Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/389

 Zwiedineck-Sildenhoi'st : Deutsche Geschiclite 379 the absolutely fantastic account of the treaty of the Holy Alliance at I. 364; the Turk was not mentioned in the treaty, nor were the Barbary States, nor English commerce ; and if the pope would not sign the treaty, his objections, like those of the sultan, were of a dogmatic nature. Coming to a later period, the Bishop of Aalborg shows only a slight acquaintance with Risorgimento literature, as when he omits Leopardi, the greatest of them all, from the poets who sang of the regen- eration of Italy. Rossi was chosen to negotiate with Gregory XVI. on the Jesuit question (II. 90), not because of his knowledge of eco- nomics, but because he was a great canonist. The whole portrait of Cardinal Gizzi as Secretary of State (II. 121) is wasted labor because it omits the most decisive detail — that he was eighty-nine years of age. More important than this is the totally inadequate treatment of the very important allocution of April 29, 1848; all the significance is taken out of this by omitting to refer to the outside — especially German — pressure that was part cause of the allocution, and to the fact that by this pro- nouncement Pius broke away from the Italianism into which he had drifted to regain universalism, the only logical position for a pope, as Germany and the Jesuits took care to remind him. The Duke d'Harcourt was not privy to the flight to Gaeta ; he was on the contrary duped by it (II. 104). In the Vatican Council period the author relies on ampler knowledge, though even here he is at times led away by his authorities, as when he states (II. 321) that "without Odo Russell's support the diplomatic astuteness of Manning would scarcely have been in a position to ward off the fatal diplomatic intervention which hovered steadily over the heads of the Council ". This correction of details might be much extended, but space forbids adding more than this, that the lack of precision is due partly to deficient criticism, partly to inade- quate sources. The authorities quoted are never more recent than 1896 or 1897, which excludes Debidour, who published in 1898; while of the others many are hopelessly antiquated, as, for example, Rennen- kampff, who printed in 1813, on the excommunication of Napoleon by Pius. And lastly it must be said that the book sins most of all by its lack of breadth and of historical proportion. Is it not for the historian of the church to inquire into the reasons why the Council of the Vatican tamely submitted to a dictation which the Council of Trent would not have tolerated? to trace the interaction between the growth of the doc- trine of the papal infallibility and the development of nineteenth-cen- tury scientific thought? to take, in other words, the deeper causes that underlay the victories of obscurantism from 1848 to 1870, and to make some attempt to set them forth in their due relation to the evolution of European thought? ^ y^_ Johnston. nST. REV., VOL.