Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/527

Rh P O P E D O M 507 1 e bull 11- iiitus. .pul- in of 13 &amp;lt;usen- 13 from ^ance. Iline ohe p edom inoliti- cuni- ptance. I;reag- i un- pu- Uty cthe Juit cier. no longer be imposed as obligatory on the Gallican clergy. Innocent responded by giving his assent to the above- mentioned disposition of the Spanish crown by Charles II. Other circumstances concurred to bridge over the breach which for half a century had separated the French monarchy from the popedom. The revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685) had conciliated both the curia and the Jesuits ; and in 1699 the feeling of accord between the French monarch and Innocent was confirmed by the condemnation of Fe&quot;nelon s Maocimes des /Saints. While Protestantism was being crushed in France, Catholicism was obtaining in other countries the immunities which it would not grant. In 1697 the elector Frederick Augustus II. consented to declare himself a Catholic in order to gain the crown of Poland, and by this means a certain toleration was secured for Roman doctrine among a population bigotedly attached to Lutheranism. In 1713 the celebrated constitution Uni- gcnitus Dei Filius promulgated by CLEMENT XI. (1700-21) not only proved a death-blow to Jansenism, but involved in nearly the same fate that party which had hitherto fought the battle of liberalism in the Gallican Church. &quot;All the extravagancies,&quot; says a recent writer, &quot; engendered by Jan senism in its later and more questionable developments recoiled, however unjustly, upon the system of ecclesiastical policy vindicated by Gerson, De Marca, and Bossuet. Jan senism became manifestly dangerous to public order and the security of the state ; Gallicanism, in the view of a despotic Government, seemed involved in the same odious category ; and it was deemed necessary, in consequence, to visit both with an impartial exhibition of the same perse cuting rigour &quot; (Jervis, Church of France, ii. 278). Many of the Jansenists, driven from France, retired to Utrecht, a church which, without professing Jansenist principles, long continued to uphold the standard of doctrine fixed by Tridentine canons in opposition to the dangerous advance of Jesuitism. The Jansenists were always distinguished by their resolute opposition to the theory of papal infalli bility, and with their fall a chief obstacle to the promulga tion of that dogma was removed. But, while, with respect to the acceptance of doctrine, the losses of the 16th century were thus materially retrieved, the popedom was sinking rapidly in political importance. Its influence in the Italian peninsula dwind led to within the limits of the States of the Church ; and the dynastic succession in Naples and Sicily, in Parma and Piacenza, underwent a total change without the curia or the pontifical interests being in any way consulted. The results of the War of the Spanish Succession dis appointed in every way the hopes of Clement XI. ; and his chagrin, when he found himself compelled to recognize the pretensions of the archduke Charles to the Spanish crown, was intense. The manner in which the conclusion of the war demonstrated the growing power of England was again a sinister omen for the permanence of the papal system. The order to whose efforts, notwithstanding an excep tional experience in France, the popedom had in other countries been largely indebted was also destined to a signal reverse. The conviction had long been growing up in the chief cities of the Continent that wherever the representatives of Jesuitism obtained a footing the cause of public order and domestic peace was placed in jeopardy. And, while, in distant lands, the vaunted successes of the Jesuit missionaries too often represented the diffusion of a merely nominal Christianity, their activity as traders was a constant source of irritation to the mercantile communi ties. We find, accordingly, the statesmen of Catholic Europe exhibiting, in the middle of the 18th century, a remarkable unanimity in their estimate of Jesuitism as a mischievous element in society, and also showing an in creasing determination to bring all ecclesiastical institu tions more and more under the control of the civil power. Carvalho, the Portuguese minister, who had himself become involved in a deadly struggle with the order at court, called upon BENEDICT XIV. (1740-58) to take measures for enforcing fundamental reforms among the whole body. Benedict, who recognized perhaps more fully than any other pontiff of the century the signs of the times, and who intro duced not a few salutary reforms in the general relations of the curia, was far from disinclined for the task, but died before his schemes could be put in operation. His suc cessor, CLEMENT XIII. (1758-69), on the other hand, pro fessed to discern in the Jesuit body the surest stay of the church, and in 1765 gave his formal sanction to the peculiar form of devotion which they had introduced, known as the worship of the Sacred Heart. In 1768 he condemned their expulsion from France as &quot;a grievous injury inflicted at once upon the church and the holy see.&quot; The dissensions fomented by their agency at the Bourbon courts continued, however, to increase ; and in 1769 the representatives of the chief Catholic powers at the Eoman court received instructions to present each a formal demand that the Jesuit order should be secularized and abolished. Clement, who had vainly appealed to the empress Maria Theresa for the exertion of her influence, died suddenly of apoplexy on the day preceding that on which a consistory was to have been held for the purpose of giving effect to the demands of the powers. It was expressly with the view that he should carry out the task which his predecessor had sought to evade that Car dinal Ganganelli, CLEMENT XIV. (1769-74), was raised to the pontifical chair, chiefly through the Bourbon interest. Originally a Franciscan friar, and a man of retiring un worldly disposition, the new pontiff was painfully embar rassed by the responsibilities attaching to the policy which he was expected to carry out. At length, after four years spent in balancing conflicting evidence and overcoming the scruples of his own mind, he issued the brief Dominus et Redemptor Noster, for the suppression of the order, which he declared to have merited its ruin by &quot; its rest lessness of spirit and audacity of action.&quot; The remorse which he was said to have subsequently exhibited, com bined with his sudden and mysterious end, were not with out considerable effect upon his successor, Pius VI, (1775- 99), who observed the utmost caution in carrying out the decree of Clement, and devoted his main efforts during his long pontificate to diverting the mind of Christendom from questions of doctrine to others of a practical and more pleasing character. The austere simplicity which had dis tinguished the Roman court in the time of Clement was exchanged for more than regal pomp and magnificence, while the pontiff s own subjects were benefited by the draining of the Pontine marshes, a work of immense labour, whereby a vast district extending along the sea-coast south of Rome was converted from an unhealthy swamp into a plain that subserved in some measure the purposes both of agriculture and commerce. That the suppression of the Jesuit order had been attended with no little danger to the interests of the Roman see was clearly shown by the progress which liberal opinions now began to make in Germany. The valuable researches of Muratori, which appeared in the earlier half of the 18th century had thrown a flood of light on all the circumstances of the develop ment of the mediaeval papacy, and his labours as an editor had served, at the same time, to render the successive contemporary writers accessible for the first time to the ordinary scholar. In the year 1763 the famous treatise of Nicholas von Hontheim, suffragan bishop of Treves, published under the pseudonym of &quot;Febronius,&quot; produced a profound impression. It was entitled On the State of the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman Bishop, Clement XIV. decrees the sup pression of the order. Pius VI. Treatise of &quot; Feb ronius.&quot;