Part 29

The restoration of the Jesuit order led, during the long pontificate of Pius IX., to the revival and hitherto unapproached prosperity of ultramontanism, especially in France, whose bishops cast the Gallican Liberties overboard (§§ 156, 3; 203, 1), and in Germany, where with strange infatuation even Protestant princes gave it all manner of encouragement. Even the lower clergy were trained from their youth in hierarchical ideas, and under the despotic rule of their bishops, and a reign of terror carried on by spies and secret courts, were constrained to continue the profession of the strictest absolutism.

§ 188.1. =The Ultramontane Propaganda.=--In =France= ultramontanism revived with the restoration. Its first and ablest prophet was Count =de Maistre=, A.D. 1754-1821, long Sardinian ambassador at St. Petersburg. He wrote against the modern views of the relations of church and state, supporting the infallibility, absolutism, and inviolability of the pope. He was supported by Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert. Only Bonald maintained this attitude. Between him and Chateaubriand a dispute arose over the freedom of the press; Lamennais and Lacordaire began to blend political radicalism with their ultramontanism; Lamartine involved himself in the February revolution of 1848 as the apostle of humanity; and Montalembert took up a half-way position. In 1840 Louis =Veuillot= started the _Univers Religieux_ in place of the _Avenir_, in which, till his death in 1883, he vindicated the extremest ultramontanism.--In =Germany= ultramontane views were disseminated by romancing historians and poets mostly converts from Protestantism. =Görres=, professor of history in Munich, represented the Reformation as a second fall, and set forth the legends of ascetics in his “History of Mysticism” as sound history. The German bishops set themselves to train the clergy in hierarchical views, and by a rule of terror prevented any departure from that theory. The ultramontanising of the masses was carried on by missions, and by the establishment of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. In the beginning of A.D. 1860 there were only thirteen ultramontane journals with very few subscribers, while in January, 1875, there were three hundred. The most important was _Germania_, founded at Berlin in 1871.--The _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome was always revised before publication by Pius IX., and under Leo XIII. a similar position is held by the _Moniteur de Rome_, while the _Osservatore Romano_ and the _Voce della verità_ have also an official character.

§ 188.2. =Miracles.=--Prince =Hohenlohe= went through many parts of Germany, Austria, and Hungary, performing miraculous cures; but his day of favour soon passed, and he settled down as a writer of ascetical works.--Pilgrimages to wonder-working shrines were encouraged by reports of cures wrought on the grand-niece of the Bishop of Cologne (§ 193, 1), cured of knee-joint disease before the holy coat of Treves (§ 187, 6). Subjected to examination, the pretended seamless coat was found to be a bit of the gray woollen wrapping of a costly silk Byzantine garment 1½ feet broad and 1 foot long.

§ 188.3. =Stigmatizations.=--In many cases these marks were found to have been fraudulently made, but in other cases it was questionable whether we had not here a pathological problem, or whether hysteria created a desire to deceive or pre-disposed the subject to being duped under clerical influence. =Anna Cath. Emmerich=, a nun of Dülmen in Westphalia, in 1812, professed to have on her body bloody wound-marks of the Saviour. For five years down to her death in 1824, the poet Brentano sat at her feet, venerating her as a saint and listening to her ecstatic revelations on the death and sufferings of the Redeemer and his mother. Overberg, Sailer, and Von Stolberg were also satisfied of the genuineness of her revelations and of the miraculous marking of her body. The physician Von Drussel examined the wound-prints and certified them as miraculous; but Bodde, professor of chemistry at Münster, pronounced the blood marks spots produced by dragon’s-blood. Competent physicians declared her a hysterical woman incapable of distinguishing between dream and reality, truth and lies, honesty and deceit. Others famous in the same line were Maria von Wörl, Dominica Lazzari, and =Crescentia Stinklutsch=; also Dorothea Visser of Holland and Juliana Weiskircher from near Vienna.

§ 188.4. Of a very doubtful kind were the miraculous marks on =Louise Lateau=, daughter of a Belgian miner. On 24th April, 1868, it is said she was marked with the print of the Saviour’s wounds on hands, feet, side, brow, and shoulders. In July, A.D. 1868, she fell into an ecstasy, from which she could be awakened only by her bishop or one authorized by him. Trustworthy physicians, after a careful medical examination, reported that she laboured under a disease which they proposed to call “stigmatic neuropathy.” Chemical analysis proved the presence of food which had been regularly taken, probably in a somnambulistic trance. In the summer of 1875 her sister for a time put an end to the affair by refusing the clergy entrance into the house, and she was then obliged to eat, drink, and sleep like other Christians, so that the Friday bloody marks disappeared. But now, say ultramontane journals, Louise became dangerously ill, and clergy were called in to her help, and the marks were again visible. Her patron Bishop Dumont of Tournay being deposed by the pope in 1879, she took part against his successor, and was threatened with excommunication (§ 200, 7). She was now deserted by the ultramontanes and Belgian clergy, and treated as a poor, weak-minded invalid. She died neglected and in obscurity in A.D. 1883.

§ 188.5. Of pseudo-stigmatizations there has been no lack even in the most recent times. In 1845 =Caroline Beller=, a girl of fifteen years, in Westphalia, was examined by a skilful physician. On Thursday he laid a linen cloth over the wound-prints, and sure enough on Friday it was marked with blood stains; but also strips of paper laid under, without her knowledge, were pricked with needles. The delinquent now confessed her deceit, which she had been tempted to perpetrate from reading the works of Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Emmerich. Theresa Städele in 1849, Rosa Tamisier in 1851, and Angela Hupe in 1863, were convicted of fraudulently pretending to have stigmata. The latter was proved to have feigned deafness and lameness for a whole year, to have diligently read the writings of Emmerich in 1861, to have shown the physician fresh bleeding wounds on hands, feet, and side, and to have affirmed that she had neither eaten nor drunk for a year. Four sisters of mercy were sent to attend her, and they soon discovered the fraud. In 1876 the father confessor of Ernestine Hauser was prosecuted for damages, having injured the girl’s health by the severe treatment to which she was subjected in order to induce ecstasy and obtain an opportunity for impressing the stigmata. =Sabina Schäfer= of Baden, in her eighteenth year, had for two years borne the reputation of a wonder-working saint, who every Friday showed the five wound prints, and in ecstasy told who were in hell and who in purgatory. She professed to live without food, though often she betook herself to the kitchen to pray alone, and even carried food with her to give to her guardian angel to carry to the distant poor. When under surveillance in 1880 she sought to bribe her guardian to bring her meat and drink, fragments of food were found among her clothes, and also a flask with blood and an instrument for puncturing the skin. She confessed her guilt, and was sentenced by the criminal court of Baden to ten weeks’ imprisonment. The ultramontane _Pfälzer Bote_ complained that so-called liberals should ruthlessly encroach on the rights of the church and the family.

§ 188.6. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in France.=--The most celebrated of these manifestations occurred in 1858 at =Lourdes=, where in a grotto the Virgin repeatedly appeared to a peasant girl of fourteen years, almost imbecile, named Bernadette Soubirous, saying “_Je suis l’Immaculée Conception_,” and urging the erection of a chapel on that spot. A miracle-working well sprang up there. Since 1872 the pilgrimages under sanction of the hierarchy have been on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and the cures in number and significance far excelling anything heard of before.--At the village of =La Salette= in the department of Isère, in 1846 two poor children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of eleven years, saw a fair white-dressed lady sitting on a stone and shedding tears, and, lo, from the spot where her foot rested sprang up a well, at which innumerable cures have been wrought. The epidemic of visions of the Virgin reached a climax in Alsace Lorraine in 1872. In a wood near the village of =Gereuth= crowds of women and children gathered, professing to see visions of the mother of God; but when the police appeared to protect the forest, the manifestation craze spread over the whole land, and at thirty-five stations almost daily visions were enjoyed. The epidemic reached its crisis in Mary’s month, May, 1874, and continued with intervals down to the end of the year. In some cases deceit was proved; but generally it seemed to be the result of a diseased imagination and self-deception fostered by speculative purveyors and the ultramontane press and clergy.

§ 188.7. =Manifestations of the Mother of God in Germany.=--In the summer of 1876 three girls of eight years old in the village of =Marpingen=, in the department of Treves, saw by a well a white-robed lady, with the halo over her head and with a child in her arms, who made herself known as the immaculate Virgin, and called for the erection of a chapel. A voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son, etc. There were also processions and choirs of angels, etc. The devil, too, appeared and ordered them to fall down and worship him. Thousands crowded from far and near, and the water of the fountain wrought miraculous cures. The surrounding clergy made a profitable business of sending the water to America, and the _Germania_ of Berlin unweariedly sounded forth its praises. Before the court of justice the children confessed the fraud, and were sentenced to the house of correction; and though on technical grounds this judgment was set aside, the supreme court of appeal in 1879 pronounced the whole thing a scandalous and disgraceful swindle.--Weichsel, priest of =Dittrichswald= in Ermland, who gained great reputation as an exorcist, made a pilgrimage to Marpingen in the summer of 1877, and on his return gave such an account of what he had seen to his communicants’ class that first one and then another saw the mother of God at a maple tree, which also became a favourite resort for pilgrims.

§ 188.8. =Canonizations.=--When in 1825 Leo XII. canonized a Spanish monk Julianus, who among other miracles had made roasted birds fly away off the spit, the Roman wits remarked that they would prefer a saint who would put birds on the spit for them. St. Liguori was canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839. Pius IX. canonized fifty-two and beatified twenty-six of the martyrs of Japan. The Franciscans had sought from Urban VIII. in 1627 canonization for six missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts martyred in 1596 (§ 150, 2), but were refused because they would not pay 52,000 Roman thalers for the privilege. Pius IX. granted this, and included three Jesuit missionaries. At Pentecost, 1862, the celebration took place, amid acclamations, firing of cannons, and ringing of bells. In 1868 the infamous president of the heretic tribunal Arbúes [Arbires] (§ 117, 2) received the distinction. The number of _doctores ecclesiæ_ was increased by Pius IX. by the addition of Hilary of Poitiers in 1851, Liguori in 1870, and Francis de Sales in 1877. And Leo XIII. canonized four new saints, the most distinguished of whom was the French mendicant, Bened. Jos. Labre, who after having been dismissed by Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists as unteachable, made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he stayed fifteen years in abject poverty, and died in 1783 in his thirty-sixth year.

§ 188.9. =Discoveries of Relics.=--The Roman catacombs continued still to supply the demand for relics of the saints for newly erected altars. Toward the end of A.D. 1870 the Archbishop of St. Iago de Compostella (§ 88, 4) made excavations in the crypt of his cathedral, in consequence of an old tradition that the bones of the Apostle James the Elder, the supposed founder of the church, had been deposited there, and he succeeded in discovering a stone coffin with remains of a skeleton. The report of this made to Pius IX. gave occasion to the appointment of a commission of seven cardinals, who, after years of minute examination of all confirmatory historical, archæological, anatomical, and local questions, submitted their report to Leo XIII., whereupon, in November, 1884, he issued an “Apostolic Brief,” by which he (without publishing the report) declared the unmistakable genuineness of the discovered bones as _ex constanti et pervulgato apud omnes sermone jam ab Apostolorum ætate memoriæ prodita_, pronounced the relics generally _perennes fontes_, from which the _dona cælestia_ flow forth like brooks among the Christian nations, and calls attention to the fact that it is just in this century, in which the power of darkness has risen up in conflict against the Lord and his Christ, these and also many other relics “_divinitus_” have been discovered, as _e.g._ the bones of St. Francis, of St. Clara, of Bishop Ambrose, of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of the Apostles Philip and James the Less, the genuineness of which had been avouched by his predecessors Pius VII. and Pius IX.

§ 188.10. =The blood of St. Januarius=, a martyr of the age of Diocletian, liquefies thrice a year for eight days, and on occasion of earthquakes and such-like calamities in Naples, the blood is brought in two vials by a matron near to the head of the saint; if it liquefies the sign is favourable to the Neapolitans, if it remains thick unfavourable; but in either case it forms a powerful means of agitation in the hands of the clergy. Unbelievers venture to suggest that this _precioso sangue del taumaturgo S. Gennaro_ is not blood, but a mixture that becomes liquid by the warmth of the hand and the heat of the air in the crowded room, some sort of cetaceous product coloured red.

§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians, 10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part in the =Leaping Procession at Echternach= in Luxemburg, which is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting” sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits, common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times (§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).

§ 188.12. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.=--Even after the suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart (§ 156, 6) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this exercise, and the _revanche_ movement of A.D. 1870 used this as one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “_Dieu, de la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur_,” became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a beautiful church _du Sacré-Cœur_ has been erected on Montmartre in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by divine revelation” two hundred years before.

§ 188.13. =Ultramontane Amulets.=--The Carmelites adopted a brown, the Trinitarians a white, the Theatines a blue, the Servites a black, and the Lazarites a red, scapular, assured by divine visions that the wearing of them was a means of salvation. A tract, entitled “_Gnaden und Ablässe des fünffachen Skapuliers_,” published by episcopal authority at Münster in 1872, declared that any layman who wore the five scapulars would participate in all the graces and indulgences belonging to them severally. The most useful of all was the Carmelite scapular, impenetrable by bullets, impervious to daggers, rendering falls harmless, stilling stormy seas, quenching fires, healing the possessed, the sick, the wounded, etc.--The Benedictines had no scapulars, but they had Benedict-medals, from which they drew a rich revenue. This amulet first made its appearance in the Bavarian Abbey of Metten. The tract, entitled, “_St. Benediktusbüchlein oder die Medaille d. h. Benediktus_,” published at Münster in 1876, tells how it cures sicknesses, relieves toothache, stops bleeding at the nose, heals burns, overcomes the craving for drink, protects from attacks of evil spirits, restrains skittish horses, cures sick cattle, clears vineyards of blight, secures the conversion of heretics and godless persons, etc.--In A.D. 1878 there appeared at Mainz, with approval of the bishop, a book in its third edition, entitled, “_Der Seraphische Gürtel und dessen wunderbare Reichtümer nach d. Franz. d. päpstl. Hausprälaten Abbé v. Segur_,” according to which Sixtus V. in 1585 founded the Archbrotherhood of the Girdle of St. Francis. It also affirms that whoever wears this girdle day and night and repeats the six enjoined paternosters, participates in all the indulgences of the holy land and of all the basilicas and sanctuaries of Rome and Assisi, and is entitled to liberate 1,000 souls a day from purgatory.--Great miracles of healing and preservation from all injuries to body and soul, property and goods, are attributed by the Jesuits to the “_holy water of St. Ignatius_” (§ 149, 11), the sale of which in Belgium, France, and Switzerland has proved to them a lucrative business. But the mother of God has herself favoured them with a still more powerful miracle-working water in the fountains of Lourdes and Marpingen.

§ 188.14. We give in conclusion a specimen of =Ultramontane pulpit eloquence=. A Bavarian priest, Kinzelmann, said in a sermon in 1872: “We priests stand as far above the emperor, kings, and princes as the heaven is above the earth.... Angels and archangels stand beneath us, for we can in God’s stead forgive sins. We occupy a position superior to that of the mother of God, who only once bare Christ, whereas we create and beget him every day. Yea, in a sense, we stand above God, who must always and everywhere serve us, and at the consecration must descend from heaven upon the mass,” etc.--An apotheosis of the priesthood worthy of the Middle Ages.

§ 189. THE VATICAN COUNCIL.[548]

Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867, given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date, the _Civiltà Cattolica_ of Rome made distinct statements to the effect that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming of the syllabus (§ 185, 2), the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal absolutism in the spirit of the bull _Unam sanctam_ of Boniface VIII. (§ 110, 1), and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The _Civiltà_ had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in him.” When the council opened on the day of the immaculate conception, December 8th, 1869, all conceivable devices of skilful diplomacy were used by the Jesuit Camarilla, and friendly cajoling and violent threatening on the part of the pope, in order to silence or win over, and, in case this could not be done, to stifle and suppress the opposition which even already was not inconsiderable in point of numbers, but far more important in point of moral, theological, and hierarchical influence. The result aimed at was secured. Of the 150 original opponents only fifty dared maintain their opposition to the end, and even they cowardly shrank from a decisive conflict, and wrote from their respective dioceses, as their Catholic faith obliged them to do, notifying their most complete acquiescence.