Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church 9780674986121

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VATICAN I

VATICAN I The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church

JOHN W. O’MALLEY

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts London, ­England 2018

Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­P ublication Data Names: O’Malley, John W., author. Title: Vatican I : the council and the making of the ultramontane church / John W. O’Malley. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017045568 | ISBN 9780674979987 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Vatican Council (1st : 1869–1870 : Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano) | Ultramontanism—­H istory—19th ­century. Classification: LCC BX1806 .O43 2018 | DDC 262/.52—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2017045568 Jacket art: Pius IX opening the First Vatican Council, 1869. Late-nineteenth– century chromolithograph. Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images Design: Annamarie McMahon Why

For HOWARD J. GRAY, S.J. Lifelong and faithful friend Upon his retirement from Georgetown University

Contents

Introduction

1

1 Catholicism and the ­Century of Lights

23

2 The Ultramontane Movement

55

3 The Eve of the Council

96

4 ­Under Way and Moving ­toward Dei Filius

133

5 Infallibility

180

Conclusion

225

Appendix: En­glish Translation of Pastor Aeternus

251

Basic Chronology

261

Notes

263

Bibliography

285

Acknowl­edgments

297

Index

299

VATICAN I

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. —­William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, 1951

Introduction

T

he First Vatican Council, convoked by Pope Pius IX (r. 1846– 1878), met in the north transept of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome for about seven months, from early December  1869 ­until mid-­July 1870. It was the first ecumenical (church-­w ide) council in over three hundred years, and ­because of the supposed implications of Pastor Aeternus, the decree of the council that defined papal primacy and infallibility, pundits predicted it would be the last such meeting. The decree, they said, rendered councils superfluous; the pope now could—­and should—­make all decisions. When on January 25, 1959, Pope John XXIII announced his intention of convening a council that he soon named Vatican II, he shattered the pundits’ predictions. Nonetheless, Pastor Aeternus was a landmark in the history of the Catholic Church. Its effects are keenly felt even ­today. ­Because of the decree alone, the council is worth studying. If history is the story of how we got to be the way we are, then the narrative of Vatican I is the story of how the Catholic Church in a relatively short time moved to a new and significantly more pope-­centered mode, which is what the term ultramontane designates. During the course of the nineteenth c­ entury the papacy lost

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control of the Papal States and even of the city of Rome, and by the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury the popes stood almost alone in thinking that the loss could be recovered. But also by the beginning of that ­century the popes had begun to exercise an authority over the church that was greater than ever before. Vatican I, the circumstances that gave rise to it, and the circumstances that followed it ­were responsible for this remarkable change. Vatican I was the largest and most international ad hoc body to meet for the longest period of time in the entire nineteenth c­ entury. Although not immediately obvious, it was a solemn and defiant statement against that ­century’s Liberalism, especially since the term designated advocacy of representative forms of government, of freedom of religion, of separation of church and state, and of secularizing programs in schools and other institutions. The reaction to Liberalism demonstrated a set of values deeply embedded in the traditional ruling classes of Western Eu­rope. Experience had taught that class that liberty, equality, and fraternity ­were not a panacea but a ­recipe for carnage and chaos. Although such sentiments gradually eroded, they have shown remarkable recuperative powers and have still not dis­appeared. The significance of the council thus extends beyond issues internal to the Catholic Church. The leaders of the g­ reat po­liti­cal powers saw this and therefore followed the council with considerable concern. Their ambassadors to the Holy See colluded with journalists and ­others to obtain information about what was ­going on and what it might mean for church–­state relations. Before the council met, Prince Chlodwig von Hohenlohe-­Schillingsfürst, prime minister of Bavaria, published a circular letter warning that the council threatened to set the church against the legitimate governments of Eu­rope. William Gladstone and Émile Ollivier, respectively the British and French prime ministers during the

Introduction

3

council, w ­ ere particularly attentive and hungry for information. ­A fter the council Gladstone and Bismarck published tracts denouncing it, and Ollivier issued a two-­volume history and analy­sis of it. The impulse to define primacy and infallibility did not drop out of the heavens. It was the result of a power­ful campaign mounted at the grass-­roots level largely by laymen. The campaign saw papal infallibility as the only ­v iable answer to the cultural, po­liti­cal, and religious crisis ignited by the French Revolution and its pan-­ European Napoleonic aftermath. It was a crisis, the campaign maintained, that ­unless met head-on held the direst consequences for the Catholic Church, for Chris­tian­ity, and for civilization ­itself. The only way to meet it was with an unchallengeable authority. The supposed urgency of the situation helps explain why the three-­hundred-­year gap between the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and Vatican I fi­nally was closed. In the ­M iddle Ages, between the First Lateran Council (1123) and the Council of Trent, ecumenical councils met on average once ­every forty years. Why, then, did such a large chronological gap yawn between Trent and Vatican I? As with ­every complex historical phenomenon, the reasons are multiple. Among them, however, three stand out. First, a­ fter the Council of Trent the persuasion grew among Catholics that Trent had solved all prob­lems. What was now needed if an issue requiring attention arose was to see what Trent had said, or, in many cases, what Trent would have said. Under­lying this persuasion was the more widespread and fundamental belief that the Catholic Church had to pres­ent itself to the Protestant world as internally coherent and ­free of prob­lems that ­were so pressing a council was needed. In a church that did not need reform, Catholics stood united against the ever-­changing Protestant and secular world. By the nineteenth ­century Catholic officialdom

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sedulously avoided speaking of reform as applicable to the church. Protestants had coopted the word and the need to reform, to both of which they ­were welcome.1 The second reason was the reluctance of the popes to risk what a council might decide, especially regarding themselves and their office. From the First Lateran Council ­until the Council of Constance (1414–1418), the popes looked upon councils as their allies in addressing prob­lems requiring serious attention, but with Constance that began to change. In 1378 the ­Great Western Schism broke out when two, then three men claimed to be the legitimate pope. Despite many serious efforts by rulers and churchmen to end the schism, it dragged on for some forty years. Constance was fi­ nally able to resolve the stalemate, but only by taking the drastic mea­sure of deposing two of the contenders, persuading the third to resign, and proceeding to elect a new pope, Martin V. From that point forward the relationship of pope to council became uneasy, to the point that at times the popes feared councils as if they ­were avenging angels. Their fear helps explain why a generation passed between the outbreak of the Reformation in 1517 and the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545. That council, which lasted off and on for eigh­teen years, did ­little to calm papal fears. The prelates at Trent early on deci­ded that reform of the papacy had to be one of their principal goals. Although the three popes who reigned during the three periods the council was in session resisted the council’s efforts in that regard, in the end they had to yield in some instances. The council’s reform mea­sures did not fully satisfy the more ardent reformers, but for the most part they operated to good effect for the church at large.2 The third and most immediate reason for the gap was the acrid politico-­ecclesiastical situation that began to develop in the ­m iddle of the seventeenth ­century and culminated in the latter de­cades

Introduction

5

of the eigh­teenth, just before the French Revolution. Although the church wanted to show a united front to the world, factions within it engaged in b­ itter disputes among themselves and in some instances forgot their differences to unite in challenging papal authority. This state of affairs was far too risky for a council.

A Changed Situation By the m ­ iddle of the nineteenth ­century, however, the situation had changed so thoroughly that Pius IX felt confident he could convoke a council. Catholics, now ready to forget grievances against the bishop of Rome they may have had at an earlier time, had under­g one one of the most remarkable changes in social consciousness in modern history. Although the change was Europe-­ wide, France was its epicenter. It transformed itself from the most formidable proponent of the “liberties” of the local church vis-­à-­vis the Holy See—­a central aspect of the phenomenon known as Gallicanism—to the most power­ful engine promoting Ultramontanism, the nineteenth-­century movement that exalted central, that is, papal authority.3 Gallicanism, similar to Ultramontanism in its multifaceted character, was other­w ise its polar opposite. Long before the council, however, classic Gallicanism had virtually dis­appeared, replaced by a much attenuated version that basically wanted to preserve, in the face of the more aggressive ultramontane claims, what they saw as the traditional role of bishops. Thus two factions developed in the church. Beneath the obvious ecclesiological difference between them lurked a methodological variance regarding the church’s tradition. The difference was the result of two divergent approaches to the deeply disturbing prob­lem of how the church was to deal with at least seeming discrepancies between past teachings and their pres­ent counter­parts.

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It was almost inevitable that the prob­lem would arise ­because in the nineteenth ­century historical approaches to almost e­ very aspect of culture began to dominate thinking in new and sometimes radical ways. The ultramontanes tended to ignore this development and assume that doctrine was above historical arguments that might challenge it. The other faction maintained that doctrine was somehow conditioned by historical contingencies and that it could not be properly understood without taking the contingences into account. Ultramontanism’s key doctrine of papal infallibility had roots in the M ­ iddle Ages, and theologians, especially since the seventeenth ­century, repeated the basic arguments in ­favor of it and in ­favor of a more papacy-­centered church. The most respected and widely read author in that camp was the Jesuit Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621).4 Only in the nineteenth ­century, however, did protagonists arise who could make ultramontane ideas seem so relevant and compelling to a large public that they had to be given practical force. Thus was born a movement. But implementing such ideas meant surrendering long-­held convictions about the prerogatives of the local church that u ­ ntil then had generally held sway in Catholicism. Thus arose a confrontation in the early nineteenth ­century that continued unabated u ­ ntil the final days of Vatican I. Papal primacy is papal preeminence in governing, whereas papal infallibility is papal preeminence in teaching. They constitute two distinct categories, yet they are so closely related that the latter can be understood as an aspect of the former. They both entered large into the thinking of the ultramontanes, but infallibility was where their attention was especially focused. Recognition that special re­spect was due to the successor of Saint Peter reached back to the earliest years of the church. It was

Introduction

7

based on the New Testament’s depiction of the leadership role that Peter played among Jesus’s disciples. Bishops and o ­ thers in both the East and the West generally acknowledged that special re­spect was due to Peter’s successors, but just what it entailed on the practical level was hotly disputed, a situation that persisted through the centuries.5 Apologists for Peter’s special role based their position principally upon three passages from the gospels. The first was the familiar passage from Matthew in which Jesus tells Peter he ­w ill build his church upon him (16:17–20). The second was from John in which he instructs Peter to feed his lambs and sheep (21:15–17). Parti­ cularly impor­tant for nineteenth-­century apologists for papal infallibility was the third passage, Jesus’s prayer for Peter in Luke: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and, when you have turned again, you w ­ ill strengthen your brethren” (22:31–34). As the so-­called pastoral epistles of the New Testament make clear, however, bishops other than the bishop of Rome early on emerged as the leaders of their respective communities. The original Greek term επισκοποι (episcopoi) meant “overseers,” “super­ visors,” or “stewards.” Bishops claimed that as the apostles’ successors, their authority to oversee and supervise their flocks derived from them. Their authority was therefore just as “apostolic” as Peter’s was. Despite ­bitter controversies in the West over the scope of popes’ preeminence in relationship to rulers, to local bishops, and eventually to councils, the preeminence was in theory almost universally acknowledged. This situation ended radically with the Reformation, which declared the pope the ­enemy of true Chris­tian­ity and even the anti-­Christ. Catholics rallied to the defense of the

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papacy, but they continued to disagree among themselves about the extent of the papacy’s authority, as the stalemates at the Council of Trent made obvious. In the eigh­teenth ­century the ministers of the g­ reat Catholic monarchs challenged papal claims at almost ­every turn. The definitions of Vatican I w ­ ere meant to end this situation once and for all.6 The pope’s preeminence in teaching, especially as expressed in infallibility, had just as complex a history and was subject to the same questions about its limits as was primacy. As early as the fifth ­century, the tradition had gained currency that “the Roman church” did not err in its stance on contested doctrines, a tradition generated by two f­actors. The first was Rome as the site of Peter’s martyrdom, which imbued the Roman church with a gravity no other could match, especially when Peter’s martyrdom was coupled with Paul’s to give the Roman church the unique quality of double apostolicity. The second fact was the Roman church’s remarkable rec­ord of supporting interpretations of disputed doctrines that eventually ­were accepted as orthodox. Rome’s tradition of not erring prepared the way for the gradual emergence in the ­M iddle Ages of the notion of papal infallibility. As Vatican I ­later defined it, infallibility is the doctrine asserting that when the pope, ­under certain conditions, pronounces that a teaching is of divine and apostolic faith, he cannot be mistaken, nor, as a consequence, can his pronouncement ­later be rescinded. Being inerrant is reactive, whereas being infallible is proactive. The former is constituted by bearing witness to the tradition of the church amid a doctrinal conflict. The latter is constituted by taking action by pronouncing upon a doctrine, ­whether or not it is being contested. It confers on a doctrine a new and unassailable authority, no ­matter how impressive the doctrine’s previous pedigree might have been.7

Introduction

9

Only sometime in the f­ourteenth ­century did popes, theologians, and canonists explic­itly begin to speak of infallibility. Although infallibility soon became a standard claim of the popes, it generally did not play a prominent part in their pronouncements, nor was it a central issue in theological discourse. The popes and their advocates, nonetheless, unfailingly maintained that solemn papal pronouncements ­were final and not subject to revision. The question of how such a position related to the more traditional doctrinal authority of ecumenical councils, however, skulked ominously in the background.8 For the ultramontanes of the nineteenth ­century, infallibility was the core of their movement, and the more aggressive among them saw the council as their opportunity to vindicate it. An irony is in play ­here. The ultramontanes seized the council as their opportunity to prevail, yet the council’s definition seemed in the eyes of some to render councils outmoded. If in the nineteenth ­century infallibility gained ground ­because of badly unsettled po­liti­cal conditions, its rise was just as due to the cultural, social, and intellectual challenges “the modern world” posed for the church. The Scientific Revolution threatened the Aristotelian system that had undergirded Catholic theology since the thirteenth ­century. The rationalism of the Enlightenment upset the balance between “faith and reason” in traditional Catholic theo­ logy and in its extreme form recognized no god but Reason. The French Revolution’s cry of liberty, equality, and fraternity undermined ecclesiastical as well as po­liti­cal hierarchy, a prob­lem compounded by the Industrial Revolution’s creation of an urban proletariat claiming—­sometimes by sticks, stones, and muskets—­a voice in affairs. The bourgeoisie’s demands for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion spelled, it seemed, the end of the discipline required to maintain public order in

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church and state, and new forms of biblical criticism threatened the credibility of the Bible. ­These and similar phenomena constituted for most Catholics the major and most pervasive prob­lems of the day, an opinion shared by Pope Pius IX. They challenged the very foundations upon which church and society had rested since time immemorial. The crisis was one of authority. Not all Catholics reacted negatively to ­these developments. ­There w ­ ere “liberal” Catholics who believed the church could and should embrace at least some of the tenets of Liberalism. They maintained, for instance, that the church should shed its allegiance to the monarchical forms of the ancien régime and align itself with the ­future, that is, with demo­cratic or republican forms of government. They ­were an impor­tant but lonely voice. Pius IX would have none of it. He conceived the council as the church’s negative response to Liberalism and to the modern world that had produced and then embraced it. On his own he had confronted that world with the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which ended with the seemingly catchall condemnation of the idea that the Roman pontiff should reconcile with pro­g ress, Liberalism, and modern culture. The prob­lem became so pressingly urgent for him that it required a council to deal with it. He was not alone in this conviction. As Cardinal Luigi Lambruschini said to him as early in the pontificate as 1849, just three years ­after Pius IX was elected: “I think that Your Holiness should in time (the time could be distant) assem­ble a general council in order to condemn modern errors, revive the faith of the Christian ­people, restore and reinforce ecclesiastical discipline, which in our days has become so feeble. Since the evils are so general, a general remedy must be applied.”9 When the council met twenty years ­later, the agenda closely corresponded to what Lambruschini indicated. Although the doc-

Introduction

11

uments prepared for it did not contain an explicit reference to papal infallibility, in retrospect we clearly see that the ultramontane campaign and the opposition it aroused led almost inexorably to Pastor Aeternus, which is an implicit but power­ful assertion that the proper social and po­liti­cal order of society is hierarchical. It is for Pastor Aeternus that Vatican I is remembered. Nonetheless, besides Pastor Aeternus, the council published Dei Filius, which dealt with the prob­lem of religious faith in an increasingly secular and skeptical world, a prob­lem still very much with us. As with Pastor Aeternus, therefore, Dei Filius makes Vatican I relevant ­today.

Vatican I and the Councils Lambruschini was for the most part on solid historical ground when he implied that ecumenical councils meet to deal with serious prob­lems that challenged the church at large. The most impor­tant feature common to all the councils, local and general, is that they w ­ ere assemblies in which bishops, successors of the apostles, always had the determining vote, even in councils convened by the emperor or empress. But each council had distinguishing marks, and Vatican I was no exception. Despite the bishops’ determining role, ­until Vatican I the laity was represented through Catholic rulers or their delegates, who took an official and active part in the councils’ proceedings. At Vatican I for the first time no laity took part in the council, even though the laity had an extraordinarily impor­tant impact on the council in other ways. Of the twenty-­one councils Catholics recognize as ecumenical, the first eight ­were held in modern-­d ay Turkey, and the language was Greek. Western influence, including papal influence, was in most instances small. The remaining thirteen w ­ ere held in Eu­rope,

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and the language was Latin. With the exception of the Council of Florence, Eastern Chris­tian­ity was virtually unrepresented, a direct result of the G ­ reat Schism between the two churches in 1054. In Vatican I, however, bishops from the Eastern churches that in the meantime had been reconciled with the Latin church participated. They soon recognized, though, that their opinions did not carry much weight. Seven of the Western councils w ­ ere held in Rome, three in France, one in Switzerland, and two in Italy outside Rome—in Florence and Trent. Vatican I was the first in Rome to be celebrated in Saint Peter’s Basilica. The o ­ thers took place in the pope’s cathedral, Saint John Lateran. Meeting in the pope’s hometown and u ­ nder his very eyes meant a quite dif­fer­ent dynamic than what prevailed at the Council of Trent, which had met hundreds of miles away. In number of bishop participants, Vatican I was among the larger councils, with over 700 bishops at its peak. Membership in the ­others generally numbered somewhere between 150 and 350 bishops, Constance was much larger, and Vatican II dwarfed them all with some 2,200 bishops generally pres­ent. Whereas at the Council of Trent not a single bishop came from outside Eu­rope, Vatican I opened with a sizable number from overseas. In that regard Vatican I became the first council that could justly claim to be worldwide. Nonetheless, it was quintessentially a Eu­ro­pean gathering: It was held in Eu­rope. The issues it dealt with ­were Eu­ro­pean in that they had their origin in Eu­ro­pean history and for the most part had urgency only in Eu­rope. The business was conducted in Latin, a Eu­ro­pean language, and all the most influential participants ­were Eu­ro­pean. But as the implications of Pastor Aeternus became clearer, the council had a strikingly church-­ wide impact.

Introduction

13

The Catholic press that promoted Ultramontanism, especially journals such as L’Univers in France and La Civiltà Cattolica in Italy, very much influenced Catholic thinking on what came to be the key issue at the council, infallibility. But journals did not do the job alone. The monographs and tracts that flew from the pens of ultramontane thinkers likewise effected the change in social consciousness that preceded the council. The opposition was never able to mount a similarly effective campaign. ­There w ­ ere exceptions. Immediately before and during the council, for instance, Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), the impor­tant church historian from Munich, stirred up opposition on an international level. True, Luther’s writings and the writings of other Reformers ­shaped much of the agenda of the Council of Trent, the first time that the impact of the invention of printing was felt in a council. But the influence of the press on Vatican I was dif­fer­ent in that it was more consistent in its focus on one issue, papal authority. It also was multinational in the location of its publications and incomparably greater in the sheer quantity of material it produced. The impact of the press was, therefore, another of the traits of Vatican I distinguishing it from preceding councils.

Pius IX The popes who convened councils invariably had a major influence on the outcome. That is true to such an emphatic degree for Pius IX and Vatican Council I that his impact gave rise to the accusation that the council was not f­ree but manipulated by the pope to accomplish the result he desired. It was an accusation that did not lack credibility. Giovanni Maria Mastai-­Ferretti was born in Senigallia near Ancona in the upper reaches of the Papal States on May 13, 1792. His

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f­amily, not wealthy but certainly not impoverished, belonged to the minor nobility of the region and, unlike most families of that class, showed a cautious openness to some of the new ideas that ­were in the air. The young Giovanni Maria attended a school in Volterra run by the Piarists, a religious order with a number of schools in Italy at the time. While ­there, he showed an interest in science, but the curriculum posed few intellectual challenges. T ­ oward the end of his program he suffered severe attacks of epilepsy. Although he was eventually cured, the disease took its toll, leaving him subject to occasional but severe mood swings for the rest of his life. Normally jovial, he could change in an instant and startle t­ hose pres­ent with an angry outburst. Shocking though the bad moments w ­ ere, they w ­ ere relatively rare. When he was himself, he spontaneously and unselfconsciously charmed all who met him, a trait often mentioned even by ­those who disagreed with his policies. In March 1816, when he was almost twenty-­four years old, he deci­ded, a­ fter having gone on several religious retreats, to become a priest. Although many of his relatives held relatively high positions in the church, Giovanni Maria seems to have been entirely ­free from ecclesiastical ambition and wanted nothing more than to be a good pastor. ­After some hasty religious studies at the Jesuits’ Roman College, he was ordained in 1819, a bare three years ­after having made his decision. His was a sparse philosophical-­theological training. In 1823, through a strange combination of circumstances, Pope Leo XII named him a member of a papal diplomatic mission to Chile, the f­uture pope’s only venture outside Italy for his entire life. When he returned three years ­later, he became director of the Istituto San Michele, one of the most impor­tant social relief ser­ vices in Rome. In that position he showed some administrative

Introduction

15

ability, which led to his being named bishop of Spoleto in 1827 and bishop of Imola in 1832. In t­hose po­liti­cally difficult years in the Papal States, he steered a relatively moderate course; he was certainly out of sympathy with many of the reactionary ecclesiastical policies of the reigning pope, Gregory XVI. When Gregory died in 1846, the cardinals ­were ready for a more conciliatory pope, and their choice landed on Cardinal Mastai-­Ferretti, elected on the fourth ballot. Genuinely devout, the new pope had a ­simple and unbounded faith in the workings of divine providence, which stood him in good stead during an extraordinarily long and challenging pontificate. On an intellectual and cultural level, he was poorly equipped to deal with the complex prob­lems of “the modern world.” Unfortunately he was surrounded by persons whose life experience was as limited as his own. A key figure in the curia at the time was Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, Pius’s secretary of state for almost his entire pontificate, from 1848 u ­ ntil Pius’s death in 1878. In terms of character and personality, Antonelli was the direct opposite of his master. If Pius was emotional, gregarious, affable, and pious, Antonelli was cold, self-­serving, and capable of playing a double game. But he was astute, devoted to Pius, and took seriously his impor­tant office. Yet theirs was a curious partnership. Although Antonelli stayed very much in the background during Vatican I, he is impor­tant in the council’s history b­ ecause before, during, and ­after the council he had to deal with the drive for Italian unity, the Risorgimento, which in 1870 resulted in the demise of the Papal States and the establishment of Rome as the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy. This background story to the council is indispensable for understanding the policies of Pius IX and the events leading up to Vatican I.10

Portrait of Pope Pius IX at the time of his election, 1846. By Ludovico Aureli. Bologna, Museo Civico del Risorgimento. Photo by De Agostini. (Courtesy of DEA/A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini Editorial Collection/Getty Images.)

Introduction

17

Since the ­M iddle Ages Italy consisted of a number of in­de­pen­ dent states. With the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814, ­these states w ­ ere reconfigured and reconstituted by the Congress of Vienna. ­There ­were nine of them, among which the Papal States was one of the larger ones. The Congress also reinstated Austria in the territory of the former Republic of Venice, which stretched westward all the way to Milan. Italians resented this situation, especially as Austria tried to extend its influence into the politics of other Italian states. The passion to rid Italy of the hated Austrians morphed easily into a fervor to unite Italy, fueled by the general upsurge of nationalist sentiment in Eu­rope in the early nineteenth ­century and by the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in France and elsewhere in Eu­rope. Pius was similar to his pre­de­ces­sor, Pope Gregory XVI, in that he had to contend not only with the larger issue of the unification of Italy, with all the questions this raised about the status of Rome and the Papal States, but with chronic po­l iti­cal unrest in the States themselves. The States w ­ ere generally considered among the most backward and ill governed in Eu­rope, and resentment of “the govern­ ment of priests” was strong and growing stronger. In November 1848, just two years a­ fter his election, the tense situation in Rome forced Pius to flee the city and remain in exile ­until April 1850. He was able to return to Rome only by the humiliating expedient of appealing for aid to a foreign power, Louis Napoleon. The prince-­president of France sent an expeditionary force that restored the city to Pius. By the ­m iddle of the c­ entury the drive to unite Italy ­under the Piedmont monarchy was moving fast, a feat that could not be accomplished without including the States, which cut the peninsula in two. The leaders of the movement agreed, moreover, that Rome had to be the capital of the new nation. The popes of the nineteenth

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T TRE YRO NT L IN

O

SAVOY

Milan KINGDOM OF PIEDMONTSARDINIA

Papal States

Venice VENETIA

LOMBARDY

Genoa

DUCHY OF PARMA

Y O OF GN A

FRANCE

Under Austrian control

AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

RO

OTTOMAN

M AG

CH L DU BO

EMPIRE

NA

Nice

TH

TE UM

PA PA L

S TA

S

Corsica

A

HE

FRANCE

A

RC

TUSCANY

EM

S

Florence

B

D

R

IA

A RI

T

I C

S

E A

Rome

K I N G D O M Naples KINGDOM OF PIEDMONTSARDINIA

O F

Sardinia

T H E

T W O M E D I T E R R A N E A N

S E A

S I C I L I E S Sicily

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

0 0

100 Miles 100 Kilometers

Map of Italy, ca. 1850, showing the extent of the Papal States and of the Austrian domains in the area between Venice and Milan. (Courtesy of Patti Isaacs, 45th Parallel Maps and Lithograhics.)

c­ entury, like their pre­de­ces­sors for centuries, considered the Papal States, and most especially the city of Rome, a sacred trust, a holy legacy that they could never surrender. No pope was more convinced of this truth than Pius IX. But by 1859 the Italian forces had occupied and controlled every­thing except a relatively small area near and around Rome,

Introduction

19

where they lay in wait for the opportunity to seize the city. That opportunity came on September 20, 1870, and shortly a­ fter Pius IX declared the council in recess ­until November. The First Vatican Council was never able to reassemble. It abided in a state of limbo ­u ntil July 14, 1960, when Pope John XXIII cleared up doubts by letting it be known that the council he had earlier announced was to be called Vatican II. Technically speaking, the story of the First Vatican Council does not end ­until that date.

Sources and Authors Historians have at their disposal more than enough original documents to reconstruct the history of Vatican I. Preeminent among them are the official acts of the council—­principally the speeches and drafts of the documents, which have long been available in a reliable edition.11 In the late twentieth ­century the diaries of two council participants and one of a journalist with an inside track ­were published, throwing more light on the council.12 Further information is found in the correspondence of participants and of the officials of dif­fer­ent governments. Vatican I was big news in its day, and journals and newspapers from the era help fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Although certainly less abundantly than Vatican II, the First Vatican Council has, from the time it was convened, generated a large quantity of lit­er­a­ture, much of it polemical or apol­o­getic during and immediately ­after it. That situation gradually changed. Not surprisingly, the convocation of Vatican II renewed interest in Vatican I. Although Vatican II almost obsessively asserted its continuity with Vatican I, the council’s promulgation of the doctrine of episcopal collegiality raised questions about the previous council’s doctrines of primacy and infallibility and gave

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impetus to further studies of Vatican I. Theologians began to review gallican and liberal claims and assess them less negatively than when they repudiated them at the council. The bibliography at the end of this book provides a listing of the studies I have cited. Two works, upon which I have heavi­ly relied, are basic. The first is the three-­volume study of the pontificate of Pius IX by the Italian Jesuit Giacomo Martina.13 This is Martina’s major work, based on de­cades of archival research and marked by balanced judgments on the pope and his policies. Although it contains only one chapter on the council, it provides indispensable background for understanding Pius IX and the role he assumed at the council. The second is another three-­volume work by another Jesuit, the German historian Klaus Schatz. This work is a detailed history of the council, the most thorough ever published and prob­ably the most thorough that w ­ ill ever be published.14 It is a model of careful scholarship, and I could not have written this book without it. Indispensable though Martina and Schatz are for the history of Vatican I, a one-­volume history by Roger Aubert, a Belgian canon, continues to be helpful, despite being published well over a half c­entury ago.15 Aubert’s other studies of the nineteenth-­ century church, some of which have been translated into En­g lish, provide good background. Mention must be made of the volume he helped edit containing a concordance of the words in the final decrees of Vatican I, a research tool useful for the scholar.16 Although it also does not have the benefit of recent scholarship, still worth reading is the two-­volume history of the council published in 1930 by the En­glish Benedictine Dom Cuthbert Butler. His history moves at a pace and at a level that make the subject accessible to the nonprofessional.17

Introduction

21

This book’s first chapter, “Catholicism and the ­Century of Lights,” describes events and ideologies that developed in the eigh­ teenth ­century, named the ­century of lights. It is pivotal for the rest of the book. In the nineteenth ­century, in both secular and religious society, controversy raged over ­those events and ideologies, especially as encapsulated during the French Revolution. My subsequent chapters tell how that controversy played out in the Catholic Church at the highest level, culminating in the First Vatican Council as a rejection of the previous c­ entury. Is it still not strange that a book that ostensibly is about Vatican Council I dedicates only two of its five chapters to the council itself? Yet ­there was almost an inevitability about how the council turned out that was certainly not true of ­either the Council of Trent or the Second Vatican Council. For both of t­hose councils the fore-­ history is definitely impor­tant. Without it ­those councils are unintelligible, but both of them turned out in ways that could not be anticipated. The opposite is true of Vatican I. Papal infallibility was so vehemently disputed before the council that we can see even more clearly than contemporaries that it was destined to be the focus and to be defined. History takes unpredictable turns, but not always. It often moves along a more or less predictable trajectory. Vatican I was the result of such a trajectory. The prehistory of Vatican I is as intrinsic to the council as the event itself. But my book’s title indicates another reason that the early chapters are integral to the book’s subject. Besides being about the First Vatican Council, this work is about “the making of the ultramontane church,” a historical pro­cess in which the council was the defining moment but certainly not the end. If we understand the making of the ultramontane church generically as the growth of

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papal authority in the church, then it obviously began long before the nineteenth c­ entury. But if we understand it as the special phase of that growth known to contemporaries of it as ultramontane, then the story begins a few years a­ fter the Congress of Vienna (1815). The half ­century that elapsed between that date and the conclusion of the council is the classic phase of the making of the ultramontane church. The council, though the centerpiece of the making of the ultramontane church and in one perspective its culmination, is certainly not its terminal date. A ­ fter the council, the “making” continued, a phenomenon in which even seemingly unrelated events such as the invention of radio, tele­v i­sion, and jet travel played a role. The book prompts questions, therefore, that go beyond 1870 and take us into the pres­ent. We are thus almost forced to ask ourselves whether the term ultramontane can validly be applied to the Catholic Church ­today and, if it can, in what ways and to what degree.

1 Catholicism and the Century of Lights

I

n Catholic areas of Eu­rope in 1869, on the eve of the council, the churches ­were full. Men, ­women, and ­children participated with obvious sincerity in a rich variety of religious devotions, including public pro­cessions and pilgrimages to local shrines. New religious ­orders of ­women had sprung up, and vocations to the priesthood ­were plentiful. Nuns and priests ­were leaving Eu­rope in large numbers to spend their lives in foreign missions, usually with ­little prospect of ever returning home. Such phenomena ­were not deceptive. Almost wherever the Catholic Church found itself, it showed remarkable vigor. By 1870 the church numbered perhaps as many as two hundred million members, of whom three-­quarters lived in Eu­rope. Membership was especially concentrated in four areas—­France, Italy, Austria-­ Hungary, and the Iberian Peninsula. With about 37.5 million Catholics in a total population of 38 million, France was the strongest Catholic nation. By midcentury it sent two-­t hirds of all missionaries leaving from Eu­rope. Two de­cades l­ater it numbered one nun for e­ very 350 inhabitants of the country. Although sharply divided ideologically, France led the church in new Catholic initiatives, which flowed from ­t here to

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the rest of the church.1 But in Spain, Italy, and the traditionally Catholic area of German-­speaking lands, the populations showed themselves similarly devoted to their Catholic heritage and ready to meet the challenges of the day.2 This vigor is all the more remarkable when viewed against the background of fifty years earlier. The French Revolution and its pan-­European Napoleonic aftermath had traumatized the Catholic Church. As the Revolution became ever more radical, it turned anti-­Catholic. Voltaire’s wish, Écrasons l’infâme—­Let us destroy the villainous t­ hing—­became a rallying cry. Before this turn of events, large segments of the clergy supported the Revolution and its goals, but the situation soon soured. The Revolution had hardly begun when the government, on the verge of bankruptcy, seized all the property of the French church, an act that with one blow reduced the richest church in Christendom almost to destitution. At the Revolution’s most radical stage, the Reign of Terror, the government sent priests, nuns, and bishops to the guillotine and drove o ­ thers into exile. Angry mobs sacked and destroyed churches and monasteries. The Revolution was far from being an exclusively French affair, though nowhere did it devolve into forms as radical as ­those in France. E ­ very country in Western Eu­rope felt its impact, and the church suffered accordingly. Across Eu­rope the onslaught devastated the ­g reat religious ­orders such as the Dominicans and the Franciscans, reducing their membership to an almost negligible level. The execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette threatened all monarchies and by extension the church, which for centuries had supported the monarchies and in turn had been supported by them. The executions put fear into the hearts of kings, not least that of Pius VI, the pope of the era, a monarch by virtue of his office as ruler of the Papal States.

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25

Despite all, the church survived and emerged from the trauma seemingly stronger and more vibrant than before. It faced, however, new and extraordinarily difficult challenges, many of which w ­ ere due to the ongoing effects of the Revolution and to the philosophies that undergirded it. The challenges included the dramatic social changes resulting from the Industrial Revolution and from the new means of transportation and communication such as the railroad and the telegraph. They included the intellectual changes emerging from the newly critical approaches to the past, which did not spare sacred texts and sacred traditions. The Enlightenment had, moreover, turned Eu­rope’s face away from the past, with its superstition and obscurantism, t­oward an ever-­brighter ­future. In this scheme of history’s course, modernity was not simply a designation of the pres­ent state of affairs but an ideology. According to this ideology, the pres­ent is better than the past and the sooner the past is forgotten, the better for all. Heavy ideological baggage now weighed down the word modern. Tradition, once a norm in belief and a source of cultural enrichment, had shifted into an obstacle blocking the march of pro­g ress. For both friend and foe the Catholic Church stood for tradition in its most unqualified form. Although to some degree challenges like ­these affected every­ body in the church, they most directly troubled the church’s leaders—­the popes and the bishops. For good reason, many of ­those leaders looked with dismay upon what was taking place before their eyes and interpreted it as destructive to fundamental Christian values. They therefore set the church in opposition to the modern world and felt obliged to take on the role of chief defenders of a church and a civilization ­under siege. Politicians and leaders of other churches sometimes reacted in similar ways, but

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the popes had a higher profile, a sharper rhe­toric, and the allegiance of a much larger flock. Meanwhile, by the early de­cades of the nineteenth c­ entury the bishops and the two popes—­Gregory XVI (r. 1831–1846) and his successor, Pius IX—­found themselves caught in a b­ itter controversy internal to the church, the scope of papal authority. The controversy became so serious that at one point it threatened to end in a major schism.

Before the Revolution The church’s trou­bles began well before the Revolution. Even though some ­were long-­standing, they coalesced in a way particularly threatening to the papacy in the eigh­teenth c­ entury. That ­century certainly was not without its positive aspects for the church, but it was riddled with rivalries and conflicts of vari­ous kinds.3 Among them, few ­were more consistently worrisome to the popes than politico-­theological positions that emphasized the authority of local or national churches, which invariably entailed a qualification of papal authority. The best known of t­ hese is Gallicanism, the properly French version of a phenomenon that during the latter half of the eigh­teenth c­ entury had impor­tant counter­ parts elsewhere, most notably in Febronianism in Germany and Josephism in Austria-­Hungary. Although Gallicanism had roots deep in the past, properly speaking it came into existence with the Four Articles of the declaration of 1682 of the Assembly of the Clergy of France.4 A dispute between Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI led to the assembly, at which the bishops worked out and then subscribed to the Four Articles. Historians have refuted the long-­accepted view that the king dominated the meeting and dictated the policy, and they have

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27

conclusively shown that the articles reflected the genuine and traditional views of the French clergy (as well as the views of prob­ably most clergy in Eu­rope at the time). Nonetheless, the relationship of classical Gallicanism to the French crown was intrinsic. The first article, for instance, stated that Christ bestowed on Peter and his successors authority over spiritual m ­ atters but not over temporal ones, an assertion of the rights of kings to manage their kingdoms. The second moved to more directly ecclesiastical concerns by declaring that full spiritual authority rested with the Holy See but that the decree Haec Sancta about the authority of councils, passed by the Council of Constance in the wake of the ­Great Western Schism, remained valid and could not be interpreted as applying “only to the period of the [­Great Western] schism.” The third article asserted what came to be called “the liberties of the French church,” that is, long-­standing customs, usages, self-­determining practices, and institutions of the French church, sanctioned by time and the esteem of the w ­ hole church, are to be respected by the Holy See and are inviolable, an indirect but clear moderation of the exercise of papal primacy in the kingdom of France. It is article 4 that is most pertinent to the controversy over infallibility at Vatican I: “In questions of faith the leading role is that of the Supreme Pontiff, and his decrees apply to all churches in general and to each of them in par­t ic­u ­lar. But his judgment is not unchangeable [Latin, irreformabile], ­unless it receives the consent of the church.”5 Although the text can seem to imply subsequent approval of a papal judgment, the meaning is broader. It could just as well be translated as “­unless it accords with the consensus of the church.” No ­matter how it is translated, the article was a strong affirmation of papal prerogatives regarding doctrine, even though it contains an impor­tant caveat.

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In 1691 Pope Alexander VIII issued the bull Inter Multiplices, which proclaimed the declaration of 1682 null and void. This was an expression of ­g reat disfavor for the articles, but it went no further. What restrained the pope was almost certainly only the fear of the po­liti­cal repercussions of an outright condemnation. In any case, the bull was interpreted to mean that the articles’ teaching, though in g­ reat disfavor, could still be tolerated. A principal author of the articles was the bishop, theologian, and renowned preacher Jacques-­Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704). He is therefore a good interpreter of article 4. Bossuet, an informed student of church history, was well aware of times when the Roman church had been saved through the action of the w ­ hole church, as in the rescue of the papacy from the clutches of the Roman nobility in the eleventh ­century. His conclusion: “It is therefore the full and supreme and universal authority of the Catholic Church that supplies what is lacking even in the Roman church.”6 Bossuet’s conclusion was a common theological opinion, subscribed to by theologians who w ­ ere neither French nor gallican.7 That “full and supreme and universal authority of the Catholic church” was most generally exercised by bishops gathered in council. In the Christian tradition this implicit gallican emphasis on episcopal authority rested on impeccable credentials. In the first millennium of Chris­tian­ity and even ­later, bishops on their own and especially when gathered in councils, both local and general, governed the church. That was a history that gallican bishops and theologians in the seventeenth ­century and ­later knew well. For that reason, they supported the Four Articles, though they did not necessarily support a form that belittled the papacy or one that was strongly regal. In other words, although the articles remained the historical touchstone, Gallicanism was a complex real­ity that was not necessarily understood in the same way even by persons who

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identified themselves as gallican. In time, moreover, the term came to be used all too freely and polemically, especially by the ultramontanes of the nineteenth ­century. What­ever its theological justification, kings and their ministers often coopted gallican princi­ples to promote the ideal of national churches only tangentially related to the Holy See, a Gallicanism distinct from that of bishops, gallicanisme ecclésiastique. By the ­m iddle of the eigh­teenth ­century the regal impulse reached a peak. For strong support, it was able to call upon Febronianism, a new ecclesiological position that originated in Germany and had strong affinities with classical Gallicanism. In reaction to what he considered the unwarranted interference in local church affairs by a papal nuncio, an other­wise obscure auxiliary bishop of Trier named Johann Nikolas von Hontheim (1701–1790) published u ­ nder the pseudonym Justinus Febronius a Latin best seller, De statu ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani pontificis (On the constitution of the church and the legitimate power of the Roman pontiff, 1763). The book was immediately put on the Index of Forbidden Books, which helped spur translations into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. It was the first of several similar treatises that appeared in Austria, Spain, and Portugal between 1750 and 1770. Thus Febronianism was born. Hontheim saw his generation as recovering, through historical studies, a better idea of how papal authority, as exercised in his day, had expanded from what it was in the early centuries and how it had gradually usurped the liberties enjoyed by the local episcopacy.8 In reaction he sought to strengthen the authority of bishops. At the same time he nourished an ecumenical hope for the day when all Germans might be spiritually united, a goal that could be fulfilled only through an emphasis on the authority of councils, local and general, and a correlative de-­emphasis on the authority

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of the papacy. In contrast, he showed considerable deference to temporal rulers as guardians of the church and promoters of its well-­being. In Catholic areas of Germany, Febronianism deeply influenced theologians and other educated Catholics, which partly explains their l­ater re­sis­tance to Vatican I. The royalist aspect of Hontheim’s teaching appealed especially to Emperor Joseph II of Austria (r. 1765–1790). Thus the stage was set for the emergence of Josephism, whose very name underscores the monarch’s role. In implicit defiance of the papacy, the emperor affirmed the right of the state to regulate religious affairs in­de­pen­ dently of the pope. In 1791, for instance, he suppressed over five hundred monasteries in Austro-­Slav lands and reor­g a­n ized the training of priests ­under state control.9 Many of Joseph’s reforms ­were badly needed, though not always in the scope the emperor employed. The church was wealthy and enjoyed privileges that sometimes did it more harm than good. It lumbered along with many outmoded procedures and with institutions that had lost vitality and lost touch with a rapidly evolving culture. The church suffered from routine and overload. Joseph II was far from being the only person aware of the prob­lem, nor the only one to take action. In fact, many Catholics and Catholic groups, influenced by the Enlightenment’s drive for simplicity in strategies and for the elimination or radical restructuring of institutions seemingly l­ittle more than unproductive relics from the past, tried to proceed in similar ways. Although bishops w ­ ere among them, most e­ ither lacked the w ­ ill to undertake the needed changes or felt they had insufficient authority and practical means to do so. But the high-­handedness with which the emperor, the traditional guardian of the church, carried out his program made it an especial challenge to papal sensibilities. In 1782, the year ­after the

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suppression of the monasteries, Pope Pius VI took the extraordinary step of traveling to Vienna to try to negotiate a compromise, which was the first time a pope had left Italy in over two centuries. The emperor received him with elaborate ceremony but conceded nothing.10 The visit was not, however, a total loss for Pius VI. As he made his way to the imperial capital, exuberant crowds thronged to see him and cheered him as he passed. Whenever he appeared in public during his month-­long stay, he experienced the same enthusiastic reception. This demonstration of the distance between the popu­lar sentiment of Joseph’s ­people and his own made the emperor and his advisers ner­vous. They ­were happy to see the pope leave—­and happy they had stood their ground. At about the same time, ­Grand Duke Peter Leopold I of Tuscany, Joseph’s b­ rother and his successor as emperor, implemented a similar policy and tried to take it further through his sponsorship in 1786 of the Synod of Pistoia.11 The synod was a ten-­d ay meeting of some two hundred fifty priests who gathered u ­ nder the leadership of Scipione de’ Ricci, bishop of Pistoia-­Prato. It became a byword for radical reforms such as basing authority in the church upon the consent of the faithful, and the authority of bishops upon the consent of their clergy. It exalted the authority of civil power. It voted to replace Latin in church ser­v ices with the vernacular, to suppress the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and to work for the reduction of all religious ­orders to one body with a common habit. The synod went too far. At an episcopal convocation in Florence the next year, the majority of Tuscan bishops refused to support it. At the grass-­roots level, demonstrations broke out against one or another of its mea­sures. The unrest and disturbances climaxed in May 1787, when a mob carry­ing clubs and stones assembled in Prato

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protesting Bishop Ricci’s decision to demolish an altar sacred to a relic of the Virgin Mary. The rioters sacked the bishop’s palace, invaded the seminary, and threatened the professors with death. Only when troops arrived was order restored. The g­ rand duke had to reckon with the fact that no m ­ atter how enlightened his reforms might be, his subjects did not want them. Fi­nally, in 1794, Pope Pius VI in his bull Auctorem Fidei condemned eighty-­five of the synod’s provisions.12 The synod was the high-­water mark of attempts to implement such policies before the outbreak of the Revolution just three years ­later. But refusal of the governments of Austria, Tuscany, Naples, Turin, Venice, Milan, Spain, Portugal, and the Constitutionalist French clergy to publish the bull indicates the depths to which papal authority and prestige had sunk. Both Leopold and Ricci ­were Jansenists, and the program at Pistoia reflected the influence of late-­Jansenist ideals as much as ­those of Febronianism and the Enlightenment. The synod’s condemnation of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus immediately signaled the Jansenist inspiration of much the synod hoped to accomplish. Jansenism was a radical reform movement in the Catholic Church. Unlike most such movements, which ­were essentially efforts to restore older canonical regulations or more austere behavioral practices, Jansenism had a firm, though contested, theological foundation. It espoused positions similar in many regards to Calvinist ones and sometimes identical with them.13 They included belief in ­human depravity, the impotence of the ­human ­w ill, the irresistible character of grace, and, hence, a preordained determination of who would be saved. Jansenism also included a severe moral and ascetical code. It looked back to the supposedly pure church of Christian antiquity.

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Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), the movement’s founder, had set out to reform the Catholic Church through such teachings and in the pro­cess save it from the pernicious influence of the Jesuits, who according to him and l­ater Jansenists promoted a lax morality and, by their emphasis on freedom of the ­w ill, had embraced the save-­yourself heresy known as Pelagianism. Although Jansenism originated in Louvain, it almost immediately moved to Paris, which became its epicenter. In accordance with their austere moral program, the Jansenists sought a purification of piety. They disdained many practices of popu­lar devotion and wanted to replace them with forms more in accord with the practices of the patristic era. They held pilgrimages, novenas, relics, and devotions such as that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in contempt, and they ­were highly skeptical of heavenly visions and apparitions. Despising the exuberance of the baroque culture that had taken the church by storm in the early seventeenth ­century, they wanted to simplify church interiors.14 True devotion, according to them, should be centered on the reading of scripture and on devout assistance at Mass, which should be celebrated in the vernacular. In some of t­ hese regards Jansenism was indistinguishable from Catholic Enlightenment. The movement was hardly ­under way before its doctrinal positions ­were condemned. Jansen’s Augustinus was published posthumously in 1640, and just two years l­ater Pope Urban VIII condemned it with the bull In Eminenti. A de­cade l­ater Pope Innocent X condemned five Jansenist propositions with the apostolic constitution Cum Occasione. Other condemnations followed, all of which failed to halt the spread of the movement in elite circles of secular and clerical society alike. The condemnations by both church and state helped turn Jansenists into champions of freedom of conscience, as they reacted against leaders they considered tyrannical and unprincipled.

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Louis XIV’s brutal destruction of the Jansenist center, Port Royal, in 1703 did not destroy the movement, as shown by the necessity Pope Clement XI felt in 1713 to publish the bull Unigenitus Dei Filius, which condemned 101 propositions attributed to the Jansenists. Unigenitus created an uproar in France. It gave rise to protests that it was an illegitimate intrusion of the papacy into the affairs of the French church and an affront to that church’s liberties. In this way Jansenists and gallicans became sometime partners. Long before Unigenitus, the Jansenist movement had grown into a pan-­European phenomenon and outside France had infiltrated into ecclesiologies similar to Gallicanism. Thus, Jansenism, though remaining distinctive by reason of its focus on ­human depravity and the irresistible power of grace, became at least a fellow traveler with other movements that espoused a qualified authority of the papacy over the affairs of the church. By the m ­ iddle of the eigh­teenth ­century, when Unigenitus was still a live issue, a new generation of royal ministers intent on building a stronger nation took over the reins in the Bourbon monarchies of France, Spain, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily). Creatures of the Enlightenment whose real religious convictions w ­ ere at best shallow, they saw the church as a branch of the state, useful insofar as it served the state, according to the axiom “The church is in the state, not the state in the church.” With a national church as their ideal, they resented papal authority and had ­little re­spect for the pope. Such men saw Gallicanism, its counter­parts, and Jansenism as ideological allies they could manipulate for their own purposes. Among ­these ministers Sebastião José Carvalho e Melo, better known as the Marquis de Pombal, is among the more impor­tant. He acted as prime minister for King Joseph I of Portugal from 1750 to 1777. While he implemented many administrative, educational,

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and economic reforms, he used them to advance the authority of the state as well as his own ­career. Even more than other religious ­orders, the Jesuits represented an internationalism that irked a minister like Pombal ­eager to promote the authority of the crown. Early in his tenure he undertook a relentless campaign against them, which in 1759 resulted in a royal decree expelling them from Portugal and Portugal’s overseas domains. In this campaign Pombal had several goals in mind, which included enriching the state by appropriating Jesuit properties. But he also used his anti-­Jesuit campaign to humiliate the papacy by demonstrating its inability to protect such a large and prestigious religious order. Pombal set in motion a concerted movement against the Jesuits, whose fate became the ecclesiastical cause célèbre of the second half of the ­century.15 The Parlement of Paris took up where Pombal had left off and in 1764 secured the suppression of the Jesuits in France. In Spain in 1767 King Charles III, on the urging of his ministers, banned them from the kingdom and its territories overseas; the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a satellite of Spain, did the same. The ministers of t­ hese Bourbon monarchies had thus positioned themselves to obtain their ultimate goal, a papal suppression of the Jesuits worldwide. They mercilessly applied pressure to a reluctant but pliant Pope Clement XIV, who in 1773 fi­nally did the deed. Although getting rid of the Jesuits certainly gratified them, its demonstration of how the papacy could be forced to do their w ­ ill perhaps gratified them even more. For the papacy, worse was still to come. Impor­tant though Gallicanism, Jansenism, and a newly aggressive nationalism are for understanding the position of the church in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century, perhaps even more

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impor­tant is the impact of the Enlightenment. Complex and multiform, the Enlightenment was differently appropriated by dif­ fer­ent groups and counted within its ranks many bishops and priests as well as ­those who despised such men.16 Despite its complexity, the Enlightenment was a fairly coherent intellectual movement in its basic assumptions and goals. For many Enlightenment phi­los­o­phers few goals ­were more primary than the pursuit of po­liti­cal liberty, equality, and fraternity, goals that took on par­tic­u­lar resonance in influential circles in France. ­Those goals ­were not necessarily incompatible with the po­liti­cal status quo or with the Catholic culture of the times, and hence they w ­ ere easily embraced by large segments of the elite. But in the extremely difficult economic situation of France in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century, they began to take on ominous implications. Many in the po­liti­cal and religious establishment began to fear that if implemented, they would overturn the right order of society. When the Revolution broke out and became ever more violent, they saw to their dismay how correct their assessment had been. Integral to the pursuit of liberty w ­ ere freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. The first two freedoms ultimately meant the end, or at least a significant reduction, of censorship by church and state. Freedom of religion meant the end of the confessional state that had come into being with the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which famously decreed that each ruler had the right to determine the form Chris­tian­ity would take in his realm and to insist that his subjects conform to it. Undergirding ­these freedoms was the assumption that legitimate authority did not descend from on high but rested upon the f­ree assent of the governed. Although this assumption did not originate with the thinkers of the Enlightenment, they developed it

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more fully and passionately, and in an age of absolute monarchies they wittingly or unwittingly imbued it with subversive force. Even more basic to the Enlightenment everywhere was confidence in the power of ­human reason. It took dif­fer­ent forms, many of which included the possibility of transcendent divine revelation. In its extreme forms, however, it rejected the very possibility of realities beyond the power of reason to understand, and it strove to demystify any phenomena that claimed super­natural origin or sanction. Fundamental in ­every form was the belief that reason would continue to triumph over the past and over ignorance, superstition, and all forms of repression. Historians long forgot that the values and perspectives we associate with the Enlightenment developed in France, Italy, Austria, and similar countries within fundamentally Catholic milieus simply as part of the cultural air that ­people breathed. The values and perspectives, which ­were not always coherent among themselves, w ­ ere not the abstraction we call the Enlightenment but questions and issues discussed and debated in elite circles as they ­rose to prominence. They developed, moreover, at a gradual pace and in piecemeal fashion over the course of de­cades and ­were in a gradual and piecemeal way appropriated or not appropriated by believers, who w ­ ere still the vast majority in t­ hose countries. Partly for that reason the incompatibility of Catholicism with at least some aspects of the Enlightenment did not become an acute issue ­until ­after the m ­ iddle of the eigh­teenth c­ entury. Pope Benedict XIV (r. 1740–1758) not only showed no animosity ­toward the Enlightenment but behaved in ways that demonstrated its profound influence upon him. For instance, he successfully supported the removal of Galileo’s writings from the Index of Prohibited Books, and in 1741, just a­ fter his election, he seemingly without scruple accepted Voltaire’s dedication to him of his play

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Mahomet. Although ­toward the end of his pontificate his attitude hardened, he remained an outstanding model of an enlightened bishop.17 Historians have therefore challenged the once-­canonical view that the eigh­teenth ­century was essentially an age of religious skepticism and declining belief.18 They speak of a Catholic Enlightenment, by which they mean the selective appropriation by bishops and o ­ thers of values and perspectives we associate with the Enlightenment. They have uncovered and described a religious anthropology that “tempered obedience with rationality, affirmed the possibility of substantial ­human pro­g ress in the arts, sciences, and morality despite the fall of ­human nature, and often favored more conciliarist, collegial styles of governance.”19 The Peace of Westphalia (1648), ending the Thirty Years’ War, had been a g­ reat turning point. It marked the end of the religious militancy of the Reformation and C ­ ounter Reformation. Catholic rulers and churchmen alike wanted to put dogmatism, fanat­i­cism, and religious wars b­ ehind them. They searched for arguments in their cultural heritage to bolster that desire, and they thus helped set the stage for the rise of the Enlightenment. They w ­ ere partly inspired by the reforms of the Council of Trent, especially its emphasis on the authority of bishops, as well as by con­temporary Protestant thinkers such as John Locke and Isaac Newton.20 Theologians and religious thinkers set out to defend essential Christian doctrines by explaining them in more modern and more rational terms. They wanted to appropriate for Catholicism new theories in economics, science, and judicial thought. Some bishops and rulers applied what they learned directly to church affairs. Such application meant, generally speaking, implementing mea­sures to streamline clumsy and in­effec­tive procedures, simplify overlapping and conflicting areas of jurisdiction, and eliminate or drastically

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restructure institutions that seemed to have lost their usefulness. ­These reformers aimed at creating a neater, more modern, and pastorally more effective church. Although Emperor Joseph II and ­Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany must be numbered among such reformers, ­others w ­ ere less radical, and their efforts more broadly acceptable. The reformers wanted to purify and simplify the practices of piety of the baroque era in ­favor of more literate and introspective ones, and they endeavored to replace baroque art with a visual culture more in accord with their own sensibilities. Perhaps no one in the era wrote more sensibly and with greater learning on such ­matters than Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), the brilliant Italian priest, historian, and polymath.21 Muratori combined the life of an active and devoted pastor with the production of works of outstanding erudition, some of which bear up well even t­ oday. In his small book Della regolata divozione de’ cristiani (The disciplined piety of Christians, 1741) and in his similar writings, he cautioned against excessive devotion to the saints, including the Virgin Mary, uncritical ac­cep­t ance of relics and miracles, and popu­lar enthusiasm for devotions that too often resembled pagan cults. The Disciplined Piety, sometimes described as the single most influential book of the Catholic Enlightenment, went through twenty editions between 1751 and 1795 in the Holy Roman Empire alone. The Jesuits operated by far the most numerous and most prestigious schools in Eu­rope and w ­ ere theoretically committed to teaching the outmoded philosophy of Aristotle, a commitment ­insisted upon as late as 1751  in decree 13 of their Seventeenth General Congregation, the highest authority in the order. In a nod to the real­ity of the situation, the congregation affirmed, not very convincingly, that Aristotle was “well suited to the more attractive and experimental style of physics.”22 But at least on paper

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Aristotle remained the norm, which helped fuel animus against the Jesuits as opponents of scientific pro­g ress. In fact, many Jesuit natu­ral phi­los­o­phers ­were fully abreast of developments in the field and w ­ ere writing about them and teaching them. Among their number none was better known than Ruggiero Boscovich (1711–1787), whose accomplishments w ­ ere distinguished enough on an international basis to win him election to both the Royal Society, London, and the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, the two most prestigious learned socie­ties of their day in the English-­speaking world.23 Yet the official stance of the order did not take account of that real­ity. Thus within Catholic areas of Eu­rope on the eve of the Revolution four distinct movements w ­ ere much in play—­Gallicanism (and its counter­parts), Jansenism, a nascent nationalism, and the Enlightenment. Each had its own characteristics in its relationship to Catholicism. Though sometimes antagonistic to one another, they also shared many traits. It was pos­si­ble for an individual to be at one and the same time, in a mix of unequal proportions, a gallican, a Jansenist, and an ardent nationalist and to be deeply supportive of Enlightenment ideals. Each of ­these movements was in its own way problematic for the papacy, and their convergence, as in the campaign against the Jesuits, was even more problematic, a fact of which the popes ­were painfully aware.

The Popes Face the Revolution and Its Consequences Pope Clement XIV died in 1774, less than a year ­a fter he suppressed the Jesuits.24 The royal ministers who had secured his election and wrenched the suppression of the Jesuits from him tried to influence the conclave to elect a candidate of their liking. They had to be satisfied with a compromise, namely Giovanni Angelo

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Braschi, who took the name Pius VI. The new pope was to have a long reign, from 1775 to 1799, and an extraordinarily turbulent one. On Christmas Day 1775, the year of his election, the new pope published the encyclical Inscrutabili Divinae Sapientiae, addressed, as was the custom ­until relatively recently, to his fellow bishops.25 In it he deplored the evils of the times, when charity had grown cold and crimes and iniquity grew more common ­every day. Such laments, a commonplace in ecclesiastical documents, served the pope as an introduction to the specific task to which he called the bishops. They w ­ ere to do their duty in opposing and refuting the teachings of “perverse phi­los­o­phers,” who declare that God does not exist, or, if he exists, that he has no care for his creatures, or who teach that the super­natural is an illusion, the product of weak and fearful minds. The encyclical did not get more specific. It named no phi­los­o­ phers, and it condemned no par­tic­u ­lar writings. Its generalities could apply to almost any era, but in this case ­there can be no doubt that Pius was attacking the philosophes of the Enlightenment. He was not the first pope to do so. As early as 1752 Pope Benedict XIV himself had placed on the Index of Forbidden Books the entire Dresden edition of the works of Voltaire.26 In 1759 Benedict’s successor, Clement XIII, took the same action for Rousseau’s Émile and for the signature work of the French Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. But Pius VI had to face other prob­lems than “the phi­los­o­phers.” To dissuade Emperor Joseph II from his ecclesiastical reforms, he, as mentioned, undertook the journey to Vienna. A few years ­later he had to deal with the Synod of Pistoia. Although Pius fi­nally prevailed when in 1786 he tried to establish a nunciature in Munich, the German archbishops informed him that bishops ran the German church and did not need papal intervention. But in 1789

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the outbreak of the French Revolution made such prob­lems seem minor in comparison. Although Pius viewed the Revolution with horror from the first moment, he took no strong action ­until the next year, when the state confiscated all church property and suppressed all religious ­orders. Then, on July 12, 1790, the National Assembly passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a document fashioned to some extent by trimmed-­down and ser­v iceable versions of gallican and Jansenist princi­ples. The constitution and related documents drastically reduced the number of dioceses in France from 135 to 83 and reor­ga­n ized their bound­aries. It determined that bishops and priests would be elected on a local level, and it dispensed with papal approval of episcopal nominations. It also required bishops to swear loyalty to the state above all foreign authority, namely the papacy. Some four months ­later the assembly required ­every holder of an ecclesiastical office to swear allegiance to the state and ­accept the Civil Constitution. More than half the clergy agreed to do so.27 ­These events stirred the pope to action. In March of the following year Pius issued the brief Quod Aliquantum, a strong denunciation of the constitution as an act of war against the Catholic religion.28 The next month he issued another document, Caritas, annulling the appointment of bishops made without papal approval and threatening with excommunication all priests who took the oath.29 On April 6, at the Palais-­Royal in Paris, he was burned in effigy as a response to his condemnation of the Revolution and the Civil Constitution. Within a short time the French government, ever more radical and soon committed to a reign of terror, undertook a systematic de-­Christianization of the country. A new Revolutionary calendar

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replaced the Gregorian, Sundays w ­ ere eliminated, secular feasts replaced religious ones, and Notre Dame Cathedral was transformed into the “­Temple of Reason.” Although such mea­sures ­were deeply unpop­u ­lar as well as unrealistic, they prevailed for a while. The government was si­mul­ta­neously bent on conquest. In 1796 French troops, u ­ nder the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Italy and eventually the Papal States, where they defeated the papal army and forced the pope to sue for peace. By the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, Pius agreed to the French occupation of Bologna, Ferrara, and Ravenna, to allow the French ­free access to all papal ports, to pay a huge indemnity, and to cede to France possession of hundreds of precious manuscripts and works of art. That was not the end. The next year the French occupied Rome and declared the Roman Republic. When Pius refused to abdicate as ruler of the Papal States, the French declared him deposed and placed him ­under surveillance. By July 1799 they had taken him to France and installed him, a virtual prisoner, in Valence, not far from Avignon. When he died ­there the next month, the town rec­ords noted his death simply as that of “Citizen Braschi. Occupation: pontiff.” The humiliation of the papacy was complete. Its end, long predicted, had fi­nally arrived. Nonetheless, with the protection of the Austrians, thirty-­four cardinals managed in December to assem­ble in Venice to elect a new pope. They w ­ ere divided into two factions, one favoring at least a modicum of reconciliation with France, the other utterly opposed to any compromise. The moderate faction fi­n ally prevailed, and Barnaba Chiaramonti was elected. In honor of his humiliated pre­de­ces­sor to whom he was distantly related, the new

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pope took the name Pius. By the time of his election, the French had been forced to withdraw from Rome, and Pius VII was able to enter the city on July 3, 1800. For the first fourteen years of Pius’s long pontificate (1800–1823), he had to concentrate his time and energy on dealing with ­Napoleon, who the year before the conclave had seized dictatorial powers in France u ­ nder the relatively modest title of first 30 consul. Both men ­were realists. Pius knew he had to negotiate with ­Napoleon, and Napoleon recognized that the vast majority of ­people in France ­were Catholics, some of whom ­were now more fervent and militant in their faith ­because of the excesses of the Revolution. Napoleon and Pius made cautious contact. For his part, Napoleon let it be known that if the pope was reasonable and understood the pres­ent situation, France and the church could be reconciled. In September  1800 Pius sent two archbishops from Rome to Paris to begin conversations. The two parties negotiated, with now one and now the other at least partly achieving his goals. A ­ fter twenty-­one dif­fer­ent drafts and eight months of negotiation, on July 13, 1801, both signed the precedent-­breaking concordat regulating the affairs of the church in France. The concordat stated that Catholicism was the religion of the g­ reat majority of French citizens (but not the state religion) and that it could function freely. The buildings and real estate seized from the church during the Revolution w ­ ere to remain in the hands of the new o ­ wners, but cathedrals and other churches needed for worship w ­ ere to be put at the disposal of the clergy, whose salaries would be paid by the state. The state would continue to enjoy virtually the same role in the nomination of bishops as had prevailed ­under the monarchy. The pope was to ask all surviving bishops of the ancien régime to resign, with the understanding that new ones would be ap-

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pointed. Although not all bishops accepted this “invitation,” the French episcopacy underwent a drastic h ­ ouse­cleaning. The earlier reor­ga­n i­za­t ion and reduction of the number of bishoprics was implicitly sanctioned, which redefined the ancient gallican church. Never in the history of Catholicism had anything on the scale of the Concordat of 1801 ever been attempted.31 Praised and excoriated, the concordat had a long life and remained in effect u ­ ntil 1905, when the French government unilaterally abrogated it. Napoleon had negotiated the concordat with the pope, not with an assembly of the French clergy, which in itself was a power­ful statement of the primacy of papal authority in the church, as was the provision that no bishop-­elect could legitimately take possession of his see without prior papal approval. The next year Napoleon published the Organic Articles, a long list of prescriptions regarding religious affairs in France that was a unilateral specification of provisions of the concordat, which gave the state considerable control. It decreed, for instance, that no papal document could be published in France without the government’s approval. Article 24 mandated that teachers in French seminaries had to subscribe to the Gallican Articles and to teach them. Pius protested Napoleon’s unilateral mea­sures, but to no avail. Despite Pius’s outrage over the Organic Articles, the hostilities between church and state officially ended with the concordat. The French population was now able to express its Catholic sentiment, and the way was opened for a religious revival. To Napoleon’s surprise and dismay, the revival began to happen while he still reigned supreme. His heavy hand in trying to control ecclesiastical m ­ atters galled many clergymen and helped turn their eyes to the papacy as an authority that could help them hold the state at bay.

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The very year of the Organic Articles, François-­René de Chateaubriand published Le génie du christianisme, ou Beautés de la religion chrétienne (The Genius of Chris­tian­ity, or The Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion). The book, a brilliant, nostalgic, and imaginative rereading of history, ranged over the cultural and civilizing achievements of the past to show how they w ­ ere e­ ither Christian in inspiration or sublimated by Chris­tian­ity. Chris­tian­ity is true ­because it is beautiful. Chateaubriand had a message for his readers: Remember where you came from and how you got to be what you are. Chateaubriand and his f­amily had suffered terribly during the Revolution. Sometime around 1798, he had a religious conversion, an event that colored virtually every­thing in his ­later literary ­career. He published the Génie just four years ­later. In it, as well as in other works, Chateaubriand praised what the Enlightenment disdained and what its offspring, the Revolution, had tried to destroy. For him, the intimate relationship between Chris­tian­ity and the cultural heritage of the past had reached a certain culmination in France in the seventeenth ­century, only to be corroded by the ­Century of Lights. According to Chateaubriand, the soul found its nourishment in  contemplation of the marvelous, the mysterious, and the super­natural—in what was beyond reason, though not contrary to it. He took delight in the bells, the vestments, the incense of the Mass, and the rhythm of the recurring cele­bration of Sundays and feast days. For him, Chris­t ian­ity, that is, Catholicism, was a nourishing haven, where its sacraments, rituals, and teachings provided balm for the soul and at the same time invested it with vitality and creative energy.32 The book was a huge success and is credited with founding Romanticism in French lit­er­a­t ure. It was followed by works by other

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authors in France and in other countries, and ­these works extolled Catholicism as a guarantor of high culture and praised its rites and observances as a source of artistic inspiration. Many such publications idealized the ­M iddle Ages by overlooking its prob­lems and portraying it as “the age of faith,” a time when the church and the papacy w ­ ere at the center of culture. Their depiction of the ­Middle Ages as a perfect realization of the theocratic ideal of society helped persuade the ultramontanes that the ideal was realizable in their own day. The nineteenth-­century revival of Gothic architecture and of scholastic philosophy and theology was in large part an expression of this persuasion. In some quarters, the Romantic Movement affected theologians, most notably Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), professor of church history at the University of Tübingen and ­later at the University of Munich. Rather than seeing the church as an institution, Möhler viewed it as a living organism filled with the Holy Spirit. In organisms, ­every member is dependent on ­every other, and therefore in the church the question of which member is superior to another is irrelevant. Although his argument had affinities with the disputes of t­hose who opposed the ultramontanes, it essentially stood outside the mainline controversy. Nonetheless, in subtle ways it influenced both parties in Germany. More broadly, the Romantic Movement provided ultramontane authors with a vocabulary and an ethos that allowed them to appeal to the emotions. They ­were thus able not only to argue their case but also to adorn it with noble sentiments and ideals. In the Romantic view, infallibility, for instance, was not an abstract, dry-­ as-­bones doctrine but a bountiful wellspring of benefits for church and society. In 1804 Napoleon invited Pius VII to Paris for his coronation as emperor. At the ceremony, Pius anointed Napoleon and the empress

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Josephine, but in defiance of tradition and in an affront to the pope, Napoleon placed the crown on his head himself. Despite Napoleon’s attempt to put the pope in his place, Pius emerged the victor. His long journey from Rome to Paris turned, without any planning or orchestration, into a triumphant pro­cession. As with Pius VI on his way to Vienna a generation earlier, enthusiastic crowds greeted the pope all along the way, a sign that despite all that had happened, Catholicism at the grass-­roots remained strong, recognized the pope’s special place in the church, and held him in reverence. Napoleon, however, took his revenge. The next year he declared himself king of Italy and set about making his kingship a real­ity. His relationship with Pius badly deteriorated, as he boasted he would “strip that foreign prince of all his pretension.” On February 2, 1808, French troops again occupied Rome and put Pius ­under virtual h ­ ouse arrest in the Quirinal Palace. France then annexed the rest of the Papal States. The next year Pius, his patience at an end, excommunicated “all robbers of the patrimony of Peter.” In the confusion that followed, the French seized him and removed him from Rome. Napoleon sanctioned the deed and as a consequence held the pope prisoner in France for the next five years, ­until his own defeat in 1814. Once Napoleon was removed from the scene, the victors met at the Congress of Vienna ­under the leadership of Count Klemens von Metternich to reverse the direction upon which the Revolution had set society. The congress did all in its power to reinstate the right order of t­ hings that had prevailed before that cataclysmic event. It restored monarchs, including the papal monarch, to their thrones. But, as events soon showed, the clock refused to be turned back. Monarchs ­were soon chased from their thrones, only to be

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reinstated some years l­ater, then to be chased away once again. This po­liti­cal instability did not in the least spare the papacy. Nonetheless, for the remaining years of his reign, Pius VII won re­spect by his judicious domestic and foreign policies, and he was able to steer a steady course in a stormy sea. He restored the Society of Jesus worldwide, reversing the order’s suppression enacted by Clement XIV. He worked well with his astute and forward-­looking secretary of state, Ercole Consalvi. Through Consalvi, Pius was able to negotiate a number of concordats with both Catholic and Protestant states that at least for the time being served the church well. In all ­these, as with the French concordat, the state retained or gained some say in the nomination of bishops. On a broader scale Pius won re­spect as the person who successfully negotiated with Napoleon. He earned even more re­spect ­because he, more than anyone e­ lse in Eu­rope, had resisted the despot and refused to be cowed by him. He had risked all, including possibly his life, to save the integrity of the church and its authority. Admiration for his steadfastness helped promote the idea that the papacy was the authority that stabilized society in a bewilderingly new situation where the princi­ples that held real­ity together had been shattered. As hard-­pressed Catholics across Eu­rope tried to save their religious commitments from the all-­consuming allegiance increasingly demanded by the secular bureaucratic state, they more and more looked to the papacy as their rallying point. They became papists, now not so much in opposition to the Reformation as in opposition to “the times.” Pius’s successor, Leo XII (r. 1823–1829), a­ fter a stormy beginning, eventually continued Pius’s policy of conciliation with other states. His policies within the Papal States, however, reversed many

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of the reforms Pius and Consalvi had initiated in trying to modernize a situation dreadfully in need of it. By his actions, Leo unfortunately consolidated world opinion about the po­ l iti­ cal backwardness of the Papal States and the ineptness of papal rule over them. Leo’s repressive mea­sures resulted in a police state, with spies and informers abounding and severe penalties imposed for even the slightest hint of incitement to civic unrest. He once again confined the Jews to the ghetto and had the gates fitted with locks. Such mea­sures alienated his subjects, who now lay in wait for an opportunity to cast off “the government of priests.” From this point forward po­l iti­cal disturbances became endemic to the Papal States. At the beginning of his pontificate Leo seemed favorable to the idea of the Abbé Felicité de Lamennais that the church should align itself with “the p­ eople” rather than with the restored monarchies, and he gave de Lamennais a warm welcome when he visited Rome for the Holy Year, 1825. Leo, however, soon began to fear that showing confidence in the p­ eople might promote revolution. Better to stick with the princes! Although it aroused l­ittle comment at the time, Leo initiated the practice of publishing encyclicals at relatively frequent intervals. Encyclicals are circular letters sent by the pope to “fellow bishops,” in which he indicates his policies and his positions, soon understood as the policies and positions of the church itself. Encyclicals as such ­were not new—­Pius VII had issued one. By the end of the c­ entury Pope Leo XIII had issued seventy-­five! What was new, then, was their increasing frequency, which raised the expectation that “Rome” was the source of au­then­t ic teaching. It played into the nascent ultramontane movement.

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Pope Gregory XVI Leo XII was succeeded by the more moderate Pius VIII, who had, however, a reign of just a l­ittle over a year (1829–1830). The conclave to elect Pius’s successor was divided into the now predictable two factions. This time the reactionary faction triumphed in Mauro Cappellari, a former Camaldolese monk, who took the name Gregory XVI (r. 1831–1846). The new pope was made of stern stuff. Intelligent but narrow-­m inded, he despised ideas that ­were considered modern. As pope, he banned the introduction of railroads into the Papal States. In the 1830s northern Eu­rope hailed the railroad as an instrument of modern civilization, destined to bring pro­g ress and prosperity to all concerned. Gregory’s refusal to allow it made him look like a hopeless troglodyte. (His successor reversed the decision.) Long before he was elected, Gregory had published Il trionfo della Santa Sede e della Chiesa contro gli assalti dei novatori (The triumph of the Holy See and the Church over the attacks of innovators).33 In time Trionfo turned out to be an impor­tant book, but even in Rome where it was published it at first received relatively ­little attention. Once Cappellari was elected pope, however, a revised edition was reprinted again and again and translated into French. Its new success was not due solely to the author’s new status. By 1830 the po­liti­cal climate and religious sentiment had changed considerably from what it was in 1799, the year the book first appeared. ­People ­were now readier to hear its message. Trionfo sounded one of the first notes in what was to become the ultramontane movement; it was one of the most extreme in its view that the pope was infallible in­de­pen­dently of the church, and that the church is dependent on the pope, not vice versa.

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For the year in which the book was published, the title was defiant, given that the papacy at that moment was undergoing one of its most humiliating ­trials, the captivity and death in exile of Pope Pius VI. But in undertaking the book, Cappellari was reacting to similarly humiliating events for the papacy, which included the conflict of Pius VI with the emperor and with the Synod of Pistoia. He radically rejected princes’ interventions in religion, and in that regard he described the synod, for which he felt profound disgust, as groveling before the throne. In rejecting royalist positions, he at the same time struck a blow at Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephism, and similar ecclesiologies, as well as late Jansenist ideas on papal authority. Written at a time when revolutions throughout Eu­rope w ­ ere threatening to topple kings from their thrones, the book began by exalting, in the face of ­those revolutions, the monarchical structure of the church and its immutable, infallible, and invincible character. The rest of the book, about 75 ­percent of the total text, defended papal infallibility and thus gave impetus to the issue at the heart of the drama of Vatican Council I. Despite his book’s title, Gregory knew few triumphs as pope. Even before he was elected, a rebellion, in tandem with other revolutions that erupted across Eu­rope in 1830, broke out in Bologna and spread through the Papal States, threatening Rome itself. The papal army could not put it down. Gregory saved the situation only by calling upon Austria to quell the uprising—­and, when that was accomplished, by asking its troops to stay to maintain order. France then sent troops to do the same. The pope’s own subjects had rebelled against him, and he did not have the resources to constrain them. This was an ominous sign. With order restored, Gregory issued his first encyclical, Mirari Vos.34 In it he put the blame for the rebellion and for the general

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depravity of the times on “the terrible conspiracy of evil men.” Among the evil ideas spread by ­those “shameless lovers of liberty” ­were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state. The encyclical denounced freedom of conscience as absurd, erroneous, and a delirium. The solution to such evils was inculcation of obedience to legitimate princes. Thus, despite the grave difficulties “the princes” had caused the Holy See before the Revolution, Gregory committed the papacy to the restoration of the monarchies of the ancien régime and to the traditional alliance of throne and altar. A ­silent target of the encyclical was de Lamennais and his “liberal” belief that the church should ally itself with the p­ eople and accept the separation of church and state. On the masthead of L’Avenir (The ­future), the newspaper de Lamennais founded, ran the inflammatory words “God and Freedom.” De Lamennais’s position won him the enmity of the French Catholic elite and infuriated Gregory XVI. The pope’s continued demands that de Lamennais profess unqualified ac­cep­tance of Mirari Vos led to de Lamennais’s fi­nally abandoning the priesthood and abjuring his Catholicism. Meanwhile, the long stay of the Austrian and French troops gave Gregory time to shore up his position, so that he did not have to face another full-­fledged rebellion. But rage against a clumsy, antiquated, and often corrupt po­liti­cal bureaucracy simmered beneath the surface. In the northern reaches of the Papal States a prosperous bourgeoisie and intellectual elite constituted a society very dif­fer­ent from the rural southern regions closer to Rome. ­T hose new urban populations resented a system that almost ­t otally excluded them from po­l iti­c al inf luence, and they w ­ ere ready to take action to repair the situation if the opportunity presented itself.

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In 1845, the year before Gregory’s death, an uprising broke out in Rimini, and the next year another in Ancona. Conspiratorial socie­t ies operated almost openly. The papal police w ­ ere impotent to disband them, in part b­ ecause they w ­ ere often in sympathy with the socie­t ies’ cause. When Gregory died on June 1, 1846, his subjects greeted the news with joy. The prob­lem of maintaining the status quo in the Papal States still rankled for Gregory’s successor. It would get only more complicated and threatening in the next quarter ­century. But as that prob­lem festered, so did the larger one of the modern world and the place of the church and the papacy within it. Challenges abounded for the new pope.

2 The Ultramontane Movement

B

y the time the Congress of Vienna concluded in 1815, Catholicism was already showing signs of a new vitality, but it was d­ oing so in a world and church very dif­fer­ent from what had prevailed before the Revolution. With one blow, the Revolution had shattered the social and po­liti­cal order that had constituted the basis for state churches. In France the Gallicanism of the ancien régime suffered an almost mortal blow when, as mentioned, the National Assembly radically reor­g a­n ized the French church and stripped it of its property, mea­sures l­ater sanctioned in 1801 by the concordat negotiated by Napoleon and Pius VII. The radical reduction of the number of bishops in itself weakened the bishops’ corporate authority. The re­d istribution of the bound­aries of dioceses entailed a loss of cohesion and of local corporate identity. The French hierarchy ­after the concordat was not the same French hierarchy as before. The French bishops continued to be described by friend and foe alike as gallican. Certainly, they knew and respected the Articles of 1682, yet they had an understanding of them that was sensitive to the changed conditions. Like most of their contemporaries, they held a deeper re­spect for the authority of the papacy than many of

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their pre-­Revolution counter­parts. Well educated and serious about their pastoral responsibilities, for the most part they ­were gallican, most notably in that they wanted to preserve legitimate local practices, defend the traditional rights and responsibilities of bishops, and uphold the supreme authority of ecumenical councils. They believed that a mea­sure of distinctiveness among local churches was not only legitimate but ­wholesome, and for none was this more legitimate and ­wholesome than for the French church. Above all, they subscribed to Bossuet’s axiom “It is therefore the full and universal authority of the Catholic Church that supplies what is lacking even in the Roman church.” For them the Holy See was the center where every­thing came together, not the source from which every­thing flowed. The bishops had a good working relationship with the Ministère des cultes, the bureau of the French government that oversaw religious affairs and made the nominations for vacant episcopal sees. The Ministère shared the bishops’ fear of where the ultramontane movement might be heading and viewed the movement with a wary eye. Although the bishops’ relationship to the Ministère was more than reminiscent of the relationship of the pre-­Revolution church to the monarchy, their ecclesiology was not aligned with the po­liti­cal order—or, at least, not to the same degree. The midcentury marked a turning point for the bishops. Fewer of their colleagues in the episcopate could now be described as gallican. T ­ hose who still considered themselves in some sense gallican faced ever-­more aggressive campaigns against them by their ultramontane critics. Many felt, moreover, that they w ­ ere u ­ nder siege also from their own clergy, whom the ultramontane press in some dioceses had won to its cause. Onto the willing ears of the lower clergy fell the ultramontane criticism of the bishops, from

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whom they already felt alienated by reason of class, privilege, and education. Although t­here ­were notable exceptions, the lower clergy was poorly educated in the French seminaries, the vast majority of which w ­ ere small and inadequately staffed. The diplomat-­historian Adolphe de Circourt expressed a common opinion when he said, “­Every new swarm of priests that comes from our seminaries is more narrow-­m inded, more bigoted, and more mischievous than the one that came before it.”1 Jansenism was a shadow of what it was before the Revolution. Insofar as it still existed, it similarly suffered from attacks by the ultramontanes. Further, it had to contend with the Romantic Movement in lit­er­a­ture and the arts, which captured the Eu­ro­ pean imagination and as translated into piety had vastly more popu­lar appeal than Jansenism’s intellectualism and cool austerity. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, other devotions, pilgrimages to saints’ shrines, and the veneration of relics that the Jansenists despised carried the day in Catholic piety. Such practices ­were promoted by the Jesuits, the archenemy whom the Jansenists thought they had sent to their grave in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV suppressed them. Jansenism survived principally as a dour interpretation of Christian life. It had lost its po­liti­cal clout and intellectual appeal. Rather than damage nationalism, the Revolution helped make it the dominant po­liti­cal philosophy of the nineteenth ­century. The drive for national unity in Germany and Italy owed a g­ reat deal to the pervasive nationalist fervor, though it also had other ­causes. In the new era the ideals of the Enlightenment persisted, in some ways even more strongly than before, but they mutated ­under the generic label of Liberalism.2 Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious choice, separation of church and

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state, belief in pro­g ress—­these ­were Liberalism’s dogmas. The dogmas faced an opposition that was skeptical of what they promised and that was determined to oppose it. Society soon divided into two bitterly opposed camps—­liberal and antiliberal. Even though ­there was a small but impor­tant segment of Catholic leadership sympathetic to the former, the church for the most part entrenched itself in the latter. The ongoing contest between the liberal and the antiliberal parties bred po­liti­cal instability and revolution, with now one party, now the other prevailing. Regimes r­ose and fell, each time with consequences for the church. In France, for instance, in September 1792 the National Assembly had abolished the monarchy, but the Congress of Vienna restored it in the person of Louis XVIII, ­brother of the ill-­fated Louis XVI. The new king reigned as a constitutional monarch, more or less in the British mold. When he died in 1824 his b­ rother Charles succeeded him, only to be deposed in 1830 ­because of his autocratic policies. Louis Philippe, a cousin, replaced him. The new king’s conservative policies and his insensitivity to the realities of an ever-­more industrialized economy and a swelling urban population led to the uprisings in 1848, which forced him to abdicate. The Second French Republic arose to replace the monarchy, to be succeeded a­ fter only four short years by the Second Empire, ­under Louis Napoleon. The empire lasted u ­ ntil Napoleon’s military defeat at the hands of the Prus­sians swept him from power. The Third French Republic replaced him and lasted from 1870 to 1940. Other countries suffered similar po­ liti­ cal unrest and regime changes—­always, as in France, as a result of ­bitter ideological b­ attles. Catholics’ painful memories of the antichurch actions of the Revolution and their full awareness of the current antichurch policy of

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their opponents had a power­ful impact upon them. Experience had taught most Catholics that liberty, equality, and fraternity ­were a master plan sure to destabilize society. Fundamental to the Catholic experience in ­those years was, along with strong feelings of alienation, a profound sense of loss. Much that they loved had been swept away, and the l­ittle that was left was ­under assault.3 In 1750, for instance, ­there had been some 25,000 monasteries, convents, and similar ­houses of the religious ­orders in Eu­rope, with approximately 350,000 members. By 1815 barely a handful remained. In France the Dominicans had been completely wiped out. The devastation, as ­g reat as any that occurred during the Reformation, began with the suppression of the Jesuits, followed by the secularizing actions of monarchs such as Emperor Joseph II. Then came the Revolution. During and ­a fter the Revolution the victories of the French armies between 1792 and 1813 made it pos­si­ble to implement the antimonastic policies of the Revolution in most of Western Eu­rope.4 In such a context the emergence and swift development of the ultramontane movement makes perfect sense. No development in the nineteenth ­century is more impor­tant for understanding Vatican I than the way that, ­after the Congress of Vienna, ultramontane fervor swept through the church and conquered the minds and hearts of bishops, theologians, and ordinary Catholics. In the late eigh­teenth ­century the vast majority of Catholic bishops ­were proud of their local traditions, happy with relative autonomy from Rome, and jealous of their prerogatives as bishops. The papacy, moreover, had proved itself powerless in resisting the designs of ­g reat monarchs, who treated it as a tool to be manipulated. Virtually nothing in that era suggested that a sentiment like Ultramontanism would emerge so quickly, push Gallicanism,

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Febronianism, and Josephism to the margins, and within a few de­ cades rise to dominate much of Catholic culture in Eu­rope.

Ultramontanism The word ultramontane originated in Italy in the ­M iddle Ages to describe a non-­Italian pope (papa ultramontano) from northern Eu­ rope, that is, from “the other side of the mountain,” the Alps. In the early modern period, the Germans and the French reversed its meaning to refer to the southern side of the Alps and therefore to denote the ­people who supported papal authority and who opposed ­those who supported Gallicanism.5 The redefined word, as well as the real­ity it designated, caught on. Nineteenth-­century Ultramontanism did not, however, simply exalt papal authority. It intrinsically linked infallibility to that authority. In other words, it enhanced papal primacy with a doctrinal character that was new in emphasis and urgency. It thereby favored a subtly impor­tant transformation of the pope’s role from testifying to the faith of the church to assuming the more proactive role as the church’s primary or even exclusive teacher, a change from witness to positive decision maker.6 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. The transformation did not occur easily, nor did every­one embrace the new orientation—­far from it!—­but something momentous in the history of the Catholic Church had occurred.

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Although France was particularly impor­tant for the advance of Ultramontanism, the movement was a pan-­European pheno­ menon. What is curious about its major proponents in dif­fer­ent countries is that so many of them ­were converts e­ ither from indifference and skepticism or from another church. The former was true for Joseph Marie de Maistre, Felicité de Lamennais, and Louis Veuillot (1813–1883) in France, for Joseph Görres in Germany, and for Juan Donoso Cortés in Spain, whereas in E ­ ngland William George Ward and the ­future archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning, ­were converts from the Church of ­England. Only de Lamennais and Manning w ­ ere clerics; the rest w ­ ere laymen. For men like t­ hese, primacy and infallibility w ­ ere not abstract doctrines but newly discovered solutions to the prob­lems of the day, which for them infused t­hose doctrines with an immediacy and urgency that required fast and uncompromising action. Ultramontanes did not agree on ­every par­t ic­u ­lar.7 Nonetheless, the basic orientation of the movement was constant: the exaltation of papal authority over po­liti­cal and episcopal authority and the exaltation of a central authority over local authority. The idea was far from new. In the M ­ iddle Ages, for instance, a pope like Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085) and a theologian such as Giles of Rome (ca. 1243–1316) made claims for that authority that vastly surpassed anything in antiquity, but such high claims w ­ ere controversial in the extreme and remained the preserve of a minority in the church. In the face of the Reformation, Catholic theologians needed to refute Protestant rejection of the papacy. They defended papal legitimacy but in the pro­cess began to emphasize papal authority, including infallibility. In the early seventeenth ­century Roberto Bellarmino, the famous Jesuit theologian, argued the supreme authority and infallibility of the pope in such a convincing manner

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that his approach began to be considered standard. Although Bellarmino wrote especially to refute Protestant denial to the papacy of any role in the church, he also wrote in opposition to “the Pa­ ri­sians,” ­those within the church such as Jean Gerson (1363–1429) who held opinions that formed the basis of the Articles of 1682. Although Bellarmino believed the Pa­r i­sian position was erroneous and close to heresy, he did not dare call it heresy b­ ecause, as he wrote, it was tolerated by the Holy See.8 ­Until the nineteenth ­century the gallicans considered Bellarmino their chief and most cogent opponent, but that changed with the rise of an Ultramontanism that was more confrontational and intransigent. For the more extreme in the ultramontane ranks, the papacy was not merely the center and guarantor of the church’s unity but the source of it. In that, they differed not only from the gallicans but also from the more traditional ultramontane view as represented by Bellarmino. It was an Ultramontanism that among its more aggressive proponents was often based on practical or po­liti­cal arguments rather than theological ones. It was, moreover, ready to argue its case in the forum of public opinion, where it could often barely conceal its contempt for anyone who disagreed.9 The change began to take shape in France just a­ fter the Congress of Vienna. In 1819 Count Joseph Marie de Maistre (1753– 1821) published Du pape, a long and stunningly learned book. A few years l­ater, in 1825, Abbé Felicité de Lamennais published his De la religion considerée dans ses rapports avec l’ordre politique et civile, an attack on Gallicanism. ­These two works set the movement in motion. A few years l­ater Gregory XVI became pope, and with that the Catholic world took notice of his Trionfo. Reprinted in 1832 in a revised edition, the Trionfo now joined the other two in sounding the call.

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The Turning Point De Maistre, a ­lawyer, a diplomat, and in his younger years a Mason, became profoundly disillusioned by the Revolution and saw it as containing in its philosophy the seeds for perpetual po­ liti­cal and social unrest. In this regard his views echo ­those Edmund Burke expressed in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a work de Maistre and other ultramontanes read and esteemed. For them Burke’s analy­sis of the basic flaw of the Revolution rang true: “You began ill ­because you began by despising every­thing that belonged to you.”10 De Maistre turned to the church as a remedy for recovering what had been lost, and within the church he saw the papacy, infallible and sovereign, as virtually the definition of the church. For him papal primacy equaled papal sovereignty. A prolific author with an elegant and incisive style, de Maistre became a fierce and uncompromising ­enemy of the Revolution and a similarly uncompromising apologist for monarchy. Not surprisingly, he was bitterly opposed to Rousseau and to anything resembling a “social contract.” He despised Gallicanism with its emphasis on the authority of councils b­ ecause councils ­were collegial bodies that arrived at their decisions through a pro­cess leading to consensus. To refer an issue to a council meant that it was in doubt, a situation that generated instability. Issues had to be deci­ded quickly and without the possibility of recourse. He saw the Articles of 1682 as the first step leading ineluctably to the chaos of the Revolution.11 From this vantage point, it was an easy leap to Du pape. De Maistre intended the book for all of Eu­rope, but his focus was France. With Du pape he summoned infallibility out of its repose in the cloisters of academic theology and sent it, ready for b­ attle,

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into the public square. Du pape was the first work to do so and therefore was crucially impor­tant. De Maistre argued that all truly ­viable government is sovereign, that is, absolute, ­free of constraints. Such a government cannot survive if it permits dissent from its directives. De Maistre ridiculed constitutional monarchy as an absurdity ­because by definition it entailed debate. The church is a monarchy—­nay, an absolute monarchy. The pope therefore reigns supreme over the church, which means he must enjoy absolute sovereignty. If this is true, then his decisions cannot be subject to review—­they must be infallible. For de Maistre papal infallibility was the only foundation upon which Eu­ro­pean society could be rebuilt and peace established. It was the foundation that ensured church unity, the rock that stood motionless and unchanging in turbulent seas. Councils, he argued, are purely accidental to the church (purement accidenteles), an interpretation of church history and church governance directly contrary to that of the gallicans. It was also an interpretation that flew in the face of at least a millennium and a half of history. De Maistre himself said it best in two paragraphs often quoted. The first is from Du pape: ­“There can be no ­human society without government, no government without sovereignty, no sovereignty without infallibility, and this last privilege is so absolutely essential that one is compelled to postulate infallibility even in secular sovereignties (where it does not exist) if one is not to concede the ultimate dissolution of h ­ uman affairs.”12 The second paragraph is from a letter to Count Pierre Louis de Blacas, dated May 22, 1814, five years before the publication of Du pape: “Chris­t ian­ity rests entirely on the pope so that the princi­ples of po­liti­cal and social order over which he has been called by divine providence to preside may be derived from the following chain of reasoning: ­there can be no Eu­ro­pean religion without

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Chris­tian­ity; ­there can be no Chris­tian­ity without Catholicism; ­there can be no Catholicism without the pope; ­there can be no pope without the sovereignty that belongs to him.”13 De Maistre argued from logic and po­liti­cal philosophy, and in so d­ oing he provided Ultramontanism with a method that, with many variations, took hold as the c­ entury wore on. The method took ­little or no account of the ancient collegial tradition of the church that was expressed in the collegial actions of bishops gathered in local and ecumenical councils. In addressing the New Testament, ultramontanes focused on Peter in such a way as almost to ignore that Jesus had gathered eleven other apostles around him. Under­neath the clash between the ultramontanes and the gallicans lay a conflict over method, and the difference in method led to two dif­fer­ent conclusions. With de Maistre the pendulum could not swing farther away from any system that conceded to bishops authority not dependent upon the pope. It could not swing farther away from the position that the pope was, ­under certain circumstances, subject to a general council. The pope governs and is not governed, judges and is not judged, teaches and is not taught. De Maistre’s was not a theological argument. ­A fter all, he had no training in theology. Nor was it a historical argument. It was an argument based ultimately on theory about proper social and po­liti­cal order. As applied to secular society, it campaigned for a goal whose day had passed. As applied to the church, it strove for a goal that sounded appealing to Catholics, battered as they ­were by the events of recent de­cades, and that now also began to seem realizable. At first the book received a cool reception. Even in Rome it initially elicited concern as a work of ecclesiology with a negligible theological base. Its opening words raised eyebrows in Rome:

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“It may appear surprising that a man of the world should assume the right to treat of questions that u ­ ntil our time have seemed to belong exclusively to the zeal and science of the sacerdotal order.” In Rome it did seem surprising. But ­there and elsewhere it gradually gained f­avor, as indicated by the publication within de­cades of some forty editions and translations. De Lamennais is generally recognized as the founder of “liberal Catholicism.” No surprise, therefore, that his Ultramontanism differed so much from de Maistre’s. His was characterized by its pop­u ­lism, its critique of the state, and its tendency to dissolve the bonds between throne and altar. For him the f­ uture of the papacy lay in its embracing the cause of freedom. De Lamennais’s opinions on religion and government changed over the course of his lifetime, but ­those are the ones he is best known for and the ones condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832). ­Until then he was just as ardent an ultramontane as de Maistre, who had influenced him. Although a rationalist as a young man, he began, through the influence of his b­ rother, a priest, to see the power of faith and religion. He therefore made his first Communion, though he was twenty-­t wo at the time. Repelled by Napoleon’s autocratic mea­ sures and his intervention in religious affairs, de Lamennais at first welcomed the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy with the ascent of Louis XVIII (1814). A few years l­ater he was ordained a priest. In 1817 he published the first volume of his Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion (Essay on indifference in religious ­matters), a rhetorically power­ful repudiation of t­ hose who saw religion as only a practical po­liti­cal institution, of ­those who admitted the need for religion but rejected revelation, and of ­those who reduced belief to the lowest common denominator. To counteract the evils of the times, he advocated a theocracy, with the pope as the

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supreme leader of kings and ­peoples. The Essai, an immediate best seller, soon was translated into several languages and established throughout Eu­rope de Lamennais’s reputation as an impor­ tant religious intellectual. Shortly ­after, de Lamennais renounced his earlier royalist views and began to advocate for theocratic democracy, a combination of liberal ideals such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state along with a strong emphasis on papal authority. If de Maistre stood for the marriage of throne and altar, de Lamennais now stood for the polar opposite. He despised the Concordat of 1801, which confirmed the state’s right to nominate bishops. In this regard he, like many ­others, was influenced by the example of foreign countries such as the United States and especially Belgium, where Catholics defended themselves by appealing not to the protection of the state but to the princi­ple of freedom. In 1825–1826 he published De la religion considérée dans ses rapport avec l’ordre politique et civile (The relationship of religion to the po­liti­cal and civil order of society), a scathing and unrestrained denunciation of Gallicanism. From that point ­until 1834 he rode an increasingly power­ful wave of popularity in France. A person of ­g reat personal charisma, de Lamennais became a hero to many of the younger clergy, some of the brightest of whom he attracted to his seminary of La Chênaie, a counterseminary to the large, prestigious, and solidly gallican seminary of Saint-­ Sulpice, where many of the bishops had been trained. He gathered to himself two outstanding disciples, Henri-­Dominique Lacordaire (1802–1861) and Count Charles Forbes René de Montalembert (1810–1870). Lacordaire ­later became the most famous preacher in the Catholic world and the restorer of the Dominican order in France. Montalembert was destined to play an impor­tant role in

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French po­liti­cal and ecclesiastical affairs for the rest of his life, always trying to reconcile Catholicism with the cause of liberty. When in 1830 de Lamennais founded the short-­l ived L’Avenir, he enlisted Lacordaire and Montalembert as collaborators. The journal turned ever more aggressively demo­c ratic, campaigning to have the church align itself with “the p­ eople” rather than with outmoded monarchies. It attacked the clergy for agreeing to be paid by the state, and the bishops for their attachment to royalty. De Lamennais’s po­liti­cal views frightened the French bishops, just as they frightened Gregory XVI. With the publication of Mirari Vos and de Lamennais’s subsequent renunciation of Catholicism, his views suffered a serious blow, but they certainly did not dis­appear. Montalembert and ­others worked to keep them alive in an ever-­more reactionary Catholicism. They became known as liberals, which in context meant especially that they espoused demo­cratic forms, separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. Virtually all other ultramontanes came to despise them and regard them as enemies to the cause.14 Ultramontanism thus split into two uneven camps, liberal Ultramontanism and authoritarian Ultramontanism. The fervor that gripped both camps owed a ­g reat deal to the influence upon them of a Romantic view of history and a Romantic view of the role of the papacy within it. Lacordaire’s apostrophe to Rome in a book he published in 1847 explaining de Lamennais’s philosophical system is a good example of how that influence worked to further the ultramontane cause. The apostrophe is a showcase of Romantic prose in the ser­v ice of the ultramontane ideal: “Rome! Serene amidst the tempests of Eu­rope, thou hast not doubted thyself, thou hast not felt fatigue. Thy glance,

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turned to the four quarters of the world, followed with sublime penetration the development of h ­ uman 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 h ­ uman race, the hope of its f­uture, the sole grandeur now existing in Eu­rope, the Queen of the world.”15

Germany Partly ­under the influence of French thinkers such as de Maistre and de Lamennais, the ultramontane movement began to take hold early in Germany. But the po­liti­cal and ecclesiastical situation ­there was dif­fer­ent from the French one and resembled it in only one regard. By 1794 French armies ­were overrunning the Rhineland, with an impact upon old po­liti­cal and religious structures generically similar to what had happened in France with the Revolution. In Germany the French invaders reor­ ga­ nized bound­aries and pursued a secularization policy that included ­expropriation of church lands and suppression of religious o ­ rders. Over the next ten years, in what seems like a domino effect, similar reorganizations and secularizations spread, with results so far-­reaching that even the Congress of Vienna could not reverse them. Other­wise the situation was dif­fer­ent. The reor­ga­ni­za­tion meant the fragmentation of the church into isolated state churches that ­were powerless in the face of secular bureaucracies. Some areas that formerly w ­ ere exclusively Catholic now had to deal with the presence of Protestants. Especially in the Rhineland, Catholics felt badly oppressed by a new Prus­sian dominance a­ fter Napoleon’s

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defeat. They w ­ ere therefore susceptible to the idea of a strong papacy that could stand up against the state. In that regard it was papal primacy rather than infallibility that could come to their aid. Germany, especially the Rhineland, thus became fertile ground for ultramontane ideals as the writings of de Lamennais and de Maistre became better known ­there. Joseph Görres (1776–1848), an impor­tant po­liti­cal activist and writer in the history of German Catholicism, soon emerged as their most ardent public spokesman.16 As a young man Görres had been enthusiastic about the ideals of the French Revolution, but he gradually grew disillusioned with them, not least as he experienced the French occupation of Coblenz, his hometown. Meanwhile, his acquaintance with Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), poet and leading figure in German Romanticism, led him to reject his earlier rationalism in ­favor of a more Romantic outlook. Raised a Catholic, Görres as a young man repudiated his faith, wrote bitterly anti-­Catholic tracts, and ­adopted a vaguely pantheistic religious philosophy. But by 1815 he had begun to move back to his old religion and by 1824 had publicly returned to it. In the meantime his experience of Napoleon in his native land and then, ­after Napoleon’s defeat, the increasing dominance of Prus­sia t­ here instilled in him a fear of despotism so deep that he could not accept the idea even of a papal authority without limit. His Ultramontanism thus differed from de Maistre’s in that critical regard. The turning point in Germany came in 1837 with the “Cologne Trou­bles” (Kölner Wirren).17 As Prus­sians moved into the Rhineland, the prob­lem of marriages between them and Catholics became acute. The archbishop of Cologne, Clemens August von Droste-­Vischering, took a hard line in demanding that a Catholic priest preside at the ceremony and that both parties swear to raise the ­children Catholic. The situation rapidly escalated into a major

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confrontation between the archbishop and the Prus­sian state and culminated with the archbishop’s arrest and imprisonment in a fortress in Minden. The event shocked, energized, and rallied the Catholics. They rapidly published more than three hundred pamphlets pitting the church against the state. Among them Görres’s Athanasius (1837) was by far the most impor­tant. It raised what had been essentially an affair of the Rhineland into a church–­state strug­g le resonating throughout Germany. It was intended as a mobilization of public opinion against an unjust state, and it thus prepared German Catholics to resist Bismarck’s Kulturkampf (culture ­battle) against them de­cades ­later. The volume solidified Görres’s position as the leading spokesman for the ultramontane cause in Germany ­until his death in 1848. He is impor­tant for another reason related to Ultramontanism, as he emerged as the first prominent ultramontane actively promoting the popu­lar piety that the Romantic Movement helped revive.18 In reaction to the austere piety of Jansenism and the often ce­re­bral piety of the Catholic Enlightenment, German ultramontanes advocated pilgrimages, the cult of relics, supernal visions, and mystical experiences.19 Thus in an informal but power­ful way Ultramontanism became associated with an emotional and sometimes sentimental piety. In Germany Görres was in the forefront of this transformation. Between 1836 and 1842 he published his four-­volume work, Die ­ iddle christliche Mystik, a study of the writings of mystics in the M Ages. In 1844, in response to critics of a large and well-­publicized group of German pilgrims that converged on Trier to view and venerate the famous relic ­there—­the robe supposedly worn by Christ just before his crucifixion—­Görres rushed to the pilgrims’ defense. He published an essay extolling the joy of the

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pilgrims and their oneness in faith. He portrayed the event as a manifestation of the collective power of Catholics in Germany, a warning to the Prus­sian state not to take that power lightly. By midcentury visions and similar phenomena had achieved a new prominence in Catholic piety beyond Germany. In 1846, for instance, when the Virgin Mary appeared to two c­ hildren at La Salette-­Fallavaux in France, Catholics responded with fervor, and only five years ­later, in 1851, Pius IX formally approved the public cult of Our Lady of La Salette. Then in 1858 the Virgin appeared at Lourdes to a fourteen-­year-­old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, and identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, the dogma Pius had defined four years earlier. In 1862 the pope gave the local bishop permission to allow the cult of Mary at the site of the apparitions.20 In Westphalia the Augustinian nun Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774–1824), who bore in her body the stigmata of Christ, from 1790 onward experienced a number of visitations by Jesus and John the Baptist, and was transported to scenes of Christ’s suffering and death almost as an eyewitness. Beginning in 1818 ­until her death, Brentano often sat by ­Sister Emmerick’s bedside to rec­ord her visions. Nine years ­after her death he published an account of them, Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi (The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ). For its genre it became a best seller and was translated into several languages.21 As visions and similar phenomena increased at this time, reception of them cut across sociocultural lines. Although each of the three instances described above originated with t­ hose in the lower socioeconomic classes—­people who w ­ ere ­either illiterate or barely literate—­they ­were sanctioned and promoted by the Catholic elite, including the pope himself. Once again the theoretical distinction between popu­lar and elite piety fails to hold.

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Guéranger A more elitist movement also partnered with the ultramontane. In France a much younger con­temporary of Görres, Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger (1805–1875), set in motion such an initiative, which was to have incalculably impor­tant consequences for Catholic piety and worship. He is justly considered the founder of the Liturgical Movement, which culminated in Vatican Council II with the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (On the Divine Liturgy). Like so many o ­ thers of his generation, Guéranger felt a responsibility to repair the ravage wrought by the Revolution and its ­aftermath. Guéranger had been a student at de Lamennais’s seminary, La Chênaie, where he was inspired by de Lamennais to study liturgical history, a life-­changing moment for him. Years ­later, in 1833, he refounded the abandoned monastery of Solesmes with the idea of providing a model of Christian community united around the liturgy of the church, whose beauty would raise to God the souls of all who participated in it or witnessed it. Solesmes became a byword for liturgical change. Guéranger reached an international audience with his im­mensely influential publications, especially L’année liturgique (The Liturgical Year, 1841–1866), a nine-­volume commentary on the feasts and solemnities of the church. T ­ hose volumes ­were a look back, a monument to the relevance and power of tradition in an age obsessed with pro­g ress. Abbot of Solesmes, Guéranger was an ardent ultramontane, and his liturgical initiatives cannot be understood apart from his devotion to Rome and Roman ways. He sparked a b­ itter controversy in 1840 with the publication of the first volume of his two-­volume Institutions liturgiques.22 In that volume he criticized the liturgies of the French church for two reasons: the introduction into some of

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them in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries of classicizing, secular ­music and their cult of local saints and local miracles, which meant that they failed to show the unity of the church. The gallican liturgies, according to Guéranger, lacked both the dignity and the universality of the Roman rite. The Institutions launched Guéranger’s campaign to install that rite in the churches of France and then in the other churches throughout the Catholic world. Rightly or wrongly, critics saw the Institutions as an attack on the French episcopacy. From the beginning, therefore, the liturgical war that ensued was about much more than liturgy.23 It was part and parcel of the gallican–­u ltramontane controversy. For the gallican bishops, their liturgies represented the spiritual core of the “liberties of the French church.” The liturgies ­were expressions of that church’s identity on the most profound level. The bishops ­were not inclined to surrender them. They w ­ ere on solid ground when they argued that the differences in liturgy from diocese to diocese ­were expressions of the rich diversity of Catholic piety and that in their substance they enjoyed the sanction of g­ reat antiquity. According to the archbishop of Tours, for instance, the liturgy of his church could be traced back to Saint Gregory of Tours (ca. 538–594). It was so beautiful and historically in­ter­est­ing, he said, that it brought even religious skeptics to Mass. The bishops could in fact argue that even Pius V’s bull in 1570 promulgating the corrected text of the Roman missal had allowed other rites that had prevailed in a given region or institution for over two hundred years. The divergence was so small that only an expert could discern how some of the gallican liturgies diverged from the Roman rite. In o ­ thers, however, it was more obvious—­d if­fer­ent readings from the gospels, changes in the order of some of the parts of the Mass, local variations in the prayers at weddings and funerals, and, as

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mentioned, cele­brations of local saints. Similar divergences occurred in the breviaries. A more serious prob­lem was that several dif­fer­ent liturgical forms competed with one another within the same diocese, a collateral damage resulting from the drastic reor­g a­n i­z a­tion of the dioceses of the French church during the Revolution. When in 1835 Pierre Louis Parisis became bishop of Langres, he found that in his diocese five dif­fer­ent liturgical books ­were being used.24 In dioceses where a similar situation prevailed, adoption of the Roman rite seemed an appealing solution to the confusion. Nonetheless, the defense of their liturgies that the gallican bishops mounted was well founded at least in some cases, as ­later scholarship has shown: “The gallican liturgical books of the eigh­ teenth ­century ­were an attractive blend of elegance and austerity, of old provincial usages and the traditions of the universal church, pruned in accordance with the scholarship of the day. The Holy Week ceremonies w ­ ere especially moving.”25 At first the gallicans so effectively resisted Guéranger that his movement seemed ready to collapse. ­A fter the publication of Institutions liturgiques, sixty of the eighty French bishops publicly announced their opposition. But by midcentury the tide had clearly begun to turn in Guéranger’s direction. Between 1849 and 1851 eight provincial councils in France declared their adoption of the Roman rite. The change was due in no small part to the role played by the power­ful ultramontane journal, L’Univers, edited by Louis Veuillot, which in 1846 took up the cause. For some bishops, Veuillot’s support of Guéranger almost automatically discredited him and his cause. The Roman rite, what­ever its merits or demerits, became in Veuillot’s hands a stick with which to beat the bishops. As bishops declared they ­were adopting the Roman rite, ultramontane publicists insinuated that the bishops who held back ­were

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influenced by Liberalism or even tainted with heterodoxy. They insinuated this while celebrating the benefit for the supranational unity of the church that adoption of the Roman rite symbolized. For them the adoption was, moreover, an admirable act of “submission to the See of Peter.” Initially the See of Peter did not respond with the support the ultramontane campaigners hoped for. Pius IX, pleased with the show of devotion to Peter, thought the issue, compared with o ­ thers troubling the church, was of minor importance. He kept his distance. The Congregation of Rites, notorious for its lethargy, failed to respond to inquiries and complaints. When Guéranger visited Rome in 1851, however, Pius IX ­received him graciously and appointed him as con­sul­tant to both the Congregation of Rites and the Congregation of the Index. From that point forward Roman support for the ultramontane cause was more forthcoming. The pope himself began to betray the side he favored. Nonetheless, in this instance as in ­others, the See of Peter had not initiated or orchestrated this groundswell of enthusiasm for itself. The initiative and the orchestration came from below. The more robust support from Rome enabled Guéranger to pursue another aspect of the gallican liturgies that the bishops had more trou­ble defending, the m ­ usic with which the liturgy was 26 often celebrated. Many of the hymns, anthems, masses, and motets used in the French church had been written in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries. They lacked the blessing of antiquity to which the bishops appealed for the French liturgical texts. According to Guéranger, such m ­ usic was infected with a classicism incompatible with church ser­v ices. Mozart, moreover, was a Mason, Bach a Protestant, and the masses of Rossini, Cherubini, and the like w ­ ere operatic and secular in the extreme. To replace

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them, Guéranger resurrected the Gregorian chant almost from oblivion. He and his associates had come to know from their own experience the power of plainchant to express, when properly performed, a range of religious emotions. But this aspect of his campaign faced almost insurmountable obstacles, the first of which was the difficulty of fulfilling the most basic requirement, “when properly performed.” Gregorian was a difficult musical form and virtually unknown except among a few specialists. Outside Guéranger’s circle ­there ­were indeed very few capable of teaching it or even performing it properly. Gregorian, altogether unfamiliar to churchgoers, sounded alien to their ears. It proved difficult to persuade ordinary Catholic congregations of its merits. In this instance Guéranger and his associates could not appeal to Rome for a model or for teachers and texts. When it came to ­music, Rome was no help at all. In the Sistine Chapel the focus was on Re­nais­sance polyphony, which for the ultramontanes sounded as secular as Rossini. With the exception of the Sistine Chapel, visitors to Italy and Rome with an interest in ­music, which included ­g reat composers such as Berlioz and Mendelssohn, ­were unan­i­mous in describing the ­music in the churches as almost blatantly secular. One visitor reported that in the m ­ iddle of a High Mass at a Roman church, a priest stood up and sang an aria from Donizetti. If Gregorian chant was to have any success, the production of texts and education of teachers would fall exclusively on the French ultramontanes, who went to work with their typical zeal. Bit by bit Gregorian chant began to be studied and ­adopted, but it ran into too many difficulties to achieve the kind of success its promoters hoped for. In both the short and the long term, it was perhaps the least successful aspect of the movement Guéranger headed.

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In Paris, late in the ­century, few ­people attended ser­vices in churches where Gregorian had been ­adopted. At the impor­tant church of Sainte-­Clotilde with its magnificent organ, César Franck, organist ­there for thirty-­two years (1858–1890), continued ­until his death to direct per­for­m ances of his own works. Even by the ­m iddle of the twentieth ­century, Gregorian chant, though assiduously taught in seminaries around the world, had for most Catholics not lost its exotic character, if they knew of it at all. But Guéranger’s major objective, to displace the gallican liturgies with the Roman rite, moved ahead at a good pace. By midcentury a significant moment was reached when Rome became more proactive. The Congregation of Rites, prodded by Guéranger, woke from its slumber to take an interest in what was happening in France. In the summer of 1851 Guéranger persuaded a priest of the diocese of Le Mans to write to the Congregation to ask if the breviary of the diocese, which had been formally codified only in 1748, was legitimate. The Congregation responded to the priest’s two questions in January of the next year: Q. ­Were the changes in the breviary of Le Mans in the year 1746 lawful? R. Negative. 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.27 The responses w ­ ere a sweet and impor­tant victory for Guéranger. Not only was Solesmes in the diocese of Le Mans, but the bishop, Jean-­Baptiste Bouvier, had been a thorn in his side for a

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long time. Most impor­tant, the response signaled to French bishops that regarding liturgy they could not count on Rome’s help or even neutrality. Then in 1853 came the encyclical Inter Multiplices, in which Pius IX threw his weight in f­avor of the Roman rite. Bishop ­after bishop began to install the rite in his diocese. ­There w ­ ere a few holdouts, such as Paris, Orléans, and Besançons, but other­wise in France the Romanization of the liturgy was virtually complete well before the opening of Vatican I.

Three En­g lishmen In 1848 revolutions broke out in many places in Western Eu­rope, a complicated phenomenon that in essence was a violent repudiation of the status quo that came into being with the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Though quickly put down, the revolutions left their mark and w ­ ere harbingers of changes to come. They signaled the coming of age of a new urban population consisting especially of a well-­educated bourgeoisie and a downtrodden proletariat. In northern Eu­rope the Industrial Revolution had drained large numbers of families from farms into towns and cities, where working and living conditions w ­ ere miserable, a perfect breeding ground for socialism and communism. It was no mere coincidence, therefore, that in February 1848 Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto with its rallying cry, “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” The modern world was taking on shapes no one had anticipated. In France the uprising forced Louis Philippe from the throne, and, as we have seen, in Rome itself a revolt compelled Pius IX to flee the city and take refuge seventy-­ five miles south in Gaeta, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The most symbolic upheaval occurred in Austria, where it led to the resignation of the

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long-­term chancellor Prince Metternich, the architect of the Congress of Vienna. The age of Metternich was over—at least for the most part. Such events had impor­tant repercussions for Catholicism and for the ultramontane cause within it. But in other ways as well the midcentury saw a significant strengthening of the cause. Although in this regard E ­ ngland, with its small Catholic population, seems an unlikely country to be singled out, ­there ­were three remarkable conversions in the midcentury. In April 1851 Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) was received into the Catholic Church and ordained a priest two months ­later. Manning as archbishop of Westminster was such an impor­tant catalyst at the council for the support of infallibility that he must be reckoned as a central figure in the doctrine’s triumph. A member of a prominent En­g lish f­amily, Manning was ordained a deacon in the Church of E ­ ngland in 1832. Just as he was gaining a reputation as an eloquent and power­ful preacher, he moved ever closer to the ideas and ideals of the Oxford Movement. In 1845 William George Ward, who had been deeply involved in the movement, entered the Catholic Church, followed by John Henry Newman ­later that year. In 1850, as a result of a decision of the Privy Council that had doctrinal implications, Manning lost faith in the Church of ­England, which resulted in his formal conversion to Catholicism the next year. Of ­these three conversions, the most impor­tant in the long run for Catholic theology is certainly Newman’s. But for the success of the ultramontane cause, it is Ward and especially Manning who are impor­tant. While Newman abstained from the agitation around the cause as much as he could, Manning could not have been more involved. Ward became the loudest voice for infallibility in the English-­speaking world, especially ­after he assumed

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editorship of the Dublin Review in 1863 (published in London). He is best known for expressing his desire to have an infallible papal encyclical delivered to him at breakfast e­ very morning along with the Times.28 Manning, though he shared many of Ward’s views, was not so extreme.29 Like Ward, he wanted to extend infallibility to encyclicals and other documents emanating from the Holy See, but he was more qualified than Ward in doing so. Yet, even ­after the council, he maintained that infallibility extended to “truths of science, truths of history, dogmatic facts [for example, canonizations], and minor censures.”30 He differed from Ward in that he believed that liberty, equality, and fraternity w ­ ere compatible with Catholicism, and felt a certain sympathy for Lacordaire and Montalembert. Manning saw papal primacy and infallibility as a defense against oppressive governments and against the ogre of national churches. Like virtually all ultramontanes, he feared, detested, and denounced Gallicanism, which for him was almost the embodiment of such evils, even though this species of Gallicanism had virtually dis­appeared.31 His views on such ­matters are in­ter­est­ing and played a role in the council, but he is impor­tant not for them but for his zealotry at the council in working to ensure that infallibility be defined. He assumed the role of energy center for achieving that goal and in marshaling forces to help him do so.

The Power of the Press In midcentury, however, it was the triumph of ultramontane journals such the Dublin Review that so greatly strengthened the ultramontane cause as to win for it papal support even before the council opened.32 The support was usually couched in words easily passed over as platitudes, but the message was unmistakably clear to the

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interested parties. Although travails lay ahead for the ultramontanes, by 1853 they had won a public ­battle that boded ill for their opponents at the council. By a remarkable coincidence, three journals with power­f ul and unwaveringly ultramontane editorial policies came into being at about the same time. Although Louis Veuillot did not officially become editor of L’Univers ­until 1848, he in effect took over the editorship in Paris five years earlier and made it into a new journal; in 1848 in Rome Louis Chaillot began publishing La Correspondence de Rome, and two years ­later in Naples the Jesuit Carlo Maria Curci won Pius IX’s encouragement, which allowed him to found La Civiltà Cattolica. Up to that time the ultramontane print campaign had been carried out principally in articles, pamphlets, and books, which appeared intermittently, without the regularity that allowed a buildup of momentum. With the journals, the campaign found a vehicle that appeared with unfailing regularity and that could therefore not only respond to e­ very crisis and e­ very opportunity as soon as it arose but could again and again, within relatively short spans of time, din readers with their message. If de Maistre brought the ultramontane cause into the public market, the journals made sure it never left it. Moreover, the three journals, especially L’Univers and the Civiltà, set an example for ­others to follow. When Ward became owner and editor of the Dublin Review, he gave it an uncompromisingly strong ultramontane orientation and granted infallibility a scope that sometimes seemed limitless.33 When five years ­later Herbert Vaughan, the ­future cardinal, became owner and editor of The ­ nder the influence of Manning and Ward Tablet (London), he was u and saw to it, therefore, that the journal reflected their ultramontane views. In 1865 the French Jesuits founded Études, an ultra-

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montane but comparably moderate journal. That same year the German Jesuits launched Stimmen aus Maria-­L aach (­later, Stimmen der Zeit), stoutly ultramontane. All ­these journals ­were up and ­r unning well before the council opened. ­There ­were of course journals that took a quite dif­fer­ent line, many of which w ­ ere sponsored by bishops for their diocese. Especially impor­tant in France was the Correspondent, a monthly founded in 1855 by Catholic laymen and aristocrats, including Montalembert. The Correspondent spoke for the liberal wing of French Catholicism, which, despite heavy blows, managed to soldier on. The religious journals cannot be considered apart from the larger phenomenon of the nonreligious press. Newspapers, whose numbers and readership vastly expanded in the nineteenth c­ entury, ­were especially impor­tant. ­W hether right-­w ing or left-­w ing, they took a keen interest in Catholic affairs. In December 1869 they fixed their eyes on the Basilica of Saint Peter, ­eager to know what was ­going on in the council and often e­ ager, even determined, to influence the outcome. Vatican I thus became the first council in which public opinion was to have a significant impact on its dynamic. The journals ­were the major instrument for the ­g reat transformation of social consciousness that took place within the church from the midcentury onward. Of them, L’Univers ranks first in importance and immediate impact. But L’Univers, La Correspondence de Rome, and the Civiltà ­were interrelated and to some extent interdependent. Thus they must be considered together. Although the Correspondence de Rome had to suspend operations while Pius was in exile in Gaeta, it resumed on a fortnightly basis on June 24, 1850, and soon created a sensation—­a newsletter that regularly based its reports on daily access to confidential materials in the Congregation of Rites and the Congregation of the Index.

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The public loved it, but the French bishops ­were horrified to find their supposedly confidential negotiations with the Holy See revealed, directly or indirectly, in the press. Sometimes the curia’s response to a bishop’s inquiry appeared in the journal before the bishop himself had received it. ­Things seemed to be g­ oing well for Chaillot, the ambitious cleric-­founder, who loved the intrigue responsible for the journal’s juiciest information. Assisting him w ­ ere young French clerics in Rome. Chaillot had strong support from Veuillot, who in February 1852 published an article urging the French clergy to subscribe to the Correspondence de Rome. But Chaillot was playing a dangerous game, publishing leaked documents, inciting the lower clergy against their bishop, and passing his own ideas along as if they expressed an official position. As he became bolder, he brought down upon himself not only the wrath of the bishops, but, more impor­tant, the dis­plea­ sure of Louis Napoleon’s government, which was gradually beginning to see the ultramontanes as endangering the role of the state in religious affairs, as enshrined in the concordat and the Organic Articles. Thus, diplomatic pressure succeeded where the protests of the bishops failed. On June  24, 1852, Cardinal Antonelli announced in a letter to the nuncio in Paris, Archbishop Pietro Antonio Garibaldi, that Pius had deci­ded to shut down the journal for an unspecified period. The pope’s decision gave the gallicans hope that their opponents did not have the high degree of support in Rome of which they boasted. In less than a year they saw that hope dashed with the publication of Inter Multiplices. In 1860, a de­cade before the opening of the council, the suspension was lifted, and the Correspondence de Rome resumed publication.34

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La Civiltà Cattolica, much more impor­tant than the Correspondence de Rome, is the only one of the three to survive ­until ­today. In 1846 Italian Jesuits began discussing the advisability and feasibility of publishing a journal dealing with the cultural and religious issues of the day, but nothing came of it ­until Curci (1810–1891) took ­matters into his own hands.35 In late 1849 he proposed the idea to his Jesuit superior, who rejected it, as did the three cardinals in the curia managing affairs in Rome while the pope was in exile. In December he betook himself to Naples, where he persuaded Cardinal Antonelli to secure for him an audience with the pope. Pius was enthusiastic, and that settled the m ­ atter. With the support and financial assistance of Pius and then the reluctant approval of the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Jan Roothan—­who rightly feared the journal would enmesh the Jesuits in po­liti­cal controversies—­Curci assembled a team of talented Jesuits and launched the journal. The Civiltà was an immediate success, not least b­ ecause it ran serialized novels, an innovation in Italy at the time. It soon reached a circulation of ten thousand copies, a large number for ­those days. The prospect of the notoriously stringent censorship by the government of King Ferdinand II of Naples, which he threatened even before the first issue appeared, persuaded Curci to locate the journal in Rome, where he believed the oversight might be less severe. Hence the routine developed of submitting to the curia a copy of each issue before publishing it. The journal thus came to be understood as a semiofficial organ of the Holy See. Curci, brilliant but volatile, even before founding the magazine, had gained a reputation as an uncompromising opponent to Italian unification and defender of the integrity of the Papal States. He had met Veuillot in Paris, which almost guaranteed an ultramontane

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policy for the Civiltà, but that policy gradually grew more extreme once Carlo Piccirillo became editor in chief in 1855. The Civiltà did for Italy what L’Univers did for France. It kept the issue of papal authority before the eyes of a large public and built support for a definition of infallibility. Impor­tant though it was, it still could not compare during ­these years with L’Univers ­because of the extraordinarily provocative character with which Veuillot imbued it, the unwavering consistency and aggressiveness of his ultramontane commitment, and his taking upon himself the task of wearing down the gallican hierarchy and undermining its reputation. Wearing down the hierarchy was not an easy m ­ atter. In 1850 the 80 bishops of France fell roughly into three categories: first, 33 convinced and active gallicans, ready to engage in public debate for the cause; second, 30, most of whom w ­ ere in agreement with their more out­spoken colleagues but who, for one reason or another, ­were reluctant to engage in controversy; fi­nally, 17 active ultramontanes. Though the ultramontanes ­were relatively small in number, they w ­ ere located in larger cities. They therefore had more influence than their numbers suggest.36 Louis Veuillot (1813–1883) was, like other ardent ultramontanes, a layman and a convert.37 Also like many of them, he had not the slightest formal training in theology. Born into ­humble circumstances, he achieved, by dint of talent, hard work, and determination, an education and a position in society. Although he was raised a Catholic and at the age of thirteen even considered entering a seminary, he does not seem to have had deep religious convictions; the seminary was a way for him to get an education at minimal cost. In any case, by the time he became a young adult he had completely abandoned Catholicism and reckoned a close friend had “lost his

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mind” when he returned to the sacraments. In 1838, however, he visited Rome, where the atmosphere of the city and the example of some devout Catholic friends t­here led to his complete turnaround. While in Rome, Pope Gregory XVI received him and his friends in audience, which helped solidify Veuillot in his new path. When just four years ­later he joined the staff of L’Univers, he launched his campaign—­bellicose at times and invariably intransigent. A brilliant writer and master of satire, he never let go when he perceived a weak link in an opponent’s argument. His positions and the often scornful rhe­toric with which he expressed them ended inevitably in controversies large and small. His ultramontane views, much inspired by de Maistre, became the most extreme imaginable. As the date of the council approached, he began to speak of the pope in terms that came close to blasphemy. In a paraphrase of the sequence for Mass on the Feast of Pentecost, “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (Come, Holy Spirit), for instance, he substituted Pius IX for the Holy Spirit: To Pius IX, Pontiff King ­Father of the poor, Giver of gifts, Light of hearts, Send forth thy beam Of heavenly light!38

Veni, Sancte Spiritus Veni, pater pauperum Veni, dator munerum O lux beatissima, Reple cordis intima Tuorum fidelium.

On October 8, 1869, he ventured in the Univers on another analogy that shocked trained theologians: “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 [in the church].”39

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His first major clash was with the archbishop of Paris, Dominique-­Auguste Sibour (1792–1857). Although this complicated affair began in the late summer of 1849, it came to a head only in midsummer a year ­later as a result of two articles published by L’Univers, on July 28 and July 31. The journal criticized the archbishop for the appointment as vicar general of the archdiocese the abbé Henri Louis Charles Maret, an old friend of Sibour’s and since 1841 a member of the faculty of theology at the university. It again questioned Maret’s doctrinal soundness in an article on August 14. This was the first volley in the controversy about Maret, a formidable adversary of Ultramontanism, a controversy that culminated at the council. The archbishop had had enough, and on August 24 he issued a pastoral letter reminding the faithful not to receive the teaching of the church from newspapers whose writers did not re­spect the authority of the diocesan bishop. He mentioned the Univers by name. With the letter, Sibour unwittingly played into Veuillot’s hands. The editor, knowing that he had the support of the ultramontane nuncio to France, Raffaele Fornari, deci­ded to appeal to Rome against an archbishop who attacked ­those who defended the Holy See. Fornari agreed to forward the appeal. In making the appeal, Veuillot knew he took the risk of a public warning or reprimand from the Holy See, even the danger that the journal might be suppressed. But he felt confident enough of his standing in Rome to press forward with the plan and draw up his appeal. When the curia got word that it was about to receive a document about a controversy in which French bishops had been engaged on one side or the other, it feared being put into an extremely awkward position. Even though Sibour was not in good standing in Rome, the curia did not want publicly to embarrass such a high-­ranking prelate as the archbishop of Paris; nor

Cartoon of Louis Veuillot as a pugnacious angel. Caricature by André Gill in La Lune, April 21, 1867. Photo by Roger Viollet. (Courtesy of Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images.)

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did it want to reprimand a journalist fighting for the authority of the papacy. The best course, therefore, was to discourage the nuncio from sending the appeal. On September 21, 1850, Cardinal Antonelli informed Fornari that an appeal from the editor “would raise major difficulties and the affair would become very complicated.” Fornari appointed an intermediary to negotiate a reconciliation between the two parties. The negotiations went poorly, but fi­nally Veuillot signed a letter promising to be more prudent. What was the upshot of the affair? On the surface it looked as if nothing had changed. The archbishop had stood his ground, and L’Univers was still in business. But Veuillot had not retracted a single word, and Rome had not even rapped his knuckles. Beneath the surface, therefore, Veuillot had scored a victory. He had challenged a member of the hierarchy who was the archbishop of the most impor­tant diocese in France, and he was none the worse for it. More was still to come, with serious consequences for the gallicans.40 The Congregation of the Index, for instance, began to take a new interest in French affairs, which resulted in condemnations of textbooks and other publications that ­until then had enjoyed a serene existence. As Veuillot r­ ose in the esteem of Pius IX, his influence with the Index grew accordingly, to the point that a negative review of a publication in the Univers almost inevitably led to an investigation of it by the Congregation of the Index. In 1852 Sibour once again unwittingly set the stage for the second and fateful confrontation with Veuillot. Along with o ­ thers in the hierarchy, he increasingly felt it urgent to produce a compendium of gallican princi­ples and of the arguments supporting them so as to have a shared document to argue from. As one bishop remarked, L’Univers had constituted itself a faculty of theology with

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the task of examining the bishops’ orthodoxy and awarding them grades of pass or fail.41 In August Sibour took the initiative and saw to the drawing up of the document, titled Sur la situation présente de l’Église gallicane relativement au droit coutumier: Mémoire adressé a l’épiscopat (On the pres­ent situation of the Gallican Church in relationship to customary law [of the Church]: A memoir addressed to the episcopacy). The Mémoire fulfilled the agenda Sibour had set for it. It argued that the customary law governing local churches was healthy and that it balanced the universal law of the church and the jurisdiction of the Holy See. The church flourished where it had deep organic roots. The Mémoire did not stop ­there. It went on to analyze recent cases and to pass negative judgment on the interventions by the Congregation of Rites and the Congregation of the Index. The Mémoire could be read as a manifesto of gallican rights vis-­à-­v is the papacy, which was, to say the least, not destined to win ­favor where it was most needed. The Mémoire had a print run of only five hundred copies, but it reached the influential public, which reacted predictably. Ultramontane bishops sent their copies to Rome, and some gallicans congratulated themselves on now having a statement that articulated what the local church stood for. It took only six months for Rome to react, but meanwhile the situation had become even more bitterly and stridently divisive. In 1850 Veuillot had led the attack of the extreme right on the Loi Falloux, a mea­sure passed by the French parliament that made it easier for Catholic clergy to teach in secondary schools. It was the best that could be achieved u ­ nder the circumstances, many Catholics believed, but Veuillot saw it as a compromise that did not grant the church its full rights. In 1852, moreover, he gave full support to a campaign to ban the Latin and Greek classics from

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schools b­ ecause they ­were pagan and fostered the classicism that reigned supreme in the ­Century of Lights and was so alien to true piety. According to Veuillot and his staff at the Univers, the Persians should have won the ­Battle of Marathon and thus spared the world the pernicious influence of Plato, Aristotle, De­mos­the­nes, and the rest. No controversy better revealed the extremism and the cultural agenda of some ultramontane enthusiasts. To the relief of many educators, the campaign, which found no f­avor whatsoever in Rome, failed.42 A l­ittle earlier, Veuillot had met and was fascinated by the ultramontane Spanish phi­los­o­pher Donoso Cortés, who became a godfather to one of his ­children. He introduced him to readers of L’Univers as “the last g­ reat opponent of the eigh­teenth ­century.” In late 1851 he published in French Cortés’s major work, Essai sur le catholicisme, le libéralisme et le socialisme. In it Cortés exploited de Maistre’s ideas and gave them one of their most extreme interpretations. This was the spark that set off the controversy that led to the direct intervention of Pius IX. In 1849 Félix Dupanloup (1802–1878), one of the outstanding figures of the council, became bishop of Orléans. Four years l­ater, the Ami de la Religion (Friend of religion), the journal sponsored by his diocese that regularly challenged L’Univers, attacked Cortés’s overheated, simplistic, and apocalyptic treatment of Catholic theology. Dupanloup’s vision of the church could not have been more dif­fer­ent from that of Cortés. He believed the church needed to emulate stable socie­t ies like ­England, where central authority was tempered by local liberties and parliamentary forms. He saw this model as identical with gallican ideals. In a series of articles in L’Univers in January and February 1853, Veuillot, who already had a difficult history with Dupanloup, his main adversary in his campaign against the classics and the Loi

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Falloux, reacted with vehemence against the author of the articles and against o ­ thers associated with him, which by implication included the bishop. Such persons, he asserted, ­were less competent in theology than laymen like Cortés and himself, and they could hardly be counted as real Catholics. Veuillot’s words infuriated many bishops, and the controversy dramatically escalated when on February 17 Sibour issued an ordinance that was severely critical of the Univers and that forbade his clergy to buy or read it. The ordinance created an uproar in France, and bishops jumped into the fray, some on one side, some on the other. For Sibour and the bishops who supported him, the timing could hardly have been worse. Veuillot happened to be in Rome, where he had been graciously received by Pius IX and other­w ise treated with ­great ­favor. But for the Holy See it was again a delicate situation. Aside from the passion on both sides and the rhe­toric sometimes bordering on hysteria, the controversy raised basic questions about the rights of both the hierarchy and the laity and about the merits of both Gallicanism and Ultramontanism. Moreover, the controversy was tearing the French church apart. The nuncio, now Archbishop Garibaldi, saw an intervention by the Holy See as the only solution. Pius and t­hose around him had pretty much come to the same conclusion. They responded in three ways. First, on March 10 Antonelli wrote to Sibour, deploring the excesses of L’Univers but urging him once again to find a way to mend his relationship with Veuillot. Second, a few days ­later another curia official responded to a letter from Veuillot by praising him for his zeal for the truth but urging him to avoid excess and criticism of the bishops. The third mea­sure was public and crucial, the encyclical Inter Multiplices, dated March 21, 1853, and addressed to the French hierarchy. Relatively brief, it began by praising the bishops for their

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zeal and their devotion to their pastoral duties. But the very title of the encyclical should have put the bishops on their guard. Inter Multiplices was, as we have seen, also the title of the bull by Alexander VIII, which in 1690 proclaimed the Gallican Declaration of 1682 null and void. It was at the end of the second section that the encyclical struck the first clearly ominous note—­praise for the bishops’ “special zeal” in restoring in their dioceses the “liturgy of the Roman church.” With ­those gentle words the pope himself for the first time openly entered into the liturgy war and made clear which side he favored. The message was unmistakable. The encyclical went on to deplore the divisions and dissensions that racked the French church and urged the bishops to “unity of spirit.” Then, with the soft rhe­toric characteristic of such documents, it delivered a heavy blow. It exhorted the bishops to support ­those who published works defending the rights of the Holy See and opposing its enemies. Religion itself can never fall, it reminded the bishops, while it rests upon the rock of Peter. Let the bishops instill in the faithful ever greater devotion to it. But it was in the penultimate section that the pope came unmistakably down against the gallicans. He wrote that he could hardly express the grief he felt when he received a copy of the Mémoire. “Its author is totally opposed to all We so fervently commend, and We have sent the book to Our Congregation of the Index to be disapproved and condemned.” With that the pope had publicly thrown his lot in with the ultramontanes. The nuncio Garibaldi reported to Rome that in France the encyclical had been received with universal joy and satisfaction, an optimistic assessment. The gallican bishops reacted with resentment and anger, seeing in the encyclical an implicit ratification of L’Univers and of all ­those who subscribed to its views. Veuillot had

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triumphed and emerged untouchable. The lower clergy idolized him and in effect made him their commander in chief. The very day Archbishop Sibour received Inter Multiplices, he lifted his ordinance of February 17 against L’Univers. Dupanloup was b­ itter; the encyclical had dealt the coup de grâce to the French church.43

3 The Eve of the Council

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mong the f­actors that prompted Pius IX to adopt his position in Inter Multiplices was the shock of the rebellion of his own subjects, which forced him to flee Rome—an event that colored every­thing that happened afterward.1 The shock was all the greater ­because of the joy and affection he experienced in the early months of his papacy. The event significantly hardened his attitude t­ oward the modern world. It also increased his susceptibility to arguments bolstering the authority of the papacy, which in the eyes of the ultramontanes was a divinely sanctioned counterforce to that world. The new pope was young, affable, and at least seemingly responsive to modern aspirations, a stark contrast to his dour pre­de­ ces­sor.2 He soon gained a deserved reputation as an Italian patriot, which in t­hose days necessarily implied ridding Italy of the hated Austrians and then uniting the Italians into one nation. His early efforts in trying to remedy prob­lems besetting the Papal States, which included plans to introduce in a modest way parliamentary reforms, won for him a reputation as a liberal and even led to speculation that he might be the head of a united Italy. This was a delusion. Pius realized changes had to be made, and he was ready

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to make them. He had sympathy, limited and highly qualified, with some aspects of the po­liti­cal and cultural realities unfolding before him. But his background, training, and the very position he now held ensured that his fundamental values ­were conservative. In the eyes of the Italians he failed the critical test when on April 29, 1848, he announced that in conscience he could not, as head of the church, order his troops to join the fight in northern Italy to oust the Austrians, who w ­ ere Catholics and his spiritual ­children. No event so clearly reveals the inherent contradiction in the pope’s double role—­secular ruler and spiritual leader of Catholics worldwide. From that announcement forward, ­things went from bad to worse. By the late fall of that year the Romans ­were in full revolt. On November 24 Pius, aided by foreign ambassadors, managed, in disguise and ­under cover of darkness, to escape from the Quirinal Palace and make his way to Gaeta. A few months l­ater, on February 8, 1849, the Constitutional Assembly in Rome declared that the pope no longer had temporal power. Meanwhile in northern Italy the Austrians smashed the revolutionary forces, reestablished themselves in their old domains, and acquired the potential to exert even more influence in other parts of Italy including the Papal States. At that point it was in the interest of the French to restore the pope to his throne before the Austrians did.3 On April 23, 1849, French troops landed at Civitavecchia. They encountered more re­sis­tance than expected, but on July 3 they took Rome and thus cleared the way for the pope’s return, which did not occur ­until April of the next year. Once returned, Pius established himself in the apostolic palace in the Vatican; he was unwilling to return to the Quirinal, from which he had so ignominiously been driven a year and a half earlier. Though restored to his city, the pope’s po­liti­cal situation continued to be precarious. The Risorgimento gained momentum.

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Moreover, as was true of Gregory XVI some fifteen years earlier, he could not reign over his dominions without being sustained by a foreign power.

A Gallican Revival In France the secular press had covered in ­g reat detail the clash between the gallicans and the ultramontanes in the early 1850s. The ultramontane victories, culminating in Inter Multiplices, began to have an adverse impact on public opinion.4 The crass authoritarianism of Veuillot and his contempt for liberal princi­ples, obvious for all to see, struck many p­ eople as too radical. In addition, the support he obviously enjoyed with Pius IX raised questions about the pope’s judgment and the direction of his policies. Such questions intensified as the Congregation of the Index intervened more frequently in the affairs of the French church, threatening to upset the equilibrium that by and large had prevailed in church–­ state relations since the concordat. Once Louis Napoleon was assured of his position, he hoped to persuade the pope to come to Paris to crown him emperor, a ceremony that would underscore the legitimacy of his regime. Negotiations with the Holy See dragged on from 1852 into 1853 but had to be abandoned. In the end the Ministère des cultes persuaded the emperor that public opinion in France would never tolerate the papacy’s conditions: abolition of the Organic Articles and a Catholic ceremony for all matrimonies. U ­ ntil ­those negotiations failed, Napoleon’s government had hesitated to give signs of support to the gallican party for fear of offending Pius IX. Now it felt less need for restraint. Five years ­later, in 1858, the so-­called Mortaro affair created an international sensation and focused public attention even more

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intensely on Pius and on the governing princi­ples of the Papal States.5 On June  23 the papal police in Bologna forcibly removed six-­ year-­old Edgardo Mortaro from his Jewish f­amily on the grounds that he had been secretly baptized as an infant by a Christian maid who thought he was in danger of ­dying. The boy, therefore, was a Christian, and the laws of the Papal States forbade Christian c­ hildren to be raised by non-­Christian parents. The international press seized on the case and found in it a perfect vehicle for anti-­Catholic rage. In December alone the New York Times published twenty articles on “the seizure of Edgardo Mortaro.” In Britain The Spectator proclaimed that the case showed the Papal States to be “the worst government in the world—­the most insolvent and the most arrogant, the cruelest and the meanest.” Pius was surprised at the reaction but refused to reconsider the case, protesting that he had no choice but to follow his conscience. Edgardo was raised as a Catholic and l­ater became a priest. The affair had po­liti­cal repercussions in that it greatly reduced sympathy for the pope when two years ­later the Italian army seized most of his kingdom. Among po­l iti­cal figures affected by what had happened was Napoleon III, who began to show himself even more inclined to listen to the complaints of the gallicans. In this inclination he was in perfect accord with the Ministère des cultes. As the ultramontane press seemed at times to advocate a theocratic restructuring of the po­liti­cal order, fear grew in the Ministère that a radical rupture in church–­state relations would be in store if the ultramontane movement prevailed. When in 1849 Veuillot fumed over Sibour’s appointment of Henri Maret as vicar general of the archdiocese, he surely did not anticipate the critical role Maret would play in restoring a substantial mea­sure of gallican influence in the French episcopacy. In

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1853 Maret became dean of the faculty of theology at the university, a position of considerable prestige. By then he already enjoyed ­favor with the Ministère. Earlier in life Maret had been an ultramontane, a disciple of de Lamennais. Especially u ­ nder the influence of Bossuet he moved to a fundamentally gallican position. Following de Lamennais, he never lost his passionate conviction that the church had to reconcile itself with science, democracy, and other modern institutions.6 Unlike the vast majority of Catholics in Eu­rope at the time, he defended the French Revolution and maintained that it did not occur simply u ­ nder the impact of the Reformation, Jansenism, and the philosophes of the eigh­teenth ­century. It was the fruit of a long evolution of the Christian conscience, which became ever more aware of the gospel’s proclamation of the dignity of e­ very h ­ uman 7 being and the f­ree character of the act of faith. Maret’s views in this regard collided head-on with ­those of de Maistre and of all who followed him. Well educated himself, Maret as dean of the faculty recruited a number of talented young clerics and thereby raised the faculty’s prestige. Among his recruits was, for instance, Guillaume-­René Meignan, f­uture bishop of Chalons-­sur-­Marne, who had studied in German universities and was fully aware of the dramatic turn scholarship had taken ­there ­toward historical and experimental methods. As soon as Maret heard that the Holy See was about to publish a document condemning modern society in globo, he set to work to try to forestall it, and then, when the Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors) appeared shortly thereafter, he tried to limit its negative impact.8 In part due to Maret’s influence, Napoleon’s government proscribed the publication of the Syllabus in France b­ ecause it was “contrary to the princi­ples upon which the constitution of the Em-

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pire rests.” Maret’s activities concerning the Syllabus especially turned Pius IX against him from this point forward. Despite his advocacy of democracy, Maret felt that ­under the circumstances he had to look to Napoleon’s government to come to the aid of the church. As early as the mid-1950s, he had become that government’s chief adviser on episcopal nominations, which he used to f­avor intellectually serious candidates with gallican leanings. Outstanding among them ­were Meignan, Jacques Ginoulhiac, and especially Georges Darboy, who in 1863 became archbishop of Paris. But the significance of the appointments was broad. Of the thirty-­one French bishops appointed between 1853 and 1870 who attended the council, twenty-­five did not vote in f­avor of the decree.9 In 1860 the Ministère proposed Maret as bishop of Vannes. The Holy See vigorously opposed the nomination. A ­ fter months of negotiations, a compromise was fi­nally reached in midsummer a year ­later by appointing him bishop of Sura, a no longer extant diocese. Marot thus became a titular bishop, as distinct from a bishop who presides over a flock. Although the titular character of his episcopal appointment was intended as a sign of the Holy See’s dis­plea­sure, it did not in the least diminish Maret’s influence with the government or with virtually all anti-­u ltramontane circles.

The Immaculate Conception and the Syllabus of Errors In 1854, a year ­after Inter Multiplices, Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus. In so ­doing he was responding, eagerly and happily, to another movement from below. The idea that Mary was sinless, even that she was immaculately conceived, can be found in the F ­ athers of the Church. But it was in the M ­ iddle

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Ages especially that Franciscan theologians promoted her Immaculate Conception, and from that point forward it was explic­itly discussed and debated.10 In the early nineteenth ­century, momentum in ­favor of it considerably increased among ordinary Catholics, due in no small mea­sure to the Romantic Movement.11 On November 17, 1830, the Virgin appeared in Paris to a nun, Catherine ­L abouré, and asked that a medal be struck in her honor bearing the words “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us.” The archbishop of Paris permitted the medal to be produced, and enthusiasm for wearing the “Miraculous Medal,” as it was called, spread rapidly among Catholics everywhere. Nor was the hierarchy untouched by the upsurge of devotion. In May 1846, in the United States, for instance, the twenty-­three prelates pres­ent at the Sixth Provincial Council, held in Baltimore, decreed with ­g reat enthusiasm that “Mary, conceived without sin,” be the patroness of the country. Meanwhile, theologians went to work. In 1847 Giovanni Perrone, prominent theologian at the Jesuits’ Roman College, published a major treatise on the subject demonstrating that the doctrine could be defined. Although enthusiasm for the Immaculate Conception cannot be directly ascribed to the ultramontane movement, it was consonant with it, and leaders in the movement began to promote it. In 1850 Abbot Guéranger, urged by the ultramontane bishop of Poitiers, Louis Pie, published his Mémoire sur la question de l’immaculée conception de la trés sainte Vierge (A memoir concerning the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary), which had a particularly wide diffusion. In 1849 Pius had already moved into action with his encyclical Ubi Primum, in which he asked the bishops of the world to send him their opinion on ­whether the Holy See should make a statement

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on the ­matter.12 Some 600 responded. Only 56 ­were negative, of whom 24 opposed the idea only ­because it was not “opportune.” The pope could hardly have received a more enthusiastic go-­ahead.13 He established a commission of cardinals and theologians to examine the ­matter; the commission’s recommendation was also enthusiastically affirmative. The definition is impor­tant for Vatican I for two reasons. First, this was the first time a pope had solemnly defined a dogma. Ineffabilis Deus states, moreover, that the Immaculate Conception of Mary is a truth “divinely revealed by God.” If it is that, it is irreversible and, hence, infallible. In effect, therefore, Pius by his action anticipated the definition of infallibility at the council and thereby gave comfort to ­those campaigning for it. He also anticipated it in that, though he consulted widely among bishops, in the document he never stated or in any way suggested that he was acting with their consent. The definition was a papal act, pure and ­simple, and in that context a victory for Ultramontanism. On the popu­lar level it was confirmed four years l­ater with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. Second, although t­here is virtually nothing of it in Ineffabilis Deus, the definition, at least in the eyes of some perceptive participants and certainly in the eyes of Pius IX, was a counterstatement to the modern world. A first indication was an article published in La Civiltà Cattolica in 1852, two years before the definition that made precisely that point. The author argued that, instead of being inopportune, a definition would be just the opposite b­ ecause it would stand as a power­ful proclamation of faith against rationalism and against all the other profane philosophies of the times. Mary, he reminded his readers, was renowned as the destroyer of all heresies.14 Pius was himself determined to put an explicit statement against modern errors into Ineffabilis Deus. Although in the end

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he deci­ded not to do so at that time, he by no means surrendered the idea of publishing such a condemnation.15 Meanwhile, Italian forces, with the aid of France and u ­ nder the aegis of King Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, defeated the Austrians and moved to unite virtually all of Italy. By 1860 they had secured almost all of the territories, including most of the Papal States. They spared Rome and its environs ­because Louis Napoleon committed himself to protecting the city for a limited period. On March 26, 1860, Pius excommunicated every­one who had anything to do with the “usurpation” of his lands, which included the king. But no excommunication could hide the fact that the pope’s situation was desperate. The seizure of most of the Papal States was accompanied by radically secularizing policies that included depriving certain religious entities of their ­legal status and confiscating some two and a half million acres of church land. Such actions further convinced Pius of the evils of Liberalism and moved him to an even more pessimistic and intransigent attitude.16 As did his pre­de­ces­ sors, he saw the lost territory as essential for the f­ree functioning of the Holy See and, more profoundly, a sacred trust that he was bound to safeguard and defend. It was at this point that the pope returned with determination to issuing a condemnation of modern errors.17 The preparation of the document stretched over several years and engaged a number of ­people, including Guéranger.18 Although a few of ­those involved questioned ­whether such a statement was needed or opportune, the rest w ­ ere staunchly supportive. Then, in the late summer of 1863, Montalembert gave two power­ful speeches at Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium, insisting that the church had to reconcile itself with civil equality, religious liberty, and po­liti­cal freedom. The audience of over three thousand cheered

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him loudly and repeatedly. Liberal Catholicism in the tradition of de Lamennais was in certain quarters, therefore, alive and vital.19 Montalembert’s speeches aroused grave concern in Rome and made the document ­under preparation seem even more needed and opportune.20 ­Father Luigi Bilio, member of the Barnabite order and l­ater, as cardinal, impor­tant in the council, put the final touches on the encyclical Quanta Cura and the Syllabus Errorum, both dated December 8, the traditional feast day of the Immaculate Conception.21 The encyclical was in effect an introduction to the Syllabus, which was a list of eighty modern errors that ­were “repudiated, proscribed, and condemned.” ­Under ten headings, the Syllabus condemned pantheism, rationalism, socialism, communism, the subordination of the church to the state, the separation of church and state, religious freedom, and much more. The often quoted final proposition, number 80, is the most global and most revealing. It condemned the statement “that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself and come to terms with pro­g ress, Liberalism, and modern civilization.” Popes had issued condemnations many times before but never with such a sweeping rejection of the real­ity of the world in which they lived. “No sentence,” wrote the British historian Owen Chadwick, “ever did more to dig a chasm between the pope and modern Eu­ro­pean society.”22 While the Syllabus revealed the degree of alienation that Pius and many other Catholics felt in the mid-­n ineteenth ­century, its very comprehensiveness suggests something much deeper—­how profoundly radical w ­ ere the changes that had brought “modern civilization” into being and how profoundly radical ­were the challenges t­hose changes posed for Catholicism and for Chris­ tian­ity itself. In this situation, the ultramontanes had reason to be pleased that the pope did not fear to deliver such a harsh prophetic message.

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“The Pope’s Mad Bull.” Satirical cartoon on the Syllabus of Errors from Punch, January 7, 1865. By John Tenniel. Photo by the Cartoon Collector/Print Collector. (Courtesy of Hulton Archive Collection/Getty Images.)

The Syllabus handed the secular press an ideal whipping boy, an object that could be derided and satirized without scruple or restraint. But as the pope was more contemned, faithful Catholics felt more constrained to rally to his side. Dupanloup, who from the moment he became bishop of Orléans was recognized as a leader among the French bishops and an opponent of the ultramontanes, defended the Syllabus almost by explaining it away. In contrast, his archenemy Veuillot exulted in its literal sense and, to drive the point home, published a brochure, L’illusion libérale, a relentless denunciation of “liberal Catholicism” à la Montalembert as a contradiction in terms. Within the church the word liberal turned ever more toxic.

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At a meeting of the cardinals from the Congregation of Rites on December 6, 1864, two days before the publication of Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, Pius revealed to the cardinals pres­ent that he was considering convoking a council, “so that with this extraordinary means better care might be provided for the extraordinary needs [­today] of Christ’s flock.” 23 He asked the cardinals their opinion. That he chose to raise the issue on the occasion of the publication of Qunta Cura and the Syllabus is significant. As Giacomo Martina, Pius’s most respected biographer, correctly observed, the occasion underscored the connections in Pius’s mind among the definition of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus, and Vatican I. For him the three constituted dif­fer­ent aspects of the same program for eliminating current evils and creating a Christian society.24

Preparing the Council It is not altogether clear what prompted Pius to consider convoking a council at this late point in his pontificate.25 We have clear evidence, however, that he had not forgotten Cardinal Lambruschini’s suggestion to him in 1850. More recently, ­others had also raised the issue with him. In any case, by December 6, 1864, the pope, though perhaps not thoroughly persuaded, was ready to make a move in that direction. Fifteen cardinals from the curia w ­ ere pres­ent that day and l­ater submitted their opinions. Six more did so l­ater.26 Two w ­ ere opposed, six expressed reservations, and thirteen w ­ ere favorable. With that positive response, Pius felt confident in taking a further step. Three months ­later he named five curial cardinals u ­ nder the presidency of his close friend Cardinal Costantino Patrizi to the special Central (Preparatory) Commission (originally, Directing

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Commission), whose remit was to examine issues that might arise in convoking a council. The commission, whose only non-­Italian member was Cardinal Karl-­August von Reisach, the ultramontane and highly respected former archbishop of Munich, ­later expanded to nine members. In its first meeting, on March 9, 1865, the commission made two suggestions to the pope.27 The first was not to consult the “Christian princes” at this time but to do what was proper in their regard at the time of the official convocation. This was a break with previous practice due to the changed po­liti­cal conditions. At the same time the commission recommended that the pope consult a select number of bishops about what issues the council should deal with. The second was that, before the council met, the materials ­were to be prepared in Rome for discussion in the council. In other words, the agenda would be set not by the bishops assembled in council, as had been done at Trent, but by other bodies working out of the curia. This suggestion was meant as an efficiency mea­ sure and was based on the supposition that the council would last only a month or two. This proposal indicated, however, the degree of authority the Holy See now assumed for itself and that was taken for granted in Rome and elsewhere. As the provision became known, it provoked concern and even resentment. The proposal, plus the secrecy that enveloped the preparations for the council, gave rise to rumors and sometimes almost paranoid fears about what was being planned. Pius accepted both recommendations and then moved almost immediately to consult, ­under the strictest seal of secrecy, a number of prelates, all of whom w ­ ere from Western Eu­rope and the majority ultramontane. He ­later sent a letter to Eastern Catholic

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bishops. In the thirty-­t wo responses from the Western bishops, a half dozen or so, including Dupanloup’s, expressed doubts about the advisability of a council at this time. The ­others ­were favorable, some enthusiastically so. The responses divided the subjects to be considered into the two traditional categories, doctrine and discipline.28 Noteworthy about the first was the widespread opinion that unlike previous councils that had to deal with one or two specific heresies, this council had to face a more comprehensive prob­lem: the very foundations of faith had been shaken and put into mortal jeopardy. Rationalism, materialism, religious indifference, and, most generally, denial of the spiritual dimension of ­human life figured large in the prob­lems to be dealt with. Surprisingly, the prelates, despite the group’s ultramontane leanings, hardly mentioned Gallicanism. Even more surprising, only eight mentioned papal infallibility. Manning was one of ­those. A number of them, however, proposed Quanta Cura and the Syllabus as the basis for the council’s deliberations. Dupanloup recommended that if it was in fact deci­ded to convoke a council, it ­reinstate ecumenical councils as a regular feature of church life, which “has been extinct for three centuries.” He also warned that a council would be closely followed by the press—­“and what a press!” (et quelle presse!). He surely had Veuillot principally in mind.29 The prelates had many concerns about discipline, such as the improvement of clergy training, the reduction and mitigation of ecclesiastical penalties, church–­state relations, control of the press, tightening episcopal control over religious ­orders, and reconsideration of the discipline concerning mixed marriages. Some urged that the council solemnly affirm the necessity of the pope’s sovereignty over the Papal States, but this issue, despite the recent seizure of most papal territory, remained marginal even during the council. A

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few recommended looking to the churches and communities separated from Rome and inviting them to return to the true fold. Cardinal Josef Othmar von Rauscher of Vienna and ­others felt that the pres­ent situation in society was so dif­fer­ent from what had preceded it that church discipline needed to be comprehensively overhauled to meet the conditions of modern life. But the council, prematurely adjourned, did not have the opportunity to address such a searching critique or, for that ­m atter, to address effectively any specific disciplinary concern. As a result, Vatican I, unlike all preceding councils, turned out to be a council that dealt exclusively with doctrine. At its second meeting, on March 10, 1865, the Central Commission suggested that further commissions (“congregations”) be formed so as to apportion the preparatory l­abor.30 It further suggested that ­these commissions be extensions of the corresponding congregations of the curia. For instance, the Doctrinal Commission would be an extension of the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition. The members of the commissions should be drawn principally from the corresponding Roman congregations ­because they, having to deal on almost a daily basis with issues facing the church worldwide, had the larger perspective needed for an ecumenical council. Moreover, they w ­ ere “the guardians of the tra31 ditions of the Holy See.” With this provision, the Roman curia assumed a role unpre­ce­dented in the history of councils. Thus, even before the council opened, Vatican I’s characteristics distinguished it from other councils, and ­those characteristics by and large reflected the centralization of decision making in the Holy See, which had taken place well before the council’s decree on papal primacy and infallibility. Pius accepted the suggestion of further preparatory commissions, and by 1867 the following five had been established:

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On Faith and Doctrine On Ecclesiastical Discipline and Canon Law On Religious O ­ rders and Congregations On Oriental Churches [united with Rome] and Foreign Missions On Politico-­Ecclesiastical Affairs and Church–­State Relations Pius, who by now had obviously made up his mind to go ahead with a council, announced it that year at the gathering in Rome of some 500 bishops and 130,000 pilgrims who had come to celebrate the eigh­teenth hundredth anniversary of the deaths of Saints Peter and Paul. The strong turnout was a demonstration of solidarity with the pope in the face of the threat of the seizure of Rome, which seemed ever-­more imminent. Just a few months ­later antipapal forces seized key areas within the city. French and papal troops pushed them back, but the incident made clear how uncertain Rome’s status was as a papal city. When Pius delivered his discourse to the assembled bishops on June 26, the seizure of Roman areas lay in the f­uture.32 He described the purpose of the council in the most general terms: to review the prob­lems facing the church and to find appropriate remedies for them. Among the bishops pres­ent for the address, a drafting committee was formed to prepare a response to the pope’s announcement. Archbishop Manning, a committee member, insisted on inserting infallibility into the response, but through Dupanloup’s influence he was overruled. Nonetheless, the final version read: “We profess that our g­ reat concern and desire is that we may believe and teach what you believe and teach, and that the errors that you reject we may also reject.” It then cited the decree of the Council of Florence (1439) on papal primacy and affirmed that the pope has “full power of feeding, guiding, and governing

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the church.”33 The orientation the council took ­later was already emerging. Pius replied to the bishops’ message and good wishes. He informed them that although the year had yet to be specified, the council would open on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and thereby be put u ­ nder the protection of she who “extirpated 34 all heresies.” A year ­later, on June 29, 1868, Pius published Aeterni Patris, the apostolic letter formally convoking the council and setting the opening date, December 8, 1869. Not only was December 8 a g­ reat feast day, but it was also the anniversary of both the definition of the Immaculate Conception and the publication of the Syllabus, a convergence that surely was not a coincidence. Aeterni Patris reveals the pessimistic mind-­set that prevailed in Rome and in Catholicism more broadly: “It is now evident and clear to every­body how terrible is the storm that tosses the church and how g­ reat are the evils besetting civil society. The Catholic Church . . . ​is attacked and trampled on by the enemies of God and man. Every­t hing that is sacred is held in contempt, ecclesiastical possessions are seized, and ministers of religion are harassed on e­ very side. . . . ​Not only our holy religion but ­human society itself is plunged into an indescribable state of chaos and misery.”35 Among the thorniest questions the Central Commission faced was who had the right to participate in the council.36 Whenever it could, the commission based its decisions on pre­ce­dents, and, citing pre­ce­dent, it resisted the pope when he tried to exclude Maret—­gallican and liberal—­about whose activities he was well informed.37 The commission deci­ded that all bishops, even titular bishops such as Maret, ­were entitled to an invitation. It also ruled that certain abbots, the superiors general of the major religious ­orders of men, and all cardinals, even ­those who

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­ ere not bishops, had the right to full participation. The ruling w on cardinals was another break with the procedures of Trent, where all the curial cardinals remained in Rome except for the one to five who acted as the pope’s legates to the council. Once again, the decision reflected the consensus already operative in the church about the rights and authority of all ­t hose closely associated with the Holy See. ­Until the last minute the commission did not discuss ­whether to invite “the Catholic princes,” and ­later it did so only ­a fter Antonelli as secretary of state sounded the alarm: this was an extremely sensitive issue with major diplomatic and po­liti­cal implications and had to be addressed before the publication of the bull of convocation. The curia knew that rulers had played active roles in ­every council up to that time, but it was also acutely aware of how radically the po­liti­cal situation had changed since 1789. The 1868 revolution in Spain drove Queen Isabel II from her throne and established the First Spanish Republic, confirming the persuasion in the curia that the world was now entirely bereft of Christian princes. On June 23, 1868, only six days before the date scheduled for the publication of Aeterni Patris, the commission held an emergency meeting to deal with the question. The presence at the meeting of both the pope and Antonelli indicates how serious it was. The commission fi­nally deci­ded that ­because the po­liti­cal scene was so complicated, unstable, and unpre­ce­dented, no formal invitation to participate in the council would be extended to rulers or heads of state. Nonetheless, in an effort not to break entirely with tradition, the bull of convocation would urge the “cooperation” of governments, without specifying what that might mean. It thus left the door slightly open to participation in some form or other.

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In France the significance of the failure to invite princes was debated at the highest level of the government, as was the advisability of the government’s availing itself of the cooperation proviso and sending a representative to the council. Like most ­others in the government, Émile Ollivier, the f­uture prime minister, was against any involvement. He interpreted the failure to invite princes as an implicit declaration by the church of the separation of church and state—or even a declaration of isolation of the church from lay concerns. In a well-­publicized intervention in the Corps législatif on July 10, 1868, he marveled at the audacity of the missing invitation—­such a drastic break with tradition! He interpreted the bull in a way that ignored the practical reasons that lay b­ ehind the break but that hit upon a sentiment widely shared by bishops of the majority: “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.”38 As t­ hings turned out, no ­matter how governments interpreted the bull, none of them tried to send a representative, which, as mentioned earlier, made Vatican I the first ecumenical council in history without direct lay participation. While the bull was still being prepared, more than a few bishops and cardinals, especially ­those impressed by recent converts from the Oxford Movement, began to think that the council might be an occasion to restore the unity of the church. They had no idea of how complex the issue was or of how poorly prepared they w ­ ere to make even a credible first step in realizing it. Nonetheless, the commission advised the pope to send a letter to the patriarchs of the Oriental churches not united with Rome. Pius’s letter, warm though it was, showed ­little sensitivity to the grievances of t­hose

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churches and, perhaps worse, appeared in the Roman press before it arrived at its intended recipients. The reaction was understandably negative. The commission faced two major prob­lems in addressing the Protestants. The first was how to avoid giving the impression that the Protestant churches w ­ ere real churches. Since they ­were only “assemblies of laypersons,” they could not be invited to participate in the council as if they ­were true churches, even if they renounced their errors. Second, with the Anglicans somewhat of an exception, t­hese assemblies did not have a central authority to which a letter could be addressed. The commission consulted Manning. It fi­nally deci­ded to address a letter to Protestants in general in which the pope would exhort them to use the occasion of the council to reconsider and come to see that their true home was the Catholic Church. The commission hoped the letter would stimulate conversions, as seemed already to be happening at Oxford. On September 13, 1868, Pius issued Iam Nos Omnes, addressed to “all Protestants and other non-­Catholics.” Although in a few restricted circles it received a respectful hearing, the general reaction was resoundingly negative. It sparked especially ­bitter exchanges in Germany. The result was inevitable: in terms of its personnel, the council would be strictly Roman Catholic.39

Procedures Procedures may seem like nothing more than the insignificant nuts and bolts of a meeting as momentous as the first Vatican council, but anyone with the slightest experience of meetings knows that ­those who control the procedures control the meeting. The council was no exception. The Central Commission was responsible for determining the procedures, which ­were finalized in Pius IX’s

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apostolic letter published on November 27, 1869. In the light of experience, the regulations ­were revised on February  22, 1870, ­after the council had been at work for a l­ittle over two months. The commission did not have an easy task. Since the members had had virtually no experience of parliamentary procedures, they called upon canonists and church historians for help. They realized that even with expert help, pre­ce­dence could not always provide a v­ iable norm b­ ecause of the large number of bishops expected to attend, at least three times larger than the number at the best-­attended period of the Council of Trent. The result was a document more concerned with protocol than with procedures. It left unanswered many points required for the smooth functioning of the meeting and weighed the procedures in ­favor of the pope and the curia, especially when compared with the methods at the Council of Trent.40 Among the more impor­tant experts summoned to help in the task was Karl Josef von Hefele, at that time church historian at the University of Tübingen and renowned for the several volumes he had published of his history of the councils. Although he was strongly opposed to infallibility, he was ­later installed, in December 1869, as bishop of Rottenburg and as such took a stand against the decree at the council. Before that, however, he, along with Sebastiano Sanguineti, a Jesuit professor of church history at the Roman College, worked to help elaborate the procedures.41 The commission assumed that the materials prepared ahead of time would constitute the agenda and not need supplementation by new proposals from the bishops. It nonetheless provided a deputation, De postulatis, to review requests to introduce new business in case any should be forthcoming from the bishops. Although the council made use of the deputation only once, that one time was absolutely crucial for the direction of the council. The depu-

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tation was asked ­whether papal infallibility should be introduced into the council’s agenda. As at the Council of Trent, the decrees would have two parts: condemnation of errors in the form of short ordinances known as canons, and a positive exposition of Catholic teaching on that same ­matter, which w ­ ere called chapters. Also as at Trent, t­ here would be two types of meetings. The general congregations w ­ ere for discussion of the drafts of the documents and their revision. They ­were the working meetings of the council, held several times a week. They began at 9:00 a.m. with a Low (unsung) Mass with no sermon, which lasted about half an hour, a­ fter which discussion opened on the business of the day. The general congregations generally adjourned around 1:00 p.m. but occasionally went l­ater. The sessions ­were formal public ceremonies, with the pope pres­ent. Only four w ­ ere held during Vatican I, at two of which a decree received its definitive vote and promulgation by the pope. Once the council convened, it would elect twenty-­four bishops as members for each of four deputations—­faith, discipline, religious o ­ rders, and questions concerning the Eastern Rite churches in communion with the Holy See. A cardinal, appointed by the pope, presided at each of the four deputations, and he was to invite canonists and theologians to assist in the work as conditions warranted. Thus, unlike Trent, where the theologians constituted a separate body with a distinctive role in the deliberations, at Vatican I they w ­ ere distributed among the deputations and participated at the deputations’ good plea­sure. Nonetheless, at Vatican I, as at Trent, they played an impor­tant and respected role. ­Until the final ballot on a document, presented at the public session, bishops could vote placet (approve—­literally, “it pleases”), non placet (disapprove), or placet juxta modum (approve but with reservations). On the final ballot, they could only approve or

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disapprove. Juxta modum was a cumbersome way of introducing amendments. It fell to the appropriate deputation to sort out the amendments and then pres­ent their recommendations to the council. As Vatican I actually functioned, the deputation De fide, on faith, was the only one that had an effect on the council’s outcome. It turned out to be unquestionably the single most impor­tant body operating in the council. Pius was pres­ent and presided only at the public sessions, whereas at the general congregations cardinals appointed by him performed that task. The five he appointed ­were all from the curia—­ Bilio, Filippo De Angelis, Annibale Capalti, Antonio De Luca, and Giuseppe Andrea Bizzarri. They ­were all Italian and close to Pius IX, though they ­were not always as pliant as the pope expected. Every­body participating in the council—­bishops, theologians, secretaries, officials, and other functionaries—­was bound by the strictest secrecy about what tran­spired within the basilica, a rule impossible to enforce. Documents ­were leaked to the press, and embassies in Rome obtained access to reserved information, a situation that bred rumors and fueled anxiety among interested parties of all persuasions. If a bishop wished to speak on a document, he was to submit his request at least a day beforehand. In their interventions, bishops spoke in serial fashion, one a­ fter another, according to a preordained list of speakers. T ­ hese two provisions ensured that t­here would be no debate in the sense of direct exchanges between the speakers. Nonetheless, bishops found ways to respond to a previous speaker, e­ ither in agreement or disagreement. The regulations did not set a time limit for the speeches, with the result that some lasted an hour or even much longer. The presidents’ efforts to remind speakers to stick to the business at hand often went unheeded, and the speakers droned on. The situation

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inevitably produced a restless and sometimes ill-­tempered council hall. In particularly trying moments, shouts of “No! No!” and “Come down! Come down” rang out. All speeches, as well as all documents, ­were in Latin, another feature that many bishops found frustrating and an obstacle to their full participation. Boredom and frustration bedevil most meetings, and they certainly bedev­iled Vatican I—­a meeting without a predetermined ending date, which made participation in the council seem like a life sentence. It was only circumstances outside the council that brought it to an end. Even the revision of the regulations did not substantially improve procedures or dispel the chorus of complaints. An enormous amount of time was wasted. Nonetheless, the council, though it moved along at a lumbering and fumbling pace, was able to do business. For a meeting comprising so many participants coming from so many dif­fer­ent countries, with so many dif­fer­ent concerns, a slow pace was almost inevitable, even if the regulations had been more pointed. Meanwhile the original five preparatory commissions had been at work, and by December 1869 they had documents ready for distribution.42 As mentioned, the council was able to deal only with documents from the doctrinal commission, which ordered its material u ­ nder six headings: 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)

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Of ­those six headings, the council addressed only numbers 2 and 4. Unlike Trent, where the pope appointed only two or three of the several dozen official theologians, at Vatican I Pius appointed them all. He expressed interest in enlisting Newman as an expert, and he asked his bishop William Bernard Ullathorne to sound him out. Newman demurred on the grounds of poor health and inability to speak any language except En­g lish. Although ­there is evidence suggesting that even at this late date Pius IX considered inviting Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), this seems highly unlikely. In any case, no invitation was issued.43 Döllinger was a professor at the University of Munich and the most respected Catholic Church historian of his day. In 1845 William Gladstone, destined to be British prime minister during the council, visited him and became a lifelong friend. Just two years ­later Newman, recently converted to Catholicism and returning home from Rome, tried to persuade him to join the faculty of the recently founded Catholic University of Dublin. Shortly thereafter John Emerich Edward Dalberg-­Acton appeared at Döllinger’s door and asked him to be his professor. Acton was sixteen years old at the time. This brilliant young man, a devout Catholic, fluent in En­g lish, German, French, and Italian, related by blood or marriage to several noble families on the Continent, soon graduated from student status to closest friend. Like Döllinger, he was passionately opposed to papal infallibility and during the council worked with “the professor” to prevent its definition. Döllinger, though originally ultramontane, began moving to more liberal positions, especially a­ fter an extended visit to Rome with Acton in 1857, during which he was dismayed by the low academic quality and the narrow perspectives he found t­ here. He was shaken by the rubrics of his audience with Pius IX, where he

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was obliged to kneel three times as he approached the pope, who then extended his foot to be kissed. During the audience Pius remarked, as Döllinger recalled it many years l­ater, that he was “the supreme authority over all, and that only when the world has learned to bow before the apostolic see would the welfare of humankind be assured.” In retrospect, Acton observed that “Döllinger used to commemorate the trip to Rome in 1857 as an epoch of emancipation.”44 Just a few years a­ fter the visit, Döllinger became a suspect in Rome for lectures suggesting that the time had come for an end to papal sovereignty over the Papal States. The lectures, delivered in 1861, created a sensation across Eu­rope, just at the moment when Italian forces had seized most of the territory of the Papal States and incorporated them into the new kingdom of Italy. In his lectures Döllinger took a stand directly opposed to Pius’s encyclical Nullis Certe Verbis ( January 19, 1860), in which the pope insisted on the absolute necessity of retaining his temporal authority. Even more serious ­were the events of 1863, which very much discredit any evidence suggesting an invitation to Döllinger was ever considered. In that year Döllinger or­g a­n ized and presided over a German theological conference in Munich that took place just a month ­after Montalembert’s famous speeches in Mechelen. The curia had long nursed misgivings about the soundness of German theology, and the conference, even with its profession of loyalty to the Holy See, only confirmed it. At the conference Döllinger made a speech not quite as sensational as t­hose of Montalembert, but he singled out Bossuet for special commendation as a “church ­father” in an other­w ise barren theological landscape. He went on to criticize Catholic theology in Italy as obscurantist. He strongly affirmed the liberty of theologians in the face of Roman control and looked forward to a

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Catholic theological re­nais­sance whose origin and center would be Germany. To accomplish the re­n ais­sance, three steps w ­ ere necessary. First, Catholic theology had to focus on promoting Christian unity, which entailed paying respectful attention to the theological insights of the “separated communities.” Second, theologians must realize their prophetic mission and resist efforts to make them conform to antiquated modes. Fi­nally, Catholic speculative theology must integrate into itself modern exegetical and historical methods. Such views ­were, to say the least, unpop­u ­lar in Rome, but they gave ­little inkling of what an articulate enfant terrible Döllinger was to become. Nonetheless, on December 21, 1863, they elicited from Pius IX Tuas Libenter, an apostolic letter addressed to Gregor von Scherr, archbishop of Munich. In it the pope reminded the archbishop of theologians’ duty to submit to the pronouncements of the Roman congregations, and he expressed concern that German scholars ­were becoming too enamored of modern forms of scholarship to the detriment of the tried and tested ways of the doctors of the church.45

The War in Print, 1869 As ­these preparations ­were being made, major ­battles broke out in the Catholic press. Though the ­battles ­were long in the making, an article in the Civiltà Cattolica, dated February 6, 1869, proved to be the spark that set the guns blazing.46 For reasons impossible to fathom, Cardinal Antonelli sent to the journal a report from the nuncio in Paris about the state of mind of the French regarding the council. The report formed the substance of the article in the journal, entitled “Correspondence from France.”

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As the Civiltà presented it, the report had much to say about the attitude of the French government. More impor­tant, it made clear the difference between “Catholics properly speaking” (Cattolici semplicemente) and “liberal Catholics.” What especially caused the controversy, however, ­were the assertions that the “real Catholics” wanted the council to define the teaching of the Syllabus, to proclaim the dogma of papal infallibility by acclamation as “a unan­i­mous outburst of the Holy Spirit,” and thus to conduct its business with the greatest pos­si­ble dispatch ­because any clash of opinion would cause grave scandal. Especially in that last regard, the report echoed the ideas of Veuillot, who found it laughable that the Holy Spirit might require time and hundreds of speeches to make the truth manifest. Every­one knew of the Civiltà’s semiofficial status and assumed, almost certainly correctly, that both Antonelli and the pope had approved the article before publication.47 Not surprisingly, the article was interpreted as expressing what Pius IX wanted regarding the mode of the council and its end result. From this it was all too easy to conclude that the council was rigged and over before it began. The response was immediate and passionate. In France Veuillot published a French translation the next week, to which his opponents replied, inspired by Dupanloup. But it was in Germany that the reaction was strongest from both sides and where, unlike other countries, universities ­were involved to a significant degree. Supporting the line taken by the Civiltà ­were the University of Mainz, the Mainz journal Katholik, and the Jesuits’ Stimmen aus Maria Laach. On the other side ­were two main centers: in the Rhineland the University of Bonn and the journal Theologische Literaturblatt, and in Bavaria the University of Munich, where Döllinger immediately assumed leadership of the campaign. It was

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he who fired the first shots, and with them he emerged as unquestionably the most emotionally engaged opponent of all that the ultramontanes stood for. Upon reading the article from the Civiltà, he wrote, “Clearly the Jesuits have now revealed the plan they have for the council.”48 Between March 10 and 16 the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung published five articles, “Das Concilium und die Civiltà,” in which the anonymous author launched an attack on the ideas in the Civiltà in terms sometimes worthy of Cassandra. He viewed with horror the prospect that the council might define the Syllabus and, even worse, infallibility. If so, it would be the church’s declaration of war on modern society and on the freedoms that society had developed. When in August the author published his arguments in a book, now entitled Der Papst und das Concil (The pope and the council), he signed his name as Janus. By that time it was becoming clear—­though some p­ eople still found it hard to believe—­that Janus was Döllinger. In the book Döllinger 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 ­M iddle Ages and against the papacy’s infallibility, which rested on forged canonical texts. The Jesuits w ­ ere 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 En­g lish translations. On November 26, just two weeks before the council opened, the Congregation of the Index condemned the book and all translations of it.49 Meanwhile, in a meeting in May at Koblenz, Catholic laymen, frightened by the specter Janus raised, published a manifesto

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addressed to the bishop of Trier expressing their objections to the Civiltà’s program and laying out a liberal alternative.50 The manifesto circulated widely in Germany, as did a similar one published by another group of Catholics who met in Berlin. Other groups and journals entered the fray. In August the bishops of Germany, ­England, Ireland, the United States, Spain, France, and Italy received in their own language an anonymous tract arguing that it would be extremely inopportune to define infallibility at this time. Döllinger acknowledged authorship. The German bishops, twenty in number, ­were painfully aware ­things w ­ ere spinning out of control. During their meeting at Fulda in early September, they published a pastoral in which they sought to calm the fears that Janus aroused and to reassure Catholics that bishops would be able freely to express themselves. They exhorted Catholics to rally around the church and the pope and to hold themselves aloof from the conflicts stirred up about the council. At the meeting they discovered that among themselves the majority ­were not ready to support a definition of infallibility. But some, most notably Bishop Ignaz von Senestrey of Regensburg, who along with Manning would be the g­ reat catalyst for the definition at the council, held quite dif­fer­ent views. Fourteen of the bishops addressed a confidential letter to Pius IX telling him of their apprehensions about the council, a letter the pope did not take in good part, especially when it was leaked to the press. A l­ittle ­later the Hungarian and Bohemian bishops, grouped around Cardinal Friedrich von Schwarzenberg, archbishop of Prague, also wrote the pope with a similar message. Groups of laymen in both Budapest and Prague began speculating about a national church, in­de­pen­dent of Rome. In France, ­after the initial polemic in February around the article in the Civiltà, a relative calm prevailed. It was abruptly broken

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in September when Bishop Maret published his two-­volume book on councils and their relationship to the church, Du concile général et de la paix religieuse (On the General Council and the peace of the Church). Emperor Louis Napoleon paid for the printing costs.51 Partly through the good offices of Döllinger, whom Maret had met in Munich in 1868, a German translation appeared in Regensburg at year’s end. Maret himself directly negotiated an Italian translation. Maret argued, especially from historical pre­ce­dents, that the church is a constitutional monarchy composed of two essential ele­ ments, 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 ele­ ments 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 in one way or another absolutely had to have consulted the worldwide episcopacy. Maret somehow did not grasp how combustible the ecclesiastical situation was, requiring only a spark to set it aflame. He hoped his book would reconcile the warring factions, even though he had been warned by friends that it would have just the opposite effect and he had been specifically cautioned not to use the word ­ ere correct. The book provoked Gallicanism favorably. His friends w

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a new and particularly unpleasant outburst of controversy. In some circles it was already compromised once it became known that the emperor had paid for the printing. The book further convinced Pius IX that Maret was a heretic. Within two weeks of the book’s arrival in Rome, it had been handed over to the Congregation of the Index. Bishop Louis Pie of Poitiers, a leading ultramontane, published an article in the Univers against Maret’s book, ­after which other French bishops repudiated it. The major critique came, however, early the next year with the monograph by Guéranger, De la monarchie pontificale àpropos du livre de Mgr. l’évêque de Sura (On the papal monarchy on the occasion of the book by the bishops of Sura). In his book Guéranger propounded the most extreme ultramontane opinion: “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.”52 On March 12, 1870, Pius sent Guéranger a letter thanking him for the book and excoriating t­ hose who held opposing views. Guéranger published the letter as an introduction to the second edition. Long before Guéranger’s book, however, Manning from across the channel attacked Maret in an appendix to his pastoral letter of October 3, 1869, about the upcoming council. Veuillot immediately picked up Manning’s letter and published it in a French translation in the Univers. On November 11, 1869, Dupanloup, shortly before he was to leave for the council, wrote a letter ostensibly to his clergy but surely intended for a broader audience, as suggested by the fact that it was a brochure of eighty-­eight pages entitled “Observations sur la controverse soulevée relativement a la définition de l’infallibilité au prochain concile” (Observations on the controversy concerning the definition of infallibility at the coming council). He wrote in large part in response to the article

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in L’Univers and therefore in what he understood, from the French translation t­ here, to be Manning’s view.53 Up to that time, Dupanloup’s Observations was the first and weightiest pronouncement by a bishop against the opportuneness of a definition. In princi­ple Dupanloup had no objections to ultramontane positions such as t­ hose Bellarmino propounded in the seventeenth ­century or ­those Giovanni Perrone put forward in the nineteenth at the Roman College. He very much objected to extreme positions such as Guéranger’s, and he believed a definition at this time would cause severe prob­lems in the church and in the church’s relationship to the outside world. Since the summer, Dupanloup had been in contact with like-­ minded bishops and theologians outside France. In early September, for instance, he visited Döllinger and Acton, at Acton’s villa near Worms. On the same trip he had hoped to meet the influential bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, but the bishop had to attend the conference at Fulda. In any case, in writing his Observations Dupanloup made generous use of a memorandum by the German philosopher-­theologian-­psychologist Franz Brentano, which Ketteler had presented to the bishops at Fulda. 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.”54 Dupanloup also inveighed against the imprudent and provocative treatment of the subject by certain ultramontane journals, and he mentioned the Univers and the Civiltà by name. He singled out

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the Univers for engineering a campaign for the definition as a kind of plebiscite, a modern way of ascertaining believers’ faith (sensus fidelium). On November 18 Veuillot replied immediately and in such a way as to prompt Dupanloup to publish a notification or warning to Veuillot (Avertissement à M. Veuillot, November 21): “The moment has come to defend ourselves against you.”55 The Avertissement, a declaration of war, was in essence a long j’accuse against Veuillot. Dupanloup upbraided the Univers for fomenting discord among the bishops, for deliberately polarizing opinion, for agitating for infallibility with amateur and ill-­informed arguments, for labeling legitimate opinions heresy, for speaking of the papacy in ways that equated it with the divinity, and for other offenses besides. “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.” Veuillot replied three days l­ater, on November 24, and then again on December 2, in terms as strong as ­those used against him.56 His most effective defense, however, was that if Dupanloup’s accusations w ­ ere true, ecclesiastical authorities would not have tolerated him for a moment. Veuillot flaunted that he stood in the good graces of Roman authorities and of Pius IX himself. ­There was no need for him to prove what was common knowledge. To that argument, ­there was ­little anyone could reply. The controversy created an uproar in France and let loose an avalanche of letters and pamphlets, many filled with invectives and denunciations usually directed against Dupanloup and the “liberals.” The uproar did not escape notice and comment elsewhere. In ­England The Tablet found it hard to let the ­matter rest and in four issues between November 13 and December 18 published articles highly critical of Dupanloup.57 Even some of t­hose who

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agreed that Dupanloup’s accusations hit the mark felt that the Avertissement was intemperate and that it was ill suited to the dignity of a bishop. The controversy raised Dupanloup’s public profile considerably, but it also prompted questions about his judgment and temperament that lessened his effectiveness at the council. Maret’s book and Dupanloup’s two pieces harmed rather than helped the cause of t­hose who opposed the definition. The controversies played themselves out just as the bishops had begun to arrive in Rome for the opening of the council, and upon them they cast their shadows. They made infallibility, never mentioned in any official communication about the purpose of the council, now seem to be the unavoidable order of the day. Bishops who had given ­little thought to the ­matter or hoped the council would not take it up now found it staring in their f­aces. As was said at the time, Quod inopportunum dixerunt, necessarium fecerunt—­simply by protesting so strongly and categorically that a definition would be inopportune, they made dealing with it unavoidable.58 If defining infallibility strengthened papal authority perhaps more than some bishops desired, now, with the spotlight so glaringly focused on it, deliberately to refuse to deal with it would certainly weaken that authority, which in 1870 no bishop wanted to do. When the council opened on December 8, 1869, leaders in the church ­were divided into two groups, one that favored a definition of infallibility and another that opposed it. Beneath the obvious fact of the two camps lay many complications. Among t­hose who favored the definition, ­there was disagreement as to its scope and its rationale—­did infallibility pertain to the person of the pope or to his office? What w ­ ere its limits? How did it relate to councils

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and to bishops? W ­ ere extremists like Ward correct, or ­were ­t here more qualified ways of understanding it? Why must it be defined—to resolve conflicts within the church and rid it once and for all of Gallicanism, Jansenism, Liberalism, and similarly insidious teachings that might arise in the ­f uture? Or, as de Maistre would have it, was it meant to remedy the grave ills of society at large, or, as Görres would have it, act as a bulwark against oppressive po­ liti­cal regimes? Or was it simply a statement against the modern world? The other side was constituted by two groups, the gallicans (heirs to Bossuet) and the liberals (heirs to de Lamennais). They ­were distinguishable, even though the bound­aries between them ­were remarkably permeable. At the council the gallicans wanted above all to preserve the traditional role of bishops and councils in the governance of the church. They opposed a definition of papal infallibility in princi­ple b­ ecause they saw it as unnecessary or inopportune. In that regard their question was the question Newman asked in his famous letter to Bishop Ullathorne on January 28, 1870: “When has definition of doctrine de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern painful necessity?”59 Their fundamental theological objection to the doctrine as formulated by many of its advocates was that it destroyed the traditional organic structure of the church by separating the head from the body. The liberals wanted the church to reconcile itself with what they saw as best in modern society, especially liberty and representative forms of government. They feared most of all that the council might define the Syllabus. They opposed a definition of papal infallibility for many of the same reasons as did the gallicans, but they also opposed it ­because it represented an antiquated form of thinking and a dangerous concentration of authority. Within the

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episcopacy the true liberals w ­ ere relatively few, and within Catholicism at large they w ­ ere, outside Belgium and the United States, an almost negligible minority, even though they had, sometimes to their distaste, two ardent advocates for the cause in Döllinger and Acton.

4 ­Under Way and Moving toward Dei Filius

B

ishops and other prelates began arriving in Rome in the ­m iddle of November 1869. “We have flown ­here,” reported Bishop Ketteler to his b­ rother, amazed that the trip from Mainz to Rome by rail had taken only thirty-­two and a half hours. With stops along the way, Bishop Francis Blanchet of Portland, Oregon, took two months for the journey, a full month of which was required for the ­actual travel. Bishops from mission lands in Asia took at least as long, with several of them forced to travel part of the journey on foot. The French government offered to transport on its navy vessels missionaries of any nationality f­ ree of charge, which allowed some bishops to come who other­w ise could not have afforded the journey. The result was an international gathering like no other in the history of the Catholic Church and, indeed, in the history of modern Eu­rope up to that time. From an episcopacy of some thousand members, over seven hundred showed up at the beginning of the council. Once the council was fully u ­ nder way, attendance at the general congregations differed from day to day. Prelates absented themselves ­because they ­were not feeling well, or they did

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not want to trudge through a drenching rain, or they simply needed a day off from the wearying routine. Attendance diminished as the months passed. On January 15, for instance, 37 cardinals ­were pres­ent, with 109 archbishops and 412 bishops, whereas by May 20 the number of archbishops had shrunk to 88, and bishops to 380. Then by July 1, the cardinals ­were down to 26, the archbishops to 69, and the bishops to 342. For the solemn proclamation of the doctrine of infallibility on July 18, the numbers sank even further. The Eu­ro­pean episcopacies ­were disproportionately represented among themselves. That of ­Great Britain was surprisingly strong, with 34 members, of whom 20 w ­ ere from Ireland. From German lands 18 came of an episcopacy of only 20, whereas from the Austro-­Hungarian Empire 49 attended the council. Italy was outlandishly overrepresented with 117 prelates, to which must be added virtually all the 48 from the curia. France, with Algeria included, came next with 88, about the same number as all Spanish-­ speaking prelates put together. About a third of the membership of the council came from outside Eu­rope. For the first time the Amer­i­cas w ­ ere represented, and represented in force. From the United States came 49 prelates, from Canada 18, but only 50 from all of Latin Amer­i­ca. Sixty-­one bishops at the council w ­ ere of an Eastern rite and came principally from Asia Minor, some 50 of whom w ­ ere from the Ottoman Empire. Forty-­ one council ­ fathers arrived from Asia, principally from China and British India. Out of 5 bishops in the Philippines, only the archbishop of Manila was at the council, but 10 bishops came from Australia. ­There w ­ ere only 8 from all of Africa. Despite the impressive number of non-­Europeans, the council was, as mentioned, a Eu­ro­pean affair by virtue of its issues, by virtue of the overwhelming Eu­ro­pean membership in the council,

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and especially by virtue of the leaders who gave the council its direction. Although Italians constituted about 35 ­percent of the total membership of the council, it was northern Eu­ro­pe­ans who emerged as the leading personalities. Once arrived, the council f­athers had to seek lodging. ­Those from France, Germany, and especially the Austro-­Hungarian Empire came with ample funds, which ensured not only comfortable quarters but carriages to carry them to and fro. Other bishops ­were not so fortunate. Some had to be satisfied with a cramped and unheated room in a seminary or religious ­house and make their way to the basilica on foot. For such bishops, a rainy day, of which t­ here ­were many, might mean sitting through three or four hours of speeches in a cold basilica soaked to the skin. But even for the bishops who enjoyed better circumstances, the council was not a Roman holiday. Nor ­were the hours spent in the north transept of Saint Peter’s a plea­sure. On September 19, 1869, the Central Commission had deci­ded that while the solemn sessions would be held in Saint Peter’s, the general congregation would take place in the church of Sant’Apollinare, where the acoustics ­were better. Pius overruled the decision and insisted on the basilica, which resulted in one of the council participants’ greatest ­trials. The impor­tant Roman architect Virginio Vespignani was in charge of transforming the transept into a suitable meeting space, and he made e­ very effort to outfit it with elegance and dignity. He walled it off from the rest of the basilica with a handsome screen of wood well over sixty feet high painted to look like marble. Inscribed on it in large gold letters ­were words taken from the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel, Docete omnes gentes, et ecce ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem saeculi (Teach all nations, and, behold, I am with you all days u ­ ntil the end of the world). Remarkable

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though it seems, this im­mense and heavy partition could be partly opened for full visual access to the basilica when occasion warranted, as for the solemn public sessions.1 But Vespignani had a daunting task. Despite his best efforts, he could not make the cavernous and unheated space fully suitable for a meeting. The major prob­lem was the acoustics. Rare ­were the bishops who did not have trou­ble hearing and following the argument. Bishops seated where the acoustics w ­ ere especially bad complained that for hours on end they could catch only a word or phrase ­here and ­there, a daily torture. Plans w ­ ere proposed to move the general congregations to a more suitable location in Rome, but they went nowhere. To ease the bishops’ discomfort, a chapel adjoining the transept had been carpeted and fitted with chairs. In good Italian fashion, it served as a bar where a bishop could always get a cup of warm broth or a glass of wine. In late December the meeting hall was shortened by about a third and a huge awning stretched over the pulpit from which the bishops spoke. This adjustment slightly improved the situation but certainly did not solve it. Nor did further adjustments made ­later. The ongoing prob­lem with the acoustics and the grueling tedium of the general congregations wore down bishops’ spirits and their patience with one another. ­There ­were psychological as well as physical prob­lems. With no predetermined terminal date, the f­athers lived in uncertainty as to when they might return home—in two months, in six, in a year, even longer? Bernard McQuaid, bishop of Rochester, New York, wrote home a­ fter only a few weeks: “­Unless an escape is found from the pres­ent way of getting on, the council ­w ill not be over for years. I would not like to say how many.”2 The uncertainty devolved into anxiety if pressing business awaited bishops at home, which was more often the case than not.

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Bishops worried, at least in the beginning, w ­ hether they would be pressured into rubber-­stamping the documents prepared for them or w ­ hether they might by force of acclamations be swept into premature and dangerous decisions. Bishops from the Continent especially lived in anxiety about the prospect of war between France and Prus­sia and therefore about the safety and po­liti­cal stability of the city of Rome. Many w ­ ere most particularly unsettled by the polarization over infallibility that, despite the goodwill on all sides, lurked beneath the surface from the very first moment of the council. At that time the vast majority of bishops w ­ ere certainly in f­avor of “strengthening the princi­ple of authority,” which did not automatically translate into a definition of papal infallibility. But the bishops soon realized that infallibility was ­going to be the question at the council and that the debate on it would be fierce. Nonetheless, the bishops had come to Rome resolved to do their duty and to take in stride any prob­lems they encountered. By December 8 they ­were ready for the council to begin, which it did that day promptly at 9:00 a.m.3 At that hour, as all the church bells in Rome began to ring amid a torrential rainfall, the pro­cession made its way down the scala regia of the apostolic palace and into the basilica, which was filled with pilgrims and dignitaries. Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Queen Olga of Württemberg, the ex-­king of Naples, and other royalty ­were ­there, as was the full diplomatic corps. The pro­cession itself was made up of 49 cardinals, 11 patriarchs, 6 prince-­bishops, 680 archbishops and bishops, 28 abbots, 29 superiors general of male religious o ­ rders and vicars general, and well over 250 clergy resident in Rome. Noble Guards and Knights of Malta stood at the main entrance to the basilica, and Swiss Guards ­were posted at the other entrances. The pro­cession passed down the main aisle of the nave and then turned right into the transept,

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the council hall. Bringing up the rear was Pius IX on the sedia gestatoria, the portable throne carried by attendants. At the door of the church he dismounted and walked the length of the basilica, to the hall. Once all w ­ ere assembled, the dean of the college of cardinals presided at a solemn High Mass. A ­ fter the Mass, which ­toward the end included a long sermon, the pope received the obedience of the council f­ athers, each in turn. Pius, obviously deeply moved by the occasion, then delivered a relatively brief allocution. In it he deplored the evils of the times and the attacks on the church but reminded the ­fathers that the church would triumph, as Jesus promised: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I build my church, and the gates of hell s­hall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:16). In another time and in another context the strong implication that the successor of Peter would prevail against the evils of the times might be bypassed as a commonplace, but at this time and in this context it sounded in some ears like an echo of ultramontane ideas.4 ­A fter the pope spoke the ­Fathers ­were asked: “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?”5 The response was a resounding placet. With that the council was officially constituted and entered history. The occasion became the first of the four public sessions of Vatican  I. The ceremony ended at about 3:00 p.m. with the Te Deum.

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The Leaders ­ here ­were many strong personalities at Vatican I.6 Among them T a handful became major influences on the council’s course. Although they can easily and correctly be categorized as belonging to one camp or the other concerning infallibility, as individuals they differed in their perspectives on the issue, sometimes considerably. Nonetheless, the categorization holds up and provides a pathway through the thicket of unfamiliar names that perforce makes up the story of the council. On the side of t­hose favoring the definition, Manning was among the most prominent and most zealous.7 At the council he traded on his unique status as the only convert and therefore was convincing when he promoted infallibility as a doctrine that would attract Protestants to the true fold of Christ. Sincere in his convictions and a pastorally effective bishop, he seems to have conceived the council as a po­liti­cal body on the model of the British Parliament, where the goal of a member proposing a bill was to make it prevail by strength of argument but also by outmaneuvering the opposition. Manning’s colleague in zealotry was Ignaz von Senestrey, bishop of Regensburg, one of the relatively few German bishops who supported the definition. He was a controversial figure among his colleagues. Public protests broke out in Regensburg when in 1858 his nomination to the diocese was announced. In 1867, while he was in Rome with the other bishops for the g­ reat anniversary of the martyrdoms of Saints Peter and Paul, he and Manning solemnly swore that they would do their utmost to promote the definition. Among the German bishops Senestrey did not, however, stand utterly alone. Konrad Martin, the Jesuit bishop of Paderborn, for instance, was also a confirmed ultramontane.

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Archbishop Henry Edward Manning, as he looked about the time of Vatican I. Engraving by Rico. Photo by PHAS. (Courtesy of Universal Images Group Collection/Getty Images.)

Just as committed to promoting the definition as Manning and Senestrey but more mea­sured in his approach was Victor-­Auguste-­ Isidor Dechamps, archbishop of Mechelen.8 A member of the Redemptorist order, early in his tenure as bishop he became respected for both his theological learning and his pastoral engagement. In 1849 he had met Pius IX while the pope was in exile

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at Gaeta and won his esteem. In the long run he was prob­ably more influential with ­those who w ­ ere wavering on the issue than was the juggernaut of Manning and Senestrey, and he is sometimes considered the real leader of the majority party. Louis-­Édouard-­François-­Desiré Pie, bishop of Poitiers, was the leading figure among the French advocates for the definition. As a young seminarian he had gained a certain reputation for openly challenging his gallican-­inclined professors. He l­ater developed a close relationship with Abbé Lecomte, pastor of the cathedral of Chartres and a ­g reat admirer of Joseph de Maistre. From the moment Pie was named bishop in 1849, he never made a secret of his disgust with his colleagues in the French episcopacy who seemed ready to compromise with liberal ideas. Straightforward in his dealings, at the council he stayed above intrigue and blatant partisanship.9 The leading Italian prelate at the council was Cardinal-­Priest Luigi Bilio, principal author of the Syllabus and Quanta Cura. He emerged as a key figure ­because Pius had appointed him to two impor­tant positions: as one of the five presidents who presided at the general congregations and as president of the pivotal deputation, On the Faith. Keen though Bilio was for the definition, he, like Deschamps, wanted to work out a formula that would be acceptable to the minority. He found Manning’s and Senestrey’s strong-­arm approach irritating and improper, and in the deputation he at one point told them they w ­ ere out of order, “Non ita sunt tranctanda res ecclesiae” (Church m ­ atters are not to be dealt 10 with that way). On the other side, Félix Dupanloup first springs to mind. Of illegitimate birth, he made his way by virtue of hard work, intelligence, and pastoral commitment. He was a power­ful speaker who attracted large crowds that w ­ ere always struck by his sincerity

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and learning. T ­ here could be no better indication of his merit than his election in 1854 to the Académie française. As we have seen, from the moment he was appointed bishop of Orléans, he took a strong stand as a gallican especially opposed to Ultramontanism à la Veuillot. Impor­tant though he was before and during the council, he had less influence with his colleagues than he is often credited with. Henri Maret continued to enjoy g­ reat re­spect among the bishops of the French minority. B ­ ecause by this time he was almost totally deaf, he did not play the active role he other­w ise might have. The deep distrust of Pius IX that he had earned earlier had only intensified with the passing of time, which led the pope at one time to call Maret, in private, a viper. During the entire council the pope never granted him an audience.11 Not surprisingly, Maret turned out to be the lightning rod at Vatican I that attracted the special obloquy of the majority. Providing effective leadership was Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris. To his interventions bishops gave an attentive ear. Affable, conciliatory, and warm, he was at the same time highly principled. Like Maret, his early patron, he was a liberal as well as a gallican, and a determined opponent of the definition. Also like Maret he was very much out of ­favor with the pope, even though Pius treated him much better during the council than he did Maret. The year a­ fter the council, Darboy’s heroic be­hav­ior during the brief triumph of the Paris Commune ended with his execution by the Communards. The most concentrated core of opposition to the definition came, however, not from the French but from an impressive group of central Eu­ro­pean prelates. This included the majority of the German bishops, among whom Hefele, by now bishop of Rottenburg, and Baron Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, bishop of Mainz,

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Bishop Félix Dupanloup. Photo by the Print Collector. (­Album de photographies: Dans l’intimité de personnages illustres, 1860–1920. Courtesy of Hulton Archive Collection/Getty Images.)

­ ere particularly impor­t ant. The former adamantly opposed the w definition and ­after the council had considerable difficulty reconciling his conscience with it. The latter was much ahead of his times when in 1861 he published Freiheit, Autorität, und Kirche (Freedom, authority, and church), a book meant to foster reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Germany. Meanwhile, he was utterly committed

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to protecting the freedom of the church in the face of state control. Influenced by the ideas of Johann Adam Möhler, Ketteler saw the church as an organism in which the head could not operate in­de­pen­dently of the body. Though opposed to the definition, he assiduously distanced himself from the likes of Döllinger and Acton, and in that distancing he was not alone. ­A fter the council he stood out among his peers in taking a particularly strong stand against Bismarck’s anti-­Catholic Kulturkampf. The prelates who held the two most impor­tant bishoprics in the Austro-­Hungarian Empire ­were strong opponents of the decree—­ Cardinal Josef Othmar von Rauscher, archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Friedrich von Schwarzenberg, archbishop of Prague. The former had been professor of church history and canon law in Salzburg, where Schwarzenberg was one of his pupils. Early on Rauscher emerged as a leader among the clergy, and in 1852 the Austrian government named him chief negotiator in the difficult pro­cess that led in 1855 to the concordat with the Holy See. Rauscher had in the meantime been named archbishop of Vienna and in 1855 was appointed cardinal. When a de­cade l­ater an antichurch reaction against the concordat broke out, Rauscher urged harmony between the two parties but stoutly defended the church’s rights and the pope’s right to condemn the new laws passed in violation of the concordat. Immediately ­after this conflict he and the other Austrian bishops set off for the council. Once ­there he soon emerged as an opponent of the decree, especially b­ ecause it would give parties hostile to the church grist for their mill. Schwarzenberg was the youn­gest child of Johann Josef, Prince Schwarzenberg, and ­brother to the Austrian prime minister, Felix, Prince Schwarzenberg. His princely lineage, and more pointedly his outstanding abilities, led to his being appointed archbishop of

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Salzburg at the extraordinarily young age of twenty-­six. He worked to improve diocesan administration and became a major patron of the arts. In 1850 Pius IX transferred him to the see of Prague. As with virtually all bishops in the Austro-­Hungarian Empire, he had to devote considerable time and effort in dealing with church–­state relationships. During the council Schwarzenberg exerted influence more through his thoughtful manner and diplomatic skills than through more obvious means. The Hungarians ­were, with only one exception, resolutely opposed to the definition, led by their primate János Simor, archbishop of Esztergom, and by Lajos Haynald, archbishop of Kalocsa-­Bács, who was also a respected theologian and a botanist of some merit. The most passionate of the central Eu­ro­pe­a ns was Josip Juraj Strossmayer, the Croat bishop of Bosnia and Syrmia, with his seat in Ðakovo, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire. The hope that dominated Strossmayer’s life was reconciliation of Slav Orthodox communions with the Catholic Church, which to a large extent explains the passion with which he opposed the definition. As Bishop Ullathorne said of him, “[He is] a warm-­ hearted, affectionate Croat, as eloquent as he is warm, but apt to get over-­heated.”12 At the council Strossmayer, without intending to do so, managed time a­ fter time to annoy Pius IX and draw harsh words from him. The minority at the council consisted of some 150 prelates out of an assembly of 700 at its peak, but 150 is a generous estimate. Moreover, among that number ­were ­those who opposed the decree simply on the grounds that it was inopportune. Once infallibility definitively appeared on the agenda and was in one form or another certain to be defined, they might have been tempted to defect, depending on their reasons for judging the teaching inopportune. The strength of the minority lay, therefore, not in its size or inner

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coherence but in having among its numbers some of the most impor­tant sees in Europe—­Paris, Mainz, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Turin, and Milan—­learned, highly respected, and well-­connected prelates. The minority bishops could never quite bring themselves to believe that the pope was as strongly opposed to them as he was, even though as the council moved along they had abundant evidence that Pius thwarted them at e­ very opportunity. A note in the pope’s hand in the Vatican archives reveals how deep his dislike of them was: “Some leaders among the opposing bishops are effeminate, and o ­ thers are sophistical, or frivolous, or heretical. They are all ambitious, boastful, and obstinately attached to their own opinion.”13 Although the regulations for the council did not provide for meetings of national or language groups, ­these meetings developed early in the council and became an impor­tant part of its dynamics. The Spanish Americans joined with the Spaniards to form the most solidly prodefinition bloc in the council, along with the Australians. The Italians w ­ ere the next but with notable exceptions, such as the archbishops of Turin and Milan.14 The Irish w ­ ere basically prodefinition, led by the very committed archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Paul Cullen. The French episcopacy was so divided that it broke up into three groups—­those favoring the definition but hoping for a compromise formula, t­ hose who ­were most absolutist in their thinking, and t­ hose opposing the definition.15 The En­g lish and the Scots ­were also divided, with a number of them reacting negatively to what they felt was Manning’s unqualified Ultramontanism. Some simply tried to stand aloof from the fray. William Clifford, bishop of Clifton, however, intervened at impor­tant points as an effective minority voice.16 The bishops from the United States had largely been spared the controversies over

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infallibility that raged in Eu­rope before the council, and as a group they w ­ ere, therefore, more concerned to obviate any movement in the council that would damage church-­state relations in their country or incite more anti-­Catholic bigotry ­there. But as the council progressed, they took their stands, with some twenty of the forty-­eight opposed to the definition.17 Among ­those opposed, John Purcell, archbishop of Cincinnati, Thaddeus Amat y Brusi, bishop of Monterey-­L os Angeles, and especially Peter Kenrick, archbishop of Saint Louis, ­were the most prominent. Kenrick, clearheaded and firm in his views, was particularly active among like-­m inded bishops from the Continent. Richard Vincent Whelan, bishop of Wheeling, West ­Virginia, was also influential through his contacts with Eu­ro­pe­ans of the minority. Bishop Augustin Vérot, the French-­born bishop of Savannah, Georgia, entertained some and annoyed many o ­ thers with his wit and sometimes seemingly erratic interventions, beneath which lay a keen intelligence and deep opposition to the decree. Leaders on the other side w ­ ere John Spalding, archbishop of Balti­ more, and Joseph Sadoc Alemany y Conill, archbishop of San Francisco. Although among the Americans t­ here w ­ ere, therefore, strong feelings, during the council only eight of the forty-­n ine Americans (forty-­eight bishops and one abbot) ever ventured to mount the pulpit and address the assembly. Nonetheless, the Americans deported themselves well and won re­spect from their colleagues. Twice a week they all met to discuss pastoral and other issues needing attention in the United States. Of the eigh­teen Canadian bishops, all but three sided with the majority. The bishops from the Quebec province stood solidly in ­favor of the decree, but from the Canadians came an impressive and persuasive voice for the minority position in the person of Thomas-­Louis Connolly, archbishop of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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Partisans in Rome outside the council did not hesitate to make their influence felt. The press was active. The Times of London, for instance, regularly published the letters it received from Thomas Mozley, the paper’s special correspondent for the council; t­hese ­were ­later published as a book.18 Mozley spoke no foreign language and was therefore dependent for his information on gossip among En­g lish speakers who happened to be in Rome. He managed, unsurprisingly, to convey a distorted image of what went on. Shortly before the council opened, Veuillot, now a widower, set up with his s­ister Élise a large h ­ ouse­hold in Rome where he could receive impor­tant visitors and have access to confidential information. Treated like a celebrity as usual when in Rome, without difficulty he secured audiences with Pius IX during the council. Veuillot’s reports about the council published regularly ­ ere influential in forming public opinion in France. in the Univers w In many dioceses the reports further incited the lower clergy to ­favor infallibility and against the local bishop if he happened to be gallican.19 L ­ ater published as a book, Rome pendant le concile (Rome during the council), ­these reports ­were also influential in countering dispatches and books from the other side. But just how much direct influence Veuillot had on the council itself is not clear. The same cannot be said of Jesuits from the staff of the Civiltà Cattolica, especially Matteo Liberatore and the editor, Carlo Piccirillo. Liberatore acted as Manning’s personal theologian for the council, with whom he had already been in contact for several years. It was Liberatore, in fact, who formulated the vow Manning and Senestrey pronounced in 1867 on Peter’s tomb. His network of contacts in the Italian and other episcopacies made him the unofficial coordinator of initiatives by the Manning-­ Senestrey bloc in their quest to marshal support for their objec-

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tive. This was not an insignificant contribution to the majority’s cause. Pius made sure that Piccirillo often dealt directly with him when the editor arrived in the Vatican for approval of the text of the next issue of the journal. He was thus able, with the ­eager cooperation of Piccirillo, to insinuate to the world his ideas and concerns without directly betraying their origin. But it was a two-­way street. Piccirillo used his visits to influence Pius in a Manning-­Senestrey direction, not a difficult task.20 Liberatore’s counterpart on the other side was Lord Acton, who in November 1869 relocated his f­amily to a large apartment in Rome, where he worked especially closely with Dupanloup and Strossmayer, but also with Kenrick, Connolly, Clifford, and Hefele. Other minority bishops kept their distance, not wanting to be identified with Döllinger. Acton was the source of information for the Römische Briefe vom Konzil (Letters from Rome on the Council), authored by Quirinus, that is, Döllinger, and originally published in sixty-­n ine installments in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. Döllinger ­shaped the information into a narrative reflecting his own predispositions. The articles and the resulting book interpreted the council as ­little more than a plot to bring about a definition of the pope’s absolute authority in all ­matters, spiritual and temporal. The case for the definition, according to Döllinger, was based on forgeries and other distortions of history. In many circles Döllinger’s publications ­were taken as the true story of the council.21 To counteract them, especially the Briefe, Manning obtained from Pius IX a dispensation from secrecy about the council’s proceedings. Senestrey and Deschamps then received the same dispensation. Acton wrote to Döllinger almost daily. To ensure his letters ­were not intercepted by the papal police, he sent them to Munich

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in the diplomatic pouch of the Bavarian ambassador in Rome. Since Acton’s brother-­ in-­ law, Count Louis Acro-­ Valley, was ­attaché to the Bavarian embassy and completely in sympathy with Acton about the council, Acton had virtually full access to the resources of the embassy. Acton also had close contacts with politicians and other diplomats, especially Harry von Arnim, the Prus­sian ambassador in Rome, and Odo Russell, the British ambassador. In a letter of January 24, 1870, Russell gave an excellent summary of Acton’s importance and role in providing the minority with orga­nizational coherence: “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.”22 Mention of Russell’s name is a reminder that the governments of Eu­rope, each with its own special concerns about what the council might enact, did their best to monitor the meeting in the hope of forestalling any enactment that might upset church–­ state relations or cause prob­lems with their Catholic citizens or subjects. In par­t ic­u ­lar, they ­were concerned about the fate of their concordats with the Holy See, about any strengthening of the Syllabus, especially regarding freedom of the press and of religious choice, or, as with Italy, about a pos­si­ble declaration on the pope’s temporal sovereignty. As far as governments ­were concerned, therefore, the council was far from being simply a church affair. They ­were not unhappy to have their diplomats collude with Acton and ­others to find out what was ­going on. Gladstone, friend of Döllinger, deeply admired Acton and had recently conferred upon him a peerage. Acton was

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Döllinger, Gladstone, Lord Acton, and o ­ thers at Acton’s villa in Tegernsee, Bavaria, 1879. Photogravure. Published in Herbert Paul, ed., Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone (London, 1904). (Reproduction courtesy of John M. Kelly Library, University of Toronto, via the Internet Archive.)

now Lord Acton, thirty-­three years of age. If during the council he wrote to Döllinger almost daily, he also kept in close touch with Gladstone.23 But Acton’s correspondence with London was not an isolated instance of ­people pres­ent at the council trying to influence their governments. Social life in Rome was lively during the council and provided venues where diplomats and journalists mixed freely with bishops, from whose conversations they gleaned the information they so eagerly sought. The apartments of Veuillot and Acton w ­ ere only the best known of the gathering places. The Roman nobility often welcomed guests to their palaces for dinner or supper, over which council gossip was eagerly exchanged. Most of t­hese Roman

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families w ­ ere ultramontane in sentiment, but t­here ­were exceptions such as the Rospigliosi. Noblewomen from other countries residing in Rome also opened their doors, especially to anti-­infallibility notables. Some of them w ­ ere of considerable accomplishment. The noble-­born Pauline Craven, for instance, received a prize from the Académie française for one of her novels. Of par­tic­u ­lar importance was the salon of Lady Blennerhassett (Charlotte von Leyden), biographer of Madame de Staël, friend of Döllinger, and during the council especially close to Dupanloup. But ­there ­were a number of other noble or aristocratic w ­ omen in Rome whose homes became havens for weary council members and places where they could exchange information and speak to their colleagues more openly and frankly than they wanted to do elsewhere.24

A Fateful Vote The first general congregation was held on Friday, December 10, two days a­ fter the solemn opening. Following the Mass, the assembly, presided over by the cardinal presidents, took up the business of the day, which consisted of announcements, the election of certain officials of the council, and similar items—­tedious but necessary evils that beset meetings at seemingly all times and in all places. The meeting was so badly prepared that the hall was already half empty by the time it was officially adjourned. During the meeting, however, the bishops ­were alerted to the serious business that lay ahead when they received a document created by the preparatory doctrinal congregation. It was titled De doctrina catholica contra multiplices errores ex rationalismo derivatos (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Against the Many Errors Flowing from Rationalism).25 The document was extremely long, the size of

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a small book. It was the starting point from which eventually developed the first of the two solemn decrees of the council, Dei Filius (The Son of God). The second general congregation, which took place on December 14, was as impor­tant as the first was routine, early on revealing and furthering a division of the council into two camps. The principal agenda for the day was the election of the twenty-­four members of the doctrinal deputation (De fide) who, as mentioned, pro­cessed the amendments bishops proposed to documents ­under discussion and thus had control of them. Although at a ­later date members had to be elected to the three other deputations also, the doctrinal was the crucial one, a fact that Manning and Sensetrey grasped earlier and more effectively than did the leaders on the other side. No l­ater than December 4, ten days before the vote, Manning and Senestrey had set to work drawing up a list of members they assessed as desirable for the deputation. The decisive meeting of the two leaders, along with Dechamps and a few o ­ thers, took place two days ­later on December 6 at the Villa Caserta, the headquarters of the Redemptorists, Deschamps’s religious order. At the meeting they agreed on three criteria for their list: First, only bishops clearly in f­avor of the definition ­were to be members. Second, the deputation would include bishops from a number of nations. Third, preliminary lists should be handed over to Archbishop Manning for coordination and vetting.26 The major prob­lem the group faced was learning the names of appropriate members of the deputation from the many nations represented at the council. Cardinal Filippo De Angelis, whom fifteen days ­later Pius named a president of the council, lent a willing hand in the task, and the Jesuits of the Civiltà w ­ ere more than ready to do the same. On December 4 F ­ ather Giovanni Giuseppe Franco

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from the Civiltà had already facilitated contacts with the Spanish and Italian hierarchies. From several tentative lists, a final choice was made that contained, despite the care with which it was compiled, an error of judgment. It included János Simor, once an ultramontane who had gone over to the other side. Senestrey was able to have the list lithographed. Well before the general congregation on December  14, copies w ­ ere given to trusted leaders from the dif­fer­ent hierarchies to be distributed among the other members of their hierarchy. Although Bishop Pie and other bishops of the majority—­and, it seems, Pius IX himself—­wanted to include the minority on the deputation, Manning would have none of it b­ ecause, as he said, “Heretics do not come to a council to help in formulating doctrine but to be heard and condemned.”27 Franco reports in his diary that the minority had begun to or­ ga­n ize before Manning and Senestrey moved into action.28 He could hardly be more mistaken. The leaders of the minority met for the first time only on December 12, two days before the voting, and even then they seem not to have fully grasped how impor­tant the deputation was for their cause. The tardiness of the meeting meant that the organizers had neither the time nor the means to communicate effectively with like-­m inded bishops from the dif­ fer­ent hierarchies. Thus, the minority came up with its list only on December 13, the day before the voting. The list contained just 21 names, an indication of the inadequacy of the mea­sures taken. As a sign of the minority’s hope of working with the majority, among ­those 21 ­were 5 from the majority. Two of the 5 ­were also on the majority’s list—­Emmanuel Garcia Gil, archbishop of Zaragoza; and Antolín Monescillo y Viso, bishop of Jaén—­and w ­ ere elected from that list.

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The election duly took place on the ­fourteenth, and the results ­ ere announced at the next general congregation, on December w 20. It was an overwhelming victory for the Manning-­Senestrey candidates. Not a single member of the minority’s list was elected except the two who supported the majority. The only voice for the minority on the deputation was Simor. Even so, the deputation soon found itself divided between moderates, who wanted to try to meet the concerns of the minority, and ­others who held more extreme positions and had ­little interest in anything resembling a compromise. The election was a sad wake-up call for the minority. Before the council got ­under way, their leaders had overestimated their strength and certainly had not reckoned with tactics like ­those employed by the other side. The Jesuit historian Klaus Schatz correctly observed that the best hope the minority had was to reach out early to the many moderates in the majority to try to cooperate with them, some of whom ­were appalled by the machinations that had taken place.29 By December 20 such a course of action, though somewhat pursued from then on, came too late. The vote hardened positions. The minority had already become “the opposition.” Cardinal Schwarzenberg, reflecting the humiliation the bishops felt, complained to Cardinal De Luca, one of the presidents, “We have been made a laughingstock to our ­people and made out to be a disgrace in the church” (Facti sumus opprobrium in ecclesia et derisio populis nostris).30 But the joy among the intransigents on the other side was unbounded and filled with confidence about the ultimate outcome. Veuillot reported, “­People are saying that the council is already over.”31 Even though Bishop Pie regretted the mea­sures by which the result was accomplished, he commented, “­People look upon

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t­hese elections as sounding the musical key to the council. They indicate what its dominant note ­w ill be.”32 Outside the council the election was often interpreted as orchestrated by the curia, the pope, the Jesuits, or “the Italians.” But the pope and members of the curia w ­ ere at most latecomers and fellow travelers. “The Italians” ­were the staff of the Civiltà. The energy for the coup came from northern Eu­rope. The unfortunate aspect of the affair was that if the election had gone forward in a less orchestrated way, the majority would still almost certainly have predominated. It may not have predominated so overwhelmingly, but it would have done so easily, substantially, and without the bitterness that many now felt. Cuthbert Butler, the fair-­m inded En­g lish historian of the council, rightly assessed the affair: “­A fter ­g oing through the proceedings of the entire council, I have to say that this appears to me as the most serious blot on its ­doings.”33

Snail’s Pace At the third general congregation, not held u ­ ntil December 20, the bishops elected members of the three remaining deputations, which resulted in more balanced memberships. On ­December 28, discussion on a substantive m ­ atter fi­n ally began, the draft of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism known by its opening words, “Apostolici muneris.” It had eigh­teen chapters followed by extensive notes. ­A fter discussion in five more congregations, it was sent to the doctrinal deputation for revision. The sequence of general congregations had been interrupted on January 6, 1870, the Feast of the Epiphany, for the second public session of the council.34 The occasion was the bishops’ public pro-

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fession of their Christian faith, in accordance with a long-­standing tradition of such oaths at the beginning of a council. Each of the council f­athers in turn professed his faith while kneeling before the pope, which resulted in a tediously long ceremony. Nine days earlier, when the discussion of the text began, Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna was the first to speak. He sounded what would be the message of most of ­those who followed: the text was too long, too academic, and did not come to grips with the real prob­lems of the day. Not this or that heresy was what now troubled the church and the world but a widespread secularizing outlook that had no room for God or the transcendent.35 ­A fter him Kenrick of Saint Louis criticized the draft for departing from the concise style and format of previous councils. He set a good example, in vain, by speaking for less than five minutes.36 The final speaker of the day was Archbishop Thomas-­ Louis Connolly of Halifax, who found the text unsatisfactory in its content, form, and style. The text was so bad, it defied revision. Let it be “decently buried” (cum honore sepeliendum) and a new one created!37 From December 28 u ­ ntil January 10 the council f­ athers heard a total of thirty-­five speeches. Although most of them rehashed the themes of the first day, three stand out from the rest. Among them was Bishop Strossmayer’s, which provoked the first intervention from a presiding president. 38 Strossmayer criticized the formal opening of the document, “Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the council, [decrees such and such].” Strossmayer objected that the council’s decrees should be promulgated in the council’s name, as was done at the Council of Trent, and not in the name of the pope. Cardinal Annibale Capalti interrupted him, told him to stick to the substance of the text, and said that when the pope was

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Bishop Josip Jurai Strossmayer. Anonymous photo about the time of the council. (Courtesy Woodstock Theological Library at Georgetown University.)

pres­ent at a council the proper formula was the one he criticized. Capalti was correct about the practice of the medieval councils. He began, however, by mentioning that the formula was prescribed in the apostolic letter of His Holiness that set down the regulations for the council and therefore could not be changed. Strossmayer responded at some length, professing that he meant no disrespect for the supreme pontiff but was using his freedom to express a concern. Then, “I ­w ill say no more on a forbidden subject but turn now to one that is allowed.”39 The sarcasm was unmistakable.

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At the next congregation, on January 3, Vérot, bishop of Savan­nah, made his debut at the council with a commonsense but long-­ winded speech, laced with witting or unwitting touches of humor that pleased some but annoyed o ­ thers. He asked why the council was wasting time in refuting the errors of some obscure German phi­los­o­phers. It should instead focus on real issues. With the new upsurge of pro­g ress in the sciences, the council should take account of it by rehabilitating Galileo. Vérot, a bishop whose see was in the American Deep South and who had entered it just as the Civil War began, also recommended that the council condemn the proposition that blacks have no souls and are not members of the ­human race. His pleas got lost in a council moving ahead on a course already difficult to change.40 The third intervention of note, which occurred on the last day of discussion, was by one of the most learned members of the minority, Guillaume Meignan, bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne.41 Meignan, a former member of the theological faculty at Paris, as we have seen, had studied scripture at Munich, Berlin, and Rome and was, consequently, fully abreast of the controversial, newly revived historical-­critical methods for interpreting the sacred text. In many religious circles t­ hose methods ­were denounced as blasphemous and a wellspring of atheism and agnosticism. The fear was not groundless. When in 1835 David Friedrich Strauss of the University of Tübingen published his Leben Jesu, a life of Jesus, he denied the historical basis of all super­n atural ele­ments in the gospels. The book created an international furor. When in 1863 Joseph Ernest Renan, professor at the Collège de France and former Catholic seminarian, published his Vie de Jésus, he escalated the outrage. The controversy over interpretation of the Bible was an aspect of a much larger cultural transformation and shift in mentality,

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which expressed itself most notably in newly critical scholarly methods, whose results came sometimes to be designated as Wissenschaft. Döllinger, for instance, was a product of it. Universities on the Continent, which had experienced a slump in influence and prestige in the previous ­century, revived in the nineteenth, beginning with Germany. They did so largely on the success of their cultivation of Wissenschaft and their zeal in pursuing it. As a concept, Wissenschaft was not understood in the same way even by ­those who professed cultivating it, but, looked at comprehensively and as a method, it represented a new, more critical form of scholarship pursued principally by experimental methods in science and newly refined tools of historical research and analy­sis in other disciplines. Critical scholarship long antedated the nineteenth ­century, but the form that emerged was novel, newly aggressive, and h ­ oused in an institution with a newly revived prestige. It was the antithesis of the scholastic method cultivated in Catholic seminaries in most parts of the world and therefore the antithesis of the Thomistic form of it that the Jesuits of the Collegio Romano ­were in the pro­cess of reviving at the time of the council. Scholastic philosophy and theology ­were based on authority and driven by logic and dialectics. Wissenschaft was based on the discovery and dispassionate analy­sis of new historical evidence and driven by the experimental testing of hypotheses. Research was its driving force and ­battle cry. Although in Catholicism the crisis over this clash of methods and perspectives did not climax ­until Pope Pius X’s all-­out campaign against Modernism in the early twentieth ­century, it nonetheless raged at the time of the council, when Wissenschaft was commonly understood as an especially pernicious and dangerous fruit of rationalism. Although Meignan did not use the term, Wissenschaft was the prob­lem he addressed.

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In his intervention Meignan admitted that some scholars employed the new methods to support a rationalist agenda, but such abuse did not render the methods invalid. In fact, proper use of philology, history, and archaeology threw impor­tant and helpful light on difficult biblical questions. Catholic exegetes, he said, needed freedom and encouragement to pursue modern methods, but in ­those regards, the document before the council was more a hindrance than a help. Meignan was dealing with methodological issues central to the document u ­ nder discussion but that in one form or another recurred when the council took up primacy and infallibility. On January 10 discussion of the draft ended simply ­because the list of ­those requesting to speak was exhausted. Then on January 14 the council took up in turn four documents dealing not with doctrine but with church practice: on bishops, on sede vacante (regulations about action to be taken upon the death of a pope), on the discipline of the clergy, and on a universal primary catechism. As it turned out, t­hese discussions w ­ ere futile b­ ecause the council was never able to take definitive action on any of them. They are enlightening, however, for highlighting the concerns of the council’s participants. The first of the four documents was the most impor­tant, “On Bishops, Synods, and Vicars General.” Cardinal Schwarzenberg of Prague, the first speaker, criticized the document for saying nothing about reform of the Roman curia or the Roman congregations, for instance, or about the mode of nominating bishops, even though ­there is ­great interest in addressing such m ­ atters. Then he sounded the note that subsequent speakers returned to again and again, especially speakers from the minority. The document tells of the bishops’ duties and obligations but says not a word about their dignity, their rights, and their authority in the governance

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of their churches.42 The next two speakers—­Cardinal Mathieu of Besançon and Archbishop Simor of Esztergom—­continued in the same vein, as did Archbishop Darboy of Paris a few days l­ater. The interventions revealed the fundamental difference in the ecclesiology of the speakers: on the one side concern about the rights and the authority of the local church and the local bishops, on the other concern about shoring up centralized authority. The document was remitted to the disciplinary deputation, and the council moved on. The debate on the proposal of a primary catechism to be used throughout the church reflected the same tension between the two ecclesiologies, as instanced by bishops from the minority wanting a provision for adaptation to local circumstances.43 It was the only document of the four to reappear on the agenda. In May the council received, debated, and accepted the revision, but the text never came to a final, formal vote, principally b­ ecause by that time all the energy and concern of the council focused on Pastor Aeternus (The Eternal Shepherd), the document on papal primacy and infallibility. On February 22 the discussion ended with all the documents at the deputations for revision. The council then went into recess for almost a month to give the deputations time to reshape the documents in accordance with the vast number of amendments and comments they had received. Among the documents for which it received comments was the draft of a doctrinal constitution on the church, Supremi Pastoris (Of the Supreme Shepherd), part of which was the source from which Pastor Aeternus was l­ater devised.44 On January 22 the document had been distributed to the bishops with the idea not that they would debate it at that time but that they could study it and submit comments. The doctrinal deputation would revise it in the light of the comments received, so that ­later bishops would debate a version that directly reflected their

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concerns. Supremi Pastoris contained, besides a preamble, fifteen chapters and twenty-­one canons. Although one chapter dealt with the infallibility of the church, it did not explic­itly mention papal infallibility, another indication that the doctrine was not being forced upon the council from above. Striking in Supremi Pastoris was the prominence of church–­state questions, which take up three of the fifteen chapters (13–15). The chapters did not make claims that popes had the authority directly to intervene in the affairs of state, and they ­were a far cry from the extreme claims of Pope Gregory VII in the eleventh ­century and Pope Boniface VIII in the f­ourteenth, but they nonetheless sparked fears along t­ hose lines. When the document became public knowledge, t­hose chapters set off a diplomatic crisis that only intensified ­later and that provoked the possibility of intervention by governments, especially ­those of Bavaria, France, and G ­ reat Britain. Although t­here w ­ ere certainly other ­people who urged intervention or w ­ ere somehow involved in the crisis, pivotally impor­ tant ­were Döllinger through his influence with the Bavarian government; Maret, Dupanloup, and Darboy through theirs with the French; and Acton through his with the British by reason of his close relationship with Gladstone. Eventually the crisis dissipated before it reached a truly serious pitch, due in large part to Antonelli’s diplomatic skills, to the good sense of Émile Ollivier, now French prime minister, and to Lord George Clarendon, British foreign minister. Nonetheless, the crisis demonstrates how closely Eu­ro­pean governments watched the council and how apprehensive they ­were about its pos­si­ble direction.45 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

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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 w ­ ere to complete the program prepared for them and creep along at the same pace. In response to the dissatisfaction, on February 22 the f­ athers had received a brief, supplementary set of regulations, published in the pope’s name.46 This new document, though it left many practical questions unanswered, was an improvement. By giving the president authority, with the consent of the majority, to end the debate before the list of speakers was exhausted, it spared the assembly endless repetitions of the same arguments. The bishops greeted the changes as a step forward. Bishop Ulla­ thorne wrote, “­Today has seen a g­ reat turning point in the history of the council.”47 Only upon reflection did the minority bishops begin to have misgivings. They soon focused on the danger provision 13 posed, seemingly first alerted to it by Haynald, who in turn had been alerted by Acton, but Ketteler emerged as the strong spokesman against it.48 The provision stipulated that a s­ imple majority would carry the day in votes on parts of the text and on proposed amendments to it. Ketteler took the position that although a ­simple majority was sufficient for a disciplinary decree, in a dogmatic definition a “moral una­nim­i­t y” was required. By March 1 the German, French, and other bishops of the minority had reached a consensus on the point, but the Hungarians, Americans, and o ­ thers held back. Both Hefele and Dupanloup wrote memos justifying the una­n im­i­ty princi­ple, but they w ­ ere never published or made use of in the council. ­There the ­m atter rested ­u ntil March 22, when Bishop Strossmayer tried to bring it to the floor, as we ­shall see.

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The minority’s position did not lack theological or historical grounding. From the time of the earliest councils, something like at least a two-­thirds consensus was assumed to be necessary for doctrinal decrees, but such a consensus is not quite the same as moral una­n im­i­t y. Moreover, as is clearer now than at the time of the council, it was the Jansenists who most prominently argued for moral una­nim­i­t y as their defense against the bull Unigenitus Dei Filius (1713), a position that attained its highest profile in the Synod of Pistoia.49 Meanwhile, on March 13, shortly before the general congregations ­were to resume, Montalembert died in Paris. Pius, informed of his death, spoke of him as “a victim of his pride” and in the eve­ ning of March 16 forbade the solemn requiem scheduled for him the next day in the Franciscan church of Aracoeli in Rome ­because he feared it would lead to public demonstrations. But he then ordered a Requiem Mass on the eigh­teenth in Santa Maria in Trastevere, which he himself attended. This strange sequence did ­little to calm the anx­i­eties of the minority.50

Dei Filius When on January 10, 1870, the council had completed its discussion of the original draft of Apostolici Muneris, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism,” the deputation De fide set to work revising it in light of the speeches in the council hall and the written amendments the bishops submitted. Bishops had criticized the text’s academic language and professorial tone. For that reason the deputation invited Johann Baptist Franzelin, the Jesuit theologian from the Collegio Romano who was the principal author of the text, to

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speak to the issue. Franzelin pointed out that the source of the rationalism of the age was the universities and that therefore the document had to speak in terms that would be clearly understood by that audience. As David Strauss’s Leben Jesu had demonstrated, universities ­were becoming a challenge to established ways of thinking. The book reflected the historical-­critical methods increasingly applied to the Bible but also to ­every aspect of sacred subjects, including the history of dogma. Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, published at about the same time, attempted to come to terms with a major prob­lem the method raised to new prominence. Franzelin, however, was directly concerned with philosophical-­ theological prob­lems raised in the universities, especially by three German Catholic thinkers—­Georg Hermes (1775–1831), Anton Günther (1783–1863), and Jakob Frohschammer (1821–1893). They ­were “semi-­rationalists,” tainted with the philosophies of Hegel, Kant, and ­others.51 They erred, Franzelin argued, in attributing too much to reason in relationship to super­natural mysteries. In fact, all three had already been condemned by the Holy See for precisely that reason—­Hermes by Gregory XVI and the other two by Pius IX. Franzelin convinced the deputation that German universities ­were a source of the prob­lem but not that the academic terms and vocabulary should not be retained. The deputation deci­ded, therefore, to keep the substance of the original text but to revise it in line with the bishops’ criticisms. It especially wanted the text to sound a more positive note about both faith and reason. To that end it established a subcommission of three members—­Dechamps, Pie, and Konrad Martin of Paderborn. The major burden of the

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revision fell to Martin, who as a German was deemed the best to deal with it. To aid him in his task, Martin bypassed Franzelin and called instead upon Joseph Kleutgen, a German Jesuit also from the Colle­g io Romano and an old friend from his student days. From this point forward, Kleutgen assumed an impor­tant role in the council, even though a de­cade earlier he been involved in a major scandal, the strange and erotic goings-on in the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, and fallen into disgrace. Somehow he had managed to survive and reestablish himself.52 At the end of February the subcommission submitted to the deputation its revised and drastically shortened text of four chapters. For the next two weeks the deputation worked hard at putting the finishing touches, which included a proposed fifth chapter on specific questions of dogma such as the Trinity and original sin. The deputation deci­ded not to submit that chapter at the pres­ent time, and it thus fell into oblivion, a victim of the pressure to move with haste to the discussion on infallibility. On March 18 the bishops began addressing the revised text of Apostolici Muneris, now entitled Dei Filius.53 They reacted favorably, perhaps rendered a l­ittle more benevolent when they saw that during the recess further, though still only minimally successful, efforts had been made to improve the acoustics. They ­were gratified that the deputation had taken good account of their criticisms and suggestions, a sentiment shared for the most part by bishops of the minority. The text, though shortened by about 60 ­percent, still ran to over thirty-­five hundred words. It had a preamble and four chapters instead of the eigh­teen in the original. Each chapter was followed by three to six canons. The title of the text had been changed from

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“On the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism” to simply “Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith” (Constitutio Dogmatica de Fide Catholica). The four chapters all dealt with dif­fer­ent aspects of the same basic question: ­whether and how God can be known. The preamble opened with an expression of gratitude to God for the renewal of the church that resulted from the previous council, the Council of Trent. It then listed the errors that had sprung up since then and pointed an accusing fin­ger at Protestantism, whose rejection of the teaching authority of the church and reliance on private judgment in religious ­matters w ­ ere responsible for the pantheism, materialism, and atheism that ravaged modern society. Even “­children of the Catholic church have strayed from the path of genuine piety.” In this situation the chair of Peter along with the bishops of the ­whole world must declare and profess the teaching of Christ and condemn the contrary errors. Chapter  1, “On God, the Creator of All ­Things” (De Deo Rerum Omnium Creatore), established the basics upon which the rest of the text was argued and was meant as a counterstatement to atheism, pantheism, and materialism, as the five canons attached to it made clear. The chapter asserted belief in the existence of God, “creator of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, incomprehensible, infinite in w ­ ill, understanding, and e­ very perfection,” and asserted other basics, such as God’s governance of the universe. The first canon accordingly reads, “If anyone denies [the existence of ] the one true God, creator and lord of ­things vis­i­ble and invisible, let him be anathema,” and thus puts in ordinance form the teaching of the chapter. In the next four canons attached to this chapter, certain ideas of Günther and Hermes ­were condemned but without mentioning their names. As at Trent, the canons functioned as the negative, reverse image of the chapter, and, as the

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more traditional form, they carried more doctrinal weight than the chapters. They therefore acted as the fundamental point of reference for interpreting the teaching in question. Chapter 2, “On Revelation” (De Revelatione), took the next step. Not only does God exist, but he can be known. Although he can be known with certainty by the proper use of reason, he is known through divine revelation at a level above and beyond what reason can attain on its own. This super­natural mode is necessary ­because God has “directed h ­ uman beings to a super­natural end, that is, a sharing of the good ­things of God that utterly surpass the understanding of the h ­ uman mind.” The chapter recalled that Trent taught that super­n atural revelation was contained in the books of the Bible and in unwritten traditions. God is the author of the books of the Bible and entrusted their interpretation to the church. No one is permitted to interpret them contrary to how the church interprets them. The canons accordingly condemned ­those who deny the possibility of knowing God through natu­ral reason, ­those who deny the need, the real­ity, or the possibility of super­natural revelation, and t­ hose who deny that “a h ­ uman being can be divinely elevated to a knowledge and perfection that exceeds the natu­ral.” A final canon anathematized anyone who did not accept all the books of the Bible as the Council of Trent listed them or denied that they ­were divinely inspired. If ­there is revelation of mysteries beyond the capacity of the ­human intellect, the only way such revelation can be accepted is through faith, the subject of the next chapter, “On Faith” (De Fide), which essentially made four points. First, since divine revelation is above and beyond reason, it can be accepted only by an act of faith. Second, the act of faith, even though its object is beyond reason, is not intrinsically unreasonable. Third, faith is a ­f ree

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act, not the result of absolutely compelling ­human arguments. And fi­nally, without grace true faith is impossible. The chapter also affirmed the possibility and the real­ity of miracles and prophesies as recorded in Holy Writ. They are signs motivating to faith. The chapter teaches that God founded the church as “the guardian and teacher of the revealed word.” Moreover, the church, by reason of her astonishing spread throughout the world, her outstanding holiness, her fecundity in good works, and her “unity and unconquerable stability,” is herself a “kind of g­ reat and perpetual motive of credibility and incontrovertible evidence of her divine mission.” T ­ hose who have embraced this faith can never have “just cause for changing it or for calling it into question.” Six canons w ­ ere attached to this chapter. The final chapter, “On Faith and Reason” (De Fide et Ratione), revisited the subject of chapters 2 and 3 but considered them from a dif­fer­ent perspective. Controversy over the relationship between faith and reason—or, more broadly, between a transcendent revelation and h ­ uman culture—­began with the birth of Chris­t ian­ity and continued through the centuries, though formulated in dif­ fer­ent terms at dif­fer­ent times. The issue was certainly not new, but the new cultural situation made addressing it seem necessary. This chapter implicitly rejected opinions supposedly expressed by Frohschammer and, once again, Günther. The chapter asserted the utter transcendence of the fundamental mysteries of faith, such as the Trinity. It went on, however, to concede that ­human reason aided by grace can achieve some small mea­sure of understanding of the mysteries, even though it can never approach a full comprehension of them. It further taught that ­there could not be a conflict between faith and reason b­ ecause the same God revealed the mysteries of faith and endowed the h ­ uman mind with reason. In fact, faith and reason are mutually supportive,

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which is why the church promotes the development of “­human arts and studies.” Yet, we must “define that e­ very assertion contrary to the truths of enlightened faith is totally false.” Faithful Christians are therefore forbidden to defend as legitimate any conclusions known to be contrary to the doctrine of the faith. The chapter ended by asserting that the meaning of dogmas can never change “­under pretext of a more profound understanding” from how the church had always understood them. The final canon of the three attached to the chapter drove that point home: “If anyone says that it is pos­ si­ble that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church that is dif­fer­ent from how the church has understood and understands them, let him be anathema.” For the bishops at the council, the teaching of Dei Filius reflected much of what they had learned in their seminary days, and therefore it came as no surprise to them. They might disagree with one point or another, but by and large they found themselves on familiar and basically uncontested ground. They accepted without question the document’s implication that faith was an assent to truths expressed in propositions. An easy course through the council seemed assured.

Moving to Definition In addressing the new text in a more focused, less scattershot way than in January, the bishops ­were aided by a new procedure, an initial pre­sen­ta­tion of the text made by a member of the deputation and in its name. Accordingly, on March  18 Bishop Simor performed the task to universal satisfaction. By anticipating questions and objections, he cleared the way for a swift ratification. A ­ fter

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he spoke, the bishops began commenting on the text. The general congregation ended without incident. At the next congregation, March 22, bishops ­were asked to speak to the preamble. All went routinely ­until Bishop Strossmayer, the last speaker of the morning, announced that he would address three points. In the first he challenged the heading, which indicated the document was issued in the pope’s name and not in the name of the council, as was done at Trent—­not a new prob­lem, as we have seen. In so ­doing Strossmayer challenged the official reply to that question: the heading could not be changed ­because it originated with the pope. In speaking to the issue, Strossmayer did not fail to mention the “divine and inviolable rights of bishops” (divina episcoporum iura et inviolabilia). In his second point he criticized the preamble for ascribing all modern errors to Protestantism. What about Voltaire and the au­ ere thors of the Encyclopédie? Among Protestants, he said, many w animated by a true Christian spirit. As he went on in this vein, murmurs and the shuffling of feet ­were heard ever louder from the bishops’ desks. The president, Cardinal De Angelis, interrupted Strossmayer to ask him to refrain from words that scandalized some of the f­athers. Cardinal Capalti joined in to remind Strossmayer that the text spoke of Protestantism, not Protestants. Strossmayer did not yield, and a back-­and-­forth argument between him and Capalti ensued—­against a background of bishops now hooting at Strossmayer and in general behaving badly as the body became ever-­more unruly. Against the noisy background, Strossmayer and Capalti continued their sharp and increasingly inaudible exchanges. Fi­nally, Strossmayer strug­gled to make his third, and most impor­tant point: they had been told that in voting for the preamble and all other sections of the decree only a ­simple majority was required for

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passage. “But certain bishops have written a commentary on this issue and have asked ­whether the ancient rule of moral una­nim­i­ty—” Capalti again interrupted, “That is irrelevant to the subject ­under discussion.” Strossmayer tried to go on, insisting on “the eternal and immutable rule of moral una­n im­i­t y,” but shouts telling him to stop, to step down, and even calling him Lucifer and another Luther rang out. In addition, vari­ous ­bishops said, “­These p­ eople do not want the infallibility of the pope but think they are themselves infallible.” As bishops began leaving their seats and heading for the exit, Cardinal de Angelis’s bell, hardly heard above the din, failed to bring order or call the bishops back to the council hall. Thus did general congregation thirty-­one come to an unseemly end. Most bishops ­were aghast at the be­hav­ior of their colleagues. A sizable number, perhaps a hundred or more, had made it impossible for Strossmayer to continue and had shut down the meeting. The international press had a field day as it projected an image of the council as a circus, a hotbed of religious prejudice, and an assembly where freedom of expression was not tolerated. For the minority bishops, scandalized by what happened to one of their most prominent members, the event constituted a turning point. It drove home to them in a dramatic way how strong and passionate their opposition was. They realized that if they ­were to block the drive for infallibility, they had to close ranks and come up with a strategy upon which they all agreed. For the next several weeks they met repeatedly to work it out. In essence the strategy consisted of assigning dif­fer­ent issues to dif­fer­ent speakers, so that useless repetition would be avoided. Thus one speaker would argue against the opportuneness of the definition, another argue against it from scripture, and a third from

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the ­Fathers of the Church such as Augustine and Ambrose, and so forth. As with most such strategies, this one was only imperfectly followed by the speakers, but at least the minority had now come to see with clarity the necessity of a united front.54 Meanwhile, as the days passed, bishops continued to comment on the text, and for the most part they dealt with details of wording. On April 1 two bishops from the minority did the same, but in so ­doing they ­rose beyond refinement of wording to make a big point about the relationship of the church to the natu­ral sciences and other branches of learning. In other words, they raised the Wissenschaft issue. Archbishop Louis Dubreil of Avignon began by addressing the second canon of chapter 4, which he saw as putting restraints on scientific inquiry. Such restraints w ­ ere improper for the church. We should not be fearful, he said, of what is not to be feared. Then he launched into almost a paean to learning, underscoring its almost sacred character. He could not have been bolder: “Pursuit of learning is for us a second religion” (Cultus scientiarum est apud nos secunda religio).55 A ­little ­later that morning Jacques Ginoulhiac, bishop of Lyon, who also addressed chapter 4, began by saying, “I wish to speak about academic freedom” (Loqui volo de libertate scientifica). He insisted that it was of the utmost importance that it be safeguarded and that the church be in the forefront of ­doing so. Let the church proclaim freedom of research, protect it, and foster it. Although he clearly had the natu­ral sciences foremost in mind, he made sure to include “speculative” learning (principally philosophy) and “humane disciplines” (disciplinae humanae).56 ­These speeches, besides delivering a positive message, acted as muted protests against what bishops, especially from the minority, saw as the danger posed to learning by a newly interventionist

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Roman authority. In any case, Ginoulhiac’s speech was not delivered entirely in vain. It led to a mitigation of its pres­ent form in the second canon of chapter 4. While the bishops ­were commenting on the text chapter by chapter, the deputation worked hard to keep pace with the amendments as they arrived at its desk. It was thus able to sort them, assess them, and have all of them printed for the perusal of the bishops in good time. As its decisions on the amendments for each chapter ­were made, a member of the deputation reported to the assembly on what action the deputation had taken and why it had done so. The final text differed in only a few particulars from the text the bishops debated, a sign of how well the document represented the bishops’ thinking. The minority bishops balked, however, at the concluding paragraph b­ ecause they saw it as indirectly implying papal infallibility and, along with that implication, providing a broad interpretation of its extent. The paragraph therefore was an illegitimate anticipation of a debate still to come: “But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy ­u nless ­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.” Forty-­four bishops signed a request to the deputation to suppress the paragraph, but the deputation refused to do so. The minority bishops met several times to decide what action to take at the public session, where they w ­ ere to vote on the decree as a ­whole and w ­ ere not allowed a qualified placet juxta modum. Strossmayer, supported by Bishop William Clifford of Clifton, as well as several French bishops, argued that they should vote non placet.

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As their discussions continued, the bishops fi­nally deci­ded on a positive vote. The reasons w ­ ere several. A negative vote could easily be misunderstood as applying to the text as a w ­ hole, but in fact they all supported the decree. The pre­sen­ta­tion on April 19 that Bishop Vinzenz Gasser had made on the paragraph in the name of the deputation made clear its limited scope. Fi­nally, for the minority to vote non placet on a decree that was certain of passage would weaken their position of the requirement of moral una­n im­i­t y for a valid definition of a dogma. Strossmayer resolved his conscience by deciding to absent himself from the session.57 On April 24 the council approved Dei Filius unanimously. Dei Filius is the forgotten decree of the council. That is unfortunate. To understand it is to have a key to understanding the council and its import in ways that include but that also transcend understanding it in terms of papal infallibility. Many de­cades ago Hermann Josef Pottmeyer wrote the classic study of Dei Filius, which he entitled Der Glaube vor dem Anspruch der Wissenschaft (Faith confronting the claims of critical scholarship). By “Wissenschaft,” he particularly meant both the philosophical methods that, beginning with Descartes, had displaced Aristotle and the newly invigorated historical-­critical methods as applied to sacred subjects. As mentioned, by the end of the c­ entury t­hese new methods produced in Catholicism and in other Christian churches the ­g reat crisis known as Modernism. But even at the time of the council, theologians and bishops ­were becoming aware of the grave prob­lems critical historical research now posed for the supposedly unchanging character of doctrine. To understand the concern and fear that that awareness generated is to understand why Dei Filius made the categorical assertion that dogma cannot be understood in a sense dif­fer­ent from how it had always been understood.

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According to the council, t­here can be no change “­under the pretext of a more profound understanding.” The document represents a style of thinking that rests upon abstract, ahistorical arguments, in which Christian truths stand above and apart from the historical contexts in which they w ­ ere formulated and above and apart from the centuries through which they then traveled. The document’s only descent into a real historical happening occurs when the preamble speaks of Protestantism. In so ­doing, besides revealing its prejudice, it revealed a simplistic understanding of the origins of rationalism and of the historical pro­cess itself. As Klaus Schatz observes, Günter and Frohschammer, whose views the document silently condemned, showed a sensitivity to the historical dimension of dogma and an awareness of pos­si­ble abuse in the church’s teaching authority that Dei Filius utterly lacks.58 If Dei Filius is about religious faith facing the critical scholarship of its time, as Pottmeyer’s title suggests, in fundamental ways it missed the mark. The bishops and theologians who wrote the decree w ­ ere not stupid or ignorant men. They ­were groping to deal with a bewilderingly new situation. The rules governing real­ity and t­ hose governing scholarship had changed from what they had learned in their seminaries. The new rules, centuries in the making, had reached a confrontational maturity by the time of the council. Understanding the world had become a brand-­new game, and the bishops and theologians ­were trying to figure out how to play it. In this context the strength of Dei Filius is that it did not say too much. It did not condemn Darwin or Marx. It did not canonize the Syllabus. Perhaps more impor­tant, it asserted a few basic truths that served the church as solid guidelines in a shifting real­ity. Among them:

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God exists and can be known Religious faith is not unreasonable In the last analy­sis, reason and divine revelation cannot be at odds Faith enhances life, opening a “sharing in the good t­ hings of God that utterly surpass the understanding of the h ­ uman mind” Despite its limitations, Dei Filius made a statement badly needed in a world that many religious ­people believed was in danger of ­going spiritually barren, of denying by word and deed the existence of anything beyond the material and the vis­i­ble. One-­sided and simplistic though that interpretation might be, it certainly did not lack foundation. In the nineteenth ­century the Western world was struggling to come to terms with truths and social impulses that in the magnitude of their scope and implications had no pre­ce­dent in history. 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 h ­ uman 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. Roman Catholic theologians wrote Dei Filius, and Roman Catholic bishops examined it and approved it. It is a Roman Catholic statement made with categories nineteenth-­century Roman Catholic bishops and theologians had available to them. It is a state-

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ment to which no Christians from other churches could unqualifiedly subscribe. Nonetheless, most main-­line Christians of the nineteenth ­century and even of the twenty-­fi rst could subscribe to a ­great deal of it. Nor would they be the only persons ready and able to do so.

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utside the council, the debate on Dei Filius seemed almost a nonevent as infallibility continued to dominate discourse. Although in the United States the press, uniformly hostile to the council, lost interest in it by the time the infallibility debate began, the Eu­ro­pean press never let up on campaigns for and against it.1 But the bishops did more than their share. Just before the council opened, Bishop Dechamps published a long open letter in refutation of Dupanloup’s letter to his clergy that argued a definition was inopportune. Not ­u ntil March 1 did Dupanloup reply in a wide-­ranging theological treatise. Twelve days ­later, Deschamps published an even longer rejoinder—­eighty pages. Dupanloup had argued that a definition would hinder conversions. Christophe-­Ernest Bonjean, apostolic vicar of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, however, published a letter to him in which he responded that the Hindus and Buddhists, among whom he had worked for many years, respected authority in religion. The definition would be an incentive for their conversion. Meanwhile Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Ketteler, Kenrick, and Hefele issued open letters or brochures arguing the other side at about the same time as Guéranger’s De la monarchie pontificale against Maret appeared. And so it went.2

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Meanwhile, inside the council the question had reached a crisis by early February. Hardly had Manning and Senestrey won their campaign to fill the deputation De fide with members to their own liking than they or­g a­n ized a movement to make sure that papal infallibility came before the council, even though the first draft of the decree on the church, Supremi Pastoris, made no mention of it. By late January they and other members of the core group such as Deschamps and Martin had gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition to the pope. ­Others in ­favor of the definition submitted similar petitions, and so did t­hose who opposed it. The bishops who abstained ­were relatively few. The result was an overwhelming number of bishops signing in ­favor of it.3 The minority had gathered fewer than 160 signatures, less than 25 ­percent of the council membership. The price the council paid for t­hese signature-­g athering campaigns was a further hardening of the division. Ketteler was ­bitter. “The bishops have created a battlefield, a scandal to the faithful and a disgrace for this holy council.”4 Purcell of Cincinnati felt the same, or perhaps more so: “The council began with the comedy of the invitations [to the Protestants] . . . ​and ­w ill end with the tragedy of excommunications.”5 Pius refused to receive the petitions and, as proper, forwarded them to the deputation De postulatis, whose function was to make decisions on w ­ hether to admit new business to the agenda. On February 9 the deputation met, deci­ded in ­favor of the majority, and recommended that course to the pope, who accepted it.6 Pius delayed the announcement for almost a month, u ­ ntil March 6, to give the deputation De fide time to produce a text to accompany the announcement. Before the council, the doctrinal preparatory commission had formulated a text on papal infallibility in the likelihood that it would be needed but, as mentioned, did

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Pope Pius IX, ca. 1872. Photo by Ludovico Tuminello, Angiolini e Tuminello. Alinari Archìves, Fratelli Alinari Museum Collections, Palazzoli Collection, Florence. (Courtesy of Alinari Collection/Getty Images.)

not include it in Supremi Pastoris. Manning and Dechamps now went to work on that draft, with Kleutgen again called upon as the theologian to put it into shape for submission on March 6 as an addendum to chapter 11 of Supremi Pastoris, the chapter on papal primacy.7

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According to this plan, therefore, the decree on papal infallibility would have been included in Supremi Pastoris, the much larger document on the church, and would have been debated only ­after deliberation on the ten previous chapters according to the normal sequence of chapters in that document: Preamble Chapter 1. The church is the mystical body of Christ. Chapter 2. The church is a super­n atural society, founded by Christ. [This was a statement against a rationalist and individualistic interpretation of the church and of the Christian religion.] Chapter 3. The church is a true, perfect, spiritual and super­natural society. [This chapter was intended especially to establish the church as in­de­pen­dent of the state, dif­fer­ent from it, and of greater dignity.] Chapter 4. The church is a vis­i­ble society. Chapter 5. The church has a vis­i­ble unity. [This chapter was included especially to ­counter the Anglican thesis of two branches.] Chapter 6. The church is the society in which membership is necessary for salvation. [This was a twin statement of the next chapter.] Chapter 7. Outside the church ­there is no salvation. [The absolute character of the statement was tempered by allowing “invincible ignorance.”] Chapter 8. The church cannot fail, that is, it ­w ill go on to the end of time. Chapter 9. The church is infallible, not only in what is directly revealed but also in what is required to ensure that revelation’s effectiveness.

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Chapter 10. The church is an unequal society made up of clergy and laity. Its authority extends to the external forum where it has legislative, judicial, and coercive forms. Chapter 11. The primacy of the Roman pontiff is a primacy of jurisdiction. [The infallibility of the Roman pontiff was to be inserted ­here.] Chapter 12. The temporal authority of the Holy See is legitimate. [This was a justification of the Papal States and a condemnation of ­those who opposed it.] Chapter 13. The church and the state are mutual. Chapter 14. The state has rights and duties. Chapter 15. Certain special rights of the church in relationship to civil society. [­These final three chapters condemned the separation of church and state, religious freedom, and the subjection of the church to the state, and they asserted the right of the church to oppose laws contrary to church teaching. As we have seen, when Supremi Pastoris was leaked to the press, ­these chapters set off a diplomatic crisis.]8 Having hoped against hope to keep papal infallibility off the agenda, the minority met the addition to chapter 11 with dismay. Cardinal Schwarzenberg even contemplated the radical step of leaving the council. In a private letter, Strossmayer gave vent to his bitterness by comparing the happening to the way in ancient Rome “a servile senate decreed the emperor god.”9 But the bishops faced the real­ity of the situation and worked for weeks on a plan to cooperate with the majority to try to overcome the standoff. For a while it looked as if the plan might work. Then on April 29, a few days ­after the public session in which Dei Filius was formally approved and promulgated, the bombshell fell: the presidents announced that the order of business had

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changed and that the next items on the agenda would be papal primacy and papal infallibility—­that is, chapter 11 of Supremi Pastoris. Although rumors had been circulating for some time that this drastic change was being contemplated, the official announcement stunned the minority and fueled their anger and frustration. The decision had an extremely significant theological implication: primacy and infallibility w ­ ere now to be considered in isolation from the larger context of the church, or, in the words of the minority, as a head severed from the body. In retrospect we know, moreover, that had this change in the order of business not been made, the definition would not have happened. The issue would not have come to the council before the seizure of Rome on September 20 and the resulting indefinite adjournment of Vatican I.

The New Order of Business How did a change with such significant consequences come about?10 The council was hardly ­under way before the deputation De fide began to reckon with its slow pace and to calculate how long it would take for it to complete the foreseen agenda. A ­ fter the approval of the first part of the document, “On the Catholic Faith,” which became Dei Filius, the council was to address the second part, the original chapter 5. That would take ­until early summer, ­after which ­there would have to be a recess for several months. When the council resumed, it would take up Supremi Pastoris chapter by chapter, beginning with chapter 1, which would last for months. According to that timetable, the council would be ready to address papal infallibility no earlier than the spring of 1871. Moreover, the possibility—or probability—of the seizure of Rome hovered in the background, with consequences no one could predict.

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Zealous advocates of infallibility in the deputation saw with dismay how their question was receding into a distant and uncertain f­ uture. Even the less zealous ones began to won­der about the wisdom of delaying for so long the issue over which the council was almost obsessively preoccupied. During March the presidents and the pope received petitions asking for the immediate treatment of primacy and infallibility. Manning and Senestrey ­were especially active in this regard. Three of the five presidents, including Cardinal Bilio, chair of the deputation De fide, opposed changing the order, but Pius IX, ­after some hesitation, deci­ded in ­favor of the change. His attitude ­toward the bishops of the minority had become even more negative during March and April and was reflected in his be­h av­ior. In the m ­ iddle of March, for example, when the minority bishops put forward their plan to ameliorate the situation and asked the presidents to allow a few representatives to meet with the deputation De fide to pres­ent their position, the presidents hesitated ­because the regulations did not provide for such a procedure. But they fi­nally agreed to allow it. Pius, however, adamantly opposed the idea, and it had to be dropped.11 On April 1 Bishop Ullathorne wrote in a letter: “The pope takes ­every opportunity of expressing his views on the infallibility [sic], 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.”12 Ullathorne did not know that as early as January 27 Pius, in a moment of exasperation over some historical difficulties that might dissuade the council from defining it, had exclaimed to Piccirillo, “I am so determined to go forward with this m ­ atter that if I knew the council was g­ oing to be ­silent on it, I would dissolve it and define it myself.”13

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Nonetheless, Pius seems to have wavered at least a l­ittle on ­ hether to change the order. In the m w ­ iddle of March he received letters from Dupanloup, Haynald, and fifteen Americans led by Kenrick and Purcell, pleading for the original schedule. By mid-­ April the pressure on him was intense. A group of Italian bishops, though passionate believers in infallibility, pleaded for the original schedule. Antonelli, Darboy, and even the French ambassador made clear to Pius how opposed they ­were to a change ­because of the adverse impression it would make on governments and on public opinion. On April 19, however, Manning and Senestrey sent to Pius a group of bishops urging immediate discussion of the question. He responded that he would do the right ­thing (se facturum esse quod congruum videbitur), which they interpreted as agreeing with their request.14 A few days ­later, on April 23, Dupanloup wrote Pius a second, more personal letter, which began with the moving words: “Most Holy F ­ ather, 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. . . . ​A llow me, Most Holy ­Father, to say to Your Holiness: Nothing could be more dangerous.”15 But Dupanloup’s letter was already too late. The pope had all but made up his mind, and that very eve­n ing he received three bishops sent principally by Manning and Senestrey to pres­ent him with a petition signed by 150 bishops asking for the change. On April 29 came the announcement that papal primacy and infallibility would be the next item of business.

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The more ardent among the majority ­were exultant, but ­others, not just the hard core of the minority, ­were apprehensive, even despondent. Giulio Arrigoni, the bishop of Lucca, 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 ­g reat agitation.”16 For the minority, the announcement dealt a blow to the inopportune argument b­ ecause it meant that for sure the issue would now be on the agenda, and once on the agenda, it almost certainly would be accepted in some form or other. Bishops for whom inopportune was their principal objection to the decree began to slip over to the majority or, in a few cases, leave for home. Only on May 2, ­after the decision had been announced, did Pius answer Dupanloup’s letter. He assured the bishop of Orléans that he had the same affection and esteem for him as before, but he went on: “Our paternal affection for you compels us, when you are stiffly dissenting from most of your venerable b­rothers and from the greatest part of the clergy and Catholic ­people of the world, to warn you not to wish to be wise in your own eyes or to rely on your own prudence, for you know that all errors and heresies have arisen from the fact that their authors thought they ­were wiser than ­others and would not acquiesce in the common opinion of the church. It is right for the f­athers at the council to put difficulties forward clearly, but it is not right to strive by ­every means to bring all over to one’s way of thinking.”17 The letter reveals the mind of the pope at this critical juncture in the council and his attitude ­toward the minority. In word and deed, he became more partisan.

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The First Draft of Pastor Aeternus Although the announcement of the change in the order of business was made on April 29, the deputation De fide did not have the new document ready for distribution ­until May 9. The document’s opening words ­were “Pastor aeternus.” Its official title was Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi (The first dogmatic constitution on the Church of Christ). The title promised that further constitutions on this subject would be forthcoming, once the council was able to return to the original fifteen chapters of Supremi Pastoris. But the council was unable to make that return. Accompanying Pastor Aeternus was the Relatio, explanatory notes that ran six or seven times longer than the main text. Clemens Schrader, a Jesuit from the Collegio Romano and the University of Vienna, and Willibald Maier, the personal theologian of Senestrey, drafted the text, which was then discussed and modified by the deputation. Although the result greatly displeased Manning, Senestrey, and like-­m inded members of the deputation b­ ecause it was not strong enough, it was approved for submission by the other members.18 The council was to begin addressing it on May 13. In the two weeks that intervened, from April 29 u ­ ntil May 13, the council filled in the time by debating and fi­nally approving a document on the catechism, but, as mentioned, in the haste and turmoil of the last days of the council it was never promulgated. Fi­nally, at the general congregation on May 13 Bishop Pie introduced Pastor Aeternus. The text was about half the size of Dei Filius.19 Essentially an expansion of chapter 11 of Supremi Pastoris, it had a preamble, four chapters—­three on the primacy and the fourth on infallibility—­and, at the end, three canons. By the time Pastor Aeternus was fi­n ally approved, it had under­g one changes,

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the most obvious of which ­were an expansion of chapter 4 and the placement of the canons at the end of the apposite chapters instead of grouping them together at the end of the document. But the basic structure presented on May 13 proved stable. The same could be said of the arguments. Even chapter 4 remained fundamentally the same, despite its expansion. The preamble recalled that Christ prayed that the church might be one, as he and his ­Father ­were one, and for that reason he instituted in Peter the foundation and princi­ple (principium) of the church’s unity. It concluded, “We [Pius IX] have judged, with the approval of the council, that the primacy is to be believed by all the faithful and that all be condemned who oppose it.” The final version expanded the text slightly by mentioning the governing and teaching office of all the apostles. Neither version explic­itly mentioned infallibility and therefore seems to have subsumed it u ­ nder primacy. The preamble set the justifying theme that runs through the subsequent chapters, safeguarding the unity of the church. Chapter 1, “De Apostolici Primatus in Beato Petro Institutione” (On the institution of the apostolic primacy in blessed Peter), argued from the passage in Matthew 16, “Thou art Peter,” and the passage in John 21, “Feed my sheep,” that Christ directly and immediately conferred on Peter the primacy of jurisdiction over the ­whole church. It condemned t­hose who interpreted the texts in other ways. The final version was virtually identical. Chapter 2, “De Perpetuitate Primatus Beati Petri in Romanis Pontificibus” (On the permanence of the primacy of blessed Peter in the Roman pontiffs), asserted that the primacy conferred on Peter must of necessity continue in his successors if the unity of the church was to be maintained. The chapter was uncontroversial, received virtually no comment in the debates, and, consequently, emerged unchanged.

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Chapter 3, “De Vi et Ratione Primatus Romani Pontificis” (On the force and meaning of the primacy of the Roman pontiff ), notably longer than the previous two, spelled out the extent of the primacy and the high level of authority with which it was endowed. The chapter received significant comment and criticism, but, like the previous two, it survived essentially intact. Nonetheless, when it returned to the council from the deputation in its final form, it contained a new canon to which the minority objected with ­g reat passion, as we ­shall see. The chapter began by “promulgating anew” the definition of the primacy decreed at the Council of Florence (1438–1439), “that the apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold a world-­w ide primacy.” To Peter (and to his successors) Christ has given “full power . . . ​to tend, rule and govern the universal church.” Therefore, “we teach and declare that by divine ordinance the Roman church possesses a preeminence of ordinary power over e­ very other church.” That jurisdictional power “extends not only to faith and morals . . . ​but also to the discipline and government of the church throughout the world” as a guarantor of the unity of the church—­“one flock with one shepherd” (  John 10:16). Nonetheless, this power “by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of the episcopal jurisdiction by which bishops tend and govern their flocks.” This statement received an impor­tant addition in the final version, insisted upon by the minority. According to that version, the bishops tend and govern their flocks “in the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit.” The Roman pontiff, the chapter continues, has the right to communicate freely with the pastors and the flock of the entire church, and governments have no right to obstruct such communication. Fi­nally, the chapter declared that the Roman pontiff is

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“the supreme judge of the faithful” and that all ecclesiastical cases are in the last instance subject to his judgment. The chapter ended with the statement “They err who maintain that it is legitimate to appeal from judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as superior to the authority of the Roman pontiff.” In the long debate on this chapter, minority bishops again and again objected to this last point and adduced the example of the condemnation of Pope Honorius (r. 625–638) by the Third Council of Constantinople in 681. Although the objection had no substantial effect, the statement was softened in the final version and was made less specific, even though it reiterated the same basic point: “From a decision of the apostolic see, t­here is no appeal and no recourse to another authority ­because no authority is higher.” Chapter 4, “De Romani Pontificis Infallibilitate” (On the infallibility of the Roman pontiff ), was subjected to the most searching criticism but, like the ­others, did not essentially change. The title, however, was changed to “Infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff” (De Romani Pontificis Infallibili Magisterio). This was more than a cosmetic modification. The original text consisted of only two paragraphs. The first asserted that the primacy included “the supreme power of teaching,” as was attested in councils attended by prelates of both the Eastern and the Western churches such as Fourth Constantinople (869–870), Second Lyons (1274), and Florence (1438–1439). The final version retained this paragraph almost unchanged. The last paragraph declared that the Roman pontiff, when “in the person of blessed Peter” he exercised his supreme teaching office to define a doctrine pertaining to faith and morals, could not err and his decisions could not be rescinded (irreformabilia). It concluded, “Since it is the same infallibility ­whether found in the Roman pontiff as head of the church or in the teaching of the

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­whole church in u ­ nion with him, we therefore define his infallibility to extend to one and the same object.” In other words, the Roman pontiff’s infallibility extends to the same sort of issues as did the infallibility of the church at large, and it extends no further than that. This paragraph, too, remained substantially unchanged u ­ ntil the last moment of the council, when a few hotly contested words ­were inserted. But by the time of the final version, three new paragraphs had been added to the text, the first two of which explained that the purpose of the Roman pontiff’s infallibility was the intact preservation of the teaching of the apostles. “All orthodox teachers” have ever acknowledged that “the see of Peter always remains unblemished by any error.” The Roman pontiffs had exercised their infallibility in vari­ous ways, including the agency of councils and synods. The third new paragraph justified the timeliness of the definition and the need for it. In other words, it justified that the definition was opportune: “But since in this very age when the salutary effectiveness of the apostolic office is most especially needed and not a few are found who disparage its authority, we judge it absolutely necessary to affirm solemnly the prerogative that the only begotten Son of God was pleased to attach to the supreme papal office.”

The Issues It would take two full months to arrive at the final version, and the effort to do so tested the patience and endurance of all concerned. The debates w ­ ere complex, passionate, often repetitious, sometimes technical, and occasionally offensive to one side or the other, but the basic issues ­were few, relatively straightforward, and swirled around five interrelated questions.

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All bishops subscribed to the doctrine that the church was infallible, that is, it could definitively pronounce on the orthodoxy of a given position, which was traditionally done through councils. The first question, therefore, was how papal infallibility related to the infallibility of the church. Or, to put it in the terms of the controversy at Vatican I, could popes exercise their supreme teaching authority apart from the consensus of the church? The minority contended that the decree was defective in that it allowed for an infallibility that was separate, that is, unrelated to the infallibility of the church as expressed by bishops. Many, perhaps most, of the majority bishops held that the pope, if he w ­ ere to act responsibly, should make use of “­human means”—­ study scripture and tradition and inquire of the church—­but ­because he was guided by the Holy Spirit, he was not required to make use of them. Making use of h ­ uman means was a moral obligation of the pope, not an ecclesiological necessity. In this view, to require the pope to consult the church was particularly problematic b­ ecause it would make him dependent upon the church, the equivalent of putting the sheep in charge of the shepherd. Among the majority at the council, moreover, some bishops went so far as to maintain that the papacy was the source of the church’s infallibility. For the majority bishops the argument of efficiency was persuasive. It could take a long time to convoke a council and even “to consult the church.” Meanwhile an error could spread and do irreparable damage, as had happened in the past. When a serious conflict emerged, a decision needed to be made as swiftly as pos­ si­ble and, lest it be open to challenge, with the greatest pos­si­ble certitude. Papal infallibility was required, therefore, to safeguard the unity of the church.

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The second question: Was the pope himself infallible, or ­were simply certain of his acts infallible? That is, was infallibility personal? If so, in what sense? The next question was related to the second. Since not e­ very papal pronouncement was infallible, what ­were the conditions that must be fulfilled to make a pronouncement so? A fourth question concerned the scope of the pope’s infallibility. To what objects did it extend? Did it extend, for instance, to canonizations of saints? The majority responded that it extended as far as the infallibility of the church extended. But how far did that infallibility reach? At this stage of the debate bishops still assumed that the council would eventually take up the full document on the church, which included chapter 9—on the church’s infallibility—­ where the question could be pursued. The final question related to the first. Does infallibility mean that seemingly infallible papal statements are not subject to pos­ si­ble correction, for example, by a council? Are such statements, therefore, absolute? The Latin term traditionally used to c­ ounter the possibility of such a correction was irreformabile (not subject to reform). The fourth of the Gallican Articles stated, as we saw, that while the pope has the “principal part” in teaching, his judgment was not unchangeable (irreformabile) apart from the consent of the church. The triad—­personal, separate, and absolute—­became almost a mantra for the minority to express what they ­were opposed to. They surely arrived at the triad by dif­fer­ent routes, but some just as surely derived it directly from Maret’s Du concile général et de la paix religieuse.20 At the council ­there ­were, in fact, a few bishops who held in an almost unqualified form the belief that the pope’s infallibility was personal in that he was intrinsically constituted as infallible,

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that it was absolute in that ­there ­were no restraints upon him except ­those indicated by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and that it was separate in that the pope was responsible only to the Spirit’s inspiration and needed no further help in fulfilling his duty to proclaim true doctrine; he did not need, therefore, to “consult the church.” Besides t­hose few, however, t­here w ­ ere a considerable number who held in one fashion or another positions e­ ither closely or remotely approximating it. Besides ­these general questions and concerns, specific historical prob­lems played a role in the debate, such as Pope Boniface VIII’s bull Unam Sanctam (1302). But it was the condemnation by name of Pope Honorius by the Third Council of Constantinople for teaching the heretical doctrine known as Monothelitism that was the case most often adduced. That heresy held that although Christ had both a h ­ uman and a divine nature, he had only one w ­ ill, the divine ­w ill. No one contested Honorius’s explicit adherence to the heresy in two letters and the council’s condemnation of him by name as a propagator of the heresy.21 The long notes (Relatio) that on May 6 accompanied Pastor Aeternus briefly took up several such cases and cited sources that showed them not to be obstacles to the definition. They affirmed, moreover, that t­ hese cases had been refuted so often as to become trite. It would be a waste of time to bring them up again.22 In another place the Relatio set forth the princi­ple according to which objections from historical evidence w ­ ere to be judged. In so d­ oing it revealed an implicit assessment of modern Wissenschaft: “As has without exception been shown above from the most impor­tant authorities [monumentis], 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

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facts are brought forward to oppose it, they must themselves be deemed false insofar as they seem opposed.”23 Thus, for the majority bishops, history was merely h ­ uman, concerned as it was with the transitory and contingent. Tradition, divinely inspired, taught the divine and the unchanging. It was found in “authorities” (monumenta), texts from scripture or ecclesiastical documents, taken at their seeming face value. It was not subject to refutation from below. The most basic prob­lem with Pastor Aeternus was its historical naïveté. 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 more sensitive to changes wrought by the historical pro­cess. It also tended to see 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 w ­ ere 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. Hefele was clear: history ­ ere convinced that was a theological source. In any case, both sides w somewhere ­there had to be a guarantor of absolute certainty.24 ­Because of its greater sensitivity to historical contingency, the minority tended to have a less negative view of modernity than did the majority and w ­ ere more willing to try to ameliorate the situation rather than simply to condemn it. As Bishop Karl Johann

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Greith of Saint Gallen in Switzerland said, “What we most need to do is repair rather than rupture our fractured bonds with public authority, forestall catastrophe rather than cause it, and calm agitated spirits rather than further provoke them.”25 What neither side took directly into account was the skepticism of the modern world about claims to infallibility made by any person or institution.

The First Debate The debates moved along according to the pattern set with Dei Filius. First came debate on the draft in general, which in the case of Pastor Aeternus proved to be crucial b­ ecause most interventions focused on chapter 4. Then came debates on the chapters one by one. The general debate lasted from May 14 u ­ ntil June 3 and stretched over fourteen general congregations, during which 64 council ­f athers spoke: 38 from the majority, 25 from the minority, and 1 difficult to categorize. As Klaus Schatz has pointed out, the arguments fell into three large segments: first, questions about the need for the dogma and its timeliness (“opportuneness”); second, questions about the dogma’s legitimacy derived from scripture and tradition; third, questions about how the dogma was to be understood in the wider context of the church and divine revelation.26 On May 13 Bishop Pie presented the draft in the name of the deputation. He was direct, relatively brief, and covered the neuralgic points.27 He tried to pres­ent the text in a way that would calm the fears of the bishops of the minority and render them benevolent. While treating papal primacy, for instance, he reassured the bishops by reminding them that for their own flocks they themselves had a primacy—­principatum habere in ecclesia aliquo certissimo sensu.

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Regarding chapter 4, Pie made five key points. First, when the text speaks of the pope as “in the person of Peter,” it is not to make the person of the pope infallible but his teaching. Second, his teaching is infallible only when he “defines by invoking his full apostolic authority.” Third, the source of the pope’s infallibility is Jesus’s prayer “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith not fail” (Luke 22:32). Fourth, the efficient cause of infallibility is the assistance of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Fi­nally, the object of infallibility is the traditional “faith and morals” (in rebus fidei et morum), which is the same object as the church’s infallibility. Pie concluded by insisting that papal infallibility was not a separate infallibility, as if the head w ­ ere separate from the members. It simply cannot happen that the pope would define in defiance of the rest of the church and the general councils—he is bound by the truths flowing from the font of revelation. “Be gone, therefore, the image of the head cut off from the body!” By and large both minority and majority bishops ­were pleased with the pre­sen­ta­tion, which indicates ­there was considerable agreement between them. The former felt the pre­sen­t a­t ion provided a basis for productive conversations, even as they insisted on more precision than Pie provided. The fact that even some of the most ardent ultramontanes also expressed satisfaction reveals the pre­sen­ ta­tion’s weakness: it was not specific enough to dispel prob­lems on ­either side. Nonetheless, the debate opened on a serene note. Once Pie stepped down from the rostrum, the presidents dismissed the assembly. The next day François Victor Rivet, bishop of Dijon, explic­itly set out to respond to Pie, and he did so in the most radical way pos­si­ble—by trying to show that a definition of papal infallibility was simply a bad idea.28 He argued that for many Catholics the definition would be too difficult to bear b­ ecause, no

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­ atter how many theological distinctions might be adduced, it m would sound “personal and absolute” to them, a scandal. Nowadays ­people are used to having a say in m ­ atters imposed upon them, especially a new teaching like this one. Moreover, the definition is unnecessary. Unlike the situation in the seventeenth or eigh­teenth ­century, papal authority was no longer ­u nder attack. In our times Catholics re­spect that authority, as shown by how well they accepted the definition of the Immaculate Conception. Rivet made clear that in defining that dogma, Pius, in admirable fashion, had not acted on his own but had consulted the bishops and theologians and had ordered public prayers. He concluded by reminding the bishops that Pius VII, in the Concordat of 1801, had resurrected the gallican church a­ fter the Revolution had destroyed it and, he implied, thus confirmed its legitimacy. In making what was ostensibly a pastoral argument against the decree, Rivet had managed to touch on the neuralgic points—­ separate, personal, and absolute—­ and interpret them in ways contrary to the way Pie explained them. He had to be answered, and at the next general congregation, on May 17, Dechamps did so, though without mentioning Rivet’s name.29 In his rebuttal Dechamps made extensive and explicit use of Bellarmino to show that the doctrine was not new ­because it had long been held, not absolute but relative to the truths of revelation (de infallibilitate omnino relativa), and not personal ­because it pertained only to the pope’s supreme teaching function. The assistance of the Holy Spirit that the pope enjoys presumes the use of normal h ­ uman means in the fulfillment of his office. Bishop Greith followed him and made the standard points that neither the times nor the m ­ atter was ripe for such a definition. But he also introduced to the council floor a quotation from Saint

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Antoninus of Florence (1389–1459) that well expressed the position of the minority bishops, who from this point forward repeatedly invoked it: “When the Roman pontiff makes use of a council and avails himself of the resources of the universal church, he cannot err.”30 Hefele, the historian of church councils, spoke next and argued that t­here ­were too many prob­lems arising from the interpretation of the proof texts from scripture and from church documents for the council to proceed to a definition. When he explained that the Council of Chalcedon (453) did not accept Pope Leo the ­Great’s letter on the two natures of Christ ­until it had examined it, he delivered an unwelcome message. Grumbling and shuffling of feet ­were heard.31 ­These interventions in the first days of the debate encapsulate the type of arguments repeated again and again in the days that followed. At that very time a heat wave hit Rome, which persisted, with only occasional days of relief, u ­ ntil the council broke up two months ­later. The temperatures remained relentlessly high, sometimes for days on end, at a debilitating 88 to 93 degrees (30 to 34 Celsius). At night sleep was difficult or impossible ­because the heat had to be borne without air conditioning or electric fans, and often with win­dows closed ­because of mosquitoes. Bishops, especially from the minority, unavailingly promoted the idea of an immediate recess ­until the fall, when nerves frayed by the unforgiving weather would be restored to health. At the same time concern that the Italian military forces might move against the city weighed on their minds.32 Both prob­lems reduced bishops’ patience with one another and added to the heavy and restless mood in the council hall. At the next general congregation, on May 18, Emmanuel García Gil, archbishop of Saragossa and member of the deputation, set out

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to answer Greith and Hefele. He repeated a standard argument of the majority that the sacred texts clearly proved the doctrine, and he thus implied that historical arguments against it ­were irrelevant.33 Then came Schwarzenberg, who began by complaining about publications authored by ­people without qualifications that vilified bishops and made them seem enemies of the church. He went on to observe that the teaching about the pope in this document stood apart from the teaching about the church at large and about the dignity, rights, and responsibilities of bishops. If, as was repeatedly said, papal infallibility was not personal, not absolute, and not separate, that should be clearly stated in the text! As it stood, the text would only aggravate the nationalist fervor—­which had captured Italy, Germany, and other nations—­promoted by enemies of the church. Schwarzenberg also made the point that the text limited bishops’ authority to their own dioceses, with no regard for their responsibility for the ­whole church, as exercised in ecumenical councils. He posed one of the minority’s most basic questions: Why are we dealing with this unhappy issue (infelicissima quaestio) when reverence for the Holy See has never been greater than it is t­oday?34 On May 19 Cardinal Paul Cullen, archbishop of Dublin, delivered an impor­tant speech that lasted close to two hours. The speech much pleased the majority.35 In s­ ilent refutation of Hefele, Cullen tried to show that the condemnation of Pope Honorius was not an obstacle to the definition. In response to Schwarzenberg, he argued that bishops’ authority was limited to their own dioceses. In further, implicit ­silent response to him, he went on to argue that Christ gave all authority to Peter, who then communicated it to the other apostles. In other words, the pope was the source of all authority in the church, both doctrinal and disciplinary: “The

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source therefore and the origin of authority in the church is found in the Supreme Pontiff.”36 This was a straightforward expression of the most radical ultramontane view. Cullen praised de Maistre, that “splendid author” (praeclarissimus scriptor) whose doctrine was close to that of Aquinas.37 Again in response to Schwarzenberg, he undertook a defense of journals that defended the Holy See. T ­ hese journals w ­ ere much needed to ­counter publications such as a certain book published in Germany and translated into En­g lish, an obvious reference to Döllinger’s Janus. Although he did not explic­itly mention the Univers and the Civiltà Cattolica, Cullen certainly meant to commend them. The Jesuits at the Civiltà got the message, and the next day two members of the staff went to the Irish College to thank Cullen for speaking “in our ­favor.”38 On May 20 Darboy, archbishop of Paris and respected leader of the minority, made the standard objections: The issue was thrust upon the council by demagogues outside it and was not ready for definition. Moreover, it had been torn from its logical and natu­ral place in the larger context of the church. The terms of the definition w ­ ere vague and uncertain, and, even though no one would admit it openly, the text taught an infallibility that was personal, absolute, and separate. The decree would not solve the prob­lems of our times but make them worse. If upon voting it became clear that a considerable minority was unfavorable to the decree, the authority of the council would suffer. Darboy concluded by recommending that chapter 4 simply be dropped from the decree.39 On May 23 Ketteler addressed the assumption that an absolute authority was not only the remedy for the ills of society but that it carried with it no dangers: “Every­body ­today deplores that all authority, both secular and spiritual, has collapsed, and all persons of good ­w ill want us to defend and give witness to authority as a

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necessity in society. Yet at the same time every­body t­ oday detests all forms of absolutism, from which so many evils have come upon the h ­ uman race. Absolutism corrupts us and renders us vile. Proclaim, reverend f­ athers, proclaim to the w ­ hole 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.” The official rec­ord notes that at this point in Ketteler’s speech the f­ athers several times signaled their disapproval—­submissa signa improbationis. That was certainly true, but some bishops ­were also enthusiastic about it.40 The next day the meeting began with the assembly assenting to the petition of seven bishops to leave the council ­because of urgent business at home.41 This was an instance of the leakage that occurred in small mea­sures but that, as mentioned, eventually amounted to a considerable diminishment of numbers by the time of the vote on Pastor Aeternus. On May 25 Archbishop Manning mounted the rostrum, a much anticipated event.42 He did not disappoint. His speech, interrupted by twelve outbursts of applause, was beautifully crafted and delivered. Even Archbishop Kenrick admitted admiring ­those aspects of it. Unknown at the time was that Manning had had F ­ ather Liberatore from the Civiltà review it beforehand, but, according to Manning, Liberatore made no changes.43 Manning began by insisting that the decree was absolutely necessary to vindicate the rights of the Holy See and to confirm Catholics in their faith. Some said that it was dangerous to promulgate the decree. On the contrary, Manning argued, it was dangerous not to promulgate it. Had they forgotten the seventeenth and eigh­ teenth centuries, he asked, when the gallicans and Febronians opposed the pope and fawned on secular rulers? The teaching of

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Pastor Aeternus was not new: the Council of Florence implicitly but unquestionably affirmed it. He argued against delaying action on the decree ­u ntil the next year, and, without actually naming it, in passing he criticized Dupanloup’s letter to his clergy. Calling upon his personal experience, he predicted that the decree would be beneficial in E ­ ngland. On two substantive points he was clear: “I must insist that in the consistent practice of the church one cannot find mention of means used or required to be used by the Roman pontiffs or of conditions they fulfilled or had to fulfill in defining truths, in con­ ater in the speech demning errors, or in confirming councils.”44 L he made a further point in a rhetorically clever way: “I have never understood how, if the pope was not infallible without the bishops and the bishops not infallible without the pope, one of them could give to the other what neither has.” That same day William Clifford, bishop of Clifton, took on both Cullen and Manning.45 He concentrated on refuting the idea that the decree was opportune. His own experience of E ­ ngland, he insisted, was quite dif­fer­ent from Manning’s, and, no m ­ atter how careful the decree was in its wording, ordinary ­people would conclude the council had made the pope a despot. At this, murmurs and other sounds of disapproval arose from the bishops’ desks. Regarding the import of the decree, Clifford struck a sensitive nerve of the majority when he declared that the very state of the question was not clear. Speakers in ­favor of the decree ­were divided over just how the pope’s infallibility might or might not be personal, absolute, and separate. He was correct. Pius closely followed the interventions in Saint Peter’s, as his immediate reaction to Clifford makes clear. He was very much displeased. In an audience two days ­later he spotted an En­g lish priest and instructed him to go to Bishop Clifford and tell him

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that he has done a ­g reat wrong “in speaking against the pope and the church.”46 Manning’s close collaborator, Bishop Senestrey, delivered a short speech on May 28, remarkable only in that it consisted in a string of proof texts, a perfect example of argument from sources (monumenta) without regard for their literary form or historical context.47 Vérot, recently transferred from Savannah, Georgia, to Saint Augustine, Florida, also spoke that day.48 With historical arguments, he took on Cullen at ­g reat length, but he could not suppress his sense of humor, as when he asked w ­ hether the Irish believed Pope Hadrian IV was infallible when he handed over Ireland to the king of ­England. The speech ended badly when Verot said that for him voting for infallibility would be a sacrilege. ­A fter several exchanges with the presidents, Vérot was asked to step down. That same day both Bishop Sándor (Alexander) Bonnaz and Bishop Jean-­Pierre Bravard expressed the resentment the minority bishops felt at being treated like heretics (Bonnaz) or as ignorant, proud, and servile to the state (Brovard).49 Three days ­later Giuseppe Valerga, patriarch of Jerusalem, fueled that resentment when he implied the gallicans w ­ ere heretics like the Mono50 thelites of the seventh ­century. The mood in the council hall was sour. On June 3 Michael Domenec, bishop of Pittsburgh, protested that the decree would be a g­ reat obstacle to conversions in the United States and spell disaster t­here.51 The last speaker that day was Bishop Maret, that special target of Veuillot’s journal and special object of the pope’s disfavor. He elaborated at length on Antoninus’s princi­ple and designated it as “the compendium of our position.”52 Most impor­tant, he provided for the first time in the council a succinct statement of the minority’s theological method: “Our position” was based on sacred scripture, on tradition, on the

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practice of the church, on the sacred canons, and especially on the actions and mode of proceeding of the ecumenical councils. He put his position boldly: “Whereas the majority sees the church as an absolute monarchy, we see it as a limited monarchy” (temperata monarchia).53 While he was speaking, bishops shouted their objections, and Cardinal Bilio, presiding that day, interrupted him several times. But Maret was deaf and continued unruffled. The presidents deserved credit for making sure that Maret had the opportunity to speak before they asked the bishops if they wanted to close the debate. On the previous day they had received a petition signed by 141 council f­ athers asking for a vote on closure. They still had the names of almost fifty bishops who had asked to speak, which meant the general debate would continue ­until at least July 1, ­after which would come the debate on each of the chapters. Not surprisingly, the vote was overwhelmingly for closure. Bishops of the minority w ­ ere displeased and saw the closure as a violation of the council’s freedom. They could hardly argue, however, that they had not had ample opportunity to make their position known. They had again and again protested that the decree was not needed and would almost certainly do more harm than good. The doctrine was, moreover, contradicted by certain historical facts and, as proposed, ignored the traditional role of bishops gathered in ecumenical councils in pronouncing on doctrinal ­matters. ­Because the chapter had been wrenched from its natu­ral place in the larger document on the church, adequate discussion of it was impossible. Fi­nally, the state of the question was not clear, as demonstrated by the conflicting interpretations of the text even members of the deputation offered. What precisely was the object of the pope’s infallibility—­was it the divinely revealed truths of faith, or did it extend beyond that? If so, extended

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to what? As it stood, therefore, the text asserted an infallibility that was personal, absolute, and separate. But the arguments, compelling though they seemed to the minority, had made no converts and fallen on deaf ears. It was highly unlikely that further speeches would change the situation. In any case, the minority would have another chance when the council undertook debate chapter by chapter.

The Guidi Affair By this point the bishops of the minority had fully accepted that they ­were powerless to prevent a definition. In a letter to Dupanloup as early as April 24, Richard Whelan, bishop of Wheeling, analyzed the situation. He observed that for the majority, “Reasons mean nothing. Facts count for nothing. Difficulties for the f­ uture do not trou­ble them. . . . ​They want it; they have deci­ded on it; nothing can stop them.” We must abandon hope of preventing a definition, he advised, and work instead for a moderate formulation of it that ­will spell out its limits precisely and emphasize that the pope speaks infallibly only when he functions as “the mouth of the church.”54 Well before the closure of debate on June 3, therefore, leading bishops of the minority more earnestly than before set themselves to work for a compromise. By the m ­ iddle of May, conversations between them and a few members of the deputation such as Deschamps and Walter Steins, the Jesuit apostolic vicar of Calcutta, ­were u ­ nder way.55 The broker of the conversations was the Belgian Jesuit Victor de Buck. He was a friend of Montalembert and Dupanloup. His liberal views made him suspect in the Roman curia, but during the council, much to the dismay of Pius IX, he served as the

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personal theologian of Pieter Jan Beckx, superior general of the Jesuits. Obviously, neither de Buck nor Beckx was sympathetic with the hard line taken by the Civiltà, but the journal was in such ­favor with the pope that the general was unable to exert any influence over its policies. The person who had the pope’s ear was ­ ather not Beckx, but Piccirillo, editor of the Civiltà. Of de Buck, F Franco of the journal’s staff, exclaimed, “How poisonous the liberal virus is even in holy men!”56 Negotiations faltered. It seemed that only if the pope threw his weight in ­favor of a compromise did one seem feasible, but well before this point Pius had thrown his weight in the opposite direction. For its part, the minority now saw clearly that if a breach ­were to be made in the dividing wall, the majority, ­because of its secure position, would have to initiate it. But who from the majority would take that initiative? On June 6 the council returned to debate on the text, this time chapter by chapter. The preamble and the first two chapters moved along at a swift pace. The debate on chapter 3 ran from June 9 to 14, during which the minority raised more questions related to bishops’ authority. Strossmayer, Schwarzenberg, and Connolly, for instance, tried to make the point that bishops had responsibility beyond their own diocese and for the church at large. Connolly implicitly accused the majority of biblical fundamentalism. But in the end few points ­were scored, and the text emerged basically unscathed. On June  17, two days ­after the council began addressing chapter 4, Pius IX celebrated the twenty-­fourth anniversary of his election. In the course of the cele­bration, he delivered a provocative address in which he divided the bishops, guardians of the church (sentinelle), into three classes. First, t­ hose who in the eve­n ing lay aside their episcopal garb and thus did not have a true ecclesiastical

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spirit. (He had in mind Strossmayer, for whom he had developed an especial dislike.) Second, ­those who wanted to live in harmony with the enemies of the church and chose the world over the church. (­Here he meant the minority bishops.) Fi­nally, the good “sentinels” who never leave their posts.57 The minority once again felt humiliated. The next day the best known and most discussed incident of the entire council occurred. It centered on Cardinal Filippo Maria Guidi, a Dominican whom Pius had made a cardinal in 1863.58 Pius also appointed Guidi, archbishop of Bologna, but Guidi had been unable to claim his see due to the obstruction of the Italian government, which now held the former papal city. During the council Guidi lived with his fellow Dominican bishops at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the ­g reat Dominican convent in the center of Rome. In keeping with the tradition of their order, Guidi and his fellow Dominicans belonged to the majority, but they w ­ ere not partisans of the Manning-­Senestrey bloc. This was especially true of Guidi, who from 1857 ­until 1863 held, at the special request of Cardinal Rauscher, the chair of Thomistic theology at the University of Vienna, where he got to know many of the bishops of the minority from that part of the world. Up to this point in the council Guidi had kept a low profile. He had, however, been in contact with minority bishops and was among the many at the council who hoped to find a formula that would end the standoff and unite the council b­ ehind the decree. That is what he attempted to do on June 18, and to a large extent he succeeded. ­Here at last was what the minority hoped for: somebody from the majority who publicly offered a formula it could accept.59 In his speech to the council Guidi essentially dealt with the two key issues: is infallibility personal to the pope, and is it separate

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from the church? Infallibility, he argued, does not make the person of the pope infallible, as if it ­were a habitual quality of his person. Guidi used a homely analogy: we do not call somebody a drunk who once or twice had too much to drink.60 Divine assistance is promised not to the person but to an act. It is the act that is infallible. Therefore the title of the chapter should be changed to “De Romani Pontificis Dogmaticarum Definitionum Infallibilitate” (The infallibility of the Roman pontiff in defining dogma).61 Is the pope separate from the church, or is he dependent upon it? The pope is not dependent on the church in the sense that the bishops, even bishops gathered in council, confer upon the pope an authority to make infallible judgments. He is, however, dependent in that he must learn from bishops what the sense of the church is on a given issue—­ut ab eis resciat quinam universalis ecclesiae sit sensus.62 We learn of this truth, he said, from the practice of the apostles themselves (Acts 15) and from the practice of frequent councils in the early church. Indeed, Cardinal Bellarmino taught that popes “do not condemn a new heresy without a new council.” And among their con­temporary Jesuit theologians, ­Father Giovanni Perrone of the Collegio Romano taught the same. Consultation of the bishops was, therefore, absolutely necessary to determine what the faith of the church was, as Pius IX did in defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The decree must, therefore, make it clear that the pope must consult the bishops, and therefore it must contain the words “­after due inquiry, as is the custom” ( facta, uti mos est, inquisitio). With that, shouts of “Good! Good!” rang out, as well as “No! No!” A few moments ­later Guidi concluded with a defense of bishops, who ­were loyal and orthodox but unfairly called gallicans, though they did not believe a council could undo an infallible papal declaration.

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As Guidi descended from the rostrum, Strossmayer ran up to kiss his hand. The mood in the council hall had lightened. Many bishops felt that a turning point had been reached and that the council could now move forward with hope for virtual una­n im­ i­ty on the decree. Both Dechamps and Pie ­were pleased. Deschamps saw the speech as a “bridge to unity” and confessed to Darboy that he had always taught what Guidi proposed. Darboy replied expressing his plea­sure but also noting that this was far from the ­actual wording of the decree. Not every­body was happy. Mann­ing groaned that Guidi was confused, and at crucial points in Guidi’s speech other bishops made clear their disagreement. In any case, a co­ali­tion of the minority and moderates of the majority now seemed a possibility. It was not to be. Pius IX was furious. That very after­noon he summoned Guidi to his apartment. He accused him of befriending the enemies of the church and of trying to ingratiate himself with the Italian government so that he might occupy his see in Bologna. He reminded Guidi that he was his creature, an unknown friar ­until he had made him a cardinal. Strossmayer’s kiss proved that Guidi was surreptitiously plotting with the leaders of the opposition. In reaction to Guidi’s insistence that before issuing a definition the pope had to investigate the tradition of the church, Pius broke out with the famous words, “I, I am tradition! I, I am the church” (Io, io sono la tradizione! Io, io sono la chiesa!). To defend himself Guidi could say only that he had spoken according to his conscience and according to the teaching of Saint Thomas and Cardinal Bellarmino. This incident is so shocking that it hardly seems credible. Did it actually happen, and did it happen as it has consistently been described? Historians and theologians have time and again sifted

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the evidence. Their conclusion is unambiguous: ­there is no reason to doubt the incident occurred and occurred as it has commonly been told.63 That eve­n ing a large number of bishops, including Schwarzenberg and Dupanloup, went to the Minerva to congratulate Guidi and to thank him. They ­were shocked to learn what had happened and filled with consternation when they saw their seemingly last hope for a united council swatted away with a single blow. The council now seemed irrevocably destined to remain divided. Even apart from its immediate impact upon the council, the Guidi Affair was an event of high significance, as Ulrich Horst explains: Without exception ­these theologians [earlier theologians of the Dominican order} and ­others strongly defended the idea that proper preparation was essential to any definition of faith, just as they considered papal heresy a self-­evident possibility. It was the theologians of the Jesuit order who fi­nally discarded ­these “relics” of a long tradition that had fused the authority and binding force of papal teaching with broader ecclesiological concerns. 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.64 The next day, and then for the next two weeks, the council continued its debate on chapter 4, with speakers rehearsing in dif­fer­ent

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forms arguments already made many times. Nonetheless, the speech on June 20 by Bartolomeo d’Avanzo, bishop of Calvi and a member of the deputation, only deepened the fears of the minority. D’Avanzo was among ­those of the majority who held the most extreme views, which he did not hide in his speech. In his peroration he went as far as the council could tolerate at this point. He proclaimed that when the pope defines de fide, he is equivalently “an incarnation of the super­n atural order and of Christ within it, who therefore in all ­things and for all t­ hings is in the pope, with the pope, and [speaks] through the pope.”65 When debate ended on July 4 the minority bishops ever more fully had to reckon with the fact that no m ­ atter how close to them some of the majority might come in their interpretation of the text, the ­actual wording of the text was not ­going to change in any significant way. The decree remained open to a maximal interpretation. Moreover, b­ ecause of departures and other forms of attrition ­after the Guidi Affair, the minority’s ranks continued to diminish.

The Final Days Beginning on July 4 the deputation worked feverishly to prepare the revised text, mindful that the solemn session for the decree’s promulgation had been set for July 18, just two weeks away.66 As mentioned earlier, it made virtually no changes in the preamble and the first two chapters. For chapter 3 the deputation agreed, at the urging of Spalding, to make a clearer statement of the authority of bishops in their own dioceses. But a thorny prob­lem had arisen. Should the deputation add a canon explic­itly against Maret and his gallican thesis that the pope had the “principal part” but not the absolute fullness of supreme authority?

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That the initiative for the canon came not directly from the floor of the council but from the deputation raised a serious procedural question. Did the deputation exceed its remit, which was to pro­cess issues raised by amendments submitted by the bishops? Perhaps more serious was the fact that the canon had not been discussed and voted upon in a general congregation before being proposed in this final text. Moreover, although the members of the deputation supported the substance of the canon, some felt reluctant to condemn a position held by a member of the council. Nonetheless, ­after much back and forth, the deputation fi­nally deci­ded to go ahead, urged to do so by Bilio, who had received a note that the pope insisted upon it. Regarding chapter 4, the deputation a­ dopted the title suggested by Bishop Martin in his intervention on June 30, “De Romani Pontificis Infallibili Magisterio” (On the infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff ), a change more than acceptable to the minority and close to the title suggested by Guidi. It also deci­ded to insert the classic expression ex cathedra to make clear that not all of the pope’s teachings w ­ ere infallible but only t­hose clearly indicated as such and solemnly proclaimed. On July 9 the council f­ athers received the revised text. Neither side was fully satisfied. Manning urged the majority bishops, especially ­those who wanted a more capacious statement of infallibility, to vote placet so as not to delay the final approval. He quite correctly worried that with the po­liti­cal situation between France and Prus­sia rapidly deteriorating, no one could predict what the consequences might be for the council. The minority bishops saw in the text no substantial change for the better and w ­ ere shocked, incensed, and humiliated by the canon against Maret. They pointed out, as the deputation feared, that the canon was newly added to the text and had never been debated.

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Two days ­later, on July 11, Federico Maria Zinelli, bishop of Treviso, introduced, in the name of the deputation, the preamble and the first three chapters. Although he failed to convince the minority, he tried to show that in substance, even if not explic­itly, the new canon attached to chapter 3 had been discussed. The main attraction of the day, however, was the pre­sen­ta­tion of chapter 4 by Vinzenz Gasser, bishop of Brixen (Bressanone). Although it lasted for almost three hours and was delivered to an already exhausted audience on the hottest day of a two-­month heat wave, it held the bishops’ attention better than might have been expected.67 Gasser reviewed the by-­now standard issues. Papal infallibility was personal in that it pertained to him as the only legitimate successor of Peter and only insofar as he acted as a public person, as head of the church in his relationship to the church. Papal infallibility was separate in that the pope had a special relationship to the Holy Spirit according to Jesus’s promise in Luke, chapter 22. He was infallible, therefore, only when he spoke representing the universal church (universalem ecclesiam representans). Papal infallibility was not identical with the infallibility of the church. The pope was not separate from the rest of the church, but a previously ascertained or subsequently confirmed consensus was not a condition for an infallible pronouncement. Papal infallibility was not absolute in that God alone possesses absolute infallibility. It was, however, absolute within the limits Christ set for it. On the delicate question of the relation of the pope to general councils, Gasser maintained that councils acquired their infallible character only when they ­were approved by the pope. He made clear, however—­against some of the extremists of the majority—­that the ­whole infallibility of the church was not vested in the pope, which he then would dole out to the rest of the church. Even more impor­t ant, in discussing the term ex cathedra, Gasser was the first

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speaker of the deputation to clarify the distinction between infallible and non-­i nfallible teachings by the church’s highest authority: the pope had to make clear it was his intention to define a teaching. Gasser’s was a masterly pre­sen­ta­tion, but he changed nobody’s opinion. The sides ­were already set. Many in the majority felt that Gasser’s attempt to meet the minority’s issues was wasted effort. The minority, once again, saw nothing substantially new in the pre­sen­ta­tion. Gasser had provided an interpretation of the text, but the text itself remained essentially unchanged. When on July 13 the presidents submitted the text to a vote, the result was 451 placet, 62 placet juxta modum, and 88 non placet.68 The large number of non placet votes along with the juxta modum was electrifying and stunned almost every­body. The day before the vote, Pius IX had confided to Darboy that he anticipated no more than ten non placet votes. The leaders of the minority felt, therefore, that they had scored a triumph and had made certain that the majority would now have to attend to their demands. They could not have been more mistaken. The vote had just the opposite effect. Before the vote, Archbishop Dechamps had pleaded with the minority’s leaders to vote juxta modum, to no avail. The bishops ­were convinced that they had to stand strong and stand together. It was a tragically mistaken strategy. By voting non placet they thereby shut themselves out from a revision pro­ cess and at the same time offended their allies in the majority. ­A fter the vote, even the conciliatory Pie said, “It’s pos­si­ble to negotiate with a juxta modum, but impossible with a non placet.” The vote allowed Veuillot to crow, “Now we see how stubborn they are in their heresy, and how useless is any concession to them.”69 ­Whether further negotiation would have borne fruit is doubtful, but the

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negative votes ­were taken as slamming the door shut on any possibility of it. On July 14 the deputation held meetings in both the morning and the after­noon to deal with the emendations urged in the sixty­two juxta modum votes but also to decide how to h ­ andle the stressful situation. Meanwhile, Pius, now more opposed than ever to the minority ­after the negative vote, gave vent to his dissatisfaction with Bilio as chair of the deputation. He had long complained to Piccirillo about Bilio’s weakness in guiding the deputation and his efforts to conciliate the minority. That same day he received a note, possibly from Charles-­Émile Freppel, bishop of Angers, and other French bishops of the majority, urging a stronger refutation of Gallicanism by inserting into the decree ­after the words “of themselves” (ex sese) the words “not by consent of the church” (non ex consensu ecclesiae). Pius promptly sent the note to Bilio and advised him to change the text in accordance with the note. Bilio and the deputation complied. The decree now concluded: “Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not by the consent of the church, immune from reform.” 70 When by July 15, two days a­ fter the vote, the minority bishops had received no conciliatory overtures, they realized how badly they had miscalculated. Their situation was now utterly desperate. At about nine that eve­n ing a five-­m an committee—­Darboy, Simor, Scherr, Rivet, and Ketteler—­was granted an audience with the pope. Darboy made a proposal. If two conditions could be met, the committee would guarantee between eighty and one hundred new placet votes at the public session three days hence: first, the removal of the anti-­Maret canon in chapter 3, and, second, the insertion in chapter  4 of an expression such as “supported by the witness of the churches” (innixus testimonio ecclesiarum).

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Pius received them graciously but reminded them that he did not interfere in the workings of the council, which, to say the least, was ­little in accord with his recent be­hav­ior. He then asked Darboy to write him a memo on the m ­ atter. The committee members left the audience with the impression that they may have succeeded and that all was not lost. They did not know that on the previous day the pope had sent his note to Bilio counseling the insertion of “not by consensus of the church,” the very opposite of what the committee had requested. The next day, July 16, marked the minority’s definitive defeat, as the deputation announced the final changes in the text. At the general congregation, d’Avanzo reported for the deputation on the preamble and first two chapters. Nothing new t­ here. Then Zinelli reported on chapter 3, making clear that the deputation recommended retaining the canon. Fi­nally, Gasser once again reported on chapter 4, insisting that the insertion of “not by consent of the church” merely clarified the “of themselves” already in the text. As Gasser concluded, he in the direst terms reminded the f­ athers of the heavy responsibility they had for the well-­being of 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.71 By the time Cardinal De Angelis tried to call for a vote on “not ­ ere by consent,” he was losing control of the assembly.72 Bishops w shouting their objections to voting on such an impor­tant change without discussion. The change did not come from the bishops, some said, but from the Jesuits, who could not other­w ise get their way. ­Others loudly congratulated their colleagues on the coup.

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Some bishops left their places and grouped themselves with ­others, so that it was impossible to get an accurate count of the votes. Even so, it was clear the amendment was accepted by a majority. De Angelis then made an announcement that set off further outcries. He asked the bishops to sign a protest against two recently published books that impugned the freedom of the council. In signing it, the bishops would affirm the council’s freedom and its adherence to proper procedures. Further shouts arose from the bishops. This time ­there ­were bishops from the majority who ­were offended by being asked to condemn two books they not only had not read but had not even heard of u ­ ntil that moment. While some rushed to the rostrum to sign the statement, ­others headed for the door, even as De Angelis announced that the pope gave bishops permission to depart for home a­ fter the session two days ­later but with the understanding they return to Rome no l­ater than the Feast of Saint Martin, in mid-­November. The next eve­n ing, July 17, a large number of bishops of the minority boarded the 7:50 train northward to take them out of Rome and begin their journeys home. The decision to leave Rome had not been easy. On that very morning some sixty bishops of the minority still in Rome had met in the apartments of Cardinal Rauscher. They had faced two alternatives: to stay and vote non placet or to absent themselves from the session. Some argued that it was their duty as witnesses to the faith to act according to their conscience and cast a negative vote. O ­ thers argued that a non placet would result in unforeseen and potentially dangerous consequences for the church. The French bishops feared that a negative vote would provoke such a reaction in their fervently ultramontane clergy as to make it even more difficult for them to administer their dioceses. When the group fi­nally voted, the tally was thirty-­six

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in ­favor of departing to twenty-­five in ­favor of remaining. They therefore would go. They drafted a short letter to the pope informing him of their decision and the reasons for it. First, out of re­spect for His Holiness they did not want to cast a negative vote in his presence. Second, they ­were leaving the council early ­because of their deep concerns about the po­liti­cal situation. And, fi­nally, they did so ­because their conscience did not allow them to vote in f­avor of the decree. They ended the letter with an expression of re­spect for the pope and fidelity to him.73 The next morning in Rome the session went forward as planned. Even Veuillot admitted that though it was a glorious occasion, two heavy clouds hovered over it—­fear of a schism as a result of the definition and fear of the consequences of the Franco-­Prussian War, declared two days earlier. In the basilica itself 535 prelates ­were pres­ent, down by almost 25 ­percent from the opening day. The absence of the minority bishops was obvious, but perhaps more ominous was the almost total absence of the diplomatic corps, which raised questions about the pos­si­ble po­liti­cal consequences of the definition. Absent also ­were some leading figures from the Roman curia, such as Cardinal Friedrich von Hohenlohe, a determined opponent of the decree, and even Bishop Luigi Puecher-­ Passavalli, who gave the sermon opening the council. The clouds over the basilica w ­ ere not only meta­phorical. The heavens opened with drenching rain, accompanied by sometimes seemingly unremitting lightning and thunder. All but two of the prelates voted placet on the decree. The dissenting votes came from two bishops who other­w ise ­were inconsequential during the council—­Luigi Riccio, bishop of Caiazzo in southern Italy, and Edward Fitzgerald, bishop of L ­ ittle Rock,

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Arkansas. ­A fter the announcement of the solemn ratification of Pastor Aeternus, and the cries of “Long live the infallible pope,” Pius gave a remarkably short address. In it he prayed that the Lord enlighten the hearts of ­those who did not accept the doctrine so that the unity of the church could be reestablished.74 Veuillot outdid himself in assessing the high significance of the event. “We have been led out of Egypt,” he wrote, “and Pha­raoh has been driven from the land.” The path ahead may be long, but they need not fear. “We have a Moses—­indeed, a greater than Moses!” 75

Porta Pia Pius gave bishops permission to leave Rome, but he did not consider the council adjourned. Although just a l­ittle over a hundred ­fathers remained in the city, they carried on for three more general congregations, on August 13 and 23 and September 1, with ­little to show for their effort. By then the French troops had already withdrawn from cities and towns such as Viterbo and Civitavecchia from which they had defended Rome. Meanwhile, on September 1–2, the French suffered their decisive defeat at the hands of the Prus­sians in the B ­ attle of Sedan, during which Napoleon III was taken prisoner. The war dragged on for a few more months ­under a provisional French government, but t­here was no way the French could recover. The result for Rome was inevitable. On September 8 the Italian forces began their offensive, with Rome the ultimate prize. The next day King Victor Emmanuel sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to negotiate. Antonelli received him that eve­ning as preparation for his meeting with Pius on the tenth. The audience with the pope went nowhere. Pius, sure that divine providence would

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not allow the seizure of the city, informed Ponza, “I am no prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, but I tell you, you w ­ ill not enter, 76 and, if you enter, you ­w ill not remain.” But as the Italians advanced, Pius had to come to terms with the real­ity. Now he had to decide ­whether to use the papal army to defend the city. He vacillated, even though his secretary of state, Antonelli, strongly opposed any military re­sis­tance. At the last minute Pius gave way to pressure from General Hermann Kanzler, commander of the papal troops, and allowed him to engage in b­ attle ­until the city wall was breached and the Italians ­were able to enter.77 By five in the morning of September 20, the Italians had arrived at Porta Pia and began their assault, for which the papal troops ­were no match. A ­ fter a few hours they broke through and claimed the city. It was a momentous event. With it, well over a thousand years of papal history came to an end. King Victor Emmanuel was installed in the papal palace on the Quirinal. Pius claimed the Vatican quarter of the city, sequestered himself ­there, and declared himself a prisoner. The new government accepted the anomalous situation and left the pope undisturbed. A month ­later, on October 20, just a few weeks before the bishops ­were scheduled to return to Rome, Pius adjourned the council in­def­initely on the grounds that it could not act in freedom. The Italian foreign minister, Emilio Visconti Venosta, immediately protested that the Italian government would guarantee the council’s freedom, a protest surely sincerely meant. The Italians had no desire to be further vilified in the world press as enemies of the Catholic Church and persecutors of the pope. But Pius could not possibly accept the offer. He knew the “liberals” only as untrustworthy. More to the point, accepting the offer would implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the seizure of Rome.

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Meanwhile, Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore proposed that the council be transferred to Mechelen in Belgium, a plan that won the approval of both Dechamps and Manning. Mechelen had much to recommend it. It had the facilities to accommodate the council and was in a small country not aligned with ­either side in the war. The Vatican greeted the plan with silence. Besides the other symbolic and practical difficulties it entailed, from Pius’s viewpoint it carried a suggestion that he might abandon Rome and his claim to it. For Pius the council was to be held in Rome or not held at all. Thus the First Vatican Council slipped into an adjournment that within a few de­cades seemed destined to be everlasting—­the soft but definitive end of ecumenical councils. ­A fter all, Pastor Aeternus had rendered such gatherings obsolete.

Conclusion

O

n July 18, 1870, Vatican Council I promulgated the decree on papal primacy and infallibility, Pastor Aeternus. The decree was controversial both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Apologists for it, then and ­later, tried to dispel objections to it by insisting that it changed nothing and was simply a solemn affirmation of long-­held beliefs. It is true that from the earliest days Christians, especially in the West, recognized the special leadership of the bishop of Rome, even though they disagreed about what its scope might be. By the nineteenth ­century Catholics accepted, often with impor­tant qualifications, papal jurisdictional claims over the church. It is also true that for centuries learned and respected theologians had argued for the doctrinal infallibility of the Roman pontiff and that most churchmen came to agree with them. They generally accepted the implicit assumption that papal infallibility was somehow compatible with the traditional doctrinal authority of the ecumenical councils. It could reasonably be argued that the decree of Vatican I did not go beyond t­ hose par­ameters, but t­ here can be no doubt that it left itself open to interpretations that did. That was the minority’s

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objection to it. But even with a restricted interpretation, the decree amplified papal authority. It did so simply by the act of definition. The definition qua definition gave papal primacy and infallibility a new prominence, a new dignity, and a new, solemn vindication. It thereby intensified their impact and thus profoundly affected how the church thought of itself and how it functioned. Traditional though the doctrines might have been, their definition changed something and changed it to a considerable degree. It made the church more ultramontane. By the third de­cade of the eigh­teenth ­century, Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephism, Jansenism, nationalism, and the Enlightenment had, to the papacy’s ­g reat dismay, often joined forces to act in ways that defied papal claims. With the death of Pius VI in ignominious exile in France, they seemed to have reduced the papacy to a powerless shambles. But the institution rebounded to a remarkable degree, and through the council it was able to take a stand against all t­hese movements. The council was to a large degree a reaction to the ­Century of Lights. Vatican I quite deliberately moved against Gallicanism and other forms of bishop-­centered ecclesiology. With Romanticism as the ­silent ally of the ultramontane movement, which generated the council, the ultramontanes saw the council as a statement against Jansenism and its ecclesiology. In Germany and elsewhere, Catholics looked to the papacy for protection against the intrusion into their religious practice of governments energized by nationalist fervor, a protection that seemingly local bishops could not provide. Moreover, Pius IX and many ­others conceived the council from the beginning as a negative response to the modern world, the world in whose creation the Enlightenment had played such an impor­tant role. The pope meant the council to be a solemn reaf-

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firmation of the Syllabus, that comprehensive rejection of modernity. The council certainly did not go that far, but with Dei Filius it proclaimed the real­ity of the spiritual and the super­natural against the materialism and rationalism that marked the nineteenth ­century. Pastor Aeternus in no uncertain terms made clear the validity of monarchy and its sovereign ability to c­ ounter modern skepticism. As Ulrich Horst observed, the majority at the council acted out of an anxiety-­r idden defensiveness that was, above all, fixated on guaranteeing certainty in a world in which the certainties that church and society had taken for granted for centuries ­were crumbling.1 For all that, the council was a remarkably modern happening. The participation of bishops from the remotest parts of the world became pos­si­ble only through modern means of transportation. On a deeper level, the centralization of authority that Pastor Aeternus promoted was a phenomenon that in the secular sphere had greatly accelerated in the nineteenth c­ entury. It resulted in a very modern standardization of procedures on a worldwide basis, as is most obvious in the church in the gradual elimination or significant diminution of local liturgical practices. At the same time it called ­people out of their provincialism and nationalism and forced them into a more expansive vision of the church and, consequently, of the world. It unwittingly further eroded the confessional-­state model. The council was modern in that it resulted from a campaign carried on in a press whose impact was made pos­si­ble by the development of fast and relatively inexpensive means of printing and distribution on a ­grand scale. Without de Maistre, Veuillot, Görres, the Civiltà, and ­others, would papal infallibility ever have gained the momentum to dominate the proceedings of Vatican Council I?

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Would counterarguments such as Döllinger’s have been widely heard around the world? The council was modern in that on the world stage a characteristically modern method of arguing confronted more traditional ones. By and large the majority at the council argued by lifting proof texts from “authorities,” unchanging and unchangeable, which most often and most pointedly w ­ ere verses from the New Testament. The council moved at a level above the irrelevancies of the contingent, at the same time interpreting the texts with juridical categories unknown to the biblical writers. The minority tended to be more historical and empirical in its approach, a reflection of a phenomenon long in the making that reached such a culmination by the time of the council as to be a striking characteristic of the culture of the nineteenth ­century. Wissenschaft was an expression of that approach. Whereas the majority tended to restrict tradition to authorities that rode above the contingencies of history, the minority saw tradition as in part constituted by the history and practice of the church. For the minority, for instance, the condemnation of Pope Honorius and similar facts ­were not irrelevant for understanding how the biblical texts might be interpreted, and therefore not irrelevant for determining the extent of papal prerogatives. For that reason, history, according to them, had to figure in theological method. The minority lost the b­ attle, but it brought the issue forward, a harbinger of a prob­lem that a few de­cades ­later exploded in the Modernist crisis. During the council the minority bishops ­were labeled gallicans. The designation was justified in that they had been trained in traditions that w ­ ere broadly gallican. But we understand t­ hose bishops better if we dispense with the label and pay attention to what they most passionately fought for at the council.

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All through the debate on Pastor Aeternus the minority bishops again and again made clear their fear that the decree supported or at least allowed an understanding of infallibility that was personal, separate, and absolute. The ­simple stroke of a pen that altered the title of the decree from “On the infallibility of the Roman pontiff” to “On the infallibility of the teaching Authority of the Roman pontiff” was a change that for the minority certainly went in the right direction. It made clear that infallibility was a quality of the teaching office the pope exercised. It was a clarification that contrasted with Pius IX’s claim “I am tradition.” The minority received no satisfaction on its other two objections. First, the decree was for them not sufficiently specified regarding the scope of infallibility. Second, despite the deputation’s official interpretation of the decree, its wording allowed that the pope might act as separate from the church, a position Pius seemed to ratify when he claimed, “I am the church.” By July 15, 1870, the minority, realizing that the ultimate crisis point had been reached, in desperation appealed directly to Pius IX. By then it was willing to concede that its objections could be met if the canon against Maret could be withdrawn and a s­ imple statement such as “supported by the witness of the churches” was inserted into the decree. That concession reveals the core of the minority bishops’ position. What­ever papal infallibility meant, it could not be exercised without regard for the rest of the church. If that was the essence of the minority’s position, it was certainly something broader than traditional Gallicanism. As it turned out, Pius took no mea­sures to insert such a statement. On the contrary, with the deputation he promoted the seemingly counterstatement “not by the consent of the church.” With that he collided head-on with the minority bishops and made their support of the decree all the more difficult. Pius’s be­hav­ior

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in this instance was consistent with his be­hav­ior for the previous several months. Roger Aubert went so far as to say that while the ultramontane victory was due to a number of c­ auses, “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.”2 The partisan role that Pius assumed raises the question that has dogged Vatican I almost from the beginning. Was it ­free? W ­ ere bishops u ­ nder such undue pressure to vote a certain way that it put the very validity of the council into question? Döllinger, writing as Quirinus at the time of the council, impugned the council’s freedom, and in that regard his voice became internationally the most heeded. But Döllinger’s was not the only, the first, or the last such voice. As early as January 26, 1870, Darboy had complained to Emperor Napoleon III about the imposition from above of the council’s procedures. Other complaints from the French followed. They resented that the regulations ­were imposed without input from the assembly or its consent, that the council presidents ­were not elected but similarly imposed by the pope, and that the pope named the heads of the commissions and the members of the deputation De postulatis. Of course, arguments that the council was not f­ ree ­were challenged. They ­were refuted by Veuillot and ­others more qualified and less partisan than he. In the twentieth ­century Cuthbert Butler in 1930 and Roger Aubert in 1964, in their well-­regarded histories of the council, judged that on balance the council was ­f ree. They represented a general consensus among scholars. In 1977 August Hasler challenged their assessment, but he won few disciples.3

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The procedures at Vatican I ­were far from perfect. The blatant partisanship of the pope certainly affected how some bishops felt constrained to vote. Cardinal Bilio was correct in his reprimand to Manning and Senestrey that their maneuvering was inappropriate for a council. Moreover, ­there is something almost predetermined in a meeting about the scope of the authority of the CEO that takes place in his headquarters, that is prepared and or­ga­n ized by his staff, that is presided over by his appointees, and that is carried out ­under his immediate scrutiny. The council cannot be proposed, therefore, as an ideal model of a deliberative assembly, but do such ideal models exist in history? If so, they are rare. Regarding the freedom of such meetings, we are forced to reckon with more and less. Vatican I might fall into the less-­free category, but even so, the basic conditions for a fair meeting w ­ ere fulfilled. The minority bishops had more than enough opportunity to make their case. In fact, in proportion to their numbers, they spoke considerably more often than their opponents. However, for what­ever reason, they failed to make a significant impact on their listeners. The presidents carried out their duties evenhandedly, even though on a few occasions they betrayed their prejudice. The voting was sometimes clumsily carried out, but it was fairly conducted. What­ever reservations one might have about Vatican Council I, its freedom should not be one of them.

Aftermath As Pastor Aeternus was solemnly promulgated on July 18, even t­ hose who most enthusiastically supported it feared that it might lead to a major schism. The schism did not happen. Simply by absenting

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themselves from the session rather than voting non placet, the minority bishops signaled to themselves and to o ­ thers that they did not want to risk rupturing the unity of the church. Just how they ­were to deal with their situation, however, was far from clear. The Franco-­Prussian War made it virtually impossible for the minority bishops in France to stay in contact with their colleagues to the east, which promoted a tendency for each bishop to find his own solution to his dilemma. The po­liti­cal upheaval and social turmoil resulting from France’s defeat in the war perforce pulled bishops’ concern away from the council and focused it on more immediately pressing prob­lems, as the execution of Archbishop Darboy in Paris makes devastatingly clear. The bishops w ­ ere helped in moving t­oward an ac­cep­tance of the decree by the generally tolerant and patient attitude ­adopted by the Roman curia, even though Pius himself was often more exigent.4 Neither the bishops nor the Vatican wanted, however, to exacerbate the prob­lem. As bishops of both the minority and majority wrote their letters to their flocks about the council, they showed considerable variety in how they interpreted the decree. The minority exploited the lack of specificity that they objected to in the council: if the decree allowed a maximal interpretation, then it allowed ­others. The curia did not object, which made it easier for minority bishops to notify the Holy See of their ac­cep­tance of Pastor Aeternus. Only Germany experienced or­ga­nized and sometimes fierce opposition to the council, and it came not from the bishops but, for the most part, from academics. On August 4, for instance, Friedrich Michelis, a phi­los­o­pher from Braunsberg, published an article in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung in which he called Pius IX a heretic and a destroyer of the church. Michelis was an extreme

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case, but nonetheless the article was symptomatic of how dangerous the situation was. The re­sis­t ance to Pastor Aeternus was therefore widespread. It broke out in a number of dioceses and universities, but Döllinger immediately emerged as the key figure.5 Opponents of the decree looked to him as their leader and spokesman, a role Döllinger accepted. He was immediately thrown into conflict with Gregor von Scherr, archbishop of Munich. During the council Scherr had been a committed member of the minority, but l­ater he felt that genuine Catholics had to accept the decree, as he himself had done. He worked to find ways to make it as easy as pos­si­ble for o ­ thers, including Döllinger, to follow his example. Less than a week a­ fter he returned from Rome on July 19, he met with Döllinger for several hours. The meeting ended with an exchange that, once known, became famous: Archbishop. Let us now begin to work again for our holy church. Döllinger. Indeed, for the church of old. Archbishop. T ­ here is only one church that is neither old nor new. Döllinger. They have made a new church. A month ­later Döllinger or­g a­n ized a meeting in Nuremberg of fourteen professors from dif­fer­ent German universities to protest the decree. They concluded the meeting with a statement disputing the decree’s validity on the grounds that it was “a new doctrine that the church has never before recognized,” wrought from a council that was not f­ree. They predicted in dire terms that it would lead to the subjection of the state to the authority of

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the papacy. The situation in Germany, especially in Munich, had become explosive, and talk of a schism was common. The archbishop, increasingly desperate to find a way to proceed, turned to his confreres for guidance, which ­later that month led to a meeting at Fulda of nine German bishops. Ketteler attended. Minority bishop though he was, Ketteler drafted a letter, which was accepted by the bishops at Fulda and soon by ­others not pres­ent. In it he argued that the doctrine was not new and that it had to be accepted by all Catholics. Although the document received a mixed reception, it was a first and impor­tant step forward in stabilizing the situation. Pius IX signaled his agreement with it, and, with that, the curia began to hope it would help minority bishops elsewhere, especially in Austria and Hungary, come to terms with Pastor Aeternus. The prob­lem with Döllinger continued to unroll. Archbishop Scherr did his best to adopt a conciliatory attitude ­toward him, but a stalemate ensued. Months passed. In February King Ludwig II sent Döllinger birthday wishes, encouraging him to stand firm. Fi­n ally, the archbishop gave Döllinger an ultimatum: he must accept Pastor Aeternus or risk excommunication. On March  28, 1871, Döllinger replied with a letter, published a few days ­later in the Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he refused to submit to a decree opposed to scripture, to the traditions of the church, and to historical evidence, a decree that was a threat to the state. The letter left Scherr no choice. The excommunication made Döllinger a martyr hero, leading to his almost unan­i­mous election as rector of the University of Munich and then to honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Marburg, and Vienna. His followers among the clergy in Munich made overtures to the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, which led to an offer from their bishops to con-

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secrate as bishop for their church a Catholic who opposed the decree. Döllinger was the obvious candidate, but he refused. Had he, with his reputation and his im­mense popularity at that moment, accepted, he might well have led the schism that had been brewing for months. Although Old Catholics consider Döllinger almost their founding ­father, his relationship to that church was “exquisitely ambivalent,” to use Thomas Howard’s expression.6 The affair resulted in the defection from the Catholic Church of a g­ reat number of German church historians, thereby dealing a terribly serious blow to the historical profession among Catholics. It did not, however, result in a mass exodus from the church. By 1877 the number of Old Catholics in Germany reached its peak at about fifty-­four thousand members, ­after which it began notably to decline. The crisis in Germany had been contained. Eventually ­every one of the minority bishops signified his ac­ cep­tance of the decree. Among the Americans, Kenrick found the deed particularly difficult. ­A fter the council he remained in Eu­ rope for months, during which he kept in touch with Acton. But upon returning to Saint Louis, he surprised all when on January 2 he announced his agreement. As 1870 drew to a close, Darboy, Dupanloup, and Maret, the three most prominent French members of the minority, still had not conceded, but they fi­n ally found ways to satisfy their consciences.7 Maret debated the merits of dif­fer­ent interpretations and eventualities, which fi­nally allowed him on November 15 to accept the decree.8 A fortnight ­later, Pius IX demanded that he renounce his book on the councils published the previous year. Complicated negotiations followed, which eventually softened the demand and left Maret in peace. The last French bishop to comply with Pastor Aeternus was François Lecourtier of Montpellier, on June 2, 1871.

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Among the Germans Hefele, the historian of the councils, who was very much in sympathy with Döllinger, as late as January 1871 professed in letters to friends that he would never recognize the decree. But he was u ­ nder pressure from vari­ous quarters and began to feel ever-­more isolated. Fi­nally, on April 17, 1871, he signified his ac­cep­tance but specified that he did so as the decree was interpreted in a book by Josef Fessler, bishop of Sankt Pölten in Austria, who during the council had served as its secretary.9 The curia found that response satisfactory, which was an impor­tant moment in the ongoing drama of the reception and interpretation of the decree. Bit by bit the Austrians and Hungarians fell into line. Strossmayer was unquestionably the last holdout of all the minority bishops. Even ­today it is difficult to pinpoint just when he ceased resisting, but it was no earlier than 1877 and no l­ater than 1881. Long before e­ ither of t­hose dates, however, it had become clear that ­there would be no schism led by bishops who at the public session on July 18, 1870, refused to undersign Pastor Aeternus. Besides fear of a schism at the promulgation of Pastor Aeternus, ­there was a grave concern over how the governments of Eu­rope would react to it. Would they accept the interpretation of the Catholic opponents of the decree and read it as encouraging popes to excommunicate rulers as they had done in the ­Middle Ages or to interfere other­w ise in the affairs of state? Would they abrogate their concordats? In early 1871 Johann Friedrich von Schulte, professor of law at the University of Prague, attacked the decree as a blanket permission for the popes to wield power and make governments do their ­w ill. It was to refute Schulte that Fessler wrote his book. Fessler’s mea­sured interpretation of the decree is among the most impor­ tant to appear both b­ ecause of its intrinsic merits and b­ ecause of

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its implicit ac­cep­tance by the curia, as in the Hefele case, and, more impor­tant, by Pius IX. Soon ­after its publication the pope commended it. Since the book had not yet been translated into Italian, Pius’s commendation must be taken more as a way of countering Schulte than as necessarily agreeing with Fessler’s interpretation. Nonetheless, the pope was now on rec­ord as supporting it. Fessler’s book was not the kind to come to the attention of Chancellor Bismarck or, if it did, to have a positive effect on him. By the time the work was published, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf was ­under way, an anti-­Catholic program whose origins w ­ ere in­de­ pen­dent of Pastor Aeternus and whose course was only marginally influenced by it. Nonetheless, it obliquely came to play an impor­ tant part in high-­level interpretations of the decree. In May 1872 Bismarck composed a circular letter that was published only in December 1874, when the Kulturkampf was gaining its full momentum. In it he asserted that “the full power . . . ​to tend, rule, and govern the universal church” that the decree granted the pope reduced bishops to nothing more than agents or tools of a foreign power (Beamten and Werkzeuge). By declaring the pope infallible, Pastor Aeternus made him the absolute monarch of the world. Wittingly or unwittingly, Bismarck was echoing what German Catholic opponents of the decree had been proclaiming. Bismarck had to be answered. In early 1875 the German bishops published their response in a “collective declaration” (Declaratio collectiva) that they all signed, ­those from the majority and the minority. Its importance transcends the German situation, however, ­because a­ fter publication it received the approval of Pius IX in his letter to the bishops, Mirabilis Illa Constantia, dated March 4, 1875. With this declaration, therefore, and with papal approval of Fessler’s book we are getting close to an official interpretation of the decree.

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The German bishops taught that the primacy and infallibility of the council’s decree was not a new teaching. The council reaffirmed it to clarify it and to ­counter the errors of Gallicanism, Jansenism, and Febronianism. The pope is bishop of Rome, not bishop of any other diocese, yet he must see to it that other bishops properly perform their duties. The pope is not an absolute sovereign b­ ecause he is bound by divine law and by the commission Christ gave his church. As does the pope, so does each bishop have his rights and duties, which are the same now as before the decree. To say that bishops are now agents of the pope is utterly to misunderstand the decree. With more than a touch of sarcasm, the document reminded Bismarck that the immoral and despotic princi­ple that a superior must ­under all circumstances be obeyed was not to be found in the Catholic Church. Bismarck was not the only impor­tant statesman to take a public stand against Pastor Aeternus. In 1874 Gladstone published The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, which sold 145,000 copies. Although Döllinger did not directly help in its composition, he supplied arguments and offered corrections. Gladstone interpreted the decree as making Catholics subjects of the pope, to whom they owed their allegiance rather than to the governments of their own land. The tract called forth refutations from Manning, Clifford, Vaughan, and Ullathorne. Most surprising, it provoked Lord Acton to write two letters to the Times against it. Up to that time Acton had maintained a discreet silence. Seemingly never entertaining the slightest temptation to abjure his Catholicism, he was convinced that only by remaining in the church could a change come about. By far the most impor­tant work that took on Gladstone’s book was Newman’s Letter to His Grace, the Duke of Norfolk. Since the

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promulgation of Pastor Aeternus, Newman, like Acton, had been noted for his discretion, which raised questions about just where “Doctor Newman” stood regarding the definition. The controversy over Gladstone’s tract forced Newman to declare himself and do so in the most public way pos­si­ble. His Letter, an effective refutation of extreme interpretations of the decree, soon achieved almost canonical status. Gradually, therefore, a consensus emerged that softened the hard edges of the differing interpretations. The minority lost the ­battle in the council, but in the reception pro­cess afterward it regained a l­ ittle ground. Controversy over infallibility continued, but it was, as before the ultramontane movement, generally confined to the cloisters of academe. ­There ­were occasions, however, when it again burst onto the public square, as for instance in the United States in 1960 with the nomination of John Kennedy to the presidency. It was not primarily infallibility but primacy that ­after 1870 had the greater and more immediate impact and that led to the biggest changes in Catholicism. They ­were changes that promoted a more ultramontane church. Of absolutely capital importance in that regard was the almost untrammeled control the popes gained over the appointment of bishops. The concordats that Consalvi made for Pius VII, beginning with the French Concordat of 1801, allowed governments rights in episcopal nominations more or less the same as t­hose that prevailed during the ancien régime. That arrangement began to fail in the latter half of the ­century. When in 1860 the new Italian nation absorbed into itself the other po­liti­cal units, the concordats with ­those units automatically became dead letters. The unilateral Law of Guarantees, which ­after 1871 regulated relations between the Italian government and the Catholic Church, gave the pope a relatively ­free hand in naming

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bishops and required from the state only an exequatur (so be it) before they could occupy their see and receive their salary. The exequatur led to conflicts, but it did not directly prevent the pope from choosing whomever he wished. Between October 1871 and the following May, Pius chose 102 new bishops, who filled half the dioceses of Italy. No pope had ever before been given anything even remotely approaching that opportunity. What happened in Italy was a harbinger of ­things to come. When in 1905 the French government unilaterally abrogated the concordat in force since 1801, Pope Pius X denounced this act but found himself ­f ree from restraint in naming as bishop whomever he wished. And so it went in other countries as po­liti­cal situations continued to change. In this regard and in many ­others, the loss of Rome and the Papal States turned out to be a happy and fruitful tragedy for the papacy. By the third quarter of the twentieth ­century the papacy had virtually unlimited sway in episcopal nominations throughout the world. This was a change of seismic proportions. Aside from its other ramifications, it made for a more monochrome episcopacy that was more docile in all spheres. Beginning with Pius IX, the popes achieved a strikingly new prominence in Catholic consciousness for the ordinary believer. The telegraph and the laying of the transatlantic cable in 1866 enabled Catholics to follow the plight of “the prisoner of the Vatican” almost as it developed, and that plight aroused their concern and sympathy worldwide. The invention of photography allowed ­those of even modest means to hang a picture of Pius IX and his successors in their living rooms. They now knew the pope’s name and recognized his face. An almost personal “devotion to the pope” became a new Catholic virtue. Catholics grew loyal to the pope in ways and to a degree unthinkable in previous centuries.

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Their loyalty and devotion found reinforcement in another new phenomenon. Of the ten popes who have died since Pius IX in 1878, three have been canonized and ­others have had their cause for canonization introduced. Up to that time the last pope to be canonized was Pius V, in 1712, and before that Gregory VII, in 1605. In time bullet trains, jet planes, and pope-mobiles accorded the popes a visibility incomparably greater than ever before. Popes became international celebrities, for whom g­ reat cities came to a stop when they visited. For ­those who cared to watch, tele­v i­sion brought papal visits and papal ceremonies into their homes, and around the globe t­ here are many who care to do so. In recent de­cades, on Wednesdays throughout the year thousands of pilgrims have gathered in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome to see the pope and hear him speak during the weekly audience. In 1870 the popes had lost Rome, yet any visitor to the city ­today cannot escape the impression that the most prominent presence ­there is not the prime minister of Italy or the president of the Republic but the successor to the erstwhile prisoner of the Vatican. Meanwhile, the ultramontane movement, culminating in the definition of infallibility, gave impetus to a remarkable increase in the number of documents emanating from the Roman curia. ­These contained teachings, regulations, or warnings on almost ­every aspect of Catholic belief and practice. Among ­t hose documents, encyclicals came to hold pride of place and achieve, it seems, ever greater binding force. During his twenty-­two-­year pontificate, Pope Pius VII, in the early years of the nineteenth ­century, issued 1. Just a few de­cades l­ater Pius IX issued 38, and his successor, Leo XIII, issued 75. Impor­tant though encyclicals are, they are only one form of document that the popes produced in ever-­increasing numbers.

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In the first half of the twentieth ­century Pius XI was the pope with which the phenomenon became noticeable. His speeches and other communications fill six volumes of some four hundred pages each. His successor, Pius XII, during a pontificate only slightly longer, more than tripled that number with twenty such volumes. Succeeding popes have not slackened the pace. In his long pontificate, Pope John Paul II produced only fourteen encyclicals, a modest number by modern standards, but the flow of other documents from him such as apostolic exhortations, apostolic letters, and apostolic constitutions was considerable, to say nothing of his homilies and other speeches. 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. A ­ fter 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.

Vatican II Pope John XXIII made clear that the new council was not a continuation of Vatican I.10 In Catholicism, however, more than in most institutions, t­ here is neither the desire to start afresh without regard for the past nor the possibility of d­ oing so without denying the church’s very identity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the documents of Vatican II insist again and again that their teaching is in continuity with that of Vatican I. In fact, the council insists so repeatedly on its fidelity to Vatican I that skeptics might think it protests too much.

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Although t­ here can be no doubt that the bishops and theologians at Vatican II genuinely accepted the definitions of the previous council, the new council, beginning with its very first document, Sacrosanctum Concilium (On the Sacred Liturgy), ­adopted mea­sures that would have pleased the minority at Vatican  I. Sacrosanctum validated, for instance, local variations in the liturgy, “provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved.” Thus, “provision ­shall be made . . . ​for legitimate variations and adaptations” (§ 38). Moreover, while the document recognized the final authority of the Holy See in overseeing the liturgy, it also validated the authority of local churches in that regard. This provision set off a ­bitter debate in the council, with some bishops maintaining that the Congregation of Rites had exclusive control over all aspects of worship. But the council approved the rights of local bishops, and they thus set the stage in the council for the g­ reat debate in the next year over episcopal collegiality. The bishops, aware that at Vatican I the council had not had time to address the full document, sometimes saw themselves as taking up where Vatican I left off. They did this in a major document, Lumen Gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church). The document is wide-­ranging, but in chapter 3, “The Church Is Hierarchical,” arose the perennial question of the relationship of episcopal to papal authority. In the chapter, the council made clear that bishops had a responsibility for the universal church as well as for their own dioceses and that they exercised that responsibility most effectively when they acted collegially, as a body in communion with the Roman pontiff. Just a­ fter “proposing anew” for the faithful the definitions of primacy and infallibility of Vatican I, the text reads: “Furthering the same issue, the council intends to profess before all and to

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declare the teaching on bishops, successors of the apostles, who together with Peter’s successor, the Vicar of Christ and the vis­i­ble head of the ­whole church, govern the ­house of the living God” (§ 18). At least to some extent collegiality answered the objections of the minority at Vatican I that Pastor Aeternus presented the pope as separate or severed from the rest of the church. This does not at all mean that Vatican II altogether resolved the age-­old prob­lem of the relationship between the popes and the bishops, yet it does clearly establish that somehow they form a team. The bishops are not a branch office of the papacy; nor is the papacy the executor of the collective bishops’ o ­ rders.11 At Vatican I it was in relationship to that prob­lem that a significant difference in the understanding of tradition emerged between the two parties at the council. For the majority, tradition was found in texts, especially the New Testament, whereas the minority believed it also included customs, practices, and the church’s modes of procedures through the ages. In that regard Vatican II expressed a position held by the minority at the previous council when it stated in its Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation): “The church in its doctrine, life, and worship perpetuates and transmits to ­every generation all that it itself is and all that it believes” (§ 8). A prob­lem for both parties at Vatican I was how to deal with the new Wissenschaft, especially its emphasis on the historical dimension of e­ very aspect of h ­ uman culture, including religious beliefs. The prob­lem was more acute for the bishops of the majority ­because of their emphasis on the unchanging and unchangeable character of the meaning of their proof texts. Although prelates from the minority such as Dubreil and Ginhoulhiac pleaded for

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more receptivity to modern learning from the council, both minority and majority ­were more or less satisfied with how Dei Filius was formulated, based as it was on traditional theological assumptions and b­ ecause it employed familiar categories. Dei Verbum is the document at Vatican II that is the correlative of Dei Filius at Vatican I. The former differs from the latter most profoundly in that it is the product of a certain synthesis of philosophical and historical Wissenschaft that theologians and exegetes had been cultivating for de­cades, most especially since the publication in 1943 of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. The encyclical validated for Catholics historical-­critical methods in interpreting biblical texts. Although Dei Verbum scarcely mentions that method, it is entirely the fruit of it and of other con­temporary forms of learning. Even so, the two documents are positively, not negatively related. Dei Verbum is not a repudiation of Dei Filius. Instead, it is a drastic reformulation and reconceptualization of some aspects of it and in part a statement concerning revelation that goes beyond it. It is an intriguing instance of how in history change, sometimes drastic change, takes place within a larger continuity. For the majority bishops at Vatican II the historical dimension of the church’s practice and belief was unquestioned and played a major role in the dynamics of the council, which is one of the most fundamental ways in which the two councils differed. To a large extent Vatican II drew its intellectual energy by exploiting the changing or contingent dimension of the church’s practice and belief. It justified the mea­sures it took by presenting them as the result of legitimate pro­cesses of change, such as a retrieval from the past of more au­then­tic traditions than ­those operative in the pres­ent (ressourcement), or updating them to meet pres­ent exigencies

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(aggiornamento), or postulating for them an evolving or developmental character. Long before Vatican I, the words monarchy and perfect society already had a long history in Catholic ecclesiology, and they reigned supreme at the time of the council. Although they do not explic­ itly appear in Pastor Aeternus, the societal and po­l iti­cal assumptions that they express pervade it. T ­ hose assumptions persisted a­fter Vatican I and even gained strength. But at Vatican II the two words and the assumptions silently, unobtrusively, and utterly dis­appeared from sight, with profound results—­a good example of change taking place simply through substitution and corporate memory loss. As Patrick Granfield put it: “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.”12 If Vatican I taken in globo was a statement against the modern world, Vatican II was an act of reconciliation with that world, as expressed most fully in Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). The document certainly did not proclaim the church’s approval of modern culture, but it recognized good features in it and expressed the desire to work with it in pursuing the common good. The council was able to do this ­because in the years since Vatican I not only had changes taken place within the church, but the modern world had shed some of the assumptions that earlier had made it particularly unacceptable to Catholics. That shift was most obvious in the po­liti­cal sphere. On the Continent in the nineteenth ­century, politicians who w ­ ere anticlerical or even antireligious tended to promote republican and demo­

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cratic forms. They sometimes enforced mea­sures that ­were brutal in their treatment of religious institutions and practices. By the end of World War II the men heading Western democracies ­were devout Catholics—­Adenauer, Schumann, de Gaulle, and De Gasperi. In t­hose Western democracies, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and even freedom of religious choice ­were unquestioned. It is not so remarkable, therefore, that a­ fter a difficult ­battle, Vatican II could, in Dignitatis Humanae (On Religious Liberty, § 2), make the declaration that “the ­human person has a right to religious freedom.” The council thus accepted one of the g­ reat distinguishing marks of the (Western) modern world that the Catholic mainstream had particularly opposed in the nineteenth ­century but that “liberal” Catholics in the tradition of de Lamennais and Montalembert had advocated. As a group, the minority bishops at Vatican I ­were much readier to embrace the freedoms promised by the modern world than ­were their opponents, sometimes including even the right to freedom of religious choice. 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 ­a fter 1870. To what extent did Vatican II’s reaction take practical form and have a notable impact on Catholic institutions and on the ways Catholics think,

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feel, and act regarding their church? The reply to that question w ­ ill answer the question I posed in the introduction: In what ways and to what extent is the Catholic Church ultramontane ­today? Merely by asking the question, we are reminded of how the past determines the pres­ent, for “the past is never dead. It ­isn’t even past.”

Appendix Basic Chronology Notes Bibliography Acknowl­edgments Index

Appendix: En­glish Translation of Pastor Aeternus

P

ius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the sacred council, for an everlasting rec­ord. The eternal shepherd and guardian of our souls, in order to render permanent the saving work of redemption, determined to build a Church in which, as in the h ­ ouse of the living God, all the faithful should be linked by the bond of faith and charity. Therefore, before he was glorified, he besought his ­Father, not for the apostles only, but also “for t­hose who ­were to believe in him through their word, that they all might be one as the Son himself and the F ­ ather are one.” So then, just as he sent apostles, whom he chose out of the world, even as he had been sent by the ­Father, in like manner it was his ­will that in his Church ­there should be shepherds and teachers ­until the end of time. In order, then, that the episcopal office should be one and undivided and that, by the ­union of the clergy, the ­whole multitude of believers should be held together in the unity of faith and communion, he set blessed Peter over the rest of the apostles and instituted in him the permanent princi­ple of both unities and their vis­i­ble foundation. Upon the strength of this foundation was

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to be built the eternal ­temple, and the Church whose topmost part reaches heaven was to rise upon the firmness of this foundation. And since the gates of hell trying, if they can, to overthrow the Church, make their assault with a hatred that increases day by day against its divinely laid foundation, we judge it necessary, with the approbation of the sacred council, and for the protection, defense, and growth of the Catholic flock, to propound the doctrine concerning the institution, permanence, and nature of the sacred and apostolic primacy, upon which the strength and coherence of the ­whole Church depends. This doctrine is to be believed and held by all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and unchanging faith of the w ­ hole Church. Furthermore, we s­hall proscribe and condemn the contrary errors that are so harmful to the Lord’s flock. Ch a p t e r 1 On the Institution of the Apostolic Primacy in Blessed Peter We teach and declare that, according to the gospel evidence, a primacy of jurisdiction over the ­whole Church of God was immediately and directly promised to the blessed apostle Peter and conferred on him by Christ the Lord. It was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said, “You ­shall be called Cephas,” that the Lord, ­after his confession, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” spoke ­these words, “Blessed are you, Simon bar-­Jona. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my F ­ ather who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I w ­ ill build my Church, and the gates of the underworld ­will not prevail against it. I ­w ill give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and what­ever you bind on earth s­ hall be bound in heaven, and what­ ever you loose on earth s­hall be loosed in heaven.” And it was to

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Peter alone that Jesus ­after his resurrection confided the jurisdiction of supreme pastor and ruler of the ­whole flock, saying, “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.” To this absolutely manifest teaching of the scriptures, as it has always been understood by the Catholic Church, are clearly opposed the distorted opinions of ­those who misrepresent the form of government that Christ the Lord established in the Church and deny that Peter, in preference to the rest of the apostles, taken singly or collectively, was endowed by Christ with true and proper primacy of jurisdiction. The same may be said of t­hose who assert that this primacy was not conferred immediately and directly on blessed Peter himself but rather on the Church, and it was through the Church that it was transmitted to him in his capacity as her minister. Therefore, if anyone says that the blessed apostle Peter was not appointed by Christ the Lord as prince of the apostles and vis­i­ble head of the ­whole Church militant, or that it was a primacy of honor only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction that he directly and immediately received from our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Ch a p t e r 2 On the Permanence of the Primacy of Blessed Peter in the Roman Pontiffs That which our Lord Jesus Christ, the prince of shepherds and the good shepherd of the sheep, established in the blessed apostle Peter, for the continual and permanent benefit of the Church, must of necessity remain forever by Christ’s authority in the Church that, founded as it is upon a rock, ­w ill stand firm ­until the end of time. For no one can be in doubt, indeed, it was known in ­every age, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the apostles, the

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pillar of faith and the foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the savior and redeemer of the h ­ uman race, and that to this day and forever he lives, and presides, and exercises judgment in his successors the bishops of the Holy Roman See, which he founded and consecrated with his blood. Therefore, whoever succeeds to the chair of Peter obtains, by the institution of Christ himself, the primacy of Peter over the ­whole Church. So what the truth has ordained remains firm, and blessed Peter perseveres in the rock-­ like strength he was granted, and does not abandon that guidance of the Church that he once received. For this reason it has always been necessary for ­every Church—­that is, the faithful throughout the world—to be in agreement with the Roman Church ­because of its more effective leadership. In consequence of being joined, as members to head, with that see from which the rights of sacred communion flow to all, they ­w ill grow together into the structure of a single body. Therefore, if anybody says that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the ­whole Church, or that the Roman pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the primacy, let him be anathema. Ch a p t e r 3 On the Power and Character of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff And so, supported by the clear witness of holy scripture, and adhering to the manifest and explicit decrees of both our pre­de­ces­ sors, the Roman pontiffs, and of general councils, we promulgate anew the definition of the ecumenical council of Florence, which must be believed by all faithful Christians, namely, that the apos-

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tolic see and the Roman pontiff hold a world-­w ide primacy, and that the Roman pontiff is successor of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, the true vicar of Christ, head of the w ­ hole Church and f­ather and teacher of all Christian ­people. To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our Lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule, and govern the universal Church. All this is to be found in the acts of the ecumenical councils and the sacred canons. Wherefore, we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman Church possesses a pre-­eminence of ordinary power over ­every other Church, and that the jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of what­ever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in m ­ atters concerning faith and morals, but also in t­hose which regard the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world. In this way, by unity with the Roman pontiff in communion and profession of the same faith, the Church of Christ becomes one flock u ­ nder one shepherd. This is the teaching of the Catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation. This power of the supreme pontiff by no means detracts from the ordinary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit, tend and govern individually the par­tic­u­lar flocks that have been assigned to them. On the contrary, this power of theirs is asserted, supported, and defended by the supreme and universal pastor, for Saint Gregory the G ­ reat says, “My honor is the honor of the w ­ hole Church. My honor is the steadfast faith of my brethren. Then do I receive my honor, when it is denied to none of ­those to whom it is due.”

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Furthermore, it follows from that supreme power that the Roman pontiff has in governing the ­whole Church that he has the right in the per­for­mance of this office of his, to communicate freely with the pastors and flocks of the entire Church, so that they might be taught and guided by him in the way of salvation. And therefore we condemn and reject the opinions of t­hose who hold that this communication of the supreme head with the pastors and flocks may be lawfully obstructed, or that it should be dependent upon the civil power, which leads them to maintain that what is determined by the apostolic see or by its authority concerning the government of the Church has no force or effect u ­ nless it is confirmed by the agreement of the civil authority. Since the Roman pontiff, by the divine right of his primacy, governs the w ­ hole Church, we likewise teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases that fall ­under ecclesiastical jurisdiction recourse may be had to his judgment. The sentence of the apostolic see (than which ­t here is no higher authority) is not subject to a revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon. And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiff to an ecumenical council, as if this w ­ ere an authority superior to the Roman pontiff. So, then, if anyone says that the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the w ­ hole Church, and this not only in ­matters of faith and morals, but also in t­ hose that concern the discipline and government of the Church dispersed throughout the ­whole world; or that he has only the principal part but not the absolute fullness of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the Churches

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and over all and each of the pastors and faithful, let him be anathema. Ch a p t e r 4 On the Infallible Teaching Authority of the Roman Pontiff That apostolic primacy that the Roman pontiff possesses as successor of Peter, prince of the apostles, includes also the supreme power of teaching. This holy see has always maintained this, the constant custom of the Church demonstrates it, and the ecumenical councils, particularly ­those in which East and West met in the ­union of faith and charity, have declared it. So the ­fathers of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, following the footsteps of their pre­de­ces­sors, published this solemn profession of faith: The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of the true faith. And since that saying of our Lord Jesus Christ, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I build my Church,” cannot fail of its effect, the words spoken are confirmed by their consequences. For in the apostolic see the Catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished and sacred doctrine held in honor. Since it is our earnest desire to be in no way separated from this faith and doctrine, we hope that we may deserve to remain in that one communion that the apostolic see preaches, for in it is the w ­ hole and true strength of the Christian religion. What is more, with the approval of the second council of Lyons, the Greeks made the following profession, “The Holy Roman Church possesses the supreme and full primacy and principality over the w ­ hole Catholic Church. She truly and humbly acknowledges that she received this from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, the prince and chief of the apostles, whose successor is the Roman pontiff, together with the fullness of power. And since, before all o ­ thers, she has the duty of defending the truth of

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the faith, so if any questions arise concerning the faith, it is by her judgment that they must be settled.” Then ­there is the definition of the council of Florence: “The Roman pontiff is the true vicar of Christ, the head of the w ­ hole Church and the f­ ather and teacher of all Christians; and to him was committed in blessed Peter, by our Lord Jesus Christ, the full power of tending, ruling, and governing the w ­ hole Church.” To satisfy this pastoral office, our pre­de­ces­sors strove without ever wearying that the saving teaching of Christ should be spread among all the p­ eoples of the world and with equal care they made sure that it be kept pure and uncontaminated wherever it was received. It was for this reason that the bishops of the w ­ hole world, sometimes individually, sometimes gathered in synods, according to the long established custom of the Churches and the pattern of ancient usage, referred to this apostolic see ­those dangers, especially ­those that arise in ­matters concerning the faith. This was to ensure that any damage suffered by the faith should be repaired in that place above all where the faith can know no failing. The Roman pontiffs, too, as the circumstances of the time or the state of affairs suggested, sometimes by summoning ecumenical councils or consulting the opinion of the Churches scattered throughout the world, sometimes by special synods, sometimes by taking advantage of other useful means afforded by divine providence, defined as doctrines to be held ­those ­things that, by God’s help, they know to be in keeping with Sacred Scripture and the apostolic traditions. For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might by his revelation make known some new doctrine, but that by his assistance they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was

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embraced by all the venerable ­fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this see of Saint Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of his disciples, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” This gift of truth and never-­failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all and so that the ­whole flock of Christ might be kept away from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of holy doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the w ­ hole Church is preserved in unity and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell. But since in this very age when the salutary effectiveness of the apostolic office is most especially needed, not a few are to be found who disparage its authority, we judge it absolutely necessary to affirm solemnly the prerogative that the only begotten Son of God was pleased to attach to the supreme pastoral office. Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, to the glory of God our Savior, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion and for the salvation of the Christian ­people, with the approval of the sacred council, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals, to be held by the w ­ hole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility that the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining

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doctrines concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, not subject to reform. So, then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours, let him be anathema. [Translation reprinted, with minor editorial changes, from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, Giuseppe Alberigo, et al. (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990). © Norman P. Tanner, 1990. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing plc.]

Basic Chronology

1786 The Synod of Pistoia 1789 The French Revolution 1815 Conclusion of the Congress of Vienna 1819 Joseph de Maistre publishes Du pape 1843 Louis Veuillot joins the staff of L’Univers 1846 Giovanni Maria Mastai-­Ferretti is elected Pope Pius IX 1848 Pius IX is forced to flee Rome and take refuge in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 1850 Pius IX returns to Rome La Civiltà Cattolica is founded in Naples 1853 Pius issues the encyclical Inter Multiplices favoring the ultramontane movement 1854 The pope proclaims the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary 1859 Defeat of the Austrian forces in northern Italy, opening the way for the unification of the country 1864 On December 6 Pius IX confidentially inquires of a group of cardinals about the advisability of a council He publishes the Syllabus of Errors on December 8 1867 Public announcement on June 26 that a council ­w ill be held 1868 Formal bull of convocation is published on June 19 1869 December 8 The council opens December 14 Vote on membership on the deputation De fide December 28 Discussion begins on the document “On the Catholic Faith”

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1870 January 21 Distribution of the document on the church Supremi Pastoris April 24 Solemn promulgation of the decree Dei Filius (On the Catholic Faith) April 29 Announcement that a decree on primacy and infallibility is the next item of business May 13 Discussion of Pastor Aeternus begins June 18 The Guidi Affair July 4 Discussion of Pastor Aeternus concludes July 18 Solemn session approving and promulgating Pastor Aeternus July 19 Hostilities open between France and Prus­sia September 20 Rome falls to the forces of the Kingdom of Italy October 20 Pius IX suspends the council in­def­initely 1960 Pope John XXIII makes known that the council he earlier announced ­w ill be called Vatican II. Therefore Vatican I officially came to an end.

Notes

Abbreviations Aubert, Vatican I Roger Aubert. Vatican I. Paris: Éditions de   L’Orante, 1964. Butler, Vatican Council Cuthbert Butler. The Vatican Council: The Story  Told from Inside in Bishop Ullathorne’s Letters. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1930. Carlen, Encyclicals Claudia Carlen, ed. The Papal Encyclicals. 5 vols.   Wilmington, NC: McGrath Publishing, 1981. Mansi Giovan Domenico Mansi [et al.], ed. Sacrorum  conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. 53 vols. Florence: Antonio Zatti, 1759–1927. Martina, Pio IX Giacomo Martina. Pio IX. 3 vols. Rome:   Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1974–1990. Schatz, Vaticanum I Klaus Schatz. Vaticanum I. 3 vols. Paderborn,   Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1992–1994.

Introduction 1. See John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Period (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 2. See John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 21–22, 26–27, 29, 32, 173, 201–3, 208–10, 271–73.

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Notes to Pages 5–9

3. On Ultramontanism, see, for example, Austin Gough, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848–1853 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Jeffrey von Arx, ed., Va­ri­et­ ies of Ultramontanism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­ i­ ca Press, 1998); Gisela Fleckenstein and Joachim Schmiedl, eds., Ultramontanus: Tendenzen und Forschung (Paderborn, Germany: Bonifatius, 2005). 4. On Bellarmino in this regard, see Richard F. Costigan, The Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility: A Study in the Background of Vatican I (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 2005), pp. 22–31. 5. See, for example, Michele Maccarrone, ed., Il primato del vescovo di Roma nel primo millennio: Ricerche e testimonianze (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991). 6. The lit­er­a­t ure on the subject is large. A basic book is by Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy from Its Origins to the Pres­ent, trans. John A. Otto and Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996). See also Maccarrone, Il primato del vescovo di Roma; James  E. Puglisi, ed., Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: “­Toward a Patient and Fraternal Dialogue” (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999); William Henn, The Honor of My ­Brothers: A Brief History of the Relationship between the Pope and the Bishops (New York: Crossroads, 2000); and Walter Kasper, ed., The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue (New York: Newman Press, 2006). 7. See Schatz, Primacy, pp. 148–49. 8. The most detailed studies of the historical evolution of infallibility are the two volumes by Ulrich Horst, Papst-­Konzil-­Unfehlbarkeit: Die Ekklesiologie der Summenkommentare von Cajetan bis Billuart (Mainz: Matthias-­Grünewald, 1978) and Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte: Studien zur Unfehlbarkeitsdiskussion von Melchior Cano bis zum I. Vatikanischen Konzil (Mainz: Matthias-­Grünewald, 1982). But see also Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350: A Study of the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the M ­ iddle Ages (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), and Donald S. Prudlo, Certain Sainthood: Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). Particularly helpful for its pre­sen­ta­tion of often neglected figures and its analy­sis of method is Costigan, Consensus of the Church. For a thorough examination of infallibility in the Ultramontanes, see Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität: Die päpstliche Un-

Notes to Pages 10–19

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fehlbarkeit im System der ultramontanen Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1975). Worthy of special note are Margaret O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 1988); Wolfgang Klausnitzer, Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit bei Newman und Döllinger: Ein historische-­ systematischer Vergleich (Innsbruck, Austria: Tyrolia-­Verlag, 1980); Adrian Lüchinger, Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit bei Henry Edward Manning und John Henry Newman (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitäts Verlag, 2001); and Francis A. ­Sullivan, “Newman on Infallibility,” in Newman A ­ fter a Hundred Years, ed. Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 419–46. When in 1970 Hans Küng published his Unfehlbar? Eine Anfrage (Zu­rich: Benzinger, 1970), he ignited a lively controversy that resulted in considerable lit­er­a­t ure. When a few years ­later August Hasler published his book on the topic, which like Küng’s was soon translated into En­g lish, the reaction from historians and theologians was generally negative: How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion, trans. Peter Heinegg (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981). 9. Quoted in Roger Aubert, Vatican I (Paris: Éditions de l’Orante, 1964), p. 39. 10. For a brief account in En­g lish, see Derek Beales, Edward Dawson, and Eugenio  F. Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, Pearson Education, 2002). See also the more recent collection by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, eds., The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-­Century Italy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The Italian lit­er­a­ture on the subject is im ­m ense. 11. Mansi, vols. 51–53. 12. Giovanni Giuseppe Franco, Appunti storici sopra il Concilio Vaticano, ed. Giacomo Martina (Rome: Università Gregoriana, 1972); Ignatius von Senestrey, Wie es zur Definition der päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit kam: Tagebuch vom 1. Vatikanischen Konzil, ed. Klaus Schatz (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht, 1977); Vincenzo Tizzani, Il Concilio Vaticano I: Diario di Vincenzo Tizzani (1869–1870), ed. Lajos Pásztor, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1991–1992). Lord John Dalberg Acton’s diary must also be mentioned, even though it covers only the first month or so of the council: Lord Acton and the First Vatican

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Notes to Pages 20–28

Council: A Journal, ed. Edmund Campion (Sidney: Catholic Theological Faculty, 1975). 13. Giacomo Martina, Pio IX, 3 vols. (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1974–1990). 14. Schatz, Vaticanum I. 15. Aubert, Vatican I. 16. Roger Aubert et al., Concilium Vaticanum I: Concordance, Index, Listes de Fréquence, T ­ ables Comparatives (Louvain, Belgium: CETEDOC, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1977). 17. That is the aim I set myself in writing this book. At the same time I hope that even professional theologians and historians might profit a ­little from the overview I try to provide.

1. Catholicism and the ­Century of Lights 1. On the ideological divide, see Joseph F. Byrnes, Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), especially pp. 69–84. 2. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 37–38. 3. Although limited to France, the most capacious and balanced treatment of the subject remains John McManners’s Church and Society in Eighteenth-­Century France, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 4. The lit­er­a­ture on Gallicanism is large. Despite its age, Victor Martin’s Les origines du Gallicanisme (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939) remains basic. But see now especially Costigan, Consensus of the Church. For a succinct treatment, see Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 173–81. 5. As quoted in Costigan, Consensus, p. 18. The original Latin is on p. 19: “In fidei quaestionibus praecipue Summi Pontificis esse partes, eiusque decreta ad omnes et singulas ecclesias pertinere, nec tamen irreformabile esse judicium nisi Ecclesiae consensus acceperit.” 6. As quoted ibid., pp. 43–44. On Bossuet more broadly, see pp. 35–62. 7. See Ulrich L. Lehner, “Introduction: Ecumenism and Enlightenment Catholicism; Beda Mayr, O.S.B. (1742–1794),” in Beda Mayr: Vertheidigung der katholischen Religion (1789), ed. Ulrich L. Lehner (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. xxxix.

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8. On Febronius, see Oakley, Conciliarist Tradition, pp. 182–95, and especially Ulrich L. Lehner, “Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim’s Febronius: A Censored Bishop and His Ecclesiology,” Church History and Religious Culture 82 (2008), 205–33. 9. See Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-­Century Eu­ rope (London: Taurus, 2005). 10. See, for example, Derek Beales, Joseph II, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987–2009), 2:214–48. 11. The best study in En­g lish of the synod is Charles A. Bolton’s Church Reform in 18th ­Century Italy (The Synod of Pistoia, 1786) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989), but see also Claudio Lamioni, ed., Il sinodo di Pistoia del 1786: Atti del convegno internazionale per il secondo centenario (Rome: Herder, 1991), and Mario Rosa, “Italian Jansenism and the Synod of Pistoia,” Concilium 17 (August 1967), 34–59. 12. Bullarii Romani continuatio summorum pontificum Clementis XIII . . . ​, 19 vols. (Rome: Ex Typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, 1835–1857), 9:395–418. See Shaun Blanchard, “The Ghost of Pistoia: Evocations of Auctorem Fidei in the Debate over Episcopal Collegiality at Vatican II,” Theological Studies, forthcoming. 13. The lit­er­a­ture on Jansenism is extensive, but the studies by Lucien Ceyssens remain basic. See, for example, his Sources relatives au début du jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme, 1640–1643 (Louvain, Belgium: Publications Universitaires, 1957). Although outdated, the book by Nigel Abercrombie remains a reliable analy­sis and overview of the movement u ­ ntil the destruction of Port-­Royal: The Origins of Jansenism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936). But see also the detailed history of the movement in France in McManners, Church and Society, 2:345–508; the collection of studies edited by Catherine Maire, Jansénisme et révolution: Actes du colloque de Versailles (Paris: Chroniques de Port-­Royal, Bibliothéque Mazarine, 1990), and her De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation: Le Jansénisme au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998). 14. See Christopher M. S. Johns, The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), especially pp. 35–59; and Marc Fumaroli, “Classicism and the Baroque: The Imago Primi Saeculi and Its Detractors,” in Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits: The Imago Primi Saeculi (1640), ed. John O’Malley (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015), pp. 57–88.

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Notes to Pages 35–39

15. See Dale K. Van Kley, Reform Catholicism and the International Suppression of the Jesuits, 1554–1791 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 16. The bibliography on the Enlightenment is large, almost beyond description. Particularly relevant for the subject of this book are the studies by Ulrich L. Lehner, “What Is Catholic Enlightenment?” History Compass 80 (2010), 166–78; Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner, eds., Enlightenment and Catholicism in Eu­rope: A Transnational History (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014); Ulrich L. Lehner and Michael Printy, eds., A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Eu­rope (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010). Bernard Plongeron’s publications grounded studies in the Catholic Enlightenment and gave an impor­t ant impetus to them. See, for example, his Théologie et politique au siècle des Lumières (Geneva: Droz, 1973). More broadly, for a con­temporary debate, see Annelien de Dijn, “The Politics of Enlightenment: From Peter Gay to Jonathan Israel,” Historical Journal 55 (2012), 785–805. 17. See Johns, Visual Culture, especially pp. 1–49, and, most broadly, Rebecca Messbarger et al., eds., Benedict XVI and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 18. See, for example, Charles Coleman, “Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment, ed. Daniel Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 105–21. 19. Jeffrey D. Burson, “Introduction: Catholicism and Enlightenment, Past, Pres­ent, and ­Future,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism, ed. Burson and Lehner, p. 7. 20. See, for example, Ulrich Lehner, “Introduction: The Many ­Faces of the Catholic Enlightenment,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment, ed. Lehner and Printy, pp. 1–61, especially pp. 2–3. 21. See, for example, Paola Vismara, “Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672– 1750): Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment, ed. Lehner and Printy, pp. 249–68. 22. See John W. Padberg, Martin D. O’Keefe, and John L. McCarthy, trans. and eds., For M ­ atters of Greater Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General Congregations (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1994), p. 390.

Notes to Pages 40–51

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23. See, for example, Marcus Hellyer, Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natu­ral Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), and Jonathan Wright, “Ruggiero Boscovich (1711–1787): Jesuit Science in an Enlightenment Context,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism, ed. Burson and Lehner, pp. 353–69. 24. Still the best overview of the papacy for this period are volumes 35–40 of Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, trans. F. I. Antrobus et al., 40 vols. (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1923–1969). See also Owen Chadwick, The Popes and Eu­ro­pean Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). 25. Bullarii Romani continuatio, 5:176–80. En­g lish translation to be found in Carlen, Encyclicals, 1:171–75. 26. See, for example, Mario Rosa, “Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758): The Ambivalent Enlightener,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism, ed. Burson and Lehner, pp. 41–60. 27. See Joseph F. Byrnes, Priests of the French Revolution: Saints and Renegades in a New Po­liti­cal Era (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014). 28. Augustin Theiner, ed., Documents inédits relatifs aux affaires religieuses de France, 1790–1800, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot fréres, 1857–1858), 1:32–71. 29. Bullarii Romani continuatio, 9:11–19. En­g lish translation in Carlen, Encyclicals, 1:177–84. 30. See Chadwick, Popes and Revolution, pp. 487–94. 31. See Byrnes, Priests of the Revolution, pp. 211–14. 32. François-­René Chateaubriand, The Genius of Chris­tian­ity, or The Spiritual History of the Christian Religion, trans. Charles I. White (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1856). On Chateaubriand, see, for example, Byrnes, Catholic and French, pp.  69–75; Emmanuelle Tabet, Chateaubriand et le XVIIe siècle: Mémoire et création littéraire (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), especially pp. 36–47, 123–43; Marc Fumaroli, Chateaubriand: Poésie et terreur (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2003), especially pp. 15–36; Philip Knee, L’expérience de la perte autour du moment 1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 179–233. 33. Il trionfo della Santa Sede e della Chiesa contro gli assolti dei novatori combattuti e respinti colle stesse loro armi (Venice: G. Battaggia, 1832). For an analy­sis, see Horst, Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte, pp.  78–120. See also Christopher Korten, “Il Trionfo? The Untold Story of Its Development and Pope Gregory

270

Notes to Pages 52–63

XVI’s Strug­g le with Orthodoxy,” Harvard Theological Review 109 (2016), 278–301. 34. Gregorii Papae XVI, ed. Antonio Maria Bernasconi, 4 vols. (Rome: S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1910), 1:169–174. En­g lish translation to be found in Carlen, Encyclicals, 1:235–41.

2. The Ultramontane Movement 1. As quoted in Austin Gough, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848–1853 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 55. 2. On this label and concept, see Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2014). Especially pertinent to our topic is Giacomo Martina, La chiesa nell’età del liberalismo, 3rd ed. (Brescia, Italy: Morcelliana, 1978). 3. See Knee, L’expérience. 4. See Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: Eu­ro­pean Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5. See Heribert Raab, “Zur Geschichte und Bedeutung des Schlagwortes ‘ultramontan’ im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” Historisches Jahrbuch 81 (1962), 159–73. 6. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, l:29–31, and Klaus Unterburger, Vom Lehramt der Theologen zum Lehramt der Päpste? Pius XI, die Apostolische Konstitution “Deus scientiarum Dominus” und die Reform der Universitätstheologie (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 2010). 7. See, for example, Arx, Va­r i­e­ties of Ultramontanism. 8. See Costigan, Consensus of the Church, pp. 22–31. 9. For a discussion of the term Neo-­U ltramontanism, which was sometimes applied to this phenomenon, see Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:29–30. 10. As quoted in Knee, L’expérience, p. 67. 11. On de Maistre, see, for example, Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:10–12; Knee, L’expérience, pp.  111–33; Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit, pp.  61–73 and 388–409; Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition, pp.  198–203; and Carolina Armenteros, “Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821): Heir of the Enlightenment, E ­ nemy of Revolutions, and Spiritual Progressivist,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism in Eu­ rope: A Transnational History, ed. Jeffrey  D. Burson and Ulrich  L. Lehner

Notes to Pages 64–72

271

(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), pp.  125–43; idem, The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and His Heirs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Carolina Armenteros and Richard  A. Lebrun, eds., Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of the Enlightenment (Oxford: University of Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2011). 12. Quoted in Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy from Its Origins to the Pres­ent, trans. John A. Otto and Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), p. 148. 13. Ibid. 14. On de Lamennais, see, for example, Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:12–14; Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit, pp.  73–93; Knee, L’expérience, pp.  179–200; Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 60–79; Carolina Armenteros, “Hugues-­Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854): Lost Sheep of the Religious Enlightenment,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism, ed. Burson and Lehner, pp. 145–64; and Louis Le Guillou, L’évolution de la pensée religieuse de Félicité Lamennais (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966). See also Norbert Hötzel, Die Uroffenbarung im französischen Traditionalismus (Munich: Max Hueber, 1962), pp. 81–114. 15. As quoted in Gough, Paris and Rome, p. 60. 16. On Görres, see Jon Vanden Heuvel, A German Life in the Age of Revolution: Joseph Görres, 1776–1848 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 2001), especially pp. 320–56. 17. See ibid., pp. 322–32. 18. See, for example, Nicole Priesching, “Grundzüge ultramontaner Frömmigkeit am Beispiel der ‘stigmatisierten’ Jungfrau Maria von Mörl,” in Ultramontanus: Tendenzen und Forschung, ed. Gisela Fleckenstein and Joachim Schmiedl (Paderborn, Germany: Bonifatius, 2005), pp. 77–109; and Vincent Viaene, “Katholisches Reveil und ultramontane Pietät in Belgien (1815–1860), in Ultramontanus, ed. Fleckenstein and Schmiedl, pp. 111–34. 19. See Otto Weiss, Weisungen aus dem Jenseits? Der Einfluss mystizistischer Phänomene auf Ordens-­und Kirchenleitungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg, Germany: Pustet, 2011). 20. See, for example, Byrnes, Catholic and French, pp. 95–115; and Andreas Johannes Kotulla, “Lourdes und die Katholiken im Kaiserreich: Zur Erforschung der Rezeption eines Kultes der ultramontanen Frömmigkeit,” in Ultra­ montanus, ed. Fleckenstein and Schmiedl, pp. 135–57.

272

Notes to Pages 72–81

21. See, for example, John W. O’Malley, “A Movie, a Mystic, a Spiritual Tradition,” Amer­i­ca, March 15, 2004, pp. 9–14. 22. See Gough, Paris and Rome, especially pp. 119–30 and 163–80. See more broadly Vincent Petit, Église et nation: La question liturgique en France au XIXe siècle (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaire de Rennes, 2010); Bruno Dumons et al., eds., Liturgie et société: Gouverner et réfomer l’Église XIXe-­X Xe siècle (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016); André Haquin, “De Grégoire XVI (1831–1846) à Paul VI (1963–1978): Les papes et le mouvement liturgique aux 19e et 20e siècles,” in La papauté contemporaine (XIX–­X X siècles) and Il papato contemporaneo (secoli XIX–­X X) (Louvain-­l a-­ Neuve, Belgium: Collège Érasme; Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2009), pp. 73–89. For official documents of the French government related to the issue of liturgy, see Jean Maurain, ed., Le Saint-­Siège et la France, de décembre 1851 à avril 1853: Documents inédits (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1930), especially pp. 63–64, 90–92, 161–63. 23. The most detailed account of the controversy of which I am aware is by Cuthbert Johnson, Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875), a Liturgical Theologian: An Introduction to His Liturgical Writings and Work (Rome: Benedictina, Edizioni Abbazia S. Paolo, 1984), pp. 147–243. Johnson takes the controversy only up to 1848. See also Louis Soltner, Solesmes & dom Guéranger, 1805–1875 (Sablé-­ sur-­Sarthe, France: Saint-­Pierre de Solesmes, 1974). 24. See Johnson, Guéranger, pp. 200–202. 25. See McManners, Church and Society, 2:40–57, at 56. 26. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 163–80, and Katherine Ellis, The Politics of Plainchant in Fin-­de-­Siècle France (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013). 27. Gough, Paris and Rome, p. 176. 28. The fullest account of Ward’s life and ­career are the two books written by his son, Wilfrid Ward, William George Ward and the Oxford Movement (London: Macmillan, 1890) and William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (London: Macmillan, 1893). 29. See James Pereiro, Cardinal Manning: From Anglican Archdeacon to Council ­Father at Vatican I (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2008), originally published as Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). On Manning’s relationship to Ward, see especially pp. 224–30. For a study arguing for the moderate character of Manning’s views, see Christian D.

Notes to Pages 81–96

273

Washburn, “The First Vatican Council, Archbishop Henry Manning, and Papal Infallibility,” The Catholic Historical Review 102 (2016), 712–45. 30. Washburn, “Vatican Council,” p. 736. 31. See Pereiro, Cardinal Manning, pp. 229–30, 263–72. 32. See Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford: Claren­don Press, 1998), pp. 322–30. 33. See Wilfrid Ward, Ward and the Revival, especially pp. 164–66, for a summary of Ward’s views while editor. This needs to be balanced by Butler’s assessment, Vatican Council, 1:72–75. 34. See Gaugh, Paris and Rome, pp. 138–39, 155–57, 168–70, 181–88, and Martina, Pio IX, 2:162–64. For samples of the orientation of the Correspondence de Rome, see Maurain, Saint-­Siège, pp. 54–68. 35. See Giacomo Martina, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia (1814– 1983) (Brescia, Italy: Morcelliana, 2003), pp. 89–113. 36. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 40–42 and the chart on pp. 58–59. 37. The only extensive treatment in En­glish is Marvin L. Brown Jr., Louis Veuillot: French Ultramontane Catholic, Journalist and Layman, 1813–1885 (Durham, NC: More, 1977). 38. See Butler, Vatican Council, 1:70. 39. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:266. 40. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp.  103–18, 138–51; Martina, Pio XI, 1:459–60; and Brown, Veuillot, pp. 143–62. 41. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 188–94, at 189. 42. On the classics controversy, see Martina, Pio IX, 2:164–66. 43. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp.  199–218; Martina, Pio IX, 2:164–76; Brown, Veuillot, pp. 183–98; Maurain, Saint-­Siège, especially pp. 171–83, 189–94, 198–201, 209, 211–12, 222–24. For the encyclical, see Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, 5 vols. (Wilmington, NC: McGrath, 1981), 1:315–18.

3. The Eve of the Council 1. The fullest study of the years between 1846 and 1850 is by Giacomo Martina. It is the subject of the entire first volume of his Pio IX. 2. See now David Kertzer, The Pope Who Would be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Eu­rope (New York: Random House, 2018).

274

Notes to Pages 97–105

3. See Martina, Pio IX, 1:344–49. 4. See Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 230–49. 5. See David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortaro (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). 6. See Raymond Thysman, “Le gallicanisme de Mgr. Maret et l’influence de Bossuet,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 52 (1957), 402–65; Andrea Riccardi, Neo-­gallicanesimo e cattolicesimo borghese: Henri Maret e il Concilio Vaticano I (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976); and Claude Bressolette, Le pouvoir dans la société et dans l’Église: L’ecclésiologie politique de Mgr. Maret, doyen de la faculté de théologie de Sorbonne au XIXe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1984), with a valuable review of lit­er­ a­t ure on Maret, pp. 11–16. 7. See Bressolette, Le pouvoir, pp. 66–68. 8. See Riccardi, Neo-­gallicanesimo, pp. 162–77. 9. See the appendix in Paris and Rome, by Gough, pp. 263–66. For an analy­sis of the bishops, see also pp. 241–43. 10. The fullest account of the history of the teaching is the entry by Xavier-­M arie Le Bachelet, “Immaculée Conception,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols. in 30 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1909–1950), vol. 7, pt. 1, ​pp. 845–1218. For an account of Pius IX’s initiatives between 1850 and 1854, see Martina, Pio IX, 2:261–86. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:24–26. 11. For the action of popes from Pius VII to Pius IX, see Le Bachelet, “Conception,” cols. 1189–95. 12. Carlen, Encyclicals, 1:281–93. 13. But see Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 219–22. 14. [G. Calvetti], “Congruenze sociali di una definizione dogmatica sull’Immacolato concepimento della B. V. Maria,” La Civiltà Cattolica 1, no. 8 (1852), 377–96. See p. 394, where the author invokes a line from the medieval hymn “Gaude, Maria,” Cunctas haereses tu sola interemisti in universo mundo,” quoted also in Ineffabilis Deus ­toward the end. 15. See Martina, Pio IX, 2:266–70. 16. See ibid., especially 107. 17. See ibid., 287–99. 18. On the Syllabus, see ibid., 287–355, and Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:29–34. 19. See Chadwick, History of the Popes, pp. 155–60. 20. See Martina, Pio IX, 2:321–36.

Notes to Pages 105–121

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21. For the encyclical, see Carlen, Encyclicals, 1:381–86. For the Syllabus, see Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 23rd  ed. (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1965), pp. 576–84. 22. Chadwick, History of the Popes, p. 176. 23. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:92–94. 24. See Martina, Pio IX, 2:347. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:91–94. 25. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:117–36. 26. See Mansi, 49:14–94. 27. See ibid., 97–104. 28. See ibid., 107–78. 29. See ibid., 118–21 at 119. 30. See ibid., 103–6. 31. See ibid., 102–3. 32. See ibid., 243–48. 33. Ibid., 249 and 250. 34. See ibid., 261–64 at 263. 35. Ibid., 261. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:139–42. 36. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:117–32, and Martina, Pio IX, 3:145–49. 37. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:112–13, 118–19, and Gough, Paris and Rome, pp. 236–43. 38. Acta et decreta sacrorum conciliorum recentiorum: Collectio lacensis, 7 vols. (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1870–1890), 7:1221. 39. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:117–32. 40. See ibid., 144–45, and more broadly 132–45. The document is in Mansi, 49 (= 50):1271–78. 41. For a complete list of the experts invited, see Mansi, 49:463–678. See also 177–80. 42. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:146–96. 43. See ibid., 1:148–49, and Butler, Vatican Council, 1:90. Regarding Newman and Vatican I, see Lüchinger, Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit. 44. See Thomas Albert Howard, The Pope and the Professor: Pius IX, Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 93–94. On Döllinger and the Munich conference, see pp. 95–114.

276

Notes to Pages 122–136

45. See Martina, Pio IX, 2:316–20. 46. “Correspondenza di Francia,” La Civiltà Cattolica, series 7, vol. 5 (February 6, 1869), 345–52. For a detailed discussion of the controversy and its repercussions, see Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:207–89. 47. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:210–11. 48. As quoted in Howard, Pope and Professor, p. 132. 49. Janus [Ignaz von Döllinger], The Pope and the Council (Boston: Roberts ­Brothers, 1870). See Howard, Pope and Professor, pp. 132–38. 50. The full text is printed in Acta et decreta, 7:1175–80. 51. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:250–59. 52. Prosper Guéranger, De la monarchie pontificale: À propos du livre de Mgr. l’évêque de Sura (Paris: V. Palme, 1870), p. 79. 53. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:264–74; Aubert, Vatican I, pp. 90–92; and Pereiro, Cardinal Manning, pp. 267–72. 54. Félix Dupanloup, “Observations sur la controverse soulevée relativement sur la définition de l’infallibilité au prochain concile,” in Histoire du Concile du Vatican d’après les documents originaux,” by Eugenio Cecconi, trans. Jules Bonhomme and M. D. Duvillard, 4 vols. (Paris: Victor Lecoffre, 1887), 4:430–82. 55. See ibid., 483–86 and 607–40. 56. See ibid., 641–44 and 653–61. 57. The articles are unsigned but are presumably the work of the editor, Herbert Vaughan, November 13, 1869, p. 760; November 27, pp. 809 and 811; December 4, pp. 891–92; and December 18, p. 905. 58. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:272–73, who notes that the axiom was coined by Charles Antoine Couseau, bishop of Angoulême. 59. As quoted in Butler, Vatican Council, 1:213.

4. ­Under Way and Moving ­toward Dei Filius 1. For a full description of the hall, see Theodore Granderath, Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzil: Von seiner ersten Afkündigung bis zu seiner Vertagung, 3 vols. (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1903–1906), 2:17–20. 2. As quoted in James Hennesey, The First Council of the Vatican: The American Experience (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), p. 65.

Notes to Pages 137–150

277

3. See Mansi, 50:7–36. 4. See ibid., 20. 5. Ibid. 6. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:16–55. 7. See, for example, Lüchinger, Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit, especially p. 179. 8. On Deschamps, see Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität, pp. 111–14. 9. See John W. Padberg, “Cardinal Louis-­Edouard-­Désiré Pie,” in Va­r i­ e­ties of Ultramontanism, ed. Jeffrey von Arx (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 1998), pp. 39–60. 10. As quoted in Butler, Vatican Council, 2:125. 11. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:173. 12. As quoted in Butler, Vatican Council, 1:237. 13. As quoted in Martina, Pio IX, 3:174. 14. See Michele Maccarrone, Il Concilio Vaticano I e il “Giornale” di Mons. Arrigoni (Padua: Antenore, 1966), pp. 184–207. 15. For a listing and brief description of bishops opposing the decree, see Margaret O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Washington, DC: Catholic University of American Press, 1988), pp. 6–14. 16. See Frederick J. Cwiekowski, The En­glish Bishops and the First Vatican Council (Louvain, Belgium: Publications Universitaires, 1971), especially pp. 315–25. 17. For an assessment of events ­later in the council, see Hennesey, First Council of the Vatican, pp. 229–31. 18. Thomas Mozley, Letters from Rome on the Occasion of the Œcumenical Council, 1869–1870, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1891). 19. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:264–70. 20. See ibid., 26–28; Martina, Pio IX, 3:135, 156–57, 172–76, 179, 184, 192, and especially Giacomo Martina’s “Introduzione” to Franco’s Appunti storici, pp. 1–69. 21. [Ignaz von Döllinger], Letters from Rome on the Council, 2 vols. (1870; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1973). See Howard, Pope and Professor, pp. 138–52. 22. Quoted in the introduction to Lord Acton and the First Vatican Council: A Journal, ed., Edmund Campion (Sydney: Catholic Theological Faculty, 1975).

278

Notes to Pages 151–165

23. On their relationship, see Owen Chadwick, Acton and Gladstone (London: Athlone Press, 1976). 24. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:222–25. 25. See Mansi, 50:59–119. 26. See Franco, Appunti, pp. 87–96, and Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:72–79. 27. Quoted in Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:75. 28. See Franco, Appunti, pp. 87–89. 29. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:77. 30. Quoted in Roger Aubert, Vatican I (Paris: Éditions de l’Orante, 1964), p. 124. 31. Quoted ibid., p. 125, “On dit qu’à présent le concile est fait.” 32. Ibid. 33. See Butler, Vatican Council, 1:172. 34. See Mansi, 50:213–32. 35. See ibid., 122–25. 36. See ibid., 126. 37. See ibid., 134–35, at 135. 38. See ibid., 138–47. 39. See ibid., 144. 40. See ibid., 163–69. See also Hennesey, First Council of the Vatican, pp. 62–65. 41. See Mansi, 50:260–63. 42. See ibid., 359–62. 43. See ibid., 699–854, 856–66. 44. See ibid., 51:539–53, with annotations at 553–639. 45. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 1:275–84, 2:281–310, 357–59. See also Butler, Vatican Council, 2:3–25, and Riccardi, Neo-­gallicanesimo e cattolicesimo borghese, pp. 241–56. 46. See Mansi, 50:854–56. 47. Butler, Vatican Council, 1:248. 48. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:167–77. 49. See Hermann Josef Sieben, “Consensus, unanimitas, und maior pars auf Konzilien, von der Alten Kirche bis zum Ersten Vaticanum,” Theologie und Philosophie 67 (1992), 192–229, at 208. 50. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:187–88, and Martina, Pio IX, 3:185.

Notes to Pages 166–184

279

51. See Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, Der Glaube vor dem Anspruch der Wissenschaft: Die Konstitution über den katholischen Glauben “Dei Filius” des ersten Vatikanischen Konzils und die unveröffentlichen theologischen Voten der vorbereitenden Kommission (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1968), pp. 146–52, 238–41, 288–91, 305–13. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:324–25, 332, and Howard, Pope and Professor, pp. 81–85. 52. See Hubert Wolf, The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a ­Convent in Scandal, trans. Ruth Martin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). 53. The final document in both Latin and En­g lish is found in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:804–11. For an extended commentary, see Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:322–39. 54. See Mansi, 51:72–77. See also Schatz, Vatikanum I, 2:190–97; Butler, Vatican Council, 2:270–73; and especially Tizzani, Concilio Vaticano I, 1:236–39. 55. See Mansi, 51:242–43, at 242. 56. See ibid., 248–52. 57. See Aubert, Vatican I, pp. 189–90. 58. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:354–55.

5. Infallibility 1. See J. Ryan Beiser, The Vatican Council and the American Secular Newspapers, 1869–1870 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 1941). 2. See Butler, Vatican Council, 2:32–33. 3. The petitions, with the names of the bishops who signed them, are in Mansi, 51:639–87. 4. As quoted in Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:146. 5. As quoted from Dupanloup’s diary, March 4, 1870, ibid., 3:207. 6. See Mansi, 51:687–696. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:137–57. 7. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:178–89. 8. See Mansi, 51:539–53. The notes are to be found at 553–639. The most thorough study of Supremi Pastoris is Fidelis van der Horst’s Das Schema über die Kirche auf dem I. Vatikanischen Konzil (Paderborn, Germany: Bonifacius-­ Druckerei), 1963.

280

Notes to Pages 184–201

9. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:180–82. 10. See ibid., 2:197–205. 11. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:191–92. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 2:185–89. 12. As quoted in Butler, Vatican Council, 2:35. 13. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:182–83. 14. Senestrey’s diary of the council provides a step-­by-­step account of what happened: Senestrey, Wie es zur Definition, pp. 72–88, at 86. See also Martina, Pio IX, 3:191–96. 15. As quoted in Butler, Vatican Council, 2:40–41, where a large portion of the letter is translated. 16. Quoted in Maccarrone, Concilio Vaticano I, p. 397. For the negative attitude of many other Italian bishops on the issue, see also pp. 372–97. 17. Translation quoted from Butler, Vatican Council, 2:42. 18. Mansi, 52:4–7. For the annotations, see 8–28. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:15–25. 19. For the text with notes as presented on May 9, see Mansi, 52:4–29. 20. See the preface to Henri Maret’s Du concile général et de la paix religieuse, in Bressolette’s Pouvoir dans la société, p. 195. See also, for example, O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat, pp. 68–85. 21. See Georg Kreuzer, Das Honoriusfrage im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1975). 22. See Mansi, 52:25–26. 23. Ibid., 24: “Ex monumentis omni exceptione maioribus, ut superius declaratum fuit, Romanorum pontificum infallibilitas est veritas divinitus revelata; fieri ergo nequit, ut haec ex historiae factis quibuscumque falsa umquam demonstretur. Sed si quae illi historiae facta opponantur, ea certissime, quatenus opposita videntur, falsa habenda sunt.” 24. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:47–61. 25. See Mansi, 52:999. 26. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:28, and as elaborated, 20–72. 27. See Mansi, 52:29–37. 28. See ibid., 50–57. 29. See ibid., 65–71. 30. Ibid., 75–80, at 78: “Romanum pontificem utentem concilio et requirentem adiutorium universalis ecclesiae non posse errare.” See Ulrich Horst,

Notes to Pages 201–210

281

“Papst, Bischöfe und Konzil nach Antonin von Florenz,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 32 (1965), 76–116, especially 107–16. 31. See Mansi, 52:80–84, at 81. 32. See Franco, Appunti, pp. 299, 305. 33. See Mansi, 52:85–92. 34. See ibid., 92–100. 35. See ibid., 112–35. 36. Ibid., 117: “Fons itaque et origo potestatis in summo pontifice invenitur.” 37. Ibid., 192: “Nam aliquid simile certo sanctus Thomas habet.” 38. See Franco, Appunti, p. 300. 39. See Mansi, 52:153–62. 40. See ibid., 210–11, and Tizzani, Concilio Vaticano I, 2:375. 41. See Mansi, 52:219–20. 42. See ibid., 249–61. 43. See Butler, Vatican Council, 2:50. 44. See Mansi, 52:253. 45. See ibid., 274–84. 46. See Franco, Appunti, p. 303. 47. See Mansi, 52:285–89. 48. See ibid., 289–302. See also Butler, Vatican Council, 2:52–54, and Hennesey, First Vatican Council, pp. 234–37. 49. See Mansi, 52:302–5, 305–9. 50. See ibid., 354–64, at 355. 51. See ibid., 425–29. See also Hennesey, First Vatican Council, p. 242. 52. See Mansi, 52:433–35. 53. See ibid., 435. 54. As quoted in Hennesey’s First Vatican Council, p. 184. 55. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:76–89. 56. Franco, Appunti, p. 308: “Quanta è venefico il virus liberalesco, anche ne’ santi uomini!” See also pp. 317 and 331. 57. For an account of the event, with comments, see Tizzani, Diario, 2:480–82. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:87–88. 58. See Ulrich Horst, “Kardinalerzbischof Filippo Maria Guidi OP und das I. Vatikanische Konzil,” Archivum Ftatrum Praedicatorum 49 (1979), 429–511.

282

Notes to Pages 210–230

59. See Mansi, 52:740–48. See also Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:99–109. 60. Ibid., 52:741: “Ita ebriosus non dicitur qui semel aut iterum inebriatur.” 61. See ibid., 741, 746. 62. See ibid., 742. 63. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:312–22, and especially Horst, “Kardinalerzbischof Guidi.” See also Martina, Pio IX, 3:355–57. A reliable con­temporary account is by Tizzani, Diario, 2:487–89. For the reaction of the majority, see Franco, Appunti, pp. 215–16, 217–18. 64. Ulrich Horst, The Dominicans and the Pope: Papal Teaching Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Tradition, trans. James D. Mixson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), p. 3. 65. See Mansi, 52:767, as well as Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:106–7. 66. See Schatz, 3:129–40. 67. See Mansi, 52:1204–30. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:140–47, and Horst, Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte, pp. 201–13. 68. For a detailed analy­sis of the votes, see Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:147–52. 69. Both quoted ibid., 153. 70. See ibid., 154–55. 71. See Mansi, 52:1314–17. 72. For a vivid account, see Tizzani, Diario, 2:578–81. 73. See Mansi, 52:1324–27, and Martina, Pio IX, 3:214–15. 74. See Mansi, 52:1336. 75. As quoted in Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:167. 76. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:238. 77. See ibid., 3:233–47.

Conclusion 1. See Ulrich Horst, Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte: Studien zur Unfehlbarkeitdiskussion von Melchior Cano bis zum I. Vatikanischen Konzil (Mainz: Mathias-­ Grünewald, 1982), p. 213. 2. Aubert, Vatican I, p. 34. 3. August Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion, trans. Peter Heinegg (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981). For a full discussion of the prob­lem of the council’s freedom, see Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:172–203.

Notes to Pages 232–246

283

4. See Martina, Pio IX, 3:216–27. 5. See Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3:220–56, and Howard, Pope and Professor. 6. Howard, Pope and Professor, p. 178. 7. For an analy­sis of the theological arguments that allowed the French bishops to acquiesce in the decree, see O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat, pp. 175–255. 8. See Klaus Schatz, “Eine ‘gallikanische’ Interpretation des Unfehlbarkeitsdogma: Die Rezeption des I. Vatikanum durch Bischof Maret,” Theologie und Philosophie 54 (1984), 499–534. 9. Joseph Fessler, The True and False Infallibility of the Popes: A Controversial Reply to Dr. Schulte (London: Burns and Oates, 1875). 10. See O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat. 11. See Schatz, Papal Primacy, pp. 175–83, and John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 311–13. 12. See Patrick Granfield, “The Church as Societas Perfecta in the Schemata of Vatican I,” Church History 48 (1979), 431–46, at 446.

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Acknowl­edgments

In 2008 I published my book on Vatican Council II. When five years l­ater I published another, on the Council of Trent, friends encouraged me to make it a trilogy by writing one on Vatican Council I. I told them I had not the slightest interest in such a proj­ect and, indeed, swore a mighty oath I would never undertake it. Perhaps Doctor Freud can explain why shortly thereafter I went to work d­ oing precisely what I swore I would never do, but the explanation escapes me. In any case, now that the book is fi­nally completed, I am grateful to the friends who sowed the seed. For the result I am much indebted to the three anonymous readers for Harvard University Press. They made valuable suggestions and in a few instances saved me from egregious errors. I am similarly indebted to friends who read drafts of chapters—­Massimo Faggioli, Ulrich Lehner, Brian McDermott, David Schultenover, and Jeffrey Von Arx. Howard Gray and Otto Hentz went the long extra mile by reading the entire manuscript. At Harvard University Press, Lindsay ­Waters guided the book through its pro­cess, as he has done with five previous books. This time I am especially indebted to his assistant, Joy Deng, whose prompt and precise replies to my queries speeded the book along.

298

Acknowl­edgments

I am grateful to Dalia Geffen, the copy-editor assigned to me by the press. Professor Thomas Albert Howard of Valparaiso University helped me obtain the images of Acton, Gladstone, and Döllinger at Acton’s villa. Patti Isaac went to work and, as in the past, constructed for me the map of Italy in the mid-­n ineteenth c­ entury. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Leon Hooper, director of the Woodstock Theological Library at Georgetown University. He found books for me, ordered books for me, and dropped what­ever he was ­doing to lend me a helping hand. Amy Phillips, Rare Materials Cata­loger at the Woodstock Theological Library, similarly put her time and skills at my disposal. I dedicate the book to my fellow Jesuit Howard Gray. He and I became friends when in 1955–56 we taught together in Chicago at Saint Ignatius High School (now Saint Ignatius College Preparatory School). We have remained friends ever since in a relationship that has grown deeper as the de­cades have slipped by. ­Unless I indicate other­w ise, all translations into En­g lish are my own. Unfortunately, the book by the late Archbishop John R. Quinn on Vatican I appeared too late for me to take into consideration.

Index

Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg: Döllinger and, 120, 121, 128; on papal infallibility, 132, 163, 164; as source on Vatican I, 149–151; Kenrick and, 235; published response to Pastor Aeternus, 238 Aeterni Patris (Pius IX), 112–114 Alemany y Conill, Joseph Sadoc, 147 d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 41 Alexander VIII (pope), 28 Amat y Brusi, Thaddeus, 147 L’année liturgique (Guéranger), 73 Antoinette, Marie, 24 Antonelli, Giacomo, 15, 84, 85, 90, 122–123, 222 Apostolici Muneris, 156–161, 165. See also Dei Filius Aristotle, 39–40, 176 Arrigoni, Giulio, 188 Articles. See Four Articles (1682); Organic Articles (Napoleon) Athanasius (Görres), 71 Aubert, Roger, 20, 230 Auctorem Fidei (Pius VI), 32 Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper), 124, 149, 232–233, 234 Augustinus ( Jansen), 33 Austria: history of state control in, 17; nineteenth-­century Catholic

presence in, 23–24, 43–44; Josephism in, 26, 30–31, 226; military conflict with Italy, 52, 96, 97, 104; social revolutions in, 79–80 d’Avanzo, Bartolomeo, 214, 219 L’Avenir ( journal), 53, 68 Beckx, Pieter Jan, 209 Bellarmino, Roberto, 6, 61–62, 128, 200, 211, 212 Benedict XIV (pope), 37–38, 41 Bilio, Luigi, 105, 118, 141, 231 Bismarck, Otto von, 3, 71, 144, 237, 238 Bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi, Das (Brentano), 72 Bizzarri, Giuseppe Andrea, 118 Blacas, Pierre Louis de, 64–65 Blanchet, Francis, 133 Boniface VIII (pope), 163, 196 Bonjean, Christophe-­Ernest, 180 Bonnaz, Sándor (Alexander), 206 Boscovich, Ruggiero, 40 Bossuet, Jacques-­Bénigne, 28, 56, 100 Bouvier, Jean-­Baptiste, 78–79 Braschi, Giovanni Angelo. See Pius VI (pope) Bravard, Jean-­Pierre, 206 Brentano, Clemens, 70, 72 Buck, Victor de, 208–209

300 Burke, Edmund, 63 Butler, Cuthbert, 20, 156, 230 Calvinism, 32 Capalti, Annibale, 118, 157–158, 172 Cappellari, Mauro. See Gregory XVI (pope) Caritas (Pius VI), 42 Carvalho e Melo, Sebastião José. See Pombal, Marquis de Catholic Enlightenment, 30, 32–40, 71, 226 Chadwick, Owen, 105 Chaillot, Louis, 82, 84 Charles III, King of Spain, 35 Charles X, King of France, 58 Chateaubriand, François-­René de, 46 Chiaramonti, Barnaba. See Pius VII (pope) Christliche Mystik, Die (Görres), 71–72 Circourt, Adolphe de, 57 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 42 Civiltà Cattolica, La ( journal): influence of, 13, 83, 86; establishment of, 82, 85–86; on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, 103; on papal infallibility, 122–126; coverage of Vatican I by, 148; Cullen on, 203 Clement XI (pope), 31, 34 Clement XIII (pope), 41 Clement XIV (pope), 35, 40 Clifford, William, 146, 175, 205 Collegio Romano ( Jesuit Roman College), 102, 116, 160, 165, 167, 189 Cologne Trou­bles (Kölner Wirren), 70–71 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels), 79 Concile général et de la paix religieuse, Du (Maret), 126, 130, 195 Concordat (1801), 44–45, 55, 67, 239, 240. See also Organic Articles (Napoleon) Congregation of Rites, 75–76, 83, 107, 243

Index Congregation of the Index, 76, 83, 90–91, 98, 124, 127 Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), 17, 48–49, 58, 79 Connolly, Thomas-­L ouis, 147–148, 157 Consalvi, Ercole, 49, 239 Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi. See Pastor Aeternus Correspondence de Rome, La ( journal), 82, 83–84 “Correspondence from France” (Civiltà), 122–123 Correspondent (French monthly), 83 Cortés, Juan Donoso, 61, 92 Council of Chalcedon (453), 201, 247 Council of Constance (1414–1418), 4, 12, 27 Council of Florence (1439), 111, 205 Council of Nicaea (325), 247 Council of Trent (1545–1563), 3–4, 7–8, 12 Cullen, Paul, 146, 202–203 Cum Occasione (Innocent X), 33 Curci, Carlo Maria, 82, 85–86 Darboy, Georges: on papal infallibility, 101, 162, 163, 187, 203; execution of, 142, 232; on Guidi’s speech, 212; work at Vatican I, 217, 218, 219; post-­council response of, 230, 235 De Angelis, Filippo, 118, 153, 172, 219–220 Dechamps, Victor-­Auguste-­Isidor: on papal infallibility, 140, 141, 180, 182, 200; on Vatican I commissions, 153, 166; on Guidi’s speech, 212 Dei Filius: content of, 11, 165–171, 177–178; pre-­document on, 152–153; Apostolici Muneris, 156–161, 165; congregation and voting on, 171–179, 184; and Dei Verbum, 244–245. See also Apostolici Muneris; scholastic philosophy and theology Dei Verbum, 244–245

Index de Lamennais, Felicité, 50, 61, 62, 66–69, 100. See also L’Avenir ( journal) Della regolata divozione de’ cristiani (Muratori), 39 De Luca, Antonio, 118 de Maistre, Joseph Marie, 61, 62–66 Diderot, Denis, 41 Dignitatis Humanae, 247 Divino Afflante Spiritu (Pius XII), 245 Doctrina catholica contra multiplices errores ex rationalismo derivatos, De, 152–153, 156. See also Apostolici Muneris; Dei Filius Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism. See Doctrina catholica contra multiplices errores ex rationalismo derivatos, De Döllinger, Ignaz von, 120–122; colleagues and influence of, 13, 126, 128, 152, 163; papal infallibility and, 123–125; pen names of, 125, 149, 203, 230; coverage of Vatican I by, 149–151; Wissenschaft and, 160; post-­council response by, 233–235; Gladstone’s book and, 238 Domenec, Michael, 206 Dominican order, 24, 59 Droste-­Vischering, Clemens August von, 70–71 Dublin Review, 81, 82 Dubreil, Louis, 174, 244–245 Dupanloup, Félix: Gallicanism of, 92; on Inter Multiplices, 95; on Syllabus of Errors, 106; on papal infallibility, 111, 127–130, 163, 180, 187; at Vatican I, 141–142; post-­council response of, 235 ecumenical councils, overview, 11–13, 56. See also specific council names Emmerick, Anna Katharina, 72 encyclicals, 50, 241–242. See also specific titles Engels, Friedrich, 79

301 Enlightenment: movement’s influence, 9, 25, 46, 57, 226; among Catholics, 30, 32–40, 71, 226; agenda of, 36–37. See also French Revolution; Liberalism Essai sur le catholicisme, le libéralisme et le socialisme (Cortés), 92 Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion (de Lamennais), 66–67 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Newman), 131, 166, 197 Études ( journal), 82–83 Febronianism, 26, 29–30, 226. See also Gallicanism Fessler, Josef, 236–237 First Lateran Council (1123), 3 Fitzgerald, Edward, 221 Fornari, Raffaele, 88 Four Articles (1682), 26–28, 55, 62, 63, 94 France: French Revolution, 17, 24–25, 42–44, 46, 55, 58–59; nineteenth-­ century Catholic membership and authority of, 23–24; 1682 Four Articles, 26–28, 55, 62, 63, 94; Jansenism in, 32–35, 40, 57, 226; on papal authority, 42–48, 55–56; monarchical vs. republican eras of, 43, 58; 1801 Concordat, 44–45, 55, 67, 239, 240; Organic Articles (Napoleon), 45–46, 84, 98; military support by, 52, 97; Franco-­Prussian War, 58, 221, 222–223, 232; overview of Ultramontanism in, 60–61; on controversy of papal infallibility, 125–126, 129–130. See also Congress of Vienna (1814–1815); Gallicanism Franciscan order, 24, 102, 165 Franck, César, 78 Franco, Giovanni Giuseppe, 153–154 Franco-­Prussian War, 58, 221, 222–223, 232 Franzelin, Johann Baptist, 165–166 freedoms, universal, 36–37, 52–53, 57–58, 67, 247

302 Freiheit, Autorität, und Kirche (Ketteler), 143 French Revolution, 17, 24–25, 42–44, 46, 55, 58–59 Freppel, Charles-­Émile, 218 Frohschammer, Jakob, 166, 177 Gaeta, Pius IX in exile in, 79, 83, 97–98, 140–141 Galileo, 37, 159 Gallicanism, 5; Four Articles and, 26–29; influence on other social movements, 29, 34, 40, 52; fall of influence, 55, 59–60; opponents of, 62, 63, 67, 81, 84–95, 226; revival of, 98–101. See also Ultramontanism Garibaldi, Pietro Antonio, 84, 93, 94 Gasser, Vinzenz, 216–217, 219 Gaudium et Spes, 246 Génie du christianisme, Le (Chateaubriand), 46 Germany: nineteenth-­century Catholic presence in, 23–24; Febronianism in, 26, 29–30, 226; Romanticism in, 47; Ultramontanism in, 69–72; Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, 71, 144, 237, 238; reaction to Civiltà article, 123–124; post-­council Catholic divisions in, 233–235 Gerson, Jean, 62 Gil, Emmanuel García, 154, 201–202 Giles of Rome, 61 Ginoulhiac, Jacques, 101, 174–175, 244–245 Gladstone, William, 2–3, 150–151, 238–239 Glaube vor dem Anspruch der Wissenschaft, Der (Pottmeyer), 176 Görres, Joseph, 61, 70, 71–72 Granfield, Patrick, 246 ­Great Western Schism, 4, 12, 27 Gregorian chant, 77–78 Gregory VII (pope), 61, 163, 241 Gregory XVI (pope), 15, 26, 51–54, 66, 68, 87 Gregory of Tours (saint), 74

Index Greith, Karl Johann, 197–198, 200–201 Guéranger, Louis Pascal, 73–79, 102, 127, 180 Guidi, Filippo Maria, 210–214 Günther, Anton, 166, 177 Hadrian IV (pope), 206 Hasler, August, 230 Haynald, Lajos, 145, 164 Hefele, Karl Josef von, 116, 142, 201, 236 Hermes, Georg, 166 Hohenlohe, Friedrich von, 221 Hohenlohe- ­Schillingsfürst, Chlodwig von, 2 Honorius (pope), 192, 196, 202 Hontheim, Johann Nikolas von, 29–30 Horst, Ulrich, 213, 227 Hungary, 23–24, 26, 234 Iam Nos Omnes (Pius IX), 115 L’illusion libérale (Veuillot), 106 Immaculate Conception of Mary. See Marian cult Index of Forbidden Books, 29, 37, 41 Ineffabilis Deus (Pius IX), 101, 103–104 In Eminenti (Urban VIII), 33 infallibility. See papal infallibility Innocent X (pope), 33 Innocent XI (pope), 26 Inscrutabili Divinae Sapientiae (Pius VI), 41 Institutions liturgiques (Guéranger), 73–74, 75 Inter Multiplices (Alexander VIII), 28, 94 Inter Multiplices (Pius IX), 79, 84, 93–95, 96, 98 Italy: social revolutions in, 17–19; nineteenth-­century Catholic presence in, 23–24, 48; military conflict with Austria, 52, 54, 96, 97, 104; Franco-­Prussian War, 221, 222–223, 232; Law of Guarantees, 239–240 Jansen, Cornelius, 33 Jansenism, 32–35, 40, 57, 226

Index

303

Janus. See Döllinger, Ignaz von Jesuit order: papal suppression of, 35, 40, 57, 59; educational agenda of, 39–40, 213; Pius VII’s restoration of, 49; on papal infallibility, 61, 124, 156, 165, 209, 219; on staff of Civiltà, 82, 148, 153, 203; journals of, 82–83, 85, 123; Collegio Romano, 102, 116, 160, 165, 167, 189 John XXIII (pope), 1, 19, 242. See also Vatican Council II (1959) John Paul II (pope), 242 Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, 30–31, 39, 59 Josephism, 26, 30–31, 226. See also Gallicanism journals. See press Juxta modum, 117–118, 175, 217

Letter to His Grace, the Duke of Norfolk (Newman), 238–239 Liberalism: papal response to, 2, 10, 26, 84, 96–97, 104–106; among Catholics, 10, 58, 131–132; background to, 57–58; of de Lamennais, 66–67; press on, 106–107, 122–130. See also Ultramontanism Liberatore, Matteo, 148–149, 204 Liturgical Movement, 73–77, 78–79 Loi Falloux (Veuillot), 91–93 Louis XIV, King of France, 26, 34 Louis XVI, King of France, 24, 58 Louis XVIII, King of France, 58, 66 Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), 17, 58, 98, 99, 104, 126, 230 Louis Philippe, King of France, 58, 79 Lumen Gentium, 243

Kanzler, Hermann, 223 Katholik ( journal), 123 Kenrick, Peter, 147, 157, 235 Ketteler, Wilhelm Emmanuel von: colleagues and influence of, 128; attendance and actions at Vatican I, 133, 142–143, 164, 218; on freedom of the church, 144; on una­n im­it­ y princi­ple, 164; on papal infallibility, 180, 181, 203–204; on results of Vatican I, 234 Kleutgen, Joseph, 167, 182 Kulturkampf, 71, 144, 237, 238

Maier, Willibald, 189 Manning, Henry Edward: about, 61; on papal infallibility, 80, 81, 109, 139, 187, 204–205; colleagues and influence of, 82, 111, 115, 125, 141, 153, 181; press coverage of, 127–128; reputation of, 146, 149, 231; on heresy, 154; on Supremi Pastoris, 182; on Pastor Aeternus, 189, 215, 238; on Guidi’s speech, 212 Maret, Henri Louis Charles: appointment of, 88, 99; background and influence of, 99–101, 142; Pius IX’s disfavor of, 101, 112, 142, 206; Du Concile général et de la paix religieuse, 126, 130, 195; on papal infallibility, 126–127, 163; on church authority, 206–207; post-­council response of, 235 Marian cult, 32, 39, 72, 101–104, 211 Martin, Konrad, 139, 166–167 Martina, Giacomo, 20, 107 Martin V (pope), 4 Marx, Karl, 79 Mastai-­Ferretti, Giovanni Maria. See Pius IX (pope) McQuaid, Bernard, 136

­L abouré, Catherine, 102 Lacordaire, Henri-­Dominique, 67, 68–69 Lambruschini, Luigi, 10, 11, 107 language, 11–12, 31 Law of Guarantees, 239–240 Leben Jesu (Strauss), 159, 166 Lecourtier, François, 235 Leo I (pope and saint), 201 Leo XII (pope), 14, 49–50 Leo XIII (pope), 241 Leopold I, ­Grand Duke of Tuscany, 31, 32, 39

304 Meignan, Guillaume-­René, 100, 101, 159–161 Mémoire sur la question de l’immaculée conception de la trés sainte Vierge (Guéranger), 102 Metternich, Klemens von, 48, 80 Michelis, Friedrich, 232–233 Mirari Vos (Gregory XVI), 52–53, 66, 68 modernity, rejection of. See Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) Möhler, Johann Adam, 47, 144 Monarchie pontificale à propos du livre de Mgr. l’évêque de Sura, De la (Guéranger), 127, 180 Monescillo y Viso, Antolín, 154 Montalembert, Charles Forbes René de, 67–68, 83, 104–105, 165 moral una­n im­i­t y princi­ple, 164–165, 173 Mortaro, Edgardo, 98–99 Mozley, Thomas, 148 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, 39 ­music, 73–79 Napoleon III. See Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) Napoleon Bonaparte, 43, 44–45, 47–48 nationalist movements, 40, 57–58, 202, 226 Newman, John Henry, 80; works by, 131, 166, 197, 238–239 New York Times, 99 Nullis Certe Verbis (Pius IX), 121 “Observations sur la controverse soulevée relativement a la définition de l’infallibilité au prochain concile” (Dupanloup), 127–129 Ollivier, Émile, 2–3, 114, 163 “On Bishops, Synods, and Vicars General,” 161–162 “On the Catholic Faith.” See Dei Filius Organic Articles (Napoleon), 45–46, 84, 98 Our Lady of La Salette, 72

Index papal infallibility: Ultramontanism on, 6–10, 60–62, 80–81; Vatican I on, 8, 10–11, 130–132, 137, 173–179; pre-­council controversy on, 21, 122–130; Four Articles on, 27–29; in Gregory’s Trionfo, 52; Jesuits on, 61, 124, 156, 165, 209, 219; de Maistre on, 62–65; Manning on, 80, 81, 109, 139, 187, 204–205; Dupanloup on, 111, 127–130, 163, 180, 187; Civiltà on controversy of, 122–126; Veuillot on, 123, 129–130; Maret on, 126–127, 163; Univers on controversy of, 127–128; Acton on, 132, 163, 164; Senestrey on, 139, 187, 206; Dechamps on, 140, 141, 180, 182, 200; Darboy on, 162, 163, 187, 203; Vatican I debates on, 162, 198–209; Ketteler on, 180, 181, 203–204; in Supremi Pastoris, 182–185; Strossmayer on, 184; council order change to address, 185–188; summary of Pastor Aeternus on, 193–198; Guidi on, 210–214; final debates on, 214–222; Bismarck on, 237. See also Pastor Aeternus; Ultramontanism papal preeminence, 6–8, 240–241. See also Ultramontanism papal primacy, 6, 70–72, 182–185, 198. See also Pastor Aeternus Pape, Du (de Maistre), 62, 63–66 Papst und das Concil, Der (Döllinger), 124 Parisis, Pierre Louis, 75 Pastor Aeternus: background and social history of, 1–11; Vatican I debates on, 162, 198–209; Relatio, 189, 196–197; first draft of, 189–193; issues of, 193–198; final voting and ratification of, 217–222, 231–232; post-­council responses and interpretations of, 231–240; En­g lish translation of, 251–260. See also papal infallibility; papal primacy; Supremi Pastoris Peace of Augsburg (1555), 36

Index Peace of Westphalia (1648), 38 Perrone, Giovanni, 102, 128, 211 philosophy. See scholastic philosophy and theology Piccirillo, Carlo, 86, 148, 209 Pie, Louis-­Édouard-­François-­Desiré, 127, 141, 154, 189, 198–199, 217 Pius V (pope), 241 Pius VI (pope), 24, 32, 40–43, 52, 226 Pius VII (pope), 43–45, 47–49, 239, 241 Pius VIII (pope), 51 Pius IX (pope), 13–19; on social movements and Liberalism, 10, 26, 84, 96–97, 104; on cult of Peter, 76; Guéranger and, 76, 127; Inter Multiplices, 79, 84, 93–95, 96, 98; military conflict and exile of, 79, 83, 97–98, 140–141; in “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” 87; Ineffabilis Deus, 101, 103–104; Ubi Primum, 102–103; on cult of Mary, 102–104, 211; Quanta Cura, 105, 107, 109; commission’s preparation for Vatican I, 107–115, 181–182; Aeterni Patris, 112–114; Iam Nos Omnes, 115; Nullis Certe Verbis, 121; Tuas Libenter, 122; on council order change to address infallibility, 185–188; on three classes of bishops, 209–210; on Guidi’s speech, 212–213; on seizure of Rome, 222–224; on Fessler’s book, 236–237; and Italy’s Law of Guarantees, 239–240; total encyclicals by, 241; Syllabus of Errors [see Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX)] Pius X (pope), 160, 240 Pius XI (pope), 242 Pius XII (pope), 242, 245 Pombal, Marquis de, 34–35 Ponza di San Martino, Gustavo, 222–223 Pottmeyer, Hermann Josef, 176 press: freedom of, 9, 36, 53, 57, 67, 150, 247; influence of, 13, 81–95, 227; on Vatican I, 13, 83, 122–132, 148, 155, 222. See also specific publications Protestantism, 172

305 Protestant Reformation: Catholic official response to, 3–4, 38–39; on papal authority, 7–8, 61 Puecher-­Passavalli, Luigi, 221 Purcell, John, 147, 181 Quanta Cura (Pius IX), 105, 107, 109, 141 Quirinus. See Döllinger, Ignaz von Quod Aliquantum (Pius VI), 42 Rauscher, Josef Othmar von, 110, 144 Reflections on the Revolution of France (Burke), 63 Reformation. See Protestant Reformation Religion considerée dans ses rapports avec l’ordre politique et civile, De la (de Lamennais), 62, 67 Renan, Joseph Ernest, 159 Ricci, Luigi, 221 Ricci, Scipione de’, 31–32 Rivet, François Victor, 199–200 Roman Republic, 43 Romanticism, 47, 57, 70, 102, 226 Rome pendant le concile (Veuillot), 148 Römische Briefe vom Konzil (Döllinger), 149 Roothan, Jan, 85 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 41, 63 Russell, Odo, 150 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 243 Saint Peter’s Basilica (Rome), meeting of Vatican I, 1, 12, 135–136 Sanguineti, Sebastiano, 116 Schatz, Klaus, 20, 155, 177, 198 Scherr, Gregor von, 122, 218, 233, 234 scholastic philosophy and theology: on rationalism and scientific revolution, 9, 37–40, 38, 70, 176; criticisms of, 40–41, 109; de Maistre’s use of, 64–65; de Lamennais’s use of, 68; Veuillot’s use of, 92; Wissenschaft and, 159–161, 244, 245; Franzelin on, 165–166; Vatican I debates on, 174–179, 228;

306 scholastic philosophy and theology (continued) Pastor Aeternus on, 194. See also Dei Filius; Doctrina catholica contra multiplices errores ex rationalismo derivatos, De Schrader, Clemens, 189 Schulte, Johann Friedrich von, 236 Schwarzenberg, Friedrich von, 125, 144–145, 155, 161, 184 Senestrey, Ignaz von: colleagues and influence of, 125, 141, 153, 181; on papal infallibility, 139, 187, 206; on divided council, 154; on Pastor Aeternus, 189; reputation of, 231 Sibour, Dominique-­Auguste, 88, 90, 95 Simor, János, 145, 154, 155, 162, 171–172, 218 Soubirous, Bernadette, 72 Spain, 24, 35, 113 Spalding, John, 147 Spectator, The ( journal), 99 Statu ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani ponticus, De (Febronius), 29 Stimmen aus Maria-­L aach (­l ater, Stimmen der Zeit), 83, 123 Strauss, David Friedrich, 159, 166 Strossmayer, Josip Juraj: about, 145; colleagues and influence of, 149, 150; on papal primacy, 157–158; on una­n im ­i­t y princi­ple, 164; on Dei Filius, 172, 175; on papal infallibility, 184; on Guidi’s speech, 212; post-­council response of, 236 Supremi Pastoris, 162–163, 181–185. See also Pastor Aeternus Sur la situation présente de l’Église gallicane relativement au droit coutumier (“Mémoire”), 91 Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX): as basis for deliberation in Vatican I, 10, 109; Maret and, 100–101; authorship of, 105, 141; press’ response to, 105–107, 123 Synod of Pistoia, 31, 41, 52, 165 Tablet, The ( journal), 82, 129 Theologische Literaturblatt ( journal), 123

Index Times (London), 148, 238 Treaty of Tolentino (1797), 43 Trionfo della Santa Sede e della Chiesa contro gli assalti dei novatori, Il (Gregory XVI), 51, 62 Tuas Libenter (Pius IX), 122 Ubi Primum (Pius IX), 102–103 Ullathorne, William Bernard, 120, 131, 145, 164, 186, 238 Ultramontanism: ultramontane as term, 1–2, 22, 60; social background of, 5–6, 57–60; press’ impact on, 13; of de Maistre, 62–66; of de Lamennais, 66–69; in Germany, 69–72; of Guéranger, 73–79; influence of the press and, 81–95; Gallican revival against, 98–101; results of Vatican I and, 225–242. See also Gallicanism; papal infallibility; Pastor Aeternus Unam Sanctam (Boniface VIII), 196 Unigenitus Dei Filius (Clement XI), 34, 165 L’Univers ( journal): influence of, 13, 75, 83; on Maret, 88; threats to, 90, 93, 94–95; controversy on papal infallibility in, 127–128; coverage of Vatican I by, 148; Cullen on, 203. See also Veuillot, Louis Urban VIII (pope), 33 Valerga, Giuseppe, 206 Vatican Council II (1959), 1, 12, 19, 242–247 Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, The (Gladstone), 238–239 Vaughan, Herbert, 82 “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” 87 Venosta, Emilio Visconti, 223 Vérot, Augustin, 147, 159, 206 Vespignani, Virginio, 135–136 Veuillot, Louis: about, 61; as L’Univers editor, 75, 82; colleagues and

Index influence of, 84, 85, 87, 88; threats and opponents of, 90, 92–95; on Loi Falloux, 91–92; on papal infallibility, 123, 129–130; coverage of Vatican I by, 148, 155, 222. See also L’Univers ( journal) Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 104, 222–223 Vie de Jésus (Renan), 159

307 Virgin Mary, cult of, 32, 39, 72, 101–104, 211 Voltaire, 37–38, 41 Ward, William George, 61, 80–81 Whelan, Richard Vincent, 147, 208 Wissenschaft, 159–161, 244, 245 Zinelli, Federico Maria, 216, 219