Chapter I (1)

The First Session, December 8, 1869, or Opening Ceremony--Mustering--Robing--The Procession--The Anthem and Mass--The Sermon--The Act of Obedience--The Allocution--The Incensing--Passing Decrees--The _Te Deum_--Appreciations of various Witnesses.

At dawn, on Wednesday, December 8, 1869, the guns of Fort St. Angelo saluted the long looked for day, while from the other side of the Tiber those of the Aventine replied. The bellowing of these beasts of war awoke the city to witness a Council of the ministers of peace. As the sounds reached the ear of peasant, monk, and nun, already plodding in the dark from places outside the walls, the sky was low, and pouring down a truly Roman rain. Unlike towns round which smiling homes are sown broadcast outside of the bounds, Rome, when approached by most of the routes, first shows the city walls, and not till a good while later does it show the beginning of habitations. The poor suburbs which lie outside a few of the gates are less dreary than the space inside, where lonely roads, shut in by blank walls, lead amidst crumbling mementoes of rulers of the world, and marks of the actual reign of drones not able to master ordinary difficulties. Every now and then comes a church, or one of the two hundred and more convents and nunneries which sanctify the place. But scarcely any of these have an outline such as to yield, in twilight, the effect of either Gothic spires or Moorish minarets, or even of good Grecian colonnades.

Many a cowled figure struggled under the drenching rain along these desolate ways. One would pass the spot where Peter was arrested by his Master, when the Fisherman uttered the famous "Lord, whither goest Thou?" and was turned back to Rome to die. Another would pass by the vale of Egeria and he might well wonder if Numa ever had to seek inspiration there in such dismal gloom. Crossing the open ground about the Lateran, some of the monks might think of the terrible morn when Totila, in mercy, halted his troops inside the gates, sending the clang of his trumpets through the dark, all over the city, to give the wretched Romans the chance of flight.

Other monks coming from St. Agnese, and entering by the Porta Pia, would reflect upon the adornment of that gate by the Holy Father, and upon its happy name which links it both with Pius IX and with its own founder. Its founder, Pius IV, signed the Creed of the Council of Trent, and Pius IX was to sign the new Creed of the Council of the Vatican. This beautiful coincidence would, with the monks, make the gate an emblem of the Church, against which the gates of hell should never prevail. If they only happened to recollect that its old name _Nomentana_ marked it as the Mentana Gate, the encouraging impression would rise almost to the brightness of a revelation. The day, only two years before, when the conquering crusaders marched in, and the welkin rang with shouts of "Long live Pius IX!" "Long live the zouaves!" "Long live the Crusaders!" "Long live Catholic France!" would return to memory as the pledge of mightier Mentanas. Had an invisible hand drawn aside the veil, and shown them that gate, some nine months later, admitting the Italian troops, followed by the dog Pio drawing a little cart full of Bibles; and then shown, still later, the residence of a British Ambassador to the King of Italy inside the gate, and on the outside the residence of Garibaldi, the monks would have vowed by all the saints, old and new, that the vision came from a lying spirit.

Some, again, crossing the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge, would, in spite of the blinding rain, see the figure of Constantine victoriously dominating the heights, and that of Maxentius being hurled into the stream. A while afterwards, when passing near the Broken Wall, where St. Peter himself had kept watch, and with his own hand had blinded and routed the Goths, they would feel that now when his successor was to be at last duly exalted, the Apostle would surely keep the city more jealously than before; and if there was need of a Belisarius to crush the Italian barbarians, the Lord would raise him up at the intercession of Peter.

As they came further inwards, the crowds of the city were already in motion. Down from the Coelian and Esquiline were they pouring past the Coliseum, reflecting men delighting in the thought that all high things which exalt themselves against the Church would fall into her power just as the Coliseum had done; for the "high things" of the Romanized imagination are naturally material ones. The Arch of Titus, darkly outlined in the morning grey, would be the prophetic pledge that the Jews, however stubborn, would yield to the Pontiff at last. But where was the golden candlestick--where the temple vessels? After Genseric carried them off, had they ever returned? The ruinous Palatine would symbolize woes coming to modern Caesars, as sure as those which had crushed the ancient ones. Indeed, it is not impossible that some would see visions like those seen by monks of yore, who beheld the soul of the great Theodoric dragged into the crater of Stromboli.

From the Aventine, where Peter resided with Priscilla and Aquila, and which is now little but a site for monastic establishments, many would come, passing by the place where once stood the Circus Maximus. The thoughtful would there have in their eye the grand spectacles of Pagan Rome. It was by a spectacle that Romulus allured the Sabines to unity by violence; and it was by a spectacle that Pius IX was now wooing the world to wedlock with the Papacy--ready, if only able, to take short measures with the coy. But what were the shows of the old rude times to this? What if three hundred thousand pairs of eyes did gleam together on the spectacles which, with bread, made up the earthly all of the Roman _plebs_? They never had looked upon such an array of holy bishops, from the whole earth, as would be seen to-day. The colours for which they went mad, their idolized blues and greens, were but few, and ill-combined, compared with the colours now about to be displayed. The ancient cry, "Bread and Spectacles!" was indeed still kept alive by Roman authorities, but was to-day to be satisfied in a Christian style glorious beyond Pagan example.

Along the Via Sacra few foreigners would appear, but from the Capitoline Germans would set out. It is natural to think of some student, fresh from the pages of Gregorovius, his imagination vividly setting face to face the ancient Rome and the actual. He would think of the exclamation, "Renowned, queenly, immeasurable Rome, a sea of beauty surpassing all power of speech!" Where were the glory and the beauty now? Inside the churches and palaces indeed were masses of decoration and artistic stores of wealth, but the city viewed, on that dismal December morning, as a city, was poor and ill-kept. The glory which once compelled men at this central point to call her Golden Rome was departed. What now represented the Temple of Jupiter--its pillars on gilded bases with gilded capitals, its gates of gilded bronze, and its roof of tiles of gilded brass? There stands the Church of the Aracoeli; Jupiter is succeeded by the Bambino, a doll, carved by St. Luke, which is driven in a stately carriage round the city to the beds of the dying.

Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman, certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of Wycliffe in the sea?

A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of _The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show_, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so. Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients, and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea of a world-empire originated with the Romans--nay, no more than did the idea of the Trojan War.

Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against riderless mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses, goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.

Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and tongues into religious and political submission to one human head. Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in the words of _Joseph de Maistre_, that the Pantheon had been devoted to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority. But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize St. Peter Arbues, red with the blood of thousands of the seed of Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces. He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome for Frond's history--[198]

It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought
back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible
corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable.
Nevertheless, there are many _gods_, in heaven and in earth.
There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (_hommes
divinisés_). The _gods_ of Christianity are the _saints_. Around
God are assembled ALL THE GODS, to serve Him in the place and order
assigned to them.

The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it, as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that "saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious, which was no doubt the original idea.[199]

By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and signs of impotence.

In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general, not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and cabmen.[201]

The grand Piazza of St. Peter's would have been at its grandest that day had the sky been true to the Papacy. Nothing but the heavens failed. From every opening into the Piazza flowed the eager crowds. They passed the two hundred and eighty columns, natives sheltering under their umbrellas, strangers compelled by admiration to look up. They passed the Obelisk, those who had history in their memory, thinking of Nero and of the scenes by him enacted. They passed the Inquisition, perhaps wondering what priests were imprisoned now, and if there were any bishops, and who; perhaps thinking how strange it was that side by side should stand the memorials of Nero and the chambers of the Inquisition. Then up the steps and across the Portico. At the same time, the coaches of the great swept to the right into the Vatican. About three hundred of these were splendidly horsed, gilt round the top, gilt at all available points, hung high on springs, with four or five servants, in yellow and blue, red and green, embroidered, powdered, and in cocked hats. The few pensive monuments of retrospective royalty that still clave to the skirt of the Pontiff, formed the first line of this array. Then came the thrice-splendid princes of the Church. Each rode in his state carriage, followed, says Frond (vol. vii. p. 91), by a second carriage, "less sumptuous." and if a prince--we presume by birth--followed by a third. Then came the nuncios, ambassadors, bishops, and notabilities with starry breasts, and ribbons like streamers among the stars--stars that dazzle Romans far more than all the constellations in the sky. The Roman nobles, always splendid, were that day in their fulness of gold, and pearls, and costly array; and their equipages are said to have counted several hundreds. No less than five hundred private ones and some two thousand street carriages completed the train. Roman ecclesiastics could not help remarking, even in print, that from a one-horse hackney coach might be seen alighting a couple of bishops, and four from a two-horse one; a sight which they contrasted with the princely splendour of Constance and of Trent. At the bridge of St. Angelo, and at other important points, rose up in the rain the mounted figures of the Papal dragoons in their long white cloaks. A plentiful display of soldiers, said to amount to about six thousand, increased the variety. Black-clad Barnabite, and brown Franciscan, broad-hatted Jesuit and white Camaldolese, with all the costumes of the barrack, the convent, the nunnery, mingled with those of the drawing-room and the village festival, spangled the thickening crowd.

The clergy of the city had early assembled in sufficient number to line the whole course of the procession, until it reached the statue of St. Peter. Within, the crowd is not represented by any writer as having been excessive. Some say that the church was full, some that it was not quite so. The people arrived in wet clothing, and as none of them, least of all the monks, were given to excessive ablutions, even the correspondent of the _Stimmen aus Maria Laach_ alluded to the quality of the air. So also did the Special Correspondent of the _Times_; but he remarked that "incense covers a multitude of perfumes." In the various side chapels, Masses were being celebrated, each priest, as he came up to the altar, or retired from it, being preceded by two soldiers under arms, and followed by one. There were upon duty in that temple of peace, opened for a great council of peace, one battalion of zouaves and one of the line.

The soldiers of Diocletian and Galerius, when beginning their work one February morning, while the two Emperors watched them from their palace windows in Nicomedia, would not have been so much at a loss had they entered a temple like St. Peter's, as they found themselves in the Christian church into which they then broke. "They searched in vain," says Gibbon, "for some visible object of worship. They were obliged to content themselves with committing to the flames the volumes of the Holy Scriptures." They could have found no Bible in St. Peter's to burn, unless they had taken to a sumptuous book, in a dead language, containing portions of the Gospels. But they would not have searched in vain for visible objects of worship. Just as even Father Abraham had been turned into chief idol in the Caaba by the heathen Arabs, so here the chief of the images set up was Peter. But never had he been so dressed in Galilee or Jerusalem, in Antioch or Babylon, with alb, girdle, stole, and tiara. The Popes might have ill copied the living Peter, but the bronze Peter had well copied the Popes. The Fisherman would have been surprised at his own pluvial. As clerical writers would blush not to tell, it was of red silk, striped with gold. On his breast was a golden cross; on his right hand a golden ring, with a large ruby, and a circle of "flashing brilliants," and the left hand held a golden key all decked with precious stones. Before him burned a lamp, and four superb wax candles painted like the illuminations of books. As all men honour their gods with what they value most, the Vatican honours Peter by feeding the jeweller and laceman in his soul with marrow and fatness, and by the sight of men kissing his feet. Peter had his faults, but he never deserved to be so paganized. True, he did forget himself when he got into the palace of the Jewish priest, but not in the same way as the bishop on the Tiber forgot himself when he got into the palace of the Roman Pontiff. That, however, was Peter before he was converted. Peter, after he was converted, passed the threshold of a Roman. Then, he strengthened his brethren, not by lording it either over their persons or their faith, but by teaching a lesson in action, to the effect that no human being should ever degrade his person before a fellow-man, and that the forms of worship, as well as the spirit of it, are to be reserved for Him whom alone it is lawful for the offspring of God to adore. Peter would not break the commandment that said, "Be not ye called rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. xxiii. 8-10).

There in a nutshell lies the whole theory of a direct government as against one by proxy; of a father's government of adult sons, as against a master's government of slaves through upper servants; of one all-watching love, and one all-working care, as against an imperial reclusion that leaves affairs to departmental divinities. "Our Father which art in heaven," deeper is Thy love to the least of us, more tender and closer far than could be that of any patron whom we might set up! In numbering the hairs of our heads, no Vicar dost Thou employ! In drawing near to Thee, no interest of Thy freedmen do we require, for we are no longer slaves, but in Thy love, the love of a Father, dost thou invite every one of us to the adoption and therefore to the access of sons!

He, who had once shaken his brethren, did not afterwards strengthen them by telling them that they must all accept him as rabbi, father, and master in the absence of their Lord, while to him there was but one Master, Christ. Just as Peter was ready, in his own person, to keep the commandment, "Be not ye called masters," so would he have been the very first to uphold the corresponding commandment, "Call no man master." He well knew that this applied pointedly and particularly to the ministers and disciples of the religion of Christ as such; for he was one of the first to teach both due reverence and due obedience to that civil authority which the Popes live to make little more than a sword under their own power.

The Italian Protestant and the Rabbi would both watch the thousands performing the adoration of St. Peter. The Italian Protestant would think of rites to Romulus, or perhaps to Hercules, whose local story was still more mythical. The Rabbi would think with scorn of the impossibility of such a spectacle in a synagogue over a dressed-up image of Aaron, for the Jews had never reformed the decalogue. He would mentally quote Jeremiah: "The stock is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder; blue and purple is their clothing, they are all the work of cunning men."[202] Educated Hindus are now often to be seen in Rome. Any of them who witnessed this scene, and heard priests complacently point out the distinctions by which simple Westerns are lulled into the notion that this is theoretically a different kind of worship from that paid to lesser gods and to images by Brahmans, would take the distinctions in his supple fingers and snap them as easily as he would so many threads of the finest Dacca looms. The Pundits were in this, as in many things, elder and abler brethren of the priests.

Friedrich, in his Doctor's robes, formed one of the promiscuous crowd; for mere theologians in Rome did not pass for much. No one has told us where Quirinus stood, or what was his toilet. It is not even clear whether his spirit was vested in a German or an English frame, although probabilities are in favour of the latter. Vitelleschi was there too, with his Roman familiarity with men, forms, and projects. And there was Lord Acton, the Roman Marchese, brother to a bishop, soon to be a Cardinal; the English Baron nephew to a Cardinal. M. Frond would be in exceedingly great glory. M. Veuillot, frightened, _he says_, by the rain, was in his rooms by the Piazza di Spagna, describing to the _Univers_ what he calls "the moral of the ceremony"--a fact which he states long afterwards (i. p. 73). He acknowledges that he did not smell the odour of the crowd; but not on that account is he to be told that he did not see the first session. He went to the top of the Pincio about noon, saw the dome and the Vatican wrapped in fog and rain, and the sky laden as if with storms for all time. But he saw the Council as one ought to see it, and as history will see it; and never on the sunniest morning did the hill of Peter, the mountain where God dwells, appear more luminous to him.

Correspondents of the _Civiltá_ published on the spot, of the _Stimmen_ published on the Rhine, of distant journals in America and the East, were revelling in the Catholicity and brilliancy of the spectacle, and preparing to transmit across the Alps and across the seas some vibration of the transports by which every now and then they were themselves thrilled. The untonsured but inevitable correspondents of the profane Press were there, odious in forms unknown.

Liberal Catholics from different countries were there in numbers, striving to hope against hope, now thinking of the courage of their national bishops, now of the moderation of the Pontiff; and now exercising faith in the good stars of the Church, but trusting that, somehow or other, credit to the Catholic cause would result from the Council, instead of Jesuit fighting, followed by disaster, which they had too much ground to fear.

On the other hand, the Jesuits were quietly exulting in the knowledge that the days of the Liberal Catholics were numbered. "Weighed and found wanting" were words often upon their lips at that time.

The feeling of the Protestants, of all classes, was chiefly that of curiosity. Such of them as believed that Rome yet retained enough of the Christian element to be capable of reform wished that the Jesuits might fail. Those, on the other hand, who believed that at Trent Rome had written upon herself the doom _irreformable_, thought that the only thing now before her was to go down deeper into her own errors, and to make herself formally what she long had been virtually, the religion simply of the _fait accompli_, a system in which each error once committed must enter into the blood, and even form abnormal bone. Perhaps the words "judicial blindness" were never so often quietly uttered by charitable men as then, and during the months ensuing.

The tomb of Peter shared with his statue in the honours of the morn. In the ray of its lamps knelt many a figure of "fair women and brave men." The men hoped to rise braver for the coming struggle. The words of the Pontiff were vividly in the memories of the devout--words uttered to five hundred bishops. "We never doubted that a mysterious force and salutary virtue emanated from the tomb where repose the ashes of Peter, as a perpetual object of religious veneration to the world; a force which inspires the pastors of the Lord's flock with bold enterprises, noble spirit, and magnanimous sentiment."[203] Pius IX would hardly have seen the force of an inquiry, should any one have dared to make it, whether there was any known case in which one of the Apostles had in Jerusalem sent even the most ignorant of Christians to the tomb of the proto-martyr, ay, or to the tomb of tombs, in order there to seek some blessing that could not be found by going into his own closet, and praying to his Father who seeth in secret.

The _Civiltá_, however, gave a more intelligent turn to this Papal suggestion--

It is to be hoped (it said) that this Council, announced on the
centenary of St. Peter, convoked by a Bull dated on the day of St.
Peter, and assembled round the wonderful tomb of St. Peter, will
be _par excellence_ the Council of St. Peter. That means the most
obsequious to the prerogatives of Peter, whose divine authority,
the centre and foundation of all social authority, is at the same
time that which is most combated by the spirit of the world,
according to the words of the Saviour, "The whole world lieth in
wickedness" (1 John v. 19).

While the people waited, the bishops were robing in the Julian corridor, and the patriarchs in one of the adjoining apartments. Over the grand portico of St. Peter's is a hall, well known on Holy Thursday as the place where the twelve apostles celebrate the Supper--the hall in which the five hundred presented their salutation in 1867. This had been converted into a chapel, by the erection of an altar. Here assembled the members of the procession. Each prelate, on completing his costume, made for the hall, but was not permitted to have any attendant. It being the Day of the Immaculate Conception, the colour of the vestments was white; a rule, however, which did not bind the Orientals. The cardinals were robing in a room apart. Each of them having done so, entered the hall followed by his train-bearer. Bishops, prelates, and cardinals waited while the Pope robed. This he did in the Pauline Chapel, attended by three cardinals, two bishops, the sub-deacon apostolic, two protonotaries, and a few minor officials. They adorned him with amice and with alb, with girdle and with stole. Then did the cardinal-priest in waiting bring the censer, and the Pope put the incense on. Then did they further array him in the "formal," the pluvial, and the precious mitre. At about half-past nine o'clock, Pius IX, in all the glory of gems and garments, entered the hall, where between seven and eight hundred bishops stood before the altar, awaiting their royal head. He did not wear either the tiara or the usual golden mitre, but a special _precious mitre_ made for the occasion, "This" says, Vitelleschi (p. 3), "was to indicate a certain equality with the other bishops, which, however, is confined to these little accessories of the ceremonial." The white pluvial was fastened on his breast by an enamelled clasp, about which clerical writers are particular. The clasp was set with jewels in the form of a dove, with outstretched wings, surrounded by a halo of rays, and _representing the Holy Ghost_. The Pope passed among the Fathers holding out his fingers, in the usual manner, on this side and on that, giving them what is grotesquely called the _pontifical_ benediction. Then kneeling at the faldstool he took off his mitre and prayed. Two cardinals, approaching the kneeling Pontiff, placed a book before his eyes. He looked upon it, lifted up his aged but resounding voice, and sang--

Creator Spirit, come!

This strain was taken up by the choir, and the first verse was sung, all kneeling. The Pontiff then rose, put on his mitre, and was seated in his portative throne.

The portative throne is a contrivance for exhibiting a dignitary to the gaze of a multitude, which does not remind one of anything to be seen elsewhere in Europe, but does strongly remind one of the way in which a great Guru is carried in India. It is a gorgeous litter, on which is placed a gorgeous chair, under a gorgeous canopy, called a Baldachino. In the chair is seated the Pontiff. Men robed in crimson bear the litter; others bear the canopy on long gilded decorated poles, and beside it others bear gigantic fans of peacocks' feathers.

Even in a secular procession, more serious than an election triumph, this sort of chairing would be of doubtful taste; but in a religious act, above all an act done in the house of God, it would be impossible, except where the aesthetic of faith had expired, and the aesthetic of thought had long surrendered to the aesthetic of sensation. As the Pontiff was set on high a shot fired from St. Angelo told the waiting multitude that the procession was formed.

We have said that the clergy of the city lined the whole course of the procession on either side. This extended from the door of the hall, through some of the apartments of the Vatican, down the celebrated Royal Staircase, through the magnificent portico of St. Peter's, up the nave to the statue of the Apostle, then to the altar at his grave, and finally, to the right of that altar, into the hall of the Council. As the head of the procession emerged from the hall, the manifold costumes of the clergy formed the skirting of the lofty walls, in the apartments through which it slowly swept. The most noticeable of these was the Royal Hall, _Sala Regia_, where frescoes, suggestive of more swords than one, appealed, by Papal memories, to Papal hopes. There was Gregory VII giving absolution to the penitent emperor Henry IV. There was the attack upon Tunis in 1553, there the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, the League against the Turks, and Barbarosas receiving the benediction of the Pope in the Piazza of St. Mark. From the Royal Hall descends the Royal Staircase _Scala Regia_. All down its two flights the reverent clergy lined the way, as the "Church Princes" swept by. In the lower flight the Ionic capitals of the colonnade gracefully lengthened out the perspective, while the stately march of mitres glanced between the shafts. With a supreme sense of the importance of the act did the train pass down the noble stair; each prelate no less sustaining the dignity of the moment because just then the eye of the outer world beheld them not. In the view of a real Vaticanist a great procession is a good in itself, and a very high good, apart from its uses; or, perhaps more properly, it is felt that its effectiveness for use wholly depends upon the sense of discipline in its members.

Finally the foot of the stair was reached. The portative throne passed the statue of Constantine, the first who ever drew sword for the Church. It swept round and faced the statue of Charlemagne, the first upon whose head the Church ever set imperial crown. Each stood at an end of the magnificent vista formed by the portico--grand watchers at the door of the Pontiff, ever telling that the kings whom his Church wants are not merely nursing fathers but champions in fight. As the sight of their uplifted monarch burst upon the people, and that of the people upon their king, the heavy guns from the Aventine were firing alternately with those of St. Angelo, while all the bells were trying to exceed the joypeal of the preceding day. Before his Holiness reached this point, the procession had already entered the nave in slow and gorgeous order.

In front came chamberlains, chaplains, and officials of sixteen ascending grades. After these came the Fathers of the Council,--first the generals of orders, next mitred abbots, and then followed bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, in succession of still ascending rank, every man in appropriate splendour. The Orientals outshone their western brethren even more than usual; for the robes of the Latins, being confined to the white of the day, were at a disadvantage beside the eastern coats of many colours. The Senator, as the incumbent is called of a quaint old office under the Papal government, which we might call that of honorary mayor of Rome, marched between the prelates and the throne in golden robe of rich variety. He was accompanied by the conservators, whom we might call something like honorary councilmen, and also by the commandants of the three orders of guards--the noble, the Palatine, and the Swiss. Finally, sitting aloft, with the fans and the bearers, and the poles and the canopy, came the Pontiff. The moving throne was followed by a lengthened rear procession, formed of sundry officials, and closing with the priests, who had for some time been practising shorthand, in order to act as reporters.

The faithful from east and west gazed with enraptured eyes. Many were proud to recognize their own bishops; some still prouder to see their own gifts in robe or gem shining among the adornments of the day. Any Hindu present, looking at priest and soldier, might have exclaimed in the words of the _Bhagavad Gita_: "Many a wondrous sight, many a heavenly ornament, many an upraised weapon; adorned with celestial robes and chaplets; anointed with heavenly essence, covered with every marvellous thing."[204]

From early morn, "_the holiest_," to use the term of one of the priestly descriptions, had been exhibited upon the altar; but out of tenderness to the throng had been veiled till the procession approached. As it entered the temple, every member of it uncovered to "_the holiest_." Those who were not members of the Council, after reaching the high altar, defiled to the left. The Fathers of the Council approaching the altar, each in his turn bent the knee before the Host; and then turning to the right, beheld the front of the Council Hall erected between two of the piers which sustain the great dome of Michael Angelo. Over the door was a picture, professing to represent the Eternal Father. The door was kept by the military figures of the Knights of Malta and the noble guards. Each prelate, in turn, entered the hall, bowed to the cross erected upon the altar, and was shown to the place assigned to him, according to his rank and seniority; for care was taken that the bishops should not group themselves either according to nation or according to opinion. There, standing and bareheaded, they awaited the Holy Father (_Frond_, vii. p. 98).

After the procession had been for some time moving up the nave, a whisper, "The cross, the cross," passed from lip to lip. The cross was borne immediately in front of the Fathers of the Council. Priest told priest of its choice beauty and immense costliness. Designed in the Gothic of the thirteenth century, and rich with gems, it represented Christ, not in His passion, but crowned, as conquering Lord, in glory. Among the expressions of delight, the proudest was, "It is a present to the Pope from the English convert, the Marquis of Bute."

The Pope did not, on this occasion, as he usually does, pass up the whole of the nave on his portative throne--a process which guide-books describe as representing the Lord of Glory entering Paradise. He now alighted at the entrance of the basilica, and, with deliberate step and thrice radiant smiles, his head alone mitred while all others were uncovered in presence of the "holiest," he marched among soldiers, priests, and subjects, a sovereign _in excelsis_. Before him went his hundreds of lieutenants, in attire which would have dazzled ancient Pontifex, Flamen, and Augur. Every one of them was prepared to contend with princes in his cause, to set his name before that of their king, and to claim, in their respective countries, a supreme sway for his sceptre. Not a few of them had endured prosecution or prison to uphold his law against that of their country, and no note of the lyres that sounded the praises of the day was sweeter than that which commemorated the name of any martyr-bishop, hero of the kingdom of God, against the naturalism of the age.

The Cardinals had not followed the bishops into the hall. They now stood near the high altar. Two bishops were at the faldstool, with book and candle. At the altar itself stood the officiating Cardinal, with a priest, a deacon and sub-deacon, a master of the ceremonies, five acolytes bearing candles, and three clerks of the chapel. On arriving at the altar the Pontiff bowed upon the faldstool. Then the last strophe of the _Veni Creator_ was exquisitely sung by the choir. To use the words of a priest, written, not for Spaniards or Brazilians, but for Germans: "Every member of the historical procession cast himself upon his knees before our God and Saviour in the form of bread, before whom all kings bow."[205]

After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"--_Protector Noster Aspice Deus_--and for some time he continued reciting prayers in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (_Guérin_, p. 76).

The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right, entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for some time.

As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial--the Cardinals Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers deserved half of the ill that was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts, Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching Christ" (p. 55).

The German Jesuit who wrote for the _Stimmen_ said, "The bloodless offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the _invisible Head of the Church be present in form of bread_. Opposite sits His representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (_Neue Folge_, vi. p. 162).

This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning, when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India, first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence--

Lo, God is here, let us adore!

At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty with all who take an impression for a reason. The program is in the _Acta_, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for each minutest move.

The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands; he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (_Acta_, pp. 204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction, during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer, with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council, and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people. Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The Pontiff recites _Quam dilecta_, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers trimmed with gold lace. The Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers. Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle; after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed that this was imposing, impressive, divine.

This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne, rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of history had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on which its first beams were beginning to strike--came forward lordly figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each, with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says, "What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma, looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw signs of happy days returning.

The Jesuits said, "Surely those non-Catholics who witnessed this action must have perceived that Catholicity, like unity, is found only where Christ lives, speaks, and reigns--in Peter; that is, in the Roman Church, of which Pius IX is now Peter." But we may quietly ask, Could even those writers fancy Peter, at the only Apostolic Council, seated upon a throne somewhere on Mount Zion, while John, James, and Paul came up in the presence of the assembled Church and kissed his knee, and Philip, Barnabas, and others knelt and kissed his foot? Far as the aesthetics of those Jesuits had descended, by a long materializing process, they must surely have read enough of the Holy Scriptures to feel that the scene enacted in St. Peter's, though a fine edition of a Durbar, was a sad fall from an Apostolic Council. You promise the pupils of Plato a higher wisdom than they ever knew in the Academy, and they find for wisdom the gewgaws of Freemasons. Such a scene was bad in manners, bad in politics, and bad in religion. In manners, it tended to make men servile in a lower position and arrogant in a higher; in politics, it tended to make them either slaves or despots; in religion, it tended to make them either unbelieving or superstitious. Is it part of the penalty of Rome that barbaric forms should linger at its Court, when the spirit of Christianity has banished them from the Courts of Christian kings? Our own monarch, at the head of her two hundred and eighty millions, is too good a Christian to make her subject Rajahs, as a spectacle for her commons and her troops, come and fall down and kiss her foot. The words which commanded the followers of Christ not to exercise over one another the kind of lordship which the kings of the Gentiles exercised over them were, with pompous action, publicly trampled upon in this scene of "the obedience," and that both in the spirit and in the letter. He who complacently sat and acted out that scene in the house of God for an hour and a quarter, might better claim to represent many known in the history of ambition, than the lowly Lord of Peter.