Chapter XXI: Part 21

§ 203.8. =The Protestant Churches under the Third
Republic.=--Since the French Reformed began to emulate their
Catholic countrymen in wild Chauvinism, fanatical hatred of
Germany and unreasoning enthusiasm for the _Revanche_, they
were left by the advancing clerical party unmolested in respect
of life, confession and worship during the time of war. The
Lutherans on the other hand, consisting, although on French
territory, mainly of German emigrants and settlers, even their
French members not so disposed to Chauvinistic extravagance,
were obliged to atone for this double offence by expulsion from
house and home and by various injuries to their ecclesiastical
interests. After the conclusion of peace, especially under
Thiers’ moderate government, this fanaticism gradually cooled
down, so that the expelled Germans returned and the churches and
institutions that had been destroyed were restored, so far as
means would allow. By the decree of Waddington, the minister
of instruction, of date March 27th, 1877, instead of the
theological faculty of Strassburg, now lost for the French
Lutheran church, one for both Protestant churches was founded
in Paris.--The =Lutheran Church=, in consequence of the cession
of Alsace-Lorraine, had only sixty-four out of 278 pastorates
and six out of forty-four consistories remaining. At the general
synod convened at Paris, in July, 1872, by the government for
reorganising the Lutheran church it was resolved: To form two
inspectorates independent of each other--Paris, predominantly
orthodox, Mömpelgard, predominantly liberal; the general assembly,
which meets every third year alternately at Mömpelgard and Paris,
to consist of delegates from both. The two inspectorates are to
correspond in administrative matters directly with the minister
of public instruction, but in everything referring to confession,
doctrine, worship and discipline, the general assembly is the
supreme authority. In regard to the confessional question they
agreed to the statement, that the holy Scripture is the supreme
authority in matters of faith, and the Augsburg Confession
the basis of the legal constitution of the church. An express
undertaking on the part of the clergy to this effect is not,
however, insisted upon. Only in 1879 could this constitution
obtain legal sanction by the State, and that only after
considerable modification in the direction of liberalism,
especially in reference to electoral qualification. In
consequence of this the first ordinary general assembly held
in Paris in May, 1881, found both parties in a conciliatory
mood.--=The Reformed Church=, with about 500 pastorates and
105 consistories, summoned by order of government a newly
constituted General Assembly at Paris, in June, 1872. Prominent
among the leaders of the orthodox party was the aged ex-minister
Guizot; the leaders of the liberals were Coquerel and Colani.
The former supported the proposal of Professor Bois of Montauban,
who insisted on the frank and full confession of holy Scripture
as the sovereign authority in matters of faith, of Christ as
the only Son of God, and of justification by faith as the legal
basis of instruction, worship and discipline; while the latter
protested against every attempt to lay down an obligatory and
exclusive confession. The orthodox party prevailed and the
dissenters who would not yield were struck off the voting lists.
When now in consequence of the complaint of the liberal party
the summoning of an ordinary general assembly was refused by
the government, the orthodox party repeatedly met in “official”
provincial and general assemblies without state sanction. The
council of state then declared all decisions regarding voting
qualifications passed by the synod of 1872 to be null and void,
the minister of worship, Ferry, ordered the readmission of
electors struck from the lists, and his successor Bert legalized,
by a decree of March 25th, 1882, the division of the Parisian
consistorial circuit into two independent consistories of Paris
and Versailles, moved for by the liberal party but opposed by the
orthodox. But upon the elections for the new consistory of Paris,
ordered in spite of all protests, and for the presbyteries of the
eight parishes assigned to it, contrary to all expectation, in
seven of these the elections with great majorities were in favour
of the orthodox, and the first official document issued by the
new consistory was a solemn protest against the decree to which
it owed its existence. Under such circumstances the government
as well as the liberal party had no desire for the calling of an
official general assembly, and the latter resolved at a general
assembly at Nimes, in October, 1882, to institute official
synods of their own for consultation and protection of their
own interests.

§ 204. ITALY.

In Italy matters returned to their old position after the restoration of 1814. But liberalism, aiming at the liberty and unity of Italy, gained the mastery, and where for the time it prevailed, the Jesuits were expelled, and the power of the clergy restricted; where it failed, both came back with greatly increased importance. The arms of Austria and subsequently also of France stamped out on all sides the revolutionary movements. Pius IX., who at first was not indisposed, contrary to all traditions of the papacy, to put himself at the head of the national party, was obliged bitterly to regret his dealings with the liberals (§ 185, 2). Sardinia, Modena and Naples put the severest strain upon the bow of the restoration, while Parma and Tuscany distinguished themselves by adopting liberal measures in a moderate degree. Sardinia, however, in 1840 came to a better mind. Charles Albert first broke ground with a more liberal constitution, and in 1848 proclaimed himself the deliverer of Italy, but yielded to the arms of Austria. His son Victor Emanuel II. succeeded amid singularly favourable circumstances in uniting the whole peninsula under his sceptre as a united kingdom of Italy governed by liberal institutions.

§ 204.1. =The Kingdom of Sardinia.=--Victor Emanuel I. after
the restoration had nothing else to do but to recall the Jesuits,
to hand over to them the whole management of the schools, and,
guided and led by them in everything, to restore the church and
state to the condition prevailing before 1789. Charles Felix
(1821-1831) carried still further the absolutist-reactionary
endeavours of his predecessor, and even Charles Albert (1831-1849)
refused for a long time to realize the hopes which the liberal
party had previously placed in him. Only in the second decade
of his reign did he begin gradually to display a more liberal
tendency, and at last in 1848 when, in consequence of the French
Revolution, Lombardy rose against the Austrian rule, he placed
himself at the head of the national movement for freeing Italy
from the yoke of strangers. But the king gloried in as “the sword
of Italy” was defeated and obliged to abdicate. Victor Emanuel II.
(1849-1878) allowed meanwhile the liberal constitution of his
father to remain and indeed carried it out to the utmost. The
minister of justice, Siccardi, proposed a new legislative code
which abolished all clerical jurisdiction in civil and criminal
proceedings, as also the right of asylum and of exacting
tithes, the latter with moderate compensation. It was passed
by parliament and subscribed by the king in 1850. The clergy,
with archbishop Fransoni of Turin at their head, protested with
all their might against these sacrilegious encroachments on the
rights of the church. Fransoni was on this account committed for
a month to prison and, when he refused the last sacrament to a
minister, was regularly sentenced to deposition and banishment
from the country. Pius IX. thwarted all attempts to obtain a
new concordat. But the government went recklessly forward. As
Fransoni from his exile in France continued his agitation, all
the property of the archiepiscopal chair was in 1854 sequestered
and a number of cloisters were closed. Soon all penalties in
the penal code for spreading non-Catholic doctrines were struck
out and non-Catholic soldiers freed from compulsory attendance
at mass on Sundays and festivals. The chief blow now fell on
March 2nd, 1855, in the Cloister Act, which abolished all orders
and cloisters not devoted to preaching, teaching, and nursing
the sick. In consequence 331 out of 605 cloisters were shut up.
The pope ceased not to condemn all these sacrilegious and church
robbing acts, and when his threats were without result, thundered
the great excommunication in July, 1855, against all originators,
aiders, and abettors of such deeds. Among the masses this indeed
caused some excitement, but it never came to an explosion.

§ 204.2. =The Kingdom of Italy.=--Amid such vigorous progress
the year 1859 came round with its fateful Franco-Italian war.
The French alliance had not indeed, as it promised, made Italy
free to the Adriatic, but by the peace of Villafranca the whole
of Lombardy was given to the kingdom of Sardinia as a present
from the emperor of the French. In the same year by popular vote
Tuscany, including Modena and Parma, and in the following year
the kingdom of the two Sicilies, as well as the three provinces
of the States of the Church, revolted and were annexed, so that
the new kingdom of Italy embraced the whole of the peninsula,
with the exception of Venice, Rome and the Campagna. Prussia’s
remarkable successes in the seven days’ German war of 1866 shook
Venice like ripe fruit into the lap of her Italian ally, and the
day of Sedan, 1870, prepared the way for the addition of Rome
and the Campagna (§ 185, 3).--In Lombardy and then also in
Venice, immediately after they had been taken possession of, the
concordat with Austria was abrogated and the Jesuits expelled.
Ecclesiastical tithes on the produce of the soil were abolished
throughout the whole kingdom, begging was forbidden the mendicant
friars as unworthy of a spiritual order, ecclesiastical property
was put under state control and the support of the clergy
provided for by state grants. In 1867 the government began
the appropriation and conversion of the church property; in
1870 all religious orders were dissolved, with exception for
the time being of those in Rome, wherever they did not engage
in educational and other useful works. In May, 1873, this law
was extended to the Roman province, only it was not to be applied
to the generals of orders in Rome. Nuns and some monks were
also allowed to remain in their cloisters situated in unpeopled
districts. The amount of state pensions paid to monks and nuns
reached in 1882 the sum of eleven million lire, at the rate
of 330 lire for each person. The abolition of the theological
faculties in ten Italian universities in 1873, because these
altogether had only six students of theology, was regarded by
the curia rather as a victory than a defeat. The newly appointed
bishops were forbidden by the pope to produce their credentials
for inspection in order to obtain their salaries from the
government. The loss of temporalities thus occasioned was made
up by Pius IX. out of Peter’s pence flowing in so abundantly from
abroad; each bishop receiving 500 and each archbishop 700 lire in
the month. Leo XIII., however, felt obliged in 1879, owing to the
great decrease in the Peter’s pence contributions, to cancel this
enactment and to permit the bishops to accept the state allowance.
In consequence of the civil marriage law passed in 1866 having
been altogether ignored by the clergy, nearly 400,000 marriages
had down to the close of 1878 received only ecclesiastical
sanction, and the offspring of such parties would be regarded
in the eye of the law as illegitimate. To obviate this difficulty
a law was passed in May, 1879, which insisted that in all cases
civil marriage must precede the ecclesiastical ceremony, and
clergymen, witnesses and parties engaging in an illegal marriage
should suffer three or six months’ imprisonment; but all
marriages contracted in accordance merely with church forms
before the passing of this law might be legitimized by being
entered on the civil register.--Finally in January, 1884, the
controversy pending since 1873 as to whether the rich property of
the Roman propaganda (§ 156, 9) amounting to twenty million lire
should be converted into state consols was decided by the supreme
court in favour of the curia, which had pronounced these funds
international because consisting of presents and contributions
from all lands. But not only was the revenue of the propaganda
subjected to a heavy tax, but also all increase of its property
forbidden. In vain did the pope by his nuncios call for the
intervention of foreign nations. None of these were inclined to
meddle in the internal affairs of Italy. The curia now devised
the plan of affiliating a number of societies outside of Italy to
the propaganda for receiving and administering donations and
presents.

§ 204.3. =The Evangelization of Italy.=--Emigrant Protestants
of various nationalities had at an early date, by the silent
sufferance of the respective governments, formed small
evangelical congregations in some of the Italian cities;
in Venice and Leghorn during the seventeenth century, at Bergamo
in 1807, at Florence in 1826, at Milan in 1847. Also by aid of
the diplomatic intervention of Prussia and England, the erection
of Protestant chapels for the embassy was allowed at Rome in 1819,
at Naples in 1825, and at Florence in 1826. When in 1848 Italy’s
hopes from the liberal tendencies of Pius IX. were so bitterly
disappointed, Protestant sympathies began to spread far and
wide through the land, even among native Catholics, fostered by
English missionaries, Bibles and tracts, which the governments
sought in vain to check by prisons, penitentiaries and exile.
Persecution began in 1851 in Tuscany, where, in spite of the
liberty of faith and worship guaranteed by the constitution of
1848, Tuscan subjects taking part in the Italian services in the
chapel of the Prussian embassy at Florence were punished with
six months’ hard labour, and in the following year the pious pair
Francesco and Rosa Madiai were sentenced to four years’ rigorous
punishment in a penitentiary for the crime of having edified
themselves and their household by reading the Bible. In vain did
the Evangelical Alliance remonstrate (§ 178, 3), in vain did even
the king of Prussia intercede. But when, stirred up by public
opinion in England, the English premier Lord Palmerston offered
to secure the requirement of Christian humanity by means of
British ships of war, the grand-duke got rid of both martyrs by
banishing them from the country in 1853. In proportion as the
union of Italy under Victor Emanuel II. advanced, the field for
evangelistic effort and the powers devoted thereto increased.
So it was too since 1860 in Southern Italy. But when in 1866 a
Protestant congregation began to be formed at Barletta in Naples,
a fanatical priest roused a popular mob in which seventeen
persons were killed and torn in pieces. The government put down
the uproar and punished the miscreants, and the nobler portion of
the nation throughout the whole land collected for the families
of those murdered. The work of evangelization supported by
liberal contributions chiefly from England, but also from Holland,
Switzerland, and the German _Gustav-Adolf-Verein_ (§ 178, 1),
advanced steadily in spite of occasional brutal interferences
of the clergy and the mob, so that soon in all the large cities
and in many of the smaller towns of Italy and Sicily there were
thriving and flourishing little evangelical congregations of
converted native Catholics, numbering as many as 182 in 1882.

§ 204.4. The chief factor in the evangelization of Italy as far
as the southern coast of Sicily was the old =Waldensian Church=,
which for three hundred years had occupied the Protestant
platform in the spirit of Calvinism (§ 139, 25). Remnants
consisting of some 200,000 souls still survived in the valleys
of Piedmont, almost without protection of law amid constant
persecution and oppressions (§ 153, 5), moderated only by
Prussian and English intervention. But when Sardinia headed
Italian liberalism in 1848 religious liberty and all civil
rights were secured to them. A Waldensian congregation was then
formed in the capital, Turin, which was strengthened by numerous
Protestant refugees from other parts of Italy. But in 1854 a
split occurred between the two elements in it. The new Italian
converts objected, not altogether without ground, against the old
Waldensians that by maintaining their church government with its
centre in the valleys, the so-called “Tables” and their old forms
of constitution, doctrine and worship, much too contracted and
narrow for the enlarged boundaries of the present, they thought
more of Waldensianizing than of evangelizing Italy. Besides,
their language since 1630, when a plague caused their preachers
and teachers to withdraw from Geneva, had been French, and
the national Italian pride was disposed on this domain also to
unfurl her favourite banner “_Italia farà da se_.” The division
spread from Turin to the other congregations. At the head of the
separatists, afterwards designated the “_Free Italian Church_”
(_Chiesa libera_), stood Dr. Luigi Desanctis, a man of rich
theological culture and glowing eloquence, who, when Catholic
priest and theologian of the inquisition at Rome, became
convinced of the truth of the evangelical confession, joined
the evangelical church at Malta in 1847 and wrought from 1852
with great success in the congregation at Turin. After ten years’
faithful service in the newly formed free church he felt obliged,
owing to the Darbyite views (§ 211, 11) that began to prevail
in it, to attach himself again in 1864 to the Waldensians, who
meanwhile had been greatly liberalised. He now officiated for
them till his death in 1869 as professor of theology at Florence,
and edited their journal _Eco della verità_. This journal was
succeeded in 1873 by the able monthly _Rivista Cristiana_, edited
at Florence by Prof. Emilio Comba.--After Desanctis left the
_Chiesa libera_ its chief representative was the ex-Barnabite
father Alessandro Gavazzi of Naples. Endowed with glowing
eloquence and remarkable popularity as a lecturer, he appeared
at Rome in 1848 as a politico-religious orator, attached himself
to the evangelical church in London in 1850, and undertook the
charge of the evangelical Italian congregation there. He returned
to Italy in 1860 and accompanied the hero of Italian liberty,
Garibaldi, as his military chaplain, preaching to the people
everywhere with his leonine voice with equal enthusiasm of Victor
Emanuel as the only saviour of Italy and of Jesus Christ as
the only Saviour of sinners. He then joined the _Chiesa libera_,
and, as he himself obtained gradually fuller acquaintance
with evangelical truth, wrought zealously in organizing the
congregations hitherto almost entirely isolated from one another.
At a general assembly at Milan in 1870, deputies from thirty-two
congregations drew up a simple biblical confession of faith,
and in the following year at Florence a constitutional code was
adopted which recognised the necessity of the pastoral office,
of annual assemblies, and a standing evangelization committee.
They now took the name “=Unione della Chiesa libere in Italia=.”
The predominantly Darbyist congregations, which had not taken
part in these constitutional assemblies, have since formed a
community of their own as =Chiesa Cristiana=, depending only on
the immediate leading of the Holy Spirit, rejecting every sort of
ecclesiastical and official organization, and denouncing infant
baptism as unevangelical.--Besides these three national Italian
churches, English and American Methodists and Baptists carry on
active missions. On May 1st, 1884, the evangelical denominations
at a general assembly in Florence, with the exception only of the
Darbyist _Chiesa Cristiana_, joined in a confederation to meet
annually in an “Italian Evangelical Congress” as a preparation
for ecclesiastical union. When, however, the various Methodist
and Baptist denominations began to check the progress of the work
of union, the two leading bodies, the Waldensians and the Free
Church party, separated from them. A committee chosen from these
two sketched at Florence in 1885 a basis of union, according to
which the Free Church adopted the confession and church order
of the Waldensians, subject to revision by the joint synods,
their theological school at Rome was to be amalgamated with the
Waldensian school at Florence, and the united church was to take
the name of the “Evangelical Church of Italy.” But a Waldensian
synod in September, 1886, resolved to hold by the ancient name
of the “Waldensian Church.” Whether the “Free Church” will agree
to this demand is not yet known.

§ 205. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

No European country has during the nineteenth century been the scene of so many revolutions, outbreaks and civil wars, of changes of government, ministries and constitutions, sometimes of a clerical absolutist, sometimes of a democratic radical tendency, and in none has revolution gone so unsparingly for the time against hierarchy, clergy and monasticism, as in unfortunate Spain. Portugal too passed through similar struggles, which, however, did not prove so dreadfully disordering to the commonwealth as those of Spain.

§ 205.1. =Spain under Ferdinand VII. and Maria Christina.=--Joseph
Bonaparte (1808-1813) had given to the Spaniards a constitution
of the French pattern, abolishing inquisition and cloisters.
The constitution which the Cortes proclaimed in 1812 carried
out still further the demands of political liberalism, but still
declared the apostolic Roman Catholic religion as alone true to
be the religion of the Spanish nation and forbad the exercise of
any other. Ferdinand VII., whom Napoleon restored in December,
1813, hastened to restore the inquisition, the cloisters and
despotism, especially from 1815 under the direction of the
Jesuits highly esteemed by him. The revolution of 1820 indeed
obliged him to reintroduce the constitution of 1812 and to banish
the Jesuits; but scarcely had the feudal clerical party of the
apostolic Junta with their army of faith in the field and Bourbon
French intervention under the Duke of Angoulême again made his
way clear, than he began to crush as before by means of his
Jesuit Camarilla every liberal movement in church and state.
But all the more successful was the reaction of liberalism in
the civil war which broke out after Ferdinand’s death under
the regency of his fourth wife, the intriguing Maria Christina
(1833-1837). The revolution now erected an inquisition, but it
was one directed against the clergy and monks, and celebrated
its _autos de fe_; but these were in the form of spoliation of
cloisters and massacres of monks. Ecclesiastical tithes were
abolished, all monkish orders suspended, the cloisters closed,
ecclesiastical goods declared national property, and the papal
nuncio sent over the frontier. A threatening papal allocution
of 1841 only increased the violence of the Cortes, and when
Gregory XVI. in 1842 pronounced all decrees of the government
null and void, it branded all intercourse with Rome as an offence
against the state.

§ 205.2. =Spain under Isabella II., 1843-1865.=--Ferdinand VII.,
overlooking the right of his brother Don Carlos, had, by
abolishing the Salic law, secured the throne to Isabella, his
own and Maria Christina’s daughter. After the Cortes of 1843
had declared Isabella of age in her thirteenth year, the Spanish
government became more and more favourable to the restoration.
After long negotiations and vacillations under constantly
changing ministries a concordat was at last drawn up in 1851,
which returned the churches and cloisters that had not been
sold, allowed compensation for what had been sold, reduced the
number of bishoprics by six, put education and the censorship of
the press under the oversight of the bishops, and declared the
Catholic religion the only one to be tolerated. But although
in 1854 the Holy Virgin was named generalissima of the brave
army and her image at Atocha had been decorated by the queen
with a band of the Golden Fleece, a revolution soon broke
out in the army which threatened to deal the finishing stroke
to ultramontanism. Meanwhile it had not fully permeated the
republican party. The proposal of unrestricted liberty to all
forms of worship was supported by a small minority, and the new
constitution of 1855 called upon the Spanish nation to maintain
and guard the Catholic religion which “the Spaniards profess;”
yet no Spaniard was to be persecuted on account of his faith, so
long as he did not commit irreligious acts. A new law determined
the sale of all church and cloister property, and compensation
therefore by annual rents according to the existing concordat.
Several bishops had to be banished owing to their continued
opposition; the pope protested and recalled his legates. Clerical
influence meanwhile regained power over the queen. The sale of
church and cloister property was stopped, and previous possessors
were indemnified for what had been already sold. Owing to
frequent change of ministry, each of which manifested a tendency
different from its predecessor, it was only in 1859 that matters
were settled by a new concordat. In it the government admitted
the inalienability of church property, admitted the unrestricted
right of the church to obtain new property of any kind, and
declared itself ready to exchange state paper money for property
that had fallen into decay according to the estimation of the
bishops. The queen proved her Catholic zeal at the instigation
of the nun Patrocinio by fanatical persecution of Protestants,
and hearty but vain sympathies for the sufferings of the pope
and the expatriated Italian princes. Pius IX. rewarded Isabella,
who seemed to him adorned with all the virtues, by sending her
in 1868 the consecrated rose at a time when she was causing
public scandal more than ever by her private life, and by her
proceedings with her paramour Marforio had lost the last remnant
of the respect and confidence of the Spanish nation. Eight months
later her reign was at an end. The provisional government now
ordered the suppression of the Society of Jesus, as well as
of all cloister and spiritual associations, and in 1869 the
Cortes sanctioned the draught of a new civil constitution, which
required the Spanish nation to maintain the Catholic worship,
but allowed the exercise of other forms of worship to strangers
and as cases might arise even to natives, and generally made all
political and civil rights independent of religious profession.

§ 205.3. =Spain under Alphonso XII., 1875-1885.=--When Isabella’s
son returned to Spain in January, 1875, in his seventeenth
year, he obtained the blessing of his sponsor the pope on his
ascending the throne, promised to the Catholic church powerful
support, but also to non-Catholics the maintenance of liberty
of worship. How he meant to perform both is shown by a decree
of 10th February, 1875, which, abolishing the civil marriage law
passed by the Cortes in 1870, gave back to the Catholic church
the administration of marriage and matters connected therewith;
for all persons living in Spain, however, “who professed another
than the true faith,” as well as for “the bad Catholics,” to whom
ecclesiastical marriage on account of church censures is refused,
liberty was given to contract a civil marriage; but this did not
apply to apostate priests, monks, and nuns, to whom any sort of
marriage is for ever refused, and whose previously contracted
marriages are invalid, without, however, affecting the legitimacy
of children already born of such connections.--Against the
draught of the new constitution, whose eleventh article indeed
affords toleration to all dissenting forms of worship, but
prohibits any public manifestation thereof outside of their place
of worship and burial grounds, Pius IX. protested as infringing
upon the still existing concordat in its “noblest” part, and
aiming a serious blow at the Catholic church. The Cortes, however,
sanctioned it in 1876.

§ 205.4. =The Evangelization of Spain.=--A number of Bibles
and tracts, as well as a religious paper in Spanish called _el
Albo_, found entrance into Spain from the English settlement at
Gibraltar, without Spain being able even in the most flourishing
days of the restoration to prevent it, and evangelical sympathies
began more or less openly to be expressed. Franc. Ruat, formerly
a lascivious Spanish poet, who was awakened at Turin by the
preaching of the Waldensian Desanctis, and by reading the Bible
had obtained knowledge of evangelical truths, appeared publicly
after the publication of the new constitution of 1855 as a
preacher of the gospel in Spain. The reaction that soon set in,
however, secured for him repeated imprisonments, and finally in
1856 sentence of banishment for life. He then wrought for several
years successfully in Gibraltar, next in London, afterwards in
Algiers among Spanish residents, till the new civil constitution
of 1868 allowed him to return to Spain, where, in the service
of the German mission at Madrid, he gathered around him an
evangelical congregation, to which he ministered till his death
in 1878. While labouring in Gibraltar he won to the evangelical
faith among others the young officer Manuel Matamoros, living
there as a political refugee. This noble man, whose whole career,
till his death in exile in 1866, was a sore martyrdom for the
truth, became the soul of the whole movement, against which
the government in 1861 and 1862 took the severest measures. By
intercepted correspondence the leaders and many of the members
of the secret evangelical propaganda were discovered and thrown
into prison. The final judgment condemned the leaders of the
movement to severe punishment in penitentiaries and the galleys.
Infliction of these sentences had already begun when the
queen found herself obliged, by a visit to Madrid in 1863 of a
deputation of the Evangelical Alliance (§ 178, 3), consisting of
the most distinguished and respected Protestants of all lands, to
commute them to banishment.--After Isabella’s overthrow in 1868,
permission was given for the building of the first Protestant
church in Madrid, where a congregation soon gathered of more than
2,000 souls. In Seville an almost equally strong congregation
obtained for its services what had been a church of the Jesuits.
Also at Cordova a considerable congregation was collected, and
in almost all the other large cities there were largely attended
places of worship. Several of those banished under Isabella,
who had returned after her overthrow, Carrasco, Trigo, Alhama,
and others, increased by new converts who had received their
theological training at Geneva, Lausanne, etc., and supported
by American, English and German fellow-labourers, such as the
brothers F. and H. Fliedner, wrought with unwearied zeal as
preachers and pastors, for the spreading and deeper grounding
of the gospel among their countrymen. With the restoration of the
monarchy in 1875, the oppression of the Protestants was renewed
with increasing severity. The widest possible interpretation
was given to the prohibition of every public manifestation
of dissenting worship in Article XI. of the constitution. The
excesses and insults of the mob, whose fanaticism was stirred up
by the clergy, were left unpunished and uncensured. Even the most
sorely abused and injured Protestants were themselves subjected
to imprisonment as disturbers of the peace. No essential
improvement in their condition resulted from the liberal ministry
of Sagasta in 1881. Nevertheless the number of evangelical
congregations continued steadily though slowly to increase, so
that now they number more than sixty, with somewhere about 15,000
native Protestant members.--Besides these an _Iglesia Española_
arose in 1881, consisting of eight congregations, which may
be regarded to some extent as a national Spanish counterpart
to the Old Catholicism of Germany. Its founder and first bishop
is Cabrera, formerly a Catholic priest, who, after having
wrought from 1868 in the service of the Edinburgh (Presbyterian)
Evangelization Society as preacher in Seville, and then in Madrid,
received in 1880 episcopal consecration from the Anglican bishop
Riley of Mexico (§ 209, 1), then visiting Madrid. Although thus
of Anglican origin, the church directed by him wishes not to be
Anglican, but Spanish episcopal. It attaches itself therefore,
while accepting the thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church,
in the sketch of its order of service in the Spanish language,
more to the old Mozarabic ritual (§ 88, 1) than to the Anglican
liturgy.[562]

§ 205.5. =The Church in Portugal.=--Portugal after some months
followed the example of the Spanish revolution of 1820. John VI.
(1816-1826) confirmed the new constitution, drawn up after the
pattern of the democratic Spanish constitution of 1812, enacting
the seizure of church property and the suppression of the
monasteries. But a counter revolution, led by the younger son of
the king, Dom Miguel, obliged him in 1823 to repudiate it and to
return to the older constitution. But he persistently resisted
the reintroduction of the Jesuits. After his death in 1826, the
legitimate heir, Pedro I. of Brazil, abandoned his claims to the
Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Donna Maria II. da
Gloria, then under a year old, whom he betrothed to his brother
Dom Miguel. Appointed regent, Dom Miguel took the oath to
the constitution, but immediately broke his oath, had himself
proclaimed king, recalled the Jesuits, and, till his overthrow
in 1834, carried on a clerical monarchical reign of terror. Dom
Pedro, who had meanwhile vacated the Brazilian throne, as regent
again suppressed all monkish orders, seized the property of
the church, and abolished ecclesiastical tithes, but died in
the same year. His daughter Donna Maria, now pronounced of age
and proclaimed queen (1834-1853), amid continual revolutions
and changes of the constitution, manifested an ever-growing
inclination to reconciliation with Rome. In 1841 she negotiated
about a concordat, and showed herself so submissive that the pope
rewarded her in 1842 with the consecrated golden rose. But the
liberal Cortes resisted the introduction of the concordat, and
maintained the right of veto by the civil government as well as
the rest of the restrictions upon the hierarchy, and the _Codigo
penal_ of 1882 threatened the Catholic clergy with heavy fines
and imprisonment for every abuse of their spiritual prerogatives
and every breach of the laws of the State. In 1857 a concordat
was at last agreed to, which, however, was adopted by the
representatives of the people not before 1859, and then only by
a small majority. Its chief provisions consist in the regulating
of the patronage rights of the crown in regard to existing and
newly created bishoprics. The relation of government to the curia,
however, still continued strained. The constitution declares
generally that the Catholic Apostolic Romish Church is the
state religion. A Portuguese who passes over from it to another
loses thereby his civil rights as a citizen. Yet no one is to be
persecuted on account of his religion. The erection of Protestant
places of worship, but not in church form, and also of burial
grounds, where necessary, is permitted.--Evangelization has
made but little progress in Portugal. The first evangelical
congregation, with Anglican episcopal constitution, was founded
at Lisbon by a Spanish convert, Don Angelo Herrero de Mora, who
in the service of the Bible Society had edited a revision of the
old Spanish Bible in New York, and had there been naturalized
as an American citizen. Consisting originally of American and
English Protestants, about a hundred Spanish and Portuguese
converts have since 1868 gradually attached themselves to it,
the latter after they had been made Spanish instead of Portuguese
subjects. After the pattern of this mother congregation, two
others have been formed in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and one
at Oporto.

§ 206. RUSSIA.

The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the people; a task which proved peculiarly difficult in consequence of the wide-spread anti-ecclesiastical spirit (§ 210, 3) and the incomparably more dangerous antichristian Nihilism (§ 212, 6).--The Catholic church, mainly represented in what had before been the kingdom of Poland, had, in consequence of the repeated revolutionary agitation of the Poles, in which the clergy had zealously taken part by stirring up fanaticism among the people and converting their religion and worship into a vehicle of rebellion, so compromised itself that the government, besides taking away the national political privileges, reduced more and more the rights and liberties granted to the church as such.--The prosperous development of the evangelical church in Russia, which, through the absolutely faultless loyalty of its members, had hitherto enjoyed the hearty protection of the government, in 1845 and 1846, and afterwards in 1883, in consequence of numerous conversions among Esthonian and Livonian peasants, was checked by incessant persecutions.

§ 206.1. =The Orthodox National Church.=--The evangelical
influences introduced from the West during the previous century,
especially among the higher clergy, found further encouragement
under Alexander I., A.D. 1801-1825. Himself affected by the
evangelical pietism of Madame Krüdener (§ 176, 2), he aimed at
the elevation of the orthodox church in this direction, founded
clerical seminaries and public schools, and took a lively
interest in Bible circulation among the Russian people. But under
Nicholas I., A.D. 1825-1855, a reaction proceeding from the holy
synod set in which unweariedly sought to seal the orthodox church
hermetically against all evangelical influences. Also during
the reign of Alexander II., A.D. 1855-1881, a reign singularly
fruitful in civil reforms, this tendency was even more rigidly
illustrated, while with the consent and aid of the holy synod
every effort was put forth to improve the church according to its
own principles. Specially active in this work was Count Tolstoi,
minister of instruction and also procurator of the holy synod. A
committee presided over by him produced a whole series of useful
reforms in 1868, which were approved by the synod and confirmed
by the emperor. While the inferior clergy had hitherto formed
an order by themselves, all higher ranks of preferment were
now opened to them, but, on the other hand, the obligation
of priests’ sons to remain in the order of their fathers was
abolished. The clamant abuse of putting mere clerks and sextons
to do the work of priests was also now put a stop to, and
training in clerical seminaries or academies was made compulsory.
Previously only married men could hold the offices of deacon and
priest; now widowers and bachelors were admitted, so soon as they
reached the age of forty years. In order to increase the poor
incomes many churches had not their regular equipment of clergy,
and instead of the full set of priest, deacon, sub-deacon, reader,
sexton, and doorkeeper, in the poorer churches there were only
priest and reader. Order was restored to monastic life, now
generally grown dissolute, by a fixed rule of a common table
and uniform dress, etc. In 1860 an Orthodox Church Society for
Missions among the peoples of the Caucasus, and in 1866 a second
for Pagans and Mohammedans throughout the empire, were founded,
both under the patronage of the empress. The Russian church
also cleverly took advantage of political events to carry on
missionary work in Japan (§ 184, 6). A society of the “Friends
of Intellectual Enlightenment,” founded in St. Petersburg
in 1872, aimed chiefly at the religious improvement of the
cultured classes in the spirit of the orthodox church by means
of tracts and addresses, while agreeing with foreign confessions
as to the nature and characteristics of the true church.
Under Alexander III., since A.D. 1881, the emperor’s former
tutor Pobedownoszew, with the conviction of the incomparable
superiority of his church, and believing that by it and only
by it could the dangerous commotions of the present be overcome
(§ 212, 6) and Russia regenerated, as procurator of the holy
synod has zealously wrought in this direction.--But meanwhile a
new impulse was given to the evangelical movement in aristocratic
circles by Lord Radstock, who appeared in St. Petersburg in 1870.
The addresses delivered by him in French in the salons of the
fashionable world won a success scarcely to be looked for. The
most famous gain was the conversion of a hitherto proud, worldly,
rich and popular Colonel of the Guards, called Paschcow, who now
turned the beautiful ball-room of his palatial residence into a
prayer-meeting room, and with all the enthusiasm of a neophyte
proclaimed successfully among high and low the newly won saving
truth in a Biblical evangelical spirit, though not without a
methodistic flavour. The excitement thus created led to police
interference, and finally, when he refused to abstain from
spreading his religious views among the members of the orthodox
church by the circulation of evangelical tracts in the Russian
language, he was, at the instigation of the holy synod and its
all powerful procurator, banished first from St. Petersburg and
then in 1884 from the empire, whereupon he withdrew to London.

§ 206.2. =The Catholic Church.=--After the Greeks in the old
West Russian provinces (§ 151, 3), who had been forcibly united
to Rome in 1596, had again in 1772, in consequence of the first
partition of Poland, come under Russian rule, the government
sought to restore them also to the orthodox national church.
This was first accomplished under Nicholas I., when at the synod
of Polosk in 1839 they themselves spontaneously expressed a wish
to be thus reunited with the mother church. Rome thus lost two
million members. But the allocution directed against this robbery
by Gregory XVI. was without effect, and the public opinion
of Europe saw a case of historical justice in this reunion,
though effected not without severe measures against those who
proved obstinate and rebellious. Yet there always remained a
considerable remnant, about one-third of a million, under the
bishop of Chelun, in the Romish communion. But even these in 1875,
after many disturbances with the prelate Popiel at their head,
almost wholly severed their connection with the pope, and were
again received into the bosom of the orthodox national church.
In a memorial addressed to the emperor for this purpose, they
declared they were led to this on the one hand by the continual
endeavour of the curia and its partisans, by Latinizing their old
Greek liturgy and Polandizing the people, to overthrow their old
Russian nationality, and on the other hand, by their aversion to
the new papal dogmas of the immaculate conception of Mary and the
infallibility of the pope.--The insurrection of the Poles against
Russian rule in 1830, which even Pope Gregory XVI. condemned,
bore bitter fruits for the Catholic church of that country.
The organic statute of 1832 indeed secured anew to the Poles
religious liberty, but the bishops were prohibited holding
any direct communication with Rome, the clergy deprived of all
control over the schools, and the Russian law regarding mixed
marriages made applicable to that province. By an understanding
with the curia in 1847 the choice of the bishops was given to the
emperor, their canonical investiture to the pope. The mildness
with which Alexander II. treated the Poles and the political
troubles in the rest of Europe fostered the hope of restoring
the old kingdom of Poland. Reckless demonstrations were made in
the beginning of 1861, pilgrimages to the graves of the martyrs
of freedom were organized, political memorial festivals were
celebrated in churches, a general national mourning was enjoined,
mourning services were held, revolutionary songs were sung
in churches, etc. The Catholic clergy headed the movement and
canonized it as a religious duty. In vain the government sought
to put it down by making liberal concessions, in vain they
applied to Pius IX. to discountenance it. When in October the
country lay in a state of siege, and the military forced their
way into the churches to apprehend the ringleaders of rebellion,
the episcopal administrator, Bialobezeski, denounced that as
church profanation, had all the Catholic churches in Warsaw
closed, and answered the government’s request to reopen them by
making extravagant demands and uttering proud words of defiance.
The military tribunal sentenced him to death, but the emperor
commuted this to one year’s detention in a fortress, with loss
of all his dignities and orders. Meanwhile the eyes of the pope
had at length been opened. He now confirmed the government’s
appointment of Archbishop Felinsky, who entered Warsaw in
February, 1862, and reopened the churches. After the suppression
of the revolt in 1864, almost all cloisters, as nurseries of
revolution, were abolished; in the following year the whole
property of the church was taken in charge by the State, and
the clergy supported by state pay. The pope, enraged at this,
gave violent expression to his feelings to the Russian ambassador
at Rome during the New Year festivities of 1866, whereupon the
government completely broke off all relations with the curia.
Consequently in 1867 all the affairs of the Catholic church
were committed to the clerical college at St. Petersburg, and
intercourse between the clergy and the pope prohibited. Hence
arose many conflicts with Catholic bishops, whose obstinacy was
punished by their being interned in their dioceses. In 1869 the
Russian calendar was introduced, and Russian made the compulsory
language of instruction. But in 1870 greater opposition was
offered to the introduction of Russian in the public services by
means of translations of the common Polish prayer and psalm-books.
Pietrowitsch, dean of Wilna, read from the pulpit the ukase
referring to this matter, but then cast it together with the
Russian translations into the flames, with violent denunciations
of the government, and gave information against himself to the
governor-general. He was agreeably to his own desire imprisoned,
and then transported to Archangel. The same sentence was
pronounced against several other obstinate prelates and clergy,
among them Archbishop Felinsky, and thus further opposition was
stamped out.--Leo XIII. soon after entering on his pontificate
in 1878 took the first step toward reconciliation. His efforts
reached a successful issue first in February, 1883. The deposed
prelates were restored from their places of banishment, with
promise of a liberal pension, and were allowed to choose their
residences as they pleased, only not within their former dioceses.
In their stead the pope consecrated ten new bishops nominated
by the emperor, who amid the jubilation of the people entered
their episcopal residences. With reference to the Roman Catholic
seminaries and clerical academies at Warsaw, the curia granted
to the government the right of control over instruction in
the Russian language, literature and history, but committed
instruction in canonical matters solely to the bishops, who,
after obtaining the approval of the government, appointed the
rector and inspector and canonical teachers. Vacant pastorates
were filled by the bishops, and only in the case of the more
important was the approval of the government required. As to the
language to be used, it was resolved that only where the people
speak Russian were the clergy obliged to employ that language in
preaching and in their pastoral work.

§ 206.3. =The Evangelical Church.=--The Lutheran church in Russia,
comprising two and a half millions of Germans, Letts, Esthonians
and Finns, is strongest in Livonia, Esthonia and Courland, is the
national church in Finland, and is also largely represented in
Poland, in the chief cities of Russia, and in the numerous German
colonies in South Russia. In 1832 it obtained, for the Baltic
provinces and the scattered congregations in central Russia, a
church constitution and service book, the latter on the basis of
the old Swedish service book, the former requiring all religious
teachers in church and school to accept the Formula of Concord.
Annual provincial synods have the initiative in calling in,
when necessary for legislative purposes, the aid of the general
synod.--In Poland the Reformed and Lutheran churches were in 1828
united under one combined consistory. By an imperial ukase of
1849, however, the independent existence of both churches was
restored. Protestants enjoyed all civil rights and had absolute
liberty in the exercise of their religion; but in central Russia
down to recent times, when a more liberal spirit began to prevail,
they were prohibited putting bells in their churches. The old
prohibition of evangelical preaching and the teaching of religion
in the Russian tongue also continued; but the attempt made for
some decades in St. Petersburg and the surrounding district to
preach the gospel to Germans who had lost their mother tongue, in
the Russian language, has been hitherto ungrudgingly allowed by
the government. Quitting the national church or returning from
it to a church that had been left before, is visited by severe
penalties, and children of mixed marriages, where one parent
belongs to the national orthodox church, are claimed by law for
that church. Only Finland counts among her privileges the right
of assigning children of mixed marriages to the church of the
father. The Lutheran church in Livonia, with the island of Oesel,
suffered considerable, and according to the law of the land
irreparable, loss by the secession of sixty or seventy thousand
Letts and Esthonians to the orthodox church under the widespread
delusion that thereby their economic position would be improved.
Disillusions and regret came too late, and the ever increasing
desire for restoration to the church forsaken in a moment
of excitement could only obtain arbitrary and insufficient
satisfaction in Lutheran baptism of infants seemingly near death,
and in permission at irregular intervals and without previous
announcement to sit at the Lord’s Table according to the Lutheran
rite. In 1865, not indeed legislatively but administratively,
the contracting of mixed marriages in the Baltic provinces
was permitted without the enforcement of the legal enactment
requiring that the children should be trained in the Greek
church. In Esthonia, however, in 1883 there was a new outbreak
of conversions in Leal, where five hundred peasants went over to
the orthodox church, declaring their wish to be of the same faith
as the emperor and the whole of the Russian people. By imperial
decree in 1885 the suspension of the law against withdrawing
again from the national church, which had existed for twenty
years, was abolished. At the instigation of Pobedownoszew the
Imperial Council granted an annual subsidy of 100,000 roubles for
furthering orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces. No evangelical
church could be built in these provinces without the approval of
the orthodox bishop of the diocese, and any evangelical pastor
who should dissuade a member of his church from his purpose
of joining the orthodox church, was liable to punishment.--In
order to supply the want of churches and schools, preachers
and teachers in the Lutheran congregations of Russia, a society
was formed in 1858 similar to the _Gustav-Adolfs-Verein_, under
the supervision of the General Consistory of St. Petersburg,
which has laboriously and zealously endeavoured to improve the
condition of the oppressed church.[563]

§ 207. GREECE AND TURKEY.

In the spirited struggle for liberty Greece freed herself from the tyranny of the Turkish Mohammedan rule and obtained complete civil independence. But the same princes representing all the three principal Christian confessions, who in 1830 gave their sanction to this emancipation within lamentably narrow limits, in 1840 conquered again the Holy Land for the Turks out of the hands of a revolting vassal. And so inextricable were, and still are, the political interests of the Christian States of Europe with reference to the East, that in the London parliament of 1854 it could be affirmed that the existence of Turkey in a condition of utter impotence was so necessary, that if it did not exist, it would require to be created. On two occasions has Russia called out her whole military force to emancipate from the Turkish yoke her Slavic brethren of a common race and common faith, without being able to give the finishing blow to the “sick man” who had the protection of European diplomacy.

§ 207.1. =The Orthodox Church of Greece.=--Deceived in their
expectations from the Vienna Congress, the Greeks tried to
deliver themselves from Turkish tyranny. In 1814 a _Hetairia_ was
formed, branches of which spread over the whole land and fostered
among the people ideas of freedom. The war of independence broke
out in 1821. Its first result was a fearful massacre, especially
in Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] with his
whole synod and about 30,000 Christians were in three months
with horrid cruelty murdered by the Turks. The London Conference
of 1830 at last declared Greece an independent state, and
an assembly of Greek bishops at Nauplia in 1833 freed the
national church of Greece from the authority of the patriarch of
Constantinople, who was under the control of Turkey. Its supreme
direction was committed to a permanent Holy Synod at Athens,
instituted by the king but in all internal matters absolutely
independent. The king must belong to the national church, but
otherwise all religions are on the same footing. Meanwhile the
orthodox church is fully represented, the Roman Catholic being
strongest, especially in the islands. The University of Athens,
opened in 1856 with professors mostly trained in Germany, has not
been unsuccessful in its task even in the domain of theology.