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 Pius now inaugurated, of restoring the old pre-revolutionary conditions, sealed the fate of the temporal dominion of the papacy. He made no attempt to regain the estranged affections of the populace, and took no measures to liberate himself and his subjects from the incubus of the last few years. He even sought to exact vengeance for the events of that period: the state officials, who had compromised themselves, lost their offices; and all grants in aid were forfeited if the recipients were discovered by the secret commissions (consigli di censure) to have taken part in the revolutionary movement. The tribunals extorted declarations on the part of witnesses by flogging, deprivation of food, and like methods of torture. In many cases the death sentence was executed at their instance, though the guilt of the accused was never established. The system of precautionary arrest, as it was termed, rendered it possible for any man to be thrown into prison, without trial and without verdict, simply on the ground that he lay under suspicion of plotting against the government. The priests, who usurped the judicial function, displayed such cruelty on several occasions that officers of the Austrian army were compelled to record a protest. The consequence of these methods was that every victim—innocent or guilty—ranked as a martyr in the estimation of his fellow-citizens. A subsidiary result was the revival of brigandage, which found a suspicious degree of support among the people. Corruption was rampant among the officials; the police were accused of illicit bargaining with criminals; and nothing but contempt was entertained for the papal army, which was recruited from the dregs of humanity. To this was added a disastrous financial administration, under which the efficiency and credit of the country sank to appalling depths. The system of taxation was calculated with a view to relieving the Church and the clergy, and imposing the main burden upon the laity. In this department the family of Cardinal Antonelli seems to have played a fatal part. The secretary of state was born in humble circumstances: when he died he left a fortune of more than 100,000,000 lire, to which a daughter succeeded in establishing her claim. His brother Felippo was president of the Roman Bank, and his brother Luigi the head of the Annona—an office created to regulate the import of grain. The pope himself had neither the will nor the power to institute searching financial reforms; possibly, also, he was ignorant of the facts.

The mismanagement which obtained in the papal dominions could not escape the observation of the other powers. As early as the Congress of Paris in 1856 the English ambassador, Lord Clarendon, had directed an annihilating criticism against the government of the pontiff; and a convincing proof of the justice of his verdict was given by Pius himself, in his treatment of the famous Mortara case. A Jewish boy of this name had been torn from his parents in Rome and the rite of baptism performed on him without their knowledge or consent. The pope flatly refused to restore the "Christian" to his Jewish parents, and turned a deaf ear both to the protest of public opinion and the diplomatic representations of France and England. The sequel to this mode of government was that the growing embitterment of the subjects of the Church came to be sympathized with outside the bounds of Italy, and the question whether the secular authority of the papacy could be allowed to continue became a much-debated problem. Even the expression of the doubt was symptomatic. In 1859 appeared an anonymous brochure, Le Pape et le congrès, composed by Laguerronniere, the friend of Napoleon III., in which it was proposed to ensure the pope “un revenu considerable” and the city of Rome, but to relieve him of a political task to which he was not competent. In 1861 another anonymous pamphlet, Pro causa italica ad episcopos catholicos, was published in Florence, advocating the ecclesiastico-political programme of Cavour; and the pope was horrified when he discovered that it came from the pen of Passaglia, the professor of dogmatic theology. In spite of all, the national idea gained strength in Italy, and the movement towards unity found powerful champions in King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia and his great statesman Cavour. Free scope was given when the understanding between the two powers protecting the papal state—France and Austria—broke down. So soon as Napoleon and Cavour had come to an agreement war ensued, France and Sardinia being ranged against Austria (18J9). The result was that Austria lost the greater part of her Italian possessions, while the pope also forfeited two-thirds of his dominions. By the war of 1866, in which Italy fought on the Prussian side, Victor Emmanuel gained Venice in addition; so that the States of the Church now formed the last remaining obstacle to complete national unity. In September 1864, France—who had been the protectress of these states since 1849—had concluded a treaty with Victor Emmanuel, undertaking to withdraw her garrison from Rome in two years time; while, on his part, the king agreed to abstain from any attack on the papal dominions, and to guarantee the safety of the pope and the patrimonium Petri. The emperor Napoleon had, in point of fact, recalled his troops in 1866; but in 1867, when Garibaldi crossed the frontiers of the papal state at the head of his volunteers, he declared the treaty violated and again threw his regiments into Rome. Three years later the time came when he could employ his arms more advantageously elsewhere, and after the outbreak of the war with Germany Rome was evacuated. The news that the French Empire had fallen produced an electrical effect in Italy: the Italian parliament called on the king to occupy Rome; on the 8th of September Victor Emmanuel crossed the borders; and on the 10th of September the green-white-and-red of the tricolour floated over the Capitol. The protests of Pius IX. remained unheeded, and his attempts to secure another foreign intervention met with no success. On the 2nd of October Victor Emmanuel instituted a plebiscite in Rome and the possessions of the Church to decide the question of annexation. The result of the suffrage was that 153,681 votes were given in favour of union with Italy, and 1507 against the proposed incorporation: that is to say only the direct dependants of the Vatican were opposed to the change. The papal state was now merged in the kingdom of Italy, which proceeded to define its diplomatic relations with the Holy See by the law of the 13th of May 1871 (see : History).

In his capacity as head of the Church, Pius IX. adhered to the principles of the Ultramontanist party, and contributed materially to the victory of that cause. The political reaction which followed the revolutionary era in most quarters of Europe offered a favourite soil for his efforts; and in several countries he found it possible to regulate the relations between Church and state from the standpoint of the curia. In 1851 he concluded a concordat with Queen Isabella II. of Spain, proclaiming Roman Catholicism the sole religion of the Spanish people, to the exclusion of every other creed (art. 1); and we find the same provision in another concordat with the South American republic of Ecuador (1862). A third concordat, negotiated with the emperor Francis Joseph I. of Austria (1855), entrusted the supervision of schools and the censorship of literature to the clergy, recognized the canon law, and repealed all secular legislation conflicting with it. France came into line with the wishes of the pope in every respect, as Napoleon needed clerical support in his political designs. Even in Germany he found no resistance; on the contrary, he was able to secure advantageous compacts from individual states (Hesse, 1854; Wurttemberg, 1857). In fact, the growing tendency to romanize Catholicism—to bring it, that is to say, into close connexion with Rome, and to a state of dependency on the guidance and instructions of the curia—made special progress in Germany.

Among the most important acts of Pius IX. must be counted his proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, by the bull Ineffabilis Deus, on the 8th of December 1854. In this bull the preservation of Mary from every stain of hereditary sin, in the first moment of her conception, was declared to be a divinely revealed truth, which consequently demanded universal acceptance (see ). By this means a view, which till then had been no more than a pious belief, was elevated into a dogma to be held de fide; though grave doubts on the subject had always been entertained, even in the midst of the Church itself. For the inner life of that