Chapter XVI: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them (6)

On Saturday morning I wrote to M. Moiré, the _juge d’instruction_, asking to be heard in the course of the day. At half-past three I received a reply. It was an order to Mazas. No illusion was longer possible. The advocates of legal forms must expect to be shot without form--a respect for which would doubtless have been a poor consolation in falling under the bullets of assassins, but it is well to observe that such judicial modes are unknown among the cannibals themselves. Among the prisoners who accompanied me were, with other ecclesiastics, the Abbé Laurent Amodru, the vicar of Notre Dame des Victoires, and the Abbé de Marsy, the vicar of St. Vincent de Paul. Both came to me and manifested a sympathy that began to cheer the gloomy perspective of Mazas. M. de Marsy was full of animation, and his cordial devotedness was of more benefit to us in a moral than a material sense. And I became inseparably attached to M. l’Abbé Amodru. He was my neighbor again at La Roquette, and his encouraging example, even more than his precious religious ministrations, aided me in enduring the greatest trials in that fearful abode. I wish to give him a public testimony of my profound gratitude. We were transported in one of those cellular vehicles, the very sight of which inspires horror and disgust, and arrived at Mazas at half-past five. They kept us shut up nearly two hours in a kind of grated cage, which made me wish for one of those which contain the wild beasts in the Jardin des Plantes.

Though separated from one another, we were able nevertheless to exchange some words. “It is an indignity,” exclaimed a young national guardsman, who had refused to serve the Commune, “to shut us up in this way as if we were robbers!”

“Cheer up,” replied an old man with a cultivated and sympathetic voice. “In these days, honest men are placed here, and robbers are left without.”

Exhausted with fatigue, I could neither sit down, lie down, eat, nor read. I can understand these rigorous precautions for the disciples of Cartouche, Troppman, and Dumolard. Would there have been any great social danger in shutting us up in an apartment where there was a bench? I learned afterward that the Archbishop of Paris had the same preliminary ceremony to undergo, which almost reduced him to agony. 243 When my turn came to go to the register’s office, I was very much exasperated, and not at all disposed to conceal my dissatisfaction; and I had begun to observe that mildness and patience only served to aggravate our troubles with the emissaries of the Commune, while a timely and vigorous protestation obtained some alleviation. The registrar, in taking a long and minute description, demanded my name--“The Abbé Lamazou, Vicar of the Madeleine.” I never failed to articulate this title distinctly. It edified some, irritated others, and proved to all that by my profession I did not necessarily belong to the family of those accused of robbery, brigandage, or assassination, for whom the prison of Mazas was intended.

Having entered the establishment, they pointed toward a door. I supposed it was my cell. By no means: it was a bath-room. As vagabonds and criminals are not always models of neatness and health, I understood the necessity of making them take a bath at their entrance into prison. I also comprehend that recourse may be had to this easy means of ascertaining if a dangerous criminal has not concealed in his clothes some weapon or some document that may compromise him. When the warden ordered me to undress in order to take a bath, I was for a moment confounded. The sight of a dirty bath-room and a smoking rag, that perhaps had just wiped the body of some foul vagrant of the barriers, quite restored my energy.

“I will not take a bath.”

“The regulations require it: you must submit to them.”

“I tell you once for all, that I will not take a bath, if you shoot me.”

“Well, in your place I would act the same,” replied the warden in a most friendly tone. “I am distressed at all that has been going on here for some time. Only, as the director of the prison is a furious partisan of the Commune, if he were aware of your resistance, he might subject you to rigorous treatment. I will close the door for a few minutes, and you will be reported as having taken your bath.”

I thanked him warmly. Some wardens of the former administration still remained at Mazas and La Roquette. They not only manifested a cordial respect for us, but rendered us the most valuable assistance. Of all the marks of sympathy that I received after my deliverance, none affected me more than the letters and calls of my old wardens of Mazas and La Roquette. Among those who came to see me was the warden of the bath-rooms at Mazas. There were then, among the hordes of the Commune, who were a disgrace to the human race, some men who honored it by their conscientiousness, their courage, and their moral dignity.

Although the day was nearly at an end, I was not at the end of my tribulations. The cell in which I was shut up seemed most objectionable. It was exceedingly cold, and, as I had been laid up with an attack of bronchitis, it might bring on inflammation of the lungs. It was on the ground, and immediately facing the interior entrance to the main part of the prison. I knew the populace might take Mazas by force and give a second edition of the days in September. I should then be one of the first at hand. Finally, and this was decisive, I had fallen into the hands of a Communist warden, who, seeing me exhausted, having had no nourishment since morning, gave no other proof of his solicitude than examining my pockets, my 244 books, and even my portemonnaie.

The next morning I asked to see one of the physicians of the prison. It was Dr. de Beauvais’s day, whom I had already seen at the Madeleine. As he was under the surveillance of the agents of the Commune, I made no sign of recognition. I made known to him the intolerable treatment I had received, the bad state of my health, and the physical impossibility of remaining in my cell. I added that I simply wished to inform him of my situation, but by no means to claim a favor.

He replied that, in consequence of my state of health, I had a right to change my cell. He ordered one to be given me in the first story.

The energy of my language had such an effect on the infirmarian and pharmaceutist of the prison that they hastened to manifest their sympathy. My new warden was perfect. In spite of the severity of the discipline, I could, thanks to them, obtain news of M. Deguerry, Mgr. Darboy, Mgr. Surat, and of M. Bayle, the vicar-general of Paris, who was in my neighborhood. Hitherto I could only give an idea of their trials and those of the other hostages of the Commune by relating my own, only most of them had been incarcerated seven weeks, and I only four days.

Sunday was, relatively speaking, a comfortable day. I guessed, on Monday morning, from the general sound of the tocsin, that the Versailles troops must have entered Paris. The pharmacist and wardens confirmed the supposition. “Courage,” they said to me, “perhaps in a few hours, or to-morrow at the latest, you will be free.”

I offered up my thanksgivings to God, and hailed the first dawn of light on Tuesday as the happy day of my deliverance, and the deliverance of all my companions in captivity.

III.

LA ROQUETTE--MASSACRE OF THE HOSTAGES--FOUR DAYS OF AGONY.

A brilliant sun lighted the prison of Mazas. We were, then, about to return to Paris, from which we seemed a thousand leagues distant, though within its limits; we were to behold once more those who were dear to us, and endeavor, according to the measure of our strength, to heal the moral and material wounds made by the most shameful and odious of _régimes_ that ever burdened a civilized people. I forgot all my fatigues, all my sadness, all my anguish, in the reawakening of hope and life. I prayed with the enthusiasm of an exile who had despaired of ever seeing his country again, and to which he was, by an unexpected event, about to be restored.

At a quarter before ten, the door of my cell was opened. A warden I did not know ordered me to collect my effects and go down. My deliverance, then, was nearer at hand than I had hoped. All my things were packed in a few minutes. I took all the money out of my purse except enough to pay for a carriage and give the driver a generous _pourboire_. I was too happy not to wish to make those around me happy. In descending I distributed all the money I possessed. They shut me up in one of the compartments of the prison parlor. After some minutes, they took me to the director, who asked me if I had any observations to make. “None,” said I, “unless that I am ignorant why I am brought here.”

His face, and the faces of the agents who surrounded him, seemed very 245 ferocious, but I knew they had been indebted to the insurrection for their places at Mazas, and must therefore be dissatisfied to see Paris restored to France and to itself. In my heart I pardoned all the ill that had been done me. Nevertheless, one thing astonished me, that I did not see Mgr. Darboy, M. Deguerry, or Père Olivaint, or any of the priests who had been transported with me from the préfecture de police to Mazas. I spied a warden I knew. I asked him where I might expect to find the curé of the Madeleine. He replied with tears in his eyes: “He left last evening with the archbishop and several other gentlemen! May God watch over you!”

I could not describe the impression made on the happiest of men by this mysterious reply and the frightened appearance of the warden. I questioned him, but he disappeared in a passage. What had happened to my companions? What was going to happen to me?... I sought an explanation to this mystery--but it was beyond my comprehension. Suddenly a word, a single word, pronounced, I know not by whom, I know not where, resounded in my ear like a thunderbolt: “La Roquette!”... To this voice from without, an interior voice instantly replied: “La Roquette, the prison of those condemned to death!”...

This frightful thunderbolt, which precipitated me into an abyss a thousand times more fearful than that from which I thought I had issued, was enough to dismay a nature more strongly tempered than mine. I was dismayed and broken down, and yet, after the poignant griefs and enervating perplexities that had overwhelmed me for two months, I had at least the advantage of knowing my certain fate. My conscience gave me the consoling testimony that I was a victim of my fidelity to duty; my courage revived at the thought of the numerous and illustrious captives who had suffered more than I, and whose examples I only had to follow to die as a priest and a Frenchman. I cried with the royal Psalmist: “But I have put my trust in thee, O Lord: I said: Thou art my God, my lot is in thy hands.” This lifting of my heart to God sufficed to give me firmness and the serenity of Christian resignation.

When they shut me up in one of the grated cages in the vestibule of Mazas, the warden charged with this painful task secretly pressed my hand, and informed me that the Archbishop of Paris, the curé of the Madeleine, and most of the other hostages had gone to La Roquette, where we were now to be taken. His pressure of my hand and the consternation of his face were more eloquent than all he could say. It was a comfort truly providential to find the Abbé Amodru again in the cage next mine. Our impressions were the same. Thanks to the signs we agreed upon when we left the préfecture de police, we could give each other absolution. We must find ourselves in the presence of death to comprehend the nothingness of all human things; there is then no longer any difficulty in praying, in repenting, in pardoning our fellow-men, and in trusting wholly in the mercy of God.

One by one the cages opened and shut with a lugubrious noise, and I was surrounded with hostages destined for La Roquette. I was surprised to find several under complete illusion respecting our situation. Some thought we were about to be restored to liberty, and others did not seem to comprehend the significance of our being sent to La Roquette. 246 It was not best to enlighten them yet, but I resolved to do so at a later moment. With almost certain death staring us in the face, I thought it proper, and especially more Christian, to modify my attitude. Until now I had taken an energetic stand against the agents of the Commune, and sometimes expressed my indignation. I now resolved to speak but little, to pray a great deal, to encourage those of my companions who should need it, and to arm myself with patience and meekness toward our persecutors.

The charitable young pharmacist of the prison, who, the night before, so gladly announced our approaching liberation, was stationed in a corner of the vestibule to give us a last proof of his sorrowful sympathy. This was not only a kind but a courageous act at a moment when a single smile of compassion might be regarded as treason. A week after, a young man, kneeling by the body of M. Deguerry in the lower chapel of the Madeleine, stopped me to express his joy and his grief. It was the pharmacist of Mazas.

An enormous cart, surrounded by armed national guards, awaited us in the first court. I at once bethought myself of the carts that during the Reign of Terror conveyed the victims of the committee of public safety to execution. And we too were to go in the same direction, toward the Barrière du Trône. Such coincidences could not fail to strike any one familiar with our revolutionary history. Fifteen prisoners mounted the cart, among whom I noticed M. Chevriaux, the principal of the Lycée at Vanves, who bravely wore his ribbon of the Legion of Honor; Père Bazin; M. Bacues, the director of St. Sulpice; an honest workman, and some members of the national guards, guilty of not having sacrificed to the idol of the day. They were mostly ecclesiastics.

We were told that the reason we had not been sent to La Roquette the night before with the first hostages dispatched was that a third vehicle could not be procured. Mgr. Darboy, Mgr. Deguerry, Mgr. Surat, and M. Bonjean had suffered very much at Mazas: the prolonged severity of the prison discipline had, in particular, shaken the archbishop’s health. They had been obliged, only a few hours before his departure for La Roquette, to apply blisters to him. But they all showed themselves, by their firmness and patience, superior to their sad condition.

At the sight of M. Perny and M. Houillon, apostolic missionaries in China, whom the Commune had stupidly arrested on their way through Paris, M. Deguerry said to Mgr. Darboy: “Only think of those two Orientals coming to seek martyrdom in Paris! Is it not curious?” On the way, they had to encounter the threats and outrages of a rabid mob. Men _en blouse_, ragged children, and women, or rather furies, wished to stop and enter the vehicles: “_A bas les chouans et les calotins!_”--“Stop, we wish to cut them in pieces!”

It was revolting, monstrous, and yet something still more hideous was reserved for us. We were insulted in our turn, not by the multitude, but by the national guards who had charge of us. I could understand the threatening attitude of an over-excited mob, led away by its bad instincts and the speeches of demagogues, but I had never seen, or thought it possible, that an armed force could basely insult and threaten those whom they were officially deputed to escort to a place of punishment. I had not suspected such a degree of vileness in human nature, and felt rather humiliated than indignant. “Ah! citizen,” 247 said one of these tigers armed with a _képi_ and a chassepot, “you reckon on the arrival of the Versailles assassins! Well, this morning we cut them off at the Porte d’Auteuil with our mitrailleuses: twenty thousand prisoners are in our hands. The _chouans_ and their accomplices will have the fate they merit.” An ecclesiastic of the Faubourg St. Antoine, who had been embittered by his trials, wished to take up for the Versailles army. I tried to make him comprehend that reserve and silence were the safest and most suitable course for us.

I asked the national guardsman at my right the quarter he was from. He replied that he belonged to the battalion of Charonne. It was more and more manifest that the old suburbs of Paris ruled and kept Paris in terror. The quarters St. Martin, St. Antoine, and St. Marceau were no longer rulers of this great city, but the citoyens of Belleville, Montmartre, La Villette, Ménilmontant, Charonne, and Montrouge, that is to say, the districts that a few years ago were not a part of Paris, that had municipalities and material interests distinct from Paris, and had made a most vigorous resistance to their annexation to the city. But the head of the second empire conceived a pride in reigning over a capital containing two millions of inhabitants, and the thickly settled suburbs were violently annexed to Paris. He wished to eclipse Babylon and ancient Rome. To make his way through his capital, innumerable boulevards must be opened, bordered by sumptuous edifices. To seek the fresh air of the Bois de Boulogne, he must traverse immense avenues peopled with all the wealthy idlers in the world, and consequently new legions of workmen were summoned from every point of the compass, who concentrated themselves like an army ranged in battle in the annexed zone.

A humble journalist, I had pointed out, as a great social danger, the tendency of the empire to separate Paris into two parts, one peopled by the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and the other by workmen, outcasts, and the dissatisfied from the entire world. My criticisms and sad forebodings were recompensed by officious remonstrances, domiciliary visits, and the seizure of my papers. The course of the empire had, then, been fatal to France in a political point of view, since compression had only served to debase its inhabitants and organize all kinds of social conspirations; fatal in a religious point of view, for the affairs of Rome alarmed the consciences of Catholics, and the clergy, so respected in 1848, became the objects of prejudice and hatred, the bitter fruits of which we were reaping; and fatal in a military sense, for France was humbled and crushed by a foreign power.

I will declare, for the political honor of the eminent men whose opposition to the empire I shared, that at the time I thought I was about to be put to death in prison and render the Supreme Judge a strict account of my actions, far from regretting a stand that some of my friends and ecclesiastical superiors had blamed and treated as “_passion politique_,” everything at Mazas and La Roquette, everything in Paris and the whole of France, assured me I had not taken a wrong course; that, on the contrary, I had served the cause of religion and of my country.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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THE DÖLLINGER SCANDAL. 248

FROM THE HISTORISCH-POLITISCHE BLAETTER.

During the course of the year 1857 we published in these pages an exhaustive article on the philosophy of Baader. Before the article was sent to press, the editor of Baader’s complete works gave to the public the author’s correspondence in another volume, the appearance of which occasioned the most painful surprise among the admirers of the great thinker. The book showed that, in his later years, Baader’s mind was out of harmony with the church; and that his tone towards it had grown to be one of bitterness even. As was wont to be the case in those happier days, the editors of these pages turned to Dr. Döllinger for an explanation of the glaring contradictions between the earlier and later views of Dr. Baader. The result was a postscript to the article above referred to, written by Dr. Döllinger, and which may be seen in the fortieth volume of the _Historisch-Politische Blätter_, p. 178.

In this postscript, Dr. Döllinger pointed out from the correspondence itself what were the reasons of the change, and showed that Baader’s animosity against the church rested only on extraneous and accidental causes, and had nothing to do with his philosophy. “No further key”--these are Döllinger’s concluding words--“will be needed to understand how the broad chasm that separates the calm convictions of the ripe man in his prime from the passionate, almost childlike, outbursts of mental impotence of the old man in his decline, was overleaped.”

These lines were written by Dr. Döllinger thirteen years ago, and we have often read them since. Step by step, he has himself proceeded in a course towards the church which he so severely censured in the philosopher of Munich.

The fall of the two men is to a certain extent the same. The gray-haired church historian, too, is separated by a great chasm from what he was in his prime--at a great distance from the convictions that guided him when he was in the zenith of his intellectual power.

His deportment and language betray signs of ungovernable passion, incompatible with the self-possession of a man who understands his own mind.

We have a right to seek in his case, also, for a psychological solution of the change that has left him the very reverse of what he was. In his case, as in that of Baader, it will be seen that the reasons have nothing to do with his erudition as a church historian; that they are of a purely “extraneous and accidental character.” But, indeed--and this is the great difference between the two--in Baader’s case, the motives were of a private, domestic nature; in the case of Döllinger, they are of a public and political nature. To express it in a word, it is the spirit of the times and of the world that has carried Döllinger into the fatal gulf. Döllinger’s fall, his breaking off from all he was in the past, is only a piece of the political history of Bavaria during the last twenty years. The Council and the definition of the 18th of July have only hastened the matter; they have merely given the disease, in its crisis, an acute form; but, 249 without them, the break would still have taken place; for a current of thought had set in in Döllinger’s mind which would have necessitated it. When, therefore, we are asked how it happens that a highly learned and highly respected man, like Döllinger, in the enjoyment of a completely independent position, could cast himself into a current running counter to his whole previous life, our answer is very simple; for, from the very beginning of a certain period in the history of Bavaria, every true Catholic was called upon to bear his cross with the church; and it is not given to every one to choose being put in the background when he needs only to yield in order to reap his share of the honors of this world.

It was beyond a doubt impossible for Döllinger to add anything to his reputation for learning. Was he not the head and ornament of the Catholic school of Munich? And, by the way, it is beyond a doubt that that school had taught as a body, concerning the _ex cathedrâ_ decisions of the Holy See, neither more nor less than is now required by the decrees of the Council of the Vatican. Witnesses can be found for every day and year, from among the students of the Munich theological faculty, from the Bishop of Mainz down to the humblest parish priest, to show from their notes and memoranda that Döllinger himself taught exactly what the Archbishop of Munich requires him now to subscribe to. Whoever questions the infallibility of the Papal decisions contradicts the present and past testimony of the church, and must deny the infallibility of the church itself--such was the view of the whole Munich school; such was Döllinger’s own view.

If Döllinger’s present views were correct, the immunity of the church from error could not for a moment be maintained, no matter where it might be claimed its infallibility resided. Döllinger subordinates the church to science and the decisions of the church to the final judgment of the learned, more especially to the final judgment of historians. Such is his theory, and such, practically, his answer to his ecclesiastical superiors.

Not without reason, therefore, does the Archbishop of Munich in his pastoral, dated Palm Sunday, say: “In this manner the church’s divine commission and all Catholic truth is called in question.” It cannot for a moment be doubted that a man who speaks as does Döllinger in his declaration of the 28th of March last, has lost completely the Catholic idea of the church. The only difference between him and the Protestants is that, in addition to the Bible, he admits, tradition, “the unanimous consent of the fathers,” to be a source of religious truth; and this a Protestant may also do, provided no external authority be constituted the court of final appeal; and Döllinger in fact claims that there is no such court, since he subordinates both Pope and Council alike to what he calls “science.”

In point of fact, however, even if not expressed in precisely those words, these were Döllinger’s views years ago. We long since foresaw what was coming, and just as it has come. It was then a matter of no little surprise to us that his course caused no uneasiness even in ecclesiastical circles; and that no importance was attached to the remarkable revelations to which we now call attention, although the circumstances attending and the persons concerned in them were calculated to invest them with a character of the highest importance. 250 We have already referred to the revelations in question as throwing light on the internal history of Bavaria, and on Döllinger’s dangerous complication with certain tendencies of the late government; but we must return to the subject, and treat it more particularly. We refer especially to the academical oration held by Dr. Döllinger on the 13th of March, 1864, on King Maximilian II.

In his oration, he happens to speak of the remarkable interest felt by the deceased monarch in historical research, and reveals to the world a very strange, “a more secret” motive for the royal interest. The reader, to understand the full bearing of the history which we give below entire on Döllinger himself, must bear in mind the peculiar characteristics of a man who has lived more among his books than among men. It would be hard for any one to be more subject to external influences than Döllinger is, and, at the same time, to be less conscious of their presence or effect. He unconsciously puts forth to-day, as the result of his own experience, what he happened to hear expressed yesterday by another. Döllinger is always the product of his surroundings, and hence his change, as he lost his old friends, one after another, by death or by alienation, and fell in almost exclusively with the society of the so-called “Bernfenen.” This explains also how it came to pass that many younger men, and the members of the scientific guild--for example, his little Mephistopheles, Huber--exercised so unwarranted and increasing an influence over him. Bearing all this in mind, it is impossible to overestimate the effects and influence of the overtures which King Maximilian made to Dr. Döllinger. He was completely intoxicated by them, and his new friends found means to prevent his return to his sober senses. The impression made on Döllinger in the conference in question must have been the more lasting, as Döllinger, the acknowledged head of the Ultramontane party, could not have hoped to stand any higher in his majesty’s favor than any other of that abused class. To express the whole matter in a few words, we are convinced that the careful observer will discover the later as opposed to the earlier Döllinger in the following account, or in his cradle.

The following extract is from the oration above referred to:

“As I have permitted myself to refer to the deeper thoughts which guided the king in his government, and especially in his attitude towards science, I may also recall certain other communications which I received from his own mouth. An upright, faithful Christian, he believed in the lasting future of Christianity, and, therefore, could not conceive that its divisions and the struggle of the different confessions should continue for ever; that Christians should waste their powers in mutual injury. The division, he was of opinion, had had its time, and God had permitted it for some high purpose; and that time, even where not entirely past, was near its end; and he believed firmly that in spite of all polemical bitterness, in spite of the sordid spirit of self which had intruded itself into the controversy, the day of union for Christian nations would come, and the promise of one fold and one shepherd be fulfilled. And the great ecclesiastical bodies of the West being once reconciled and working with more than redoubled intellectual vigor upon the Græco-Russian church, the latter would not long resist the powerful magnetic influence of unity. Or, on the other hand, when once the union of the Catholic and Anatolian 251 churches was effected, the various Protestant sects would be gradually drawn into the current and meet their brethren.

“Naturally, however, the attention of the king was claimed in the first instance by whatever could be looked upon as tending in a proximate or remote degree to the reconciliation of the East, and particularly of Germany. He saw that the future union could not be a simple, unaccommodating mechanical coming together of the separated confessions. Neither did he think for a moment of the absorption of one church into another. It was necessary, he thought, that both bodies should first undergo a purgative process, and that each should acknowledge that it might receive, though, perhaps, in an unequal degree, some good from the other; that each might help to free the other from its peculiar defects and one-sidednesses, and supply what was wanting in each other’s ecclesiastical and religious being; that each might heal the other’s wounds; and that neither should be required to surrender anything which its life and history had proved to be a positive good. Under these conditions, sooner or later, the process of reconciliation and of union would take place in the heart of Europe, in Germany.

“Such nearly were the thoughts which the king developed to me in a long conversation which I had with him, and which I never can forget. I do not know how far Schelling’s ideas of an all-embracing church of the future gave form and shape to the royal views. It is a matter of fact, however, that that thinker had exerted a great influence on the mind of the king long before his accession to the throne. At the same time, the king saw that this idea of a future church entertained by Leibnitz and by Germany’s greatest men was recognized as a necessity, and confidently hoped for also by his eminent and enlightened kinsman, King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia. A German patriot, he saw in this reunion the salvation of Germany; a Christian, he saw in it a bulwark for the defence of the Christian faith, now so fiercely menaced.

“And here he believed his own Bavaria was called to take an active and initiatory part, and the Bavarian king not only to point out the way the country was to go, but to guide it in that way. It was not a matter of mere chance the Frankish race, the numerically predominant race in Bavaria, was about equally divided between the two confessions, and that in no country, not even in Prussia, were the local mixture and inter-relations of Protestants and Catholics so intimate and extensive as in Bavaria.

“In the second place, as far as the king himself was concerned, he could and it was his duty to do something to bring Germany a little nearer to the desired goal. He had been obliged to establish a perfect equality of rights and of political standing for the professors of both confessions, to the end that no portion of the people might feel oppressed, or grow embittered, or think themselves kept in the background, for with such feelings on the part of any portion of the nation, all coming together, all understanding, was impossible.

“And here he was of opinion science, and particularly historical science, was called upon to accomplish much; for religion itself was history, and only as a historical fact, and in accordance with the rules of historical criticism, could religion be understood or appreciated. In his own view, historical science was the kingdom in which, in the words of the sacred writings, peace and justice would 252 kiss; for only through history, as established by the most thorough research, could men know their own past and others’ past, their own and others’ failings; through it only was there any hope of begetting a conciliatory and pacificatory frame of mind.

“Thus the field of historical science seemed to the king like the Truce of God in the middle ages, or like a sacred city in which those elsewhere at variance found themselves at peace together; and, urged on by the same desires, endeavored to slake their thirst at the same fountain of truth, and grew into one communion.

“Out of the scientific fraternity of historians would one day proceed, so he hoped, after the trammels of confessions had been done away with, a higher union, embracing all historical, all religious truth, a brotherly reconciliation, such as patriots and Christians alike hoped and prayed for.”

All this Dr. Döllinger spoke with all the warmth of personal conviction. Although the whole is evidently a thrust at the idea of a confession and against the church as an organization, Döllinger does not append one word of correction in the name of the church. We cannot, however, help wondering that a critic so acute, a thinker so profound, as Döllinger should have surrendered himself to such a politico-religious system. It is easily seen that there are three separate, and in part contradictory, ideas in the royal programme, and all three have this in common, that they are totally irreconcilable with the idea of a divinely instituted and saving church.

In the first place, there is mentioned St. John’s church of love, Schelling’s church of the future, on which subject Döllinger was otherwise perfectly innocent. An ideal which contemplative enthusiastic characters like King William the Fourth might cherish, and which might also claim a place in the thoughts of the Bavarian king, could scarcely have much attraction for Döllinger. But it was otherwise with the second idea which King Maximilian had elaborated, that is, with the idea of a German national church; and, finally, with the third idea, that of the absorption of all the confessions into a universal republic of _savants_, and the church into a world-academy of science. Here the thread of the supernatural is completely lost, though, perchance, the king himself was not aware of it; for, is this not the most utter rationalism?

If, now, we look at Döllinger’s declaration of the 28th of March, we will find these two ideas standing out in bold relief. The odious antithesis of Germanism and Romanism may indeed be in harmony with the reigning political spirit; it certainly is incompatible with the idea of the Catholic Church. Whoever presumes in the name of nationality to speak of any member of the church as of the “Roman party,” either knows not what he is doing or must wish the “German national church” in schism. From this there is but one step, and that not a hard one for the pride of intellect or the haughtiness of science, to the position occupied by Döllinger in his declaration to the archbishop, in which he places the scientific fraternity of historians as the highest authority over the church, and makes it the court of final appeal in matters of faith. And yet the learned gentleman, although he signs himself only “a Christian,” will have us consider him a Catholic.

It is impossible to look into the abyss into which this once clear thinker has fallen without a feeling of terror. Is it not sufficient to open the eyes of every one that the apostles of German Catholicism 253 and free religion, like a Heribert Rau and an Oswald, have again called the attention of the public to their already published works as an “interesting commentary on Dr. Döllinger’s protest”?

It is true that Döllinger has nothing in common with those men in his views of his relations to God; but then we must remember these gentlemen are only drawing their own consequences, and Döllinger has lost all right to find fault with the consequences they draw.

The unwarranted introduction of nationalism into the idea of the church was doubtless Döllinger’s first step downhill. This gained, the disturbers of the peace of the church soon possessed themselves of the whole man. There can be nothing more hostile to the real spirit of Catholicism than this false principle of nationality; for the end of the church, in a spiritual point of view, is to smooth away all national differences, and bring the different nations into one fold.

To wish, at a time like the present, when the fanaticism of nationality, if we may be allowed the expression, is tending to alienate still more the peoples of different nations--to wish, we say, at such a time to destroy the only tie that holds them together, is to betray the wildest party fanaticism imaginable.

We can understand what the cry for a German national church means in the mouths of those modern Neros, the liberalists--in the mouth of any one else, we cannot understand it.

We know very well that Döllinger was very far from desiring a schism when he spoke at the Linzer Catholic meeting in 1850, upon the subject of the place of German nationalism in the church. It was somewhat otherwise in his declarations in the Munich Conference in 1863. There a turning-point was discoverable.

A short time previously, the at first purely scientific difference with the “Roman party,” or neo-scholastics, had arisen. Döllinger had roused the suspicions of these latter; but we feel certain that at that time there were no grounds for their suspicions. He was, it was plain, only a little too susceptible to the influences of a certain kind of liberalism, and extraordinarily anxious to do away with any suspicion of adhering to the Ultramontane party.

The danger practically and in point of fact began when he became entangled in Bavarian politics, especially in what concerns the question of the relations of science to ecclesiastical authority. “German science” now became the focus in which the more or less conscious tendencies of Döllinger were concentrated. It is in 1865 that we must place the real turning-point in Döllinger’s career.

About the end of the year 1861, the writer of these lines went to Frankfort-on-the-Main. He visited Böhmer, and will never forget a scene he witnessed on the occasion of that visit. The great historian was sick at the time, fresh in mind, it is true, but in a repining condition, and almost bitter. Our conversation turned on the condition of the University of Munich under the _régime_ of the so-called “Bernjungen.” Böhmer expressed great regret at what was going on in Munich, but reserved the vials of his wrath for the celebrities of the month of March previous. Especially, he made Döllinger responsible for it that so favorable a time had not been used for the founding of a historical school in the interests of the church. It was well known that Dr. Döllinger had had many scholars during his long career as a professor; but he had founded no school. It might be said, even, that he did not leave a disciple after him. Whilst he expatiated in the 254 endless world of book in a manner hitherto unparalleled, perhaps it became impossible for him to prepare the living materials which young men needed, and lost the gift of sociability.

Böhmer became more and more aggravated as he proceeded, till, finally, his anger culminated in the following anecdote: He said that, when Döllinger visited Frankfort last, he had had a walk with him through the city, and Döllinger had spoken to him about his literary plans. He, Böhmer, remonstrated with him, and inquired why he did not fulfil his older promises; why he did not continue his unfinished church history. Whereupon Döllinger, stopping and swinging his cane, said with a smile: “You see, I can’t do that; for now my researches have brought me to such a pass that I cannot make the end of my history tally with the beginning; the continuation of my church history would be entirely Protestant.” I see Böhmer this moment before me with the same grim visage which he wore as he closed this story with the words: “_He--he_ said that!”

Still, in 1860, Döllinger’s great work, _Christianity and the Church in the time of their Foundation_, appeared. Embracing the results of the latest research, and written in the most charming manner, this book touched and strengthened many a Catholic heart, as it did my own. But Döllinger has made that same beautiful book a sad memorial of his fall. He had written the book when he was sixty years of age, but when, in 1868, the second edition of it appeared, it was discovered that he had omitted some of the principal passages of the first edition, bearing upon the promises to and the establishment of the primacy; and what he had not omitted, he had changed in the interests of liberalism, and all without giving any ground for the alterations, without a single note even.

Döllinger has a wonderful memory for everything in the world of print, but very little for what concerns his own person or his own acts. When he wrote his declaration to the Archbishop of Munich, he seems to have quite forgotten the intentional “corrections” of his celebrated work. Otherwise, he would not have referred to the approval which it met with from the whole of Catholic Germany, and raised the question, Which text he meant--the true one of 1860, or the altered, not to say the falsified, one of 1868? Moreover, he, as the inspirer of _Janus_, recalled, in that last-named book, the little he had left in the edition of 1868 favorable to the primacy, for the reason that it “contradicted all opinions of the fathers, and the principles of exegetical theology.” In other words, _Janus_ has completely and flatly denied the primacy.

It is hard to calculate what a blessing Döllinger might have been the means of to his contemporaries and to posterity, had he continued to make the rich treasures of his knowledge accessible to Christendom as he had done in his work of 1860. The Almighty, who had preserved him upright during the wars and passions of these later years, would have decreed him doubtless a rare old age had he remained true to his resolution not to divide his powers, to live an unprejudiced votary of science. It was to be otherwise. That book was the last fruit of the professional activity of the historian. The historian was now to become the bitter party-man, not to say the future Bavarian senator, and, as a writer, a mere political pamphleteer. Here his career as a 255 man of science closes.

Late in the fall of 1861 appeared his work, _The Church and the Churches, etc._ It was a kind of colossal apology for the two well-known Odeon Lectures of the fifth and ninth of April of the same year, on the temporal power of the popes. In these lectures Döllinger has come forward in the _rôle_ of the politician--a _rôle_ which he was never intended to play on account of his too great credulity. Expressions had crept into these lectures so little savoring of piety, so painful to Catholic hearts, that the worst was feared for Döllinger in ecclesiastical circles. We also feared the consequences. Döllinger himself was evidently staggered at the unexpected impression of his, to say the least, unexplained appearance in such a character. The book which followed, in other respects a wonder of historical information, was nothing but a powerful effort to shield himself from the consequences of this step.

The ideas expressed in the royal conversation above referred to are here recognizable, more particularly in the introduction, as well as the endeavor to harmonize them with the principles of the church. It would not be very difficult to allay the doubts which Döllinger has endeavored to awaken concerning the mediæval church and the Papacy in his (or his amanuensis’s) letters on the council in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_, and now in his “declaration,” from his own work of 1861. The Encyclical, and particularly the doctrine of the Syllabus on the relations of church and state, may be both explained and defended by the assistance of the same book. Döllinger then knew very well how to vindicate the true sense of certain decrees and bulls of the popes issued while the mediæval relations of the church to the state were yet in force; he well knew then how to separate what is transient from that which is eternally true. If, at that time, any one had come to him to tell him that Napoleon III. intended to take advantage of the Bull “Cum ex apostolatus officio” against the Protestant princes of Germany and Prussia, with what shouts of laughter would he not have received him! Now he himself is guilty of just such an absurdity--and how grave he is withal!

The question of the relations of science to church authority became now in Bavaria a practical question, and Döllinger was called upon to prove the strength of his principles by overt acts. One difference followed another in that country, and Döllinger was as interested in them as he could be in matters entirely personal to himself. Like a general, he felt himself responsible for the result of all those contests, and never thought of examining closely the claims of those who crowded around him and offered him their services. In this way it was that he became the protector of one so unworthy as Pichler against the archiepiscopal ordinary. At this time, even, he had his passionate turns, which gave rise to serious misgivings, but which he was sure to regret himself before any length of time had expired.

At this period the episcopal conference at Fulda resolved to take steps to revive action in the matter of the establishment of a “free Catholic university.” Döllinger could see in this nothing but the proof of a dark conspiracy against German science.

He was unable to see that the anti-ecclesiastical, not to say the antichrist, spirit which had crept into the universities, was more than even he would be willing to be accountable for were he the chief 256 pastor of a diocese.

The opinion expressed in an appeal to the Catholic ladies of Germany on the subject of the higher schools, made him lose his patience altogether. The outbreak of the Seminary question in Spiers was in his view another attempt of those infected with the “Roman” spirit against free German science, and it found him, even if not publicly, on the side of the decided opponents of the bishop’s rightful claim in the matter.

Very nearly at the same time, the then Bavarian minister of worship made a report to the king on the occasion of a vacancy in the theological faculty of Würzburg, in which he painted the clergy educated in the German College at Rome in no flattering terms. An accidental circumstance threw suspicion on Döllinger as the instigator of it. The pamphlet “for the information of kings,” which appeared in the beginning of 1866, represented Döllinger, although only under the general name “of the Munich school,” as the real actor in the minister of worship’s puppet-play. There was a report that in the Spiers matter, speaking of the attitude of the bishops, he had said: “They are attempting to misuse the king’s youth!” How much of this had its foundation in truth, to what extent the statements of the pamphlet were based on a change or mistake between the ministry and cabinet, must remain undecided.

The pamphlet referred to created no small excitement, however; and, precisely two years before the appearance of the notorious articles on the Council, was exhaustively replied to in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_. The style and other accidents would lead to suppose that the “amanuensis,” since known more of, had here made his _début_. The reply was not a refutation. It was made up of a series of counter-complaints, and, with the exception of the attacks on the Jesuits, the Roman party, and the boys’ seminaries, these articles contain the kernel of the articles against the Council published two years later. In spite of all this, however, Döllinger is represented in these articles as of the same unaltered mind with other members of the faculty, Haneberg and Reithmayer.

“If there was no ground of suspicion during all these long years, no reason to believe that these men were hankering after dangerous novelties, how comes it recently that such suspicions are aroused, seeing that they have always been of the same mind?” It is now certain that this unanimity has since ceased; and it is clear that Döllinger’s monstrous accusation--“not a soul believes it”--must have been unjustly brought by him against his colleagues. The articles also quote the words of the Tübingen theologian: “The suspicion has spread further--Döllinger and Michelis are no longer innocent.” What says the Tübinger of the drifting of these two men to-day?

On the first of January, 1867, the Hohenlohe ministry took charge of the ship of state.

It will not be claimed that Döllinger’s influence increased with the accession of his old friend Prince Hohenlohe to the ministry; it seemed more probable that the prince would have found the learned professor a powerful obstacle in his way. The prince had formerly been considered unexceptionable in his religious views and relations; but in order to dissipate the bad odor in which he was in the highest circles, suspected as he was of favoring Prussia, he knew no better method than to encourage the superstitious fear of the Ultramontanes and of the Jesuits which for twenty years had reigned within the walls 257 of the royal palace at Munich. This it was which had made Dr. Döllinger so interesting a subject since he was regenerated from the infection of Ultramontanism.

Countenanced by such a man, it was thought the discomfiting of the “clerical party” would be a less dangerous operation than effecting it by an unasked-for alliance with the party of progress.

This explains how Prince Hohenlohe, at the head of the foreign department, was determined to serve Döllinger in every way possible against the “Curia” and all matters related to it.

The infamous articles on the Council appeared in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ from the 10th to the 15th March, 1869, under an anonymous name. Every effort was made to conceal the author, and even to mislead the public as to who he was. The real author could not conceal himself as far as we were concerned; but it required a long time to convince the many, and great was the surprise of all unprejudiced minds at the discovery.

In the meantime, the preparation of the anonymous _Janus_ was undertaken, and the circulatory dispatches of Prince Hohenlohe made their appearance on the 9th of April, 1869, which, of course, Döllinger could not well subscribe as their author. The council of ministers, of course, was not consulted in the matter; and the well-known five questions put by Prince Hohenlohe to the theological faculties of Munich and Würzburg, concerning the future council, were not whispered to the minister of foreign affairs by some secret agent.