Part 11

§ 165.1. =The Popes.=--=Clement XI.=, 1700-1721, protested in vain against the Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg assuming the crown as King Frederick I. of Prussia, on Jan. 18th, A.D. 1701. In the Spanish wars of succession he sought to remain neutral, but force of circumstances led him to take up a position adverse to German interests. The new German emperor, Joseph I., A.D. 1705-1711, scorned to seek confirmation from the pope, and Clement consequently had the usual prayer for the emperor omitted in the church services. The relations became yet more strained, owing to a dispute about the _jus primarum precum_, Joseph claiming the right to revenues of vacancies as the patron. In A.D. 1707, the pope had the joy of seeing the German army driven out, not only of northern Italy, but also of Naples by the French. Again they came into direct conflict over Parma and Piacenza, Clement claiming them as a papal, the emperor claiming them as an imperial, fief. No pope since the time of Louis the Bavarian had issued the ban against a German emperor, and Clement ventured not to do so now. Refusing the invitation of Louis XIV. to go to Avignon, he was obliged either unconditionally to grant the German claims or to try the fortune of war. He chose the latter alternative. The miserable papal troops, however, were easily routed, and Clement was obliged, in A.D. 1708, to acknowledge the emperor’s brother, the Grand-duke Charles, as king of Spain, and generally to yield to Joseph’s very moderate demands. Clement was the author of the constitution _Unigenitus_, which introduced the second stage in the history of Jansenism. After the short and peaceful pontificate of =Innocent XIII.= A.D. 1721-1724, came =Benedict XIII.=, A.D. 1724-1730, a pious, well-meaning, narrow-minded man, ruled by a worthless favourite, Cardinal Coscia. He wished to canonize Gregory VII., in the fond hope of thereby securing new favour to his hierarchical views, but this was protested against by almost all the courts. All the greater was the number of monkish saints with which he enriched the heavenly firmament. He promised to all who on their death-bed should say, “Blessed be Jesus Christ,” a 2,000 years’ shortening of purgatorial pains. His successor =Clement XII.=, A.D. 1730-1740, deprived the wretched Coscia of his offices, made him disgorge his robberies, imposed on him a severe fine and ten years’ imprisonment, but afterwards resigned the management of everything to a greedy, grasping nephew. He was the first pope to condemn freemasonry, A.D. 1736. =Benedict XIV.=, A.D. 1740-1758, one of the noblest, most pious, learned, and liberal of the popes, zealous for the faith of his church, and yet patient with those who differed, moderate and wise in his political procedure, mild and just in his government, blameless in life. He had a special dislike of the Jesuits (§ 156, 12), and jestingly he declared, if, as the curialists assert, “all law and all truth” lie concealed in the shrine of his breast, he had not been able to find the key. He wrote largely on theology and canon law, founded seminaries for the training of the clergy, had many French and English works translated into Italian, and was a liberal patron of art. To check popular excesses he tried to reduce the number of festivals, but without success.--Continuation, in Paragraphs § 165, 9, 10, 13.

§ 165.2. =Old and New Orders.=--Among the old orders that of =Clugny= had amassed enormous wealth, and attempts made by its abbots at reformation led only to endless quarrels and divisions. The abbots now squandered the revenues of their cloisters at court, and these institutions were allowed to fall into disorder and decay. When, in A.D. 1790, all cloisters in France were suppressed, the city of Clugny bought the cloister and church for £4,000, and had them both pulled down.--The most important new orders were:

1. =The Mechitarist Congregation=, originated by Mechitar the Armenian, who, at Constantinople in A.D. 1701, founded a society for the religious and intellectual education of his countrymen; but when opposed by the Armenian patriarch, fled to the Morea and joined the United Armenians (§ 72, 2). In A.D. 1712 the pope confirmed the congregation, which, during the war with the Turks was transferred to Venice, and in A.D. 1717 settled on the island St. Lazaro [Lazzaro]. Its members spread Roman Catholic literature in Armenia and Armenian literature in the West. At a later time there was a famous Mechitarist college in Vienna, which did much by writing and publishing for the education of the Catholic youth.

2. =Frères Ignorantins=, or Christian Brothers, founded in A.D. 1725 by De la Salle, canon of Rheims, for the instruction of children, wrought in the spirit of the Jesuits through France, Belgium, and North America. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in A.D. 1724, they took their place there till themselves driven out by the Revolution in A.D. 1790.[493]

3. The =Liguorians or Redemptorists=, founded in A.D. 1732 by Liguori, an advocate, who became Bishop of Naples in A.D. 1762. He died in A.D. 1787 in his ninety-first year, was beatified by Pius VII. in A.D. 1816, and canonized by Gregory XVI. in A.D. 1839, and proclaimed _doctor ecclesiæ_ by Pius IX. in A.D. 1871 as a zealous defender of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility. His devotional writings, which exalt Mary by superstitious tales of miracles, were extremely popular in all Catholic countries. His new order was to minister to the poor. He declared the pope’s will to be God’s, and called for unquestioning obedience. Only after the founder’s death did it spread beyond Italy.--Continuation, § 186, 1.

§ 165.3. =Foreign Missions.=--In the accommodation controversy (§ 156, 12), the Dominicans prevailed in A.D. 1742; but the abolishing of native customs led to a sore persecution in China, from which only a few remnants of the church were saved. The Italian Jesuit Beschi, with linguistic talents of the highest order, sought in India to make use of the native literature for mission purposes and to place alongside of it a Christian literature. Here the Capuchins opposed the Jesuits as successfully as the Dominicans had in China. These strifes and persecutions destroyed the missions.--The Jesuit state of Paraguay (§ 156, 10) was put an end to in A.D. 1750 by a compact between Portugal and Spain. The revolt of the Indians that followed, inspired and directed by the Jesuits, which kept the combined powers at bay for a whole year, was at last quelled, and the Jesuits expelled the country in A.D. 1758.--Continuation § 186, 7.

§ 165.4. =The Counter-Reformation= (§ 153, 2).--Charles XII. of Sweden, in A.D. 1707, forced the Emperor Joseph I. to give the Protestants of =Silesia= the benefits of the Westphalian Peace and to restore their churches. But in =Poland= in A.D. 1717, the Protestants lost the right of building new churches, and in A.D. 1733 were declared disqualified for civil offices and places in the diet. In the Protestant city of Thorn the insolence of the Jesuits roused a rebellion which led to a fearful massacre in A.D. 1724. The Dissenters sought and obtained protection in Russia from A.D. 1767, and the partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in A.D. 1772 secured for them religious toleration. In =Salzburg= the archbishop, Count Firmian, attempted in A.D. 1729 a conversion of the evangelicals by force, who had, with intervals of persecution in the seventeenth century, been tolerated for forty years as quiet and inoffensive citizens. But in A.D. 1731 their elders swore on the host and consecrated salt (2 Chron. xiii. 5) to be true to their faith. This “covenant of salt” was interpreted as rebellion, and in spite of the intervention of the Protestant princes, all the evangelicals, in the severe winter of A.D. 1731, 1732, were driven, with inhuman cruelty, from hearth and home. About 20,000 of them found shelter in Prussian Lithuania; others emigrated to America. The pope praised highly “the noble” archbishop, who otherwise distinguished himself only as a huntsman and a drinker, and by maintaining a mistress in princely splendour.

§ 165.5. In =France= the persecution of the Huguenots continued (§ 153, 4). The “pastors of the desert” performed their duties at the risk of their lives, and though many fell as martyrs, their places were quickly filled by others equally heroic. The first rank belongs to Anton Court, pastor at Nismes from A.D. 1715; he died at Lausanne A.D. 1760, where he had founded a theological seminary. He laboured unweariedly and successfully in gathering and organizing the scattered members of the Reformed church, and in overcoming fanaticism by imparting sound instruction. Paul Rabaut, his successor at Nismes, was from A.D. 1730 to 1785 the faithful and capable leader of the martyr church. The judicial murder of =Jean Calas= at Toulouse in A.D. 1762 presents a hideous example of the fanaticism of Catholic France. One of his sons had hanged himself in a fit of passion. When the report spread that it was the act of his father, in order to prevent the contemplated conversion of his son, the Dominicans canonized the suicide as a martyr to the Catholic faith, roused the mob, and got the Toulouse parliament to put the unhappy father to the torture of the wheel. The other sons were forced to abjure their faith, and the daughters were shut up in cloisters. Two years later Voltaire called attention to the atrocity, and so wrought on public opinion that on the revision of the proceedings by the Parisian parliament, the innocence of the ill-used family was clearly proved. Louis XV. paid them a sum of 30,000 livres; but the fanatical accusers, the false witnesses, and the corrupt judges were left unpunished. This incident improved the position of the Protestants, and in A.D. 1787 Louis XVI. issued the Edict of Versailles, by which not only complete religious freedom but even a legal civil existence was secured them, which was confirmed by a law of Napoleon in A.D. 1802.

§ 165.6. =Conversions.=--Pecuniary interests and prospect of marriage with a rich heiress led to the conversion, in A.D. 1712, of Charles Alexander while in the Austrian service; but when he became Duke of Württemburg [Württemberg] he solemnly undertook to keep things as they were, and to set up no Catholic services in the country save in his own court chapel. Of other converts Winckelmann and Stolberg are the most famous. While Winckelmann, the greatest of art critics, not a religious but an artistic ultramontane, was led in A.D. 1754 through religious indifference into the Romish church, the warm heart of Von Stolberg was induced, mainly by the Catholic Princess Gallitzin (§ 172, 2) and a French emigrant, Madame Montague, to escape the chill of rationalism amid the incense fumes of the Catholic services.--Continuation, § 175, 7.

§ 165.7. =The Second Stage of Jansenism= (§ 157, 5).--=Pasquier Quesnel=, priest of the Oratory at Paris, suspected in 1675 of Gallicanism, because of notes in his edition of the works of Leo the Great, fled into the Netherlands, where he continued his notes on the N.T. Used and recommended by Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, and other French bishops, this “Jansenist” book was hated by the Jesuits and condemned by a brief of Clement XI. in A.D. 1708. The Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV., Le Tellier, selected 101 propositions from the book, and induced the king to urge their express condemnation by the pope. In the =Constitution Unigenitus= of A.D. 1713, Clement pronounced these heretical, and the king required the expulsion from parliament and church of all who refused to adopt this bull, which caused a division of the French church into _Acceptants_ and _Appellants_. As many of the condemned propositions were quoted literally by Quesnel from Augustine and other Fathers, or were in exact agreement with biblical passages, Noailles and his party called for an explanation. Instead of this the pope threatened them with excommunication. In A.D. 1715 the king died, and under the Duke of Orleans’ regency in A.D. 1717, four bishops, with solemn appeal to a general council, renounced the papal constitution as irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. They were soon joined by the Sorbonne and the universities of Rheims and Nantes, Archbishop Noailles, and more than twenty bishops, all the congregations of St. Maur and the Oratorians with large numbers of the secular clergy and the monks, especially of the Lazarists, Dominicans, Cistercians, and Camaldulensians. The pope, after vainly calling them to obey, thundered the ban against the Appellants in A.D. 1718. But the parliament took the matter up, and soon the aspect of affairs was completely changed. The regent’s favourite, Dubois, hoping to obtain a cardinal’s hat, took the side of the Acceptants and carried the duke with him, who got the parliament in 1720 to acknowledge the bull, with express reservation, however, of the Gallican liberties, and began a persecution of the Appellants. Under Louis XV. the persecution became more severe, although in many ways moderated by the influence of his former tutor, Cardinal Fleury. Noailles, who died in 1729, was obliged in 1728 to submit unconditionally, and in A.D. 1730 the parliament formally ratified the bull. Amid daily increasing oppression, many of the more faithful Jansenists, mostly of the orders of St. Maur and the Oratory, fled to the Netherlands, where they gave way more and more to fanaticism. In 1727 a young Jansenist priest, Francis of Paris, died with the original text of the appeal in his hands. His adherents honoured him as a saint, and numerous reports of miracles, which had been wrought at his grave in Medardus churchyard at Paris, made this a daily place of pilgrimage to thousands of fanatics. The excited enthusiasts, who fell into convulsions, and uttered prophecies about the overthrow of church and state, grew in numbers and, with that mesmeric power which fanaticism has been found in all ages to possess powerfully influenced many who had been before careless and profane. One of these was the member of parliament De Montgeron, who, from being a frivolous scoffer, suddenly, in 1732, fell into violent convulsions, and in a three-volumed work, “_La Vérité des Miracles Opérés par l’Intercession de François de Paris_,” 1737, came forward as a zealous apologist of the party. The government, indeed, in 1732 ordered the churchyard to be closed, but portions of earth from the grave of the saint continued to effect convulsions and miracles. Thousands of convulsionists throughout France were thrown into prison, and in 1752, Archbishop Beaumont of Paris, with many other bishops, refused the last sacrament to those who could not prove that they had accepted the constitution. The grave of “St. Francis,” however, was the grave of Jansenism, for fanatical excess contains the seeds of dissolution and every manifestation of it hastens the catastrophe. Yet remnants of the party lingered on in France till the outbreak of the Revolution, of which they had prophesied.

§ 165.8. =The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.=--The first Jesuits appeared in Holland in A.D. 1592. The form of piety fostered by superior and inferior clergy in the Catholic church there, a heritage from the times of the Brethren of the Common Life (§ 112, 9), was directed to the deepening of Christian thought and feeling; and this, as well as the liberal attitude of the Archbishop of Utrecht, awakened the bitter opposition of the Jesuits. At the head of the local clergy was Sasbold Vosmeer, vicar-general of the vacant archiepiscopal see of Utrecht. Most energetically he set himself to thwart the Jesuit machinations, which aimed at abolishing the Utrecht see and putting the church of Holland under the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio at Cologne. On the ground of suspicions of secret conspiracy Vosmeer was banished. But his successors refused to be overruled or set aside by the Jesuits. Meanwhile in France the first stage of the Jansenist controversy had been passed through. The Dutch authorities had heartily welcomed the condemned book of their pious and learned countryman; but when the five propositions were denounced, they agreed in repudiating them, without, however, admitting that they had been taught in the sense objected to by Jansen. The Jesuits, therefore, charged them with the Jansenist heresy, and issued in A.D. 1697 an anonymous pamphlet full of lying insinuations about the origin and progress of Jansenism in Holland. Its beginning was traced back to a visit of Arnauld to Holland in A.D. 1681, and its effects were seen in the circulation of prayer-books, tracts, and sermons, urging diligent reading of Scripture, in the depreciation of the worship of Mary, of indulgences, of images of saints and relics, rosaries and scapularies (§ 186, 2), processions and fraternities, in the rigoristic strictness of the confessional, the use of the common language of the country in baptism, marriage, and extreme unction, etc. The archbishop of that time, Peter Codde, in order to isolate him, was decoyed to Rome, and there flattered with hypocritical pretensions of goodwill, while behind his back his deposition was carried out, and an apostolic vicar nominated for Utrecht in the person of his deadly foe Theodore de Cock. But the chapter refused him obedience, and the States of Holland forbad him to exercise any official function, and under threat of banishment of all Jesuits demanded the immediate return of the archbishop. Codde was now sent down with the papal blessing, but a formal decree of deposition followed him. Meanwhile the government pronounced on his rival De Cock, who avoided a trial for high treason by flight, a sentence of perpetual exile. But Codde, though persistently recognised by his chapter as the rightful archbishop, withheld on conscientious grounds from discharging official duties down to his death in A.D. 1710. Amid these disputes the Utrecht see remained vacant for thirteen years. The flock were without a chief shepherd, the inferior clergy without direction and support, the people were wrought upon by Jesuit emissaries, and the vacant pastorates were filled by the nuncio of Cologne. Thus it came about that of the 300,000 Catholics remaining after the Reformation, only a few thousands continued faithful to the national party, while the rest became bitter and extreme ultramontanes, as the Catholic church of Holland still is. Finally, in A.D. 1723, the Utrecht chapter took courage and chose a new archbishop in the person of Cornelius Steenowen. Receiving no answer to their request for papal confirmation, the chapter, after waiting a year and a half, had him and also his three successors consecrated by a French missionary bishop, Varlet, who had been driven away by the Jesuits. But in order to prevent the threatened loss of legitimate consecration for future bishops after Varlet’s death in A.D. 1742, a bishop elected at Utrecht was in that same year ordained to the chapter of Haarlem, and in A.D. 1758 the newly founded bishopric of Deventer was so supplied. All these, like all subsequent elections, were duly reported to Rome, and a strictly Catholic confession from electors and elected sent up; but each time, instead of confirmation, a frightful ban was thundered forth. This, however, did not deter the Dutch government from formally recognising the elections.--Meanwhile the second and last act of the Jansenist tragedy had been played in France. Many of the persecuted Appellants sought refuge in Holland, and the welcome accorded them seemed to justify the long cherished suspicion of Jansenism against the people of Utrecht. They repelled these charges, however, by condemning the five propositions and the heresies of Quesnel’s book; but they expressly refused the bull of Alexander VII. and its doctrine of papal infallibility. This put a stop to all attempts at reconciliation. The church of Utrecht meanwhile prospered. At a council held at Utrecht in A.D. 1765 it styled itself “The Old Roman Catholic Church of the Netherlands,” acknowledged the pope, although under his anathema, as the visible head of the Christian church, accepted the Tridentine decrees as their creed, and sent this with all the acts of council to Rome as proof of their orthodoxy. The Jesuits did all in their power to overturn the formidable impression which this at first made there; and they were successful. Clement XIII. declared the council null, and those who took part in it hardened sons of Belial. But their church at this day contains, under one archbishop and two bishops, twenty-six congregations, numbering 6,000 souls.[494]--Continuation, § 200, 3.

§ 165.9. =Suppression of the Order of Jesuits, A.D. 1773.=--The Jesuits had striven with growing eagerness and success after worldly power, and instead of absolute devotion to the interests of the papacy, their chief aim was now the erection of an independent political and hierarchical dominion. Their love of rule had sustained its first check in the overthrow of the Jesuit state of Paraguay; but they had secured a great part of the world’s trade (§ 156, 13), and strove successfully to control European politics. The Jansenist controversy, however, had called forth against them much popular odium; Pascal had made them ridiculous to all men of culture, the other monkish orders were hostile to them, their success in trade roused the jealousy of other traders, and their interference in politics made enemies on every hand. The Portuguese government took the first decided step. A revolt in Paraguay and an attempt on the king’s life were attributed to them, and the minister Pombal, whose reforms they had opposed, had them banished from Portugal in A.D. 1759, and their goods confiscated. =Clement XIII.=, A.D. 1758-1769, chosen by the Jesuits and under their influence, protected them by a bull; but Portugal refused to let the bull be proclaimed, led the papal nuncio over the frontier, broke off all relations with Rome, and sent whole shiploads of Jesuits to the pope. France followed Portugal’s example when the general Ricci had answered the king’s demand for a reform of his orders: _Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_. For the enormous financial failure of the Jesuit La Valette, the whole order was made responsible, and at last, in A.D. 1764, banished from France as dangerous to the state. Spain, Naples, and Parma, too, soon seized all the Jesuits and transported them beyond the frontiers. The new papal election on the death of Clement XIII. was a life and death question with the Jesuits, but courtly influences and fears of a schism prevailed. The pious and liberal Minorite Ganganelli mounted the papal throne as =Clement XIV.=, A.D. 1769-1774. He began with sweeping administrative reforms, forbad the reading of the bull _In cœna Domini_ (§ 117, 3), and, pressed by the Bourbon court, issued in A.D. 1773 the bull _Dominus ac Redemtor Noster_ suppressing the Jesuit order. The order numbered 22,600 members and the pope felt, in granting the bull, that he endangered his own life. Next year he died, not without suspicion of poisoning. All the Catholic courts, even Austria, put the decree in force. But the heretic Frederick II. tolerated the order for a long time in Silesia, and Catherine II. and Paul I. in their Polish provinces.--=Pius VI.=, A.D. 1775-1799, in many respects the antithesis of his predecessor, was the secret friend of the exiled and imprisoned ex-Jesuits. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, a proposal was made at Rome, in A.D. 1792, for the formal restoration of the order, as a means of saving the seriously imperilled church, but it did not find sufficient encouragement.