withdrew all bishoprics and monasteries from direct dependence upon the Roman See or direct intercourse therewith, abolished and created bishoprics, and lessened the incomes of some, suppressed convents which he turned into hospitals, barracks or colleges, put down superstitious ceremonies, ordered a German translation of the Bible, bestowed full freedom of worship upon the Protestants and Greeks and rendered them capable of holding any office and dignity. These innovations, remarkable in any sovereign, but passing wonder in the head of the House of Austria and the successor of Ferdinand II., astonished Europe and alarmed as much as they amazed Pius VI., who after an ineffectual diplomatic correspondence determined to deprecate these reforms in person and to arrest the imperial innovator by the charm of his presence, the grace of his manners and the power of his eloquence. He accordingly set off for Vienna in February 1782 against the advice of many cardinals who feared that the papal visitor might appear a papal suppliant and return an unsuccessful suppliant, as in fact he did. Joseph gave his pontifical guest the most splendid and respectful reception, overwhelmed him with gorgeous ceremonies, honourable observances and marks of outward veneration, but took no heed of his exhortations and remonstrances, would not make a single concession, would not revoke a single edict, would not suspend a single reform. The pontifical suppliant returned to Rome, with no other result from his visit than that of having thrust the impotence of the popedom before the eyes of Europe.39 In Peter Leopold, grand duke of Tuscany, the congenial brother of Cæsar Joseph, and himself afterwards emperor, Pius had to do with a reforming neighbour. Among the innumerable benefits which the benignant Austrian innovator showered upon his Tuscan subjects, many found no favour with the Roman See. He abolished the Inquisition, suspended bulls and sentences of excommunication, forbade the publication of the same, withdrew the laity from the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and subjected the clergy to the civil tribunals. These beneficent enactments were among the fifty-seven propositions laid before the synod of Pistoja which he gathered together in 1787 without leave of the pope, and where Scipio de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoja, took a leading part, who though nephew of the last general 39 Coxe, History of the House of Austria, c. 124. of the Jesuits, combined Jansenist theology with anti-papal politics, and got the reputation of being almost a Protestant. Ricci asserted the independence of the bishops upon the papal power, claimed more liberty for the inferior clergy, cried out for a national Italian council, demanded that the service should be performed in the vulgar tongue, maintained that indulgences did not affect the dead, and half propounded the Protestant conceptions of faith, grace and church-authority. The Austrian innovator and the Tuscan theologian troubled Pius VI. not a little, who at length in 1794 hurled an elaborate bull against the synod of Pistoja.40 Royal reformers and semi-Protestant doctors however seemed the most formidable foes with whom Pius would have to do: the papacy promised to go on leading the same quiet, insignificant, not very glorious but not uncomfortable life which it had lived during the eighteenth century, making a few concessions to the importunity of judicious friends, and suffering a little gentle violence at the hands of respectful and somewhat exacting sons. The eighteenth century must strike a philosopher, a Protestant and even a moderate Catholic as the most pleasant portion of the papal story. Never had the popes done so little harm, shown so little cruelty or corruption; never was their demeanour so modest and their character so respectable. It is true that their Italian territories were sadly misgoverned. Nearly three centuries of direct ecclesiastical rule had utterly extinguished all political and intellectual life there. Commerce languished; population dwindled; great cities, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna shrank; brigandage throve. The pontiffs attempted no political reforms and made scarcely any real improvements. Herein they sank far below the contemporary sovereigns of Italy, not only beneath Joseph in Milan and Leopold in Tuscany, but even below the kings of Naples and Sardinia and the dukes of Parma. But their political dominion like their spiritual dominion during the eighteenth century was not sharply oppressive, though heavily repressive; their subjects, misgoverned and kept down, had their industry undeveloped, their energy suspended, their intellects fettered and their souls in bondage, but were not tormented or trampled under foot, and had not yet become indignantly sensible of the pressure 40 Botta, Histoire, lib. i. pp. 24-29. Lipsiæ, 1842. Bulla Pii apud Canones Concilii Tridentini, put upon them. The territorial like the spiritual popedom did not then wear a shockingly repulsive aspect; to many the latter especially looked like an evil thing mitigated and capable of further mitigation. The hopeful and pious sons of the eighteenth century might entertain the agreeable expectation that the papacy would be smoothed and polished down into the ornamental appendage of advancing civilisation or into the decorous satellite of some leading power, that the spirit of the age would strip the popedom of all its peculiarities one after the other and in the end wear it away, that the process would be gradual and quiet, unattended by dire calamities and unmarked by fierce convulsions. Some politicians expected the fall of the popedom from the financial distresses of the great Catholic powers who would lay hands upon ecclesiastical property including the territorial popedom and thus break up the Roman Church.41 Even sincere and enlightened Protestants had got to regard the papacy, if not with complacency, with no unkindly indifference, had lost all lively sense of the spiritual evil of the Roman Church; in their eyes as on their lips the Great Whore had dwindled into the Scarlet Lady, and they looked for her slow and peaceful disappearance before the march of mind and the spread of knowledge. There were only some very devout and obscure Protestants, humble readers of the Word and despised students of the Apocalypse who believed in the unchangeable disposition of the papacy and in the ineradicable corruptions of the Roman Church, who still beheld in her the Great Whore, somewhat faded and shrunken, 41 Frederick in a letter to Voltaire (tom. liv. c. 132) thus puts forth this theory: 'Le pape et les moines périront sans doute; leur chute ne sera pas l'ouvrage de la raison; mais ils périront à mesure que les finances des grands potentats se dérangeront. En France quand on aura épuisé tous les expédients pour avoir des espèces, on sera forcé de séculariser des abbayes et des couvents. En Autriche le même besoin d'argent donnera l'idée d'avoir recours à la conquête facile des états du saint siége pour avoir de quoi fournir aux dépenses extraordinaires, et l'on fera une grosse pension au saint père. Mais qu'arriverait-il? La France, l'Espagne, la Pologne, en un mot toutes les puissances catholiques ne voudront pas reconnaître un vicaire de Jésus, subordonné à la main impériale. Chacun alors créera un patriarche chez soi. On assemblera des conciles nationaux. Petit à petit chacun s'écartera de l'unité de l'Église.' What a clever and yet what a shallow prophecy! Frederick foresaw the growing embarrassment of European princes; but he foresaw not the Revolution of France nor the resurrection of Italy. How utter a mistake to make the papacy destroyed by that embarrassed Austria with which it is a fellow sufferer and make the deed of an aspiring nation the deed of a needy government! but still not without power to allure and deceive, who felt sure that great woes were laid in store for the popedom and the nations in its train, and expected that the world would be shaken by the long agony of its closing hours and the strangeness of its awful end. BOOK X. THE AGONY OF THE POPEDOM. So as she bade, that witch they disarrayed Faery Queen, i. viii. 46. THE more deeply and earnestly the French Revolution is contemplated the more manifest is its pre-eminence above all the strange and terrible things which have come to pass on this earth. Never has the world witnessed so gorgeous an outbreak of hope and so tremendous an outbreak of wrath, so bold an undertaking and so bitter a disappointment, so thorough a work of destruction, so daring an attempt at renewal. Never likewise has the world witnessed so exact and sublime a piece of retribution. Supreme as an aspiring energy and a destroying force, the French Revolution has a not less awful pre-eminence as an avenging power. If it inflicted enormous evil, it presupposed and overthrew enormous evil. If France showed such mad earnestness to break utterly with the Past and to make all things new, there must have been something very painful and intolerable in that Past; the old things must have been very grievous indeed. In a country where every ancient institution and every time-honoured custom disappeared in a moment, where the whole social and political system went down before the first stroke, where monarchy, nobility and Church were swept away almost without resistance, the whole framework of the state must have been rotten; royalty, aristocracy and priesthood must have horribly sinned. Where the good things of this world, birth, rank, wealth, fine clothes and elegant manners became worldly perils and worldly disadvantages for a time, rank, birth and riches must have been frightfully abused; the nation, which abolished and proscribed Christianity, which dethroned religion in favour of reason, and en |