Rome Has Spoken
Sources:
De Cesare Raffaele and George Macaulay Trevelyan. 1909. The Last Days of Papal Rome 1850-1870. London: A. Constable.
Vatican I : The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. 2018. Cambridge Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Eno Robert B. 2008. The Rise of the Papacy. Eugene Or: Wipf & Stock.
Page John R. 1994. What Will Dr. Newman Do? : John Henry Newman and Papal Infallibility 1865-1875. Collegeville Minn: Liturgical Press.
Certain Sainthood : Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church. 2015. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kertzer David I. 2004. Prisoner of the Vatican : The Popes’ Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
The Pope Who Would Be King : The Exile of Pius Ix and the Emergence of Modern Europe. 2018 First ed. New York: Random House.
Prologue
Sausage is one of the best foods devised by man - breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, German brats, sausage pizza, even those chicken sausages with pockets of cheese in them. Everyone loves sausage. But you know what no one loves? Watching sausage get made.
As Catholics, we love the doctrines of the faith handed down to us by the Church fathers. They reveal more to us about God and His relationship with us. They gives is a better understanding in the Faith and assist us in working out our salvation. Everyone loves the Faith. But you know what no one loves? Ecumenical council proceedings.
This really bad analogy I’ve just given you has been helpful for me at least in understanding that being a little too familiar with the sausage factory can affect my appetite for the end product. Vatican I may as well be the sausage factory from Upton Sinclaire’s “The Jungle”. So, are we examining it?
For return listeners you know this podcast examines those moments in Church history when it seems the Gates of Hell come awfully close to prevailing. A dogmatic ecumenical council seems an unlikely place to find one of those moments. But then consider the gravity of an ecumenical council – it produces dogma and doctrine that the faithful are bound to ascent to and believe. A public refutation of the results of Church councils often leads to one being excommunicated. Let him be anathema. These men, these bishops, the living fathers of the Church are understood to be fallible, and capable of sin just like the rest of us. However, it to be believed that the Holy Spirit will not let these councils lead the faithful into error. That’s a reassuring belief.
The answer the question, why we are examining a church council, is Papal Infallibility – declared a dogma of the faith during the first Vatican council. What might surprise you, and what certainly surprised me, was how controversial this dogma was – and always had been. In fact, many of the world’s most prominent theologians, almost all of the Catholic princes, and at least 25% of the Church bishops felt the Gates of Hell had either prevailed or come dangerously close at Vatican I. It also – and there’s no getting around this – changed the trajectory of the Church Hierarchy in ways that no one ever expected, and in ways we take for granted today. This appears to be mostly forgotten history, and the perfect type of subject for this podcast.
To be crystal clear – this is not a theology podcast. It is a history podcast. The merits of, or apologetics for theological concepts, including doctrine, dogma, and articles of the faith are not analyzed here. I say this because for some people, the very nature of looking at the history of the first Vatican Council and calling its results controversial, can be a little to spicy for some people. That’s fine. For those interested in a sober and thoughtful examination of this critical pivot in Church History – grab a seat.
St. Augustine is credited with originating the phrase, Roma locuta; causa finita est. Rome has spoken – the case is closed. I shall most unworthily borrow from that great doctor of the church and use part of that phrase for the title of this series: Rome Has Spoken.
Part 1 – Plenitude of Power
A mob, some ten thousand strong, had gathered around the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The pope had no choice but to barricade himself and his closest advisors inside. The mob had sent their pleas to the Vicar of Christ – they demanded a liberal government. The pope had again refused. In response the mob set the palace gates on fire. The flames took and began to rise – it looked as if the whole palace might go up in flames. The pope’s servants managed to douse the fires from above – buying more time. When the mob attempted to reignite it, the Swiss Guard opened fire on them.
Some of the more daring Romans outside the gate, armed with rifles, climbed a bell tower, others perched on roofs, looking for movement within the palace windows. Monsignor Palma – Latin text preparer for the pope, glanced out into the piazza below, when a bullet zipped through the window, striking the Monsignor in the chest. He fell dead upon the cold marble floor. The lonely pontiff lamented:
“This is the second victim who dies for my cause.”
The first victim was the pope’s Minister of the Interior, Pelligrino Rossi. Just days earlier, as Rossi was walking from his carriage to parliament, he was stabbed in the neck by an assassin. That night a group of protesters had gathered outside the home of Rossi and chanted: Blessed is the hand that stabbed Rossi.
Back outside the pope’s palace, the crowd was now overturning carts, creating barricading at the entrances to the piazza that lead to the palace. They were preparing for a siege. If they could not enter the Quirinal Palace, they would starve out the pope-king. Somehow, the crowd acquired a canon. They rolled the piece of artillery to the front of their barricade and aimed it directly at the palace gates.
Seeing the strengthening position of the roman mob, the pope’s advisors urged him to at last give in, to appoint new government ministers favorable to the people, to allow the people to form a liberal government. The pope replied:
"Hope of resisting, none. Here in my own royal palace, a prelate has been killed. Shots are fired at us, cannons are aimed at us. Encircled, besieged by the rebels. We give in to avoid useless shedding of blood and even worse crimes, but only to force. You see, signori, we give in, but under protest. We give in only under threat of violence, and every concession we make is invalid, it is null and void."
So little was left in the pope’s control that this was less a concession of authority, and more an acknowledgement of reality. There was no one in Rome who desired to come to his defense. No one in Rome desired his rule – at least publicly. The Swiss Guard was rendered impotent by the Civic Guard – who had aligned themselves with the mob and taken control of the Quirinal Palace. The streets of Rome were no longer the pope’s. The soldiers in the army of his Papal States’ territory had also abandoned him, joining the mob. Roman aristocrats, who had long profited from this monarchy were nowhere to be found. Most of the roman curia – the cardinals, were hiding in the shadows.
When news of the pope’s capitulation reached the streets of Rome, the mobs fired rifles in the air in celebration of their victory. This was jarring news for the French, Spanish, and British governments – who each held uneasy control of their nations in this post enlightenment new-world. All three had warships docked on the Italian coast, ready to deliver the pope to safety – if he could make it out of Rome.
At 5pm, on November 24th, 1848, the French Ambassador, Duke Harcourt, stepped out of his carriage and entered the palace - the Civic Guard let him pass, not willing to deny entry to such a high ranking foreign visitor. Duke Harcourt was a realist. Just a week earlier he had advised his government that: The pope’s authority exists in name only.
The ambassador entered the papal apartment high up in the palace, where he found Pius IX waiting for him. From another door, the papal steward, Count Benedetto Filippani entered. The steward escorted Pius to his bedroom where he helped the pope disrobe himself of the iconic snow white robes and red shoes. Pius then lowered himself to his knees and began to pray: Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. ... In your compassion blot out my offense.
His steward interrupted the pontiff’s prayers, reminding him that time was of the essence. To which Pius responded in Latin with: The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.
The new clothes laid out for the pope were those of the common cleric: a black cassock, black socks, black shoes, and black wide brimmed floppy hat. He rubbed powder in his hair to whiten it, and then placed tinted glasses upon the bridge of his nose. As Pius turned toward his mirror to review his new garb, he said: I look like a country priest.
Back in the receiving room, the French ambassador sat alone, talking to himself, in case anyone was listening, hoping to give off the impression that he and the pope were engaged in diplomatic discussions. Meanwhile, Pius IX and his steward lit a single candle and made their escape through a side door of the bedroom, and then passing through the papal throne room. Reaching the end of a hall, they were supposed to meet a papal servant with a key to a secret exit from the palace. But the servant was not there. "My God," muttered the pope, "this begins badly."
Steward Filippani left to find the servant and returned with the key in hand. Both men passed then through another dark hall and then down a stairway. At the base of the stairs was an exterior door to the palace. The keys to this door (like all exterior doors to the palace) were held by the Civic Guardsmen. Yet this particular door was discovered to have a faulty lock. It could be opened if at the same time one person pushed and one person on the opposite side lifted. Another papal servant was supposed to be waiting on the outside to do precisely that. The papal steward knocked to alert the servant that they had arrived. Three knocks in reply would have meant the coast was clear. But they received two knocks – meaning the Civic Guard was present. After what must have been an eternity, three knocks finally came in reply. The door was lifted and pushed open, revealing Pius IX dressed as a common priest. The papal servants awaiting him fell to their knees to receive his blessing.
Filippani and the unrecognizable country priest with him then made their way to the steward’s carriage. Loudly, for all to hear he commanded the diver to take them to his house. Passing by the courtyard guards Filippani leaned out the window waving them good night. Pius IX held a handkerchief to his face, pretending to sneeze. After a few more midnight carriage transfers, Pius made his way safely to Gaeta, near the tip of the Italian boot, under the direct protection of King Ferdinand of Naples. The eternal city had kicked out the pope. Its citizens had rejected him, and his priestly government. Rome had spoken.
This event did not lead to the downfall of Pius IX; rather, it defined him. It was the pivotal moment when various threads of Catholic Church history converged into a single significant result. While it undoubtedly was the beginning of the end of the decline of the papal states – the pope's earthly kingdom that had endured for a millennium – and the fading of papal temporal power, it also created an opportunity for papal reformers. The centralizing of all church governance under the authority of the Chair of Peter was nigh – something that was not always a given in the first millennium of the church.
Pope Pius IX would later preside over the first Vatican Council, introducing the dogma of Papal Infallibility. It is this Vatican Council that is the subject of this series, not necessarily Pius IX or the dogma of papal infallibility specifically. Yet both must inevitably play an oversized part in our conversation, and one or the other – Vatican I would either never happened or produced nothing remarkable. Therefore, both must be examined if we are to properly understand Vatican I. There is one more critical element to understanding this council – and that is geopolitics. Leading up to the council, the Papal monarchy is rightly regarded as a failed state. The first men to recognize this fact this was the European aristocracy. The last man to discover it was Pius IX.
To truly comprehend how and why the first Vatican Council came to be we must, of course look at the historical contextual evolution of theory and thought on papal infallibility – and for any repeat listeners you know in most cases this means we need to go back a long way, nearly back to Christ himself – and all the while we need to keep one eye on the city of Rome itself.
Author Raffaele De Cesare in his incredibly informative and detailed work: The Last Days of Papal Rome, describe the city in 1870 as having changed so much as to:
“…render the reconstruction of her past most difficult, a past complicated by historical circumstances and by reason of its geography; a city not really in the centre of Italy, the political capital of a small Italian State and the religious capital of the Catholic world, girdled by a desert and marshes, almost skirting the sea, yet not a maritime city; subject to the enervating sirocco [dustrorms], enclosed within walls, of which two-thirds surrounded villas, vine-yards, meadows, malarial cane fields and ruins.”
De Cesare goes on to marvel at the speed at which Rome changed when he was writing his history in 1909:
Still more is this the case in dealing with contemporary history and with the extraordinary events by means of which the political unity of a country, never before united, was achieved and a thousand-year-old power, which seemed immortal, was brought to an end. The events accomplished in twenty years prove to be the natural consequence of those historic laws from which the political Papacy flattered itself it was to be exempt.”
The last thing the papacy did, mere moments before its fall, was to declare itself infallible. Infallibility is a funny thing. And at the time De Cesare was writing his history – acceptance of infallibility by the common laity was far from universal. As late as the early 20t century there was enough of a public debate that well know Anglican historian and priest Sparrow Simpson noted that Catholics were still altering all their works to conform to a new dogma that previously few had heard of.
Just nine years prior to the declaration of papal infallibility Reverand Stephen Keenan published a Catechism to combat protestant heresies that was distributed to Catholic schools in England, Wales, and Scotland. On the subject of papal infallibility, it reduced it to protestant slander:
(Q.) Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself to be infallible?
(A.) This is a Protestant invention: it is no article of the Catholic faith: no decision of his can oblige under pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, that is by the bishops of the Church.
This catechism wasn’t revised until 30 years after the dogma was declared.
Jesuit historian and author Klaus Schatz tells us that:
"If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no."
Schatz has made a career on this subject and puts forward the case that papal primacy was an evolution of an office, not a fundamental theological given, let alone an article of faith. For many Catholics today it is still not a given. In 1992 a survey of young Christians was conduct on this very topic. 81 % of the respondents were Catholic. Less than 37 percent said they believed in the dogma. The exact same proportion outright denied it, with around 26 percent saying they didn’t know.
Roman Catholic author, trained classicist, rosary devotee and church historian, Garry Wills to this day outright rejects the dogma. Author, theologian, Catholic priest, and theological advisor to the Second Vatican Council Hans Kung, wrote an entire book condemning the dogma of papal infallibility. He wasn’t declared a heretic but was stripped of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. A thousand students in Germany held a candlelit vigil in protest. Followed by sixty American and Canadian theologians publishing a statement directly rebuffing the Vatican’s decision:
"We publicly affirm our recognition that he is indeed a Roman Catholic theologian."
Pope Benedict XVI, who himself in his own words did not believe the papacy was an absolute monarchy, apparently did not see Kung’s the denial of infallibility as much of a scandal, inviting him to the Vatican as a dinner guest.
Brian Tierney, famed medievalist, church historian and former professor at the Catholic University of America wrote:
"There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the thirteenth century; the doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans because it suited their convenience to invent it; eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it."
Father Robert Eno, theologian and professor of Church history at the Catholic University of America, in his book The Rise of the Papacy, illustrates how well the results of infallibility, that is centralizing the authority of the papal office, has paired well with modern technology:
“The years following the council have shown that the problem of papal-episcopal relations is far from resolved. In fact, some would argue that after a brief and modest experiment with decentralization, centralizing tendencies have returned with a vengeance. Rome can be consulted now almost in a matter of minutes from any part of the world. Bishops and others can and do go to Rome in person, frequently with a journey of only a few hours. And now, if you cannot go to Rome, the Pope will come to you. In other words, modern means of communication and travel have made centralization easier than ever.”
We now arrive back at a historical thread that I spent some time on in my first series on the crusade – papal ascendency.
It’s not lost on me that the theological case for papal authority is sourced from the same gospel verses where I derived the title for this entire podcast: The Petrine texts. Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter, the rock, on which His Church would be built. The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, from there says Peter holds the first place among the twelve (CCC 552) Peter is to feed Christ’s sheep, and, along with the other bishops, has the power to bind and loose.
Most church historians acknowledge early church juridic primacy being the see of Jerusalem, where James the lesser was bishop, while Peter was bishop of Rome, often citing the council of Jerusalem in the New Testament where after Peter spoke, James gave his final judgement. It’s important to remember that this is a part of history that we have very little information on. Generally, it is agreed that the shift in juridic primacy to Rome occurred after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome. Yet it all remains speculation at best.
Father Eno goes on:
“No one has ever offered the definitive answer to the question: When and where did the various structural configurations emerge? … Indeed, the closest thing one finds to a monarchical bishop in the first century is precisely the role of James in the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem.”
A watershed moment for papal authority came from the Donation of Constatine – a document claiming that after Constantine was miraculously cured of leprosy by being baptized by Pope Sylvester, the emperor gave the see of peter the governance of Rome and the western empire. The problem is that the Vatican itself, and nearly every historian unanimously agree that the entire thing is a 6th century forgery by Pope Symmachus, who was looking for reasons why he should not be subjected to ecclesiastical tribunals – or the judgments of other bishops. The Catholic Encyclopedia further refers to these texts the Symmachian forgeries.
In the medieval church, the donation was believed to be authentic, however. But this explosion of papal power was held as a good thing by all. From Dante’s Inferno:
“Ah, Constantine, how much evil was born, not from your conversion, but from that donation that the first wealthy Pope received from you!”
But how could the papacy centralize its power based on something that never happened. The answer is it didn’t. According to author and professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, Donald Prudlo, the papacy’s path for primacy was the canonization process. Prudlo’s book, Certain Sainthood, explores this historical development in detail:
“The cult of the saints is one of the oldest manifestations of orthodox Christianity. From the early days of the Christian martyrs to the transition to monastic confessors and then to the geographical extension of new cults in recently Christianized areas, sainthood was an essential correlative to the spread of the Gospel. Even today, in spite of grave challenges from the Protestant Reformation, it still plays a dominant role in the Christian churches most attached to their historical pedigrees: in Roman Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodoxy and, to a lesser extent, among certain high-church Protestants. Such practices had deep roots in popular consciousness and were ubiquitous in first-millennium Christianity.”
By the fourth and fifth centuries the local bishops had asserted control over the recognition of sainthood. We can’t call it canonization because that wasn’t a thing yet. Between 6th and 8th centuries the increasingly hegemonic Roman Church was looking for ways to break its subordination to the Emperors of Constantinople –shockingly evident by the papal forgeries of the time. The time was ripe for the papacy. Not only had it, by necessity, taken over governance of the Roman empire but the Byzantine empire was being ravaged by the rise of Islam. To solidify its military strength and gain sway over the east, the papacy aligned itself with the rising Franks, who were busily unifying into an enormous power. In homage to the new alliance, the Franks gave the Pope large swathes of the Italian peninsula to govern as he would. In return the pope crowned the Frankish King Charlemagne. And thus, was born the Papal states, the papal monarchy, and the Holy Roman Empire.
With the unification of politics came the unification of worship, i.e. the Roman liturgy. The word canonization begins to appear as the millennium approaches, literally meaning the enrollment of men and women into the canon for authorized public and liturgical veneration. Enter Gregory VII and the investiture contest, followed immediately by Urban II’s unleashing of the crusades. The culmination of these events brought the papacy worldwide prestige and interest it had yet to enjoy in its thousand-year history. The Bishopric of Rome was now, by a long shot, the most powerful office on the planet and had proven its ability to not only bring the western aristocracy to heel, but also marshal them to launch intercontinental wars.
This Gregorian-style reformed papacy matured in the 13th century – a big century for the office. It is during this century that discussion emerged about the bishop of Rome having a special charism – that of infallibility. But before we follow those breadcrumbs, we need to go back to the canonization process.
The authority for approving saints was quickly recognized as a tool for doctrinal control. As already mentioned, up to this point the local bishops had taken up the jurisdiction of the veneration of local saints. With the increasing prominence of Rome, it became popular for cults of these regional saints to go on pilgrimage to Rome, to visit the chief bishop of Christendom and receive his recognition of their saint. As more and more pilgrim cults came and went, questions naturally arose over the quality of some of these saints. Doubt and suspicion grew over these locally venerated saints, as well as the motives behind their veneration. For some saints, it was evident that their lives were less than holy.
Challenges to venerations were officially raised, resulting in canonical and theological examinations. These investigations naturally landed in the lap of the papacy. Prudlo reminds us that this was a several hundred-year evolution. The earliest evidence we have of a pope’s involvement in a canonization didn’t occur until 993 at a council in Rome. A bishop read aloud the life and miracles of Bishop Ulrich – who died 20 years prior. Pope John XV issued a document asserting his approval, using the words: “by the authority of Blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles.” John XV then threatened anyone who might disagree with his declaration with anathema. Under apparent threat of excommunication, all the attending bishops signed the document. From this event comes the form for future papal canonizations: collegiality, universality, and testimony of virtues and miracles. This was the beginning of the transformation of canonization of saints from a local liturgical matter, to a universal juridic one.
A hundred years later popes are declaring new saints using language like: “We establish and decree”, “Apostolic authority”, and as it was in the case of a canonization by Benedict IX, the pope for the first time demanded veneration for a saint by all the Christian people and clergy – a new and innovative departure from prior language issued by the bishop of Rome. It should be no surprise then that 30 years after this event, Pope Gregory VII famously declared that the Bishop of Rome is subject to no authority and cannot be judged. That the Roman Church specifically has never erred and will never err. Papal infallibility is, by extensions, a natural and reasonable gravitational outcome of this reckoning.
In 1139 at the Second Lateran Council, pope Innocent II canonized a new saint, Sturm of Fulda. What stood out about Sturn was that he had lived in the 8th century. So why after 400 years now encourage a cult of veneration? The answer was politics. According to the local cult of Sturn, he was in life a stout partisan of the bishop of Rome against political opponents in Germany. This was a saint made for Gregorian-style pontiffs. The year following Sturn’s canonization, canon law was at last organized into a stable, cohesive body that contained within it, according to Donald Prudlo:
“a very high theory of the papal monarchy through the employment of texts, both authentic and otherwise, from the Christian tradition.”
By the end of the 13th century, the Bishop of Rome had total control over canonizations, replete with courts, lawyers, appellate courts, until at the end it would be declared: Rome has spoken, the case is closed.
Pope Innocent then pushed the canonization process into the terms of undeniable infallibility, from Prudlo:
“Innocent used the strongest language to date regarding the pope’s authority to canonize. He speaks with authority as the “successor of blessed Peter and the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” This is one of the first examples of the stabilization of the term Vicarius Christi, which would become a commonplace title for the popes. What is significant here is that Innocent describes the desire of the canonization petitioners for recognition because as “Vicar of Christ” he employs the “plenitude of power.” Aside from the constitutional innovations that Innocent is surely making here, he firmly situates canonization in terms of the fullness of power that “Christ conceded to blessed Peter.” Papal canonization, then, was no simple act of recognition, no permission to translate, no bare juridical edict or liturgical addendum. No, canonization was a reserved and special case (one of the earliest and most explicit reservations in the history of the papacy). It was to be interpreted through the lens of the pope’s supreme authority, granted by Christ Himself. It was to be an extraordinary act, requiring extraordinary process and extraordinary proof. When all of these issues—rigorous public and legal examination, validation by tested miracles, anti-heretical orientation, and the fullness of papal power became joined, Innocent had finally gathered together all the components for the historical unfolding of the process by which infallibility would be claimed regarding canonization, which in the future would stir up strident opposition.”
Innocent’s “plenitude of power” was deployed as a cudgel of teaching authority, mobilizing canonization bulls as papal instructions on faith and morals – what Prudlo calls the proving ground for papal authority. Critics of this new plenitude of power arose immediately – many of them canon lawyers. How could these decisions be infallible if a person were later to be discovered unsaintly? Further, dogmas and morals are clearly found in scripture – but not so with canonized saints. By virtue of this newly defined authority, the pope was taking it upon himself and himself only, to present a member of the church as definitively in Heaven, the lack of divine revelation notwithstanding. Pope Innocent IV responded to challenges by canonists and theologians by declaring that God will sort out the bad saints:
“If the Church might err in such a canonization, which nevertheless is not to be believed, although it may happen… God will accept prayers offered in such good faith, for all things are cleansed in the faith of Christ and though it might be that the truth of canonization might be wanting, nevertheless the faith of those [who believe in the canonization] is not wanting.”
This is a brilliant response by the papacy. The pope’s infallibility and authority is preserved in canonization. But if his infallible declaration ends up indeed being fallible – it’s not his fault.
Innocent IV’s canonizations were all controversial. One of the most divisive was Peter of Verona – who holds title to the fasted canonization in history – one year after his death. In life, he was an inquisitor, and enemy of the Cathars, a politically powerful yet heretical sect. Adding Peter of Verona to the canon of saints was the method by which Innocent would solidify the errors of Catharism. But was this the proper use of the canonization process? Should canonizations have contemporary political ends? Many thought not, believing the canonization of Peter undermined the entire canon. It was not Peter’s piety in question, just the use of this papal authority against an opponent. To further incite critics against the papacy, Peter was a In response to the challenges of the canonization of Peter, theologians, the papacy, and the Dominicans all needed to lawyer up, as it were. Their arguments were sloppy. From Peter’s canonization was birthed saintly legal precision. From Donald Prudlo:
“Papal canonization by the middle of the thirteenth century had become one of the most professional endeavors ever devised. It had explicit, streamlined processes, checks and balances, a diversity of legal explanations and defenses, and growing prestige among the membership of the church. It began to be what it had never been before: a tool that the papal curia could use to reward devoted subjects, a method of elevating and underscoring certain types of piety and holiness, and a way to stress certain currents in papal policy. The honing of this process into a precision tool made canonizations a key weapon in the papal arsenal of the 1200s. Canonized saints could also be explicitly deployed against heresy and heretics. This raised the stakes in the medieval battle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy.”
By 1634, under Pope Urban VIII, the bishops were entirely removed from participation of this ancient right with the wholesale abolition of episcopal canonization.
With increasing status and power of the Dominicans and Franciscans, the mendicant orders became obsessed with canonization. A contest doesn’t even begin to describe the tenor of the competition among the orders. Each canonization from a particular order was further evidence of their validity. To this end, papal infallibility with regards to canonizations was critical. Error was not an option. Enter Saint Bonaventure who laid the theological substrate for infallibility by arguing that for the pope to error in canonization would be throwing the entire church and faithful into error. Such a thing would not be permissible by God. Brian Teirney and Donald Prudlo, both of whom have written extensively on this history, while disagreeing about particulars, both point to Saint Bonaventure as initiating the theological case of papal infallibility.
Contemporary of Bonaventure and fellow a teacher in Paris was Saint Thomas Aquinas. During their tenure, the questions surrounding the infallibility of canonizations were becoming hot. There was growing opposition among the mendicant saints, increasingly seen as self-interested, and promoting unsound doctrine towards political ends. Thomas aimed to take on the issue directly. In his work Quodlibet IX, question 8, he asks: whether all saints who are canonized by the church, are in glory, or if any of them might be in hell.
Being the good scholastic that he was, he first presents two difficult questions that would seem to refute infallibly. First, since no person can be sure of their own salvation, how can the pope be so sure of another’s? The canon legal response is that the pope is presented with witnesses that allow him to assess the candidate. But this leads directly to the second objection. If the pope is relying on fallible people, then the pope must be able to error. Further, as was brought up earlier – none of this is derived from divine revelation. For a resolution to an unanswerable question, Thomas brings an X factor into the argument - The Holy Ghost. For St. Thomas, the Holy Ghost leads the pope and therefore the pope cannot error in canonizations as this would introduce a damnable error in the church and undermine the entire thing.
With the help of St. Thomas, by the 14th century, the process of canonization is fixed, and inquisitors begin using belief in certain mendicant saints as evidence of one’s orthodox faith. A new heresy is born. By denying a certain person is in heaven, thou art denying the infallibility of the pope.
And yet, as we see in the marry-go-round of popes today, things can change drastically from one pope to the next. Just 20 years after St. Thomas weighed in, Pope John XXII condemned the doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil. He called it “pestiferous doctrine” and “pernicious audacity”. But John was treading against the marches of history. Nonetheless, by 1600, papal infallibility in canonizations was largely accepted but it wasn’t universal. In Germany, professors and theologians published their own catechisms that, citing no clear mandate in scripture for such a believe, outright denied it. In England and Ireland in the in the late 18th century, any Catholic who wished to serve in official office had to take an oath denying papal infallibility.
The specter of a doctrine of papal infallibly left the international world uneasy. Kings wondered to which monarch their subjects were loyal. If one was infallible and another was not, well, that made the pope an inherent threat to one’s sovereignty. European sovereigns, who retained the right to appoint bishops, rarely appointed a prelate who leaned towards infallibility. France in particular was particularly hostile to this doctrine.
Gallicanism had been a political faction of the French clergy for a few hundred years. It sprang from a feud between the French king and the pope. An formal agreement was reached between both acknowledging that the pope only has authority over spiritual matters – not temporal ones, that the kings had the right to rule their own lands, and the bishops their own sees. The liberty of the French church codified, legally. To quote Charlie Brown – if you have a signed document in your hands, you can’t go wrong. Self-determining customs and liturgies were, per the agreement, to be respected and regarded as inviolable. And lasty, while it allowed for the primacy of the judgement of the pope, it included a caveat that the pope’s judgments are subject to the consent of the whole church.
The rise in popular papal infallibility as we have been discussing was on an inevitable crash course with Gallicanism – the two world views just would never be able to coexist. In 1763, when the French bishop of Trier felt the papal nuncios were being too heavy handed, he published a book called “On the constitution of the church and the legitimate power of the Roman pontiff.” The book was immediately put on the Index of Forbidden Books by Rome – which of course caused it to be an international best seller in multiple languages. Who doesn’t want to read a forbidden book?
Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria, was outspoken against the bishop of Rome’s international exercises of authority, and so he eliminated the papacy’s involvement inside his borders, taking control of the administration of clergy and seminaries himself. Amidst these dueling forces, Gallicanism and other flavors of nationalism vs the papacy, an disrupting factor was introduced by the enlightenment – the French Revolution.
When the revolutionary French government confiscated all church property, it also gave the Gallican bishops what they desired: episcopal elections at the local diocesan level and a dispensation of papal approval for episcopal nominations. However, it also required the episcopate to swear allegiance to the state over the pope. More than half of the clergy agreed.
Pius VI condemned and nullified all these actions with papal bulls. He declared the French government at war with the church. He was more correct than he anticipated. In 1796 French troops invaded the papal states, defeated the pope’s army, and forced him to sign a humiliating peace treaty that lifted from him certain papal territories, allowed the French access to papal ports, and granted them possession of priceless works of art.
Pius VI was eventually deposed by the French and brought back to France as a prisoner. When he died a month later, thirty-four bishops in Venice elected a new pope, Pius VII. External factors then forced the French to leave Rome, allowing the pope to return to Rome.
Napolean Bonaparte struck a deal that allowed the Church to remain in France. In this agreement, Napolean required that the pope replace all the old bishops with younger ones – in this the emperor thought he would be doing away with the old Catholics loyal to the papacy and installing younger prelates more caught up in revolutionary fervor. He could not have been more mistaken. The old bishops were Gallican, French nationalists. These newer bishops now owed their careers to a pope who was going toe to toe with Napoleon Boneparte. It was magnetic papal supremacy on display.
There was another cultural movement that must be acknowledged, as it is critical to the rise in popular concepts of infallibility. French romanticism had emerged. Whereas the enlightenment caused the French to rid themselves of the customs of the od, it was suddenly popular for the people of France to remember who they were and where they came from. The spiritual mysteries of the Faith, the smells and bells of the Mass, the rhythmic patter of the liturgy became a renewed symbol of national pride. The Middle Ages existed now as a paradigm of perfect theocracy. Gothic architecture and scholasticism had unexpectedly unseated the reason and efficiency of the revolution.
With the enlightenment and the French revolution now in the rear view mirror, this an up-and-coming generation of priests, bishops, laity and theologians, influenced by a burgeoning romanticism, a yearning for the past, saw the papacy as an institution of stability and tradition, power and majesty.
After Napoleon’s downfall, at the congress of Viena, the papal states on the Italian peninsula were reconfigured and reinstated. Austria control over the former republic of Venice. Yet there were now whispers of an Italian nationalism. And this horse-trading of their homelands began to fuel clandestine nationalism.
Such was the cultural and geopolitical condition of Europe and the Italian peninsula that the main character of this narrative was coming of age. Before he was Pius IX, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born to a family of minor nobility in the norther reaches of the papal states. However, it’s not time to tell his story yet.
We must now discuss the word “Ultramontanism.” It is a medieval word that was originally used to describe a pope who was not Italian – a pope who was from over the mountains, which is what ultramontane means – meaning the other side of the Alps, like France and Germany. Over the years France and Germany began using the term to describe people who favored international papal authority – they supported the power over the mountains – they were ultramontanes. This pejorative meaning stuck and is how it has come down to us through the centuries.
You will have to forgive the admittedly oversimplification for the sake of time: European Catholics at the dawn of the 19th century could be, and often were, put into one of two parties: The Ultramontanes and the Gallicans. As mentioned, the Gallicans cherished their liturgical traditions and independence from the bishop of Rome – and they had a contractual agreement to authenticate their position. The Ultramontanes, however, were younger, former revolutionaries, romantics, poets, artists. They were vibrant and enthusiastic, and believed that the only way to defeat the enlightenment and prevent another bloodbath was not just a centralized papacy with sweeping international authority, but also, supreme, and irreformable theological powers - papal infallibility. The pope as they saw it these powers and he needed them now. To this movement the pope wasn’t the primary teacher if the faith, as had been previously developed – he was more than that. He was the exclusive teacher.
Catholic Jesuit priest and historian John William O'Malley, in his book on Vatican I tells us:
“The transformation of social consciousness that the rise of Ultramontanism effected occurred rapidly and dramatically, particularly in France. Within two generations the French Catholic Church, which had long prided itself on its “liberties and privileges” in the face of papal authority, became the crusader for an exaltation of that authority.”
A strange phenomenon of the Ultramontanism movement was that its leaders were largely made up of very recent converts to the faith – many were previously agnostic or came from different creeds, particularly drawing from the Anglicans. Of the Anglican converts, two of the most significant were Felicite de Lamennais from France and Henry Edward Manning of England, both being ordained became priests.
When Lamennais and Manning describe papal infallibility, they do not frame it as an abstract doctrine needing defining, they describe it as a contemporary innovation that can be wound up an released. Modern problems require modern solutions. They argued that subordinate to the pope in every detail was both the political and episcopal. Whether they knew it or not, they were progenies of Gregorian reforms. For a time, they were seen as extremist, occupying a small but loud minority.
A change in he winds for Ultramontanism occurred in 1819 when Count Joseph Marie de Maistre, French lawyer and member of the Scottish Rite Masonic lodge published a book called Du Pape, where he delegitimized the temporal authority of nations and prostrated them before an exalted international papal office. For de Maistre, the papacy as an infallible and sovereign office could by bring the unwieldy European kingdoms to heel. Naturally, Gallicanism was a decided aberration that must be destroyed, along with its emphasis on the authority of councils, the need for consensus, and the respect for episcopal collegiality. These were new anathemas, new heresies. Du Pape was a new call to Ultramontanism that invigorated the groundwork already laid by de Lamennais and Mannig.
From father O'Malley:
“With Du Pape he summoned infallibility out of its repose in the cloisters of academic theology and sent it, ready for battle, into the public square. Du Pape was the first work to do so and therefore was crucially important.”
Du Pape was widely read in Europe and when opening it, the first thing one would read was: There can be no human society without government, no government without sovereignty, no sovereignty without infallibility.
Despite the vigor of De Maistre’s pen, he was no theologian or historian, and therefore his case for infallibility was never intended to be based on tradition or scripture. It was put forward as an antidote to the contemporary ills plaguing society at that moment. To Catholics who survived the French revolution – is was an medicine they ingested without question.
The political dichotomy of Ultramontanes vs Gallican materialized in the press and public square as liberals vs conservatives. Ironically, the Ultramontanes, taking the role as the conservatives found all sorts of enlightenment idealists on their side, eager to coopt a movement bent on ushering in an absolute power to unilaterally effect society. This alliance of revolutionaries and Ultramontanes alarmed Pope Gregory XVI to the point where he penned an encyclical titled Mirari Vos, condemning de Lamennais’ movement. The pope called de Lamennais’ works small in size, but enormous in wickedness. After this repudiation by the office he wished to exalt above all else, de Lamennais disavowed his Catholic faith and shed himself of his priestly vestments. Before long he would end up in debtors’ prison and become an early advocate for socialism.
De Lamennais may have lost influence, but his movement did not.
The Romantic movement of the 19th century gave the Ultramontanes a crutch for papal infallibility they badly needed, since history and theology were not their areas of expertise. A book that attempted to rationalize de Lamennais’ ethos used romanticism quite effectively:
“Rome! Serene amidst the tempests of Europe, thou hast not doubted thyself, thou hast not felt fatigue. Thy glance, turned to the four quarters of the world, followed with sublime penetration the development of human affairs in their relation to the Divine. ... I did not fail to recognize thee when I saw no kings prostrate at thy gates. I kiss thy dust with unspeakable joy and respect. Thou art the benefactress of the human race, the hope of its future, the sole grandeur now existing in Europe, the Queen of the world.”
Ultramontane zeal spread from France into the Rhineland and Germany. Popular political activist and former advocate of the French Revolution, Joseph Gorres discovered Ultramontanism through German romanticism and became one of its strongest activists. Like so many of these Ultramontanes, he had a complex relationship with his faith. Raised Catholic, he became a ruthless anti-Catholic, before publicly returning to the faith and declaring himself an ultramontane. Gorre’s version of Ultramontanism took a flavor different from de Lamennais and le Maistre. His was almost more mystical – focusing on pilgrimages, supernatural visions, and cults of relics.
This international movement was gaining not only supporters, but also detractors. A new Catechism edition called Berrington Kirks Faith of Catholics outright denied that Catholics are bound to proclamation of the pope. Catholic theologians lined up against ultramontanism. A Catholic professor from the seminary of Maynooth of Ireland asserted that Catholics who deny infallibility are not alien to the Church. The episcopacy of Ireland went even further, warning that the papacy may in fact be teaching error in an 1826 pastoral address to the clergy:
“The Catholics of Ireland not only do not believe, but they declare upon oath [...] that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are they required to believe, that the Pope is infallible, and that they do not hold themselves 'bound to obey any order in its own nature immoral', though the Pope or any ecclesiastical power should issue or direct such an order; but, on the contrary, that it would be sinful in them to pay any respect or obedience thereto.”
Bishop Baines of England declared that no Catholics in Ireland or England believes in papal infallibility.
We can briefly return now to the star of this opera, young Giovanni Maria, who was in his twenties during this time. After several religious retreats, the young man had decide he was being called to the priesthood. His theological training and religious studies were negligible, with the young man was ordained in three years. He gained recognition by the papacy fast. In 1823 he accompanied Pope Leo XII for a diplomatic mission to Chile. After three years he returned and was given some administrative duties, which he proved quite effective at. By 1827 Giovanni was ordained bishop of Spoleto and then moved to be bishop of Imola in 1832.
In this post enlightenment world, the papal states were regarded as a broken, failed, corrupt backward nation by serious diplomats of the world. Pope Leo XII proved them right with his exploitive and repressive approach to governing his subjects – his was a police state. The pope employed countless spies and informers to gather information on enemies of the government. Anyone suspected of attempting political unrest was thrown in prison. The Jews were forced into a ghetto and locked behind gates. It was under this pontificate that an antisocial political movement arose aiming to rid Rome of “the government of priests.”
Leo looked on infallibility favorably and even met with de Lamennais when he visited Rome. Side note, it is from his pontificate that we get the tradition of unending encyclicals from our popes. The pope before Leo XII issues one encyclical. A couple of popes later and you have Leo XIII issuing eighty-five encyclicals.
Leo XII was succeeded by a moderate, Pius VIII, who died a little over a year after taking office. After his death, the hardline faction won out, electing Gregory XVI. Gregory hated all things modern. And I don’t mean this in some social-philosophical way. He literally banned the introduction of railroads and light poles in the papal states. Before becoming pope, Gregory had written a book called the Triumph of the Holy See and the Church over the attacks of Innovators. Otherwise known as Trionfo for short. Trionfo was ahead of its time. But now that its author was pope, Trionfo was translated into French and reprinted. In it Gregory argues that the pope was undoubtedly infallible, and even more extreme, he was infallible independent of the Church, that the Church is dependent on the pope – not vice versa. It instantly became the manifesto of the Ultramontanes. Pope Gregory was their man.
But grumpy old Gregory had little time to actually do anything about papal infallibility. His papal states were in rebellion against the luddite pope. The papal army was overwhelmed. Gregory reached out to Austria for aid. When the Austrian Empire came to help – they stayed. France, not to be outdone, did the same. Pope Gregory, ardent proclaimer of infallibly was now a monarch of an occupied state in rebellion. Yet Gregory welcomed the occupation, as he thought he would not have time to shore up his shaky throne – but to no avail. His own papal police despised him and were largely on the side of his subjects. In 1845, another rebellion broke out, putting further stress on the papal kingdom. The next year – Gregory was dead, to the grief of almost no one.
During all this, Italian nationalism had been gaining significant ground. The peninsula had for so long been a patchwork of states, duchies and outposts of foreign armies. These nationalists had their sights set on Rome. They knew if they took Rome, all the various little kingdoms were vulnerable and would fall – this was demonstrated recently by Napoleon. Post revolution France, they calculated was so weak that they would not devote the men needed to withstand an national movement.
While the Italians were calculating nationalism, a student of de Lamennais rose to prominence – and you might have heard of him. Dom Gueranger was a Benedictine monk and priest and was inspired by de Lamennais to study liturgical history. His subsequent volumes on the history of the liturgy shot him up to international fame. For Dom Geuranger, the history of the liturgy meant exclusively the Roman liturgy. He vigorously attacked French liturgical traditions and venerations of regional saints – those unapproved of by the bishop of Rome. The Gallican liturgies according to Dom Gueranger lacked the universality of the Roman rite.
The French episcopacy saw their independence under threat. The Archbishop of Tours reminded Geuranger that their liturgy could be traced back to Saint Gregory of Tours from the 6th century. At first, sixty of the 80 French bishops publicly opposed Geuranger. But as we have already seen, those marching against papal centralization are marching against the tides of history. One by one, due to Dom Geuranger’s fame and influence, each bishopric adopted the Roman liturgy.
Dom Geuranger was obviously a sincere Ultramontane. Thus, his popularity and influence was aided by the rabid Ultramontane journal, L’Univers. This journal will continue to come up in this series. It argued that Ultramontanism was the only way to save Catholicism in the world and in France. Yet statistically the Faith was in remarkable shape, especially in France, considering recent history. In the middle of the 19th century, it boasted two hundred million Catholics. Three quarters lived in Europe. France had a population of thirty-eight million at the time. 37.5 million were Catholic. Two thirds of all missionaries came from France. There was one nun for every 350 people.
After Gregory XVI died, the aristocracy of Europe convened to pressure the college of cardinals to ensure the next pope is an inexperienced liberal, someone who can be told what to do, that the fate of European monarchies hung in the balance. Another backward troglodyte would surely invoke revolution. This message was primarily delivered and enforced by Prince Metternich of Austria. For Metternich, Giovanni Maria, who was now a cardinal, was the ideal candidate. He was well liked by both clergy and laity. He wasn’t a monk, like Gregory. They did not want that again. He was a bishop of a small town and had no experience with the intrigues and politics of the Roman curia. The conservatives found him favorable as well, as they saw him as manageable.
Sunday June 14th, at 6pm, magnificent carriages pulled up to the San Silvestro Church in Rome – each bearing a cardinal. After mass they walked the couple blocks to the Quirinal palace, flanked by papal soldiers. Each cardinal had two rooms, one for himself, and the other for his attendants. The windows were shuttered to prevent outside communication. Swiss guardsmen cleared the streets of onlookers, fearing mob of violence.
The next morning in the Pauline Chapel the cardinals each sat under individual canopied thrones behind desks furnished with goose-quilled pens, ink and paper. Three cardinals sat at the front of the chapel, nominated to read the votes. Giovani Maria was one of those three. By the fourth vote, as Giovanni read the ballots, his voice failed him as he kept reading his own name. He asked to be excused, allowing another cardinal to take his place. When the votes for Giovanni tallied over two thirds of the vote, the presiding cardinal rang a bell and formally asked Giovanni if he would accept his election. Giovanni walked to the altar, fell to his knees, said a private prayer, then stood and turned to the cardinals, and replied in Latin, “Accepto”. When asked what name he would take, he responded, Pius IX.
Part Two: No One is Amnestied
This new pope, Pius IX, immediately displayed the qualities the power brokers of Europe, both lay and ecclesiastic, had hoped for. He was young and affable, conciliatory and responsive to modern sensibilities. He was popular among the local Italian citizenry, spoke to their interests and gained a reputation for being an Italian patriot. He demonstrated a willingness to implement parliamentary reforms in the Papal government. He was a welcomed liberal. Some Italians thought he would be the man who unifies Italy. In a way, he would be.
Every good tale of a king’s court has a dark, brooding, menacing character lurking in the shadows, pulling strings. Pius IX’s pontificate was no exception to this trope. This malevolent person to the pope-king was Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli. He would eventually become Pius’ Secretary of State and remain at the pope’s side for his entire pontificate.
Antonelli was everything Pius wasn’t. Where the new pope was friendly, devout, and affectionate, Antonelli was cold, calculating, and suspecting. While he was also sharp as a whip, Pius was politically inept. Antonelli was a diplomatic mastermind. As the two men drew closer – wherever Pius was, in the background was Antonelli. His strange hold over the pope wasn’t the only fascinating characteristic of Antonelli. Though he was a cardinal, he never ordained a priest – not technically a requirement at this time. Antonelli had zero interest in theology or any religious questions. He was a miser, concerned only with the financial order of the papal states. At the death of pope Gregory – Antonelli was the kingdom’s treasurer.
Books on the Pius IX pontificate spend entire chapters on the nefarious character of Antonelli – a contemporary observer called him a bird of prey, a disturbing, diabolical person. Rumors circled all over Rome of him using his position to enrich himself and his friends. His home was described as frequented by female visitors, leaving many to lament the scandal he brought to the college of cardinals.
At one of their meetings, Pius IX lit a cigarette and offered one to Antonelli. Antonelli replied that he did not have that vice. Pius replied, if it were a vice, you would have it.
For all of Pius’ charm, he still inherited a nightmare of a kingdom. The Papal states as we’ve said were considered a broken, backward European kingdom. Calls for reform were everywhere, filling the streets and cafes. On January 9th, in Palermo, Sicily, outside of the pope’s kingdom, a manifesto appeared on the walls that sparked riots against the King, Fernando II of Naples. By the end of the month – Fernando caved to public pressure and granted the people a constitution. Within a few weeks the rulers of Sardinia and Tuscany granted constitutions as well.
The public demonstrations in Rome were putting pressure on the pope to do the same. A roman senator appeased a particularly hostile crowd and staved off a full-on riot by promising that he would bring their demands to the pope. Two days later, Pius IX responded with a proclamation letting them know that the pontiff is not deaf to their desires. While he promised nothing, he blessed them as Italians – a loaded label. Some took this to mean papal support for a unified Italian peninsula. The early days of Pius’ pontificate are marked by these political vacillations. Every speech sent mixed messages, tacitly supporting Italian unification but always saying there were things he could not do. His advisors saw disaster ahead, warning him of the similarities with how the French revolution started. A British foreign minister noted: As to the poor Pope, events have gone too fast for such a slow sailor as he is.
The people wanted more from their pope-king. Within weeks demonstrators filled nearly every piazza of Rome. They demanded the pope give them the same rights enjoyed by the other European nations They wanted the brutal foreign papal mercenary militias disbanded. They wanted the priests removed from their roles of government officers. They wanted freedom of the press. They wanted a united Italy. They wanted foreign armies off the peninsula. Those last two demands were particularly difficult for Pio Nono – they meant war against France and Austria – against the guarantors of the pope’s temporal power.
Roman aristocrats were wallowing in genuine fear that these demonstrations were nearing a fever pitch that would soon boil over into violence. They advised Pius to do something to lower the temperature. They convinced him to replace the foreign mercenaries with a citizen’s police force – dubbed the Civic Guard. The pope’s first Secretary of State, Cardinal Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi was horrified by the move. He warned the pope that arming the people would invite disaster:
"You will be chased out of Rome with those same rifles that you are now giving them for your defense.”
Pio Nono replied to his secretary of state that he had nothing to fear from his own people. Cardinal Gizzo was so upset by the decision that he resigned, wanting no further part in this pontificate.
In March of 1848 he notified his new secretary of state, Cardinal Bofondi that he would give his subjects a constitution – something deemed anathema by his predecessors. Cardinal Bofondi responded with his resignation, explaining that he be part of dismantling church authority in Rome.
The romans were ecstatic at the news and tens of thousands of people poured into Quirinal square to thank the Vicar of Christ for this gift. The pope, hearing their cries of thanksgiving stepped out onto a balcony to greet his subjects. As he raised his arms for a blessing as the crowd fell to its knees. Parades were had all over Rome under the soft glow of oil lit lamps for the glory of the Pope.
It was now time to find a new secretary of state – the fourth in 2 years. At last he turned to the aforementioned, and controversial, Giacamo Antonelli. Further, he formed a new government of nine laymen and only three prelates – acquiescing again to the demands of his subjects to reduce the footprint of priestly officers.
In 1848, Italy and Sicily were not the only places to experience government shaking mobs and revolts. The Austrian Empire seemed ready to collapse. Hungarians were demanding representative government. There was revolution in Berlin. In France, the monarchy was overthrown again, and again, a republic was instituted.
The Italians saw these weakened empires as their moment to kick their armies off the peninsula - particularly Austria’s. Italian liberators attacked the Austrian embassy and removed the imperial coat of arms with an axe. They attached the standard – a double headed eagle, to a the tail of a donkey and sent it running through the streets while the people flung mud at it. Makes you feel bad for the donkey.
King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who ruled the largest and most powerful Italian state, was very much on board with this populism against the Austrians, as he shared a long border with Austrian occupied Lombardy. This was an opportunity to expand his kingdom. Pius too, something of an Italian nationalist sympathizer, and fearful of the wrath of his subjects, sent the papal army north to the border of Lombardy – but under strict orders to hold there – and not cross the border. It was another mixed signal. At their leaving they sang a hymn to the pontiff:
The arms are ready
At Pius's signal
Sent by God
To save Italy
Viva Pio Nono!
Viva l'Italia!
Viva l'unionel
Libertà
The Roman Club was a private meetingplace of roman businessmen and professions – but they also were a mix of nationalists and ultramontanes, and principal source for much of the anti-Austrian agitation. Pope Pius had no idea he had become their puppet. After he sent his army north, the Roman Club sent him a plea for him to take his rightful place in the earthy hierarchy:
"Blessed Father, in this time in which all the powers of the earth are failing, in this sublime reordering of European nationalities, only one power survives. New splendor [can be brought] to the papacy and to religion... giving back to Rome its moral and civil primacy not only in Italy, but in Europe and the world.”
From Milan, his subjects expected an attack from Austria, they pleaded to Pio Nono:
"The great cause of Italian independence, which Your Holiness has blessed, has triumphed in our city as well. ... In your Name, Most Blessed Father, we prepare to fight. We have written your Name on our flags and on our barricades."
The pope was at a loss and lamented:
"If I could still sign my name as 'Mastai,' I would take a pen, and in a few minutes it would all be done, because I too am an Italian. But I must sign as Pius IX, and this name obliges me to bow down before God and beg for his infinite Divine wisdom to guide me."
David Kertzer, anthropologist, authority on papal history and often granted access to Vatican archives, sums up the position of Pius IX well:
“What could he do? He was not one to spend much time reflecting on history or on questions of political philosophy. He had never had much of an intellectual inclination, and his seminary education- not in any case geared to critical examination of the church's guiding assumptions had been limited. It would not occur to him that there was a fundamental incompatibility between his role as spiritual leader and his role as king. For Pius, the pope-king was a position created by God, so such a question could not even be posed. That modern times would undermine rule from on high, that people would no longer be happy being told to leave government to the priests, were questions that he did not think deeply about. He had gone long past the point at which he thought the concessions he'd granted were wise. Fearful that bowing to the latest popular demands would only further undermine the church's authority, he did his best to hold out against them, but he was fighting a losing battle.”
Pius’ allies that guaranteed his earthy power seemed to be all but gone. France was now an irreligious republic, and Austria’s king was feeble, and the empire was being driven out of Italy. His position was oriented now only to keep himself from being hung in his own streets.
The people of Rome were in near total revolt against the government of priests, thinking that Pio Nono supported them. Austrian ambassadors desperate for the pope to exercise his authority were rebuffed by the pope, told that if he comes out publicly against the war with Austria: You cannot imagine without feeling a chill of horror what reactions, what disorders would occur.
He told them his authority grows weaker every day.
Finally on Saturday, April 29th, he published his official statement on the war in a Roman newspaper. He declared engaging in war against the Austrians would be abhorrent, and that he would not be presiding over some new republic of the people, reminding them that they should remain loyal to their sovereigns.
Pius had finally picked a side. To his subjects, he was now a traitor, a phony. He was not their liberator. He was not a patriot. What they did not know was that the original text for the papal pronouncement contained far more endearing language for the Italian nationalists. It was Cardinal Antonelli who rewrote it into a condemnation of the people and a strict alliance to the aristocracy. Pius IX’s biographer, Jesuit Giacamo Martina observed Antonelli’s acumen for this double game, as he called it. In meetings with Pius, he was his advisor, in meetings with civil authorities – he blamed Pius’ inability as a ruler that had created this whole mess.
Margaret Fuller, an American newspaper correspondent in Rome, once wrote of the love and affection mutually held between pontiff and people. Not anymore: But it is all over. He is the modern Lot's wife and now no more a living soul, but cold pillar of the Past.
Things began moving faster now. When the people elected lay ministers to government, the pope rejected their authority. By June, Pius had transferred all government duties to Cardinal Antonelli. In August, a civil body voted to grant the Jewish ghettos full civil rights – a bellwether in the power of any European monarchy.
In September, Pius turned to a man who he thought could keep both the aristocracy and the people happy. He promoted the French ambassadors, Pellegrino Rossi to minister of the interior. Rossi immediately tried to implement policies of moderate liberalism and limited voting rights. Much of this was stymied by the clerical party in Rome. For the cardinals despised having a lay ma in charge of government, but Rossi pressed forward, nonetheless. The people quickly labelled him the pope’s lacky, viewed as a heavy-handed autocratic foreigner who used the military against the people. Rossi told a Bavarian minister that if the people wanted to destroy the pope’s authority, they would have to do it over his dead body.
Days later he was stabbed to death in the neck by an angry Italian nationalist – kicking off the story of the pope’s escape from the eternal city at the beginning of this narrative.
Pope Pius IX was now an exile of his own kingdom, under the care of King Ferdinand of Naples. Cardinal Antonelli had masterminded the entire escape, who was likewise blamed by the pope’s advisors for creating the antagonistic relationship with the Roman citizens. They tried to encourage the pope to return to Rome and adopt a more consolatory attitude with the people, but Pius was done with compromise. His flight out of from Rome had created a new man, a more bitter pope. He began reasoning that the pope leaving Rome was God the Father’s punishment upon the ingratitude of the children. He was burned by the reality that no roman lifted a finger to save him, and none seemed distressed at his departure. He felt betrayed and alone.
The pope gave a new year address denouncing the mob in Rome as lunatics and called the new roman citizen state as detestable, declaring those involved to be in a condition of grave sin. Many bishops in Italy considered it the better part of prudence not to publish the message – fearing violent reactions.
Every diplomat trying to help the pope stabilize the situation gave a collective eyeroll to the popes address as well. The American consul in Rome sent an abridged version of the statement back to Washington, explaining that it: …could hardly do justice to its imbecility.
The French aristocracy was still hopeful that Pio Nono would return to being the liberal pope they had managed to get elected. But his response to the constitutional assembly in Rome dashed those hopes, calling it deplorable, invoking the Lord to intervene. Cardinal Antonelli was also exasperating the diplomatic distress by issuing his own denunciations of the sacrilegious government occupying Rome, calling them fatal to religion and the church.
Despite the apocalyptic warnings of Pius and Antonelli, Romans were largely going about their business in the eternal city as normal. Priests were performing marriages. The government was functioning. The opera houses were playing. The American consul in Rome reported back:
Whatever malevolence ... may insinuate, order & peace never reigned more profoundly within her ancient walls.
All of the bluster from Antonelli was cover for what he was really doing behind the scenes, negotiating for the Austrian Army to liberate Rome and reinstitute the pope in his proper seat of earthy power. The Austrian ambassador, Moritz Esterhazy remembered he was greeted by the pope in Gaeta, southern Italy, as the messiah. The pope repented to the ambassador of his recent unfriendly language about the Catholic Empire. Still the diplomat required that, since there had been so much public antagonism from the pontiff towards Austria of late, if the pope requested their help, he must ask for it publicly:
"Pius IX . . . is throwing himself in the arms of Austria! I believe his conversion to be sincere. ... I would not say that it is deep, because I fear that there is nothing very deep to be found in this Prince."
In Rome, the pope was missed by some. The economy was dependent on Rome being the center of the Chrisitan world and was in financial turmoil from the sudden vacuum. Thus, the new Roman Government voted on a compromise to allow the pope to return, and enshrined it in their government:
1. The papacy no longer exercises temporal power over the Roman State either in fact or in law.
2. The Roman pontiff will have all the guarantees necessary to freely exercise his spiritual authority.
3. The form that the Government of the Roman State will have is pure democracy, and it will take the glorious name of the Roman Republic.
4. The Roman Republic will have with the rest of Italy those relations required by their common nationality.
This was declared by the roman government in February of 1849. Yet at the same time, the Austrians were obliterating the revolutionary military in northern Italy, reclaiming their old domains on the peninsula. The Austrian army had the former papal states in its sights and could take them back on whim. This geopolitical development brought the French to the table. The French, adversaries of Austria, saw it as beneficial to their position if they were the ones who reinstated the pope to Rome – Antonelli very much playing the part of power broker here too. He convinced the French president to tell a grand lie before the French general assembly, that an expeditionary force was needed to ensure the liberal policies of Pius IX were put back in place, that they would not impose a government. A British envoy in Italy reported back to London that:
“the Pope had come to the determination to be for the future entirely guided by the advice of Cardinal Antonelli.”
A Sardinian envoy piled on:
“The Pontiff is weak, and easily impressionable. Taking advantage of the right moment, one can get him to do things that don't seem to be in his nature."
By April, three French infantry brigades totaling 12,000 men complete with horses, cannons and a corps of engineers landed on the northern coastal town of Civitavecchia. From the ships, a French diplomat and two senior officers rowed to the shore to meet the Roman Republican Governor:
"Animated always by a very liberal spirit, the government of the French Republic declares its desire to respect the view of the majority of the Roman population, and comes on their land in friendship. … It is committed to not imposing on these people any form of government that they would not choose for themselves."
The French then asked permission to come to shore. Permission was granted out of fear of the overwhelming force. The Roman governor was then imprisoned by the French – out of friendship of course, and the French flag was hoisted up alongside the Italian flag.
Austria then crossed the Po River and invaded the new Roman Republic from the north. Antonelli, naturally playing both sides now urged haste on the part of Austria, trying to stoke their fears of anti-Catholic French forces on the precipice of liberating Rome. He further declared the Roman government was stealing and destroying priceless relics and works of art. The Roman government denied the charges and warned the citizens, out of caution, to respect the clergy and church property, which they mostly did. Yet many of the church palaces were declared property of the state, such as the grand Quirinal Palace. Catholic hospitals, charities, and orphanages were also taken over.
Thus, the Austrian pressed southward from Lombardy. Spanish troops too landed on the coast and joined them. Even King Ferdinand of Naples, who was in possession of the pope sent 5000 troops to march north to ensure his name was recorded in the history of this grand reinstitution of the papacy.
Giuseppe Mazzini, de facto leader of the Roman Republic was in a panic, calling all Italians to him to join the fight in the defense of the eternal city from foreign conquerors. Mazzini, in the face of a 4-pronged invasion had no choice but to call out of retirement an old guerrilla warrior for Italina unification - Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi is one of those guys that was just born to be a revolutionary. His name alone invoked fear in his enemies and resolve amongst his soldiers. He was called the hero of two worlds for fighting in a revolution in South America as well Italy. Mazzini didn’t have an experienced fighting force. Garibaldi’s legion had experience all over the world, but he was a loose cannon that could not be controlled. But Mazzini had no choice.
The French for their part were not interested in cannonading their way to Rome. They assumed that if Pio Nono publicly declared that he would at least be open to liberal government, then they may be able to reinstate him without a shot being fired. Pius refused, urging them to blast into Rome if need be.
Marching south towards Rome, the French soldiers noticed handwritten signs posted to trees lining the roadway that repeated article 5 of the French constitution:
"The French Republic respects foreign nations, as it expects others to respect its own, not initiating any war of conquest, and never employing its forces against the freedom of any people."
Nearing the eternal city, a roman assembly arrived at the French camp to meet with General Oudinot, leading the campaign. They warned him that if he attacked, he would be met with fierce resistance. General Oudinot replied:
"Nonsense, The Italians do not fight. I have ordered dinner at the Hôtel de Minerve, and I shall be there to eat it."
Now, I have read plenty of battle accounts in the 10 years or so that I’ve been doing history podcasts and I find the general’s confidence a bit perplexing – though I suppose I find anyone’s confidence in war perplexing. The good general should know that no battle plan extends beyond the first shot. Rome was surrounded by a 26-foot wall built in the 17th century. Though he had some cannons, they were not really of siege caliber, and he had no ladders for scaling. Nonetheless at five am on April 30th, he ordered his men to break camp and march on the eternal city.
On the way, the French general was met with a fork in the road before the city gates. He took the bulk of the army left and ordered a smaller troop to the right to guard his flank.
Mazzini, while preparing the city for assault, also prepared it spiritually. There was a mandate for public prayer with church bells peeling all over the city air. It was further decreed that: The Holy Sacrament will be exposed in all of the principal churches to pray for Rome's safety and victory of its good cause.
When the main French force came within a quarter mile of the city walls, two roman cannon opened fire, raining grape shot down upon the advance guard. Oudinot ordered the retreat of the advance guard but kept his main army on the attack. He was searching for the gate designated as the easiest point of entry, the Porta Pertusa at the northwester part of the wall. He brought with him bags of gunpower to blow thing open. But there was one problem. The Porta Pertusa didn’t exist anymore. It was walled up decades early. French intelligence was outdated – by a lot.
Fumbling in a mire of confusion, the French troops were being blown apart by grape shot and musket fire from the parapets. They rolled forward two cannons to return fire but couldn’t reach the Romans well-guarded positions. Oudinot ordered them to march another half mile under fire to the next gate, the Porta Cavalleggieri. They quickly discovered that if they continued that march – there wouldn’t be any French army left. So Oudinot sent another contingent around to another gate, the Porta Angelica. The French artillery captain was killed instantly as they approached. Other attempts at reaching other gates ended in similar disaster. The smaller French contingent that initially broke off from the main body attempted to gain cover in the aristocratic villas outside the city gates to use as a beachhead. But Garibaldi was already there waiting for them. As the French approached Garibaldi launched his attack astride his white horse swinging his saber high in the air and lead his motley crew legion into battle, right into the heart of the French infantry. Many of the untrained Romans fell dead, but Garibaldi legionnaires, with bayonets fixed skewered the French. A French bullet pierced the stomach of Garibaldi, but he stayed in the fight.
By 5pm, the battle was over. General Oudinet realized he would not make his dinner appointment in Rome. A US diplomat present in Rome for the battle recalled the transformation of the Roman army of the Republic:
"The appearance of a foreign enemy has accomplished for the republic what its own measures, papal abuses and the cause of liberty have hitherto failed to effect. It has converted thousands, who were indifferent as to its existence, into warm and strong supporters.”
Mazzini, however, knew he had only won the battle. The outcome of the war was all but certain. The French would not leave. King Ferdinand was invading from the south. The Austrians were invading from the north.
With the initial defeat the French were even more motivated to convince the pope to take the road of appeasement toward the romans. The French foreign ministers for their part, were furious. If it was not for the threat of Austria taking Rome, they wouldn’t even be on the Italian peninsula. How could the Republic of France justify spilling French blood to reinstate a dictatorship of priests?
Foreign press of course was quick to take notice of the duplicity of the French government. Some papers theorized that the Parisians may revolt yet again at the news.
Not making any headway with Antonelli or Pius toward a policy of reconciliation, French foreign minister Alphonse de Rayneval went to the battle front to meet with Oudinot. The two agreed that bombarding the eternal city and destroying the churches and monuments was not an option, nor could they engage in street-to-street barricade fighting. The death toll would be enormous. They settled on bringing up more reinforcements, to create an overwhelming show of force, blow a hole in the city wall and hope the Romans surrender.
The next night a new French diplomat arrived, sent by the president of France, Louis Napoleon, nephew of Bonepart. General Oudinot was informed via letter written personally by the president that there would now always be a diplomat at his side to oversee the interest of the French presidency, and further, that he expected him to take the city, and would have all the reinforcements he needed toward that end. This was, in no uncertain terms, an illegal act by the French president, and a flagrant contrast to what the French general assembly was told.
Inexorably, French reinforcements began pouring in and plans for a siege commenced. Siege, as you students of history know can be just as deadly for the besiegers as the besieged. An army sitting still gets restless and sick. A reporter in the French camp noted that as the days were warming up:
"Already the heat is great. . .. Even within the walls of Rome, sickness and fever fall to the lot of every stranger, but without, the effects of malaria are so severe that no one can sleep abroad with impunity. What, then, is to become of the 20,000 men now encamped within a mile of Rome? … One hundred men swollen with the malaria fever came in here yesterday, and in another week the hospitals will not contain the number of sick who will claim admittance. Will the General-in-Chief, under such circumstances, hesitate any longer? For my part, I think not."
On May 5th, the Neapolitans entered Albano, coming within 15 miles of Rome. Garibaldi had already beaten back the French and was now ready to face king Ferdinand. King Ferdinand had 16,000 highly decorative troops under his command, with a large cavalry and a significant artillery corps. But Garibaldi’s uninformed brigands had experience. They wore no emblems of rank, the rode their horses bareback, and for provisions they hunted sheep to roast over a fire.
King Ferdinand, hearing that the “red devil” was marching towards his force, he moved his army into defensive positions. They were terrified of Garibaldi, some believing that any army he controlled was invincible. As soon as the red devil attacked, the Neapolitan army melted away with little resistance. King Ferdinand was forced to abandon his invasion, and return to Gaeta, back to the pope.
France decided they would try to force the pope’s hand. On May 18th diplomat Comte de Lesseps negotiated his way into Rome and secured a meeting with the intellectual and political leader of the Italina Republic, Mazzini. He made his way to the Palace of the Consulta, where Mazzini officed. Arriving there at 1am, he asked where he could find the Italian prophet. He was told to walk to the far side of the second floor. When Lesseps reached the top of the stairs, he removed his shoes so he would not alert Mazzini. He found him asleep on a simple iron bed. Lesseps pulled the room’s only chair to the bedside and sat down. Lesseps then began whispering Mazzini’s name, quiet at first, but he did not stir. So then louder, an louder until the republican leader awoke. Mazzini, quite rationally thought Lesseps was there to assassinate him. It was the strangest of diplomatic meetings, but at least it began the dialogue that the French had hoped for.
When Pius learned that the French were negotiating with the romans, he was furious and threatened to throw his lot in completely with the Austrians. The French held their ground, knowing the pope had little to bargain with – Afterall, it was the French on the doorsteps of Rome, not the Austrians. Though the Austrians were getting closer, taking city after city, and as they drew nearer, General Oudinot was losing patience, wanting to redeem himself and take the city now.
After Lesseps failed to find a solution, an American diplomat arrived to the French camp, named Lewis Cass Jr, son of senator, and offered to act as an unofficial mediator. Inside Rome, Cass found himself negotiating with Charle Bonaparte, another nephew of the former emperor of France, who had taken up the cause of Italian unification. The American soon emerged with a deal. The Roman Republic would accept France’s offer to protect it from outside forces and Rome would welcome the French as republican brothers, but must exists as guests of the Romans only – meaning they could be kicked out.
While the French contemplated this proposal, Antonelli and Pius notified the Austrian diplomats that there were going to issue a public protest against France for negotiating with the Romans. The Austrian ambassador, Esterhazy, sternly warned them about the foolishness if this idea. He reminded them that France was a republic and had to keep up appearances. If they pressed too hard, the French assembly may recall the army, or worse, the French army may switch sides, and actually defend Rome against the pontiff. What the Austrians did not let onto was that they were perfectly happy to have France take Rome, they only cared about increasing their holdings to the north. Esterhazy convinced Antonelli to let the Austrians handle the communication with France. It was evident to all that Austria controlled Antonelli, who controlled the pope. The Sardinian envoy noted that without passing through these men, the pope would do nothing.
The French, for their part refused to enter Rome as a guest. Cass warned them that the city is resolute, that they will not surrender easily. That the women of the city had donated all their jewelry for the cause. The monastery gardens were in full bloom, filling the roman bellies with artichokes, bread, salami, and wine. From outside the walls the French could hear the operas and the nightlife of the city.
Meanwhile in Paris, an election took place. A more conservative majority took power. As a result, the diplomatic mission of negotiating an entry to Rome was recalled, and a direct order was given to General Oudinot: attack.
Then, in a truly bizarre twist of history, President Louis Napoleon appoint Alexis de Tocqueville as foreign minister and charged with crushing the Roman Republic and reinstituting rule by the church. If you know your American history, you know Tocqueville was so impressed with post-independence United States that he became one of Europe’s leading theorists on constitutional rights.
With the news of the renewed support from Paris for the campaign against Rome, French diplomats now urgently pressed the pope for comprise, to spare filling the roman streets with blood. Cardinal Antonelli kept compromise as far from the pope as he could. They complained that Antonelli had poisoned Pius’ mind against the French, lamenting:
“…there is such a cardinal-heavy atmosphere of purely mundane interests, dissimulation, petty intrigues, and absence of any higher sentiments that one cannot hope that the pope can pierce it, even should he wish to. … this self-interested, corrupt, unenlightened entourage who surround the pope… their worldly privileges… the only political program consists of trying to get people to believe that in attacking their privileges one is attacking the true interests of the church and of the religion that they themselves do so little to honor.”
Pius now spoke openly of constitutions, freedom of the press, and freedom of association being inherently evil. A well-known and well-like abbot, Antonio Rosmini came to visit the pope and tried to further convince the pope not to spill Roman blood. The pope, even though he respected Rosmini, rebuffed his efforts. A man like Rosmini speaking with the pope could not be tolerated by Antonelli. And so, the cardinal ordered the Gaeta police to Rosmini’s room just as he was preparing to go to sleep. They demanded to see his passport. Upon review they declared that he lacked the necessary documentation to be in Naples. Rosmini protested that he was invited to the country by the pope himself. The police didn’t budge and dragged him to a boat waiting in the harbor. There was to be no peace with Rome.
Oudinot now had 30,000 soldiers ready to attack. Many of them were experienced and battle hardened from fighting a colonial war in Algeria. The Roman Republican soldiers were probably around 18,000 strong with limited ammunition, and beside Garibaldi’s forces, they had little combat experience.
At 2:30 in the morning on June 3rd, the French began blasting their way through a weaker wall of the city protecting a villa. After four hours of battle, they took the villa and 200 prisoners. Eighteen hours of hard battle then commenced with Garibaldi’s forces leading the defense. Streams of stretchers were racing through the roman streets carrying the wounded and dead amid the crying and tears of the inhabitants. During the battle, Mazzini received news that the Neapolitans were again advancing and taking cities, and now nine thousand Spanish troops were marching north toward Rome planting the papal flag on rooftops as they went.
Charles Bonaparte presented the roman constituent assembly with an unexploded bomb that was found rolling down the city streets, catapulted in by the French. He proposed they place it in the city archives and engrave it with: In perpetual memory of a Pope who ordered the bombing of the Capital of his faithful subjects and children.
As the endless bombs rained down on the city, the roman citizens, adopted a gallows humor, naming the bombs, Pio Nonos. There goes another Pio Nono they would cry. Cloistered nuns at the Trasteveres Convent had to flea for their lives. Children and families were burning to death in fires now ravaging the city. Those who could, managed to turn carts and wagons into makeshift barricades for when the gates were finally breached. Margaret Fuller, the American journalist, recounted one scene:
“Many of these young men, students from Pisa, Pavia, Padua and the Roman University lie wounded in the hospitals, for naturally they rushed first in the combat. One kissed an arm which was cut off, another preserves pieces of bone which are being painfully extracted from his wound, as reliques of the best days of his life.”
The initial French assault failed again, but they quickly renewed the effort. Waiting for the second attack, an American diplomat recounted the state of the city:
From dawn to the close of the day, the domes, cathedrals and parapets, are crowded with spectators, whose acclamation at every gallant action incites to deeds of most extraordinary daring. … The roads leading from the gates are planted with iron spears, rendering the movements of cavalry impossible. ... The gates themselves are mined. ... Every house in the streets through which the enemy must pass, after having forced the outworks, is provided with oil and stones, the former of which is directed to be kept boiling hot, to be cast from the windows.
Food was scarce. The French had cut off the ancient aqueducts bringing the city fresh water. Another American diplomat recorded:
The contest is no longer between one army and another... but it is a struggle that embraces a whole moral world of ideas, hopes and faith, that may have an echo in the most distant generations. The actual object of the intervention is shaking the edifice of the Catholic religion to its very foundations, crushing that faith in thousands of hearts. ... The consequence, naturally, is that many are now asking themselves whether he who represents a religion of peace has a right to reassert temporal power by force of arms; and ... not a few begin to doubt of the truth of the Catholic religion, in consequence of the acts of its head. They cannot conceive how a religion ... is now changed into a weapon intended to transform free men into slaves.
Oudinot was weary of the mounting body count among the French. He requested to speak with one of the young captains of the Roman barricades. He urged the young man, Enricho, to allow the French to pass through peacefully to avoid bloodshed. Enricho replied:
In Rome, we produce tragedies, we do not produce comedies.... If we cannot save Italy, we at least want to save the memory of Italy. Italy is not going to end as a vaudeville show.
As the women marched to St Peter’s Basilica to pray for the men at the front, one young soldiers touched a woman on her shoulder and said, "Mamma," he said, "say three Ave Marias for me so that the Madonna sees that this all ends soon, because we can't go on like this anymore.”
A young volunteer wrote in his journal:
You get used to anything with time. So that now we see the transport of the wounded, immersed in blood, almost with indifference, and we eat bread and salami without being bothered by the stench of over twenty cadavers that for the past sixteen days lie in the garden of Villa Corsini, unburied and unbandaged, as black as coal, and swollen as if they had been drowned.
By June 20th, Oudinot had his large siege cannons within shot of the city walls. Those walls, being already weakened from the cannonading, crumbled apart, opening three breaches in Roman defenses. Oudinot renewed the bombardment again, and now with the city walls down, he could strike deeper. Bombs fell on some of the city’s most famous piazzas.
From Paris, Tocqueville was trying to stave off political disaster, writing to his envoy at Oudinet’s side, he said:
You can be sure that the noise of our bombs will be heard in all of Europe and that nothing will be more harmful for our expedition's honor than the explosion of these projectiles in Rome… Rome, is not like any other city.
Reaching one of the breaches, with Poi Nonos flying overhead, the French took up positions and dug in.
On June 29th, the romans would not be kept from celebrating the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, both martyred in that very city. At 8pm a thunderstorm ripped through. The thunder was so loud that many of the citizens thought a renewed bombardment had commenced. When the rains ended, the feasting got underway. Fireworks were shot above St. Peters Basilica, torches and candles adorned what was left of the city’s windows. Bands played in the streets. Yet on the far side of the city, where the French pressed their attack, Roman soldiers were falling in droves to French bullets.
With bayonets fix, the French attacked the Roman defenses beyond the breaches. Garibaldi was there to meet them, saber in hand. Explosions from guns and cannons sent smoke swirling through the city streets. Ancient building walls finally gave out, collapsing and crushing roman volunteers. Garibaldi led one last charge, and though he survived, his legionnaires were beaten back. As the sun rose, the two armies declared a truce so that both sides could collect their dead. The Roman assembly then posted a notice to the public – they would not surrender, but they would no longer resist the French with arms.
There’s no reliable count of the dead and wounded. The Italians wanted to maximize the loss, the French minimize, but its likely thousands on each side.
With the French army readying to enter the city American diplomat Lewis Cass told Garibaldi that he had an American ship at his disposal in the harbor, and that the leaders of the republic could find passage with him. Garibaldi refused. Instead, the hero of two worlds he drew his remaining legions to him and marched to St Peter’s Square. Astride his white horse and with thousands watching he stood before the obelisk shouting:
To those who follow me, I demand great love for the fatherland. . .. I can promise no pay but only hardship, hunger, thirst, and all the dangers of war.
In response, those hardened veterans of his, along with old and young patriots responded:
We'll all come! You are Italy! Long live Garibaldi!
He then disappeared into the hills with four thousand men behind him. Margaret Fuller recounted the moment:
Never have I seen a sight so beautiful, so romantic, and so sad. The sun was setting, the crescent moon rising, the flower of the Italian youth were marshalling in that solemn place. They had been driven from every other spot where they had offered their hearts as bulwarks of Italian independence. ... They must now go or remain prisoners and slaves, ... I saw the wounded, all that could go, laden upon their baggage cars. . . . I saw many youths, born to rich inheritance, carrying in a handkerchief all their worldly goods.
At noon on July 3rd, as the French army was literally marching into the city streets the constituent assembly of the Roman Republic was ratifying its last official act – their constitution. Amid hundreds of supporters in a piazza designed by Michealangelo, the new document was read out loud. The people removed their hats from their heads. It guaranteed the rights of all individuals, it guaranteed free speech, it eliminated class or caste systems, and in the end, it guaranteed that the pope would enjoy: all the guarantees necessary for the independent exercise of his spiritual power.
Moving through the roman streets the French marching band at the head of Oudinot’s column began playing military songs but seeing the dower mood of the inhabitants, and the deadly glare occupying soldiers often get from an occupied people, they gave up playing, and marched in silence. It was replaced by cries from all corners of Rome:
“Long live the Roman Republic! Death to Pio Nono”
On the fourth of July, the very next day, General Oudinot sent his personal envoy to Gaeta, carrying with him the keys to the gates of Rome and delivered them to Pius IX.
To the frustration of the pope, the French refused to hoist the papal flag over any buildings. The French didn’t dare. A painter was hired to paint over the Italian tri color decorations that adorned the roman streets. But before he could finish his work his head was smashed in with a piece of cobblestone. Any priest or aristocrat who spoke well of the French found themselves violently attacked. The French, intent on simply maintain order, captured these assailants, lined them up against a wall, and had them shot.
Pius fumed that the French had allowed Garibaldi to escape, that Mazzini was allowed to travel in Rome as a free man, that nowhere was the papal flag flying. Cardinal Antonelli complained further that the penalties for the revolutionaries were not harsh enough. He demanded that anyone who served on the public councils or in government be rounded up and arrested. The cardinal didn’t stop there. When French diplomats began discussing the institution of the new government, Antonelli made two things clear: that only cardinals, not lay men would be heading up the government, and that ecclesiastical tribunals would be set up to deal out justice in the aftermath of the rebellion. The London Times noted that:
"Pio Nono, is surrounded by persons ... who have no other remedy to offer than the old ones, the dungeon and banishment."
Alexis de Tocqueville was at his wits end. These pronouncements by marginalized aging men clinging to old ways was tone deaf to the point of being suicidal. The post enlightenment world had created a new kind of citizen and if the papal government wished to survive, it had better learn that lesson – and if it didn’t – the French republic had needlessly spilled blood. Tocqueville warned those in Gaeta that he was prepared to speak publicly against the pope and his priestly government. The threat did nothing.
On August 1st, 1849, the Quirinal Palace was once again the seat of papal power – though the pope was safely miles away in Gaeta. Proclamations of the return of the new government were posted all over Rome, yet within hours all copied posted were ripped from wherever they were posted.
A commission of three cardinals was put in charge of the government and dubbed the “red triumvirate” by the romans. The triumvirate’s first official act was to lead a solemn procession to St. Peter’s Basilica. But the French killed the proposal, gob smacked by their stupidity. It was suicidal.
The next day the commission released a rash of acts. They nullified all laws made since secretary Rossi’s assassination. They reinstituted the ecclesiastical tribunals for priests to oversee, all government employees hired by the revolutionary government were fired, and the currency of the roman republic was declared worthless.
Of all these items it was the Vicariate Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the pope that most terrified the civilians. It was an all-powerful governing body that held the power of life and death over everyone. Its enforcers were the papal police – and now the French army. Its spies were the same people these Roman were expected to confess their sins to – the low-level clergy. Nothing, from the people’s perspective, was private.
The London Time reported that:
If the Quirinal was not guarded by French soldiers, it would not be safe for one hour. That unpopularity will be increased a hundredfold for all that may emanate from Gaeta, when it is seen that nothing in the shape of a benevolent promise can be extracted from the Pope.
Before long, the people began to perceive the tensions between the papal government and the French army, sensing the unease at the retrograde despotism. The French, as many Romans began to see it, were the only thing standing between them and the vengeance of the cardinals. They were right. Everyday Antonelli demanded rounding up the former government officials and everyday Alexis de Tocqueville prevented it. General Oudinot was under direct orders to not let a single trial against former government officials happen.
“Who needs trials?”, thought the cardinals. In the middle of the night on August 8th, papal police smashed into the home of Pietro Ripari, a doctor who oversaw medical relief for a military division of the Republican Army. He was thrown in prison without a hearing. From prison he demanded to know what his crime was. He was told he was discovered to have written critically of the pope. After two years of languishing in prison he was finally sentenced – his punishment for writing poorly of Pio Nono was 20 years behind bars. The pope’s roman dungeons were full of souls just like poor Pietro. Tocqueville knew these injustices were occurring and was furious that General Oudinot was not doing enough to prevent them. Finally, Tocqueville declared to President Louis Napolean that he would have to accept either his resignation, or Oudinot’s. Napoleon chose to fire Oudinot.
Far up in the Apennine Mountains near Venice, Garibaldi and his men were under hot pursuit by the Austrian army. Knowing he was close to capture; Garibaldi relieved his soldiers of their duty. 900 soldiers left, while 300 soldiers refused to abandon Garibaldi. So, these men, along with his Brazilian-born pregnant wife made their escape. The Austrians however had caught up with the nine hundred men that Garibaldi released. They guaranteed that the rebels’ lives would be sparred if they put down their arms and peacefully surrender. Trusting in Austrian honor, they agreed. A contemporary keeping a diary of the events recalled:
At noon today, the sixth, in the midst of a troop of infantry and cavalry, the unfortunates who were part of Garibaldi's militia began to arrive. . . . The poor men are all torn up, shoeless and reduced to such a state as to move even the most unfeeling to compassion. ... No one knows what their fate will be.
One among them was singled out – Catholic priest and Barnabite monk Ugo Bassi, Garibaldi’s personal military chaplain. He was a prize catch. On August 8th the monk was manacled to a military wagon and lead down the road with a drummer pounding out a funeral march. Reaching the site of his execution, Bassi fell to his knees and began to pray. A soldier came to the monk to place a blindfold over him. But the monk asked that another priest put the blindfold upon him instead, so that another priest’s touch would be the last he would feel. The request was granted. The officer in charge raised his sword towards the riflemen. Bassi raised his voice in prayer. The officer lowered his sword and gunfire rang out, crumpling the monk to the ground.
The Austrians did not stop there. Another Garibaldini priest was executed shortly after. Then an Italian nationalist Ciceruachio and his two sons, Lorenzo and Luigi, were caught. The father and two sons were tied to each other. Ciceruachio pleaded with the officer to spare his younger son, for he was only 13 years old – just a child. At the father’s pleading, the office smiled, and ordered the firing squad to shoot the boy first.
Garibaldi was still on the run and under hot pursuit. He and his wife, Anita, were heading towards Ravenna. Anita, now seven months pregnant, developed a fever and died the next day with their fourth child in her womb. Garibaldi, being the sort he was, pushed on. With the help of Italian nationalists along the way to the Tuscan coast, he found sanctuary in Genoa.
The papal triumvirate in Rome was busy, despite French protests. Father Dominic Savelli, who bore the nickname Monsignor Bulldog was reinstated as head of police. He was a despised man, called vindictive and hard by one historian. The French called him an unfortunate choice.
A special commission was set up under Monsignor Bulldog to directly oversee crimes against the Catholic religion. The number of arrests exploded. The French again protested. Pius IX responded that it still wasn’t enough:
Crimes remain unpunished. The men who have acted most openly against me walk freely through the streets of Rome.
By now, French President Louis Napoleon had grown tired of this petulant, bitter, unhelpful, ungrateful pope, who still had not returned to take up the seat he reinstituted. He was sick of poisonous lurch, cardinal Antonelli. The president, in what was described as a dramatic cabinet meeting, penned a letter to be delivered to his aid de camp in Rome:
The French Republic did not send an army to Rome to extinguish Italian freedom but, on the contrary, to regulate it in order to preserve it from its excesses, and to give it a solid basis in returning to the pontifical throne the prince who first boldly placed himself at the head of all useful reforms. ... It pains me to learn that the benevolent intentions of the Holy Father, as well as our own action, have been thwarted by the presence of hostile passions and influences of those who would instead like to make banishment and tyranny the basis for his return. ... Make clear to the general (Rostolan] on my behalf that in no case can he allow any act to take place under the shadow of our flag that can alter the character of our intervention. I would have the pope's temporal power resume in this way: general amnesty, secularization of the administration, and a liberal government… When our armies made their way through Europe, they left everywhere, in their wake, the destruction of the abuses of feudalism and the seeds of freedom. It will not be said that, in 1849, a French army could act in a different direction and lead to different results.
The letter was officially intended to be private. It was however, copied and posted all over Italy. The papal police had their work cut out for them in suppressing it. They raided cafes and wineries, looking for illicit printers producing copies of the French president’s letter. Ambassador Rayneval was summoned to Gaeta, and simply informed that the letter offended the dignity of the pope. The diplomat was then ordered to convey the condition of the papacy back to Paris:
Experience has counted for nothing. The real needs of society have counted for nothing. France's advice has counted for nothing. ... The men the cardinals surround themselves with would render the most perfect institutions fruitless. ... In Rome, where prominent, well-educated, distinguished lawyers are to be found in large numbers, they went and found a perfect unknown to be Minister of Justice. For Minister of Public Works, they chose a contractor who had built a bridge, for Minister of Finance an accountant. This is what they have in mind by putting laymen in government… Repression, that is the key word for the Roman policy. ... They are persuaded here that everything is going badly because they have not executed enough people, nor imprisoned enough, nor punished enough.
As the French pressed the pope to return to Rome he intead moved farther away to Naples, finding it more comfortable. Back in Rome, a leading colonel reported the troubles with the new government back to Paris:
This swarm of idle priests that one runs into at every step, and who exploit the country, is an evil that is difficult to destroy. This is a population of sycophants and mendicants, who lack the habit of supporting themselves by their own work. But how could all this be reconciled with the authority of a pope who tends increasingly to give everything to the priests?"
On September 17th, Pius IX issued a motu proprio long awaited by the French and the romans. It would lay out the official structure of the new government. He began by praising the catholic powers for saving Rome from tyranny and restoring papal power. He then listed a litany of new councils, the bodies of which he would nominate personally. Then he came to the much-awaited question of amnesty. Amnesty would at last be granted – although it would exclude anyone who took part in the republican government, aided the constituent assembly, partook in military units, along with all political prisoners and already declared exiles.
Luigi Carlo Farini, former public health officer under the papal government remembered:
In the whole history of amnesties, one does not find a document like this, which can only jokingly be called by that name. Consider its terms, and you will see no one is amnestied.
There were now officially and publicly two sides in a grand geopolitical contest, between the Rome and France, between Napoleon and Pius, between Tocqueville and Cardinal Antonelli. Astute roman citizens knew Antonelli’s pope and government would prevail, for he was too shrewd a player at this game. Prime Minister of Sardinia recounted:
I continue to doubt that French influence will prove a match against priestly cunning.
The ambassador from France, Rayneval too lamented the regrettable situation:
Pius IX is a blind man who is bringing the temporal power to its ruin.
Rayneval visited Antonelli, begging why the pope will not return to Rome as he promised. Antonelli laid some of his cards on the table. The papacy was flat broke. If he returned, government employees would suddenly start demanding paychecks. Infrastructure improvements, especially with the recent battles, would be required. Charity organizations were withering away, desperately needing operating funds. There were also papal debts needing serviced – before Pius IX, Gregory had indebted the papacy to the Rothchilds, who underwrote his pontificate. Antonelli was urging Pope Pius IX to do the same. He readily took his cardinal’s advice. The sad irony of this history is that while Pio Nono was forcing the swaths of Jews back behind gates of the ghettos, he was waiting on the delivery of a loan from Europe’s most prominent Jewish family for sustenance. Until the cash from the Jews was in his pocket, the pope would not be returning to Rome.
On the streets of Rome, monsignor bulldog was carrying out the pope’s orders mercilessly, arresting all those excluded in the amnesty proclamation. Two weeks later, a board of censures was created to identify and process teachers and professors with republican sympathies.
A police captain complained to the French that the priests were now so distrusted that many roman citizens desired to convert to Protestantism. A British envoy reported back to London that:
The greatest discontent prevails in Rome. Every act of theirs has shown the strongest tendency to retrograde principles and to the adoption of the abuses of the old priestly rule. . .. The Pope is now undoubtedly swayed by entirely opposite principles to those formerly entertained by him.
A British naval captain wrote:
I am again the witness of horrors. … A reign of terror exists. No one on going to bed feels sure that he will not be in prison before morning.
The French ambassador agreed:
The terror is always at a fever pitch. Everyone feels threatened, pursued. They are living in a state of siege, war councils, and bloody executions. The police and courts display the most uncontrollable zeal and strike ... at the most honorable of men. One is always struck by how little enthusiasm, how little sign of veneration one finds [of the pope] along the way.
In mid-October, President Louis Napoleon was forced to ask the general assembly for more cash to fund the occupation of Rome. The debate was fierce. Victor Hugo was one of the men to speak against the measure. Hugo called out the hypocrisy of the pope’s actions in the face of the president’s now famous letter:
A huge distance separates them. The one says yes, the other says no! It is impossible to escape the dilemma posed by these things. You absolutely have to say that one of them is wrong. If you approve the letter, you disapprove the motu proprio. If you accept the motu proprio, you disavow the letter. You have, on one side, the president of the Republic, calling for freedom for the Roman people, in the name of a great nation that, for three centuries has brought enlightenment . .. to the civilized world. On the other side, you have Cardinal Antonelli, refusing, in the name of the clerical government. Choose!”
President Louis Napoleon then enacted coup de tate of the French republic. He fired all the operatives he deemed disloyal and aligned himself with men of a more monarchist outlook – a sign of things to come. Since Napoleon was now focused on consolidating his power at home, and since the French general assembly was too impotent to stop him, he ceased caring about what the pope did. Yet the new French diplomatic corps was still charged with urging the pope to return to Rome. Again, they were told that the pope was waiting on the payment of the loan from the Rothchilds. The Rothchilds, for their part were delaying things in hopes of getting the pope to abolish the Jewish ghettos. The pope responded that it was for the protection of the Jews that they were locked in the ghettos.
Both the French and the Austrians were fed up with the popes delays. Even the pope’s nephew, when asked about why his uncle wouldn’t return to Rome, said:
Every day another mushroom sprouts up.
Both French and Austrian nations pressured the Rothchilds to drop the demands about the ghettos and give the pope his damn bailout money. The Rothchilds finally agreed, securing only a vague promise of repayment and better treatment of the Jews, not from the pope, but from the French.
Finally, now out of excuses and allies, Cardinal Antonelli announced that the pope would return to Rome, a week after Easter. The pope-king – the last pope-king was coming home – a home of enemies.
Before returning, back in Gaeta, French diplomats delivered a scathing letter from Tocqueville of the pope’s behavior, of his repugnant conduct towards his subjects, and warning him that French aid had its limits. The pope exploded at Rayneval, the French diplomat, accusing the French of not trusting in the papacy. Rayneval replied that France has yet to see any results from his holiness. All the old laws have been reestablished to the destruction of everyone’s trust and affection towards the papacy. The pope responded that Spain, Austria and Naples had no issues with his action. Rayneval reminded the pope that France is the only government that risked its existence for the pope. To whom did the king of Naples, or the emperor of Austria have to answer? All in good time responded the pope.
Part Three: Rejoice, o Pope, You Are King
Rome was once again rule by the clergy. Priestly rule wasn’t the only factor that made the city distinct from other overcrowded 19th century European metropolises. Among the 170,000 inhabitants, the city had over 400 Churches, 3500 priests and monks, 1500 cloistered nuns. In the streets, the beggars and the mendicants were indistinguishable. The princes of Rome were the Cardinals. The cardinals hailed from ancient families who were in the business of supplying the Church with popes. These cardinals were usually younger sons of the aristocracy, those who never had a chance at their father’s inheritance. They held the highest positions in government. They oversaw the public treasury, which despite its name, was not public at all, but property of the church. All administration, all education, all courts and all police, rolled up to the Cardinals. Amid the poverty-stricken countryside, they possessed the best farmland and the richest comforts – these cardinal owned plantations produced half of the agricultural wealth of the Papal states and paid no taxes.
The parish priests were somewhere in between the lower clergy and the cardinal-princes. They had some status due to their governance over marriages. They presided over local governance. They might enter the home of a parish member unannounced to ensure church precepts were being obeyed. They hired spies, and ordered police raids in search of contraband, or a particular enemy of the state. They were the key masters of the local dungeon. But they also were the gatekeepers of the sacraments – and for this, they were revered. In their presence men removed their hats, women and children would kiss their hands.
After an arrest was made at the order of a priest, when the accused was brought to trial, the judges were also priests. If a witness against the alleged criminal was a priest, the testimony was as good as gospel. Criminal charges could be brought up on any sin, ranging from adultery, to swearing, to eating meat on Fridays during lent. When the romans complained of priestly rule, this is what they meant.
This old order of priestly rule in the papal states was guaranteed so long as everyone played by the same rules, rules based on the divine rights of kings. But the Enlightenment brought that system to its knees. A king, let alone a pope-king wielding absolute, uncontestable, and infallible power was now seen as a vestige of the Middle Ages. This was the rub – these two forces were pulling each other apart at the seams. But now, as we’ve seen in the last episode, a new and grotesquely powerful social concept had emerged that was quickly gobbling up both doctrines – nationalism. For many, and the Italians were no different, the cure to these societal upheavals was a united nation. For the papacy, whether Pius knew it or not, nationalism was a far greater threat to the temporal power of the papacy than freedom and liberal government, for they were willing to tolerate the papacy. But for the nationalists, the papal states, occupying a massive swath of the middle of the Italian peninsula, the pope was merely in the way.
At the announcement that he would return to Rome, the French offered Pius passage by ship. He declined, preferring instead to travel by land through the rural landscape of southern Italy. As his procession travelled from rural town to rural town, the pope was greeted with choirs, decorations, and prayers. Local bishops and dignitaries came out to kiss his shoes. One hastily painted mural he passed by read: Pio Nono, immortal, immortal, immortal.
Despite the praise, the closer the procession inched towards Rome, the more alert the French guard became. Rumors swirled of various plots ranging from embarrassment to assassination. Now, for the first time since Pius left Rome in disguise, he found himself again before a Roman city gate. It was Friday, April 12th, 1850. Now as he passed through the gate, church bells rang all over the city mixed with cannonades welcoming the pope-king home. The procession made its way to the piazza in front of the church of St. John Lateran. When the pope stepped off his carriage, the crowd waved their handkerchiefs in praise. A London Times reporter was skeptical of the display of pageantry. Where is the devout laity that should be kneeling at a moment like this, he wondered.
As Pius entered the cathedral, the cardinals who had been governing Rome prostrated themselves before him. The foreign diplomatic corps kissed his hand. The pope then made his way to the knave and knelt in prayer.
Then they were off to the other side of the city. Flanked by the French cavalry and marching amid decorative tapestries and ornate garlands displayed for the occasion, they crossed the Tiber and turned to St. Peter’s Basilica where the other cardinals were waiting. After hearing Mass, Pius retired to his apartment in the Vatican Palace.
A few weeks after the pope’s return, on April 30th, the first anniversary of Roman Republic’s first victory over the French, plastered throughout the city was a leaflet reading:
Rejoice o Pope, you are in Rome, you are on the throne, you are king . .. your hands are soiled with blood. ..So Rejoice o Pope, you are king. Like all the other Popes, you have betrayed the fatherland, handing it over to foreigners...You have called for war and carnage. . .. You have given your blessing to a massacre! ... So rejoice, o Pope, you are king!
Most of the pent-up anger stemmed from the tens of thousands of relatives of the 3000 souls languishing in prison. The cells were not made to handle this capacity. 6 prisoners were stuffed into quarters meant for one. They were deprived of blankets and the air was diseased from the open latrines. They were fed stale bread for food. Many were succumbing to disease. Stories of injustices against the prisoners were tearing through Rome. A priest, Monsignor Gazzola was given a life sentence for “injuries to the person of the pope”, apparently stemming from articles he wrote. A life sentence for criticizing the pope. One man was put in prison for allegedly blackening the nose of a statue of a cardinal. He had been in prison for two years and still had not seen his trial. As the pope reentered Rome, this prisoner was on his deathbed, coughing up blood from tuberculosis contracted in prison. Nearing the pitiful end of his life, he petitioned the Vicar of Christ to be released, so that he may die in the care of his family. His request was denied.
Cardinal Antonelli, on behalf of Pius, relieved the commissions of cardinals from their operational duties and took the reins himself. A secretary of the city government came to the pope to beg for his job back, but Pius had noted that the man did not quit his job when the papacy left Rome – like a good subject should have done. He denied the man a return to his post, telling him: The time for mercy is over, it is now the time for justice."
Many who had known Pius before he left now marked that he had returned a different man. He was no longer jovial, and affable, but was now suspicious, prone to fits of anger and rage. His violent outbursts were becoming famous. When he wasn’t losing his temper, he was sullen, and destructively melancholic.
Cardinal Antonelli, for his part, was laser focused on the consolidation of power. A critical stopgap for maintaining control was being the gatekeeper for access to Pius. Without scheduling an appointment through him first, the pope would see no one. Of this, a Neapolitan envoy said:
The Sacred College, already not well disposed to Cardinal Antonelli would with this new measure be even less well disposed. However, this shows that he feels strong and secure in his Sovereign's favor.
Now that Antonelli had successfully isolated Pio Nono and neutered French influence in governance, he ramped up arrests and executions. Guillotines were placed in the middle of piazzas, more than just a symbol of papal justice, they were frequently used before the crowds of horrified onlookers. It was a show of papal justice designed personally by Antonelli. One man, a 35-year-old hat maker was so angry with the carnage being done by the Cardinal that he attempted to attack him with a pitchfork. Guards subdued the angry man before he could do any harm. Antonelli ordered the man be put to the guillotine immediately. The hatmaker complied with his sentence and kissed his executioner before laying his head down to be cut.
In October, six men were found guilty of a murder allegedly committed during the time of the Roman Republic. They were taken to the piazza in front of the Church of Santa Maria, known for the sculpture mask, Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth.
The men appealed to the pope for leniency. Pio Nono refused. After the crowd had gathered for the execution, the signal was given, and the papal soldiers opened fire. But papal soldiers are apparently terrible marksmen and missed the men. One among the prisoners said, “Grazie,” thanking the executioners for their aim. A second round of fire was ordered, but again, they missed most of their targets. On the third round, all the men at last were dead.
A duke of Rome admitted to a British visitor that ten people a day are whisked away for criticizing the pope – never to be seen again.
Pius then randomly and oddly began a crusade against marble genitalia throughout the city – marble genitalia is everywhere in Rome. Pants and tunics were painted all over the city’s statues. One ridiculous example was a statue of a woman nursing an infant. The bare breast was covered up. The head of the child was cut off and fastened back on facing the opposite directly of the mother.
Americans in Rome were particularly horrified by the state of the eternal city. Lewis Cass, diplomat from Washington reported back the despotic power of the pope had reach such heights that it would not be tolerated for much longer – predicting that a second revolution was at hand. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:
I look out of the window this gray, rainy day, and see the streets all mud and the roofs all green mould, and the mist lying like a pall over the lower town, and Rome seems to me like king Lear staggering in the storm and crowned with weeds.
The poet was afforded a meeting with Cardinal Antonelli, where he told him the city had become beleaguered and depressing. The cardinal, as he pinched snuff up his nose replied, yes, and thank God. Antonelli himself knew the damage being wrought. He admitted to his nuncio in Vienna that if the French ever abandoned their posts in Rome, he and the rest of the government would all be hung in the streets.
In the middle of 1851, the heavens displayed ominous signs in the skies above Rome. A Solar eclipse on July 28th, followed by meteors and an aurora borealis left Romans uneasy. Thunderstorms too ravaged the city, darkening the skies so much that the streetlamps had to be lit during the day. By November, huge portions of the city remained flooded from the unusual weather.
Such was the state of Rome when Pio Nono returned. But now we must now reach all the way back into the first episode to bring the aforementioned Dom Gueranger back into this tale. Dom Gueranger was the benedictine monk we sort of left the thread of papal infallibility at. Remember he was also an Ultramontane – believing in the boundless authority of the pope, as well as a roman liturgy war hawk, mobilizing all he could against Gallicanism and the French episcopate. Pio Nono invited Dom Gueranger to Rome and appointed him as a consultant to the Congregation of Rites, which had policing authority over liturgical practices, and the Congregation of the Index, which had policing authority over publications. A writing place on the index was forbidden to be read by Catholics. The monk’s appointment to these congregations would reignite the Gallican - Ultramontane battles.
An Ultramontane Church instantly became a cause for the papacy. Pius threw his weight in on the issue, choosing sides where previous popes declined to get involved. Gueranger, doing the bidding of Pius, went for the low hanging fruit first, he attacked the hymns of the French liturgy were written in the 17th and 18th centuries that lacked the weight of tradition behind them, otherwise known as Mozart masses. His reasoning was that Mozart was a mason, Bach was a protestant.
Gueranger’s liturgical crusade thankfully revived one the most timeless and beautiful traditions the Roman Catholics have – Gregorian chant, which at this time nearly extinct. Gueranger literally wrote the teaching manuals for its practice. He also convinced priests in French diocese to write to the Congregation on the Rites, prompting them to clarify questions regarding the Gallican liturgy. One such petition was:
Q. May, however, the priests of this diocese continue with a clear conscience to use this liturgy, which is sanctified by age and custom?
R. Negative.
The type of central intervention by Rome in the liturgy, especially in France became a unifying ultramontane dog whistle for papalists to rally around. But there was another significant event in the middle of the 19th century that would affect these historical trajectories, and it came to be called the Oxford movement.
England had a small Catholic population, and yet some of the top Anglican thinkers, particularly those associated with Oxford, began converting back to the Catholic Faith. Three of them would have major implications on the eventual definition and interpretation of papal infallibility. Most critically, in April of 1851 was Henry Manning, who after becoming Catholic and was ordained a priest two months later, eventually being elevated to Bishop of Westminster by Pius IX.
Henry Manning was following in the footsteps of Englishmen William Ward, an Anglican thinker converting to Roman Catholicism. Ward was an early and very loud voice for the promulgation of a doctrine of papal infallibility. What he lacked in theological soundness was made up for by Manning, who became arguably the most significant instigator for the doctrine of infallibility. Without Manning, it’s hard to see the first Vatican council happening at all. Between Manning and Ward, there would have been a sense that England Catholics were almost entirely Ultramontanes – I say almost, because the third Oxford movement conversion of significance was one who opposed papal infallibility from the beginning and remained something of an apologist for dissenters after the dogma. He is also regarded as the greatest theologian of the 19th century – St. John Henry Newman.
Unlike Newman, Ward was a blustering dunce. When asked if he was concerned that papal infallibility would turn the papacy into some sort of papal bull factory, he replied that he desired a new papal bull every morning with his breakfast and newspaper. Edward Manning, for his part saw papal infallibility as not a theological concept, but a silver bullet against nationalism and national churches. He despised Gallicanism.
Prominent Anglican converts like Manning and Ward, building on the groundwork already laid by the Masons and apostates like de Maistre, Lamennais, easily aligned infallibility with the liturgical and censorship powers of ultramontane Dom Guerenger. This alliance created a momentum and means to begin consolidating a doctrine.
In 1853, Pope Pius IX published his encyclical Inter Multiplices. It reneged on the two-hundred-year-old agreement guaranteeing an independent French church, declaring their liturgical liberties and their ecclesiastical authority null, void, and therefor, invalid. With so much of the French clergy dismantled and replaced with the more progressive ultramontanes – albeit accidentally by Napoleon, there were few bishops with the clout to stand against the new Rome. One by one, the French episcopate Romanized their liturgy.
Meanwhile in the streets of the papal kingdom, government workers were being assassinated by, followed up by arrests and executions of alleged perpetrators who rarely saw trial. The chaos in Rome was increasing, not decreasing. The French were under extreme pressure from Paris and the Pope to restore moral order. General Baraguay – leader of the French issued an extreme order:
Any person found wearing knives, daggers, stilettos, or any other kind of lethal weapon, shall be instantly shot.
The result of course left bodies lying in the street, shot dead for things they may or may not have had in their pockets. The poor classes of the city were so affected by this new edict and by the midnight arrests, that voluntary exile became the norm. Many who stayed, stayed out of vengeance. There were so many people who either lost a loved one at the hands of the French, or at the hands of the pope. Their payback would be sabotage, violence, assassination. As this resistance inevitably organized, it began looking for external aid. The growing nationalist movement outside Rome, began paying attention to the resistance inside Rome.
Cardinal Antonelli had a financial problem. Due to the loan, he negotiated from the Rothchilds, the Pius pontificate had a massive note to service. They simply didn’t have the money to pay it back. To make up the difference, they did what financially insolvent government always do – raise taxes. A flurry of new tax increases came from the Vicar of Christ - property taxes, levies on civil entities, import taxes on salt, coffee, cocoa, and sugar. All taxes were naturally promised to last only a year. And predictably, after the year was up, the taxes were renewed and raised. And so, to make up for oppressive taxes, the people did what a republican minded people always do. They smuggled.
Against smuggling the papal police were worthless, partly because everyone enjoyed cheaper goods, including the police, and partly because there was far more pressure on arresting enemies of the state. The French didn’t have the bandwidth to stop the smuggling because they were the only ones doing the actual police work of the state.
To make up for the lost tax revenue on imported goods, the papal government tried to get creative with taxing commercial activities. Merchandise was taxed as it transferred from factory to a warehouse, then taxed again from a warehouse to a store, then taxed again from the store hawker to the customer – creating even higher prices – giving smuggling a further boon. The smuggling was fragrant, even creeping up the Tiber to the very seat of government, as some of their best customers were Cardinals, who were of course immune from prosecution of contraband. Afterall, cardinals must eat too.
When the government of Pio Nono wasn’t vacillating between predatory taxation and complicit criminal activity, its more reasonable attempts at governance were dashed by incompetence. Government minted stamps were produced to raise revenue. The stamps were generally welcomed by the people as a useful employment of government resources, but because the Pope was dead set on priestly supervision of government bureaucracy, management of these efforts was lacking. They never implemented a system for removing the stamps from circulation. Postal workers would pocket once and twice used stamps to sell on the black market. Other postal workers simply printed for themselves whole sheets of freshly minted stamps. It took three years to get the process under control.
Another money pit for the government was the Papal State Bank - it was failing, partly from mismanagement, partly because no one who lived in Rome would ever trust it to hold their counterfeit stamps, let alone their money. To encourage business, it gave easy loans against bad credit, ending in disaster. Many of the loans were to shell companies created by professional grifters. Coming under fire for its misappropriation of state funds, Cardinal Antonelli stepped into its defense – for his own brother was the banks director. The good cardinal proclaimed that to question the integrity of the bank was to question the integrity of the state – meaning the pope. The bank and the state are one, he said. Case closed; Rome has spoken.
The state then began concocting public commissions for the most minute matters of life, publishing “notifications” on matters such as the proper color of butter that’s sold in the markets.
All this government intervention was mostly the work of Antonelli. Pio Nono was bored with it. His days were spent on horseback travelling in the countryside, visiting convents and monasteries and ancient church sites. He loved it. This was his joy, not the cares of governance. Antonelli, it is said by this time had already calculated the demise of the temporal power of the papacy. He was not a believer in divine protection as Pius was. Seeing the pope was enamored with the Ultramontanes, he regarded a doctrine of papal infallibility to be ludicrous and diplomatically catastrophic. But there was little he could do to swing the momentum, as most of it was coming from outside the curia, not within.
Pius, for his part did have a genuine interest in theological affairs, though he was far from a theologian. He deemed the issue of the immaculate conception of Mary, the mother of God, ready to be resolved. The year after he declared the Gallican liturgy invalid, he released a dogmatic pronouncement on his own volition, answering once and for all that the belief in the immaculate conception is to be a required belief for all Catholics.
It was a dogma long in the works, debated since the early Church. In 1830, the virgin Mary was alleged to appear to Catherine Laboure, and gave her instructions on the design of the now famous miraculous medal, with the words “O Mary, conceived without sin” imprinted upon them. Enthusiasm for the doctrine was universal and uncontroversial. The laity had already accepted it before it was defined. “Mary, conceived without sin” had already be declared the patroness of America by the bishops in Baltimore.
Prior to the papal proclamation of the dogma, the Ultramontanes took up the cause of the Immaculate Conception. For them, whether the mother of God was born with original sin was irrelevant. What was relevant was the way it could be defined. When it was at last defined by Pius, it marked the first time in the history of the church that a pope had unilaterally defined a dogma of the faith. In doing so he invoked the words, divinely revealed by God. In other words, something that is irreversible, irrefutable, infallible. And even though he consulted the bishops and referred to himself as we, he never acknowledged or referred to having or needing the consent of the bishops. It was a papal act of dogmatic consequence. It was also a contextual ultramontane victory.
This is not to suggest one should question the holy devotion of the pope to the immaculate conception, or any ultramontane for that matter. The method is the point here.
Credit needs to be given to Pio Nono for infrastructure improvements in the eternal city. Where his predecessor, Gregory feared trains and lamps, Pius embraced them. In the same year as the new Marian dogma came telegraph and railway lines in and out of Rome. Yet the economy was floundering in Rome and beyond. Romans found unity with the rest of their papal state brothers and sisters in poverty and oppression with those under Austrian occupation.
This anger against the state, which had now publicly chosen sides in the Ultramontanism debate, began to be directed at that concept. Ultramontanism was tied now to heavy handed, oppressive, antiquated regimes – despite it being a novel concept compared to ecclesiastical independence. Polarizing these schools of thought in the public sector was a new polemist for the Ultramontane cause.
Louis Veuillot, standing on the shoulders of de Maister had no theological acumen aim. He was a radical antisemite, publicly promoting the blood libel conspiracy theories – that the Jews use Christian blood for ritualistic rites. His writing was accusatory, egregious, and slanderous – landing him in at least two duels. He was also the most passionate ultramontane to date. He founded a newspaper called L’Univers whose sole purpose was to function as an ultramontane propaganda machine. American Catholic Labor Activist, Orestes Brownson Remembers that Veuillot:
Manifests the temper and breeding of a fanatic, and seems to act on the principle that whoever differs on any important point in history, politics, or philosophy, from himself, must needs be a bad Catholic, or no Catholic at all. We question not his sincerity, we question not his personal piety; but we do question his qualification to be a Catholic leader. His mind is too narrow and one-sided for that, and his leadership, with the best intentions on his part, is fitted only to bring about the very results he most deprecates.
Pope Pius IX liked Veuillot immediately. This new friendship caused problems for Louis Napoleon as the common French laity despised him. Louis Napoleon reenters this tale not as a president, but now as an emperor. He was now Napoleon III, but despite his new power of office, the papacy publicly supporting a radical political rag sheet caused the emperor’s advisors to rethink the alliance with Pio Nono.
Another incident drove the pontiff and French emperor further apart. In 1858, a Catholic servant to a Jewish family had reportedly secretly baptized the families six-year-old son. Roman law dictated that a baptized person must be raised in the faith. Therefore, Papal police forcibly removed the child from his parents, tearing the family asunder. The boy was re-baptized, just in case, and eventually grew up to become a priest. But the story was an international PR disaster for the papal states. The New York times published a twenty-article series on the event. The British Spectator labeled the papal states:
"The worst government in the world--the most insolvent and the most arrogant, the cruelest and the meanest."
The lingering Italian nationalist sympathies that I keep alluding to were able to coalesce around this crime against the family unit. The Frech laity, already having little respect for Pio Nono and the company he kept, put more pressure on Louis Napoleon, who was now decidedly more Gallican in world view, growing suspicious of the Ultramontane cause and the type of papal monarch it would produce.
This event, while tragic for the family, who never saw their son again, still seems like a small event in this vast geopolitical web we’ve traced over the past few hours. Yet, it was the catalyst for a change in the way the world viewed the papal government. With its rumors of purges, executions, festering prison dungeons, all at the hands of a government that couldn’t self-sustain itself without the imperial powers, it seemed there was very little actually legitimate about it. The kidnapping of a six-year-old boy gave the international community something to talk about.
The very next month, seizing on this story, Napoleon III met with the prime minister of Sardinia for a secret meeting. He told the prime minister to let the King of Sardinia know that he wanted him to aid France in kicking the Austrians off the Italian peninsula. Napoleon knew King Victor Emmanuel II hated the Austrians. The French emperor would then use his army to rip control of the temporal kingdom from the pope, leaving him only Rome. Victor Emanual agreed to the plan, but also had his own designs. He saw the popular calls for Italian unity and thought he could be the guy to do it.
Six months later, revolts broke out in the papal states. The leaders were demanding Italian unity with the Kingdom of Sardinia. There for it all was Garibaldi and his legionaries. Responding to Sicilian calls for unification, the hero of two worlds landed a thousand of his men and conquered the island with remarkable and embarrassing ease. They then hopped onto the Italian boot and turned north towards Rome.
Garibaldi may have well taken Rome, but Victor Emanuel’s plan was for himself to be the king of Italy, not Garibaldi, and so he stationed his army in Naples, essentially cutting off the revolutionary hero. Victor Emmanuel was now solidly in possession of Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy. In mere days Naples and swaths of the papal states were conquered. The cardinals who ruled these territories fled to Rome. The romans were ecstatic at the sweeping and breakneck pace of unification, eagerly waiting for the revolution to make its way to Rome. They decorated their shops and houses with the red, green and white of the Italian flag.
Napoleon III attacked the Austrians in Lombardy, crushing them and sending them packing. The Neapolitan army crumpled in the south against Victor Emanuel. Events were moving way too fast for Pio Nono. His allies, Naples, and Austria were gone. France, once his benefactor was now his prison warden. His only weapons were spiritual ones, threats of excommunications, encyclicals, political letters – but they all fell flat. In diplomatic exchanges between the Pius and Napoleon, the pope told the emperor he refused to accept the new geopolitical map – the loss of the papal states. The emperor admonished him for his obstinance and refusal to accept the inevitable – temporal papal power was gone. It was gone at the whim of couple lay Catholics. And there was nothing the pope could do about it.
The emperor recommended Pio Nono thank him instead of complaining, thanked him for allowing Pius to exist this long. He further rebuked the pope for squandering the time allotted to him, for not using it to install good, lasting government, but choosing instead the petty persecutions of his political adversaries. He also warned the pope:
The government, which re-established the sovereign Pontiff, tenders advice, inspired by respectful and sincere devotion; but it feels anxious in view of the day, that is not far distant, when the French troops will evacuate Rome, for Europe cannot permit an indefinite occupation. And when the troops are withdrawn, will they leave anarchy and terror or peace behind them? These are the questions which must be solved.
With Rome and the immediate regions around it being all that was left of the papal states, Pius IXs only recourse was to excommunicate Napoleon III, Victor Emanuel II, and all who had participated in his ruin.
Despite the swift and enormous victories for Italian unification, the nationalists were unsatisfied – Rome was the historic capital of the peninsula. It was the most important city in the world. Italian unification would not be complete without Rome. Garibaldi agreed, and he gathered his legionaries to march on Rome. Victor Emanuel was in a predicament. He knew this would force him into war with France – that cannot be allowed to happen. So, he sent troops to intercept Garibaldi. Garibaldi thought the Italian troops had come to talk, and so he ordered his men not to shoot. He was mistaken. The Italian troops opened fire and decimated Garibaldi’s men. Garibaldi again escaped death but had his foot shattered by a bullet and was taken prisoner.
Garibaldi was correct in that he knew Italian unification, now called the Risorgimento was the ultimate and only acceptable goal for the Italians. Victor Emanuel knew popular support from his people would not last long while the French still occupied Rome. On September 15th, 1864, Victor Emanuel and Napoleon III came to an agreement. In exchange for the French leaving Rome in 2 years, the Italians would make Florence their capital, would pledge not to attack Rome, nor let any other Italian army take it.
That same year, on the feast of the immaculate conception, set by himself, Pope Pius IX published a document called Quanta cura. It was a statement of opposition to the realigning of the world. This document would become famous for its index, The Syllabus of Errors – which explicitly named and condemned 80 modern errors or heresies – although it didn’t specifically say why it condemned them. Antonelli advised against its publishing, worrying that it would further antagonize the Catholic powers. He was right. As for the average cleric and layman, the document was largely panned. Only the theologians bothered to examine it. John Newman did his best to defend it – offering that the pope was misunderstood. No one quite understood what a list of “isms” Pio Nono didn’t like would accomplish. It certainly added nothing to the deposit of faith, to the frustration of the pope.
In the Vatican palace, Pius IX and Antonelli were reaching for anything that would save Rome and regain the lost papal territory. In mid-January 1865, British envoy Odo Russel was in a meeting with the Cardinal and the pope. They proposed to him a frightening idea, yet one that might their skins, a great European war. Tensions between Austria and Prussia were high, and both hated France. If they could be drawn into a war, then Italy would be pulled in as an ally of France, and would surely be destroyed by Austria, allowing the papal lands to be conquered. Russel, shaken by the Machiavellian policies of the Vicar if Christ, immediately sent his report back to London:
Like the Pope, Antonelli hopes in a European war to set matters right again in the Holy See!
Despite the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of deaths, and unmeasurable ruination of innocent lives such a colossally wicked gamble would have produced, it was a creative solution. Russel added in his report that Pio Nono:
Bore the unmistakable signs of the approach of second childhood.
Russel then spoke of the handlers of the pope saying:
He seems to inspire them with unreasonable apprehension and inexplicable terror.
By June of 1866, combat among these European empires finally broke out. Austria and Prussia were at war. Italy joined in with the Prussians. Pius IX was thrilled. Russel described he an Antonelli as experiencing “unbounded joy”, believing that the Austrians would easily prevail.
Yet within weeks the Austrians were having their lunch eaten by the Prussians, and from the south, Garibaldi was on the march again, beating back the Italian army, laser focused on Rome. And worse, the deadline for French withdrawal was only months away. From Odo Russel:
I called again on Cardinal Antonelli this morning and found His Eminence looking painfully ill and unusually excited. ‘Good God’, he exclaimed and struck his forehead with the palms of his hands, 'what is to become of us.
By December of that year, 1866, the French lowered their flags over Rome and boarded their ships. Pius’ advisors urged him to flee to Austria or Spain – the chances of being hung in the streets or thrown in prison were very real. Victor Emanuel was in a tough spot too. He promised the French that he would not invade Rome after they left. Yet that’s exactly what his subject expected of him. And never had such a monumental city been such low hanging fruit as Rome was after the French left. Everyone knew the Romans hated the pope, his government, and his papal troops made up of foreign mercenaries. It was nearly guaranteed that anyone who stepped in afterwards would be hailed as a welcomed ruler, especially an Italian army.
If only a spontaneous rebellion could ignite in Rome that Victor Emanuel could, out of the necessity of security of course, march in to put down – that would certainly be construed as an ethical invasion. To that end, King Victor Emanuel began pouring money into the eternal city, funding whatever agitators could be found, hoping something would catch. Yet to show that the king of Italy was holding up his bargain, he had Garibaldi arrested again and placed on house arrest. But you can’t keep a guy like Garibaldi under house arrest. He immediately escaped, made his way to Florance, raised another army and began marching on Rome again.
Napoleon, from his high tower in Paris knew exactly what Victor Emanuel was doing and he ordered the French troops back into Rome to protect the pope. They also beat back Garibaldi while they were at it, handing him over to the Italians, who put him on house arrest again, this time keeping him locked up for 3 years. The French were back ruling the streets of Rome, they hadn’t even been gone a year.
Odo Russel reported back to London that the renewed French presence makes:
Rome a fortified city and of the Pope a military despot.
Pius then bragged to the British envoy that, based on population, he now had the largest army in the world and that:
If the interests of the Church ever required it, he would even buckle on a sword, mount a horse, and take command of his army himself like Julius II.
Pius probably would not have been a good Risk player. His city was surrounded by the Italians. All they needed was a reason to enter. Yet such a violation was unimaginable to Pio Nono – God was surely on his side; he was the pope after all. Soon his enemies would be punished, soon order would be restored.
In the middle of 1868, Pope Pius IX had an idea, it was an idea that was long discussed among the ultramontanes. It was an idea that could allow the pope to reassert and centralize his importance and authority over a church that seemed unsure of what to make of all the commotion coming from Rome. It was an idea that could force the princes of Europe to take him seriously. He decided that he would convoke an ecumenical council – the first in 300 years, since Trent. The date for this grand council was set for December 8th, 1869, a year and a half out.
Papal infallibility was the predetermined reason for the council. Everyone knew it. The ultramontanes had a direct line with the pope, and they knew they had his support. After the council was announced the Civilta Cattolica, a magazine published by the Jesuits in Rome, outright named infallibility to be put on the agenda. This magazine, The Civilta Cattolica was a very special journalism, for the secretary of state of Rome had final editing authority.
The European governments were uncomfortable at all this. Infallibly was nonsense to them and would nullify hundreds of years of national concordats. They knew this was Pio Nono’s goal, this was simply a repeat of what he did to the Gallicans. They also knew that anyone who disagreed with him was subject to being declared a heretic and excommunicated.
Many questioned the need for a council. The only turmoil in the catholic world was the pope’s temporal kingdoms slipping though his fingers, while Rome rotted away. In 1869 Europe, the damage from the enlightenment had at last subsided. The churches were full. Public processions and pilgrimages were growing in popularity. The seminaries and convents were full. Foreign missionary work was expanding rapidly.
Yet for over a decade now all the previously mentioned Ultramontane advocates had each opened their own journals and magazine and been trumpeting the infallibly cause. Rome itself was doing the same with the Civilta.
In response to the propaganda, many bishops especially in France, founded their own magazine to counter the arguments for papal infallibility. It was an all-out propaganda war. Bishops on one side, and a motley crew of former masons, Anglicans, revolutionaries – turned rag sheet journalist on the other – none of whom, surprisingly, were theologians. The moral, ecclesiastic authority, and high-minded theology put forward by the bishops, was so match for calculating demagoguery. Leading up to the council, to show his obstinance to ecclesiastic authority and his loyalty to Pius, Louis Veuillot, editor of L’Univers substituted the pope in the place of the Holy Ghost in the liturgy of the feast of Pentecost:
To Pius IX, Pontiff King
Father of the poor,
Giver of gifts,
Light of hearts,
Send forth thy beam
Of heavenly light!
In another edition, he scandalized theologians by declaring:
Just as the Father begets the Son and from them comes forth the Holy Spirit, so does the pope beget the bishops and likewise from them comes the Holy Spirit.
For Archbishop Marie Sibour defaming the Holy Trinity crossed a line, and issued a pastoral letter reminding his flock that these magazines are damaging to their faith, specifically calling out L’Univers. Veuillot, already had gushing papal support. And so, he appealed to Rome that he was unjustly attacked by a bishop who does not respect papal authority.
Veuillot had challenged an archbishop, a member of the hierarchy of the church and was not rebuked for it, in fact he was rewarded by Pius with influenced on the Congregation of the Index. Now publications that challenged infallibility, or even dared to rebut articles published by L’Univers or Veuillot, began leading to investigations by the Congregation of the Index. The message was clear from the pope - from archbishop, to theologian, to lay person – writings denying the merits of papal infallibility, or critiques of ultramontanes are banned.
Archbishop Sibour was not going to take the affront to ecclesiastical authority lying down. He published a memoir titled: On the present situation of the Gallican Church in relationship to customary law [of the Church|: A memoir addressed to the episcopacy. It analyzed recent cases opened by the Index of the Church and found their judgement partisan, prejudiced, predetermined, and unorthodox. Gallicans welcomed it as a manifesto in their defense. Ultramontanes blasted it as a direct attack on the authority the pope should be demanding.
But Veuillot doubled down. He blamed bishops like Sibour on their classical education, calling it a pagan education. This tactic oddly sent L’Univers on a campaign of encouraging the pope to ban Latin and Greek literature of antiquity. He declared it would have been better that the Persians won the Battle of Marathon, saving the world from the influence of Plato, Aristotle and the like. Historian Father O’Malley tells us that, to the horror of educators and theologians: No controversy better revealed the extremism and the cultural agenda of some ultramontane enthusiasts.
Pio Nono’s resolution was to place the archbishop’s memoir on the index for banned books.
In preparation for the coming council, Pius established a commission of ultramontane cardinals, headed up by a close friend, cardinal Patrizi. The only non-Italian member was a German ultramontane, Cardinal Reisach.
The commission made two immediate recommendations to the pope that, if implemented would significantly break with council tradition and norms. The first was to not invite Christian princes of the world, and second was to not let the bishops set the agenda – leaving it exclusively to the Roman curia under the direct supervision of the pope. These innovations applied to the coming council represent two contextual changes for the papacy, with relation to episcopal authority and autonomy. They eliminated reason popes often feared convoking councils int the first place, that is that the bishops may effect changes unwanted by the pope. Secondly, they demonstrated the central teaching and juridic power by which the papacy now regarded itself.
Bishops were nonetheless asked to submit issues to be addressed. Most requested by the church fathers were calls to reform and improve priestly formation and church state relations. Only eight bishops specifically asked for papal infallibility. The previously mentioned Anglican convert turned Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning, was one of them. Despite all the noise from the ultramontane press, infallibility didn’t even rank.
Yet the entire reason Pius convoked the council was for this issue specifically – everything else was secondary. He knew he couldn’t be seen as forcing something no one was asking for. So he demurred when he released his public address on what the purpose of the council would be, vaguely proclaiming that it would be to solve problems in the church.
A committee of bishops was assembled that would offer the official response to the pope’s address. Bishop Manning was of course on the committee and attempted to insert call for papal infallibility but ran into resistance from another bishop, bishop Dupanloup of Orleans, de facto leader of what was left of the Gallicans in France, and already a vocal opponent of any notion of a doctrine of infallibility for the papacy. In the end, Dupanloup managed to water down the episcopal response to the pope. It proclaimed only their desire to believe and teach, what the pope believes and teaches. That was it.
In a public response to the bishops, Pius called for the intercession of the immaculate conception that feast day proclaimed by him, was also the date of the release of his syllabus of errors, and now the date the council would begin. He begged the mother of God to “extirpate all heresy”. The dog whistle to the ultramontanes was noticed.
Decisions then had to be made as to who had a right to participate in the council. Christian secular leaders were already ruled out - which Cardinal Antonelli warned was a horrible idea, knowing the council would lack credibility without them. But Pius went even further. He presented the committee with a list of Gallican bishops he thought should not be invited. But the committee pushed back, telling the pope that he risked schism with that sort of behavior, and so he backed down.
Thus, when Pius issues his bull detailing the council, it created the first council in history without lay participation. French politician and future prime minister Emile Olivier was appalled and declared:
For the first time in history, the church, through a document of its supreme pastor, says to the lay world, to lay society, and to lay authorities: It is apart from you and without you that I want to exist, to take action, to make decisions, and to develop, affirm, and understand myself.
With the list of invitees complete, planning turned to procedural details. For those of you who have ever served on a committee or deliberative body, you know that he who determines the procedure also determines the outcome. The clerics in charge of smoothing out these details had zero experience in this sort of work and inevitable left much of it to the whims of the curia and the pope.
At Trent, there were two bodies set up for the review of pronouncements, the bishops, and the theologians, who would communicate back and forth, one body to one another as unified groups, hashing out theological topics, ultimately distilling out doctrine. Vatican I would be much different. In this council the groups, or deputations for compiling teachings was headed by cardinals appointed directly by the pope. That cardinals then had the option, if it pleased them, to summon a theologian on a case-by-case basis. And so, unlike Trent where the canonist and theologians constituted a deliberative body, at Vatican I, they were distributed amongst the various group, reduced to ceremonial supplementary role, and as such, prevented from acting in uniformity. At Trent, the theologians were appointed by the bishops of the world. At Vatican one, all the theologians were appointed by Pope Pius.
Everyone involved in the council was sworn to oaths of secrecy which no one kept. Officially, if a bishop desired to speak before the body on a specific issue, he was required to submit his request a day in advance. That bishop was then placed on a list in a predetermined order set by the presiding cardinals. This procedural rule affected two goals for the pontiff in how the council would proceed – there would be no opportunity for spontaneous debate and unwelcome opinions could be pushed to the end of the day.
With procedures in place, the official schedule for the council was released. It had 6 sections:
1. Church and State
2. The Hierarchical Structure of the Church, Its Infallibility, and Papal Primacy
3. The Papal States
4. Faith and Revelation
5. The Sacrament of Matrimony
6. Miscellany (such as secret societies, socialism, communism, and so on)
Item number 2, despite its mentioning of infallibility was understood to be referring to the church’s hierarchy having an infallible nature to it, which would include the bishops.
The most prominent theologian of the day was also the most prominent theologian not invited: Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, priest and church historian. He was hated by ultramontanes for his refutations of any historical support for a doctrine of infallibility, and equally hated by liberals for his strict adherence to church tradition. In his younger days, Dollinger was an ultramontane. His hyper-papalism was shattered when he visited Rome, shaken by the low academic quality narrow perspectives of the curia. He was further disturbed in his audience with Pius IX, when it was demanded of him that he kneel three times and then kiss the pope’s foot. Lord Acton, contemporary Catholic historian recalled this papal audience as an Dollinger’s emancipation from ultramontanism.
Lord Acton, it should be mentioned, is famous for his quote: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The full quote is often ignored:
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton was warning specifically of Pius IX.
Dollinger was already on Pius’ hit list, for whenever the pope issues an encyclical, there was Dollinger with a fraternal correction. When Pius published an encyclical insisting that the temporal authority was necessary to the papacy, Dollinger refuted the pope with historical and theological evidence to the contrary. Thus, the crusade of affirming and defending the liberty of theologians in the face of papal suppression of thought fell to Dollinger.
Dollinger called it like he saw it. On February 6th, 1869, Pius ordered Antonelli to publish an article in the Civilta, drawing a line between real Catholics and phony Catholics. Real Catholics reported the magazine, wanted the dogma of papal infallibility to be pronounced immediately as a unanimous outburst of the Holy Ghost, and to proceed in haste because any clash of opinion would cause grave scandal. That the Civilta had editorial control by the Vatican was well known, and therefore left contemporaries, both pro and anti-infallibility to conclude that the outcome of the council was predetermined before it even began.
Antonelli’s article polarized an already polarizing and controversial subject. The Jesuits and mendicant orders, along with magazine editors went to war with Dollinger, who found civil governments and catholic theologians rallying behind him. Realizing he was occupying the role of resistance leader, he set out to formulate his argument in a book he titled The Pope and the Council. From Father O’Malley:
In the book Dollinger expanded his argument, which was fundamentally historical. His grievance was not against the primacy, which as a believing Catholic he certainly accepted, but against the political papacy in which the primacy had developed in the Middle Ages and against the papacy’s infallibility, which rested on forged canonical texts. The Jesuits were the chief manufacturers and propagators of infallibility. The book, whose purpose was to rally public opinion to forestall the definition, created a sensation and quickly appeared in French, Italian, and English translations.
Dollinger’s book was put on the Index of forbidden books two weeks before the commencement of Vatican I.
Dollinger’s supporters in Germany published a manifesto, echoing his fears of the coming council and what defining infallibly would produce. It was addressed to the bishop of Trier. Another group of theologians wrote to the bishop of Berlin. Before long bishops in Germany, England, Ireland, the United States, Spain, France and Italy had all received manifestos, anonymously signed by theologians and each in its native tongue citing grave concern at the prospects of defining papal infallibly.
In response to the groundswell of opposition, fourteen bishops penned a letter of concern to Pio Nono, advising him not to proceed with infallibility. They were followed by bishops from Hungary and Bohemia, along with the Archbishop of Prague – same message, this is a bad idea, no one is asking for this. Lay groups throughout Europe, anticipating schism, began drafting language in preparation of national churches, independent from Rome.
Bishop Maret of France, who was very moderate in the debate, and also dubbed the council historian, published a two-volume book on the history of ecumenical councils and their relationship to the church, the pope and dogma. It was a comprehensive historical rebuttal of Pio Nono’s pontificate. Napoleon III paid for the printing costs. The book was then translated into German and Italian. From O’Malley:
Maret argued, especially from historical precedents, that the church is a constitutional monarchy composed of two essential elements, one of which is principal, the papacy, the other subordinate, the episcopacy. The two elements must work together to achieve an absolute rule of faith (an infallible definition), as happens in a general council. It is therefore in the cooperation of the two elements that spiritual sovereignty is exercised. In the correlation of sovereignty with infallibility, Maret followed de Maistre, but he arrived at a different conclusion.
Although Maret held that the pope alone never had full jurisdictional and dogmatic sovereignty over the church, he denied that councils were superior to the pope. In fact, the bishops' college, according to him, was inferior but essential for defining a dogma infallibly. For the pope validly to proclaim he was speaking ex cathedra, that is, solemnly in an infallibly binding manner, he absolutely had to have the consensus of the worldwide episcopacy.
Bishop Maret was innocent and genuine in that his book was written as a way to find a middle ground that would appease all parties and bring peace to the debate leading up to the council. He couldn’t have miscalculated more. The book enraged the ultramontanes. Pius IX had convinced himself that Bishop Maret was a heretic. With in two weeks of the book arriving in on the streets of Rome, it was placed on the index for banned books. L’Univers, receiving its marching orders from Pius, went on the attack against Maret. Even Dom Gueranger entered the fray against Maret and made public his own extreme ultramontane opinion of the papacy:
The pope receives nothing from the church, just as Peter received nothing from the apostles. The pope stands in the place of Jesus Christ and the bishops in that of the apostles."
Pius sent him a letter thanking him for the support. Guerenger then published the letter as an introduction to the second edition of one of his books on the subject. Bishop Manning ridiculed Maret in a letter, which was then published in the ultramontane echo chamber of Vieulot’s, L’Univers.
Seeing the chaos being wrought by the Ultramontane press, Bishop Felix Dupanloup published a brochure for the souls in his care titled: Observations on the controversy concerning the definition of infallibility at the coming council. Dupanloup was significant because he himself shared some of the original ultramontane positions on the papacy, but he deplored the cannibalistic tenor of its pushers. O’malley tells us:
Dupanloup’s Observations included the following arguments: a definition is unnecessary; it will raise fresh barriers against reunion with the Orthodox churches and rapprochement with Protestant bodies; it will antagonize governments; and its theological and historical basis is still disputed. He ended with a strong statement of papal prerogatives but coupled it with a similarly strong statement about bishops’ status as successors of the apostle, “placed by the Holy Spirit to govern the church of Christ.”
He labeled the ultramontane thinkers imprudent and provocative. He mentioned L’Univers and Civilta by name. He accused them of attempting to create a new and separate sensu fidelum by which one must pass through to be considered Catholic. Veullot of course published articles attacking the character of Bishop Duopanlop. The bishop then published a public warning to Veullot: "The moment has come to defend ourselves against you."
He accused Veullot of fomenting discord in the Church and among the bishops. He said vitriolic ragsheet editor was agitating infallibility with amateur and ill formed arguments, and equating reasonable opinions with heresy, and for elevating the papacy to divinity:
"Above all I reproach you for making the church participate in your violence, by giving as its doctrine your own ideas, which you do with the greatest audacity."
These controversies were playing themselves out as the bishops began arriving in Rome for Pius’ grand council - all bishops who neither ask for nor wanted to discuss papal infallibility. It was a topic never mentioned in any official communication about the purpose of the council. And yet, they all knew what they were there to rubber stamp a new doctrine of the Faith.
Part 4: I Am Tradition, I Am the Church
All the world’s bishops were on their way to Rome for the council - the council the ultramontanes hoped would be the council to end all councils - for once the pope was infallible, any subsequent councils would be superfluous. There were two distinct, adversarial groups among the bishops – the Gallicans and the Ultramontanes. Between them were bishops with varying alliances and prejudices, adding an element of unpredictable fluidity between the two camps. Within each camp there was significant division. For those who wanted a definition of infallibility, there was no consensus on the scope. Nor was there agreement about who exactly was infallible, the office or the man? What were its limits? Did it even have limits? Many thought not. What about the bishops? If the pope makes unilateral judgements on faith and morals, what remaining role do the bishops play in the church?
Among the Gallicans – they had a liberal faction that leaned toward the Enlightenment values of self-governance. Increasingly centralized authority in the church was something they were naturally opposed to. But for the purist Gallicans, opposing infallibility was a matter of principle, a matter of custom – they were trying to preserve the traditional understanding of the relationship between the bishop of Rome and the rest, and more importantly, the relationship between the bishops and their flocks.
Saint John Henry Newman, famed Oxford movement convert declined the invitation to the council but nonetheless questioned the wisdom of calling this council:
When has definition of doctrine of fiith been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern painful necessity?
Modern liturgical scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, and author of several books and published lectures on this subject, tells us that Newman was hesitant about a definition of infallibility not because:
he did not accept the pope as the God-given pastor of Christians and the final court of appeal, but because he knew that a party of "ultramontanes" was busy pushing a theologically unsound, philosophically unreasonable, historically untenable, and ecclesiastically damaging version of papal inerrancy that threatened to confuse the pope's office with divine revelation itself, rather than seeing him more modestly as the guardian of Tradition and the arbiter of controversy.
Many bishops were just simply skeptical of anything Pius IX was up to, from Bishop Freppel of Anger, France:
The Council is being held either too soon or too late. Too late, because we are at the end of the pontificate of a tired and discouraged old man who views everything through the misfortunes he has suffered. For him, everything that takes place in the modern world is, and must by necessity be, an 'abomination’. It is too soon, because it is clear that the situation in Europe is not yet settled.
The American Bishops for their part were largely left out of all the commotion of the Pius pontificate. During the Risorgimento and the Italian wars for independence, they preoccupied with the American Civil War. They further, being good old fashioned Americans were largely unimpressed by the pope’s Syllabus of Errors, which fell on nearly unanimous deaf ears across the Atlantic. After arriving in Europe, Bishop McQuaid of Rochester New York wrote back home:
Since coming to Europe, I have heard much of the question of the infallibility of the Pope, which with us in America was scarcely talked of. The feeling is very strong, pro and con. It seems that the Jesuits have been at the bottom of it, and have been preparing the public mind for it for the past two years. They have not made friends for themselves by the course they have followed, and if in any way the harmony of the Council is disturbed, it will be by the introduction of this most unnecessary question. There is no telling what the Jesuits will do, and from the manner in which they are sounding out the Bishops, I am inclined to think that they will succeed in having the question forced upon us. In my humble opinion, and almost every American Bishop whose opinion I have heard agrees with me, it will be a great calamity for the Church.
The bishop of Pittsburg, hearing that infallibility was the reason he’d been dragged to Europe said: It will kill us . .. we shall have to swallow what we have vomited up.
With the bishops arriving in Rome, Dollinger used his pen to go on a final offensive against the Ultramontanes, accusing them of attempting a papal seizure of power. The bishop’s authority would be undermined, replaced by a papal dictatorship, calling the thousand-year effort of the popes to centralize power a: a tumor that is disfiguring the Church and causing it to suffocate.
Bishop Dupanloup agreed and published a pamphlet that was handed out before the opening ceremonies.
In the middle of November 1869, because of new industrial transportation, bishops from far corners of the world could now attend and were attending the first ecumenical council in over 300 years. The French government offered its navy to transport any bishop from anywhere. Some 700 bishops of the thousand or so around the world had come. Such an attendance would not last for long – as we’ll see. Nonetheless even with the bishops of the world in Rome, Europe was wildly overly represented making up two thirds of the prelates. Britain had 34 bishops, 20 of which were from Ireland. German lands had 18 of its 20 present. 49 represented the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both France and Spain had over 80 apiece. Italy was way overrepresented with 117 prelates, with about half of them coming from the Roman Curia. America had its first opportunity to participate in a council and sent nearly 50 prelates from the United States, 18 from Canada, and another 50 from Latin America. 61 bishops represented the Eastern Rite churches from the Ottoman Empire, along with 41 coming from China and India. One came from the Philippines and one from Australia, and 8 came from all of Africa.
The first thing these old men had to do when arriving in Rome was secure lodging. Many of the European bishops had plenty of money and thus were able to lock down comfortable apartments and private carriages to cart them around. Those coming from outside Europe were more cash strapped and had to find lodging in seminaries or religious houses, often in unheated and unwindowed quarters. Unable to afford carriages, they had to make their daily trips on foot.
In the 19th century, before microphones, audio equipment and ted talks, acoustics for large gatherings was a critical concern. The council was originally supposed to take place the church of Sant Apollinare, because it was known for good acoustics. Pio Nono overruled the decision and demanded it occur in St. Peter’s Basilica. The acoustic problem was hoisted upon a roman architect to figure out a solution for. His solution was to build an enormous wooden box or shell, painted to look like marble, blocking out the echo from the cavernous basilica. For a bunch of grumpy old men hard of hearing anyway – this really didn’t help any.
At 9am on December 8th, church bells throughout Rome began ringing to call the bishops to the council. As a procession of the gilded clergy began making their way to the basilica, the skies opened into torrential rainfall. Getting soaked to their bones were 49 cardinals, 11 patriarchs, 6 prince-bishops, 680 archbishops and bishops, 28 abbots, 29 superiors general and over 250 resident roman clergy. The Knights of Malta and the Swiss guard awaited the procession at the basilica. Behind them was Pius IX, being carried on a portable throne by his attendants. At the church entrance, he dismounted and walked into the hall. With all members now present, the dean of the college of cardinals presided at a solemn high mass, followed by a sermon. After Mass, the entire congregation fell in line to pay homage to the pope. The cardinals kissed his hand, the bishops his knee, everyone else, his foot. Pius then stood before his clerics and reminded them they had important business before them, and to not fear, that the church would triumph. He then quoted scripture, exclaiming:
Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Gallicans bristled, believe it to be a nod to the ultramontanes.
When the pope was done speaking, the MC asked the congregation:
Most Reverend Fathers, does it please you, for the praise and glory of the Holy and Undivided Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the increase and exaltation of the Catholic faith and religion, for the uprooting of current errors, for the reform of the clergy and Christian people, for the common peace and concord of all, that the sacred ecumenical Vatican Council begin and be declared already to have begun?
The response was a resounding agreement. With that, the first Vatican Council commenced and was entered into the pages of history. Rome’s naturally superstitious populace marveled at the unrelenting rain, fearing it was a bad omen for things to come.
It was at least an omen of how uncomfortable the council would be. The first day of the council was taken up with administrative affairs. The clerics immediately began complaining of the lack of heat in their sleeping quarters, the horrible weather, the inability to hear any of the speakers, and boredom. Making it through some of the meetings when Cardinal Manning was asked what they had been discussing, he responded:
"Well, we meet, and we look at one another, and then we talk a little, but when we want to know what we have been doing, we read The Times."
So many of the bishops were infirm, and after the initial opening of each session, they were carried off, back to their quarters for comfort. The clerics from non-European countries had another problem, even if they could hear what was being discussed, all the speeches were in Latin, which they hardly spoke. One of the first suggestions made by the clerics was to move the location of the council so they could hear whatever it was they were supposed to be voting on – the request went nowhere. Instead, to ease their discomfort, in an adjoining chapel to the basilica a lounge was set up, carpeted and fitted with cozy chairs, and a bar that served wine. This helped to ease the daily torture somewhat.
Patience and manners of all the bishops began wearing down quickly, and soon they found themselves faced with a terrifying thought: No end date for the interminable council was given. They began to wonder how long they were expected to stay. Many began making arrangements to leave in their own time. Bishop McQuade wrote home:
"Unless an escape is found from the present way of getting on, the council will not be over for years. I would not like to say how many.
Many of these bishops had pressing matters in their own diocese that need attending to. The European bishops were particularly anxious as war between France and Prussia seemed imminent – and Rome they guessed would be caught up in it. Many prayed that something would make them adjourn before they were forced to vote on infallibility. Despite the marketing material, they knew that’s why they were there, and knew their clerical careers hung on how they voted.
Outside the council the streets of Rome were swollen with journalists and the generally curious. Despite the rules on secrecy, the roman streets were abuzz with rumor mills of infallibility – this thing that was too delicate to mention at the council was the most talked about issue in the cafes. German historian, Ferdinand Gregorovius doing research for a multivolume history of Rome wrote of the convening bishops:
Rome presents the spectacle of the deification, amounting to insanity, of despotism. If the movement is really carried: if the bishops, in fear and fanaticism, yield submission to the will of the pope: it is to be hoped that the unity of Germany will quickly bring to pass a second reformation.
The Hungarian episcopacy showed up to the council resolutely and almost unanimously opposed to infallibility. Croatian bishop Josip Strossmayer arrived as one of the doctrine’s loudest opponents. Strossmeyer’s see was within the Ottoman Empire at the time and his life’s work had been the reconciliation of the Slavic Orthodox communities to communion with Rome. He warned papal infallibility would undo everything he had had labored for. Pius IX would come to despise Strossmeyer, for as he was regarded as warm hearted, and affectionate by all, he was also eloquent and effective in his opposition to the pope.
Out of the 700 or so clerics who attended the council, its estimate that about 150 were publicly against defining the doctrine. Knowing infallibly would be forced into the schedule at some point, they knew they would need to form a voting block of coherence, which they did quite well. But the true strength of the minority was that they hailed from the most influential and important sees in Europe: Paris, Mainz, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Turin and Milan. These were not novice clerics. They also loved their flocks, loved the Church and loved the papacy – despite the toxicity of the current pope. They were not revolutionaries, but counterrevolutionaries, attempting to hang on to the reigns of episcopal authority that was all but gone – you could say these 150 bishops represented the last resistance against a continuous juridic and pastoral ossification of the papacy in the works since Gregory VII – 800 years ago. The simplest distillation of their argument was that defining a dogma of infallibility now was at best inopportune, and thus, this minority opposition came to be called the inopportunists.
Pius IX did not view these clerics as his brothers, or even some sort of intellectual opponent. To him, they were debauched enemies of the Faith. A note, handwritten by Pio Nono himself was found in the Vatican archives that shed light on where his head was at the commencement of the council:
Some leaders among the opposing bishops are effeminate, and others are sophistical, or frivolous, or heretical. They are all ambitious, boastful, and obstinately attached to their own opinion.
Among the majority, the Spanish Americans, seeing the Spaniards favoring a definition, joined in with them. The Italians were almost universally in favor of infallibility, with only the archbishops of Milan and Turin. The Irish were led by a very vocal pro-definition archbishop and therefore bent that way. The French episcopacy was shattered into several different groups, with a sizable middle group supporting some sort of limited definition. The English and Scots were split evenly, though tended to support the minority, largely because of Bishop Mannings aggressive ultramontanism that seemed deify Pius IX.
The Americans, thinking they were called across the pond for wildly different reasons, and having only recently become familiar with the debate, likewise didn’t arrive with strong opinions. Yet as they sank their teeth into the debate, about half of them opposed a definition, arguing it would hamper conversions among the significant protestant populations back home, complicate their relationship with constitutionally secular government, and worse, foment discord between the pope and American Catholics, who as a rule, viewed centralized authority with little trust.
It would be fair to say the Americans, despite technical division, didn’t have their heart in the debate. Only 8 American bishops elected to even speak at the council – infallible for them was a minor issue. Instead, they put their efforts into convening with one another twice a week to discuss pastoral issues in the United States that they deemed way more pressing.
As we’ve already mentioned, Council members were strictly forbidden from leaking anything to the press or discussing matters with the public. What happens at Vatican I stays at Vatican I – unless you know the pope. Owner and editor of L’Univers, Louis Veuillot, had significant access to confidential information via regular meetings with Pius. Pius fed Veuillot propaganda that went straight to print, which was the major source of council news for the French laity. Other frequent guests of the pope during the council were the editors of the Civilta Cattolica – that semiofficial yet claimed to be independent Catholic journal whose final edit must be approved by the secretary of state of Rome. Pius directly oversaw, edited and approved the articles published by that paper, while all the while maintaining plausible deniability about how it sourced its confidential information on council proceedings. Yet the propaganda flowed into the papal apartment too. The ultramontane radicals used their access to Pius’ ears, especially via Cardinal Manning, pope ear to influence him, aligning him into more to the limitless expectations of infallibility.
The theological opposition outside the walls of the council was doing what it could. Joseph Dollinger took up an apartment in Rome and remained on the offensive in the publish intellectual sphere. Lord Acton wrote to him daily on how the definition might be stalled. Papal police knew Dollinger was receiving aid from outside Rome and were on the hunt for correspondence they could intercept. Acton, knowing Dollinger was being watched by Pius sent his dispatch to Munich, under the care of the Bavarian ambassador to Rome. Acton’s brother-in-law worked at the embassy and facilitated the correspondence. Lord Acton was well connected among the European aristocracy and had full resources of the Bavarian embassy at his disposal. When European leaders wanted to get a message to the opposition within the council, they would contact Acton, who would contact Dollinger, who would then meet with bishop Dupanloup or Strossmeyer.
British diplomat to the Holy See, Odo Russel reflects on how pivotal Acton was for the opposition:
Both Dupanloup and Strossmayer admit that the opposition could not have been organized without Lord Acton, whose marvelous knowledge, honesty of purpose, clearness of mind, and powers of organization have rendered possible what appeared at first impossible. The party he has so powerfully helped to create is filled with respect and admiration for him.
European governments had existential reason for influencing the council. They were loath to see the syllabus of errors codified – the upshot of the Enlightenment bloodbath was that the European princes had found relative middle ground for freedom of press and religion. They feared a declaration of the pope’s temporal authority – knowing that they would then be forced to choose sides in a debate none of them wanted to have. The pope fought a war for land and lost, this was how the game was played, welcome to Europe. Many still had existing concordats with the Holy See – a declaration of papal infallibly would constitute a fundamental change in the kind of authority with which they negotiated, rendering them all null. Despite Pius’ insistence on not inviting the princes of Europe –their governments had full diplomatic, surveillant, and reconnaissance networks on the ground. With regards to information flowing in and out of the council - the apartments of Acton and Dollinger were just as active as Veuillot’s and Pius’. Napoleon III held no punches and spoke directly, warning cardinal Antonelli that if Papal Infallibility succeeds, he will pull all French troops out of Rome, and they would be on their own.
One of the early meetings of the council was set to determine how amendments to proposals would be processed and presented to the bishops for voting. The panels to process these amendments were called deputations. If Vatican I is game of chess, this is where the minority bishops lost their queen early. Cardinal Manning, along with another ultramontane, Cardinal Senestry realized that he who controls the amendments, controls the outcome. They began compiling a list of bishops that would be voted upon to sit on these deputations. There were three criteria for making Manning’s list: They must be of course pro infallibility, they must be from a variety of countries different countries, and Cardinal Manning gets final approval. With the list complete, Cardinal Senestry had ordered it lithographed and distributed it to trusted ultramontane members of the council.
When Pius IX saw the list, he suggested to Manning that perhaps he should include at least one from the monitory to show some sense of fairness. To which Manning replied: Heretics do not come to a council to help in formulating doctrine but to be heard and condemned.
The minority, not grasping the importance of these deputations and not comprehending the extent to which the majority stuffed the ballot, found out what had happened way too late. When voting on the members of the deputation, most of the bishops simply cast votes reflecting Manning’s lithographed list. Now, absolute control of the deputations, no proposal by the majority could be amended by the minority. And no proposal by the minority stood a chance of making it into a final draft without consent of the majority. The council had already been disparaged by some as being oriented towards a predetermined outcome. Those allegations were now codified. Common clerics on both sides were appalled at the deception. They found the whole process detestable, taking what should have been an honest vote on procedural integrity, providing for the fairness of all voices was reduced to a ballot stuffing campaign.
Cardinal Schwarzenberg complained to one of the council presidents: We have been made a laughingstock to our people and made out to be a disgrace in the church.
Veuillot, voice for the ultramontanes was giddy, declaring the council already over. Some bishops regretted their involvement in the affair, acknowledging they had rigged the system. Everything was now tainted, and bitter. Middle of the road clerics who held both sides in charity now became hardened against the ultramontanes. An English historian of the council, one who took no position on infallibly recounted:
After going through the proceedings of the entire council, I have to say that this appears to me as the most serious blot on its doings.
It wasn’t until December 28th that substantive theological discussion began taking place. The first was on a draft titled the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism. It had 18 enormous sections with tons of notes attached. The bishops who scheduled their time to speak on it complained it was way too long, too wordy, too academic, and that none of the laity would read it – binding or not. Archbishop Halifax accused the council of departing from the precise language of previous councils, calling the document so bad that it defied revision and should be decently buried.
Then came the criticism of how the opening text of the document read: Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the council…
Bishop Strossmayer strongly objected, and with much support to the opening text, arguing that dogmatic decrees should be promulgated in the name of the council, as was tradition, and not in the name of the pope. This afront to Pio Nono would not be tolerated, and so the council president interrupted Strossmayer, and admonished him to stick only to the substance of the decree only. To which Strossmayer replied: I will say no more on a forbidden subject but turn now to one that is allowed.
Discussions continued for weeks and months. On February 22, some of the proposals were sent to the deputations to process all the amendments and notes. The council then went into recess for a month to give the deputations time to sift through everything. One of the documents received by the deputations was called Supremi Pastoris, or Of the Supreme Shepard. When it was previously submitted to the Church fathers by the presidents, they were told the document was not available for debate, but that they could only submit comments and that the deputations may revise it based on comments received. It contained a preamble, fifteen chapters and twenty-one canons – which are new official rules associated with the document. One chapter dealt specifically with the infallibility of the church but failed to explicitly mention papal infallibility. The minority thought a doctrinal bullet had been dodged.
The recess was very much welcomed by all sides. Father O’Malley in his history of the council described the feelings during the break:
Well before the recess, the bishops had grown increasingly frustrated at the slow pace, at the excruciating tedium of endless speeches repeating points that had already been made countless times, and at acoustics that distorted or muffled the words of speakers on those seemingly rare occasions when they made a new or particularly important point. Ahead of them lay, they feared, perhaps three or four years of such torture if they were to complete the program prepared for them and creep along at the same pace.
In response to the bishop’s frustration Pope Pius released a new rule for the council – that the president, if the majority agreed, could now have the authority to cut short the list of speakers on presented documents. While shortening the process, it manifested yet another regulation that favored the majority.
And there was another new rule introduced under the guise of efficiency – where at previous council unanimity, consensuses or significant majorities were required to promulgate doctrine or dogma, now, only a simple majority was needed. One bishop noted this event as a great turning point in Church history.
When the deputations came back with revisions of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism, it was hoped their amendments were heard and the document was made less academic. Instead, the document stood as is, being told that since academia was one of the principal sources of rationalism, it would remain styled for an academic audience. It was also declared that German academia was primarily to blame. And so, the deputation handed to document to a team of bishops to rewrite it, leaving the academic tone, but inserting the Germans as a party to blame. These were revisions that no one asked for – and none of the German bishops were going to assist with a revision. So to help with the revision they called up a German Jesuit and ultramontane who was well connected In Rome, named Father Joseph Kleutgen. Kleutgen was henceforth established as a major academic in the council, serving at the request of these deputations and becoming an elected passthrough for drafting documents.
Kleutgen being given such a prominent role at the council is a truly bizarre development. First, he was a revolutionary in his youth, circa 1830 – though many of the ultramontanes were, so that was far from a disqualifier. Second, despite being a priest, he was well known to be living in an apartment with a woman in the late 1840s in Rome, and publicly admitted to having a sexual relationship with her. In light of all this he was still promoted to the substitute secretary of the Superior General of the Jesuits and Consultant of the Congregation of the Index. But here’s where things with father Kleutgen get really weird. In 1856 he was appointed confessor to the Franciscan Convent of St Ambrose in Rome. This little convent had major problems. They defied the Holy Office of Rome by venerating their founding abbess as a saint. Father Kleutgen apparently encouraged them to do so. Two years later, a German princess, recently widowed, joined the convent to become a nun. The mistress of novices for the convent, Maria Luisa, this German princess discovered, claimed to be receiving message from the mother of God and was performing rituals reserved only for priests. To add another layer to this cake – she was also sleeping with several of the novices. Father Kleutgen, being confessor for the convent knew about all this, and instead of reporting the convent to the powers that be, he began a sexual relationship with the mistress, Maria Luisa – whom he defended as a saintly person receiving divine revelations. When the German princess got word out to the outside of what was going on in the convent, Kleutgen and Maria Luisa allegedly poisoned her. She survived the attempted murder. Her family came to her aid, removed her from the convent and reported the incident to the holy see. The result for Father Kleutgen was his conviction as a heretic for promoting the cult of the founder of the convent. He was sentenced to three years of house arrest. Pope Pius IX, for reason that defy all prudence, justice, and good governance, reduced his sentence by a year and allowed him to relocate to a shrine in Rome where the Jesuit could work on publishing his theological works. Seeing the council in need of a German authority, Pope Pius removed all ecclesiastical censures on Father Kleutgen and put him to work on the theology of infallibility.
Getting back to the council proceedings on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism. Bishop Strossmayer stood up with several challenges. He again disputed the opening lines, that this document seems to come from the mouth of the pope, and not the council. He stressed to the council that they remind themselves of the "divine and inviolable rights of bishops".
Second, he called the preamble foolish for ascribing all modern errors to Protestantism. He reminded the audience that Voltaire was a baptized Catholic. The president of the council once again interrupted Strossmayer, asking him to refrain from words that scandalized those present. Some bishops began shouting at Strossmayer to step down. Strossmayer refused to yield the podium, violating the rules of the council by debating his critics point by point. The entire body of bishops – these grumpy, tired old men who were by now, thoroughly sick and tires of being in Rome – devolved into an absolute shouting match. When things calmed down, Strossmayer declared he had another point to make. He challenged the new rule that a simple majority was all that was needed to ratify dogma – he demanded to know why they had done away with the ancient rule of unanimity. But Strossmayer was immediately interrupted by the president again: That is irrelevant to the subject under discussion.
But Strossmayer shouted over the president, demanding the "the eternal and immutable rule of moral unanimity,” be put back in place. The ultramontanes in the audience then began calling him names like Lucifer, and Luther. The president clanged his bell to demand order to the hall, but no one could hear him. Sick of the mayhem and hungry for dinner, one by one bishops began leaving the basilica, bringing to an end, congregation number 31, of the first Vatican council.
A majority of bishops were now offended by the behavior of the ultramontanes and weren’t afraid to leak their misgiving to the media that night over wine. The international press went to print with stories of Strossmayer being shouted down, bullied, and unfairly vilified. The council was described as a narrow-minded circus, intolerant of freedom of thoughts and opinions that differ from the pope-king.
Nonetheless after the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism sent to the deputations for final revision, and returned, the body of the language generally acceptable, even to opposition, exceot the last paragraph, which contained a vague threat of heresy against those who oppose future legislation:
But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those are carefully shunned whose positions approach it in greater or lesser degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this Holy See.
It was easy to read between the lines – don’t you dare oppose papal infallibility when it’s presented to you.
44 bishops officially requested that the last paragraph be suppressed from the document. The deputations refused. The minority met and considered voting against the document. Yet in the end, they decided if the coming fight, the real fight was to be about infallibility, then they would only hurt their standing in voting against a document that they generally agreed with. Strossmayer abstained from the vote, thus allowing the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism (which thankfully was shortened to Dei Filius) passed unanimously.
In the end, Dei Filius was an affirmation of Church beliefs in the face of the Enlightenment and modernism. It affirmed there is a God and He can be known. That reason and divine revelation cannot be at odds. It fell short of what Pius wanted – he desired codification of his Syllabus of Errors. But it also was something the world needed at a time when secular sciences and modernist philosophers had significant influence viz a viz the Catholic Church, which under the Pius pontificate seemed hell-bent on medieval paradigms of the social order. From O’Malley:
Dei Filius was a proclamation of the reality of the transcendent. It was an affirmation of a reality beyond the visible and material, of a reality beyond the rationally demonstrable. As it did so, it taught that in the human person the material and the transcendent met and interacted. There is One beyond the senses who nonetheless can be known by beings of flesh and blood. Traditional though the statement was, it was not for that reason insignificant. The situation required that the church, if it were to remain true to itself, reaffirm such basic beliefs.
Outside the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica, no one cared about Dei Filius, this tragically forgotten document of Vatican I. The propaganda journals for and against infallibility ignored it, focused solely on the infallibility debate.
The ultramontane bishops petitioned the pope to at last introduce a document on papal infallibility to the council – thinking they had the minority on their heels. Pius gave them what they wanted and produced a document already prepared, presumably penned by Bishop Glasser, under the theological advice of the previously mentioned Father Kleutgen. Since papal infallibility wasn’t on the official schedule, the ultramontanes attempted to declare the Holy Spirit will the discussion since its proposal had come from the pope. Some Cardinals threatened to leave the council considering the ridiculous facade. Strossmayer compared the council to an ancient Rome – calling it a servile senate to an emperor-god.
The original plan by the ultramontanes for papal infallibility was to insert it in a much larger and vast document on church authority called Supremi Pastoris. Chapter 11 of Supremi Pastoris was to detail the pope’s primacy of jurisdiction – as preapproved and predesigned addendum, papal infallibility was designed to be inserted here in chapter 11. Yet the minority bishops had time on their hands. At the speed this council was moving, it would be many months to years before they got to chapter 11. But then everything changed.
On April 29th, the presidents of the council announced that chapters 1-10 would be tabled, and the discussion would move immediately on to chapter 11 – papal primacy and infallibility. The minority was furious. Even the moderate bishops had problems with the theological implications of removing a discussion on papal primacy and infallibly outside of the larger context of church authority, where it was intended to be enshrined. They denounced it as severing the head from the body.
What we know now, what the bishops did not know then, was that the agenda was scrapped, and infallibility rushed forward because the invasion of the city of Rome was a very real and imminent possibility. Napoleon was not impressed by Pius’ manipulation of the direction of the council. And the Italian king was running out of reasons not to conquer the eternal city and establish it as its capital. Had the schedule remained the same – papal infallibility would never have happened. What was rumored to be the real reason for the council had been confirmed.
The change of the schedule almost didn’t happen. 3 of the 5 presidents refused to change the schedule, knowing the public scandal they would be part of – they were right. But Pius IX threatening the full punitive weight of his office demanded they change it, proving true Strossmayer’s admonition of a servile senate. The pope, feeling the pressure of external forces bearing down, and his own machinations facing imminent failure, had significantly hardened his heart against the bishops in the minority.
Birhsop Ullathorne described the change in the outward attitude of the bishop of Rome:
The pope takes every opportunity of expressing his views on the infallibility, both in audiences and in letters that at once get into the papers. He has quite changed his old policy on our arrival, when he professed neutrality before the council.
What bishop Ullathorne did not know was that the “neutrality” pope Pius demonstrated was a lie. Merely weeks after the council had first convened, Pius was presented with the disappointing news by his theologians that the history of the church did not really present a clear case for defining papal infallibility, and thus, would be a difficult thing to do. His response was:
I am so determined to go forward with this matter that if I knew the council was going to be silent on it, I would dissolve it and define it myself.
Bishop Ullathorne had drastically miscalculated his opponent.
With the opposition hardening, Pius’ famous flash attacks of uncontrollable anger became even more pronounced. His fuse had grown short. When diplomates or press asked about certain minority bishops, he lashed out, happy to see the names of the heretics smeared in the press and on the world stage. Bishop Maret, he dubbed a cold soul, a snake. Bishop Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, he said was wrong thinking, and a bad bishop. Bishop Darboy, the very next year would be murdered in the streets by revolutionaries.
By April 19th, bishops from France, America and even Italy (many of them ultramontanes) pleaded with the pope to keep the original schedule, that the integrity of the council was at stake. Even his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli warned Pio Nono that forcing infallibility this way would destroy its credibility as a free council in the court of public opinion and among the world governments.
In response to the groups of bishops petitioning Pius to revert to the original schedule, Cardinal Manning quickly organized a group of bishops to plead with Pius to continue with the schedule change. Pius assured Manning that he would do the right thing.
Then Bishop Dupanloup of France wrote a letter to Pius invoking a spirit of fraternal love with bishop of Rome:
Most Holy Father, My name is not pleasing to you. I know it, and it is my sorrow. But, for all that, I feel myself authorized and obliged, in the profound and inviolable devotion of which I have given so many proofs to Your Holiness, to open my heart to you at this moment. The report is confirmed that many are soliciting your Holiness to suspend suddenly our important work and invert the order of the discussions. ... Allow me, Most Holy Father, to say to Your Holiness: Nothing could be more dangerous.
The bishops’ heartfelt letter was of no avail. Six days later, Pope Pius IX announced that papal infallibility would be the next item of business.
The minority, during these days, is described as despondent. The Bishop of Luca wrote in his diary:
Will this be for the good? Will it not be bad to have moved this issue ahead? I feel a deep fear. . .. The question of infallibility would have come before us in its own time, in a sober and dignified way, but now it comes at us out of the blue in an atmosphere of great agitation.
On May 9th, the new document was distributed. It was called Pastor Aeternus. It had a preamble, three chapters on papal primacy, and one on papal infallibility – with three canons at the end. The chapters on primacy can be seen as the full blooming flower of Gregorian reforms – giving the office of the papacy full jurisdictional authority not just of faith and morals, but also of discipline and government – using the words, one flock, one shepherd.
The minority went to work to make sure an amendment made it into the final copy, that this power which was, in the document’s words “promulgated anew” included that this power of the pope:
by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of the episcopal jurisdiction by which bishops tend and govern their flocks… in the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit.
In the original draft of Paster Aeternus, it specifically labelled the pope as a superior authority to a council and not answerable to it. History disagreed. Thus, the minority succeeded again in softening the language to:
There is no appeal and no recourse to another authority because no authority is higher.
The fourth chapter on infallibility was attacked immediately because of its title: On the infallibility of the Roman pontiff.
The minority again succeeded in having it changed to a more limiting scope of: Infallible Teaching Authority of the Roman Pontiff. Implying that the pope himself is not infallible, only certain teachings that come from the office.
The text of the document would be debated for two whole months. All of the bishops agreed that the Church was infallible. But in the history of the church, infallible teaching was the province of councils, not popes. The principal question was then, could the pope exercise supreme teaching authority apart from the church, i.e. without the consensus of the episcopate? For the minority the answer was definitely no. The majority made no argument of the necessity of efficiency – councils took too long, and were too cumbersome, which in their defense was on remarkable display in Rome in the spring of 1870.
Another question debated was whether the pope himself was infallible, or only his acts? And then, what would constitute an infallible act? How far did his infallibly extend? And are his statements absolute? What if a council later disagrees with the whims of a pope? Using history as a judgement, many popes have refused the idea that their acts are irreformable. One pope even signed a document with the Gallican’s saying as much.
Almost no bishop at the council was prepared to defend an absolutist concept of infallibility, most agreeing that he still needed to consult the church, yet this was not the weak-sauce infallibility the ultramontanes envisioned. They argued way back to Pope Boniface’s VIII’s bull Unam Sanctum, in the 14th century, which tried to assert papal infallibility back then. The minority reminded the majority that Unam Sanctum was resoundingly rejected by bishops, archbishops, medieval princes and theologians. The minority then reminded the majority of the case of Pope Honorius, who was posthumously declared a heretic and anatomized by an ecumenical council for teaching heresy - the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and the Third Council of Constantinople, to be specific.
Yet in the formal argument for infallibly submitted with the text, called the relatio, it was declared that:
The infallibility of the Roman pontiffs is a truth divinely revealed. Therefore, it is impossible that it can ever be proved false by any historical facts. If, however, such facts are brought forward to oppose it, they must themselves be deemed false insofar as they seem opposed.
History, being a human construct, was not an impediment. From O’Malley:
The most basic problem with Pastor Aeternus was its historical naivete. It took the present situation as the norm for interpreting the past and projected present practice and understanding onto it. Since it ignored differentiation between past and present, it lacked a sense of development from past to present, even though Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was by then twenty-five years old.
The minority was extremely sensitive to deviations from prior council rubrics. It also saw tradition and history as inseparable and intimately related. Tradition included more than verses from scripture and pronouncements by councils and popes, which in any case had to be interpreted in context and according to how they were received and put into practice. Tradition included liturgical practices, the history of the reception of papal and conciliar decisions, and especially the customary ways the church had proceeded in the course of its history. Some argued the laity would not take infallibility seriously, that it lacked context in their lives. Anther bishops wondered why the pope did not avail himself of the historical use of councils for dogmatic authority – why does the pope require this doctrine? Why now? Bishop Hefele, a historian on church council, reminded the majority that they were simply wrong by denouncing history as a man-made construct - that history was a theological source, that they were one shaky ground in insisting it wasn’t. He went on to cite previous councils in history where the bishops operated as a safety check for pronouncements from pope that may have otherwise issued heresy.
As these arguments heated up, so did the weather. A heat wave soaring above 90 degrees stuck Rome, making the council not just intellectually unbearable but now physically exhausting. There was no air conditioning – and windows had to be kept shut to keep out mosquitoes. Some bishops proposed a recess until the fall, allowing nerves and thermometers to cool. The motion was denied. Further, news of movements outside Rome were making all these foreign bishops nervous. They feared being caught in a revolution.
Being forced back into the basilica, Bishop Darboy stood up and gave his objections – infallibly had been thrust upon them, when no one asked for it or saw its necessity. He called its proponents demagogues from outside the faith looking to ruin it from within. He denounced how it had been ripped from its proper place in a larger contextual document of church authority and made a separate issue. He deemed the language vague and uncertain, and further saying this decree would only make the problems of combating modernism worse.
Bishop Ketteler then stood up:
Everybody today deplores that all authority, both secular and spiritual, has collapsed, and all persons of good will want us to defend and give witness to authority as a necessity in society. Yet at the same time everybody today detests all forms of absolutism, from which so many evils have come upon the human race. Absolutism corrupts us and renders us vile. Proclaim, reverend fathers, proclaim to the whole world the church’s authority, the mildest yet most basic. But also show forth that there is in the church no arbitrary, lawless, and absolute authority. Show that in her there is only one Lord and absolute monarch, Jesus Christ.
Kettelers speech was met with audible disapproval.
The next day, after Bishop Ketteler being shouted down for saying Christ is the absolute monarch of the Church, seven bishops abandoned the council, citing matters at home that needed attending to.
Bishop Verot of the United States then stood up, and asked whether the Irish believed pope Hadrian IV was infallible when he gave the English moral authority to invade and conquer Ireland – a shrewd zinger. He then ended his speech by declaring that a vote for infallibility was a vote for a sacrilege. The president of the council forced him to step down, which he did, no doubt with some satisfaction.
Finally, Old bishop Maret of France, who was mostly deaf, got up to speak. He told the majority that while they saw the church as an absolute monarchy, he and his companions saw it as a limited monarchy. The council president interrupted Maret several times, attempting to prevent him from speaking, but being deaf, he passively ignored the council president.
There were still 50 more bishops who had signed up to speak against defining infallibility, yet by a vote of a simple majority, the debate was brought to a close, leaving most of these voices unheard. Those remaining saw themselves and their rights violated by a gang, to which there was no appeal. The reality was there was nothing they could do. There was no consensus on the historical merit of the document. There was no census on the theological merit of the document. And now owing to the previous change of rules, a consensus was not needed, and any proposed amendments were dead on arrival when submitted to the deputations handpicked by Manning and Pius. Even among the ultramontanes, there was no consensus on which questions were being answered by the document. Each bishop had his own interpretation of the text. A dogma is supposed to divinely reveal truths of the Faith – those truths were never settled upon during the council. Since further discussion was forbidden and denied, the current most common interpretation was that infallibility was personal to the pope, absolute to his proclamations, and separate from the church – this directly contradicted what the council president said the document would contain when it was first presented. And yet, here they were.
On June 6th, the council reconvened to debate the deputation’s revisions of the text. Few points were scored by the minority and almost no changes were made. Bishop Connoly implicitly accused the majority of heresy, subscribing to biblical fundamentalism. They weren’t swayed.
Days later, on June 17th, Pope Pius IX celebrated the 24th anniversary of his election. He used it as an opportunity to publicly malign the minority bishops, accusing them of laying aside their episcopal garb in the evening, implying sinful lifestyles. He then dubbed the majority as the good sentinels who never leave their guard.
The very next day, the most famous incident of the council occurred. Cardinal Filippo Guidi, being a Dominican, naturally sided with the majority, but was nonetheless uncomfortable by the comportment of the bishops on his side. Many of the minority bishops were his friends that he had known for years. He knew them to be true pious men, and men who loved the papacy. He had kept a low profile at the council and hoped that a compromise between the two sides could be found – for the good of the Church. Guidi decided to take it upon himself to find that middle ground.
He gave a speech asserting that it is the office of the pope that is infallible, not the person. He used the metaphor of a person who once or twice had too much to drink, though is not called a drunk. Divine assistance, he said, is promised to the act – not the person. He then suggested the title of the document be called: The Infallibility of the Roman pontiff in Defining Dogma – a reflection of the acts of the pope, and not the pope himself. Guidi then agreed partly with the minority that it is reasonable, based on history, that the bishops must be consulted before the pope may makes an infallible statement, yet agreed with the majority that when the pope makes such a statement, it was then beyond the councils’ authority to reform it.
The ultramontanes were unsatisfied with the compromise and booed Guidi off the stage. Bishop Manning denounced Guidi as confused. Bishop Strossmayer kissed his hand and thanked him. Moderates on both sides seem appeased, praising Guidi for his bridge to unity. Bishop Dabroy cautioned that while reaching a consensus was vitality important, and praised Guidi’s attempts, the actual text of the decree needed to be changed, not just its interpretation. To the horror of the hard-core ultramontanes – a coalition of moderates was achieved.
Pio Nono was furious. There was to be no moderate coalition. Later that day he summoned Guidi to the papal apartment. He shouted at Cardinal Guidi, accusing him of befriending the heretics and enemies of the church. He accused him of trying to ingratiate himself with the Italian government to gain their favor when they conquered Rome. He reminded Guidi that it was he, Pope Pius IX who had appointed him to be a cardinal, that the cardinal was his creature, that he owed his career to the pope only. How dare he act in such an unfriendly way towards his benefactor. Guidi, a bit overwhelmed by the admonitions of the Vicar of Christ, attempted to calmy ask his holiness to investigate history before making a declaration on infallibility, urging the pontiff to consult the traditions of the Faith, and that he was prepared to defend what he said, because it was in conformity with the doctors of the Church, such as St. Thomas.
The pope responded with wrath:
I, I am tradition! I, I am the church!
Pope Pius IX dismissed the cardinal and ordered his doctor to bring him a laxative to calm his blood.
That evening, minority and majority bishops sought out Cardinal Guido to thank him for his bridge to moderation, totally unaware of what had just happened. When he told them of the rebuke, they were speechless – it was unvarnished megalomania on display. Some bishops opted to leave Rome in despondency. Dominican historian and senior professor at the University of Munich, Ulrich Horst wrote a book on medieval papal teaching authority, published by Notre Dame University, put this Guidi affair as a thousand-year watershed moment:
The intervention of the Dominican cardinal Filippo Maria Guidi, who criticized papal infallibility without certain conditions, was the last attempt to orient the discussion to the late-medieval and early modern theologians of the cardinal's order. The rejection of his proposal by the majority of the fathers and by Pope Pius IX showed that a long and complex history of papal teaching authority had definitively come to an end.
There was to be no more debate. There was never supposed to be a debate. Papal Infallibility meant whatever Pius IX said it did.
The next day, the majority went on a counteroffensive. Cardinal D’Avanzo, who also was one of the deputations gave a speech proclaiming that when the pope speaks on an article of faith, he is at that point:
…an incarnation of the supernatural order and of Christ within it, who therefore in all things and for all things is in the pope, with the pope, and [speaks] through the pope."
The minority bishops were already so disheartened by this point that borderline sacrilegious statements like these failed to excite them anymore. They submitted their petitions for amendments to the deputations knowing full well they wouldn’t even be read – what else could they do?
Before there was any confirmation that an agreement on the text had been reached, Pope Pius set the date for the public promulgation of the text for July 18th – two weeks away. The deputation had their work cut out for them. In their haste, they left more than half the document unamended. Cardinal Spalding, who though a supporter of the document, was also a moderate – and succeeded in convincing the deputation to partially reassert the authority of the bishops in the final text – a welcomed change for the minority.
But Pius was still not satisfied with the text. It was the deputation’s job to process amendments raised by church fathers – not invent new ones. The Pope ordered them to do just that in the final version. They were ordered to add a canon to the document aimed specifically against Bishop Maret’s thesis of papal infallibility – for months he had argued that history and tradition showed the papacy occupied only the principal part and not the full part of church authority. The pope wanted the exact opposite in writing in the final document. Some members of the deputation felt reluctant to draft language that so specifically targeted a member of the council, i.e. Bishop Maret. They were perhaps even more uncomfortable in taking upon themselves authority which the council did not grant them. To add language to a document not introduced or presented by the church fathers would be an egregious and illegal violation of not only what credibility was left in the execution of their office, but also a direct subversive act against what is supposed to be a holy ecumenical council. And yet, the pope, who was about to be declared infallible in a matter of days demanded they do just that. So, they did.
A great many of the minority bishops had packed up and left Rome by this point that Pius and Manning knew there really wasn’t anyone else left to constitute a significant opposition anyway. They had gone home humiliated and dejected.
On July 9th, 5 days before its promulgation, the council received back the revisions on Pastor Aeternus. Neither side was fully happy with the text. Chapter 4 was changed to the title that appeased the minority and suggested by Cardinal Guido: ON THE INFALLIBLE TEACHING OF THE ROMAN PONTIFF. Cardinal Manning was disappointed that they did not have an unequivocal document on limitless papal authority. The minority had successfully worked in the limiting phrase, “ex cathedra” – meaning that the pope was only infallible when speaking from the chair of Peter, rendering most as what the pope says as fallible.
Yet discovering the fabricated canon aimed at Maret and the Gallicans were incensed. How could the deputation introduce a text into the document that the council never saw, never considered, never proposed, never voted on, and never asked for?
The ultramontanes were frustrated too by the weakness of the document, but Manning nonetheless urged his underlings to vote, placet, meaning affirmative, not because he was happy with the text, but because he feared the political situation in Europe was explosive. The Italians may invade in a matter of days.
On July 13th, the revisions were put to a vote. When pope Pius was asked how many votes against the document he would receive, he estimated less than 10. The tally was 451 for, 62 for but with revisions, and 88 against. The strong showing of disapproval inspired the minority to conclude that with so many church fathers against the vote, the majority would have to listen to them now. They again underestimated Pio Nono.
Veuillot went on the attack: Now we see how stubborn they are in their heresy, and how useless is any concession to them.
Pius wasn’t done inserting his own words into the text independent of the council. He loathed any notion of accountability to the church fathers, and thus ordered the deputations to insert the following words at the end of the decree:
Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not by the consent of the church, immune from reform.
The minority bishops still in Rome were just beginning to realize they were dealing with a tyrant with zero respect for ecumenical proceedings. The pope was going to proclaim himself infallible with or without them. So instead of continuing to block Paster Aeternus, they hoped that in exchange for voting in favor of it, they could force some amendments. They secured an audience with Pio Nono. A five-man delegation of the minority was sent and presented the pope with an offer. If he removed the language aimed at the Gallicans in chapter 3, and in chapter 4 inserted language that the pope’s decisions must be supported by the Church fathers, they could guarantee 100 more votes in favor.
The pope brushed them off – telling them that he did not interfere in the working of the council – a brazen lie since that’s exactly what he had been busy doing not only the previous day but every day since the idea for a council first entered his consciousness. He demanded that they put their requests in an official memo, and he would consider it. The minority delegates left, thinking they had made some headway. Yet the very next day, July 16th, the deputations announced the final version of the decree had been completed – none of the minority bishop’s changes were made. Cardinal Gasser, one of the presidents of the council and likely the principal author of Paster Aeternus, gave a speech reminding the minority bishops of their responsibly to the world:
It is clear that human society has arrived at the point where its very foundations have been shaken. The church was the only means to remedy the situation because in it alone was an infallible authority against which the gates of hell would not prevail. For that reason God had willed that the doctrine come before the council.
This was the final insult to the minority and even moderate minded bishops. They never approved the final version and never knew the pope had made changes in the first place. The presidents had lost control of the assembly. Shouts rang out from the bishops, condemning the council as rigged, accusing the pope and its leaders of a coup. The ultramontanes shouted back praising the coup for what it was.
Then, in a truly tone-deaf move, the council presidents presented the bishops with a list of books critical of the council that had been published since it began. The bishops were asked to sign their names to a document condemning these books – thereby having those opinions and authors officially condemned by the council. The bishops again shouted in protest that they were being asking to sign against things they never ready. With that, most of the congregation turned and headed for the door. Many were done with what they saw as a sham.
The next day, July 17th, a significant bulk of the minority bishops decided they had had enough, and boarded a train out of Rome, to begin their journey home. Another group of minority bishops, about 60 met in an apartment to decide if they should stay and vote or abstain in protest and leave. They decided that they would act as a body and take a vote to decide: the majority came back in favor of abstaining and going home. They wrote a short letter to the pope – giving him their reasons, and fears. And then left Rome. They also expressed fear of the political situation Rome faced – for just the day before war was declared between France and Prussia.
On July 18th, 1870, the day of the promulgation had at last arrived. It was a day that felt ominous – even Veuillot admitted that everyone feared a schism that would be caused by infallibility, and the coming war. Only 535 prelates were present at St. Peter’s Basilica – a reduction of 25% from when the council started. No one was surprised by the absence of the minority – but what struck those who remained was the absence of the diplomatic Corp to the papacy, manifesting the prediction of Secretary of State Cardinal Antonelli had about the decree – that it would digitize the papacy in the eyes of the world government. These Catholic nations, France, Austria, Spain, and Portugal – wanted nothing to do with it. Bishop Passavalli – who gave the opening sermon of the council back in December had opted not to be present, along with other members of the Roman curia. As one author puts it, these clouds over the council were not only metaphorical. The heavens opened in drenching rain, along with alarming displays of lightning and thunder – eerily similar weather to the opening day of the council.
The local, historically superstitious Roman population again took note. The pope had ordered his subject to light up their homes in celebration of the event. None dared and left their houses dark. Even the pope’s own entourage was nervous – with good reason. A quarter of the church fathers left Rome in disgust, the Catholic allies of Europe have abandoned them, the people of Rome shut themselves up in their home, and even God himself saw it fitting to bless the day with terrifying lightning. Pius reminded them, did not God choose to give Moses the tablets on Mount Sinai amid just such a celestial firework show?
With the ratification of Pastor Aeternus, codifying the infallible papacy and attaining the long climb of Gregory VII’s vision for this office, cries amid the bishops rang out: “Long live the infallible pope!
Pius gave a short address in response, praying that the Lord enlighten the hearts of those who do not accept the doctrine. Veuillot wrote in L’Univers, reiterating Pius’ reference to himself as a new Moses:
We have been led out of Egypt and Pharaoh has been driven from the land. We have a Moses indeed, a greater than Moses!"
This new Moses amid the fireworks of Heaven present his decree to the world:
We teach and define that it is a divinely-revealed dogma: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex Cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church. But if anyone -- God forbid -- should presume to contradict this Our definition; let him be anathema.
Pope Pius had done the main thing. He had achieved the hopes and dreams of papal supremacists, papal primacists and ultramontanes – he had made himself infallible. He had separated the office from the authority of history, traditions, and church councils. In the immediate, he believed this would give him the temporal authority he needed to wrest back control of the lost papal states, to reassert himself as a political power broker, and to bring the European princes to heel. Satisfied that all this would soon come to pass, and since the charade of all the other reasons for a assembling the bishops were now not needed, Pius gave them permission to leave Rome and return home – although he did not consider the council technically adjourned. The bishops were relieved. Relieved in part because Rome had become an unfriendly and hostile place to be – but more importantly, war was on their doorsteps.
Around a hundred bishops stayed to carry out more congregations of the council, but little came of those. Pius, for his part resting on what he considered new found authority – immediately set to unleash this authority in civil rule among the roman citizens.
Previously cited Italina Historian, Raffaele De Cesare compiled contemporaneous eyewitness accounts from those who lived through these days. He recounts the immediate exertion of Pius’s interpretation of his infallible authority upon the citizenry:
Impossible to enumerate all the contradictions, apprehensions, and sophistries. …Terror reigned. The bishops, contrary to Infallibility were unpopular, and avoided as though plague-struck. Never had the Congregation of the Index been so severe as during these months until September 1870, making almost a holocaust of prohibited books…. No Council was ever poorer in practical and positive results; in none did political sentiments predominate more completely over religious interests; in none, perhaps, had the Pope taken so direct a part in favour of a thesis which interested him personally.
And yet, the dogmatic high of infallibility wore off quickly. A week after the promulgation, seeing his power and influence waning at an increasing speed, Pius wrote to his nephew: The things of this world grow ever more disturbed. God alone can extract from this chaos a new order of things.
As promised, Napoleon III prepared to pull his troops out of Rome. An infallible pope needs not the army of another nation – and he had need of them against Prussia. Odo Russel, British diplomat sent word back to London that the French were actively pulling out. The British foreign minister wrote back that the recent council was a monstrous assault on the reason of mankind, and that this sort of church despotism would just lead Catholics away from their church, predicting that Catholic government would rue the day they let the pope usurp their authority. German historian Gregorovius who was documenting the council while he was in Rome, noted in his diary that:
Many seriously believe that the Pope is out of his mind. He has entered with fanaticism into these things and has acquired votes for his own deification.
In the streets of Rome, a poem was printed and circulated:
When Eve bit the apple, and told Adam he can
Jesus, to save mankind, made himself a man;
But the Vicar of Christ, Pius number nine
To make man a slave, wants to make himself divine.
With in days of the promulgation of Pastor Aeternus, the Austrian empire voted to annul its concordat with the Vatican. The Swiss and other nations took steps to limit the influence of the pope within their borders, for now the local priests were viewed as his direct spies. Otto Von Bismark, that most consequential German politician couldn’t have been happier with the declaration – nothing would unify Germany under one banner more than the decree. He used what he labelled the absolutism of Rome to begin his kulturkampf movement – but that’s a tale foe another podcast. Bismark began forming a coalition of European government opposed this declared exactly what the minority bishops feared:
In principle, he has taken the place of each individual bishop, and, in practice, at every single moment, it is up to him alone to put himself in the former's position in relation to the governments. Further the bishops are only his tools, his officials without responsibility. In relation to the governments, they have become officials of a foreign sovereign, and, to be sure, a sovereign who, by virtue of his infallibility, is a completely absolute one – more so than any absolute monarch in the world.
As was feared, a schism did happen, though much smaller than anticipated. Groups of Catholics, particularly German, Swiss and Austrian, broke away and called themselves The Old Catholic Church – they still exist today.
British Prime Minister Edward Gladstone stood out as one of the most vocal critics of the decree, accusing Roman Catholics of forfeiting their moral and mental freedom. He called the church a monarchy, giddy at the height of despotism, saying the pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then hide his violent crimes in a suffocating cloud of incense.
St. John Henry Newman, privately revealed his disdain for the majority, and made some sharp predictions while writing to a friend:
I have various things to say about the Definition... to me the serious thing is this, that, whereas it has not been usual to pass definition except in case of urgent and definite necessity, this definition, while it gives the Pope power, creates for him, in the very act of doing so, a precedent and a suggestion to use his power without necessity, whenever he will, when not called on to do so. I am telling people who write to me to have confidence-but I don't know what I shall say to them, if the Pope did so act. And I am afraid moreover, that the tyrant majority is still aiming at enlarging the province of Infallibility. I can only say if all this takes place, we shall in matter of fact be under a new dispensation. But we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the Pope will be driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council, or that there will be another Pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.
Newman later famously argued that one’s conscience is supreme to infallibility, telling a friend:
I shall drink to the Pope if you please – still, to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards.
While Newman mourned the state of the Church, he was also one of the first (perhaps second only to Pio Nono himself) to recognize how inconsequential the doctrine it actually was, saying that in the end the council had left the pope just as it had found him.
Newman was right, for just as Pius IX owed his entire office to French and Austrian military generosity prior to infallible – now with infallibility, he will owe the loss of the greatest city in the world to the vacuum of their power.
Part Five: It Is Impossible to Govern the Church
The alliance between the Italians, the French, and the Austrians, made two years before the council, never fully played out. Though Italy was united, by the designs of the French as an ally against Prussia – this Italian creature demanded Rome. Napoleon would never give it to them. The immutable reality that he ruled over a Catholic people was always at the forefront of his mind. Allowing Rome to be conquered by an ally would be unforgivable treachery. Yet papal infallibly enormous ripple effects on European Geopolitics. Gone were the days when the nations of Europe could look to the bishop of Rome as an arbiter of justice – for he was now to invested within himself. As we’ve discussed at length, this result wasn’t just that of Pastor Aeternus, infallibility was just the coup de grace, following the Enlightenment, the revolutions and modernism. The pope, for Europe was now just another monarch with worldly territorial ambitions.
The declaration of war between France and Prussia gave Napoleon a timely excuse to pull his troops out of Rome without upsetting his subjects. Yet before he left, he procured a written promise from Victor Emanuel that the Italian armies would not invade the eternal city. This was his CYA document.
On July 27th the announcement was made. The pope was now alone. The French ambassador met with Antonelli, asking him what the pope’s response was to the news. Antonelli told the ambassador that Pius simply shrugged his shoulders and said that he hoped this time the French would never return. The feeling was mutual. As the French were boarding their ships in the ports they were shouting: Down with the pope! Down with the government of the priests! Vive l'Italie!
Napoleon III was once a whip smart, and extremely competent ruler. His ability to negotiate the republic back into a monarchy and empire is demonstrative of his talents. But he was now over 60. His left arm was paralyzed, and he was taking multiple medications for multiple afflictions. He could barely walk and many often thought his eyes seemed glazed over. Moreover, his Spanish wife, 18 years younger than him, despised the Prussians, especially Otto von Bismark, and used her position in the French royal court to instigate the Franco-Prussian war.
On August 3rd, an Italian military attaches offered its support to France against Prussia if it green lights the Italian invasion of Rome. Napoleon turned them down. Telling him the French Catholics would rather see Prussians in Paris than Italians in Rome. Two days later, the last French boot stepped off the shores of Italy.
By August 6th, the lack of French preparations for war were obvious as she was being defeated across the front. Seeing the writing on the wall, Cardinal Antonelli summoned the Roman military leadership. He knew if France began losing this war, the Italians would take the opportunity to seize Rome. The Roman military leaders told Antonelli that the only reasonable plan in the face of invasion would be to put up minor resistance and prepare for organized withdrawal – it was a fight that they would never win.
Among the Italians, pretty much every political group despised the idea of allying itself with France – who they saw as historic marauders of their homeland. Antonelli knew and predicted all of this. He considered himself a master diplomat – and while he may lurch the halls of the Roman Curia like count Dracula, it he, and he alone that the pope could personally thank for the reinstitution of his papacy. Now he was watching it all fall apart. He blamed these current misfortunes on infallibility. It had created exactly what he said it would, only enemies:
They want to have me take the blame for things that I not only didn't do, but that I opposed with all my might. You will see that they will say that it is I who will have wrecked the papacy.
Rome was devolving into chaos. Its citizens were assuming Italian invasion was only days away. Rumors were spreading that the pope was preparing to flee again. Some of his advisors told him to beg the English for sanctuary on the isle of Malta. Others begged the pontiff to enter into negotiations with the Italians and find a political solution that would allow him to stay – Cardinal Antonelli was open to any of these, yet even he could not sway Pope Pius.
Pius IX had absolutely convinced himself of several delusions. First, he thought the Italians would honor the agreement not to invade Rome. Second, he believed the French were going to win this war. Third, he believed divine providence was on his side.
On August 20th, Swiss general Hermann Kanzler, the commander of the papal army met with the Pius. He warned him that Italian troops were massing on the borders of Rome. Pius told him to remain calm, that such an attack is simply impossible. God would not allow it.
No one inside the ternal city shared this infallible optimism. The pleas and urgings for Pio Nono to flee the city were gnawing at him. His police commissioner, monsignor Randi ask what his officers should do when the Italians invade. Pius jumped out of his seat and began shouting at the monsignor:
Can't you understand that I have formal assurances that the Italians will not set foot in Rome? How many times must I keep repeating myself?
The Italians by now had long been funding various efforts inside Rome to create some public disturbance that they would have to quell – so far this had not paid off and they were growing anxious. The Italian Prime Minister then had a brilliant idea – bribe the papal officers. They are mercenaries from all different countries with no loyalty to Rome or the papacy.
On August 29th, the Italian diplomat Emilio Visconti sent his ambassadors a confidential message throughout Europe that it was now considering its agreement with France null and void – due to the upheavals on the European continent. With this confidential notice it was asserted that Romans would have the right to determine their own future, and second that the pope would maintain his independence, freedom, and religious authority. He intentionally said nothing of his temporal authority. Visconti was crystal clear in calling out the papacy as:
an enemy Government established as an enclave within the Kingdom, seeking in the confusions sweeping Europe to trigger new military intervention. The Roman territory is the nerve center for the party that plots foreign intervention aimed at restoring another political order on the peninsula.
By August 30th, the papal government had the state newspapers publish assurances that the troops massing on the border were not meant for invasion, that they would never violate the agreement made with France.
That was the month of August, barely a month since the promulgation of infallibility. Now, with the papacy operating at the height of willful ignorance – September of 1870 begins.
The very first day of the month was one of the worst military defeats in French history – the battle of Sedan. It was classic Prussian military superiority on display. They outmaneuvered and out gunned the French with Prussian field canons proving pivotal. I could easily nerd out on this battle, but I won’t. What was most significant was the capture of Napoleon III – precipitating the collapse of the second Napoleonic empire and fueling the rise of the German empire, the Prussian born creature of Otto von Bismark. A mighty Catholic empire had fallen to a protestant one.
When news reached Italy, the nationalists were ecstatic, celebrating in the streets. Prime Minister Lanza called for the immediate invasion of Rome. Foreign minister, Visconti argued against it, worried they were still bound by the agreement with France. De Cesare’s Last Days of Papal Rome:
For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations who remembered him as a student and a fugitive, and whom at the climax of his power he had never forgotten. In Rome he had been with equal intensity loved and hated, feared, and regarded as a sphinx. Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.
By September 4th, the French government, with its emperor in captivity, dissolved the monarchy and established another republic. The agreement to not invade Rome was now truly void. The Holy See had no more defenders. At its disposal was the poorly trained pontifical army of around 13,000 troops whose loyalty was questionable at best.
On September 6th, King Victor Emanuel formally approved sending troops into Rome – yet he held out one last olive branch to the pope-king. He wanted to give Pius the chance to come to the bargaining table and find a peaceful solution.
Pope Pius IX was faced with a choice. The papal army could not be relied on. The city was protected only by ancient walls that would surely crumble against modern artillery. To send soldiers out to fight in that environment was the equivalent of a death sentence with gain no strategic upshot. And yet he couldn’t personally accept the thought of letting Rome be taken without a fight.
On September 7th – the pope called in his military generals. He ordered them to put up resistance, just enough to show that the city was taken by force. Once that show of victimhood was made, they should surrender.
On September 8th, the Italian king’s messenger arrived in Rome to deliver the last plea of Victor Emanuel III. Reading the letter, Pius slammed the document on the table and unleashed his famous temper. He raged at the Italian diplomat, calling his countrymen a set of vipers, whited sepulchers, and wanting in faith. Then he made a strange divination:
I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!
In retrospect the offer letter was quite conciliatory. It proposed that Rome would go to Italy, but the pope would be allowed to occupy the Leonine city – Vatican City – which would remain under his full jurisdiction and sovereignty. The Italian state would guarantee the pope’s freedom to communicate with the Catholic world and well as grant diplomatic immunity for his envoys. The Italian government would further grant a permanent annual stipend for the pope and cardinals, equal to what they were getting paid now. All papal civil servants would be put on the state payroll, with full pensions, as long as they were Italian. Finally, it was added that this agreement would be governed as an international treaty and thus inviolable.
Pope Pius rejected it all, and then was said to have grieved deeply – knowing he was living the last days as a pope-king.
On September 10th, Pope Pius walked the streets of Rome. As he passed, he was greeted by shouts of Viva Pio Nono! Flowers were thrown at his feet. He was observed to be in good spirits. The next day he penned an official response to the king of Italy:
SIRE, - Count Ponza di San Martino has delivered to me a letter which Your Majesty was pleased to send me; but it is unworthy of an affectionate son who boasts of professing the Catholic faith and glories in his kingly loyalty. I will not enter into the particulars of the letter to avoid renewing the pain which its first perusal occasioned me. I bless God, Who has suffered that Your Majesty should fill the last years of my life with bitterness. For the rest I cannot admit the requests contained in your letter nor give my adhesion to the principles propounded therein. I once more turn to God and place my cause, which is His, in His Hands. I pray Him to grant to Your Majesty abundant grace to preserve you from every peril and to render you a participant in the mercies of which you have such need.
On September 11th, Italian troops crossed the borders of what remained of the papal state. The day had finally come which Pius believed God would never permit. The Italians closed in on Rome from the north and the south. The pope frantically reached out to the European powers for help – but there was no one on the other line. France was still at war with Prussia. Its capital, surrounded. It’s former monarch in captivity. Prussia had no love for the office nor the person of the pope. Austria had been handedly defeated by Prussia just four years early and would never recover.
With Austria’s refusal of aid, the Vatican accused the Catholic empire of patricide – the murder of its parents. The impotent rage of course got the pope nothing. Papal diplomats asked if the Austrian emperor would at least announce publicly that It was displeased with the Italian invasion. The response to the infallible pope was simply, no, it would not.
The French response to calls for aid was even more severe, with its foreign minister writing:
You know our opinion. . . The temporal power has been a scourge to the world, it is prostrate, we will not resurrect it...
At these refusals, the military defense of Rome commenced. The gates to the city were barricaded. Observation stations were set up upon the walls connected to telegraph wires. The citizens shut themselves up. The streets turned gloomy. Only soldiers and police were about. Pope Pius, reverted inward, back to his deep faith that had once guided him so many years earlier. He said his last pontifical mass in Rome, and then spent time in prayer, adoring a miraculous image of the virgin.
On the eve of the invasion, even the Italians were fearful of its potential cosmological consequences. Italian patriot Michele Amari said:
Tell me what you think of this cataclysm, this eruption, this deluge in which we try to lay hold of the patrimony of the Infallible One? From what I gather, we shall fall upon the city of Rome if the devil wishes the doors to be opened. And this is probable. We will go in for the enterprise, blind to its enormous cost, to the danger of the future and to the many disorders both physical and moral, which we shall encounter amid the Seven Hills. But what-ever may be, to go to Rome is now an indisputable necessity.
By September 16th Italian forces had control of the pope’s sea port, Civitavecchia. All that was left was one last sweep into the city. The Italians sent word again, pleading, for the pope to surrender. The thought of leveling ancient Rome and spilling clerical blood in the streets appalled the Italian politicians. They needed a plan of restraint.
On September 18th the Italian government gave word to its generals – the plan for attack is yours, however the Vatican City must be sparred. It shall be treated as property of the pope. They admonished the generals that this invasion called for the utmost prudence and moderation.
On September 19th, Pius, having nothing left to do before losing his temporal power, walked through the city to the scala santa, the holy steps, across from the Lateran Basilica. These steps were believed to have been the steps to the palace of Pontius Pilate - meaning these were the steps climbed by Jesus Christ during His passion. They were relocated to Rome by St Helen, the mother of Constantine. Pius, who was nearly 80 by this time, began climbing these 28 seps on his knees. After finally reaching the top, before the crucifix, and in a trembling voice, he asked God to watch over his people. Those around him were brought to tears. He then made his way to the nearby piazza and blessed the papal troops. Then he turned, waived, and boarded his red carriage. On his way back to the Vatican, people in the streets were heard to beg him not to abandon them a second time.
For the citizens of Rome, no one quite knew the sort of conquerors the Italians would be. If the papal government was to be believed, which it often wasn’t – the Italians were barbarians. And so, provisions were stored. Diplomats flew their various national flags high so as not to be missed. Convents barricaded their entrances. Roman palaces and churches did the same.
It is to the benefit of posterity that American consul David Armstrong was in Rome for the following events and documented them well – also, side note, he was an extremely talented stained-glass artist. Armstrong had arrived in Rome just a few days ago. He entered the city through the porta pia – the same gate the Italians would soon invade from. He described the piles of sandbags and earthworks and trenches. He said the streets were barren. The postal service and telegraph service were cut off. No shops were open. The walls of the city were plastered with various military proclamations and curfews. Assemblies were banned. No one was allowed to leave the city. He noted the people’s lack of enthusiasm for the continuation of papal rule. When Pio Nono called for volunteers, only 200 men from all of Rome showed up to defend the papacy. Unsavory men, he said, who had previously served the papal authorities as spies were now given uniforms and patrolled the streets, fueling popular resentment.
On September 20th, at 5 in the morning, the Italians reach the porta pia and commenced their attack. The military front arched across a third of the city’s perimeter. Cannons hammered the walls at a rate of forty shots a minute, shaking the foundations of the old churches. The ancient walls of the eternal city crumbled to dust in just a few hours, with some sections being entirely swept from the face off the earth. The gate of the porta pia was now a cavernous 50-foot-wide breech. When the cannonading ceased, the Italian troops marched in, filling the city streets. The papal troops fired off a few Parthian shots before retreating. Then the watch stations reported the Italians assaulting the porta San Giovanni, the Tre Archi, the porta Maggiore, the Villa Pamphili and the porta San Pancrazio.
For the first hour and a half, Pius was described as strangely calm. His calm was broken at about 6:30 am when the Janiculum, one of the hills of Rome was began to be cannonaded, just south of where he sat. The military defied the pope’s orders to not shoot back and began cannonading their own city, hoping to hit some Italians, yet putting the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica at risk of friendly fire.
The papal diplomatic corps dressed in full regalia began arriving at the Vatican knowing the formal surrender would soon be coming. The diplomats were invited to the pope’s private chapel, and asked to assist at Mass. During the mass, cannon fire and grenades shook the building so fiercely the glass was rattling in the sashes. Pius was unmoved.
When the mass was over, Pius invited the diplomats to his private library. His diplomatic corps told him that at this moment they considered it their sacred duty to protect the pontiff with their own persons at this pivotal hour. The pope thanked them, but his mood turned sour, and he launched into an angry tirade against the sacrilegious action against him, blaming the entire world for the offense.
Hearing his own cannons returning fire, he asked why his orders had been disobeyed. None could answer. Realizing he wasn’t even in control of his own military; Pius ordered a white flag be raised above St Peter’s Basilica at once. Within minutes, the firing stopped. It was ten AM.
The pope and cardinal Antonelli prepared a capitation agreement and dispatch one of their diplomats to see that it was signed by the Italian, it began with:
The sacred person of the Holy Father shall be treated with the greatest respect; the Sacred College and the clergy shall not only be respected, but all religious Congregations of either sex shall be maintained, including those abolished by the laws of the kingdom of Italy.
The subsequent sections dealt with military capitulation and demanded the pope with his private Swiss guard be allowed to retreat within the Leonine city – to the Vatican – essential the same peace terms offered to him by the king of Italy.
On September 21st, early in the morning, Pius IX was informed that his troops had been disarmed, the papal flags throughout Rome had been lowered and replaced with Italian flags. The temporal power was at last gone, his state no longer existed. Later that day, Pius wrote letter to his nephew:
Dear Nephew, -All is over! Without liberty it is impossible to govern the Church. Pray for me, all of you.
David Armstrong noted that during the attack the Italians did their best to avoid unnecessary bloodshed or destruction – only shooting at the walls of the city. The firing into the city mostly came from papal friendly fire. Yet stray shots happened. A bullet passed through his own window.
Armstrong said the papal troops were more than happy to surrender, noting that they defended the city against invaders that were happily welcomed by the citizens: no private citizens made the least effort or demonstration in favor of the Papal Government.
It was a far cry from the defense of the Roman republic against the French, 20 years ago. Armstrong goes on:
it was an easy victory for the Italians, and the loss, in killed and wounded, on both sides, was not great, they were in over-whelming force, with very heavy artillery and they knew that the mass of Romans were their friends; the Zouaves [the papal troops], on the other hand, although they never could have imagined how much they were detested, must have, at heart, feared the people, and could not fight their best; they were a fine looking body of men, many of them, even the common soldiers, of superior education and refinement, some of them undoubtedly served the Pope from religious feeling, many for the sake of the romance and adventure of the thing, very few for pay, as it was ridiculously small.
With dissolution of the Pope’s government, the dream of Italian unification had come to pass – it was a dream once held in esteem by Pio Nono himself – now the victim of his own dream.
On September 23rd, the first uncensored newspapers were allowed to publish. One of them opened with:
After fifteen centuries of darkness, of mourning, of misery and pain, Rome, once the queen of all the world, has again become the metropolis of a great State. Today, for us Romans, is a day of indescribable joy. Today in Rome freedom of thought is no longer a crime, and free speech can be heard within its walls without fear of the Inquisition, of burnings at the stake, of the gallows. The light of civil liberty that, arising in France in 1789, has brightened all Europe now shines as well on the eternal city. For Rome it is only today that the Middle Ages are over.
For those defeated, they knew felt that it was only a matter of time before they papal government would return, explicitly threatening the Italian government with as much. Those who knew pope Pius well, knew that the chances of him accepted the geopolitical reality around him were never very high. Yet his despondency was now bordering on delusion. A few weeks after his defeat, it was noted in small circles that the pope had been trying to produce miracles of various types. He claimed he would receive fits of vitality which he discerned to be visits from the Holy Spirit. At one of those times, he commanded a cripple to arise and walk. The poor man made the attempt and collapsed in the effort. Pius’ handlers did their best to hush up the episode.
King Victor Emanuel took up his place in the Quirinal Palace – the same palace where this story started. Pius held up in the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner. The Italian government was quick to remind the world that no one was preventing the pope from traveling in or out of the Vatican. He was only a prisoner of his own mind.
On October 20th, Pope Pius officially adjourned the Vatican council – which was due to reconvene in a few weeks, citing that it would not be able to act in freedom. Again, the Italians protested, and in fact guaranteed the councils ability to act on its own. Pius refused the offer.
The Archbishop of Baltimore suggested the council be moved to Belgium – a neutral state in the European wars. Pius refused this as well. For him, despite the obliviousness of his bishops, there was no reason to continue. The entire council was about papal infallibly – which he had achieved. What was there else to discuss? Further, he had declared himself a prisoner – a most unique prisoner he would be if he can cross international borders at will. Thus, the council slipped into indefinite adjournment. For many of the ultramontanes, this was the goal of infallibility anyway. From their perspective, there was no need for another council ever again. Pastor Aeternus had rendered them obsolete.
As the Italian peninsula settled down, the bishops of the world returned to affairs in their own localities. Nothing of any practical necessity changed in how they governed their sees – much as John Newman had foretold. With Pius styling himself as a prisoner, centralized command of the episcopate waned. Pius personally fumed over his lack of authoritative control of church affairs in the wake of infallibility. His curia however was all too aware of their weakened image with both the bishops and civil governments. So they opted for a more tolerant and patient attitude - generally ignored the pontiffs pontificating on authority. Ironically, this tolerant attitude contributed to a reduction in resistance to Pastor Aeternus. No minority bishop wanted to fight anymore or kick the hornet’s nest again. When the bishops wrote to their flocks about infallibility to Catholics on a practical level, their opinions were vague, casual, and varied widely. Between both minority and majority bishops there was no cohesive instruction to the faithful.
Yet academics, especially in Germany did respond with anger at the perceived novelties contained in the decree. Some went so far as to declared Pius IX a heretic and destroyer of the church. Some dioceses, led by their bishops publically refused to accept the doctrine. Dollinger emerged, quite naturally, as their leader. The archbishop of Munich met with Dollinger asking that they work together for the holy church. Dollinger responded that he wanted to do that as well, for the church of old. The archbishop retorted that there is only one church, and it is neither old nor new. Dollinger responded that they have made a new church.
A meeting of academics, organized by Dollinger published a statement claiming the new decree was not valid and not to be followed because it was a: a new doctrine that the church has never before recognized, wrought from a council that was not free.
They concluded that it would lead to only suspicion of the papacy instead of love for it. The bishop of Munich appealed to the Vatican for guidance. Rumors of an excommunication abounded. The king of Bavaria sent Dillinger a birthday letter, encouraging him to stand firm.
Finally, the archbishop gave Dollinger an ultimatum. Accept Paster Aeternus or be excommunicated. Dollinger responded with a letter, stating his refusal to submit to a decree which lacked theological, historical, or scriptural evidence, that it was contrary to the traditions of the church and to his conscience. He echoed Saint John Newman’s remark in a letter he wrote after Pastor Aeternus:
I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
Dollinger was excommunicated, but he was viewed by many as a martyred hero. He was almost unanimously elected as rector of the University of Munich and then given honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Marburg, and Vienna. The Old Catholic Church, that previously mentioned schismatic sect reached out to Dollinger and offered to consecrate him as a bishop of their church. Dollinger refused.
Had he done so, with how popular he was among governments, academics, and princes of the world – he likely would have precipitated a European-wide schismatic movement. Yet with Dollinger, in his own sad words acknowledging isolation, the crisis was contained to Germany only.
One by one, the bishops of the church began publicly accepting Pastor Aeternus – these acceptances were dutifully monitors by the Curia. The minority bishops went through various mental gymnastics to find ways to satisfy their consciences and at the same time accept the doctrine. But Pio Nono wanted more. From Bishop Maret, after he finally accepted the doctrine, Pius demanded that he renounce his book on church councils from the previous year. Maret refused. After going toe to toe with the papal Curia, Pius backed down. The last French bishop accepted the doctrine on June 2nd, 1871.
The official historian of the council, Bishop Hefele had long refused to accept papal infallibility. After threats of excommunication, he hobbled together his own limiting interpretation of the doctrine and said he would accept that one. The Papal Curia again said sure, fine, good enough, and happily dropped the matter.
The Austrian and Hungarian Bishops were long hold outs. Some of them, including Bishop Strossmayer issued statements that make it difficult to discern exactly when and where they officially accepted the new dogma. The curia again was happy to get what it could and moved on.
To battle the German kulturkampf against Catholic by Bismark, and the counter the accusations of creating a papal deity, even Pius found himself approving interpretations of the decree offering more limiting paradigms that horrified the ultramontanes.
With national governments like England and Germany condemning the papacy, and with more and more limiting and contradictory interpretations being officially allowed or otherwise sanctioned by the curia, this allowed Lord Acton and St John Newman to defend the church’s position, defining the limiting interpretations against attacks from the secular world. Both Acton and Newman held interpretations of the doctrine that should have left them anathematized – and yet they weren’t.
While the minority had lost the battle of the council, they were winning the battle of clarification – largely due to the reputation of Pio Nono, the ultramontanes, and the difficult to chew language of the decree. In the end, the fallout from the council and the loss of the papal temporal power, effected no change in the lives of everyday Catholic. The debates happened mostly in academic circles – and in academic circles, the ultramontanes had zero credibility.
The real victory of the ultramontanes played out not with infallibility, but with primacy. The church had become ruled by the ultramontane party, and as a result, juridical power shifted forever and anon to the Vatican. For the first time in history the pope now had unfettered and uncontested authority in nominating bishops. Up until Pius IX, the ancient tradition of secular episcopal nomination was still a thing. Immediately following the council, Pius personally picked 102 new bishops that filled half the diocese in Italy. No pope, in the entire history of the church ever had anything remotely close to that opportunity to stack an episcopacy.
As the years progressed, Pius IX never reconciled himself to his situation. His angry outbursts became worse. In 1877 he gave a speech that some viewed as an Urban-esq calling for a crusade against the Italians. The Cattolica summed up his pronouncement with: he declared that in Rome the Head of the Church must either be ruler or prisoner.
Up to his last days Pius fought for what he saw as his divine right to temporal authority. Renowned Jesuit scholar and journalist Carlo Maria, one of the founders of Civilta Cattolica, and longtime friend to Pius, wrote a public appeal for the papacy to make amends with the Italian government and normalize relations – to cease being a prisoner. This was blasphemy to Pio Nono and in response he suspended his old friend from the Jesuit order.
I said the dogma of papal infallibility had little effect on the daily lives of ordinary Catholics. Yet, you could say the spirit of papal infallibility, more than the text of Pastor Aeternus itself, had historical ramifications both geopolitical and, personally for Catholics.
In 1905 the French government ripped up its old concordat with the church. Pope Pius X denounced the move – and yet, this gave him the freedom promised to him by his predecessor. With the concordat gone – an agreement that allowed the French government to nominate bishops, Pope Pius X was now free to nominate whatever bishop he liked in France. Father O’Malley calls this loss of Rome and the papal states the fruitful tragedy of the papacy. By the late 20th century, the papacy had attained unlimited authority in episcopal nominations throughout the world.
The cult of the papacy was born. Technology played a huge part. The transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866, allowing Catholics for the first time to follow live updates about the plight of the Vicar of Christ. Photography allowed average Catholics to hang photographs of the succeeding popes in their living rooms. Whereas before many Catholics didn’t even know the pope’s name, and certainly never read anything he wrote. Now they could recognize his face, and soon, his voice. A new catholic virtue was invented – devotion to the pope. Loyalty to the papacy grew exponentially and reached levels never seen before or even dreamed of by Gregorian reformers.
Then, there was another historically important phenomenon. You may recall that way at the beginning of this series, we discussed how canonizations were used by popes to establish various devotions that they deemed expedient. It is said that history often rhymes. Since the death of Pio Nono, ten popes have died. Three of them have been canonized with more having their cause for canonization introduced. Prior to Pio Nono, the last pope to be canonized was Pius V in 1712, and before that, Gregory VII in 1605 – both dead hundreds of years before they were canonized.
Popes are now international jet-setting celebrities. You don’t visit the pope; the pope visits you. The largest cities in the world would slide to a stop when the pope graced them with their presence. If you couldn’t make it to a papal ceremony – you could watch it on TV – and now, via live stream. Today, every Wednesday, thousands of pilgrims eagerly wait outside St Peter’s square to hear the pope speak.
Despite losing Rome in 1870 to the Italians, when one visits Rome, the most significant presence that permeates the city is not the prime minister of the government, or the president of the republic – it’s the prisoner of the Vatican.
This newfound prominence as the most direct and immediate spiritual authority of Catholics turned the Roman Curia into a prolific printing press, issuing innumerable documents, teachings, regulations, and warnings of everything and every part of everyday life. Encyclicals became the primary tool for the papacy. While officially and legally non-binding, coming from the modern papacy they nonetheless possess a mystical obligatory influence. In the early nineteenth century, Pope Pius VII issued one encyclical in his 20-year reign. Pius IX issued 38. Pius’ successor Leo XIII issued 75. The encyclicals and speeches to the world made by Pius XI fill six volumes at four hundred pages each. Pius XII, not to be outdone, tripled that number with twenty volumes. Father O’Malley expands on this phenomenon:
The definitions of primacy and Infallibility at Vatican I provided the momentum for the making of the ultramontane church of contemporary Roman Catholicism. Indeed, they now quite properly serve as icons for the phenomenon. Nonetheless, they are only one factor- though the crucial one- in a convergence of factors that resulted in the current situation. After all, the genesis and the ultimate success of the ultramontane movement were also the result of a convergence of factors. That is how history works.
The younger sister of Vatican one is Vatican II. Vatican I existed in church council limbo since it was never officially closed – until Pope John XXIII officially closed it and opened the second Vatican council.
As I said, while the minority lost Vatican I, they won the battle of interpretations, and oddly, also saw their victory come to fruition at Vatican II in some meaningful ways. For one thing, it officially allowed for local liturgical variations – something anathema to the ultramontanes. In a document called Lumen Gentium it scored a victory for the minority bishops in Vatican I that the bishops acted most effectively for the universal church when they acted collegially – something the ultramontanes had declared obsolete. Further, while Pastor Aeternus presented a papacy that was apart from the church, Vatican II seemed to bring the office back into the college of bishops. It made crystal clear that the bishops are not a branch office of the papacy – saying directly that they are Vicars of Christ, not of the pope. See Lumen Gentium, chapter 3, section 27.
In Vatican I, the majority was largely self-referential. When it needed historical affirmation for tis positions would reference the New Testament primarily. The minority on the other hand believed that tradition, including customs, practices, modes and procedures through the centuries could not be ignored. Vatican II was far more a reflection of those positions held by the minority than the majority. Concepts of perfect society, divine kings, and other medieval socio-political assumptions that permeated Vatican I are gone at Vatican II. One author called this corporate memory loss – but another, Patrick Granfield, author of the Limits of the Papacy wrote:
Emphasis has shifted dramatically from the sociological to the biblical, from the jurisdictional to the sacramental, from the sectarian to the ecumenical, from the papal to the episcopal, from the hierarchical to the collegial
Father Omalley says that Vatican I was a statement against the world while Vatican II was reconciliation with it. He goes on:
The long-term reception of a council is an essential part of any council's history. The Council of Chalcedon is thus an essential part of the history of the Council of Nicaea. So far, the most important and authoritative moment in the history of the reception of Vatican Council I is Vatican II. A full understanding of the former depends on an understanding of the latter. And vice versa. Much of Vatican II can be understood as an implicit reaction to what the bishops saw as the excesses of the ultramontane movement, especially as the impulses of the movement continued to gain strength after 1870.
When the king of Italy, Victor Emanuel II died in 1878, Pius IX had been so sick that he hadn’t celebrated mass in over a month. Yet he did manage to say Mass on the 75th anniversary of his first holy communion. Immediately afterward his health turned. The doctors warned him that the end was near. Pius was under no illusions and asked for the last rites. David Kertzer, author of the prisoner of the Vatican recounts these moments:
Dressed in white nightclothes and propped up on his bed by pillows, he alternately rested, prayed, and talked with one or another of the cardinals who came to comfort him. Just before noon, the man whom he had recently appointed as his chamberlain, Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci, asked Pius to bless all the cardinals. “Yes,” the failing pontiff replied, “I bless the Sacred College, and pray that God will enlighten you to make a good choice.” Grasping the small wooden cross that he always carried with him, he held it up and added, “I bless the whole Catholic world.
The prime minister of Italy had hoped the funeral procession of Pio Nono would be small and discrete. Afterall, the pope had been dead now for three years. His remains were being transferred from St. Peters Basilica to their final resting place. Yet a political disaster was unfolding. 100,000 people had swarmed St Peter’s Square and overflowed into the surrounding streets – it was near midnight. A time set to deter visitors. In the dark, with their faces glowing in the flickering torch light was a hundred thousand rosary carrying, prayer chanting devotees of the last pope-king. He was, to the Italian government a deposed ruler – this crowd was inherently an existential threat.
Police swarmed the carriage carrying the pope’s remains to prevent it from being overrun. Two hundred more carriages of the wealthiest Catholic’s formed a line behind them. Thousands of anti-clerics came out and tried to shout down the prayers of the faithful. Long live Garibaldi they cried, while the faithful replied long live the pope!
As the carriage procession turned to pass over the Tiber, the anti-clerics yelled out, into the river with the pope. A Catholic newspaper said it was only by the grace of God his venerate bones did not end up in Tiber.
As the procession moved to the center of Rome, its citizens placed lit lantern in their windows in homage to the pope-king. The anti-clerics smashed them with stone. Then the stones began finding human targets. With a full-on riot developing, the police begged the funeral carriages to abandon the mourning pace and speed up. They complied and went into a half trot. The carriages finally outpaced the assailants, and at 3am arrived at the church of San Lorenzo. The praying procession was left behind, bloodied, burned, exhausted, and battling with rioters and the police.
At his death, he was the longest reigning pope in history – even longer than Peter himself.
The great irony of Pius’ council is that the council itself exalted an office, the papacy to heights never before seen – so high in fact that it placed it above the church itself – the church that makes it what it is. It allowed the papacy to break the bonds of the traditions of its predecessors and reduce the God-given office of the bishops to vicars of himself. And yet, the papal office’s ability to teach and instruct the faithful has been so diluted by floods of excessive and seemingly trivial encyclicals and speeches, printed, repointed, televised, livestreamed and tweeted 24/7. The pope is expected to comment on everything.
The council was an overreaction. It needed to validate a monarchy in a time when monarchies were failing. It tried to place guarantees in a world where there no longer were any. The world the papacy had taken for granted for a thousand years had died, and Vatican I tried to raise it from the dead.
This overreaction coincided with the industrial revolution. Both ultramontanism and industrial society called people out of their provincialism and nationalism and beckoned them to become members of the world – and yet in doing so added to the decay of the temporal authority of the papacy. In these ways the first Vatican council was a creature of modernity, but in others also. It was greatly influenced, swayed, directed, and admonished with great success by the world’s press corps – without de Maistre, Veuillot, le Univers, and the Cattolica – not even Pius IX would have heard of papal infallibility.
The council’s method of debate left behind the older, scholastic form of reasoning. And as proof texts only sought to refer to the New Testament much as fundamentalist Christian puritans do, leaving the teaching authority of the doctors of the church on the cutting room floor. Further, the council embraced the in vogue totalitarian leanings of society, using parliamentary manipulation against its opponents, leaving them voiceless.
The minority, mired in the slow methods of tradition, preferred to be historical and empirical. Scholastics couldn’t keep up with the wheels of industry.
The majority also had a pope on its side who embraced a novel approach to the papacy, whereas he was a political liberal before fleeing Rome, he returned a totalitarian despot – from his perspective, out of necessity. Theologian Roger Aubert says:
the determining factor . . . is to be found in the personality of the pope, Pius IX, to the point that it is possible to say that it was the victory of a man as much as the victory of a doctrine."
The character and involvement of Pius IX leaves an ongoing asterisk next to the first Vatican council that has been debated ever since by theologians and canon lawyers. Question: was the council actually free? Answer: depends on who you ask. There are undoubtedly two facts: the bishops were under substantial pressure to vote a certain way by the pontifical government, and the papal office manipulated and violated the council rules to produce a desired outcome. No serious historian disagrees with that. To what degree then do those realities equate to a servile senate?
I’ve read authors that argue both free and unfree – every decade or so the debate swings one way or the other among historians. Father O’Malley, who I found to be extremely balanced in his approach argues that in the history of deliberative bodies, none are perfect, and Vatican I certainly was one of the farthest from perfection. In his words, on a scale of free and less free councils, it might fall on the less free side. But he stops short of saying it was definitely declaring it not free.
In the end, infallibility was not the lasting impact of the council. Infallibility by a pope has officially only been invoked once, to declare the assumption of Mary. Infallible statements promulgated by the Church prior to Pius IX were reserved to councils. Ask your average Catholic today if they believe in papal infallibility, and you’ve got about a 70% chance of them saying no or I don’t know. And yet, there is virtually no admonishment or concern from the pulpit or the Vatican on this apparent overwhelming disbelief in dogma.
What does this mean for the ultramontanes? Does this mean they failed? Or did they succeed? While very few Catholics believe that the pope is infallibly, he is yet more than ever in the entire 2000-year history of the Church, the magnetic center of Catholic thought.
Brian Tierney from the Catholic University of America says:
There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the thirteenth century; the doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans because it suited their convenience to invent it; eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it… the dogma of infallibility is neither true nor false but meaningless; in practice… the dogma seems to have no practical use and to have succumbed to the sense that it is irrelevant.
Margaret Hebblethwaite, Catholic missionary, writer, and acquaintance of Pope Francis makes a topical prediction:
If no one pays much attention when Rome bangs its fist and says, "This is infallible", then what can we conclude? We can conclude that we are witnessing what may be the biggest decline of papal authority in real terms ever seen in history.