Part 51

§ 203.5. =The Catholic Church in the Third French Republic.=--The Gambetta government, the national vindication of the 4th September, 1870, resigned its power in February, 1871, into the hands of the National Assembly elected by the whole nation, which, although through clerical influence upon the electors predominantly monarchical and clerical, appointed the old Voltairean Thiers (died, 1877), formerly ministerial president under Louis Philippe, as alone qualified for the difficult post of president of the republic. In the necessary second vote, indeed, there was a considerable increase of the republican and as such thoroughly anti-clerical party; but even in its ranks it was admitted that the establishment of France as leader of all Europe in the fight against ultramontanism and the co-operation therein of the clergy were the absolutely indispensable means for the political _Revanche_, after which the hearts of all Frenchmen longed as the hart for the water streams. A petition from five bishops and other dignitaries to the National Assembly for the restoration of the temporal power of the pope was set aside as inopportune. But Archbishop Guibert of Paris, without asking the government, proclaimed the infallibility dogma, and the minister of instruction, Jules Simon, contented himself with warning the episcopate in a friendly way against any further illegal steps of that kind. The clerical party was also successful in its protest to the National Assembly against the education law, which by raising the standard of instruction, placing it under the supervision of the state and making inspection of schools obligatory, proposed to put an end to the terrible ignorance of the French people as the chief cause of their deep decay. Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans was appointed president of the commission for examining it, and so its fate was sealed. Meanwhile the people, by frequent manifestations of the Virgin, were roused to a high pitch of religious excitement. Crowds of pilgrims encouraged by miraculous healings flocked to our Lady of La Salette, at Lourdes, etc. (§ 188, 6), and the consecration of _Notre Dame de la Deliverance_ at Bayeux was celebrated as a brilliant national festival. When in May, 1873, Thiers gave way before the machinations of his opponents and, under the new president, Marshal Macmahon, the thoroughly clerical ministry of the Duc de Broglie got the helm of affairs, the pilgrimage craze, mariolatry and ultramontane piety, aided by the prefects and mayors, increased to an unparalleled extent among all ranks. Under the Buffet ministry of 1875 the influence of clericalism was unabated. To him it owed its most important acquisition, the right of creating free Catholic universities wholly independent of the State, with the privilege of conferring degrees. But when in 1876 the new elections for the National Assembly gave an anti-clerical majority, Buffet was obliged to resign. The new Dufaure ministry, with the Protestant Waddington as minister of instruction, declared indeed that it continued the liberty of instruction, but decidedly refused the right of conferring degrees. The proposal to this effect met with the hearty support of the new chamber of deputies. But all the greater was the jubilation of the clericals when the senate by a small majority refused its consent, and all the more eagerly was the founding of new free Catholic universities carried on, at Paris, Angers, Lyons, Lille and Toulouse, but notwithstanding every effort they only attracted a very small number of scholars,--in 1879, when they flourished most, at all the five there were only 742 students.

§ 203.6. =The French “Kulturkampf,” 1880.=--The Dufaure ministry was succeeded in December, 1876, by the semi-liberal ministry of Jules Simon, which again was driven out in a summary fashion by president Macmahon on May 16th, 1877, and replaced, on the dissolution of the chamber, by a clerical ministry under Duc de Broglie. But in the newly elected chamber the republican anti-clerical majority was so overwhelming that Macmahon, on January 30th, 1879, abandoning his motto of government, _J’y suis et j’y reste_, was at last obliged, between the alternatives offered him by Gambetta, _Se soumettre ou se démettre_, to choose the latter. His successor was Grévy, president of the Chamber, who entrusted the protestant Waddington with the forming of a new ministry in which Jules Ferry was minister of instruction. Ferry brought in a bill in March to abolish the representation of the clergy in the High Council of Education by four archiepiscopal deputies, continuing indeed the free Catholic universities, but requiring their students to enroll in a state university which alone could hold examinations and give degrees, and finally enacting by Article 7 that the right of teaching in all educational institutions should be refused to members of all religious orders and congregations not recognised by the state. The chamber deputies accepted this bill without amendment on July 9th, but the senate on March 7th, 1880, after passing six articles refused to adopt the seventh. On March 29th, the president of the republic issued on his own authority two decrees, based indeed upon earlier enactments (1789-1852), gone into desuetude indeed, but never abrogated (§ 186, 2), demanded the dissolution of the Society of Jesus, containing 1,480 members in 56 institutions, within three months, and insisted that the orders and congregations not recognised by the State, embracing 14,033 sisters in 602 institutions and 7,444 brothers in 384 institutions, in the same time should by production of their statutes and rules seek formal recognition or else be broken up. A storm of protests on the part of the bishops greeted these “_March Decrees_,” and riotous demonstrations made before the Minister of Instruction at his residence at Lille expressed the protests of the students of the Catholic university there. The pope now broke his reserve and by a nuncio sent the president of the republic a holograph letter in which he declared that he must interfere on behalf of the Jesuits and the threatened orders, because they were indispensably necessary to the wellbeing of the church. He did not wish that they should have recourse to unlawful means, but it must be understood that they would appeal to the courts for protection of their threatened civil liberties. When therefore on the morning of June 30th the police began their work of expelling the Jesuits from their houses, these lodged a complaint before the courts of invasion of their domestic peace and infringement of their personal liberty. Their schools were closed on August 31st, the end of the school year; meanwhile they had taken the precaution to transfer most of them to such as would be ready afterwards to restore them. The enforcement of the second of the March Decrees against the other orders was delayed for a while. A compromise proposed by the episcopate, favoured by the pope and not absolutely rejected even by the minister Freycinet, Waddington’s successor, according to which instead of the required application for recognition all these orders should sign a declaration of loyalty, undertaking to avoid all participation in political affairs and to do nothing opposed to existing order, brought about the overthrow of this ministry in September, 1880, by the machinations from other motives of the president of the chamber and latent dictator, Leon Gambetta. At the head of the new ministry was Ferry, who held the portfolio of instruction, and under him the carrying out of the second March Decree began on October 16th, 1880. Up to the meeting of the chamber in November 261 monasteries had been vacated; the rest, as from the first all female congregations, were spared, so that France with its colonies and mission stations still number 4,288 male and 14,990 female settlements of spiritual orders, the former with about 32,000, the latter with about 166,200 inmates.--The expulsion of the Jesuits, as well as the more recent of the other orders, was, however, stoutly opposed. The police told off for this duty found doors shut and barricaded against them or defended by fanatical peasants and mobs of shrieking women, so that they had often to be stormed and broken up by the military. Still more threatening than this opposition was the reaction which began to assert itself at the instance of the almost thoroughly ultramontane jurists of the country, a survival of the times of Napoleon III. and Macmahon. An advocate Rousse, who publicly stated the opinion that the March Decrees were illegal and therefore not binding, was supported by 2,000 attorneys and over 200 corporations of attorneys and by many distinguished university jurists. More than 200 state officials and many judiciary and police officers, together with several officers of the army, tendered their resignations so as to avoid taking part in the execution of the decrees. When it became clear that unfavourable verdicts would be given by the courts invoked by the Jesuits against the executors of the decree, as indeed was soon actually done by several courts, the government lodged an appeal against their competence before the tribunal of conflicts which also actually in regard to all such cases pronounced them incompetent and their decisions therefore null and void; but the complainers insisted that their complaints should be taken to a Council of State as the only court suitable to deal with charges against officials, which, as might be expected, was not done.

§ 203.7. In the future course of the French “Kulturkampf” the most important proceedings of the government were the following: The abolition of the institute of military chaplains, highly serviceable in ultramontanizing the officers, was carried out in 1880, as well as the requirement that the clergy and teachers should give military service for one year, and subsequently also military escorts to the Corpus Christi procession were forbidden. In 1880 the Municipal Council of Paris, with the concurrence of the prefect of the Seine, forbad the continuance of the beautiful building of the church of the Heart of Jesus begun in 1875 on Montmartre (§ 188, 12), confiscating the site that had been granted for it. In 1881 the churchyards were relieved of their denominational character, and the following year the right of managing them, with permission of merely civil interment without the aid of a clergyman, was transferred from the ecclesiastical to the civil authorities. By introducing in 1880 high schools for girls with boarding establishments an end was put to the education of girls of the upper ranks in nunneries, which had hitherto been the almost exclusive practice. Far more sweeping was the School Act brought in by the radical minister of worship, Paul Bert, and first enforced in October, 1886, which made attendance compulsory, relegated religious instruction wholly to the church and home, and absolutely excluded all the clergy from the right of giving any sort of instruction in the public schools, and demanded the removal of all crucifixes and other religious symbols from the school buildings. In December, 1884, a tax was imposed on the property of all religious orders, also the state allowance for the five Catholic seminaries with only thirty-seven students was withdrawn, and many other important deductions made upon the budget for Catholic worship, which at first the senate opposed, but at last agreed to. The Divorce Bill frequently introduced since 1881, which permitted parties to marry again, and gave disposal of the matter to the civil court, got the assent of the senate only in the end of July, 1884. The clericals were also greatly offended by the decree passed in May, 1885, which closed the church of St. Genoveva, the former Pantheon, as a place of worship and made it again a burial place for distinguished Frenchmen. This resolution was first carried out by placing there the remains of Victor Hugo. Amid these and many other injuries to its interests the Roman curia, concentrating all its energies upon the German “Kulturkampf,” endeavoured to keep things back in a moderate way. Yet in July, 1883, the pope addressed to president Grévy a friendly but earnest remonstrance, which he treated simply as a private letter and, without communicating it officially to his cabinet, answered that apart from parliament he could not act, but that so far as he and his ministry were able they would seek to avoid conflict with the holy see. And in fact the government, especially after the overthrow of the Gambetta ministry in 1882, often successfully opposed the proposal of the radical chamber, _e.g._ the separation of church and state, the abrogation of the concordat, the recall of the embassy to the Vatican, the abolition of religious oaths in the proceedings of the courts, the stopping of the state subvention of a million francs for payment of salaries in seminaries for priests, etc.

§ 203.8. =The Protestant Churches under the Third Republic.=--Since the French Reformed began to emulate their Catholic countrymen in wild Chauvinism, fanatical hatred of Germany and unreasoning enthusiasm for the _Revanche_, they were left by the advancing clerical party unmolested in respect of life, confession and worship during the time of war. The Lutherans on the other hand, consisting, although on French territory, mainly of German emigrants and settlers, even their French members not so disposed to Chauvinistic extravagance, were obliged to atone for this double offence by expulsion from house and home and by various injuries to their ecclesiastical interests. After the conclusion of peace, especially under Thiers’ moderate government, this fanaticism gradually cooled down, so that the expelled Germans returned and the churches and institutions that had been destroyed were restored, so far as means would allow. By the decree of Waddington, the minister of instruction, of date March 27th, 1877, instead of the theological faculty of Strassburg, now lost for the French Lutheran church, one for both Protestant churches was founded in Paris.--The =Lutheran Church=, in consequence of the cession of Alsace-Lorraine, had only sixty-four out of 278 pastorates and six out of forty-four consistories remaining. At the general synod convened at Paris, in July, 1872, by the government for reorganising the Lutheran church it was resolved: To form two inspectorates independent of each other--Paris, predominantly orthodox, Mömpelgard, predominantly liberal; the general assembly, which meets every third year alternately at Mömpelgard and Paris, to consist of delegates from both. The two inspectorates are to correspond in administrative matters directly with the minister of public instruction, but in everything referring to confession, doctrine, worship and discipline, the general assembly is the supreme authority. In regard to the confessional question they agreed to the statement, that the holy Scripture is the supreme authority in matters of faith, and the Augsburg Confession the basis of the legal constitution of the church. An express undertaking on the part of the clergy to this effect is not, however, insisted upon. Only in 1879 could this constitution obtain legal sanction by the State, and that only after considerable modification in the direction of liberalism, especially in reference to electoral qualification. In consequence of this the first ordinary general assembly held in Paris in May, 1881, found both parties in a conciliatory mood.--=The Reformed Church=, with about 500 pastorates and 105 consistories, summoned by order of government a newly constituted General Assembly at Paris, in June, 1872. Prominent among the leaders of the orthodox party was the aged ex-minister Guizot; the leaders of the liberals were Coquerel and Colani. The former supported the proposal of Professor Bois of Montauban, who insisted on the frank and full confession of holy Scripture as the sovereign authority in matters of faith, of Christ as the only Son of God, and of justification by faith as the legal basis of instruction, worship and discipline; while the latter protested against every attempt to lay down an obligatory and exclusive confession. The orthodox party prevailed and the dissenters who would not yield were struck off the voting lists. When now in consequence of the complaint of the liberal party the summoning of an ordinary general assembly was refused by the government, the orthodox party repeatedly met in “official” provincial and general assemblies without state sanction. The council of state then declared all decisions regarding voting qualifications passed by the synod of 1872 to be null and void, the minister of worship, Ferry, ordered the readmission of electors struck from the lists, and his successor Bert legalized, by a decree of March 25th, 1882, the division of the Parisian consistorial circuit into two independent consistories of Paris and Versailles, moved for by the liberal party but opposed by the orthodox. But upon the elections for the new consistory of Paris, ordered in spite of all protests, and for the presbyteries of the eight parishes assigned to it, contrary to all expectation, in seven of these the elections with great majorities were in favour of the orthodox, and the first official document issued by the new consistory was a solemn protest against the decree to which it owed its existence. Under such circumstances the government as well as the liberal party had no desire for the calling of an official general assembly, and the latter resolved at a general assembly at Nimes, in October, 1882, to institute official synods of their own for consultation and protection of their own interests.

§ 204. ITALY.

In Italy matters returned to their old position after the restoration of 1814. But liberalism, aiming at the liberty and unity of Italy, gained the mastery, and where for the time it prevailed, the Jesuits were expelled, and the power of the clergy restricted; where it failed, both came back with greatly increased importance. The arms of Austria and subsequently also of France stamped out on all sides the revolutionary movements. Pius IX., who at first was not indisposed, contrary to all traditions of the papacy, to put himself at the head of the national party, was obliged bitterly to regret his dealings with the liberals (§ 185, 2). Sardinia, Modena and Naples put the severest strain upon the bow of the restoration, while Parma and Tuscany distinguished themselves by adopting liberal measures in a moderate degree. Sardinia, however, in 1840 came to a better mind. Charles Albert first broke ground with a more liberal constitution, and in 1848 proclaimed himself the deliverer of Italy, but yielded to the arms of Austria. His son Victor Emanuel II. succeeded amid singularly favourable circumstances in uniting the whole peninsula under his sceptre as a united kingdom of Italy governed by liberal institutions.

§ 204.1. =The Kingdom of Sardinia.=--Victor Emanuel I. after the restoration had nothing else to do but to recall the Jesuits, to hand over to them the whole management of the schools, and, guided and led by them in everything, to restore the church and state to the condition prevailing before 1789. Charles Felix (1821-1831) carried still further the absolutist-reactionary endeavours of his predecessor, and even Charles Albert (1831-1849) refused for a long time to realize the hopes which the liberal party had previously placed in him. Only in the second decade of his reign did he begin gradually to display a more liberal tendency, and at last in 1848 when, in consequence of the French Revolution, Lombardy rose against the Austrian rule, he placed himself at the head of the national movement for freeing Italy from the yoke of strangers. But the king gloried in as “the sword of Italy” was defeated and obliged to abdicate. Victor Emanuel II. (1849-1878) allowed meanwhile the liberal constitution of his father to remain and indeed carried it out to the utmost. The minister of justice, Siccardi, proposed a new legislative code which abolished all clerical jurisdiction in civil and criminal proceedings, as also the right of asylum and of exacting tithes, the latter with moderate compensation. It was passed by parliament and subscribed by the king in 1850. The clergy, with archbishop Fransoni of Turin at their head, protested with all their might against these sacrilegious encroachments on the rights of the church. Fransoni was on this account committed for a month to prison and, when he refused the last sacrament to a minister, was regularly sentenced to deposition and banishment from the country. Pius IX. thwarted all attempts to obtain a new concordat. But the government went recklessly forward. As Fransoni from his exile in France continued his agitation, all the property of the archiepiscopal chair was in 1854 sequestered and a number of cloisters were closed. Soon all penalties in the penal code for spreading non-Catholic doctrines were struck out and non-Catholic soldiers freed from compulsory attendance at mass on Sundays and festivals. The chief blow now fell on March 2nd, 1855, in the Cloister Act, which abolished all orders and cloisters not devoted to preaching, teaching, and nursing the sick. In consequence 331 out of 605 cloisters were shut up. The pope ceased not to condemn all these sacrilegious and church robbing acts, and when his threats were without result, thundered the great excommunication in July, 1855, against all originators, aiders, and abettors of such deeds. Among the masses this indeed caused some excitement, but it never came to an explosion.