JOSEPH DE MAISTRE.

Concluded.

THE reader has already seen what were the views of De Maistre on the future of Catholicism. I must refer those who would wish to penetrate his thought still deeper to his grand work, Du Pape, which he concludes with these solemn words :-" The Catholic edifice, whose component parts are politically dissimilar, and even inimical -attacked, moreover, by all that human power, aided by time, could devise of a nature the most malicious, crafty, and formidable-at the very moment when it seems to be finally crumbling away, is more firmly seated than ever upon its foundations; and the Sovereign Pontiff of Christendom, escaped from the most pitiless persecution, consoled by new accessions, by illustrious conversions, by the most cheering hopes, raises his august head in the midst of astounded Europe. His virtues were undoubtedly worthy of this triumph. . . O, holy Church of Rome!" he exclaims, "as long as I shall have the power of utterance, I shall use it to celebrate thee. Immortal mother of science and sanctity, I greet theesalve magna parens! It is thou who sheddest light to the extremities of the earth, wherever blind sovereignties do not stop thy influence, and often even in despite of them. It is thou who causest human sacrifices, barbarous or infamous customs, fatal prejudices, the night of ignorance to cease; and wherever thy envoys cannot penetrate, something is wanting to civilization. The great men belong to thee! ... The Pontiffs will soon be universally proclaimed the supreme agents of civilization, the creators of European monarchy and unity, the preservers of science and arts, founders and protectors of civil liberty, destroyers of slavery, enemies of despotism, indefatigable upholders of sovereignty, benefactors of mankind. No throne in the universe ever bore so much wisdom, science and virtue. In the midst of all imaginable overturnings, God has constantly watched over thee, O, Eternal City! All that could ruin thee has been leagued against thee, and thou art standing, and, as thou wast formerly the centre of error, thou art for eighteen hundred years the centre of truth. The Roman power made thee the citadel of Paganism, apparently invincible in the capital of the known world. All the errors of the universe converged towards thee, and the first of thy emperors, concentrating them in a single resplendent point, consecrates them all in the Pantheon. The capital of Paganism was destined to become that of Christianity; and the temple that, in this capital, concentrated all the forces of idolatry, was to unite all the lights of faith-all the saints in place of all the gods. What an in

Ο

exhaustible subject of profound philosophical and religious meditation!"

In that masterly treatise the reader will find all the irrefutable arguments in favour of the maintenance of the Papal power firmly upheld, and such light thrown upon them as only genius exalted by faith can shed. He will be told how the Church has outlived every other power, no human institution having lasted over eighteen hundred years; how all the Churches that separated in the twelfth and sixteenth centuries have only preserved their external forms, like frozen corpses, in whom the cold has temporarily arrested decay, but from whom all life and warmth have departed; how every Church that is not Catholic is Protestant, and can only be designated by a negative name; and that every effort to reunite the separated Churches has utterly failed, the Catholic Church alone having a name upon which the whole world is agreed, proving that without the Sovereign Pontiff there is no real Christianity, and that no honest man, separated from him, can sign upon his honour (if he has any knowledge of the subject) a clearly circumscribed profession of faith. The reader will also have it made clear to him how there is no pedantry or exclusiveness in Rome, and that the Popes have never refused to kings or peoples all that is Christianly possible; that all the fears excited, and all the big words used with reference to their terrible infallibility, are only a vain scarecrow, and that it is a rôle very unworthy of a Catholic, or even a man of the world, to write against this magnificent and divine privilege of the Chair of Peter; that nothing in history is so invincibly demonstrated as the monarchical supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff, and that there is not in Europe a sovereignty more justifiable-like the Divine Law, it is justificata in semetipsa. The Popes became sovereigns unawares, and even despite themselves. "An invisible law," he says, " erected the See of Rome, and it may be said that the Chief of the Universal Church is a born sovereign. From the scaffold of the martyrs he mounted a throne, at first unperceived, but which consolidated itself universally, like all great things, and was revealed from its carliest age by I know not what atmosphere of grandeur that environed it, without any assignable cause. Sovereignty, by its nature, resembles the Nile: it conceals its head. That of the Popes alone derogates from the universal law. All its elements have been laid bare in order that it may be visible to all eyes- et vincat cum judicatur. There is nothing so evidently just in its origin as this extraordinary sovereignty. The incapacity of the sovereigns that preceded it; the unbearable tyranny exercised over goods, persons and peoples, the formal abandonment of those very peoples, handed over defenceless to pitiless barbarians; the voice of the west abdicated by its former master; the new sovereignty that starts up, advances and takes the place of the old one without any shock, without bloodshed, impelled by a hidden, in

vincible force, and, up to the last moment, swearing faith and fidelity to the feeble personage it is going to replace-in fine, the right of conquest, acquired and solemnly ceded by one of the greatest men that ever existed, so great, that greatness has penetrated his name: such are the titles of the Popes, and history presents nothing like them." He proves conclusively that the Papal monarchy is anterior to the Carlovingian donation; for Pepin, before attacking Astolphus, sent several ambassadors to urge him to re-establish peace, and "restore the possessions of the Holy Church of God and the Roman Republic;" and in the famous charter, "Ego Ludovicus," Louis le Debonnaire declares that "Pepin and Charlemagne had long since by an act of donation restored the Exarchate to the Blessed Apostle and the Popes."*

It is a trite saying that history repeats itself; and to no country in Europe is the observation more strikingly applicable than to Italy. In the Piedmontese usurpation and occupation of Rome, and in the complications between the Holy See and the new German empire, we have two notable episodes in Church history re-enacted under our eyes in the midst of this nineteenth century, which so loves to persuade itself that it has completely broken with the past. In Rome, under Piedmontese domination, as in Pagan Rome, there are at this moment two sovereigns representing two principles, two phases of thought, two civilizations. The Roman Pontiff again confronts the Cæsars; and if there be any philosophy or logic in history, the historical student, guided solely by the light of facts, may confidently predict the issue. Even when the Roman Pontiff was a subject, the incongruity of the situation was felt. They recognised the presence of a priesthood so eminent, that the Emperor, who bore among his titles that of Sovereign Pontiff, suffered another in Rome to bear it with more impatience than he would brook, another Cæsar in the army who should dispute with him the empire. "Perhaps in the mind of Constantine," says De Maistre, "nascent faith and respect, mingled with the embarrassment I speak of; but I do not doubt for a moment that this sentiment influenced his determination to transfer the seat of empire, far more than all the political motives attributed to him. The same place could not contain the Emperor and the Pontiff. Constantine ceded Rome to the Pope. From that moment it is felt that the Emperors are no longer at home in Rome. They are like strangers who, from time to time, come to lodge there with permission. But here is what is more astonishing still:

Du Pape, liv. ii., chap. vi.

+ It is curious that Mr. Gallenga, the Times correspondent, who cannot be suspected of any partiality towards the Papacy, not long ago described the horde of hungry officials who constitute the entourage of the sovereign who calls himself "King of Italy" in similar terms, and complained of the absence of the aristocracy rom Rome as indicative of a feeling of want of confidence in the "stability" of the new régime.

Odoacer with his Herules had just put an end to the Empire of the West in 475; soon after the Herules disappeared before the Goths, and the latter in turn gave place to the Lombards, who seized upon the kingdom of Italy. What power for more than three centuries hindered the princes from permanently establishing their thone in Rome? What arms drove them back at Milan, Pavia, Ravenna, &c.? It was the donation that perpetually prevailed and descended too high not to be executed. From all sides they turned to the Pope; every affair was referred to him; insensibly, and without knowing how, he had become in Italy, in relation to the Greek Emperor, what the Mayor of the Palace was in France to the titular King. In a word, the Popes were absolute masters, sovereigns de facto, or, to express it more exactly, sovereigns by compulsion, before any Carlovingian liberality. The people of Italy, driven to despair, took counsel together. Abandoned by their masters, ravaged by the barbarians, they selected their own chiefs and gave themselves laws. The Popes, become Dukes of Rome, de facto and de jure, could no longer resist the people, who flung themselves into their arms, and, not knowing how to defend them against the barbarians, at length turned their eyes to the French princes. All the rest is known. What remains to be said after Baronius, Pagi, Le Cointe, Marca, Thomassin, Orsi, and so many others who have left nothing unrecorded to place this grand epoch of history in its full light?"* He points out as a remarkable feature in the political policy of the Popes, that they never used their immense power to aggrandize the States of the Church, although, as temporal princes, they equalled or surpassed in power several crowned heads, and had as much right to make war as they had.

Upon the vexed question of the German pretensions upon Italy, and the war of investiture, at one time debated with a warmth that now-a-days men even passably well-informed find it difficult to understand, he is equally clear, solid, and convincing. The temporal power, then as now, openly threatened to extinguish ecclesiastical supremacy, and make the Church both in Germany and Italy a grand fief dependent on the Emperor. Every historical student is more or less familiar with the salient features of the protracted wars arising out of the disputed investiture of bishops with the cross and the ring, which the Popes would not concede, for fear sovereigns should make use of these religious symbols to signify that they likewise conferred spiritual jurisdiction, thus changing the benefice into a fief; a contest between the spiritual and temporal powers, made for ever memorable by the striking episode of Canossa, near Reggio, in 1077, when

*"To form a sound judgment of it," he says elsewhere, "we must look at it from a height and only regard it as a whole: short-sighted people should not read history, they are losing their time."

Gregory VII., holding the Eucharist in his hands, turned to the Emperor, and summoned him to swear, as he had sworn, upon his eternal salvation, that he never acted but with a perfect purity of intention for the glory of God and the happiness of peoples; while Henry, overawed by the saintly aspect of the Pontiff, and oppressed by his conscience, dared not repeat the formula or receive communion. De Maistre places the struggle between the priesthood and the empire, as it is commonly called, in its true light when he declares that it was really a struggle between Germany and Italy; between usurpation and freedom; between the master who brings chains and the slave who rejects them—a war in which the Popes did their duty as Italian princes and wise statesmen, taking the part of Italy, because they could not favour the Emperor without dishonour, nor stand neutral without ruin. The posterity of Charlemagne was extinct. Neither Italy nor the Popes in particular, owed anything to the princes who replaced them in Germany. Even Voltaire admits as much. "These princes," he says, "decided everything by the sword. The Italians certainly had a more natural right to freedom than a German to be their master. If this authority of the Emperors had lasted, the Popes had only been their chaplains and Italy their slave. It seems evident that the grand design of Frederick II. was to establish the throne of the new Cæsars in Italy; and it is at least quite certain that he ambitioned an unlimited and undivided sway over the peninsula."* Where, asks De Maistre, is the charter giving Italy to the German Emperors? Where have they learned that the Pope must not act as a temporal prince, that he must be purely passive, and let himself be beaten, despoiled, &c. The Popes, he concludes, as natural chiefs of the Italian association, and born protectors of the people that composed it, had every imaginable reason to oppose with all their might the renaissance in Italy of that nominal power which, despite the titles affixed to the head of its edicts, was neither holy, nor an empire, nor Roman.†

Speaking of the Popes naturally leads De Maistre to discourse of the priesthood; for it is the sacerdotal character of the Supreme Pontiff-highest visible type of the Eternal Priesthood throughout the Universal Church-that gives to the Pontifical sovereignty that inviolable majesty of which every hostile power, human or diabolical, has failed to divest it; that marvellous ascendency that stopped Theodosius at the gate of the temple, Attila upon the highroad to Rome, and Louis XIV. before the holy table. "That still more marvellous power," he says, can move the hardened heart and restore it to life; which wrings from insensible or indifferent opulence the gold that it pours into

* Essai sur l'histoire générale. † Du Pape, liv. ii., chap. viii.