Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/261

* ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 237 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. fruitful missionary fields from which a host of new Christians were recruited. The work of the missionaries of the first half of the sixteenth century, typically repre- sented at its sublimest in the lies of such men as Saint Francis Xavier and Bartolom6 de las Casas, breathe the true apostolic spirit. After the missions the most impcjrtant work of the C'iuireh during the sixteenth century was the revival of education. This, like nuich of the missionary work, was due mainly to the .(csuits, who established colleges in all the countries which remained imtouched by the Reformat inn, and also in parts of Germany. Other teaching Orders, especially of women, took their rise or were revived in spirit at the end of this century, and for the next two hundred j'ears practically mo- nopolized such feminine education as there was. Xew elements were of necessity introduced into the political relations of the Church after the Reformation. The final loss of England, Scot- land, and Scandinavia; the consolidation of the non-Catholic powers; the mercantile predomi- nance acquired by Holland, while the power of Venice and Genoa was waning;, the colonial enterprise of Protestant England, at the expenseof the interests of Spain and Portugal ; the growth of a mighty empire in the East uuder the Czars, which was viltimately to involve the de- struction of the Catholic Kingdom of Poland — all these causes tended to restrict the influence of the See which had a century earlier been ac- knowledged as the spiritual head of all Christen- dom. Austria and Spain assumed the rOle of defenders of the Catholic Church. France, after the crisis of the religious wars and the sub- mission of Henry IV., became alternately the principal support of the Catholic cause and the greatest menace to the Pope's claims of jurisdiction. A succession of sagacious pontiffs were aided in their work by a large number of saintly individuals, whose lives drew men into the Church and confirmed the wavering — Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Francis de Sales, and others. During the seventeenth century the same forces were at work within the Church. The number of students in Jesuit colleges increased before 1700 to nearly 200.000. Foreign missions pros- pered wonderfully in China (under Father Jlat- thew Ricci, S..J. ), India, and .Japan. The Reduc- tions of Paraguaj' ofi'ered a shining example of the successful organization of a Christian com- munity among recent converts from heathen bar- barism. In Europe, however, the stubborn spirit of Jan- senism (q.v.) for almost a hundred years threat- ened the peace of the Church. Though it was ultimately suppressed, it left its mark upon the Churcli of France in the spirit of Gallicanism, which implies nationalism in ecclesiastical organ- ization and discipline, as opposed to the s.vstem of unification of all Christian peoples round the one centre. (See G-iLLiCiN Church.) At the same time in Central Europe the nations who had separated themselves from this unity were daily growing in material prosperity, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Spanish and Portuguese missions in America, Africa, and Asia were in a great measure re- placed by Dutch Calvinists and English Protes- tants. Prussia rose to be a great Protestant State by the side of Catholic Austria. The long minority of Louis XV. of France, under the regency of the infidel Duke of Orleuiis, opencil the doors to the spread of a literature wliieh, under the general name of the Kncyclupa-dic School, treated the most vital doctrines of Chris- tianity as open questions. The dissolute reifjn of that King and the innuoral tone of his Court, which set the fashion for the rest of Europe, fo- mented a general discontent among the masses in France, which the relaxed discipline among the clergy was unable to counteract and wliidi rapid- ly spread throughout the rest of the Continent. yith the distinct object of eradicating Chris- tian doctrines, the secret societies which had ob- tained increasing power in all the court* of Europe began by singling out for attack the Society of Jesus, in which they rccugni/.«id the foremost champions of the liberties of the llolv See and of the old faith. Tlic war. which began by the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal and Brazil by Pombal. was carried on by the Bourbon kings of France, Spain, and Naples, who brought such pressure to bear on Pope Clement XIV. as to force him in ITi'.S to decree the suppression of the Order. The removal of the most prominent exponents of religious education had a marked efl'ect on the rising generation : and the attack on the other religious Orders, and eventually on the person of the Pope himself, could not be long delayed. The hostility to defi- nite and dogmatic religious organizations which was shown in many quarters during the last half of the eighteenth century found ex])ression espe- cially in the hostile attitude of the Emperor Joseph II., and reached its culmination in the decrees of the French Rcvidutionary Assembly. Since then, even in nominally Catholic States, the action of European governments has generally lieen characterized by complete disregard of the traditional principles which had for many cen- turies influenced their conduct. Personal vio- lence was offered to the Pope by Xapoleon ; and the nineteenth century was marked by the loss of the territory which had been subjected to Papal temporal jurisdiction, until in 1870 the last vestige of it, outside of the walls of the Vatican, disappeared. Yet in spite of all these changes the inherent vitalit}' of the Church has enabled it. in the con- cluding period, to gain in one direction what it lost in another. At .the close of the eigh- teenth century, when Pius VI. died in cajjtivity, those outside the Church spoke of the end of the Papacy. It was not until after thi; fall of Xapo- leon that Pius VII. was able to carry on hia sacred duties in freedom. One of his acts was the restoration of the .Tesuits, and. as before, they spread rapidly throughout the world, until again the principal Catholic schools came under their charge. In France the end of the first quarter of the century saw a reaction against the ration- alism of the eighteenth, and, under the teachings of many zealous missionaries, the mass of the people "returned to the faith of which many of them had grown up in practical ignorance. In England the famous Oxford Movement (q.v.) called the attention of the English-speak- ing world to the Church's claims, and the re- moval of the legal disabilities under which her members hid rested for three hundred years was the prelude to the restoration of an English hierarchy in 1850. Throughout the century there