Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/79

Rh We will now take up once more our narrative of events.

11. From the year 1833, when Gregory the Sixteenth condemned certain political writings in France, and from the year when Pius the Ninth condemned the attempt made in Germany by certain professors to withdraw politics and science from the cognisance and guidance of revelation, a school had existed in both countries hostile to the authority of Rome. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the acts and declarations of the Centenary should have called such adversaries into greater activity. In France appeared various writings of a lighter or of a more extensive kind, which need no longer be enumerated by name. In Germany, in the year 1868, appeared the work entitled Janus, an elaborate attempt of many hands to destroy, by profuse misrepresentations of history, the authority of the Pope, and to create animosity against the future Council. The fable, that the infallibility was to be defined by acclamation, was first formally announced in Janus. The work was promptly translated into English, French, and Italian. It was understood that in England and in France a number of writers had divided among themselves certain portions of historical controversy by which it was intended to render the definition of the infallibility impossible. An active cor-