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RUSSIA received by the tsar, and thereafter wrote optimistically to Rome. Soon, however, the trials of the Catholics began. By two ukases in 1828 the admission of novices in the religious orders, and of clerics in the seminaries, was made very difficult, if not quite impossible; and in the following year all the novitiates were closed. In 1830 other ukases encouraged divorce among Catholics, prohibited Catholic religious propaganda among the Orthodox, the hearing the confessions of foreigners, and changes of residence among the clergy.

The Polish insurrection of 1830 and 1831 intensified the persecution against the Latin Catholics. In 1832 the Russian Government asked of the "Roman Ecclesiastical College" that the number of convents be diminished. Of 300 monasteries in the Diocese of Mohileff 202 were closed; while the administrator of that diocese, Bishop Szezyt, who had opposed this reduction, was sent to Siberia. In the same year the publication of Papal Bulls in Russia was prohibited. In June and September, 1832 respectively the Holy See addressed two notes to the Russian Government, lamenting the disabilities to which Catholics were subjected in Russia, and the innovations which had been introduced into ecclesiastical discipline. The government blamed the Polish revolutionists for its severity. On June 9, 1832, yielding to the Russian Government, Gregory XVI addressed his Encyclical to the Polish clergy, urging obedience to the civil power in civil matters. The encyclical aroused great discontent among the Poles, and did not deter the Russian Government from its purpose of annihilating Catholicism. The Government directed its blows against Catholics, more especially by laws concerning mixed marriages, by preventing Catholic priests from ministering to the United Catholics, and by calling to the episcopal sees men who were devoted to its policy, e.g. Msgr. Pawlowski, who was named Archbishop of Mohileff in 1841. The Holy See could no longer remain silent in the presence of this violence, and in his Allocution to the solemn Consistory of July 22, 1842, Gregory XVI called the attention of the Catholic world to the painful oppression to which Catholicism was subjected in Russia; and his protests were more serious and energetic, when in 1845, upon the occasion of the visit of the tsar to Rome, he had an interview with the latter, which resulted in the concordat of August 3, 1847, by which there were established in Russia an archbishopric and six episcopal sees, and in Poland, the same number of dioceses that had been established by the Bull of Pius VII of June 30, 1818. The concordat repealed several iniquitous laws that had been promulgated against Catholics, placed the seminaries and the ecclesiastical academy of St. Petersburg under the jurisdiction of the ordinary, and recognized to a somewhat greater degree the authority of the Holy See over the bishops. The Tsar Nicholas, by a letter of November 15, 1847, ratified the concordat of August 3, which, like so many other Russian laws, was destined to remain a dead letter. Obstacles were placed to the determination of the boundaries of dioceses; 21 convents were suppressed by a ukase of July 18, 1850; while Catholics were prohibited from restoring their churches and from building new ones; from preaching sermons that had not previously been approved by the government, and from refuting the calumnies of the Press against Catholicism. It is not necessary for us to recur to the authority of Catholic writers, like Lescceur, to prove how odious this violence was; we may be satisfied with a mere glance at the immense collection of laws and governmental measures concerning the Catholic Church from the times of Peter and of Ivan Alexeievitch to 1867 ("Zakonopolozhenija i pravitelstvennyia rasporjazhenija do rimskokato litcheskoi cerkvi v Rossii otnosjachtchijasja so vremeni carstvovanija Tzarei Petra i Ioanna Aleksieevitchei, 1669-1867", Vienna, 1868). It is not without reason that a Catholic writer has said that the laws of Nicholas I against Catholicism constitute a Neronian code.

The first years of the reign of Alexander II were not marked by anti-Catholic violence. The Russian Government promised the Holy See that the concordat would be scrupulously observed, and in 1856 the episcopal sees of Russia and Poland were filled. Soon however there was a return to the methods of Nicholas I, notwithstanding the fact that Pius IX wrote to the tsar, imploring liberty for Catholics of both rites in Russia. In another letter, addressed in 1861 to Msgr. Fialkowski, Archbishop of Warsaw, Pius IX referred to the continual efforts of the Holy See to safeguard the existence of Catholicism in Russia, and to the difficulties that were opposed to all measures of his and of his predecessors in that connection. Encouraged by the words of the pope, the Polish bishops presented a memorandum to the representative of the emperor at Warsaw, asking for the abrogation of the laws that oppressed Catholics and destroyed their liberty. A similar memorandum was presented to the tsar by the Archbishop of Mohileff and the bishops of Russia. Upon the basis of these memoranda, the government accused the Catholic clergy of promoting the spirit of revolution and of plotting revolts against the tsar. Most painful occurrences ensued; the soldiery was not restrained from profaning the churches and the Holy Eucharist, from wounding defenseless women, or from treating Warsaw as a city taken by storm. One hundred and sixty priests, and among them the vicar capitular Bialobrzeski, were taken prisoners, and several of them were exiled to Siberia. Msgr. Deckert, coadjutor of the Archbishop Fialkowski, died of the sufferings that these events caused him. The condition of the Poles were becoming intolerable, and Catholicism suffered proportionately. Amid the general indifference of Europe, one voice, that of Pius IX, was raised, firm and energetic. in favor of an oppressed people and of a persecuted faith. On March 12, 1863, in his Allocution to the Consistory, and on April 22, 1863, in a letter to the tsar, Pius IX demanded that justice and equity be no longer violated. The tsar Alexander II wrote to the pope expressing regrets that the Polish clergy should ally itself with the authors of civil disorder and should disturb the public peace.

The Polish revolution of 1863 furnished the government with a pretext for inhumanity towards the Catholic clergy, both regular and secular. There is no doubt that some priests and religious, moved by patriotic ardor, committed the error of taking part in an insurrection which was opposed by the more cultured and reasonable portion of the nation. The Russian Government, however, did not take pains to punish only the guilty, but dealt with all the Catholic clergy alike. In 1863 the Archbishop of Warsaw, Msgr. Felinski, was confined at Yaroslaff, as was his coadjutor Msgr. Rzaewuski at Astrakhan in 1865; while their successors, the canons Szczygielski and Domagolski, were exiled to Siberia in 1867. Msgr. Krasinski, Archbishop of Vilna, was confined at Vyatka. Several priests in 1863 were either hanged or shot, as implicated in the revolt, while others were sent to the interior of Russia, or were deported to Siberia. The Poles and the Catholics in their distress received consolation only from Pius IX, who distinguished between the right of a government to punish an unjust revolt and the right of subjects to profess their Faith freely. In the encyclical "Ubi Urbaniano" of July 30, 1864, addressed to the bishops of Russia and Poland, he enumerated the grievous evils that the Russian Government had inflicted on Catholicism.

The letters and the protests of the pope however were of little avail. On November 8, 1864 the government suppressed the convents and religious orders of Rus-