CHAPTER VII FULFILMENT OF THE FOREGOING ANTICIPATIONS OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETERS IN THE FALL OF THE PAPAL POWER IN THE YEARS 1848 AND 1866-1870

The Pontificate of Pius IX, the last Pope exercising temporal sovereignty, witnessed a double overthrow of papal power. The first of these took place in 1848. Marvellous were the events of the period! In a single fortnight in that year “a conflagration broke out which blazed from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Vistula.” France, Germany, Austria, and Italy were convulsed by the earthquake shocks of Revolution. Thrones fell like trees before a tornado. Lamartine and Louis Blanc, who were eye-witnesses and actors in the Revolution have each written its history. The literature of the subject is voluminous. Granier de Cassagnac, Reynault, Lord Normanby, Caussidiere, Emile Thomas, Proudhon, Grey, Lespez, Pre-vost Paradol, Guizot, Jules Simon, and other writers of various nationalities have told its tale. In his “Century of Continental History,” Rose has given a synopsis and diagrammatical summary of the revolutionary events of 1848. In July, 1847, the profound tranquillity of the western world was proclaimed from the thrones of England and France. On the 23d of February, 1848, the Revolution broke out at Paris. Barricades were thrown up, the Tuileries ransacked, the prisons opened, and frightful disorders committed. Louis Philippe abdicated on February 24th. A Republic was proclaimed from the steps of the Hotel de Ville on February 26th. The perpetual banishment of Louis Philippe and his family was decreed on the 26th of May. The election of Louis Napoleon to the national assembly followed on the 18th of June. On the 25th of June Paris was in a state of siege, in which 16,000 people were killed or wounded. On the 2Oth of December Louis Napoleon was proclaimed President of the French Republic. On March 15th, a little more than a fortnight after the fall of Louis Philippe a constitution was proclaimed at Rome. The Pope fled to Gaeta, on the 24th of November, where an asylum had been provided for him by the King of Naples. On the 8th of February, 1849, the Pope was formally deposed from his temporal authority, and a Republic proclaimed. The revolutionary contagion penetrated with amazing rapidity into every stronghold of European despotism. “Metternich fled before it, leaving the once powerful empire whose policy he had so long guided, a prey to terrible calamities. It descended the Rhine along its entire course from the mountains of the Black Forest, stirring its dukedoms and electorates into tumult and insurrection. It struck eastward into the very heart of Germany, still producing wherever it came the same commotions, popular assemblies, demands, threats, insurrections, skirmishings—all hostile to the royal prerogative. The great kingdom of Prussia felt its shock, and was well-nigh prostrated. The force of the movement was spent only when it had reached the Russian frontier. Providence had said to it ‘ tlitherto but no further’; and now accordingly its progress was arrested. It did not cross the Vistula, for Russia forms no part of the Roman earth, and Providence has reserved this powerful kingdom, it would appear, for other purposes. Such was the extent of the movement. On almost the same day the various nations inhabiting from the hills of Sicily to the shores of the Baltic met to discuss the same grievances, and urge the same demands. They did not act by concert; nothing had been arranged beforehand; none were more astonished at what was going on than the actors themselves in these scenes. One mighty influence had moved the minds of a hundred nations, as the mind of one man; and all obeyed a power which every one felt to be irresistible. Then suddenly were all the lights of the political heaven smitten, and as it seemed at the time, extinguished.””All over Papal Europe royalty was smitten—suddenly, terribly smitten. Laws were abolished; armies were forced to flee; dynasties were sent into exile; the supreme Power was in the dust; and the mob was the Monarch.”1 The flight of the Pope from Rome was followed by anarchy, and the dissolution of civil society in Italy. The Roman Republic which had been proclaimed proved short-lived. In 1849 it was forcibly suppressed by the French Republic, and the Pope restored to temporal dominion by French soldiers. “The sight of the soldiers of republican France in the streets of Rome compelling the Romans to submit to a very much worse government than that which the French themselves had rejected at the cost of revolution, and doing so professedly for the sake of French religion, was a singularly loathsome one, and grievously revolting and demoralizing to the conscience of Europe.”2

Restored to his throne by French bayonets, against the will of the Italians, the Pope was maintained in his unnatural position by a French army of occupation for twenty-one years longer, till the fatal year 1870, in which the French Empire of Louis Napoleon, and the papacy suddenly fell together. Isolated during this period as a temporal ruler, Pius IX turned his attention to becoming a great Pope, and promulgated the new dogmas of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and the infallibility of the tiara crowned priest. The latter was the climax of papal self-exaltation.

EVENTS OF 1866-70

The overthrow of Papal 1 Austria by Protestant Prussia took place in 1866. Prussia declared war on the i8th of June, and was victorious in a series of battles. The total defeat of the Austrians at Sadowa, followed on the 3rd of July. Italy declared war against Austria on the 18th of June. The Austrians retired from Mantua, Verona, and Venice on October 9-17. The invitation of the Pope to all Catholic bishops to celebrate the eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul was issued on the 8th of December. We pause before this fact. Such was the period reached in 1866-7, the eighteenth centenary of Paul’s martyrdom at Rome. Such was the appointed time of papal downfall. Five hundred and ninety-nine bishops, and thousands of priests were present at the allocution delivered by the Pope on the 26th of June, 1867. Twenty-five martyrs were canonized by the Pope on June 29th. Then followed on September 13th the publication of the Pope’s encyclical letter summoning the CEcumenical council at Rome for the 8th of December, 1869. Immediately after, on September i8th a general insurrection broke out in Spain. Ministers resigned, the queen fled, and was deposed. The Jesuits were suppressed, and freedom of religious worship was decreed.

The twenty-first general council was opened at Romejon the 8th of December, 1869. At this great CEcumenical council were present six archbishop princes, forty-nine k cardinals, eleven patriarchs, six hundred and eighty archbishops and bishops, twenty- eight abbots, twenty-nine generals of orders; eight hundred and three in all. Four public sessions were held and between ninety and one hundred congregations. New canons were issued on the 24th of April, 1870. The Infallibility of the Pope, as head of the Church, affirmed by 547 placets against two non-placets, was decreed and promulgated the i8th of July, 1870.

The dogma was read by candle-light, amid the rolling thunders of a storm which burst over Rome. “The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church Irreformable. But if any one presume to contradict this our definition, let him be Anathema.””The reader ceased. The storm alone was speaking. For a moment no human tone disturbed the air. But memory was repeating two terrific words, and imagination kept saying that the winds were whispering, ‘Irreformable! Anathema! ‘ ”

His great and memorable Vatican decree, the ne plus ultra of Popery, involved no less than “The legal extinction of Right”, and the enthronement of Will in its place, throughout the churches of one half of Christendom.”It subjected the Church to “more than Asian despotism.””The effect of it, described with literal rigour, was in the last resort to place the entire Christian religion in the breast of the Pope, and to suspend it on his will.””Whatsoever was formerly ascribed either to the Pope, or the Council, or to the entire governing body of the Church, or to: the Church general and diffused, the final sense of the great Christian community, aided by authority, tested by discussion, mellowed and ripened by time—all—no more than all, and no less than all—of what God gave, for guidance, through the power of truth, by the Christian revelation, to the whole redeemed family, the baptized flock of the Saviour of the world; all this is now locked in the breast of one man, opened and distributed at his will, and liable to assume whatever form—whether under the name of identity, or other name, it matters not—he may think fit to give it.”1

“Idle is it to tell us that the Pope is bound ‘ by the moral and divine law, by the Commandments of God, by the rules of the Gospel’; and if more verbiage and refutation could be piled up, as Ossa was set upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa, to cover the poverty and irrelevancy of the idea, it would not mend the matter. For of these, one and all, the Pope himself, by himself, is the judge without appeal. If he consults, it is by his will; if he does not consult, no man can call him to account. No man, or assemblage of men, is one whit the less bound to hear and to obey. He is the judge of the moral and divine law, of the Gospel, and of the Commandments; the supreme and only final judge; and he is the judge, with no legislature to correct his errors, with no authoritative rules to guide his pro- ceedings; with no power on earth to question the force, or intercept the effect of his decisions.”

FALL OF THE PAPAL POWER, 1870

Speedily was the blasphemy of this infallibility decree rebuked by the Most High! The same day that it was published there was dispatched from Paris to Berlin the declaration of war which sealed the fate of the second French Empire, and with it that of the temporal power of the papacy. On July 18th, when the Pope read, amid the thunder and lightning of an awful storm the decree which marked the climax of papal pretension, the announcement of his own infallibility, Napoleon III dispatched his challenge to Germany. We know what followed; how Protestant Prussia humbled herself before God by a day of special prayer on the ayth, and besought His blessing on her quickly gathering armies; how the wicked, and withered, and blood- stained emperor of Catholic France, accompanied by his poor unfortunate boy, assumed the next day the command of the wretchedly organized French troops at Metz; how the Germans defeated the French, both at Wissemburg and at Geisburg on August 4th, and on the 6th at Woerth and Forbach; how they bombarded Strasburg and defeated Bazaine, and drove him back into Metz, gained another great victory at Gravelotte, and forced the emperor and the entire army into Sedan, where on September ad, they had to surrender, and were all taken prisoners; how 300,000 men marched on Paris, and establishing their headquarters at Versailles, besieged it in September; how other German armies overran all France ; how Bazaine had to surrender Metz and 173,000 men in October; and how before the end of the year France lay bleeding and prostrate at the feet of her Protestant foes, without an army in the field, or an ally in Europe. And we know how also, long before this crisis arrived in France —Rome having been evacuated by the French troopswhich were sorely needed at home — the Pontifical government fell, to rise no more. The king of Italy forewarned the Pope of his intention to occupy Rome on September 8th, and did so in the following month. Rome decided, by an overwhelming vote, for union with Italy, and was with its surrounding territories incorporated by Royal decree with the Italian kingdom in October, 1870.

This was the full and final fall of the temporal power of the papacy. It was on the day of the last meeting of the Council, which had deified a man by declaring him possessed of the Divine attribute of infallibility, that Victor Immanuel’s announcement reached Rome; it was on the day that the German armies closed round Paris that the Italian general Cadorna invested Rome. The struggle lasted but a few hours; the Pope understood that further resistance would be mere wanton waste of life, for his Zouaves numbered but 8,000, and 50,000 Italians were arrayed against him. As soon as a breach had been made in the walls of Rome, the word to surrender was given.

“There, yea, there on the dome of proud St. Peter’s, being raised and beginning to flutter, was the white flag, and there unwinding itself did it float out upon the September breeze, and waved in the forenoon sun,—waved over Pontiff and Cardinal, over the Circus of Nero and the Inquisition of the P,opes. Was it real? Eyes would be wiped to see if they did not deceive. Eyes, ay, the eyes of soldiers, would be wiped from thick, hot tears. Could it be— could it ever be? Come at last! The hour for which ages had impatiently waited, for which myriads of Italians had died. Italy one! her arms outstretched from Etna and from Monte Rosa, clasping at last every one of her children, and even availing by their returning strength to lift up her poor old Rome from under the load of the priest and the stranger.

“He who two brief months before had, amid deep darkness at noonday, read out, by artificial light, the decree of his own unlimited power and irreformable law, lay down that night amid a rude and intrusive glare streaming from across the Tiber into the* multitudinous windows of the Vatican. It came from the lights of Rome all ablaze with illuminations for the fall of the temporal power.”

Can any one suppose that these things happen by accident? Consider what a combination is here! Far back, at the beginning of the dark ages, a wicked usurper and murderer, thinking perhaps to atone for his crimes, presumes to bestow a prerogative which pertains to Christ alone —the headship of all the Christian churches east and west—on the bishop of the ancient seat of the Empire, Rome; and the ambitious and worldly-minded bishop dares to accept the gift, and seat himself in the temple of God, as if he were God. Divine prophecy had foretold, more than a thousand years before, the uprising of this power at this period, and had foretold also that it should endure in the Roman world for 1,260 years. We pass on through the centuries, and note how this same power grows greater and greater, till it wields an authority mightier than that of the Caesars at the pinnacle of their glory, for it rules over two hundred millions of mankind, and, according to its own account, rules not in earth only, but in heaven and in hell. We note how the saints are given into its hand, and perish by millions at its instigation. We note how all the monarchs of the Roman world give it their voluntary submission for centuries, and how at last they rebel against it, and seek to overthrow it; how they succeed .n doing this time after time, though not fully or finally, till, when eleven centuries have been left behind us we see this power declining and failing. Twelve pass away; it is weaker still! Will it last out to a thirteenth? No; its duration is fixed at 1,260 years. We scan its condition more closely. Fall succeeds fall; yet it rises again, or rather is helped up again. The last four years are come; it still stands trembling. The fateful year is ushered in. Its first six months pass, and there is no sign of a crash; midsummer comes, and, lo ! the storm breaks, and before winter appears all is over—as a reigning dynasty in Europe it has fallen to rise no more! Is not this the finger of God?

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