Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (14)

§ 186.1. =The Society of Jesus and Related Orders.=--After the
suppression of their order by Clement XIV. the Jesuits found
refuge mainly among the =Redemptorists= (§ 165, 2), whose
headquarters were at Vienna, from which they spread through
Austria and Bavaria, finding entrance also into Switzerland,
France, Belgium, and Holland, and after 1848 into Catholic
Prussia, as well as into Hesse and Nassau. The =Congregation
of the Sacred Heart= was founded by ex-Jesuits in Belgium
in A.D. 1794, and soon spread in Austria and Bavaria.--The
=restored Jesuit order= was met with a storm of opposition from
the liberals. The July revolution of A.D. 1830 drove the Jesuits
from France, and when they sought to re-establish themselves,
Gregory XVI., under pressure of the government, insisted that
their general should abolish the French institutions in A.D. 1845.
An important branch of the order had settled in Catholic
Switzerland, but the unfavourable issue of the Separated Cantons’
War of 1847 drove its members out of that refuge. The revolution
of 1848 threatened the order with extinction, but the papal
restoration of A.D. 1850 re-introduced it into most Catholic
countries. Since then the sons of Loyola have renewed their
youth like the eagle. They have forced their way into all lands,
even in those on both sides of the ocean that had by legislative
enactments been closed against them, spreading ultramontane views
among Catholics, converting Protestants, and disseminating their
principles in schools and colleges. Even Pius IX., under whose
auspices Aug. Theiner had been allowed, in A.D. 1853, in his
“History of the Pontificate of Clement XIV.” to bring against
them the heavy artillery drawn from “the secret archives of the
Vatican,” again handed over to them the management of public
instruction, and surrendered himself even more and more to their
influence, so that at last he saw only by their eyes, heard only
with their ears, and resolved only according to their will.[544]
The founding of the Italian kingdom under the Prince of Sardinia
in A.D. 1860 led to their expulsion from all Italy, with the
exception of Venice and the remnants of the Papal States. When,
in A.D. 1866, Venice also became an Italian province, they
migrated thence into the Tyrol and other Austrian provinces,
where they enjoyed the blessings of the concordat (§ 198, 2).
Spain, too, on the expulsion of Queen Isabella in A.D. 1868, and
even Mexico and several of the States of Central and Southern
America, drove out the disciples of Loyola. On the other hand,
they made brilliant progress in Germany, especially in Rhenish
Hesse and the Catholic provinces of Prussia. But under the
new German empire the Reichstag, in A.D. 1872, passed a law
suppressing the Jesuits and all similar orders throughout the
empire (§ 197, 4). They were also formally expelled from France
in A.D. 1880 (§ 203, 6). Still, however, in A.D. 1881 the order
numbered 11,000 members in five provinces, and according to
Bismarck’s calculation in A.D. 1872 their property amounted to
280 million thalers. In A.D. 1853 John Beckx of Belgium was made
general. He retired in A.D. 1884 at the age of ninety, Anderlady,
a Swiss, having been appointed in A.D. 1883 his colleague and
successor.--The hope which was at first widely entertained
that Leo XIII. would emancipate himself from the domination of
the order seems more and more to be proved a vain delusion. In
July, 1886, he issued, on the occasion of a new edition of the
institutions of the order, a letter to Anderlady, in which he,
in the most extravagant manner, speaks of the order as having
performed the most signal services “to the church and society,”
and confirms anew everything that his predecessors had said and
done in its favour, while expressly and formally he recalls anew
anything that any of them had said and done against it.

§ 186.2. =Other Orders and Congregations.=--After the storms of
the revolution religious orders rapidly recovered lost ground.
France decreed, on November 2nd, 1789, the abolition of all
orders, and cloisters and in 1802, under Napoleon’s auspices,
they were also suppressed in the German empire and the friendly
princes indemnified with their goods. Yet on grounds of utility
Napoleon restored the Lazarists, as well as the Sisters of Mercy,
whose scattered remnants he collected in A.D. 1807 in Paris into
a general chapter, under the presidency of the empress-mother.
But new cloisters in great numbers were erected specially in
Belgium and France (in opposition to the law of 1789, which was
unrepealed), in Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, etc.,
as also in England and America. In 1849 there were in Prussia
fifty monastic institutes; in 1872 there were 967. In Cologne one
in every 215, in Aachen one in every 110, in Münster one in every
sixty-one, in Paderborn one in every thirty-three, was a Catholic
priest or member of an order. In Bavaria, between 1831 and 1873
the number of cloisters rose from 43 to 628, all, with the
exception of some old Benedictine monasteries, inspired and
dominated by the Jesuits. Even the Dominicans, originally such
determined opponents, are now pervaded by the Jesuit spirit. The
restoration of the =Trappist order= (§ 156, 8) deserves special
mention. On their expulsion from La Trappe in A.D. 1791 the
brothers found an asylum in the Canton Freiburg, and when driven
thence by the French invasion of A.D. 1798, Paul I. obtained from
the czar permission for them to settle in White Russia, Poland,
and Lithuania. But expelled from these regions again in A.D. 1800
they wandered through Europe and America, till after Napoleon’s
defeat they purchased back the monastery of La Trappe, and made
it the centre of a group of new settlements throughout France
and beyond it.--Besides regular orders there were also numerous
=congregations= or religious societies with communal life
according to a definite but not perpetually binding rule, and
without the obligation of seclusion, as well as =brotherhoods=
and =sisterhoods= without any such rule, which after the
restoration of A.D. 1814 in France and after A.D. 1848 in Germany,
were formed for the purposes of prayer, charity, education,
and such like. From France many of these spread into the Rhine
Provinces and Westphalia.--In Spain and Portugal (§ 205, 1, 5)
all orders were repeatedly abolished, subsequently also in
Sardinia and even in all Italy (§ 204, 1, 2), and also in several
Romish American states (§ 209, 1, 2), as also in Prussia and
Hesse (§ 197, 8, 15). Finally the third French Republic has
enforced existing laws against all orders and congregations not
authorized by the State (§ 203, 6).--On the 700th anniversary of
the birth of St. Francis, in September, 1882, Leo XIII. issued an
encyclical declaring the institute of the Franciscan Tertiaries
(§ 98, 11) alone capable of saving human society from all the
political and social dangers of the present and future, which had
some success at least in Italy.

Of what inhuman barbarity the superiors of cloisters are still
capable is shown _instar omnium_ in the horrible treatment of the
nun =Barbara Ubryk=, who, avowedly on account of a breach of her
vow of chastity, was confined since A.D. 1848 in the cloister of
the Carmelite nuns at Cracow in a dark, narrow cell beside the
sewer of the convent, without fire, bed, chair, or table. It was
only in A.D. 1869, in consequence of an anonymous communication
to the law officers, that she was freed from her prison in a
semi-animal condition, quite naked, starved, and covered with
filth, and consigned to an asylum. The populace of Cracow,
infuriated at such conduct, could be restrained from demolishing
all the cloisters only by the aid of the military.

§ 186.3. =The Pius Verein.=--A society under the name of the Pius
Verein was started at Mainz in October, 1848, to further Catholic
interests, advocating the church’s independence of the State,
the right of the clergy to direct education, etc. At the annual
meetings its leading members boasted in grossly exaggerated terms
of what had been accomplished and recklessly prophesied of what
would yet be achieved. At the twenty-eighth general assembly
at Bonn in A.D. 1881, with an attendance of 1,100, the same
confident tone was maintained. Windhorst reminded the Prussian
government of the purchase of the Sibylline books, and declared
that each case of breaking off negotiations raised the price
of the peace. Not a tittle of the ultramontane claims would be
surrendered. The watchword is the complete restoration of the
_status quo ante_. Baron von Loë, president of the Canisius
Verein, concluded his triumphant speech with the summons to
raise the membership of the union from 80,000 to 800,000, yea
to 8,000,000; then would the time be near when Germany should
become again a Catholic land and the church again the leader of
the people. At the assembly at Düsseldorf in A.D. 1883, Windhorst
declared, amid the enthusiastic applause of all present, that
after the absolute abrogation of the May laws the centre would
not rest till education was again committed unreservedly to the
church. In the assembly at Münster in A.D. 1885, he extolled
the pope (notwithstanding all confiscation and imprisoning for
the time being) as the governor and lord of the whole world.
The thirty-third assembly at Breslau in A.D. 1886, with special
emphasis, demanded the recall of all orders, including that of
the Jesuits.

§ 186.4. =The various German unions= gradually fell under
ultramontane influences. The Borromeo Society circulated Catholic
books inculcating ultramontane views in politics and religion.
The Boniface Union, founded by Martin, Bishop of Paderborn,
aided needy Catholic congregations in Protestant districts. Other
unions were devoted to foreign missions, to work among Germans in
foreign lands, etc. In all the universities such societies were
formed. In Bavaria patriot peasant associations were set on foot,
as a standing army in the conflict of the ultramontane hierarchy
with the new German empire. For the same purpose Bishop Ketteler
founded in A.D. 1871 the Mainz Catholic Union, which in A.D. 1814
had 90,000 members. The Görres Society of 1876 (§ 188, 1) and
the Canisius Society of 1879 (§ 151, 1) were meant to promote
education on ultramontane lines.--In =Italy= such societies
have striven for the restoration of the temporal power and the
supremacy of the church over the State. The unions of =France=
were confederated in A.D. 1870, and this general association
holds an annual congress. The several unions were called
“_œuvres_.” The _Œuvre du Vœu National_, _e.g._, had the task
of restoring penitent France to the “sacred heart of Jesus”
(§ 188, 12); the _Œuvre Pontifical_ made collections of Peter’s
pence and for persecuted priests; the _Œuvre de Jesus-Ouvrier_
had to do with the working classes, etc.

§ 186.5. The knowledge of the omnipotence of =capital= in
these days led to various proposals for turning it to account
in the interests of Catholicism. The Catholic Bank schemes of
the Belgian Langrand-Dumonceau in 1872 and the Munich bank were
pure swindles; and that of Adele Spitzeder 1869-1872, pronounced
“holy” by the clergy and ultramontane press, collapsed with
a deficit of eight and a quarter million florins.--Archbishop
Purcell of Cincinnati invited church members to avoid risk to
bank with him. He invested in land, advanced money for building
churches, cloisters, schools, etc., and in A.D. 1878 found
himself bankrupt with liabilities amounting to five million
dollars. He then offered to resign his office, but the pope
refused and gave him a coadjutor, whereupon the archbishop
retired into a cloister where he died in his eighty-third year.
In the _Union Générale_ of Paris, founded in 1876, which came
to a crash in 1882, the French aristocracy, the higher clergy
and members of orders lost hundreds of millions of francs.

§ 186.6. =The Catholic Missions.=--The impulse given to Catholic
interests after 1848 was seen in the zeal with which missions
in Catholic lands, like the Protestant Methodist revival and
camp-meetings (§ 208, 1), began to be prosecuted. An attempt was
thus made to gather in the masses, who had been estranged from
the church during the storms of the revolution. The Jesuits and
Redemptorists were prominent in this work. In bands of six they
visited stations, staying for three weeks, hearing confessions,
addressing meetings three times a day, and concluding by a
general communion.

§ 186.7. Besides the Propaganda (§ 156, 9), fourteen societies in
Rome, three in Paris, thirty in the whole of Catholic Christendom,
are devoted to the dissemination of Catholicism among =Heretics=
and =Heathens=. The Lyons Association for the spread of the faith,
instituted in 1822, has a revenue of from four to six million
francs. Specially famous is the =Picpus Society=, so called from
the street in Paris where it has its headquarters. Its founder
was the deacon Coudrin, a pupil of the seminary for priests
at Poictiers [Poitiers] broken up in A.D. 1789. Amid the evils
done to the church and the priests by the Revolution, in his
hiding-place he heard a divine call to found a society for the
purpose of training the youth in Catholic principles, educating
priests, and bringing the gospel to the heathen “by atoning for
excesses, crimes, and sins of all kinds by an unceasing day and
night devotion of the most holy sacrament of the altar.” Such a
society he actually founded in A.D. 1805, and Pius VII. confirmed
it in A.D. 1817. The founder died in A.D. 1837, after his
society had spread over all the five continents. Its chief aim
henceforth was missions to the heathen. While the Picpus society,
as well as the other seminaries and monkish orders, sent forth
crowds of missionaries, other societies devoted themselves to
collecting money and engaging in prayer. The most important of
these is the =Lyonese Society= for the spread of the faith of
A.D. 1822. The member’s weekly contribution is 5 cents, the
daily prayer-demand a paternoster, an angel greeting, and a
“St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.” The fanatical journal of the
society had a yearly circulation of almost 250,000 copies, in
ten European languages. The popes had showered upon its members
rich indulgences.--After Protestant missions had received such
a powerful impulse in the nineteenth century, the Catholic
societies were thereby impelled to force in wherever success had
been won and seemed likely to be secured, and wrought with all
conceivable jesuitical arts and devices, for the most part under
the political protection of France. The Catholic missions have
been most zealously and successfully prosecuted in North America,
China, India, Japan, and among the schismatic churches of the
Levant. Since 1837 they have been advanced by aid of the French
navy in the South Seas (§ 184, 7) and in North Africa by the
French occupation of Algiers, and most recently in Madagascar.
In South Africa they have made no progress.--In A.D. 1837-1839
a bloody persecution raged in Tonquin and Cochin China; in
A.D. 1866 Christianity was rooted out of Corea, and over 2,000
Christians slain; two years later persecution was renewed in
Japan. In China, through the oppressions of the French, the
people rose against the Catholics resident there. This movement
reached a climax in the rebellion of 1870 at Tientsin, when all
French officials, missionaries, and sisters of mercy were put to
death, and the French consulate, Catholic churches and mission
houses were levelled to the ground. Also in Further India since
the French war of A.D. 1883 with Tonquin, over which China
claimed rights of suzerainty, the Catholic missions have again
suffered, and many missionaries have been martyred.

§ 187. LIBERAL CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS.

Alongside of the steady growth of ultramontanism from the time of the restoration of the papacy in A.D. 1814, there arose also a reactionary movement, partly of a mystical-irenical, evangelical- revival and liberal-scientific, and partly of a radical-liberalistic, character. But all the leaders in such movements sooner or later succumbed before the strictly administered discipline of the hierarchy. The Old Catholic reaction (§ 190), on the other hand, in spite of various disadvantages, still maintains a vigorous existence.

§ 187.1. =Mystical-Irenical Tendencies.=--=J. M. Sailer=,
deprived in A.D. 1794 of his office at Dillingen (§ 165, 12), was
appointed in A.D. 1799 professor of moral and pastoral theology
at Ingolstadt, and was transferred to Landshut in A.D. 1800.
There for twenty years his mild and conciliatory as well as
profoundly pious mysticism powerfully influenced crowds of
students from South Germany and Switzerland. Though the pope
refused to confirm his nomination by Maximilian as Bishop of
Augsburg in A.D. 1820, he so far cleared himself of the suspicion
of mysticism, separatism, and crypto-calvinism, that in A.D. 1829
no opposition was made to his appointment as Bishop of Regensburg.
Sailer continued faithful to the Catholic dogmatic, and none
of his numerous writings have been put in the Index. Yet he lay
under suspicion till his death in A.D. 1832, and this seemed to
be justified by the intercourse which he and his disciples had
with Protestant pietists. His likeminded scholar, friend, and
vicar-general, the Suffragan-bishop =Wittmann=, was designated
his successor in Regensburg, but he died before receiving papal
confirmation. Of all his pupils the most distinguished was the
Westphalian Baron von =Diepenbrock=, over whose wild, intractable,
youthful nature Sailer exercised a magic influence. In A.D. 1823
he was ordained priest, became Sailer’s secretary, remaining his
confidential companion till his death, was made vicar-general
to Sailer’s successor in A.D. 1842, and in A.D. 1845 was
raised to the archiepiscopal chair of Breslau, where he joined
the ultramontanes, and entered with all his heart into the
ecclesiastico-political conflicts of the Würzburg episcopal
congress (§ 192, 4). His services were rewarded by a cardinal’s
hat from Pius IX. in A.D. 1850. His pastoral letters, however,
as well as his sermons and private correspondence, show that he
never altogether forgot the teaching of his spiritual father. He
delighted in the study of the mediæval mystics, and was specially
drawn to the writings of Suso.

§ 187.2. =Evangelical-Revival Tendencies.=--A movement much
more evangelical than that of Sailer, having the doctrine of
justification by faith alone as its centre, was originated by
a simple Bavarian priest, =Martin Boos=, and soon embraced sixty
priests in the diocese of Augsburg. The spiritual experiences
of Boos were similar to those of Luther. The words of a poor old
sick woman brought peace to his soul in A.D. 1790, and led him
to the study of Scripture. His preaching among the people and his
conversations with the surrounding clergy produced a widespread
revival. Amid manifold persecutions, removed from one parish
to another, and flying from Bavaria to Austria and thence into
Rhenish Prussia, where he died in A.D. 1825 as priest of Sayn,
he lighted wherever he went the torch of truth. Even after his
conversion Boos believed that he still maintained the Catholic
position, but was at last to his own astonishment convinced of
the contrary through intercourse with Protestant pietists and the
study of Luther’s works. But so long as the mother church would
keep him he wished not to forsake her.[545] So too felt his
like-minded companions =Gossner= and =Lindl=, who were expelled
from Bavaria in A.D. 1829 and settled in St. Petersburg. Lindl,
as Provost of South Russia, went to reside in Odessa, where he
exercised a powerful influence over Catholics and Protestants and
among the higher classes of the Russians. The machinations of the
Roman Catholic and Greek churches caused both Gossner and Lindl
to leave Russia in A.D. 1824. They then joined the evangelical
church, Lindl in Barmen and Gossner in Berlin. Lindl drifted
more and more into mystico-apocalyptic fanaticism; but Gossner,
from A.D. 1829 till his death in A.D. 1858 as pastor of the
Bohemian church in Berlin, proved a sincere evangelical and a
most successful worker.--The Bavarian priest Lutz of Carlshuld,
influenced by Boos, devoted himself to the temporal and spiritual
well-being of his people, preached Christ as the saviour of
sinners, and exhorted to diligent reading of the Bible. In
A.D. 1831, with 600 of his congregation, he joined the Protestant
church; but to avoid separation from his beloved people, he
returned again after ten months, and most of his flock with him,
still retaining his evangelical convictions. He was not, however,
restored to office, and subsequently in A.D. 1857, with three
Catholic priests of the diocese, he attached himself to the
Irvingites, and was with them excommunicated.

§ 187.3. =Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.=--=Von Wessenberg=,
as vicar-general of the diocese of Constance introduced such
drastic administrative reforms as proved most distasteful to
the nuncio of Lucerne and the Romish curia. He also endeavoured
unsuccessfully to restore a German national Catholic church.
In the retirement of his later years he wrote a history of the
church synods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which
gave great offence to the ultramontanes.--=Fr. von Baader= of
Munich expressed himself so strongly against the absolutism
of the papal system that the ultramontane minister, Von Abel,
suspended his lectures on the philosophy of religion in A.D. 1838.
He gave still greater offence by his work on Eastern and Western
Catholicism, in which he preferred the former to the latter.[546]
The talented =Hirscher= of Freiburg more interested in what is
Christian than what is Roman Catholic, could not be won over
to yield party service to the ultramontanes. They persecuted
unrelentingly =Leop. Schmid=, whose theosophical speculation
had done so much to restore the prestige of theology at Giessen,
and had utterly discredited their pretensions. When his enemies
successfully opposed his consecration as Bishop of Mainz
in A.D. 1849, he resigned his professorship and joined the
philosophical faculty. Goaded on by the venomous attacks of his
opponents he advanced to a more extreme position, and finally
declared “that he was compelled to renounce the specifically
Roman Catholic church so long as she refused to acknowledge the
true worth of the gospel.”

§ 187.4. =Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.=--The brothers
=Theiner= of Breslau wrote in A.D. 1828 against the celibacy
of the clergy; but subsequently John attached himself to the
German-Catholics, and in A.D. 1833 Augustine returned to his
allegiance to Rome (§ 191, 7).--During the July Revolution in
Paris, the priest Lamennais, formerly a zealous supporter of
absolutism, became the enthusiastic apostle of liberalism. His
journal _L’Avenir_, A.D. 1830-1832, was the organ of the party,
and his _Paroles d’un Croyant_, A.D. 1834, denounced by the
pope as unutterably wicked, made an unprecedented sensation. The
endeavour, however, to unite elements thoroughly incongruous led
to the gradual breaking up of the school, and Lamennais himself
approximated more and more to the principles of modern socialism.
He died in A.D. 1854. One of his most talented associates on
the staff of the _Avenir_ was the celebrated pulpit orator
=Lacordaire=, A.D. 1802-1861. Upon Gregory’s denunciation of
the journal in A.D. 1832 Lacordaire submitted to Rome, entered
the Dominican order in A.D. 1840, and wrote a life of Dominic
in which he eulogised the Inquisition; but his eloquence still
attracted crowds to _Notre Dame_. Ultimately he fell completely
under the influence of the Jesuits.

§ 187.5. =Attempts at Reform in Church Government.=--In A.D. 1861
=Liverani=, pope’s chaplain and apostolic notary, exposed the
scandalous mismanagement of Antonelli, the corruption of the
sacred college, the demoralization of the Roman clergy, and the
ambitious schemes of the Jesuits, recommended the restoration
of the holy Roman empire, not indeed to the Germans, but to
the Italians: the pope should confer on the king of Italy by
divine authority the title and privileges of Roman emperor, who,
on his part, should undertake as papal mandatory the political
administration of the States of the Church. But in A.D. 1873 he
sought and obtained papal forgiveness for his errors. The Jesuit
=Passaglia= expressed enthusiastic approval of the movements of
Victor Emanuel and of Cavour’s ideal of a “free church in a free
state.” He was expelled from his order, his book was put into
the Index, but the Italian Government appointed him professor of
moral philosophy in Turin. At last he retracted all that he had
said and written. In the preface to his popular exposition of the
gospels of 1874, the Jesuit father =Curci= urged the advisability
of a reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian
government, and expressed his conviction that the Church States
would never be restored. That year he addressed the pope in
similar terms, and refusing to retract, was expelled his order in
A.D. 1877. Leo XIII. by friendly measures sought to move him to
recant, but without success. The condemnation of his books led
to their wider circulation. In A.D. 1883 he charged the Holy See
with the guilt of the unholy schism between church and state; but
in the following year he retracted whatever in his writings the
pope regarded as opposed to the faith, morals, and discipline of
the Catholic church.

§ 187.6. =Attempts to Found National Catholic Churches.=--After
the July Revolution of A.D. 1830 the Abbé =Chatel= of Paris
had himself consecrated bishop of a new sect by a new-templar
dignitary (§ 210, 1) and became primate of the =French Catholic
Church=, whose creed recognised only the law of nature and viewed
Christ as a mere man. After various congregations had been formed,
it was suppressed by the police in A.D. 1842. The Abbé =Helsen=
of Brussels made a much more earnest endeavour to lead the church
of his fatherland from the antichrist to the true Christ. His
=Apostolic Catholic Church= was dissolved in A.D. 1857 and its
remnants joined the Protestants. The founding of the =German
Catholic Church= in A.D. 1844 promised to be more enduring. In
August of that year, Arnoldi, Bishop of Treves, exhibited the
holy coat preserved there, and attracted one and a half millions
of pilgrims to Treves (§ 188, 2). A suspended priest, =Ronge=, in
a letter to the bishop denounced the worship of relics, seeking
to pose as the Luther of the nineteenth century. =Czerski= of
Posen had in August, 1844, seceded from the Catholic church, and
in October founded the “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,”
whose creed embodied the negations without the positive beliefs
of the Protestant confessions, maintaining in other respects
the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Ronge meanwhile
formed congregations in all parts of Germany, excepting Bavaria
and Austria. A General Assembly held at Leipzig in March, 1845,
brought to light the deplorable religious nihilism of the leaders
of the party. Czerski, who refused to abandon the doctrine of
Christ’s divinity, withdrew from the conference, but Ronge held
a triumphal procession through Germany. His hollowness, however,
became so apparent that his adherents grew ashamed of their
enthusiasm for the new reformer. His congregations began to break
up; many withdrew, several of the leaders threw off the mask
of religion and adopted the _rôle_ of political revolutionists.
After the settlement that followed the disturbances of A.D. 1848
the remnants of this party disappeared.[547]

§ 187.7. The inferior clergy of Italy, after the political
emancipation of Naples from the Bourbon domination in A.D. 1860,
longed for deliverance from clerical tyranny, and founded in
A.D. 1862 a society with the object of establishing a =national
Italian church= independent of the Romish curia. Four Neapolitan
churches were put at the disposal of the society by the minister
Ricasoli, but in 1865, an agreement having been come to between
the curia and the government, the bishops were recalled and the
churches restored. Thousands, to save themselves from starvation,
gave in their submission, but a small party still remained
faithful. Encouraged by the events of 1870 (§§ 135, 3; 189, 3),
they were able in 1875 to draw up a “dogmatic statement” for
the “Church of Italy independent of the Roman hierarchy,” which
indeed besides the Holy Scriptures admitted the authority of
the universal church as infallible custodian and interpreter
of revealed truth, but accepted only the first seven œcumenical
councils as binding. In the same year Bishop Turano of Girgenti
excommunicated five priests of the Silician town Grotta as
opponents of the syllabus and the dogma of infallibility. The
whole clergy of the town, numbering twenty-five, then renounced
their obedience to the bishop, and with the approval of the
inhabitants declared themselves in favour of the “statement.”
North of Rome this movement made little progress; but in 1875
three villages of the Mantuan diocese claimed the ancient
privilege of choosing their own priest, and the bishop and
other authorities were obliged to yield. The Neapolitan movement,
however, as a whole seems to be losing itself in the sand.

§ 187.8. =The Frenchman, Charles Loyson=, known by his Carmelite
monkish name of _Père Hyacinthe_, was protected from the Jesuits
by Archbishop Darboy when he inveighed against the corruptions
of the church, and even Pius IX. on his visit to Rome in 1868
treated him with favour. The general of his order having imposed
silence on him, he publicly announced his secession from the
order and appeared as a “preacher of the gospel,” claiming
from a future General Council a sweeping reform of the church,
protesting against the falsifying of the gospel of the Son of God
by the Jesuits and the papal syllabus. He was then excommunicated.
In A.D. 1871 he joined the German Old Catholics (§ 190, 1);
and though he gave offence to them by his marriage, this did
not prevent the Old Catholics of Geneva from choosing him as
their pastor. But after ten months, because “he sought not the
overthrow but the reform of the Catholic church, and reprobated
the despotism of the mob as well as that of the clergy, the
infallibility of the state as well as that of the pope,” he
withdrew and returned to Paris, where he endeavoured to establish
a French National Church free of Rome and the Pope. The clerical
minister Broglie, however, compelled him to restrict himself to
moral-religious lectures. In February, 1879, he built a chapel
in which he preaches on Sundays and celebrates mass in the French
language. He sought alliance with the Swiss Christian Catholics,
whose bishop, Herzog, heartily reciprocated his wishes, and with
the Anglican church, which gave a friendly response. But that
this “seed corn” of a “Catholic Gallican Church” will ever grow
into a fully developed plant was from the very outset rendered
more than doubtful by the peculiar nature of the sower, as well
as of the seed and the soil.

§ 188. CATHOLIC ULTRAMONTANISM.

The restoration of the Jesuit order led, during the long pontificate of Pius IX., to the revival and hitherto unapproached prosperity of ultramontanism, especially in France, whose bishops cast the Gallican Liberties overboard (§§ 156, 3; 203, 1), and in Germany, where with strange infatuation even Protestant princes gave it all manner of encouragement. Even the lower clergy were trained from their youth in hierarchical ideas, and under the despotic rule of their bishops, and a reign of terror carried on by spies and secret courts, were constrained to continue the profession of the strictest absolutism.

§ 188.1. =The Ultramontane Propaganda.=--In =France=
ultramontanism revived with the restoration. Its first and ablest
prophet was Count =de Maistre=, A.D. 1754-1821, long Sardinian
ambassador at St. Petersburg. He wrote against the modern
views of the relations of church and state, supporting the
infallibility, absolutism, and inviolability of the pope. He
was supported by Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais,
Lacordaire, and Montalembert. Only Bonald maintained this
attitude. Between him and Chateaubriand a dispute arose over
the freedom of the press; Lamennais and Lacordaire began to
blend political radicalism with their ultramontanism; Lamartine
involved himself in the February revolution of 1848 as the
apostle of humanity; and Montalembert took up a half-way position.
In 1840 Louis =Veuillot= started the _Univers Religieux_ in place
of the _Avenir_, in which, till his death in 1883, he vindicated
the extremest ultramontanism.--In =Germany= ultramontane views
were disseminated by romancing historians and poets mostly
converts from Protestantism. =Görres=, professor of history in
Munich, represented the Reformation as a second fall, and set
forth the legends of ascetics in his “History of Mysticism” as
sound history. The German bishops set themselves to train the
clergy in hierarchical views, and by a rule of terror prevented
any departure from that theory. The ultramontanising of the
masses was carried on by missions, and by the establishment
of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. In the beginning of A.D. 1860
there were only thirteen ultramontane journals with very
few subscribers, while in January, 1875, there were three
hundred. The most important was _Germania_, founded at Berlin in
1871.--The _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome was always revised before
publication by Pius IX., and under Leo XIII. a similar position
is held by the _Moniteur de Rome_, while the _Osservatore Romano_
and the _Voce della verità_ have also an official character.

§ 188.2. =Miracles.=--Prince =Hohenlohe= went through many parts
of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, performing miraculous cures;
but his day of favour soon passed, and he settled down as a
writer of ascetical works.--Pilgrimages to wonder-working shrines
were encouraged by reports of cures wrought on the grand-niece
of the Bishop of Cologne (§ 193, 1), cured of knee-joint
disease before the holy coat of Treves (§ 187, 6). Subjected to
examination, the pretended seamless coat was found to be a bit
of the gray woollen wrapping of a costly silk Byzantine garment
1½ feet broad and 1 foot long.

§ 188.3. =Stigmatizations.=--In many cases these marks were
found to have been fraudulently made, but in other cases it was
questionable whether we had not here a pathological problem,
or whether hysteria created a desire to deceive or pre-disposed
the subject to being duped under clerical influence. =Anna Cath.
Emmerich=, a nun of Dülmen in Westphalia, in 1812, professed
to have on her body bloody wound-marks of the Saviour. For five
years down to her death in 1824, the poet Brentano sat at her
feet, venerating her as a saint and listening to her ecstatic
revelations on the death and sufferings of the Redeemer and his
mother. Overberg, Sailer, and Von Stolberg were also satisfied of
the genuineness of her revelations and of the miraculous marking
of her body. The physician Von Drussel examined the wound-prints
and certified them as miraculous; but Bodde, professor of
chemistry at Münster, pronounced the blood marks spots produced
by dragon’s-blood. Competent physicians declared her a hysterical
woman incapable of distinguishing between dream and reality,
truth and lies, honesty and deceit. Others famous in the same
line were Maria von Wörl, Dominica Lazzari, and =Crescentia
Stinklutsch=; also Dorothea Visser of Holland and Juliana
Weiskircher from near Vienna.

§ 188.4. Of a very doubtful kind were the miraculous marks on
=Louise Lateau=, daughter of a Belgian miner. On 24th April, 1868,
it is said she was marked with the print of the Saviour’s wounds
on hands, feet, side, brow, and shoulders. In July, A.D. 1868,
she fell into an ecstasy, from which she could be awakened
only by her bishop or one authorized by him. Trustworthy
physicians, after a careful medical examination, reported
that she laboured under a disease which they proposed to call
“stigmatic neuropathy.” Chemical analysis proved the presence of
food which had been regularly taken, probably in a somnambulistic
trance. In the summer of 1875 her sister for a time put an end
to the affair by refusing the clergy entrance into the house,
and she was then obliged to eat, drink, and sleep like other
Christians, so that the Friday bloody marks disappeared. But
now, say ultramontane journals, Louise became dangerously ill,
and clergy were called in to her help, and the marks were again
visible. Her patron Bishop Dumont of Tournay being deposed by
the pope in 1879, she took part against his successor, and was
threatened with excommunication (§ 200, 7). She was now deserted
by the ultramontanes and Belgian clergy, and treated as a poor,
weak-minded invalid. She died neglected and in obscurity in
A.D. 1883.

§ 188.5. Of pseudo-stigmatizations there has been no lack even
in the most recent times. In 1845 =Caroline Beller=, a girl of
fifteen years, in Westphalia, was examined by a skilful physician.
On Thursday he laid a linen cloth over the wound-prints, and sure
enough on Friday it was marked with blood stains; but also strips
of paper laid under, without her knowledge, were pricked with
needles. The delinquent now confessed her deceit, which she had
been tempted to perpetrate from reading the works of Francis of
Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Emmerich. Theresa Städele in 1849,
Rosa Tamisier in 1851, and Angela Hupe in 1863, were convicted of
fraudulently pretending to have stigmata. The latter was proved
to have feigned deafness and lameness for a whole year, to have
diligently read the writings of Emmerich in 1861, to have shown
the physician fresh bleeding wounds on hands, feet, and side, and
to have affirmed that she had neither eaten nor drunk for a year.
Four sisters of mercy were sent to attend her, and they soon
discovered the fraud. In 1876 the father confessor of Ernestine
Hauser was prosecuted for damages, having injured the girl’s
health by the severe treatment to which she was subjected in
order to induce ecstasy and obtain an opportunity for impressing
the stigmata. =Sabina Schäfer= of Baden, in her eighteenth year,
had for two years borne the reputation of a wonder-working saint,
who every Friday showed the five wound prints, and in ecstasy
told who were in hell and who in purgatory. She professed
to live without food, though often she betook herself to the
kitchen to pray alone, and even carried food with her to give
to her guardian angel to carry to the distant poor. When under
surveillance in 1880 she sought to bribe her guardian to bring
her meat and drink, fragments of food were found among her
clothes, and also a flask with blood and an instrument for
puncturing the skin. She confessed her guilt, and was sentenced
by the criminal court of Baden to ten weeks’ imprisonment. The
ultramontane _Pfälzer Bote_ complained that so-called liberals
should ruthlessly encroach on the rights of the church and the
family.

§ 188.6. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.=--The
most celebrated of these manifestations occurred in 1858 at
=Lourdes=, where in a grotto the Virgin repeatedly appeared to a
peasant girl of fourteen years, almost imbecile, named Bernadette
Soubirous, saying “_Je suis l’Immaculée Conception_,” and urging
the erection of a chapel on that spot. A miracle-working well
sprang up there. Since 1872 the pilgrimages under sanction of the
hierarchy have been on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and
the cures in number and significance far excelling anything heard
of before.--At the village of =La Salette= in the department of
Isère, in 1846 two poor children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of
eleven years, saw a fair white-dressed lady sitting on a stone
and shedding tears, and, lo, from the spot where her foot rested
sprang up a well, at which innumerable cures have been wrought.
The epidemic of visions of the Virgin reached a climax in Alsace
Lorraine in 1872. In a wood near the village of =Gereuth= crowds
of women and children gathered, professing to see visions of
the mother of God; but when the police appeared to protect the
forest, the manifestation craze spread over the whole land, and
at thirty-five stations almost daily visions were enjoyed. The
epidemic reached its crisis in Mary’s month, May, 1874, and
continued with intervals down to the end of the year. In some
cases deceit was proved; but generally it seemed to be the
result of a diseased imagination and self-deception fostered
by speculative purveyors and the ultramontane press and clergy.

§ 188.7. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.=--In
the summer of 1876 three girls of eight years old in the village
of =Marpingen=, in the department of Treves, saw by a well a
white-robed lady, with the halo over her head and with a child
in her arms, who made herself known as the immaculate Virgin,
and called for the erection of a chapel. A voice from heaven
said, This is my beloved Son, etc. There were also processions
and choirs of angels, etc. The devil, too, appeared and ordered
them to fall down and worship him. Thousands crowded from far
and near, and the water of the fountain wrought miraculous cures.
The surrounding clergy made a profitable business of sending
the water to America, and the _Germania_ of Berlin unweariedly
sounded forth its praises. Before the court of justice the
children confessed the fraud, and were sentenced to the house of
correction; and though on technical grounds this judgment was set
aside, the supreme court of appeal in 1879 pronounced the whole
thing a scandalous and disgraceful swindle.--Weichsel, priest
of =Dittrichswald= in Ermland, who gained great reputation as an
exorcist, made a pilgrimage to Marpingen in the summer of 1877,
and on his return gave such an account of what he had seen to
his communicants’ class that first one and then another saw the
mother of God at a maple tree, which also became a favourite
resort for pilgrims.

§ 188.8. =Canonizations.=--When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a
Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted
birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they
would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them.
St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX.
canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs
of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627
canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts
martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would
not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted
this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862,
the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons,
and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the
heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the
distinction. The number of _doctores ecclesiæ_ was increased by
Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori
in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized
four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French
mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed
by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made
a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject
poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.

§ 188.9. =Discoveries of Relics.=--The Roman catacombs continued
still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly
erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of
St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt
of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the
bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the
church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering
a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this
made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission
of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of
all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and
local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon,
in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which
he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable
genuineness of the discovered bones as _ex constanti et
pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ
prodita_, pronounced the relics generally _perennes fontes_,
from which the _dona cælestia_ flow forth like brooks among the
Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is
just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen
up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also
many other relics “_divinitus_” have been discovered, as _e.g._
the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the
martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James
the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his
predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.

§ 188.10. =The blood of St. Januarius=, a martyr of the age
of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on
occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the
blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the
saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans,
if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms
a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy.
Unbelievers venture to suggest that this _precioso sangue del
taumaturgo S. Gennaro_ is not blood, but a mixture that becomes
liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the
crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.

§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians,
10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part
in the =Leaping Procession at Echternach= in Luxemburg, which
is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the
sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting”
sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six
persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their
hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the
music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and
three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and
then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession
goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up
the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church
aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up
incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because
of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s
intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits,
common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless
proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition
relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared
among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till
the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and
the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian
adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times
(§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).

§ 188.12. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.=--Even after the
suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart
(§ 156, 6) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their
friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods
and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this
exercise, and the _revanche_ movement of A.D. 1870 used this as
one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked
to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of
Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France
and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “_Dieu, de
la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur_,”
became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the
Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a
beautiful church _du Sacré-Cœur_ has been erected on Montmartre
in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that
the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth
anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two
hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le
Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred
heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the
foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop
of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show
greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by
divine revelation” two hundred years before.

§ 188.13. =Ultramontane Amulets.=--The Carmelites adopted a brown,
the Trinitarians a white, the Theatines a blue, the Servites
a black, and the Lazarites a red, scapular, assured by divine
visions that the wearing of them was a means of salvation. A
tract, entitled “_Gnaden und Ablässe des fünffachen Skapuliers_,”
published by episcopal authority at Münster in 1872, declared
that any layman who wore the five scapulars would participate
in all the graces and indulgences belonging to them severally.
The most useful of all was the Carmelite scapular, impenetrable
by bullets, impervious to daggers, rendering falls harmless,
stilling stormy seas, quenching fires, healing the possessed, the
sick, the wounded, etc.--The Benedictines had no scapulars, but
they had Benedict-medals, from which they drew a rich revenue.
This amulet first made its appearance in the Bavarian Abbey of
Metten. The tract, entitled, “_St. Benediktusbüchlein oder die
Medaille d. h. Benediktus_,” published at Münster in 1876, tells
how it cures sicknesses, relieves toothache, stops bleeding
at the nose, heals burns, overcomes the craving for drink,
protects from attacks of evil spirits, restrains skittish horses,
cures sick cattle, clears vineyards of blight, secures the
conversion of heretics and godless persons, etc.--In A.D. 1878
there appeared at Mainz, with approval of the bishop, a book in
its third edition, entitled, “_Der Seraphische Gürtel und dessen
wunderbare Reichtümer nach d. Franz. d. päpstl. Hausprälaten
Abbé v. Segur_,” according to which Sixtus V. in 1585 founded
the Archbrotherhood of the Girdle of St. Francis. It also affirms
that whoever wears this girdle day and night and repeats the six
enjoined paternosters, participates in all the indulgences of
the holy land and of all the basilicas and sanctuaries of Rome
and Assisi, and is entitled to liberate 1,000 souls a day from
purgatory.--Great miracles of healing and preservation from all
injuries to body and soul, property and goods, are attributed by
the Jesuits to the “_holy water of St. Ignatius_” (§ 149, 11),
the sale of which in Belgium, France, and Switzerland has proved
to them a lucrative business. But the mother of God has herself
favoured them with a still more powerful miracle-working water in
the fountains of Lourdes and Marpingen.

§ 188.14. We give in conclusion a specimen of =Ultramontane
pulpit eloquence=. A Bavarian priest, Kinzelmann, said in a
sermon in 1872: “We priests stand as far above the emperor, kings,
and princes as the heaven is above the earth.... Angels and
archangels stand beneath us, for we can in God’s stead forgive
sins. We occupy a position superior to that of the mother of God,
who only once bare Christ, whereas we create and beget him every
day. Yea, in a sense, we stand above God, who must always and
everywhere serve us, and at the consecration must descend from
heaven upon the mass,” etc.--An apotheosis of the priesthood
worthy of the Middle Ages.

§ 189. THE VATICAN COUNCIL.[548]

Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867, given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date, the _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome made distinct statements to the effect that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming of the syllabus (§ 185, 2), the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal absolutism in the spirit of the bull _Unam sanctam_ of Boniface VIII. (§ 110, 1), and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The _Civiltà_ had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in him.” When the council opened on the day of the immaculate conception, December 8th, 1869, all conceivable devices of skilful diplomacy were used by the Jesuit Camarilla, and friendly cajoling and violent threatening on the part of the pope, in order to silence or win over, and, in case this could not be done, to stifle and suppress the opposition which even already was not inconsiderable in point of numbers, but far more important in point of moral, theological, and hierarchical influence. The result aimed at was secured. Of the 150 original opponents only fifty dared maintain their opposition to the end, and even they cowardly shrank from a decisive conflict, and wrote from their respective dioceses, as their Catholic faith obliged them to do, notifying their most complete acquiescence.