free!" For the rest God will provide, and the
unceasing gifts and sympathies of the Catholic world. And the parties
in Italy, when they have torn and exhausted the land which has become
a battle-field; when the sobered and saddened people, tired of the
rule of lawyers and of soldiers, has understood the worth of a moral
and spiritual authority, then will be the time to think of returning
to the Eternal City. In the interval, the things will have
disappeared for whose preservation such pains are taken; and then
there will be better reason than Consalvi had, in the preface to the
_Motu Proprio_ of 6th July 1816, to say: "Divine Providence, which so
conducts human affairs that out of the greatest calamity innumerable
benefits proceed, seems to have intended that the interruption of the
papal government should prepare the way for a more perfect form of
it."
We have written at a length for which we must apologise to our readers;
and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which
deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the
thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum
up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed
audience, he undertakes to controvert two different interpretations of
the events which are being fulfilled in Rome. To the Protestants, who
triumph in the expected downfall of the Papacy, he shows the
consequences of being without it. To the Catholics, who see in the Roman
question a great peril to the Church, he explains how the possession of
the temporal sovereignty had become a greater misfortune than its loss
for a time would be. From the opposite aspects of the religious camps of
our age he endeavours to awaken the misgivings of one party, and to
strengthen the confidence of the other. There is an inconsistency
between the Protestant system and the progress of modern learning; there
is none between the authority of the Holy See and the progress of modern
society. The events which are tending to deprive the Pope of his
territory are not to be, therefore, deplored, if we consider the
preceding causes, because they made this catastrophe inevitable; still
less if, looking to the future, we consider the state of Protestantism,
because they remove an obstacle to union which is humanly almost
insurmountable. In a former work Döllinger exhibited the moral and
intellectual exhaustion of Paganism as the prelude to Christianity. In
like manner he now confronts the dissolution and spiritual decay of
Protestantism with the Papacy. But in order to complete the contrast,
and give force to the vindication, it was requisite that the true
function and character of the Holy See should not be concealed from the
unpractised vision of strangers by the mask of that system of government
which has grown up around it in modern times. The importance of this
violent disruption of the two authorities consists in the state of
religion throughout the world. Its cause lies in the deficiences of the
temporal power; its end in the mission of the spiritual.
The interruption of the temporal sovereignty is the only way we can
discern in which these deficiences can be remedied and these ends
obtained. But this interruption cannot be prolonged. In an age in which
the State throughout the Continent is absolute, and tolerates no
immunities; when corporations have therefore less freedom than
individuals, and the disposition to restrict their action increases in
proportion to their power, the Pope cannot be independent as a subject.
He must, therefore, be a sovereign, the free ruler of an actual
territory, protected by international law and a European guarantee. The
restoration consequently is necessary, though not as an immediate
consequence of the revolution. In this revolutionary age the protection
of the Catholic Powers is required against outward attack. They must
also be our security that no disaffection is provoked within; that there
shall be no recurrence of the dilemma between the right of insurrection
against an arbitrary government and the duty of obedience to the Pope;
and that civil society shall not again be convulsed, nor the pillars of
law and order throughout Europe shaken, by a revolution against the
Church, of which, in the present instance, the conservative powers share
the blame, and have already felt the consequences.
In the earnest and impressive language of the conclusion, in which
Döllinger conveys the warnings which all Transalpine Catholicism owes to
its Head as an Italian sovereign, it seems to us that something more
definite is intended than the expression of the wish, which almost every
Catholic feels, to receive the Pope in his own country. The anxiety for
his freedom which would be felt if he took refuge in France, would be
almost equally justified by his presence in Austria. A residence in an
exclusively Catholic country, such as Spain, would be contrary to the
whole spirit of this book, and to the moral which it inculcates, that
the great significance of the crisis is in the state of German
Protestantism. If the position of the Catholics in Germany would supply
useful lessons and examples to the Roman court, it is also from the
vicinity of the Protestant world that the full benefit can best be drawn
from its trials, and that the crimes of the Italians, which have begun
as calamities, may be turned to the advantage of the Church. But
against such counsels there is a powerful influence at work. Napoleon
has declared his determination to sweep away the temporal power. The
continuance of the occupation of Rome, and his express prohibition to
the Piedmontese government to proceed with the annexation during the
life of the present Pope, signify that he calculates on greater
advantages in a conclave than from the patient resolution of Pius IX.
This policy is supported by the events in Italy in a formidable manner.
The more the Piedmontese appear as enemies and persecutors, the more the
emperor will appear as the only saviour; and the dread of a prolonged
exile in any Catholic country, and of dependence for subsistence on the
contributions of the faithful, must exhibit in a fascinating light the
enjoyment of the splendid hospitality and powerful protection of France.
On these hopes and fears, and on the difficulties which are pressing on
the cardinals from the loss of their revenues, the emperor speculates,
and persuades himself that he will be master of the next election. On
the immovable constancy of her Supreme Pontiff the Catholic Church
unconditionally relies; and we are justified in believing that, in an
almost unparalleled emergency, he will not tremble before a resolution
of which no Pope has given an example since the consolidation of the
temporal power.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 334: _The Rambler_, November 1861.]
[Footnote 335: _Kirche und Kirchen_, Munich, 1861 ("Papstum und
Kirchenstaat").]
[Footnote 336: So late as 1791 Pius VI. wrote: "Discrimen intercedit
inter homines, qui extra gremium Ecclesiae semper fuerunt, quales sunt
Infideles atque Judaei, atque inter illos qui se Ecclesiae ipsi per
susceptum baptismi sacramentum subjecerunt. Primi enim constringi ad
catholicam obedientiam non debent, contra vero alteri sunt cogendi." If
this theory had, like that of the Protestants, been put in practice by
the Government, it would have furnished the Protestants with an argument
precisely similar to that by which the Catholics justified the severity
they exercised towards them.]
[Footnote 337: The works contained in Clark's library of translations
are chiefly of this school.]
XI
DÖLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK[338]
When first seen, at Würzburg, in the diaries of Platen the poet, Dr.
Döllinger was an eager student of general literature, and especially of
Schlegel and the romantic philosophy. It was an epoch in which the
layman and the _dilettante_ prevailed. In other days a divine had half a
dozen distinct schools of religious thought before him, each able to
develop and to satisfy a receptive mind; but the best traditions of
western scholarship had died away when the young Franconian obtained a
chair in the reorganised university of Munich. His own country, Bavaria,
his time, the third decade of the century, furnished no guide, no
master, and no model to the new professor. Exempt, by date and position,
from the discipline of a theological party, he so continued, and never
turned elsewhere for the dependence he escaped at home. No German
theologian, of his own or other churches, bent his course; and he
derived nothing from the powerful writer then dominant in the North. To
a friend describing Herder as the one unprofitable classic, he replied,
"Did you ever learn anything from Schleiermacher?" And if it is doubtful
which way this stroke was aimed, it is certain that he saw less than
others in the Berlin teacher.
Very young he knew modern languages well, though with a defective ear,
and having no local or contemporary attachments he devoted himself
systematically to the study of foreign divines. The characteristic
universality of his later years was not the mere result of untiring
energy and an unlimited command of books. His international habit sprang
from the inadequacy of the national supply, and the search for truth in
every century naturally became a lecturer whose function it was to
unfold from first to last the entire life of the Church, whose range
extended over all Christian ages, and who felt the inferiority of his
own. Döllinger's conception of the science which he was appointed to
carry forward, in conformity with new requirements and new resources,
differed from the average chiefly by being more thorough and
comprehensive. At two points he was touched by currents of the day.
Savigny, the legal expert of a school recruited from both denominations
and gravitating towards Catholicism, had expounded law and society in
that historic spirit which soon pervaded other sciences, and restored
the significance of national custom and character. By his writings
Protestant literature overlapped. The example of the conspicuous jurist
served as a suggestion for divines to realise the patient process of
history; and Döllinger continued to recognise him as a master and
originator of true scientific methods when his influence on
jurisprudence was on the wane. On the same track, Drey, in 1819,
defended the theory of development as the vital prerogative of Rome over
the fixity of other churches. Möhler was the pupil of Drey, and they
made Tübingen the seat of a positive theology, broader and more
progressive than that of Munich.
The first eminent thinker whom he saw and heard was Baader, the poorest
of writers, but the most instructive and impressive talker in Germany,
and the one man who appears to have influenced the direction of his
mind. Bishop Martensen has described his amazing powers; and Döllinger,
who remembered him with more scant esteem, bore equal testimony to the
wealth and worth of his religious philosophy. He probably owed to him
his persistent disparagement of Hegel, and more certainly that
familiarity with the abstruse literature of mysticism which made him as
clear and sure of vision in the twilight of Petrucci and St. Martin as
in the congenial company of Duperron. Baader is remembered by those who
abstain from sixteen volumes of discordant thought, as the inventor of
that system of political insurance which became the Holy Alliance. That
authority is as sacred and sovereignty as absolute in the Church as in
the State, was an easy and obvious inference, and it had been lately
drawn with an energy and literary point to which Baader was a stranger,
by the Count de Maistre, who was moreover a student of St. Martin. When
the ancient mystic welcomed his new friend, he was full of the praises
of De Maistre. He impressed upon his earnest listener the importance of
the books on the pope and on the Gallican church, and assured him that
the spirit which animates them is the genuine Catholicism. These
conversations were the origin of Döllinger's specific ultramontanism. It
governed one half of his life, and his interest in De Maistre outlasted
the assent which he once gave to some of his opinions. Questions arising
from the Savoyard's indictment against Bacon, which he proposed to
Liebig, formed the connection between the two laboured attacks on the
founder of English philosophy.
Much of that which at any time was unhistoric or presumptive in his mind
may be ascribed to this influence; and it divided him from Möhler, who
was far before him in the fulness of the enjoyment of his powers and his
fame, whom he survived half a century, and never ceased to venerate as
the finest theological intellect he had known. The publication of the
_Symbolik_ made it difficult for the author to remain in Wirtemberg;
Tübingen, he said, was a place where he could neither live nor die
happy; and having made Döllinger's acquaintance, he conceived an ardent
wish to become his colleague at Munich.
Im Verkehre mit Ihnen, und dem Kreise in dem Sie leben, habe ich mich
aufs anmuthigste erheitert, sittlich gestärkt, und religiös getröstet
und ermuthigt gefunden; ein Verein von Einwirkungen auf mich würde
mir gewährt, deren aller ich in fast gleichein Grade bedürftig war.
Döllinger negotiated his appointment, overcame the resisting ministerial
medium through the intervention of the king, and surrendered his own
department of theology, which they both regarded as the most powerful
agency in religious instruction. Möhler had visited Göttingen and
Berlin, and recognised their superiority. A public address to Planck,
praising the Protestant treatment of history, was omitted by Döllinger
from the edition of his miscellaneous writings. They differed so widely
that one of them hesitated to read Bossuet's _Defensio_, and generally
kept the stronger Gallicans out of sight, whilst the other warmly
recommended Richer, and Launoy, and Dupin, and cautioned his pupils
against Baronius, as a forger and a cheat, who dishonestly attributed to
the primitive Church ideas quite foreign to its constitution. He found
fault with his friend for undue favour to the Jesuits, and undue
severity towards Jansenism. The other advised him to read Fênelon, and
succeeded in modifying this opinion.
Sie werden vielleicht um so geneigter sein, mir zu verzeihen, wenn
ich Ihnen melde, dass ich inzwischen recht fleissig die
Jansenistischen Streitigkeiten, durch Ihre freundliche Zuschrift
angeregt, studirt habe, und Ihrer Darstellung ohne Zweifel jetzt weit
näher stehe als früher. Selbst die Bulle Unigenitus erscheint mir in
einem weit günstigeren Lichte als früher, obschon ich die Censur
mancher Quesnel'scher Sätze immer noch nicht begreifen kann. Sie
schrieben mir, dass die Fénelon'sche Correspondenz einen grossen
Einfluss auf Ihre Betrachtungsweise ausgeübt habe. Auch bei mir ist
dieses der Fall.
But in describing the failure of scholastic theology, the exaggeration
of De Maistre, the incompetence of the Roman censorship, the irreligion
of Leo X., and the strength of Luther's case against the Papacy, the
sensitive Suabian made a contrast, then, and long after, with
Döllinger's disciplined coolness and reserve.
Dann war wirklich die bestehende Form der Kirche im höchsten Grade
tadelhaft, und bedurfte der Reinigung. Die Päpste waren Despoten,
willkührliche Herrscher geworden. Gebräuche hatten sich angehäuft,
die im höchsten Grade dem Glauben und der christlichen Frömmigkeit
entgegen waren. In vielen Punkten hatte Luther immer Recht, wenn er
von Missbräuchen der Römischen Gewalt spricht, dass dort alles feil
sei.--Tetzel verfuhr ohnediess auf die empörendste Weise, und
übertrieb, mit einer religiösen Rohheit und einem Stumpfsinn ohne
Gleichen, das Bedenkliche der Sache auf die äusserste Spitze.
The disagreement which made itself felt from time to time between the
famous colleagues was not removed when one of them wished the other to
change his confessor before his last illness.
Möhler claimed the supreme chair of ecclesiastical history as a matter
of course, and by right of seniority. He apologised for venturing to
supersede one who had gained distinction in that lecture-room, but he
hinted that he himself was the least fit of the two for dogmatics.
Ich habe mich für die historischen Fächer entschieden. Ihr Opfer,
wenn Sie Dogmatik lesen, anerkenne ich, aber ich bitte das meinige
nicht zu übersehen. Welcher Entschluss, ich möchte sagen, welche
Unverschämtheit ist es, nach Ihnen und bei Ihren Lebzeiten,
Kirchengeschichte in München zu doziren?
Döllinger took that branch for the time, but he never afterwards taught
theology proper. As Möhler, who was essentially a theologian, deserted
divinity to compose inferior treatises on the gnostics and the false
decretals, Döllinger, by choice and vocation a divine, having religion
as the purpose of his life, judged that the loftier function, the more
spiritual service, was historical teaching. The problem is to know how
it came to pass that a man who was eminently intelligent and perspicuous
in the exposition of doctrines, but who, in narrative, description, and
knowledge of character, was neither first nor second, resolved that his
mission was history.
In early life he had picked up chance copies of Baronius and Petavius,
the pillars of historic theology; but the motives of his choice lay
deeper. Church history had long been the weakest point and the cause of
weakness among the Catholics, and it was the rising strength of the
German Protestants. Therefore it was the post of danger; and it gave to
a theologian the command of a public of laymen. The restoration of
history coincided with the euthanasia of metaphysic; when the foremost
philosophic genius of the time led over to the historic treatment both
of philosophy and religion, and Hamilton, Cousin, Comte, severally
converted the science into its history. Many men better equipped for
speculation than for erudition went the same way; the systematic
theology was kept up in the universities by the influence of Rome, where
scholasticism went on untouched by the romantic transformation. Writing
of England, Wiseman said: "There is still a scholastic hardness in our
controversial theology, an unbendingness of outward forms in our
explanations of Catholic principles, which renders our theologians dry
and unattractive to the most catholicly inclined portion of our
Protestants." The choice which these youths made, towards 1830, was,
though they did not know it, the beginning of a rift that widened.
Döllinger was more in earnest than others in regarding Christianity as
history, and in pressing the affinity between catholic and historical
thought. Systems were to him nearly as codes to Savigny, when he
exhorted his contemporaries not to consolidate their law, lest, with
their wisdom and knowledge, they should incorporate their delusions and
their ignorance, and usurp for the state what belonged to the nation. He
would send an inquiring student to the _Historia Congregationis de
Auxiliis_ and the _Historia Pelagiana_ rather than to Molina or Lemos,
and often gave the advice which, coming from Oriel, disconcerted Morris
of Exeter: "I am afraid you will have to read the Jesuit Petavius." He
dreaded the predominance of great names which stop the way, and
everything that interposes the notions of an epoch, a region, or a
school between the Church and the observer.
To an Innsbruck professor, lamenting that there was no philosophy which
he could heartily adopt, he replied that philosophies do not subsist in
order to be adopted. A Thomist or a Cartesian seemed to him as a
captive, or a one-armed combatant. Prizing metaphysicians for the
unstrung pearls which they drop beyond the seclusion of system, he loved
the _disjecta membra_ of Coleridge, and preferred the _Pensieri_, and
_Parerga und Paralipomena_ to the constructed work of Gioberti and
Schopenhauer. He knew Leibniz chiefly in his letters, and was
perceptibly affected by his law of continuous progression, his general
optimism, and his eclectic art of extracting from men and books only the
good that is in them; but of monadology or pre-established harmony there
was not a trace. His colleague, Schelling, no friend to the friends of
Baader, stood aloof. The elder Windischmann, whom he particularly
esteemed, and who acted in Germany as the interpreter of De Maistre, had
hailed Hegel as a pioneer of sound philosophy, with whom he agreed both
in thought and word. Döllinger had no such condescension. Hegel
remained, in his _eyes_, the strongest of all the enemies of religion,
the guide of Tübingen in its aberrations, the reasoner whose abstract
dialectics made a generation of clever men incapable of facing facts. He
went on preferring former historians of dogma, who were untainted by the
trail of pantheism, Baumgarten-Crusius, and even Muenscher, and by no
means admitted that Baur was deeper than the early Jesuits and
Oratorians, or gained more than he lost by constriction in the Hegelian
coil. He took pleasure in pointing out that the best recent book on the
penitential system, Kliefoth's fourth volume, owed its substance to
Morinus. The dogmas of pantheistic history offended him too much to give
them deep study, and he was ill prepared with counsel for a wanderer
lost in the pervading haze. Hegelians said of him that he lacked the
constructive unity of idea, and knew the way from effect to cause, but
not from cause to law.
His own lectures on the philosophy of religion, which have left no deep
furrow, have been praised by Ketteler, who was not an undiscriminating
admirer. He sent on one of his pupils to Rosmini, and set another to
begin metaphysics with Suarez; and when Lady Ashburton consulted him on
the subject, he advised her to read Norris and Malebranche. He
encouraged the study of remoter luminaries, such as Cusa and Raymundus,
whose _Natural Theology_ he preferred to the _Analogy_; and would not
have men overlook some who are off the line, like Postel. But although
he deemed it the mark of inferiority to neglect a grain of the gold of
obsolete and eccentric writers, he always assigned to original
speculation a subordinate place, as a good servant but a bad master,
without the certainty and authority of history. What one of his English
friends writes of a divine they both admired, might fitly be applied to
him:
He was a disciple in the school of Bishop Butler, and had learned as
a first principle to recognise the limitations of human knowledge,
and the unphilosophical folly of trying to round off into finished
and pretentious schemes our fragmentary yet certain notices of our
own condition and of God's dealing with it.
He alarmed Archer Gurney by saying that all hope of an understanding is
at an end, if logic be applied for the rectification of dogma, and to
Dr. Plummer, who acknowledged him as the most capable of modern
theologians and historians, he spoke of the hopelessness of trying to
discover the meaning of terms used in definitions. To his archbishop he
wrote that men may discuss the mysteries of faith to the last day
without avail; "we stand here on the solid ground of history, evidence,
and fact." Expressing his innermost thought, that religion exists to
make men better, and that the ethical quality of dogma constitutes its
value, he once said: "Tantum valet quantum ad corrigendum, purgandum,
sanctificandum hominem confert." In theology as an intellectual
exercise, beyond its action on the soul, he felt less interest, and
those disputes most satisfied him which can be decided by appeal to the
historian.
From his early reputation and his position at the outpost, confronting
Protestant science, he was expected to make up his mind over a large
area of unsettled thought and disputed fact, and to be provided with an
opinion--a freehold opinion of his own--and a reasoned answer to every
difficulty. People had a right to know what he knew about the end of the
sixteenth chapter of St. Mark, and the beginning of the eighth chapter
of St. John, the lives of St. Patrick and the sources of Erigena, the
author of the _Imitation_ and of the _Twelve Articles_, the _Nag's Head_
and the _Casket Letters_. The suspense and poise of the mind, which is
the pride and privilege of the unprofessional scholar, was forbidden
him. Students could not wait for the master to complete his studies;
they flocked for dry light of knowledge, for something defined and
final, to their keen, grave, unemotional professor, who said sometimes
more than he could be sure of, but who was not likely to abridge thought
by oracular responses, or to give aphorism for argument. He accepted the
necessity of the situation. A time came when everybody was invited, once
a week, to put any imaginable question from the whole of Church history,
and he at once replied. If this was a stimulus to exertion during the
years spent in mastering and pondering the immense materials, it served
less to promote originality and care than premature certitude and the
craving for quick returns. Apart from the constant duty of teaching, his
knowledge might not have been so extensive, but his views would have
been less decided and therefore less liable to change.
As an historian, Döllinger regarded Christianity as a force more than as
a doctrine, and displayed it as it expanded and became the soul of later
history. It was the mission and occupation of his life to discover and
to disclose how this was accomplished, and to understand the history of
civilised Europe, religious and profane, mental and political, by the
aid of sources which, being original and authentic, yielded certainty.
In his vigorous prime, he thought that it would be within his powers to
complete the narrative of the conquest of the world by Christ in a
single massive work. The separated churches, the centrifugal forces,
were to have been treated apart, until he adopted the ampler title of a
history of Christianity. We who look back upon all that the combined and
divided labour of a thousand earnest, gifted, and often instructed men
has done and left undone in sixty years, can estimate the scientific
level of an age where such a dream could be dreamed by such a man,
misled neither by imagination nor ambition, but knowing his own
limitations and the immeasurable world of books. Experience slowly
taught him that he who takes all history for his province is not the man
to write a compendium.
The four volumes of _Church History_ which gave him a name in literature
appeared between 1833 and 1838, and stopped short of the Reformation. In
writing mainly for the horizon of seminaries, it was desirable to eschew
voyages of discovery and the pathless border-land. The materials were
all in print, and were the daily bread of scholars. A celebrated
Anglican described Döllinger at that time as more intentional than
Fleury; while Catholics objected that he was a candid friend; and
Lutherans, probing deeper, observed that he resolutely held his ground
wherever he could, and as resolutely abandoned every position that he
found untenable. He has since said of himself that he always spoke
sincerely, but that he spoke as an advocate--a sincere advocate who
pleaded only for a cause which he had convinced himself was just. The
cause he pleaded was the divine government of the Church, the fulfilment
of the promise that it would be preserved from error, though not from
sin, the uninterrupted employment of the powers committed by Christ for
the salvation of man. By the absence of false arts he acquired that
repute for superior integrity which caused a Tyrolese divine to speak of
him as the most chivalrous of the Catholic celebrities; and the nuncio
who was at Munich during the first ten years called him the "professeur
le plus éclaire, le plus religieux, en un mot le plus distingué de
l'université."
Taking his survey from the elevation of general history, he gives less
space to all the early heresies together than to the rise of
Mohammedanism. His way lies between Neander, who cares for no
institutions, and Baur, who cares for no individuals. He was entirely
exempt from that impersonal idealism which Sybel laid down at the
foundation of his review, which causes Delbrück to complain that
Macaulay, who could see facts so well, could not see that they are
revelations, which Baur defines without disguise in his
_Dreieinigkeitslehre_: "Alle geschichtlichen Personen sind für uns
blosse Namen." The two posthumous works of Hegel which turned events
into theories had not then appeared. Döllinger, setting life and action
above theory, omitted the progress of doctrine. He proposed that Möhler
should take that share of their common topic, and the plan, entertained
at first, was interrupted, with much besides, by death. He felt too
deeply the overwhelming unity of force to yield to that atomic theory
which was provoked by the Hegelian excess: "L'histoire n'est pas un
simple jeu d'abstractions, et les hommes y sont plus que les doctrines.
Ce n'est pas une certaine théorie sur la justification et la rédemption
qui a fait la Réforme: c'est Luther, c'est Calvin." But he allows a vast
scope to the variable will and character of man. The object of religion
upon earth is saintliness, and its success is shown in holy individuals.
He leaves law and doctrine, moving in their appointed orbits, to hold up
great men and examples of Christian virtue.
Döllinger, who had in youth acted as secretary to Hohenlohe, was always
reserved in his use of the supernatural. In the vision of Constantine
and the rebuilding of the temple, he gives his reader both the natural
explanation and the miraculous. He thought that the witness of the
fathers to the continuance of miraculous powers could not be resisted
without making history _a priori_, but later on, the more he sifted and
compared authorities, the more severe he became. He deplored the
uncritical credulity of the author of the _Monks of the West_; and, in
examining the Stigmata, he cited the experience of a Spanish convent
where they were so common that it became a sign of reprobation to be
without them. Historians, he said, have to look for natural causes:
enough will remain for the action of Providence, where we cannot
penetrate. In his unfinished book on _Ecclesiastical Prophecy_ he
enumerates the illusions of mediæval saints when they spoke of the
future, and describes them, as he once described Carlyle and Ruskin, as
prophets having nothing to foretell. At Frankfort, where he spoilt his
watch by depositing it in unexpected holy water, and it was whispered
that he had put it there to mend it, everybody knew that there was
hardly a Catholic in the Parliament of whom such a fable could be told
with more felicitous unfitness.
For twenty years of his life at Munich, Görres was the impressive
central figure of a group reputed far and wide, the most intellectual
force in the Catholic world. Seeing things by the light of other days,
Nippold and Maurenbrecher describe Döllinger himself as its most eminent
member. There was present gain and future peril in living amongst a
clever but restricted set, sheltered, supported, and restrained by
friends who were united in aims and studies, who cherished their
sympathies and their enmities in common, and who therefore believed that
they were divided by no deep cleft or ultimate principle. Döllinger
never outlived the glamour of the eloquence and ascendancy of Görres,
and spoke of him long after his death as a man of real knowledge, and of
greater religious than political insight Between the imaginative
rhetorician and the measured, scrutinising scholar, the contrast was
wide. One of the many pupils and rare disciples of the former complained
that his friend supplied interminable matter for the sterile and
unavailing _Mystik_, in order to amuse him with ropes of sand: and the
severest censure of Döllinger's art as an historian was pronounced by
Görres when he said, "I always see analogies, and you always see
differences."
At all times, but in his early studies especially, he owed much to the
Italians, whose ecclesiastical literature was the first that he
mastered, and predominates in his Church history. Several of his
countrymen, such as Savigny and Raumer, had composed history on the
shoulders of Bolognese and Lombard scholars, and some of their most
conspicuous successors to the present day have lived under heavy
obligations to Modena and San Marino. During the tranquil century
before the Revolution, Italians studied the history of their country
with diligence and success. Even such places as Parma, Verona, Brescia,
became centres of obscure but faithful work. Osimo possessed annals as
bulky as Rome. The story of the province of Treviso was told in twenty
volumes. The antiquities of Picenum filled thirty-two folios. The best
of all this national and municipal patriotism was given to the service
of religion. Popes and cardinals, dioceses and parish churches became
the theme of untiring enthusiasts. There too were the stupendous records
of the religious orders, their bulls and charters, their biography and
their bibliography. In this immense world of patient, accurate, devoted
research, Döllinger laid the deep foundations of his historical
knowledge. Beginning like everybody with Baronius and Muratori, he gave
a large portion of his life to Noris, and to the solid and enlightened
scholarship that surrounded Benedict XIV., down to the compilers,
Borgia, Fantuzzi, Marini, with whom, in the evil days of regeneration by
the French, the grand tradition died away. He has put on record his
judgment that Orsi and Saccarelli were the best writers on the general
history of the Church. Afterwards, when other layers had been
superposed, and the course he took was his own, he relied much on the
canonists, Ballerini and Berardi; and he commended Bianchi, De
Bennettis, and the author of the anonymous _Confutazione_, as the
strongest Roman antidote to Blondel, Buckeridge, and Barrow. Italy
possessed the largest extant body of Catholic learning; the whole sphere
of Church government was within its range, and it enjoyed something of
the official prerogative.
Next to the Italians he gave systematic attention to the French. The
conspicuous Gallicans, the Jansenists, from whom at last he derived much
support, Richer, Van Espen, Launoy, whom he regarded as the original of
Bossuet, Arnauld, whom he thought his superior, are absent from his
pages. He never overcame his distrust of Pascal, for his methodical
scepticism and his endeavour to dissociate religion from learning; and
he rated high Daniel's reply to the _Provinciales_. He esteemed still
more the French Protestants of the seventeenth century, who transformed
the system of Geneva and Dort. English theology did not come much in his
way until he had made himself at home with the Italians and the primary
French. Then it abounded. He gathered it in quantities on two journeys
in 1851 and 1858, and he possessed the English divines in perfection, at
least down to Whitby, and the nonjurors. Early acquaintance with Sir
Edward Vavasour and Lord Clifford had planted a lasting prejudice in
favour of the English Catholic families, which sometimes tinged his
judgments. The neglected literature of the Catholics in England held a
place in his scheme of thought, which it never obtained in the eyes of
any other scholar, native or foreign. This was the only considerable
school of divines who wrote under persecution, and were reduced to an
attitude of defence. In conflict with the most learned, intelligent, and
conciliatory of controversialists, they developed a remarkable spirit of
moderation, discriminating inferior elements from the original and
genuine growth of Catholic roots; and their several declarations and
manifestoes, from the Restoration onwards, were an inexhaustible supply
for irenics. Therefore they powerfully attracted one who took the words
of St Vincent of Lérins not merely for a flash of illumination, but for
a scientific formula and guiding principle. Few writers interested him
more deeply than Stapleton, Davenport, who anticipated Number XC.,
Irishmen, such as Caron and Walshe, and the Scots, Barclay, the
adversary and friend of Bellarmine, Ramsay, the convert and recorder of
Fénelon. It may be that, to an intellect trained in the historic
process, stability, continuity, and growth were terms of more vivid and
exact significance than to the doctors of Pont-à-Mousson and Lambspring.
But when he came forward arrayed in the spoils of Italian libraries and
German universities, with the erudition of centuries and the criticism
of to-day, he sometimes was content to follow where forgotten
Benedictines or Franciscans had preceded, under the later Stuarts.
He seldom quotes contemporary Germans, unless to dispute with them,
prefers old books to new, and speaks of the necessary revision and
renovation of history. He suspected imported views and foregone
conclusions even in Neander; and although he could not say, with
Macaulay, that Gieseler was a rascal, of whom he had never heard, he
missed no opportunity of showing his dislike for that accomplished
artificer in mosaic. Looking at the literature before him, at England,
with Gibbon for its one ecclesiastical historian; at Germany, with the
most profound of its divines expecting the Church to merge in the State,
he inferred that its historic and organic unity would only be recognised
by Catholic science, while the soundest Protestant would understand it
least. In later years, Kliefoth, Ritschl, Gass, perhaps also Dorner and
Uhlhorn, obliged him to modify an opinion which the entire school of
Schleiermacher, including the illustrious Rothe, served only to confirm.
Germany, as he found it when he began to see the world, little resembled
that of his old age, when the work he had pursued for seventy years was
carried forward, with knowledge and power like his own, by the best of
his countrymen. The proportion of things was changed. There was a
religious literature to be proud of, to rely on: other nations, other
epochs, had lost their superiority. As his own people advanced, and
dominated in the branches of learning to which his life was given, in
everything except literary history and epigraphies, and there was no
more need to look abroad, Döllinger's cosmopolitan characteristic
diminished, he was more absorbed in the national thought and work, and
did not object to be called the most German of the Germans.
The idea that religious science is not so much science as religion, that
it should be treated differently from other matters, so that he who
treats it may rightly display his soul, flourished in his vicinity,
inspiring the lives of Saint Elizabeth and Joan of Arc, Möhler's fine
lectures on the early fathers, and the book which Gratry chose to
entitle a _Commentary on St. Matthew_. Döllinger came early to the
belief that history ought to be impersonal, that the historian does
well to keep out of the way, to be humble and self-denying, making it a
religious duty to prevent the intrusion of all that betrays his own
position and quality, his hopes and wishes. Without aspiring to the calm
indifference of Ranke, he was conscious that, in early life, he had been
too positive, and too eager to persuade. The Belgian scholar who,
conversing with him in 1842, was reminded of Fénelon, missed the acuter
angles of his character. He, who in private intercourse sometimes
allowed himself to persist, to contradict, and even to baffle a bore by
frankly falling asleep, would have declined the evocation of Versailles.
But in reasonableness, moderation, and charity, in general culture of
mind and the sense of the demands of the progress of civilisation, in
the ideal church for which he lived, he was more in harmony with Fénelon
than with many others who resembled him in the character of their work.
He deemed it catholic to take ideas from history, and heresy to take
them into it. When men gave evidence for the opposite party, and against
their own, he willingly took for impartiality what he could not always
distinguish from indifference or subdivision. He felt that sincere
history was the royal road to religious union, and he specially
cultivated those who saw both sides. He would cite with complacency what
clever Jesuits, Raynaud and Faure, said for the Reformation, Mariana and
Cordara against their society. When a Rhenish Catholic and a Genevese
Calvinist drew two portraits of Calvin which were virtually the same, or
when, in Ficker's revision of Böhmer, the Catholic defended the Emperor
Frederic II. against the Protestant, he rejoiced as over a sign of the
advent of science. As the Middle Ages, rescued from polemics by the
genial and uncritical sympathy of Müller, became an object of popular
study, and Royer Collard said of Villemain, _Il a fait, il fait, et il
fera toujours son Grégoire VII._, there were Catholics who desired, by a
prolonged _sorites_, to derive advantage from the new spirit. Wiseman
consulted Döllinger for the purpose. "Will you be kind enough to write
me a list of what you consider the best books for the history of the
Reformation; Menzel and Buchholz I know; especially any exposing the
characters of the leading reformers?" In the same frame of mind he asked
him what pope there was whose good name had not been vindicated; and
Döllinger's reply, that Boniface VIII. wanted a friend, prompted both
Wiseman's article and Tosti's book.
In politics, as in religion, he made the past a law for the present, and
resisted doctrines which are ready-made, and are not derived from
experience. Consequently, he undervalued work which would never have
been done from disinterested motives; and there were three of his most
eminent contemporaries whom he decidedly underestimated. Having known
Thiers, and heard him speak, he felt profoundly the talent of the
extraordinary man, before Lanfrey or Taine, Häusser and Bernhardt had so
ruined his credit among Germans that Döllinger, disgusted by his
advocacy, whether of the Revolution, of Napoleon, or of France,
neglected his work. Stahl claims to be accounted an historian by his
incomparably able book on the Church government of the Reformation. As a
professor at Munich, and afterwards as a parliamentary leader at Berlin,
he was always an avowed partisan. Döllinger depreciated him accordingly,
and he had the mortification that certain remarks on the sovereign
dialectician of European conservatism were on the point of appearing
when he died. He so far made it good in his preface that the thing was
forgotten when Gerlach came to see the assailant of his friend. But
once, when I spoke of Stahl as the greatest man born of a Jewish mother
since Titus, he thought me unjust to Disraeli.
Most of all, he misjudged Macaulay, whose German admirers are not always
in the higher ranks of literature, and of whom Ranke even said that he
could hardly be called an historian at all, tried by the stricter test.
He had no doubt seen how his unsuggestive fixity and assurance could
cramp and close a mind; and he felt more beholden to the rivals who
produced d'Adda, Barillon, and Bonnet, than to the author of so many
pictures and so much bootless decoration. He tendered a course of
Bacon's Essays, or of Butler's and Newman's Sermons, as a preservative
against intemperate dogmatism. He denounced Macaulay's indifference to
the merits of the inferior cause, and desired more generous treatment of
the Jacobites and the French king. He deemed it hard that a science
happily delivered from the toils of religious passion should be involved
in political, and made to pass from the sacristy to the lobby, by the
most brilliant example in literature. To the objection that one who
celebrates the victory of parliaments over monarchs, of democracy over
aristocracy, of liberty over authority, declares, not the tenets of a
party, but manifest destiny and the irrevocable decree, he would reply
that a narrow induction is the bane of philosophy, that the ways of
Providence are not inscribed on the surface of things, that religion,
socialism, militarism, and revolution possibly reserve a store of cogent
surprises for the economist, utilitarian, and whig.
In 1865 he was invited to prepare a new edition of his Church history.
Whilst he was mustering the close ranks of folios which had satisfied a
century of historians, the world had moved, and there was an increase of
raw material to be measured by thousands of volumes. The archives which
had been sealed with seven seals had become as necessary to the serious
student as his library. Every part of his studies had suffered
transformation, except the fathers, who had largely escaped the
crucible, and the canon law, which had only just been caught by the
historical current. He had begun when Niebuhr was lecturing at Bonn and
Hegel at Berlin; before Tischendorf unfolded his first manuscript;
before Baur discovered the Tübingen hypothesis in the congregation of
Corinth; before Rothe had planned his treatise on the primitive church,
or Ranke had begun to pluck the plums for his modern popes. Guizot had
not founded the _École des Chartes_, and the school of method was not
yet opened at Berlin. The application of instruments of precision was
just beginning, and what Prynne calls the heroic study of records had
scarcely molested the ancient reign of lives and chronicles. None had
worked harder at his science and at himself than Döllinger; and the
change around him was not greater than the change within. In his early
career as a teacher of religion he had often shrunk from books which
bore no stamp of orthodoxy. It was long before he read Sarpi or the
_Lettres Provinciales_, or even Ranke's _Popes_, which appeared when he
was thirty-five, and which astonished him by the serene ease with which
a man who knew so much touched on such delicate ground. The book which
he had written in that state of mind, and with that conception of
science and religion, had only a prehistoric interest for its author. He
refused to reprint it, and declared that there was hardly a sentence fit
to stand unchanged. He lamented that he had lost ten years of life in
getting his bearings, and in learning, unaided, the most difficult craft
in the world. Those years of apprenticeship without a master were the
time spent on his _Kirchengeschichte_. The want of training remained. He
could impart knowledge better than the art of learning. Thousands of his
pupils have acquired connected views of religion passing through the
ages, and gathered, if they were intelligent, some notion of the meaning
of history; but nobody ever learnt from him the mechanism by which it is
written.
Brougham advised the law-student to begin with Dante; and a
distinguished physician informs us that Gibbon, Grote, and Mill made him
what he is. The men to whom Döllinger owed his historic insight and who
mainly helped to develop and strengthen and direct his special faculty,
were not all of his own cast, or remarkable in the common description of
literary talent. The assistants were countless, but the masters were
few, and he looked up with extraordinary gratitude to men like Sigonius,
Antonius Augustinus, Blondel, Petavius, Leibniz, Burke, and Niebuhr, who
had opened the passes for him as he struggled and groped in the
illimitable forest.
He interrupted his work because he found the materials too scanty for
the later Middle Ages, and too copious for the Reformation. The
defective account of the Albigensian theology, which he had sent to one
of his translators, never appeared in German. At Paris he searched the
library for the missing information, and he asked Rességuier to make
inquiry for the records of the Inquisition in Languedoc, thus laying the
foundations of that _Sektengeschichte_ which he published fifty years
later. Munich offered such inexhaustible supplies for the Reformation
that his collections overran all bounds. He completed only that part of
his plan which included Lutheranism and the sixteenth century. The third
volume, published in 1848, containing the theology of the Reformation,
is the most solid of his writings. He had miscalculated, not his
resources, of which only a part had come into action, but the
possibilities of concentration and compression. The book was left a
fragment when he had to abandon his study for the Frankfort barricades.
The peculiarity of his treatment is that he contracts the Reformation
into a history of the doctrine of justification. He found that this and
this alone was the essential point in Luther's mind, that he made it the
basis of his argument, the motive of his separation, the root and
principle of his religion. He believed that Luther was right in the
cardinal importance he attributed to this doctrine in his system, and he
in his turn recognised that it was the cause of all that followed, the
source of the reformer's popularity and success, the sole insurmountable
obstacle to every scheme of restoration. It was also, for him, the
centre and the basis of his antagonism. That was the point that he
attacked when he combated Protestantism, and he held all other elements
of conflict cheap in comparison, deeming that they are not invariable,
or not incurable, or not supremely serious. Apart from this, there was
much in Protestantism that he admired, much in its effects for which he
was grateful. With the Lutheran view of imputation, Protestant and
Catholic were separated by an abyss. Without it, there was no lasting
reason why they should be separate at all. Against the communities that
hold it he stood in order of battle, and believed that he could scarcely
hit too hard. But he distinguished very broadly the religion of the
reformers from the religion of Protestants. Theological science had
moved away from the symbolical books, the root dogma had been repudiated
and contested by the most eminent Protestants, and it was an English
bishop who wrote: "Fuit haec doctrina jam a multis annis ipsissimum
Reformatae Ecclesiae opprobrium ac dedecus.--Est error non levis, error
putidissimus." Since so many of the best writers resist or modify that
which was the main cause, the sole ultimate cause, of disunion, it
cannot be logically impossible to discover a reasonable basis for
discussion. Therefore conciliation was always in his thoughts; even his
_Reformation_ was a treatise on the conditions of reunion. He long
purposed to continue it, in narrower limits, as a history of that
central doctrine by which Luther meant his church to stand or fall, of
the reaction against it, and of its decline. In 1881, when Ritschl, the
author of the chief work upon the subject, spent some days with
Döllinger, he found him still full of these ideas, and possessing Luther
at his fingers' ends.
This is the reason why Protestants have found him so earnest an opponent
and so warm a friend. It was this that attracted him towards Anglicans,
and made very many of them admire a Roman dignitary who knew the
Anglo-Catholic library better than De Lugo or Ripalda. In the same
spirit he said to Pusey: "Tales cum sitis jam nostri estis," always
spoke of Newman's _Justification_ as the greatest masterpiece of
theology that England has produced in a hundred years, and described
Baxter and Wesley as the most eminent of English Protestants--meaning
Wesley as he was after 1st December 1767, and Baxter as the life-long
opponent of that theory which was the source and the soul of the
Reformation. Several Englishmen who went to consult him--Hope Scott and
Archdeacon Wilberforce--became Catholics. I know not whether he urged
them. Others there were, whom he did not urge, though his influence over
them might have been decisive. In a later letter to Pusey he wrote: "I
am convinced by reading your _Eirenicon_ that we are united inwardly in
our religious convictions, although externally we belong to two
separated churches." He followed attentively the parallel movements that
went on in his own country, and welcomed with serious respect the
overtures which came to him, after 1856, from eminent historians. When
they were old men, he and Ranke, whom, in hot youth, there was much to
part, lived on terms of mutual goodwill. Döllinger had pronounced the
theology of the _Deutsche Reformation_ slack and trivial, and Ranke at
one moment was offended by what he took for an attack on the popes, his
patrimony. In 1865, after a visit to Munich, he allowed that in religion
there was no dispute between them, that he had no fault to find with the
Church as Döllinger understood it. He added that one of his colleagues,
a divine whose learning filled him with unwonted awe, held the same
opinion. Döllinger's growing belief that an approximation of part of
Germany to sentiments of conciliation was only a question of time, had
much to do with his attitude in Church questions after the year 1860. If
history cannot confer faith or virtue, it can clear away the
misconceptions and misunderstandings that turn men against one another.
With the progress of incessant study and meditation his judgment on many
points underwent revision; but with regard to the Reformation the change
was less than he supposed. He learnt to think more favourably of the
religious influence of Protestantism, and of its efficacy in the defence
of Christianity; but he thought as before of the spiritual consequences
of Lutheranism proper. When people said of Luther that he does not come
well out of his matrimonial advice to certain potentates, to Henry and
to Philip, of his exhortations to exterminate the revolted peasantry, of
his passage from a confessor of toleration to a teacher of intolerance,
he would not have the most powerful conductor of religion that
Christianity has produced in eighteen centuries condemned for two pages
in a hundred volumes. But when he had refused the test of the weakest
link, judging the man by his totals, he was not less severe on his
theological ethics.
Meinerseits habe ich noch eine andre schwere Anklage gegen ihn zu
erheben, nämlich die, dass er durch seine falsche Imputationslehre
das sittlich-religiöse Bewusstseyn der Menschen auf zwei Jahrhunderte
hinaus verwirrt und corrumpirt hat (3rd July 1888).
The revolution of 1848, during which he did not hold his professorship,
brought him forward uncongenially in active public life, and gave him
the means of telling the world his view of the constitution and policy
of the Church, and the sense and limits of liability in which he gave
his advocacy. When lecturing on canon law he was accustomed to dwell on
the strict limit of all ecclesiastical authority, admitting none but
spiritual powers, and invoking the maxims of pontiffs who professed
themselves guardians, not masters, of the established legislation--"Canones
ecclesiae solvere non possumus, qui custodes canonum sumus." Acting on
these principles, in the Paulskirche, and at Ratisbon, he vindicated Rome
against the reproach of oppression, argued that society can only gain by
the emancipation of the Church, as it claims no superiority over the State,
and that both Gallicans and Jesuits are out of date. Addressing the
bishops of Germany in secret session at Würzburg, he exhorted them to
avail themselves fully of an order of things which was better than the old,
and to make no professions of unconditional allegiance. He told them that
freedom is the breath of the Catholic life, that it belongs to the Church
of God by right divine, and that whatever they claimed must be claimed for
others.
From these discourses, in which the scholar abandoned the details by
which science advances for the general principles of the popular orator,
the deductions of liberalism proceed as surely as the revolution from
the title-page of Sieyès. It should seem that the key to his career lies
there. It was natural to associate him with the men whom the early
promise of a reforming pope inspired to identify the cause of free
societies with the papacy which had Rosmini for an adviser, Ventura for
a preacher, Gioberti for a prophet, and to conclude that he thus became
a trusted representative, until the revolving years found him the
champion of a vanished cause, and the Syllabus exposed the illusion and
bore away his ideal. Harless once said of him that no good could be
expected from a man surrounded by a ring of liberals. When Döllinger
made persecution answer both for the decline of Spain and the fall of
Poland, he appeared to deliver the common creed of Whigs; and he did not
protest against the American who called him the acknowledged head of the
liberal Catholics. His hopefulness in the midst of the movement of 1848,
his ready acquiescence in the fall of ancient powers and institutions,
his trust in Rome, and in the abstract rights of Germans, suggested a
reminiscence of the _Avenir_ in 1830.
Lamennais, returning with Montalembert after his appeal to Rome, met
Lacordaire at Munich, and during a banquet given in their honour he
learnt, privately, that he was condemned. The three friends spent that
afternoon in Döllinger's company; and it was after he had left them that
Lamennais produced the encyclical and said: _Dieu a parlé_. Montalembert
soon returned, attracted as much by Munich art as by religion or
literature. The fame of the Bavarian school of Catholic thought spread
in France among those who belonged to the wider circles of the _Avenir_;
and priests and laymen followed, as to a scientific shrine. In the
_Memoires d'un Royaliste_ Falloux has preserved, with local colour, the
spirit of that pilgrimage:
Munich lui fut indiqué comme le foyer d'une grande rénovation
religieuse et artistique. Quels nobles et ardents entretiens, quelle
passion pour l'Eglise et pour sa cause! Rien n'a plus ressemblé aux
discours d'un portique chrétien que les apologies enflammeés du vieux
Görres, les savantes déductions de Döllinger, la verve originale de
Brentano.
Rio, who was the earliest of the travellers, describes Döllinger as he
found him in 1830:
Par un privilège dont il serait difficile de citer un autre exemple,
il avait la passion des études théologiques comme s'il n'avait été
que prêtre, et la passion des études littéraires appliquées aux
auteurs anciens et modernes comme s'il n'avait été que littérateur; à
quoi il faut ajouter un autre don qu'il y aurait ingratitude à
oublier, celui d'une exposition lucide, patiente et presque
affectueuse, comme s'il n'avait accumulé tant de connaissances que
pour avoir le plaisir de les communiquer.
For forty years he remained in correspondence with many of these early
friends, who, in the educational struggle which ended with the ministry
of Falloux in 1850, revived the leading maxims of the rejected master.
As Lacordaire said, on his deathbed: "La parole de l'Avenir avait germé
de son tombeau comme une cendre féconde." Döllinger used to visit his
former visitors in various parts of France, and at Paris he attended the
salon of Madame Swetchine. One day, at the seminary, he inquired who
were the most promising students; Dupanloup pointed out a youth, who was
the hope of the Church, and whose name was Ernest Renan.
Although the men who were drawn to him in this way formed the largest
and best-defined cluster with which he came in contact, there was more
private friendship than mutual action or consultation between them. The
unimpassioned German, who had no taste for ideas released from
controlling fact, took little pleasure in the impetuous declamation of
the Breton, and afterwards pronounced him inferior to Loyson. Neither of
the men who were in the confidence of both has intimated that he made
any lasting impression on Lamennais, who took leave of him without
discussing the action of Rome. Döllinger never sought to renew
acquaintance with Lacordaire, when he had become the most important man
in the church of France. He would have a prejudice to overcome against
him whom Circourt called the most ignorant man in the Academy, who
believed that Erasmus ended his days at Rotterdam, unable to choose
between Rome and Wittemberg, and that the Irish obtained through
O'Connell the right to worship in their own way. He saw more of
Dupanloup, without feeling, as deeply as Renan, the rare charm of the
combative prelate. To an exacting and reflective scholar, to whom even
the large volume of heavy erudition in which Rosmini defended the
_Cinque Piaghe_ seemed superficial, there was incongruity in the
attention paid to one of whom he heard that he promoted the council,
that he took St. Boniface for St Wilfrid, and that he gave the memorable
advice: _Surtout méfiez-vous des sources_. After a visit from the Bishop
of Orleans he sat down in dismay to compose the most elementary of his
books. Seeing the inferiority of Falloux as a historian, he never
appreciated the strong will and cool brain of the statesman who overawed
Tocqueville. Eckstein, the obscure but thoughtful originator of much
liberal feeling among his own set, encouraged him in the habit of
depreciating the attainments of the French clergy, which was confirmed
by the writings of the most eminent among them, Darboy, and lasted until
the appearance of Duchesne. The politics of Montalembert were so heavily
charged with conservatism, that in defiance of such advisers as
Lacordaire, Ravignan, and Dupanloup, he pronounced in favour of the
author of the _coup d'état_, saying: "Je suis pour l'autorité contre la
révolte"; and boasted that, in entering the Academy he had attacked the
Revolution, not of '93 but '89, and that Guizot, who received him, had
nothing to say in reply. There were many things, human and divine, on
which they could not feel alike; but as the most urgent, eloquent, and
persevering of his Catholic friends, gifted with knowledge and
experience of affairs, and dwelling in the focus, it may be that on one
critical occasion, when religion and politics intermingled, he
influenced the working of Döllinger's mind. But the plausible reading of
his life which explains it by his connection with such public men as
Montalembert, De Decker, and Mr. Gladstone is profoundly untrue; and
those who deem him a liberal in any scientific use of the term, miss the
keynote of his work.
The political party question has to be considered here, because, in
fact, it is decisive. A liberal who thinks his thought out to the end
without flinching is forced to certain conclusions which colour to the
root every phase and scene of universal history. He believes in upward
progress, because it is only recent times that have striven
deliberately, and with a zeal according to knowledge, for the increase
and security of freedom. He is not only tolerant of error in religion,
but is specially indulgent to the less dogmatic forms of Christianity,
to the sects which have restrained the churches. He is austere in
judging the past, imputing not error and ignorance only, but guilt and
crime, to those who, in the dark succession of ages, have resisted and
retarded the growth of liberty, which he identifies with the cause of
morality, and the condition of the reign of conscience. Döllinger never
subjected his mighty vision of the stream of time to correction
according to the principles of this unsympathising philosophy, never
reconstituted the providential economy in agreement with the Whig
Théodicée. He could understand the Zoroastrian simplicity of history in
black and white, for he wrote: "obgleich man allerdings sagen kann, das
tiefste Thema der Weltgeschichte sei der Kampf der Knechtschaft oder
Gebundenheit, mit der Freiheit, auf dem intellectuellen, religiösen,
politischen und socialen Gebiet." But the scene which lay open before
his mind was one of greater complexity, deeper design, and infinite
intellect. He imagined a way to truth through error, and outside the
Church, not through unbelief and the diminished reign of Christ.
Lacordaire in the cathedral pulpit offering his thanks to Voltaire for
the good gift of religious toleration, was a figure alien to his spirit.
He never substituted politics for religion as the test of progress, and
never admitted that they have anything like the dogmatic certainty and
sovereignty of religious, or of physical, science. He had all the
liberality that consists of common sense, justice, humanity,
enlightenment, the wisdom of Canning or Guizot. But revolution, as the
breach of continuity, as the renunciation of history, was odious to him,
and he not only refused to see method in the madness of Marat, or
dignity in the end of Robespierre, but believed that the best measures
of Leopold, the most intelligent reformer in the era of repentant
monarchy, were vitiated and frustrated by want of adaptation to custom.
Common party divisions represented nothing scientific to his mind; and
he was willing, like De Quincey, to accept them as corresponding halves
of a necessary whole. He wished that he knew half as much as his
neighbour, Mrs. Somerville; but he possessed no natural philosophy, and
never acquired the emancipating habit which comes from a life spent in
securing progress by shutting one's eyes to the past. "Alle Wissenschaft
steht und ruht auf ihrer historischen Entwicklung, sie lebt von ihrer
traditionellen Vergangenheit, wie der Baum von seiner Wurzel."
He was moved, not by the gleam of reform after the conclave of Pius IX.,
but by Pius VII. The impression made upon him by the character of that
pope, and his resistance to Napoleon, had much to do with his resolution
to become a priest. He took orders in the Church in the days of revival,
as it issued from oppression and the eclipse of hierarchy; and he
entered its service in the spirit of Sailer, Cheverus, and Doyle. The
mark of that time never left him. When Newman asked him what he would
say of the Pope's journey to Paris, for the coronation of the emperor,
he hardly recognised the point of the question. He opposed, in 1853, the
renewal of that precedent; but to the end he never felt what people mean
when they remark on the proximity of Notre-Dame to Vincennes.
Döllinger was too much absorbed in distant events to be always a close
observer of what went on near him; and he was, therefore, not so much
influenced by contact with contemporary history as men who were less
entirely at home in other centuries. He knew about all that could be
known of the ninth: in the nineteenth his superiority deserted him.
Though he informed himself assiduously his thoughts were not there. He
collected from Hormayr, Radowitz, Capponi, much secret matter of the
last generation; and where Brewer had told him about Oxford, and
Plantier about Louis Philippe, there were landmarks, as when Knoblecher,
the missionary, set down Krophi and Mophi on his map of Africa. He
deferred, at once, to the competent authority. He consulted his able
colleague Hermann on all points of political economy, and used his
advice when he wrote about England. Having satisfied himself, he would
not reopen these questions, when, after Hermann's death, he spent some
time in the society of Roscher, a not less eminent economist, and of all
men the one who most resembled himself in the historian's faculty of
rethinking the thoughts and realising the knowledge, the ignorance, the
experience, the illusions of a given time.
He had lived in many cities, and had known many important men; he had
sat in three parliamentary assemblies, had drawn constitutional
amendments, had been consulted upon the policy and the making of
ministries, and had declined political office; but as an authority on
recent history he was scarcely equal to himself. Once it became his duty
to sketch the character of a prince whom he had known. There was a
report that this sovereign had only been dissuaded from changing his
religion and abolishing the constitution by the advice of an archbishop
and of a famous parliamentary jurist; and the point of the story was
that the Protestant doctrinaire had prevented the change of religion,
and the archbishop had preserved the constitution. It was too early to
elucidate these court mysteries; instead of which there is a remarkable
conversation about religion, wherein it is not always clear whether the
prince is speaking, or the professor, or Schelling.
Although he had been translated into several languages and was widely
known in his own country, he had not yet built himself a European name.
At Oxford, in 1851, when James Mozley asked whom he would like to see,
he said, the men who had written in the _Christian Remembrancer_ on
Dante and Luther. Mozley was himself one of the two, and he introduced
him to the other at Oriel. After thirty-two years, when the writer on
Dante occupied a high position in the Church and had narrowly escaped
the highest, that visit was returned. But he had no idea that he had
once received Döllinger in his college rooms and hardly believed it when
told. In Germany, the serried learning of the _Reformation_, the
author's energy and decisiveness in public assemblies, caused him to
stand forth as an accepted spokesman, and, for a season, threw back the
reticent explorer, steering between the shallows of anger and affection.
In that stage the _Philosophumena_ found him, and induced him to write a
book of controversy in the shape of history. Here was an anonymous
person who, as Newman described it, "calls one pope a weak and venal
dunce, and another a sacrilegious swindler, an infamous convict, and an
heresiarch _ex cathedrâ_." In the Munich Faculty there was a divine who
affirmed that the Church would never get over it. Döllinger undertook to
vindicate the insulted See of Rome; and he was glad of the opportunity
to strike a blow at three conspicuous men of whom he thought ill in
point both of science and religion. He spoke of Gieseler as the flattest
and most leathern of historians; he accused Baur of frivolity and want
of theological conviction; and he wished that he knew as many
circumlocutions for untruth as there are Arabian synonyms for a camel,
that he might do justice to Bunsen without violation of courtesy. The
weight of the new testimony depended on the discovery of the author.
Adversaries had assigned it to Hippolytus, the foremost European writer
of the time, venerated as a saint and a father of the Church. Döllinger
thought them right, and he justified his sincerity by giving further
reasons for a conclusion which made his task formidable even for such
dexterity as his own. Having thus made a concession which was not
absolutely inevitable, he resisted the inference with such richness of
illustration that the fears of the doubting colleague were appeased. In
France, by Pitra's influence, the book was reviewed without making known
that it supported the authorship of Hippolytus, which is still disputed
by some impartial critics, and was always rejected by Newman.
_Hippolytus und Kallistus_, the high-water mark of Döllinger's official
assent and concurrence, came out in 1853. His next book showed the ebb.
He came originally from the romantic school, where history was
honeycombed with imagination and conjecture; and the first important
book he gave to a pupil in 1850 was Creuzer's _Mythology_. In 1845 he
denounced the rationalism of Lobeck in investigating the _Mysteries_;
but in 1857 he preferred him as a guide to those who proceed by analogy.
With increase of knowledge had come increase of restraining caution and
sagacity. The critical acumen was not greater in the _Vorhalle_ that
when he wrote on the _Philosophumena_, but instead of being employed in
a chosen cause, upon fixed lines, for welcome ends, it is applied
impartially. Ernst von Lasaulx, a man of rich and noble intellect, was
lecturing next door on the philosophy and religion of Greece, and
everybody heard about his indistinct mixture of dates and authorities,
and the spell which his unchastened idealism cast over students.
Lasaulx, who brilliantly carried on the tradition of Creuzer, who had
tasted of the mythology of Schelling, who was son-in-law to Baader and
nephew to Görres, wrote a volume on the fall of Hellenism which he
brought in manuscript and read to Döllinger at a sitting. The effect on
the dissenting mind of the hearer was a warning; and there is reason to
date from those two hours in 1853 a more severe use of materials, and a
stricter notion of the influence which the end of an inquiry may
lawfully exert on the pursuit of it.
_Heidenthum und Judenthum_, which came out in 1857, gave Lasaulx his
revenge. It is the most positive and self-denying of histories, and owes
nothing to the fancy. The author refused the aid of Scandinavia to
illustrate German mythology, and he was rewarded long after, when
Caspari of Christiania and Conrad Maurer met at his table and confirmed
the discoveries of Bugge. But the account of Paganism ends with a
significant parallel. In December 69 a torch flung by a soldier burnt
the temple on the Capitol to the ground. In August 70 another Roman
soldier set fire to the temple on Mount Sion. The two sanctuaries
perished within a year, making way for the faith of men still hidden in
the back streets of Rome. When the Hellenist read this passage it struck
him deeply. Then he declared that it was hollow. All was over at
Jerusalem; but at Rome the ruin was restored, and the smoke of sacrifice
went up for centuries to come from the altar of Capitoline Jove.
In this work, designed as an introduction to Christian history, the
apologist betrays himself when he says that no Greek ever objected to
slavery, and when, out of 730 pages on paganism, half a page is allotted
to the moral system of Aristotle. That his Aristotelian chapter was
weak, the author knew; but he said that it was not his text to make more
of it. He did not mean that a Christian divine may be better employed
than in doing honour to a heathen; but, having to narrate events and the
action of causes, he regarded Christianity more as an organism employing
sacramental powers than as a body of speculative ideas. To cast up the
total of moral and religious knowledge attained by Seneca, Epictetus,
and Plutarch, to measure the line and rate of progress since Socrates,
to compare the point reached by Hermas and Justin, is an inquiry of the
highest interest for writers yet to come. But the quantitative
difference of acquired precept between the later pagan and the early
Christian is not the key to the future. The true problem is to expose
the ills and errors which Christ, the Healer, came to remove. The
measure must be taken from the depth of evil from which Christianity had
to rescue mankind, and its history is more than a continued history of
philosophical theories. Newman, who sometimes agreed with Döllinger in
the letter, but seldom in the spirit, and who distrusted him as a man in
whom the divine lived at the mercy of the scholar, and whose burden of
superfluous learning blunted the point and the edge of his mind, so much
liked what he heard of this book that, being unable to read it, he had
it translated at the Oratory.
The work thus heralded never went beyond the first volume, completed in
the autumn of 1860, which was received by the _Kirchenzeitung_ of
Berlin as the most acceptable narrative of the founding of Christianity,
and as the largest concession ever made by a Catholic divine. The
author, following the ancient ways, and taking, with Reuss, the New
Testament as it stands, made no attempt to establish the position
against modern criticism. Up to this, prescription and tradition held
the first place in his writings, and formed his vantage-ground in all
controversy. His energy in upholding the past as the rule and measure of
the future distinguished him even among writers of his own communion. In
_Christenthum und Kirche_ he explained his theory of development, under
which flag the notion of progress penetrates into theology, and which he
held as firmly as the balancing element of perpetuity: "In dem Maass als
dogmenhistorische Studien mehr getrieben werden, wird die absolute
innere Nothwendigkeit und Wahrheit der Sache immer allegingr
einleuchten." He conceived no bounds to the unforeseen resources of
Christian thought and faith. A philosopher in whose works he would not
have expected to find the scientific expression of his own idea, has a
passage bearing close analogy to what he was putting forward in 1861:
It is then in the change to a higher state of form or composition
that development differs from growth. We must carefully distinguish
development from mere increase; it is the acquiring, not of greater
bulk, but of new forms and structures, which are adapted to higher
conditions of existence.
It is the distinction which Uhhorn draws between the terms _Entfaltung_
and _Entwickelung_. Just then, after sixteen years spent in the Church
of Rome, Newman was inclined to guard and narrow his theory. On the one
hand he taught that the enactments and decisions of ecclesiastical law
are made on principles and by virtue of prerogatives which _jam antea
latitavere_ in the Church of the apostles and fathers. But he thought
that a divine of the second century on seeing the Roman catechism, would
have recognised his own belief in it, without surprise, as soon as he
understood its meaning. He once wrote: "If I have said more than this,
I think I have not worked out my meaning, and was confused--whether the
minute facts of history will bear me out in this view, I leave to others
to determine." Döllinger would have feared to adopt a view for its own
sake, without knowing how it would be borne out by the minute facts of
history. His own theory of development had not the same ingenious
simplicity, and he thought Newman's brilliant book unsound in detail.
But he took high ground in asserting the undeviating fidelity of
Catholicism to its principle. In this, his last book on the Primitive
Church, as in his early lectures, he claims the unswerving unity of
faith as a divine prerogative. In a memorable passage of the _Symbolik_
Möhler had stated that there is no better security than the law which
pervades human society, which preserves harmony and consistency in
national character, which makes Lutheranism perpetually true to Luther,
and Islamism to the Koran.
Speaking in the name of his own university, the rector described him as
a receptive genius. Part of his career displays a quality of
assimilation, acquiescence, and even adaptation, not always consistent
with superior originality or intense force of character. His
_Reformation_, the strongest book, with the _Symbolik_, which Catholics
had produced in the century, was laid down on known lines, and scarcely
effected so much novelty and change as the writings of Kampschulte and
Kolde. His book on the first age of the Church takes the critical points
as settled, without special discussion. He appeared to receive impulse
and direction, limit and colour, from his outer life. His importance was
achieved by the force within. Circumstances only conspired to mould a
giant of commonplace excellence and average ideas, and their influence
on his view of history might long be traced. No man of like
spirituality, of equal belief in the supreme dignity of conscience,
systematically allowed as much as he did for the empire of chance
surroundings and the action of home, and school, and place of worship
upon conduct. He must have known that his own mind and character as an
historian was not formed by effort and design. From early impressions,
and a life spent, to his fiftieth year, in a rather unvaried
professional circle, he contracted homely habits in estimating objects
of the greater world; and his imagination was not prone to vast
proportions and wide horizons. He inclined to apply the rules and
observation of domestic life to public affairs, to reduce the level of
the heroic and sublime; and history, in his hands, lost something both
in terror and in grandeur. He acquired his art in the long study of
earlier times, where materials are scanty. All that can be known of
Cæsar or Charlemagne, or Gregory VII., would hold in a dozen volumes; a
library would not be sufficient for Charles V. or Lewis XVI. Extremely
few of the ancients are really known to us in detail, as we know
Socrates, or Cicero, or St. Augustine. But in modern times, since
Petrarca, there are at least two thousand actors on the public stage
whom we see by the revelations of private correspondence. Besides
letters that were meant to be burnt, there are a man's secret diaries,
his autobiography and table-talk, the recollections of his friends,
self-betraying notes on the margins of books, the report of his trial if
he is a culprit, and the evidence for beatification if he is a saint.
Here we are on a different footing, and we practise a different art when
dealing with Phocion or Dunstan, or with Richelieu or Swift. In one case
we remain perforce on the surface of character, which we have not the
means of analysing: we have to be content with conjecture, with probable
explanations and obvious motives. We must constantly allow the benefit
of the doubt, and reserve sentence. The science of character comes in
with modern history. Döllinger had lived too long in the ages during
which men are seen mostly in outline, and never applied an historical
psychology distinct from that of private experience. Great men are
something different from an enlarged repetition of average and familiar
types, and the working and motive of their minds is in many instances
the exact contrary of ordinary men, living to avoid contingencies of
danger, and pain, and sacrifice, and the weariness of constant thinking
and far-seeing precaution.
We are apt to judge extraordinary men by our own standard, that is to
say, we often suppose them to possess, in an extraordinary degree,
those qualities which we are conscious of in ourselves or others.
This is the easiest way of conceiving their characters, but not the
truest They differ in kind rather than in degree.
We cannot understand Cromwell or Shaftesbury, Sunderland or Penn, by
studies made in the parish. The study of intricate and subtle character
was not habitual with Döllinger, and the result was an extreme dread of
unnecessary condemnation. He resented being told that Ferdinand I. and
II., that Henry III. and Lewis XIII. were, in the coarse terms of common
life, assassins; that Elizabeth tried to have Mary made away with, and
that Mary, in matters of that kind, had no greater scruples; that
William III. ordered the extirpation of a clan, and rewarded the
murderers as he had rewarded those of De Witt; that Lewis XIV. sent a
man to kill him, and James II. was privy to the Assassination Plot. When
he met men less mercifully given than himself, he said that they were
hanging judges with a Malthusian propensity to repress the growth of
population. This indefinite generosity did not disappear when he had
long outgrown its early cause. It was revived, and his view of history
was deeply modified, in the course of the great change in his attitude
in the Church which took place between the years 1861 and 1867.
Döllinger used to commemorate his visit to Rome in 1857 as an epoch of
emancipation. He had occasionally been denounced; and a keen eye had
detected latent pantheism in his _Vorhalle_, but he had not been
formally censured. If he had once asserted the value of nationality in
the Church, he was vehement against it in religion; and if he had joined
in deprecating the dogmatic decree in 1854, he was silent afterwards. By
Protestants he was still avoided as the head and front of offending
ultramontanism; and when the historical commission was instituted at
Munich, by disciples of the Berlin school, he was passed over at first,
and afterwards opposed. When public matters took him to Berlin in 1857,
he sought no intercourse with the divines of the faculty. The common
idea of his _Reformation_ was expressed by Kaulbach in a drawing which
represented the four chief reformers riding on one horse, pursued by a
scavenger with the unmistakable features of their historian. He was
received with civility at Rome, if not with cordiality. The pope sent to
Cesena for a manuscript which it was reported that he wished to consult;
and his days were spent profitably between the Minerva and the Vatican,
where he was initiated in the mysteries of Galileo's tower. It was his
fortune to have for pilot and instructor a prelate classified in the
pigeon-holes of the Wilhelmsstrasse as the chief agitator against the
State, "dessen umfangreiches Wissen noch durch dessen Feinheit und
geistige Gewandtheit übertroffen wird." He was welcomed by Passaglia and
Schrader at the Collegio Romano, and enjoyed the privilege of examining
San Callisto with De Rossi for his guide. His personal experience was
agreeable, though he strove unsuccessfully to prevent the condemnation
of two of his colleagues by the Index.
There have been men connected with him who knew Rome in his time, and
whose knowledge moved them to indignation and despair. One bishop
assured him that the Christian religion was extinct there, and only
survived in its forms; and an important ecclesiastic on the spot wrote:
_Delenda est Carthago_. The archives of the Culturkampf contain a
despatch from a Protestant statesman sometime his friend, urging his
government to deal with the Papacy as they would deal with Dahomey.
Döllinger's impression on his journey was very different. He did not
come away charged with visions of scandal in the spiritual order, of
suffering in the temporal, or of tyranny in either. He was never in
contact with the sinister side of things. Theiner's _Life of Clement the
Fourteenth_ failed to convince him, and he listened incredulously to
his indictment of the Jesuits. Eight years later Theiner wrote to him
that he hoped they would now agree better on that subject than when they
discussed it in Rome. "Ich freue mich, dass Sie jetzt erkennen, dass
mein Urtheil über die Jesuiten und ihr Wirken gerecht war.--Im kommenden
Jahr, so Gott will, werden wir uns hoffentlich besser verstehen als im
Jahr 1857." He thought the governing body unequal to the task of ruling
both Church and State; but it was the State that seemed to him to suffer
from the combination. He was anxious about the political future, not
about the future of religion. The persuasion that government by priests
could not maintain itself in the world as it is, grew in force and
definiteness as he meditated at home on the things he had seen and
heard. He was despondent and apprehensive; but he had no suspicion of
what was then so near. In the summer of 1859, as the sequel of Solferino
began to unfold itself, he thought of making his observations known. In
November a friend wrote: "Je ne me dissimule aucune des misères de tout
ordre qui vous ont frappé à Rome." For more than a year he remained
silent and uncertain, watching the use France would make of the
irresistible authority acquired by the defeat of Austria and the
collapse of government in Central Italy.
The war of 1859, portending danger to the temporal power, disclosed
divided counsels. The episcopate supported the papal sovereignty, and a
voluntary tribute, which in a few years took shape in tens of millions,
poured into the treasury of St. Peter. A time followed during which the
Papacy endeavoured, by a series of connected measures, to preserve its
political authority through the aid of its spiritual. Some of the most
enlightened Catholics, Dupanloup and Montalembert, proclaimed a sort of
holy war. Some of the most enlightened Protestants, Guizot and Leo,
defended the Roman government, as the most legitimate, venerable, and
necessary of governments. In Italy there were ecclesiastics like
Liverani, Tosti, Capecelatro, who believed with Manzoni that there
could be no deliverance without unity, or calculated that political
loss might be religious gain. Passaglia, the most celebrated Jesuit
living, and a confidential adviser of the pope, both in dogma and in the
preparation of the Syllabus, until Perrone refused to meet him, quitted
the Society, and then fled from Rome, leaving the Inquisition in
possession of his papers, in order to combat the use of theology in
defence of the temporal power. Forty thousand priests, he said, publicly
or privately agreed with him; and the diplomatists reported the names of
nine cardinals who were ready to make terms with Italian unity, of which
the pope himself said: "Ce serait un beau rêve." In this country, Newman
did not share the animosity of conservatives against Napoleon III. and
his action in Italy. When the flood, rising, reached the papal throne,
he preserved an embarrassed silence, refusing, in spite of much
solicitation, to commit himself even in private. An impatient M.P. took
the train down to Edgbaston, and began, trying to draw him: "What times
we live in, Father Newman! Look at all that is going on in
Italy."--"Yes, indeed! And look at China too, and New Zealand!"
Lacordaire favoured the cause of the Italians more openly, in spite of
his Paris associates. He hoped, by federation, to save the interests of
the Holy See, but he was reconciled to the loss of provinces, and he
required religious liberty at Rome. Lamoricière was defeated in
September 1860, and in February the fortress of Gaëta, which had become
the last Roman outwork, fell. Then Lacordaire, disturbed in his
reasoning by the logic of events, and by an earnest appeal to his
priestly conscience, as his biographer says: "ébranlé un moment par une
lettre éloquente," broke away from his friends:--
Que Montalembert, notre ami commun, ne voie pas dans ce qui se passe
en Italie, sauf le mal, un progrès sensible dans ce que nous avons
toujours cru le bien de l'église, cela tient à sa nature passionnée.
Ce qui le domine aujourd'hui c'est la haine du gouvernement
français.--Dieu se sert de tout, même du despotisme, même de
l'égoïsme; et il y a même des choses qu'il ne peut accomplir par des
mains tout à fait pures.--Qu'y puis-je? Me déclarer contre l'Italie
parce que ses chaînes tombent mal à propos? Non assurément: je laisse
à d'autres une passion aussi profonde, et j'aime mieux accepter ce
que j'estime un bien de quelque part qu'il vienne.--Il est vrai que
la situation temporelle du Pape souffre présentement de la libération
de l'Italie, et peut-être en souffrira-t-elle encore assez longtemps:
mais c'est un malheur qui a aussi ses fins dans la politique
mystérieuse de la Providence. Souffrir n'est pas mourir, c'est
quelquefois expier et s'éclairer.
This was written on 22nd February 1861. In April Döllinger spoke on the
Roman question in the Odeon at Munich, and explained himself more fully
in the autumn, in the most popular of all his books.
The argument of _Kirche und Kirchen_ was, that the churches which are
without the pope drift into many troubles, and maintain themselves at a
manifest disadvantage, whereas the church which energetically preserves
the principle of unity has a vast superiority which would prevail, but
for its disabling and discrediting failure in civil government. That
government seemed to him as legitimate as any in the world, and so
needful to those for whose sake it was instituted, that if it should be
overthrown, it would, by irresistible necessity, be restored. Those for
whose sake it was instituted were, not the Roman people, but the
catholic world. That interest, while it lasted, was so sacred, that no
sacrifice was too great to preserve it, not even the exclusion of the
clerical order from secular office.
The book was an appeal to Catholics to save the papal government by the
only possible remedy, and to rescue the Roman people from falling under
what the author deemed a tyranny like that of the Convention. He had
acquired his politics in the atmosphere of 1847, from the potential
liberality of men like Radowitz, who declared that he would postpone
every political or national interest to that of the Church, Capponi, the
last Italian federalist, and Tocqueville, the minister who occupied
Rome. His object was not materially different from that of Antonelli and
Mérode, but he sought it by exposing the faults of the papal government
during several centuries, and the hopelessness of all efforts to save it
from the Revolution unless reformed. He wrote to an English minister
that it could not be our policy that the head of the Catholic Church
should be subject to a foreign potentate:--
Das harte Wort, mit welchem Sie im Parlamente den Stab über Rom
gebrochen haben--_hopelessly incurable_, oder _incorrigible_,--kann
ich mir nicht aneignen; ich hoffe vielmehr, wie ich es in dem Buche
dargelegt habe, das Gegentheil. An die Dauerhaftigkeit eines ganz
Italien umfassenden Piemontesisch-Italiänischen Reiches glaube ich
nicht.--Inzwischen tröste ich mich mit dem Gedanken, dass in Rom
zuletzt doch _vexatio dabit intellectum_, und dann wird noch alles
gut werden.
To these grateful vaticinations his correspondent replied:--
You have exhibited the gradual departure of the government in the
states of the church from all those conditions which made it
tolerable to the sense and reason of mankind, and have, I think,
completely justified, in principle if not in all the facts, the
conduct of those who have determined to do away with it.
The policy of exalting the spiritual authority though at the expense of
sacrifices in the temporal, the moderation even in the catalogue of
faults, the side blow at the Protestants, filling more than half the
volume, disarmed for a moment the resentment of outraged Rome. The Pope,
on a report from Theiner, spoke of the book as one that might do good.
Others said that it was pointless, that its point was not where the
author meant it to be, that the handle was sharper than the blade. It
was made much more clear that the Pope had governed badly than that
Russia or Great Britain would gain by his supremacy. The cold analysis,
the diagnosis by the bedside of the sufferer, was not the work of an
observer dazzled by admiration or blinded by affection. It was a step, a
first unconscious, unpremeditated step, in the process of detachment.
The historian here began to prevail over the divine, and to judge Church
matters by a law which was not given from the altar. It was the outcome
of a spirit which had been in him from the beginning. His English
translator had uttered a mild protest against his severe treatment of
popes. His censure of the Reformation had been not as that of Bossuet,
but as that of Baxter and Bull. In 1845 Mr. Gladstone remarked that he
would answer every objection, but never proselytised. In 1848 he rested
the claims of the Church on the common law, and bade the hierarchy
remember that national character is above free will: "Die Nationalität
ist etwas der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens entrücktes,
geheimnissvolles und in ihrem letzen Grunde selbst etwas von Gott
gewolltes." In his _Hippolytus_ he began by surrendering the main point,
that a man who so vilified the papacy might yet be an undisputed saint.
In the _Vorhalle_ he flung away a favourite argument, by avowing that
paganism developed by its own lines and laws, untouched by Christianity,
until the second century; and as with the Gentiles, so with the sects;
he taught, in the suppressed chapter of his history, that their
doctrines followed a normal course. And he believed so far in the
providential mission of Protestantism, that it was idle to talk of
reconciliation until it had borne all its fruit. He exasperated a Munich
colleague by refusing to pronounce whether Gregory and Innocent had the
right to depose emperors, or Otho and Henry to depose popes; for he
thought that historians should not fit theories to facts, but should be
content with showing how things worked. Much secret and suppressed
antagonism found vent in 1858, when one who had been his assistant in
writing the _Reformation_ and was still his friend, declared that he
would be a heretic whenever he found a backing.
Those with whom he actively coalesced felt at times that he was
incalculable, that he pursued a separate line, and was always learning,
whilst others busied themselves less with the unknown. This note of
distinctness and solitude set him apart from those about him, during his
intimacy with the most catholic of Anglican prelates, Forbes, and with
the lamented Liddon. And it appeared still more when the denominational
barrier of his sympathy was no longer marked, and he, who had stood in
the rank almost with De Maistre and Perrone, found himself acting for
the same ends with their enemies, when he delivered a studied eulogy on
Mignet, exalted the authority of Laurent in religious history and of
Ferrari in civil, and urged the Bavarian academy to elect Taine, as a
writer who had but one rival in France, leaving it to uncertain
conjecture whether the man he meant was Renan. In theory it was his
maxim that a man should guard against his friends. When he first
addressed the university as Rector, saying that as the opportunity might
never come again, he would employ it to utter the thoughts closest to
his heart, he exhorted the students to be always true to their
convictions and not to yield to surroundings; and he invoked, rightly or
wrongly, the example of Burke, his favourite among public men, who,
turning from his associates to obey the light within, carried the nation
with him. A gap was apparent now between the spirit in which he devoted
himself to the service of his Church and that of the men whom he most
esteemed. At that time he was nearly the only German who knew Newman
well and appreciated the grace and force of his mind. But Newman, even
when he was angry, assiduously distinguished the pontiff from his court:
There will necessarily always be round the Pope second-rate people,
who are not subjects of that supernatural wisdom which is his
prerogative. For myself, certainly I have found myself in a different
atmosphere, when I have left the Curia for the Pope himself.
Montalembert protested that there were things in _Kirche und Kirchen_
which he would not have liked to say in public:
Il est certain que la seconde partie de votre livre déplaira
beaucoup, non seulement à Rome, mais encore à la très grande majorité
des Catholiques. Je ne sais donc pas si, dans le cas où vous
m'eussiez consulté préalablement, j'aurais eu le courage d'infliger
cette blessure à mon père et à mes frères.
Döllinger judged that the prerogative even of natural wisdom was often
wanting in the government of the Church; and the sense of personal
attachment, if he ever entertained it, had worn away in the friction and
familiarity of centuries.
After the disturbing interlude of the Roman question he did not resume
the history of Christianity. The second century with its fragments of
information, its scope for piercing and conjecture, he left to
Lightfoot. With increasing years he lost the disposition to travel on
common ground, impregnably occupied by specialists, where he had nothing
of his own to tell; and he preferred to work where he could be a
pathfinder. Problems of Church government had come to the front, and he
proposed to retraverse his subject, narrowing it into a history of the
papacy. He began by securing his foundations and eliminating legend. He
found so much that was legendary that his critical preliminaries took
the shape of a history of fables relating to the papacy. Many of these
were harmless: others were devised for a purpose, and he fixed his
attention more and more on those which were the work of design. The
question, how far the persistent production of spurious matter had
permanently affected the genuine constitution and theology of the Church
arose before his mind as he composed the _Papstfabeln des Mittelalters_.
He indicated the problem without discussing it. The matter of the volume
was generally neutral, but its threatening import was perceived, and
twenty-one hostile critics sent reviews of it to one theological
journal.
Since he first wrote on these matters, thirty years earlier, the advance
of competitive learning had made it a necessity to revise statements by
all accessible lights, and to subject authorities to a closer scrutiny.
The increase in the rigour of the obligation might be measured by
Tischendorf, who, after renewing the text of the New Testament in seven
editions, had more than three thousand changes to make in the eighth.
The old pacific superficial method yielded no longer what would be
accepted as certain knowledge. Having made himself master of the
reconstructive process that was carried on a little apart from the main
chain of durable literature, in academic transactions, in dissertations
and periodicals, he submitted the materials he was about to use to the
exigencies of the day. Without it, he would have remained a man of the
last generation, distanced by every disciple of the new learning. He
went to work with nothing but his trained and organised common sense,
starting from no theory, and aiming at no conclusion. If he was beyond
his contemporaries in the mass of expedient knowledge, he was not before
them in the strictness of his tests, or in sharpness or boldness in
applying them. He was abreast as a critic, he was not ahead. He did not
innovate. The parallel studies of the time kept pace with his; and his
judgments are those which are accepted generally. His critical mind was
pliant, to assent where he must, to reject where he must, and to doubt
where he must. His submission to external testimony appeared in his
panegyric of our Indian empire, where he overstated the increase of
population. Informed of his error by one of his translators, he replied
that the figures had seemed incredible also to him, but having verified,
he found the statement so positively made that he did not venture to
depart from it. If inclination ever swayed his judgment, it was in his
despair of extracting a real available Buddha from the fables of
Southern India, which was conquered at last by the ablest of Mommsen's
pupils.
He was less apprehensive than most of his English friends in questions
relating to the Old Testament; and in the New, he was disposed, at
times, to allow some force to Muratori's fragment as to the person of
the evangelist who is least favourable to St. Peter; and was puzzled at
the zeal of the Speaker's commentator as to the second epistle of the
apostle. He held to the epistles of St. Ignatius with the tenacity of a
Caroline prelate, and was grateful to De Rossi for a chronological point
in their favour. He rejected the attacks of Lucius on the most valued
passages in Philo, and stood with Gass against Weingarten's argument on
the life of St. Anthony and the origin of Monasticism. He resisted
Overbeck on the epistle to Diognetus, and thought Ebrard all astray as
to the Culdees. There was no conservative antiquarian whom he prized
higher than Le Blant: yet he considered Ruinart credulous in dealing
with acts of early martyrs. A pupil on whose friendship he relied, made
an effort to rescue the legends of the conversion of Germany; but the
master preferred the unsparing demolitions of Rettberg. Capponi and Carl
Hegel were his particular friends; but he abandoned them without
hesitation for Scheffer Boichorst, the iconoclast of early Italian
chronicles, and never consented to read the learned reply of Da Lungo.
The _Pope Fables_ carried the critical inquiry a very little way; but he
went on with the subject. After the Donation of Constantine came the
Forged Decretals, which were just then printed for the first time in an
accurate edition. Döllinger began to be absorbed in the long train of
hierarchical fictions, which had deceived men like Gregory VII., St.
Thomas Aquinas, and Cardinal Bellarmine, which he traced up to the false
Areopagite, and down to the Laminæ Granatenses. These studies became the
chief occupation of his life; they led to his excommunication in 1871,
and carried him away from his early system. For this, neither syllabus
nor ecumenical council was needed; neither crimes nor scandals were its
distant cause. The history of Church government was the influence which
so profoundly altered his position. Some trace of his researches, at an
early period of their progress, appears in what he wrote on the occasion
of the Vatican Council, especially in the fragment of an ecclesiastical
pathology which was published under the name of Janus. But the history
itself, which was the main and characteristic work of his life, and was
pursued until the end, was never published or completed. He died without
making it known to what extent, within what limit, the ideas with which
he had been so long identified were changed by his later studies, and
how wide a trench had opened between his earlier and his later life.
Twenty years of his historical work are lost for history.
The revolution in method since he began to write was partly the better
use of old authorities, partly the accession of new. Döllinger had
devoted himself to the one in 1863; he passed to the other in 1864. For
definite objects he had often consulted manuscripts, but the harvest was
stacked away, and had scarcely influenced his works. In the use and
knowledge of unpublished matter he still belonged to the old school, and
was on a level with Neander. Although, in later years, he printed six or
seven volumes of Inedita, like Mai and Theiner he did not excel as an
editor: and this part of his labours is notable chiefly for its effect
on himself. He never went over altogether to men like Schottmüller, who
said of him that he made no research--_er hat nicht geforscht_--meaning
that he had made his mind up about the Templars by the easy study of
Wilkins, Michelet, Schottmüller himself, and perhaps a hundred others,
but had not gone underground to the mines they delved in. Fustel de
Coulanges, at the time of his death, was promoting the election of the
Bishop of Oxford to the Institute, on the ground that he surpassed all
other Englishmen in his acquaintance with manuscripts. Döllinger agreed
with their French rival in his estimate of our English historian, but he
ascribed less value to that part of his acquirements. He assured the
Bavarian Academy that Mr. Freeman, who reads print, but nevertheless
mixes his colours with brains, is the author of the most profound work
on the Middle Ages ever written in this country, and is not only a
brilliant writer and a sagacious critic, but the most learned of all our
countrymen. Ranke once drew a line at 1514, after which, he said, we
still want help from unprinted sources. The world had moved a good deal
since that cautious innovation, and after 1860, enormous and excessive
masses of archive were brought into play. The Italian Revolution opened
tempting horizons. In 1864 Döllinger spent his vacation in the libraries
of Vienna and Venice. At Vienna, by an auspicious omen, Sickel, who was
not yet known to Greater Germany as the first of its mediæval
palæographers, showed him the sheets of a work containing 247
Carolingian acts unknown to Böhmer, who had just died with the repute of
being the best authority on Imperial charters. During several years
Döllinger followed up the discoveries he now began. Theiner sent him
documents from the _Archivio Segreto_; one of his friends shut himself
up at Trent, and another at Bergamo. Strangers ministered to his
requirements, and huge quantities of transcripts came to him from many
countries. Conventional history faded away; the studies of a lifetime
suddenly underwent transformation; and his view of the last six
centuries was made up from secret information gathered in thirty
European libraries and archives. As many things remote from current
knowledge grew to be certainties, he became more confident, more
independent, and more isolated. The ecclesiastical history of his youth
went to pieces against the new criticism of 1863, and the revelation of
the unknown which began on a very large scale in 1864.
During four years of transition occupied by this new stage of study, he
abstained from writing books. Whenever some local occasion called upon
him to speak, he spoke of the independence and authority of history. In
cases of collision with the Church, he said that a man should seek the
error in himself; but he spoke of the doctrine of the universal Church,
and it did not appear that he thought of any living voice or present
instructor. He claimed no immunity for philosophy; but history, he
affirmed, left to itself and pursued disinterestedly, will heal the ills
it causes; and it was said of him that he set the university in the
place of the hierarchy. Some of his countrymen were deeply moved by the
measures which were being taken to restore and to confirm the authority
of Rome; and he had impatient colleagues at the university who pressed
him with sharp issues of uncompromising logic. He himself was reluctant
to bring down serene research into troublesome disputation, and wished
to keep history and controversy apart. His hand was forced at last by
his friends abroad. Whilst he pursued his isolating investigations he
remained aloof from a question which in other countries and other days
was a summary and effective test of impassioned controversy. Persecution
was a problem that had never troubled him. It was not a topic with
theoretical Germans; the necessary books were hardly available, and a
man might read all the popular histories and theologies without getting
much further than the Spanish Inquisition. Ranke, averse from what is
unpleasant, gave no details. The gravity of the question had never been
brought home to Döllinger in forty years of public teaching. When he
approached it, as late as 1861, he touched lightly, representing the
intolerance of Protestants to their disadvantage, while that of
Catholics was a bequest of Imperial Rome, taken up in an emergency by
secular powers, in no way involving the true spirit and practice of the
Church. With this light footfall the topic which has so powerful a
leverage slipped into the current of his thought. The view found favour
with Ambrose de Lisle, who, having read the _Letters to a Prebendary_,
was indignant with those who commit the Church to a principle often
resisted or ignored. Newman would admit to no such compromise:
Is not the miraculous infliction of judgments upon blasphemy, lying,
profaneness, etc., in the apostles' day a sanction of infliction upon
the same by a human hand in the times of the Inquisition?
Ecclesiastical rulers may punish with the sword, if they can, and if
it is expedient or necessary to do so. The church has a right to make
laws and to enforce them with temporal punishments.
The question came forward in France in the wake of the temporal power.
Liberal defenders of a government which made a principle of persecution
had to decide whether they approved or condemned it. Where was their
liberality in one case, or their catholicity in the other? It was the
simple art of their adversaries to press this point, and to make the
most of it; and a French priest took upon him to declare that
intolerance, far from being a hidden shame, was a pride and a glory:
"L'Eglise regarde l'Inquisition comme l'apogée de la civilisation
chrétienne, comme le fruit naturel des époques de foi et de catholicisme
national." Gratry took the other side so strongly that there would have
been a tumult at the Sorbonne, if he had said from his chair what he
wrote in his book; and certain passages were struck out of the printed
text by the cautious archbishop's reviser. He was one of those French
divines who had taken in fuel at Munich, and he welcomed _Kirche und
Kirchen_: "Quant au livre du docteur Döllinger sur la Papauté, c'est,
selon moi, le livre décisif. C'est un chef-d'oeuvre admirable à
plusieurs égards, et qui est destiné à produire un bien incalculable et
à fixer l'opinion sur ce sujet; c'est ainsi que le juge aussi M. de
Montalembert. Le docteur Döllinger nous a rendu à tous un grand
service." This was not the first impression of Montalembert. He deplored
the Odeon lectures as usurping functions divinely assigned not to
professors, but to the episcopate, as a grief for friends and a joy for
enemies. When the volume came he still objected to the policy, to the
chapter on England, and to the cold treatment of Sixtus V. At last he
admired without reserve. Nothing better had been written since Bossuet;
the judgment on the Roman government, though severe, was just, and
contained no more than the truth. There was not a word which he would
not be able to sign. A change was going on in his position and his
affections, as he came to regard toleration as the supreme affair. At
Malines he solemnly declared that the Inquisitor was as horrible as the
Terrorist, and made no distinction in favour of death inflicted for
religion against death for political motives: "Les bûchers allumés par
une main catholique me font autant d'horreur que les échafauds où les
Protestants ont immolé tant de martyrs." Wiseman, having heard him once,
was not present on the second day; but the Belgian cardinal assured him
that he had spoken like a sound divine. He described Dupanloup's defence
of the Syllabus as a masterpiece of eloquent subterfuge, and repudiated
his _interprétations équivoques_. A journey to Spain in 1865 made him
more vehement than ever; although, from that time, the political
opposition inflamed him less. He did not find imperialism intolerable.
His wrath was fixed on the things of which Spain had reminded him:
"C'est là qu'il faut aller pour voir ce que le catholicisme exclusif a
su faire d'une des plus grandes et des plus héroïques nations de la
terre.--Je rapporte un surcroît d'horreur pour les doctrines fanatiques
et absolutistes qui ont cours aujourd'hui chez les catholiques du monde
entier." In 1866 it became difficult, by the aid of others, to overcome
Falloux's resistance to the admission of an article in the
_Correspondant_, and by the end of the year his friends were unanimous
to exclude him. An essay on Spain, his last work--"dernier soupir de mon
âme indignée et attristée"--was, by Dupanloup's advice, not allowed to
appear. Repelled by those whom he now designated as spurious, servile,
and prevaricating liberals, he turned to the powerful German with whom
he thought himself in sympathy. He had applauded him for dealing with
one thing at a time, in his book on Rome: "Vous avez bien fait de ne
rien dire de l'absolutisme spirituel, quant à présent. _Sat prata
biberunt_. Le reste viendra en son temps." He avowed that spiritual
autocracy is worse than political; that evil passions which had
triumphed in the State were triumphant in the Church; that to send human
beings to the stake, with a crucifix before them, was the act of a
monster or a maniac. He was dying; but whilst he turned his face to the
wall, lamenting that he had lived too long, he wished for one more
conference with the old friend with whom, thirty-five years before, in a
less anxious time, he had discussed the theme of religion and liberty.
This was in February 1867; and for several years he had endeavoured to
teach Döllinger his clear-cut antagonism, and to kindle in him something
of his gloomy and passionate fervour, on the one point on which all
depended.
Döllinger arrived slowly at the contemplation of deeper issues than that
of churchmen or laymen in political offices, of Roman or German pupils
in theological chairs. After seeing Baron Arnim, in 1865, he lost the
hope of saving the papal government, and ceased to care about the things
he had contended for in 1861; and a time came when he thought it
difficult to give up the temporal power, and yet revere the Holy See. He
wrote to Montalembert that his illusions were failing: "Ich bin sehr
ernüchtert.--Es ist so vieles in der Kirche anders gekommen, als ich es
mir vor 20-30 Jahren gedacht, und rosenfarbig ausgemalt hatte." He
learnt to speak of spiritual despotism almost in the words of his
friend. The point of junction between the two orders of ideas is the use
of fire for the enforcement of religion on which the French were laying
all their stress: "In Frankreich bewegt sich der Gegensatz blos auf dem
socialpolitischen Gebiete, nicht auf dem theologisch-wissenschaftlichen,
weil es dort genau genommen eine theologische Wissenschaft nicht gibt"
(16th October 1865). The Syllabus had not permanently fixed his
attention upon it. Two years later, the matter was put more definitely,
and he found himself, with little real preparation, turning from
antiquarian curiosities, and brought face to face with the radical
question of life and death. If ever his literary career was influenced
by his French alliances, by association with men in the throng, for whom
politics decided, and all the learning of the schools did not avail, the
moment was when he resolved to write on the Inquisition.
The popular account which he drew up appeared in the newspapers in the
summer of 1867; and although he did not mean to burn his ships, his
position as an official defender of the Holy See was practically at an
end. He wrote rapidly, at short notice, and not in the steady course of
progressive acquisition. Ficker and Winkelmann have since given a
different narrative of the step by which the Inquisition came into
existence; and the praise of Gregory X., as a man sincerely religious
who kept aloof, was a mark of haste. In the work which he was using,
there was no act by that pontiff; but if he had had time to look deeper
he would not have found him, in this respect, different from his
contemporaries. There is no uncertainty as to the author's feeling
towards the infliction of torture and death for religion, and the
purpose of his treatise is to prevent the nailing of the Catholic
colours to the stake. The spirit is that of the early lectures, in which
he said: "Diese Schutzgewalt der Kirche ist rein geistlich. Sie kann
also auch einen solchen öffentlichen hartnäckigen und sonst unheilbaren
Gegner der Kirche nur seiner rein geistlichen kirchlichen Rechte
berauben." Compared with the sweeping vehemence of the Frenchmen who
preceded, the restrained moderation of language, the abstinence from the
use of general terms, leaves us in doubt how far the condemnation
extended, and whether he did more, in fact, than deplore a deviation
from the doctrine of the first centuries. "Kurz darauf trat ein
Umschwung ein, den man wohl einen Abfall von der alten Lehre nennen
darf, und der sich ausnimmt, als ob die Kaiser die Lehrmeister der
Bischöfe geworden seien." He never entirely separated himself in
principle from the promoters, the agents, the apologists. He did not
believe, with Hefele, that the spirit survives, that there are men, not
content with eternal flames, who are ready to light up new Smithfields.
Many of the defenders were his intimate friends. The most conspicuous
was the only colleague who addressed him with the familiar German _Du_.
Speaking of two or three men, of whom one, Martens, had specially
attacked the false liberalism which sees no good in the Inquisition, he
wrote: "Sie werden sich noch erinnern ... wie hoch ich solche Männer
stelle." He differed from them widely, but he differed academically; and
this was not the polish or precaution of a man who knows that to assail
character is to degrade and to betray one's cause. The change in his own
opinions was always before him. Although convinced that he had been
wrong in many of the ideas and facts with which he started, he was also
satisfied that he had been as sincere and true to his lights in 1835 as
in 1865. There was no secret about the Inquisition, and its observances
were published and republished in fifty books; but in his early days he
had not read them, and there was not a German, from Basel to
Königsberg, who could have faced a _viva voce_ in the _Directorium_ or
the _Arsenale_, or who had ever read Percin or Paramo. If Lacordaire
disconnected St. Dominic from the practice of persecution, Döllinger had
done the same thing before him.
Weit entfernt, wie man ihm wohl vorgeworfen hat, sich dabei Gewalt
und Verfolgung zu erlauben, oder gar der Stifter der Inquisition zu
werden, wirkte er, nicht den Irrenden, sondern den Irrthum befehdend,
nur durch ruhige Belehrung und Erörterung.
If Newman, a much more cautious disputant, thought it substantial truth
to say that Rome never burnt heretics, there were things as false in his
own early writings. If Möhler, in the religious wars, diverted attention
from Catholic to Protestant atrocities, he took the example from his
friend's book, which he was reviewing. There may be startling matter in
Locatus and Pegna, but they were officials writing under the strictest
censorship, and nobody can tell when they express their own private
thoughts. There is a copy of Suarez on which a priest has written the
marginal ejaculation: "Mon Dieu, ayez pitié de nous!" But Suarez had to
send the manuscript of his most aggressive book to Rome for revision,
and Döllinger used to insist, on the testimony of his secretary, in
Walton's _Lives_, that he disavowed and detested the interpolations that
came back.
The French group, unlike him in spirit and motive, but dealing with the
same opponents, judged them freely, and gave imperative utterance to
their judgments. While Döllinger said of Veuillot that he meant well,
but did much good and much evil, Montalembert called him a hypocrite:
"L'Univers, en déclarant tous les jours qu'il ne veut pas d'autre
liberté que la sienne, justifie tout ce que nos pires ennemis ont jamais
dit sur la mauvaise foi et l'hypocrisie des polémistes chrétiens."
Lacordaire wrote to a hostile bishop: "L'Univers est à mes yeux la
négation de tout esprit chrétien et de tout bon sens humain. Ma
consolation au milieu de si grandes misères morales est de vivre
solitaire, occupé d'une oeuvre que Dieu bénit, et de protester par mon
silence, et de temps en temps par mes paroles, contre la plus grande
insolence qui se soit encore autorisée au nom de Jésus-Christ." Gratry
was a man of more gentle nature, but his tone is the same: "Esprits faux
ou nuls, consciences intellectuelles faussées par l'habitude de
l'apologie sans franchise: _partemque ejus cum hypocritis ponet_.--Cette
école est bien en vérité une école de mensonge.--C'est cette école qui
est depuis des siècles, et surtout en ce siècle, l'opprobre de notre
cause et le fléau de la religion. Voilà notre ennemi commun; voilà
l'ennemi de l'Eglise."
Döllinger never understood party divisions in this tragic way. He was
provided with religious explanations for the living and the dead; and
his maxims in regard to contemporaries governed and attenuated his view
of every historical problem. For the writers of his acquaintance who
were unfaltering advocates of the Holy Office, for Philips and Gams, and
for Theiner, who expiated devious passages of early youth, amongst other
penitential works, with large volumes in honour of Gregory XIII., he had
always the same mode of defence: "Mir begegnet es noch jede Woche, dass
ich irgend einem Irrthum, mitunter einem lange gepflegten, entsage, ihn
mir gleichsam aus der Brust herausreissen muss. Da sollte man freilich
höchst duldsam und nachsichtig gegen fremde Irrthümer werden" (5th
October 1866). He writes in the same terms to another correspondent
sixteen years later: "Mein ganzes Leben ist ein successives Abstreifen
von Irrthümern gewesen, von Irrthümern, die ich mit Zähigkeit festhielt,
gewaltsam gegen die mir aufdämmernde bessere Erkenntniss mich stemmend;
und doch meine ich sagen zu dürfen, dass ich dabei nicht _dishonest_
war. Darf ich andre verurtheilen _in eodem luto mecum haerentes_?" He
regretted as he grew old the hardness and severity of early days, and
applied the same inconclusive deduction from his own experience to the
past. After comparing Baronius and Bellarmine with Bossuet and Arnauld
he goes on: "Wenn ich solche Männer auf einem Irrthum treffe, so sage
ich mir: 'Wenn Du damals gelebt, und an seiner Stelle gestanden wärest,
hättest Du nicht den allegingn Wahn getheilt; und er, wenn er die Dir zu
Theil gewordenen Erkenntnissmittel besessen, würde er nicht besseren
Gebrauch davon gemacht haben, die Wahrheit nicht früher erkannt und
bekannt haben, als Du?'"
He sometimes distrusted his favourite argument of ignorance and early
prepossessions, and felt that there was presumption and unreality in
tendering such explanations to men like the Bollandist De Buck, De
Rossi, whom the Institute elected in preference to Mommsen, or
Windischmann, whom he himself had been accused of bringing forward as a
rival to Möhler. He would say that knowledge may be a burden and not a
light, that the faculty of doing justice to the past is among the rarest
of moral and intellectual gifts: "Man kann viel wissen, viele Notizen im
Kopf haben, ohne das rechte wissenschaftliche Verständniss, ohne den
historischen Sinn. Dieser ist, wie Sie wohl wissen, gar nicht so häufig;
und we er fehlt, da fehlt auch, scheint mir, die volle Verantwortlichkeit
für das gewusste."
In 1879 he prepared materials for a paper on the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. Here he was breaking new ground, and verging on that which
it was the policy and the aspiration of his life to avoid. Many a man
who gives no tears to Cranmer, Servetus, or Bruno, who thinks it just
that the laws should be obeyed, who deems that actions done by order are
excused, and that legality implies morality, will draw the line at
midnight murder and wholesale extermination. The deed wrought at Paris
and in forty towns of France in 1572, the arguments which produced it,
the arguments which justified it, left no room for the mists of
mitigation and compromise. The passage from the age of Gregory IX. to
that of Gregory XIII., from the Crusades to the wars of Religion,
brought his whole system into jeopardy. The historian who was at the
heels of the divine in 1861, and level with him in 1867, would have come
to the front. The discourse was never delivered, never composed. But the
subject of toleration was absent no more from his thoughts, filling
space once occupied by Julian of Eclanum and Duns Scotus, the Variata
and the Five Propositions. To the last days of 1889 he was engaged in
following the doctrines of intolerance back to their root, from Innocent
III. to the Council of Rheims, from Nicholas I. to St. Augustine,
narrowing the sphere of individual responsibility, defending agents, and
multiplying degrees so as to make them imperceptible. Before the
writings of Priscillian were published by the Vienna Academy the nature
of their strange contents was disclosed. It then appeared that a copy of
the _Codex unicus_ had been sent to Döllinger from Würzburg years
before; and that he had never adverted to the fact that the burning of
heretics came, fully armed, from the brain of one man, and was the
invention of a heretic who became its first victim.
At Rome he discussed the council of Trent with Theiner, and tried to
obtain permission for him to publish the original acts. Pius IX.
objected that none of his predecessors had allowed it, and Theiner
answered that none of them had defined the Immaculate Conception. In a
paper which Döllinger drew up, he observed that Pallavicini cannot
convince; that far from proving the case against the artful Servite, the
pettiness of his charges indicates that he has no graver fault to find;
so that nothing but the production of the official texts can enforce or
disprove the imputation that Trent was a scene of tyranny and intrigue.
His private belief then was that the papers would disprove the
imputation and vindicate the council. When Theiner found it possible to
publish his _Acta Authentica_, Döllinger also printed several private
diaries, chiefly from Mendham's collection at the Bodleian. But the
correspondence between Rome and the legates is still, in its integrity,
kept back. The two friends had examined it; both were persuaded that it
was decisive; but they judged that it decided in opposite ways. Theiner,
the official guardian of the records, had been forbidden to communicate
them during the Vatican Council; and he deemed the concealment prudent.
What passed in Rome under Pius IX. would, he averred, suffer by
comparison. According to Döllinger, the suppressed papers told against
Trent.
Wenn wir nicht allen unseren henotischen Hoffnungen entsagen und uns
nicht in schweren Konflikt mit der alten (vormittel-alterigen) Kirche
bringen wollen, werden wir doch auch da das Korrektiv des
Vincentianischen Prinzips (_semper, ubique, ab omnibus_) zur
Anwendung bringen müssen.
After his last visit to the Marciana he thought more favourably of
Father Paul, sharing the admiration which Venetians feel for the
greatest writer of the Republic, and falling little short of the
judgments which Macaulay inscribed, after each perusal, in the copy at
Inveraray. Apart from his chief work he thought him a great historian,
and he rejected the suspicion that he professed a religion which he did
not believe. He even fancied that the manuscript, which in fact was
forwarded with much secrecy to Archbishop Abbot, was published against
his will. The intermediate seekers, who seem to skirt the border, such
as Grotius, Ussher, Praetorius, and the other celebrated Venetian, De
Dominis, interested him deeply, in connection with the subject of
Irenics, and the religious problem was part motive of his incessant
study of Shakespeare, both in early life, and when he meditated joining
in the debate between Simpson, Rio, Bernays, and the _Edinburgh Review_.
His estimate of his own work was low. He wished to be remembered as a
man who had written certain books, but who had not written many more.
His collections constantly prompted new and attractive schemes, but his
way was strewn with promise unperformed, and abandoned from want of
concentration. He would not write with imperfect materials, and to him
the materials were always imperfect. Perpetually engaged in going over
his own life and reconsidering his conclusions, he was not depressed by
unfinished work. When a sanguine friend hoped that all the contents of
his hundred note-books would come into use, he answered that perhaps
they might, if he lived for a hundred and fifty years. He seldom wrote a
book without compulsion, or the aid of energetic assistants. The
account of mediæval sects, dated 1890, was on the stocks for half a
century. The discourse on the Templars, delivered at his last appearance
in public, had been always before him since a conversation with Michelet
about the year 1841. Fifty-six years lay between his text to the
_Paradiso_ of Cornelius and his last return to Dante.
When he began to fix his mind on the constitutional history of the
Church, he proposed to write, first, on the times of Innocent XI. It was
the age he knew best, in which there was most interest, most material,
most ability, when divines were national classics, and presented many
distinct types of religious thought, when biblical and historical
science was founded, and Catholicism was presented in its most winning
guise. The character of Odescalchi impressed him, by his earnestness in
sustaining a strict morality. Fragments of this projected work
reappeared in his lectures on Louis XIV., and in his last publication on
the Casuists. The lectures betray the decline of the tranquil idealism
which had been the admiration and despair of friends. Opposition to Rome
had made him, like his ultramontane allies in France, more indulgent to
the ancient Gallican enemy. He now had to expose the vice of that
system, which never roused the king's conscience, and served for sixty
years, from the remonstrance of Caussin to the anonymous warning of
Fénelon, as the convenient sanction of absolutism. In the work on
seventeenth-century ethics, which is his farthest, the moral point of
view prevails over every other, and conscience usurps the place of
theology, canon law, and scholarship. This was his tribute to a new
phase of literature, the last he was to see, which was beginning to put
ethical knowledge above metaphysics and politics, as the central range
of human progress. Morality, veracity, the proper atmosphere of ideal
history, became the paramount interest.
When he was proposed for a degree, the most eloquent lips at Oxford,
silenced for ever whilst I write this page, pointed to his excellence in
those things which are the merit of Germans. "Quaecunque in Germanorum
indole admiranda atque imitanda fere censemus, ea in Doellingero maxime
splendent." The patriotic quality was recognised in the address of the
Berlin professors, who say that by upholding the independence of the
national thought, whilst he enriched it with the best treasure of other
lands, he realised the ideal of the historian. He became more German in
extreme old age, and less impressive in his idiomatic French and English
than in his own language. The lamentations of men he thought good
judges, Mazade and Taine, and the first of literary critics, Montégut,
diluted somewhat his admiration for the country of St. Bernard and
Bossuet. In spite of politics, his feeling for English character, for
the moral quality of English literature, never changed; and he told his
own people that their faults are not only very near indeed to their
virtues, but are sometimes more apparent to the observer. The belief in
the fixity and influence of national type, confirmed by his authorities,
Ganganelli and Möhler, continued to determine his judgments. In his last
letter to Mr. Gladstone, he illustrated the Irish question by means of a
chronicle describing Ireland a thousand years ago.
Everybody has felt that his power was out of proportion to his work, and
that he knew too much to write. It was so much better to hear him than
to read all his books, that the memory of what he was will pass away
with the children whom he loved. Hefele called him the first theologian
in Germany, and Höfler said that he surpassed all men in the knowledge
of historical literature; but Hefele was the bishop of his predilection,
and Höfler had been fifty years his friend, and is the last survivor of
the group which once made Munich the capital of citramontane
Catholicity. Martensen, the most brilliant of Episcopalian divines,
describes him as he talked with equal knowledge and certainty of every
age, and understood all characters and all situations as if he had lived
in the midst of them. The best ecclesiastical historian now living is
the fittest judge of the great ecclesiastical historian who is dead.
Harnack has assigned causes which limited his greatness as a writer,
perhaps even as a thinker; but he has declared that no man had the same
knowledge and intelligence of history in general, and of religious
history which is its most essential element, and he affirms, what some
have doubted, that he possessed the rare faculty of entering into alien
thought. None of those who knew Professor Döllinger best, who knew him
in the third quarter of the century, to which he belonged by the full
fruition of his powers and the completeness of his knowledge, will ever
qualify these judgments. It is right to add that, in spite of boundless
reading, there was no lumber in his mind, and in spite of his classical
learning, little ornament. Among the men to be commemorated here, he
stands alone. Throughout the measureless distance which he traversed,
his movement was against his wishes, in pursuit of no purpose, in
obedience to no theory, under no attraction but historical research
alone. It was given to him to form his philosophy of history on the
largest induction ever available to man; and whilst he owed more to
divinity than any other historian, he owed more to history than any
other divine.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 338: _English Historical Review_,1890.]
XII
CARDINAL WISEMAN AND THE HOME AND FOREIGN REVIEW[339]
It is one of the conditions inseparable from a public career to be often
misunderstood, and sometimes judged unfairly even when understood the
best. No one who has watched the formation of public opinion will be
disposed to attribute all the unjust judgments which assail him to the
malice of individuals, or to imagine that he can prevent misconceptions
or vindicate his good name by words alone. He knows that even where he
has committed no errors he must pay tribute to the fallibility of
mankind, and that where he is in fault he must also pay tribute to his
own. This is a natural law; and the purer a man's conscience is, and the
more single his aim, the less eager will he be to evade it, or to defend
himself from its penalties.
The man whose career is bound up with that of some school or party will
estimate the value of his opponents' censures by the worth which he
attributes to the undiscriminating praise of his friends; but he who has
devoted himself to the development of principles which will not always
bend to the dictates of expediency will have no such short way of
dealing with objections. His independence will frequently and inexorably
demand the sacrifice of interests to truth--of what is politic to what
is right; and, whenever he makes that sacrifice, he will appear a
traitor to those whom he is most anxious to serve, while his act will be
hailed by those who are farthest from sharing his opinions as a proof of
secret sympathy, and harbinger of future alliance. Thus, the censure
which he incurs will most often come from those whose views are
essentially his own; and the very matter which calls it forth will be
that which elicits the applause of adversaries who cannot bring
themselves to believe either in the truth of his opinions, in the
integrity of his motives, or in the sincerity of his aims.
There are few men living whose career has been more persistently
misinterpreted, more bitterly assailed, or more ignorantly judged, than
the illustrious person who is the head in England of the Church to which
we belong, Cardinal Wiseman has been for many years the chief object of
the attacks of those who have desired to injure or degrade our
community. He is not only the canonical chief of English Catholics, but
his ability, and the devotion of his life to their cause, have made him
their best representative and their most powerful champion. No prelate
in Christendom is more fully trusted by the Holy See, or exercises a
more extensive personal influence, or enjoys so wide a literary renown.
Upon him, therefore, intolerance and fanaticism have concentrated their
malice. He has had to bear the brunt of that hatred which the holiness
of Catholicism inspires in its enemies; and the man who has never been
found wanting when the cause of the Church was at stake may boast, with
a not unworthy pride, of the indifference with which he has encountered
the personal slander of a hostile press.
The Catholics of this country are attached to Cardinal Wiseman by warmer
feelings and more personal ties than those of merely ecclesiastical
subordination. It has been his privilege to gather the spiritual fruits
of the Catholic Emancipation Act; and the history of English Catholicism
has been, for a whole generation, bound up with his name. That immense
change in the internal condition of the Church in England which
distinguishes our days from the time of Milner has grown up under his
influence, and has been in great part his work. We owe it to him that we
have been brought into closer intercourse with Rome, and into contact
with the rest of Europe. By his preaching and his spiritual direction he
has transformed the devotions of our people; while his lectures and
writings have made Protestants familiar with Catholic ideas, and have
given Catholics a deeper insight into their own religion. As a
controversialist he influenced the Oxford movement more deeply than any
other Catholic. As director of the chief literary organ of Catholics
during a quarter of a century he rendered services to our literature,
and overcame difficulties, which none are in a better position to
appreciate than those who are engaged in a similar work. And as
President of Oscott, he acquired the enduring gratitude of hundreds who
owed to his guidance the best portion of their training.
These personal relations with English Catholics, which have made him a
stranger to none and a benefactor to all, have at the same time given
him an authority of peculiar weight amongst them. With less unity of
view and tradition than their brethren in other lands, they were
accustomed, in common with the rest of Englishmen, to judge more
independently and to speak more freely than is often possible in
countries more exclusively Catholic. Their minds are not all cast in the
same mould, nor their ideas derived from the same stock; but all alike,
from bishop to layman, identify their cause with that of the Cardinal,
and feel that, in the midst of a hostile people, no diversity of opinion
ought to interfere with unity of action, no variety of interest with
identity of feeling, no controversy with the universal reverence which
is due to the position and character of the Archbishop of Westminster.
In this spirit the Catholic body have received Cardinal Wiseman's latest
publication--his "Reply to the Address of his Clergy on his return from
Rome." He speaks in it of the great assemblage of the Episcopate, and of
their address to the Holy Father. Among the bishops there present he
was the most conspicuous, and he was President of the Commission to
which the preparation of their address was intrusted. No account of it,
therefore, can be more authentic than that which he is able to give. The
reserve imposed by his office, and by the distinguished part he had to
bear, has been to some extent neutralised by the necessity of refuting
false and exaggerated rumours which were circulated soon after the
meeting, and particularly two articles which appeared in _The Patrie_ on
the 4th and 5th of July, and in which it was stated that the address
written by Cardinal Wiseman contained "most violent attacks on all the
fundamental principles of modern society."
After replying in detail to the untruths of this newspaper, the Cardinal
proceeds as follows:--
With far greater pain I feel compelled to advert to a covert
insinuation of the same charges, in a publication avowedly Catholic,
and edited in my own diocese, consequently canonically subject to my
correction. Should such a misstatement, made under my own eyes, be
passed over by me, it might be surmised that it could not be
contradicted; and whether chronologically it preceded or followed the
French account it evidently becomes my duty to notice it, as French
bishops have considered it theirs to correct the inaccuracies of
their native writers.
Otherwise, in a few years, we might find reference made, as to a
recognised Catholic authority, for the current and unreproved
statement of what occurred at Rome, to _The Home and Foreign Review_.
And that in a matter on which reprehension would have been doubly
expected, if merited. In its first number the Address, which has, I
believe, wonderfully escaped the censure of Protestant and infidel
journals, is thus spoken of: "This Address is said to be a compromise
between one which took the violent course of recommending that major
excommunication should be at once pronounced against the chief
enemies of the temporal power by name, and one still more moderate
than the present" (_The Home and Foreign Review_, p. 264). Now this
very charge about recommending excommunication is the one made by the
French paper against my Address. But, leaving to the writer the
chance of an error, in this application of his words, I am bound to
correct it, to whomever it refers. He speaks of only two addresses:
the distinction between them implies severe censure on one. I assure
you that neither contained the recommendation or the sentiment
alluded to.
My Brethren, I repeat that it pains me to have to contradict the
repetition, in my own diocese, of foreign accusations, without the
smallest pains taken to verify or disprove them with means at hand.
But this can hardly excite surprise in us who know the antecedents of
that journal under another name, the absence for years of all reserve
or reverence in its treatment of persons or of things deemed sacred,
its grazing over the very edges of the most perilous abysses of
error, and its habitual preferences of uncatholic to catholic
instincts, tendencies, and motives. In uttering these sad thoughts,
and entreating you to warn your people, and especially the young,
against such dangerous leadership, believe me I am only obeying a
higher direction than my own impulses, and acting under much more
solemn sanctions. Nor shall I stand alone in this unhappily necessary
correction.
But let us pass to more cheerful and consoling thoughts. If my
connection with the preparation of the Address, from my having held,
though unworthy, office in its Committee, enables and authorises me
to rebut false charges against it, it has further bestowed upon me
the privilege of personal contact with a body of men who justly
represented the entire Episcopate, and would have represented it with
equal advantage in any other period of the Church. I know not who
selected them, nor do I venture to say that many other equal
committees of eighteen could not have been extracted from the
remainder. I think they might; but I must say that a singular wisdom
seemed to me to have presided over the actual, whatever might have
been any other possible, choice.
Deliberations more minute, more mutually respectful, more courteous,
or at the same time more straightforward and unflinching, could
hardly have been carried on. More learning in theology and canon law,
more deep religious feeling, a graver sense of the responsibility
laid upon the Commission, or a more scrupulous regard to the claims
of justice, and no less of mercy, could scarcely have been exhibited.
Its spirit was one of mildness, of gentleness, and of reverence to
all who rightly claimed it. "Violent courses," invitations to "draw
the sword and rush on enemies," or to deal about "the major
excommunication by name," I deliberately assure you, were never
mentioned, never insinuated, and I think I may say, never thought of
by any one in that Council. In the sketches proposed by several,
there was not a harsh or disrespectful word about any sovereign or
government; in anything I ever humbly proposed, there was not a
single allusion to "King or Kaiser."
Our duty to the Cardinal and our duty to our readers alike forbid us to
pass by these remarks without notice. Silence would imply either that we
admitted the charge, or that we disregarded the censure; and each of
these suppositions would probably be welcome to the enemies of our
common cause, while both of them are, in fact, untrue. The impossibility
of silence, however, involves the necessity of our stating the facts on
which charges so definite and so formidable have been founded. In doing
so, we shall endeavour both to exhibit the true sequence of events, and
to explain the origin of the Cardinal's misapprehension; and in this way
we shall reply to the charges made against us.
But we must first explicitly declare, as we have already implied, that
in the Cardinal's support and approbation of our work we should
recognise an aid more valuable to the cause we are engaged in than the
utmost support which could be afforded to us by any other person; and
that we cannot consider the terms he has used respecting us otherwise
than as a misfortune to be profoundly regretted, and a blow which might
seriously impair our power to do service to religion.
A Catholic Review which is deprived of the countenance of the
ecclesiastical authorities is placed in an abnormal position. A germ of
distrust is planted in the ground where the good seed should grow; the
support which the suspected organ endeavours to lend to the Church is
repudiated by the ecclesiastical rulers; and its influence in Protestant
society, as an expositor of Catholic ideas, is in danger of being
destroyed, because its exposition of them may be declared unsound and
unfair, even when it represents them most faithfully and defends them
most successfully. The most devoted efforts of its conductors are liable
to be misconstrued, and perversely turned either against the Church or
against the _Review_ itself; its best works are infected with the
suspicion with which it is regarded, and its merits become almost more
perilous than its faults.
These considerations could not have been overlooked by the Cardinal when
he resolved to take a step which threatened to paralyse one of the few
organs of Catholic opinion in England. Yet he took that step. If an
enemy had done this, it would have been enough to vindicate ourselves,
and to leave the burden of an unjust accusation to be borne by its
author. But since it has been done by an ecclesiastical superior, with
entire foresight of the grave consequences of the act, it has become
necessary for us, in addition, to explain the circumstances by which he
was led into a course we have so much reason to deplore, and to show how
an erroneous and unjust opinion could arise in the mind of one whom
obvious motives would have disposed to make the best use of a
publication, the conductors of which are labouring to serve the
community he governs, and desired and endeavoured to obtain his sanction
for their work. If we were unable to reconcile these two
necessities,--if we were compelled to choose between a forbearance
dishonourable to ourselves, and a refutation injurious to the Cardinal,
we should be placed in a painful and almost inextricable difficulty. For
a Catholic who defends himself at the expense of an ecclesiastical
superior sacrifices that which is generally of more public value than
his own fair fame; and an English Catholic who casts back on Cardinal
Wiseman the blame unjustly thrown on himself, hurts a reputation which
belongs to the whole body, and disgraces the entire community of
Catholics. By such a course, a Review which exists only for public
objects would stultify its own position and injure its own cause, and
_The Home and Foreign Review_ has no object to attain, and no views to
advance, except objects and views in which the Catholic Church is
interested. The ends for which it labours, according to its light and
ability, are ends by which the Church cannot but gain; the doctrine it
receives, and the authority it obeys, are none other than those which
command the acceptance and submission of the Cardinal himself. It
desires to enjoy his support; it has no end to gain by opposing him. But
we are not in this painful dilemma. We can show that the accusations of
the Cardinal are unjust; and, at the same time, we can explain how
naturally the suppositions on which they are founded have arisen, by
giving a distinct and ample statement of our own principles and
position.
The complaint which the Cardinal makes against us contains,
substantially, five charges: (1) that we made a misstatement, affirming
something historically false to be historically true; (2) that the
falsehood consists in the statement that only two addresses were
proposed in the Commission--one violent, the other very moderate,--and
that the address finally adopted was a compromise between these two; (3)
that we insinuated that the Cardinal himself was the author of the
violent address; (4) that we cast, by implication, a severe censure on
that address and its author; and (5) that our narrative was derived from
the same sources, and inspired by the same motives, as that given in
_The Patrie_,--for the Cardinal distinctly connects the two accounts,
and quotes passages indifferently from both, in such a way that words
which we never used might by a superficial reader be supposed to be
ours.
To these charges our reply is as follows: (1) We gave the statement of
which the Cardinal complains as a mere rumour current on any good
authority at the time of our publication, and we employed every means in
our power to test its accuracy, though the only other narratives which
had then reached England were, as the Cardinal says (p. 9), too "partial
and perverted" to enable us to sift it to the bottom. We stated that a
rumour was current, not that its purport was true. (2) We did not speak
of "only two addresses" actually submitted to the Commission. We
supposed the report to mean, that of the three possible forms of
address, two extreme and one mean, each of which actually had partisans
in the Commission, the middle or moderate form was the one finally
adopted. (3) We had no suspicion that the Cardinal had proposed any
violent address at all; we did not know that such a proposal had been,
or was about to be, attributed to him; and there was no connection
whatever between him and it either in our mind or in our language. (4)
We implied no censure either on the course proposed or on its proposer,
still less on the Cardinal personally. (5) The articles in _The Patrie_
first appeared--and that in France--some days after our Review was in
the hands of the public; we know nothing of the authority on which their
statements were founded, and we have not the least sympathy either with
the politics or the motives of that newspaper.
This reply would be enough for our own defence; but it is right that we
should show, on the other side, how it came to pass that the Cardinal
was led to subject our words to that construction which we have so much
reason to regret. Reading them by the light of his own knowledge, and
through the medium of the false reports which afterwards arose with
regard to himself, his interpretation of them may easily have appeared
both plausible and likely. For there were more draft addresses than one:
one was his; the actual address was a compromise between them, and he
had been falsely accused of, and severely censured for, proposing
violent courses in his address. Knowing this, he was tempted to suspect
a covert allusion to himself under our words, and the chronological
relation between our own article and those of _The Patrie_ was easily
forgotten, or made nugatory by the supposition of their both being
derived from the same sources of information.
But this will be made clearer by the following narrative of facts: A
Commission was appointed to draw up the address of the bishops; Cardinal
Wiseman, its president, proposed a draft address, which was not
obnoxious to any of the criticisms made on any other draft, and is, in
substance, the basis of the address as it was ultimately settled. It was
favourably received by the Commission; but, after some deliberation, its
final adoption was postponed.
Subsequently, a prelate who had been absent from the previous discussion
presented another draft, not in competition with that proposed by the
president, nor as an amendment to it, but simply as a basis for
discussion. This second draft was also favourably received; and the
Commission, rather out of consideration for the great services and
reputation of its author than from any dissatisfaction with the address
proposed by the president, resolved to amalgamate the two drafts. All
other projects were set aside; and, in particular, two proposals were
deliberately rejected. One of these proposals was, to pay a tribute of
acknowledgment for the services of the French nation to the Holy See;
the other was, to denounce the perfidious and oppressive policy of the
Court of Turin in terms which we certainly should not think either
exaggerated or undeserved. We have neither right nor inclination to
complain of the ardent patriotism which has been exhibited by the
illustrious Bishop of Orleans in the two publications he has put forth
since his return to his See, or of the indignation which the system
prevailing at Turin must excite in every man who in his heart loves the
Church, or whose intelligence can appreciate the first principles of
government. Whatever may have been the censure proposed, it certainly
did not surpass the measure of the offence. Nevertheless, the impolicy
of a violent course, which could not fail to cause irritation, and to
aggravate the difficulties of the Church, appears to have been fully
recognised by the Commission; and we believe that no one was more prompt
in exposing the inutility of such a measure than the Cardinal himself.
The idea that anything imprudent or aggressive was to be found in his
draft is contradicted by all the facts of the case, and has not a shadow
of foundation in anything that is contained in the address as adopted.
We need say no more to explain what has been very erroneously called our
covert insinuation. From this narrative of facts our statement comes
out, no longer as a mere report, but as a substantially accurate summary
of events, questioned only on one point,--the extent of the censure
which was proposed. So that in the account which the Cardinal quoted
from our pages there was no substantial statement to correct, as in fact
no correction of any definite point but one has been attempted.
How this innocent statement has come to be suspected of a hostile
intent, and to be classed with the calumnies of _The Patrie_, is another
question. The disposition with which the Cardinal sat in judgment upon
our words was founded, not on anything they contained, but, as he
declares, on the antecedents of the conductors of _The Home and Foreign
Review_, and on the character of a journal which no longer exists. That
character he declares to consist in "the absence for years of all
reserve or reverence in its treatment of persons or of things deemed
sacred, its grazing over the very edges of the most perilous abysses of
error, and its habitual preferences of uncatholic to catholic instincts,
tendencies, and motives." In publishing this charge, which amounts to a
declaration that we hold opinions and display a spirit not compatible
with an entire attachment and submission of intellect and will to the
doctrine and authority of the Catholic Church, the Cardinal adds, "I am
only obeying a higher direction than my own impulses, and acting under
much more solemn sanctions. Nor shall I stand alone in this unhappily
necessary correction."
There can be little doubt of the nature of the circumstances to which
this announcement points. It is said that certain papers or
propositions, which the report does not specify, have been extracted
from the journal which the Cardinal identifies with this Review, and
forwarded to Rome for examination; that the Prefect of Propaganda has
characterised these extracts, or some of them, in terms which correspond
to the Cardinal's language; and that the English bishops have
deliberated whether they should issue similar declarations. We have no
reason to doubt that the majority of them share the Cardinal's view,
which is also that of a large portion both of the rest of the clergy and
also of the laity; and, whatever may be the precise action which has
been taken in the matter, it is unquestionable that a very formidable
mass of ecclesiastical authority and popular feeling is united against
certain principles or opinions which, whether rightly or wrongly, are
attributed to us. No one will suppose that an impression so general can
be entirely founded on a mistake. Those who admit the bare orthodoxy of
our doctrine will, under the circumstances, naturally conclude that in
our way of holding or expounding it there must be something new and
strange, unfamiliar and bewildering, to those who are accustomed to the
prevalent spirit of Catholic literature; something which our
fellow-Catholics are not prepared to admit; something which can
sufficiently explain misgivings so commonly and so sincerely
entertained. Others may perhaps imagine that we are unconsciously
drifting away from the Church, or that we only professedly and
hypocritically remain with her. But the Catholic critic will not forget
that charity is a fruit of our religion, and that his anxiety to do
justice to those from whom he must differ ought always to be in equal
proportion with his zeal. Relying, then, upon this spirit of fairness,
convinced of the sincerity of the opposition we encounter, and in order
that there may remain a distinct and intelligible record of the aim to
which we dedicate our labours, we proceed to make that declaration which
may be justly asked of nameless writers, as a testimony of the purpose
which has inspired our undertaking, and an abiding pledge of our
consistency.
This Review has been begun on a foundation which its conductors can
never abandon without treason to their own convictions, and infidelity
to the objects they have publicly avowed. That foundation is a humble
faith in the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church, a devotion to
her cause which controls every other interest, and an attachment to her
authority which no other influence can supplant. If in anything
published by us a passage can be found which is contrary to that
doctrine, incompatible with that devotion, or disrespectful to that
authority, we sincerely retract and lament it. No such passage was ever
consciously admitted into the pages either of the late _Rambler_ or of
this Review. But undoubtedly we may have committed errors in judgment,
and admitted errors of fact; such mistakes are unavoidable in secular
matters, and no one is exempt from them in spiritual things except by
the constant assistance of Divine grace. Our wish and purpose are not to
deny faults, but to repair them; to instruct, not to disturb our
readers; to take down the barriers which shut out our Protestant
countrymen from the Church, not to raise up divisions within her pale;
and to confirm and deepen, not to weaken, alter, or circumscribe the
faith of Catholics.
The most exalted methods of serving religion do not lie in the path of a
periodical which addresses a general audience. The appliances of the
spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere--that of the priesthood,
of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and
self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the
distractions of public affairs. The world cannot be taken into the
confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality
be complicated with the secular questions of the day. To make the
attempt would be to usurp and degrade a holier office. The function of
the journalist is on another level. He may toil in the same service, but
not in the same rank, as the master-workman. His tools are coarser, his
method less refined, and if his range is more extended, his influence is
less intense. Literature, like government, assists religion, but it does
so indirectly, and from without. The ends for which it works are
distinct from those of the Church, and yet subsidiary to them; and the
more independently each force achieves its own end, the more complete
will the ultimate agreement be found, and the more will religion profit.
The course of a periodical publication in its relation to the Church is
defined by this distinction of ends; its sphere is limited by the
difference and inferiority of the means which it employs, while the need
for its existence and its independence is vindicated by the necessity
there is for the service it performs.
It is the peculiar mission of the Church to be the channel of grace to
each soul by her spiritual and pastoral action--she alone has this
mission; but it is not her only work. She has also to govern and
educate, so far as government and education are needful subsidiaries to
her great work of the salvation of souls. By her discipline, her
morality, her law, she strives to realise the divine order upon earth;
while by her intellectual labour she seeks an even fuller knowledge of
the works, the ideas, and the nature of God. But the ethical and
intellectual offices of the Church, as distinct from her spiritual
office, are not hers exclusively or peculiarly. They were discharged,
however imperfectly, before she was founded; and they are discharged
still, independently of her, by two other authorities,--science and
society; the Church cannot perform all these functions by herself, nor,
consequently, can she absorb their direction. The political and
intellectual orders remain permanently distinct from the spiritual. They
follow their own ends, they obey their own laws, and in doing so they
support the cause of religion by the discovery of truth and the
upholding of right. They render this service by fulfilling their own
ends independently and unrestrictedly, not by surrendering them for the
sake of spiritual interests. Whatever diverts government and science
from their own spheres, or leads religion to usurp their domains,
confounds distinct authorities, and imperils not only political right
and scientific truths, but also the cause of faith and morals. A
government that, for the interests of religion, disregards political
right, and a science that, for the sake of protecting faith, wavers and
dissembles in the pursuit of knowledge, are instruments at least as well
adapted to serve the cause of falsehood as to combat it, and never can
be used in furtherance of the truth without that treachery to principle
which is a sacrifice too costly to be made for the service of any
interest whatever.
Again, the principles of religion, government, and science are in
harmony, always and absolutely; but their interests are not. And though
all other interests must yield to those of religion, no principle can
succumb to any interest. A political law or a scientific truth may be
perilous to the morals or the faith of individuals, but it cannot on
this ground be resisted by the Church. It may at times be a duty of the
State to protect freedom of conscience, yet this freedom may be a
temptation to apostasy. A discovery may be made in science which will
shake the faith of thousands, yet religion cannot refute it or object to
it. The difference in this respect between a true and a false religion
is, that one judges all things by the standard of their truth, the other
by the touchstone of its own interests. A false religion fears the
progress of all truth; a true religion seeks and recognises truth
wherever it can be found, and claims the power of regulating and
controlling, not the progress, but the dispensation of knowledge. The
Church both accepts the truth and prepares the individual to receive it.
The religious world has been long divided upon this great question: Do
we find principles in politics and in science? Are their methods so
rigorous that we may not bend them, their conclusions so certain that we
may not dissemble them, in presence of the more rigorous necessity of
the salvation of souls and the more certain truth of the dogmas of
faith? This question divides Protestants into rationalists and pietists.
The Church solves it in practice, by admitting the truths and the
principles in the gross, and by dispensing them in detail as men can
bear them. She admits the certainty of the mathematical method, and she
uses the historical and critical method in establishing the documents of
her own revelation and tradition. Deny this method, and her recognised
arguments are destroyed. But the Church cannot and will not deny the
validity of the methods upon which she is obliged to depend, not indeed
for her existence, but for her demonstration. There is no opening for
Catholics to deny, in the gross, that political science may have
absolute principles of right, or intellectual science of truth.
During the last hundred years Catholic literature has passed through
three phases in relation to this question. At one time, when absolutism
and infidelity were in the ascendant, and the Church was oppressed by
governments and reviled by the people, Catholic writers imitated, and
even caricatured the early Christian apologists in endeavouring to
represent their system in the light most acceptable to one side or the
other, to disguise antagonism, to modify old claims, and to display only
that side of their religion which was likely to attract toleration and
good will. Nothing which could give offence was allowed to appear.
Something of the fulness, if not of the truth, of religion was
sacrificed for the sake of conciliation. The great Catholic revival of
the present century gave birth to an opposite school. The attitude of
timidity and concession was succeeded by one of confidence and triumph.
Conciliation passed into defiance. The unscrupulous falsehoods of the
eighteenth century had thrown suspicion on all that had ever been
advanced by the adversaries of religion; and the belief that nothing
could be said for the Church gradually died away into the conviction
that nothing which was said against her could be true. A school of
writers arose strongly imbued with a horror of the calumnies of infidel
philosophers and hostile controversialists, and animated by a sovereign
desire to revive and fortify the spirit of Catholics. They became
literary advocates. Their only object was to accomplish the great work
before them; and they were often careless in statement, rhetorical and
illogical in argument, too positive to be critical, and too confident to
be precise. In this school the present generation of Catholics was
educated; to it they owe the ardour of their zeal, the steadfastness of
their faith, and their Catholic views of history, politics, and
literature. The services of these writers have been very great. They
restored the balance, which was leaning terribly against religion, both
in politics and letters. They created a Catholic opinion and a great
Catholic literature, and they conquered for the Church a very powerful
influence in European thought. The word "ultramontane" was revived to
designate this school, and that restricted term was made to embrace men
as different as De Maistre and Bonald, Lamennais and Montalembert,
Balmez and Donoso Cortes, Stolberg and Schlegel, Phillips and
Tapparelli.
There are two peculiarities by which we may test this whole group of
eminent writers: their identification of Catholicism with some secular
cause, such as the interests of a particular political or philosophical
system, and the use they make of Protestant authorities. The views which
they endeavoured to identify with the cause of the Church, however
various, agreed in giving them the air of partisans. Like advocates,
they were wont to defend their cause with the ingenuity of those who
know that all points are not equally strong, and that nothing can be
conceded except what they can defend. They did much for the cause of
learning, though they took little interest in what did not immediately
serve their turn. In their use of Protestant writers they displayed the
same partiality. They estimated a religious adversary, not by his
knowledge, but by his concessions; and they took advantage of the
progress of historical criticism, not to revise their opinions, but to
obtain testimony to their truth. It was characteristic of the school to
be eager in citing the favourable passages from Protestant authors, and
to be careless of those which were less serviceable for discussion. In
the principal writers this tendency was counteracted by character and
learning; but in the hands of men less competent or less suspicious of
themselves, sore pressed by the necessities of controversy, and too
obscure to challenge critical correction, the method became a snare for
both the writer and his readers. Thus the very qualities which we
condemn in our opponents, as the natural defences of error and the
significant emblems of a bad cause, came to taint both our literature
and our policy.
Learning has passed on beyond the range of these men's vision. Their
greatest strength was in the weakness of their adversaries, and their
own faults were eclipsed by the monstrous errors against which they
fought. But scientific methods have now been so perfected, and have come
to be applied in so cautious and so fair a spirit, that the apologists
of the last generation have collapsed before them. Investigations have
become so impersonal, so colourless, so free from the prepossessions
which distort truth, from predetermined aims and foregone conclusions,
that their results can only be met by investigations in which the same
methods are yet more completely and conscientiously applied. The sounder
scholar is invincible by the brilliant rhetorician, and the eloquence
and ingenuity of De Maistre and Schlegel would be of no avail against
researches pursued with perfect mastery of science and singleness of
purpose. The apologist's armour would be vulnerable at the point where
his religion and his science were forced into artificial union. Again,
as science widens and deepens, it escapes from the grasp of
dilettantism. Such knowledge as existed formerly could be borrowed, or
superficially acquired, by men whose lives were not devoted to its
pursuit, and subjects as far apart as the controversies of Scripture,
history, and physical science might be respectably discussed by a single
writer. No such shallow versatility is possible now. The new accuracy
and certainty of criticism have made science unattainable except by
those who devote themselves systematically to its study. The training of
a skilled labourer has become indispensable for the scholar, and science
yields its results to none but those who have mastered its methods.
Herein consists the distinction between the apologists we have described
and that school of writers and thinkers which is now growing up in
foreign countries, and on the triumph of which the position of the
Church in modern society depends. While she was surrounded with men
whose learning was sold to the service of untruth, her defenders
naturally adopted the artifices of the advocate, and wrote as if they
were pleading for a human cause. It was their concern only to promote
those precise kinds and portions of knowledge which would confound an
adversary, or support a claim. But learning ceased to be hostile to
Christianity when it ceased to be pursued merely as an instrument of
controversy--when facts came to be acknowledged, no longer because they
were useful, but simply because they were true. Religion had no occasion
to rectify the results of learning when irreligion had ceased to pervert
them, and the old weapons of controversy became repulsive as soon as
they had ceased to be useful.
By this means the authority of political right and of scientific truth
has been re-established, and they have become, not tools to be used by
religion for her own interests, but conditions which she must observe in
her actions and arguments. Within their respective spheres, politics can
determine what rights are just, science what truths are certain. There
are few political or scientific problems which affect the doctrines of
religion, and none of them are hostile to it in their solution. But this
is not the difficulty which is usually felt. A political principle or a
scientific discovery is more commonly judged, not by its relation to
religious truth, but by its bearings on some manifest or probable
religious interests. A fact may be true, or a law may be just, and yet
it may, under certain conditions, involve some spiritual loss.
And here is the touchstone and the watershed of principles. Some men
argue that the object of government is to contribute to the salvation of
souls; that certain measures may imperil this end, and that therefore
they must be condemned. These men only look to interests; they cannot
conceive the duty of sacrificing them to independent political principle
or idea. Or, again, they will say, "Here is a scientific discovery
calculated to overthrow many traditionary ideas, to undo a prevailing
system of theology, to disprove a current interpretation, to cast
discredit on eminent authorities, to compel men to revise their most
settled opinions, to disturb the foundation on which the faith of others
stands." These are sufficient reasons for care in the dispensation of
truth; but the men we are describing will go on to say, "This is enough
to throw suspicion on the discovery itself; even if it is true, its
danger is greater than its value. Let it, therefore, be carefully
buried, and let all traces of it be swept away."
A policy like this appears to us both wrong in itself and derogatory to
the cause it is employed to serve. It argues either a timid faith which
fears the light, or a false morality which would do evil that good might
come. How often have Catholics involved themselves in hopeless
contradiction, sacrificed principle to opportunity, adapted their
theories to their interests, and staggered the world's reliance on their
sincerity by subterfuges which entangle the Church in the shifting sands
of party warfare, instead of establishing her cause on the solid rock of
principles! How often have they clung to some plausible chimera which
seemed to serve their cause, and nursed an artificial ignorance where
they feared the discoveries of an impertinent curiosity! As ingenious in
detraction as in silence and dissimulation, have they not too often
answered imputations which they could not disprove with accusations
which they could not prove, till the slanders they had invented rivalled
in number and intensity the slanders which had been invented against
them? For such men principles have had only temporary value and local
currency. Whatever force was the strongest in any place and at any time,
with that they have sought to ally the cause of religion. They have,
with equal zeal, identified her with freedom in one country and with
absolutism in another; with conservatism where she had privileges to
keep, and with reform where she had oppression to withstand. And for all
this, what have they gained? They have betrayed duties more sacred than
the privileges for which they fought; they have lied before God and man;
they have been divided into fractions by the supposed interests of the
Church, when they ought to have been united by her principles and her
doctrines; and against themselves they have justified those grave
accusations of falsehood, insincerity, indifference to civil rights and
contempt for civil authorities which are uttered with such profound
injustice against the Church.
The present difficulties of the Church--her internal dissensions and
apparent weakness, the alienation of so much intellect, the strong
prejudice which keeps many away from her altogether, and makes many who
had approached her shrink back,--all draw nourishment from this rank
soil. The antagonism of hostile doctrines and the enmity of governments
count for little in comparison. It is in vain to point to her apostolic
tradition, the unbroken unity of her doctrine, her missionary energy, or
her triumphs in the region of spiritual life, if we fail to remove the
accumulated prejudice which generations of her advocates have thrown up
around her. The world can never know and recognise her divine perfection
while the pleas of her defenders are scarcely nearer to the truth than
the crimes which her enemies impute to her. How can the stranger
understand where the children of the kingdom are deceived?
Against this policy a firm and unyielding stand is of supreme necessity.
The evil is curable and the loss recoverable by a conscientious
adherence to higher principles, and a patient pursuit of truth and
right. Political science can place the liberty of the Church on
principles so certain and unfailing, that intelligent and disinterested
Protestants will accept them; and in every branch of learning with which
religion is in any way connected, the progressive discovery of truth
will strengthen faith by promoting knowledge and correcting opinion,
while it destroys prejudices and superstitions by dissipating the errors
on which they are founded. This is a course which conscience must
approve in the whole, though against each particular step of it
conscience may itself be tempted to revolt. It does not always conduce
to immediate advantage; it may lead across dangerous and scandalous
ground. A rightful sovereign may exclude the Church from his dominions,
or persecute her members. Is she therefore to say that his right is no
right, or that all intolerance is necessarily wrong? A newly discovered
truth may be a stumbling-block to perplex or to alienate the minds of
men. Is she therefore to deny or smother it? By no means. She must in
every case do right. She must prefer the law of her own general spirit
to the exigencies of immediate external occasion, and leave the issue in
the hands of God.
Such is the substance of those principles which shut out _The Home and
Foreign Review_ from the sympathies of a large portion of the body to
which we belong. In common with no small or insignificant section of our
fellow-Catholics, we hold that the time has gone by when defects in
political or scientific education could be alleged as an excuse for
depending upon expediency or mistrusting knowledge; and that the moment
has come when the best service that can be done to religion is to be
faithful to principle, to uphold the right in politics though it should
require an apparent sacrifice, and to seek truth in science though it
should involve a possible risk. Modern society has developed no security
for freedom, no instrument of progress, no means of arriving at truth,
which we look upon with indifference or suspicion. We see no necessary
gulf to separate our political or scientific convictions from those of
the wisest and most intelligent men who may differ from us in religion.
In pursuing those studies in which they can sympathise, starting from
principles which they can accept, and using methods which are theirs as
well as ours, we shall best attain the objects which alone can be aimed
at in a Review,--our own instruction, and the conciliation of opponents.
There are two main considerations by which it is necessary that we
should be guided in our pursuit of these objects. First, we have to
remember that the scientific method is most clearly exhibited and
recognised in connection with subjects about which there are no
prepossessions to wound, no fears to excite, no interests to threaten.
Hence, not only do we exclude from our range all that concerns the
ascetic life and the more intimate relations of religion, but we most
willingly devote ourselves to the treatment of subjects quite remote
from all religious bearing. Secondly, we have to remember that the
internal government of the Church belongs to a sphere exclusively
ecclesiastical, from the discussion of which we are shut out, not only
by motives of propriety and reverence, but also by the necessary absence
of any means for forming a judgment. So much ground is fenced off by
these two considerations, that a secular sphere alone remains. The
character of a scientific Review is determined for it. It cannot enter
on the domains of ecclesiastical government or of faith, and neither of
them can possibly be affected by its conclusions or its mode of
discussion.
In asserting thus absolutely that all truth must render service to
religion, we are saying what few perhaps will deny in the abstract, but
what many are not prepared to admit in detail. It will be vaguely felt,
that views which take so little account of present inconvenience and
manifest danger are perilous and novel, though they may seem to spring
from a more unquestioning faith, a more absolute confidence in truth,
and a more perfect submission to the general laws of morality. There is
no articulate theory, and no distinct view, but there is long habit, and
there are strong inducements of another kind which support this
sentiment.
To understand the certainty of scientific truth, a man must have deeply
studied scientific method; to understand the obligation of political
principle requires a similar mental discipline. A man who is suddenly
introduced from without into a society where this certainty and
obligation are currently acknowledged is naturally bewildered. He cannot
distinguish between the dubious impressions of his second-hand knowledge
and the certainty of that primary direct information which those who
possess it have no power to deny. To accept a criterion which may
condemn some cherished opinion has hitherto seemed to him a mean
surrender and a sacrifice of position. He feels it simple loss to give
up an idea; and even if he is prepared to surrender it when compelled by
controversy, still he thinks it quite unnecessary and gratuitous to
engage voluntarily in researches which may lead to such an issue. To
enter thus upon the discussion of questions which have been mixed up
with religion, and made to contribute their support to piety, seems to
the idle spectator, or to the person who is absorbed in defending
religion, a mere useless and troublesome meddling, dictated by the pride
of intellectual triumph, or by the moral cowardice which seeks
unworthily to propitiate enemies.
Great consideration is due to those whose minds are not prepared for the
full light of truth and the grave responsibilities of knowledge; who
have not learned to distinguish what is divine from what is
human--defined dogma from the atmosphere of opinion which surrounds
it,--and who honour both with the same awful reverence. Great allowances
are also due to those who are constantly labouring to nourish the spark
of belief in minds perplexed by difficulties, or darkened by ignorance
and prejudice. These men have not always the results of research at
command; they have no time to keep abreast with the constant progress of
historical and critical science; and the solutions which they are
obliged to give are consequently often imperfect, and adapted only to
uninstructed and uncultivated minds. Their reasoning cannot be the same
as that of the scholar who has to meet error in its most vigorous,
refined, and ingenious form. As knowledge advances, it must inevitably
happen that they will find some of their hitherto accepted facts
contradicted, and some arguments overturned which have done good
service. They will find that some statements, which they have adopted
under stress of controversy, to remove prejudice and doubt, turn out to
be hasty and partial replies to the questions they were meant to answer,
and that the true solutions would require more copious explanation than
they can give. And thus will be brought home to their minds that, in the
topics upon which popular controversy chiefly turns, the conditions of
discussion and the resources of arguments are subject to gradual and
constant change.
A Review, therefore, which undertakes to investigate political and
scientific problems, without any direct subservience to the interests of
a party or a cause, but with the belief that such investigation, by its
very independence and straightforwardness, must give the most valuable
indirect assistance to religion, cannot expect to enjoy at once the
favour of those who have grown up in another school of ideas. Men who
are occupied in the special functions of ecclesiastical life, where the
Church is all-sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, will naturally
see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern
society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and
unwelcome difficulties,--trial and distraction to themselves, temptation
and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a
higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear
and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service
they may render to the Church by vindicating for themselves a place in
every movement that promotes the study of God's works and the
advancement of mankind. They will remember that, while the office of
ecclesiastical authority is to tolerate, to warn, and to guide, that of
religious intelligence and zeal is not to leave the great work of
intellectual and social civilisation to be the monopoly and privilege of
others, but to save it from debasement by giving to it for leaders the
children, not the enemies, of the Church. And at length, in the progress
of political right and scientific knowledge, in the development of
freedom in the State and of truth in literature, they will recognise one
of the first among their human duties and the highest of their earthly
rewards.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 339: "Rome and the Catholic Episcopate. Reply of His Eminence
Cardinal Wiseman to an Address presented by the Clergy, Secular and
Regular, of the Archdiocese of Westminster, on Tuesday, the 5th of
August 1862." London: Burns and Lambert. (_Home and Foreign Review_,
1862.)]
XIII
CONFLICTS WITH ROME[340]
Among the causes which have brought dishonour on the Church in recent
years, none have had a more fatal operation than those conflicts with
science and literature which have led men to dispute the competence, or
the justice, or the wisdom, of her authorities. Rare as such conflicts
have been, they have awakened a special hostility which the defenders of
Catholicism have not succeeded in allaying. They have induced a
suspicion that the Church, in her zeal for the prevention of error,
represses that intellectual freedom which is essential to the progress
of truth; that she allows an administrative interference with
convictions to which she cannot attach the stigma of falsehood; and that
she claims a right to restrain the growth of knowledge, to justify an
acquiescence in ignorance, to promote error, and even to alter at her
arbitrary will the dogmas that are proposed to faith. There are few
faults or errors imputed to Catholicism which individual Catholics have
not committed or held, and the instances on which these particular
accusations are founded have sometimes been supplied by the acts of
authority itself. Dishonest controversy loves to confound the personal
with the spiritual element in the Church--to ignore the distinction
between the sinful agents and the divine institution. And this confusion
makes it easy to deny, what otherwise would be too evident to question,
that knowledge has a freedom in the Catholic Church which it can find in
no other religion; though there, as elsewhere, freedom degenerates
unless it has to struggle in its own defence.
Nothing can better illustrate this truth than the actual course of
events in the cases of Lamennais and Frohschammer. They are two of the
most conspicuous instances in point; and they exemplify the opposite
mistakes through which a haze of obscurity has gathered over the true
notions of authority and freedom in the Church. The correspondence of
Lamennais and the later writings of Frohschammer furnish a revelation
which ought to warn all those who, through ignorance, or timidity, or
weakness of faith, are tempted to despair of the reconciliation between
science and religion, and to acquiesce either in the subordination of
one to the other, or in their complete separation and estrangement. Of
these alternatives Lamennais chose the first, Frohschammer the second;
and the exaggeration of the claims of authority by the one and the
extreme assertion of independence by the other have led them, by
contrary paths, to nearly the same end.
When Lamennais surveyed the fluctuations of science, the multitude of
opinions, the confusion and conflict of theories, he was led to doubt
the efficacy of all human tests of truth. Science seemed to him
essentially tainted with hopeless uncertainty. In his ignorance of its
methods he fancied them incapable of attaining to anything more than a
greater or less degree of probability, and powerless to afford a strict
demonstration, or to distinguish the deposit of real knowledge amidst
the turbid current of opinion. He refused to admit that there is a
sphere within which metaphysical philosophy speaks with absolute
certainty, or that the landmarks set up by history and natural science
may be such as neither authority nor prescription, neither the doctrine
of the schools nor the interest of the Church, has the power to disturb
or the right to evade. These sciences presented to his eyes a chaos
incapable of falling into order and harmony by any internal
self-development, and requiring the action of an external director to
clear up its darkness and remove its uncertainty. He thought that no
research, however rigorous, could make sure of any fragment of knowledge
worthy the name. He admitted no certainty but that which relied on the
general tradition of mankind, recorded and sanctioned by the infallible
judgment of the Holy See. He would have all power committed, and every
question referred, to that supreme and universal authority. By its means
he would supply all the gaps in the horizon of the human intellect,
settle every controversy, solve the problems of science, and regulate
the policy of states.
The extreme Ultramontanism which seeks the safeguard of faith in the
absolutism of Rome he believed to be the keystone of the Catholic
system. In his eyes all who rejected it, the Jesuits among them, were
Gallicans; and Gallicanism was the corruption of the Christian
idea.[341] "If my principles are rejected," he wrote on the 1st of
November 1820, "I see no means of defending religion effectually, no
decisive answer to the objections of the unbelievers of our time. How
could these principles be favourable to them? they are simply the
development of the great Catholic maxim, _quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus_." Joubert said of him, with perfect justice, that when he
destroyed all the bases of human certainty, in order to retain no
foundation but authority, he destroyed authority itself. The confidence
which led him to confound the human element with the divine in the Holy
See was destined to be tried by the severest of all tests; and his
exaggeration of the infallibility of the Pope proved fatal to his
religious faith.
In 1831 the Roman Breviary was not to be bought in Paris. We may hence
measure the amount of opposition with which Lamennais's endeavours to
exalt Rome would be met by the majority of the French bishops and
clergy, and by the school of St. Sulpice. For him, on the other hand, no
terms were too strong to express his animosity against those who
rejected his teaching and thwarted his designs. The bishops he railed
at as idiotic devotees, incredibly blind, supernaturally foolish. "The
Jesuits," he said, "were _grenadiers de la folie_, and united imbecility
with the vilest passions."[342] He fancied that in many dioceses there
was a conspiracy to destroy religion, that a schism was at hand, and
that the resistance of the clergy to his principles threatened to
destroy Catholicism in France. Rome, he was sure, would help him in his
struggle against her faithless assailants, on behalf of her authority,
and in his endeavour to make the clergy refer their disputes to her, so
as to receive from the Pope's mouth the infallible oracles of eternal
truth.[343] Whatever the Pope might decide, would, he said, be right,
for the Pope alone was infallible. Bishops might be sometimes resisted,
but the Pope never.[344] It was both absurd and blasphemous even to
advise him. "I have read in the _Diario di Roma_," he said, "the advice
of M. de Chateaubriand to the Holy Ghost. At any rate, the Holy Ghost is
fully warned; and if he makes a mistake this time, it will not be the
ambassador's fault."
Three Popes passed away, and still nothing was done against the traitors
he was for ever denouncing. This reserve astounded him. Was Rome herself
tainted with Gallicanism, and in league with those who had conspired for
her destruction? What but a schism could ensue from this inexplicable
apathy? The silence was a grievous trial to his faith. "Let us shut our
eyes," he said, "let us invoke the Holy Spirit, let us collect all the
powers of our soul, that our faith may not be shaken."[345] In his
perplexity he began to make distinctions between the Pope and the Roman
Court. The advisers of the Pope were traitors, dwellers in the outer
darkness, blind and deaf; the Pope himself and he alone was infallible,
and would never act so as to injure the faith, though meanwhile he was
not aware of the real state of things, and was evidently deceived by
false reports.[346] A few months later came the necessity for a further
distinction between the Pontiff and the Sovereign. If the doctrines of
the _Avenir_ had caused displeasure at Rome, it was only on political
grounds. If the Pope was offended, he was offended not as Vicar of
Christ, but as a temporal monarch implicated in the political system of
Europe. In his capacity of spiritual head of the Church he could not
condemn writers for sacrificing all human and political considerations
to the supreme interests of the Church, but must in reality agree with
them.[347] As the Polish Revolution brought the political questions into
greater prominence, Lamennais became more and more convinced of the
wickedness of those who surrounded Gregory XVI., and of the political
incompetence of the Pope himself. He described him as weeping and
praying, motionless, amidst the darkness which the ambitious, corrupt,
and frantic idiots around him were ever striving to thicken.[348] Still
he felt secure. When the foundations of the Church were threatened, when
an essential doctrine was at stake, though, for the first time in
eighteen centuries, the supreme authority might refuse to speak,[349] at
least it could not speak out against the truth. In this belief he made
his last journey to Rome. Then came his condemnation. The staff on which
he leaned with all his weight broke in his hands; the authority he had
so grossly exaggerated turned against him, and his faith was left
without support. His system supplied no resource for such an emergency.
He submitted, not because he was in error, but because Catholics had no
right to defend the Church against the supreme will even of an erring
Pontiff.[350] He was persuaded that his silence would injure religion,
yet he deemed it his duty to be silent and to abandon theology. He had
ceased to believe that the Pope could not err, but he still believed
that he could not lawfully be disobeyed. In the two years during which
he still remained in the Church his faith in her system fell rapidly to
pieces. Within two months after the publication of the Encyclical he
wrote that the Pope, like the other princes, seemed careful not to omit
any blunder that could secure his annihilation.[351] Three weeks
afterwards he denounced in the fiercest terms the corruption of Rome. He
predicted that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was about to depart with the
old monarchies; and, though the Church could not die, he would not
undertake to say that she would revive in her old forms.[352] The Pope,
he said, had so zealously embraced the cause of antichristian despotism
as to sacrifice to it the religion of which he was the chief. He no
longer felt it possible to distinguish what was immutable in the
external organisation of the Church. He admitted the personal
fallibility of the Pope, and declared that, though it was impossible,
without Rome, to defend Catholicism successfully, yet nothing could be
hoped for from her, and that she seemed to have condemned Catholicism to
die.[353] The Pope, he soon afterwards said, was in league with the
kings in opposition to the eternal truths of religion, the hierarchy was
out of court, and a transformation like that from which the Church and
Papacy had sprung was about to bring them both to an end, after eighteen
centuries, in Gregory XVI.[354] Before the following year was over he
had ceased to be in communion with the Catholic Church.
The fall of Lamennais, however impressive as a warning, is of no great
historical importance; for he carried no one with him, and his favourite
disciples became the ablest defenders of Catholicism in France. But it
exemplifies one of the natural consequences of dissociating secular from
religious truth, and denying that they hold in solution all the elements
necessary for their reconciliation and union. In more recent times, the
same error has led, by a contrary path, to still more lamentable
results, and scepticism on the possibility of harmonising reason and
faith has once more driven a philosopher into heresy. Between the fall
of Lamennais and the conflict with Frohschammer many metaphysical
writers among the Catholic clergy had incurred the censures of Rome. It
is enough to cite Bautain in France, Rosmini in Italy, and Günther in
Austria. But in these cases no scandal ensued, and the decrees were
received with prompt and hearty submission. In the cases of Lamennais
and Frohschammer no speculative question was originally at issue, but
only the question of authority. A comparison between their theories will
explain the similarity in the courses of the two men, and at the same
time will account for the contrast between the isolation of Lamennais
and the influence of Frohschammer, though the one was the most eloquent
writer in France, and the head of a great school, and the other, before
the late controversy, was not a writer of much name. This contrast is
the more remarkable since religion had not revived in France when the
French philosopher wrote, while for the last quarter of a century
Bavaria has been distinguished among Catholic nations for the faith of
her people. Yet Lamennais was powerless to injure a generation of
comparatively ill-instructed Catholics, while Frohschammer, with
inferior gifts of persuasion, has won educated followers even in the
home of Ultramontanism.
The first obvious explanation of this difficulty is the narrowness of
Lamennais's philosophy. At the time of his dispute with the Holy See he
had somewhat lost sight of his traditionalist theory; and his attention,
concentrated upon politics, was directed to the problem of reconciling
religion with liberty,--a question with which the best minds in France
are still occupied. But how can a view of policy constitute a
philosophy? He began by thinking that it was expedient for the Church to
obtain the safeguards of freedom, and that she should renounce the
losing cause of the old _régime_. But this was no more philosophy than
the similar argument which had previously won her to the side of
despotism when it was the stronger cause. As Bonald, however, had
erected absolute monarchy into a dogma, so Lamennais proceeded to do
with freedom. The Church, he said, was on the side of freedom, because
it was the just side, not because it was the stronger. As De Maistre had
seen the victory of Catholic principles in the Restoration, so Lamennais
saw it in the revolution of 1830.
This was obviously too narrow and temporary a basis for a philosophy.
The Church is interested, not in the triumph of a principle or a cause
which may be dated as that of 1789, or of 1815, or of 1830, but in the
triumph of justice and the just cause, whether it be that of the people
or of the Crown, of a Catholic party or of its opponents. She admits the
tests of public law and political science. When these proclaim the
existence of the conditions which justify an insurrection or a war, she
cannot condemn that insurrection or that war. She is guided in her
judgment on these causes by criteria which are not her own, but are
borrowed from departments over which she has no supreme control. This is
as true of science as it is of law and politics. Other truths are as
certain as those which natural or positive law embraces, and other
obligations as imperative as those which regulate the relations of
subjects and authorities. The principle which places right above
expedience in the political action of the Church has an equal
application in history or in astronomy. The Church can no more identify
her cause with scientific error than with political wrong. Her interests
may be impaired by some measure of political justice, or by the
admission of some fact or document. But in neither case can she guard
her interests at the cost of denying the truth.
This is the principle which has so much difficulty in obtaining
recognition in an age when science is more or less irreligious, and when
Catholics more or less neglect its study. Political and intellectual
liberty have the same claims and the same conditions in the eyes of the
Church. The Catholic judges the measures of governments and the
discoveries of science in exactly the same manner. Public law may make
it imperative to overthrow a Catholic monarch, like James II., or to
uphold a Protestant monarch, like the King of Prussia. The
demonstrations of science may oblige us to believe that the earth
revolves round the sun, or that the _donation of Constantine_ is
spurious. The apparent interests of religion have much to say against
all this; but religion itself prevents those considerations from
prevailing. This has not been seen by those writers who have done most
in defence of the principle. They have usually considered it from the
standing ground of their own practical aims, and have therefore failed
to attain that general view which might have been suggested to them by
the pursuit of truth as a whole. French writers have done much for
political liberty, and Germans for intellectual liberty; but the
defenders of the one cause have generally had so little sympathy with
the other, that they have neglected to defend their own on the grounds
common to both. There is hardly a Catholic writer who has penetrated to
the common source from which they spring. And this is the greatest
defect in Catholic literature, even to the present day.
In the majority of those who have afforded the chief examples of this
error, and particularly in Lamennais, the weakness of faith which it
implies has been united with that looseness of thought which resolves
all knowledge into opinion, and fails to appreciate methodical
investigation or scientific evidence. But it is less easy to explain how
a priest, fortified with the armour of German science, should have
failed as completely in the same inquiry. In order to solve the
difficulty, we must go back to the time when the theory of Frohschammer
arose, and review some of the circumstances out of which it sprang.
For adjusting the relations between science and authority, the method of
Rome had long been that of economy and accommodation. In dealing with
literature, her paramount consideration was the fear of scandal. Books
were forbidden, not merely because their statements were denied, but
because they seemed injurious to morals, derogatory to authority, or
dangerous to faith. To be so, it was not necessary that they should be
untrue. For isolated truths separated from other known truths by an
interval of conjecture, in which error might find room to construct its
works, may offer perilous occasions to unprepared and unstable minds.
The policy was therefore to allow such truths to be put forward only
hypothetically, or altogether to suppress them. The latter alternative
was especially appropriated to historical investigations, because they
contained most elements of danger. In them the progress of knowledge has
been for centuries constant, rapid, and sure; every generation has
brought to light masses of information previously unknown, the
successive publication of which furnished ever new incentives, and more
and more ample means of inquiry into ecclesiastical history. This
inquiry has gradually laid bare the whole policy and process of
ecclesiastical authority, and has removed from the past that veil of
mystery wherewith, like all other authorities, it tries to surround the
present. The human element in ecclesiastical administration endeavours
to keep itself out of sight, and to deny its own existence, in order
that it may secure the unquestioning submission which authority
naturally desires, and may preserve that halo of infallibility which the
twilight of opinion enables it to assume. Now the most severe exposure
of the part played by this human element is found in histories which
show the undeniable existence of sin, error, or fraud in the high places
of the Church. Not, indeed, that any history furnishes, or can furnish,
materials for undermining the authority which the dogmas of the Church
proclaim to be necessary for her existence. But the true limits of
legitimate authority are one thing, and the area which authority may
find it expedient to attempt to occupy is another. The interests of the
Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesiastical
government. A government does not desire its powers to be strictly
defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing
precision. Authority may be protected by its subjects being kept in
ignorance of its faults, and by their holding it in superstitious
admiration. But religion has no communion with any manner of error: and
the conscience can only be injured by such arts, which, in reality, give
a far more formidable measure of the influence of the human element in
ecclesiastical government than any collection of detached cases of
scandal can do. For these arts are simply those of all human governments
which possess legislative power, fear attack, deny responsibility, and
therefore shrink from scrutiny.
One of the great instruments for preventing historical scrutiny had long
been the Index of prohibited books, which was accordingly directed, not
against falsehood only, but particularly against certain departments of
truth. Through it an effort had been made to keep the knowledge of
ecclesiastical history from the faithful, and to give currency to a
fabulous and fictitious picture of the progress and action of the
Church. The means would have been found quite inadequate to the end, if
it had not been for the fact that while society was absorbed by
controversy, knowledge was only valued so far as it served a
controversial purpose. Every party in those days virtually had its own
prohibitive Index, to brand all inconvenient truths with the note of
falsehood. No party cared for knowledge that could not be made available
for argument. Neutral and ambiguous science had no attractions for men
engaged in perpetual combat. Its spirit first won the naturalists, the
mathematicians, and the philologists; then it vivified the otherwise
aimless erudition of the Benedictines; and at last it was carried into
history, to give new life to those sciences which deal with the
tradition, the law, and the action of the Church.
The home of this transformation was in the universities of Germany, for
there the Catholic teacher was placed in circumstances altogether novel.
He had to address men who had every opportunity of becoming familiar
with the arguments of the enemies of the Church, and with the
discoveries and conclusions of those whose studies were without the bias
of any religious object. Whilst he lectured in one room, the next might
be occupied by a pantheist, a rationalist, or a Lutheran, descanting on
the same topics. When he left the desk his place might be taken by some
great original thinker or scholar, who would display all the results of
his meditations without regard for their tendency, and without
considering what effects they might have on the weak. He was obliged
often to draw attention to books lacking the Catholic spirit, but
indispensable to the deeper student. Here, therefore, the system of
secrecy, economy, and accommodation was rendered impossible by the
competition of knowledge, in which the most thorough exposition of the
truth was sure of the victory, and the system itself became inapplicable
as the scientific spirit penetrated ecclesiastical literature in
Germany.
In Rome, however, where the influences of competition were not felt, the
reasons of the change could not be understood, nor its benefits
experienced; and it was thought absurd that the Germans of the
nineteenth century should discard weapons which had been found
efficacious with the Germans of the sixteenth. While in Rome it was
still held that the truths of science need not be told, and ought not to
be told, if, in the judgment of Roman theologians, they were of a nature
to offend faith, in Germany Catholics vied with Protestants in
publishing matter without being diverted by the consideration whether it
might serve or injure their cause in controversy, or whether it was
adverse or favourable to the views which it was the object of the Index
to protect. But though this great antagonism existed, there was no
collision. A moderation was exhibited which contrasted remarkably with
the aggressive spirit prevailing in France and Italy. Publications were
suffered to pass unnoted in Germany which would have been immediately
censured if they had come forth beyond the Alps or the Rhine. In this
way a certain laxity grew up side by side with an unmeasured distrust,
and German theologians and historians escaped censure.
This toleration gains significance from its contrast to the severity
with which Rome smote the German philosophers like Hermes and Günther
when they erred. Here, indeed, the case was very different. If Rome had
insisted upon suppressing documents, perverting facts, and resisting
criticism, she would have been only opposing truth, and opposing it
consciously, for fear of its inconveniences. But if she had refrained
from denouncing a philosophy which denied creation or the personality of
God, she would have failed to assert her own doctrines against her own
children who contradicted them. The philosopher cannot claim the same
exemption as the historian. God's handwriting exists in history
independently of the Church, and no ecclesiastical exigence can alter a
fact. The divine lesson has been read, and it is the historian's duty to
copy it faithfully without bias and without ulterior views. The Catholic
may be sure that as the Church has lived in spite of the fact, she will
also survive its publication. But philosophy has to deal with some facts
which, although as absolute and objective in themselves, are not and
cannot be known to us except through revelation, of which the Church is
the organ. A philosophy which requires the alteration of these facts is
in patent contradiction against the Church. Both cannot coexist. One
must destroy the other.
Two circumstances very naturally arose to disturb this equilibrium.
There were divines who wished to extend to Germany the old authority of
the Index, and to censure or prohibit books which, though not heretical,
contained matter injurious to the reputation of ecclesiastical
authority, or contrary to the common opinions of Catholic theologians.
On the other hand, there were philosophers of the schools of Hermes and
Günther who would not retract the doctrines which the Church condemned.
One movement tended to repress even the knowledge of demonstrable truth,
and the other aimed at destroying the dogmatic authority of the Holy
See. In this way a collision was prepared, which was eventually brought
about by the writings of Dr. Frohschammer.
Ten years ago, when he was a very young lecturer on philosophy in the
university of Munich, he published a work on the origin of the soul, in
which he argued against the theory of pre-existence, and against the
common opinion that each soul is created directly by Almighty God,
defending the theory of Generationism by the authority of several
Fathers, and quoting, among other modern divines, Klee, the author of
the most esteemed treatise of dogmatic theology in the German language.
It was decided at Rome that his book should be condemned, and he was
informed of the intention, in order that he might announce his
submission before the publication of the decree.
His position was a difficult one, and it appears to be admitted that his
conduct at this stage was not prompted by those opinions on the
authority of the Church in which he afterwards took refuge, but must be
explained by the known facts of the case. His doctrine had been lately
taught in a book generally read and approved. He was convinced that he
had at least refuted the opposite theories, and yet it was apparently in
behalf of one of these that he was condemned. Whatever errors his book
contained, he might fear that an act of submission would seem to imply
his acceptance of an opinion he heartily believed to be wrong, and would
therefore be an act of treason to truth. The decree conveyed no
conviction to his mind. It is only the utterances of an infallible
authority that men can believe without argument and explanation, and
here was an authority not infallible, giving no reasons, and yet
claiming a submission of the reason. Dr. Frohschammer found himself in a
dilemma. To submit absolutely would either be a virtual acknowledgment
of the infallibility of the authority, or a confession that an
ecclesiastical decision necessarily bound the mind irrespectively of its
truth or justice. In either case he would have contradicted the law of
religion and of the Church. To submit, while retaining his own opinion,
to a disciplinary decree, in order to preserve peace and avoid scandal,
and to make a general acknowledgment that his work contained various
ill-considered and equivocal statements which might bear a bad
construction,--such a conditional submission either would not have been
that which the Roman Court desired and intended, or, if made without
explicit statement of its meaning, would have been in some measure
deceitful and hypocritical. In the first case it would not have been
received, in the second case it could not have been made without loss of
self-respect. Moreover, as the writer was a public professor, bound to
instruct his hearers according to his best knowledge, he could not
change his teaching while his opinion remained unchanged. These
considerations, and not any desire to defy authority, or introduce new
opinions by a process more or less revolutionary, appear to have guided
his conduct. At this period it might have been possible to arrive at an
understanding, or to obtain satisfactory explanations, if the Roman
Court would have told him what points were at issue, what passages in
his book were impugned, and what were the grounds for suspecting them.
If there was on both sides a peaceful and conciliatory spirit, and a
desire to settle the problem, there was certainly a chance of effecting
it by a candid interchange of explanations. It was a course which had
proved efficacious on other occasions, and in the then recent discussion
of Günther's system it had been pursued with great patience and decided
success.
Before giving a definite reply, therefore, Dr. Frohschammer asked for
information about the incriminated articles. This would have given him
an opportunity of seeing his error, and making a submission _in foro
interno_. But the request was refused. It was a favour, he was told,
sometimes extended to men whose great services to the Church deserved
such consideration, but not to one who was hardly known except by the
very book which had incurred the censure. This answer instantly aroused
a suspicion that the Roman Court was more anxious to assert its
authority than to correct an alleged error, or to prevent a scandal. It
was well known that the mistrust of German philosophy was very deep at
Rome; and it seemed far from impossible that an intention existed to put
it under all possible restraint.
This mistrust on the part of the Roman divines was fully equalled, and
so far justified, by a corresponding literary contempt on the part of
many German Catholic scholars. It is easy to understand the grounds of
this feeling. The German writers were engaged in an arduous struggle, in
which their antagonists were sustained by intellectual power, solid
learning, and deep thought, such as the defenders of the Church in
Catholic countries have never had to encounter. In this conflict the
Italian divines could render no assistance. They had shown themselves
altogether incompetent to cope with modern science. The Germans,
therefore, unable to recognise them as auxiliaries, soon ceased to
regard them as equals, or as scientific divines at all. Without
impeaching their orthodoxy, they learned to look on them as men
incapable of understanding and mastering the ideas of a literature so
very remote from their own, and to attach no more value to the
unreasoned decrees of their organ than to the undefended _ipse dixit_ of
a theologian of secondary rank. This opinion sprang, not from national
prejudice or from the self-appreciation of individuals comparing their
own works with those of the Roman divines, but from a general view of
the relation of those divines, among whom there are several
distinguished Germans, to the literature of Germany. It was thus a
corporate feeling, which might be shared even by one who was conscious
of his own inferiority, or who had written nothing at all. Such a man,
weighing the opinion of the theologians of the Gesù and the Minerva, not
in the scale of his own performance, but in that of the great
achievements of his age, might well be reluctant to accept their verdict
upon them without some aid of argument and explanation.
On the other hand, it appeared that a blow which struck the Catholic
scholars of Germany would assure to the victorious congregation of Roman
divines an easy supremacy over the writers of all other countries. The
case of Dr. Frohschammer might be made to test what degree of control it
would be possible to exercise over his countrymen, the only body of
writers at whom alarm was felt, and who insisted, more than others, on
their freedom. But the suspicion of such a possibility was likely only
to confirm him in the idea that he was chosen to be the experimental
body on which an important principle was to be decided, and that it was
his duty, till his dogmatic error was proved, to resist a questionable
encroachment of authority upon the rights of freedom. He therefore
refused to make the preliminary submission which was required of him,
and allowed the decree to go forth against him in the usual way.
Hereupon it was intimated to him--though not by Rome--that he had
incurred excommunication. This was the measure which raised the
momentous question of the liberties of Catholic science, and gave the
impulse to that new theory on the limits of authority with which his
name has become associated.
In the civil affairs of mankind it is necessary to assume that the
knowledge of the moral code and the traditions of law cannot perish in a
Christian nation. Particular authorities may fall into error; decisions
may be appealed against; laws may be repealed, but the political
conscience of the whole people cannot be irrecoverably lost. The Church
possesses the same privilege, but in a much higher degree, for she
exists expressly for the purpose of preserving a definite body of
truths, the knowledge of which she can never lose. Whatever authority,
therefore, expresses that knowledge of which she is the keeper must be
obeyed. But there is no institution from which this knowledge can be
obtained with immediate certainty. A council is not _à priori_
oecumenical; the Holy See is not separately infallible. The one has to
await a sanction, the other has repeatedly erred. Every decree,
therefore, requires a preliminary examination.
A writer who is censured may, in the first place, yield an external
submission, either for the sake of discipline, or because his conviction
is too weak to support him against the weight of authority. But if the
question at issue is more important than the preservation of peace, and
if his conviction is strong, he inquires whether the authority which
condemns him utters the voice of the Church. If he finds that it does,
he yields to it, or ceases to profess the faith of Catholics. If he
finds that it does not, but is only the voice of authority, he owes it
to his conscience, and to the supreme claims of truth, to remain
constant to that which he believes, in spite of opposition. No authority
has power to impose error, and, if it resists the truth, the truth must
be upheld until it is admitted. Now the adversaries of Dr. Frohschammer
had fallen into the monstrous error of attributing to the congregation
of the Index a share in the infallibility of the Church. He was placed
in the position of a persecuted man, and the general sympathy was with
him. In his defence he proceeded to state his theory of the rights of
science, in order to vindicate the Church from the imputation of
restricting its freedom. Hitherto his works had been written in defence
of a Christian philosophy against materialism and infidelity. Their
object had been thoroughly religious, and although he was not deeply
read in ecclesiastical literature, and was often loose and incautious in
the use of theological terms, his writings had not been wanting in
catholicity of spirit; but after his condemnation by Rome he undertook
to pull down the power which had dealt the blow, and to make himself
safe for the future. In this spirit of personal antagonism he commenced
a long series of writings in defence of freedom and in defiance of
authority.
The following abstract marks, not so much the outline of his system, as
the logical steps which carried him to the point where he passed beyond
the limit of Catholicism. Religion, he taught, supplies materials but no
criterion for philosophy; philosophy has nothing to rely on, in the last
resort, but the unfailing veracity of our nature, which is not corrupt
or weak, but normally healthy, and unable to deceive us.[355] There is
not greater division or uncertainty in matters of speculation than on
questions of faith.[356] If at any time error or doubt should arise,
the science possesses in itself the means of correcting or removing it,
and no other remedy is efficacious but that which it applies to
itself.[357] There can be no free philosophy if we must always remember
dogma.[358] Philosophy includes in its sphere all the dogmas of
revelation, as well as those of natural religion. It examines by its own
independent light the substance of every Christian doctrine, and
determines in each case whether it be divine truth.[359] The conclusions
and judgments at which it thus arrives must be maintained even when they
contradict articles of faith.[360] As we accept the evidence of
astronomy in opposition to the once settled opinion of divines, so we
should not shrink from the evidence of chemistry if it should be adverse
to transubstantiation.[361] The Church, on the other hand, examines
these conclusions by her standard of faith, and decides whether they can
be taught in theology.[362] But she has no means of ascertaining the
philosophical truth of an opinion, and cannot convict the philosopher of
error. The two domains are as distinct as reason and faith; and we must
not identify what we know with what we believe, but must separate the
philosopher from his philosophy. The system may be utterly at variance
with the whole teaching of Christianity, and yet the philosopher, while
he holds it to be philosophically true and certain, may continue to
believe all Catholic doctrine, and to perform all the spiritual duties
of a layman or a priest. For discord cannot exist between the certain
results of scientific investigation and the real doctrines of the
Church. Both are true, and there is no conflict of truths. But while the
teaching of science is distinct and definite, that of the Church is
subject to alteration. Theology is at no time absolutely complete, but
always liable to be modified, and cannot, therefore, be made a fixed
test of truth.[363] Consequently there is no reason against the union of
the Churches. For the liberty of private judgment, which is the formal
principle of Protestantism, belongs to Catholics; and there is no actual
Catholic dogma which may not lose all that is objectionable to
Protestants by the transforming process of development.[364]
The errors of Dr. Frohschammer in these passages are not exclusively his
own. He has only drawn certain conclusions from premisses which are very
commonly received. Nothing is more usual than to confound religious
truth with the voice of ecclesiastical authority. Dr. Frohschammer,
having fallen into this vulgar mistake, argues that because the
authority is fallible the truth must be uncertain. Many Catholics
attribute to theological opinions which have prevailed for centuries
without reproach a sacredness nearly approaching that which belongs to
articles of faith: Dr. Frohschammer extends to defined dogmas the
liability to change which belongs to opinions that yet await a final and
conclusive investigation. Thousands of zealous men are persuaded that a
conflict may arise between defined doctrines of the Church and
conclusions which are certain according to all the tests of science; Dr.
Frohschammer adopts this view, and argues that none of the decisions of
the Church are final, and that consequently in such a case they must
give way. Lastly, uninstructed men commonly impute to historical and
natural science the uncertainty which is inseparable from pure
speculation: Dr. Frohschammer accepts the equality, but claims for
metaphysics the same certainty and independence which those sciences
possess.
Having begun his course in company with many who have exactly opposite
ends in view, Dr. Frohschammer, in a recent tract on the union of the
Churches, entirely separates himself from the Catholic Church in his
theory of development. He had received the impulse to his new system
from the opposition of those whom he considered the advocates of an
excessive uniformity and the enemies of progress, and their
contradiction has driven him to a point where he entirely sacrifices
unity to change. He now affirms that our Lord desired no unity or
perfect conformity among His followers, except in morals and
charity;[365] that He gave no definite system of doctrine; and that the
form which Christian faith may have assumed in a particular age has no
validity for all future time, but is subject to continual
modification.[366] The definitions, he says, which the Church has made
from time to time are not to be obstinately adhered to; and the
advancement of religious knowledge is obtained by genius, not by
learning, and is not regulated by traditions and fixed rules.[367] He
maintains that not only the form but the substance varies; that the
belief of one age may be not only extended but abandoned in another; and
that it is impossible to draw the line which separates immutable dogma
from undecided opinions.[368]
The causes which drove Dr. Frohschammer into heresy would scarcely have
deserved great attention from the mere merit of the man, for he cannot
be acquitted of having, in the first instance, exhibited very
superficial notions of theology. Their instructiveness consists in the
conspicuous example they afford of the effect of certain errors which at
the present day are commonly held and rarely contradicted. When he found
himself censured unjustly, as he thought, by the Holy See, it should
have been enough for him to believe in his conscience that he was in
agreement with the true faith of the Church. He would not then have
proceeded to consider the whole Church infected with the liability to
err from which her rulers are not exempt, or to degrade the fundamental
truths of Christianity to the level of mere school opinions. Authority
appeared in his eyes to stand for the whole Church; and therefore, in
endeavouring to shield himself from its influence, he abandoned the
first principles of the ecclesiastical system. Far from having aided the
cause of freedom, his errors have provoked a reaction against it, which
must be looked upon with deep anxiety, and of which the first
significant symptom remains to be described.
On the 21st of December 1863, the Pope addressed a Brief to the
Archbishop of Munich, which was published on the 5th of March. This
document explains that the Holy Father had originally been led to
suspect the recent Congress at Munich of a tendency similar to that of
Frohschammer, and had consequently viewed it with great distrust; but
that these feelings were removed by the address which was adopted at the
meeting, and by the report of the Archbishop. And he expresses the
consolation he has derived from the principles which prevailed in the
assembly, and applauds the design of those by whom it was convened. He
asked for the opinion of the German prelates, in order to be able to
determine whether, in the present circumstances of their Church, it is
right that the Congress should be renewed.
Besides the censure of the doctrines of Frohschammer, and the
approbation given to the acts of the Munich Congress, the Brief contains
passages of deeper and more general import, not directly touching the
action of the German divines, but having an important bearing on the
position of this _Review_. The substance of these passages is as
follows: In the present condition of society the supreme authority in
the Church is more than ever necessary, and must not surrender in the
smallest degree the exclusive direction of ecclesiastical knowledge. An
entire obedience to the decrees of the Holy See and the Roman
congregations cannot be inconsistent with the freedom and progress of
science. The disposition to find fault with the scholastic theology, and
to dispute the conclusions and the method of its teachers, threatens the
authority of the Church, because the Church has not only allowed
theology to remain for centuries faithful to their system, but has
urgently recommended it as the safest bulwark of the faith, and an
efficient weapon against her enemies. Catholic writers are not bound
only by those decisions of the infallible Church which regard articles
of faith. They must also submit to the theological decisions of the
Roman congregations, and to the opinions which are commonly received in
the schools. And it is wrong, though not heretical, to reject those
decisions or opinions.
In a word, therefore, the Brief affirms that the common opinions and
explanations of Catholic divines ought not to yield to the progress of
secular science, and that the course of theological knowledge ought to
be controlled by the decrees of the Index.
There is no doubt that the letter of this document might be interpreted
in a sense consistent with the habitual language of the _Home and
Foreign Review_. On the one hand, the censure is evidently aimed at that
exaggerated claim of independence which would deny to the Pope and the
Episcopate any right of interfering in literature, and would transfer
the whole weight heretofore belonging to the traditions of the schools
of theology to the incomplete, and therefore uncertain, conclusions of
modern science. On the other hand, the _Review_ has always maintained,
in common with all Catholics, that if the one Church has an organ it is
through that organ that she must speak; that her authority is not
limited to the precise sphere of her infallibility; and that opinions
which she has long tolerated or approved, and has for centuries found
compatible with the secular as well as religious knowledge of the age,
cannot be lightly supplanted by new hypotheses of scientific men, which
have not yet had time to prove their consistency with dogmatic truth.
But such a plausible accommodation, even if it were honest or dignified,
would only disguise and obscure those ideas which it has been the chief
object of the _Review_ to proclaim. It is, therefore, not only more
respectful to the Holy See, but more serviceable to the principles of
the _Review_ itself, and more in accordance with the spirit in which it
has been conducted, to interpret the words of the Pope as they were
really meant, than to elude their consequences by subtle distinctions,
and to profess a formal adoption of maxims which no man who holds the
principles of the _Review_ can accept in their intended signification.
One of these maxims is that theological and other opinions long held and
allowed in the Church gather truth from time, and an authority in some
sort binding from the implied sanction of the Holy See, so that they
cannot be rejected without rashness; and that the decrees of the
congregation of the Index possess an authority quite independent of the
acquirements of the men composing it. This is no new opinion; it is only
expressed on the present occasion with unusual solemnity and
distinctness. But one of the essential principles of this _Review_
consists in a clear recognition, first, of the infinite gulf which in
theology separates what is of faith from what is not of faith,--revealed
dogmas from opinions unconnected with them by logical necessity, and
therefore incapable of anything higher than a natural certainty--and
next, of the practical difference which exists in ecclesiastical
discipline between the acts of infallible authority and those which
possess no higher sanction than that of canonical legality. That which
is not decided with dogmatic infallibility is for the time susceptible
only of a scientific determination, which advances with the progress of
science, and becomes absolute only where science has attained its final
results. On the one hand, this scientific progress is beneficial, and
even necessary, to the Church; on the other, it must inevitably be
opposed by the guardians of traditional opinion, to whom, as such, no
share in it belongs, and who, by their own acts and those of their
predecessors, are committed to views which it menaces or destroys. The
same principle which, in certain conjunctures, imposes the duty of
surrendering received opinions imposes in equal extent, and under like
conditions, the duty of disregarding the fallible authorities that
uphold them.
It is the design of the Holy See not, of course, to deny the distinction
between dogma and opinion, upon which this duty is founded, but to
reduce the practical recognition of it among Catholics to the smallest
possible limits. A grave question therefore arises as to the position of
a _Review_ founded in great part for the purpose of exemplifying this
distinction.[369] In considering the solution of this question two
circumstances must be borne in mind: first, that the antagonism now so
forcibly expressed has always been known and acknowledged; and secondly,
that no part of the Brief applies directly to the _Review_. The _Review_
was as distinctly opposed to the Roman sentiment before the Brief as
since, and it is still as free from censure as before. It was at no time
in virtual sympathy with authority on the points in question, and it is
not now in formal conflict with authority.
But the definiteness with which the Holy See has pronounced its will,
and the fact that it has taken the initiative, seem positively to invite
adhesion, and to convey a special warning to all who have expressed
opinions contrary to the maxims of the Brief. A periodical which not
only has done so, but exists in a measure for the purpose of doing so,
cannot with propriety refuse to survey the new position in which it is
placed by this important act. For the conduct of a _Review_ involves
more delicate relations with the government of the Church than the
authorship of an isolated book. When opinions which an author defends
are rejected at Rome, he either makes his submission, or, if his mind
remains unaltered, silently leaves his book to take its chance, and to
influence men according to its merits. But such passivity, however right
and seemly in the author of a book, is inapplicable to the case of a
_Review_. The periodical iteration of rejected propositions would amount
to insult and defiance, and would probably provoke more definite
measures; and thus the result would be to commit authority yet more
irrevocably to an opinion which otherwise might take no deep root, and
might yield ultimately to the influence of time. For it is hard to
surrender a cause on behalf of which a struggle has been sustained, and
spiritual evils have been inflicted. In an isolated book, the author
need discuss no more topics than he likes, and any want of agreement
with ecclesiastical authority may receive so little prominence as to
excite no attention. But a continuous _Review_, which adopted this kind
of reserve, would give a negative prominence to the topics it
persistently avoided, and by thus keeping before the world the position
it occupied would hold out a perpetual invitation to its readers to
judge between the Church and itself. Whatever it gained of approbation
and assent would be so much lost to the authority and dignity of the
Holy See. It could only hope to succeed by trading on the scandal it
caused.
But in reality its success could no longer advance the cause of truth.
For what is the Holy See in its relation to the masses of Catholics, and
where does its strength lie? It is the organ, the mouth, the head of the
Church. Its strength consists in its agreement with the general
conviction of the faithful. When it expresses the common knowledge and
sense of the age, or of a large majority of Catholics, its position is
impregnable. The force it derives from this general support makes direct
opposition hopeless, and therefore disedifying, tending only to division
and promoting reaction rather than reform. The influence by which it is
to be moved must be directed first on that which gives its strength, and
must pervade the members in order that it may reach the head. While the
general sentiment of Catholics is unaltered, the course of the Holy See
remains unaltered too. As soon as that sentiment is modified, Rome
sympathises with the change. The ecclesiastical government, based upon
the public opinion of the Church, and acting through it, cannot separate
itself from the mass of the faithful, and keep pace with the progress of
the instructed minority. It follows slowly and warily, and sometimes
begins by resisting and denouncing what in the end it thoroughly adopts.
Hence a direct controversy with Rome holds out the prospect of great
evils, and at best a barren and unprofitable victory. The victory that
is fruitful springs from that gradual change in the knowledge, the
ideas, and the convictions of the Catholic body, which, in due time,
overcomes the natural reluctance to forsake a beaten path, and by
insensible degrees constrains the mouthpiece of tradition to conform
itself to the new atmosphere with which it is surrounded. The slow,
silent, indirect action of public opinion bears the Holy See along,
without any demoralising conflict or dishonourable capitulation. This
action belongs essentially to the graver scientific literature to
direct: and the inquiry what form that literature should assume at any
given moment involves no question which affects its substance, though it
may often involve questions of moral fitness sufficiently decisive for a
particular occasion.
It was never pretended that the _Home and Foreign Review_ represented
the opinions of the majority of Catholics. The Holy See has had their
support in maintaining a view of the obligations of Catholic literature
very different from the one which has been upheld in these pages; nor
could it explicitly abandon that view without taking up a new position
in the Church. All that could be hoped for on the other side was silence
and forbearance, and for a time they have been conceded. But this is the
case no longer. The toleration has now been pointedly withdrawn; and the
adversaries of the Roman theory have been challenged with the summons to
submit.
If the opinions for which submission is claimed were new, or if the
opposition now signalised were one of which there had hitherto been any
doubt, a question might have arisen as to the limits of the authority of
the Holy See over the conscience, and the necessity or possibility of
accepting the view which it propounds. But no problem of this kind has
in fact presented itself for consideration. The differences which are
now proclaimed have all along been acknowledged to exist; and the
conductors of this _Review_ are unable to yield their assent to the
opinions put forward in the Brief.
In these circumstances there are two courses which it is impossible to
take. It would be wrong to abandon principles which have been well
considered and are sincerely held, and it would also be wrong to assail
the authority which contradicts them. The principles have not ceased to
be true, nor the authority to be legitimate, because the two are in
contradiction. To submit the intellect and conscience without examining
the reasonableness and justice of this decree, or to reject the
authority on the ground of its having been abused, would equally be a
sin, on one side against morals, on the other against faith. The
conscience cannot be relieved by casting on the administrators of
ecclesiastical discipline the whole responsibility of preserving
religious truth; nor can it be emancipated by a virtual apostasy. For
the Church is neither a despotism in which the convictions of the
faithful possess no power of expressing themselves and no means of
exercising legitimate control, nor is it an organised anarchy where the
judicial and administrative powers are destitute of that authority which
is conceded to them in civil society--the authority which commands
submission even where it cannot impose a conviction of the righteousness
of its acts.
No Catholic can contemplate without alarm the evil that would be caused
by a Catholic journal persistently labouring to thwart the published
will of the Holy See, and continuously defying its authority. The
conductors of this _Review_ refuse to take upon themselves the
responsibility of such a position. And if it were accepted, the _Review_
would represent no section of Catholics. But the representative
character is as essential to it as the opinions it professes, or the
literary resources it commands. There is no lack of periodical
publications representing science apart from religion, or religion apart
from science. The distinctive feature of the _Home and Foreign Review_
has been that it has attempted to exhibit the two in union; and the
interest which has been attached to its views proceeded from the fact
that they were put forward as essentially Catholic in proportion to
their scientific truth, and as expressing more faithfully than even the
voice of authority the genuine spirit of the Church in relation to
intellect. Its object has been to elucidate the harmony which exists
between religion and the established conclusions of secular knowledge,
and to exhibit the real amity and sympathy between the methods of
science and the methods employed by the Church. That amity and sympathy
the enemies of the Church refuse to admit, and her friends have not
learned to understand. Long disowned by a large part of our Episcopate,
they are now rejected by the Holy See; and the issue is vital to a
_Review_ which, in ceasing to uphold them, would surrender the whole
reason of its existence.
Warned, therefore, by the language of the Brief, I will not provoke
ecclesiastical authority to a more explicit repudiation of doctrines
which are necessary to secure its influence upon the advance of modern
science. I will not challenge a conflict which would only deceive the
world into a belief that religion cannot be harmonised with all that is
right and true in the progress of the present age. But I will sacrifice
the existence of the _Review_ to the defence of its principles, in order
that I may combine the obedience which is due to legitimate
ecclesiastical authority, with an equally conscientious maintenance of
the rightful and necessary liberty of thought. A conjuncture like the
present does not perplex the conscience of a Catholic; for his
obligation to refrain from wounding the peace of the Church is neither
more nor less real than that of professing nothing beside or against his
convictions. If these duties have not been always understood, at least
the _Home and Foreign Review_ will not betray them; and the cause it has
imperfectly expounded can be more efficiently served in future by means
which will neither weaken the position of authority nor depend for their
influence on its approval.
If, as I have heard, but now am scarcely anxious to believe, there are
those, both in the communion of the Church and out of it, who have found
comfort in the existence of this _Review_, and have watched its straight
short course with hopeful interest, trusting it as a sign that the
knowledge deposited in their minds by study, and transformed by
conscience into inviolable convictions, was not only tolerated among
Catholics, but might be reasonably held to be of the very essence of
their system; who were willing to accept its principles as a possible
solution of the difficulties they saw in Catholicism, and were even
prepared to make its fate the touchstone of the real spirit of our
hierarchy; or who deemed that while it lasted it promised them some
immunity from the overwhelming pressure of uniformity, some safeguard
against resistance to the growth of knowledge and of freedom, and some
protection for themselves, since, however weak its influence as an
auxiliary, it would, by its position, encounter the first shock, and so
divert from others the censures which they apprehended; who have found a
welcome encouragement in its confidence, a satisfaction in its sincerity
when they shrank from revealing their own thoughts, or a salutary
restraint when its moderation failed to satisfy their ardour; whom, not
being Catholics, it has induced to think less hardly of the Church, or,
being Catholics, has bound more strongly to her;--to all these I would
say that the principles it has upheld will not die with it, but will
find their destined advocates, and triumph in their appointed time. From
the beginning of the Church it has been a law of her nature, that the
truths which eventually proved themselves the legitimate products of her
doctrine, have had to make their slow way upwards through a phalanx of
hostile habits and traditions, and to be rescued, not only from open
enemies, but also from friendly hands that were not worthy to defend
them. It is right that in every arduous enterprise some one who stakes
no influence on the issue should make the first essay, whilst the true
champions, like the Triarii of the Roman legions, are behind, and wait,
without wavering, until the crisis calls them forward.
And already it seems to have arrived. All that is being done for
ecclesiastical learning by the priesthood of the Continent bears
testimony to the truths which are now called in question; and every work
of real science written by a Catholic adds to their force. The example
of great writers aids their cause more powerfully than many theoretical
discussions. Indeed, when the principles of the antagonism which
divides Catholics have been brought clearly out, the part of theory is
accomplished, and most of the work of a _Review_ is done. It remains
that the principles which have been made intelligible should be
translated into practice, and should pass from the arena of discussion
into the ethical code of literature. In that shape their efficacy will
be acknowledged, and they will cease to be the object of alarm. Those
who have been indignant at hearing that their methods are obsolete and
their labours vain, will be taught by experience to recognise in the
works of another school services to religion more momentous than those
which they themselves have aspired to perform; practice will compel the
assent which is denied to theory; and men will learn to value in the
fruit what the germ did not reveal to them. Therefore it is to the
prospect of that development of Catholic learning which is too powerful
to be arrested or repressed that I would direct the thoughts of those
who are tempted to yield either to a malignant joy or an unjust
despondency at the language of the Holy See. If the spirit of the _Home
and Foreign Review_ really animates those whose sympathy it enjoyed,
neither their principles, nor their confidence, nor their hopes will be
shaken by its extinction. It was but a partial and temporary embodiment
of an imperishable idea--the faint reflection of a light which still
lives and burns in the hearts of the silent thinkers of the Church.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 340: _Home and Foreign Review_, April 1864.]
[Footnote 341: Lamennais, _Correspondence_, Nouvelle édition (Paris:
Didier).]
[Footnote 342: April 12 and June 25, 1830.]
[Footnote 343: Feb. 27, 1831.]
[Footnote 344: March 30, 1831.]
[Footnote 345: May 8 and June 15, 1829.]
[Footnote 346: Feb. 8, 1830.]
[Footnote 347: Aug. 15, 1831.]
[Footnote 348: Feb. 10, 1833.]
[Footnote 349: July 6, 1829.]
[Footnote 350: Sept. 15, 1832.]
[Footnote 351: Oct. 9, 1832.]
[Footnote 352: Jan. 25, 1833.]
[Footnote 353: Feb. 5, 1833.]
[Footnote 354: March 25, 1833.]
[Footnote 355: _Naturphilosophie_, p. 115; _Einleitung in die
Philosophie_, pp. 40, 54; _Freiheit der Wissenschaft_, pp. 4, 89;
_Athenäum_, i. 17.]
[Footnote 356: _Athenäum_, i. 92.]
[Footnote 357: _Freiheit der Wissenschaft_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 358: _Athenäum_, i. 167.]
[Footnote 359: _Einleitung_, pp. 305, 317, 397.]
[Footnote 360: _Athenäum_, i. 208.]
[Footnote 361: _Ibid._ ii. 655.]
[Footnote 362: _Ibid._ ii. 676.]
[Footnote 363: _Ibid._ ii. 661.]
[Footnote 364: _Wiedervereinigung der Katholiken und Protestanten_, pp.
26, 35.]
[Footnote 365: _Wiedervereinigung_, pp. 8, 10.]
[Footnote 366: _Ibid._ p. 15.]
[Footnote 367: _Ibid._ p. 21.]
[Footnote 368: _Ibid._ pp. 25, 26.]
[Footnote 369: The prospectus of the _Review_ contained these words: "It
will abstain from direct theological discussion, as far as external
circumstances will allow; and in dealing with those mixed questions into
which theology indirectly enters, its aim will be to combine devotion to
the Church with discrimination and candour in the treatment of her
opponents: to reconcile freedom of inquiry with implicit faith, and to
discountenance what is untenable and unreal, without forgetting the
tenderness due to the weak, or the reverence rightly claimed for what is
sacred. Submitting without reserve to infallible authority, it will
encourage a habit of manly investigation on subjects of scientific
interest."]
XIV
THE VATICAN COUNCIL[370]
The intention of Pius IX. to convene a General Council became known in
the autumn of 1864, shortly before the appearance of the Syllabus. They
were the two principal measures which were designed to restore the
spiritual and temporal power of the Holy See. When the idea of the
Council was first put forward it met with no favour. The French bishops
discouraged it; and the French bishops holding the talisman of the
occupying army, spoke with authority. Later on, when the position had
been altered by the impulse which the Syllabus gave to the ultramontane
opinions, they revived the scheme they had first opposed. Those who felt
their influence injured by the change persuaded themselves that the
Court of Rome was more prudent than some of its partisans, and that the
Episcopate was less given to extremes than the priesthood and laity.
They conceived the hope that an assembly of bishops would curb the
intemperance of a zeal which was largely directed against their own
order, and would authentically sanction such an exposition of Catholic
ideas as would reconcile the animosity that feeds on things spoken in
the heat of controversy, and on the errors of incompetent apologists.
They had accepted the Syllabus; but they wished to obtain canonicity for
their own interpretation of it. If those who had succeeded in assigning
an acceptable meaning to its censures could appear in a body to plead
their cause before the Pope, the pretensions which compromised the
Church might be permanently repressed.
Once, during the struggle for the temporal power, the question was
pertinently asked, how it was that men so perspicacious and so
enlightened as those who were its most conspicuous champions, could
bring themselves to justify a system of government which their own
principles condemned. The explanation then given was, that they were
making a sacrifice which would be compensated hereafter, that those who
succoured the Pope in his utmost need were establishing a claim which
would make them irresistible in better times, when they should demand
great acts of conciliation and reform. It appeared to these men that the
time had come to reap the harvest they had arduously sown.
The Council did not originate in the desire to exalt beyond measure the
cause of Rome. It was proposed in the interest of moderation; and the
Bishop of Orleans was one of those who took the lead in promoting it.
The Cardinals were consulted, and pronounced against it The Pope
overruled their resistance. Whatever embarrassments might be in store,
and however difficult the enterprise, it was clear that it would evoke a
force capable of accomplishing infinite good for religion. It was an
instrument of unknown power that inspired little confidence, but
awakened vague hopes of relief for the ills of society and the divisions
of Christendom. The guardians of immovable traditions, and the leaders
of progress in religious knowledge, were not to share in the work. The
schism of the East was widened by the angry quarrel between Russia and
the Pope; and the letter to the Protestants, whose orders are not
recognised at Rome, could not be more than a ceremonious challenge.
There was no promise of sympathy in these invitations or in the answers
they provoked; but the belief spread to many schools of thought, and was
held by Dr. Pusey and by Dean Stanley, by Professor Hase and by M.
Guizot, that the auspicious issue of the Council was an object of vital
care to all denominations of Christian men.
The Council of Trent impressed on the Church the stamp of an intolerant
age, and perpetuated by its decrees the spirit of an austere
immorality. The ideas embodied in the Roman Inquisition became
characteristic of a system which obeyed expediency by submitting to
indefinite modification, but underwent no change of principle. Three
centuries have so changed the world that the maxims with which the
Church resisted the Reformation have become her weakness and her
reproach, and that which arrested her decline now arrests her progress.
To break effectually with that tradition and eradicate its influence,
nothing less is required than an authority equal to that by which it was
imposed. The Vatican Council was the first sufficient occasion which
Catholicism had enjoyed to reform, remodel, and adapt the work of Trent.
This idea was present among the motives which caused it to be summoned.
It was apparent that two systems which cannot be reconciled were about
to contend at the Council; but the extent and force of the reforming
spirit were unknown.
Seventeen questions submitted by the Holy See to the bishops in 1867
concerned matters of discipline, the regulation of marriage and
education, the policy of encouraging new monastic orders, and the means
of making the parochial clergy more dependent on the bishops. They gave
no indication of the deeper motives of the time. In the midst of many
trivial proposals, the leading objects of reform grew more defined as
the time approached, and men became conscious of distinct purposes based
on a consistent notion of the Church. They received systematic
expression from a Bohemian priest, whose work, _The Reform of the Church
in its Head and Members_, is founded on practical experience, not only
on literary theory, and is the most important manifesto of these ideas.
The author exhorts the Council to restrict centralisation, to reduce the
office of the Holy See to the ancient limits of its primacy, to restore
to the Episcopate the prerogatives which have been confiscated by Rome,
to abolish the temporal government, which is the prop of hierarchical
despotism, to revise the matrimonial discipline, to suppress many
religious orders and the solemn vows for all, to modify the absolute
rule of celibacy for the clergy, to admit the use of the vernacular in
the Liturgy, to allow a larger share to the laity in the management of
ecclesiastical affairs, to encourage the education of the clergy at
universities, and to renounce the claims of mediæval theocracy, which
are fruitful of suspicion between Church and State.
Many Catholics in many countries concurred in great part of this
programme; but it was not the symbol of a connected party. Few agreed
with the author in all parts of his ideal church, or did not think that
he had omitted essential points. Among the inveterate abuses which the
Council of Trent failed to extirpate was the very one which gave the
first impulse to Lutheranism. The belief is still retained in the
superficial Catholicism of Southern Europe that the Pope can release the
dead from Purgatory; and money is obtained at Rome on the assurance that
every mass said at a particular altar opens heaven to the soul for which
it is offered up. On the other hand, the Index of prohibited books is an
institution of Tridentine origin, which has become so unwieldy and
opprobrious that even men of strong Roman sympathies, like the bishops
of Würzburg and St. Pölten, recommended its reform. In France it was
thought that the Government would surrender the organic articles, if the
rights of the bishops and the clergy were made secure under the canon
law, if national and diocesan synods were introduced, and if a
proportionate share was given to Catholic countries in the Sacred
College and the Roman congregations. The aspiration in which all the
advocates of reform seemed to unite was that those customs should be
changed which are connected with arbitrary power in the Church. And all
the interests threatened by this movement combined in the endeavour to
maintain intact the papal prerogative. To proclaim the Pope infallible
was their compendious security against hostile States and Churches,
against human liberty and authority, against disintegrating tolerance
and rationalising science, against error and sin. It became the common
refuge of those who shunned what was called the liberal influence in
Catholicism.
Pius IX. constantly asserted that the desire of obtaining the
recognition of papal infallibility was not originally his motive in
convoking the Council. He did not require that a privilege which was
practically undisputed should be further defined. The bishops,
especially those of the minority, were never tired of saying that the
Catholic world honoured and obeyed the Pope as it had never done before.
Virtually he had exerted all the authority which the dogma could confer
on him. In his first important utterance, the Encyclical of November
1846, he announced that he was infallible; and the claim raised no
commotion. Later on he applied a more decisive test, and gained a more
complete success, when the bishops summoned to Rome, not as a Council
but as an audience, received from him an additional article of their
faith. But apart from the dogma of infallibility he had a strong desire
to establish certain cherished opinions of his own on a basis firm
enough to outlast his time. They were collected in the Syllabus, which
contained the essence of what he had written during many years, and was
an abridgment of the lessons which his life had taught him. He was
anxious that they should not be lost. They were part of a coherent
system. The Syllabus was not rejected; but its edge was blunted and its
point broken by the zeal which was spent in explaining it away; and the
Pope feared that it would be contested if he repudiated the soothing
interpretations. In private he said that he wished to have no
interpreter but himself. While the Jesuit preachers proclaimed that the
Syllabus bore the full sanction of infallibility, higher functionaries
of the Court pointed out that it was an informal document, without
definite official value. Probably the Pope would have been content that
these his favourite ideas should be rescued from evasion by being
incorporated in the canons of the Council. Papal infallibility was
implied rather than included among them. Whilst the authority of his
acts was not resisted, he was not eager to disparage his right by
exposing the need of a more exact definition. The opinions which Pius
IX. was anxiously promoting were not the mere fruit of his private
meditations; they belonged to the doctrines of a great party, which was
busily pursuing its own objects, and had not been always the party of
the Pope. In the days of his trouble he had employed an advocate; and
the advocate had absorbed the client. During his exile a Jesuit had
asked his approbation for a Review, to be conducted by the best talents
of the Order, and to be devoted to the papal cause; and he had warmly
embraced the idea, less, it should seem, as a prince than as a divine.
There were his sovereign rights to maintain; but there was also a
doctrinaire interest, there were reminiscences of study as well as
practical objects that recommended the project. In these personal views
the Pope was not quite consistent. He had made himself the idol of
Italian patriots, and of the liberal French Catholics; he had set
Theiner to vindicate the suppresser of the Jesuits; and Rosmini, the
most enlightened priest in Italy, had been his trusted friend. After his
restoration he submitted to other influences; and the writers of the
_Civiltà Cattolica_, which followed him to Rome and became his
acknowledged organ, acquired power over his mind. These men were not
identified with their Order. Their General, Roothan, had disliked the
plan of the Review, foreseeing that the Society would be held
responsible for writings which it did not approve, and would forfeit the
flexibility in adapting itself to the moods of different countries,
which is one of the secrets of its prosperity. The Pope arranged the
matter by taking the writers under his own protection, and giving to
them a sort of exemption and partial immunity under the rule of their
Order. They are set apart from other Jesuits; they are assisted and
supplied from the literary resources of the Order, and are animated more
than any of its other writers by its genuine and characteristic spirit;
but they act on their own judgment under the guidance of the Pope, and
are a bodyguard, told off from the army, for the personal protection of
the Sovereign. It is their easy function to fuse into one system the
interests and ideas of the Pope and those of their Society. The result
has been, not to weaken by compromise and accommodation, but to
intensify both. The prudence and sagacity which are sustained in the
government of the Jesuits by their complicated checks on power, and
their consideration for the interests of the Order under many various
conditions, do not always restrain men who are partially emancipated
from its rigorous discipline and subject to a more capricious rule. They
were chosen in their capacity as Jesuits, for the sake of the peculiar
spirit which their system develops. The Pope appointed them on account
of that devotion to himself which is a quality of the Order, and
relieved them from some of the restraints which it imposes. He wished
for something more papal than other Jesuits; and he himself became more
subject to the Jesuits than other pontiffs. He made them a channel of
his influence, and became an instrument of their own.
The Jesuits had continued to gain ground in Rome ever since the Pope's
return. They had suffered more than others in the revolution that
dethroned him; and they had their reward in the restoration. They had
long been held in check by the Dominicans; but the theology of the
Dominicans had been discountenanced and their spirit broken in 1854,
when a doctrine which they had contested for centuries was proclaimed a
dogma of faith. In the strife for the Pope's temporal dominion the
Jesuits were most zealous; and they were busy in the preparation and in
the defence of the Syllabus. They were connected with every measure for
which the Pope most cared; and their divines became the oracles of the
Roman congregations. The papal infallibility had been always their
favourite doctrine. Its adoption by the Council promised to give to
their theology official warrant, and to their Order the supremacy in the
Church. They were now in power; and they snatched their opportunity when
the Council was convoked.
Efforts to establish this doctrine had been going on for years. The
dogmatic decree of 1854 involved it so distinctly that its formal
recognition seemed to be only a question of time and zeal. People even
said that it was the real object of that decree to create a precedent
which should make it impossible afterwards to deny papal infallibility.
The Catechisms were altered, or new ones were substituted, in which it
was taught. After 1852 the doctrine began to show itself in the Acts of
provincial synods, and it was afterwards supposed that the bishops of
those provinces were committed to it. One of these synods was held at
Cologne; and three surviving members were in the Council at Rome, of
whom two were in the minority, and the third had continued in his
writings to oppose the doctrine of infallibility, after it had found its
way into the Cologne decree. The suspicion that the Acts had been
tampered with is suggested by what passed at the synod of Baltimore in
1866. The Archbishop of St. Louis signed the Acts of that synod under
protest, and after obtaining a pledge that his protest would be inserted
by the apostolic delegate. The pledge was not kept. "I complain," writes
the archbishop, "that the promise which had been given was broken. The
Acts ought to have been published in their integrity, or not at
all."[371] This process was carried on so boldly that men understood
what was to come. Protestants foretold that the Catholics would not rest
until the Pope was formally declared infallible; and a prelate returning
from the meeting of bishops at Rome in 1862 was startled at being asked
by a clear-sighted friend whether infallibility had not been brought
forward.
It was produced not then, but at the next great meeting, in 1867. The
Council had been announced; and the bishops wished to present an address
to the Pope. Haynald, Archbishop of Colocza, held the pen, assisted by
Franchi, one of the clever Roman prelates and by some bishops, among
whom were the Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Orleans. An
attempt was made to get the papal infallibility acknowledged in the
address. Several bishops declared that they could not show themselves in
their dioceses if they came back without having done anything for that
doctrine. They were resisted in a way which made them complain that its
very name irritated the French. Haynald refused their demand, but agreed
to insert the well-known words of the Council of Florence; and the
bishops did not go away empty-handed.
A few days before this attempt was made, the _Civiltà Cattolica_ had
begun to agitate, by proposing that Catholics should bind themselves to
die, if need be, for the truth of the doctrine; and the article was
printed on a separate sheet, bearing the papal _imprimatur_, and
distributed widely. The check administered by Haynald and his colleagues
brought about a lull in the movement; but the French bishops had taken
alarm, and Maret, the most learned of them, set about the preparation of
his book.
During the winter of 1868-69 several commissions were created in Rome to
make ready the materials for the Council. The dogmatic commission
included the Jesuits Perrone, Schrader, and Franzelin. The question of
infallibility was proposed to it by Cardoni, Archbishop of Edessa, in a
dissertation which, having been revised, was afterwards published, and
accepted by the leading Roman divines as an adequate exposition of their
case. The dogma was approved unanimously, with the exception of one
vote, Alzog of Freiberg being the only dissentient. When the other
German divines who were in Rome learned the scheme that was on foot in
the Dogmatic Commission, they resolved to protest, but were prevented by
some of their colleagues. They gave the alarm in Germany. The intention
to proclaim infallibility at the Council was no longer a secret. The
first bishop who made the wish public was Fessler of St. Pölten. His
language was guarded, and he only prepared his readers for a probable
contingency; but he was soon followed by the Bishop of Nîmes, who
thought the discussion of the dogma superfluous, and foreshadowed a vote
by acclamation. The _Civiltà_ on the 6th of February gave utterance to
the hope that the Council would not hesitate to proclaim the dogma and
confirm the Syllabus in less than a month. Five days later the Pope
wrote to some Venetians who had taken a vow to uphold his infallibility,
encouraging their noble resolution to defend his supreme authority and
all his rights. Until the month of May Cardinal Antonelli's confidential
language to diplomatists was that the dogma was to be proclaimed, and
that it would encounter no difficulty.
Cardinal Reisach was to have been the President of the Council. As
Archbishop of Munich he had allowed himself and his diocese to be
governed by the ablest of all the ultramontane divines. During his long
residence in Rome he rose to high estimation, because he was reputed to
possess the secret, and to have discovered the vanity, of German
science. He had amused himself with Christian antiquities; and his
friendship for the great explorer De' Rossi brought him for a time under
suspicion of liberality. But later he became unrelenting in his ardour
for the objects of the _Civiltà_, and regained the confidence of the
Pope. The German bishops complained that he betrayed their interests,
and that their church had suffered mischief from his paramount
influence. But in Rome his easy temper and affable manners made him
friends; and the Court knew that there was no cardinal on whom it was so
safe to rely.
Fessler, the first bishop who gave the signal of the intended
definition, was appointed Secretary. He was esteemed a learned man in
Austria, and he was wisely chosen to dispel the suspicion that the
conduct of the Council was to be jealously retained in Roman hands, and
to prove that there are qualities by which the confidence of the Court
could be won by men of a less favoured nation. Besides the President and
Secretary, the most conspicuous of the Pope's theological advisers was
a German. At the time when Passaglia's reputation was great in Rome,
his companion Clement Schrader shared the fame of his solid erudition.
When Passaglia fell into disgrace, his friend smote him with reproaches
and intimated the belief that he would follow the footsteps of Luther
and debauch a nun. Schrader is the most candid and consistent asserter
of the papal claims. He does not shrink from the consequences of the
persecuting theory; and he has given the most authentic and unvarnished
exposition of the Syllabus. He was the first who spoke out openly what
others were variously attempting to compromise or to conceal. While the
Paris Jesuits got into trouble for extenuating the Roman doctrine, and
had to be kept up to the mark by an abbé who reminded them that the
Pope, as a physical person, and without co-operation of the Episcopate,
is infallible, Schrader proclaimed that his will is supreme even against
the joint and several opinions of the bishops.[372]
When the proceedings of the dogmatic commission, the acts of the Pope,
and the language of French and Austrian bishops, and of the press
serving the interests of Rome, announced that the proclamation of
infallibility had ceased to be merely the aspiration of a party and was
the object of a design deliberately set on foot by those to whom the
preparation and management of the Council pertained, men became aware
that an extraordinary crisis was impending, and that they needed to make
themselves familiar with an unforeseen problem. The sense of its gravity
made slow progress. The persuasion was strong among divines that the
episcopate would not surrender to a party which was odious to many of
them; and politicians were reluctant to believe that schemes were
ripening such as Fessler described, schemes intended to alter the
relations between Church and State. When the entire plan was made public
by the _alleging Zeitung_ in March 1869, many refused to be convinced.
It happened that a statesman was in office who had occasion to know that
the information was accurate. The Prime Minister of Bavaria, Prince
Hohenlohe, was the brother of a cardinal; the University of Munich was
represented on the Roman commissions by an illustrious scholar; and the
news of the thing that was preparing came through trustworthy channels.
On the 9th of April Prince Hohenlohe sent out a diplomatic circular on
the subject of the Council. He pointed out that it was not called into
existence by any purely theological emergency, and that the one dogma
which was to be brought before it involved all those claims which cause
collisions between Church and State, and threaten the liberty and the
security of governments. Of the five Roman Commissions, one was
appointed for the express purpose of dealing with the mixed topics
common to religion and to politics. Besides infallibility and politics,
the Council was to be occupied with the Syllabus, which is in part
directed against maxims of State. The avowed purpose of the Council
being so largely political, the governments could not remain indifferent
to its action; lest they should be driven afterwards to adopt measures
which would be hostile, it would be better at once to seek an
understanding by friendly means and to obtain assurance that all
irritating deliberations should be avoided, and no business touching the
State transacted except in presence of its representatives. He proposed
that the governments should hold a conference to arrange a plan for the
protection of their common interest.
Important measures proposed by small States are subject to suspicion of
being prompted by a greater Power. Prince Hohenlohe, as a friend of the
Prussian alliance, was supposed to be acting in this matter in concert
with Berlin. This good understanding was suspected at Vienna; for the
Austrian Chancellor was more conspicuous as an enemy of Prussia than
Hohenlohe as a friend. Count Beust traced the influence of Count
Bismarck in the Bavarian circular. He replied, on behalf of the Catholic
empire of Austria, that there were no grounds to impute political
objects to the Council, and that repression and not prevention was the
only policy compatible with free institutions. After the refusal of
Austria, the idea of a conference was dismissed by the other Powers; and
the first of the storm clouds that darkened the horizon of infallibility
passed without breaking.
Although united action was abandoned, the idea of sending ambassadors to
the Council still offered the most inoffensive and amicable means of
preventing the danger of subsequent conflict. Its policy or impolicy was
a question to be decided by France. Several bishops, and Cardinal
Bonnechose among the rest, urged the Government to resume its ancient
privilege, and send a representative. But two powerful parties, united
in nothing else, agreed in demanding absolute neutrality. The democracy
wished that no impediment should be put in the way of an enterprise
which promised to sever the connection of the State with the Church. M.
Ollivier set forth this opinion in July 1868, in a speech which was to
serve him in his candidature for office; and in the autumn of 1869 it
was certain that he would soon be in power. The ministers could not
insist on being admitted to the Council, where they were not invited,
without making a violent demonstration in a direction they knew would
not be followed. The ultramontanes were even more eager than their
enemies to exclude an influence that might embarrass their policy. The
Archbishop of Paris, by giving the same advice, settled the question. He
probably reckoned on his own power of mediating between France and Rome.
The French Court long imagined that the dogma would be set aside, and
that the mass of the French bishops opposed it. At last they perceived
that they were mistaken, and the Emperor said to Cardinal Bonnechose,
"You are going to give your signature to decrees already made." He
ascertained the names of the bishops who would resist; and it was known
that he was anxious for their success. But he was resolved that it
should be gained by them, and not by the pressure of his diplomacy at
the cost of displeasing the Pope. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and
his chief secretary were counted by the Court of Rome among its friends;
and the ordinary ambassador started for his post with instructions to
conciliate, and to run no risk of a quarrel. He arrived at Rome
believing that there would be a speculative conflict between the
extremes of Roman and German theology, which would admit of being
reconciled by the safer and more sober wisdom of the French bishops,
backed by an impartial embassy. His credulity was an encumbrance to the
cause which it was his mission and his wish to serve.
In Germany the plan of penetrating the Council with lay influence took a
strange form. It was proposed that the German Catholics should be
represented by King John of Saxony. As a Catholic and a scholar, who had
shown, in his Commentary on Dante, that he had read St. Thomas, and as a
prince personally esteemed by the Pope, it was conceived that his
presence would be a salutary restraint. It was an impracticable idea;
but letters which reached Rome during the winter raised an impression
that the King regretted that he could not be there. The opinion of
Germany would still have some weight if the North and South, which
included more than thirteen millions of Catholics, worked together. It
was the policy of Hohenlohe to use this united force, and the
ultramontanes learned to regard him as a very formidable antagonist.
When their first great triumph, in the election of the Commission on
Doctrine, was accomplished, the commentary of a Roman prelate was, "Che
colpo per il Principe Hohenlohe!" The Bavarian envoy in Rome did not
share the views of his chief, and he was recalled in November. His
successor had capacity to carry out the known policy of the prince; but
early in the winter the ultramontanes drove Hohenlohe from office, and
their victory, though it was exercised with moderation, and was not
followed by a total change of policy, neutralised the influence of
Bavaria in the Council.
The fall of Hohenlohe and the abstention of France hampered the Federal
Government of Northern Germany. For its Catholic subjects, and
ultimately in view of the rivalry with France, to retain the friendship
of the papacy is a fixed maxim at Berlin. Count Bismarck laid down the
rule that Prussia should display no definite purpose in a cause which
was not her own, but should studiously keep abreast of the North German
bishops. Those bishops neither invoked, nor by their conduct invited,
the co-operation of the State; and its influence would have been
banished from the Council but for the minister who represented it in
Rome. The vicissitudes of a General Council are so far removed from the
normal experience of statesmen that they could not well be studied or
acted upon from a distance. A government that strictly controlled and
dictated the conduct of its envoy was sure to go wrong, and to frustrate
action by theory. A government that trusted the advice of its minister
present on the spot enjoyed a great advantage. Baron Arnim was
favourably situated. A Catholic belonging to any but the ultramontane
school would have been less willingly listened to in Rome than a
Protestant who was a conservative in politics, and whose regard for the
interests of religion was so undamaged by the sectarian taint that he
was known to be sincere in the wish that Catholics should have cause to
rejoice in the prosperity of their Church. The apathy of Austria and the
vacillation of France contributed to his influence, for he enjoyed the
confidence of bishops from both countries; and he was able to guide his
own government in its course towards the Council.
The English Government was content to learn more and to speak less than
the other Powers at Rome. The usual distrust of the Roman Court towards
a Liberal ministry in England was increased at the moment by the measure
which the Catholics had desired and applauded. It seemed improbable to
men more solicitous for acquired rights than for general political
principle, that Protestant statesmen who disestablished their own Church
could feel a very sincere interest in the welfare of another. Ministers
so Utopian as to give up solid goods for an imaginary righteousness
seemed, as practical advisers, open to grave suspicion. Mr. Gladstone
was feared as the apostle of those doctrines to which Rome owes many
losses. Public opinion in England was not prepared to look on papal
infallibility as a matter of national concern, more than other dogmas
which make enemies to Catholicism. Even if the Government could have
admitted the Prussian maxim of keeping in line with the bishops, it
would have accomplished nothing. The English bishops were divided; but
the Irish bishops, who are the natural foes of the Fenian plot, were by
an immense majority on the ultramontane side. There was almost an
ostentation of care on the part of the Government to avoid the
appearance of wishing to influence the bishops or the Court of Rome.
When at length England publicly concurred in the remonstrances of
France, events had happened which showed that the Council was raising up
dangers for both Catholic and liberal interests. It was a result so easy
to foresee, that the Government had made it clear from the beginning
that its extreme reserve was not due to indifference.
The lesser Catholic Powers were almost unrepresented in Rome. The
government of the Regent of Spain possessed no moral authority over
bishops appointed by the Queen; and the revolution had proved so hostile
to the clergy that they were forced to depend on the Pope. Diplomatic
relations being interrupted, there was nothing to restrain them from
seeking favour by unqualified obedience.
Portugal had appointed the Count de Lavradio ambassador to the Council;
but when he found that he was alone he retained only the character of
envoy to the Holy See. He had weight with the small group of Portuguese
bishops; but he died before he could be of use, and they drifted into
submission.
Belgium was governed by M. Frère Orban, one of the most anxious and
laborious enemies of the hierarchy, who had no inducement to interfere
with an event which justified his enmity, and was, moreover, the
unanimous wish of the Belgian Episcopate. When Protestant and Catholic
Powers joined in exhorting Rome to moderation, Belgium was left out.
Russia was the only Power that treated the Church with actual hostility
during the Council, and calculated the advantage to be derived from
decrees which would intensify the schism.
Italy was more deeply interested in the events at Rome than any other
nation. The hostility of the clergy was felt both in the political and
financial difficulties of the kingdom; and the prospect of conciliation
would suffer equally from decrees confirming the Roman claims, or from
an invidious interposition of the State. Public opinion watched the
preparations for the Council with frivolous disdain; but the course to
be taken was carefully considered by the Menabrea Cabinet. The laws
still subsisted which enabled the State to interfere in religious
affairs; and the government was legally entitled to prohibit the
attendance of the bishops at the Council, or to recall them from it. The
confiscated church property was retained by the State, and the claims of
the episcopate were not yet settled. More than one hundred votes on
which Rome counted belonged to Italian subjects. The means of applying
administrative pressure were therefore great, though diplomatic action
was impossible. The Piedmontese wished that the resources of their
ecclesiastical jurisprudence should be set in motion. But Minghetti, who
had lately joined the Ministry, warmly advocated the opinion that the
supreme principle of the liberty of the Church ought to override the
remains of the older legislation, in a State consistently free; and,
with the disposition of the Italians to confound Catholicism with the
hierarchy, the policy of abstention was a triumph of liberality. The
idea of Prince Hohenlohe, that religion ought to be maintained in its
integrity and not only in its independence, that society is interested
in protecting the Church even against herself, and that the enemies of
her liberty are ecclesiastical as well as political, could find no
favour in Italy. During the session of 1869, Menabrea gave no pledge to
Parliament as to the Council; and the bishops who inquired whether they
would be allowed to attend it were left unanswered until October.
Menabrea then explained in a circular that the right of the bishops to
go to the Council proceeded from the liberty of conscience, and was not
conceded under the old privileges of the crown, or as a favour that
could imply responsibility for what was to be done. If the Church was
molested in her freedom, excuse would be given for resisting the
incorporation of Rome. If the Council came to decisions injurious to the
safety of States, it would be attributed to the unnatural conditions
created by the French occupation, and might be left to the enlightened
judgment of Catholics.
It was proposed that the fund realised by the sale of the real property
of the religious corporations should be administered for religious
purposes by local boards of trustees representing the Catholic
population, and that the State should abdicate in their favour its
ecclesiastical patronage, and proceed to discharge the unsettled claims
of the clergy. So great a change in the plans by which Sella and
Rattazzi had impoverished the Church in 1866 and 1867 would, if frankly
carried into execution, have encouraged an independent spirit among the
Italian bishops; and the reports of the prefects represented about
thirty of them as being favourable to conciliation. But the Ministry
fell in November, and was succeeded by an administration whose leading
members, Lanza and Sella, were enemies of religion. The Court of Rome
was relieved from a serious peril.
The only European country whose influence was felt in the attitude of
its bishops was one whose government sent out no diplomatists. While the
Austrian Chancellor regarded the issue of the Council with a profane and
supercilious eye, and so much indifference prevailed at Vienna that it
was said that the ambassador at Rome did not read the decrees, and that
Count Beust did not read his despatches, the Catholic statesmen in
Hungary were intent on effecting a revolution in the Church. The system
which was about to culminate in the proclamation of infallibility, and
which tended to absorb all power from the circumference into the centre,
and to substitute authority for autonomy, had begun at the lower
extremities of the hierarchical scale. The laity, which once had its
share in the administration of Church property and in the deliberations
of the clergy, had been gradually compelled to give up its rights to the
priesthood, the priests to the bishops, and the bishops to the Pope.
Hungary undertook to redress the process, and to correct centralised
absolutism by self-government. In a memorandum drawn up in April 1848,
the bishops imputed the decay of religion to the exclusion of the people
from the management of all Church affairs, and proposed that whatever is
not purely spiritual should be conducted by mixed boards, including lay
representatives elected by the congregations. The war of the revolution
and the reaction checked this design; and the Concordat threw things
more than ever into clerical hands. The triumph of the liberal party
after the peace of Prague revived the movements; and Eötvös called on
the bishops to devise means of giving to the laity a share and an
interest in religious concerns. The bishops agreed unanimously to the
proposal of Deàk, that the laity should have the majority in the boards
of administration; and the new constitution of the Hungarian Church was
adopted by the Catholic Congress on the 17th of October 1869, and
approved by the King on the 25th. The ruling idea of this great measure
was to make the laity supreme in all that is not liturgy and dogma, in
patronage, property, and education; to break down clerical exclusiveness
and government control; to deliver the people from the usurpations of
the hierarchy, and the Church from the usurpations of the State. It was
an attempt to reform the Church by constitutional principles, and to
crush ultramontanism by crushing Gallicanism. The Government, which had
originated the scheme, was ready to surrender its privileges to the
newly-constituted authorities; and the bishops acted in harmony with the
ministers and with public opinion. Whilst this good understanding
lasted, and while the bishops were engaged in applying the impartial
principles of self-government at home, there was a strong security that
they would not accept decrees that would undo their work. Infallibility
would not only condemn their system, but destroy their position. As the
winter advanced the influence of these things became apparent. The
ascendency which the Hungarian bishops acquired from the beginning was
due to other causes.
The political auspices under which the Council opened were very
favourable to the papal cause. The promoters of infallibility were able
to coin resources of the enmity which was shown to the Church. The
danger which came to them from within was averted. The policy of
Hohenlohe, which was afterwards revived by Daru, had been, for a time,
completely abandoned by Europe. The battle between the papal and the
episcopal principle could come off undisturbed, in closed lists.
Political opposition there was none; but the Council had to be governed
under the glare of inevitable publicity, with a free press in Europe,
and hostile views prevalent in Catholic theology. The causes which made
religious science utterly powerless in the strife, and kept it from
grappling with the forces arrayed against it, are of deeper import than
the issue of the contest itself.
While the voice of the bishops grew louder in praise of the Roman
designs, the Bavarian Government consulted the universities, and
elicited from the majority of the Munich faculty an opinion that the
dogma of infallibility would be attended with serious danger to society.
The author of the Bohemian pamphlet affirmed that it had not the
conditions which would enable it ever to become the object of a valid
definition. Janus compared the primacy, as it was known to the Fathers
of the Church, with the ultramontane ideal, and traced the process of
transformation through a long series of forgeries. Maret published his
book some weeks after Janus and the Reform. It had been revised by
several French bishops and divines, and was to serve as a vindication of
the Sorbonne and the Gallicans, and as the manifesto of men who were to
be present at the Council. It had not the merit of novelty or the fault
of innovation, but renewed with as little offence as possible the
language of the old French school.[373] While Janus treated
infallibility as the critical symptom of an ancient disease, Maret
restricted his argument to what was directly involved in the defence of
the Gallican position. Janus held that the doctrine was so firmly rooted
and so widely supported in the existing constitution of the Church, that
much must be modified before a genuine OEcumenical Council could be
celebrated. Maret clung to the belief that the real voice of the Church
would make itself heard at the Vatican. In direct contradiction with
Janus, he kept before him the one practical object, to gain assent by
making his views acceptable even to the unlearned.
At the last moment a tract appeared which has been universally
attributed to Döllinger, which examined the evidences relied on by the
infallibilists, and stated briefly the case against them. It pointed to
the inference that their theory is not merely founded on an illogical
and uncritical habit, but on unremitting dishonesty in the use of texts.
This was coming near the secret of the whole controversy, and the point
that made the interference of the Powers appear the only availing
resource. For the sentiment on which infallibility is founded could not
be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason, but resided in
conclusions transcending evidence, and was the inaccessible postulate
rather than a demonstrable consequence of a system of religious faith.
The two doctrines opposed, but never met each other. It was as much an
instinct of the ultramontane theory to elude the tests of science as to
resist the control of States. Its opponents, baffled and perplexed by
the serene vitality of a view which was impervious to proof, saw want of
principle where there was really a consistent principle, and blamed the
ultramontane divines for that which was of the essence of ultramontane
divinity. How it came that no appeal to revelation or tradition, to
reason or conscience, appeared to have any bearing whatever on the
issue, is a mystery which Janus and Maret and Döllinger's reflections
left unexplained.
The resources of mediæval learning were too slender to preserve an
authentic record of the growth and settlement of Catholic doctrine. Many
writings of the Fathers were interpolated; others were unknown, and
spurious matter was accepted in their place. Books bearing venerable
names--Clement, Dionysius, Isidore--were forged for the purpose of
supplying authorities for opinions that lacked the sanction of
antiquity. When detection came, and it was found that fraud had been
employed in sustaining doctrines bound up with the peculiar interests of
Rome and of the religious Orders, there was an inducement to depreciate
the evidences of antiquity, and to silence a voice that bore obnoxious
testimony. The notion of tradition underwent a change; it was required
to produce what it had not preserved. The Fathers had spoken of the
unwritten teaching of the apostles, which was to be sought in the
churches they had founded, of esoteric doctrines, and views which must
be of apostolic origin because they are universal, of the inspiration of
general Councils, and a revelation continued beyond the New Testament.
But the Council of Trent resisted the conclusions which this language
seemed to countenance, and they were left to be pursued by private
speculation. One divine deprecated the vain pretence of arguing from
Scripture, by which Luther could not be confuted, and the Catholics were
losing ground;[374] and at Trent a speaker averred that Christian
doctrine had been so completely determined by the Schoolmen that there
was no further need to recur to Scripture. This idea is not extinct, and
Perrone uses it to explain the inferiority of Catholics as Biblical
critics.[375] If the Bible is inspired, says Peresius, still more must
its interpretation be inspired. It must be interpreted variously, says
the Cardinal of Cusa, according to necessity; a change in the opinion of
the Church implies a change in the will of God.[376] One of the greatest
Tridentine divines declares that a doctrine must be true if the Church
believes it, without any warrant from Scripture. According to Petavius,
the general belief of Catholics at a given time is the work of God, and
of higher authority than all antiquity and all the Fathers. Scripture
may be silent, and tradition contradictory, but the Church is
independent of both. Any doctrine which Catholic divines commonly
assert, without proof, to be revealed, must be taken as revealed. The
testimony of Rome, as the only remaining apostolic Church, is equivalent
to an unbroken chain of tradition.[377] In this way, after Scripture had
been subjugated, tradition itself was deposed; and the constant belief
of the past yielded to the general conviction of the present. And, as
antiquity had given way to universality, universality made way for
authority. The Word of God and the authority of the Church came to be
declared the two sources of religious knowledge. Divines of this school,
after preferring the Church to the Bible, preferred the modern Church to
the ancient, and ended by sacrificing both to the Pope. "We have not the
authority of Scripture," wrote Prierias in his defence of Indulgences,
"but we have the higher authority of the Roman pontiffs."[378] A bishop
who had been present at Trent confesses that in matters of faith he
would believe a single Pope rather than a thousand Fathers, saints, and
doctors.[379] The divine training develops an orthodox instinct in the
Church, which shows itself in the lives of devout but ignorant men more
than in the researches of the learned, and teaches authority not to need
the help of science, and not to heed its opposition. All the arguments
by which theology supports a doctrine may prove to be false, without
diminishing the certainty of its truth. The Church has not obtained, and
is not bound to sustain it, by proof. She is supreme over fact as over
doctrine, as Fénelon argues, because she is the supreme expounder of
tradition, which is a chain of facts.[380] Accordingly, the organ of one
ultramontane bishop lately declared that infallibility could be defined
without arguments; and the Bishop of Nîmes thought that the decision
need not be preceded by long and careful discussion. The Dogmatic
Commission of the Council proclaims that the existence of tradition has
nothing to do with evidence, and that objections taken from history are
not valid when contradicted by ecclesiastical decrees.[381] Authority
must conquer history.
This inclination to get rid of evidence was specially associated with
the doctrine of papal infallibility, because it is necessary that the
Popes themselves should not testify against their own claim. They may be
declared superior to all other authorities, but not to that of their own
see. Their history is not irrelevant to the question of their rights. It
could not be disregarded; and the provocation to alter or to deny its
testimony was so urgent that men of piety and learning became a prey to
the temptation of deceit. When it was discovered in the manuscript of
the _Liber Diurnus_ that the Popes had for centuries condemned Honorius
in their profession of faith, Cardinal Bona, the most eminent man in
Rome, advised that the book should be suppressed if the difficulty could
not be got over; and it was suppressed accordingly.[382] Men guilty of
this kind of fraud would justify it by saying that their religion
transcends the wisdom of philosophers, and cannot submit to the
criticism of historians. If any fact manifestly contradicts a dogma,
that is a warning to science to revise the evidence. There must be some
defect in the materials or in the method. Pending its discovery, the
true believer is constrained humbly but confidently to deny the fact.
The protest of conscience against this fraudulent piety grew loud and
strong as the art of criticism became more certain. The use made of it
by Catholics in the literature of the present age, and their acceptance
of the conditions of scientific controversy, seemed to ecclesiastical
authorities a sacrifice of principle. A jealousy arose that ripened into
antipathy. Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner
or later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome. But its censures
had lost efficacy; and it was found that the progress of literature
could only be brought under control by an increase of authority. This
could be obtained if a general council declared the decisions of the
Roman congregations absolute, and the Pope infallible.
The division between the Roman and the Catholic elements in the Church
made it hopeless to mediate between them; and it is strange that men who
must have regarded each other as insincere Christians or as insincere
Catholics, should not have perceived that their meeting in Council was
an imposture. It may be that a portion, though only a small portion, of
those who failed to attend, stayed away from that motive. But the view
proscribed at Rome was not largely represented in the episcopate; and it
was doubtful whether it would be manifested at all. The opposition did
not spring from it, but maintained itself by reducing to the utmost the
distance that separated it from the strictly Roman opinions, and
striving to prevent the open conflict of principles. It was composed of
ultramontanes in the mask of liberals, and of liberals in the mask of
ultramontanes. Therefore the victory or defeat of the minority was not
the supreme issue of the Council. Besides and above the definition of
infallibility arose the question how far the experience of the actual
encounter would open the eyes and search the hearts of the reluctant
bishops, and how far their language and their attitude would contribute
to the impulse of future reform. There was a point of view from which
the failure of all attempts to avert the result by false issues and
foreign intrusion, and the success of the measures which repelled
conciliation and brought on an open struggle and an overwhelming
triumph, were means to another and a more importunate end.
Two events occurred in the autumn which portended trouble for the
winter. On the 6th of September nineteen German bishops, assembled at
Fulda, published a pastoral letter in which they affirmed that the whole
episcopate was perfectly unanimous, that the Council would neither
introduce new dogmas nor invade the civil province, and that the Pope
intended its deliberations to be free. The patent and direct meaning of
this declaration was that the bishops repudiated the design announced by
the _Civiltà_ and the _alleging Zeitung_, and it was received at Rome
with indignation. But it soon appeared that it was worded with studied
ambiguity, to be signed by men of opposite opinions, and to conceal the
truth. The Bishop of Mentz read a paper, written by a professor of
Würzburg, against the wisdom of raising the question, but expressed his
own belief in the dogma of papal infallibility; and when another bishop
stated his disbelief in it, the Bishop of Paderborn assured him that
Rome would soon strip him of his heretical skin. The majority wished to
prevent the definition, if possible, without disputing the doctrine; and
they wrote a private letter to the Pope warning him of the danger, and
entreating him to desist. Several bishops who had signed the pastoral
refused their signatures to the private letter. It caused so much dismay
at Rome that its nature was carefully concealed; and a diplomatist was
able to report, on the authority of Cardinal Antonelli, that it did not
exist.
In the middle of November, the Bishop of Orleans took leave of his
diocese in a letter which touched lightly on the learned questions
connected with papal infallibility, but described the objections to the
definition as of such a kind that they could not be removed. Coming from
a prelate who was so conspicuous as a champion of the papacy, who had
saved the temporal power and justified the Syllabus, this declaration
unexpectedly altered the situation at Rome. It was clear that the
definition would be opposed, and that the opposition would have the
support of illustrious names.
The bishops who began to arrive early in November were received with the
assurance that the alarm which had been raised was founded on phantoms.
It appeared that nobody had dreamed of defining infallibility, or that,
if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned.
Cardinals Antonelli, Berardi, and De Luca, and the Secretary Fessler
disavowed the _Civiltà_. The ardent indiscretion that was displayed
beyond the Alps contrasted strangely with the moderation, the friendly
candour, the majestic and impartial wisdom, which were found to reign in
the higher sphere of the hierarchy. A bishop, afterwards noted among the
opponents of the dogma, wrote home that the idea that infallibility was
to be defined was entirely unfounded. It was represented as a mere
fancy, got up in Bavarian newspapers, with evil intent; and the Bishop
of Sura had been its dupe. The insidious report would have deserved
contempt if it had caused a revival of obsolete opinions. It was a
challenge to the Council to herald it with such demonstrations, and it
unfortunately became difficult to leave it unnoticed. The decision must
be left to the bishops. The Holy See could not restrain their legitimate
ardour, if they chose to express it; but it would take no initiative.
Whatever was done would require to be done with so much moderation as to
satisfy everybody, and to avoid the offence of a party triumph. Some
suggested that there should be no anathema for those who questioned the
doctrine; and one prelate imagined that a formula could be contrived
which even Janus could not dispute, and which yet would be found in
reality to signify that the Pope is infallible. There was a general
assumption that no materials existed for contention among the bishops,
and that they stood united against the world.
Cardinal Antonelli openly refrained from connecting himself with the
preparation of the Council, and surrounded himself with divines who were
not of the ruling party. He had never learned to doubt the dogma itself;
but he was keenly alive to the troubles it would bring upon him, and
thought that the Pope was preparing a repetition of the difficulties
which followed the beginning of his pontificate. He was not trusted as a
divine, or consulted on questions of theology; but he was expected to
ward off political complications, and he kept the ground with
unflinching skill.
The Pope exhorted the diplomatic corps to aid him in allaying the alarm
of the infatuated Germans. He assured one diplomatist that the _Civiltà_
did not speak in his name. He told another that he would sanction no
proposition that could sow dissension among the bishops. He said to a
third, "You come to be present at a scene of pacification." He described
his object in summoning the Council to be to obtain a remedy for old
abuses and for recent errors. More than once, addressing a group of
bishops, he said that he would do nothing to raise disputes among them,
and would be content with a declaration in favour of intolerance. He
wished of course that Catholicism should have the benefit of toleration
in England and Russia, but the principle must be repudiated by a Church
holding the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The meaning of this
intimation, that persecution would do as a substitute for infallibility,
was that the most glaring obstacle to the definition would be removed if
the Inquisition was recognised as consistent with Catholicism. Indeed it
seemed that infallibility was a means to an end which could be obtained
in other ways, and that he would have been satisfied with a decree
confirming the twenty-third article of the Syllabus, and declaring that
no Pope has ever exceeded the just bounds of his authority in faith, in
politics, or in morals.[383]
Most of the bishops had allowed themselves to be reassured, when the
Bull _Multiplices inter_, regulating the procedure at the Council, was
put into circulation in the first days of December. The Pope assumed to
himself the sole initiative in proposing topics, and the exclusive
nomination of the officers of the Council. He invited the bishops to
bring forward their own proposals, but required that they should submit
them first of all to a Commission which was appointed by himself, and
consisted half of Italians. If any proposal was allowed to pass by this
Commission, it had still to obtain the sanction of the Pope, who could
therefore exclude at will any topic, even if the whole Council wished to
discuss it. Four elective Commissions were to mediate between the
Council and the Pope. When a decree had been discussed and opposed, it
was to be referred, together with the amendments, to one of these
Commissions, where it was to be reconsidered, with the aid of divines.
When it came back from the Commission with corrections and remarks, it
was to be put to the vote without further debate. What the Council
discussed was to be the work of unknown divines: what it voted was to be
the work of a majority in a Commission of twenty-four. It was in the
election of these Commissions that the episcopate obtained the chance of
influencing the formation of its decrees. But the papal theologians
retained their predominance, for they might be summoned to defend or
alter their work in the Commission, from which the bishops who had
spoken or proposed amendments were excluded. Practically, the right of
initiative was the deciding point. Even if the first regulation had
remained in force, the bishops could never have recovered the surprises,
and the difficulty of preparing for unforeseen debates. The regulation
ultimately broke down under the mistake of allowing the decree to be
debated only once, and that in its crude state, as it came from the
hands of the divines. The authors of the measure had not contemplated
any real discussion. It was so unlike the way in which business was
conducted at Trent, where the right of the episcopate was formally
asserted, where the envoys were consulted, and the bishops discussed the
questions in several groups before the general congregations, that the
printed text of the Tridentine Regulation was rigidly suppressed. It was
further provided that the reports of the speeches should not be
communicated to the bishops; and the strictest secrecy was enjoined on
all concerning the business of the Council. The bishops, being under no
obligation to observe this rule, were afterwards informed that it bound
them under grievous sin.
This important precept did not succeed in excluding the action of public
opinion. It could be applied only to the debates; and many bishops spoke
with greater energy and freedom before an assembly of their own order
than they would have done if their words had been taken down by
Protestants, to be quoted against them at home. But printed documents,
distributed in seven hundred copies, could not be kept secret. The rule
was subject to exceptions which destroyed its efficacy; and the Roman
cause was discredited by systematic concealment, and advocacy that
abounded in explanation and colour, but abstained from the substance of
fact. Documents couched in the usual official language, being dragged
into the forbidden light of day, were supposed to reveal dark mysteries.
The secrecy of the debates had a bad effect in exaggerating reports and
giving wide scope to fancy. Rome was not vividly interested in the
discussions; but its cosmopolitan society was thronged with the several
adherents of leading bishops, whose partiality compromised their dignity
and envenomed their disputes. Everything that was said was repeated,
inflated, and distorted. Whoever had a sharp word for an adversary,
which could not be spoken in Council, knew of an audience that would
enjoy and carry the matter. The battles of the Aula were fought over
again, with anecdote, epigram, and fiction. A distinguished courtesy and
nobleness of tone prevailed at the beginning. When the Archbishop of
Halifax went down to his place on the 28th of December, after delivering
the speech which taught the reality of the opposition, the Presidents
bowed to him as he passed them. The denunciations of the Roman system by
Strossmayer and Darboy were listened to in January without a murmur.
Adversaries paid exorbitant compliments to each other, like men whose
disagreements were insignificant, and who were one at heart. As the plot
thickened, fatigue, excitement, friends who fetched and carried, made
the tone more bitter. In February the Bishop of Laval described
Dupanloup publicly as the centre of a conspiracy too shameful to be
expressed in words, and professed that he would rather die than be
associated with such iniquity. One of the minority described his
opponents as having disported themselves on a certain occasion like a
herd of cattle. By that time the whole temper of the Council had been
changed; the Pope himself had gone into the arena; and violence of
language and gesture had become an artifice adopted to hasten the end.
When the Council opened, many bishops were bewildered and dispirited by
the Bull _Multiplices_. They feared that a struggle could not be
averted, as, even if no dogmatic question was raised, their rights were
cancelled in a way that would make the Pope absolute in dogma. One of
the Cardinals caused him to be informed that the Regulation would be
resisted. But Pius IX. knew that in all that procession of 750 bishops
one idea prevailed. Men whose word is powerful in the centres of
civilisation, men who three months before were confronting martyrdom
among barbarians, preachers at Notre Dame, professors from Germany,
Republicans from Western America, men with every sort of training and
every sort of experience, had come together as confident and as eager as
the prelates of Rome itself, to hail the Pope infallible. Resistance was
improbable, for it was hopeless. It was improbable that bishops who had
refused no token of submission for twenty years would now combine to
inflict dishonour on the Pope. In their address of 1867 they had
confessed that he is the father and teacher of all Christians; that all
the things he has spoken were spoken by St. Peter through him; that they
would believe and teach all that he believed and taught. In 1854 they
had allowed him to proclaim a dogma, which some of them dreaded and some
opposed, but to which all submitted when he had decreed without the
intervention of a Council. The recent display of opposition did not
justify serious alarm. The Fulda bishops feared the consequences in
Germany; but they affirmed that all were united, and that there would be
no new dogma. They were perfectly informed of all that was being got
ready in Rome. The words of their pastoral meant nothing if they did not
mean that infallibility was no new dogma, and that all the bishops
believed in it. Even the Bishop of Orleans avoided a direct attack on
the doctrine, proclaimed his own devotion to the Pope, and promised that
the Council would be a scene of concord.[384] It was certain that any
real attempt that might be made to prevent the definition could be
overwhelmed by the preponderance of those bishops whom the modern
constitution of the Church places in dependence on Rome.
The only bishops whose position made them capable of resisting were the
Germans and the French; and all that Rome would have to contend with was
the modern liberalism and decrepit Gallicanism of France, and the
science of Germany. The Gallican school was nearly extinct; it had no
footing in other countries, and it was essentially odious to the
liberals. The most serious minds of the liberal party were conscious
that Rome was as dangerous to ecclesiastical liberty as Paris. But,
since the Syllabus made it impossible to pursue the liberal doctrines
consistently without collision with Rome, they had ceased to be
professed with a robust and earnest confidence, and the party was
disorganised. They set up the pretence that the real adversary of their
opinions was not the Pope, but a French newspaper; and they fought the
King's troops in the King's name. When the Bishop of Orleans made his
declaration, they fell back, and left him to mount the breach alone.
Montalembert, the most vigorous spirit among them, became isolated from
his former friends, and accused them, with increasing vehemence, of
being traitors to their principles. During the last disheartening year
of his life he turned away from the clergy of his country, which was
sunk in Romanism, and felt that the real abode of his opinions was on
the Rhine.[385] It was only lately that the ideas of the Coblentz
address, which had so deeply touched the sympathies of Montalembert, had
spread widely in Germany. They had their seat in the universities; and
their transit from the interior of lecture-rooms to the outer world was
laborious and slow. The invasion of Roman doctrines had given vigour and
popularity to those which opposed them, but the growing influence of the
universities brought them into direct antagonism with the episcopate.
The Austrian bishops were generally beyond its reach, and the German
bishops were generally at war with it. In December, one of the most
illustrious of them said: "We bishops are absorbed in our work, and are
not scholars. We sadly need the help of those that are. It is to be
hoped that the Council will raise only such questions as can be dealt
with competently by practical experience and common sense." The force
that Germany wields in theology was only partially represented in its
episcopate.
At the opening of the Council the known opposition consisted of four
men. Cardinal Schwarzenberg had not published his opinion, but he made
it known as soon as he came to Rome. He brought with him a printed
paper, entitled _Desideria patribus Concilii oecumenici proponenda_, in
which he adopted the ideas of the divines and canonists who are the
teachers of his Bohemian clergy. He entreated the Council not to
multiply unnecessary articles of faith, and in particular to abstain
from defining papal infallibility, which was beset with difficulties,
and would make the foundations of faith to tremble even in the devoutest
souls. He pointed out that the Index could not continue on its present
footing, and urged that the Church should seek her strength in the
cultivation of liberty and learning, not in privilege and coercion; that
she should rely on popular institutions, and obtain popular support. He
warmly advocated the system of autonomy that was springing up in
Hungary.[386] Unlike Schwarzenberg, Dupanloup, and Maret, the Archbishop
of Paris had taken no hostile step in reference to the Council, but he
was feared the most of all the men expected at Rome. The Pope had
refused to make him a cardinal, and had written to him a letter of
reproof such as has seldom been received by a bishop. It was felt that
he was hostile, not episodically, to a single measure, but to the
peculiar spirit of this pontificate. He had none of the conventional
prejudices and assumed antipathies which are congenial to the
hierarchical mind. He was without passion or pathos or affectation; and
he had good sense, a perfect temper, and an intolerable wit. It was
characteristic of him that he made the Syllabus an occasion to impress
moderation on the Pope: "Your blame has power, O Vicar of Jesus Christ;
but your blessing is more potent still. God has raised you to the
apostolic See between the two halves of this century, that you may
absolve the one and inaugurate the other. Be it yours to reconcile
reason with faith, liberty with authority, politics with the Church.
From the height of that triple majesty with which religion, age, and
misfortune adorn you, all that you do and all that you say reaches far,
to disconcert or to encourage the nations. Give them from your large
priestly heart one word to amnesty the past, to reassure the present,
and to open the horizons of the future."
The security into which many unsuspecting bishops had been lulled
quickly disappeared; and they understood that they were in presence of a
conspiracy which would succeed at once if they did not provide against
acclamation, and must succeed at last if they allowed themselves to be
caught in the toils of the Bull _Multiplices_. It was necessary to make
sure that no decree should be passed without reasonable discussion, and
to make a stand against the regulation. The first congregation, held on
the 10th of December, was a scene of confusion; but it appeared that a
bishop from the Turkish frontier had risen against the order of
proceeding, and that the President had stopped him, saying that this was
a matter decided by the Pope, and not submitted to the Council. The
bishops perceived that they were in a snare. Some began to think of
going home. Others argued that questions of Divine right were affected
by the regulation, and that they were bound to stake the existence of
the Council upon them. Many were more eager on this point of law than on
the point of dogma, and were brought under the influence of the more
clear-sighted men, with whom they would not have come in contact through
any sympathy on the question of infallibility. The desire of protesting
against the violation of privileges was an imperfect bond. The bishops
had not yet learned to know each other; and they had so strongly
impressed upon their flocks at home the idea that Rome ought to be
trusted, that they were going to manifest the unity of the Church and to
confound the insinuations of her enemies, that they were not quick to
admit all the significance of the facts they found. Nothing vigorous was
possible in a body of so loose a texture. The softer materials had to be
eliminated, the stronger welded together by severe and constant
pressure, before an opposition could be made capable of effective
action. They signed protests that were of no effect. They petitioned;
they did not resist.
It was seen how much Rome had gained by excluding the ambassadors; for
this question of forms and regulations would have admitted the action of
diplomacy. The idea of being represented at the Council was revived in
France; and a weary negotiation began, which lasted several months, and
accomplished nothing but delay. It was not till the policy of
intervention had ignominiously failed, and till its failure had left the
Roman court to cope with the bishops alone, that the real question was
brought on for discussion. And as long as the chance remained that
political considerations might keep infallibility out of the Council,
the opposition abstained from declaring its real sentiments. Its union
was precarious and delusive, but it lasted in this state long enough to
enable secondary influences to do much towards supplying the place of
principles.
While the protesting bishops were not committed against infallibility,
it would have been possible to prevent resistance to the bull from
becoming resistance to the dogma. The Bishop of Grenoble, who was
reputed a good divine among his countrymen, was sounded in order to
discover how far he would go; and it was ascertained that he admitted
the doctrine substantially. At the same time, the friends of the Bishop
of Orleans were insisting that he had questioned not the dogma but the
definition; and Maret, in the defence of his book, declared that he
attributed no infallibility to the episcopate apart from the Pope. If
the bishops had been consulted separately, without the terror of a
decree, it is probable that the number of those who absolutely rejected
the doctrine would have been extremely small. There were many who had
never thought seriously about it, or imagined that it was true in a
pious sense, though not capable of proof in controversy. The possibility
of an understanding seemed so near that the archbishop of Westminster,
who held the Pope infallible apart from the episcopate, required that
the words should be translated into French in the sense of independence,
and not of exclusion. An ambiguous formula embodying the view common to
both parties, or founded on mutual concession, would have done more for
the liberty than the unity of opinion, and would not have strengthened
the authority of the Pope. It was resolved to proceed with caution,
putting in motion the strong machinery of Rome, and exhausting the
advantages of organisation and foreknowledge.
The first act of the Council was to elect the Commission on Dogma. A
proposal was made on very high authority that the list should be drawn
up so as to represent the different opinions fairly, and to include some
of the chief opponents. They would have been subjected to other
influences than those which sustain party leaders; they would have been
separated from their friends and brought into frequent contact with
adversaries; they would have felt the strain of official responsibility;
and the opposition would have been decapitated. If these sagacious
counsels had been followed, the harvest of July might have been gathered
in January, and the reaction that was excited in the long struggle that
ensued might have been prevented. Cardinal de Angelis, who ostensibly
managed the elections, and was advised by Archbishop Manning, preferred
the opposite and more prudent course. He caused a lithographed list to
be sent to all the bishops open to influence, from which every name was
excluded that was not on the side of infallibility.
Meantime the bishops of several nations selected those among their
countrymen whom they recommended as candidates. The Germans and
Hungarians, above forty in number, assembled for this purpose under the
presidency of Cardinal Schwarzenberg; and their meetings were continued,
and became more and more important, as those who did not sympathise with
the opposition dropped away. The French were divided into two groups,
and met partly at Cardinal Mathieu's, partly at Cardinal Bonnechose's. A
fusion was proposed, but was resisted, in the Roman interest, by
Bonnechose. He consulted Cardinal Antonelli, and reported that the Pope
disliked large meetings of bishops. Moreover, if all the French had met
in one place, the opposition would have had the majority, and would have
determined the choice of the candidates. They voted separately; and the
Bonnechose list was represented to foreign bishops as the united choice
of the French episcopate. The Mathieu group believed that this had been
done fraudulently, and resolved to make their complaint to the Pope; but
Cardinal Mathieu, seeing that a storm was rising, and that he would be
called on to be the spokesman of his friends, hurried away to spend
Christmas at Besançon. All the votes of his group were thrown away. Even
the bishop of Grenoble, who had obtained twenty-nine votes at one
meeting, and thirteen at the other, was excluded from the Commission. It
was constituted as the managers of the election desired, and the first
trial of strength appeared to have annihilated the opposition. The force
under entire control of the court could be estimated from the number of
votes cast blindly for candidates not put forward by their own
countrymen, and unknown to others, who had therefore no recommendation
but that of the official list. According to this test Rome could dispose
of 550 votes.
The moment of this triumph was chosen for the production of an act
already two months old, by which many ancient censures were revoked, and
many were renewed. The legislation of the Middle Ages and of the
sixteenth century appointed nearly two hundred cases by which
excommunication was incurred _ipso facto_, without inquiry or sentence.
They had generally fallen into oblivion, or were remembered as instances
of former extravagance; but they had not been abrogated, and, as they
were in part defensible, they were a trouble to timorous consciences.
There was reason to expect that this question, which had often occupied
the attention of the bishops, would be brought before the Council; and
the demand for a reform could not have been withstood. The difficulty
was anticipated by sweeping away as many censures as it was thought safe
to abandon, and deciding, independently of the bishops, what must be
retained. The Pope reserved to himself alone the faculty of absolving
from the sin of harbouring or defending the members of any sect, of
causing priests to be tried by secular courts, of violating asylum or
alienating the real property of the Church. The prohibition of anonymous
writing was restricted to works on theology, and the excommunication
hitherto incurred by reading books which are on the Index was confined
to readers of heretical books. This Constitution had no other immediate
effect than to indicate the prevailing spirit, and to increase the
difficulties of the partisans of Rome. The organ of the Archbishop of
Cologne justified the last provision by saying, that it does not forbid
the works of Jews, for Jews are not heretics; nor the heretical tracts
and newspapers, for they are not books; nor listening to heretical books
read aloud, for hearing is not reading.
At the same time, the serious work of the Council was begun. A long
dogmatic decree was distributed, in which the special theological,
biblical, and philosophical opinions of the school now dominant in Rome
were proposed for ratification. It was so weak a composition that it was
as severely criticised by the Romans as by the foreigners; and there
were Germans whose attention was first called to its defects by an
Italian cardinal. The disgust with which the text of the first decree
was received had not been foreseen. No real discussion had been
expected. The Council hall, admirable for occasions of ceremony, was
extremely ill adapted for speaking, and nothing would induce the Pope to
give it up. A public session was fixed for the 6th of January, and the
election of Commissions was to last till Christmas. It was evident that
nothing would be ready for the session, unless the decree was accepted
without debate, or infallibility adopted by acclamation.
Before the Council had been assembled a fortnight, a store of discontent
had accumulated which it would have been easy to avoid. Every act of the
Pope, the Bull _Multiplices_, the declaration of censures, the text of
the proposed decree, even the announcement that the Council should be
dissolved in case of his death, had seemed an injury or an insult to the
episcopate. These measures undid the favourable effect of the caution
with which the bishops had been received. They did what the dislike of
infallibility alone would not have done. They broke the spell of
veneration for Pius IX. which fascinated the Catholic Episcopate. The
jealousy with which he guarded his prerogative in the appointment of
officers, and of the great Commission, the pressure during the
elections, the prohibition of national meetings, the refusal to hold the
debates in a hall where they could be heard, irritated and alarmed many
bishops. They suspected that they had been summoned for the very purpose
they had indignantly denied, to make the papacy more absolute by
abdicating in favour of the official prelature of Rome. Confidence gave
way to a great despondency, and a state of feeling was aroused which
prepared the way for actual opposition when the time should come.
Before Christmas the Germans and the French were grouped nearly as they
remained to the end. After the flight of Cardinal Mathieu, and the
refusal of Cardinal Bonnechose to coalesce, the friends of the latter
gravitated towards the Roman centre, and the friends of the former held
their meetings at the house of the Archbishop of Paris. They became,
with the Austro-German meeting under Cardinal Schwarzenberg, the
strength and substance of the party that opposed the new dogma; but
there was little intercourse between the two, and their exclusive
nationality made them useless as a nucleus for the few scattered
American, English, and Italian bishops whose sympathies were with them.
To meet this object, and to centralise the deliberations, about a dozen
of the leading men constituted an international meeting, which included
the best talents, but also the most discordant views. They were too
little united to act with vigour, and too few to exercise control. Some
months later they increased their numbers. They were the brain but not
the will of the opposition. Cardinal Rauscher presided. Rome honoured
him as the author of the Austrian Concordat; but he feared that
infallibility would bring destruction on his work, and he was the most
constant, the most copious, and the most emphatic of its opponents.
When the debate opened, on the 28th of December, the idea of proclaiming
the dogma by acclamation had not been abandoned. The Archbishop of Paris
exacted a promise that it should not be attempted. But he was warned
that the promise held good for the first day only, and that there was no
engagement for the future. Then he made it known that one hundred
bishops were ready, if a surprise was attempted, to depart from Rome,
and to carry away the Council, as he said, in the soles of their shoes.
The plan of carrying the measure by a sudden resolution was given up,
and it was determined to introduce it with a demonstration of
overwhelming effect. The debate on the dogmatic decree was begun by
Cardinal Rauscher. The Archbishop of St. Louis spoke on the same day so
briefly as not to reveal the force and the fire within him. The
Archbishop of Halifax concluded a long speech by saying that the
proposal laid before the Council was only fit to be put decorously under
ground. Much praise was lavished on the bishops who had courage,
knowledge, and Latin enough to address the assembled Fathers; and the
Council rose instantly in dignity and in esteem when it was seen that
there was to be real discussion. On the 30th, Rome was excited by the
success of two speakers. One was the Bishop of Grenoble, the other was
Strossmayer, the bishop from the Turkish frontier, who had again
assailed the regulation, and had again been stopped by the presiding
Cardinal. The fame of his spirit and eloquence began to spread over the
city and over the world. The ideas that animated these men in their
attack on the proposed measure were most clearly shown a few days later
in the speech of a Swiss prelate. "What boots it," he exclaimed, "to
condemn errors that have been long condemned, and tempt no Catholic? The
false beliefs of mankind are beyond the reach of your decrees. The best
defence of Catholicism is religious science. Give to the pursuit of
sound learning every encouragement and the widest field; and prove by
deeds as well as words that the progress of nations in liberty and light
is the mission of the Church."[387]
The tempest of criticism was weakly met; and the opponents established
at once a superiority in debate. At the end of the first month nothing
had been done; and the Session imprudently fixed for the 6th of January
had to be filled up with tedious ceremonies. Everybody saw that there
had been a great miscalculation. The Council was slipping out of the
grasp of the Court, and the regulation was a manifest hindrance to the
despatch of business. New resources were required.
A new president was appointed. Cardinal Reisach had died at the end of
December without having been able to take his seat, and Cardinal De Luca
had presided in his stead. De Angelis was now put into the place made
vacant by the death of Reisach. He had suffered imprisonment at Turin,
and the glory of his confessorship was enhanced by his services in the
election of the Commissions. He was not suited otherwise to be the
moderator of a great assembly; and the effect of his elevation was to
dethrone the accomplished and astute De Luca, who had been found
deficient in thoroughness, and to throw the management of the Council
into the hands of the junior Presidents, Capalti and Bilio. Bilio was a
Barnabite monk, innocent of court intrigues, a friend of the most
enlightened scholars in Rome, and a favourite of the Pope. Cardinal
Capalti had been distinguished as a canonist. Like Cardinal Bilio, he
was not reckoned among men of the extreme party; and they were not
always in harmony with their colleagues, De Angelis and Bizarri. But
they did not waver when the policy they had to execute was not their
own.
The first decree was withdrawn, and referred to the Commission on
Doctrine. Another, on the duties of the episcopate, was substituted; and
that again was followed by others, of which the most important was on
the Catechism. While they were being discussed, a petition was prepared,
demanding that the infallibility of the Pope should be made the object
of a decree. The majority undertook to put a strain on the prudence or
the reluctance of the Vatican. Their zeal in the cause was warmer than
that of the official advisers. Among those who had the responsibility of
conducting the spiritual and temporal government of the Pope, the belief
was strong that his infallibility did not need defining, and that the
definition could not be obtained without needless obstruction to other
papal interests. Several Cardinals were inopportunists at first, and
afterwards promoted intermediate and conciliatory proposals. But the
business of the Council was not left to the ordinary advisers of the
Pope, and they were visibly compelled and driven by those who
represented the majority. At times this pressure was no doubt
convenient. But there were also times when there was no collusion, and
the majority really led the authorities. The initiative was not taken by
the great mass whose zeal was stimulated by personal allegiance to the
Pope. They added to the momentum, but the impulse came from men who were
as independent as the chiefs of the opposition. The great Petition,
supported by others pointing to the same end, was kept back for several
weeks, and was presented at the end of January.
At that time the opposition had attained its full strength, and
presented a counter-petition, praying that the question might not be
introduced. It was written by Cardinal Rauscher, and was signed, with
variations, by 137 bishops. To obtain that number the address avoided
the doctrine itself, and spoke only of the difficulty and danger in
defining it; so that this, their most imposing act, was a confession of
inherent weakness, and a signal to the majority that they might force on
the dogmatic discussion. The bishops stood on the negative. They showed
no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism; and it seemed that
they would compound for the concession they wanted, by yielding in all
other matters, even those which would be a practical substitute for
infallibility. That this was not to be, that the forces needed for a
great revival were really present, was made manifest by the speech of
Strossmayer on the 24th of January, when he demanded the reformation of
the Court of Rome, decentralisation in the government of the Church, and
decennial Councils. That earnest spirit did not animate the bulk of the
party. They were content to leave things as they were, to gain nothing
if they lost nothing, to renounce all premature striving for reform if
they could succeed in avoiding a doctrine which they were as unwilling
to discuss as to define. The words of Ginoulhiac to Strossmayer, "You
terrify me with your pitiless logic," expressed the inmost feelings of
many who gloried in the grace and the splendour of his eloquence. No
words were too strong for them if they prevented the necessity of
action, and spared the bishops the distressing prospect of being brought
to bay, and having to resist openly the wishes and the claims of Rome.
Infallibility never ceased to overshadow every step of the Council,[388]
but it had already given birth to a deeper question. The Church had less
to fear from the violence of the majority than from the inertness of
their opponents. No proclamation of false doctrines could be so great a
disaster as the weakness of faith which would prove that the power of
recovery, the vital force of Catholicism, was extinct in the episcopate.
It was better to be overcome after openly attesting their belief than to
strangle both discussion and definition, and to disperse without having
uttered a single word that could reinstate the authorities of the Church
in the respect of men. The future depended less on the outward struggle
between two parties than on the process by which the stronger spirit
within the minority leavened the mass. The opposition was as averse to
the actual dogmatic discussion among themselves as in the Council. They
feared an inquiry which would divide them. At first the bishops who
understood and resolutely contemplated their real mission in the Council
were exceedingly few. Their influence was strengthened by the force of
events, by the incessant pressure of the majority, and by the action of
literary opinion.
Early in December the Archbishop of Mechlin brought out a reply to the
letter of the Bishop of Orleans, who immediately prepared a rejoinder,
but could not obtain permission to print it in Rome. It appeared two
months later at Naples. Whilst the minority were under the shock of this
prohibition, Gratry published at Paris the first of four letters to the
Archbishop of Mechlin, in which the case of Honorius was discussed with
so much perspicuity and effect that the profane public was interested,
and the pamphlets were read with avidity in Rome. They contained no new
research, but they went deep into the causes which divided Catholics.
Gratry showed that the Roman theory is still propped by fables which
were innocent once, but have become deliberate untruths since the excuse
of mediæval ignorance was dispelled; and he declared that this school of
lies was the cause of the weakness of the Church, and called on
Catholics to look the scandal in the face, and cast out the religious
forgers. His letters did much to clear the ground and to correct the
confusion of ideas among the French. The bishop of St. Brieuc wrote that
the exposure was an excellent service to religion, for the evil had gone
so far that silence would be complicity.[389] Gratry was no sooner
approved by one bishop than he was condemned by a great number of
others. He had brought home to his countrymen the question whether they
could be accomplices of a dishonest system, or would fairly attempt to
root it out.
While Gratry's letters were disturbing the French, Döllinger published
some observations on the petition for infallibility, directing his
attack clearly against the doctrine itself. During the excitement that
ensued, he answered demonstrations of sympathy by saying that he had
only defended the faith which was professed, substantially, by the
majority of the episcopate in Germany. These words dropped like an acid
on the German bishops. They were writhing to escape the dire necessity
of a conflict with the Pope; and it was very painful to them to be
called as compurgators by a man who was esteemed the foremost opponent
of the Roman system, whose hand was suspected in everything that had
been done against it, and who had written many things on the sovereign
obligations of truth and faith which seemed an unmerciful satire on the
tactics to which they clung. The notion that the bishops were opposing
the dogma itself was founded on their address against the regulation;
but the petition against the definition of infallibility was so worded
as to avoid that inference, and had accordingly obtained nearly twice as
many German and Hungarian signatures as the other. The Bishop of Mentz
vehemently repudiated the supposition for himself, and invited his
colleagues to do the same. Some followed his example, others refused;
and it became apparent that the German opposition was divided, and
included men who accepted the doctrines of Rome. The precarious alliance
between incompatible elements was prevented from breaking up by the next
act of the Papal Government.
The defects in the mode of carrying on the business of the Council were
admitted on both sides. Two months had been lost; and the demand for a
radical change was publicly made in behalf of the minority by a letter
communicated to the _Moniteur_. On the 22nd of February a new
regulation was introduced, with the avowed purpose of quickening
progress. It gave the Presidents power to cut short any speech, and
provided that debate might be cut short at any moment when the majority
pleased. It also declared that the decrees should be carried by
majority--_id decernetur quod majori Patrum numero placuerit_. The
policy of leaving the decisive power in the hands of the Council itself
had this advantage, that its exercise would not raise the question of
liberty and coercion in the same way as the interference of authority.
By the Bull _Multiplices_, no bishop could introduce any matter not
approved by the Pope. By the new regulation he could not speak on any
question before the Council, if the majority chose to close the
discussion, or if the Presidents chose to abridge his speech. He could
print nothing in Rome, and what was printed elsewhere was liable to be
treated as contraband. His written observations on any measure were
submitted to the Commission, without any security that they would be
made known to the other bishops in their integrity. There was no longer
an obstacle to the immediate definition of papal infallibility. The
majority was omnipotent.
The minority could not accept this regulation without admitting that the
Pope is infallible. Their thesis was, that his decrees are not free from
the risk of error unless they express the universal belief of the
episcopate. The idea that particular virtue attaches to a certain number
of bishops, or that infallibility depends on a few votes more or less,
was defended by nobody. If the act of a majority of bishops in the
Council, possibly not representing a majority in the Church, is
infallible, it derives its infallibility from the Pope. Nobody held that
the Pope was bound to proclaim a dogma carried by a majority. The
minority contested the principle of the new Regulation, and declared
that a dogmatic decree required virtual unanimity. The chief protest was
drawn up by a French bishop. Some of the Hungarians added a paragraph
asserting that the authority and oecumenicity of the Council depended
on the settlement of this question; and they proposed to add that they
could not continue to act as though it were legitimate unless this point
was given up. The author of the address declined this passage, urging
that the time for actual menace was not yet come. From that day the
minority agreed in rejecting as invalid any doctrine which should not be
passed by unanimous consent. On this point the difference between the
thorough and the simulated opposition was effaced, for Ginoulhiac and
Ketteler were as positive as Kenrick or Hefele. But it was a point which
Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait
for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could
prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the papacy was to renounce
infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing bishops but to
break up the Council. The most eminent among them accepted this
conclusion, and stated it in a paper declaring that the absolute and
indisputable law of the Church had been violated by the Regulation
allowing articles of faith to be decreed on which the episcopate was not
morally unanimous; and that the Council, no longer possessing in the
eyes of the bishops and of the world the indispensable condition of
liberty and legality, would be inevitably rejected. To avert a public
scandal, and to save the honour of the Holy See, it was proposed that
some unopposed decrees should be proclaimed in solemn session, and the
Council immediately prorogued.
At the end of March a breach seemed unavoidable. The first part of the
dogmatic decree had come back from the Commission so profoundly altered
that it was generally accepted by the bishops, but with a crudely
expressed sentence in the preamble, which was intended to rebuke the
notion of the reunion of Protestant Churches. Several bishops looked
upon this passage as an uncalled-for insult to Protestants, and wished
it changed; but there was danger that if they then joined in voting the
decree they would commit themselves to the lawfulness of the Regulation
against which they had protested. On the 22nd of March Strossmayer
raised both questions. He said that it was neither just nor charitable
to impute the progress of religious error to the Protestants. The germ
of modern unbelief existed among the Catholics before the Reformation,
and afterwards bore its worst fruits in Catholic countries. Many of the
ablest defenders of Christian truth were Protestants, and the day of
reconciliation would have come already but for the violence and
uncharitableness of the Catholics. These words were greeted with
execrations, and the remainder of the speech was delivered in the midst
of a furious tumult. At length, when Strossmayer declared that the
Council had forfeited its authority by the rule which abolished the
necessity of unanimity, the Presidents and the multitude refused to let
him go on.[390] On the following day he drew up a protest, declaring
that he could not acknowledge the validity of the Council if dogmas were
to be decided by a majority,[391] and sent it to the Presidents after it
had been approved at the meeting of the Germans, and by bishops of other
nations. The preamble was withdrawn, and another was inserted in its
place, which had been written in great haste by the German Jesuit
Kleutgen, and was received with general applause. Several of the Jesuits
obtained credit for the ability and moderation with which the decree was
drawn up. It was no less than a victory over extreme counsels. A
unanimous vote was insured for the public session of 24th April; and
harmony was restored. But the text proposed originally in the Pope's
name had undergone so many changes as to make it appear that his
intentions had been thwarted. There was a supplement to the decree,
which the bishops had understood would be withdrawn, in order that the
festive concord and good feeling might not be disturbed. They were
informed at the last moment that it would be put to the vote, as its
withdrawal would be a confession of defeat for Rome. The supplement was
an admonition that the constitutions and decrees of the Holy See must be
observed even when they proscribe opinions not actually heretical.[392]
Extraordinary efforts were made in public and in private to prevent any
open expression of dissent from this paragraph. The Bishop of Brixen
assured his brethren, in the name of the Commission, that it did not
refer to questions of doctrine, and they could not dispute the general
principle that obedience is due to lawful authority. The converse
proposition, that the papal acts have no claim to be obeyed, was
obviously untenable. The decree was adopted unanimously. There were some
who gave their vote with a heavy heart, conscious of the snare.[393]
Strossmayer alone stayed away.
The opposition was at an end. Archbishop Manning afterwards reminded
them that by this vote they had implicitly accepted infallibility. They
had done even more. They might conceivably contrive to bind and limit
dogmatic infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of
the objections taken from the examples of history; but, in requiring
submission to papal decrees on matters not articles of faith, they were
approving that of which they knew the character, they were confirming
without let or question a power they saw in daily exercise, they were
investing with new authority the existing Bulls, and giving unqualified
sanction to the Inquisition and the Index, to the murder of heretics and
the deposing of kings. They approved what they were called on to reform,
and solemnly blessed with their lips what their hearts knew to be
accursed. The Court of Rome became thenceforth reckless in its scorn of
the opposition, and proceeded in the belief that there was no protest
they would not forget, no principle they would not betray, rather than
defy the Pope in his wrath. It was at once determined to bring on the
discussion of the dogma of infallibility. At first, when the minority
knew that their prayers and their sacrifices had been vain, and that
they must rely on their own resources, they took courage in extremity.
Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Hefele, Ketteler, Kenrick, wrote pamphlets, or
caused them to be written, against the dogma, and circulated them in the
Council. Several English bishops protested that the denial of
infallibility by the Catholic episcopate had been an essential condition
of emancipation, and that they could not revoke that assurance after it
had served their purpose, without being dishonoured in the eyes of their
countrymen.[394] The Archbishop of St. Louis, admitting the force of the
argument, derived from the fact that a dogma was promulgated in 1854
which had long been disputed and denied, confessed that he could not
prove the Immaculate Conception to be really an article of faith.[395]
An incident occurred in June which showed that the experience of the
Council was working a change in the fundamental convictions of the
bishops. Döllinger had written in March that an article of faith
required not only to be approved and accepted unanimously by the
Council, but that the bishops united with the Pope are not infallible,
and that the oecumenicity of their acts must be acknowledged and
ratified by the whole Church. Father Hötzl, a Franciscan friar, having
published a pamphlet in defence of this proposition, was summoned to
Rome, and required to sign a paper declaring that the confirmation of a
Council by the Pope alone makes it oecumenical. He put his case into the
hands of German bishops who were eminent in the opposition, asking first
their opinion on the proposed declaration, and, secondly, their advice
on his own conduct. The bishops whom he consulted replied that they
believed the declaration to be erroneous; but they added that they had
only lately arrived at the conviction, and had been shocked at first by
Döllinger's doctrine. They could not require him to suffer the
consequences of being condemned at Rome as a rebellious friar and
obstinate heretic for a view which they themselves had doubted only
three months before. He followed the advice, but he perceived that his
advisers had considerately betrayed him.
When the observations on infallibility which the bishops had sent in to
the Commission appeared in print it seemed that the minority had burnt
their ships. They affirmed that the dogma would put an end to the
conversion of Protestants, that it would drive devout men out of the
Church and make Catholicism indefensible in controversy, that it would
give governments apparent reason to doubt the fidelity of Catholics, and
would give new authority to the theory of persecution and of the
deposing power. They testified that it was unknown in many parts of the
Church, and was denied by the Fathers, so that neither perpetuity nor
universality could be pleaded in its favour; and they declared it an
absurd contradiction, founded on ignoble deceit, and incapable of being
made an article of faith by Pope or Council.[396] One bishop protested
that he would die rather than proclaim it. Another thought it would be
an act of suicide for the Church.
What was said, during the two months' debate, by men perpetually liable
to be interrupted by a majority acting less from conviction than by
command,[397] could be of no practical account, and served for protest,
not for persuasion. Apart from the immediate purpose of the discussion,
two speeches were memorable--that of Archbishop Conolly of Halifax, for
the uncompromising clearness with which he appealed to Scripture and
repudiated all dogmas extracted from the speculations of divines, and
not distinctly founded on the recorded Word of God,[398] and that of
Archbishop Darboy, who foretold that a decree which increased authority
without increasing power, and claimed for one man, whose infallibility
was only now defined, the obedience which the world refused to the whole
Episcopate, whose right had been unquestioned in the Church for 1800
years, would raise up new hatred and new suspicion, weaken the influence
of religion over society, and wreak swift ruin on the temporal
power.[399]
The general debate had lasted three weeks, and forty-nine bishops were
still to speak, when it was brought to a close by an abrupt division on
the 3rd of June. For twenty-four hours the indignation of the minority
was strong. It was the last decisive opportunity for them to reject the
legitimacy of the Council. There were some who had despaired of it from
the beginning, and held that the Bull _Multiplices_ deprived it of legal
validity. But it had not been possible to make a stand at a time when no
man knew whether he could trust his neighbour, and when there was fair
ground to hope that the worst rules would be relaxed. When the second
regulation, interpreted according to the interruptors of Strossmayer,
claimed the right of proclaiming dogmas which part of the Episcopate did
not believe, it became doubtful whether the bishops could continue to
sit without implicit submission. They restricted themselves to a
protest, thinking that it was sufficient to meet words with words, and
that it would be time to act when the new principle was actually
applied. By the vote of the 3rd of June the obnoxious regulation was
enforced in a way evidently injurious to the minority and their cause.
The chiefs of the opposition were now convinced of the invalidity of the
Council, and advised that they should all abstain from speaking, and
attend at St. Peter's only to negative by their vote the decree which
they disapproved. In this way they thought that the claim to
oecumenicity would be abolished without breach or violence. The greater
number were averse to so vigorous a demonstration; and Hefele threw the
great weight of his authority into their scale. He contended that they
would be worse than their word if they proceeded to extremities on this
occasion. They had announced that they would do it only to prevent the
promulgation of a dogma which was opposed. If that were done the Council
would be revolutionary and tyrannical; and they ought to keep their
strongest measure in reserve for that last contingency. The principle
of unanimity was fundamental. It admitted no ambiguity, and was so
clear, simple, and decisive, that there was no risk in fixing on it. The
Archbishops of Paris, Milan, Halifax, the Bishops of Djakovar, Orleans,
Marseilles, and most of the Hungarians, yielded to these arguments, and
accepted the policy of less strenuous colleagues, while retaining the
opinion that the Council was of no authority. But there were some who
deemed it unworthy and inconsistent to attend an assembly which they had
ceased to respect.
The debate on the several paragraphs lasted till the beginning of July,
and the decree passed at length with eighty-eight dissentient votes. It
was made known that the infallibility of the Pope would be promulgated
in solemn session on the 18th, and that all who were present would be
required to sign an act of submission. Some bishops of the minority
thereupon proposed that they should all attend, repeat their vote, and
refuse their signature. They exhorted their brethren to set a
conspicuous example of courage and fidelity, as the Catholic world would
not remain true to the faith if the bishops were believed to have
faltered. But it was certain that there were men amongst them who would
renounce their belief rather than incur the penalty of excommunication,
who preferred authority to proof, and accepted the Pope's declaration,
"La tradizione son' io." It was resolved by a small majority that the
opposition should renew its negative vote in writing, and should leave
Rome in a body before the session. Some of the most conscientious and
resolute adversaries of the dogma advised this course. Looking to the
immediate future, they were persuaded that an irresistible reaction was
at hand, and that the decrees of the Vatican Council would fade away and
be dissolved by a power mightier than the Episcopate and a process less
perilous than schism. Their disbelief in the validity of its work was so
profound that they were convinced that it would perish without violence,
and they resolved to spare the Pope and themselves the indignity of a
rupture. Their last manifesto, _La dernière Heure_, is an appeal for
patience, an exhortation to rely on the guiding, healing hand of
God.[400] They deemed that they had assigned the course which was to
save the Church, by teaching the Catholics to reject a Council which was
neither legitimate in constitution, free in action, nor unanimous in
doctrine, but to observe moderation in contesting an authority over
which great catastrophes impend. They conceived that it would thus be
possible to save the peace and unity of the Church without sacrifice of
faith and reason.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 370: _The North British Review_, October 1870.]
[Footnote 371: Fidem mihi datam non servatam fuisse queror. Acta
supprimere, aut integra dare oportebat. He says also: Omnia ad nutum
delegati Apostolici fiebant.]
[Footnote 372: Citra et contra singulorum suffragia, imo praeter et
supra omnium vota pontificis solius declarationi atque sententiae
validam vim atque irreformabilem adesse potestatem.]
[Footnote 373: Nous restons dans les doctrines de Bossuet parce que nous
les croyons généralement vraies; nous les défendons parce qu'elles sont
attaquées, et qu'un parti puissant veut les faire condamner. Ces
doctrines de l'épiscopat français, de l'école de Paris, de notre vieille
Sorbonne, se ramènent pour nous à trois propositions, à trois vérités
fondamentales: 1o l'Église est une monarchie efficacement tempérée
d'aristocracie; 2o la souveraineté spirituelle est essentiellement
composée de ces deux éléments quoique le second soit subordonné au
premier; 3o le concours de ces éléments est nécessaire pour établir la
règle absolue de la foi, c'est-à-dire, pour constituer l'acte par
excellence de la souveraineté spirituelle.]
[Footnote 374: Si hujus doctrinae memores fuissemus, haereticos seil cet
non esse infirmandos vel convincendos ex Scripturis, meliore sane loco
essent res nostrae; sed dum ostentandi ingenii et eruditionis gratia cum
Luthero in certamen descenditur Scripturarum, excitatum est hoc, quod,
proh dolor! nunc videmus, incendium (Pighius).]
[Footnote 375: Catholici non admondum solliciti sunt de critica et
hermeneutica biblica ... Ipsi, ut verbo dicam, jam habent aedificium
absolutum sane ac perfectum, in cujus possessione firme ac secure
consistant.]
[Footnote 376: Praxis Ecclesiae uno tempore interpretatur Scripturam uno
modo et alio tempore alio modo, nam intellectus currit cum
praxi.--Mutato judicio Ecclesiaemutatum est Dei judicium.]
[Footnote 377: Si viri ecclesiastici, sive in concilio oecumenico
congregati, sive seorsim scribentes, aliquod dogma vel unamquamque
consuetudinem uno ore ac diserte testantur ex traditione divina haberi,
sine dubio certum argumentum est, uti ita esse credamus.--Ex testimonio
hujus solius Ecclesiae sumi potest certum argumentum ad probandas
apostolicas traditiones (Bellarmine).]
[Footnote 378: Veniae sive indulgentiae autoritate Scripturae nobis non
innotuere, sed autoritate ecclesiae Romanae Romanorumque Pontificum,
quae major est.]
[Footnote 379: Ego, ut ingenue fatear, plus uni summo pontifici
crederem, in his, quae fidei mysteria tangunt, quam mille Augustinis,
Hieronymis, Gregoriis (Cornelius Mussus).]
[Footnote 380: The two views contradict each other; but they are equally
characteristic of the endeavour to emancipate the Church from the
obligation of proof. Fénelon says: "Oseroit-on soutenir que l'Église
après avoir mal raisonné sur tous les textes, et les avoir pris à
contre-sens, est tout à coup saisie par un enthousiasme aveugle, pour
juger bien, en raisonnant mal?" And Möhler: "Die ältesten ökumenischen
Synoden führten daher für ihre dogmatischen Beschlüsse nicht einmal
bestimmte biblische Stellen an; und die katholischen Theologen lehren
mit allegingr Uebereinstimmung und ganz aus dem Geiste der Kirche
heraus, dass selbst die biblische Beweisführung eines für untrüglich
gehaltenen Beschlusses nicht untrüglich sei, sondern eben nur das
ausgesprochene Dogma selbst."]
[Footnote 381: Cujuscumque ergo scientiae, etiam historiae
ecclesiasticae conclusiones, Romanorum Pontificum infallibiltati
adversantes, quo manifestius haec ex revelationis fontibus infertur, eo
certius veluti totidem errores habendas esse consequitur.]
[Footnote 382: Cum in professione fidei electi pontificis damnetur
Honorius Papa, ideo quia pravis haereticorum assertionibus fomentum
impendit, si verba delineata sint vere in autographo, nec ex notis
apparere possit, quomodo huic vulneri medelam offerat, praestat non
divulgari opus.]
[Footnote 383: That article condemns the following proposition: "Romani
Pontifices et Concilia oecumenica a limitibus suae potestati
recesserunt, jura Principum usurparunt, atque etiam in rebus fidei et
morum definiendis errarunt."]
[Footnote 384: J'en suis convaincu: à peine aurai-je touché la terre
sacrée, à peine aurai-je baisé le tombeau des Apôtres, que je me
sentirai dans la paix, hors de la bataille, au sein d'une assemblée
présidée par un Père et composée de Frères. Là, tous les bruits
expireront, toutes les ingérences téméraires cesseront, toutes les
imprudences disparaitront, les flots et les vents seront apaisés.]
[Footnote 385: Vous admirez sans doute beaucoup l'évêque d'Orléans, mais
vous l'admireriez bien plus encore, si vous pouviez vous figurer l'abime
d'idolatrie où est tombé le clergé français. Cela dépasse tout ce que
l'on aurait jamais pu l'imaginer aux jours de ma jeunesse, au temps de
Frayssinous et de La Mennais. Le pauvre Mgr. Maret, pour avoir exposé
des idées tres modérées dans un langage plein d'urbanité et de charité,
est traité publiquement dans les journaux soi-disant religieux
d'hérésiarque et d'apostat, par les derniers de nos curés. De tous les
mystères que présente en si grand nombre l'histoire de l'Église je n'en
connais pas qui égale ou dépasse cette transformation si prompte et si
complète de la France Catholique en une basse-cour de _l'anticamera du
Vatican_. J'en serais encore plus désesperé qu'humilié, si là, comme
partout dans les régions illuminées par la foi, la miséricorde et
l'esperance ne se laissaient entrevoir à travers les ténèbres. "C'est du
Rhin aujourd'hui que nous vient la lumière." L'Allemagne a été choisie
pour opposer une digue à ce torrent de fanatisme servile que menaçait de
tout englouter (Nov. 7, 1869).]
[Footnote 386: Non solum ea quae ad scholas theologicas pertinent
scholis relinquantur, sed etiam doctrinae quae a fidelibus pie tenentur
et coluntur, sine gravi causa in codicem dogmatum ne inferantur. In
specie ne Concilium declaret vel definiat infallibilitatem Summi
Pontificis, a doctissimis et prudentissimis fidelibus Sanctae sedi
intime addictis, vehementer optatur. Gravia enim mala exinde oritura
timent tum fidelibus tum infidelibus. Fideles enim, qui Primatum
magisterii et jurisdictionis in Summo Pontifice ultro agnoscunt, quorum
pietas et obedientia erga Sanctam Sedem nullo certe tempore major fuit,
corde turbarentur magis quam erigerentur, ac si nunc demum fundamentum
Ecclesiae et verae doctrinae stabiliendum sit; infideles vero novam
calumniarum et derisionum materiam lucrarentur. Neque desunt, qui
ejusmodi definitionem logice impossibilem vocant.... Nostris diebus
defensio veritatis ac religionis tum praesertim efficax et fructuosa
est, si sacerdotes a lege caeterorum civium minus recedunt, sed
communibus omnium juribus utuntur, ita ut vis defensionis sit in
veritate interna non per tutelam externae exemtionis.... Praesertim
Ecclesia se scientiarum, quae hominem ornant perficiuntque, amicam et
patronam exhibeat, probe noscens, omne verum a Deo esse, et profunda ac
seria literarum studia opitulari fidei.]
[Footnote 387: Quid enim expedit damnare quae damnata jam sunt, quidve
juvat errores proscribere quos novimus jam esse proscriptos?... Falsa
sophistarum dogmata, veluti cineres a turbine venti evanuerunt,
corrupuerunt, fateor, permultos, infecerunt genium saeculi hujus, sed
numquid credendum est, corruptionis contaginem non contigisse, si
ejusmodi errores decretorum anathemate prostrati fuissent?... Pro tuenda
et tute servanda religione Catholica praeter gemitus et preces ad Deum
aliud medium praesidiumque nobis datum non est nisi Catholica scientia,
cum recta fide per omnia concors. Excolitur summopere apud heterodoxos
fidei inimica scientia, excolatur ergo oportet et omni opere augeatur
apud Catholicos vera scientia. Ecclesiae amica.... Obmutescere faciamus
ora obtrectantium qui falso nobis imputare non desistunt, Catholicam
Ecclesiam opprimere scientiam, et quemcumque liberum cogitandi modum ita
cohibere, ut neque scientia, nec ulla alia animi libertas in ea
subsistere vel florescere possit.... Propterea monstrandum hoc est, et
scriptis et factis manifestandum, in Catholica Ecclesia veram pro
populis esse libertatem, verum profectum, verum lumen, veramque
prosperitatem.]
[Footnote 388: Il n'y a au fond qu'une question devenue urgente et
inévitable, dont la décision faciliterait le cours et la décision de
toutes les autres, dont le retard paralyse tout. Sans cela rien n'est
commencé ni même abordable (_Univers_, February 9).]
[Footnote 389: Gratry had written: "Cette apologétique sans franchise
est l'une des causes de notre décadence religieuse depuis des
siècles.... Sommes-nous les prédicateurs du mensonge ou les apôtres de
la vérité? Le temps n'est-il pas venu de rejeter avec dégoût les
fraudes, les interpolations, et les mutilations que les menteurs et les
faussaires, nos plus cruels ennemis, ont pu introduire parmi nous?" The
bishop wrote: "Jamais parole plus puissante, inspirée par la conscience
et le savoir, n'est arrivée plus à propos que la vôtre.... Le mal est
tel et le danger si effrayant que le silence deviendrait de la
complicité."]
[Footnote 390: Pace eruditissimorum virorum dictum esto: mihi haecce nec
veritati congrua esse videntur, nec caritati. Non veritati; verum quidem
est Protestantes gravissimam commisisse culpam, dum spreta et
insuperhabita divina Ecclesiae auctoritate, aeternas et immutabiles
fidei veritates subjectivae rationis judicio et arbitrio subjecissent.
Hoc superbiae humanae fomentum gravissimis certe malis, rationalismo,
criticismo, etc. occasionem dedit. Ast hoc quoque respectu dici debet,
protestantismi ejus qui cum eodem in nexu existit rationalismi germen
saeculo xvi. praeextitisse in sic dicto humanismo et classicismo, quem
in sanctuario ipso quidam summae auctoritatis viri incauto consilio
fovebant et nutriebant; et nisi hoc germen praeextitisset concipi non
posset quomodo tam parva scintilla tantum in medio Europae excitare
potuisset incendium, ut illud ad hodiernum usque diem restingui non
potuerit. Accedit et illud: fidei et religionis, Ecclesiae et omnis
auctoritatis contemptum absque ulla cum Protestantismo cognatione et
parentela in medio Catholicae gentis saeculo xviii. temporibus Voltarii
et encyclopaedistarum enatum fuisse.... Quidquid interim sit de
rationalismo, puto venerabilem deputationem omnino falli dum texendo
genealogiam naturalismi, materialismi, pantheismi, atheismi, etc., omnes
omnino hos errores foetus Protestantismi esse asserit.... Errores
superius enumerati non tantum nobis verum et ipsis Protestantibus
horrori sunt et abominationi, ut adeo Ecclesiae et nobis Catholicis in
iis oppugnandis et refellendis auxilio sint et adjumento. Ita Leibnitius
erat certe vir eruditus et omni sub respectu praestans; vir in
dijudicandis Ecclesiae Catholicae institutis aequus; vir in debellandis
sui temporis erroribus strenuus; vir in revehenda inter Christianas
communitates concordia optime animatus et meritus. [Loud cries of "Oh!
Oh!" The President de Angelis rang the bell and said, "Non est hicce
locus laudandi Protestantes."] ... Hos viros quorum magna copia existit
in Germania, in Anglia, item et in America septentrionali, magna hominum
turba inter Protestantes sequitur, quibus omnibus applicari potest illud
magni Augustini: "Errant, sed bona fide errant; haeretici sunt, sed illi
nos haereticos tenent. Ipsi errorem non invenerunt, sed a perversis et
in errorem inductis parentibus haereditaverunt, parati errorem deponere
quamprimum convicti fuerint." [Here there was a long interruption and
ringing of the bell, with cries of "Shame! shame!" "Down with the
heretic!"] Hi omnes etiamsi non spectent ad Ecclesiae corpus, spectant
tamen ad ejus animam, et de muneribus Redemptionis aliquatenus
participant. Hi omnes in amore quo erga Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum
feruntur, atque in illis positivis veritatibus quas ex fidei naufragio
salvarunt, totidem gratiae divinae momenta possident, quibus
misericordia Dei utetur, ut eos ad priscam fidem et Ecclesiam reducat,
nisi nos exaggerationibus nostris et improvidis charitatis ipsis debitae
laesionibus tempus misericordiae divinae elongaverimus. Quantum autem ad
charitatem, ei certe contrarium est vulnera aliena alio fine tangere
quam ut ipsa sanentur; puto autem hac enumeratione errorum, quibus
Protestantismus occasionem dedisset, id non fieri.... Decreto, quod in
supplementum ordinis interioris nobis nuper communicatum est, statuitur
res in Concilio hocce suffragiorum majoritate decidendas fore. Contra
hoc principium, quod omnem praecedentium Conciliorum praxim funditus
evertit, multi episcopi reclamarunt, quin tamen aliquod responsum
obtinuerint. Responsum autem in re tanti momenti dari debuisset clarum,
perspicuum et omnis ambiguitatis expers. Hoc ad summas Concilii hujus
calamitates spectat, nam hoc certe et praesenti generationi et posteris
praebebit ansam dicendi: huic concilio libertatem et veritatem defuisse.
Ego ipse convictus sum, aeternam ac immutabilem fidei et traditionis
regulam semper fuisse semperque mansuram communem, adminus moraliter
unanimem consensum. Concilium, quod hac regula insuperhabita, fidei et
morum dogmata majoritate numerica definire intenderet, juxta meam
intimam convictionem eo ipso excideret jure conscientiam orbis Catholici
sub sanctione vitae ac mortis aeternae obligandi.]
[Footnote 391: Dum autem ipse die hesterno ex suggestu hanc quaestionem
posuissem et verba deconsensu moraliter unanimi in rebus fidei
definiendis necessario protulissem, interruptus fui, mihique inter
maximum tumultum et graves comminationes possibilitas sermonis
continuandi adempta est. Atque haec gravissima sane circumstantia magis
adhuc comprobat necessitatem habendi responsi, quod clarum sit omnisque
ambiguitatis expers. Peto itaque humillime, ut hujusmodi responsum in
proxima congregatione generali detur. Nisi enim haec fierent anceps
haererem an manere possem in Concilio, ubi libertas Episcoporum ita
opprimitur, quemadmodum heri in me oppressa fuit, et ubi dogmata fidei
definirentur novo et in Ecclesia Dei adusque inaudito modo.]
[Footnote 392: Quoniam vero satis non est, haereticam pravitatem
devitare, nisi ii quoque errores diligenter fugiantur, qui ad illam plus
minusve accedunt, omnes officii monemus, servandi etiam Constitutiones
et Decreta quibus pravae eiusmodi opiniones, quae isthic diserte non
enumerantur, ab hac Sancta Sede proscriptae et prohibitae sunt.]
[Footnote 393: In the speech on infallibility which he prepared, but
never delivered. Archbishop Kenrick thus expressed himself: "Inter alia
quae mihi stuporem injecerunt dixit Westmonasteriensis, nos additamento
facto sub finem Decreti de Fide, tertia Sessione lati, ipsam Pontificiam
Infallibilitatem, saltem implicite, jam agnovisse, nec ab ea recedere
nunc nobis licere. Si bene intellexerim Rm Relatorem, qui in
Congregatione generali hoc additamentum, prius oblatum, deinde
abstractum, nobis mirantibus quid rei esset, illud iterum inopinato
commendavit--dixit, verbis clarioribus, per illud nullam omnino
doctrinam edoceri; sed earn quatuor capitibus ex quibus istud decretum
compositum est imponi tanquam eis coronidem convenientem; eamque
disciplinarem magis quam doctrinalem characterem habere. Aut deceptus
est ipse, si vera dixit Westmonasteriensis; aut nos sciens in errorem
induxit, quod de viro tam ingenuo minime supponere licet. Utcumque
fuerit, ejus declarationi fidentes, plures suffragia sua isti decreto
haud deneganda censuerunt ob istam clausulam; aliis, inter quos egomet,
doles parari metuentibus, et aliorum voluntati hac in re aegre
cedentibus. In his omnibus non est mens mea aliquem ex Reverendissimis
Patribus malae fidei incusare; quos omnes, ut par est, veneratione
debita prosequor. Sed extra concilium adesse dicuntur viri
religiosi--forsan et pii--qui maxime in illud influunt; qui calliditati
potius quam bonis artibus confisi, rem Ecclesiae in maximum ex quo orta
sit discrimen adduxerant; qui ab inito concilio effecerunt ut in
Deputationes conciliares ii soli eligerentur qui eorum placitis fovere
aut noscerentur aut crederentur; qui nonnullorum ex eorum
praedecessoribus vestigia prementes in schematibus nobis propositis, et
ex eorum officina prodeuntibus, nihil magis cordi habuisse videntur quam
Episcopalem auctoritatem deprimere, Pontificiam autem extollere; et
verborum ambagibus incautos decipere velle videntur, dum alia ab aliis
in eorum explicationem dicantur. Isti grave hoc incendium in Ecclesia
excitarunt, et in illud insufflare non desinunt, scriptis eorum,
pietatis speciem prae se ferentibus sed veritate ejus vacuis, in populos
spargentibus."]
[Footnote 394: The author of the protest afterwards gave the substance
of his argument as follows: "Episcopi et theologi publice a Parlamento
interrogati fuerunt, utrum Catholici Angliae tenerent Papam posse
definitiones relativas ad fidem et mores populis imponere absque omni
consensu expresso vel tacito Ecclesiae. Omnes Episcopi et theologi
responderunt Catholicos hoc non tenere. Hisce responsionibus confisum
Parlamentum Angliae Catholicos admisit ad participationem iurium
civilium. Quis Protestantibus persuadebit Catholicos contra honorem et
bonam fidem non agere, qui quando agebatur de iuribus sibi acquirendis
publice professi sunt ad fidem Catholicam non pertinere doctrinam
infallibilitatis Romani Pontificis, statim autem ac obtinuerint quod
volebant, a professione publice facta recedunt et contrarium
affirmant?"]
[Footnote 395: Archbishop Kenrick's remarkable statement is not
reproduced accurately in his pamphlet _De Pontificia infallibilitate_.
It is given in full in the last pages of the _Observationes_, and is
abridged in his _Concio habenda sed non habita_, where he concludes:
"Eam fidei doctrinam esse neganti, non video quomodo responderi possit,
cum objiceret Ecclesiam errorem contra fidem divinitus revelatam diu
tolerare non potuisse, quin, aut quod ad fidei depositum pertineret non
scivisse, aut errorem manifestum tolerasse videretur."]
[Footnote 396: Certissimum ipsi esse fore ut infallibilitate ista
dogmatice definita, in dioecesi sua, in qua ne vestigium quidem
traditionis de infallibilitate S.P. hucusque inveniatur, et in aliis
regionibus multi, et quidem non solum minoris, sed etiam optimae notae,
a fide deficiant.--Si edatur, omnis progressus conversionum in
Provinciis Foederatis Americae funditus extinguetur. Episcopi et
sacerdotes in disputationibus cum Protestantibus quid respondere possent
non haberent.--Per eiusmodi definitionem acatholicis, inter quos haud
pauci iique optimi hisce praesertim temporibus firmum fidei fundamentum
desiderant, ad Ecclesiam reditus redditur difficilis, imo
impossibilis.--Qui Concilii decretis obsequi vellent, invenient se
maximis in difficultatibus versari. Gubernia civilia eos tanquam
subditos minus fidos, haud sine verisimilitudinis specie, habebunt.
Hostes Ecclesiae eos lacessere non verebuntur, nunc eis objicientes
errores quos Pontifices aut docuisse, aut sua agendi ratione probasse,
dicuntur et risu excipient responsa quae sola afferri possint.--Eo ipso
definitur in globo quidquid per diplomata apostolica huc usque definitum
est.... Poterit, admissa tali definitione, statuere de dominio
temporali, de eius mensura, de potestate deponendi reges, de usu
coercendi haereticos.--Doctrina de Infallibilitate Romani Pontificis nec
in Scriptura Sacra, nec in traditione ecclesiastica fundata mihi
videtur. Immo contrarian., ni fallor, Christiana antiquitas tenuit
doctrinam.--Modus dicendi Schematis supponit existere in Ecclesia
duplicem infallibilitatem, ipsius Ecclesiae et Romani Pontificis, quod
est absurdum et inauditum.--Subterfugiis quibus theologi non pauci in
Honorii causa usi sunt, derisui me exponerem. Sophismata adhibere et
munere episcopali et natura rei, quae in timore Domini pertractanda est,
indignum mihi videtur.--Plerique textus quibus eam comprobant etiam
melioris notae theologi, quos Ultramontanos vocant, mutilati sunt,
falsificati, interpolati, circumtruncati, spurii, in sensum alienum
detorti.--Asserere audeo eam sententiam, ut in schemate jacet, non esse
fidei doctrinam, nec talem devenire posse per quamcumque definitionem
etiam conciliarem.]
[Footnote 397: This, at least, was the discouraging impression of
Archbishop Kenrick: Semper contigit ut Patres surgendo assensum
sententiae deputationis praebuerint. Primo quidem die suffragiorum, cum
quaestio esset de tertia parte primae emendationis, nondum adhibita
indicatione a subsecretario, deinde semper facta, plures surrexerunt
adeo ut necesse foret numerum surgentium capere, ut constaret de
suffragiis. Magna deinde confusio exorta est, et ista emendatio, quamvis
majore forsan numero sic acceptata, in crastinum diem dilata est.
Postero die Rms Relator ex ambone Patres monuit, deputationem
emendationem istam admittere nolle. Omnes fere eam rejiciendam surgendo
statim dixerunt.]
[Footnote 398: Quodcumque Dominus Noster non dixerit etiam si
metaphysice aut physice certissimum nunquam basis esse poterit dogmatis
divinae fidei. Fides enim per auditum, auditus autem non per scientiam
sed per verba Christi.... Non ipsa verba S. Scripturae igitur, sed
genuinus sensus, sive litteralis, sive metaphoricus, prout in mente Dei
revelantis fuit, atque ab Ecclesiae patribus semper atque ubique
concorditer expositus, et quem nos omnes juramento sequi abstringimur,
hic tantummodo sensus Vera Dei revelatio dicendus est.... Tota
antiquitas silet vel contraria est.... Verbum Dei volo et hoc solum,
quaeso et quidem indubitatum, ut dogma fiat.]
[Footnote 399: Hanc de infallibilitate his conditionibus ortam et isto
modo introductam aggredi et definire non possumus, ut arbitror, quin eo
ipso tristem viam sternamus tum cavillationibus impiorum, tum etiam
objectionibus moralem hujus Concilii auctoritatem minuentibus. Et hoc
quidem eo magis cavendum est, quod jam prostent et pervulgentur scripta
et acta quae vim ejus et rationem labefactare attentant; ita ut nedum
animos sedare queat et quae pacis sunt afferre, e contra nova
dissensionis et discordiarum semina inter Christianos spargere
videatur.... Porro, quod in tantis Ecclesiae angustiis laboranti mundo
remedium affertur? Iis omnibus qui ab humero indocili excutiunt onera
antiquitus imposita, et consuetudine Patrum veneranda, novum ideoque
grave et odiosum onus imponi postulant schematis auctores. Eos omnes qui
infirmae fidei sunt novo et non satis opportuno dogmate quasi obruunt,
doctrina scilicet hucusque nondum definita, praesentis discussionis
vulnere nonnihil sauciata, et a Concilio cujus libertatem minus aequo
apparere plurimi autumant et dicunt pronuntianda.... Mundus aut aeger
est aut perit, non quod ignorat veritatem vel veritatis doctores, sed
quod ab ea refugit eamque sibi non vult imperari. Igitur, si eam
respuit, quum a toto docentis Ecclesiae corpore, id est ab 800 episcopis
per totum orbem sparsis et simul cum S. Pontifice infallibilibus
praedicatur, quanto magis quum ab unico Doctore infallibili, et quidem
ut tali recenter declarato praedicabitur? Ex altera parte, ut valeat et
efficaciter agat auctoritas necesse est non tantum eam affirmari, sed
insuper admitti.... Syllabus totam Europam pervasit at cui malo mederi
potuit etiam ubi tanquam oraculum infallibile susceptus est? Duo tantum
restabant regna in quibus religio florebat, non de facto tantum, sed et
de jure dominans: Austria scilicet et Hispania. Atqui in his duobus
regnis ruit iste Catholicus ordo, quamvis ab infallibili auctoritate
commendatus, imo forsan saltem in Austria eo praecise quod ab hac
commendatus. Audeamus igitur res uti sunt considerare. Nedum Sanctissimi
Pontificis independens infallibilitas praejudicia et objectiones
destruat quae permultos a fide avertunt, ea potius auget et aggravat....
Nemo non videt si politicae gnarus, quae semina dissensionum schema
nostrum contineat et quibus periculis exponatur ipsa temporalis Sanctae
sedis potestas.]
[Footnote 400: Espérons que l'excès du mal provoquera le retour du bien.
Ce Concile n'aura eu qu'un heureux résultat, celui d'en appeler un
autre, réuni dans la liberté.... Le Concile du Vatican demeurera
stérile, comme tout ce qui n'est pas éclos sous le souffle de l'Esprit
Saint. Cependant il aura révélé non seulement jusqu'à quel point
l'absolutisme peut abuser des meilleures institutions et des meilleurs
instincts, mais aussi ce que vaut encore le droit, alors même qu'il n'a
plus que le petit nombre pour le deféndre.... Si la multitude passe
quand même nous lui prédisons qu'elle n'ira pas loin. Les Spartiates,
qui étaient tombés aux Thermopyles pour défendre les terres de la
liberté, avaient preparé au flot impitoyable au despotisme la défaite de
Salamis.]
XV
A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES. By HENRY CHARLES
LEA[401]
A good many years ago, when Bishop Wilberforce was at Winchester, and
the Earl of Beaconsfield was a character in fiction, the bishop was
interested in the proposal to bring over the Utrecht Psalter. Mr.
Disraeli thought the scheme absurd. "Of course," he said, "you won't get
it." He was told that, nevertheless, such things are, that public
manuscripts had even been sent across the Atlantic in order that Mr. Lea
might write a history of the Inquisition. "Yes," he replied, "but they
never came back again." The work which has been awaited so long has come
over at last, and will assuredly be accepted as the most important
contribution of the new world to the religious history of the old. Other
books have shown the author as a thoughtful inquirer in the remunerative
but perilous region where religion and politics conflict, where ideas
and institutions are as much considered as persons and events, and
history is charged with all the elements of fixity, development, and
change. It is little to say, now, that he equals Buckle in the extent,
and surpasses him in the intelligent choice and regulation, of his
reading. He is armed at all points. His information is comprehensive,
minute, exact, and everywhere sufficient, if not everywhere complete. In
this astonishing press of digested facts there is barely space to
discuss the ideas which they exhibit and the law which they obey. M.
Molinier lately wrote that a work with this scope and title "serait, à
notre sens, une entreprise à peu près chimérique." It will be
interesting to learn whether the opinion of so good a judge has been
altered or confirmed.
The book begins with a survey of all that led to the growth of heresy,
and to the creation, in the thirteenth century, of exceptional tribunals
for its suppression. There can be no doubt that this is the least
satisfactory portion of the whole. It is followed by a singularly
careful account of the steps, legislative and administrative, by which
Church and State combined to organise the intermediate institution, and
of the manner in which its methods were formed by practice. Nothing in
European literature can compete with this, the centre and substance of
Mr. Lea's great history. In the remaining volumes he summons his
witnesses, calls on the nations to declare their experience, and tells
how the new force acted upon society to the end of the Middle Ages.
History of this undefined and international cast, which shows the same
wave breaking upon many shores, is always difficult, from the want of
visible unity and progression, and has seldom succeeded so well as in
this rich but unequal and disjointed narrative. On the most significant
of all the trials, those of the Templars and of Hus, the author spends
his best research; and the strife between Avignon and the Franciscans,
thanks to the propitious aid of Father Ehrle, is better still. Joan of
Arc prospers less than the disciples of Perfect Poverty; and after Joan
of Arc many pages are allotted, rather profusely, to her companion in
arms, who survives in the disguise of Bluebeard. The series of
dissolving scenes ends, in order of time, at Savonarola; and with that
limit the work is complete. The later Inquisition, starting with the
Spanish and developing into the Roman, is not so much a prolongation or
a revival as a new creation. The mediæval Inquisition strove to control
states, and was an engine of government. The modern strove to coerce the
Protestants, and was an engine of war. One was subordinate, local,
having a kind of headquarters in the house of Saint Dominic at Toulouse.
The other was sovereign, universal, centred in the Pope, and exercising
its domination, not against obscure men without a literature, but
against bishop and archbishop, nuncio and legate, primate and professor;
against the general of the Capuchins and the imperial preacher; against
the first candidate in the conclave, and the president of the
oecumenical council. Under altered conditions, the rules varied and even
principles were modified. Mr. Lea is slow to take counsel of the
voluminous moderns, fearing the confusion of dates. When he says that
the laws he is describing are technically still in force, he makes too
little of a fundamental distinction. In the eye of the polemic, the
modern Inquisition eclipses its predecessor, and stops the way.
The origin of the Inquisition is the topic of a lasting controversy.
According to common report, Innocent III. founded it, and made Saint
Dominic the first inquisitor; and this belief has been maintained by the
Dominicans against the Cistercians, and by the Jesuits against the
Dominicans themselves. They affirm that the saint, having done his work
in Languedoc, pursued it in Lombardy: "Per civitates et castella
Lombardiae circuibat, praedicans et evangelizans regnum Dei, atque
contra haereticos inquirens, quos ex odore et aspectu dignoscens,
condignis suppliciis puniebat" (Fontana, _Monumenta Dominicana_, 16). He
transferred his powers to Fra Moneta, the brother in whose bed he died,
and who is notable as having studied more seriously than any other
divine the system which he assailed: "Vicarium suum in munere
inquisitionis delegerat dilectissimum sibi B. Monetam, qui spiritu
illius loricatus, tanquam leo rugiens contra haereticos surrexit....
Iniquos cum haereticos ex corde insectaretur, illisque nullo modo
parceret, sed igne ac ferro consumeret." Moneta is succeeded by Guala,
who brings us down to historic times, when the Inquisition flourished
undisputed: "Facta promotione Guallae constitutus est in eius locum
generalis inquisitor P.F. Guidottus de Sexto, a Gregorio Papa IX., qui
innumeros propemodum haereticos igne consumpsit" (Fontana, _Sacrum
Theatrum Dominicanum_, 595). Sicilian inquisitors produce an imperial
privilege of December 1224, which shows the tribunal in full action
under Honorius III.: "Sub nostrae indignationis fulmine praesenti edicto
districtius praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus inquisitoribus haereticae
pravitatis, ut suum libere officium prosequi et exercere valeant, prout
decet, omne quod potestis impendatis auxilium" (Franchina, _Inquisizione
di Sicilia_, 1774, 8). This document may be a forgery of the fifteenth
century; but the whole of the Dominican version is dismissed by Mr. Lea
with contempt. He has heard that their founder once rescued a heretic
from the flames; "but Dominic's project only looked to their peaceful
conversion, and to performing the duties of instruction and
exhortation." Nothing is better authenticated in the life of the saint
than the fact that he condemned heretics and exercised the right of
deciding which of them should suffer and which should be spared.
"Contigit quosdam haereticos captos et per eum convictos, cum redire
nollent ad fidem catholicam, tradi judicio saeculari. Cumque essent
incendio deputati, aspiciens inter alios quemdam Raymundum de Grossi
nomine, ac si aliquem eo divinae praedestinationis radium fuisset
intuitus, istum, inquit officialibus curiae, reservate, nec aliquo modo
cum caeteris comburatur" (Constantinus, _Vita S. Dominici_; Echard,
_Scriptores O.P._, 1. 33). The transaction is memorable in Dominican
annals as the one link distinctly connecting Saint Dominic with the
system of executions, and the only security possessed by the order that
the most conspicuous of its actions is sanctioned by the spirit and
example of the founder. The original authorities record it, and it is
commemorated by Bzovius and Malvenda, by Fontana and Percin, by Echard
and Mamachi, as well as in the _Acta Sanctorum_. Those are exactly the
authors to whom in the first instance a man betakes himself who desires
to understand the inception and early growth of the Inquisition. I
cannot remember that any one of them appears in Mr. Lea's notes. He says
indeed that Saint Dominic's inquisitorial activity "is affirmed by all
the historians of the order," and he is a workman who knows his tools so
well that we may hesitate to impute this grave omission to
inacquaintance with necessary literature. It is one of his
characteristics to be suspicious of the _Histoire Intime_ as the seat of
fable and proper domain of those problems in psychology against which
the certitude of history is always going to pieces. Where motives are
obscure, he prefers to contemplate causes in their effects, and to look
abroad over his vast horizon of unquestioned reality. The difference
between outward and interior history will be felt by any one who
compares the story of Dolcino here given with the account in Neander.
Mr. Lea knows more about him and has better materials than the ponderous
professor of pectoral theology. But he has not all Neander's patience
and power to read significance and sense in the musings of a reckless
erratic mind.
He believes that Pope Gregory IX. is the intellectual originator, as
well as the legislative imponent, of the terrific system which ripened
gradually and experimentally in his pontificate. It does not appear
whether he has read, or knows through Havet the investigations which
conducted Ficker to a different hypothesis. The transition of 1231 from
the saving of life to the taking of life by fire was nearly the sharpest
that men can conceive, and in pursuance of it the subsequent legal forms
are mere detail. The spirit and practice of centuries were renounced for
the opposite extreme; and between the mercy of 1230 and the severity of
1231 there was no intervening stage of graduated rigour. Therefore it is
probable that the new idea of duty, foreign to Italian and specifically
to Roman ways, was conveyed by a new man, that a new influence just then
got possession of the Pope. Professor Ficker signals Guala as the real
contriver of the _régime_ of terror, and the man who acquired the
influence imported the idea and directed the policy. Guala was a
Dominican prior whom the Pope trusted in emergencies. In the year 1230
he negotiated the treaty of San Germano between Frederic II. and the
Church, and was made Bishop of Brescia. In that year Brescia, first
among Italian cities, inserted in its statutes the emperor's Lombard law
of 1224, which sent the heretic to the stake. The inference is that the
Dominican prelate caused its insertion, and that nobody is so likely to
have expounded its available purport to the pontiff as the man who had
so lately caused it to be adopted in his own see, and who stood high
just then in merit and in favour. That Guala was bishop-elect on 28th
August, half a year before the first burnings at Rome, we know; that he
caused the adoption of Frederic's law at Brescia or at Rome is not in
evidence. Of that abrupt and unexplained enactment little is told us,
but this we are told, that it was inspired by Honorius: "Leges quoque
imperiales per quondam Fredericum olim Romanorum imperatorem, tunc in
devotione Romane sedis persistentem, procurante eadem sede, fuerunt
edite et Padue promulgate" (Bern. Guidonis, _Practica Inquisitionis_,
173). At any rate, Gregory, who had seen most things since the elevation
of Innocent, knew how Montfort dealt with Albigensian prisoners at
Minerve and Lavaur, what penalties were in store at Toulouse, and on
what principles Master Conrad administered in Germany the powers
received from Rome. The Papacy which inspired the coronation laws of
1220, in which there is no mention of capital punishment, could not have
been unobservant of the way in which its own provisions were
transformed; and Gregory, whom Honorius had already called "magnum et
speciale ecclesie Romane membrum," who had required the university of
Bologna to adopt and to expound the new legislation, and who knew the
Archbishop of Magdeburg, had little to learn from Guala about the
formidable weapon supplied to that prelate for the government of
Lombardy. There is room for further conjecture.
In those days it was discovered that Arragon was infested with heresy;
and the king's confessor proposed that the Holy See be applied to for
means of active suppression. With that object, in 1230 he was sent to
Rome. The envoy's name was Raymond, and his home was on the coast of
Catalonia in the town of Pennaforte. He was a Bolognese jurist, a
Dominican, and the author of the most celebrated treatise on morals made
public in the generation preceding the scholastic theology. The five
years of his abode in Rome changed the face of the Church. He won the
confidence of Gregory, became penitentiary, and was employed to codify
the acts of the popes militant since the publication of Gratian. Very
soon after Saint Raymond appeared at the papal court, the use of the
stake became law, the inquisitorial machinery had been devised, and the
management given to the priors of the order. When he departed he left
behind him instructions for the treatment of heresy, which the pope
adopted and sent out where they were wanted. He refused a mitre, rose to
be general, it is said in opposition to Albertus Magnus, and retired
early, to become, in his own country, the oracle of councils on the
watch for heterodoxy. Until he came, in spite of much violence and many
laws, the popes had imagined no permanent security against religious
error, and were not formally committed to death by burning. Gregory
himself, excelling all the priesthood in vigour and experience, had for
four years laboured, vaguely and in vain, with the transmitted
implements. Of a sudden, in three successive measures, he finds his way,
and builds up the institution which is to last for centuries. That this
mighty change in the conditions of religious thought and life and in the
functions of the order was suggested by Dominicans is probable. And it
is reasonable to suppose that it was the work of the foremost Dominican
then living, who at that very moment had risen to power and predominance
at Rome.
No sane observer will allow himself to overdraw the influence of
national character on events. Yet there was that in the energetic race
that dwell with the Pyrenees above them and the Ebro below that suited a
leading part in the business of organised persecution. They are among
the nations that have been inventors in politics, and both the
constitution of Arragon and that of the society of Jesus prove their
constructive science. While people in other lands were feeling their
way, doubtful and debonair, Arragon went straight to the end. Before the
first persecuting pope was elected, before the Child of Apulia, who was
to be the first persecuting emperor, was born, Alfonso proscribed the
heretics. King and clergy were in such accord that three years later the
council of Girona decreed that they might be beaten while they remained,
and should be burnt if they came back. It was under this government,
amid these surroundings, that Saint Dominic grew up, whom Sixtus V.,
speaking on authority which we do not possess, entitled the First
Inquisitor. Saint Raymond, who had more to do with it than Saint
Dominic, was his countryman. Eymerici, whose _Directorium_ was the best
authority until the _Practica_ of Guidonis appeared, presided during
forty years over the Arragonese tribunal; and his commentator Pegna, the
Coke upon Littleton of inquisitorial jurisprudence, came from the same
stern region.
The _Histoire Générale de Languedoc_ in its new shape has supplied Mr.
Lea with so good a basis that his obligations to the present editors
bring him into something like dependence on French scholarship. He
designates monarchs by the names they bear in France--Louis le
Germanique, Charles le Sage, Philippe le Bon, and even Philippe; and
this habit, with Foulques and Berenger of Tours, with Aretino for
Arezzo, Oldenburg for Altenburg, Torgau for Zürich, imparts an exotic
flavour which would be harmless but for a surviving preference for
French books. Compared with Bouquet and Vaissète, he is unfamiliar with
Böhmer and Pertz. For Matthew Paris he gets little or no help from Coxe,
or Madden, or Luard, or Liebermann, or Huillard. In France few things of
importance have escaped him. His account of Marguerite Porrette differs
from that given by Hauréau in the _Histoire Littéraire_, and the
difference is left unexplained. No man can write about Joan of Arc
without suspicion who discards the publications of Quicherat, and even
of Wallon, Beaucourt, and Luce. Etienne de Bourbon was an inquisitor of
long experience, who knew the original comrade and assistant of Waldus.
Fragments of him scattered up and down in the works of learned men have
caught the author's eye; but it is uncertain how much he knows of the
fifty pages from Stephanus printed in Echard's book on Saint Thomas, or
of the volume in which Lecoy de la Marche has collected all, and more
than all, that deserves to live of his writings. The "Historia
Pontificalis," attributed to John of Salisbury, in the twentieth volume
of the _Monumenta_, should affect the account of Arnold of Brescia. The
analogy with the Waldenses, amongst whom his party seems to have merged,
might be more strongly marked. "Hominum sectam fecit que adhuc dicitur
heresis Lumbardorum.... Episcopis non parcebat ob avariciam et turpem
questum, et plerumque propter maculam vite, et quia ecclesiam Dei in
sanguinibus edificare nituntur." He was excommunicated and declared a
heretic. He was reconciled and forgiven. Therefore, when he resumed his
agitation his portion was with the obstinate and relapsed. "Ei populus
Romanus vicissim auxilium et consilium contra omnes homines et nominatim
contra domnum papam repromisit, eum namque excommunicaverat ecclesia
Romana.... Post mortem domni Innocentii reversus est in Italiam, et
promissa satisfactione et obediencia Romane ecclesie, a domno Eugenio
receptus est apud Viterbum." And it is more likely that the fear of
relics caused them to reduce his body to ashes than merely to throw the
ashes into the Tiber.
The energy with which Mr. Lea beats up information is extraordinary even
when imperfectly economised. He justly makes ample use of the _Vitae
Paparum Avenionensium_, which he takes apparently from the papal volume
of Muratori. These biographies were edited by Baluze, with notes and
documents of such value that Avignon without him is like Athenæus
without Casaubon, or the Theodosian Code without Godefroy. But if he
neglects him in print, he constantly quotes a certain Paris manuscript
in which I think I recognise the very one which Baluze employed.
Together with Guidonis and Eymerici, the leading authority of the
fourteenth century is Zanchini, who became an inquisitor at Rimini in
1300, and died in 1340. His book was published with a commentary by
Campeggio, one of the Tridentine fathers; and Campeggio was further
annotated by Simancas, who exposes the disparity between Italian and
Spanish usage. It was reprinted, with other treatises of the same kind,
in the eleventh volume of the _Tractatus_. Some of these treatises, and
the notes of Campeggio and Simancas, are passed over by Mr. Lea without
notice. But he appreciates Zanchini so well that he has had him copied
from a manuscript in France. Very much against his habit, he prints one
entire sentence, from which it appears that his copy does not agree to
the letter with the published text. It is not clear in every case
whether he is using print or manuscript. One of the most interesting
directions for inquisitors, and one of the earliest, was written by
Cardinal Fulcodius, better known as Clement IV. Mr. Lea cites him a
dozen times, always accurately, always telling us scrupulously which of
the fifteen chapters to consult. The treatise of Fulcodius occupies a
few pages in Carena, _De Officio S.S. Inquisitionis_, in which, besides
other valuable matter, there are notes by Carena himself, and a tract by
Pegna, the perpetual commentator of the Inquisition. This is one of the
first eight or ten books which occur to any one whose duty it is to lay
in an inquisitor's library. Not only we are never told where to find
Fulcodius, but when Carena is mentioned it is so done as to defy
verification. Inartistic references are not, in this instance, a token
of inadequate study. But a book designed only for readers who know at a
glance where to lay their finger on _S. Francis. Collat. Monasticae,
Collat. 20_, or _Post constt. IV. XIX. Cod. I. v._ will be slow in
recovering outlay.
Not his acquaintance with rare books only, which might be the curiosity
of an epicurean, but with the right and appropriate book, amazes the
reader. Like most things attributed to Abbot Joachim, the Vaticinia
Pontificum is a volume not in common use, and decent people may be found
who never saw a copy. Mr. Lea says: "I have met with editions of Venice
issued in 1589, 1600, 1605, and 1646, of Ferrara in 1591, of Frankfort
in 1608, of Padua in 1625, and of Naples in 1660, and there are
doubtless numerous others." This is the general level throughout; the
rare failures disappear in the imposing supererogation of knowledge. It
could not be exceeded by the pupils of the Göttingen seminary or the
École des Chartes. They have sometimes a vicious practice of overtopping
sufficient proof with irrelevant testimony: but they transcribe all
deciding words in full, and for the rest, quicken and abridge our toil
by sending us, not to chapter and verse, but to volume and page, of the
physical and concrete book. We would gladly give Bluebeard and his
wife--he had but one after all--in exchange for the best quotations from
sources hard of access which Mr. Lea must have hoarded in the course of
labours such as no man ever achieved before him, or will ever attempt
hereafter. It would increase the usefulness of his volumes, and double
their authority. There are indeed fifty pages of documentary matter not
entirely new or very closely connected with the text. Portions of this,
besides, are derived from manuscripts explored in France and Italy, but
not it seems in Rome, and in this way much curious and valuable material
underlies the pages; but it is buried without opportunity of display or
scrutiny. Line upon line of references to the Neapolitan archives only
bewilder and exasperate. Mr. Lea, who dealt more generously with the
readers of _Sacerdotal Celibacy_, has refused himself in these
overcrowded volumes that protection against overstatement. The want of
verifiable indication of authorities is annoying, especially at first;
and it may be possible to find one or two references to Saint
Bonaventure or to Wattenbach which are incorrect. But he is exceedingly
careful in rendering the sense of his informants, and neither strains
the tether nor outsteps his guide. The original words in very many cases
would add definiteness and a touch of surprise to his narrative.
If there is anywhere the least infidelity in the statement of an
author's meaning, it is in the denial that Marsilius, the imperial
theorist, and the creator with Ockam of the Ghibelline philosophy that
has ruled the world, was a friend of religious liberty. Marsilius
assuredly was not a Whig. Quite as much as any Guelph, he desired to
concentrate power, not to limit or divide it. Of the sacred immunities
of conscience he had no clearer vision than Dante. But he opposed
persecution in the shape in which he knew it, and the patriarchs of
European emancipation have not done more. He never says that there is no
case in which a religion may be proscribed; but he speaks of none in
which a religion may be imposed. He discusses, not intolerance, but the
divine authority to persecute, and pleads for a secular law. It does not
appear how he would deal with a Thug. "Nemo quantumcumque peccans contra
disciplinas speculativas aut operativas quascumque punitur vel arcetur
in hoc saeculo praecise in quantum huiusmodi, sed in quantum peccat
contra praeceptum humanae legis.... Si humana lege prohibitum fuerit
haereticum aut aliter infidelem in regione manere, qui talis in ipsa
repertus fuerit, tanquam legis humanae transgressor, poena vel supplicio
huic transgressioni eadem lege statutis, in hoc saeculo debet arceri."
The difference is slight between the two readings. One asserts that
Marsilius was tolerant in effect; the other denies that he was tolerant
in principle.
Mr. Lea does not love to recognise the existence of much traditional
toleration. Few lights are allowed to deepen his shadows. If a stream of
tolerant thought descended from the early ages to the time when the
companion of Vespucci brought his improbable tale from Utopia, then the
views of Bacon, of Dante, of Gerson cannot be accounted for by the
ascendency of a unanimous persuasion. It is because all men were born to
the same inheritance of enforced conformity that we glide so easily
towards the studied increase of pain. If some men were able to perceive
what lay in the other scale, if they made a free choice, after
deliberation, between well-defined and well-argued opinions, then what
happened is not assignable to invincible causes, and history must turn
from general and easy explanation to track the sinuosities of a tangled
thread. In Mr. Lea's acceptation of ecclesiastical history intolerance
was handed down as a rule of life from the days of St. Cyprian, and the
few who shrank half-hearted from the gallows and the flames were
exceptions, were men navigating craft of their own away from the track
of St. Peter. Even in his own age he is not careful to show that the
Waldenses opposed persecution, not in self-defence, but in the necessary
sequence of thought. And when he describes Eutychius as an obscure man,
who made a point at the fifth general council, for which he was rewarded
with the patriarchate of Constantinople--Eutychius, who was already
patriarch when the council assembled; and when he twice tears Formosus
from his grave to parade him in his vestments about Rome,--we may
suspect that the perfect grasp of documentary history from the twelfth
century does not reach backwards in a like degree.
If Mr. Lea stands aloft, in his own domain, as an accumulator, his
credit as a judge of testimony is nearly as high. The deciding test of
his critical sagacity is the masterly treatment of the case against the
Templars. They were condemned without mercy, by Church and State, by
priest and jurist, and down to the present day cautious examiners of
evidence, like Prutz and Lavocat, give a faltering verdict. In the face
of many credulous forerunners and of much concurrent testimony Mr. Lea
pronounces positively that the monster trial was a conspiracy to murder,
and every adverse proof a lie. His immediate predecessor, Schottmüller,
the first writer who ever knew the facts, has made this conclusion easy.
But the American does not move in the retinue of the Prussian scholar.
He searches and judges for himself; and in his estimate of the chief
actor in the tragedy, Clement V., he judges differently. He rejects, as
forgeries, a whole batch of unpublished confessions, and he points out
that a bull disliked by inquisitors is not reproduced entire in the
_Bullarium Dominicanum_. But he fails to give the collation, and is
generally jealous about admitting readers to his confidence, taking them
into consultation and producing the scales. In the case of Delicieux,
which nearly closes the drama of Languedoc, he consults his own sources,
independently of Hauréau, and in the end adopts the marginal statement
in Limborch, that the pope aggravated the punishment. In other places,
he puts his trust in the _Historia Tribulationum_, and he shows no
reason for dismissing the different account there given of the death of
Delicieux: "Ipsum fratrem Bernardum sibi dari a summo pontifice
petierunt. Et videns summus pontifex quod secundum accusationes quas de
eo fecerant fratres minores justitiam postularent, tradidit eis eum.
Qui, quum suscepissent eum in sua potestate, sicut canes, cum vehementer
furiunt, lacerant quam capiunt bestiam, ita ipsi diversis afflictionibus
et cruciatibus laniaverunt eum. Et videntes quod neque inquisitionibus
nec tormentis poterant pompam de eo facere in populo, quam quaerebant,
in arctissimo carcere eum reduxerunt, ibidem eum taliter tractantes,
quod infra paucos menses, quasi per ignem et aquam transiens, de carcere
corporis et minorum et praedicatorum liberatus gloriose triumphans de
mundi principe, migravit ad coelos."
We obtain only a general assurance that the fate of Cecco d' Ascoli is
related on the strength of unpublished documents at Florence. It is not
stated what they are. There is no mention of the epitaph pronounced by
the pope who had made him his physician: "Cucullati Minores recentiorum
Peripateticorum principem perdiderunt." We do not learn that Cecco
reproached Dante with the same fatalistic leaning for which he himself
was to die: "Non è fortuna cui ragion non vinca." Or how they disputed:
"An ars natura fortior ac potentior existeret," and argument was
supplanted by experiment: "Aligherius, qui opinionem oppositam mordicus
tuebatur, felem domesticam Stabili objiciebat, quam ea arte instituerat,
ut ungulis candelabrum teneret, dum is noctu legeret, vel coenaret.
Cicchius igitur, ut in sententiam suam Aligherium pertraheret, scutula
assumpta, ubi duo musculi asservabantur inclusi, illos in conspectum
felis dimisit; quae naturae ingenio inemendabili obsequens, muribus vix
inspectis, illico in terram candelabrum abjecit, et ultro citroque
cursare ac vestigiis praedam persequi instituit." Either Appiani's
defence of Cecco d' Ascoli has escaped Mr. Lea, who nowhere mentions
Bernino's _Historia di tutte l' Heresie_ where it is printed; or he may
distrust Bernino for calling Dante a schismatic; or it may be that he
rejects all this as legend, beneath the certainty of history. But he
does not disdain the legendary narrative of the execution: "Tradition
relates that he had learned by his art that he should die between Africa
and Campo Fiore, and so sure was he of this that on the way to the stake
he mocked and ridiculed his guards; but when the pile was about to be
lighted he asked whether there was any place named Africa in the
vicinage, and was told that that was the name of a neighbouring brook
flowing from Fiesole to the Arno. Then he recognised that Florence was
the Field of Flowers, and that he had been miserably deceived." The
Florentine document before me, whether the same or another I know not,
says nothing about untimely mockery or miserable deception: "Aveva
inteso dal demonio dover lui morire di morte accidentale infra l'Affrica
e campo di fiore; per lo che cercando di conservare la reputazione sua,
ordinò di non andar mai nelle parti d'Affrica; e credendo tal fallacia è
di potere sbeffare la gente, pubblicamente in Italia esecutava l'arte
della negromanzia, et essendo per questo preso in Firenze e per la sua
confessione essendo già giudicato al fuoco e legato al palo, nè vedendo
alcun segno della sua liberazione, avendo prima fatto i soliti
scongiuri, domandò alle persone che erano all'intorno, se quivi vicino
era alcun luogo che si chiamasse Affrica, et essendogli risposto di si,
cioè un fiumicello che correva ivi presso, il quale discende da Fiesole
ed è chiamato Affrica, considerando che il demonio per lo campo de'
fiori aveva inteso Fiorenza, e per l'Affrica quel fiumicello, ostinato
nella sua perfidia, disse al manigoldo che quanto prima attaccasse il
fuoco."
Mr. Lea thinks that the untenable conditions offered to the count of
Toulouse by the council of Arles in 1211 are spurious. M. Paul Meyer has
assigned reasons on the other side in his notes to the translation of
the _Chanson de la Croisade_, pp. 75-77; and the editors of Vaissète
(vi. 347) are of the same opinion as M. Paul Meyer. It happens that Mr.
Lea reads the _Chanson_ in the _editio princeps_ of Fauriel; and in this
particular place he cites the _Histoire du Languedoc_ in the old and
superseded edition. From a letter lately brought to light in the
_Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters_, he infers that the decree of
Clement V. affecting the privilege of inquisitors was tampered with
before publication. A Franciscan writes from Avignon when the new canons
were ready: "Inquisitores etiam heretice pravitatis restinguuntur et
supponuntur episcopis"--which he thinks would argue something much more
decisive than the regulations as they finally appeared. Ehrle, who
publishes the letter, remarks that the writer exaggerated the import of
the intended change; but he says it not of this sentence, but of the
next preceding. Mr. Lea has acknowledged elsewhere the gravity of this
Clementine reform. As it stands, it was considered injurious by
inquisitors, and elicited repeated protests from Bernardus Guidonis: "Ex
predicta autem ordinatione seu restrictione nonnulla inconvenientia
consecuntur, que liberum et expeditum cursum officii inquisitoris tam in
manibus dyocesanorum quam etiam inquisitorum diminuunt seu retardant....
Que apostolice sedis circumspecta provisione ac provida circumspectione
indigent, ut remedientur, aut moderentur in melius, seu pocius totaliter
suspendantur propter nonnulla inconvenientia que consecuntur ex ipsis
circa liberum et expeditum cursum officii inquisitoris."
The feudal custom which supplied Beaumarchais with the argument of his
play recruits a stout believer in the historian of the Inquisition, who
assures us that the authorities may be found on a certain page of his
_Sacerdotal Celibacy_. There, however, they may be sought in vain. Some
dubious instances are mentioned, and the dissatisfied inquirer is passed
on to the Fors de Béarn, and to Lagrèze, and is informed that M. Louis
Veuillot raised an unprofitable dust upon the subject. I remember that
M. Veuillot, in his boastful scorn for book learning, made no secret
that he took up the cause because the Church was attacked, but got his
facts from somebody else. Graver men than Veuillot have shared his
conclusion. Sir Henry Maine, having looked into the matter in his quick,
decisive way, declared that an instance of the _droit du seigneur_ was
as rare as the Wandering Jew. In resting his case on the Pyrenees, Mr.
Lea shows his usual judgment. But his very confident note is a too easy
and contemptuous way of settling a controversy which is still wearily
extant from Spain to Silesia, in which some new fact comes to light
every year, and drops into obscurity, riddled with the shafts of
critics.
An instance of too facile use of authorities occurs at the siege of
Béziers. "A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs us that when Arnaud
was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he feared the heretics
would escape by feigning orthodoxy, and fiercely replied, 'Kill them
all, for God knows his own.'" Caesarius, to whom we owe the _locus
classicus_, was a Cistercian and a contemporary, but he was not so
fervent as that, for he tells it as a report, not as a fact, with a
caution which ought not to have evaporated. "Fertur dixisse: Caedite
eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" The Catholic defenders had been
summoned to separate from the Cathari, and had replied that they were
determined to share their fate. It was then resolved to make an example,
which we are assured bore fruit afterwards. The hasty zeal of Citeaux
adopted the speech of the abbot and gave it currency. But its rejection
by the French scholars, Tamizey de Larroque and Auguste Molinier, was a
warning against presenting it with a smooth surface, as a thing tested
and ascertained. Mr. Lea, in other passages, has shown his disbelief in
Caesarius of Heisterbach, and knows that history written in reliance
upon him would be history fit for the moon. Words as ferocious are
recorded of another legate at a different siege (Langlois, _Règne de
Philippe le Hardi_, p. 156). Their tragic significance for history is
not in the mouth of an angry crusader at the storming of a fortress, but
in the pen of an inoffensive monk, watching and praying under the
peaceful summit of the Seven Mountains.
Mr. Lea undertakes to dispute no doctrine and to propose no moral. He
starts with an avowed desire not to say what may be construed
injuriously to the character or feelings of men. He writes pure history,
and is methodically oblivious of applied history. The broad and
sufficient realm of fact is divided by a scientific frontier from the
outer world of interested argument. Beyond the frontier he has no
cognisance, and neither aspires to inflame passions nor to compose the
great eirenikon. Those who approach with love or hatred are to go empty
away; if indeed he does not try by turns to fill them both. He seeks his
object not by standing aloof, as if the name that perplexed Polyphemus
was the proper name for historians, but by running successively on
opposing lines. He conceives that civilised Europe owes its preservation
to the radiant centre of religious power at Rome, and is grateful to
Innocent III. for the vigour with which he recognised that force was the
only cure for the pestiferous opinions of misguided zealots. One of his
authorities is the inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis, and there is no writer
whom, in various shapes, he quotes so often. But when Guidonis says that
Dolcino and Margarita suffered _per juditium ecclesie_, Mr. Lea is
careful to vindicate the clergy from the blame of their sufferings.
From a distinction which he draws between despotism and its abuse, and
from a phrase, disparaging to elections, about rivers that cannot rise
above the level of their source, it would appear that Mr. Lea is not
under compulsion to that rigid liberalism which, by repressing the
time-test and applying the main rules of morality all round, converts
history into a frightful monument of sin. Yet, in the wake of passages
which push the praises of authority to the verge of irony, dire
denunciations follow. When the author looks back upon his labours, he
discerns "a scene of almost unrelieved blackness." He avers that "the
deliberate burning alive of a human being simply for difference of
belief, is an atrocity," and speaks of a "fiendish legislation," "an
infernal curiosity," a "seemingly causeless ferocity which appears to
persecute for the mere pleasure of persecuting." The Inquisition is
"energetic only in evil"; it is "a standing mockery of justice, perhaps
the most iniquitous that the arbitrary cruelty of man has ever
devised."
This is not the protest of wounded humanity. The righteous resolve to
beware of doctrine has not been strictly kept. In the private judgment
of the writer, the thinking of the Middle Ages was sophistry and their
belief superstition. For the erring and suffering mass of mankind he has
an enlightened sympathy; for the intricacies of speculation he has none.
He cherishes a disbelief, theological or inductive it matters not, in
sinners rescued by repentance and in blessings obtained by prayer.
Between remitted guilt and remitted punishment he draws a vanishing line
that makes it doubtful whether Luther started from the limits of
purgatory or the limits of hell. He finds that it was a universal
precept to break faith with heretics, that it was no arbitrary or
artificial innovation to destroy them, but the faithful outcome of the
traditional spirit of the Church. He hints that the horror of sensuality
may be easily carried too far, and that Saint Francis of Assisi was in
truth not very much removed from a worshipper of the devil. Prescott, I
think, conceived a resemblance between the god of Montezuma and the god
of Torquemada; but he saw and suspected less than his more learned
countryman. If any life was left in the Strappado and the Samarra, no
book would deserve better than this description of their vicissitudes to
go the way of its author, and to fare with the flagrant volume, snatched
from the burning at Champel, which is still exhibited to Unitarian
pilgrims in the Rue de Richelieu.
In other characteristic places we are taught to observe the agency of
human passion, ambition, avarice, and pride; and wade through oceans of
unvaried evil with that sense of dejection which comes from Digby's
_Mores Catholici_ or the _Origines de la France Contemporaine_, books
which affect the mind by the pressure of repeated instances. The
Inquisition is not merely "the monstrous offspring of mistaken zeal,"
but it is "utilised by selfish greed and lust of power." No piling of
secondary motives will confront us with the true cause. Some of those
who fleshed their swords with preliminary bloodshed on their way to the
holy war may have owed their victims money; some who in 1348 shared the
worst crime that Christian nations have committed perhaps believed that
Jews spread the plague. But the problem is not there. Neither credulity
nor cupidity is equal to the burden. It needs no weighty scholar,
pressed down and running over with the produce of immense research, to
demonstrate how common men in a barbarous age were tempted and
demoralised by the tremendous power over pain, and death, and hell. We
have to learn by what reasoning process, by what ethical motive, men
trained to charity and mercy came to forsake the ancient ways and made
themselves cheerfully familiar with the mysteries of the
torture-chamber, the perpetual prison, and the stake. And this cleared
away, when it has been explained why the gentlest of women chose that
the keeper of her conscience should be Conrad of Marburg, and,
inversely, how that relentless slaughterer directed so pure a penitent
as Saint Elizabeth, a larger problem follows. After the first
generation, we find that the strongest, the most original, the most
independent minds in Europe--men born for opposition, who were neither
awed nor dazzled by canon law and scholastic theology, by the master of
sentences, the philosopher and the gloss--fully agreed with Guala and
Raymond. And we ask how it came about that, as the rigour of official
zeal relaxed, and there was no compulsion, the fallen cause was taken up
by the Council of Constance, the University of Paris, the
States-General, the House of Commons, and the first reformers; that
Ximenes outdid the early Dominicans, while Vives was teaching
toleration; that Fisher, with his friend's handy book of revolutionary
liberalism in his pocket, declared that violence is the best argument
with Protestants; that Luther, excommunicated for condemning
persecution, became a persecutor? Force of habit will not help us, nor
love and fear of authority, nor the unperceived absorption of
circumambient fumes.
Somewhere Mr. Lea, perhaps remembering Maryland, Rhode Island, and
Pennsylvania, speaks of "what was universal public opinion from the
thirteenth to the seventeenth century." The obstacle to this theory, as
of a ship labouring on the Bank, or an orb in the tail of a comet, is
that the opinion is associated with no area of time, and remains
unshaken. The Dominican democrat who took his seat with the Mountain in
1848 never swerved from the principles of his order. More often, and, I
think, more deliberately, Mr. Lea urges that intolerance is implied in
the definition of the mediæval Church, that it sprang from the root and
grew with "the very law of its being." It is no desperate expedient of
authority at bay, for "the people were as eager as their pastors to send
the heretic to the stake." Therefore he does not blame the perpetrator,
but his inherited creed. "No firm believer in the doctrine of exclusive
salvation could doubt that the truest mercy lay in sweeping away the
emissaries of Satan with fire and sword." What we have here is the logic
of history, constraining every system to utter its last word, to empty
its wallets, and work its consequences out to the end. But this radical
doctrine misguides its author to the anachronism that as early as the
first Leo "the final step had been taken, and the Church was definitely
pledged to the suppression of heresy at whatever cost."
We do not demand that historians shall compose our opinions or relieve
us from the purifying pains of thought. It is well if they discard
dogmatising, if they defer judgment, or judge, with the philosopher, by
precepts capable of being a guide for all. We may be content that they
should deny themselves, and repress their sentiments and wishes. When
these are contradictory, or such as evidently to tinge the medium, an
unholy curiosity is engendered to learn distinctly not only what the
writer knows, but what he thinks. Mr. Lea has a malicious pleasure in
baffling inquiry into the principle of his judgments. Having found, in
the Catechism of Saint Sulpice, that devout Catholics are much on a par
with the fanatics whose sympathy with Satan made the holy office a
requisite of civilisation, and having, by his exuberant censure,
prepared us to hear that this requisite of civilisation "might well seem
the invention of demons," he arrives at the inharmonious conclusion that
it was wrought and worked, with benefit to their souls, by sincere and
godly men. The condemnation of Hus is the proper test, because it was
the extreme case of all. The council was master of the situation, and
was crowded with men accustomed to disparage the authority of the Holy
See and to denounce its acts. Practically, there was no pope either of
Rome or Avignon. The Inquisition languished. There was the plausible
plea of deference to the emperor and his passport; there was the
imperative consideration for the religious future of Bohemia. The
reforming divines were free to pursue their own scheme of justice, of
mercy, and of policy. The scheme they pursued has found an assiduous
apologist in their new historian. "To accuse the good fathers of
Constance of conscious bad faith" is impossible. To observe the
safe-conduct would have seemed absurd "to the most conscientious jurists
of the council." In a nutshell, "if the result was inevitable, it was
the fault of the system and not of the judges, and their conscience
might well feel satisfied."
There may be more in this than the oratorical precaution of a scholar
wanting nothing, who chooses to be discreet rather than explicit, or the
wavering utterance of a mind not always strung to the same pitch. It is
not the craving to rescue a favourite or to clear a record, but a fusion
of unsettled doctrines of retrospective contempt. There is a
demonstration of progress in looking back without looking up, in finding
that the old world was wrong in the grain, that the kosmos which is
inexorable to folly is indifferent to sin. Man is not an abstraction,
but a manufactured product of the society with which he stands or falls,
which is answerable for crimes that are the shadow and the echo of its
own nobler vices, and has no right to hang the rogue it rears. Before
you lash the detected class, mulct the undetected. Crime without a
culprit, the unavenged victim who perishes by no man's fault, law
without responsibility, the virtuous agent of a vicious cause--all these
are the signs and pennons of a philosophy not recent, but rather
inarticulate still and inchoate, which awaits analysis by Professor
Flint.
No propositions are simpler or more comprehensive than the two, that an
incorrigible misbeliever ought to burn, or that the man who burns him
ought to hang. The world as expanded on the liberal and on the hegemonic
projection is patent to all men, and the alternatives, that Lacordaire
was bad and Conrad good, are clear in all their bearings. They are too
gross and palpable for Mr. Lea. He steers a subtler course. He does not
sentence the heretic, but he will not protect him from his doom. He does
not care for the inquisitor, but he will not resist him in the discharge
of his duty. To establish a tenable footing on that narrow but needful
platform is the epilogue these painful volumes want, that we may not be
found with the traveller who discovered a precipice to the right of him,
another to the left, and nothing between. Their profound and admirable
erudition leads up, like Hellwald's _Culturgeschichte_, to a great note
of interrogation. When we find the Carolina and the savage justice of
Tudor judges brought to bear on the exquisitely complex psychological
revolution that proceeded, after the year 1200, about the Gulf of Lyons
and the Tyrrhene Sea, we miss the historic question. When we learn that
Priscillian was murdered (i. 214), but that Lechler has no business to
call the sentence on John Hus "ein wahrer Justizmord" (ii. 494), and
then again that the burning of a heretic is a judicial murder after all
(i. 552), we feel bereft of the philosophic answer.
Although Mr. Lea gives little heed to Pani and Hefele, Gams and Du Boys,
and the others who write for the Inquisition without pleading ignorance,
he emphasises a Belgian who lately wrote that the Church never employed
direct constraint against heretics. People who never heard of the
Belgian will wonder that so much is made of this conventional figleaf.
Nearly the same assertion may be found, with varieties of caution and of
confidence, in a catena of divines, from Bergier to Newman. To appear
unfamiliar with the defence exposes the writer to the thrust that you
cannot know the strength or the weakness of a case until you have heard
its advocates. The liberality of Leo XIII., which has yielded a
splendid and impartial harvest to Ehrle, and Schottmüller, and the
École Française, raises the question whether the Abbé Duchesne or Father
Denifle supplied with all the resources of the archives which are no
longer secret would produce a very different or more complete account.
As a philosophy of religious persecution the book is inadequate. The
derivation of sects, though resting always upon good supports, stands
out from an indistinct background of dogmatic history. The intruding
maxims, darkened by shadows of earth, fail to ensure at all times the
objective and delicate handling of mediæval theory. But the vital parts
are protected by a panoply of mail. From the Albigensian crusade to the
fall of the Templars and to that Franciscan movement wherein the key to
Dante lies, the design and organisation, the activity and decline of the
Inquisition constitute a sound and solid structure that will survive the
censure of all critics. Apart from surprises still in store at Rome, and
the manifest abundance of Philadelphia, the knowledge which is common
property, within reach of men who seriously invoke history as the final
remedy for untruth and the sovereign arbiter of opinion, can add little
to the searching labours of the American.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 401: _English Historical Review_, 1888.]
XVI
THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH. By JAMES BRYCE[402]
_THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH_ cancels that sentence of Scaliger which
Bacon amplifies in his warning against bookish politicians: "Nec ego nec
alius doctus possumus scribere in politicis." The distinctive import of
the book is its power of impressing American readers. Mr. Bryce is in a
better position than the philosopher who said of another, "Ich hoffe,
wir werden uns recht gut verständigen können; und wenn auch keiner den
andern ganz versteht, wird doch jeder dem andern dazu helfen, dass er
sich selbst besser verstehe." He writes with so much familiarity and
feeling--the national, political, social sympathy is so spontaneous and
sincere--as to carry a very large measure indeed of quiet reproach. The
perfect tone is enough to sweeten and lubricate a medicine such as no
traveller since Hippocrates has administered to contrite natives. Facts,
not comments, convey the lesson; and I know no better illustration of a
recent saying: "Si un livre porte un enseignement, ce doit être malgré
son auteur, par la force même des faits qu'il raconte."
If our countryman has not the chill sententiousness of his great French
predecessor, his portable wisdom and detached thoughts, he has made a
far deeper study of real life, apart from comparative politics and the
European investment of transatlantic experience. One of the very few
propositions which he has taken straight from Tocqueville is also one of
the few which a determined fault-finder would be able to contest. For
they both say that the need for two chambers has become an axiom of
political science. I will admit that the doctrine of Paine and Franklin
and Samuel Adams, which the Pennsylvanian example and the authority of
Turgot made so popular in France, is confuted by the argument of
Laboulaye: "La division du corps législatif est une condition
essentielle de la liberté. C'est la seule garantie qui assure la nation
contre l'usurpation de ses mandataires." But it may be urged that a
truth which is disputed is not an axiom; and serious men still imagine a
state of things in which an undivided legislature is necessary to resist
a too powerful executive, whilst two chambers can be made to curb and
neutralise each other. Both Tocqueville and Turgot are said to have
wavered on this point.
It has been said that Tocqueville never understood the federal
constitution. He believed, to his last edition, that the opening words
of the first section, "all legislative powers herein granted," meant
"tous les pouvoirs législatifs déterminés par les représentants." Story
thought that he "has borrowed the greater part of his reflections from
American works [meaning his own and Lieber's] and little from his own
observation." The French minister at Washington described his book as
"intéressant mais fort peu exact"; and even the _Nation_ calls it
"brilliant, superficial, and attractive." Mr. Bryce can never be accused
of imperfect knowledge or penetration, of undue dependence upon others,
or of writing up to a purpose. His fault is elsewhere. This scholar,
distinguished not only as a successful writer of history, which is said
to be frequent, but as a trained and professed historian, which is rare,
altogether declines the jurisdiction of the HISTORICAL REVIEW. His
contumacy is in gross black and white: "I have had to resist another
temptation, that of straying off into history." Three stout volumes tell
how things are, without telling how they came about. I should have no
title to bring them before this tribunal, if it were not for an
occasional glimpse at the past; if it were not for a strongly marked
and personal philosophy of American history which looms behind the Boss
and the Boom, the Hoodlum and the Mugwump.
There is a valid excuse for preferring to address the unhistoric mind.
The process of development by which the America of Tocqueville became
the America of Lincoln has been lately described with a fulness of
knowledge which no European can rival. Readers who thirst for the
running stream can plunge and struggle through several thousand pages of
Holst's _Verfassungsgeschichte_, and it is better to accept the division
of labour than to take up ground so recently covered by a work which, if
not very well designed or well composed, is, by the prodigious digestion
of material, the most instructive ever written on the natural history of
federal democracy. The author, who has spent twenty years on American
debates and newspapers, began during the pause between Sadowa and Wörth,
when Germany was in the throes of political concentration that made the
empire. He explains with complacency how another irrepressible conflict
between centre and circumference came and went, and how the welfare of
mankind is better served by the gathering than by the balance or
dispersion of forces. Like Gneist and Tocqueville, he thinks of one
country while he speaks of another; he knows nothing of reticence or
economy in the revelation of private opinion; and he has none of Mr.
Bryce's cheery indulgence for folly and error. But when the British
author refuses to devote six months to the files of Californian
journalism, he leaves the German master of his allotted field.
The actual predominates so much with Mr. Bryce that he has hardly a word
on that extraordinary aspect of democracy, the union in time of war; and
gives no more than a passing glance at the confederate scheme of
government, of which a northern writer said: "The invaluable reforms
enumerated should be adopted by the United States, with or without a
reunion of the seceded States, and as soon as possible." There are
points on which some additional light could be drawn from the roaring
loom of time. In the chapter on Spoils it is not stated that the idea
belongs to the ministers of George III. Hamilton's argument against
removals is mentioned, but not the New York edition of _The Federalist_
with the marginal note that "Mr. H. had changed his view of the
constitution on that point." The French wars of speculation and plunder
are spoken of; but, to give honour where honour is due, it should be
added that they were an American suggestion. In May 1790, Morris wrote
to two of his friends at Paris: "I see no means of extricating you from
your troubles, but that which most men would consider as the means of
plunging you into greater--I mean a war. And you should make it to
yourselves a war of men, to your neighbours a war of money.... I hear
you cry out that the finances are in a deplorable situation. This should
be no obstacle. I think that they may be restored during war better than
in peace. You want also something to turn men's attention from their
present discontents." There is a long and impartial inquiry into
parliamentary corruption as practised now; but one wishes to hear so
good a judge on the report that money prevailed at some of the
turning-points of American history; on the imputations cast by the
younger Adams upon his ablest contemporaries; on the story told by
another president, of 223 representatives who received accommodation
from the bank, at the rate of a thousand pounds apiece, during its
struggle with Jackson.
America as known to the man in the cars, and America observed in the
roll of the ages, do not always give the same totals. We learn that the
best capacity of the country is withheld from politics, that there is
what Emerson calls a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the
social organisation, so that the representatives approach the level of
the constituents. Yet it is in political science only that America
occupies the first rank. There are six Americans on a level with the
foremost Europeans, with Smith and Turgot, Mill and Humboldt. Five of
these were secretaries of state, and one was secretary of the treasury.
We are told also that the American of to-day regards the national
institutions with a confidence sometimes grotesque. But this is a
sentiment which comes down, not from Washington and Jefferson, but from
Grant and Sherman. The illustrious founders were not proud of their
accomplished work; and men like Clay and Adams persisted in desponding
to the second and third generation. We have to distinguish what the
nation owes to Madison and Marshall, and what to the army of the
Potomac; for men's minds misgave them as to the constitution until it
was cemented by the ordeal and the sacrifice of civil war. Even the
claim put forward for Americans as the providers of humour for mankind
seems to me subject to the same limitation. People used to know how
often, or how seldom, Washington laughed during the war; but who has
numbered the jokes of Lincoln?
Although Mr. Bryce has too much tact to speak as freely as the Americans
themselves in the criticism of their government, he insists that there
is one defect which they insufficiently acknowledge. By law or custom no
man can represent any district but the one he resides in. If ten
statesmen live in the same street, nine will be thrown out of work. It
is worth while to point out (though this may not be the right place for
a purely political problem) that even in that piece of censure in which
he believes himself unsupported by his friends in the States, Mr. Bryce
says no more than intelligent Americans have said before him. It chances
that several of them have discussed this matter with me. One was
governor of his State, and another is among the compurgators cited in
the preface. Both were strongly persuaded that the usage in question is
an urgent evil; others, I am bound to add, judged differently, deeming
it valuable as a security against Boulangism--an object which can be
attained by restricting the number of constituencies to be addressed by
the same candidate. The two American presidents who agreed in saying
that Whig and Tory belong to natural history, proposed a dilemma which
Mr. Bryce wishes to elude. He prefers to stand half-way between the two,
and to resolve general principles into questions of expediency,
probability, and degree: "The wisest statesman is he who best holds the
balance between liberty and order." The sentiment is nearly that of
Croker and De Quincey, and it is plain that the author would discard the
vulgar definition that liberty is the end of government, and that in
politics things are to be valued as they minister to its security. He
writes in the spirit of John Adams when he said that the French and the
American Revolution had nothing in common, and of that eulogy of 1688 as
the true Restoration, on which Burke and Macaulay spent their finest
prose. A sentence which he takes from Judge Cooley contains the brief
abstract of his book: "America is not so much an example in her liberty
as in the covenanted and enduring securities which are intended to
prevent liberty degenerating into licence, and to establish a feeling of
trust and repose under a beneficent government, whose excellence, so
obvious in its freedom, is still more conspicuous in its careful
provision for permanence and stability." Mr. Bryce declares his own
point of view in the following significant terms: "The spirit of 1787
was an English spirit, and therefore a conservative spirit.... The
American constitution is no exception to the rule that everything which
has power to win the obedience and respect of men must have its roots
deep in the past, and that the more slowly every institution has grown,
so much the more enduring is it likely to prove.... There is a hearty
puritanism in the view of human nature which pervades the instrument of
1787.... No men were less revolutionary in spirit than the heroes of the
American Revolution. They made a revolution in the name of Magna Charta
and the Bill of Rights." I descry a bewildered Whig emerging from the
third volume with a reverent appreciation of ancestral wisdom, Burke's
_Reflections_, and the eighteen Canons of Dort, and a growing belief in
the function of ghosts to make laws for the quick.
When the last Valois consulted his dying mother, she advised him that
anybody can cut off, but that the sewing on is an acquired art. Mr.
Bryce feels strongly for the men who practised what Catharine thought so
difficult, and he stops for a moment in the midst of his very impersonal
treatise to deliver a panegyric on Alexander Hamilton. _Tanto nomini
nullum par elogium._ His merits can hardly be overstated. Talleyrand
assured Ticknor that he had never known his equal; Seward calls him "the
ablest and most effective statesman engaged in organising and
establishing the union"; Macmaster, the iconoclast, and Holst, poorly
endowed with the gift of praise, unite in saying that he was the
foremost genius among public men in the new world; Guizot told Rush that
_The Federalist_ was the greatest work known to him, in the application
of elementary principles of government to practical administration; his
paradox in support of political corruption, so hard to reconcile with
the character of an honest man, was repeated to the letter by Niebuhr.
In estimating Hamilton we have to remember that he was in no sense the
author of the constitution. In the convention he was isolated, and his
plan was rejected. In _The Federalist_, written before he was thirty, he
pleaded for a form of government which he distrusted and disliked. He
was out of sympathy with the spirit that prevailed, and was not the true
representative of the cause, like Madison, who said of him, "If his
theory of government deviated from the republican standard, he had the
candour to avow it, and the greater merit of co-operating faithfully in
maturing and supporting a system which was not his choice." The
development of the constitution, so far as it continued on his lines,
was the work of Marshall, barely known to us by the extracts in late
editions of the _Commentaries_. "_The Federalist_," says Story, "could
do little more than state the objects and general bearing of these
powers and functions. The masterly reasoning of the chief-justice has
followed them out to their ultimate results and boundaries with a
precision and clearness approaching, as near as may be, to mathematical
demonstration." Morris, who was as strong as Hamilton on the side of
federalism, testifies heavily against him as a leader: "More a theoretic
than a practical man, he was not sufficiently convinced that a system
may be good in itself, and bad in relation to particular circumstances.
He well knew that his favourite form was inadmissible, unless as the
result of civil war; and I suspect that his belief in that which he
called an approaching crisis arose from a conviction that the kind of
government most suitable, in his opinion, to this extensive country,
could be established in no other way.... He trusted, moreover, that in
the changes and chances of time we should be involved in some war, which
might strengthen our union and nerve the executive. He was of all men
the most indiscreet. He knew that a limited monarchy, even if
established, could not preserve itself in this country.... He never
failed, on every occasion, to advocate the excellence of, and avow his
attachment to, monarchical government.... Thus, meaning very well, he
acted very ill, and approached the evils he apprehended by his very
solicitude to keep them at a distance." The language of Adams is more
severe; but Adams was an enemy. It has been justly said that "he wished
good men, as he termed them, to rule; meaning the wealthy, the
well-born, the socially eminent." The federalists have suffered somewhat
from this imputation; for a prejudice against any group claiming to
serve under that flag is among the bequests of the French Revolution.
"Les honnêtes gens ont toujours peur: c'est leur nature," is a maxim of
Chateaubriand. A man most divergent and unlike him, Menou, had drawn the
same conclusion: "En révolution il ne faut jamais se mettre du côté des
honnêtes gens: ils sont toujours balayés." And Royer Collard, with the
candour one shows in describing friends, said: "C'est le parti des
honnêtes gens qui est le moins honnête de tous les partis. Tout le
monde, même dans ses erreurs, était honnête à l'assemblée constituante,
excepté le côté droit." Hamilton stands higher as a political
philosopher than as an American partisan. Europeans are generally
liberal for the sake of something that is not liberty, and conservative
for an object to be conserved; and in a jungle of other motives besides
the reason of state we cannot often eliminate unadulterated or
disinterested conservatism. We think of land and capital, tradition and
custom, the aristocracy and the services, the crown and the altar. It is
the singular superiority of Hamilton that he is really anxious about
nothing but the exceeding difficulty of quelling the centrifugal forces,
and that no kindred and coequal powers divide his attachment or
intercept his view. Therefore he is the most scientific of conservative
thinkers, and there is not one in whom the doctrine that prefers the
ship to the crew can be so profitably studied.
In his scruple to do justice to conservative doctrine Mr. Bryce extracts
a passage from a letter of Canning to Croker which, by itself, does not
adequately represent that minister's views. "Am I to understand, then,
that you consider the king as completely in the hands of the Tory
aristocracy as his father, or rather as George II. was in the hands of
the Whigs? If so, George III. reigned, and Mr. Pitt (both father and
son) administered the government, in vain. I have a better opinion of
the real vigour of the crown when it chooses to put forth its own
strength, and I am not without some reliance on the body of the people."
The finest mind reared by many generations of English conservatism was
not always so faithful to monarchical traditions, and in addressing the
incessant polemist of Toryism Canning made himself out a trifle better
than he really was. His intercourse with Marcellus in 1823 exhibits a
diluted orthodoxy: "Le système britannique n'est que le butin des
longues victoires remportées par les sujets contre le monarque.
Oubliez-vous que les rois ne doivent pas donner des institutions, mais
que les institutions seules doivent donner des rois?... Connaissez-vous
un roi qui mérite d'être libre, dans le sens implicite du mot?... Et
George IV., croyez-vous que je serais son ministre, s'il avait été libre
de choisir?... Quand un roi dénie au peuple les institutions dont le
peuple a besoin, quel est le procédé de l'Angleterre? Elle expulse ce
roi, et met à sa place un roi d'une famille alliée sans doute, mais qui
se trouve ainsi, non plus un fils de la royauté, confiant dans le droit
de ses ancêtres, mais le fils des institutions nationales, tirant tous
ses droits de cette seule origine.... Le gouvernement représentatif est
encore bon à une chose que sa majesté a oubliée. Il fait que des
ministres essuient sans répliquer les épigrammes d'un roi qui cherche à
se venger ainsi de son impuissance."
Mr. Bryce's work has received a hearty welcome in its proper hemisphere,
and I know not that any critic has doubted whether the pious founder,
with the dogma of unbroken continuity, strikes the just note or covers
all the ground. At another angle, the origin of the greatest power and
the grandest polity in the annals of mankind emits a different ray. It
was a favourite doctrine with Webster and Tocqueville that the beliefs
of the pilgrims inspired the Revolution, which others deem a triumph of
pelagianism; while J.Q. Adams affirms that "not one of the motives which
stimulated the puritans of 1643 had the slightest influence in actuating
the confederacy of 1774." The Dutch statesman Hogendorp, returning from
the United States in 1784, had the following dialogue with the
stadtholder: "La religion, monseigneur, a moins d'influence que jamais
sur les esprits.... Il y a toute une province de quakers?... Depuis la
révolution il semble que ces sortes de différences s'évanouissent....
Les Bostoniens ne sont-ils pas fort dévots?... Ils l'étaient,
monseigneur, mais à lire les descriptions faites il y a vingt ou même
dix ans, on ne les reconnaît pas de ce côté-là." It is an old story that
the federal constitution, unlike that of Hérault de Séchelles, makes no
allusion to the Deity; that there is none in the president's oath; and
that in 1796 it was stated officially that the government of the United
States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. No three
men had more to do with the new order than Franklin, Adams, and
Jefferson. Franklin's irreligious tone was such that his manuscripts,
like Bentham's, were suppressed, to the present year. Adams called the
Christian faith a horrid blasphemy. Of Jefferson we are assured that, if
not an absolute atheist, he had no belief in a future existence; and he
hoped that the French arms "would bring at length kings, nobles, and
priests to the scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with
human blood." If Calvin prompted the Revolution, it was after he had
suffered from contact with Tom Paine; and we must make room for other
influences which, in that generation, swayed the world from the rising
to the setting sun. It was an age of faith in the secular sense
described by Guizot: "C'était un siècle ardent et sincère, un siècle
plein de foi et d'enthousiasme. Il a eu foi dans la vérité, car il lui a
reconnu le droit de régner."
In point both of principle and policy, Mr. Bryce does well to load the
scale that is not his own, and to let the jurist within him sometimes
mask the philosophic politician. I have to speak of him not as a
political reasoner or as an observer of life in motion, but only in the
character which he assiduously lays aside. If he had guarded less
against his own historic faculty, and had allowed space to take up
neglected threads, he would have had to expose the boundless innovation,
the unfathomed gulf produced by American independence, and there would
be no opening to back the Jeffersonian shears against the darning-needle
of the great chief-justice. My misgiving lies in the line of thought of
Riehl and the elder Cherbuliez. The first of those eminent conservatives
writes: "Die Extreme, nicht deren Vermittelungen und Abschwächungen,
deuten die Zukunft vor." The Genevese has just the same remark: "Les
idées n'ont jamais plus de puissance que sous leur forme la plus
abstraite. Les idées abstraites ont plus remué le monde, elles ont causé
plus de révolutions et laissé plus de traces durables que les idées
pratiques." Lassalle says, "Kein Einzelner denkt mit der Consequenz
eines Volksgeistes." Schelling may help us over the parting ways: "Der
erzeugte Gedanke ist eine unabhängige Macht, für sich fortwirkend, ja,
in der menschlichen Seele, so anwachsend, dass er seine eigene Mutter
bezwingt und unterwirft." After the philosopher, let us conclude with a
divine: "C'est de révolte en révolte, si l'on veut employer ce mot, que
les sociétés se perfectionnent, que la civilisation s'établit, que la
justice règne, que la vérité fleurit."
The anti-revolutionary temper of the Revolution belongs to 1787, not to
1776. Another element was at work, and it is the other element that is
new, effective, characteristic, and added permanently to the experience
of the world. The story of the revolted colonies impresses us first and
most distinctly as the supreme manifestation of the law of resistance,
as the abstract revolution in its purest and most perfect shape. No
people was so free as the insurgents; no government less oppressive than
the government which they overthrew. Those who deem Washington and
Hamilton honest can apply the term to few European statesmen. Their
example presents a thorn, not a cushion, and threatens all existing
political forms, with the doubtful exception of the federal constitution
of 1874. It teaches that men ought to be in arms even against a remote
and constructive danger to their freedom; that even if the cloud is no
bigger than a man's hand, it is their right and duty to stake the
national existence, to sacrifice lives and fortunes, to cover the
country with a lake of blood, to shatter crowns and sceptres and fling
parliaments into the sea. On this principle of subversion they erected
their commonwealth, and by its virtue lifted the world out of its orbit
and assigned a new course to history. Here or nowhere we have the broken
chain, the rejected past, precedent and statute superseded by unwritten
law, sons wiser than their fathers, ideas rooted in the future, reason
cutting as clean as Atropos. The wisest philosopher of the old world
instructs us to take things as they are, and to adore God in the event:
"Il faut toujours être content de l'ordre du passé, parce qu'il est
conforme à la volonté de Dieu absolue, qu'on connoît par l'évènement."
The contrary is the text of Emerson: "Institutions are not aboriginal,
though they existed before we were born. They are not superior to the
citizen. Every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular
case. We may make as good; we may make better." More to the present
point is the language of Seward: "The rights asserted by our forefathers
were not peculiar to themselves, they were the common rights of mankind.
The basis of the constitution was laid broader by far than the
superstructure which the conflicting interests and prejudices of the day
suffered to be erected. The constitution and laws of the federal
government did not practically extend those principles throughout the
new system of government; but they were plainly promulgated in the
declaration of independence. Their complete development and reduction to
practical operation constitute the progress which all liberal statesmen
desire to promote, and the end of that progress will be complete
political equality among ourselves, and the extension and perfection of
institutions similar to our own throughout the world." A passage which
Hamilton's editor selects as the keynote of his system expresses well
enough the spirit of the Revolution: "The sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are
written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the
hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by
mortal power. I consider civil liberty, in a genuine, unadulterated
sense, as the greatest of terrestrial blessings. I am convinced that the
whole human race is entitled to it, and that it can be wrested from no
part of them without the blackest and most aggravated guilt." Those were
the days when a philosopher divided governments into two kinds, the bad
and the good, that is, those which exist and those which do not exist;
and when Burke, in the fervour of early liberalism, proclaimed that a
revolution was the only thing that could do the world any good: "Nothing
less than a convulsion that will shake the globe to its centre can ever
restore the European nations to that liberty by which they were once so
much distinguished."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 402: _English Historical Review_, 1889.]
XVII
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE AND FRENCH BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND.
By ROBERT FLINT[403]
When Dr. Flint's former work appeared, a critic, who, it is true, was
also a rival, objected that it was diffusely written. What then occupied
three hundred and thirty pages has now expanded to seven hundred, and
suggests a doubt as to the use of criticism. It must at once be said
that the increase is nearly all material gain. The author does not cling
to his main topic, and, as he insists that the science he is adumbrating
flourishes on the study of facts only, and not on speculative ideas, he
bestows some needless attention on historians who professed no
philosophy, or who, like Daniel and Velly, were not the best of their
kind. Here and there, as in the account of Condorcet, there may be an
unprofitable or superfluous sentence. But on the whole the enlarged
treatment of the philosophy of history in France is accomplished not by
expansion, but by solid and essential addition. Many writers are
included whom the earlier volume passed over, and Cousin occupies fewer
pages now than in 1874, by the aid of smaller type and the omission of a
passage injurious to Schelling. Many necessary corrections and
improvements have been made, such as the transfer of Ballanche from
theocracy to the liberal Catholicism of which he is supposed to be the
founder.
Dr. Flint's unchallenged superiority consists alike in his familiarity
with obscure, but not irrelevant authors, whom he has brought into
line, and in his scrupulous fairness towards all whose attempted systems
he has analysed. He is hearty in appreciating talent of every kind, but
he is discriminating in his judgment of ideas, and rarely sympathetic.
Where the best thoughts of the ablest men are to be displayed, it would
be tempting to present an array of luminous points or a chaplet of
polished gems. In the hands of such artists as Stahl or Cousin they
would start into high relief with a convincing lucidity that would rouse
the exhibited writers to confess that they had never known they were so
clever. Without transfiguration the effect might be attained by
sometimes stringing the most significant words of the original.
Excepting one unduly favoured competitor, who fills two pages with
untranslated French, there is little direct quotation. Cournot is one of
those who, having been overlooked at first, are here raised to
prominence. He is urgently, and justly, recommended to the attention of
students. "They will find that every page bears the impress of patient,
independent, and sagacious thought. I believe I have not met with a more
genuine thinker in the course of my investigations. He was a man of the
finest intellectual qualities, of a powerful and absolutely truthful
mind." But then we are warned that Cournot never wrote a line for the
general reader, and accordingly he is not permitted to speak for
himself. Yet it was this thoughtful Frenchman who said: "Aucune idée
parmi celles qui se réfèrent à l'ordre des faits naturels ne tient de
plus près à la famille des idées religieuses que l'idée du progrès, et
n'est plus propre à devenir le principe d'une sorte de foi religieuse
pour ceux qui n'en ont pas d'autres. Elle a, comme la foi religieuse, la
vertu de relever les âmes et les caractères."
The successive theories gain neither in clearness nor in contrast by the
order in which they stand. As other countries are reserved for other
volumes, Cousin precedes Hegel, who was his master, whilst Quetelet is
barely mentioned in his own place, and has to wait for Buckle, if not
for Oettingen and Rümelin, before he comes on for discussion. The finer
threads, the underground currents, are not carefully traced. The
connection between the _juste milieu_ in politics and eclecticism in
philosophy was already stated by the chief eclectic; but the subtler
link between the Catholic legitimists and democracy seems to have
escaped the author's notice. He says that the republic proclaimed
universal suffrage in 1848, and he considers it a triumph for the party
of Lafayette. In fact, it was the triumph of an opposite school--of
those legitimists who appealed from the narrow franchise which sustained
the Orleans dynasty to the nation behind it. The chairman of the
constitutional committee was a legitimist, and he, inspired by the abbé
de Genoude, of the _Gazette de France_, and opposed by Odilon Barrot,
insisted on the pure logic of absolute democracy.
It is an old story now that the true history of philosophy is the true
evolution of philosophy, and that when we have eliminated whatever has
been damaged by contemporary criticism or by subsequent advance, and
have assimilated all that has survived through the ages, we shall find
in our possession not only a record of growth, but the full-grown fruit
itself. This is not the way in which Dr. Flint understands the building
up of his department of knowledge. Instead of showing how far France has
made a way towards the untrodden crest, he describes the many flowery
paths, discovered by the French, which lead elsewhere, and I expect that
in coming volumes it will appear that Hegel and Buckle, Vico and
Ferrari, are scarcely better guides than Laurent or Littré. Fatalism and
retribution, race and nationality, the test of success and of duration,
heredity and the reign of the invincible dead, the widening circle, the
emancipation of the individual, the gradual triumph of the soul over the
body, of mind over matter, reason over will, knowledge over ignorance,
truth over error, right over might, liberty over authority, the law of
progress and perfectibility, the constant intervention of providence,
the sovereignty of the developed conscience--neither these nor other
alluring theories are accepted as more than illusions or half-truths.
Dr. Flint scarcely avails himself of them even for his foundations or
his skeleton framework. His critical faculty, stronger than his gift of
adaptation, levels obstructions and marks the earth with ruin. He is
more anxious to expose the strange unreason of former writers, the
inadequacy of their knowledge, their want of aptitude in induction, than
their services in storing material for the use of successors. The result
is not to be the sifted and verified wisdom of two centuries, but a
future system, to be produced when the rest have failed by an exhaustive
series of vain experiments. We may regret to abandon many brilliant laws
and attractive generalisations that have given light and clearness and
simplicity and symmetry to our thought; but it is certain that Dr. Flint
is a close and powerful reasoner, equipped with satisfying information,
and he establishes his contention that France has not produced a classic
philosophy of history, and is still waiting for its Adam Smith or Jacob
Grimm.
The kindred topic of development recurs repeatedly, as an important
factor in modern science. It is still a confused and unsettled chapter,
and in one place Dr. Flint seems to attribute the idea to Bossuet; in
another he says that it was scarcely entertained in those days by
Protestants, and not at all by Catholics; in a third he implies that its
celebrity in the nineteenth century is owing in the first place to
Lamennais. The passage, taken from Vinet, in which Bossuet speaks of the
development of religion is inaccurately rendered. His words are the same
which, on another page, are rightly translated "the course of
religion"--_la suite de la religion_. Indeed, Bossuet was the most
powerful adversary the theory ever encountered. It was not so alien to
Catholic theology as is here stated, and before the time of Jurieu is
more often found among Catholic than Protestant writers. When it was put
forward, in guarded, dubious, and evasive terms, by Petavius, the
indignation in England was as great as in 1846. The work which contained
it, the most learned that Christian theology had then produced, could
not be reprinted over here, lest it should supply the Socinians with
inconvenient texts. Nelson hints that the great Jesuit may have been a
secret Arian, and Bull stamped upon his theory amid the grateful
applause of Bossuet and his friends. Petavius was not an innovator, for
the idea had long found a home among the Franciscan masters: "Proficit
fides secundum statum communem, quia secundum profectum temporum
efficiebantur homines magis idonei ad percipienda et intelligenda
sacramenta fidei.--Sunt multae conclusiones necessario inclusae in
articulis creditis, sed antequam sunt per Ecclesiam declaratae et
explicatae non oportet quemcumque eas credere. Oportet tamen circa eas
sobrie opinari, ut scilicet homo sit paratus eas tenere pro tempore, pro
quo veritas fuerit declarata." Cardinal Duperron said nearly the same
thing as Petavius a generation before him: "L'Arien trouvera dans sainct
Irénée, Tertullien et autres qui nous sont restez en petit nombre de ces
siècles-là, que le Fils est l'instrument du Père, que le Père a commandé
au Fils lors qu'il a esté question de la création des choses, que le
Père et le Fils sont _aliud et aliud_; choses que qui tiendroit
aujourd'huy, que le langage de l'Eglise est plus examiné, seroit estimé
pour Arien luy-mesme." All this does not serve to supply the pedigree
which Newman found it so difficult to trace. Development, in those days,
was an expedient, an hypothesis, and not even the thing so dear to the
Oxford probabilitarians, a working hypothesis. It was not more
substantial than the gleam in Robinson's farewell to the pilgrims: "I am
very confident that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of
His holy word." The reason why it possessed no scientific basis is
explained by Duchesne: "Ce n'est guère avant la seconde moitié du xviie
siècle qu'il devint impossible de soutenir l'authenticité des fausses
décrétales, des constitutions apostoliques, des 'Récognitions
Clémentines,' du faux Ignace, du pseudo-Dionys et de l'immense fatras
d'oeuvres anonymes ou pseudonymes qui grossissait souvent du tiers ou de
la moitié l'héritage littéraire des auteurs les plus considérables. Qui
aurait pu même songer à un développement dogmatique?" That it was
little understood, and lightly and loosely employed, is proved by
Bossuet himself, who alludes to it in one passage as if he did not know
that it was the subversion of his theology: "Quamvis ecclesia omnem
veritatem funditus norit, ex haeresibus tamen discit, ut aiebat magni
nominis Vincentius Lirinensis, aptius, distinctius, clariusque eandem
exponere."
The account of Lamennais suffers from the defect of mixing him up too
much with his early friends. No doubt he owed to them the theory that
carried him through his career, for it may be found in Bonald, and also
in De Maistre, though not, perhaps, in the volumes he had already
published. It was less original than he at first imagined, for the
English divines commonly held it from the seventeenth century, and its
dirge was sung only the other day by the Bishop of Gloucester and
Bristol.[404] A Scottish professor would even be justified in claiming
it for Reid. But of course it was Lamennais who gave it most importance,
in his programme and in his life. And his theory of the common sense,
the theory that we can be certain of truth only by the agreement of
mankind, though vigorously applied to sustain authority in State and
Church, gravitated towards multitudinism, and marked him off from his
associates. When he said _quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_, he
was not thinking of the Christian Church, but of Christianity as old as
the creation; and the development he meant led up to the Bible, and
ended at the New Testament instead of beginning there. That is the
theory which he made so famous, which founded his fame and governed his
fate, and to which Dr. Flint's words apply when he speaks of celebrity.
In that sense it is a mistake to connect Lamennais with Möhler and
Newman; and I do not believe that he anticipated their teaching, in
spite of one or two passages which do not, on the face of them, bear
date B.C., and may, no doubt, be quoted for the opposite opinion.
In the same group Dr. Flint represents De Maistre as the teacher of
Savigny, and asserts that there could never be a doubt as to the
liberalism of Chateaubriand. There was none after his expulsion from
office; but there was much reason for doubting in 1815, when he
entreated the king to set bounds to his mercy; in 1819, when he was
contributing to the _Conservateur_; and in 1823, when he executed the
mandate of the absolute monarchs against the Spanish constitution. His
zeal for legitimacy was at all times qualified with liberal elements,
but they never became consistent or acquired the mastery until 1824. De
Maistre and Savigny covered the same ground at one point; they both
subjected the future to the past. This could serve as an argument for
absolutism and theocracy, and on that account was lovely in the eyes of
De Maistre. If it had been an argument the other way he would have cast
it off. Savigny had no such ulterior purpose. His doctrine, that the
living are not their own masters, could serve either cause. He rejected
a mechanical fixity, and held that whatever has been made by process of
growth shall continue to grow and suffer modification. His theory of
continuity has this significance in political science, that it supplied
a basis for conservatism apart from absolutism and compatible with
freedom. And, as he believed that law depends on national tradition and
character, he became indirectly and through friends a founder of the
theory of nationality.
The one writer whom Dr. Flint refuses to criticise, because he too
nearly agrees with him, is Renouvier. Taking this avowal in conjunction
with two or three indiscretions on other pages, we can make a guess, not
at the system itself, which is to console us for so much deviation, but
at its tendency and spirit The fundamental article is belief in divine
government. As Kant beheld God in the firmament of heaven, so too we can
see him in history on earth. Unless a man is determined to be an
atheist, he must acknowledge that the experience of mankind is a
decisive proof in favour of religion. As providence is not absolute, but
reigns over men destined to freedom, its method is manifested in the law
of progress. Here, however, Dr. Flint, in his agreement with Renouvier,
is not eager to fight for his cause, and speaks with a less jubilant
certitude. He is able to conceive that providence may attain its end
without the condition of progress, that the divine scheme would not be
frustrated if the world, governed by omnipotent wisdom, became steadily
worse. Assuming progress as a fact, if not a law, there comes the
question wherein it consists, how it is measured, where is its goal. Not
religion, for the Middle Ages are an epoch of decline. Catholicism has
since lost so much ground as to nullify the theories of Bossuet; whilst
Protestantism never succeeded in France, either after the Reformation,
when it ought to have prevailed, nor after the Revolution, when it ought
not. The failure to establish the Protestant Church on the ruins of the
old _régime_, to which Quinet attributes the breakdown of the
Revolution, and which Napoleon regretted almost in the era of his
concordat, is explained by Mr. Flint on the ground that Protestants were
in a minority. But so they were in and after the wars of religion; and
it is not apparent why a philosopher who does not prefer orthodoxy to
liberty should complain that they achieved nothing better than
toleration. He disproves Bossuet's view by that process of deliverance
from the Church which is the note of recent centuries, and from which
there is no going back. On the future I will not enlarge, because I am
writing at present in the HISTORICAL, not the PROPHETICAL, REVIEW. But
some things were not so clear in France in 1679 as they are now at
Edinburgh. The predominance of Protestant power was not foreseen, except
by those who disputed whether Rome would perish in 1710 or about 1720.
The destined power of science to act upon religion had not been proved
by Newton or Simon. No man was able to forecast the future experience of
America, or to be sure that observations made under the reign of
authority would be confirmed by the reign of freedom.
If the end be not religion, is it morality, humanity, civilisation,
knowledge? In the German chapters of 1874 Dr. Flint was severe upon
Hegel, and refused his notion that the development of liberty is the
soul of history, as crude, one-sided, and misunderstood. He is more
lenient now, and affirms that liberty occupies the final summit, that it
profits by all the good that is in the world, and suffers by all the
evil, that it pervades strife and inspires endeavour, that it is almost,
if not altogether, the sign, and the prize, and the motive in the onward
and upward advance of the race for which Christ was crucified. As that
refined essence which draws sustenance from all good things it is
clearly understood as the product of civilisation, with its complex
problems and scientific appliances, not as the elementary possession of
the noble savage, which has been traced so often to the primeval forest.
On the other hand, if sin not only tends to impair, but does inevitably
impair and hinder it, providence is excluded from its own mysterious
sphere, which, as it is not the suppression of all evil and present
punishment of wrong, should be the conversion of evil into an instrument
to serve the higher purpose. But although Dr. Flint has come very near
to Hegel and Michelet, and seemed about to elevate their teaching to a
higher level and a wider view, he ends by treating it coldly, as a
partial truth requiring supplement, and bids us wait until many more
explorers have recorded their soundings. That, with the trained capacity
for misunderstanding and the smouldering dissent proper to critics, I
might not mislead any reader, or do less than justice to a profound
though indecisive work, I should have wished to piece together the
passages in which the author indicates, somewhat faintly, the promised
but withheld philosophy which will crown his third or fourth volume. Any
one who compares pages 125, 135, 225, 226, 671, will understand better
than I can explain it the view which is the master-key to the book.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 403: _English Historical Review_, 1895.]
[Footnote 404: [Dr. Ellicott.]]
APPENDIX
By the kindness of the Abbot Gasquet we are enabled to supplement the
Bibliography of Acton's writings published by the Royal Historical
Society with the following additional items:--
In _The Rambler_, 1858
April--Burke.
July--[With Simpson] Mr. Buckle's Thesis and Method.
Short Reviews.
August--Mr. Buckle's Philosophy of History.
October--Theiner's _Documents inédits relatifs aux affaires religieuses
de France 1790-1800_, pp. 265-267.
December--The Count de Montalembert, pp. 421-428 and note, 432.
Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_, vols. i. and
ii. p. 429.
1859
January--Political Thoughts on the Church.
February--The Catholic Press.
September--Contemporary Events.
1860
September--National Defence.
Irish Education in Current Events.
1862
Correspondence.
The Danger of the Physical Sciences.
INDEX
Abbot, Archbishop, and Father Paul, 432
Abbott, Dr., on Bacon and Machiavelli, 228
Absolutism, causes contributing to, 288
impulse given to, by teaching of Machiavelli, 41
inherently present in France, 237-40
and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 121
the old, its most revolutionary act, 275
sanction of, 433
Absolutists, eighteenth century, their care solely for the State, 273
_Acta Sanctorum_ authority on the inception and early growth of the
Inquisition, 554
Acton, Lord--
Character and characteristics of--
Absolutism detested by, xxxi, xxxiv
admiration of, for George Eliot and for Gladstone, basis of, xxiii
Catholicism of, xii-xiv, xix, xx, xxvii, xxviii;
attitude of, to doctrine of Papal Infallibility, xxv, xxvi;
reality of his faith, xviii _et seq._
ideals cherished by, document embodying, xxxviii-ix;
need of directing ideals practised by, xxii, xxiv
individualistic tendencies of, xxviii
intense individuality of, xvi
objection of, to doctrine of moral relativity, xxxii, xxxiii
personality of, as exhibited in present volume, xii;
greatness of, xxii, xxxvii, xxxviii
severity of his judgments, xxv, xxvii
Literary activity and tastes of--
contributions of, to periodicals, light thrown by, on his erudition
and critical faculty, ix
_History of Liberty_ projected by, xxxv
as leader-writer, ix
preference of, for matter rather than manner in literature, xxii
literary activity, three chief periods in, xii-xiv
writings of, planned, xxxv, xxxvi;
and completed, ix _et passim_;
why comparatively few, xxxv-vii;
qualities in, iv, x, xvi;
instance of, xi;
the real inspiration of, and of his life, xxi;
style of, xxxiv _et seq._
origin, birth, and environment of, xiv, xviii, xix, xxxiii
political errors of, xxviii _et seq._;
on freedom, xxxi;
on Liberalism, xxv, xxx
on Stahl, 391
Adams, J.Q., on the Christian faith, 585
denying the influence of the pilgrims on the American Revolution, 584
despondency of, as to American constitution, 579
discriminating between American and French Revolutions, 580
on Hamilton, 582
Adams, the younger, 578
Addison, J., inconsistent ideas of, regarding liberty, 53
Address of the Bishops at Rome, Wiseman's draft, the facts
concerning, 444-5;
attacks on, of the _Patrie_, 439, 443, 444, 445;
Wiseman's reply, _and see Home and Foreign Review_
Ahrens, _cited_ on national government, 227
Alamanni, forecasting the Huguenot massacres, 109
Albertus Magnus, 557
Albigenses, how dealt with by Montfort, 556
why persecuted, 168
Aldobrandini, Cardinal Hippolyto, _see_ Clement VIII.
Alessandria, Cardinal of, Michielli Bonelli, Legate of Pius V. mission of,
to Spain, Portugal, and France, 112;
his famous companion, 113;
his ostensible purpose, its failure, information given to, on the
forthcoming massacre, 113-14
after the St. Bartholomew 140
Alfonso, King of Aragon, proscription by, of heretics, 558
Alva, Duke of, Catherine de' Medici's message to, on the massacres, 122
failure of, in the Low Countries, 103
judgment of, on the St. Bartholomew, 124
letter of, on the St. Bartholomew. 108 & _note_
ordered to slay all Huguenot prisoners, 141-2
America, colonists of, opposition of Lords Chatham and Camden to, 55
early settlers in, Catholic and Protestant, contrasted action as to
religious liberty, 187
doctrine of rights of man, originated from, 55
United States, democracy in, 64
government, based on Burke's political philosophy, 56;
how the value of this foundation was negatived, 56
humour in, 579
national institutions of, attitude to, of Americans of to-day, not
that of the founders, 579
place of, in political science, 578
presidency of Monroe, "the era of good feeling," 56
progress of democracy in, 84
religion in, Döllinger on, 339-40
representation in, defect concerning, 579
_American Commonwealth The_, by James Bryce, _review_, 575
American Constitution, Hamilton's position regarding, 581;
its development due to Marshall, _ib._
how cemented, 579
government, confederate scheme of, 577
Judge Cooley on, 580
liberty, Judge Cooley on, 580
revolution, the abstract revolution in perfection, 586
no point of comparison between it and the French, 580
not inspired by the beliefs of the Pilgrim Fathers, 584-5
spirit of, 580, 587
Americans, attitude of the best towards politics, 578
Anabaptists, destructive tendency of their teaching, 157, 169, 171, 174,
175, 178, 185;
and its effect on Luther, 155
intolerance of, 171-2
views of reformers as to their toleration, 157, 164, 167, 176
Andreæ. Lutheran divine, on the Huguenots, 145
Angelis, de Cardinal, manager of elections to Commission on Dogma, 529
President of Vatican Council, 534
Anglicanism, appreciation of Döllinger for some exponents of, 395
and growth of other sects, 334-7
progress of, 329-32
Anjou, Confession of, on the St. Bartholomew, 107
Anjou, Duke of (_see also_ Henry III.), and the crown of Poland, 105,
120, 144
schemes for marriage of, with Queen Elizabeth, 105
guilt of, for the St. Bartholomew, 110
orders of, for Huguenot massacre in his lands, 119
Annalists, method of, compared with that of scientific historians, 233
Antiquity, authority of State excessive in, 4
of liberty proved by recent historians, 5
Antonelli, Cardinal, advice of, to Bonnechose, 529
discussion of Infallibilty by Vatican Council, denied by, 518-19
on temporal power of Papacy, 414
Apologists for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 147-8
Apology of Confession of Augsburg on excommunication, 158
Arianism among the Teutonic tribes, 199
suggested, of Petavius, and why, 592
Aristides and democracy, 68
Aristocracy, destruction of, in the Reign of Terror, 262
early eighteenth-century, 273-4
government by, advocated by Pythagoras, 21;
government by, danger of, 20
Roman, struggle with plebeians, 13, 14
Aristotle on class interests, 69
estimation of, by Döllinger, 406
_Ethics_ of, democracy condemned by, 71
_Politics_ of, 22, 79;
makes concession to democracy, 72
saying of, reflecting the illiberal sentiments of his age, 18
Arles, Council of, and the Count of Toulouse, 565
Arnaud and the saying, "God knows His own," 567
Arnauld, 429
Arnim, Baron, influence of, at Vatican Council, 506
interview of, with Döllinger, 426
Arnold of Brescia, 559
Arragon, constructive science of its people, 557
heresy in (1230), 556;
lead of the country in persecution, 557
Artists, method of, compared with that of scientific historians, 233
Ascoli, Cecco d', fate of, 564-5
Ashburton, Lady, 382
Asoka (Buddhist king), first to proclaim and establish representative
government, 26
Assassination, _see also_ Murder and Regicide
Catherine de' Medici's plan, inspired by member of Council of Trent, 216
expediency of, view of Swedish bishops, 217
as a political weapon, 213-14
religious, considered expedient, 325
the reward of heresy, a doctrine of the Church in Middle Ages, 216
Athenagoras _cited_, 70
Athenians, character of, 11
Athens, constitution of, rapid decline in career of, 11;
revision of, provided for by Solon with good results, 7, 8
democracy of, 66;
tyranny manifested by, 12
government by consent superseded government by compulsion, under Solon, 7
laws of, revised by Solon, 6
political equality at, 68
Republic of, causes of ruin of, 70
death of Socrates crowning act of guilt of, 12
reform in, came too late, 12, 13
Aubigné, Merle d', and the charge against the Bordeaux clergy, 127 _note_
Auger, Edmond, S.J., and the Bordeaux massacres, 127
Augsburg, Confession of, axiom concerning importance of, in Luther's
system of politics, 159
Apology of, on excommunication, 158
Austria, Concordat in, its failure, 292
opposition to Vatican politics in, and to the Council, 503, 506
policy of repression in, after Waterloo, 283
representation of, on Vatican Council, 509
Austria, Don Juan of, and the victory of Lepanto, 104;
effect of, marred by Charles IX., 105
Austrian Empire, nationalities in, 295, 296;
why substantial, one of the most perfect States, 298
Austrian power in Italy, effect of, on nationality, 287
rule in Italy, error of, 285
Authorities, use made of, revealing qualities of historians, 235
Authority of the Church questioned through Frohschammer's
excommunication, 477-8
Authority, supreme, of the Church, 192;
attitude of _Home and Foreign Review_ towards, 482-91
Avaux, D', view of expedient political massacre, 218
Avignon, removal of the Papacy to, 370;
strife between, and the Franciscans, 552
Ayamonte, Spanish Ambassador to Paris, 123
Baader, F.X. von, estimate of, by Döllinger and Martensen, 376;
work of, 377;
father-in-law of Lasaulx, 405
Schelling's coolness to, 381
Baboeuf, proclaimer of Communism, 273
Bach, administration of, in Austria, 283
Bacon, Francis, 562
advocate of passive obedience to kings, 48
modern attacks on, 377
on bookish politicians, 575
on St. Thomas Aquinas, 37
influence of Machiavelli on, 228
_cited_ on political justification, 220
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 44
Baden (1862), nationality in, 295
Baglioni, family of, models for Machiavelli, 212
Bain, T., interpreter of Locke, 220
Ballanche and liberal Catholicism, 588
Ballerini, influence on Döllinger, 387
Balmez, classed as Ultramontane, 451
Baltimore, synod of, and Infallibility, 499
Baluze, 559
Barbarians, the, become instrument of the Church by introducing single
system of law, 244
Barberini, Cardinal, on reason for condemning De Thou's History, 147
Baronius, 379, 429;
Döllinger's study of, 387
Barrot, O., opposed to universal suffrage, 590
Barrow, Isaac, Döllinger's Roman antidote to, 387
Basel, Church government at, under OEcolampadius, 176
Baudrillart, cited on Machiavelli's universality, 226
Baumgarten, Crusius, on political expediency, 230
works of, esteemed by Döllinger, 381
Baur, Ferdinand, on historical facts, 385
work of, estimated by Döllinger, 381, 404
Bavaria, Catholic stronghold (1572), 103
Baxter, Richard, 416
Bayle, Pierre, _cited_ on Servetus, 185
Bayonne, conference of, massacre of St. Bartholomew the outcome of,
108, 109 & _note_, 124
Beaconsfield, Earl of, story of, 551;
view of Döllinger on, 391
Beauville, bearer to Rome of news of the St. Bartholomew, 132-3
Beccaria, on importance of success as result of action, 223
Belgian revolution, causes united in, 284
Belgium, representation of, on Vatican Council, 507
vigorous growth of municipal liberties in, 38
Bellarmine, Cardinal, deceived by hierarchical fictions, 420
"Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," maxim utilised by Polish
bishops, 103
Benedict XIV., Pope, 148
scholarship under, 387
Bennettis, De, appreciated by Döllinger, 387
Bentham, Jeremy, pioneer in abolition of legal abuses, 3
principle of greatest happiness, 223
Berardi, Cardinal, influence of, on Döllinger, 387
proposed announcement of discussion of Infallibility at Vatican Council
set aside, 518
Bergier, 573
Berlin, 378
Bernard, Brother, 564
Bernays, 432
Besold, followers of Machiavelli denounced by, 225
Beust, Count, on Vatican Council, 503;
indifference to, 509
Beza, Theodore, death of Servetus approved by, 185
defence of Calvin, 183
on the Huguenot massacres, on toleration, and on the civil authority
over religious crime, 146
on religious assassination, 326
Beziers, siege of, 567
Bianchi, recommended by Döllinger, 387
Bible, inspiration of, 513-15
as sole guide in all things, Luther's principle, 154, 158, 159, 161
Bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, how dealt with by Luther, and why, 160
Bilio, Cardinal, junior president of Vatican Council, 534
Biner, apologist of the St. Bartholomew, 148
Biran, Maine de, _cited_ on political expediency, 220
Bishops, the, address to Pius, in preparation for Vatican Council, 494, 499
attitude of, towards Bull _Multiplices inter_, 520-25
and the Papacy, 511
protesting, charge of sharing Döllinger's views, repudiated by, 538
deception of, at Vatican Council, 518-526
hostility of, harm done by, 531
withdrawal of, from close of Vatican Council, 549
Bismarck, Count, on State participation in Vatican Council, 506
Bizarri, policy of, on Vatican Council, 534
Blanc, Louis, a secret worker for overthrow of Louis Philippe, 92
Blasphemy, reasons for its punishment by the Reformers, 169, 175
Blois, French court at, 112;
Coligny at, 1571., 115
Blondel, Döllinger's gratitude to, 393
Blue Laws of Connecticut, 55
Boccaccio, Giovanni, revision of the _Decamerone_, 215
Boccapaduli, Papal secretary, speech of, on the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, 136
Bodin, _cited_ on _Il Principe_, 218
Bohemia, religious future of, in relation to the case of Hus, 571
Bolingbroke, Lord, slight knowledge of Machiavelli's works, 218
Bologna, University of, 556
Bona, Cardinal, urged suppression of _Liber Diurnus_, 516
Bonald, and absolute monarchy, 467
and Lamennais's theory, 593
ultramontanism of, 451
Bonelli, Michiel, _see_ Alessandria, Cardinal of
Boniface VIII., Pope, Bull of, on supreme spiritual power, 324;
vindications of, inspired by Döllinger, 391
Bonnechose, Cardinal, share of, in elections to Commission of
Dogma, 529, 532
urged French representation on Vatican Council, 504
Bordeaux, the Huguenot massacres of, 127
Boretius, _cited_ on Frederick the Great and Machiavelli, 229
Borghese, Cardinal, afterwards Paul V., Pope, his knowledge of the
planned character of St. Bartholomew, 114
Borgia, compiler of history, 387
family, models for Machiavelli, 212
Francis, S.J., 113
Borromeo, Cardinal, 108 _& notes_, 108-9
Bossuet, advocate of passive obedience to kings, 47, 429, 434
_Defensio_ feared, 378
indignation of, 148
and the idea of development, 591, 592, 593, 595
on love of country, 20 _& note_
work of, compared to Döllinger, 424
Boucher, 45;
on Henry III. of France and reliance on maxims of _Il Principe_, 215
Bourbon, Cardinal of, unguarded speech of, on coming Huguenot massacre, 111
Etienne de, inquisitor, works of, 558-9
House of, French and Spanish, contests of the Habsburgs with, 275
House of, upholders of supremacy of kingship over people, 47
Bourges, massacre of Huguenots commanded at, by Charles IX. La Chastre's
refusal to obey, 115
Boys, Du, defender of the Inquisition, 573
Brandenburg, Albrecht, Margrave of, and the Anabaptists, 157, _& see_
156 _note_
Brantôme on the death of Elizabeth of Valois, 104
Brescia, Bishop of, _see_ Guala
city, centre of historical work, 387
Brewer, intercourse with Döllinger, 402
Brief of Pius IX. to Archbishop of Munich, and attitude of _Home and
Foreign Review_ to supreme authority of the Church, 482-491
Brill, the, Dutch maritime victory, its importance, 103
British empire, why substantially one of the most perfect states, 298
Brittany, and the Huguenot massacres, 119
Brixen, Bishop of, on Papal authority, 543
Brosch, on Cardinal Pole and _Il Principe_, 214
Brougham, Lord, advice to students, 393
Bruce, house of, struggle with house of Plantagenet, 35
Bruno, 430
Bryce, James, _The American Commonwealth_, review, 575
Bucer, Martin, in favour of persecution, 172-73
Buch, De, 430
Buchanan, 44, 45
Buckeridge, Blondel, Döllinger's Roman antidote to, 387
Buckle, H.T., 589, 590
Bugge, discoveries of, 405
Bull, censure of the Reformation of, 416
Bull of Boniface VIII., on supreme spiritual authority, 324
Bull of Gregory XIII. relating to the Huguenot massacres, 134-45 & _note_;
not admitted into official collections 101
Bull _Multiplices inter_, of Vatican Council, 520-22
_Bullarium Dominicanum_, the, referred to by Lea, 563
Bullinger, Heinrich, death of Servetus approved by, 185
_cited_ on persecution, 174-76
Burd, L.A., edition of Machiavelli's _Il Principe_, introduction to,
212-31;
skill as exponent of Machiavelli's political system, 212
text of the _Discorsi_ produced by, 227
Burgundy, refusal of its governors to massacre Huguenots, 118
Burke, Edmund, 580;
Döllinger's political model, 393, 417
French Revolution denounced by, 219
on the moral and political as distinct from the merely geographical, 294
on the partition of Poland, 275
on revolution, 587
_cited_ on political oppression in Ireland, 253, _note_
on the rights of mankind, 56
Burning of heretics, Lea's view on, 568
Byzantine despotism, due to combined influence of Church and State, 33
Bzovius, authority on the Inquisition, 554
Cadiz Constitution, 1812., 89;
its overthrow the triumph of the restored monarchy of France, 89
Cæsarius of Heisterbach, authority of, distrusts by Lea, 567
Calhoun, J.C., indictment against democracy, 93
Calvin, John, 176, 585
action of, with regard to Servetus, 184;
and his defence of the same, 181
attitude of, to the civil power, 179-81
hostility to, of Lutherans, 145
republican views of, 42, 43
system of Church government, 177-79
Calvinism in Germany, 345
Calvinists, English, tolerated by Melanchthon, 170 & _note_
Camden, Lord, _cited_ in disfavour of American taxation, 55
Campanella, ideal society of, 270
Campeggio, Cardinal, commentary of, on Zanchini, 559
Canello, _cited_ on Machiavelli's unpopularity, 226
Canning, G., on the question as to who reigned, George III. or his
ministers, 583;
his wisdom, 40
Capalti, Cardinal, junior President of Vatican Council, 534
Capecelatro, 412
Capilupi, Camillo, author of _Lo Stratagemma di Carlo IX._, 129;
its bearing on the position of the Cardinal of Lorraine, 130;
and others, on Alessandria's information as to forthcoming massacre
of Huguenots, 114
family, glorification by, of Charles IX. for the St. Bartholomew,
128 _et seq._
Hippolyto, Bishop of Fano, support given by, to Charles IX., 128-9
Capito, Wolfgang Fabricius, reformer, 172, 174
Capponi, friend of Döllinger, 420
as federalist, 414
Döllinger's study of, 402
Capuchins, General of, and the Inquisition, 553
Carbonari, supporters of, 284;
their impotence, 286
Carcassonne, no Huguenot massacres at, 142
Cardinal Wiseman, 436
Cardinals, approval by, of the St. Bartholomew, 140
opposition of, to Vatican Council, 493
French, and absolute monarchy, 41
Carena, "_De Officio S.S. Inquisitionis_," valuable matter in, on the
Inquisition, 560
Carius, works of, edited by Trent Commissioners, 215
Carlstadt, Andreas, polygamy defended by, 159
Carlyle, Thomas, on truth as basis of success, 223
Carneades, his infusion of Greek ideas into minds of Roman statesmen, 16
Carouge, and the Rouen massacre of Huguenots, 119
Caspari, at Döllinger's house, 405
Castagna, Papal Nuncio, 117
Catechism of St. Sulpice, Lea's deductions from, 571
Catherine de' Medici, Queen-Mother of France, advisers urging, to destroy
Coligny and his party, 108-9 & _notes_
challenge of, to Queen Elizabeth, 122
children of, trained on Machiavelli's principles, 215
hints of the intended massacre, 110, 111, 113-14
jealous for her merit in the St. Bartholomew, 130
levity of her religious feelings, 122
long premeditation by, of the massacre, 115
methods of, to balance Catholic and Huguenot power, 103
wrath of, at Gregory's demand for revocation of the edict of
Toleration, 137
on the death of her daughter, Queen of Spain, 104 & _note_
_cited_, 580-81
Catholic attitude to Huguenot massacres, 146-8;
change in, how induced, 148
Church, _see_ Church
countries, revolution more frequent in, than in Protestant, and why, 278
Emancipation Act, spiritual fruits of, gathered by Wiseman, 437
legitimists and democracy, link between, 590
literature, phases of, last hundred years as to principles in politics
and science, 450-51
theory on the proper way to deal with heretics, discredit caused by,
140-41
use of subterfuge, 454
Catholic and Protestant intolerance, difference between, 165, 168-70,
186-7
Catholicism, in the Dark Ages, 200
ground lost by, since the Middle Ages, 593
holiness of, hated by its enemies, 437
identification of, with some secular cause an Ultramontane
peculiarity, 451
liberal, supposed founder of, 588
spreads as an institution as well as a doctrine, 246
tendency of, 189
Catholics, English, peculiarities of their position, 438;
unity aimed at by them, _ib._
treatment of, by the Reformers, 157, 162, 163, 168, 174, 178-9
Cavalli, Venetian ambassador, on the bad management of the St.
Bartholomew, 109
Celts, Gallic and British, why conquered, 241
the materials less than the impulse of history supplied by, 240
Champel, half-burned book from, 569
_Chanson de la Croisade_, 565
Character, national, influence of, on events, limits of, 557
Charlemagne, 409
Charles Albert, King of Piedmont, revolution under, 285
Charles I., King of England, execution of, a triumph for Royalism, 51
Charles II., King of England, secret treaty between him and Louis XIV., 53
Charles V., Emperor, records of reign of, 409
Charles IX., King of France, active conciliation by, of Protestants, 105
alliances made by, with Protestant rulers, 105
attempts of, to appease Protestant powers after the massacre, 120
blamed for "leniency," "cruel clemency," etc., in the massacre,
126, 141, 143
Cardinal Lorraine's eulogy of, for the massacre, 112
civil war resulting from persecutions during his minority, 103
date when Catherine suggested the massacre to him, 115
desirous of thwarting Spain, his measures to that end, 104, 105
effect on his attitude to Rome of his success in crushing Huguenots, 137
explanations offered by, various, on the massacre, 118
hints dropped by, of the coming massacre, 111
letters of, to Rome, fate of, 101
letter from, to the Pope, announcing the massacre, 132;
reasons alleged in, 133
massacre of Huguenot prisoners ordered by, 141
methods of, in the provincial massacres, 118 _et seq._
Naudé's Apology for its basis, 147
negotiations of, for Anjou's marriage with Queen Elizabeth, 105
Nuncio on Charles IX., tenacity of his authority, 137
panegyric on, by Panigarola, 125
personal share of, in the massacre, approved by Mendoça, 124
praised for his conduct as to the massacre, 112, 125, 128-9, 136,
140, 147
suppression by, of materials for history of the massacre, 121 & _note_
threats of Pius V. to, 139
tracts on his danger from Coligny, and on his joy at the massacre, 131
on his plan for the massacre, 117
death of, Sorbin's account, 126-7
his wife and her parentage, 105
Charron, on subordination to universal reason, 46
Chastre, La, refuses to execute Charles IX.'s orders as to Huguenot
massacre at Bourges, 115
Chateaubriand, Marquis de, 464
liberalism of, discussed, 594
maxim of, on the timidity of the better sort of men, 582;
endorsed by Menou, _ib._
transcription by, of Salviati's despatches, 102
Chatham, Lord, against taxation of American colonists, 55
Châtillon, House of, feud of, with the Guises, 112
Chemnitz, Lutheran divine, on Calvinists, 145
Cherbuliez, the elder, on the power of abstract ideas, 585
Cheverus, 402
Chinese, stationary national character of, 241
Christ, His divine sanction the true definition of the authority of
government, 29
Christian states, constitution of the Church as model for, 192
Christianity, appeal to barbarian rulers, 33
considered as force, not doctrine, by Döllinger, 383-7
in the Dark Ages, 200
as history, Döllinger's view of, 380
how employed by Constantine, 30, 31
influence of, on the human race, 200;
and on popular government, 79
primitive, penetration of influence over State gradual, 27
progress of, must be supplemented by secular power, 246, 247
teaching of Stoics nearest approach to that of, 24, 25
universality of, influence of nations on, 317-21
why Romans opposed establishment of, 195, 198
freedom in, appeal of Christianity to rulers, 33
effects on, of Teutonic invasion, 32
influence on, of feudalism, 35
political influence of the Reformation on, 43
supplying faculty of self-government in classical era, 31
political advances of Middle Ages due to, 39
rise of Guelphs and Ghibellines as affecting, 36
rise and progress of absolute monarchy as affecting, 41, 47, 48
rise of religious liberty and toleration as resulting from, 52, 53
rise and progress of political liberty due to, 56, 57, 58
sovereignty of people in Middle Ages acknowledged in consequence of, 35
Christina, Queen, of Sweden, on truth, 316
_Chronicle, The_, Acton's leaders in, ix
Chrysippus, views of, 73
Church, the, _see also_ Catholicism, Papacy, Popes, _and_ Rome attitude
of, to isolation of nations, 292
attitude of, to Wycliffe, Hus, and Luther, 271;
difference in their attitude to her, _ib._
both accepting and preparing the individual to receive, 450;
how she performs this, _ib._
censure of, ineffectual against Machiavelli's political doctrines, 218
condemnation of Frohschammer's book, and excommunication, 477
and the development of Machiavelli's policy, 225
difficulties of, how nourished, 455
Döllinger's vindication of, 404
effect on, of growth of feudalism, 245
fables of, Döllinger's investigation of, in _Papstfabeln des
Mittelalters_, 418-21
free action of, test of free constitution of State, 246
Goldwin Smith's unfair estimate of, 234
in Ireland, Goldwin Smith's views on, 259
great work (salvation of souls) and its subsidiaries, 448-9
hostility to, roused by conflicts with science and literature, 461-91
indebted to the barbarians for corporate position, 244
manifestation of, how seen, 269
minority in, in agreement with Döllinger, 313
not justified in resisting political law or scientific truth on
grounds of peril in either to the faith, 449 _et seq._
not openly attacked, eighteenth century, 273-4
her peculiar mission to act as channel of grace not her sole
mission, 448-9
political thoughts on, 188;
authority, supreme, the Church as, 192;
Catholicism in the "Dark Ages," 200;
Christianity, influence of, on human race, 200;
divine order in the world, establishment of, 189;
English race, Christianity a cause of greatness of, 204;
liberty, influence of Christianity on, 203;
religion, true, definition of, 197;
Romans, persecution of Christians by, reasons for, 196, 198
position of, in State, regulation difficult, 252
struggle of feudalism with, 35
tolerance of, in early days, 186
view of, on government, 260
Church discipline, Bucer's system of, 172-3
government, under control in the modern State, 151
Church of England, internal condition of, 437-8
establishment, English and Irish, difference between, 259
Church and State Teutonic, quarrel between, cause of revival of
democracy, 80
relations of, 150-52, 162, 163-4
union of, creating Byzantine despotism, 33;
effect of, on paganism, 33
views on, of Anabaptists, 171-2;
Bucer, 172-3;
Calvin, 177 _et seq._;
Luther, 154, 156, 157-8, 159, 161-4, 180;
Melanchthon, 164 _et seq._;
OEcolampadius, 176-7;
Zwingli, 173-4;
Reformers in general, 181
Cicero, 409
Cienfuegos, Cardinal and Jesuit, view of, on Charles IX., 148
_Circumspice_, as motto for the Catholic Church, 269
Citeaux, 567
Citizenship in Athens, 68
"City of the Sun," an ideal society described by, 270
Civil authority over religious crime (_see also_ Passive obedience),
Beza's view, 146
liberty, point of unison of, with religious liberty, 151;
its two worst enemies, 300
War of America, consolidating effects of, on the Constitution, 579
society, its aim and end, 298
Civilisation, despotism in relation to, 5, 6, 27
liberty the product of, 596
mature, liberty the fruit of, 1
social, unconnected with political civilisation, 243
in Western Europe retarded by five centuries owing to Teutonic invasion
and domination, 32, 33
_Civilta Cattolica_, organ of Pius IX., 497
Classical literature, subjects not found in, 25, 26
Clay, H., despondency of, as to American institutions, 579
Clement IV., Pope, directions of, for Inquisitors, 560
Clement V., Pope, decree of, on privilege of Inquisitors, deductions
on, of Lea, 566
share of, in the trial of the Templars, 563
_cited_ on political honesty, 214
publication of _Il Principe_ authorised by, 214
Clement VIII., Pope (Aldobrandini), testimony of, on premeditation of
the St Bartholomew, 114-15 & _notes_
Clergy, immunities of, 34;
unpopular in Italy, 363
upholders of absolute monarchy, 41
Clifford, Lord, acquaintance of, with Döllinger, 388
Colbert, admirers of, in accord with Helvetius, 220
Coleridge, S.T., metaphysics of, Döllinger's love for, 381
Coligny, Admiral de, 105;
death of, origin and motives of, discussed, 101 _et seq._, 117-18;
the story of, 106, 111 _et seq._, 118;
the question of its premeditation discussed, 106-7 _et seq._
alleged plot to kill Charles IX., 131, 135, 136
murderer of, 124;
reward of, from Philip II., 123,
and presented to the Pope, 144 & _note_;
nationality (alleged) of, 124
Colocza, Archbishop of, head of Council of Bishops, 1867., 499
Cologne, Archbishop of, loose reading of terms of the legal reform
of Index, 531
Cologne, Synod at, and infallibility, 499
Commines, Philip de, on levying of taxes, 39
_Commonwealth, The American_, by James Bryce, review, 575
Commonwealths, founders of, 70
Communism, a subversive theory, proclaimed by Baboeuf, 273;
theory of its antiquity due to Critias, 17
Comte, Auguste, historic treatment of philosophy, 380
Concordat, Austrian, failure of, 292
Confederacy essential to a great democracy, 277
Confederate scheme of American government, 577
Conference of Bayonne, resolutions inimical to Huguenots taken
at, 108-9 & _notes_
Confession of Anjou, on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 107
Confession of Augsburg, apology of, on excommunication, 158
importance of, recognised by Luther, 159
Conflicts with Rome, 461-91
Connecticut, Blue Laws of, 55
Conrad, Master (of Marburg), principles inspiring, 556;
as confessor of St. Elizabeth, 570
Conscience, freedom of, a postulate of religious revolution, 153
in politics, expedient elasticity of, 212-14
_Conservateur_, the, 594
Conservatism, indirect elections not always a safeguard of, 2;
restriction of suffrage in relation to, 96
Conservatism of American revolutionists, 580
European, 583
Constance, Council of, support of, to the Inquisition, 570
_Constantine, donation of_, 469;
political Christianity of, 30, 31
Constantinople, seat of Roman Empire transferred to, 30
Patriarchs of, _see_ Eutychius
Constitution, American, consolidated by the Civil War, 579
despondency of its founders as to, 579
Hamilton's views on, 581-3
not understood by Tocqueville, 576
Constitution of England, Sir E. May on, 62
Constitutions, evolution of, 58
growth of, nature of, 5
Periclean, characteristic of, 10
view of Guelph writers respecting, 36
how ancient, differ from modern, 19
mixed, difficulty of establishing and impossibility of maintaining, 20
Contarini, Gaspar, 214
Contarini, Venetian ambassador, on the expected change in France
(as to the Huguenots), 109
Conti, story of priests and the St. Bartholomew disproved, 126
Cooley, Judge, _cited_ by Bryce, on American liberty and government, 580
Copernican system, the, derided by Luther, 160
Corsica, 105
Cortes, Donoso, classed as ultramontane, 451
Council of Arles and the Count of Toulouse, 565
Council of Constance, support of, to the Inquisition, 570
Council of Trent, 111, 138;
Döllinger's investigations of, 431;
and tradition, 513
Council of Ten, Molino on, 213
Cournot, intellectual qualities of, 589
Cousin, Victor, 224, 588, 589
historic treatment of philosophy, 380
Cranmer, 430
Creuzer, 405
Critias, _cited_, 70
originator of notion of original communism of mankind, 17
Croker, _see_ Canning
Cromwell, Oliver, Constitutions of, short-lived, 50
study of, 410
Cromwell, Thomas, acquaintance of, with _Il Principe_, 214
death of, a joy of Melanchthon, 217
_Culturgeschichte_ of Hellwald, 573
Cumberland, expositor of Grotius, 46
Cusa, Cardinal of, on Christian doctrine, 514
Daniel, historian, 588
Dante, Döllinger's return to study of, 433
key to, where found, 574
views of, on conscience, 562
and Cecco d'Ascoli, on schism, 564
Danton, his action in the Reign of Terror, 266
Darboy, Archbishop, on Papal Infallibility, 547
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 522
Daru, revival by, of Hohenlohe's policy, 511
Darwin, Charles, estimate of Carlyle, 223
Deàk on Hungarian administration, 510
Decree, the first, issued to Vatican Council, 531;
withdrawn, 535
Defoe, Daniel, on want of principle among contemporary politicians, 53
"De Haereticis," tract on toleration, 182
Delbrück, criticism of Macaulay's power of historical deduction, 385
Delicieux, fall of, conclusions on, of Lea, 563, 564
Democracy (_see also_ Will of the People), alliance of, with despotism, 238
alliance of, with socialism baneful, 92, 93, 98
attitude to, of Aristotle, 71, 72
and Catholic Legitimists, link between, 590
curbing of, by ancient constitutions, 19
definition and tendencies of, 62
enlightened ideas of Lilburne on, 83
essence of, 7
federalism most effective check on, 98
in fourteenth century, 80
government by, danger of, 20
a great, in relation to self-government, 277
modern mistakes in true conception of, 93, 94
in Pennsylvania, 84
pervading evil of, 97
political writers against, 93
Presbyterianism and, 81, 82
present aim, 95
principles of, advocated by Pericles, 9
progress of, in Europe, 85
revival of, to what due, 80
ancient, partial solution of, by popular government, 79
Athenian, tyranny manifested by, 12
Swiss, 90
_Democracy in Europe_, by Sir Erskine May, 61
Democratic method of Socrates, 71
principle, triumph of, in France, results of, 287
Denifle, Father, 574
Denmark, religion in, Döllinger on, 340-31
Derby, Lord, cited, 189
Descartes, advocate of passive obedience to kings, 48
Despotic spirit, old, its two adversaries, 276
Despotism after peace of Westphalia, 325
alliance of democracy with, 238
emancipation of mankind from, to what due, 24, 25
overpowering strength of, the doom of classical civilisation, 27
product of civilisation, 5, 6
_see also_ Absolutism
Development, _see also_ Progress
and its earlier supporters, 592
Flint on, topic discussed, 591, 592
Diocletian's persecution of the Christians due to attempt to transform
Roman government into despotism of Eastern type, 30, 31
Dispensation, the, for the Navarre marriage long withheld, 128 & _note_;
price, assumed, for, ib.;
never granted, 131-2;
Charles IX.'s hope regarding, 133
Divine right of freeholders established by Revolution of 1688., 54
of kings, principle of, led to advocacy of passive obedience, 47
of the people, 36, _see also_ Will of the People with respect to
election of monarch, 35
Divine order in the world, establishment of, 189
Djakovar, Bishop of, on validity of Vatican Council's decrees, 549
Doctrine, danger from, motive for religious persecution in pagan
and mediæval times, 251
Dogma, Commission on, at Vatican Council, election and proceedings
of, 529-31
Dolcino, two versions of the story of, 555, 568
Döllinger, Dr. J.J. Ignatius von, his attacks on Papal Infallibility,
538, 545;
on episcopal authority, in Council, 545
character of, 403
declaration of, on papal necessity for temporal power, 312-13
fame of, 463
historical insight of, limitations of, 409-10
judgments of, compared to Möhler's, 378;
their gentleness, 410
influences acting upon, earlier and later studies, intercourse,
literatures, etc.--evolution due to--375-6, 379-82, 383, 386-9,
392-3, 399;
later views of, 396, 425-36
later life of, 399
and Möhler in Munich, views at variance, 377-80
politics and their interest for, 400-403
reliance of scholars on, in theological difficulties, 382-3
silence of followers of, 313-15
style of, 375-435; own estimate of, 432;
views on, and methods of, 383, 385, 389-92
tract attributed to, on Infallibility, 512, 513
value as historian of the Church, 408-10
views of, compared to Möhler's, 378-9;
on temporal power, 301-74
visits of, to Oxford, 403; to Rome, 410-14
Works by--
_Church History_, interpretations of, 379-435;
source of, 386;
new edition of, refused by, 392-3
_Heidenthum und Judenthum_, publication of, 405-7
_Hippolytus und Kallistus_, publication of, 404-5
_Kirche und Kirchen_, argument of, 414-18;
description of, 384-6;
source of, 386;
preface to, _cited_ on temporal authority of the Church, 303-12;
purpose of, 371-4
_Papstfabeln des Mittetalters_, spurious authority of the Church,
418-21
_Philosophumena_, vindication of Rome, after publication of, by, 404
_Reformation_, preparation for, 392-4;
publication of, 394;
ridiculed in Rome, 411;
style of, 393-7
_cited on_ attitude of Pius IX. and the Council, 371
character of Pius IX., 365-6
Council of Trent, 432
England's attitude to temporal power of Pope, 415
German loyalty to the Church, 370-71
Luther, 397
mistaken judgments of youth, 429
St. Dominic, 428
the temporal power of the Pope, 414-15
Dominicans, the, theology of, discountenanced, 498
Dominis, De, 432
Dorner, 389
Dort, Canons of, 580
Doyle, 402
Duchesne, Abbé, 400, 574
on the idea of development, and what impeded its acceptance, 592-3
Dupanloup, 400, 425;
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 522, 526
defence of Syllabus by, 424
opposition of, to Papal temporal power, 412
Duperron, Cardinal, on Arianism, apparent, in St. Irenæus and Tertullian,
592
Duplessis-Mornay, forebodings of, as to Huguenot perils, 107
Dutch independence due to maritime successes, 103
Dynastic interest, dominant in old European system, 273
at the Congress of Vienna, 283
Ebrard, Döllinger's opinion of work of, 420
Ecclesiastical authority, functions of its office, 460
Echard, authority on the Inquisition, 554
book by, on St. Thomas, pages by another, printed in, 558-9
Eckstein, character of, 400
École des Chartes, pupils of, methods of, 561
École Française, 574
Edessa, Archbishop of, at commission of preparation for Vatican Council,
500
Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, an inconsistency, 170
not approved by Innocent XI., 147
remarks on, 260
of Pacification, 108
of Toleration, deceitful, of Charles IX., 117, 135
Elections, indirect, 97;
not always a safeguard of conservatism, 2
Elizabeth, Queen of England, Catherine de' Medici's challenge to a
massacre of Catholics, 122
Döllinger's lenient view of, 410
murder of, sanctioned by Pius V., 139
not alienated by Charles IX.'s Huguenot massacres, 120
proposed league of, for Protestant defence, Lutheran protest, 145
Elizabeth of Valois, first wife of Philip II. of Spain, fate of,
104 & _note_
Ellicott, Dr., Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, on Lamennais's theory, 593
Emerson, R.W., on attitude of the best Americans to politics, 578
Encyclical, the, of 1846, Infallibility proclaimed in, 496
England, an exception to the common law of dynastic States till 1745., 274
indignation in, at the idea of development in religion, 591
Inquisition never admitted into, 59
status of kings in, Canning on, 583-4
under the Stuarts, Church and liberty in, 208
English Catholics, peculiarities of their position, 438;
Wiseman's personal relations with, 437, 438
legal system, pioneer work of Jeremy Bentham in reform of, 3
liberty, adversary of the despotic policy, 276
nation, endurance of, and supremacy of, in art of labour, 60
foremost in battle for liberty, 59
views of, on the Huguenot massacres, 144
race, Christianity a cause of greatness of, 204
writers, Döllinger's acquaintance with, 388
Entremont, Countess, marriage of, with Coligny, Salviati's denunciation
on, 110
Eötvös on lay interest in religious government, 510
Ephialtes and democracy, 68
Epictetus, 406
Epicurus on purpose of foundation of societies, 18
Equality, passion for, in France, 57, 58
subversive theory proclaimed by Rousseau, 273;
making French Revolution (1789) disastrous to liberty, 88
of fortune, and class interests, 69
political, observations on the right to, 262
Erasmus, his idea of renovating society on the principles of
self-sacrifice, 58
Erhle, Father, 552, 560, 574
Essenes, disappearance of, 66
idea of renovating society on the principles of self-sacrifice, 58
slavery, both in principle and practice, rejected by, 26
Ethical offices of the Church not exclusively hers, 448-9
Ethnology and Geography united, in relation to security of free
institutions, Mill on, 286
Eudæmon-Johannes, praise given by, to the St. Bartholomew, 147
Eugenius IV., Pope, election of, 355
Euphemus, _cited_, 70
Europe, attitude of, to the French massacre of Huguenots, 120. 124-5;
progress of democracy in, 85;
theory of Nationality in, how awakened, 275
civilised, to what its preservation is due according to Lea, 568
Latin, frequency in, of revolution, 278;
its object, 280-81
Western, retrogression in arts and sciences due to domination of
Teutons, 32, 33
the two conquests of, and their effects on social ideas, 278 _et seq._
European liberalism and conservatism, 582-3
system, the old, reigning families, not nationalities, dominant in, 273
Eutychius, Lea's remarks on, challenged, 563
Excommunication, of Frohschammer, 477
what it involves, according to the confession of Schmalkald, etc., 158
Eymeric, author of the _Directorium_, President of Arragonese tribunal
against heretics, 558, 559
Fables of the Church (_Papstfabeln des Mittelalters_), Döllinger's
investigations of, 418-21
Faenza, why menaced by Pius V., 137
Faith not to be kept with heretics, Catholic theory on, 140-41
Falloux, value of, as historian, 400
opposition of, to Montalembert, 425
False principles, place of, in social life of nations, 272
Fantuzzi, compiler of history, 387
Farel, death of Servetus approved by, 185
Farnese, Cardinal, _see_ Paul III., Pope
Fatalism, philosophy of historians, 221
Fauriel, 565
Federal government, views on, of Hamilton, 581-3
Federalism, most effective check on democracy, 98;
value of, 20
_Federalist, The_, by Alexander Hamilton, various views on, 581
Federal form of American constitution, said not to be understood by
Tocqueville, 576
Fénelon, his idea of renovating society
on the principles of self-sacrifice, 58
on absolutism, 433
on domains as dowries, 273
on national distress, 49
Ferdinand I., Döllinger's lenient estimate of, 410
Ferdinand II., Döllinger's lenient estimate of, 410
Ferralz, despatches of, on attitude of Roman Court to the St. Bartholomew,
unused, 102
quarrels of, with the Cardinal of Lorraine, 129
true particulars of the Navarre marriage according to, 131-2
on the attitude of Gregory XIII. on hearing of the St. Bartholomew,
132-3 _note_
Ferrara, Alfonso, Duke of, a massacre of Huguenots advised by (1564),
108 & _note_
Ferrari, 590;
Döllinger's tribute to, 417
on Machiavelli's character, 226
Ferrier, Du, Catherine de' Medici's words to, on the death of the Queen
of Spain and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 104
Ferrières, 122
Fessler, _see_ St. Pölten, Bishop of
Feudalism, alien to the sentiment of France, 279
growth of, 34;
effect on Church, 245
struggles of, with the Church, 34, 35
Feuerlein, Machiavelli's loyalty upheld by, 229
on political expediency, 224
Fichte, J.S., _cited_ in praise of Machiavelli's policy, 228
Ficker, Prof., account by, of the Inquisition, 426
on the real contriver of the Inquisition's rule by terror, 555
First Empire, the French, things most oppressed by, the causes of
its downfall, 281
Fischer, Kuno, trace of Machiavelli in metaphysics of, 228
Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, on persecution, 570
Flaminian Gate, ancient custom connected with, 136
Flaminius, works of, edited by Trent Commissioners, 215
Fleury, style of, Döllinger's compared to, 381
Flint, Professor Robert, 572;
_Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and
Switzerland_, review, 588
critical faculty strong in, 591
nature of his superiority as writer, 588-9;
some defects, 589-90
Florence, prepared for the St. Bartholomew, 109
Fontana, authority on the Inquisition, 554
Forbes (Bishop of Brechin), Döllinger's intimacy with, 416
Force replaced by opinion as Catholic tribunal, 148
Foreign rulers, objection to, as third cause of popular risings, 284
Forgery, Church authority supported by 511, 513
Formosus, 563
Fors de Béarn, the, 566
"Fourth Estate," rise of, 67
Fox, Charles James, 54
France, absolute monarchy in, 48;
how built up, 41
the Church in, and Protestantism, Döllinger on, 337
democratic principle in, its triumph the cause of the energy of the
national theory, 287
feudalism alien to, 279
Gallican theory in, with respect to reigning houses, 35
governed by Paris during Revolution of 1789., 88
of history, how, and why, it fell, 277
inherent absence of political freedom and presence of absolutism
in, 237-40
kingdom of, how evolved, 278
opposition in, to Lamennais's Ultramontanism, 463-4
passion in, for equality, 57, 158
political ideas concerning, of Charles IX., and of Richelieu, 116
removal of Papacy to, 370
and representation on Vatican Council, 504-5
"the slave of heretics" according to Pius V., 105
restored monarchy of, _see_ Restoration
Franchi at Council of Bishops in 1867., 499
Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, in 1859., 287
Franciscan masters, the, and the idea of development in religion, 592
Franciscans, General of, on the planned character of the St.
Bartholomew, 124
struggle of Avignon with, 552
Franklin, Benjamin, irreligious tone of, 584
Franks, preamble of the Salic law of, 200
Franzelin on commission of preparation for Vatican Council, 500
Frederic the Great and Machiavelli's political schemes, 227
ignorant opposition of, to Machiavelli's works, 218
Frederic II., Emperor, treaty of, with the Church, 555
Lombard law of, 152;
its provisions, 555, 556
Free institutions, a generally necessary condition for securing,
Mill on, 286
Freedom (_see also_ Liberty) accorded to English Catholics, 438
in antiquity--
age of Pericles, 9
antiquity of liberty, modernity of despotism, 5
cause of liberty benefited more under Roman Empire than under
Republic, 15
dangers of monarchy, of aristocracy and democracy, 19, 20
decline of Athenian constitution, 11
definition of liberty, 3
early communism and utilitarianism, 17, 18
emancipation by Stoics of mankind from despotic rule, 24
guiding principle of Roman Republic, 13
highest teaching of classical civilisation powerless to avert
despotism, 27
history of institutions often deceptive and illusive, 2
implicit opposition of Stoics to principle of slavery, 25, 26
influence of Christianity over the State, gradual, 27
infusion of Greek ideas of statesmanship among Romans, 16
liberty, highest political end, 22, 23, 24
limitation and excess in duties of State, 4
method of growth of constitution, 5
nature of government of Israelites, 4
object of constitutions, 10
reform in English legal system instituted by Jeremy Bentham, 3
representative government, emancipation of slaves, and liberty of
conscience not a subject of classical literature, 25, 26
revision of laws of Athens by Solon, 6
sanction of Christ the true definition of the authority of
government, 29
teaching of Plato and Aristotle respecting politics, 22
teaching of Pythagoras and Heraclitus of Ephesus, 21, 22
triumphs due to minorities, 1, 4
value of federalism, 20
vice of the Classic State, 16
wisest minds among the ancients tainted with perverted morality, 18
Freedom in Christianity, history of--
Christianity employed by Constantine to strengthen his empire, 30, 31
civil, its two worst enemies, 300
conscience, a postulate of religious revolution, 153
Freeholders, "divine right of," established by Revolution of 1688, 54
Freeman, Döllinger on, as a historian, 421
on Mommsen's want of generous sentiment, 222
_French Belgium_, see _Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium
and Switzerland_
French Catholics, reasons of their confusion between piety and
ferocity, 141
clergy, and the St. Bartholomew, 126-7 & _notes_
monarchy, aid of the democracy in establishing and in demolishing,
reasons for both, 278-80
people, attitude of, to and after the Huguenot massacres, 143 _et seq._
how regarded after the Revolution, 277
provincial massacres of Huguenots, 118-19, 134
writers, influence of, on Döllinger, 387
scholarship, dependence on, of Mr. H.C. Lea, 558
French Republic of 1848, of what school the triumph, 590
French Revolution, _see_ Revolution, French
Frohschammer, 473-7
conflict with Rome, 462, 467, 469, 473-483
Fulcodius, Cardinal, _see_ Clement IV.
Fulda, council of bishops at, 517
Funds of the Church, proposed disposal of, in Italy, 509
Gallicanism, corruption of Christianity, 463, 524
Lamennais's crusade against, 464
theory of, on reigning houses in France, 35
Gams, 429; defender of the Inquisition, 573
Ganganelli, Cardinal, influence of, on Döllinger, 434
Gaspary, _cited_ on Machiavelli's loyalty, 230
Gass, on St. Anthony's life and origin of monasticism, 420
Gaul, Roman, tolerance in, of absolutism, 279
_Gazette de France_ and universal suffrage, 590
Geneva, trial of Servetus at, 184
Genlis, Huguenot commander, defeat of, the consequences to Coligny,
116, 117, 141
Genoa, extinction of, as State, 283
Gentz _cited_ on Machiavelli's policy, 229
George III., King of England, 583
George IV., King of England, 583
German, or Teutonic, conquest of Europe, its consequences, 277 _et seq._
writers, as influencing Döllinger, 389
Germany, effect on, of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124, 143
Protestantism in (1572), 103
theology of, unique and scientific, 317, 347-351, 376, 471-482
union of, 225
and the Vatican Council--
circular of German bishops to, 517
opposition in, 503;
and to Infallibility, 500;
representation of, 505
Gerson, 562; _cited_, 191
Gervinus, G.G.. on Machiavelli as prophet of modern politics, 229
Ghibellines, political theory of, 37
Gibbon, Edward, 389
Gieseler, Döllinger's dislike of, 389, and estimate of, 404
Ginoulhiac, on Papal Infallibility, 540
on Strossmayer's influence, 536
Gioberti, followers of, 314
metaphysics of, Döllinger's love for, 381
Girondists, objects of, 263
Gladstone, W.E., Acton's admiration for, xxiii;
and Döllinger, letter to, on the Irish question, 434;
estimate of historical judgment and style, 416;
intercourse of, 400
policy of, feared in Rome, 507
Glencoe, massacre of, 218, 410
Gneist, 377
Gonzaga, Lewis, _see_ Nevers
Görres, Joseph, 282, 405
centre of Munich group of theologians, 386
Göttingen, 378;
seminary pupils of, methods of, 561
Government, authority of, defined by Divine sanction of Christ, 29
Catholic view of, 260
chief duty of, to maintain political right, 449
American, Judge Cooley on, 580
Gracchus, opposition to Octavius, 76
Grant, General Ulysses, 579
Granvelle, Cardinal, Viceroy of Naples, on the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, 125, 140;
on Alva's prisoners, 142
Gratian, 557
Gratry, letters of, to the Archbishop of Mechlin, on divisions in
the Church, 537-8
on the Inquisition, 424
tribute from, to Döllinger, 424
_cited_ on Veuillot's school, 429
Greece, national beliefs yielding to doubt during age of Pericles, 8, 9
politics of, infused into minds of Roman statesmen, 16
Greek Church, development of, 332-3
revolution, causes united in, 284
Greeks, democracy of, 66
as makers of history, 240
slavery discouraged by, 63
Gregory VII., Pope, deception of, by hierarchical fictions, 420
and democracy, 80
his disparagement of civil authorities, 36
Gregory IX., Pope, 430
appointed Guala as first Inquisitor, 553
Lea's view of, as intellectual originator of the Inquisition, 555, 557
Gregory X., Pope, and the Inquisition, 426
Gregory XIII., Pope, 430
and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--
Bull of, on, 101, 134
complicity of, discussed, 128
fate of his letters to France, 101
previous knowledge of, 110, 116
receipt of the news by, his public and private attitude, and his
reply, 132-5, 137
urges full and complete extirpation of Huguenots, 142
conduct as viewed by French and by Italians, 148
reply, 137
undue hatred of, consequent on his attitude to the matter, 138
and the Navarre marriage, his steady opposition, 105, 111, 113, 128
on destruction as result of sedition, 216
Gregory XVI., Pope, personal fallibility of, admitted, and denounced by
Lamennais, 465, 466
Grenoble, Bishop of, doctrine of Papal Infallibility admitted by, 528
excluded from Commission on Dogma, 530
on dogmatic decrees of the Vatican Council, 533
Grey, Lord, 219
Grotius, 432; days of, 225
founder of study of real political science, 46
on the principles of law, 46
Guala, Bishop of Brescia, successor of Moneta and St. Dominic, 553
and the burning of heretics. 555-6
Guelphs, political theory of, 36
Guicciardini, Francesco, abridged by Trent Commissioners, 215
Guidonis, Bernardus, frequently cited by Lea, 568
leading authority of the fourteenth century, 559
_Practitia_ of, 558
protests of, on Clement V.'s decree on privilege of Inquisitors, 566
Guise, Duke of, initiative of, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 112
recalled to France, 213
slain by Henry III. of France, 121
Guise, House of, 112, 118
Guizot, 400
on the eighteenth century, 585
on Hamilton's work _The Federalist_, 581
on importance, to all denominations, of the Vatican Council, 493
wisdom of, 401
Günther, 473
Gurney, Archer, alarm of, at Döllinger's views, 382
Guyon on the murder of heretics, 147
_Habeas Corpus_ Act, principle originated in Middle Ages, 39
Habsburg family, contests of, 274
Halifax Archbishop of (Conolly), on the dogmatic decree, 533
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 522
on Scriptural authority, 547
Halifax, George Savile, Lord, 53
Hallam, Henry, favourable comparison of theory of _Il Principe_ with
other political theories, 224
Hamilton, Alexander, eulogised, 581-3
history, treatment of philosophy, 380
political example of, 586
views of, as cited by Bryce, 578
Harnack, estimate of Döllinger, 434
Harrington, political writer in advance of his time, 51
Hartwig, 230
Hase, Prof. K., _cited_ on political expediency, view of, on importance
of Vatican Council to all denominations, 493
Hauréau, _Histoire Littéraire_ by, divergence from, of Lea, 558, 563
Havet, 555
Haynald, Archbishop of Colocza, at Council of Bishops, 1867, 499
Hefele, defender of the Inquisition, 573
estimate by, of Döllinger, 434
on Papal Infallibility, 540, 544
on validity of dicta of Vatican Council, 548
Hegel, Carl, friend of Döllinger, 420
Hegel, G.W.F., 589, 590
definition by, of universal history, 224
as enemy of religion, Döllinger's disparaging view of, 376, 381
master of Cousin, 589
posthumous work of, 385
view of, on Development of Liberty, 596
Henry III., King of France (_see also_ Anjou. Duke of), 44, 580
Döllinger's lenient estimate of, 410
hopes of his destroying the Huguenots root and branch, 142;
urged on him by Muzio, 143
and the murder of the Guises, 121, 213
reliance of, on _Il Principe_, 215
Henry IV., King of France, _see_ Navarre, King of
Heraclitus, of Ephesus, on the supremacy of reason and divine origin of
laws, 21, 22
Herbert, _cited_ to show Machiavelli's sacrifice to unity, 229
Herder, J.G., 375
on _Il Principe_, 228
Heresy (_see also_ Intolerance, Persecution, _and_ Toleration), books
on, definition of, by the Archbishop of Cologne, 531
Calvin's views on punishment, 181;
its famous refutation, 182
causes of, in Frohschammer, 481
dependent on the State, 317
laws of Frederic II. on, 152, 555
punishable by death, doctrine of the Church, 216-19
methods of dealing with the Reformers _cited_ on, 154, 157, 163-164,
166, 167, 175, 181, 183
Heretics, attitude towards, of St. Dominic, 554
Catholic theory on the proper way to deal with, 569;
discredit incurred from, 140-41
a prominent dissentient, 144
divisions among, 103
first proscribed in Aragon, 557-58
murder of, Guyon on, 147
Hermann, reliance of Döllinger on authority of, 403
Hermas, 406
Hermes and followers denied the power of _the Index_, 473
Hesse, Landgrave of, bigamy of, why condoned by Luther, 160 & _note_
Hindoos, stationary national character of, 241
Historians, qualities of, revealed by use made of their authorities, 235
scientific, method of, how differing from that of artist and annalist,
233
_Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and Switzerland_,
by Robert Flint, _review_, 588
History, deductions of, Döllinger's theory, 389-92;
not drawn from moral standards, 219-21
Döllinger's work in, 375-435
equity of, deductions drawn from action, 219
God seen in, 594
no conscience in, Hartwig's opinion of, 230
teaching of, Döllinger's desertion of theology for, 379-83
theory of, Döllinger's view, 385
_History, A, of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_, by Henry Charles Lea,
review, 551
Hobbes, Thomas, advocate of passive obedience to kings, 48
and Machiavelli's policy, 228
Höfler, 434
Hogendorp, on the American Revolution and the decline of religion in
America (circ. 1784), 584
Hohenlohe, Prince, defeat of his policy, 511
defeated by Ultramontanes, 505
Döllinger secretary to, 385
opposed to discussion of Infallibility at Vatican Council, 503-4
Hohenzollern, house of, contests of Silesia with, 275
Holland, _see also_ Low Countries and Netherlands, declares for the
Prince of Orange, 103
republican, an exception to common law of dynastic states, 274
Holst on Hamilton's genius, 581
_Verfassungsgeschichte_, by, 577
Holy Alliance, originated by Baader, 377;
the devotion of, to absolutist interests, 282;
and to suppression of the revolution and national spirit, 283
_Home and Foreign Review, The_, action concerning, of Wiseman, 439-40;
deprecated, 440 et seq.;
his complaints investigated, 442-43;
and replied to, 443-44;
how Wiseman came to misconceive the words of the Review, 444 _et seq._;
position on which the Review was founded, 447, 457;
sphere of such a publication delimited, 448-56;
topics excluded from its purview, 457;
its aid to religion indirect but valuable, 459;
attitude of, on supreme authority of the Church, 482-91
Honorius III., Pope, characterisation by, of Gregory IX., 556
the Inquisition extant under, 554
and the Lombard law for burning heretics, 556
Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_, 45
Hosius, Cardinal, opposition of, to Beza, concerning the Polish
Socinians, 146
Hötzl, Father, support of Döllinger, 545
House of Commons, the, and the Inquisition, 570
Huguenots, expulsion of from Switzerland, 125
massacres of, in Paris and the provinces, 106, _and see_ Massacre
of St. Bartholomew _passim_
position of, in 1572, and apparent prospects, 102
views of, on the massacres of co-religionists, 145-46
Humboldt, W. von, 282
Hume, David, 54; _cited_ on _Il Principe_, 218
Hungary, Church constitution of 1869., 510
growing autonomy of, 526
Huns, stationary national character of, 241
Hus, John, difference between his teaching and Luther's, 271
trial of, 552, 570;
a test case, 572;
Lea's puzzling views on, 573
Ideals, energy evoked by, why greater than in case of rational ends, 272
usefulness of, 272;
how limited, 273
Ideas, abstract, more powerful than practical, views on cited, 585
_Il Principe_ (Machiavelli's), dedication of, 215
Nourrisson's praise of, 227
Pole's attention called to, 214
publication of, 214;
interpretation of, by all later history, 213;
known to Pole and Cromwell, 214
various criticisms of, 218
Immaculate Conception, doctrine of, Archbishop of St. Louis on, 545
Income Tax, known in Middle Ages, 39
Independent congregations, advocacy of toleration by, 52
_Index_, the Church's instrument of preventing scandal by literature,
469-471
institution and origin of, 215, 495
permanent exclusion of _Il Principe_ by, 215
power of, in Germany, 473
reform of, urged on and effected by the Vatican Council, 495, 525, 531
sanction of, 544
Indifference, religious, of educated Protestants, 350-51
Indulgences granted by Pius V., in connection with war against the
heretics, 141
Infallibility, Papal--
attitude to, of Lamennais, 462-4, 465, 466
Bavarian warning against adoption of, by Vatican Council, 511
_Civiltà Cattolica_ on, 500-501
continental discussions on, 518
debate on, at Vatican Council, 532-549
declaration of, urged on Vatican Council, 499
definition of, not to be made, by Vatican Council, 518
discussion and definition of, by Vatican Council, 525-49
doctrine of the Jesuits, 498;
establishment of, Vatican Council, 499
opinions in England, on discussion of, at Vatican Council, 507
opposition to, 502-4
origin of doctrine of, 513-515
to be presented at Vatican Council, 500-501
proposed by Cardoni at commission of preparation for Vatican Council, 500
Infidelity, growth of, due to intolerance, 256
Innocent III., commonly reported as founder of the Inquisition, 553;
intolerance of, 431
treatment of heretics, 568
Innocent IV., Pope, _cited_, 206
Innocent X., Pope, protest against Peace of Westphalia, 324-25
Innocent XI., Döllinger's proposed history of, 433
Innocent XI., Pope, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 147
Inquisition, the, earlier and later, distinction between aims and
characteristics of, 552
Lea's view on, 568
Machiavelli denounced to, 214-15
never admitted into England, 59
origin of, controversy on, 553
period of its activity and decline, 574
problem of, 570
sanction of, 544
in Spain, 152
supporters of, 570
tribunal of, appropriation by Spanish kings leading to absolute
monarchy, 41
at Vienna, 184
writers defending, 573
_Inquisition, The, of the Middle Ages, A History of_, by Henry Charles
Lea, review, 551
_Institutes_, Calvin's, on Toleration, 182
Insurrections previous to 1789, wherein differing from the French
Revolution, 271
Intellectual offices of the Church not exclusively hers, 448-9
International league of nations founded by Mazzini, 286
Intolerance carried to an extreme by the Anabaptists, 172
Catholic and Protestant, distinguished, 165, 168-70, 186-7
cause of growth of infidelity, 256
inherent in the Mediæval Church, Leas view, 571
motive and principle of, when justifiable, 251
of Reformers, 184
as a rule of life, Lea's view on, 562-3
Ireland, Church in, Goldwin Smith's views on, 259
Celtic race in, yielding to higher political aptitude of the
English, 242
failure of Reformation in, 43
history of, comparative method of, study of, 234
land question, the great difficulty in, 236
question of, Döllinger's views on, 434
religious disabilities in, an engine of political oppression, 253
and Ultramontanism at Vatican Council, 507
Irish agitation, causes united in, 284
Israelites, democracy of the, 65
government of, exhibiting principle upon which freedom has been won, 4, 5
a federation held together by faith and race, 4
resistance of monarchy among, by prophet Samuel, 4
Italian States (1862), nationality in, 295
Italy, Austrian rule in, error of, 285
effect on, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124, 143
literature of, influence on Döllinger, 386-7
policy of, under Machiavelli and before, use of assassination, 213
politics of, influenced by Vatican Council, 508-511
reliance in, on Machiavelli, 226
Machiavelli's triumph, 225, 266
temporal power of papacy in, 355-62, 367-71
wisdom of Huguenot massacres confessed, 125
Ivan the Terrible. Czar of Muscovy, protests of, on the St.
Bartholomew, 144
Jackson, Andrew, American President, 578
Jacobins, policy of, criticism of, 261
James II., King of England, 54, 410
overthrow imperative, 468
Janus, 519; book on Ultramontane ideal, 511, 513
Jefferson, Thomas, President, U.S.A., 579
irreligion of, 585
Jesuit attitude to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1, 127, 147, 148
Jesuits, the, and infallibility, 498
and preparations for Vatican Council, 497-98
Jews, _see also_ Israelites
treatment of, by Catholics, 169;
and by Protestants, 164, 179
Joachim, Abbot, and his work, 560
Joan of Arc, 552;
authorities on, not consulted by Lea, 558
John Of Salisbury, 45;
reputed author of the _Historia Pontificalis_, 559
Joubert, on authority of the Church, 463
Judæ, Leo, views of, as to persecution, 174
Julian, apostate, reasons for persecution by, 196
Julius Cæsar, conversion by, of Roman republic into monarchy, 15
Jürgens, his estimate of Luther, 161
Justification by faith, dogma of, as test of orthodoxy, 158
Justin, summit reached by, 406
Justinian, code of, greatest obstacle to liberty next to feudalism, 79
on the absolute authority of the Roman Emperor, 31
Kolde, effect of works of, 408
Kampschulte, effect of works of, 408
Kant, Immanuel, 594
Kaulbach, pictorial ridicule of Döllinger's _Reformation_, 411
Kenrick, on Papal infallibility, 540, 544
Ketteler, W.E. von, Döllinger's lectures praised by, 381
on Papal infallibility, 540, 544
Kings, status of, in England, Canning on, 583-84
Kirchmann on political ethics, 222
_cited_ on the adoption of Machiavelli's policy, 227-28
Klein. J.L., _cited_ on Machiavelli's moral purpose, 229
Kleutgen, garbled version of Strossmayer's protest, 542
Kliefoth, influence on Döllinger, 389
work on penitential system, 381
Knowledge, growth of, freedom of, in the Church, 461
Knox, John, 44
"Monstrous Regiment of Women," 45
Laboulaye, indictment against democracy, 93
Labour, supremacy of English nation in art of, 60
Lacordaire, Henry, advice of, ignored by Montalembert, 400
_cited_ on political honesty, 220
Döllinger antagonistic to, 401
on St. Dominic, 428
Lafayette, 590
La Farina, tribute to Machiavelli, 226
Lamennais and the Church, condemnation and fall, and cause of the
latter, 398, 465, 466-73
conflict with Rome, 462-473
classed as Ultramontane, 451
endeavours of, to exalt Rome, 463-4
intercourse of, with Döllinger, 398
and the idea of development, 591, 593
theory of common sense, 593
Land question, the great difficulty in Ireland, 236
Languedoc, work in, of St. Dominic, 553
Lanza, 509
La Roche-sur-Yon, on the resolutions of the conference of Bayonne,
108 & _notes_
Larroque, Tamizey de, rejection by, of Arnaud's speech at Beziers, 567
Lasaulx, Ernst von, estimation of, 405
Lassalle, Ferdinand, on collective thought, 585
Laurent, 590;
Döllinger's praise of, 417
_cited_ on Machiavelli's doctrines, followed by detractors, 226
Laval, Bishop of, opposition of, at Vatican Council, 522
Lavradeo, Count de, Portuguese ambassador to Vatican Council, 507
Lavaur, fate of Albigenses at, 556
Law, custom and national qualities, not will of government, makers of, 58
mediæval opinions on, 258
in relation to the will of the people, Vergniaud on, 276
Laws (_see also_ Legal system), divine origin of, 22
of realm, Socratic view that they were only sure guide of conduct, 18
view of Ghibelline writers respecting, 37
view of Guelph writers respecting, 36
Lay representation on Vatican Council, plans for, 503-8
Lea, Henry Charles, _A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_,
review, 551
characteristics of, 555, 559, _passim_;
as historical writer, 551
League, the, Charles IX.'s refusal to join, 129
League, Holy, attempts to bring France into, 113
Le Blanc de Beaulieu on political expediency, 225
Lecoy de la Marche, collection, 559
Lee, murder of, note on, 65
Legal system, English, pioneer work in reform of, of Jeremy Bentham, 3
'_Leges Barbarorum_,' principle of, in respect to the Church, 244
Legislation, liberty independent of domain of, 2
Legitimate ruler, defence of, first cause of popular risings, 1813., 284
Leibniz, Döllinger's gratitude to, 393
on _Il Principe_, 228
influence of, on Döllinger, 381
Leo I., Pope, and the suppression of heresy at any cost, 571
Leo X. (Medici), Pope, character of, 378
treatment of tyrant of Perugia, 214
Leo XIII., Pope, literary fruits of his liberality, 573-4
Leopold, 401
Lepanto, naval battle of, 104;
effect foiled by Charles IX., 105
victory of, less dear to the Pope than the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, 134
Leti, _cited_, 140
Lewis XII., king of France, extermination of Vaudois of Provence by, 217
Lewis XIII., king of France, Döllinger's lenient estimate of, 410
Lewis XIV., king of France, death penalty by, indicted for disobedience
to his will, 48
Döllinger's lectures on, 433
ordinance against Protestants, 50
as political assassin, 410
records of reign of, 409
secret treaty between, and Charles II., 53
supreme among tyrants for bad use of his power, 49;
adulation bestowed on him sign of national subjection to absolutism, 49
L'Hôpital, 126
Liberal movement in Latin Europe, its objects, 280-81
Liberalism, European, 582-3
Liberals, eighteenth century, their care only for the individual, 273
of the French Restoration, limitations of, 282
Liberty (_see also_ Freedom), change in constitution not effected by, in
Italy and Germany, 225
definition of, 3
and democracy, 63
essential condition and guardian of, religion, 4
essential to the subsistence of a country, Rousseau on, 294
failure of Protestant systems to secure, 181
influences of Christianity on, 203
Luther's attitude to, 156
and property, connection between, 54
realisation of, on what depended, 288
reconciled to religion, dispute concerning, 467-9
theory of, as regards nationality, 289
religion and nationality, causes united in revolutions after 1815., 284
sacrificed to unity, by Machiavelli, 229
views on, of Hegel, and of Flint, 596
vulgar definition of, 580
Liberty, American, Judge Cooley on, 580
civil and religious, point of unison between, 151
English, adversary of old despotic policy, 276
English, adversary of former despotic power, 276
municipal, vigorous growth of, in Belgium, 38
religious, definition of, 151-2
effect on, of State control, 151-3
in Maryland, 187
necessary conditions of, 152-3
not impossible, 367
Liddon, Canon, intimacy with Döllinger, 416
Liebig, 377
Lightfoot (Bishop of Durham), Church history of, 418
Lilburne, political writer in advance of his time, 50;
his enlightened ideas on democracy, 83
Limborch, 563
Lipsius, R.A., study of Machiavelli by, 215
Lisle, Ambrose de, 423
Littré, 590
Locke, John, 54
doctrine of resistance, 54
inconsistent ideas regarding liberty, 53
on rules of morality, 221
Lombard law of Frederick II., as affecting heretics, 152, 555, 556
Lombardy, the heresy of (Waldensian), 559
work of St. Dominic in, 553
Longpérier, _cited_, on Italy's adoption of Machiavelli's policy, 227
Lorraine, Cardinal of (Guise), on Anjou's hatred of Protestants and its
consequences, 105 _& note_
approval expressed by, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 140
high position of, 111;
on his initiative in the Huguenot massacre, his praise of Charles IX.,
112 _& note_;
complicity of, in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 129-30
quarrels with, of Ferralz, 129;
its reason, the Pope's attitude to him, 130
on the price of the Navarre marriage, 128
slain by Henry III., attitude of the Pope, 121
Louis XVI., king of France, policy of, 57
powerlessness of, to effect reform, 85
why he perished, 280
Louis Philippe, king of the French, his good opinion of republican
government, 56, 90
decline of his popularity, 92
Love of country, Bossuet on, 294 _note_
Low Countries (_see also_ Holland _and_ Netherlands), Alva's failure
in, 103
Loyola, Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, 113
Luca, Cardinal de, proposed discussion of infallibility at Vatican
Council denied by, 518
Reisach's deputy as president, 534
Lucchesini, sermon against Machiavelli, 215
Lucius, attack of, on Philo, 419
Luther, Martin, 502
attitude of, to the marriage difficulties of Henry VIII., 160
and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, 160
Döllinger's estimate of, 397
early utterances of, on toleration, 153-5;
his change of view, 155
influence of, on politics, 81
Möhler on, 378
persecuting principles involved in his system, 164, 590
teaching of, wherein differing from that of Wycliffe and of Hus, 271
views of, on government, 42;
on polygamy, 159, 162;
on the relations of Church and Slate, 156, 157-58, 161-63, 173,
177, 180;
logical outcome of his theory, 159;
its inconsistency, 162;
work of, on the Civil Power, 154 & _note_;
_cited_ on toleration of Anabaptists, 157
Lutheran attitude to heretics, gradual change in, 154, 157
to Huguenots, 145-6
theory of persecution, political element in, 172
Lutheranism, decline of, 327-9
in Denmark, 341
description of, 343-5
national character of, 319-320
roused by abuses in the Church, 495
in Sweden, 341
Lyons, massacre of Huguenots at, 119;
news of, sent to Rome, 132;
horror aroused by, in Provence, 144;
letter from, on the massacres at that place, 131
Macaulay, T.B., 580
historical limitation of, 385
injustice of Döllinger to, 391-2
opinion of, on Father Paul, 432
on the study of history, 232
Machiavelli, Niccolo (_see also_ Il Principe), character of, 225-6;
its complexity, 212-14
crime of Catherine de' Medici not instigated by, 216
denouncement of, to Inquisition, by Muzio, 214-15
doctrine of, 40, 41;
impulse given by, to absolutism, 41
influence on succeeding generations, 40, 41;
political, 49;
held by rulers before and since, 216-19;
estimated by early historians, 225-231
ignorance of, displayed by great men, 218-19
indulgent views taken of methods of, 224
Medici patron and his daughter, 122
merits of, admitted by later historians, 230-231
methods of, 225-6
secret patriotism of, upheld by various historians, 229-230
in touch with reasoners and imitators, by theory of success, 223
zenith of power, 225-7
Mackintosh, Sir James, on constitutions, 581
Macmaster, on Hamilton's genius, 581
Madison, James, 579
on Hamilton's theory of government, 581
Maffei, on regicide, 217
Magdeburg, Archbishop of, _temp._ Gregory IX., 556
Mai, Cardinal, as an editor, 421
Maimbourg, 215
Maine, Sir Henry, on the _Droit du Seigneur_, 566-7
Maistre, Count de, Ultramontane writer, 451, 468;
on the authority of the Church, 377
and Lamennais's theory, 593
relation to Savigny, 593
exaggerations of, 378
influence on Döllinger, 377
interpreted by elder Windischmann, 381
rank of, as writer, 417
thoughts of, on Nationality, 282 & _note_
Malebranche, 382
Malvenda, authority on the Inquisition, 554
Mamachi, authority on the Inquisition, 554
Mandelot, Governor of Lyons, and the Huguenot massacres, 119
Manin, Daniele, 287
Manning, Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster, adviser of De Angelis, 529
on admission of papal infallibility by acknowledgment of supreme
authority, 543-4
Manteuffel, administration of, 283
Manzoni on temporal power of Papacy, 512
Marat, madness of, 401
outcome of Rousseau's teaching on his policy, 57, 58
Maret, book of, on Vatican Council plans, 512, 513
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 426
and papal infallibility, 528
Mariana, rejoicing of, over the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124
_cited_ on death of Henry III., 217
Marini, as a compiler of history, 387
occasional removal of, from _Index_, 215
Marlborough, Duke of (the Great), character of, 53
Marseilles, Bishop of, on validity of Vatican Council's decrees, 549
Marsilius of Padua, the Ghibelline,
views of, on power and persecution, 561-2
_cited_ on the relation of kings to the people, 37
Marshall, John, 579;
and the development of the American Constitution, 581
Martens, 427
Martensen, Bishop, estimate of Döllinger, 434
tribute to Baader's powers, 376
Martineau, Dr., and Mill's opinion of results as test of actions, 223
Mary Tudor, Queen of England, 410
Maryland, religious history of, 187
Massachusetts, history of, contrasted with that of Maryland, 187
Massacre, the, of St. Bartholomew, 101
defects in plan and execution of, as judged by immediate results, 106;
sources of the same, 117
defence of, on political grounds, 218
Döllinger's work on, 430-31
evidence concerning, how dealt with, difficult of access, 101;
best existing sources, 102
motive inspiring its chief author, 121
question of numbers slain in, 106, 137
question of premeditation of, contemporary view, 106;
modern view, 107;
evidence in support of the former, 107 _et seq._
results anticipated from, 69;
Philip II., 123;
view not stated by Alva, 124
Massillon, Jean-Baptiste, _cited_ on retribution, 220
Mathieu, Cardinal, share in elections to Commission of Dogma, 529, 530, 532
Matter, cited on Machiavelli's influence on liberty, 227
Maurenbrecher, rank of Döllinger estimated by, 386
Maurer, Conrad, at Döllinger's house, 405
Maximillian II., Emperor, information sent to, of the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, 107
opinion of, on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 144
toleration of, 105
urged to follow example of Charles IX., 134 & _note_
May, Sir Erskine, _Democracy in Europe_, by, 61
Mazade, influence on Döllinger, 434
Mazzini, Giuseppe, association of, with the growth of the idea of
Nationality, 286
association of his revolutionary ideas with conservatism of Niebuhr, 59
on Machiavelli's politics, 219
proclaimer of Nationality, 273
profane criticism by, 218
Mazzuchelli, 114
Mechlin, Archbishop of, reply to the Bishop of Orleans by, 537
Medici, Cosmo de', patron of Machiavelli, father of Catherine, 122
family of, in disfavour under Paul III., 214
Machiavelli not countenanced by followers of, 214
Mediæval writers on law and right, 258
Melanchthon, Philip, his theory of persecution, 164-170
views of, on polygamy, and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, 160 & _note_
on religious assassination, 325
_cited on_ Cromwell's death, 217
Memorandum of the Powers, 183;
on temporal power, 366
Menabrea, circular of, on representation of Vatican Council, 509
Mendoça, praise of those concerned in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124
Mentz, Bishop of, belief in infallibility doctrine, 518
Mérode, 414
Metternich, Prince, 283;
attitude of, to Nationality, 285
Metz, Bishop of, repudiation of Döllinger's declaration, 538
Mexico, nationality in, 245-46
Meyer, Paul, on the Council of Arles, 565
Michelet, Jules, Flint compared to, 596
_cited_ on human action as interpreter of God's commands, 223
on Machiavelli, 213
influence on Döllinger, 433
Döllinger's study of, 421
Michiel, Giovanni, Venetian ambassador, 109;
on premeditation of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 110
Middle Ages, authority of State inadequate in, 4
decline of religion in, 595
history of, reason for its unity, 244
political advances in, 39
persecution in, 152, 168
revival of study of, 390-91
_Middle Ages, The, A History of the_
_Inquisition of_, by Henry Charles Lea, review, 551
Mignet, Döllinger's praise of, 417
Milan, Archbishop of, on validity of Vatican Council's decrees, 549
Mill, John Stuart, indictment of democracy, 93
on results as tests of actions, 223
on states as coincident with nationalities, 285
Milton, John, his justification of execution of Charles I., 51
Minerve, fate of Albigenses at, 556
Modena, 386
Mohammedans, treatment of, by Catholics, 169;
by Protestants, 179;
their tolerance, 186
Möhler, J.A., 593
influence on Döllinger's views of fixity of national types, 434
publication of _Symbolik_, 377
on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 149
suggested history of progress of doctrine of, 385
_cited_ on Döllinger's rank as theologian, 379
_cited_ on intercourse with Döllinger, 377
partiality as historian of religious wars, 428
rank of, 430
views of, compared to Döllinger's, 378-9
_cited_ on Luther, 378-9
Möhler and Döllinger in Munich, views at variance, 377-380
Molina, Luis, 380
Molinier, Auguste, on a history of the Inquisition, 551-2
rejection by, of Arnaud's speech at Béziers, 567
Molino, Francesco da, cited on the recall of the Guises, 213
Mommsen, Theodor, cited on political expediency, 222
distinction of pupils of, 419
indifference of the public to, 430
Monarchy--
adulation manifested towards, after the Middle Ages, 48
danger of, 19, 20
and democracy, 64
limitation of powers, aim of modern constitutions, 19
resistance of, among Israelites, justified in later ages, 4
restricted suffrage not always a safeguard of, 2
Absolute--
clergy upholders of, 41
development and destruction of, by the democracy in France,
& _notes_, 279-80
France chief centre of, 48
one of the worst enemies of civil freedom, 300
Monarchs, election and deposition of, divine right of people with
respect to, 35
Guelphic and Ghibelline views respecting, 36, 37
subjection of, to public law, 35
Mondoucet, French agent at Brussels, Charles IX.'s letter to, on the
proposed Massacre, 117
Moneta, Fra, successor of St. Dominic, 553
Monluc, Bishop of Valenca, dying speech of, its bitterness against
Huguenots, 141
on the effect of the Huguenot massacres on Poland, 120
view of, on St. Bartholomew, 107
Monroe, James, President, his term of office "the era of good feeling," 56
Mons, fall of, 103;
Lewis of Nassau at, 105
the garrison devoted to death by Charles IX. and Philip II., 141-2
Montaigne, Michel de, view held by, on Machiavelli's fame, 215
Montalembert, Count de, classed as Ultramontane, 451
influence of, on Döllinger, 400
intercourse unbroken, 463
unacknowledged agreement with Döllinger, 316
and _Kirche und Kirchen_, views cited, 417;
estimate of that work, 424
in Munich, 398
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 524-5
politics of, 400
and the temporal power of the Papacy, 412
Montalto, Cardinal, alleged dissent of from congratulation on the
St. Bartholomew, 140
Montégut, influence on Döllinger, 434
Montesquieu, and his development of Locke's teaching, 54
Montezuma, and Torquemada, resemblance between the gods of, 569
Montferaud, Sieur de, rumoured orders
to, as to massacre of Huguenots, 127 _note_
Montfort and the Albigenses, 556
Montgomery and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 107, 122
Montpensier, Duke of, Huguenot massacres ordered by, in Brittany, 119
unguarded speech by, on coming massacre, 111
Montpezat, Lieutenant of Guienne, and the Bordeaux massacres, 127
Morality, perverted ideas of, prevailing among classic sages, 18
public, how differing from private, 40
Mordenti, _cited_ on Machiavelli, as champion of conscience, 226
More, Sir Thomas, author of the Utopia, 270
idea of renovating society on the principles of self-sacrifice, 58
_Mores Catholici_, Digby's, 569
Morinus _cited_, 194
basis of Kliefoth's work in, 381
Morley, John, on equity of history, 219
Mornay, _see_ Duplessis-Mornay
Morris of Exeter, and study of Petavius, 380
Morris, Robert, an American, the suggester of the French wars of
speculation and plunder, 578
_cited_ on Hamilton as a leader, 582-3
Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans, attitude of, to the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, 126
Mozley, James, visit of Döllinger to, 403
Muenscher, works of, esteemed by Döllinger, 381
Müller, 282
Munich, Archbishop of (Reisach), brief from the Pope to, denouncing
Frohschammer, 481-5
nominated as President of Vatican Council, 501;
death of, before taking seat as, 534
Munich, conference at, Döllinger's declaration to, 312-13
Döllinger at, 386;
lectures in, 375
Frohschammer's work in, 473
Möhler with Döllinger in, 377-80
school of theology at, 398-9, 434
Municipal liberties, vigorous growth in Belgium, 38
Münster (Westphalia), excesses of Anabaptists at, 171
Münzer, Thomas, intolerance of, 171
Muratori, Döllinger's study of, 387
on evangelists, 419
papal biographies by, 559
and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 148
Murder (_see also_ Assassination, Heretics, and Persecution), on plea
of religion, attitude to, of Rome, 138, 139, 140, 147
Muretus, 101; famous speech of, on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 130
Muzio, the _Decamerone_ recommended to students by, 215
in favour with Pius V., 214-15
letter from, to Henry III. of France, urging unsparing extirpation
of Huguenots, 143
Machiavelli denounced by, to the Inquisition, 214-15
Mylius, view of, on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 107
Nantes, city, refusal of, to massacre Huguenots, 119
edict of, revocation of, not approved by Innocent XI., 147;
inconsistency, 170;
remarks on, 260
Napoleon I., causes of his downfall, 281, 284
new power called into existence by, 281
question respecting the durability of his institutions, 238
_cited_ on importance of results, 221
_cited_ on quality of endurance in English nation, 66
Napoleon III., ambition of, 316
and discussion of infallibility doctrine at Vatican Council, 504
Nassau, Lewis of, at Mons, French auxiliaries with, 105
National character, influence of, on events, units of, 557
claims, based on race only, futility of, an instance, 295
Nationality, essay on, 270
auxiliary and substance of present-day revolution, 276
denial of, what it implies, 297
evolution of, three stages in, 284-5;
and definition of, in its final form, 285
idea of, as influencing modern thought greater than that of liberty, 59
modern theory of, greatest advocate of rights of, 297
historical importance of, its two chief causes, 298, 299
how awakened in Europe, 273, 275, 276;
its parentage, 277, 286, 287;
how first seen, 278, 281, 286
mission of, in the world, 300
more absurd and criminal than that of Socialism, 300
political character and value of, discussed, 280 _et seq._
a retrograde step in history, 298
rights of, and greatest adversary of, 297
some of its first supporters, 281-2
a subversive theory, 273
summing up of, 287-8
political theory of, in contradiction with the historic nation, 243
the true, 294, 295
Nations, different, in one State, considerations regarding, 289 _et seq._
Naudé, basis of his apology for Charles IX., 147
Navarre, Henry, King of, later Henry IV., King of France, 44
marriage of, with Margaret of Valois, opposed by the Popes, 105,
109, 111, 128;
real facts regarding, 131-3;
representations on, of Charles IX. and his mother, 135;
dissolution of, by Paul V., 114
murder of, schemed as a good deed, 139
and the proposed league of Protestant defence, 145
Navarre, Queen of (Margaret of Valois), death of, reckoned on in
France, 109, and _see_ Marriage, under Navarre, Henry, King of
Neander, rank of, 421
special gifts of, 555
unconventionally of, 384
Nelson, 592
Netherlands (_see also_ Holland _and_ Low Countries), deposition of
Philip II., and establishment of republic, 44
republic of, inaugurated reign of law through freedom of press, 50
Nevers, Duke of (Lewis Gonzaga), high station of, 128
share of, in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 110;
his "ill-timed generosity" on this occasion, 122;
praises of, by Capilupi, 129
Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, 573, 592, 593
distinction drawn between Pope and Court, 417
Döllinger's early appreciation of, 395;
intercourse with, 402
Napoleon III. not condemned by, 413
theory of development different from Döllinger's, 407-8
_cited_ on papal authority, 423
Nicholas I., 431
Niebuhr, 581;
association of his conservatism with revolutionary ideas of Mazzini, 59
Döllinger's gratitude to, 393
Nimes, Bishop of, on infallibility, 515;
opposed to discussion of, 501
Nimes (city), no Huguenot massacres at, 143
Nippold, rank of Döllinger estimated by, 386
Nourrison cited on Machiavelli's sincerity, 227
Nugent, Count, proclamation by, on Italian independence, 285
Nuremberg, Anabaptists at, 157
Octavius, opposition of Gracchus to, 76
Odescalchi, character of, 433
OEcolampadius, Joannes, opinions of, on Church government, 176-7
Ollivier, opposition of, to French lay representation in Vatican
Council, 504
Orange, Prince of (William the Silent), 44
alliance made with, by Charles IX., 105
declaration for (1572), of province of Holland, 103
Huguenot expedition to aid, failure of results, 116, 141
not alienated by Charles IX.'s Huguenot massacres, 120
_Origines de la France Contemporaine_, 569
Orleans, Bishop of, attitude of, to papal infallibility, 228,
316, 515, 523, 524
at Council of Bishops, 1867., 500
patriotism of (1862), 445
permission refused to, for publication of reply to the Archbishop
of Mechlin, 537
promotion of Vatican Council by, 493
unacknowledged agreement with Döllinger, 316
on validity of Vatican Council's decrees, 549
Orleans, city of, horrors of Huguenot massacre at, 124
Orleans dynasty, result of appeal from, in 1848., 590
Orsi, Döllinger's tribute to, 387
Orsini, Cardinal, Legatine mission of, to France, his instructions, 137;
Charles IX.'s representations to him, 138
Oscott, Wiseman's work as President of, 438
Osiander, Andreas, _cited_ on toleration, 157
Ossat, D' 114 & _note_
Overbeck, on Epistle to Diognetus, 420
Oxford movement, Döllinger told of, by Brewer. 402
Wiseman's influence on, 438
Paderborn, Bishop of, on infallibility of Pope, 518
Paine, Thomas, 585;
citation of, from _Rights of Man_, on the confusion of political
forms with political liberty, 238
Pallavicini, Theiner on, 431
Panhellenism, 284
Panigarola, panegyric by, on Charles IX., 125
Panslavism, rise of, 284
Papacy, the, acknowledgment of small principalities of Italy, 355
based on organic development, 321-4
and the Byzantine Empire, 353
extraordinary notions of Godwin Smith on the, 267
future of, 367-70
government of, reform in, 363-5
reform of, attempted by Pius IX., Döllinger on, 365
removal to France, a challenge to schism, 370
temporal power of, _see_ Temporal power
Papal Legations rescued from Austria at the Congress of Vienna, 283
See, confusion between direct and indirect authority of, 256
struggle with the Franciscans, 552
Papinian, _cited_ on political progress, 79
Paramo, 428
Paris, attitude hostile to the Huguenots, 116, 117
attitude after the murder of Coligny and Massacre of St. Bartholomew
in, 106, 126, _and see both heads_
France governed by, during revolution of 1789, 88
Mendoça's praise of its Catholic inhabitants, 124
Archbishop of, cardinals hat refused for, by Pius IX., 526
career of, 526
character of, 326
French representation on Vatican Council urged by, 505
on Papal infallibility, 532
on validity of Vatican Council's decrees, 549
university of, and the Inquisition, 570
Paris, Matthew, Lea's authorities on, 558
Parliamentary corruption in America, past and present, 578
government, primitive republicanism the germ of, 32
Parma, centre of historical work, 387
(1862) nationality in, 292
Partition of Poland, _see under_ Poland
Pascal, Blaise, advocate of passive obedience to kings, 48
_cited_ on varying standards of right and wrong, 220
Passaglia, fame of, 413
on papal liberty, 313
reputation of, 502
Passive obedience to the State, doctrine upheld by theologians and
philosophers, 47, 48
taught by Luther, 156, 161, 180;
asserted by Calvin, 180-81
_Patrie_, French newspaper, criticism by, of Wiseman's address at Rome,
439, 443, 444, 445;
his reply, 439
Paul, Father, 432
Paul III., Pope (Cardinal Farnese), hatred of the Medici family, 214;
letter from Sadolet, praising the extermination of the Vaudois, 217
Paul V., Pope (Borghese), aware of premeditated Huguenot massacre, 114
Peace of St. Germains, as affecting French Huguenots, 105;
alarmist views on, held by Salvati, 110
Peasants' war, the, in Germany, attitude of Luther towards, 155, 156
& _note_, 162
Pegna, Arragonese origin of, 558, 560
character of works of, 428
Pellevé, Cardinal, Archbishop of Sens, on the premeditation of a massacre
of Huguenots, 111
Peloponnesian war, influence of, on Athens, 69
Penn, William, 410;
follower of doctrine of toleration, 84
Pennaforte, home of St. Raymond, 556
Pennsylvania, democratic constitution of, 84
People, _see also_ Democracy _and_ Will of the People
sovereignty of, idea of parent of idea of Nationality, 277
wishes, etc., of, as criterion of right, teaching on, of the French
Revolution as to, 271
Percin, authority on the Inquisition, 554
German ignorance of, 428
Peresius, on Bible inspiration, 514
Perez, Antonio, accusation by, of
Philip II. of Spain, 104
Pericles and democracy, 9, 68
effort to prevent predominance of any particular interest in
politics, 10
Perronne, on biblical critics, 514
on commission of preparation for Vatican Council, 500
hostility to Passaglia, 413
rank of, 417
Persecution, attitude to, of Marsilius, 562
by Catholics, principles of, 168-170, 186
by heathen Rome, justified on political grounds, 186
mediæval, justification of, 254
method of escaping from imposition of religious disabilities, 250
natural stage in the progress of society, 250
Protestant theory of, 150;
the book by H.C. Lea, review, inadequate as history of, 574
reasons for and against, as a political principle, 252
some noted supporters of, 570
Spain and Sweden contrasted, 170
two propositions regarding, 572-3
Persian wars, influence of, 67
Persians, makers of history, 240
Petavius (s.j.) and the idea of development in religion, 591, 592
Döllinger's early study of, 379
Döllinger's gratitude to, 393
Morris of Exeter advised to read, 380
Peter Martyr, death of Servetus approved by, 185
Petrucci, communications of, forecasting the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, 109
mysticism of, 376
Philip II., king of Spain, aid of, essential to crush French Huguenots, 104
the St. Bartholomew massacre urged by, 116-17
orders from, for slaughter of Alva's Huguenot prisoners, 142
revolt against, of the Netherlands, 44
Philo of Alexandria, Lucius's attacks on, 420
on customs of the Essenes, 26
Philosophers, doctrine of passive obedience, upheld by, 48
schemes of, for ideal societies, why never realised, 270-71
Piatti, apologist of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 148
Piedmontese government and the Papacy, 368-9
Pilgrim fathers, belief of, not influencing the American revolution, 584-5
Pistoja, on treatment of heretics in Rome under Pius V., 138
Pitra, influence of, in France, 404
Pius IV., Pope, Bull _Multiplices inter_, published by, 520-25
Pius V., Pope, blessing given by, to war against Huguenots, 141
denunciatory letter from, to court of France, 110
patron of Muzio, 214-15
previous information of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew supplied
to, 130-31
strong anti-Protestant views of, 138-9
on the peace of St. Germains, 105
Pius VII., Pope, destruction of church of France by, 323
influence on Döllinger, 402
_cited_ on Papal authority, 323
Pius IX., Pope, alarm of dissenting bishops allayed by, 519
Archbishop of Paris rebuked by, 526
brief of, to the Archbishop of Munich, censuring Frohschammer, 481-5
character of, described by Döllinger, 365-6
confidence in the support of the bishops at the discussion of Papal
infallibility, 523-4
on Döllinger's _Kirche und Kirchen_, 415
on the infallibility of the Pope, 496
personal popularity of, 497
quarrel with Russia, 493
reform of excommunication laws, 531
treatment of Döllinger, 411
Vatican Council convened and prepared for by, 492-511
obstinacy in management of Vatican Council, 532
reforms of, 402
refusal of permission to Theiner to publish acts of Council of Trent, 431
and Vatican Council, Döllinger's estimate of, 431
veneration of, spell broken by protesting bishops, 531
Planck, Möhler's address to, 378
Plantagenet, house of, claims backed by Rome against house of Bruce, 35
Plantier, authority on Louis Philippe, 402
Platen, diaries of, description of Döllinger's early studies in, 375
Plato, _Laws_, 22
on class interests, 69, 71
opinions of, 71
not without perverted notions of morality, 18
_Republic_ of, 270
Plebeians, Roman, struggle with aristocracy, 13, 14
Plotinus, ideal society of, 270
Plutarch, religious knowledge of, 406
Poland, 105;
Anjou as candidate for throne of, 105;
prospects of, after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 144
an exception to common law of dynastic States, 274;
and why, 275;
the consequence, the partition, 275
extinction of, 283
government of, and the Reformation, 43
partition of, awakening theory of nationality in Europe, 275
religious toleration in sixteenth century, 103
republic of, nature, 49
Socinians in, Beza's hostility to, 146
wrath in, at the Huguenot massacres, 120
Pole, Cardinal, _Il Principe_ brought to notice of, 214
_cited_ on political scruples, 219
Polish exiles, why always champions of national movements, 286
Protestants, strength and unity of, 103
revolution, causes united in, 284
Political corruption, Hamilton's paradox on, 581
disorders, distribution supersedes concentration of power as remedy
against, under Solon, 7
equality at Athens, 68
forms, confusion with popular rights, 238
freedom inherently absent in France, 237-40
habits and ideas special to particular nations, varying in the
national history, 297
intelligence, not culture, the test of a conquering race, 242
liberty in modern times the fruit of self-government, 253
life a sign of true patriotism, 293
opposition to Vatican Council, absence of, 511
power should be in proportion to public service, 8
observance of this principle at Athens, 8
principles, obligation of, essentials for understanding, 458
science, America's rank in, its exponents, 578
theory of nationality in contradiction with the historic notion, 243
thoughts on the Church, 188
Politics, attitude to, of the best Americans, 578
conscience in, expedient elasticity of, 212-14
contemporary, Döllinger's part in, 400-403
honesty in, approved by great men, 219-23;
not always expedient, 219-21;
opinions of Pope Clement, 214;
Machiavelli, 212;
Michelet, 213;
Molino, 213;
Sarpi, 213;
Soto, 213
laws of, rest on experience, 391
liberty highest end of, 22, 23, 24
Machiavellian, tribute to, 219
principles of, high teaching regarding, in Plato's _Laws_ and
Aristotle's _Polities_, 22
retribution in, 220-23
science of, impartial study, unknown in seventeenth century, 43-46;
impartial study originated by Grotius, 46
Politics and science, authority of, now re-established, extent of, 453;
discoveries and principles of, how generally judged, 454
Polygamy, attitude of reformers to, 159, 160
Pontiac, price on head of, 213
Pope, the, and the court, Lamennais's distinction between, 464-5
intervention of, between state and sovereign, 257
Popes, the (Medicean), unofficial countenance of Machiavelli, 214
Popular rights, confusion of political forms with, 238
Population, masses of, not benefited by liberty of subject, 94
relief of, aim of modern democracy, 95
Porrette, Marguerite, 558, 568
Portugal, lay representative of, on Vatican Council, 507
Postel, 382
Potomac, army of, 579
Praetorius, 432
Presbyterianism, democratic element in, 81, 82
Döllinger's sketch of, 336-7
Prescott, W., 569
Press, freedom of, in Netherlands Republic inaugurated reign of law, 50
Principles, false, place of, in social life of nations, 272
political, obligation of, essentials for understanding, 458
touchstone and watershed of, 454
Principles and interests, relative importance of, 449
Priscillian, fate of, Lea's view on, 572
Property, liberty and connection between, 54
Protagoras _cited_, 70
Protestant authorities, use made of, by the Ultramontanes, 451-2
Church government, agitation for reform in Prussia, 347
establishment, its views on government, 260
Reformers, _see_ Reformers
"Protestant Theory, The, of Persecution," 150, & _see_ 254, 255, 576
involved in Luther's teaching, 164
developed by Melanchthon, 164 _et seq._
carried to an extreme by the Anabaptists, 172
carried out by Calvin, 178;
and defended by Beza, 183
continued in Massachusetts, 187
characteristics of, 168-70
failure of, 187
Zwinglian varieties of, 174 _et seq._
Protestantism, aversion of, to freedom, 240
and the civil power, 150, 159, 161, 181
decline of, in Northern Europe, Döllinger's description of, 342-51
Döllinger's survey of, 302-303
final acceptance by, of toleration, 187
friendly feeling of Döllinger towards, 396-7
growth of, 325-52
and the later mediæval sects, essential difference between, 271
never successful in France, 595
toleration as, cause and effect of its decline, 255
Protestants, the, _see also_ Huguenots and Lutherans
as cats' paws of France against Spain, 105-16
ordinance of Louis XIV. against, and their action, 50
position and apparent prospects of (1572), 102
English, unanimity amongst, 189
Polish, unity and strength among, 103
Provincial massacres of Huguenots, 105
Prussia, nationality shown in the opposition to Napoleon I., 281
Prynne, on study of records, 393
Pufendorf, expositor of Grotius' doctrines, 46
Purgatory, release from (_see_ Indulgences), obtainable from the Pope,
belief in, 495
Puritans in America, intolerance of, 187
Pusey, Dr., Döllinger's letters to, 395-6
in favour of Vatican Council, 493
Puygaillard, mission of, to ensure provincial massacres of Huguenots,
118 _note_, 119
Pythagoras, an advocate of government by aristocracy, 21
Quetelet, 589
Quicherat and other authorities on Joan of Arc, 558
Quinet, cause to which he attributes the breakdown of the French
Revolution, 595
Radowitz, Döllinger's debt to, 402
potential liberality of, 414
_Rambler, The_, 447
Rambouillet, French Ambassador at Rome, 136
Ranke, Leopold von, calm indifference of historical deductions of, 390
estimate of Macaulay by, 391
old age of, friendship with Döllinger, 396
style of, admiration of Döllinger for, 393
_cited_ on judgment of time, 221;
on Luther's conservatism, 161;
on Machiavelli's merits, 228
Rattazzi, impoverishing policy of, 509
Raumer, source of historical work of, 386
Rauscher, Cardinal, opponent of Papal infallibility, 532, 533, 535, 544
Ravignan, 400
Raymundus, Döllinger's opinion of works of, 382
Raynaud, account of Machiavelli's death, 215
Rebellion punished by death by the Church in the Middle Ages, 216-19
Reformation, the, discredited by the Peasants' War, 155
Döllinger on, 393-7
early character of, 153
effect of, on governments, 41, 42, 43
Reformers, Protestant, attitude of, to polygamy, 159, 160
common origin of their views on State policy, 150-51
intolerance of, exemplified, 184
Saxon and Swiss, reason of their political differences, 173, 177
on the treatment of heresy, 183
views of, on Church and State, 181
writings of, 150
Regicide (_see also_ Assassination _and_ Murder) urged by mediæval
Church to remove tyrants, 217-18
Reid, 593
Reisach, Cardinal, _see_ Munich, Archbishop of
Religion in relation to the American government, 584-5
decay in belief of, among Greeks, 8
development of, attitude to, of Bossuet, 591
how it influences State policy, 150
principles of, non-sectarian study of, unknown in seventeenth
century, 45-46
reconcilable to liberty, dispute on, 467-9
toleration in, early advocates of, 52
turned into engine of despotism after
Reformation, 44
true, definition of, 197
differentiation of, from false, standards for, 449
Religions, multiplicity of, danger from, limited, 250
suppression of, due to danger from doctrine in pagan and mediæval
times, 251;
only necessary when practice of, dangerous to State, 251
Religious crime, civil jurisdiction over, Beza's views, 146
disabilities, danger of, greater than multiplicity of religions, 250
in Ireland made an engine of political oppression, 253
intelligence and zeal, office of, 460
liberty, defined, 151-2
effect on, of State control, 151-3
incompatibility of, with unity frequent, 252
in Maryland, 187
and political emancipation, connection of, not accidental, 292
persecution and slavery, 64
toleration, _see_ Toleration
Renan, Ernest, commendation by, of dishonesty in politics, 225
rank of, as writer in France, 417
Renouvier, Flint's agreement with, 594-5
Representation separability from taxation, origin of this principle
in Middle Ages, 39
in America, restrictions on, 579
Representative assemblies, methods of strengthening, 97
government, earliest proclamation and enactment of, 26
not discussed in classical literature, 25, 26
origin of, in Middle Ages, 39
Republic, French (the first), its title and what it signified, 277
Republic of 1848 (France), of what school the triumph, 590
Republican views of Zwingli and Calvin, 42
Republicanism of Athens, 68
primitive, germ of Parliamentary government, 32
true, defined, 277
Republics, government by, good opinion of Louis Philippe as to, 56, 90
of Poland and Venice, contrast between, 49
Resistance, doctrine of, 54
law of, as manifested in the American Revolution, 586
Restoration, French (under Louis XVIII.), effects of, on Nationality, 282
the true, that of 1688., 580
Rettberg, 420
Retz, Cardinal de, opposed to, yet ignorant of, Machiavelli's
doctrines, 218
_cited_ on political adaptability, 219
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, an inconsistency, 170;
not approved by Innocent XI., 147;
remarks on, 266
Revolution, identity of, and difference from, passive obedience, 162
one of the worst enemies of civil freedom, 300
its most powerful auxiliary, present day, 276
Protestantism favourable to, 181
American--
not inspired by the belief of the Pilgrim Fathers, 584-5
nothing of, in common with the French, 580
spirit of, 580, 587
supreme manifestation of the law of resistance, 586
of 1848, double debt to, of Nationality, 287
the French--
abolition by, of traces of national history, 278
the (1789), causes leading up to, 85, 86, 87
change produced by, how effected, 271;
consequences, 272
characteristics peculiar to, roots far back in history, 280
denounced by Burke, 219
doctrines of, adversary of the old despotic policy, 276
essential difference between it and others, 271
injured by its religious policy, 86
ethnological character of, 277, 278
nothing in it in common with the American revolution, 580
revival of a conquered race, 241
no constructive idea given rise to by it, 241
substance of its ideas, 280
theory of equality disastrous to liberty, 88
of 1688, "divine right of freeholders" established by, 54
principles of, anticipated, 179
statesmen of, represented as ancestors of modern liberty, 53
Revolutionary leaders of 1789, ideas of, contrary to idea of
Nationality, 281
Revolutions, three phases of those subsequent to the Congress of
Vienna, 284-5
Rhode Island, State of, rise of, 187
Richelieu, Cardinal, historical insight of, 409
method of dealing with Protestants, its effect, 116
on subjection of nation, 48
_cited_ on historical deductions based on success, 221
Riehl, on abstract ideas and their power, 585
Rimini, 559
Rio, 432; _cited_ on Döllinger as a theologian, 399
Ritschl, 389
Robespierre, fate of, 401
terrorism of, causes of production of, 262
Robinson _cited_ on progressive revelation, 592
Rochelle, La, siege of, 113 _note_, 115, 118
Roman conquest of Europe and its consequences, 277 _et seq._
Romans, as makers of history, 240
persecution of Christians by, reasons for, 196, 198
Rome, _see also_ Church, the conflicts with, 461-91
attitude at, towards Döllinger, 410-14
and the Church at variance, 516-17
popularity of Machiavelli in, 214
statesmen of, permeation of, with Greek ideas, 16
Court of, reformation demanded by Strossmayer, 536
religious power of, as the preservation of civilised Europe,
Lea's view, 568
and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, its complicity (believed in),
128, 131;
reception at, of the news of, 132, 134, 135
result of Vatican Council, scorn of opposition, 544
ties of English Catholics with, tightened by Wiseman, 438
Wiseman's Address at, criticised by _The Patrie_, 439;
his reply and rebuttal of "covert insinuations" in _The Home and
Foreign Review_, 439-40;
reply of that publication, 440;
statement of facts concerning the Address, 444
Emperors of, above legal restraint, 78, 79
pleasure of, force of law possessed by, 31
Empire of, creation of the Roman people, not by usurpation, 77, 78
better services rendered by, to cause of liberty than by the
Republic, 15
seat of, transferred from Rome to Constantinople, 30
heathen, persecution by, how justified, 186
Republic of, conversion into monarchy by Julius Cæsar, 15
influenced by precept and example, 13, 14
ruined by its own vices, 74
Roscher, intercourse of, with Döllinger, 403
Rosmini, 381;
disciples of, 314
Döllinger's pupils sent to, 381
erudition of, 400
Rossi, De, 431; Döllinger's guide in Rome, 411
on epistles of St. Ignatius, 419
friendship with Cardinal Reisach, 501
Rouen, clergy of, desirous of Huguenot extirpation, 142
reluctance of Carouge to allow Huguenot
massacre at, 119
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, cause of his power as a political writer, 84
definition of the social compact, 57
effects of his teaching on Marat, 57, 58
proclaimer of equality, 273
vindication of natural society by, 263
on true sense of country, 294
Royalism, execution of Charles I., a triumph for, 51
Royalty exalted into a religion (_see also_ Divine Right of Kings
_and_ Passive Obedience), 47
Ruinart, credulous criticism of, 420
Rümelin, 589; on political expediency, 222
Russia, and its adoption of Greek Church, 333-4
attitude of, to Vatican Council, 508
quarrel of, with Pius IX., 493
Russian nationality attacked by Napoleon I., 281
Saccarelli, Döllinger's tribute to, 387
"Sacerdotal Celibacy," 561;
and the _Droit du Seigneur_, 566
Sacred College, the, attitude of, on the St. Bartholomew, 140
Salviati's eminence at, 110
Sadolet, Paul, _cited_, on massacre of Vaudois of Provence, 217
Sailer, 402
St. Augustine, _cited_, 197;
in praise of Seneca, 25
St. Bartholomew, the Massacre of (_see_ Massacre of St, Bartholomew),
44, 101;
not a crime of the people, 43
St. Bernard, 434
St. Brieuc, agreement with Gratry's views, 537
St. Cyprian, intolerance a rule of life from the days of, Lea's view, 562
St. Dominic as the First Inquisitor, 553;
so entitled by Sixtus V. 558
attitude of, to heretics, 428, 554
house of, at Toulouse, headquarters of the Inquisition, 552
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, strange choice by, of a confessor, 570
St. Francis of Assisi, Lea's view of, 569
St. Germains, Peace of, advantages of, to French Huguenots, 105;
alarmist views on, of Salviati, 110
St. Irenaeus, language of, which might be taken as Arian, 592
St. Louis, Archbishop of, on the Immaculate Conception, 545
on Papal Infallibility, 533, 545;
his protest against the doctrine, 499
St. Martin, mysticism of, 376;
study of, by De Maistre, 377
St. Pölten, Bishop of (Fessler), and the proposed discussion of Papal
Infallibility at Vatican Council, 500-501, 513
reform urged by, 495
Secretary of Vatican Council, 501
St. Raymond and the Inquisition, 556-7
St. Sulpice, Catechism of, Lea's deductions from, 570
opposition of, to Lamennais's Ultramontanism, 463
St. Thomas Aquinas, later exponent of Plato's _Politics_, 72
_cited_ on the relation of Kings to the People, 36, 37
Sainte Beuve, C.A., _cited_ on political fatalism, 221
Ste. Hilaire, Barthélemy, _cited_ on Machiavelli's politics, 219
Salvianus on social virtues of pagans, 33
Salviati, despatches of, on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 132, 133;
as utilised by Acton, and his predecessors, 102
on the "spirit of a Christian," as shown by Charles IX. at the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 122
on the true reason for the Navarre marriage, 135
Samarra, the, 569
San Callisto, Döllinger's visit to, 411
San Germano, treaty of, 555
San Marino, 386
Santa Croce, Nuncio, information derived from, on the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, 102;
on the plans framed at Bayonne against Huguenots, 108 & _note_, 108-9
alleged report by, on the intended Huguenot massacre, 131-2
Sarpi, Paolo, _cited_ on political honesty, 213
Savigny, 380;
influence of, on Döllinger, 376
leading doctrines of, 594
source of historical works of, 386
Savonarola, Girolamo, 556
Savoy, motto of its abortive rising in 1834., 286
not surprised by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 109
Duke of, and the marriage of Coligny, 110
Say, J.B., _cited_ on political virtues, 219
Schelling, 403
estrangement of, from Döllinger, 381
mythology of, 405
_cited_ on collective thought, 585-6
Scherer, Edmond, _cited_ on progress, 221
Schlegel, H.W.F. von, classed as Ultramontane, 451
studied by Döllinger, 375
Schleiermacher, F.E.D., Döllinger on, 375
Schmalkald, Confession of, on excommunication, 158
Schomberg on Charles IX. and the provincial massacres, 120
Schopenhauer, metaphysics of, Döllinger's love for, 381
Schottmüller, 421, 574;
conclusions of, on the trial of the Templars, 563
Schrader, Clement, reputation of, 502
on commission of preparation for Vatican Council, 500
Schwarzenberg, Cardinal, manager of German elections to Commission
on Dogma, 529, 532
Cardinal, opposition of, at Vatican Council, 525-6
on Papal Infallibility, 544
Schwenkfeld, Kaspar von, his doctrines condemned by Melanchthon, 167
Science, demands of, on its students, 453
liberty of, in the Church, 461-91
liberty in, questioned through Frohschammer's excommunication, 477
power of, to act upon religion, not foreseen in 1679., 595
Science and religion, reconciliation of, 462;
denied by Frohschammer, 462;
accepted by Lamennais, 462-3
Science, truth essential in, 449
German, great services to intellectual liberty, 469
religious, definition of, 389
Scientific truth, certainty of essentials for understanding, 458
Sclopis, Count, on character of Machiavelli, 226
Scotland, Döllinger on Presbyterianism of, 337
triumph of Reformation in, over the State, 43
Scott, Hope, consulted by Döllinger, 395
Sega, Bishop of Piacenza and Nuncio, attitude of, to murder for the
glory of God, 139
Self-government, faculty of, opposed to tradition of antiquity, 31
in a great democracy, how alone preservable, 277;
that kind of, which constitutes true republicanism, 277
modern political liberty the result of, 253
Self-sacrifice, renovation of society on principles of, 58
Seneca, his elevated sentiments praised by St. Augustine, 25
religious knowledge of, 406
views of, 73
Sermoneta, 131
Servetus, Michael, 430;
his condemnation approved by Melanchthon, 167;
and by other Reformers, 175, 184-5;
defended by Calvin, 181-2;
but not politically justified, 184-5
Seward, W.H., on the rights sought by the revolting Americans, 587
praise by, of Hamilton's statesmanship, 581
Shakespeare, study of, Döllinger's motive for, 432
Sherman, General, 579
Sicily, the Inquisition in, 1224., 553-4
Sickel, 422
Sidney, Algernon, character of, 53
slight knowledge of Machiavelli's works, 218
Sieyès, 277; council suggested by, 96
doctrine of, 57
Sigismund, King of Poland, Beza's advice to, on Socinianism, 146
Sigonius, Döllinger's gratitude to, 393
Simancas, annotations of, on Campeggio's commentary, 559-60
Simpson, 432
Sixtine Chapel, Vasari's paintings in, illustrative of the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 135
Sixtus V., Pope, attitude of, to the murder of the Guises, 121-2
Döllinger's estimate of, 424
St. Dominic entitled by, the First Inquisitor, 558
a strong Pope, 138
Slavery and democracy, 63
Slavery, general extinction of, in Europe in Middle Ages, 39
principle of, implicit opposition of Stoics to, 25, 26
and practice of, rejected by Essenes, 26
Slavonic races, 245
stationary national character of, 241
Smith, Adam, doctrine of, 57
known in France, 219
Smith, Goldwin, on the Catholic Church in Ireland, 259
on history, success only attribute acknowledged by, 223
Smith, Sir Thomas, on English attitude to the French, after the
Huguenot massacres, 144 & _note_
Socialism, baneful alliance of, with democracy, 92, 93, 98
and slavery, 63
Societies, Epicurean notion that they are founded on contract for
mutual protection, 18
Society and government, association and correspondence of, 265
Society of Jesus (_see also_ Jesuits), Arragonese influence in
its constitution, 557
Socinians, reason of their persecution, 169
Socinus, partial advocate of toleration, 52
Socrates, 406; on democracy, 71
death of, crowning act of guilt of Athenian government, 12
method of, essentially democratic, 71
records of, 409
view of, on laws of country as sole guide of conduct, 18
Solon, decentralisation of power advised by, to remedy social
disorders, 7
doctrine of, that political power should be commensurate with
public service, 8
influence of, on democracy, 66, 68
revision of laws of Athens by, 6
good results of his forethought in providing for revision of
Athenian constitution, 7, 8
Sophists, doctrine of, 70
their ideas of utilitarianism, 17
Sorbin, Confessor of Charles IX., and the Orleans massacres, 126;
his account of the death of Charles IX., 126-7 & _note_
on premeditation of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 112
Soto, on political conscience, 216
_cited_ on assassination as a political resource, 213
Spain (_see also_ Cadiz Constitution), abortive monarchy of (1812), 89
absolute monarchy in, due to appropriation of tribunal of Inquisition, 41
designs against, of Charles IX., utilisation in, of the Protestants,
105, 116
effect on, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124, 143
and the Inquisition, 152
Montalembert's journey to, 425
national character of rejection of French forces and ideas, 281
Parliamentary system of, origin, 34
reasons for persecution in, 170
and representation on Vatican Council, 507
view in, of the planned character of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 124
Spinoza, advocate of passive obedience to the State, 48
interpreter of Machiavelli, 228
Spirit of the American Revolution, what it was, 587;
what it was not, 584-5
Spondanus, Bishop, on Gregory XIII., reasons for permitting the Navarre
marriage, 128
Stahl, J., 589; injustice of Döllinger to, 391
Stahr, A., _cited_ on historical deductions, 221
Stanley, Dean, considered Vatican Council important to all
denominations, 493
State, the (_see also_ Church and State), authority of, excessive in
ancient times, insufficient in Middle Ages, 4
free constitution of, free action of Church a test of, 246
limitations of its duties, 3
and religious liberty, 151-3
sole authority according to modern theory, 151
sole care of the Absolutists, eighteenth century, 273
State Church, its connection with the community, 260
of Ireland, Goldwin Smith on, 259
States, boundaries of, as coincident with Nationalities, J.S. Mill on, 285
classic, taking from citizens more than they gave them. 17;
vice of, 16
small, drawbacks of, 295
States-General, the, and the Inquisition, 570
Stein, 282
Stenzel, G.A.H., _cited_ on political expediency, 222
Stephen, Leslie, _cited_ on philosophy of history based on truth, 223
Stewart, Dugald, praise of Machiavelli, 224
Stoics, their emancipation of mankind from subjugation to despotic rule, 24
their implied opposition to principle of slavery, 25, 26
their teaching nearest approach to that of Christianity, 24, 25
views of, 73
Stolberg, classed as Ultramontane, 451
Story, on Tocqueville's views of the American Constitution, 576
_cited_ on _The Federalist_, 581
Strappado, the, 569
Strasburg, Senate of, reluctance of, to act harshly to Catholics, 172
_Stratagemma, Lo, di Carlo IX._, and its author, 129
Strossmayer, Bishop (upon Turkish frontier), 548;
absence of, from vote on decree (involving acceptance of
Infallibility), 543
demand for reform made by, 536
opposition of, at Vatican Council, 522
protest of, to Vatican Council altered before presentation, harmony
restored by, 542
on authority of Vatican Council, 541
on the dogmatic decree, 527, 533
on ungenerous treatment of Protestants, 541
Strozza, Philip, 113 _note_
Stuart, House of, misrule of, only temporarily foiled under Cromwell, 50
upholders of supremacy of kingship over people, 47
Suarez, revision of MS. of, in Rome, 428
Suffrage, limitations of, effects of, 96
restricted, not always a safeguard of monarchy, 2
universal, of what school the triumph, 590
Sunderland, 410
Sura, Bishop of, 519
Sweden, bishops of, and political assassinations, 217
religion in, Döllinger on, 341-2
working of Protestant theory of persecution in, 170
Swift, Jonathan, 409
Swiss, the, true nationality of, 294-5
Constitution (1874), significant work of modern democracy, 91
reformers, unlikenesses of, to the Saxons, 173
Switzerland, _see_ Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and
Calvinism in, Döllinger on, 338-9
Cantons of, influence in days preceding French Revolution, 50
progress and success of democracy in, 91
and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 120, 124-5
Sybel, H. von, historical style of, 384
_cited_ on historical deduction, 221
Sylla, invested with dangerous powers, 77
Syllabus, the Archbishop of Paris led by, to urge moderation, 526
the, designed to restore authority to the Church, 492
opinions of Pius IX. collected in, 496-8
opposition controlled by, 524
Prince Hohenlohe opposed to discussing state maxims of, at Vatican
Council, 503-4
Symmachus, _cited_, 196
Synods, Acts of, alleged tampering with, as affecting doctrine of
Infallibility, 499
Tacitus, confession of, respecting mixed constitutions, 20
Taine, Henri, Döllinger's ambiguous praise of, 417
influence of, on Döllinger, 434
Talleyrand de Perigord, Charles Maurice, 100
signs of sympathy with idea of nationality shown by, 282-3
_cited_ on Hamilton, 581
Tapparelli, classed as Ultramontane, 451
Taxation of American colonists, opposition of Lords Chatham and
Camden to, 55
exemption of clergy from, 34
inseparable from representation, origin of this principle in Middle
Ages, 39
Taylor, Sir Henry, on necessity for political subtlety, 219
Téligny and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 107
Tempesti on Catherine de' Medici and the Massacre of St-Bartholomew, 148
Templars, Döllinger's lecture on, 433
trial of, Lea's conclusions on, 552, 563
Temporal power of the Papacy, 312-13, 352-62, 367-71, 412-16, 422-5
antagonism to, 315-16
Döllinger on, 301-74
Terror, the, _see_ Reign of Terror
Tertullian, language of, which might be taken as Arian, 592
Teutonic races, missionaries the channel of conversion to Christianity, 245
union political more than religious, 244
State and the Church, quarrel between, cause of revival of democracy, 80
tribes, Christianity readily accepted by, 199
Theiner, A., early views of, superseded, 429
_Life of Clement the Fourteenth_, by, 411
Permission to publish acts of Council of Trent, refused to, by the
Pope, 431
skill of, as editor, 421
as source of information on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 102
views of, on Jesuits not in agreement with Döllinger, 411-12
Theognis on domination of oligarchies, 6
Theology in Germany, unique and scientific, 317, 347-51, 376, 471-82
schools of, at Munich, 375, and Tübingen, 376
Theramenes as statesman, 70
Thiers, Adolphe, opinion of Machiavelli's works, 227
Thou, De, and the charge against the Bordeaux clergy, 127 _note_
on the Navarre marriage, 128
reproached for condemning Huguenot massacres, 147
Thucydides on reformed government at Athens, 12
Tocqueville, 400;
indictment brought by, against democracy, 93
influence of, on Döllinger's politics, 414
on the inspiration of the American Revolution, 584
on the need for two chambers in a Senate, 575-6
_cited_ on the American federal constitution, 576
on democracy and absolute government, 239
Toledo, Councils of, framework of Parliamentary system of Spain, 34
Toleration, advocacy of, by William Penn, 84
of Anabaptists, varying views of Reformers on, 157, 164, 176
anonymous tract on, against Calvin, 182
Calvinism a danger to, 180
cause and effect of decline of Protestantism, 255
early attitude of Reformers towards, 153-55, 168
in the early church, 186
Edict of, deceitful, of Charles IX., 117
Maryland an example of, 187
as a political principle, reasons for and against, 252
religious, in Poland, 103
forced upon Protestantism, 187
Protestant theory of, 151
and religious liberty, 152
traditional, attitude to, of Lea, 562
views of Beza on, 146
Tommasini, praise of Machiavelli, 226
Torquemada, 569
Tosti, on Papal Liberty, 313
on Temporal Power, 412
Toulouse, and the Albigenses, 556
Count of, and the Council of Arles, 565
Treitschke, _cited_ on Political Morality, 222
Trent Commissioners and prohibited works, 215
Trent, Council of, 111, 175
intolerance of, reformed by Vatican Council, 493-4
spirit of, 138
Treviso (province), story of, 387
Tridentine Reformation, _see_ Trent, Council of
Tronchin, on Voltaire's death, 215
Tübingen, heresies of, 381
school of positive theology at, 376, 377
Turgot, attempted reforms of, 85
_cited_ on political expediency, 220
views of, on single or double form of Legislature, 576
Turin, Court of, policy of, 445
Turks, Charles IX.'s pourparlers with, 104
Twesten, _cited_ in support of Machiavelli's policy, 229
Tyrol, movement in, against Napoleonic institutions, a national one, 281
Ultramontane school, eminent writers of, two peculiarities of, 451
supersession of, 452
Ultramontanism, _see also_ Döllinger extreme, considered to be keystone
of the Church, by Lamennais, 462-3
United States, _see_ America
Unity, aimed at, by English Catholics, 438
change of constitution effected by, in Italy and Germany, 225
of faith in France, enforcement of, aim of the Court, 117
liberty sacrificed to, by Machiavelli, 229
in relation to nationality, 287, 289
and religious liberty, incompatibility of, frequent, 252
necessity for, in Church and State, 252
religious, in relation to religious freedom, 152
Universal suffrage, of what school the triumph, 590
University of Paris and the Inquisition, 570
Ussher, Archbishop, advocate of passive obedience to kings, 47
Utilitarianism in classical ages, 17
Utrecht Psalter, story of, 551
Vaissète, 565
Valois, Margaret of, _see_ Navarre, Queen of
Vasari, paintings by, in the Sixtine Chapel, of the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, 135
Vatican Council, 431, 492-550
constitution of, 501-11
convened by Pius IX., 492;
approbation of Pius IX.'s action in convening, 492-511
decree of, dissatisfaction with, 531
discussion on validity of dicta of, 548
Infallibility, doctrine of, its victory over opposition, 543
letter from German bishops to, on doctrinal points, 517
methods of, reformed to involve admission of Papal Infallibility, 539
opening of, 511
opposition at, 492-511, 525-9
preparations for, 492-511
proceedings of, 527-50
programme of, discussed in _The Reform of the Church in its Head and
Members_, 494-6
representation on:--
by Belgium, 507
by England, 506
by France, 504
by Germany, 505
by Italy, 508
by Portugal, 507
by Spain, 507
Strossmayer prevented by, from protesting, 541
_Vaticinia Pontificum_, Lea's knowledge of, 560
Vauban, Marshal, 48
Vaudois, the, of Provence, extermination of, by Louis XII., 217
Vavasour, Sir Edward, acquaintance of, with Döllinger, 388
Venice, extinction of, as State, 283
not surprised by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 109;
the event celebrated at, 125
and political murders, 213, 214
withdrawal of, from the League, 105, 107
republic of, nature, 49
Vergennes, _cited_ on political judgment, 227
Vergniaud, on the laws in relation to the will of the people, 276
Verona, centre of historical work, 387
Vespucci, 562
Veuillot, Louis, Döllinger on, 428
and the _Droit du Seigneur_, 566
Montalembert, _cited_ on, 428
Vico, 590
Vienna, Congress of, dynastic interests
predominant at, 282-3
effects of, on ideas of nationality, 283
Vienne, Inquisition at, and Servetus, 184
Villari, admiration of Machiavelli, 226
Vinet, 591
Virginia and Maryland, 187
Visconti family, models for Machiavelli, 212
_Vitae Paparum Avenionensium_, utilised by Lea and others, 559
Vives, toleration taught by, 570
Voltaire, profane criticism of, 218
Waldenses, analogy of Arnold of Brescia with, 559
why they opposed persecution, 563
Waldus, 558
Walpole, Horace, _cited_ on political scruples, 219
Walsingham, English ambassador in France, his reports on the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 101, 107, 115-16
condemnation by French Catholics as a whole, 143
War, art of, no national feeling in, till after 1789., 274
of Deliverance, new forces evoked by, 282
of 1859, troubles of the Papacy after, 412-14
Wars of religion, end of, 274
Washington, George, 579
political example of, 586
Waterloo, 282
Webster, 584
Weingarten on St. Anthony's life and origin of monasticism, 420
Wesel, English Calvinists at, 170
Wesley, John, Döllinger's tribute to, 395
Westminster, Archbishop of, at Council of Bishops, 1867., 500
on Papal Infallibility, 528
Westphalia, Peace of, and Roman ambition, 323, 324
Whigs, English, and their continental counterparts, attitude of,
after Waterloo, 282
Wilberforce, Archdeacon, Döllinger consulted by, 395
Samuel, Bishop of Winchester, story of, 551
Wilkins, 421
Will or sovereignty, the, of the people (_see also_ Democracy),
as criterion of right, 271;
as above the law, 276;
idea of, the parent of idea of nationality, 277
theory of nationality involved in, 287
William III., King of England, and massacre of Glencoe, 218, 410
Windelband, _cited_ on national government, 227
Windischmann (elder), Döllinger's esteem for, 381
public indifference to, 430
Winkelmann on the Inquisition, 426
Wirtemberg, left by Möhler, after publication of _Symbolik_, 377
Duke of, and the Huguenot refugees, 145
Wiseman, Cardinal, 424, 436
Döllinger consulted by, on mediæval authorities, 390-91
influence of, on the Church of England, and on the Oxford movement,
437-8
literary standing of, 437, 438
position of, universal and local in Catholicism, 437
relations of, with English Catholics, 437, 438
view of, on English theology, 380
work of, at Oscott, 438
on the "covert insinuations" of the _Home and Foreign Review_, 439-40;
the editor's defence of that publication, 440 _et seq._
Witt, De, murder of, 410
Wittelsbach, house of, contests of the Empire in the, 275
Würzburg, Bishop of, reform urged by, 495
(city) Döllinger and Platen at, 375
Wycliffe, John, difference between his teaching and Luther's, 271
Ximenes, Cardinal, and the Inquisition, 570
_Young Europe_, Mazzini's evolution of _Young Italy_, 286
_Young Italy_ and Mazzini, 286
Zanchini, an Inquisitor, leading authority of the fourteenth century, 559;
_cited_ by Lea, 560
Zeller, _cited_ on Anti-Machiavel policy in Prussia, 227
Zimmerman, Wilhelm, and Machiavelli's policy, 227
Zuñiga, Juan and Diego, 123
denunciation by, of French treachery even to heretics, etc., 144
Zürich, the question of toleration in, 174, 175
Zwickau, Saxony, prophets of, Melanchthon's attitude towards, 164
Zwingli, Ulrich, influence of, on politics, 81;
influence of environment on him, 173, 177
theory of government, including persecution, 173-4
republican views of, 42
Zwinglian schism, influence of, on Luther, 155
Zwinglians, the, condemned by Melanchthon, 167, 170 _note_
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_8vo. 10s. net._
HISTORICAL ESSAYS
AND STUDIES
BY THE LATE LORD ACTON, D.C.L., LL.D., ETC. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN
HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Edited with an Introduction by JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, M.A., and REGINALD
VERE LAURENCE, M.A.
CONTENTS
I. Wolsey and the Divorce of Henry VIII.
II. The Borgias and their Latest Historian.
III. Secret History of Charles II.
IV. The Civil War in America.
V. The Rise and Fall of the Mexican Empire.
VI. Cavour.
VII. The Causes of the Franco-Prussian War.
VIII. The War of 1870.
IX. George Eliot's "Life."
X. Mr. Buckle's "Thesis and Method."
XI. German Schools of History.
XII. Talleyrand's Memoirs.
XIII. The "Life" of Lord Houghton.
XIV. A History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation.
XV. A Short History of Napoleon I. The First Napoleon: A Sketch,
Political and Military.
XVI. Mabillon et la Société de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés
à la Fin du XVIIe Siècle.
XVII. A History of England, 1837-1880.
XVIII. A History of the French Revolution.
XIX. Wilhelm von Giesebrecht.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_8vo. 10s. net._
LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY
BY THE LATE LORD ACTON, D.C.L., LL.D., ETC.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Edited with an Introduction by JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, M.A., and REGINALD
VERE LAURENCE, M.A.
CONTENTS
Introduction.
Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History.
LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY
I. Beginning of the Modern State.
II. The New World.
III. The Renaissance.
IV. Luther.
V. The Counter-Reformation.
VI. Calvin and Henry VIII.
VII. Philip II., Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth.
VIII. The Huguenots and the League.
IX. Henry the Fourth and Richelieu.
X. The Thirty Years' War.
XI. The Puritan Revolution.
XII. The Rise of the Whigs.
XIII. The English Revolution.
XIV. Lewis XIV.
XV. The War of the Spanish Succession.
XVI. The Hanoverian Settlement.
XVII. Peter the Great and the Rise of Prussia.
XVIII. Frederic the Great.
XIX. The American Revolution.
Appendix I.--Letter to Contributors to the Cambridge Modern History.
Appendix II.--Notes to Inaugural Lecture.
Index.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
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