Italian freedom in the poor, little crusade which came to so speedy and sorry an end at Castelfidardo and Spoleto. The political popedom has still its admirers and supporters, but only among doomed dynasties, worn-out factions and decrepit nations. Trembling Bourbons and terrified Hapsburgs delight in its dominion; dainty French Legitimists uphold its cause; impotent Ireland cries out, powerless Spain murmurs, shattered Austria protests against these doings of Italian patriotism, while they are enjoyed and assisted by England, applauded by Sweden, Norway and Denmark, approved by Holland, Protestant Germany and Switzerland and not unfavourably regarded by Russia. From such allies there comes no deliverance for the imperilled popedom. The House of Austria will scarcely furnish forth another Philip II. or another Ferdinand II.; Spain will hardly yield another Alva, nor France contribute another House of Guise; while Italy instead of finding great captains like Farnese and Spinola to fight the battles of her foreign lords and her papal afflicters, produces national and antipapal heroes like Garibaldi and Cialdini. The pontiff it is true has one protector in the Emperor of the French, and a very powerful protector, but ominous and inscrutable as he is powerful, who combines the protectorate of the popedom with the championship of Italy. Such is the subtle and complicated snare in which the papacy finds itself caught: such is the spectacle which absorbs the gaze of Christendom, which stirs up the most opposite passions, suggests the most contradictory speculations and produces the most conflicting prophecies, which is contemplated with intense fear and with ardent hope, with exceeding wrath and with supreme delight. Mere political Liberals and philosophical speculators regard the struggling and ensnared papacy with calm satisfaction and expect from this peril the overthrow of another old and worn-out government, another triumph for the cause of progress. Italian patriots and lukewarm Roman Catholics, the more liberal or less affectionate children of the sovereign pontiff, look upon the peril with no small pleasure as sent to annihilate the Italian prince but sure to leave the pope strong as ever, nay, predict the expansion and advancement of his spiritual sovereignty when divorced from his temporal power. But not thus opine and prophesy the most dutiful sons of the devoted partisans of the papacy; not thus Irish servants and its Austrian vassals. Church, the most hope and argue its They mourn the imperilled princedom as passionately and inconsolably as though the last hour of the popedom were in truth at hand; they abhor the emancipated Italians as intensely, they revile them as fiercely and fanatically as though Luther and Calvin were indeed leading them on to the final assault against Babylon. They bemoan the threatened patrimony of St. Peter as bitterly as he who said silver and gold I have not,' wept over his momentary treason to his beloved Lord; they urge the forcible recovery of the states of the Church as though her continuance were bound up with their restoration. In company with the pope himself they cling to the temporalities with a desperate tenacity, which bespeaks doubt and dread as to the permanence of the spiritual power. More logical and clear-sighted than their liberal or lukewarm brethren in the faith, and herein agreeing with the more earnest and far-seeing among their Protestant adversaries, they feel the deep and subtle connection between the temporal and spiritual power and forebode woe to the popedom from the loss of the princedom.44 Affection opens the eyes of zealous Roman Catholics to the full extent of the danger which they dread and deplore, as hostility opens the eyes of earnest Protestants to the full magnitude of the peril which they invoke and enjoy. Intense Protestants fix upon this peril that rapt, earnest, expectant and rejoicing gaze which every trouble of the papacy has won from them. They interpret this gross misrule of his own peculiar realm by the Vicar of Christ, they point to this glaring earthly failure of infallibility, as a practical, overwhelming and irresistible argument in favour of their convictions respecting the papacy; they behold in the uprising of his Italian subjects against the in 44 This conviction is strongly holden by M. Guizot who so singularly combines attachment to the political popedom with estrangement from the spiritual papacy. In his work L'Église et la Société Chrétienne, 1861, the Protestant partisan of the popedom says (c. 19, p. 148): 'Il faut reconnaître que dans la papauté le pouvoir spirituel et le pouvoir temporel sont intimement unis et nécessaires l'un à l'autre, et qu'ils doivent subsister ou tomber ensemble; il faut dire tout haut qu'en attaquant et en renversant le pouvoir temporel du pape, on attaque et on renverse aussi son pouvoir spirituel, c'est à dire, l'Église catholique elle-même.' The perverseness of this remarkable book is fully equalled by the mental vigour and lofty spirit which ennoble it. While this stern and almost fanatical Conservative would fain restore that temporal rule of the popedom which he acknowledges to have been misrule, for the sake of that spiritual power against which he has all his life protested, the great political Doctrinaire shows himself a great religious Doctrinaire, a mighty champion of the only real Christianity, Christianity as a system of dogmatic truth, against the many loose religious systems now in fashion, rationalistic, pantheistic and mythical. tolerable earthly yoke of the deputy of Heaven a proclamation not only of political impotence and evil but also of spiritual rottenness in the popedom; and they read in the present ignominious peril the prophecy of spiritual downfall. And they make this peril heartily welcome; they expend upon it their whole capacity of hope and joy; they enjoy it in every way as a great historical vista, as a sublime spiritual conjuncture, as an awful judgment of God, as an exact and solemn retribution, and as a hastening of the second advent of the Heavenly King to set all things right. The pontiff seems of the same mind with his best friends and his worst foes, and holds to the deep and vital connection between the Italian principality and the ecclesiastical supremacy. The popedom shrinks from the loss of the princedom as from the pangs of death, feels it less dreadful to writhe in the hostile gripe of Italy and to blush beneath the heavy hand of protecting France than to plunge into an untried condition of being, would rather shiver in the rags of its torn temporalities than make a trial of pure nakedness, and recoils from that glorious career as a purely spiritual power alluringly held forth by Italian patriots and prophesied by many disinterested observers. The Roman Church feels that this twofold life is her proper life and that the loss of it will be death or something almost as bad. Duessa after all knows herself to be Duessa and while usurping the name feels incapable of sustaining the character of Fidessa. Shamed and aggrieved by the protection of France the pontiff still more cordially detests the covenant whereby she has bound herself to withdraw that protection erelong. The Convention of September 15, 1864, between Italy and France, though in terms most tender and respectful towards the Roman See and merely providing for the early departure of its foreign guardians, appeared to the pontiff a covenant with death and hell, and hastened, if it did not provoke that most amazing and amusing defiance of the age put forth in the Encyclical Letter of December 1864 and the catalogue of errors accompanying it; wherein he has gathered together for condemnation in company with a few spiritual aberrations the most vital and precious truths political and spiritual, wherein he has comprehended all the most glorious gains and most fruitful achievements of humanity, and whereby he has set the Roman Church in direct and declared antagonism with this time of ours in its higher moods and purer aspirations. Toleration and liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of worship, the rights of sovereigns, the rights of peoples and the rights of conscience, the recognised principles of civil law and the established practice of political government alike enjoy the consecration of papal censure. There are few occasions of more lively joy, there are many occasions of less innocent joy than the follies and mistakes of opponents. The enjoyment which vehement Papists are bound to feel in this solemn declaration of principles on the part of their infallible head is far transcended by the delight taken by earnest Protestants in this enormous blunder on the part of the papal Antichrist; while moderate and liberal Roman Catholics sorely bewail the fatuity of the pontiff who seeks to disarm the hostile powers of the age by a proclamation of their impiety and to uphold his tottering temporalities by a declaration of their sanctity, who would break through the encircling peril with a denunciatory Encyclical, and intercept the descending blow with a catalogue of heresies. The strangely vital papacy may outlive this peril: that much enduring power may endure this ignominy; but certainly he must be a very daring interpreter of passing events who predicts that the pope will emerge from his present plight stronger as a temporal ruler and mightier as a spiritual monarch. It is somewhat difficult for the most impartial observer and the most sober expectant not to anticipate from this strange conjuncture the overthrow of the Italian prince and the degradation of the head of Latin Christendom. Marvellous indeed must be his faith who believes that the popedom will gather fresh strength from the disdainful hate of Italy, or break forth into new glory beneath the stern and exacting protection of France. This age may witness the close of an era in ecclesiastical history through the transformation, if not through the extinction of the papacy. But the change will not be a new birth; the new shape will not be a shape of glory; the transformation will be a debasement. If the popedom pass over into the new era, it will appear not as a renovated and independent power but as a depressed and degraded satellite. 397 BOOK XI. ITALY AND THE POPEDOM. Habbiamo adunque con la Chiesa e coi preti noi Italiani questo primo obligo di essere diventati senza religione e cattivi; ma ne habbiamo ancora un maggiore, il quale è cagione della rovina nostra. Questo è che la Chiesa ha tenuto e tiene questa nostra provincia divisa.—MACHIAVELLI, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, lib. i. c. 12. 'We Italians owe it in the first place to the Church and to the priests that we have become irreligious and worthless; but we are still more greatly bound to them, even for our downfall as a nation; as it is the Church which has kept and still keeps this country of ours divided.' WHILE hordes of barbarians were overwhelming the Roman empire and swarms of corrupt doctrines and idolatrous practices were darkening the Christian Church, a subject of that empire and a bishop of that Church grew gradually into a prince and a pontiff. The dignity of the imperial city assisted this exaltation of the Roman bishop; and about the middle of the eighth century he stood forth as the claimant of spiritual mastery over Christendom and of political dominion over a portion of central Italy. The papacy has known every variety of fortune, has been sometimes nearly omnipotent and at other times wellnigh powerless, has been sometimes terrible and at other times contemptible; but it has continued throughout still ambitious of universal empire, still tenacious of a petty principality. In both its temporal and its spiritual character the popedom has triumphed, suffered and sinned; the fortunes of the princedom have not been less various and remarkable than those of the pontificate; and if the crimes of the latter have a size and terribleness which defy all rivalry, the maintenance of the former has involved a tolerably severe and sustained infliction of evil. In truth the popedom has been almost as mournfully memorable in Italian as in ecclesiastical history. It has laboured almost as assiduously for the conquest and consolidation of the States of the Church as for the subjection of the world. The management of Christendom, the vindication of ecclesiastical |