Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/31

 GREGORY

GREGORY

through the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs, was successful in obtaining a letter to the French provin- cials advising that the novitiates and other houses should be gradually diminished or abandoned.

The reign of Gregory was drawing to its close. In August, 1841, with the intention of entering into closer relations with liis people, he undertook a tour throughout some of the provinces. He travelled through Umbria to Loreto, thence to Ancona, and on to Fabriano, where he visited the relics of St. Rorau- ald, the founder of the Camaldolese. He retiuned by Assisi, Viterbo and Orvieto, reaching Rome by the beginning of October. The progress had cost 2,000,- 000 francs, but it is very doubtful whether it had the intended result. Cardinal Lambruschini, to whom the pope as he grew older confided more and more of the actual direction of state affairs, was even more arbitrary and less accessible to modern political doctrines than Bernetti; the discontent grew and threatened. In 1843 there were attempts at revolt in Romagna and Umbria, which were suppressed with re- lentless severity by the special legates. Cardinals Van- nicelli and Massimo. In September, 1845, the city of Rimini was again captured by a revolutionary force, which, however, was obliged to retire and seek safety in Tuscany. But the impassioned appeals of Nicco- lini, of Gioberti, of Farini, of d'Azeglio, were spread throughout Italy and all Europe, and the fear was only too well founded that the Papal States could not long outlast Gregory XVI. On 20 May, 1846, he felt himself failing, and ordered Cretineau-Joly to write the history of the secret societies, against which he had struggled vainly. A few days later the pope was taken ill with erysipelas in the face. At first the at- tack was not thought to be serious, but on 31 May his strength suddenly failed, and it was seen that the end was near. He died early on 9 Jiuie, with but two attendants near him. His tomb, by Amici, is in St. Peter's.

Gregory XVI has been treated with but scant re- spect by later historians, but he has by no means deserved their contempt. It is true that in political questions he showed himself almost as opposed as his immediate predecessors to even a minimum of demo- cratic progress. But in this he was but similar to most rulers of his time, England itself, as Bernetti sarcastically remarked, being ready enough to suggest to others reforms it would not try at home. Gregory believed in autocracy, and neither his inclinations nor his experience was such as to make him favourable to increased political freedom. Probably the policy of his predecessors had made it very difficult for any but a very strong pope to oppose the growing revolution by efficient reforms. In any case both his tempera- ment and his policy were such that he left to his suc- cessor an almost impossible task. But Gregory was by no means an obscurantist. His interest in art and in all forms of learning is attested by the founding of the Etruscan and Egyptian museums at the Vatican, and of the Christian museum at the Lateran; by the encouragement given to men like Cardinals Mai and Mezzofanti, and to Visconti, Salvi, Marchi, Wiseman, Hurter, Rohrbacher, and Gu^ranger; by the lavish aid given to the rebuilding of St. Paul's Outside-the- Walls and of Santa Maria degli Angioli, at Assisi; by researches encouraged in the Roman Forum and in the catacombs. His care for the social welfare of his people is seen in the tunnelling of Monte Catillo to prevent the devastation of Tivoli by the floods of the river Anio, in the establishment of steamboats at Os- tia, of a decimal coinage in the Roman States, of a bureau of statistics at Rome, in the lightening of vari- ous imposts and the re-purchase of the appanage of Eugene Beauharnais, in the foundation of public baths and hospitals, and orphanages. During his reign the losses of the Church in Europe were more than bal- anced by her gains in the rest of the world. Gregory

sent missionaries to Abyssinia, to India, to China, to Polynesia, to the North American Indians. He doubled the number of Vicars-Apostolic in England, he increased greatly the number of bishops in the United States. During his reign five samts were canonized, thirty-three servants of God declared Blessed, many new orders were founded or supported, the devotion of the faithful to the Immaculate Mother of God in- creased. In private as in public life, Gregory was noted for his piety, his kindliness, his simplicity, his firm friendship. He was not, perhaps, a great pope, or fully able to cope with the complicated problems of his time, but to his devotion, his munificence, and his labours Rome and the Universal Church are indebted for many benefits.

BiANCHi, Storm documcntata delta diploniazia eitropea in Italia daW anno 1814 al 1S61 (Turin. 1S65-72), III; Cambridge Mod- em History, X, iv, V (Cambridge, 1907): Cipollett.^, Memorie politiche sui conclavi da Pio VltaPio IX (Milan, 1S63); Coppi, Annali d' Italia dal 1750, VIII (Florence, 1.S59); Ceetineau- JoLY, L'Egiise romaine en face de la Revolution (Paris, 18.59); Dardano. Diario dei conclavi del 1829-SO-Sl (Florence, 1879); Darras and Fevre, Jlistoire de rEgli.^e, XL (Paris, 1886); Dassance, Gregoire XVI in Biographic Universclle, XVII (Paris, 1857); Dollinger, The Church and the Churches (Lon- don, 1862); Farini, Lo stato rornano dalC anno 1815 (Turin, 1850-3); Giov.\GNOLi, Pcllcgrino Rossi e la rivohuione romana (Rome, 1898); Guizot, Mcmoircs pour servir it I'histoire de man temps (Paris, 1858-67); King. History of Italian Unity (London, 1899); L.wissE and Rambaud, Ilistoire generate du IVe siccle (V nos jours, X (Paris, 1898); Lubienski, Guerres et revohc- tions d' Italic (Paris, 1852); Maynard, J. Crctineau-Joly (Paris, 1875); Metternich, Memoires (Piiris, lSSO-4); Nielsen, Gregor XVI in Realencyk. fiir prot. TheoL, VII (Leipzig, 1899); Nielsen, History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, II, 51-101 (London, 1875); Orsi, Modern Italy. 1748-1S9S (Lon- don, 1900); Phillips, Modern Europe, 1815-1899 (London, 1902) ; SiLVAGNi, La corte e la society romana ne' secoli XVIII e XIX, III (Rome, 1SS5); Sylvain, Gregoire XVI el son Pantifi- cat (Lille, 1889); von Reumont, Zcitgcnossen, Biografien u. Karakteristikcn, I (Berlin, 1862); Ward, Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, I (London, 1897); Wiseman, Recollections of the last four Popes and of Rome in their times (London, 1858).

Leslie A. St. L. Toke.

Gregory Baeticus, Bishop of Elvira, in the prov- ince of Bajtica, Spain, from which he derived his sur- name; d. about 392. Gregory is first met with as Bishop of Elvira (lUiberis) in 375; he is mentioned in the Luciferian " Libellus precum ad Imperatores" (Migne, P. L., XIII, 89 sq.) as the defender of the Nictean creed, after Bishop Hosius of Cordova had given his assent in Sirmium to the second Sirmian formulation of doctrine, in the year 357. He proved himself at any rate an ardent opponent of Arianism, stood for the Nicican creed at the Council of Rimini, and refused to enter into ecclesiastical intercourse with the Arian Bishops Ursacius and Valens. He took, in fact, the extreme ^^ew, in common with Bishop Lucifer of Calaris (Cagliari), that it was un- lawful to make advances to bishops or priests who at any time had been tainted with the .\rian heresy, or to hold any religious communion with them. This Luci- ferian party found adherents in Spain, and on the death of Lucifer (370 or 371) Gregory of Elvira became the head and front of the movement. Such at least is the mention found of him in the "Libellus precum" above referred to, as well as in St. Jerome's chronicle (Migne, P. L., XXVII, 659). However, the progress made in Spain was by no means considerable.

Gregory found time also for literary labours. St. Jerome says of him that he wrote, until a very ripe old age, a diversity of treatises composed in simple and ordinary language (mediocri sermone), and produced an excellent book (clegantem librum), "De Fide", which is said to be still extant (Hieron., De Viris ill., c. 105). The book "De Trinitate seu de Fide" (Rome, 1575), which was ascribed to Gregory Bjeticus by Achilles Statins, its first editor, did not come from his pen, but was written in Spain at the end of the fourth century. On the other hand early historians of literature, e. g. Quesnel, and quite recently Morin, have attributed to him the treatise " De Fide ortho- doxa ", which is directed against Arianism, and figures