Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/129

Rh V A T V A U 113 on that very day Napoleon III. proclaimed war against Prussia, and entered on that great conflict amongst the immediate results of which were the overthrow of the temporal power of the Papacy and the occupation of Kome by the troops of the king of Italy in two months time from the last meeting of the council. It was formally prorogued by Pius IX. on 20th October, and is thus technically still in existence ; but the prorogation is a virtual dissolution. The opposition collapsed everywhere after the promulgation of the decree, as even the German bishops, who had been the main stay of the minority, consented to publish it in their dioceses. Tliis led to the genesis of the Old Catholic communion (see OLD CATHOLICS) as a refuge for such as were conscientiously unable to accept the new dogma, but equally unwilling to join any of the Protestant societies. But submission to the dogma is not identical with belief in it, at any rate in the sense wherein Pius IX. under stood it and meant it to be received. The majority had, indeed, achieved their &quot; triumph over history &quot;: they had done what warn ing voices had declared beforehand to be their purpose annihilated the independence of the episcopate, abrogated the teaching and attesting functions of the dispersive church, and contracted the Roman Catholic creed into the single article of belief in the pope, lint they had failed in three matters essential to the ultimate success of their plans. They had not even seemed to make any reply, save that of their superior voting strength in the council, to the destructive criticism which had established the falsehood and novelty of the infallibility dogma ; they were not able to pass it so as to be canonically or theologically binding ; and they could not secure its unqualified acceptance in its original form. Instead of terminating all controversy, the new dogma (as might have been anticipated by any one familiar either with the laws of the human intellect or the facts of ecclesiastical history) at once became itself a topic of debate, receiving contradictory interpretations, partly due to its vague and clumsy wording, and partly the expression of competing opinions, ranging from the widest to the narrowest view of its scope and force. The &quot;senza condiziono &quot; of Pius IX. proved hopelessly unworkable, and it was soon found necessary to modify the decree so as to make it a not intolerable burden for intelligent consciences. Accordingly, Bishop Fessler of St Pol ten, secretary- general of the council, published in 1871, with a brief of approbation from the pope, his treatise Die wahre uiulfalsche Unfehlbarkcit dcr J cijtste, soon reproduced in French and English, which provides that &quot; juxta modum &quot; limitation vainly sought from the tyrannical majority in the council itself. Ostensibly a reply to an anti-infalli- bilist work by the learned canonist A r on Schulte, it is in fact a studious minimizing of the incidence of the dogma, arguing that the occasions when the attribute of papal infallibility has been actually exercised and formulated in ex cathedra decrees have been, and must continue to be, of extremely rare occurrence, and further attenuating the dogma itself, so as to approach in some measure the old Gallican view of the pope s constitutional and limited authority as official spokesman of the church. In England, where the evidence collected by Pitt in the 18th century, and by the earl of Liverpool in the 19th, when aiming at the abolition of the penal laws, on the opinions held by Roman Catholic theologians as to the prerogatives and attributes of the popes, made their general repudiation of papal infallibility familiarly known, the question was even more trenchantly dealt with. For Dr Newman, who had anxiously deprecated the coming definition, speaking of it in a letter to Bishop Ullathorne as a &quot; great calamity,&quot; wantonly forced on by &quot;an aggressive, insolent faction,&quot; explained the manner of his own belief and acceptance of it in a letter to the duke of Norfolk, and that in terms which to less subtle (and, it may be, more practical) intellects are indistinguishable from disbelief and rejection. Not only does he limit the attribute itself, and the occasions of its exercise, within much straiter bounds than those set by Fessler, but he specifies a number of cases wherein he would disobey a papal mandate, and, after saying that each such mandate must be decided on its own merits, adds : &quot;I should look to see what theologians could do for me, what the bishops and clergy around me, what my confessor, what friends whom I revered ; and if, after all, I could not take their view of the matter, then I must rule myself by my own judgment and my own conscience.&quot; That this deliverance is in effect a complete evacuation of the dogma will appear at once by supposing cognate language to be used in the civil sphere by the subject of an absolute temporal sovereign when defining the limits of his allegiance. But the subsequent eleva tion of its author to the cardinalate proves that his view is regarded as fairly tenable in the Roman Church, and the infallibility dogma is thus, for the present at least, dismissed from the domain of practical action to that of speculative theory. The bibliography of the Vatican Council is very copious, but the following works will suffice for most students to consult: Cecconi, Storia del Concilia Vaticu.no, Rome, 1873 ; J. Friedrich, Geschichte des vatikanischen Konzils, Bonn, 1877-87; Id., Taftebuch, wahrend des vaticanischen Concils gefiihrt, Xordlin- gen, 1873; Id., Docnmenta ad Illustrandum Concilium Vaticanum, Nordlin- gen, 1873 ; Quirinus, Romische Briefe torn Concil 1870 (also an English version) ; Pomponio Leto, Otto Mesi a Roma durante il Concilia Vaticano, Florence, 1873 (also an English version); Michelis, Kiirze Geschichte des vaticanischen Concils, Constance, 1875 ; Friedberg, Sammlungder Alctenstiicke zum ersten vaticanischen Concil, Tubingen, 1872 ; Froniniann, Geschichte. ttnd Kritik des vaticanischen Concils, Gotha, 1872 ; Pius IX., Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio IX. pronunziati in Vaticano, Rome, 1872-73 ; Frond, Actes et Histoire du Concile OEewmtnique de Rome, Paris, 1870-73, 8 vols. folio; Arthur, The Pope, the Kings, and the Pensile, Belfast, 1877. (R. F. L.) VATTEL, EMEU DE (1714-1767), an eminent jurist, was the son of a Protestant minister, and was born at Couvet, in the principality of Neuchatel, on 25th August 1714. He studied at Basel and Geneva. During his early years his favourite pursuit was philosophy ; and, having carefully examined the works of Leibnitz and Wolf, he published in 1741 a defence of Leibnitz s system against Crousaz. In the same year Vattel, who was born a subject of the king of Prussia, repaired to Berlin in the hope of obtaining some public employment from Frederick II., but was disappointed in his expectation. Two years later he proceeded to Dresden, where he experienced a very favour able reception from Count Briihl, the minister of Saxony. In 1746 he obtained from the elector, Augustus III., the title of councillor of embassy, accompanied with a pension, and was sent to Bern in the capacity of the elector s minister. His diplomatic functions did not occupy his whole time and much of his leisure was devoted to litera ture and jurisprudence. Among other works he published Loisirs Philosophiques (1747) and Melanges de Litterature, de Morale, et de Politique (1757). But his reputation chiefly rests on his Droit des Gens, ou Princes de la Loi Naturelle appliques a la Conduite et aux Affaires des Nations et des Souverains (Neuchatel, 1758). During the same year he was recalled from Switzerland, to be employed in the cabinet of Dresden, and was soon afterwards honoured with the title of privy councillor. His labours now became so intense as to exhaust his strength, and his health broke down. After a period of rest he returned to Dresden in 1766 ; but his renewed exertions soon produced a relapse, and he made another excursion to Neuchatel, where he died on 20th December 1767. His last work was entitled Questions de Droit Naturel, ou Observations sur le Traite du Droit de la Nature, par Wolf (Bern, 1762). Vattel s Droit des Gens, which is founded on the works of Wolf, had in its day a great success, in truth, greater than it deserved. His principal and only merit consists in his having rendered the ideas of that author accessible to the political and diplomatic world. The Droit des Gens passed through many editions, and was translated into various languages (English in 1760). VAUBAN, SEBASTIEN LE PKESTRE DE (1633-1707), marshal of France, was born in the neighbourhood of Saulieu in Burgundy (now in the department of Cote-d Or) on 15th May 1633. At an early age he was left an orphan in very poor circumstances, and his boyhood and youth were spent among the peasantry of his native place, thus enabling him to gain that sympathetic insight into the condition of the agricultural classes which he afterwards showed in his economic writings. He owed his early education and his first instruction in the rudiments of mathematics and surveying to a friendly cure, who had taken an interest in him and discerned his abilities. At the age of seventeen he joined the Spanish troops under the prince of Conde, but after about a year s campaigning was taken prisoner by the French. He then became known to Mazarin, who treated him with kindness and enlisted him in the service of the king. In 1653 he first earned repute as an engineer by the share he had in the capture of Sainte-Menehould, and after further distinction at Stenay and Clermont he was given a lieutenancy and re ceived in 1655 his commission as an &quot;ingenieur du roi.&quot; Be tween that year and the peace of 1659 he took part in numerous successful sieges especially those of Graveline.s, Ypres, and Oudenarde. After the cession of Dunkirk, Fort XXIV. --15