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 VATICAN

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VATICAN

natural and supprnatural understanding of right and true faith, their possibihty, necessity, their sources, and of their relations to f-.\i-h other. Tluis it otTers to all of honest inlenlion a guide and a firm foothold, both in solviiiK the grcMt (jueslion of Ufe and in all the investigations of learning. The second Consti- tution settles finally a question which had kept the minds of men disturbed from the time of the Great Schism, and the Council of Constance, and more especially from the apjiearance of the four Galilean articles of 1S2, the question of the relation between the pope and the Church. .According to the dogmatic decision of the Vatican Council, the papacy founded by Christ is the crown and centre of the entire consti- tution of the Catholic Church. The papacy includes in itself the entire fullness of the power of adminis- tration and teaching bestowed by Christ upon His Church. Thus ecclesiastical particularism and the theory of national Churche.s are for- ever overthrown. On the other hand, it is extravagant and unju.st to say that by the definition nf the primacy of jiiri.>*- diction and of the infallibility of the pope the oecumenical councils have lost their essential im- portance. The oecu- menical councils have never been ab- solutely necessary. Even before the Vati- can Council their de- crees obtained gen- eral currency only through the approval of the pope. The in- creasing difficulty of their convocation as time went on is shown by the interval of three hun- dred years between the nineteenth and twentieth oecu- menical councils. The definitions of the last council have, therefore, brought about the alleviation that w-as desirable and the necessary legal certainty. Apart from this, however, the hierarchy united with the pope in a general council is, now as formerly, the most complete representation of the Catholic Church.

La-stly, as regards the drafts and proposition which were left unsettled by the Vatican Council, a number of these were revived and brought to completion by Pius IX and his two successors. To mention a few: Pius IX made St. .lo.seph the patron saint of the Uni- versal Church on 8 Dec, 1S70. the same year as the council. Moral and religious problems, which it was intended to lay before the council for discussion, are treated in the encyclicals of Leo XIII on the origin of the civil power (1881), on freemasonrj' (1884), on human freedom (18S8), on Christian marriage (1880), etc. Leo XIII also issued in 1900 new regulations regarding the index of forbidden books. From the beginning of his administration Pius X seems to have had in view in his legislative labours the completion of the great tasks left by the Vatican Council. The most striking proofs of this are: the reform of the Italian diocesan .seminaries, the regulation of the philo.sophical and theological studies of candidates for the priesthood, the introduction of one catechism for the Roman church province, the laws concerning the form of ritual for betrothal and marriage, the revision of the prayers of the Breviary, and, above all, the codi- fication of the whole of modern canon law.

(1) Archives of the Vatican Council: AN official papers relat- ing to the preparations for the Vatican Council, its* proceeding!^,

The Vatica.\ OB.SF.nv

speeches made at the general congregations exist in shorthand notes and handwriting: in addition, Pius IX also arranged to have them printed. The first four folio volumes were issued b.v the Vatican Press in 1875-8, the fifth and final volume appeared in 1884. .\bout a dozen copies of each volume are in the ar- chives. (2) Collections of Official Documents: ('i:ir<,M. storia del Concilio ccumcniro Vaticano itrritia sui linnnrc'iri <f tnnt/, i,ri.jh/ri - ,I,t Geschichte desselben (Tubingen, 1872): M^riin, (/,„„,„„, c.,,,- citii Vaticani quw ad ductrinam et disci pli mi rn i^rii/i'iif ./.'. unnti- torum collectio (Paderborn, 1873); the most e.-mplrtp r,,ll-. tion is Ada et decrela sacrosancii acumenici Comiln \''irn,n,i. <<i.

ScHNEEMAN and GRANDERATH (Freiburg, 1802): Iht^ ',,l|rrlinii

is in the Collectio Lacensis, vol. VII. The deer., s if tli.' mil

have often been published, as at Rome by the Propaganda, at Freiburg, and Ratisbon.

(3) Historical .\ccounts: (a) Catholic: by the secretary of the council, Fessleh, Das vntikanische Concilium, dessen (iussere Bcdeuluno unit inncrc Verlauf (Vienna, 1.871): Manning, The

True Slon, of the Vati- can Council (London, 1S77): OLLrviER. L'iglise et I'etat au concile du Vatican (2 vols.. Paris, 1879): Granderath and Kirch, Geschichte des vatikanischen Kumils von seiner ersten Ankiiridii/ung his zu seiner Vertagnng, nach den authcntischen Dokumenten (3 vols,, Frei- burg, 1903 and 1906); Fro.vd, Actes et histoire du concile (scumenique de Rome (8 vols., Paris, 18(iy), numerous illustra- tions; Granderath in Wetzer and Welte. Kirchenlexikon, s. v. Vati- can. Condi, (b) Non- Catholic: Friedrich, Tagebuch wdhrend des vatikanischen Konzils ge- fiihrt (2nd ed., Nordlin- gen. 1873); Idem, 6V- schichte des vatikaniscften Komils (3 vols., Bonn, 1877-87); Mozlev, Ut- ters from. Rome on the Occasion of the (Ecu- menical Council 1869- 1S70 (2 vols., London. 1891); MiRBT in Realencyklopddie fur protest. Theol., s.v. Vati- can. Condi. In addition, consult the biographies of the most distinguished members of the council. The most important works and pamphlets that appeared during the council are mentioned in the course of the article.

(4) Explanations of the Decrees of the Council: Granderath, Constitutiones dogmaticce s. cecumen. Concilii Vaticani, explicate (Freiburg, 1892) ; Vacant, Etudes th&ologiques sur les constitu- tions du concile du Vatican (2 vols., Paris, 1895),

K. Kirch.

Vatican Observatory. — The Vatican Observa- tory now bears the official title, "Specola Astronomica Vaticana". To under.-it and its history it is necessary to remark that the designations ossenalorio ov specola are not restricted to astronomy, but may mean any elevated locality from which aerial ))henomena are observed. From this point of view the history of the Specola Vaticana has passed through four successive stages. (1) The first i)erioil of I lie \:iticaii Observa- tory is thus described in the Motu Proprio of 18!)1 by Leo XIII: "Gregorj' XIII ordered a tower to be erected in a convenient part of the Vat ican buildings, and to be fitted out with the greatest and best in- strument.s of the time. There he held the meeting.s of the learned men to whom the reform of the calendar had been entrusted. The tower stands to this day, a witness to the munificence of its author. It con- tains a meridian line by Ignazio Danti of Perugia, with a round marble plate in the centre, adorned with scientific designs. When touched by the rays of the 8un that are allowed to enter from .al)o\e. the designs demonstrate the error of the old reckoning and the correctness of the reform." The first half of this narration is based upon a tradition supported by Gilii and Calandrelli (see LiLlDs); it is connected