Part 3 (1/2)
The theories of these pseudo-canonists nowhere found greater favor than among a certain cla.s.s of prelates in Germany, who besides their jurisdiction as bishops of the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed the further dignity and revenues of prince-electors in the German Empire. These combinations of politician and churchman could hardly regard with favor the pre-eminence of a Bishop in Rome who claimed however justly the rights of jurisdiction in any manner over them. They thus welcomed with open arms any daring spirit who would minimize or destroy the value of the Papal supremacy, and thus leave them in undisturbed possession of their pretended rights, carrying as these did with them a broad license to all the worldly luxuries and distractions of a political court.
The prince Bishop of Treves in Germany was one of this kind, and it is not surprising that when a canonist or theologian of the new order suddenly appeared at his court that the latter should receive all the honor and encouragement such a bishop could bestow. The court of the Bishop of Treves produced in the middle of the eighteenth century such a spirit in Johannes von Hontheim, a suffragan of the electoral diocese, and better known under his pseudonym of Febronius. In 1763 appeared in Germany some copies of a mysterious quarto ent.i.tled: _The State of the Church and of the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pontiff_, bearing the name of _Justinus Febronius_, and the place of publication _Bouillon_, though the author was in reality Johannes von Hontheim, and the place of its publication, Frankfort-on-the-Main. The book, finally increased to five volumes, was rapidly spread throughout Europe. In Venice it appeared in two editions, Latin and Italian. In France it was translated twice. In Spain the Council of Castile defrayed in part the expenses of a new translation, and that edition according to Cardinal Capara became the law for the Court and the Nation. Portugal provided both a Latin and a Portuguese text which latter was distributed gratuitously. Germany also produced both a Latin and German edition.
The book was condemned by Clement XIII., in 1764, and anathematized by the greater number of the German bishops upon its appearance, yet it made so much noise in the world, was so highly eulogized by the ignorant, and so greedily welcomed by the enemies of the Church, besides the fact that it has served to sanction so many desolating a.s.saults upon the faith, the hierarchy and the discipline of the Catholic Church, that it is necessary to discuss it in detail, in order to undeceive many who even today hold some of the views espoused by Febronius.
And first as to the theme around which the author has woven his network of sophisms. George Goyau, in his _Catholicism_, thus synopsises the whole teaching of Febronius: ”Febronius recognized the Pope as the Vicar of Jesus Christ; he professes that the Church has need of a chief to direct it, and that the bonds which unite the members to the chief ought to be sacred and inviolable; he desires that the primacy be conserved in the Church with care, and that it be piously honored; and Photius who strove to sap its foundations appears to him a fool. But this primacy is to Febronius only a simple pre-eminence; all that it imports is a right of inspection and direction over the different dioceses, similar to that which an archbishop possesses with regard to his suffragans; but it does not signify that the Pope has any jurisdiction.” He holds, moreover, that ”The power of the keys was conferred by Christ to the whole body of the faithful; it belongs to them all _radicaliter et princ.i.p.aliter_; the bishops exercise it under the t.i.tle of _usufruct, usualiter et usufructualiter_; while as to the Pope, he is superior to each bishop in particular in virtue of what Hontheim terms the _majoritas_; but that majoritas does not extend over the whole episcopal body in its entirety; the episcopal body is thus the real sovereign of the Church.”
It was a consequence of such ideas that Febronius should utter the usual outcry against the ”abuses” of the Roman Church, and recommend a general council of all Christians to the decisions of which all must bow. In all this he pretended to seek the furtherance of unity in the great Christian body.
The false doctrines of Febronius were met with denunciation and refutation from all reliable sources. Clement XIII. in 1764, Clement XIV. in 1769, and Pius VI. in 1775, raised their voices solemnly in condemnation of the book. The ablest theologians of the Church gave their services to combat its errors. Among these were especially Zaccaria, Amort, Kleiner and St. Alphonsus Liguori. It is noteworthy that the first refutation of Febronius came from the pen of a Lutheran, Frederick Bahrdt, in Leipzig.
Among the many able discussions upon the work of Hontheim that of the Abbe Bernier deserves to be reproduced in part, not only because it reflects the sentiment of the time, but especially for its keen exposure of the falsehoods and inconsistencies which abound in the work of the heretic. It is found in a letter to the Duke Louis Eugene of Wurtemburg dated 1775.
”It is astonis.h.i.+ng how the Treatise on the Government of the Church and the Authority of the Pope, by Febronius has made so much noise in some of the states of Germany; neither in its depth nor in its form was this book ever capable of impressing men of intellect or such as pretend to the faculty of reasoning. Whatever of truth the author produces is taken from French theologians, particularly from Bossuet, in his _Defense of the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682_; his falsehoods and errors are extracted from Protestants and Jansenists, or from those canonists who seek to humiliate the Court of Rome in her time of trouble. Various materials, which were never intended to be taken together, have been maladroitly compiled by Febronius; he has lighted torches which destroy each other; as he never takes his stand upon principles universally admitted, he is continually falling into contradictions; he denies in one place what he affirms in another; he sustains one theory at the very time that he professes to reject it; it would be sufficient to compare the t.i.tles of the sections and chapters of his work, to perceive that he either does not understand what he writes, or that he is not in accord with himself.”
The Abbe thereupon goes on to point out the most glaring contradictions in the work, and to show that to any person not yet blinded by prejudice, the very contention of the author is destroyed by his evident lack of truthfulness.
In 1778, through the influence brought to bear upon the Archbishop Elector of Treves by the Papal nuncios, Caprara and Bellisomi, Febronius was led to reconsider his action, and signed a retractation of his errors in a letter sent to Pope Pius VI. Three years later, however, in 1781, he published a _Commentary_ on his _Retraction_, which served to show the spirit of insincerity which dominated him throughout his whole career. He died in 1790.
Febronianism was not so disastrous in itself as (it proved to be) in its consequences. Its immediate result was a weakening of that loyalty which Catholic peoples owe to the centre of unity in the Holy See; but through all that, it affected, in a certain way, the very foundations of the social and political life of Europe. Although its immediate effects were almost simultaneous in their action, yet for the sake of brevity we shall notice them in order. 1. The revolt of the Elector archbishops of Germany. 2. The schism of Scipio de Ricci. 3. The final development into Josepheism.
_THE CONGRESS OF EMS._
For two centuries, there were three nuncios sent by the Holy See to Germany: to Vienna, to Cologne, and to Lucerne. In 1777, the new Elector of Bavaria pet.i.tioned Pius VI. for a fourth nunciature, to Munich. This measure, so just and useful in itself, irritated the German archbishops, already too jealous of the jurisdiction of the nuncios in the Empire.
The three Electors, Clement Wenceslas of Saxony, Archbishop of Treves; Maximilian of Austria, Archbishop of Cologne, and Baron d'Erthal, Archbishop of Mayence, were the soul of the resistance to the will of the Sovereign Pastor. Jerome Collerodo, Archbishop of Salzburg, and Legate of the Holy See, joined forces with them, and when Cardinal Pacca, the papal nuncio, arrived at Cologne, the Archbishop forbade any official reception, pretending that henceforth he would recognize no external jurisdiction. A like treatment was accorded to Zogno, the new nuncio to Munich.
In August, 1786, the delegates of the above-mentioned four prelates, a.s.sembled in a congress at Ems, near Coblenz, and agreed upon measures to be taken in order to restrict the authority of the Pope in his relations with Germany, a restriction that, in their antic.i.p.ations, was to mean nothing less than complete annihilation. The Congress of Ems formulated twenty-three decisions, which have become known as the Punctuations of Ems. Their purport was to suppress the immunities which were enjoyed by convents in regard to episcopal jurisdiction, to forbid all intercourse between the religious orders of Germany and their superiors in Rome, to suppress the nunciatures to Germany; they would also abolish the custom by which the Holy Father granted to German bishops the faculty, to be renewed every five years, of granting matrimonial dispensations. Moreover the Pontifical doc.u.ments might not be circulated without the formal acceptance of each bishop; they changed the formula of the oath of fidelity to the Pope as fixed by Pope Gregory VII. The Electors, in fine, made themselves thenceforth the legislators for the Church of Germany, and as such addressed their ”Punctuations” to the Emperor for his approval.
It is significant that Joseph II. much as he had encouraged the Electors, one of whom, Maximilian, was his brother, in their hostility to the Holy See, nevertheless he received the acts of the Congress coldly; it was not his policy to permit so much power to the German bishops when he had already decided that all ecclesiastical authority in his dominions was to reside in his own hands. Nor was the King of Prussia, Protestant as he was, any more enthusiastic in support of the rebellious Electors. On the contrary he accorded to the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Pacca, every reasonable service, even receiving the latter, with all the formalities due to his amba.s.sadorial character, at Wesel, in 1788. In fact the advent of this great representative of the Holy See proved a G.o.d-sent blessing to the Catholic people of the German States; for the spirit of revolt so obstinately settled in the minds of the ecclesiastical princes, found no echo in the hearts of their subjects, always as loyal to the Holy Father as they were disgusted and humiliated by the time-serving att.i.tude of those to whom they had the right to look for guidance and example.
The anger of the four archbishops against Mgr. Pacca increased despite all reverses. In 1788 they pet.i.tioned the Diet of Ratisbonne to cause the framing of a law suppressing altogether the nunciatures. The German princes, however, had no intention of issuing thus a formal insult to the Court of Rome, and the law was not pa.s.sed. Moreover, the archbishops had by this time discovered that their suffragans had taken umbrage at the fact that they were not officially notified as to the proceedings of the Congress of Ems, thus weakening the effect of that a.s.sembly in its most vital point, the adhesion of the episcopate to the repudiation of Papal authority. Finally, after various vain attempts to gain the aid of the secular princes, three of the archbishops, those of Salzburg, Treves, and Cologne, yielded a tardy obedience to the authority of the Pope; the Archbishop of Mayence, von Erthal, held obstinately to his position until after seeing himself abandoned by his quondam friends, he was at length driven from his See by the advent of the French revolutionary troops in 1793. By this event Febronianism lost, for a time at least, the influence it had exerted for thirty years over the Church in Germany.
_THE SYNOD OF PISTOIA._
While these events were taking place in Germany a like movement was observable in Northern Italy. The Diocese of Pistoia, presided over from 1780 by Scipione di Ricci, was the scene of the trouble. This bishop, fanatically addicted to the reforms introduced into the Austrian States by Joseph II. held himself in constant opposition to the Holy See, especially because of the Pope's rejection of his errors. As counsellor to the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, he permitted the government to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, to regulate all matters of wors.h.i.+p and ceremony, and to a.s.sume full control of ecclesiastical teaching.
Catechisms were composed without consulting the bishops, and schools were established by professors imbued with doctrines accredited by the government.
In 1786, at the instance of the Grand Duke, Ricci a.s.sembled at Pistoia a synod which was to formulate regularly the reforms he had in view. The schismatical bishop placed as moderator in this gathering that Tamburini who had been deprived of his professional office by Cardinal Molino, and who had not the right even to be present at an ecclesiastical a.s.sembly.
The synod adopted all the doctrines of the French Appellants, and reconsecrated the old errors of Baius, Jansen, and Quesnel. The year following, the people of Prato, in the Diocese of Pistoia, arose in arms against the tyrannical bishop. They overthrew his episcopal throne and burned his coat-of-arms, after having despoiled his palace and seminary of the books and ma.n.u.scripts found therein.
Despite these reverses Ricci, still sustained by the Grand Duke, held firmly to his position. He caused new edicts hostile to legitimate religion to be put forth, which might have had disastrous effects but for the death of Joseph II., which caused Leopold to abandon Tuscany for the Imperial throne. The errors of Ricci were formally condemned by Pope Pius VI., in the Const.i.tution _Auctorem Fidei_ of 1794. Ricci, however, held his See in opposition to the will of the Sovereign Pontiff until 1799, when at length he sent his resignation to the Emperor. He was finally reconciled with the Church through the good offices of Pope Pius VII. in 1805, and died in 1810.
_JOSEPHINISM._
Joseph II. of Austria, son of the celebrated Maria Theresa, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was the incarnation of that spirit which, beginning its active life in Jansenism, was formulated in the doctrines of Febronius. More anti-Roman than all his predecessors, except perhaps Frederic II. of Hohenstaufen, he was destined through his practical alliance with the anti-Christian spirit of his day, to sound the knell of that same Holy Roman Empire, which was dissolved fifteen years after his death.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSEPH II. OF AUSTRIA.]