Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/80

68 respondence united ecclesiastical persons of several nations in co-operation for the same end. Conferences were held in France, Belgium, and Germany, to organise an opposition. Pamphlets and treatises were written on the eve of the assembling of the Council. But this was not all. In the year 1869, the Bavarian government was inspired to address itself to all the governments of Europe, inviting them to unite in opposition to the Council, which was to meet on the 8th of December in that year. A document was sent, dated the 9th of April 1869—that is, eight months before—with the signature of Prince Hohenlohe, then minister at Munich, the internal evidence of which revealed the hand from which it came. The object of these documents was to inspire all the civil powers of Europe with suspicion and alarm, and to combine them in active resistance to prevent the definition of the infallibility of the head of the Church. Prince Hohenlohe in his despatch said:—"The only dogmatic thesis which Rome would wish to have decided by the Council, and which the Jesuits in Italy and Germany are now agitating, is the question of the infallibility of the Pope." How Prince Hohenlohe should know the wish of Rome with such exclusive precision, he did not tell us. He then goes on to say:—"I thought the initiative in so important a matter should be taken by