73. THE METTERNICH ERA

Political settlement. Between September, 1814, and June, 1815, allied diplomats conferred about European restoration. The host, Chancellor Klemens von Metternich of Austria, was the most influential statesman, although full execution of his reactionary ideas was hindered by the territorial ambitions of the eccentric Czar Alexander of Russia, British foreign minister Castlereagh’s isolationism, and even by Talleyrand’s adroit diplomacy on behalf of defeated France. Thus the accepted principle of “legitimacy” entitling prewar monarchs to restoration to their thrones and prerogatives came to be qualified by the stubborn demands of certain allies for “compensations” for their efforts expended in defeating Bonaparte. After lengthy arguments, the following compromises were reached. Russia was induced to abate her demand for the whole of Poland by receiving Finland from Sweden. This in turn necessitated Sweden’s compensation by receiving Norway from Denmark—which was too small to object. Prussia agreed to forego half of Saxony, a persistent Napoleonic ally,’ in exchange for territorial additions in the Rhineland. Austria exchanged Belgium for Venice and a dominant position in northern Italy. Belgium could then be given to Holland to form a “Kingdom of the Netherlands” supposedly capable of resisting either Prussia or France, and thus protecting the English Channel. In general, thirty-nine German states already consolidated by Bonaparte were favored in preference to restoration of some three hundred pre-Revolutionary ^{[p. 463]} principalities. In place of the defunct Holy Roman Empire, these states were joined in a weak “Germanic Confederation” under Austrian presidency. The Bourbons were restored to France, Spain and Naples, and the Savoyards to Sardinia-Piedmont, augmented by the former Republic of Genoa. Great Britain contented herself with retaining a few territories picked up in previous wars: Malta, Cape Colony, etc. The only shred of Liberalism tolerated at the Congress was a resolution to abolish the slave trade.

Ecclesiastical reorganization. Cardinal Consalvi had taken care to meet the leading diplomats before the opening of the Vienna Congress, even going to London on this errand. During the first period of the Congress prior to the “Hundred Days,” Consalvi had little success in promoting his objective, complete restoration of papal temporal possessions. He kept aloof from the social life of the Congress and lacked the material inducements used by other embassies, though at Talleyrand’s motion the papal nuncio was accorded ceremonial precedence among diplomats as had been traditional. But France held on to Avignon, Austria continued to occupy the Romagna, Murat had the Marches, and Talleyrand himself wanted to keep his Principality of Benevento. Bonaparte’s reappearance reunited the allies and they vied with him in seeking papal favor. Murat’s capture and execution freed part of the Papal States, and Austria then allowed restoration of her occupied territories, save for a slight “rectification” of the frontier along the Po. As soon as the Holy See had paid the expenses of the occupation forces they would be withdrawn. Talleyrand agreed to yield Benevento for monetary compensation: all that the Holy See had to do was to buy back its own territory from an apostate bishop. But as for Avignon, King Louis XVIII of France explained that though his own intentions were good, public opinion would not permit him to return it. Yet on the whole, Consalvi had restored the bulk of the Papal States, now the only surviving ecclesiastical palatinate, and the diplomatic prestige of the papacy was comparatively high.

(2) METTERNICH^’S CONCERT OF EUROPE (1815-48)

Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859), Austrian chancellor from 1809 to 1848, had taken the lead in Bonaparte’s overtbraw, and after the Corsican’s downfall enjoyed almost comparable political, prestige until his own downfall before the Liberal outbursts against his “system” in 1848. Metternich was a realist in politics, but farsighted enough to appreciate Europe’s need for international solidarity. He felt that men were weary of war and change he proposed to give them peace and stability. A conservative, Metternich was yet not blind to recent changes. He was a Catholic, though affected by Febronian secularism. For Metternich,  ^{[p. 464]} “Politics is the science of the vital interests of states in its widest meaning. Since, however, an isolated state no longer exists ... we must always view the society of states as the essential condition of the modern world. .. . The establishing of international relations on the basis of reciprocity under the guarantee of respect for acquired rights . . . constitutes in our time the essence of politics, of which diplomacy is merely the daily application.¹

¹Helene DuCoudray, Metternich (Yale University Press, 1936), p. 167.

The Quadruple Alliance—not to be confused with the pseudomystic “Holy Alliance”—was the agency on which Metternich relied to implement his views. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain operate in order to maintain the status quo established at Vienna. Frequent international conferences would maintain a vigilance against any revival of the ideas of the French Revolution. For some seven years this “concert of Europe” proved entirely successful. Russia’s Alexander was converted from flirtations with Liberalism to a repressive policy when his agent Kotzebue was assassinated in Germany during 1819. The same incident enabled Metternich to win most German princes to policies of censorship and repression. During the same year Britain’s Tory government issued the “Six Repressive Acts” against social-economic discontent. The assassination of a Bourbon prince in 1820 drove the moderate Louis XVIII of France into the hands of ultra-royalist reactionaries. Carbonari plots in Naples and Piedmont were put down by Austrian intervention. Finally, when Ferdinand VII of Spain had to yield to a Liberal uprising in 1820, Metternich’s international punitive expedition rescued him for autocracy by 1822.

Liberal defections, however, began that very year when Ganning- of Great Britain countenanced Greek rebellion against the Turks and cooperated with the Monroe Doctrine of the United States In regard to Latin American independence from Spain and Portugal. During 1830– 31 Metternich had to acquiesce in the substitution of the more liberal Orléanists for the Bourbons in France, and the independence of Belgium from Holland. But at least the new regimes were monarchical in form, and prompt military action had prevented the spread of Liberalism to Central Europe: revolts in Italy and Poland had been suppressed. For nearly two decades more Metternich held down the lid on Liberalism with increasing difficulty. But in 1848 occurred a series of explosions: the Second Republic in France; papal concessions in Rome; overthrow of absolute monarchs in Germany and Italy, together with projects for national unification under Liberal auspices. Finally Metternich himself under the incognito of “Mr. Smith” had to seek temporary asylum in England. To be sure, his system gradually returned within the next few years, though with increasing concessions to, Liberalism as the bourgeoisie ^{[p. 465]} were gradually fused with the nobility. Absolute monarchy accepted more and more “constitutional” restraints as time worked a compromise between the Old Regime and Liberalism that was neither Democracy nor Proletarianism. By the end of the nineteenth century, Liberalism began to share the stage with Nationalism and Socialism in the ideological parade.

B. Intellectual Currents

(1) VOGUE OF ROMANTICISM

“Romanticism was not merely a literary movement. . . . From the literary aspect, Romanticism was the movement of liberation from the classical rules of composition, from the logical order in speech, from the restricting unities of tragedy. It meant a free rein to fantasy, escape from the present, worship of the past a leap into the unreal It was the irrational turned toward the sensual, the mystical bordering on the orgiastic, the substitution of the passional for the lyrical, the abandon of  the idea for experience of the concrete. All this brought confusion, but it gave a means for renewing the material and technique of poetic and artistic expression. . . . The underlying exigencies of the Romantic movement were sound: a return to historical, traditional, ethnical, religious, and popular values—not a return such as some, in their exaggeration, wanted; to even the style and incongruities of a Middle Ages that could not be brought back to life, but taking such values as permanent values of the historical process, successively realized by the culture of the various ages. . . . The Romantic movement was at bottom a movement of Catholic liberation, albeit with an immense confusion of ideas and sentiments and with an unloosing of passions and signal deviations and distortions.” ²

‘Don Luigi Sturzo, Church and State, trans. Barbara Carter (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939), pp. 408-10.

A new dogmatism was in marked contrast to the cynicism of the “Enlightenment,” though, as Madame de Staël expressed it, the content of this dogma seemed secondary: “I do not know exactly what we must believe, but I believe that we must believe! The eighteenth century did nothing but deny. The human spirit lives by its beliefs. Acquire faith through Christianity, or through German philosophy, or merely through enthusiasm, but believe in something.” ³ It is not surprising, then, that Romanticism took some rather confused lurches in different directions. Pietism revived in Germany; Methodism won new converts in England and the United States, while Anglicans at Oxford, Liberals in France, and Febronians in Germany sometimes set out on the path to Rome. ^{[p. 466]} Meanwhile, non-scholastic philosophy veered from Hume’s scepticism to a search for a new principle of authority. Immanuel Kant promised a new certainty in his “categorical imperative”; Fichte and Schelling called on the will, Jacobi on a “sentimental faith,” Hegel elaborated the Absolute Idea, concreted in the Prussian state. Marx reacted against Hegelian Idealism to use his technique in Dialectical Materialism, while Kierkegaard scorned Hegelian religious rationalism for existential experience—not that these two latter offshoots created much stir in the contemporary scene. Romanticism was nearly as slippery to define as Liberalism, with which it was often allied in political aspirations. Romanticism was in part disillusioned by the ultimate failure of the 1848 Liberal Revolutions to achieve a prompt millennium, and during the second half of the nineteenth century many intellectuals inclined toward a tougher “Realism,” even if they did not subscribe wholly to “Materialism.”

‘Frederick Artz, Reaction and Revolution (New York: Harper and Bros., 1953), p. 49.

2) CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS

Restored Confessionalism. In the Catholic countries the restoration of the monarchy usually entailed its privileges. But the clock could not be turned back. Much of the “divinity that doth hedge a kin” had rubbed off and the so-called “Union of Throne and Altar” could never again enjoy the serene and unchallenged position it had with the common people before the Revolution.  Indeed, there was danger that the political animosities aroused against the restored monarchies would be directed against the Church and its clergy as well.  This was particularly true wherever the monarchs, whatever their private beliefs or morals, ostentatiously paraded external devotion to the Church in the effort to bolster their tottering regimes. In this way the prelates, usually bound to take an oath of allegiance, were committed in advance to what proved to be the losing side. Whereas in the Middle Ages the Church stood outside and above politics as the champion of the moral law and, if need be, of the basic liberty of the Christian man, now too often prelates and clergy felt that they must soft-pedal their criticisms of the monarchy lest they be accused of ingratitude or deliver over the country to Liberals or Jacobins. The gulf between the clergy and the common people was often widened and the latter instead of regarding the Church as sharing their lot of oppression, sometimes jumped to the conclusion that the Church was on the side of the rich and the powerful.  A special case was the survival of the antiquated medieval temporal government of the Papal States which would prove an embarrassing problem even for loyal Catholics, while exposing the weaker brethren to specious assertions of the demands of modern progress. Already, however, there were appearing  ^{[p. 467]} would-be mediators between Church and state of varying principles: Félicité de Lamennais, Frédéric Ozanam, Ketteler, Don Bosco.

Secularist Indifferentism, especially, endangered the restored established Churches. The classic summary of this theological Liberalism is found in the Syllabus Errorum of Pope Pius IX, though it must be noted that its sometimes blunt and uncompromising expressions are due to the juxtaposition of abbreviated and bald assertions extracted from various documents where the context permits a more moderate and accurate exposition. According to the papal secretary of state, Cardinal Antonelli, the following propositions, among others, were at least “reprobated and proscribed”:

15) “Any man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, led by the light of reason, he deems true.”

16) “Men can find the way of eternal salvation and attain eternal salvation in the cult of any religion.”

20) “The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and consent of the civil government.”

26) “The Church does not have the native and legitimate right of acquisition and possession.”

39) “The state, as the origin and font of all rights, enjoys a right circumscribed by no limits.”

45) “The entire government of public schools . . . can and ought to be attributed to the civil power.”

55) “The Church is to be separated from the state and the state from the Church.”

67) “. . . Strict divorce can be sanctioned by the civil authority.”

73) “True matrimony can exist between Christians by force of a civil contract alone. . . .”

77) “It is no longer expedient in our age that the Catholic religion be considered the sole religion of the state. .. .”

79) “Liberty of worship, of thought, of speech do not harm public morals.”

80) “The Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to and compromise with progress, with Liberalism, and with modern civilization.”

Liberals found these “hard sayings” indeed.

(3) RELIGIOUS TRADITIONALISM

Catholic return to tradition. Within the Catholic Church and to a considerable extent outside of it also there occurred not precisely a reactionary movement, but a return to tradition. Authoritarianism but not Absolutism was reverenced, with more or less admixture of Romanticism. In France, Joseph, comte de Maistre (1753-1821) and François, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), while differing in their estimates of the French Revolution and its political lessons, both glorified Christianity and the papacy. “Catholic Liberals,” Félicité de Lamennais (1782-1854), Jean Lacordaire (1802-61) and Charles, comte de Montalembert (1810-70), tried to reconcile the Church with a Liberal Democracy. In England, John Henry Newman (1801-90), though scarcely a Romantic, was certainly a leader in a movement of return to theological traditions, ^{[p. 468]} while Frederick Faber (1814-63) supplied the enthusiasm and August Pugin (1812-52) the Romanticism. In Germany, Johann Möhler (17961838) was a sort of Teutonic Newman; Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and Joseph Görres (1776-1848) became Romantic protagonists of the Church, while Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), a convert, revived interest in Christian art. In Italy, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) and Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72) were both Romantics, but the former in harmony with the Church, and the latter in fanatic opposition. In Spain, Jaime Balmes (1810-48) and Donoso Cortés (1809-53) flayed Liberal half-truths, while in the United States, Orestes Brownson (1803-76) was akin to this group.

“Fideism,” however, represented a definite excess in this Traditionalism. By reaction against Rationalism, Fideism and Traditionalism in varying degrees belittled the power of human reason to know God’s existence and other religious truths, and had recourse to a primitive revelation to explain their derivation. Louis, vicomte de Bonald (17541840), and to a degree Lamennais, extended the scope of faith or tradition to all natural truths. Less sweeping were the views of Louis Bautain (1796-1867), which he was obliged to retract in 1840 (Denzinger 162227), and Augustine Bonnetty (1798-1879) and Joachim Ventura (17921861), who insinuated that medieval Scholasticism tended toward Rationalism. Bonetty’s views were condemned by the Holy Office in 1855 (Denzinger 1649-52), and he at once submitted. Mitigated Traditionalism survived at Louvain in the teaching of Casimir Ubaghs (1800-1875) . Ubaghs’ views had been denounced to the Holy Office in 1843, but Cardinal Steryx interposed to prevent condemnation until 1864, when Ubaghs retired.

“Ontologism” was closely allied with Fideism in the sense of a pietistic reaction of well-meaning men against Rationalism. Its exponents included Vicenzo Gioberti (1801-52), Auguste Gratry (1805-72), and Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797-1855), who held for a form of natural intuition of the divine essence. Rosmini was acquitted by an investigating commission in 1854, but extreme expressions of this theory were condemned by the Holy Office in 1861 (Denzinger 1659-66), including the claim that “at least an habitual immediate cognition of God is essential to the human intellect so that without it it can know nothing.” Pope Pius IX’s admiration for Padre Rosmini’s virtue preserved him from further prosecution during their lifetimes, but Pope Leo XIII, who as Cardinal Pecci had vainly tried to obtain a condemnation of Rosmini’s views at the Vatican Council, ordered a searching investigation in 1887, which resulted in the posthumous condemnation of forty of Rosmini’s propositions (Denzinger 1891-1930) . Some elements of Ontologism have also been detected in Ubaghs, Maret, and perhaps Brownson. ^{[p. 469]}

In brief, these men and many others fiercely challenged the smug and blasé Rationalism of the eighteenth century. Whatever they were, they were enthusiastic, and as such, portended change. For all its vaunted political stability, therefore, the Metternich Era did not prove intellectually stagnant. Unfortunately the same years saw a low ebb of Scholasticism so that various theologians and philosophers were tempted to essay a new doctrinal synthesis on the basis of revolutionary philosophies. This trend, applying Kantianism to dogma, eventually produced Modernism.

74. CAPETIAN FINALE

Political background. After Bonaparte’s abdication, Louis Stanislas, comte de Provence, younger brother of King Louis XVI, began what he blandly described as the “nineteenth year of my reign”—dating from the death of his nephew, called “Louis XVII,” in 1795. Though he thus officially ignored the Revolution and Bonaparte, this shrewd and indolent monarch was not unaware that times had changed. He sought to restore the substance of the Old Regime, while making seemingly voluntary concessions to Liberalism. Then he granted a “Charter” or constitution which introduced some of the new political ideas under the guise of free favors of a benevolent despot. It provided for a House of Peers nominated by the king, and a Chamber of Deputies elected by restricted suffrage, and offered certain guarantees of civil and religious liberty. In practice the restored Bourbon regime was at first not unlike contemporary Tory rule in Great Britain. This middle course dissatisfied not only the Liberals, whose idol was Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans, son of Égalité, but also the Ultra-Royalists, led by the king’s brother, the comte d’Artois, who denounced all concessions to Liberalism. Following the assassination of the king’s nephew, the duc de Berri, in 1820, the Ultra-Royalist influence increased in the government. During 1822 another royal nephew, the duc de Angoulême, was allowed to lead a successful international intervention to restore absolute monarchy in Spain. By the end of the reign, France seemed fully in accord with the Metternich Era.

Ecclesiastical developments. Characteristically, Louis XVIII wished to reject the Concordat of 1801 simply because of its authorship. But by 1817 he agreed to its ratification with certain modifications, and promised to renounce the “Organic Articles” which he had used as a threat during protracted negotiations between Cardinal Consalvi and the comte de Blacas. The new settlement, approved by Pope Pius VII on July 19, 1817, declared the Catholic Church again the state religion, and not merely the privileged cult of the majority. Unlike the Old Regime ^{[p. 470]}, the restored Bourbons tolerated other religions. Sunday observance was again legally enforceable, e.g., by closing of cafes. Divorce was suppressed. Seminaries and primary schools were to be under ecclesiastical control. Thirty new sees were erected to be endowed by the monarchy, more church property was restored, and provisions made for future endowment. Except for five émigré and four constitutional prelates, the French hierarchy rallied to the Bourbon regime, and there was somewhat of a relapse to Gallicanism. This attitude, however, was no longer unchallenged. A vigorous Ultramontanism appeared, though divided on political ideas. De Maistre, author of Le Pape (1819), regarded the Revolution as “satanique par essence,” and urged a return to monarchical tradition under papal presidency. On the other hand, Chateaubriand glorified Christianity in his romantic Genius of Christianity (1801), and looked to the realization of Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité in a Christian Democracy under papal inspiration. Félicité de Lamennais in his Essay on Indifference flayed Gallican subservience to the secular power, while tending toward a theological Liberalism which later came to grief.

(2) EXTREME REACTION: CHARLES X

Charles d’Artois, first of the émigrés and uncompromising foe of the French Revolution, now ascended the throne (1824-30) . On the whole, he was a more honest and straightforward man than his brother, but his very virtues when applied to his reactionary principles made him an impolitic and irresolute autocrat. Dissolute in early life, Charles had become pious, though he had strong Gallican tendencies. He claimed not to have changed since 1789, and on May 29, 1825, the ancient coronation ceremonial at Rheims was performed for what was to prove the last time. For Charles had declared that “he would rather saw wood than reign after the fashion of the king of England.” He was to be given his chance.

Neo-Gallicanism. If the royal government did conciliate the clergy by small concessions, it also strove to dominate them. Thus the king enacted a law against sacrilege and increased ecclesiastical subsidies, but he also insisted on the teaching of the Four Gallican Articles in the seminaries. The placet and the exequatur were often invoked from the “Organic Articles”: during 1826 one papal document was published with reservations, and another was suppressed. In 1827 the king named a bishop to Strasbourg without awaiting papal confirmation, and he continued to insist on the deposition of Cardinal Fesch from the see of Lyons—a demand which Pope Leo XII as consistently refused. Religious orders had reappeared in France with governmental authorization or toleration. When Ultra-Royalist concessions provoked the Liberals into  ^{[p. 471]} Jesuit-baiting, the king placated them by naming a Liberal prime minister, Martignac (1828) . The latter subjected Jesuit schools to prying regulations, placed minor seminaries under governmental inspection, and limited the number of seminarians. Though the French hierarchy were roused to protest, they ended by accepting the regulations. To be sure, Lamennais flayed this Neo-Gallicanism and summoned the younger clergy to profess uncompromising Ultramontanism. At the same time he abandoned his original Ultra-Royalism for what he eventually styled “Catholic Liberalism.” Pope Leo XII prudently suspended judgment on this sort of apologetics. While receiving Lamennais kindly, he distrusted his aims: “He is one of those lovers of perfectionism who, if allowed, would overturn the world.”

Revolt in July. Ultra-Royalist strictures induced the king in 1829 to replace Martignac with the authoritarian Jules Polignac. Press warfare between Ultra-Royalists and Liberals, Gallicans and Ultramontanes, became vigorous: Lamennais publicly denounced the French hierarchy for weakness to Archbishop De Quelen of Paris, who replied. Bourgeois Liberals and Republicans revived old accusations against union of “throne and altar.” In 1830 Charles X dissolved the Assembly and called for new elections, in which many clerics actively supported the crown. When the Liberals nonetheless increased their hold on the legislature, the king issued his “July Ordinances” designed to muzzle the press and manipulate elections to secure an “Ultra” majority. This was enough; three days later, July 28, Paris arose under Lafayette and Thiers to demand the king’s abdication. Archbishop De Quelen was menaced with death, several church edifices were plundered, and priests found it prudent to close the churches and stay off the streets. Street fighting began in Paris. Refusing to preserve his crown by shedding his people’s blood, Charles X made a dignified retreat to England, and after some hesitation, Louis Philippe d’Orléans was named the constitutional “King of the French.”

B. Orléanist Liberalism (1830-48)

(1) THE ORLÉANIST COMPROMISE

Louis Philippe, monarch in virtue of the July Revolution, for all his attempts to conciliate all parties, depended in the last analysis on the support of the Liberal bourgeoisie. Son of that duke of Orléans who as “Citoyen Égalité” had voted for the death of his cousin, King Louis XVI, Louis Philippe inherited Liberal pretensions. He posed as “Citizen King,” paraded the streets in frock coat and umbrella, and made himself accessible to all. But after an attempt at his assassination (1835), the king grew suspicious and his increasingly repressive rule demonstrated that after all he was a Capetian dynast. ^{[p. 472]}

Political status. The “July Monarchy” nevertheless continued in office for some time by favoring the interests of those capitalists and industrialists who appeared in the wake of the rapid introduction of the Industrial Revolution on the Continent after the Napoleonic Wars. This development, however, brought the attendant social ills of the factory system. The French proletariat with Gallic directness rushed to the Socialism of Louis Blanc (1811-82) who advocated corporate factories. While laissez-faire economics forced the Orléans monarchy to adopt a pacifist foreign policy, nationalists recalling Bonaparte’s conquests began to give heed to the propaganda of the latter’s nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. At the same time the king’s reversion to Capetian dynastic schemes—the attempt to place one of his sons on the Spanish throne—threatened the friendship of British Liberals. Louis Philippe’s concessions to the Church, meager as they were, alienated thoroughgoing anti-clericals and unconverted Republicans. Finally, the king gave his confidence to a Huguenot, François Guizot, prime minister from 1840 to the fall of the regime in February, 1848. Guizot, eminently respectable, was a typical bourgeois Liberal who denied peaceful redress by limiting the suffrage to the wealthier classes. It proved to be only a question of time before all these many critics of the unheroic Orléanist monarchy, at first divided among themselves, would unite to send Louis Philippe to Charles X’s English asylum.

Ecclesiastical policies. The Liberal government reverted to the Bonapartist designation of the Catholic Church as merely the religion of the majority rather than that of the state. Clerics went into political disfavor, a papal nuncio was refused admittance, sacrilege no longer had a legal penalty, and the budget for the support of the cult was reduced. Significantly the new secularism removed the crucifix from the courts—though it was restored later when the regime began to totter. Financial and educational measures hostile to the Church were consistently pursued throughout the reign, though toward its close negotiations for an understanding were on the way. But even if governmental hostility toward the Church decreased in time, most of the clergy remained legitimists, i.e., loyal to the rightful Bourbon pretenders to the throne, and cool to Louis Philippe. Reactionaries, not untinged with Gallicanism, continued to idealize the union of “Throne and Altar” under the Old Regime. These erstwhile Ultra-Royalists spurned Louis Philippe as an usurper, while from the other direction came the mounting criticism of the “Catholic Liberals.”

(2) CATHOLIC LIBERALISM

Progressive leaders who styled themselves “Catholic Liberals” protested against what they deemed excessive Gallican subservience to the ^{[p. 473]} state. De Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert, with a host of disciples including Gerbet, Rohrbacher, Gueranger, De Coux, D’Eckstein, championed papal leadership while courting the lower classes by advocating a democratic regime in which Church and state would be practically separated, somewhat along American lines. Their hope lay in a modernized, democratic, spiritualized Church, uniting a commonwealth of nations under the banner of “God and Liberty.”

L’Avenir was their organ of expression, begun on October 16, 1830. Liberty for France to them meant liberty of teaching, liberty of the press (“the strongest guarantee of all the others”) , liberty of assembly, freedom of election, political liberty. These Catholic Liberals also agitated on behalf of the independence of Belgium, Poland, Ireland, and Italy. Lamennais and Lacordaire were prosecuted by the Orléanist government during January, 1831, for opening a free school, but were acquitted. But their continuing attacks on the monarchy and the Gallican hierarchy brought down upon them official condemnations. The government subjected L’Avenir to endless legal prosecutions—usually with scant success, while the prelates, led by Cardinal De Rohan, blacklisted the paper and drew up a list of its alleged theological errors. Anticipating denunciation to Rome, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert suspended publication in November, 1831, and proceeded themselves to lay their cause before Gregory XVI at Rome.

Papal condemnation. Pope Gregory was personally anything but liberal, but he might legitimately object to a defense of separation of Church and state as an ideal regime. Even more dangerous was Lamennais’ implication that faith, stemming from a primitive revelation, rather than unaided reason, established God’s existence, and his corollary that profession of the Catholic faith was a matter of indifference provided that non-Catholics lived honorably. After careful examination, the pope condemned the tenets of L’Avenir in his encyclical, Mirari Vos (1832). Though its language was rather severe, the papal document refrained from citing the editors by name.

Penitent and impenitent Liberals. Lacordaire and Montalembert submitted, and Lamennais, apparently in bad faith, allowed them to add his name to a profession of loyalty. Yet this brilliant but largely self-taught scholar was intellectually dissatisfied and prone to rebel. His friends were unable to reconcile him to simple obedience; after a period of sulking, Lamennais definitely broke with the Church, April, 1834, by publishing Paroles d’un Croyant, which renounced belief in Christ and His Church for faith in humanity, something akin to Comte’s Sociologism. Gregory XVI condemned this work the same year and excommunicated its author nominatim in Singulari Nos. Far from submitting, Lamennais drifted farther from the Faith and died, apparently unrepentant ^{[p. 474]}, in 1854. On the other hand Lacordaire, in submission to Archbishop De Quelen of Paris, began a series of brilliant apologetical sermons in Notre Dame (1835) . Interrupting these to enter the Dominican novitiate, he reintroduced that Order into France in 1840. He then resumed his orthodox campaign for “God and Liberty” until virtually silenced in 1853 by the second Bonapartist dictatorship. While Montalembert worked diligently, if not always successfully, for Catholic education and revival of medieval history, Dom Gueranger initiated a liturgical movement and Rohrbacher turned to Church history apologetics.

(3) CATHOLIC SOCIALISM

St. Vincent de Paul Society. Unfortunately the Catholic Liberals, themselves largely from the noble or middle classes, were not sufficiently aware of the social problems of the proletariat. One exception to this fatal shortsightedness was Antoine Frédéric Ozanam (1813-53), professor of law at Lyons. In 1833 he provided a practical remedy for poverty by founding the lay organization of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a revival of St. Vincent’s auxiliary charitable associations. But Ozanam came to realize that not merely charity, but social justice as well was due the workers. Impressed by the Socialist rising of June, 1848, he pleaded: “It is time to prove that we can plead the cause of the proletariat, to pledge ourselves to the solace of the suffering classes, to seek the abolition of poverty, without becoming a participant of the doctrines which unchained the tempest of June, and which are still spreading their dark clouds around us.” This plea, which was being made simultaneously at Frankfurt, Germany, by the future Bishop Ketteler, was but faintly heard in France. Notable exceptions to this indifference were the Harmel managed cotton mills at Val-des-Bois, founded in 1840, and the social leaders, Bargemont (1784-1850) and Charles Perin (1815-1905) .

Domestic missions were organized in France by Fathers Rauzan (1765-1819) and Forbin-Janson (1785-1844), and these were given a more lasting form by the Marianists, founded in 1816 by Père Chaminade, the Marists, by Pères Champagnat and Colin, and the Oblates of Père Mazenod (1782-1861).

The Society for Propagation of the Faith, founded in 1822 by Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862), may perhaps be not utterly alien to the category of social works, for it began with the humble pittances of poor working girls. It is true that Jaricot’s own institution on behalf of social reform came to constitute the dark night of her spiritual life, but she is more to be commended for trying than to be blamed for failing. The Propagation ^{[p. 475]} of the Faith movement was powerfully promoted by her contemporary, Bishop Forbin-Janson. Practically exiled by the French government for his refusal to subscribe to the Four Gallican Articles, the bishop became the Holy See’s representative in visits to the American and Canadian missions between 1839 and 1841. After making his report to Rome, Pope Gregory XVI praised him “because of his wonderful zeal for the propagation and defense of the Catholic faith in the United States of America.” The French Society for the Propagation of the Faith survived difficult beginnings, providentially prospered, and was incorporated into the Roman curia by Pope Pius XI during its centennial year, 1922.

Karl von Dalberg

75. TEUTONIC TRANSFORMATION

Secularization. The Napoleonic victories put an end to the ancient Holy Roman Empire in 1806. As early as 1801 French annexations necessitated a reapportionment of territories to “compensate” dispossessed magnates, especially in the Rhineland. To this end recourse was had in 1803 to a general secularization of the ecclesiastical palatinates. Then the Diet of Regensburg issued the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, which verbose legal theft deprived the Church in Germany of temporal rule over 3,500,000 subjects, of three electoral votes, and of an annual revenue of $10,000,000. Though Cardinal Consalvi requested restoration at the Congress of Vienna, it was in vain. The Church in Germany never received any adequate reimbursement for this robbery of the pious bequests of centuries, and the German clergy were largely cast on the resources of the faithful during the nineteenth century.

Febronian alienation. This impoverishment, however, may have averted the greater evil of a schismatic German Church. Bonaparte’s ecclesiastical tool in Germany had been Karl von Dalberg (1744-1817) , coadjutor of Mainz. At the secularization of 1803, not to lose his worldly status, Dalberg transferred his metropolitan rights to Regensburg, and with Bonaparte’s approbation carved out a temporal principality for himself. Next Dalberg was pressed upon Pope Pius VII as primate of a subservient German hierarchy according to the erroneous Febronian views. When the pontiff refused to be content with a mere primacy of honor over Germany, Bonaparte and Dalberg put their project into execution within the French-dominated Confederation of the Rhine. Dalberg as primate altered diocesan boundaries and installed henchmen without recourse to the Holy See. Ignaz von Wessenberg (1774-1860) became Dalberg’s vicar and aide in introducing Febronian concepts of ^{[p. 476]} a German national Church. Papal refusal of canonical institution to Dalberg’s hierarchy completed the organizational confusion of the Church in Germany.

Febronian defeat. After the Battle of Leipsic (1813) had freed Germany from French domination, Dalberg was obliged to renounce his secular principality, but continued to hold on to the see of Regensburg. To the Congress of Vienna Dalberg’s deputy Wessenburg proposed a national Church with a German jurisdictional patriarchate under honorary papal precedence. The ex-elector of Trier, Archbishop Clemens von Wettin, who had long failed to rebuke his auxiliary Hontheim (Febronius) in the eighteenth century, now made belated amends by opposing this project. But what most effectively countered Dalberg’s plan was the desire of the German magnates to preserve state autonomy in ecclesiastical as well as secular affairs. For at the Congress, the German princes defeated a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire as well as a strong federal union, and contented themselves with a league of independent states similar to the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Cardinal Consalvi, in order to defeat Dalberg, sided with the magnates’ aspirations to the extent of consistently speaking of the “Catholic Churches in Germany.” Dalberg’s scheme was therefore rejected and the German Church received no national organization. Instead, hierarchical reorganization was subsequently undertaken through concordats with individual states, e.g., Bavaria (1817-1933) and Austria (1855) . Dalberg held out at Regensburg until his death in 1817 and Wessenberg hampered Swabian ecclesiastical jurisdiction until 1827. Febronianism was not entirely extinguished even among German prelates, but a rising tide of Ultramontanism would soon render it old-fashioned.

(2) CATHOLIC REVIVAL

Ultramontanism. Febronianism had failed because it was already challenged by a Catholic revival similar to that occurring in France and England. This movement sought to restore society under the leadership of the papacy and soon developed a powerful current of Ultramontane sentiment which counteracted the Febronian faction among clergy and laity: the Prussian Mixed Marriage Controversy, presently to be treated, was the final demonstration that Febronianism was out of date in Germany.

Münster Circle. The first manifestation of this revival appeared in Westphalia where the “Münster Circle” was founded by Canon Franz von Fürstenberg (1729-1810) . As temporal administrator (1762-80) of the prince-bishopric, he had fostered agrarian reforms which reduced serfdom, introduced a system of Catholic education free from Febronian ^{[p. 477]} and Rationalist influences and employing modern methods, and had tried to train a solidly Catholic clergy and laity in his Münster University (1771) . Canon Fürstenberg continued to direct education until the 1803 secularization, but his ideals survived under Father Bernard Overberg (1754-1820) who added normal schools to the program. These educators’ efforts attracted the patronage of Lady Adele Schmettau (1748-1806), wife of a Russian nobleman, and mother of the American missionary, Father Demetrius Gallitzin (1770-1840). After returning to the practice of the Catholic Faith in 1786, she sponsored a literary group which publicized and aided the revival. In 1800 the circle was augmented by the conversion of the classical scholar, Count Friedrich zu Stolberg (17501819), a sort of German Chateaubriand. At Cologne he inaugurated a rebirth of Christian art. This in turn inspired the “Nazarean School” of German painters at Rome, and the Düsseldorf School in the town of that name. Clemens von Droste-Vischering (1773-1845), subsequently archbishop of Cologne during the Prussian Mixed Marriage Controversy, was also a member of the Münster Circle.

Landshut Group. Another associate of the Münster Circle, Johann Sailer (1751-1832), carried the revival to Landshut in Bavaria where he became bishop of the reorganized see of Regensburg in 1829. As professor and bishop he sought to train good priests; as writer of devotional works he sought to develop piety among the laity. Bishop Sailer brought back to the Faith Melchior von Diepenbrock (1798-1853), later the zealous bishop of Breslau, and Clemens Brentano (1778-1842), Romantic apologist for the Church, and protagonist of the stigmatic, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) . Bishop Sailer also exercised a good influence upon Prince Louis I of Bavaria (1786-1868), patron of the Munich School.

Munich School. On his accession to the Bavarian throne in 1825, Louis I transferred the Landshut college to Munich to make of it a truly Catholic university. To this end in 1827 he summoned Joseph Görres (1776-1848) to become professor and to preside over an extracurricular academy of Catholic scholars. Görres was an ex-Jacobin disillusioned of Liberalism who had been a German patriot in the resistance to Bonaparte, and was becoming a great literary apologist for the Church. He became widely known through lectures, books, and articles, chiefly in a new review, Der Katholik, which was the leading organ of Ultramontane expression. Against Hegel’s pantheistic Philosophy of History, Görres pleaded for a Christian interpretation of historical development, and himself edited a series entitled God in History from 1831. His Historisch-Politische Blätter traced some of the ideas later put into practice by the Catholic Center Party. Among Görres’s disciples at Munich were the Catholic scholars and his son Guido Görres ^{[p. 478]} (1805-52), also an editor; Georg Phillips (1804-1872) and Karl May (1799-1867), lay experts in both civil and canon law; Father Joseph Allioli (1793-1873), translator of a new Catholic German version of the Bible; Father Johann MVlöhler (1796-1838), theologian and petrologist; Peter Cornelius (1805-64), Christian artist; Franz Streber (180564), archaeologist; and Johann Ignaz Döllinger (1799-1890) , the brilliant but caustic historical scholar, who did good work before becoming an “Old Catholic” apostate. Theirs was to be a vocation in line with Bishop Sailer’s ideal for the men of the nineteenth century when ecclesiastics “must know more, do more, and be ready to suffer more” than formerly. The School enjoyed the patronage of Prince Louis, who also founded the Ludwigverein, a missionary aid society which greatly assisted the spread of the Faith in the United States. Though the Spanish actress, Lola Montez, later distracted his attention, Prince Louis was on the whole quite favorable to the Church until his deposition in the 1848 Revolutions.

B. German Liberalism (1815-48)

(1) LIBERALISM AND THE STATE

The “Metternich System.” For thirty years the Austrian chancellor, Metternich, worked tirelessly to maintain in Germany the status quo established by the Congress of Vienna. He was opposed, therefore, to the realization of German national unity, which would be likely to disrupt the multinational Habsburg monarchy. Instead, he endeavored to perpetuate Austrian presidency of a loose Germanic Confederation. Metternich likewise repressed Liberalism as a legacy of the French Revolution and a tenet of the secret societies. To achieve his objectives he jailed nationalist agitators and garrisoned territories with alien troops. Rigid censorship of the press and careful police surveillance, especially of the universities, long rendered the Habsburg dominions impervious to change. Other German states, however, thought it expedient to compromise with Liberalism. In particular, Frederick William III of Prussia (1797-1840) granted a charter; whereupon Liberal patriots and masonic agitators hailed Prussia as potential head of the Germany of the future. Archduke Karl of Saxe-Weimar made his dominions a haven for Liberals, and Metternich’s protests were unavailing until 1819 when Karl Sand, a Liberal student, assassinated Kotzebuie, an agent of Russian autocracy. Metternich utilized the princes’ alarm over this incident to induce the Diet of Carlsbad (1819) to promulgate decrees supervising the universities, censoring the press, renouncing existing Liberal constitutions and establishing a central bureau of investigation at Mainz. Measures of this type served to keep the Germanic Confederation ^{[p. 479]} externally tranquil through the European disturbances of 183031, and even to the eve of the year of universal eruption of Liberalism: 1848.

Restoration ideologies. “Metternich, antiliberal, antinational, opposed to the ideals of the French Enlightenment and Revolution, set the reactionary pattern of the period. . . . Hegel combined the rationalism of the eighteenth century with the new individualizing Historicism of the nineteenth. His theory of the dialectic was an attempt to find a logic and inner meaning in the process of history that was open to rational and scientific observation and analysis. . . . His acceptance of the Prussian patriarchal state of his own time as the concrete realization of his political ideal . . . marked a definite break with the liberal, rational, and universal tradition of the Enlightenment. . . . Politically, the period following 1815 was ‘one of disillusionment, of hopes belied, promises broken, and reforms deferred.’ . . . The Revolution of 1848 had a positive significance in subsequent German history. It represented the first entry of the broad masses into politics, and whatever movements of political Liberalism and Radicalism developed in later years, they were nourished and fed by the experience, the memories and the inspiration of 1848. Political Catholicism was initiated in the movement of 1848; the working classes developed a greater self-consciousness, and the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels became one of the basic documents of the proletarian movement.” ⁴

‘ Koppel Pinson, Modern Germany (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1954), pp. 51-52, 107.

 (2) LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH

Hermesianism. Georg Hermes (1775-1831) , ordained in 1799 and subsequently professor of theology at Münster, became influenced by Kant to the extent of constructing a system of hypothetical doubt. He was sustained by his bishop, Baron von Spiegel, intruded by Bonaparte, and later archbishop of Cologne. But the vicar-general, Droste-Vischering, was convinced of his heterodoxy and secured his posthumous condemnation by Rome. Johann Möhler (1796-1838) was for a time influenced by Hermes, but was eventually disabused by patristic studies in which he anticipated Newman and the Oxford Movement. He was an exemplary priest and died in good standing. Anton Günther (17831863) was brought back to the Faith by St. Clement Hofbauer. Ordained in 1820, he remained an unattached cleric. Like Hermes, he was led by his prejudice against Scholasticism into Kantian metaphysical vagaries. Condemned by Rome in 1857, he left some doubts as to his submission. Froschammer (1821-83) was also condemned in 1857 for various errors, but claiming that philosophy was independent of ecclesiastical authority, refused to submit. The forces that would culminate in Modernism were already at work.

In Austria, despite the good dispositions of Francis II (1792-1835) and Ferdinand (1835-48), the court remained permeated with Josephinist adherents who strove to control the Church through a governmental agency, the “Ecclesiastical Commission.” Universities and schools had been proclaimed neutral by Emperor Joseph II, and later-day Josephinists tried to make them so in practice. Thus, St. Clement Hofbauer (1751-1820), the “Apostle of Vienna,” was obliged to make use of what today would be called a “Newman Club” in the supposedly Catholic city and University of Vienna. On the other hand, except for the appropriation of the large palatinate of Salzburg, Austrian ecclesiastical property and diocesan boundaries had remained substantially intact through the revolutionary era. Though the government permitted greater clerical influence upon educational supervision as time went on, no complete accord could be reached with the Holy See despite attempts at a concordat in 1819 and 1833. Except for Bavaria, other nominally Catholic states—whose detailed history cannot be traced here—were even less co-operative with the Church.

In Prussia, the acquisition of the Rhineland at the Congress of Vienna brought many Catholics into this hitherto predominantly Protestant state. As previously noted, Frederick the Great (1740-86) had initiated a policy of religious tolerance, and Pope Pius VII was able to utilize this spirit to reach an agreement with King Frederick William III (17971840) regarding the erection of dioceses and vicariates within Prussian frontiers. According to the bull, De Salute Animarum (1821) , cathedral chapters were authorized to select bishops, subject alike to papal confirmation and royal veto. Seminaries were to be established in each diocese. For a time the Prussian government, while directed by the anti-masonic premier, Baron von Hardenberg, was almost more gracious toward Catholics than were the Catholic princes. But after Hardenberg’s retirement in 1822, a major controversy arose about mixed marriages. While its history is here traced for Prussia alone, where it assumed the most serious proportions, it should be noted that similar struggles went on simultaneously in many other German states.

(3) PRUSSIAN MIXED MARRIAGE CONTROVERSY

Governmental attack. In 1825 a Prussian law of 1803 requiring all children of mixed marriages to be raised in the father’s religion was extended to the Catholic Rhineland. When Catholic pastors refused to bless marriages in which the Catholic education of all prospective children was not guaranteed, the Prussian government voided all such prematrimonial ^{[p. 481]} contracts. When the dispute was referred to the Febronian archbishop of Cologne, Baron von Spiegel, this prelate weakly sanctioned the law, pending consultation with the Holy See. The Roman response was delayed by the death of Pope Leo XII (1829), but in March, 1830, the new Pope Pius VIII replied with Literis Altero. This document directed pastors to warn the faithful against such mixed marriages and to strive to obtain the canonically required promises. But in case these were not forthcoming, the pastors were allowed to assist passively at the exchange of vows without religious ceremony. Since the Tridentine decree Tametsi had never been promulgated in Prussia, such marriages would then be illicit but not invalid. The king, unsatisfied even with these maximum concessions, induced the pliant Archbishop Spiegel to suppress much of the papal directive and to order pastors to give the nuptial blessing in practically all cases.

Catholic defiance. But in 1836 Clemens Droste-Vischering, a member of the Ultramontane Münster Circle, succeeded Spiegel at Cologne. He was still in ignorance of the full facts, but by 1837 the Holy See had obtained information of Spiegel’s secret pact. Pope Gregory XVI then ordered instant promulgation of Literis Altero. The new archbishop thereupon examined the documents in his predecessor’s archives, which had been concealed even from some of the suffragan bishops. Henceforth Droste-Vischering displayed himself a resolute champion of the papal mandate. Except for his Febronian chapter, the archbishop’s clergy were only too happy to follow the wishes of the Holy See against the government. The king imprisoned the archbishop in November, 1837, and ordered the chapter to elect a vicar-capitular. Though the latter complied, their nominee, Hugsen, was disregarded by the greater part of the clergy and the laity. German Catholics were roused to the support of the captive prelate by Görres whose Athanasius compared his lot to that of the great foe of Arianism. Archbishop Dunin of Gnesen, hitherto passive, now himself promulgated Literis Altero, and in 1839 was also put in detention. Bishop Sedlnitzky of Breslau indeed sided with the government, but was obliged to resign his see when his clergy denounced him to Rome. Thereupon the bishops of Culm and Ermland hastily changed to the papal side, as aroused Ultramontane sentiment excoriated Febronianism.

Government capitulation followed the old king’s death in June, 1840. The new monarch, Frederick William IV (1840-61), realized that the controversy ill served his dream of German unification under Prussian presidency. He permitted Archbishop Dunin to return to his see, while the ailing Droste-Vischering—since 1839 under house arrest instead of in prison—was released to proceed to Rome where the Prussian government instituted discussions. After the king had agreed to accept the ^{[p. 482]} papal directive unconditionally and to withdraw the governmental placet and exequatur, a way was open for a settlement of the dispute. The government withdrew its charges against Droste-Vischering, while the Holy See saved royal prestige by sacrificing the “New Athanasius” as it had the first one. Though the aged prelate retained title to his see, he remained at Rome, leaving the administration in the hands of a coadjutor, Johann von Geisel, acceptable to the king. On his part, the king tried to make amends by admitting some Catholic representatives to his “ministry of cult” where they could advise him on Catholic interests in legislation, and by contributing generously to the completion of the five-hundred-year-old Cologne Cathedral—it was finished in 1880.

Canonical postscript. The concessions of Literis Altero remained the norm for mixed marriages in Prussia and several other German states until 1918, and even Ne Temere which in 1908 required interrogations for validity did not alter these special pontifical concessions. But in 1918 not only did the New Code of Canon Law revoke the concessions of Literis Altero, but the democratic revolutions in Central Europe following World War I swept away the meddling monarchical governments which had extorted them from the Holy See, for arrangements similar to the Prussian had been made with Austria (1841), Hungary, and Bavaria.’

⁶H. Noldin, S.J., De Sacramentis (twenty-first edition; Oeniponte: Pustet, 1901), III, n. 651.

76. THE PAPACY AND ITALIAN LIBERALISM

Italian restoration. For a decade (1802-13) a Republic and kingdom of Italy had existed under Napoleonic leadership. Though this comprised only a part of the Italian peninsula, it had awakened nationalist aspirations. But since for Metternich, “Italy was a mere geographical expression,” the Congress of Vienna ignored any desires of Italian patriots for unity and imposed a political system which was destined to endure without substantial change until 1859. The Papal States and the Two Sicilies were restored to their former rulers without major alteration. Sardinia-Savoy-Piedmont was permitted to annex Genoa and remained the only dynasty Italian in sentiment; hence it soon became a rallying point for patriots. Lombardy, with the former Republic of Venice, became an Austrian province. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, Lucca, and Guastalla became Austrian protectorates—Lucca was annexed by Tuscany in 1847 and Guastalla absorbed by Modena in 1848.

Pontifical restoration. Pope Pius VII made his definitive return to ^{[p. 483]} Rome—after the Hundred Days—on June 7, 1815. Caedinal Consalvi, again papal secretary of state, secured the almost complete restoration if the papal temporal states, but the problem of reorganizing the administration remained.  The Zelanti, led by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacce (1756-1844), pro-secretary from 1808 to 1814, inclined toward conservative reaction, and during Cardinal Consalvi’s absence at Vienna, Monsignor Rivarola, provisional administrator of the Papal States, had practically ignored the revolutionary developments in restoring the old system of government. On the other hand, the Politiques, led by Consalvi (1757-1824) himself, favored a compromise between the Old and New Regimes. The cardinal secretary of state eventually convinced Pius VII of the expediency of the latter program, which was the basis of a motu proprio issued by the pope on July 6, 1816. By this decree the pontifical territories were subdivided into legations on the model of the new French departments.  The clerical legates were to be assisted by lay subordinates, and advised by provincial councils, though these were named from Rome rather than elected. Justice and administration were separated; a new civil code tried to harmonize the better features of the Code Napoleon with the canon law.  Torture was abolished, and feudal privileges of the nobility sacrificed to equality of taxation.  Other progressive measures, chiefly economic were planned, but want of funds would keep them merely on paper.  During 1818 a concordat was negotiate wî h the Two Sicilies which may represent standard papal desiderata in Italy: recognition of the Church as the state religion; renunciation of the placet; acceptance of endowments by the Church in condonation of confiscated properties; redrawing of diocesan boundaries, and subjection of royal nomination of prelates to papal confirmation.

Carbonari uprisings. Yet youths enamored of extremist views of the Jacobin Revolution regarded these changes inadequate.  The secret society of the Carbonari (“Charcoal Burners”) formed about 1800, began to work for the overthrow of “priestly government.” An abortive revolt in the Papal States during  1817 led to the arrest and condemnation to death of the ringleaders, but the pope commuted the sentences to life imprisonment. Cardinal Pacca had issued an edict against these Carbonari in 1814, but it was not until 1821 that the kindly pontiff could be induced to pronounce definitive condemnation. This censure seems to have precipitated the dissolution of the Carbonari, but similar societies took their place. With these, however, the aged and patient Pius VII did not have to deal, for he died on August 16, 1823, to be followed within six months by his faithful aide, Cardinal Consalvi. Though not a strong character, Pius VII had won general European admiration for his patient sufferings at Bonaparte’s hands, and for his willingness to meet new ideas half way. ^{[p. 484]}

(2)                          (2) POPE LEO XII (1823-29)

Annibale della Genga (1760-1829), vicar-general of Rome, was elected by the Zelanti on September 28, after their first candidate, Cardinal Severoli, had been vetoed by Cardinal Albani in the name of Francis II of Austria. Cardinal della Genga had disagreed with Cardinal Consalvi regarding the postwar settlement, had remained without sympathy for the diplomatic policies of Pius VII, and had consequently remained in the background during the preceding pontificate. Austere, sickly, retiring, he never gained much popularity, although his health, if precarious, sufficed for six years.

Conservatism, even reaction, marked Pope Leo’s governmental policy in the Papal States. Though he granted a friendly audience to Cardinal Consalvi, the pope chose a definite reactionary, Cardinal della Somaglia as secretary of state (1823-28). Repression became the order of the day. Theaters and colleges were supervised, meeting places of the Carbonari searched, brigandage suppressed. The local councils of the legations were abandoned, and some of the privileges of the nobility restored. Legate Rivarola sentenced 508 suspects: seven to death and thirteen to life imprisonment; others were given long terms or put under strict supervision. Rivarola’s life was attempted. He was dismissed, but his successor issued seven more death sentences. There were, however, useful measures: a new system of public education began in 1824, the Roman College was restored to the Jesuits, and the Vatican Library and press promoted.

Diplomatic affairs had little interest for the pope, yet he courageously reorganized the Latin American hierarchies, despite the vehement opposition of the Spanish monarchy. Pacts were also concluded with Hanover (1824), and the Netherlands (1827), and the Rhenish hierarchy reorganized.

Spiritual leadership was the pope’s chief concern and here he displayed both intelligence and zeal. His encyclical of May 5, 1824, Ubi Primum, condemned Indifferentism and the Rationalist Bible Societies, and in 1825 Quo Graviore renewed the condemnation of the Carbonari and Freemasons. The Holy Year Jubilee, omitted in 1800, was resumed in 1825. The pope was particularly solicitous for the foreign missions and reunion of Oriental Dissidents. Leo XII departed life in an edifying manner on February 10, 1829, but was little mourned by his restless contemporaries.

(3)                          (3) POPE Pius VIII (1829-30)

Francesco Castiglione (1761-1830), cardinal-bishop of Frascati, and candidate of the Politiques at the last conclave, now at last obtained the

 ^{[p. 485]} required number of votes on March 31 in a conclave again plagued by secular interference: Francis of Austria and Charles X of France sought a conservative, and Charles Felix of Sardinia a liberal. The new pope was moderate and conscientious, but was physically ill-favored and in constant pain. Though little able to assist at liturgical functions, he still took an active interest in diplomacy.

Moderation characterized this short pontificate. Without relaxing his predecessor’s condemnation of secret societies or rationalist groups, Pope Pius did abolish his repressive measures. Taxes were lowered and employment relief provided. But revolution was nonetheless brewing when the pope died at Rome on December 1, 1830, though prompt measures by the interim government ensured the security of the conclave of December 13.

In diplomacy, Pius VIII, as has been seen, went to the limits of concession in the Prussian mixed marriage dispute. When Louis Philippe replaced Charles X on the French throne, the pope recognized the new government without difficulty, and directed reluctant French prelates to support it. British Catholic Emancipation (1829) was the chief lasting boon for Catholics in the political sphere during the pontificate, for in response to the French July Revolution, Jacobin Liberalism erupted anew in Italy while the conclave went into session.

B. Repression of Liberalism (1830-46)

(1) ITALIAN PARTIES

Jacobin Republicans. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72), charging that the Carbonari were now ruled by an aging oligarchy, had formed a new group of rebels called “Young Italy.” Its members agitated for a radical republic with greater emphasis on Democracy than the bourgeois Car‑ bonari had placed. According to Mazzini: “Young Italy is unitarist and republican. . . . The means which Young Italy plans to use for the attainment of its end are education and insurrection. Education, for instance by the spoken word and by books, will give twenty million Italians an awareness of their nationality so that the insurrection finds them ready against their oppressors. . . . The Italian people is called upon to destroy Catholicism in the name of the continuous revelation.” ⁶ Young Italy was to make its great effort during the Roman Republic of 1848-49, would fail, and be in turn discredited. It is doubtful if their violent break with Italian clerical and aristocratic traditions could have won lasting success during the nineteenth century. Clerical Federalists. Some “Liberal Catholics,” led by Padre Vincenzo.^{[p. 486]}

 ‘Fernand Mourret, S.S., History of the Catholic Church, trans. Newton Thompson (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1946), VIII, 236.

Gioberti (1801-52), sought a federation of autonomous Italian states under papal presidency. In his Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani (1843), Gioberti denounced revolution and conspiracy as futile means toward Italian unification, and defended the traditional cultural leadership of the papacy. But in his Gesuita Moderno, Gioberti turned to baiting Jesuit Ultramontanes. The Federalist cause was also sustained, with some modifications of thought, by the writings of Cesare Balbo (17871853) and Massimo Taporelli (1798-1866), marchese d’Azeglio. This group, which included Liberals and Romantics of the Chateaubriand type as well as the old Guelf nobility, desired to preserve papal sovereignty at all costs. Realization of this program, however, would have identified the papacy with Italian nationalism and it was doomed by papal repudiation.

Liberal monarchists. A third group hoped to unify Italy into a constitutional monarchy under the House of Savoy. Their leader was a Mason, Count Camillo di Cavour (1810-61), almost continuously premier of Sardinia from 1852 to his death. Though he proclaimed a “free Church in a free state,” in practice his program involved abolition of the Papal States and reduction of the papacy to a national primacy. He expected to engineer a fait accompli and then placate the Holy See by expressions of regret and financial reimbursement. His party included a large number of compromising Catholics, torn between their love and loyalty for the Holy See and their ambitions for a unified Italy. The party’s leaders represented the dominant class of the century, the industrial and capitalist bourgeoisie. Piedmont as yet comprised the only industrialized area in Italy, and its leaders looked with favor on the British monarchy where administration was in accord with laissez-faire theories. Viscount Palmerston, influential British statesman, lent Cavour powerful backing, and Napoleon III of France was eventually prodded into half-hearted military intervention. King Charles Albert of Sardinia (1831-49), like Napoleon, seems to have had links with the Carbonari in his youth, and it is possible that political blackmail, if not threats of assassination, forced him to play the role assigned. Stampeded into a war beyond his resources, he abdicated and went into exile, leaving the throne to a son, Vittorio Emmanuele II, whom Pope Pius IX was to describe as the “compliant tool of Freemasons.”

(2) POPE GREGORY XVI (1831-46)

Mauro Bartolomeo Capellari (1765-1846), a Camaldolese monk and only a priest at the time of his election, was chosen as pope after a fifty-day conclave, February 2, 1831. The delay had been occasioned by the veto of the promotion of Cardinal Giustiniani by Ferdinand VII of Spain. Capellari’s election may be regarded as a victory for the Zelanti; as prefect of Propaganda Fidei, he had been chiefly concerned with purely ^{[p. 487]} ecclesiastical matters. Unlike his immediate predecessors, he enjoyed good health. An ascetic, he was firm and unyielding on all doctrinal and disciplinary questions, but his administrative talents were mediocre. Although he devoted himself to reform in economic affairs, at the end of his pontificate his chancery was running on a budgetary deficit. It is not surprising, then, that Metternich, protesting that the pope “did not know how to govern,” would fain have become his tutor. Gregory XVI nonetheless was resolved to maintain his independence of action.

Jacobin revolt. The revolutionary agitation had spread to the Papal States during the conclave, and two days after the pope’s election, Bologna set up a Jacobin provisional government. Cardinal Benevenuti, sent to suppress the insurrection, was taken prisoner. Riots in Rome were put down with difficulty. Hence, the new secretary of state, Cardinal Bernetti, appealed to Austria for assistance. Metternich was only too happy to oblige and Austrian troops speedily dispersed the rebels of Bologna by the end of March, 1831. Some of the refugees were given asylum by the bishop of Imola, Giovanni Mastia-Ferretti, the future Pope Pius IX.

        Alien intervention. In May, 1831, the Quintuple Alliance dictated a memorandum to the pope, recommending that he introduce the following reforms into the Papal States: a general amnesty; elective communal and provincial councils; a lay judiciary and civil service; and a central assembly of nobles to advise on administration and finance. The pope was happy enough to grant an amnesty, but aside from some gestures toward greater lay participation—by restoring Pius VII’s councils—he refused to be lectured. The allied sovereigns did not insist; indeed, did three of them, the rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, grant as much to their own subjects? During August, 1831, moreover, Pope Gregory freed himself from diplomatic problems by announcing in Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum that the Holy See would automatically recognize the de facto existence of new governments, without thereby committing itself to a judgment upon their legitimacy.

Conservative reaction characterized the remainder of this pontificate. Radicals, denouncin the pa ap refusa to conce e the suggested  reforms, rioted anew. At tie request of Cardinal Albani, special cornmrssioner, Austrian troops returned in January, 1832, but this time France also sent an expedition to Ancona. Despite papal protests, Austria and France maintained “protective” and mutually suspicious garrisons at Bologna and Ancona until 1838. Cardinal Bernetti tried to placate disaffected elements by some nonpolitical concessions: reopening colleges; revising taxation; naming chambers of commerce and lay judges. But the pope had lost confidence in concessions and during the last decade of his pontificate sustained a new secretary of state, Cardinal Lambruschini ^{[p. 488]} (1836-46) in a reactionary policy which paid no heed to popular clamor and repressed all signs of discontent. “Young Italians” who tried a new revolt at Bologna in 1843 were sternly suppressed but they did not cease their denunciations of “pontifical and clerical tyranny,” and their outcry was taken up by Liberals throughout Europe. Federalists received no encouragement from the pontiff who continued to rely on Metternich’s armed backing until his death on June 1, 1846. As separately noted, the pope had condemned the theological Liberalism of Hermes and Lamennais.

(3) PAPAL TEMPORAL RULE AT MID-CENTURY

Estimates of the efficiency of papal temporal administration during the nineteenth century were highly colored by the clerical or liberal views of their authors. The following contrasting appraisals are given in an endeavor to strike some sort of a balance.

Favorable estimate. Alphonse de Rayneval, member of the French embassy at Rome during the Orléanist and Bonapartist regimes, pointed out that a vast majority of civil officials were laymen: there were less than two hundred clerics engaged in temporal administration, and of these less than half were in sacred orders. The civil property and commercial codes were as modern as the contemporary French laws. The papal government bought up the paper money of the Roman Republic (1848-49) , and yet soon balanced the budget again. The rate of taxation was half that in France: 22 francs against 45. He concluded: “The pontifical government has not failed in its duty; it has marched regularly on the way of reform, and has made great progress.” ⁷

‘Reuben Parsons, Studies in Church History (Philadelphia: J. J. McVey, 1909), V, 527.

Unfavorable estimate. On the other hand, Luigi Farini, undersecretary of Pius IX in 1848, believed that the native soldiers were poorly paid and disciplined, and so untrustworthy that reliance was had on foreign mercenaries. Commerce was anemic and large industry absent. Robber bands threatened the country districts. Government bureaus were in a chaotic condition, and inordinate and inequitable taxes imposed on the people. Maladministration made economic conditions deplorable; large reserves of wealth were immobile. Citizens were not equal before the law, and the course of justice was slow, tedious, and costly. The national debt amounted to 37,000,000 scudi with a five per cent interest charge and a yearly deficit of at least a million. Education he believed woefully deficient in all its branches, not excluding that of religious instruction. Thousands of citizens were “admonished,” and therefore ineligible for office. Military commissions were in permanent session. Pope Pius IX, however, “knew nothing of this, for his favorites took care that business ^{[p. 489]} affairs were never discussed.” ⁸ Some confirmation of these charges would seem to be found in a remark attributed to Pope Gregory XVI in 1843: “The civil administration of the Papal States stands in need of a thoroughgoing reform, but I was too old when I was elected pope; I did not think that I would live so long, and had not the courage to undertake the task. For whoever undertakes it must carry it through. A younger pope will be chosen as my successor, and it will devolve upon him to accomplish this task, without which it will be impossible to go on.” ⁹

‘Franz X. Seppelt and Clement Löffler, Short History of the Popes (St. Louis:

Herder Book Co., 1932), p. 416. ° Ibid., p. 407.

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