needful, yet recommendable by high antiquity and by successful experiences, and as a matter of agreement within the English nation he would have the civil and the religious government amalgamate in a Christian kingdom. "A Commonwealth is one way and a Church is another way defined, yet seeing that there is not any man of the Church of England but the same is also a member of the Commonwealth, nor any man is member of the Commonwealth who is not also of the Church of England, therefore as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the same line is both a base and also side-a side simply, a base if it chance to be at the bottom and support the rest-so albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a Commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given to a multitude; yet one and the same multitude may be a such sort both, or is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other."28

Dean Stanley inherited from his master, Dr. Arnold, much of Hooker's scheme. Arnold, his biographer tells us, thought it superstition to suppose the Church ruled not by natural laws, but by a divinely appointed succession of priests; in the Christian people he disliked a distinction into lay and sacerdotal order. His ideal was not a sovereign Church acting through a State as through an inferior instrument for the Christianizing of the people, but an identification in a single Church-State. "The only perfect freedom," he said, "is where the Church and the State are both free and both one.' "29 Dissenters strongly revolted from such an amalgamation. Their watchword, still repeated to-day, was that Church and State were institutions quite apart, and that the Church must accept no State money and tolerate no State interference in spiritual concerns. In the heat of the controversy about the present question of religion to be taught in schools we shall not understand the vehemence and the persistence of the dissenters unless we remember that from their religious as distinct from their worldly point of view their attitude is an inheritance from a keenly contentious past in English history, during which, as they boast, they suffered much hardship for their cause.

In his chapter on the secularization of politics Mr. Leckey takes the Crusades as marking out the time when dogmatic interests most domineered over the political and the social, so as to quell even national animosities and to put the State to that extreme test of earnestness, submission to have its finances ruined for a religious cause. "The statesmen of to-day," he adds, "set aside dogmatic interests from practical politics, which are quite secularized." The extension of the severance to our schools is natural. We who would avoid secularization as a calamity of the direst sort seek to stop the course of naturalistic development, in aid of which purpose we still look to the Pope to speak to us and to the civil rulers as one who has a right, whether statesmen admit it or not, to check governments when their action is injurious to the religion of Christ. For us that utility has not ceased which as serviceable to the Middle Ages has been so highly exalted by writers of very different schools, such as Milwan, Guizot, Hallam, Gregorovius and Leckey. For example, the last named says of the Papal State then about to fall before the Italian conquest: "No human pen can write its epitaph, for no imagination can adequately recognize its glories. In the eyes of those who estimate the greatness of a sovereignty not by the extent of its territory or the valor of its soldiers, but by the influence which it has exercised over mankind, the Papal government had no rival and can have no successor." "30

Stonyhurst, England.

JOHN RICKABY, S. J.

T

PIUS VII. AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

IV.

HE Church of France did not begin to enjoy peace and independence as soon as the Concordat was signed and ratified.

Bonaparte had succeeded in concluding it in spite of the ill-will and opposition of the members of his government and of the strong Jacobin element still prevailing among the representatives of the people. He alone had seen clearly the necessity of reconciling France with the Holy See, though his proceedings show that he was guided by purely political motives, and was determined to maintain the Church as much as possible subordinate to the State and to use it as a means of spreading among the people the ideas of order and of submission to the government. But though the infidel members of his administration had been forced to yield to his strong will, they still sought to counteract, by every means in their power, his efforts to grant the Church even the small degree of liberty he was inclined to allow. One might even ask if this petty persecution may not have been tolerated to a certain degree by Bonaparte with a view to making the French clergy feel how completely it was still in his power, and that to him were owing whatever freedom it 30 "History of Rationalism," Vol. II., p. 142, first edition.

possessed. The ecclesiastics who had found means to remain in France without taking the oath to the Civil Constitution, or who had returned from exile without the permission of the government, were no longer, it is true, liable to be condemned to death or to deportation to Cayenne, but they were still exposed to be treated as enemies of the State, for in several departments the prefects continued to arrest them and expel them from the country, as they had done under the Directory and had not ceased to do since the beginning of the Consulate. It was probably with the intention of openly manifesting his aversion to the First Consul's policy that Fouché, the Minister of Police, took care to give as mcuh publicity as possible to these repressive measures.

Not only while Cardinal Consalvi was negotiating the Concordat, but even after it had been signed, the official Moniteur, in the same column as that which contained the arrestations and condemnations of robbers and murderers, announced almost every day that some priest guilty of having reëntered France without having obtained the permission of the government or of saying Mass without having taken the latest form of oath,1 had been seized and banished. Even four days after the Concordat had been signed, Fouché sent a circular to the prefects, in which he vehemently denounced the priests who refused to make the promise required of them and ordered the prefects to expel them without delay from the territory of the Republic. But Fouché's hostility was at last checked by a sharp reprimand from the First Consul, who told him that his circular was written in a tone of hatred and passion unbecoming to the dignity of the government; that its principles were opposed to those of his administration, and that the power of deporting citizens would never be delegated to any local authority. Fouché, therefore, by another circular, at once revoked his instructions.

While Cardinal Consalvi was still in Paris Bonaparte had expressed a strong desire that Cardinal Caprara, Bishop of Jesi (17331810), should be sent to Paris as Legate a latere, provided with the necessary powers for the purpose of reestablishing order in religious matters in France. The Cardinal, who was then aged sixty-eight and in very delicate health, had been Nuncio at Vienna, and the feeble resistance which he offered to the reforms so forcibly imposed

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on the Church by the Emperor Joseph II. had much displeased Pius VI. He was, indeed, religious and charitable and possessed great capacity for the management of affairs, but he was timid; he did not uphold sufficiently the dignity of a representative of the Holy See, and he was too anxious to avoid whatever might offend the sovereigns with whom he had to treat. Cardinal Consalvi states in his Memoirs that in many cases Caprara acted without first consulting the Holy Father, and sometimes even contrary to the orders which he had received, but always with the best intentions and in the belief that what he did was right.

5

Cardinal Caprara was named Legate in a secret consistory held on August 24, 1801 ; he received the silver cross which was the symbol of his dignity in a public consistory on the 27th, and he reached Paris on October 4.

At the audience which Bonaparte gave the Legate on the following day he informed him that he intended to select a third of the new Bishops from among the constitutional clergy, provided they submitted to the conditions required by the Holy Father. It was not difficult for the Cardinal to point out that the nomination as Bishops of persons who had manifested their Jansenist opinions in the synod they had recently held in Paris was not exactly the way to restore religious peace in France, but rather to prepare another struggle and to develop a spirit of insubordination among the clergy. In his report to Cardinal Consalvi Caprara expressed his conviction that his reply had evidently produced a strong impression on the First Consul, but even if it had, the hostile influences always working to hinder the success of the Concordat soon effaced it, and Bonaparte remained as obstinately determined to carry out his plans as before. 6

It was this resolution taken by the First Consul to nominate members of the constitutional clergy as Bishops and their refusal to renounce their errors in the form prescribed by the Holy See which for a considerable time presented the chief obstacle to the religious pacification of France.

After the ratification of the Concordat on August 15 Pius VII. addressed a brief to the French hierarchy, in which he exhorted them to resign their sees. He praised the services which they had already rendered to religion, but warned them that they had not as yet completed the glorious career prepared for them by Divine Providence.

4 P. Ilario Rinieri, La Diplomazia Pontificia nel secolo XIX. Roma, 1902, Vol. I., p. 321.

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Still greater sacrifices than those by which they had so much distinguished themselves were demanded of them. The preservation of the unity of the Church and the reestablishment of religion in France now required a new manifestation of their virtue and magnanimity. They should send him of their own accord the resignation of their sees. Both in the reign of Pius VI. and in more recent times many Bishops had declared that they were willing to give up their sees if it were demanded for the good of religion; the sacrifice had now become necessary, and he had no doubt that they would make it. The Holy Father added that he was obliged by the difficulties of the times (temporum necessitate), to which he, too, was forced to yield, to ask them to send him, within ten days, an answer which should be final and not dilatory (absolutum omnino esse debere, non dilatorium). If they did not, or if by their answer they sought to gain time, he should be obliged to consider that they refused to obey his request."

The brief addressed to the intrusive Bishops who belonged to the constitutional clergy was drawn up under two forms; one was addressed to them directly, the other to Mgr. Spina, who still remained in Paris and who was to correspond with them in the name of the Sovereign Pontiff. He was to request them to listen to the exhortations of the Holy Father; to return to the unity of the Catholic Church, and to abandon the bishoprics which they had occupied without having been instituted by the Apostolic See. Annexed to this brief was a formula of retractation to be signed by them, declaring that they submitted to the Sovereign Pontiff and accepted the decisions of the Holy See with regard to the ecclesiastical affairs of France. Mgr. Spina was left free to make use of either form, according as he should judge most prudent, and in conformity with the preference expressed by the Holy Father he decided to employ the "indirect" form. The brief was highly approved by the French Government, and Bonaparte assured Mgr. Spina that if the intrusive Bishops did not submit to the paternal invitation of the Holy Father, he would have nothing more to say to them.

Mgr. Spina, therefore, forwarded to each of the intrusive Bishops a copy of the brief which had been directed to himself, without appending, however, the formula of, retractation, for in his letter which accompanied the brief he named the conditions which had been laid down by the Holy Father for their reunion with the