CHAPTER XIII

RESTORATION AND REACTION

THE Pope’s journey to Rome was a triumphal progress; the people fell on their knees before him, and the princes did homage to him. In his native town of Cesena he was met by Murat, who had deserted Napoleon and joined the Allied Powers. Murat’s troops had occupied Rome and the Papal States, and he himself came to Cesena, not only to pay homage to the Pope, but also to be recognised ;as King of Naples. When Pius VII told him that the rights of the Papacy over Naples must first be acknowledged, the Neapolitan ministers advised their King to promise the white courser; but Murat rejected the advice as derogatory to his honor. Before the Porta del Popolo, which Pius VII reached on 24th May, Carlos IV of Spain greeted the returning Pope; and the crowd unharnessed the horses of his carriage, in which the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Mattei, and Cardinal Pacca, were seated, and thirty young men of the best Roman families dragged it to St Peter’s. Amidst the enthusiastic shouts of the crowd Pius VII mounted the steps of the church, and in the church Charles Emanuel IV of Sardinia kissed hisfoot. At the Quirinal Queen Marie Louise of Etruria awaited his coming, Pius VII was the one who had suffered most at the hands of Napoleon; therefore he was made a hero of by the sovereigns, who were rejoicing to be able to shake off the French yoke. But there was also a deeper cause for the homage paid to the successor of St Peter; it was paid not to the martyr only but also to the Head of the Church. The sovereigns of Europe were glad at th quelling of the Revolution, and since the Revolution was in its inner nature anti-religious, the Restoration bore from the beginning a religious and ecclesiastical impress, and the Pope was extolled as the representative of religious interests, even by Protestants. The bloody drama enacted in France had taught the sovereigns how easily thrones could follow altars to their ruin, and the throne upon the altar became the watchword of the Restoration. Instead of the revolutionary triad, “liberty, equality, fraternity”, the reaction set up foi, roi, loi. To a certain extent Napoleon himself helped to inaugurate the Restoration; his coronation and the institution of the new French nobility was the first expression of that return towards the Middle Ages and what belonged to them, which was so marked in the period following 1814.

But the attempt to reintroduce the faith of the Middle Ages was not more sincere in the case of many sovereigns than Napoleon’s solicitude for the Church. It was outwardly politics, and inwardly a matter of police, that made many hark back to the altars. They wished to infuse into the people a spirit of bondage again to fear; therefore the new period became the blossoming season of Ultramontanism. Gallicanism, Febronianism, and all freer ovements within he Roman Church were stopped. The portion of the Middle Ages, which Rome herself wished to revive, was not the time of Valdes, Wycliffe, and Hus, not the time of the proud metropolitans, the mighty Ghibellines, and the great Councils, but the days of Innocent III, when the whole of Christendom listened to the words that proceeded from the see& of St Peter. And in Rome people saw with happy wonder that the Papacy was becoming a necessary factor in many of the systems of the reactionary theorists.

Thus when Schlegel sought in the past a remedy for the future, he halted at the empire, the Papacy, and the orders of chivalry, but it was the empire of Charles the Great and of the Ottos that he wished to restore, before the battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The ideal for the European system of states and nationalities should be a harmonious cooperation between Empire and Papacy as in the days of Otto III and Sylvester II. De Maistre expressed still more clearly the dawning apotheosis of the Papacy. To him the Papacy was the one essential thing in religion, the only help against ‘the constitutional fever’. The Pope was to be an umpire who should put an end to all strife; he was to be above princes and peoples alike, and infallibility was to be in the spiritual world the same thing as the sovereignty in the temporal world.

And Pius VII, during the controversy with Napoleon, had developed into a pope after the heart of the Romanticists. His moral character had shown itself to be more marked than his intellectual powers, and he was stronger in the passive than in the active virtues; his courage was the suffering type of courage, and the martyr’s crown suited him better than the triple tiara. If Napoleon had been face to face with a personality like Gregory VII or Alexander III, all the scenes in the drama would have had quite another character, from the prelude of the coronation to the Concordat at Fontainebleau. In dealing with a dove like Pius VII the imperial eagle often seemed only a common hawk; and there was more of a Celestine V than of a Boniface VIII in the meek peregrinus Apostolicus. In his inmost heart Pius VII was a quiet monk, who was more at home in a cell and a convent garden than in the salons of the Louvre or in the Champs Elysées.

But at his side he had a statesman who was soon to prow himself a match for the other statesmen of the Restoration. This time it was the Guelph, who had with him a Peter de la Vigne. Dante in his Divina Commedia makes the great minister of Frederic II of Hohenstaufen say that he possessed both the keys of his sovereign’s heart, and that he understood how to open and to shut sweetly, as he turned them. In these words the Romans saw a description of the relation between Pius VII and his Secretary of State.

But circumstances compelled Pius to send his Peter de la Vigne for a while to Paris and Vienna to watch over the political interests of the Papal See, and during his absence Bartolommeo Pacca, who had been appointed Cardinal Camerlengo, occupied the post of Papal Secretary of State. Pacca was a counselor of another stamp. Consalvi was in many respects a man of modern sympathy and intelligence, who saw the various statesmen working for the consolidation of their states upon a conservative basis, without jealously watching over the supposed sovereignty of the Church with the Bull Unam Sanctam always in his mind. Pacca, on the other hand, who had given German Febronianism its death-blow, was entirely possessed with mediaeval ideals, and the Jesuit policy was his policy. Pius VII admired in Consalvi a political breadth of view and a diplomatic skill which he did not himself possess; in Pacca he could rejoice over a consistent prosecution of that statecraft which was born within the monastery walls, and which looked upon everything through a church window.

PROPOSED RESTORATION OF JESUITS

Before Pius VII made his entry into his capital, Cardinal Rivarola as legate a latere had already endeavored to put everything in Rome on the old footing. What he had begun was continued by Pacca, and he began at the right end from the point of view of the Restoration and the Counter-Revolution. He had already proposed in his daily conversations with the Pope at Fontainebleau the restoration of the Jesuit  order. Pius had been doubtful. He was a Benedictine, and the teachers of his youth had been opposed to the Jesuits; “and it is well known”, says Pacca, “what an impression that which we learn in our youth makes upon us”. But the destroyer of Febronianism did not give up the idea for lost. He had himself been brought up on Pascal’s Provincial Letters and Arnauld’s book on the practical morals of the Jesuits; but these early impressions he counted among the sins of his youth. Only with the assistance of the revived order of the Jesuits would it be possible, in his opinion, for the Papacy to crush the hydra of the Revolution.

We have already seen that the spirit of Jesuitism had found an asylum with Alfonso Maria de' Liguori's congregation of the Redemptorists, and that in Prussia and Russia, thanks to Frederick II and Catherine II, ‘Jesuit seed’ had been preserved until better times should come. Something ;more had likewise happened. In 179 the ex-Jesuit de Broglie, son of the Marshal, together with the Abbés de Tournely and Pey of Louvain, had formed “a Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”, which was to be a substitute for the dissolved order. The advance of the French army compelled the little society to flee from Louvain to Augsburg, and from thence to Passau and Vienna. In Austria “the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” gained many friends, amongst others the Arch­duchess Marie Anna, who enabled it to open a school at Hagenbrunn and a house for novices at Prague; but at the close of the century it was united at the Pope’s bidding to the so-called “Paccanarists” or “fathers of the faith of Jesus”.

There was a tradition in Italy and Spain, that if Loyola’s order was ever to be restored, it would not be done by a king, but by a soldier or a man of the people. Niccold Paccanari was such a man. He was a tanner of Trent, who had been a soldier in the Pope’s army, but had forsaken his warlike occupation in order to live a life of penitence. He and a few more young men of the people had taken care of a dozen or so of the seminarists who had been turned out of the palace of the Propaganda after the French occupation of Rome. The religious and enthusiastic youths were soon noticed by the revolutionary party, and were imprisoned in the castle of Sant' Angelo. In the room where these young men were confined Lorenzo Ricci had breathed his last, and the young prisoners, who had the deepest veneration for Loyola’s order, there formed the plan of restoring the dissolved order themselves. After their release they retired to a secluded spot near Spoleto, and chose Paccanari as their Superior. They put themselves into communication with Pius VI while he was at Val d'Ema, and obtained of him leave to hold missions, after the manner of the Jesuits, and in all essentials to follow the Jesuit rule, while they called themselves “the fathers of the faith of Jesus”. The ex-Jesuits looked with jealousy upon this imitation of their order, but at Padua, where the fathers of the faith of Jesus had their house for novices, many young men in sympathy with the Jesuits gathered together, and this society, which was augmented by the members of “the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”, became a nursery for Loyola’s order. When the Society of Jesus was restored, not a few of the fathers of the faith of Jesus sought admission into it, and by order of the Pope were let off with only one year’s noviciate.

PARTIAL RESTORATIONS OF JESUITS 

But besides these off-shoots, there were also true branches on the old stem. On 7th March 1801 Pius VII, at the instance of the Emperor Paul I, had re-established the order of Loyola in the Russian Empire, by the brief Catholica fidei, which is addressed to the Superior of the Russian Jesuits Franz Karev. It was the peculiar situation in Russia which induced him to do this; and it was only to hold good in Russia. His reasons for this step were solicitude for the training of priests, and the fact that the harvest was great but the laborers few. On 30th July 1804 in a new brief addressed to the superior and ‘praeses generalis’ Gabriel Gruber, Karev’s successor, he had re-established the order for the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, again at the instigation of the temporal ruler, King Ferdinand. It was, perhaps, only the great controversy with Napoleon, that hindered the complete restoration of the order a few years after. In the house at the Gesú in Rome a band of Jesuits continued to live; they consisted chiefly of returned missionaries, they labored in the cure of souls, and in preaching; and several seminaries were under their control. From this centre proceeded continual demands to make good the error of Clement XIV, and Cardinal Pacca made himself the interpreter of these desires.

By the two Bulls above-mentioned, Pius VII had taken such a decisive step towards re-establishment of the order, that the logic of events was bound to compel him, sooner or later, to accede to Pacca’s wish. He knew beforehand, as he said in a letter to Consalvi, that the re-establishment would put the philosophical and Jansenist clique in a bad humor; but in their displeasure he saw the best evidence that the order ought to be restored. Nor was much opposition to be expected from the leading statesmen. The disciples of Ignatius Loyola had in past times stood sponsors for political autocracy; therefore Conservative politicians looked upon them as champions of the throne as well as of the altar. Amongst Metternich’s papers there is an interesting memorandum, written in 1825, which shows how this statesman looked upon the much-contested order. He is full of admiration for Saint Ignatius, who with ‘a truly Christian outlook’, formed his order as a protection for the Head of the Church. But he distinguishes between the original order and that ‘Jesuitism’ which had so greatly-degenerated in the eighteenth century, and which would undoubtedly have been compelled by the governments to return to its original purity, if the philosophical spirit of the century had not demolished the order altogether. Metternich entirely approves of the original aim of the order: “the maintenance of the Church and the Throne, and the victory of both over their opponents”. The “passionate persecution and endless bitterness”, which all revolutionary spirits, from the religious Reformers down to the lowest Radical, had displayed towards the Society of Jesus, was to him a sure sign that the Jesuits had not abandoned their original task. From that side, therefore, there was no need to expect serious objections to the restoration, even if such a step should be hailed both with astonishment, and with ill-will, by certain circles in the Austrian capital.

THE JESUITSRESTORED

On 7th August 1814 Pius VII entered the Jesuit church at Rome in solemn procession, and said Mass at the altar of Ignatius.He then caused the Bull Sollicitudo omnium to be read in the adjoining oratory before a numerous congregation of cardinals, bishops, and Neapolitan and Sicilian Jesuits. The Pope says in that Bull that the care of the Church committed to his charge imposes upon him the duty of meeting the spiritual needs of Christendom by all the means in his power. Since the re-establishment of the Society of Jesus in Russia and in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the briefs of 7th March 1801, and of 30th July 1804, the unanimous wishes of nearly the whole of Christendom had called forth urgent and strong appeals to restore the order, especially since the activities of the Society had borne abundance of fruit in the countries where it had been at work. The Pope would therefore be guilty of a grave sin against God, if, amidst the heavy storms that raged around the ship of St Peter, he were to reject the strong and experienced navigators who offered themselves to cleave a way through the seething billows. For that reason he had determined to carry out what had been his warmest wish since he ascended the throne of St Peter, and he now gave command by the present irrevocable decree, that the former permissions issued for Russia and the Sicilies should from this moment be extended to all parts of the Papal States, and to all states and kingdoms. This decision, it is said, is to be for all time abiding and inviolable; every action contrary to it, from whomsoever it emanates, shall be invalid and ineffectual, and in particular the brief of Clement XIV is by these presents made null and void, and deprived of all efficacy.

Pacca says, that it is impossible to describe the joyful shouts of the good Romans, and the acclamations which greeted the Pope on his way to and from the church of the Jesuits. But he is not an entirely impartial witness in this matter, and we know that Consalvi and others with him had great misgivings. It seemed to many to be premature to restore the order wholly to its former status, and there were Conservative cardinals who thought it exceedingly improper for one pope to restore an order which another pope had dissolved for ever. But the revived order made its way quickly in most places. Ferdinand VII of Spain, immediately after the Restoration, resolved to support his tottering throne by means of the Jesuits, although De la Huerta, the financial minister, was the only member of the regular Conservative Castilian council who pleaded their cause. To strengthen the Spanish king in his intention Pius VII sent him a letter on 15th December 1814, warmly commending the order, and on 29th May 1815 such Spanish laws as were a hindrance to the return of the Jesuits were repealed, so that Loyola’s order quickly came into possession of great riches and regained their old power in the confessional and in the schools. In Piedmont the Jesuits had a faithful friend in Charles Emanuel, the brother of Victor Emanuel I, who at the beginning of 1815 became a Jesuit novice; and there also they soon became, by favor of the King and of the nobility, masters of the universities and in the schools, and obtained great influence over the government and the tribunals. In 1816 they came to Vienna, and in 1818 by the help of the, Bishop of Geneva and Lausanne they obtained a stronghold at Fribourg, from which they could work other places in Switzerland.

But from Portugal and Brazil came a strong protest against the restoration of the order, and in France great difficulties were in store for it. The “fathers of the faith” had there prepared the way for the order, and as most of the members of this congregation had been incorporated with the disciples of Loyola, the latter took courage and founded a house for the professed at Montrouge. Lamennais greeted their efforts with joy, being convinced that they alone could revive religion in France, but Gallicanism and Jansenism again and again entered into conflict with them. In Russia Jesuitism had& a great admirer in another of ‘the prophets of the past’, the Sardinian representative in St Petersburg, De Maistre, who looked upon the order as one of the best instruments for promoting enlightenment and civilisation. But they lost the asylum which Catherine II and Paul I had granted them, because their propaganda, becoming bolder and bolder after the restoration of the order, began to frighten the Orthodox rulers of Russia. On 16th December 1815 they were banished from the two Russian capitals, and on 13th March 1820 the were expelled from the whole of Russia and Poland. The exiled Russian and Polish Jesuits found an asylum in Galicia, where the Dominican convent at Tarnopol was granted to them. At first, it was desired that they should break off connection with Rome, and choose a vicar-general for the Austrian province independent of the General of the order, and should at the same time subject themselves to certain restrictions; but after they had pointed out to the government, in an application drawn up with true Jesuit dialectic, that the demands made upon them were not conformable to the statutes of their order, they were allowed to live as their statutes directed.

REACTION AT ROME

As soon as the Jesuits, who had been driven out like dogs, had returned according to the old prophecy like eagles, fanaticism, superstition, and Ultramontanism found in them a ready army, and reaction all round broke forth under Pacca’s administration of the Papal States. All the laws of the French period were immediately cancelled by Cardinal Rivarola, and the Canon Law and the Papal Constitutions were again put in force. Every improvement which the French had introduced into Rome was got rid of, from the lighting of the streets to vaccination. Begging was again allowed, and the images of the Madonna began again to roll their eyes. The Jesuits once more got the schools into their hands, and Latin thereby obtained an overwhelming importance in education. The Inquisition was restored. At the beginning of 1815 there were already 737 prosecutions for heresy in progress, and in 1816 the Inquisitor at Ravenna condemned a converted but renegade Jew to death. The Congregation of the Index went to work and extended its operations to political and poetical writings, so that at length several of Alfieri’s poetical works (January 1823) came to be on the list of prohibited books. Cardinal della Genga, the successor of Pius VII in the chair of St Peter, who was then vicar-general at Rome, forbade the Roman priests to wear an overcoat as laymen did; and every Saturday at least 300 Jews from the Ghetto had to go to church to listen to a sermon intended to convert them; Delia Genga even thought of closing the gates of the Ghetto every evening. The monasteries were opened once more; an edict of 15th August 1814 re-established at one stroke 1,824 convents for monks and 612 for nuns. The sale of church property was stopped, and the demand was made that those, who during the French occupation had bought anything belonging to the Church, should restore what they had bought. The Dominican Magister Palatii, Anfossi, even wrote a pamphlet in which he maintained that those who did not return such acquisitions would forfeit eternal salvation. As long as Consalvi had any influence, Anfossi’s work was not allowed to see the light, but it shows what were the ruling thoughts in Zelanti circles immediately after the Restoration began. It was Pacca’s desire to force everything back, not only to the time before 1789, but even to the time before 1773.

While Pacca was doing his best to spread the gloom and darkness of the Middle Ages over the Eternal City, Consalvi was travelling in foreign lands. When he arrived in Paris in May, all the allied princes and diplomatists had left, or were about to leave, for London; Consalvi did not hesitate to follow them, especially as he bore an introduction from Pius VII to the Prince Regent. But when he was about to set foot on English soil, he was perplexed. Durst he show himself in his cardinal's dress in England, where no cardinal had been received for a couple of hundred years, and where the people not long before had burned the Pope himself in effigy? He solved the question by putting on the black coat and white neckcloth of an English clergyman, and he met with no violence. The English were then so kindly disposed towards all the enemies of Napoleon that the Pope’s minister could show himself everywhere without let or hindrance, and at a public banquet the English drank to the health of Pius VII without any objection being made. Consalvi had even in 1800 the reputation amongst Englishmen of being a “very gentle­manly liberal man”, and he maintained his reputation. Through him a close connection was begun between the Papacy& and England, where the Roman propaganda was afterwards to obtain so much success.

CONGRESS OF VIENNA

From London Consalvi travelled to the Congress at Vienna. The diplomatists who gathered there were not unwilling to listen to the wishes of Rome. They had learnt, as Talleyrand explained to Louis XVIII in 1815 on the way from Ghent to Paris, that the old belief that sovereignty is an emanation of Deity had lost its hold, as well as the belief that certain families were to reign in the strength of divine right. “Nowadays”, said Talleyrand, “the general opinion is that that is the legitimate power, which can best secure for the nations peace and happiness, and which has existed for a long period of years, and so has many associations connected with it”. From this point of view, which was held by many of the statesmen assembled at Vienna, the Papacy could certainly reckon upon a prominent place, and those who were the upholders of legitimacy bowed reverently before a ruling ;dynasty which traced its genealogy back to St Peter, and which possessed the rich associations of Rome. Italy had sent but few epresentatives to the Austrian capital. That beautiful country was looked upon as a conquered province, which was at the disposal of the Allied Powers. It was only a ‘geographical expression’ to most statesmen. The only man who really took an interest in the peninsula was Count Capodistrias, the representative of Russia, and that was only because he was a Philhellenist. Greece and Italy were to him two noble sisters sunk in the sleep of death; “let the one sister awake, and the other would also be released from her magic slumber”.

Fortunately for the Papacy, Pius VII had a statesman in Consalvi, who possessed all the qualifications necessary for bringing the cause of the Papal States to the desired end. As the Pope’s Legate, he took precedence, according to old custom, of all the other ambassadors, and this was conceded without objection even by the sovereigns who were not in communion with Rome. At first, however, his influence does not seem to have been great. He was considered to be insinuant comme un parfum, and his zeal and perseverance were admired, but it took some time before his most eminent qualities were observed. Meanwhile, he was soon initiated into all secrets, and the English, German, and Russian diplomatists seem to have been especially intimate with him. We have, from Consalvi’s own hand, an account of a confidential meeting, which throws light on the temper of the Congress. In a fragment of a note written at the end of 1814 or the beginning of 1815, we hear that he had a long conversation one day, with Prince Hardenberg, Count Nesselrode, and Lord Castlereagh. “I came away from the conversation much troubled”, he writes. “Prince Hardenberg and Lord Castlereagh admit in confidential conversation, that they have no confidence in the arrangements which we are making here. People think they can crush out the Revolution by suppressing or silencing it; but it penetrates into the very midst of the Congress through all the crevices that are opened for it. An able and far-seeing policy has never allowed itself to give nations new rulers, new laws, manners and customs, every half century. Laws are a bridle to which the human mouth must get accustomed little by little. The yoke which a happy obedience imposes must pass from one generation of a family to another, more as a reminiscence of fatherly protection, than as a sign of servitude. The French Revolution represents princes as tyrants, and abhors the holy and venerable traditions of the past. Its mission is to hew everything down with the stroke of the axe, and to introduce everything new with cannon shots. It is a new form of despotism inaugurated in the name of liberty, and this new form will be more disastrous both for people and for princes, because it brings defeats and misfortunes without number as the result of blindness and arrogance. When I think of them I am absolutely in despair. We are engaged here in propping up an old hovel with money and might; but we do not think of erecting a new, solid house, although it would probably cost less and would certainly be more durable”. The three ambassadors understood Consalvi’s anxiety well, but the troublous times and modern ways of thought made it, in their opinion, impossible to build the solid house. The great misfortune of the negotiations at the Congress seemed to Consalvi to be the want of mutual understanding between those present; they only understood one another when two were together at a time in this ecumenical council of monarchy. “We are like the builders of the Tower of Babel”, he says; “our tongues become confounded the very moment we lay the first stone of the foundation”. The conversation shows that Consalvi was a Conservative of the purest water. From his point of view he was also an enemy of the liberty of the Press. When he was in Paris, he had expressed to Louis XVIII his dissatisfaction with the recently published Charter, and said that the liberty of the Press was the most dangerous weapon which had ever been placed in the hands of the opponents of religion and of monarchy. It would be extended at every public crisis, and with every social disturbance; and he foresaw that the despotism of the Press would more and more be exercised by unknown men or by persons of bad character. When the case of the Papacy itself came before the Congress, Consalvi had to use all his skill as a statesman to ward off the threatening perils. Some days before the peace of Paris, Metternich in a note to Lord Castlereagh had expressed the opinion that Austria ought to have the Legations, partly on account of the agreement of Prague, arrived at on 27th July 1813, partly because the Austrian house had an ‘indisputable’ right to that part of Italy, because the sovereign of Austria was King of Rome, hereditary Emperor and head over all Germany. Against this assertion Consalvi protested in a note of 23rd June which he sent from London to the principal powers of Europe.

In that note he claimed the restoration of all the provinces of the Papal See which had been occupied by foreign powers; arguing that Rome in 1806 had refused to make common cause with Napoleon, and to consider Napoleon’s enemies as its own; and Rome had never wavered since in refusing alliance with Napoleon. The Papacy, according to Consalvi, had a complete right both to the Legations, and to Avignon and Venaissin, Benevento and Pontecorvo, even to Parma and Piacenza; for Rome had never acknowledged those princes who governed the two last named countries, but on the contrary she had protested every St Peter's Day against the loss of them. “The Holy Father”, says Consalvi, “has taken his oath to keep and defend all these lands, and he cannot do without them, if he is to occupy his old position and forward the interests of religion”.

Afterwards, on 23rd October, he prepared another note, in which he repeated the same claims and reminded England and Russia that Pius VII had suffered so much, because he would not break with them. But further with regard to the Catholic churches of Germany—he uses the plural in order to guard against the rising idea of a German Imperial Church—Rome had many wishes and many demands. The peace of Luneville, by which the Rhine had been fixed as the eastern frontier of France, had compensated the temporal princes who lost by the peace at the expense of the Church, and the secularization of church property and the abolition of the spiritual principalities were the results of this peace. The church property had not since been given back, and the Holy Roman Empire had not been re-established. Next to the loss of his provinces this last misfortune weighed especially heavily upon the Pope’s conscience, for the Holy Roman Empire was, as Consalvi explained in a subsequent note, “the centre of political unity and a venerable fabric of antiquity founded upon religion, the overthrow of which was one of the most deplorable works of destruction that the Revolution had committed”.

THE HUNDRED DAYS

Great difficulties arose as to the question of the provinces. Louis XVIII in the instructions given to his ambassadors had demanded that the Holy See should have not only the provinces on the Adriatic coast but also the Legations of Ravenna and Bologna. But weighty voices were lifted against this project. Prussia insisted that the Legations should be given to the King of Saxony as compensation for the lands that he had lost. Austria preferred to have the Legations herself; but as this could not be, she wished to hand them over to the Infanta Marie Louise, so as to keep her and her son away from Tuscany and Parma. But Marie Louise had promised the Pope never to receive a province which had belonged to the Holy See, and the Sardinian Court would not suffer the Pope to lose any territory for the benefit of a Bourbon princess. Russia contemplated making the three Legations into a kingdom for Eugene Beauharnais, and the Emperor Alexander I said bitterly to Metternich, “Austria thinks she is sure of Italy; but there is a Napoleon there of whom use might be made”. The want of agreement as to the partition of Italy was on the point of breaking up the congress, when the empire of the hundred days compelled the princes to agree.

Great consternation in Rome followed the landing of Napoleon in France. His sister, Madame Elisa, is reported to have declared at Bologna: “Bonaparte is in France; if they imprison him, we will get hold of the Pope here as a hostage”. King Murat of Naples, who joined Napoleon during the hundred days, had projects of taking Pius VII prisoner and sending him to Gaeta. He asked permission to march through the Papal States with 12,000 men, that he might join Napoleon. This was refused, and Pius considered the position of affairs so serious, that he entrusted the government of Rome to Cardinal della Somaglia and a Junta, and fled by way of Florence and Leghorn to Genoa. But he was quite cheerful. He said immediately, “This is a storm that will last for three months”, and he was not far wrong.

Napoleon knew how important the friendship of the Pope was in such a difficult situation as his. He therefore sent Pius VII a letter in which he represented his return “as a work of the unanimous will of a great nation”. He received no answer to this letter, but as he continually gave friendly assurances, and as Murat had been beaten back by the Austrians, Pius VII resolved to return home. First, however, he paid a visit to Savona, where he crowned an image of the Madonna much revered by the people; and on the square in front of the episcopal palace, which had formerly been his prison, he received the homage of the King of Sardinia. He afterwards visited Turin, Parma, and Modena, and was everywhere greeted with veneration by princes and people.

On 7th June he made his fourth entry into his capital after being a fugitive for seventy-eight days. Two days after­wards the Congress of Vienna determined in the 103rd article of the peace to restore to the see of St Peter the Marches, with Camerino, Benevento, and Pontecorvo, the three Legations of Ravenna, Bologna and Ferrara, with the exception of a small piece of Ferrara, situated on the left bank of the Po. Although this might well be considered an extremely favorable result, Consalvi made a protest on behalf of Pius VII against the peace of Vienna. Rome was dissatisfied with the loss of Avignon, Venaissin, and the strip of Ferrara, and with the provision that Austria should have the right of placing troops in the Castle of Comacchio and at Ferrara. But the protest naturally availed nothing. Since the Bull of Innocent X against the peace of Westphalia, people were prepared for objections of that kind. Consalvi had obtained the utmost that could possibly be obtained, and diplomatists were full of admiration for the results he had achieved. “That is the boldest and prettiest stroke that has been made on the green table”, said Talleyrand to Metternich about Consalvi, and another of the diplomatists wrote: “Up to the very conclusion of the Congress Consalvi hovered between hope and fear. It is necessary to have seen him at Vienna in order to appreciate his watchfulness, his energy, and his passionate devotion to the interests of the Holy See”.

CONSALVI'S HOME GOVERNMENT

When Consalvi came home, the engraver, Antonio Banzo, had got a drawing by Manno engraved in all secrecy, in which the Cardinal is depicted as presenting the restored Legations to Pius VII. In this picture Consalvi is turning his eyes towards the Pope, and with his right hand points to Bologna, a kneeling figure, wearing the helmet of Minerva. Behind Pius VII is seen, in addition to the city of Rome, Religion standing, and History seated. This idea was afterwards used by Thorvaldsen in the monument which he executed at Rome in 1824. In Thorvaldsen’s beautiful bas-relief, which is placed in the Pantheon, Consalvi is seen bringing the six Papal provinces back to Pius VII. The provinces are represented as women with mural crowns. Ancona, in front, is to be recognised by the rudder; Bologna by the shield bearing the arms of the University.

After the close of the Congress of Vienna Consalvi was able quietly to resume the government, but under the most difficult conditions. It is true that Pius VII had received nearly all his territories again, but as regards the outward position of the hierarchy things had much changed. The Pope was at that time in the position of a nobleman, whose mansion has been given back to him, but without sufficient means to enable him to lead the old life. Much less money came in, and the younger sons of the rich houses, who had formerly done service at the Papal Court for nothing, came no more, since there was no prospect of receiving rich abbeys and prebends. Happily the debt of the Papal States had been considerably reduced during the French period by the abolition of the spiritual corporations. These had owned a large proportion of the bonds, which were cancelled by this abolition; and moreover the property of the corporations could be sold to meet the Papal debt. In the year 1800 the debt was 74,000,000, and in 1815 only 33,000,000 and in the same period the income had risen from 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 or 7,000,000.

The greatest misfortune of Rome was the priestly government, and it was not easily broken up. Consalvi, at Vienna, had given the Allied Powers many promises regarding it, but he was not in a position to fulfill them. When he returned, Pacca had for a long time exercised a hierarchical rule in the old style, and had done everything to wipe out all traces of the French occupation. Some of the more progressive Romans, in despair at Pacca’s reactionary government, had enrolled themselves in Murat’s army, and were lost in his adventurous expedition; others led a life of indolence. Every fifteenth person encountered in the street was a priest or a monk; every tenth a footman in livery. Several of the Eastern, and most of the Western, orders of monks had their general offices in Rome, and there were a great number of monasteries. There was not much industry in these houses: only the English monks had the reputation of studying more, of taking more exercise, and of washing themselves more frequently than the rest.

Yet among the priests there were some who felt that radical changes were needed. Thus, in 1814, the Abate Giuseppe Antonio Sala presented to the Pope a quarto volume of 202 pages, which contained the first part of a complete scheme of reform. Sala, who was intimately connected with Cardinal Caprara, had stayed in Paris from the conclusion of the Concordat until the coronation of the Emperor. In 1809, Pius VII, shortly before his imprisonment, appointed him secretary of the apostolic delegation at Rome, but after the French occupation of the town Sala had to flee, first to Cascia, then to the Villa Salviati near Fiesole. At Cascia he continued to correspond with the imprisoned Pope, and, when Pius VII returned home, Sala joined him. On the journey to Rome he was master of the ceremonies to Pius VII, and later on he accompanied the Pope in his flight to Genoa.

SALA'S REFORM PROJECTS 

As early as 1798 Sala wrote in his diary, of which Cugnoni has published some fragments, that both the government of the Papal States and the Church itself required great reforms with regard to the ecclesiastical personnel. Such thoughts were expressed by him in the Piano di riforma, which in 1814 he presented in all humility to the restored Pope. He blamed the existing commixture of the sacred and the secular, and maintained that political sovereignty was not essential for the successor of St Peter. He also expressed his regret that the Papal bullarium contained decrees about civil affairs side by side with ecclesiastical decisions. The high places of the Church ought to be better filled; the rules of the Council of Trent ought to be closely followed in the choice of cardinals and bishops. Preachers ought to be compelled to preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified, instead of changing the pulpit into an academical chair or into a theatre; and the monastic houses of men and women ought to be reformed.

Sala’s publication was sent to Vienna to Consalvi, but he showed himself very ungraciously disposed towards the Piano. Orders were immediately sent to Rome to stop the sale of the book, and an attempt was made to destroy the copies that were already in circulation. The destruction of the inopportune book was so effectual that Professor Cugnoni for twenty-five years sought in vain to get hold of a copy. Padre Curci relying upon Cugnoni’s disclosures not long ago bitterly reproached Consalvi for his conduct, and expressed the opinion that the zeal of the Papal Secretary was due to his anxiety lest he should be removed from his post by the reforming Abate, who stood in such high favour with Pius VII. This is undoubtedly an unjust accusation. Consalvi was then so highly respected, both by Pius VII and by the whole of Europe, that he scarcely needed to fear being set aside for a man like Sala, whose name of honor, even after he at length received the purple under Gregory XVI, was “the live archives of the Holy See”. But one can quite understand that to Consalvi it would be very inopportune that voices should be raised in Rome for the separation of the spiritual and temporal power just at the very moment when he was fighting a hard battle amongst the diplomatists in order to preserve all the temporal possessions of the Papal See. Besides, most of the proposals for reform made by the Abate were neither so new nor so conspicuous as to provoke Consalvi's jealousy. Many of them enjoyed his full approval, but he was so much of a practical politician that he preferred rather to act than to write about affairs.

Even before he left Vienna he promulgated several laws for the settlement of the internal affairs of the recovered Legations. He allowed most of the French amendments to remain in force, confirmed the sale of the national estates, and promised a new and better government. As early as 6th July 1816 the great Motu proprio was published, which became a sort of Constitution for the whole of the Papal States. In the preface Consalvi says that Divine Providence seems to have made use of the French occupation of the country to prepare the way for uniformity and unity in the State. Unity was in his opinion the basis of every political regulation which could strengthen the government and make the people happy; therefore it was his intention to proceed in the path which the French had trodden. Both the towns and the nobility lost their old privileges, which not infrequently in past time had caused difficulties to the popes; and all monopolies and exemptions disappeared. The Papal States, on the model of the French division into departments, were divided into seventeen ‘delegations’, and at the head of each of these a ‘delegate’ was placed with the same power as the French prefects. By the side of the delegates there were to be provincial consultative bodies, whose members were appointed at Rome, and not by the province itself. The whole of this system was a thorough centralization, which gave great power both to the leading men in the State and to the individual officials; and the delegates were to be prelates. The priesthood thus obtained an absolute predominance in the new settlement. With regard to the administration, the taxes, and the customs, the Motu proprio allowed the French arrangements to remain; in other directions, as for instance with regard to education, it promised that everything should be improved ‘as quickly as possible’. The educational system was, however, not so bad as has often been asserted; there were at that time more than a hundred schools at Rome, in which instruction was given free or at very little cost.

CONSALVI’S FINANCE 

The finances also were the object of Consalvi's care; but they were in a hopeless condition, and they remained so. The times were past when Prince Doria could send 500,000 scudi to the Papal mint; there were now only a few rich men at Rome, such as Torlonia and some other bankers. As early as 1816 the Budget showed a deficit of more than 100,000 scudi. The expedient was then tried of farming the taxes after the manner of Ancient Rome, and this was carried very far. For the sake of economy the feeding of the prisoners, the number of whom in 1820 rose to 11,000, was let out to private persons. The first person who undertook it received 15 soldi a day; but he delegated his duty to others for 10 and 8 soldi, so that the prisoners were starved. The judicial procedure was as bad as the prison system. Cardinal Rivarola, as has been said above, had already, before Pius VII returned to Rome, abolished ‘for ever’ the French laws, and the Canon Law and the apostolical constitutions became again valid. Incredible confusion was the result, and Consalvi had to devise a new code. The part which concerned judicial procedure appeared as early as 1817, mainly by the help of the Bartolucci whose name has been mentioned before; but the rest was never finished. Law and justice in the Papal States were still dependent therefore upon favor and chance, and the Papal grace was continually abused. “Consalvi”, say the courteous Annali d'Italia,”began much, accomplished something, but left various matters unfinished, such as the code, the financial system, and the fund for paying off the National Debt”. The clear sight of the Secretary of State had perceived that a great deal of what the French Revolution had produced ought to be, and might be, preserved and imitated; but there was no authority in Rome possessed of sufficient power, or provided with the necessary staff, to carry out the new order of things.

But who under such difficult circumstances could have done more than Consalvi? Formerly the Church had fed both town and country; now it needed to be supported by both, and therefore it became an object of dislike. The provinces were highly displeased at everything being determined at Rome, and the aristocracy missed its old privileges. To this must be added the wide division between clergy and laity, which appeared so markedly after the French occupation; and, as reasonable concessions were not made in time, this division afterwards became fatal. Farini thinks that Pius VII might at that time have raised the banner of the Guelphs and have assumed a protectorate over all Italy; but was it really possible? Pius VII would in such a case have had to break with the Conservative powers, which were his support, and to trust himself to the people, of whom half were free­thinkers. How would such a proceeding have fitted with the agreements concerning “the outward and inward tranquility of Italy”, which were signed a few days after the closing scenes at Vienna? And is there the least likelihood that Pius VII would have succeeded where Pius IX failed, at a moment when reaction and restoration were in full swing in Europe? The Papal States were bound to succumb to the fate which has always overtaken every corrupt blending of politics with Christianity.

The possibility “of infusing a new spirit into Guelphism”, of which Farini speaks, disappears completely, when it is seen how strong was the resistance which Consalvi had to encounter. Many libels against him were produced at Rome, which passed from hand to hand in manuscript in the Roman cafes, and he met with the strongest opposition among his own colleagues. Cardinal Albani declared openly that he felt no inclination to pay three times as much as formerly in taxes upon his estates, which were now worth only a third of what they had been; and many thought as Albani did. Pacca became the leader of a great party of Zelanti, who would not budge from strict ecclesiastical principles, and who secretly and openly accused Consalvi of being infected with ungodly liberalism. To this party belonged the Cardinals Castiglioni, afterwards Pius VIII, and Delia Genga, afterwards Leo XII.

SANFEDISTI AND CARBONARI 

On account of the resistance which Consalvi always met with from the cardinals, he excluded them from any influence upon the government. Their animosity increased accordingly, and they had recourse to the fatal expedient of forming or of favoring secret reactionary societies, which proved a great misfortune, since religion through them became a tool in the service of politics. The growing power of the Jesuits was no longer sufficient—more helpers were needed. A politico-religious society called the Pacifici or the Santa Unione had long existed. Their motto was the saying of our Lord, “Blessed are the peace­makers”. They swore to maintain the public peace, even if it cost them their lives. The Sanfedisti, as the members of the association were called, only aimed originally at defending the faith and the Pope against worldly aggressions; but afterwards these shield-bearers of absolute theocracy ventured in the name of Christianity to raise bloody persecutions against the Liberals without regard to class, sex, or age. It was at the instigation of the Sanfedisti that Pius VII, on 13th September 1821, promulgated a Bull against the Carbonari. These, like all secret societies, delighted to derive their origin from the mysteries of the ancient world, especially from the ministers of Isis and of Mithra, but they were in reality scarcely older than the French occupation. While the French made friends in Italy through the Freemasons, the Carbonari, as patriotic Italians, had endeavored to throw off the French yoke, and their society became a nursery both for the longing after liberty, and for the national feeling. In their ‘unbridled love of liberty’ they swore upon the poison flask and upon red-hot iron to think night and day of the extirpation of tyrants, and to keep the secrets of the society, otherwise “the poison flask should be their drink, and red-hot iron should burn their flesh”. At their feasts the Carbonari drank to each other with the words, “Death or independence”, and they sang of the “blood-red star”, that was rising over their country, which should be in the ascendant again, “at the cock crow, when the eagles are fighting”.

Compared with the calamities which the antagonism between the Sanfedisti and the Carbonari brought upon the Papal States, the other epidemic of brigandage was of less importance. In self-defence against the French many had been compelled to take to the mountains; and afterwards those who came into collision with the law sought a hiding-place there. A false spirit of romance cast a peculiar glamour over the bandits, so, that the girls of Rome looked up with admiration to the men who “could live in the mountains”, and their fathers as a rule did not hesitate to do business with them. By a sort of agreement Consalvi succeeded in restricting this nuisance, but it is not even yet quite eradicated.

But if in many respects Consalvi’s home government did not reach what he aimed at, he was absolutely successful in his foreign politics. The good fortune which had smiled upon him at Vienna, never left him, and he gained by his diplomatic skill a series of victories, which proved of great importance for the position of the Roman Church in most of the European countries.

THE HOLY ALLIANCE

At one time it created some dissatisfaction amongst the princes, that Pius VII would not join the Holy Alliance, which was intended to maintain justice, love, and peace. This league of sovereigns, which was mainly due to Frau von Krüdener’s untiring energy, was to form a substitute for the system of balance which rested upon power only, and not upon justice. This enthusiastic woman had succeeded in winning over the Emperor Alexander I of Russia to her plan. The Tsar looked upon her as an angel, who spoke in the name of God, and she saw in him the ‘white angel’, whose mission it was to build up all that the black angel, Napoleon, had torn down. This new alliance was to create harmony and mutual honesty; right of conquest was not to be recognised, the great armies were to be disbanded, and the era of eternal peace was to dawn. The Turks were to make it their business to stop the plague, and to treat their Christian subjects more humanely; the piratical states of North Africa were to be wiped out, and the English commercial despotism to be broken. It was the recollection of past trials and dangers, and a humble sense that the Almighty hand of God had helped them, that made the princes desirous to enter this league. But the fair words of the treaty of alliance—words which Frau von Krüdener had only with difficulty preserved from “the unholy hands of diplomatists and courtiers”,—were sadly confuted in the period that followed by the acts of the alliance; it became a conspiracy of princes against the liberty of the peoples. The Holy Alliance was the expression of a feeling similar to that which, after the wars of religion, gave Henry IV the idea of a Christian European state, in which Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were to enjoy the free exercise of their religion. But the romanticism of the period cast a special glamour over the new princely alliance.

At first the people in many places joined in the alliance; but Pius VII maintained a cold attitude. He would not look upon ‘heretics’ as genuine members of the Church, and he would not, as the alliance desired, give up the power of excommunication and the Inquisition.

We might have expected that a man like Consalvi, in matters pertaining to forms of faith, would have shown himself less narrow than the statesmen of the Zelanti, who on all points followed the dogma of the schools, and the church policy of the Middle Ages. But this was not the case; Consalvi was as intolerant in things of this kind as Pacca and the other Zelanti, and he had openly expressed to Louis XVIII his dissatisfaction that the French charter should have granted liberty of worship. Niebuhr succeeded, indeed, in 1819 in obtaining permission to hold an Evangelical service in Rome once a week in the Prussian embassy, whereby the precedent was established for the services which are now held in the Palazzo Caffarelli. But general religious liberty in Rome was out of the question. The fanaticism of the Roman section of the Church against the Evangelical and against th individual members of it, was at that period, according to Bunsen, at its height. In order to proselytize amongst the Protestants residing in Rome, a French publication, the Voix de l’église catholique aux protestants de bonne foi, was sent to them, which Brandis, a member of the Prussian legation, answered in a letter, in which he showed that the main propositions to be proved were very poorly handled; that it was impudent ignorance to attack the character of the Reformers and their friends, and ridiculous folly to present the fathers of the Council of Trent as patterns of sanctity. Finally, Brandis set forth what intellectual and religious sacrifices were in reality demanded, before a Protestant with a good conscience could go over to the Roman section of the Church.

ROME AND THE BIBLE SOCIETIES

The fanaticism of the leading Roman circles towards the Reformation appeared strikingly in the condemnation of the Bible Societies. Clement XI in his time had condemned in the Bull Unigenitus the proposition that reading the Bible is useful for all, and that the obscurity of God’s Holy Word ought not to debar Christian laymen from reading it. But Jansenism, on the other hand, had contributed to make even zealous Catholics take a more tolerant view of the reading of the Bible. Benedict XIV allowed all the faithful to read the Scriptures provided they would use only an authorized version, furnished with notes taken from the fathers of the Church, or Catholic men of learning. It was, therefore, not the reading of the Bible in itself, but the free investigation of the Scriptures which was to be prohibited. Pius VI. even went so far as to write to the Abate Martini, afterwards Archbishop of Florence: “You do well to encourage the faithful to read the Divine Word, for it is the purest of fountains, and must be kept open to all the faithful, so that they may draw from it purity in morals and belief”.

But when the reaction set in, and the Protestant Bible Societies gave the Curia cause for fresh alarm, new prohibitions appeared. In Poland, the authorized version put forth in 1599 by the Jesuit, Jacob Wuick, had been republished, and at the same time a new translation without notes. Pius VII took occasion to send a letter to the Archbishop of Gnesen, Metropolitan of Poland, in which he expressed his abhorrence of the crafty invention (to wit, the Bible Societies) by which the very foundations of religion are undermined. He had sought the counsel of the cardinals to consider how ‘this plague’ might be best cured. Rome’s dislike of the Bible Societies was shared by several of the leading men of the Restoration, as can be seen from Metternich’s Memoirs? He tells Nesselrode that he himself every day reads a chapter or two in Luther’s translation, but nevertheless he thinks that the Roman Church acts wisely in forbidding ordinary men to read the Bible, which contains so many mysterious passages, and relates so many crimes and immoral scenes. In Austria, Catholics were allowed to read Catholic translations under the supervision of the Church, and Protestants to read their own without supervision; but Metternich was certain the Emperor would never allow a Bible Society to be formed in his empire.

It was the old rancor on the part of the restored Society of Jesus that found vent in the condemnation of the Bible Societies. It was also the cause of Jesuitism and Ultramontanism, that Consalvi furthered when in the period after the Congress of Vienna, so rich in princely meetings and princely compacts, he succeeded in concluding and introducing a whole series of agreements with the different States, so that the time after 1815 may be described as an era of Concordats. For the new Concordats were first and foremost a means of suppressing the National Church movements in Roman Catholic countries, and of eradicating all traces of Jansenism, Gallicanism, and Febronianism. Consalvi, who had learnt his diplomatic lessons during the negotiations with Bonaparte over the French Concordat, had a much easier task in the conclusion of the later agreements. He now dealt with statesmen who had a far greater respect for the Papacy than Bonaparte ever had, and who were far less on their guard against the artifices of Roman policy than the keen-sighted First Consul had been.

And the Concordat with Bonaparte was useful as a pattern for the later agreements. No legitimate sovereign could expect more and greater concessions than revolutionary France had obtained, and the uncompromising suppression of Gallicanism, which was the assured consequence of those terms of the French Concordat by which the old episcopate was set aside, promised the victory to Ultramontanism in all the National Churches. Consalvi at once revealed his diplomatic skill by the very order in which the Concordats were concluded. Agreements with the friendliest governments, and with countries where the Jesuits had already begun to prepare the way for a return to the old state of things, opened this era of Concordats.

THE NEW CONCORDATS

In Spain Ferdinand VII returned to the Concordat of 1753; in Sardinia, the government persecuted all opponents of the Pope’s Infallibility, and ten dioceses, which had been abolished by the French, were restored in 1817. In the same year France concluded a new Concordat, by which the Concordat of 1801 was made invalid, while the old Concordat of 1516 was to come again into force. The suppressed bishoprics were to be restored and endowed so richly that a great part of France would again come under the dead hand; but the old rights of the Gallican Church would, by the new agreement, be in every respect kept sacred. At Rome people already rejoiced that the French Church had regained her old splendor, and Pius VII showed his satisfaction by giving three of his legitimist antagonists among the French bishops the cardinal’s hat. But before this Concordat could become law in France, it had to be sanctioned by the chambers, and that proved impossible. The projet de loi, which the government laid before the legislative assemblies, contained in reality just as gross a violation of the new Concordat, as the Organic Laws did of the Concordat of 1801; and fury reigned at Rome over this last exhibition of French faithlessness. And even with the proposed restrictions, the Concordat of 1817 could not pass. Count Portalis was therefore sent to Rome to induce Pius VII either to abandon the new Concordat altogether or to alter the articles objected to, so that there might be some hope of carrying the matter through. But all his efforts were fruitless. The Curia would go no further than to promise a suspension of the new Concordat until circumstances in France were changed. After the negotiations had been in abeyance for six months, Portalis renewed them under the ministry of Richelieu; but Rome would not make any more concessions than before. In 1819 a temporary suspension of the new Concordat was agreed upon, by which the Concordat of 1801 again came into force for the time being. And Pius VII to the last held to this view of the arrangement of 1819, as being merely temporary.

The course of things in Bavaria was very similar. With that state also Rome made a most favorable arrangement in 1817. But here again opposition did not fail to declare itself, and the government had to give way to the storm, by appending to the new Constitution an Edict which assured to the Protestants establishment and guarantees; since that time the government of Bavaria has halted between submission to the Concordat and loyalty to the Constitution. By a clever use of the fear of the Revolution, which possessed the Neapolitan reigning family, Consalvi at last succeeded, in 1818, in making a Concordat with Naples, which contained all the concessions that Rome could reasonably wish for. The Revolution of 1820 certainly caused a temporary breach between Rome and Naples, but in 1821 the Concordat again came into force.

Things did not go so smoothly with the Protestant governments. The Republican Constitution of the Netherlands had brought with it religious liberty, but under Napoleon the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church had not been settled, although the Emperor had made several offers in that direction while Pius VII was a prisoner at Savona. Immediately after the Restoration, William I expressed his wish to conclude a Concordat with Rome, which after being sanctioned by the estates should form part of the Constitution of the Netherlands. The negotiations were opened by Count Reinhold and continued by De Celles; but it was not until 18th July 1827 that a conclusion was reached, by which the French Concordat of 1801 was extended to Belgium; three new bishoprics were created, and the appointment of the Roman Catholic bishops was taken away from the non-Catholic King.

At the Vienna Congress there had been an inclination to form a free German National Church, and during the negotiations which took place in 1818 at Frankfort between the states which composed the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine, an echo of Febronianism was still heard. Metternich wished that all the German federal states should conclude a common Concordat with Rome, and he made overtures in that direction, but they were without result. On the other hand, the several Protestant states in Germany made arrangements and Concordats of their own with the Pope. Frederic William III sent to Rome the great historical pioneer, Niebuhr, as the representative of Prussia, and Niebuhr obtained in 1821 an agreement with Rome which the Pope himself called mirificum. Niebuhr, who was critical enough in other things, was completely convinced of the Harmlosigkeit of the Papal Court; and he was a bitter antagonist of Febronianism and of Jansenism. Therefore the agreement which he introduced, and which was concluded by Hardenberg himself during his stay at Rome, was especially favorable for the Papacy.

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS TO ROME

The only Catholic power which did not make a new agreement with the Pope was Austria; for over this country there still hung in matters relating to the Church something of the spirit of Joseph II. But the Emperor Francis I came to Rome in 1819 with his consort, his daughter, Prince Metternich, and a splendid retinue, to visit Pius VII and to demonstrate his affection and reverence for him. It was a welcome visit, and it would have been still more welcome if the Papal Treasury had not been completely empty. Pius VII was obliged, curiously enough, to borrow some of the money for the festivities arranged for Francis I and Metternich, from Madame Letitia Bonaparte and the Princess Pauline. The remainder was raised by the collecting of outstanding debts, and by the conclusion of unfortunate leases. During the visit of the imperial couple to Rome the friendship between Consalvi and Metternich was renewed, and shortly afterwards the Austrian minister, on his way to Karlsbad, gave his Roman colleague good advice. “Crush intriguers and you diminish intrigues. You may in every respect rely upon us for help in the good cause”; so runs the letter of Metternich. “The intimate understanding that exists between our two governments will serve mightily for the preservation of peace, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. But Metternich, as we learn from his Memoirs, was anything but edified by his stay in Rome. He writes from there to his wife: “I confess that I do not comprehend how a Protestant can become a Catholic at Rome—Rome is like a most splendid theatre, but it has the poorest of actors. Keep my remark to yourself, for otherwise it will go the round of Vienna, and I am too much interested in religion and its victory to wish in any way to make an attack upon it”.

Other princely personages followed the example of Francis I, as the Kings of Naples and of Prussia. Prince Christian of Denmark also, and Princess Caroline Amalie, visited Rome; amongst Consalvi’s letters there are letters of gratitude from them both for the kindness which the Cardinal had shown them during their stay in the Eternal City. It was during their visit that Thorvaldsen came into closer contact with Consalvi and the Roman clergy. But besides these guests Rome had several exiled kings constantly within her walls. Both Charles IV of Spain and Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy had taken up their abode there, and the family of Napoleon also for a long time found an asylum at Rome.

But it was above all the devotees of art and science who flocked to the city of St Peter, where antiquity and the Middle Ages meet. It was Consalvi’s idea to make Rome the metropolis of the world as the city of art, since it no longer seemed able to be the world’s mistress; artists therefore were held in high honor. Canova was highly regarded both by Pius VII and by his Secretary of State, and Thorvaldsen was able to create his masterpieces there, admired and honored by all. During Consalvi’s time it was chiefly sculpture that flourished in Rome; afterwards it was painting. In 1817, and often afterwards, the Crown Prince Ludvig of Bavaria visited the city to refresh his spirit by gazing at its art treasures. He acquired the Villa Malta on the Monte Pincio and lived amongst the antiquities of the Eternal City, surrounded by artists such as Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, Overbeck, Catel, Thorvaldsen, and the architect, Leo von Klenze. Rome also contained men of learning in great numbers. Several of the representatives of foreign powers, such as Niebuhr and Bunsen, have acquired a greater name in the history of knowledge than in that of diplomacy.

But the city of St Peter was not allowed to be only an asylum for Church and art; under Pius VII there were already fore­bodings of new storms. In 1816 the Pope said to Artaud, when the conversation turned upon the recently published Motu proprio: “The people are difficult to deal with nowadays”. He had reason to observe how the difficulties increased year by year. In 1817 the Carbonari made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the town of Macerata, and two years afterwards it came to light that they had designs upon Rome itself. An Italian officer named Illuminati, brought a couple of letters to the post-office. The postmaster noticed that the man was uneasy; he therefore opened the letters. They contained information for fellow-members of a lodge, composed in enigmatic language. Illuminati was tortured, but he would confess nothing. He would not eat, in order to meet death without confessing. Then came a letter to him from his mistress at Venice, and love conquered politics. The desire of life returned; he ate, and confessed. It appeared from his disclosures that there was a network of conspiracy over the whole peninsula.

THREATENED REVOLUTION

When Spain in 1820 proclaimed the Constitution of 1812, a revolutionary movement was felt throughout the whole of Italy. In Naples the army demanded the Spanish Constitution of 1812, and a revolution broke out in Sicily. In the south of Italy the rising was directed against the tyranny of the King; in the north against foreign dominion. “The kingdom of Italy! Independence!” was the watchword in Piedmont. In the midst between these two revolutionary streams lay the Papal States, whose sovereign could never rule according to a Constitution, and whose minister was a friend of Metternich. In the enclaves of the Papal States, Benevento and Pontecorvo, people were already planting trees of liberty, and a declaration was published which stated that it was the will of the people of Benevento to live and die free, and in union with Naples. In Rome rings were sold with death’s heads and other emblems of the Carbonari; in the Legations, where the French rule had left behind it a revolutionary seed ready to sprout, the members of the secret societies held meetings in out-of-the-way places of the woods, and sang: “We are all soldiers of liberty!” A fictitious proclamation was spread abroad, in which the Pope promised for the future to govern according to “the Spanish Constitution, the gospel, and the Council of Trent”. It even seemed for a moment as if Consalvi’s opponents, the most reactionary cardinals and the Liberals, would unite in a costituzione cardinalizia, formed after the Spanish model, which had very attractive features for the priesthood, because it forbade the exercise of any other religion than the Catholic, and surrounded the elections with religious ceremonies.

Consalvi weathered the storm by keeping cool, and by combining firmness with clemency. During the carnival season, troubles broke out in the Legations, but when the Austrians appeared, matters became quiet again. The Holy-Alliance succeeded in smothering the revolts in the southern peninsulas of Europe, and Jansenism which had boldly raised its head in the Spanish Cortes and in the Portuguese court circles received thereby its death-blow. The victory of the alliance, however, was not an unmixed pleasure to Pius VII. He, like the rest of the Italian sovereigns, received much good advice regarding his government which Consalvi would not accept. It hurt him to see St Peter's successor placed on an equal footing with the princes of Tuscany and Modena. A Bull was promulgated in 1821, as we have seen, against the Carbonari, but from that moment Consalvi became more distant towards Metternich; whereupon the secret agents of Austria in Rome spoke with the greatest bitterness of the Cardinal, “who forgot the instructions he had received from the Allied Powers in 1815”. The condition of affairs in Rome was described as “demoralization in things spiritual, disorder and corruption in things temporal”, and Roman politics as a mixture of Pharisaism and Machiavellism. We cannot wonder therefore that Austria, when a rumor of the Pope’s failing health was circulated looked about for a candidate for the Papal chair, and would on no account have Consalvi elevated to the Papacy. Louis XVIII on the contrary trusted Consalvi more and more, and the Orleanists also leaned towards Rome. Louis Philippe in 1822 wrote in his paternal style to Consalvi, that his wife and he were “happy in inculcating upon their young family affection for the see of St Peter”, and as a token of his great respect for the Cardinal he sent him some flowers, because he had learned from Talleyrand that Consalvi was a great lover of flowers.

DEATH OF NAPOLEON

In the same year that the Pope issued the Bull against the Carbonari, the captive Emperor died. The pious Pope had never forgotten him. In October 1817 he wrote from Castel Gandolfo to Consalvi: “The Emperor Napoleon's family has informed me through Cardinal Fesch that the climate of the rocky island of St Helena is deadly, and that the poor exile sees his strength ebbing away with every minute. This news has caused me unspeakable sorrow, and you will no doubt share it with me; for we must both remember that, next to God, we owe it to him that religion was re-established in the great French Empire. Savona and Fontainebleau were only spiritual delusions or errors, due to human ambition; the Concordat was a saving act, full of Christian courage ... It would be to my heart a joy like nothing else, if I could help in lessening Napoleon’s sufferings. He can no longer be dangerous to anyone. I only wish that he may not cause anybody remorse”. It was language worthy of a Christian. Pius VII was minded to write to the Allied Powers, and especially to the Prince Regent of England, and he requested Consalvi also to intercede with that Prince, who was the Cardinal’s “dear and good friend”. In a letter of 18th May 1818, Madame Letitia thanks the Pope for all that he has done for her “great, unhappy, proscribed one in St Helena”; she feels herself like the “mother of all sorrows”, and her only consolation is that Pius VII has forgotten the past, so that he now only thinks of her and her children with kindness.

The news received from St Helena was always sad. Pius VII had sent to Napoleon a priest, the Abbé Vignali, who was to bring him the consolations of religion; but there was nothing to indicate that misfortune and downfall had brought the Emperor to the Christian faith. He ordered, however, the Sacrament to be exhibited in the sick-room, and just before his death he received Extreme Unction. His will opens with the words, “I die in the bosom of the Apostolic and Roman Church”; and he wished to have the observances of the Roman Church followed at his funeral. When his doctor scoffed at this he said: “Young man! You are perhaps too clever to believe in God; I am not so advanced as that. Not all can be atheists”. A few days before his death he said: “I shall see my generals again. They will meet me; they will yet again feel the excitement there is in earthly glory. We will speak of what we have achieved; we will converse about our art with Frederick, Turenne, Condé, Caesar, and Hannibal, unless people up there, like those here below, should be afraid of seeing so many warriors in one place”. Thus it was a modern Valhalla that he looked for, and Mme. de Rémusat is scarcely wrong, when she says that Napoleon attached greater importance to the immortality of his name than to that of his soul.

At last, on 5th May, whilst storm and rain raged outside, he breathed his last after a terrible death struggle. “My son—the army—Desaix,” were the few words that could be caught, and it has been gathered from them that the dying Emperor’s last thoughts dwelt upon Marengo. As soon as the news of his death was received at Rome, Pius VII ordered Cardinal Fesch to hold a memorial service, as a sign that Napoleon had died at peace with the Church, and the Italians sang Manzoni’s song, Il cinque Maggio, with the verse:

" II Dio, che atterra e suscita,

Che affanna e che consola,

Sulla deserta cultrice

Accanto a lui poso."

DEATH OF PIUS VII

Pius VII did not survive him long. On 6th July 1823, in the evening, he fell on the floor in his chamber in the Quirinal, and was obliged to keep his bed. While he lay ill, a disaster occurred, which to the Romans was an omen of the Pope’s death: the Church of San Paolo outside the walls was burned down. It was the most beautiful Basilica of Rome, built under Theodosius, with five aisles, divided by Corinthian columns. In the monastery by San Paolo Pius VII had spent his youth as a quiet monk in literary occupations, and he loved that church. While it was burning, he was so ill that they dared not tell him about it. He grew weaker day by day, and he was prepared for the coming of death. The Emperor of Austria sent him old Tokay, and Louis XVIII presented him with an ingeniously contrived mechanical bed to lessen his sufferings. On 17th August he made his communion, and on the 19th he received Extreme Unction; and in all the churches of Rome prayers were offered for the dying Pope, who in a gentle voice continually repeated the words : “Savona—Fontainebleau”. It is a beautiful story that Pius VII in his last illness would not bear the usual mode of address, “Most Holy Father”, and said, “No, call me poor sinner”. On 17th August he died calmly and quietly, absorbed in prayer. Consalvi, who was himself ill with fever, had risen from his bed to watch the last three nights by his sovereign. As soon as Pius breathed his last, he fell upon his knees at the bedside and watered the dead man’s feet with his tears.

With the death of Pius VII Consalvi’s rule came to an end. At the first meeting of the cardinals jealousy and ill-will towards the powerful Secretary of State were immediately displayed, but Cardinal Fesch defended him. Cardinals della Somaglia and Ruffo received orders to prepare everything for a new Conclave, and while Masses were said for the deceased Pope, thoughts were eagerly turned towards finding the best man to succeed him. Consalvi never attempted to play a part again; all his thoughts were concentrated upon raising a worthy monument to his dead master. In his will of 1st August 1822, he had appointed a sum of 20,000 Roman florins for this purpose. The execution was to be entrusted to Canova or to Thorvaldsen, and if neither could undertake the work, to one of the best sculptors in Rome. The monument was to consist of three statues: over the urn the statue of the Pope, and by his side two figures, representing heavenly Strength and heavenly Wisdom.

As Canova died shortly after the will was made, the execution was entrusted to Thorvaldsen. One day in November, while he was occupied in working at his Angel of Baptism, he was summoned to the Vatican, and was there commissioned by Consalvi to execute the monument of Pius VII. He was greatly pleased with this task; contrary to his usual custom, he stopped his friends in the street and told them of his good fortune. He made several sketches.

First he represented the Pope sitting with a palm-branch in his hand, while two angels carried a crown of stars above his head. It was unfortunate, for palm and crown are the attributes of saints, and Pius VII was not a saint. Then he represented the Pope sitting, weighed down by his many sufferings, with the triple crown, which he had taken off, standing beside him. It was Pius VII at Savona and Fontainebleau; but what was desired was Pius VII at Rome. At last he made a third sketch, in which the Pope sat, clothed in his heavy cope embroidered with the instruments of the Apostles’ martyrdom, and his right hand uplifted to bless the people, and his left foot advanced for them to kiss. The face had the mild and gentle expression of the pious Pope, and contemporaries considered the likeness striking. The model for this monument, which was finished in 1825, was generally admired. But zealous Catholics were dissatisfied; they thought it was a scandal that a heretic should execute a monument to the Head of the Church in the chief sanctuary of Roman Catholic Christendom, and they hoped that Thorvaldsen, as usual, would not be ready in time. But this spurred the great artist on. The monument was ready at the appointed time and was unveiled on 2nd April 1831.