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 CIVILIZATION 
 
 THE SEE OF ROME. 
 
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 LORD ROBERT MONTAGU, M.P. 
 
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CIVILIZATION 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SEE OF ROME. 
 
 -A. 1 L IE 3 O T XT IR, E 
 
 DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 
 
 * 
 
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 BY THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 LORD ROBERT MONTAGU, M.P. 
 
 ONE SHILLING. 
 
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 M'GLASHAN & GILL, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE STREET. 
 W. B. KELLY, 8 GRAFTON STREET. 
 
 1874. 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 ILLINOIS U3&&& 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 https://archive.org/details/civilizationseeoOOmont 
 
0 . 6 / 
 
 CIVILIZATION AND THE SEE OF ROME. 
 
 - — & — 
 
 On the 13TH of October, 1874, The Right Hon. Lord Robert 
 Montagu, M.P., delivered the following Lecture (the 
 
 FIRST DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE CATHOLIC UNION 
 
 of Ireland, and now published by it) in the Catholic 
 University, Dublin. The Right Hon. the Earl of 
 Granard, K.P., President of the Catholic Union, 
 presided on the occasion. 
 
 Have you ever attempted to picture, in imagination, the state of 
 society when Christianity began the work of redeeming it ? If you 
 have, you must have seen how, to human minds, the task would 
 have appeared hopelessly beyond the power of remedy. If you 
 have, you will be able to estimate the enormous difficulties which 
 had to be encountered, and appreciate the means by which we 
 know that those difficulties were surmounted, and the work, at last, 
 achieved. But if we shrink from this labour of historical imagina- 
 tion, we shall sink, in hopeless despair, at the sight of evils in these 
 days, which are less, indeed, in amount, but similar in character ; 
 and we shall foolishly despise those means which still exist, be- 
 cause they were instituted by our Lord as the only means of rescu- 
 ing society from the power of the devil. We may perchance call 
 them “ rusty weapons/' and may accuse the Church of “ furbishing 
 them up anew." 
 
 That is the subject to which, by a slight and hasty sketch, I 
 hope to draw the minds of the Catholic Union of Ireland to-night 
 — that Union whose end is “ to guard our faith from assaults, and 
 to assert the rights of the Church, which are invaded, and to up- 
 hold the injured honour of religion and of God." 
 
 We must first turn our eyes for a few moments to the society of 
 the Roman Empire, which was utterly effete, cruel, sunk in luxury, 
 and given up to immorality in its grossest and most revolting 
 forms. We must, in the next place, regard the more manly, but 
 fierce and violent barbarians, who came and mingled themselves 
 with that Roman society, adding to all the evils of animal sensu- 
 ality the savageness and ferocity of wild beasts. 
 
4 
 
 The evils, which I shall touch lightly upon, may be divided into 
 four classes. 
 
 (i.) Oppression of the poor. 
 
 (2.) Swinish debauchery of the rich. 
 
 (3.) Disregard of law and justice. 
 
 (4.) The continual conflicts between states. 
 
 On these revolting parts of the picture I shall not detain you 
 long ; for it will be far more agreeable and instructive to dwell 
 upon the remedy which was successful in removing them. In 
 conclusion, I will ask you to consider for yourselves whether similar 
 evils are not again beginning to invade society, simply because the 
 world now persists in ignoring and despising — nay, rather, hating — 
 the remedy which our Lord devised. 
 
 I take the first class. (1.) In the Roman Empire, the poor — 
 the labouring men — were all slaves. Neither in town nor in the 
 country was any work done except by slaves. How much does 
 that one word tell us of the condition of the working classes at the 
 beginning of the Christian era ! A slave was not a person but a 
 chattel — a thing, or possession, destined merely to subserve the 
 will of his- or her master. The only end of the slave’s life was to 
 minister to that master’s pleasures. 
 
 That was the condition of the great majority of the inhabitants 
 of the Roman Empire. Athenseus asserts that many Roman 
 families possessed as many as 10,000 or even 20,000 slaves a-piece. 
 The slave population, according to Tacitus, greatly exceeded the 
 free population. 
 
 What was the treatment of this vast majority of the population ? 
 In what did some of the pleasures of the masters consist ? Pollio 
 narrates that the lampreys in the fish-ponds of the Roman patri- 
 cians were fatted with the flesh of slaves. Sometimes the slaves 
 were subjected to a wholesale slaughter, partly to feast the blood- 
 thirsty eyes of their proprietors, and partly to allay their suspicious 
 fears, or to glut their desire for some petty revenge. Sometimes 
 hundreds of slaves were put to the torture, in order to extort from 
 them the knowledge of one offender. It is related in history that a 
 man of consular rank was murdered, and that all his slaves, some 
 thousands, were at once led out to execution. 
 
 As late as 250 years after the birth of our Lord, the Roman 
 Empire extended from the Western Ocean to the Tigris, and from 
 Mount Atlas to the Rhine and the Danube. But, says Gibbon, 
 all that 250 years “had been consumed in apparent prosperity and 
 internal decline.” Throughout that vast tract of country “ the 
 industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long 
 series of oppression ” [vol. i., p. 243]. With regard to one part of 
 that Empire, viz., Gaul, he adds that [vol. ii., p. 118] “during the long 
 series of troubles which agitated Gaul, from the reign of Gallienus 
 
5 
 
 to that of Diocletian, the condition of the servile peasants was 
 peculiarly miserable ; and they experienced at once the compli- 
 cated tyranny of their masters, of the barbarians, of the soldiers, 
 and of the officers of the revenue.” Let that suffice to give us an in- 
 sight into the condition of the poor in the Roman Empire. Let us now 
 pass to the second head — the swinish debauchery of Roman society. 
 
 (2.) To learn the depths to which this cancer had eaten into 
 the vitals of Roman society, we may fitly read the first chapter of 
 St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Or let us hear, from Gibbon’s 
 History [vol. i., p. 158], the character of an emperor which the 
 Romans regarded as not inglorious : — “ Every sentiment of virtue 
 
 and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus 
 
 He valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded 
 license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent 
 in a seraglio of beautiful women, and as many boys, of every rank 
 and of every province ; and wherever the arts of seduction proved 
 ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence.” This low 
 animal life pervaded every rank of society. The butcheries of the 
 circus were always accompanied by the lowest debauchery in its 
 precincts ; and the coarsest animal appetites were fostered and 
 encouraged by the scenes of lust and blood on which the people 
 feasted their eyes. 
 
 (3.) But let us turn from the precincts of the circus to the am- 
 phitheatre itself, while we consider the third head into which we 
 have divided the character of the Roman Empire : namely, the 
 disregard of law and justice. How could there be a sense of law 
 in a people whose amusement was butchery — a people who were 
 born in the midst of butchery, and brought up to relish slaughter 
 and butchery? Tertullian [De Spectaculis, c. 19] regarded these 
 amusements of the Roman people as the very acme of “ cruelty, 
 impiety, and beastiality.” He said that they originated in devil- 
 worship, and were maintained in the interests of devils. Pliny 
 recounts a fight in one of these arenas between 20 wild elephants 
 and 600 poor captives. He mentions also some “games” — 
 (games, indeed !) — which were given by Trajan, that excellent 
 emperor ! — games of 120 days, in which 10,000 men and more 
 than 10,000 beasts had to do battle unto death. 
 
 In those fights it was the sacred virgins who, by reversing the 
 thumb, devoted the poor wounded and vanquished combatant to 
 his doom. Some sawdust was then sprinkled over his blood, a 
 hook was thrust into his ribs, and he was dragged from the arena 
 and thrown into a gory pit, while another gladiator was quickly 
 turned in to take his place, Such was the pleasure of the 
 Roman people ! Men were “butchered to make a Roman holiday.” 
 
 The disregard for law and justice did not stop there. Gibbon 
 informs us [vol. ii., p. 212] that the whole empire was full of 
 
6 
 
 sycophants and delators, whose only business was to bring false 
 accusations of crime against the rich, and to substantiate their 
 false assertions by false oaths. The aim of these men was the 
 confiscation of the property of the wealthy, which then became their 
 booty. The emperor himself was at the head of this universal gang 
 of bandits. “ He filled Rome and Italy (says Gibbon), as well as 
 Africa, with armed troops, connived at their tumults, suffered them 
 with impunity to plunder and even to massacre the defenceless 
 people ; and, indulging them in the same licentiousness which 
 their emperor enjoyed, Maxentius often bestowed on his military 
 . favourites the splendid villa, or the beautiful wife of a senator.” More- 
 over, the country was overrun by hordes of tax-gatherers and other 
 officials. We are told by Latin writers that the number who ex- 
 torted taxes was greater than the number of those who paid them. 
 They exacted innumerable imposts, when imposts were not due. 
 They forced their way into houses, to take inventories of things, 
 or to find some article which they might pretend to be liable to 
 taxation. They even put men and women to the torture, so that 
 they, in order to escape, might, in their pain, confess to the pos- 
 session of some article on which imposts could be laid, although 
 they did not possess it. Such a system ruined the whole empire, 
 but it desolated Gaul. [Lactantius. De mortibus persecutorum. 
 7 & 23, and Ozanam. Etudes Germ, i., p. 424.] 
 
 I cannot conclude this picture of Roman society better than by 
 a quotation from Count de Champagny [Les Cesars, vol. ii., p. 
 209] : — “ The despotic government came to the rescue, as the only 
 possible government, for keeping in check, on the one hand, the 
 masses of proletaires and slaves who were irritated by suffering ; 
 and for coercing, on the other, beneath a rule both sanguinary and 
 ignominious, an aristocracy which was ambitious and quarrelsome, 
 aspiring after power, and ever ready to raise the standard of civil 
 war.” 
 
 Such then was the society of the Romans — effeminate, sunk in 
 luxury, steeped in the grossest immorality, regardless of law and 
 justice; and yet, in spite of their effeminacy, ready to commit 
 murders, or even to revolt whenever they could do so with im- 
 punity. Let us now pass to that society of the barbarians, which 
 was superadded to the Roman society before the time that the 
 Christian Church began, on a great scale, her work of reformation. 
 These barbarians we shall find to be less luxurious, and more manly, 
 but, withal, fierce and violent. With the exception of excessive 
 drink, we may therefore consider that, in their case, the first three 
 species of evils are undeserving of lengthened notice ; while the 
 vices of the fourth head (of which the Romans were deficient, in 
 consequence of their effeminacy) will now stand out in bold relief. 
 “With the exception of excessive drink,” I said; because we 
 
7 
 
 learn from Tacitus that the Romans encouraged the passion for 
 drink among the Germans. They did this in order to reduce by 
 debauchery, those whom they had failed to conquer by force of 
 arms. For the same reason (according to Tacitus) they also sowed 
 hatreds, and stirred up dissensions, and fanned the flames of war 
 among the barbarian tribes. “ To kill and to rob,” said he, “that 
 was the age ; the Romans made a solitude, and called it peace.” 
 [Agricola 30.] 
 
 (4.) In their own conduct towards the barbarians, the Romans 
 did even more to increase the natural ferocity of manners. For, 
 by the indiscriminate slaughter of men and destruction of buildings, 
 they added, in the breasts of the barbarians, the thirst for vengeance 
 to their savageness of disposition, and aroused the natural impla- 
 cability of temper of those who were about to form the dominant 
 part of Roman society. Pollio quotes a letter of Maximinus to 
 the Senate, in which he says : — “ For 400 miles we have burned 
 all the German villages, we have carried off all their cattle, and we 
 have taken as captives those who were unarmed, while we killed all 
 who were found with arms.” The unarmed were, of course, reserved 
 for the butcheries of the circus, or the debaucheries of the seraglio. 
 
 The disposition of the Germans, thus excited by the Romans, 
 has been pictured by S. Salvian [De Gub : Dei, lib. vi.], in de- 
 scribing Treves : “ The first city of the Gauls was thrice destroyed. 
 The whole town had become one sepulchre. Through woes in- 
 creasing with each destruction, those who had evaded the enemy, 
 in the demolition of the city, could not escape the calamities 
 which succeeded the demolition .... Some died from hunger ; 
 from nakedness, some; others by fever; others by exposure to 
 cold ; and so by divers ways all reached that one sepulchre of 
 death together ... I myself have seen (aye, and I lived after 
 witnessing such a spectacle !) — I have seen, lying about in every 
 place, the corpses of men and women, wounded, naked, unchastely 
 offending the eye, and mangled by birds and dogs. The funereal 
 smell of the dead was a deadly pestilence for the living ; death 
 was exhaled from death.” 
 
 The Goths invaded Italy, a.d. 250 : “A fierce multitude,” says 
 Gibbon [vol. i., p. 398.] — a multitude, because it was not at one ; 
 it was not organized ; it was at war with itself ; it “ was agitated 
 by various and often hostile intentions.” Germany itself was 
 divided into forty independent states, which were always at war. 
 Each state was subdivided into tribes, whose “ union” says Gibbon, 
 “ was rextremely loose and precarious. The barbarians were easily 
 provoked ; they knew not how to forgive an injury, much less an 
 insult. Their resentments were bloody and implacable. The 
 casual disputes that so frequently happened in their tumultuous 
 parties of hunting or drinking, were sufficient to inflame the minds 
 
8 
 
 of whole nations ; the private feud of any considerable chieftains 
 diffused itself among their followers and allies. To chastise the 
 insolent, or to plunder the defenceless, were alike causes of war.” 
 
 The Franks [Gibbon, i., 435] overran Gaul and Spain in a.d. 
 256. They are described as of “ an inconstant spirit, who disre- 
 garded the most solemn treaties.” “ Wretched cottages, scattered 
 amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still recorded, even as late 
 as the fifth century, the rage of these barbarians.” But the Huns 
 were the fiercest, the most debased, the most brutal of all the 
 barbarians. 
 
 The concluding sentence of Gibbon’s first volume testifies 
 admirably to the savageness of this element in the society which 
 the Christian Church was to civilize. For he expresses his belief 
 “ that war, pestilence, and famine had consumed, in a few years, 
 the moiety of the human species.” 
 
 These two elements — the debauched and profligate Roman and 
 the savage and bloody barbarian — were the warring components of 
 that society which Christianity was to redeem. A society— 
 
 “ where eldest night 
 
 And chaos held 
 
 Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
 Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. ” 
 
 [Milton. — Paradise Lost.] 
 
 That was the condition of society. What remedy could be 
 successful in reforming it ? 
 
 In the first ages of Christianity, from the death of our Lord to 
 the time of Nero, and from Nero until Constantine, in the 
 “sowing” and the “watering” times of the Church, Christians were 
 of absolutely no account. Their Master was a poor labourer, a 
 carpenter’s boy, who had been condemned and executed with the 
 death of the vilest malefactor. The first teachers of the Church 
 were a few ignorant fishermen, of a nation despised by the 
 Romans. It is true that men had observed how the members of 
 this obscure sect “ loved one another ;” and how they had “ all 
 things in common ” (which was the abolition of pauperism from 
 among them); and how (as Gibbon relates) [vol. ii., 315] the 
 Christian “ demonstrated his faith by his virtues.” But what was 
 this little sect in an overwhelming world of moral turpitude, 
 splendid luxury, high-handed lawlessness, and fierce and crushing 
 barbarism ! Christians were despised ; they were the butts for the 
 scoffs and jeers of the world; they were, as Tacitus tells us, 
 “ held in hatred and abhorrence by the human race.” All they 
 were good for was to be “butchered in the circus to make a Roman 
 holiday.” 
 
 Yet, look at that little society— despised as their Master was I 
 
9 
 
 It is working, silently, like leaven, in these three first centuries of 
 planting and watering. It snatches up one man here, and another 
 there, to live in darkened catacombs, or to die in glorious martyr- 
 dom. The heads of this little society— the succession of Popes — 
 were martyrs, crushed under the Pagan oppressor’s heel. How 
 can this little society, or these powerless Popes, ever do anything 
 to remedy the evils under which a hellish society was labouring ! 
 
 The stone was being cut out in the barren mountains. The 
 death of each Pope or martyr was a chip with God’s mallet and 
 chisel ; painful, but forming. At last the stone was cut out and 
 formed, and set a-rolling down the mountain slope to crush the feet 
 of iron and clay — the ten kingdoms of Latin and of Teutonic race. 
 
 Another age of Christianity has commenced. Let us take a 
 glance, as far as it affects our subject, at the constitution of this 
 society of Christians, as the curtain is drawn aside in the reign of 
 Constantine, to exhibit the drama of the world’s history. 
 
 We see this Christian society with a Pope at its head, who was 
 invested with a primacy of honour and jurisdiction, conferred on 
 St. Peter the first Pope, and on every one of his successors, by 
 our Lord himself. This primacy of the head of the Church 
 involved his jurisdiction both in government and in doctrine. This 
 jurisdiction or legitimate authority was a tota plenitudo supreme 
 potestatis to pasture and rule the Universal Church — an “ entire 
 plenitude of supreme authority/’ viz. : judicial, legislative, and 
 coercive. 
 
 As the curtain of obscurity is drawn aside, when Constantine 
 ascended the throne, we see, then, in the Pope, a supreme judge over 
 the whole Christian commonwealth, from whose sentence there was 
 no appeal ; a supreme lawgiver ; and the source of executive 
 power. To this plentitude of supreme authority there was added, 
 of course, a proportionate grace, by which it was sustained ; and, 
 to his divine mission and office of Teacher, there was attached 
 a security against error, whenever he spoke officially as Chief Pastor 
 of the Church on questions of faith and morals. That is, the assist- 
 ance of infallibility attached to the jurisdiction of the Head of the 
 Church, in all questions of faith and morals, whether in the form of 
 doctrine or of discipline, and in so far as it extended to faith and 
 morals ; while a large part of his jurisdiction or supreme authority 
 lay beyond his infallibility. Of this latter gift I do not require to 
 say more ; but I will speak further of the jurisdiction of the Popes. 
 
 Cardinal Antonelli thus explained it to the Nuncio at Paris, in 
 a despatch written on March 19th, 1870. “ The arguments ad- 
 
 vanced in this projected constitution (of the Vatican Council) and 
 in the subjoined canons . . . . do no more than expound the 
 
 maxims and fundamental principles of the Church ; principles which 
 have been many times reiterated in the acts of preceding General 
 
10 
 
 Councils, and enunciated and developed in similar Pontifical con- 
 stitutions, which have been published in all Catholic States of the 
 world ; . . . principles, in fine, which have always formed the basis 
 of the teaching of the Church in all ages. . . . . The Church 
 having received from God the high mission of directing men, 
 whether individually or as constituted together in a society, 
 towards a supernatural end, received thereby not only the 
 authority but also the duty to judge of the morality and justice of 
 all their acts, whether domestic or foreign, in respect of their con- 
 formity to law, natural and divine. And as no action, whether com- 
 manded by a sovereign authority as means to some political end, 
 or voluntarily committed by an individual, can escape the character 
 of morality and justice, so it comes to be that the judgment of the 
 Church, although directly touching the morality of those acts, yet 
 indirectly extends to the acts themselves which are affected with 
 that moral character.” 
 
 The following is the authoritative declaration [Dogmatic Const, 
 of the Church, cap, iii.] : — “ If, then, anyone shall say that the 
 Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, 
 and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the Universal 
 Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but 
 also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the 
 Church spread throughout the world ; or assert that he possesses 
 merely the principal part, and not all the fulness of this supreme 
 power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and 
 immediate, both over each and all the Churches, and over each 
 and all the Pastors and faithful — let him be anathema.” The 
 next chapter begins by the assertion that the power of teaching is 
 comprehended in the Apostolic Primacy. 
 
 Again — the present Pontiff used these words in replying to the Ad- 
 dress from the Academia of the Catholic Religion (July 21st, 1871): — 
 “ There are many errors regarding the infallibility; but the most mali- 
 cious of all is that which includes, in that dogma, the right of deposing 
 sovereigns and declaring the people no longer bound by the obli- 
 gation of fidelity. This right has now and again, in critical cir- 
 cumstances, been exercised by the Pontiffs ; but it has nothing to 
 do with Papal infallibility. Its origin was not the infallibility, but 
 the authority of the Pope. This authority — in accordance with 
 public right, which was then vigorous, and with the acquiescence 
 of all Christian nations, who reverenced, in the Pope, the supreme 
 judge of the Christian Commonwealth — extended so far as to pass 
 judgment, even in civil affairs, on the acts of princes and of 
 nations.” 
 
 Pope Innocent III., speaking of “ this constitution as not 
 human, but divine,” wrote that — “ There is no one of sane mind 
 who doubts that it is part of our office to snatch every Christian of 
 
1 1 
 
 every rank from every kind of mortal sin.” Again : “ It is not 
 only in our power, but our duty, to judge and censure everyone 
 for sin.” 
 
 Every Pontiff inflicted punishments in exercise of his right as 
 Supreme Ruler over the Christian Commonwealth, in which all 
 Christian nations were united in a divine federation. A punish- 
 ment is an act of the coercitive or executive power, which supposes 
 authority in him who inflicts it. It follows on an act of the judi- 
 cial power, which itself follows only on an act of legislative power. 
 The three powers are united in the Pope. 
 
 The Gallicans, even, who denied the Pope’s infallibility, always 
 recognised his legislative, judicial, and coercitive powers; his 
 right to punish princes whenever they abused their civil jurisdic- 
 tion. Gerson, for example, wrote : “ All men, princes and others, 
 are subject to the Pope, in so far as they might choose to make a 
 bad use of their jurisdictions, temporality, and dominion, in con- 
 travention of the Divine and Natural Law.” 
 
 This jurisdiction or authority was not exercised by the Pope 
 alone, but streamed down from him to the bishops in their sees, 
 and from the bishops to the priests in their parishes. We learn 
 from Cardinal Matthieu that the bishops, before the time of Con- 
 stantine, used to act as arbitrators in disputes, so as to obviate the 
 necessity of “ going to law, and that, too, before unbelievers.” 
 From the time of Constantine their jurisdiction was recognised by 
 the State. Before Constantine, the episcopal sentence was enforced 
 only by the inherent authority of justice and the consent of the 
 parties; but after Constantine the episcopal judgment had the 
 force of civil law ; and either party in a dispute might refuse to 
 be judged in a secular court, and thus bring the matter before the 
 episcopal court. In the year 368, Valentinian and Valens [Cod. 
 Just., lib. i., tit. iv.] gave the bishops the charge of preventing 
 frauds by merchants and traders, and of exacting reparation if any 
 fraud had been "committed. Subsequently the emperors extended 
 this power to all cases in which the poor, the weak, or prisoners, 
 or persons who were otherwise helpless, had suffered any injury. 
 Soon the bishops were made the civil governors, and even civil 
 legislators of towns, the heads of the police, the guardians of the 
 municipal purse, the surveyors and judges of weights and mea- 
 sures. [Cod. Just., lib. i., tit. iv.] 
 
 The Council of Sardica (which declared that the final judgment, 
 or judgment without appeal, in major causes, did not lie in the 
 bishops, but that an appeal might be had to the Pope) was held 
 in the year 347. But it appears from Pope Innocent’s letter that 
 such an appeal to the Pope, in the graver cases, was “ an ancient 
 custom” even in the year a.d. 404. For he wrote in that year to 
 the Archbishop of Rouen— “ If grave cases are brought into judg- 
 
12 
 
 ment, the bishop’s sentence may be passed, but a reference must 
 then be allowed to the Apostolic See, as the Sardican Synod 
 ordered, and as the ancient custom requires.” 
 
 That was the remedy for the evils of society which was prepared 
 by Jesus Christ. Now let us see how it worked. 
 
 Before narrating a few examples, I must briefly allude to some 
 of the means employed by the coercitive power in its action. 
 From the time of the persecutions, shortly after the end of the 
 third century, the Church ordained various humiliating practices 
 of public penance for sinners guilty of any grievous mortal sin, 
 however secret. Such a public penance disqualified the sinner, 
 at least until he had been reconciled with the Church, from hold- 
 ing any civil office, from engaging in secular affairs, or attending 
 a feast, or returning to the army, or pleading in any legal court, 
 or embarking in commerce. It also imposed the duty of perfect 
 chastity on married persons and celibacy on the unmarried. This 
 disciplinary system was in complete vigour until the eighth century, 
 when it became relaxed ; but it was somewhat revived, owing to an 
 increase of moral laxity, in the twelfth century. The sentence of 
 excommunication was the severest ecclesiastical punishment. The 
 excommunicated person was outlawed from human society ; and 
 no one, not even a relative, was allowed to hold intercourse with 
 him, except for the mere indispensable necessities of life ; he was 
 declared infamous, and lost all civil rights ; and, in cases of ob- 
 duracy, was deprived of his property in favour of his legitimate heir. 
 He might not even enter a church, nor might any Christian eat 
 with him. [See, for example, the Constitution of Childebert, a.d. 
 595 ; and the Council of Verneuil, a.d. 755; and the Constitution of 
 Ethelred, King of England, a.d. 1008 ; and the Laws of Canute, 
 &c.] M. Guizot, a Protestant, in his 6th Lecture on the History 
 of Civilization, writes : “ The Church worked hard, and in a most 
 efficacious manner for the amelioration of the social state. . . . 
 
 There is among the institutions of the Church, one which generally 
 passes with too little notice : I speak of her penitentiary system — a 
 system which is, in these days, a curious subject of study, seeing that 
 her principles and her applications of penal justice were completely 
 in accordance with the ideas of philosophy. If you study the punish- 
 ments awarded by the Church — the public penances, for example, 
 which were her principal chastisements — you will observe that 
 they were calculated to excite a feeling of contrition in the mind 
 of the guilty person ; and, in the minds of the spectators, a whole- 
 some fear at his example.” 
 
 Let me now enumerate a few facts from history, in order to show 
 how the Church worked for the amelioration of society. We 
 divided, under four heads, the evils which called for remedy : 
 
13 
 
 (i.) Oppression of the poor. 
 
 (2.) Moral turpitude or debauchery. 
 
 (2.) Lawlessness or injustice. 
 
 (4.) Wars. 
 
 (1.) The oppression of the poor, in the earliest days of Chris- 
 tianity, appeared as the institution of slavery. The Church freed 
 the slave. She attacked the evil at the root — not by inciting the 
 slaves to revolt, for in no case was any violence used ; but by 
 working upon the minds and principles of the masters. As early 
 as the second century, Hermes, the Prefect of Rome, was con- 
 verted to Christianity by Pope Alexander ; his slaves, to the 
 number of 1250, were also converted, and, on receiving the sacra- 
 ment of baptism, were proclaimed freemen and brothers. Under 
 Diocletian, another Prefect of Rome was converted, and manu- 
 mitted 1,400 slaves, in like manner. For the Church made the 
 manumission of slaves a religious duty and a religious service. 
 Before the altar of sacrifice, the master pronounced these words : 
 “ In the name of God, and for the good of my soul, for the re- 
 demption of my sins, and in the hope that the Lord will deign to 
 pardon me, I set at liberty my slave, named M. or N. From this 
 day let him be free as if he had been born of free parents. Let 
 all that he can gain and accumulate by his work and by the grace 
 of Christ be his property f and soforth. 
 
 The Council of Orange, a.d. 441, forbade, under pain of ex- 
 communication, the reduction to slavery again of anyone whom 
 the Church had freed. Another Council, shortly afterwards, di- 
 rected that any slave who should take refuge in a church, even if 
 he had committed a fault, should not be rendered up to his master, 
 unless the master should take an oath not to do him any harm. 
 
 A Council in a.d. 517 pronounced excommunication on everyone 
 who should kill a slave without trial and the sentence of a judge. 
 
 By such action, continued through many centuries, slavery was 
 at last abolished. 
 
 It would take too much time to explain the constant en- 
 deavours of the Church to ameliorate the condition of poor work- 
 ing men. I will here merely mention one fact of enormous sig- 
 nificance. The jurisdiction — which streamed down ’from the Hea.d 
 of the Church, through the whole hierarchy of bishops throughout 
 the world, to the priests of the Universal Church — was everywhere 
 employed in protecting the poor man from injustice and oppres- 
 sion, and furnishing him with a court where he could, without ex- 
 pense, establish his rights against the rich and powerful. Thus 
 Mohler [Manual of the Hist, of the Middle Ages] writes : “ Who- 
 ever had cause of complaint against the emperor, or against the 
 king who was his more immediate ruler, had the right to cite the 
 oppressor before the tribunal of the Holy See. The emperor, on the 
 
14 
 
 other hand, and the other princes had, on the very same ground, 
 the right to claim that justice should be done at Rome against 
 their recalcitrant vassals.” The Protestant historian and states- 
 man, M. Guizot, alludes to the same system of universal justice 
 [“ Cours d’Histoire Moderne,” No. 6], and says : “ From the miser- 
 able dwelling of the serf, which stood at the foot of the great 
 feudal castle, up to the presence of the sovereign, everywhere 
 there was a priest. He was associated with all ranks and conditions 
 of men. . . . The bishops — the chiefs of the Christian clergy — 
 were, moreover, engaged in a feudal organization ; they were at the 
 same time members of a civil and of an ecclesiastical hierarchy.” 
 
 (2.) Let this much suffice for a subject on which an interesting 
 volume might be written. We must pass to the second head, namely, 
 moral turpitude. In turning hastily over the pages of history, we find 
 Pope Nicholas the Great carrying on a contest with Lothaire II., 
 King of Lorraine (the son of the Emperor LothaireL, and grandson 
 of Louis le Debonnaire, who had himself been deposed by the 
 French bishops in the year 833). Why had the HolySee this contest 
 with the king? Because his majesty was about to put away his 
 lawful wife, Teutberga, and marry Waldrade, with whom he had 
 been carrying on an illicit commerce ; and the Pope, not being 
 worldly-minded, was zealous to prevent the commission of crime 
 in high places as well as in the lower ranks of society. The Pope 
 was successful. But after the death of Nicholas I., Lothaire re- 
 sumed his guilty intention. Pope Adrian II. was of the same 
 mind as his predecessor, and in the year 869 excommunicated the 
 king, and all who were privy to the design. The king there- 
 upon made haste to submit, and was absolved, on his swearing that 
 he had forever renounced Waldrade. But he swore falsely; and died 
 within a month. In the year 998, we find that Pope Gregory V., 
 in like manner, excommunicated King Robert, for his incestuous 
 marriage with Bertha. 
 
 The Emperor Henry IV. had filled his palace with the frail 
 victims of his debauches, and was about to put away his wife 
 Praxedes. Pope Alexander II. intervened to protect the rights 
 of the lawful wife, and prevent so great a wrong from being per- 
 petrated by the most powerful man of the time. In the year 1088, 
 St. Gregory VII., and again in the year 1094, Pope Urban II., ex- 
 communicated Philip I., King of France, for an adulterous inter- 
 course, and then an unlawful marriage with Bertrade. King Philip 
 had poisoned his Queen Bertha, and married the notorious Ber- 
 trade de Montfort. The Pope, on hearing of it, rebuked him ; 
 and as he did not become penitent, he was excommunicated. 
 Four years later (in the year 1098) the same Pope Urban II. ex- 
 communicated King Philip II. for his adulterous connection with 
 Agnes de M^ranie. In 1213, Pope Innocent III. had to put all 
 
i5 
 
 France under an interdict, until King Philip Augustus took back 
 his wife Ingerberg. He also constrained the King of Leon, in 
 Spain, to separate from his niece, whom he had incestuously 
 married. Let me cite one more example nearer home. In 1534, 
 Pope Clement VII., after most earnest paternal entreaties to King 
 Henry VIII. to dismiss his concubine, Anna Boleyn, and take back 
 his lawful wife, at last excommunicated him. In December, 1538, 
 Pope Paul III., finding him obdurate, cited him to appear at Rome 
 within three months, to submit himself to the judgment of the Holy 
 See. As he disobeyed this citation, the Pope not only repeated the 
 excommunication, but forfeited the king’s right to reign, and absolved 
 all his subjects from their allegiance. We all know that the 
 origin of the Anglican Church was a consequence of the king’s 
 immorality. 
 
 (3.) We must now hurry on to the third head — lawlessness or 
 injustice. M. Guizot, the statesman and historian, writes these 
 words in his second lecture : — “ If the Christian Church had not 
 existed, the whole world would have been delivered over to mere 
 brpte force. She alone exerted a moral power. She did more ; 
 she observed, and she inculcated the idea of rule, the idea of a 
 law above all human laws. She herself professed this belief (so 
 essential to the rescuing of humanity), that there is, above all 
 human laws, a law which ... is, at all times and in all 
 places, the same law. . . . There was another cause which 
 
 also led to the same result : the frightful condition of the temporal 
 order of things, the violence, the iniquity which was dominant in 
 the secular government of all societies. Lately persons have 
 talked at their ease of ‘ the rights of the secular power ;’ but at 
 the period with which we are engaged, the secular power was 
 simply brute force — an intractable brigandage. The Church . . 
 
 was infinitely superior to such a secular power ; the earnest cry of 
 the people was ever urging her to take the place of the secular 
 power. . . . Generally speaking, whenever men lost their 
 
 liberties, it was the Christian Church which undertook to restore 
 those liberties. In the tenth century, nowhere was the people 
 able to defend itself, and to establish its rights in the face of the 
 violence of the State ; the Church then interfered in the name of 
 Heaven.” 
 
 Before narrating examples of the remedial influence of the Ploly 
 See, I desire to make a quotation from another historian, who is 
 not only Protestant, but also most bitter against the Catholic 
 Church. In Mr. Froude’s first volume, we read these words 
 “ In the Middle Ages, a lofty effort had been made to overpass 
 the common limitations of government, to introduce punishments 
 for sins as well as crimes, and to visit with temporal penalties the 
 breach of the moral law. The punishment best adapted for such 
 
i6 
 
 offences was some outward expression of the disapproval with 
 which good men regard acts of sin ; some open disgrace ; some 
 spiritual censure ; some suspension of the communion with the 
 Church, accompanied by other consequences practically incon- 
 venient, to be continued until the offender had made reparation, 
 or had openly repented, or had given confirmed proof of amend- 
 ment. The administration of such a discipline fell, as a matter 
 of course, to the clergy. The clergy were the guardians of mo- 
 rality ; their characters were a claim to confidence ; their duties 
 gave them opportunities of observation which no other men could 
 possess ; while their priestly office gave solemn weight to their 
 sentences. Thus arose, throughout Europe, a system of spiritual 
 surveillance over the habits and conduct of every man, extending 
 from the cottage to the castle, taking note of all wrong-dealing, of 
 all oppression of man by man, of all licentiousness and profligacy, 
 and representing upon earth, in the principles by which it was 
 guided, the laws of the great tribunal of Almighty God. 
 
 “ Such was the origin of the Church Courts, perhaps the 
 greatest institutions ever yet devised by man. . . . Each pri- 
 
 vate person was liable to be called in question for every action *of 
 his life ; and an elaborate network of canon law, perpetually grow- 
 ing, enveloped the whole surface of society. . . . The mis- 
 
 demeanours of which these courts took cognizance — [See also 
 Hale’s Criminal Causes , from the Records of the Consistory 
 Court of London] — were ‘ offences against chastity, heresy, or 
 matter sounding thereunto, witchcraft, drunkenness, scandal, defa- 
 mation of character, impatient words, broken promises, untruths, 
 &c., & cl . . . Workmen were not allowed to take advantage 
 
 of the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages, 
 and capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their 
 holdings and destroy their healthy independence, &c.” Those are 
 the words of Mr. Froude. 
 
 I will now call your attention to a few historical examples under 
 this head. In the year 380 the city of Thessalonica revolted, and 
 put the governor to death. The emperor, as soon as he had re- 
 ceived intelligence of this catastrophe, gave an order, in anger, 
 that the citizens of Thessalonica should be exterminated. Pre- 
 sently milder counsels prevailed with him, and he revoked his 
 sanguinary decree. His second messenger, however, arrived too 
 late : for vengeance had already been taken. The emperor was 
 at Milan, and St. Ambrose, the archbishop, wrote to him a warn- 
 ing that the Holy Sacrifice would not be offered in his presence, 
 as his imperial majesty’s soul was stained with blood-guiltiness. 
 Yet the emperor came, in the morning, to the church. St. 
 Ambrose stood in the doorway, resolutely and fearlessly, and 
 forbade the emperor to enter. The emperor thereupon sub- 
 
*7 
 
 mitted ; and when he had performed a severe penance he received 
 absolution. 
 
 Pope Victor II. ascended the throne in the year 1054. After 
 assembling the Council of Florence, he travelled to Germany, 
 which was in revolt against the Emperor Henry III., in order 
 to give peace to the empire, and to unite the Imperial family, 
 which was torn by intestine quarrels. The emperor died (in 
 1056), after appointing the Pope as Regent, and guardian of Henry 
 IV. The Pontiff then succeeded in uniting all the princes of 
 Germany in friendly alliance, gaining for himself a loving re- 
 verence from each one ; for they all saw in him the Supreme 
 Father of all, and a just arbiter in all their dissensions. 
 
 Henry IV. had, however, a most cruel, violent, haughty, and 
 lawless temper, which the mildness of the Pope utterly failed to 
 calm. We shall presently find, therefore, that he was excommuni- 
 cated by Gregory VII. for oppressing his subjects. 
 
 About this time, Vezelin led a rebellion in Dalmatia against 
 Demetrius, his king ; but Gregory VII. stopped his lawless 
 career by these words: “We are exceedingly astonished that, 
 after having long since promised to be a vassal to St. Peter and to 
 us, you now attempt to rise up against him whom the Apostolical 
 authority has appointed King of Dalmatia. We, therefore, in 
 the name of St. Peter, prohibit you to take arms against the king ; 
 because, whatever you do against him, you do against the Holy 
 See itself. If you have any grounds of complaint, you should ask 
 justice of us, and wait for our decision. Otherwise, know that we 
 will draw against thee the sword of St. Peter, to punish thine 
 audacity, and the temerity of all those who shall favour thee in 
 this enterprise.” A short time previously the Saxon people re- 
 frained from rising against their oppressor, but appealed to Pope 
 Alexander II. for justice against the emperor for his tyranny. The 
 Pope judged their case, and excommunicated the emperor's evil 
 councillors, menacing the emperor himself with a like infliction, 
 unless he should govern somewhat more in accordance with the 
 laws of God. 
 
 In the year 1073, we find St. Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) re- 
 buking the Emperor Henry IV. for his excessive tyrannies, and 
 endeavouring to recall him from his evil ways. The emperor 
 refused to listen to the paternal warning, but was obdurate in his 
 oppressions and crimes. The Pontiff then pronounced the sen- 
 tence of excommunication. Presently he gave him absolution, on 
 the condition that he would submit his conduct' in accordance 
 with the laws of the empire, to a General Assembly of the German 
 barons, and to the final judgment of the Holy See. The emperor 
 shrank from the verdict of his barons. Four years later this great 
 and holy Pope met the emperor at Canossa, near Reggio. While 
 
 B 
 
i8 
 
 celebrating the Divine office, the Pontiff stopped short, and, hold- 
 ing up the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, with eyes upturned to 
 heaven, he solemnly swore that, as he looked for eternal salvation, 
 he had never acted but with a pure intention for the glory of God 
 and the happiness of the people. He then called aloud upon the 
 emperor, before the assembled multitude, to swear the same. The 
 emperor could not swear it, and was denied the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment. St. Gregory VII. soon afterwards wrote a Brief, saying 
 that he would teach rulers that no true sovereign is ever a tyrant ; 
 and (said he) “ we will furnish sovereigns with weapons of humility, 
 whereby they may be able effectually to war against the spirit of 
 pride.” 
 
 In the same year (1073), the Saxon people again complained 
 of continued oppressions, and joined the princes of Germany in 
 aiming at the deposition of the Emperor Henry, and the election 
 of Rudolf, Duke of Suabia, in his stead. Gregory VII. hastened 
 to order a suspension of arms, until he had fully investigated and 
 judged the quarrel, and decided what would be just and right. 
 
 In the year 12 11, that great Pope, Innocent III., excommuni- 
 cated John, King of England, and pronounced against him a 
 sentence of deposition for the murder of Prince Arthur. 
 
 In 1216, Pope Honorius III. commenced his reign by bringing 
 about a peace between Henry III., King of England, and his 
 revolted barons. 
 
 In 1230, we find the Emperor Frederick II., Red-beard or Tile- 
 beard (who had just made his submission to Pope Gregory IX., 
 and had promised amendment for the future), returning to his 
 former evil course of tyrannies and exactions. Genoa, Milan, and 
 Venice appealed to the Pope to save them. The Pontiff, after 
 finding entreaties to be of no avail, again excommunicated 
 Frederick. That was in the year 1239. Frederick replied by 
 ravaging Italy, and committing the most atrocious cruelties. Pope 
 Innocent IV. called a General Council at Lyons (1245), an d cited 
 Frederick to appear. At this Council the emperor was excom- 
 municated and deposed. 
 
 In 1275, King Demetrius was driven by rebels from the throne 
 of Russia, and appealed for justice to Pope Gregory X., as the 
 Supreme Judge and Universal Father of all Christians. In the 
 next year, Pope Innocent V. laboured successfully to make peace 
 between the towns of Pisa and Lucca, which were at feud, and to 
 calm excited passions in Florence, where blood had begun to flow 
 in civil broils. 
 
 In a few years (1282) Pope Martin IV. excommunicated 
 Peter III., King of Arragon, for usurping Sicily (as Prussia a few 
 years ago usurped Hanover), and deposed him from both those 
 thrones. 
 
x 9 
 
 Edward II. and Richard II. of England were also, in the pre- 
 ceding century (says De Maistre), formally judged and condemned 
 in the regular courts of the Holy See. After Gaveston was killed 
 by Thomas, Duke of Lancaster, grandson of Henry III. (1312), 
 the flames of civil war were lighted up between Edward II. and 
 his barons. The Pope put an end to the civil war and reconciled 
 the two parties. A few years later, Pope John XXI. charged the 
 Bishops of Dublin and of Cashel to endeavour to put an end to the 
 revolt in Ireland. The Irish fully acknowledged the authority of 
 the Holy See, as they always have done, and, I think, always will 
 do, but addressed to him a memoir of their grievances. The 
 Pontiff wrote (a.d. 1317 ) to the king in their favour, and the king 
 promised, in reply, that the Irish should be no more oppressed, 
 but should be treated with justice and gentleness. 
 
 At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Emperor Wen- 
 ceslaus was deposed by the Pope, because he was “ negligent of 
 his trust, unworthy and useless.” 
 
 In 1570 (February 25), Pope Pius V. issued a Bull against 
 Queen Elizabeth for persecuting the Catholics ; but the obdurate 
 queen was relentless. 
 
 The Church similarly endeavoured to put down the practice of 
 duelling. We find, for example, a decree of the Council of Trent 
 (Sess. 25. De Reform., cap. xix.) in these words : — “ The emperor, 
 kings, dukes, marquises, counts, and all temporal lords, who per- 
 mit duels on their properties, are, ipso facto, excommunicated and 
 deprived of their jurisdiction over that city, castle, or place, in or 
 near which they have permitted the duel, if such places are held 
 under the Church ; and, if they be feoffs, those feoffs immediately 
 revert to the direct lord. ... As to the duellists and their 
 seconds, they incur excommunication, the confiscation of all their 
 property, and perpetual infamy.” 
 
 Almost as soon, indeed, as the Church had issued from the 
 grievous persecutions by which she was nearly crushed during the 
 first three centuries, she applied herself resolutely to put down the 
 resort to violence which was then the custom. Thus the Council 
 of Arles (a.d. 443), in its 50th canon, interdicted the use of the 
 Church and the advantages of the sacraments to all persons who 
 had quarrelled, until they became sincerely reconciled. Ten years 
 later, the Council of Angers, in its 3rd canon, more strongly de- 
 nounced every act of violence. The Council of Agde, in Langue- 
 doc (a.d. 506) decreed, in the 31st canon, that if two persons who 
 had quarrelled should refuse to hear and obey the judgment of the 
 priest for determining the quarrel, they should be ipso facto excom- 
 municated. The Council of Lerida (a.d. 546) ordered, in the 
 7 th canon, that he who has sworn to pursue an enemy until death, 
 shall be under sentence of excommunication until he has done 
 
20 
 
 penance for the sinful oath, and become heartily reconciled with 
 his enemy. The 41st canon of the Council of Worms (a.d. 868) 
 excommunicated all persons who refused to lay aside their quarrels 
 and become friends. By the Council of Canterbury (a.d. 560) 
 three British kings were excommunicated ; Monric, King of Gla- 
 morgan, for killing King Cinetha ; King Morcant, for killing Tiac, 
 his uncle ; and King Guidnert, for killing his brother, who was a 
 competitor for his throne. These hardy Britons, however, sub- 
 mitted, did penance, and received absolution. 
 
 In the days when feudal barons levied private war upon each 
 other, “ The Truce of God ” was made a law of the Church ; it 
 ordained that no attack was to be made, and no violence should 
 be committed, and no fighting should take place on any of the 
 days of religious solemnity, nor from Friday morning until Monday 
 morning. The result of a violation of the Truce of God was 
 excommunication and banishment. By the Council of Narbonne 
 (a.d. 1045) the Truce was extended to the periods between the 
 first Sunday in Advent and the Octave of the Epiphany, between 
 Quinquagesima Sunday and the Octave of Easter, between the Sun- 
 day before Ascension and the Octave of Pentecost, and also to all 
 fast days and the greater saints’ days. It was also made to apply 
 to shepherds with their flocks, at all times of the year, and to all 
 houses within thirty paces of any church. Moreover, all men were 
 forbidden to take any steps to procure redress by violence, or to 
 make reprisals, until their case had been heard and judged by the 
 bishop. This was a great step to be secured in days when rights 
 were always determined by force, when men regarded might as 
 right, and it was held as mean not to revenge by violence any in- 
 sult or injury. 
 
 Pope Alexander II. confirmed the Truce of God in the year 
 1 068. In the year 1095 Pope Urban II. extended it from every 
 Thursday (instead of Friday) until Monday ; also to an enemy 
 who, when pursued, should take refuge under a cross. He also 
 decreed that every person, on reaching the age of twelve years, 
 should take a solemn oath to observe the Truce of God. Pope 
 Calixtus II. confirmed it at Rheims (a.d. 1119) ; and it was, again 
 enforced by the Council of Lateran (in 1123) and by Innocent II (in 
 the year 1130). In the year 1195 a universal Truce was proclaimed 
 for three years. without intermission. 
 
 Everyone has heard of the two political factions called the 
 Guelfs and the Ghibellines. Every city, every province, was 
 divided by these rival factions, and was vexed by their murderous 
 animosities. The impious race of the Hohenstauffen, and their 
 agents, the Ghibellines, were, like the secret societies of these days, 
 always busy fanning flames of hatred, and offering suggestions for 
 resorting to violence and fury, in the interests of private ambition 
 
2 
 
 or private gain. Their emissaries were in every place, secretly 
 lighting up the fires of discord in the hearts of great feudal lords ; 
 or in' towns, or in the midst of the family circle, sowing distrust 
 wherever it found that hatred had died out ; and corrupting, by 
 artifices and lies, the fidelity which was due to the Pope. So says 
 Cardinal Matthieu. What does he add ? “ The mission of Papal 
 
 Legates was everywhere to bring about peace and good-will among 
 men. They proposed just terms to rival towns and rival factions, 
 who were seeking to satisfy their thirst for private revenge . . . 
 Somehow a cessation of strife was always brought about, and the 
 towns or factions sent their deputies to the Holy See to receive 
 the just terms of peace.” 
 
 During this year (1874) the Carmelite Fathers have succeeded in 
 putting an end to a feud which had long raged in the County of 
 Limerick ; showing that the Church is, as ever, the Church of the 
 God of Peace and Justice. 
 
 Before proceeding to the last head, I must allude to one recent 
 example, when the Pope set himself resolutely against an infrac- 
 tion of law. When Napoleon I. had got all Europe into his 
 power, he attacked our trade, in order to cripple our resources. 
 Every secular government yielded concurrence and support to 
 this illegal act of Napoleon. The Holy See alone, in all Europe 
 (as we find in Cardinal Gonsalvi’s life), refused to sanction those 
 Berlin and Milan decrees, grounding his refusal on the maxim of 
 international law, that every alliance which prohibits a country 
 from holding intercourse with a nation from whom it had suffered 
 no wrong, is unjust and illegal. 
 
 (4.) We must now cut short our examples under this head, and 
 pass to the last head, namely, war between nations. If the Church, 
 bv her justice or righteousness, has raised society in respect to the 
 other species of evil, still more can she judge justly in this. For 
 the Universal Church must always be on both sides of every 
 quarrel between States, and be implicated, by some of her children, 
 with each party in a fight. She must, therefore, be impartial, as 
 her voice commands, in the name of the God of Righteousness, 
 her soldiers in the armies of both combatants, and her children on 
 both their territories. 
 
 All wars must, in the case of each combatant, be either just 
 or unjust. When a war is unjust or criminal, it is, as Pope 
 Innocent III. asserted, the duty of the Church to censure it ; 
 because, qui facet as sentit; and “ if the watchman does not speak to 
 warn the wicked man from his way, the wicked man will die in his 
 iniquity ; but God will require his blood at the hand of the watch- 
 man ” (Ez. xxxiii. 8) ; and St Thomas said : “ Every power, or 
 art, or virtue, to which the ultimate end belongs, must dispose of 
 all things which relate to that end. But, carnal wars, against a 
 
22 
 
 faithful people, must be referred to spiritual and divine good as 
 their end ; of which the clergy are the appointed judges.” 
 
 The cause of every war is crime ; for there must be two to make 
 a fight, and one at least must be in the wrong. “ But (you may 
 say) may it not be doubtful on which side the right lies ?” Pre- 
 cisely ; and if there is a doubt as to justice, it is a matter for the 
 decision of a judge, and not for violence. In former days, as we 
 have seen, when feudal barons had a dispute, their only thought 
 of settlement was a duel or a street fight. The Church put an end 
 to those resorts to violence, by bringing the matter for judgment. 
 If two claimants in these days have a dispute, it is sent before a 
 judge. No one dreams of arming adherents to test the point. So 
 in the affairs of nations, wars used frequently to be prevented by 
 the judgment of that Authority whom Christ set over the whole 
 commonwealth or federation of nations called Christendom, or the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 In the year 476, Odoacer, the Arian, having conquered Italy, and 
 overturned the Western Empire, concluded, at the instance of St. 
 Severinus, the Pope, a secure peace for a space of eleven years. 
 In 590, St. Gregory the Great terminated the war between the Lom- 
 bards and the emperor. Cardinal Matthieu says of him : “ The 
 confidence of the whole world made him become, during the thir- 
 teen years of his Pontificate, the universal arbiter of peace and 
 war.” Gibbon, speaking of the origin of the temporal power of 
 the Popes, said that St. Gregory had saved Italy from bloodshed 
 and destruction, and therefore had the best of titles to a supreme 
 authority. 
 
 Pope Zacharias (a.d. 741) went out with his bishops and clergy 
 to meet Luitprand, King of the Lombards, and made that monarch 
 spare the effusion of blood and conclude a peace with Italy and 
 the Duchy of Rome for a period of twenty years. Luitprand then 
 turned his arms against the Exarch of Ravenna, and took from him 
 many provinces. The Pope hastened to the spot, and, acting with 
 great energy, he stopped the war, saved Ravenna, and procured 
 the restoration of the conquered provinces. Astolphus, the next 
 King of the Lombards, broke the peace of Pope Zacharias, 
 seized Istria, Ravenna, and other provinces, and prepared to attack 
 the Duchy of Rome. The Pope caused him to conclude a peace 
 for forty years. In four months Astolphus broke the peace, and 
 the Pope had to fly for refuge to France. King Pepin instantly 
 prepared to make war on Astolphus. The Pope however 
 restrained his ardour, and enjoined him to offer peace, three times, 
 on the condition that Astolphus should restore the towns which he 
 had unjustly seized. A fourth time restitution was demanded ; for, 
 at the very last, the Pope wrote, conjuring Astolphus to do justly, 
 and thus save the effusion of blood. Astolphus refused to hear 
 
23 
 
 of justice, and his army was cut to pieces. Cardinal Orsi, who 
 mentions this fact, asserts that the Pope acted eminently in sup- 
 port of the rules of morality and the law of nations. 
 
 On the death of Astolphus (in 756), there were two claimants 
 to the throne, the brother of Astolphus and the Duke of Tuscany. 
 War was on the point of breaking out, and the Franks and Lom- 
 bards were ranging themselves, on opposite sides, when Pope 
 Stephen II. put an end to the strife, by investigating the case and 
 pronouncing a judgment in favour of the duke. This Pope was 
 consulted, as Supreme Judge, by peoples and sovereigns of the 
 whole world ; and the justice of his judgments enforced respect to 
 his decisions. 
 
 Pope Lando filled the Papal chair for only five months ; yet 
 during that time he succeeded in effecting a peace between 
 Berengarius,“King of Italy, and King Rudolf of Germany, who 
 were competitors for the Imperial throne. 
 
 In 914 John X. succeeded to the Papal throne. He caused the 
 Princes of Capua, Spoleto, Salerno, and Benvenuto, to lay aside 
 their animosities and enter into a close alliance ; thus securing 
 peace for the whole peninsula of Italy. 
 
 Under Pope John XV. (a.d. 990), Ethelred, King of Wessex, - 
 had a quarrel with Richard, Duke of Normandy. The question at 
 issue was investigated by the Pope, who sent a legate with a letter 
 to Normandy, and a letter of admonition to the English king. In 
 these letters the Pope “ testified his sorrow that his spiritual sons 
 should strive together, and conjured all the faithful in their respec- 
 tive kingdoms, for the love and fear of Almighty God and of St. 
 Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and in obedience to his own 
 fatherly admonition, to agree to a lasting peace with all men now 
 and thereafter, without reserve or deception. 5 ’ So the English 
 monarch sent an embassy to Normandy, and the terms of “ a per- 
 petual peace, which should never be disturbed, 55 were arranged. 
 They also bound themselves by a clause in the treaty, that “ if 
 at any time afterwards either of them should consider himself 
 wronged, the case should be submitted to the Pope, and the 
 wrongdoer should thereupon make restitution, so that peace 
 shall never more be broken. 55 They then swore, on the Blessed 
 Sacrament, to preserve that treaty inviolate for ever. Before 
 William of Normandy ventured to invade England, his grievance 
 was submitted to the jurisdiction of the Pope ; and it was not until 
 the Pope had declared the justice of his cause that he embarked 
 (1066) on the campaign. 
 
 Pope Calixtus II. succeeded Pope Gelasius in the year 1119. 
 He at once summoned a General Council at Rheims, which heard 
 and investigated for him the cases of many princes, who were then 
 at war, as well as the complaint of the Countess of Poictiers, who 
 
24 
 
 had been deserted by her husband. Two years later, having sub- 
 dued the Emperor’s Antipope, he applied himself, with great ad- 
 dress, to reconcile with each other the warring princes of Germany. 
 
 During the reign of Pope Alexander III., says Baronius (1161), 
 King Louis of France and Henry II. of England, collected “im- 
 mense armies,” and took the field. A sanguinary battle was -im- 
 minent, when a legate arrived from the Pope, and examined the 
 grounds of the quarrel, and made peace, by pronouncing judgment 
 in the Pope’s name. Each of these sovereigns thereupon as- 
 sembled the bishops in their respective kingdoms, and recognised 
 Alexander III. as “ the true Bishop of the Holy Catholic Church,” 
 and proclaimed Octavianus, who was the Emperor Frederick’s 
 Antipope, to be “ no better than a usurper.” 
 
 When Pope Alexander III. returned to Rome (in 1165), after his 
 exile of three years in France, he united the warring towns and 
 principalities of Italy in a league of amity, and caused them all to 
 swear to observe it inviolate for twenty years. 
 
 Pope Innocent III. mounted the throne of St. Peter a.d. 1198. 
 There were three pretenders to the Imperial crown. The Pope 
 considered their claims and pronounced in favour of Otho. His 
 Bull proves the extent to which he had mastered the details. 
 Bloodshed was stopped also in Hungary by his decision between 
 the rival claims of two competitors for that throne. 
 
 At the accession of John, King of England, a war broke out 
 with Philip of France. John appealed to the Pope, who sent 
 over a Cardinal Legate to investigate and judge the case; and 
 thus the war was averted. Two years after, John broke the peace. 
 The Pope sent the Abbot of Casamari as his legate, writing to the 
 two kings and to the archbishops of England and France. These 
 and subsequent letters are given at length by Reynaldus. In one 
 of them the Pontiff reminds Philip that the Pope’s office was the 
 Gospel of peace ; that the angels who announced our Lord’s 
 birth had said that the effect of the Church would be to make 
 peace between men of good will ; and that the gift of our Lord to 
 St. Peter was peace ; and that our Lord had said of those who 
 should refuse to receive His messengers of peace : “ It shall be more 
 tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment.” He con- 
 tinued in these words : “Besides, no one denies, that what pertains to 
 the salvation or damnation of souls belongs to us, and is our function ; 
 yet nothing leads to damnation so much as the production of dis- 
 cords, the spilling of blood, the causing of so much misery, &c. 
 And remember the injunction of the Gospel : 4 If thy brother shall 
 have sinned against thee, take him apart and speak to him, and if 
 thou shalt make peace thou will have gained thy brother ; but if 
 he will not hear thee, take with thee two or three more, that in the 
 mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established ; 
 
25 
 
 and if he then will not hear them, tell it to the Church ; and if he 
 will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen man and 
 a publican/ Now the King of England is your brother, not in the 
 flesh, but in the unity of the faith ; ... so if you will not hear the 
 Church, what shall I do ? Shall I fear to offend you or to offend 
 God ? I will proclaim you a heathen man and publican. But 
 if you argue that you did not offend against him (King John), but 
 he against you, what then shall we do ? We must make a more 
 searching inquiry, and, having learned the truth, we shall proceed 
 as the Lord has commanded, &c. 
 
 The legate heard the complaints of each, and showed to 
 each king the particular wrongs that he had done, and urged 
 each to make reparation. Thus the evil was averted. A few years 
 afterwards the same Pope brought about, in like manner, a peace 
 between Henry III. of England and Philip Augustus of France ; 
 and in 1281 Pope Nicholas III. caused France and Castile to 
 cease from war. At the end of this century, Pope Nicholas IV., 
 by the Treaty of Tarascon, terminated the quarrel which had sub- 
 sisted for a long time between the Houses of Anjou and Arragon ; 
 a quarrel which had begun with the Sicilian Vespers, had troubled 
 many princely families, and had made South Italy the arena for 
 sanguinary struggles. 
 
 In 1294 all Europe was shaken by a great war between Philip 
 le Bel, King of France, and the Dukes of Brabant and of Savoy, 
 and the Earl of Brittany, on the one side ; and Edward I. of Eng- 
 land, with the Kings of Scotland and of Norway, on the other 
 side. Adolf of Nassau, one of the claimants for the imperial 
 throne, sided with England ; while the other claimant, Albert of 
 Austria, fought on the side of France. Pope Boniface VIII. in- 
 stantly stepped between the combatants and offered mediation. 
 His offer was rejected. He thereupon cited both parties before 
 his tribunal to answer for all their unjust deeds ; he then published 
 (1296) a Bull in which he forbade all men to pay any subsidies 
 towards the war. He also threatened with excommunication 
 every person who should attempt to levy subsidies ; and he laid 
 under interdict every town which should hand over subsidies to 
 either side. The Pope then sent a Bull in which he reminded 
 each monarch that he had to respect justice, and make due repara- 
 tion for the exactions and violences which his subjects had 
 suffered from him. A council, moreover, met in the year 1302, 
 on November 1st, at Rome, when the famous Bull, “ Unam Sanc- 
 tam” was promulgated. This Bull unfolds the distinction be- 
 tween the spiritual and temporal powers, and shows the proper 
 subordination of the latter to the former. Albert of Austria had 
 by this time killed his rival, Adolf of Nassau ; and was immediately 
 struck by the Pontiff, with the sentence of excommunication. 
 
26 
 
 In the year 1317, John XXI. effected a peace between Edward 
 II. of England and Robert Bruce of Scotland. Two subsequent 
 wars between the English and Scotch were also ended by the 
 judgments of the Pope’s legates. 
 
 During the reign of Pope Clement VI. war was declared between 
 Edward III. of England and Philip VI. of France. For Louis- of 
 Bavaria had made an offensive alliance with the King of England 
 and with the Princes of Flanders, conspiring with them to make 
 war upon France. Such an alliance was unjust and contrary to 
 international law ; because it was not necessary for each of these 
 powers, in self-defence and the support of right. The Pope imme- 
 diately examined into the matter, and passed judgment upon it, 
 anathematizing Louis, the instigator of the plot (a.d. 1346). 
 Three years later, Louis of Hungary laid claim to the crown of 
 Naples, and at once levied war to obtain it. The Pope went mi- 
 nutely into the merits of the claim, reviewing carefully every point. 
 He then ordered the King of Hungary to retire from the war. 
 Dissensions broke out the same year between the Genoese and 
 Venetians, the two great naval powers of the time. This dispute 
 also was judged by the Pope, and war was prevented. When 
 Gregory XI. ascended the throne (in 1370), a war was imminent 
 between France and England. The Pope was prepared to adjudi- 
 cate, but his voice was unheeded, and much loss and bloodshed 
 resulted. He prevented, however, another war between the King 
 of Castile and Ferdinand, King of Portugal, by his judgment and 
 sentence on the cause of quarrel. Soon afterwards he reconciled 
 Castile with Navarre and Arragon ; and put an end to the strife 
 between Sicily and the King of Naples. 
 
 In the year 1436 the Portuguese prepared to go to war with the 
 Moors of Tangier. Pope Eugenius IV. gave the matter a careful 
 consideration in council, and then wrote : — “ War would be just, 
 and therefore permissible, only so far as Portugal should be com- 
 pelled to fight for self-preservation ; otherwise war would be unjust 
 and damnable, &c.” The Portuguese heeded not, but entered on 
 the unjust war, and were defeated, and the Infante Ferdinand was 
 made captive by the Moors. 
 
 The battle of Bosworth was fought in 1485 between Richard III. 
 and Henry VII. The latter, who was the victor, prayed Pope 
 Innocent VII. to confirm his succession to the throne. The Pope 
 investigated his claim, and issued a Bull, which is given at length 
 in Bacon’s History, confirming Henry’s claim, and anathematizing 
 any who should venture to stir up again the strife between the 
 White and Red Roses, to which the marriage of Henry with the 
 daughter of Edward IV. had offered a happy termination. 
 
 At the same period, Spain and Portugal had a serious quarrel 
 about their respective possessions in the New World. Emmanuel 
 was the King of Portugal, and Ferdinand and Isabella reigned in 
 
27 
 
 Spain. These nations, however, referred the quarrel, and many 
 other matters, out of which dispute might^subsequently arise, to the 
 judgment of the Head of the Church. Pope Alexander VI. in- 
 vestigated the case and published the Bull “ inter ccetera which 
 awarded to Spain all the territory to the east of a certain line, and 
 to Portugal all that to the west. The sword was sheathed, and to 
 this day those respective territories are held by the successors of 
 those whose strife was thus happily averted. The Pope also con- 
 firmed to Spain her conquests in Algiers and Tunis ; and to Por- 
 tugal her conquests in Fez and Morocco. The same Pontiff pro- 
 mulgated the Bull “ In coma, Domini which Count de Maistre 
 looked upon as the model of good policy ; saying that if it had 
 been accepted, as it should have been, the world would to this day 
 have had an international police and an unvarying code of inter- 
 national law. The 5 th article hit a great blow at the practice of 
 war, by placing under sentence of excommunication every ruler 
 who should impose new taxes or increase old taxes, except in cases 
 provided for by the constitution of the country, or, in unforeseen 
 contingencies, by dispensation from the Holy See, after due inves- 
 tigation and judgment. 
 
 Pope Clement VIII. mediated between France and Spain, and 
 secured peace by the Treaty of Vervins, in 1598. Sixty-nine years 
 later, Pope Clement IX. again reconciled these two great nations. 
 
 When war was declared between France and Prussia in 1870, 
 the present Pontiff desired to prevent the effusion of blood, by an 
 exertion of his supreme judicial power. Napoleon III. spurned 
 his mediation with a sneer ; and Napoleon lost his throne, within 
 the year, amid the sneers of the world. 
 
 In the pictures ^handed down to us by historians, we have 
 witnessed each Pope rescuing the world from its debasement and 
 barbarism, and then, as a colossus of moral power, standing up 
 amid a jarring world of littleness and vice. We have seen him as 
 the Supreme Legislator for Christendom, the Supreme Judge in the 
 last resort of political acts, and the Source of Order throughout 
 the world ; as the councillor of kings, and the arbiter between 
 nations ; checking the passions of peoples, and the tyrannies of 
 rulers ; nipping in the bud those seditions and tumults, those wars 
 and rumours of wars which have burdened nations with taxes, and 
 filled Europe with widows, and the world with wail. We have 
 seen him interposing to stay the hand of the victor, and to save 
 the vanquished from vengence. We have seen him exhorting 
 sovereigns to act with mildness towards their subjects, and urging 
 subjects not to rebel against their sovereigns. We have seen him 
 rebuking the mighty for their adulteries, and all men for their 
 lawlessness. We have seen him free the slave, and taking in hand 
 the cause of the poor ; reforming abuses throughout Europe, 
 
28 
 
 introducing a stricter discipline, stopping revenges, and interposing, 
 with judgment and sentence, between mighty combatants. We 
 have always seen the Pope as a protection for the weak against the 
 strong, for the poor against those who oppressed them, for the 
 people against powerful monarchs. 
 
 As, in those days, parishes and municipalities and corporations 
 were independent republics, which were federated under the 
 personal rule of the king ; so was each state a local autonomy or 
 local government under the supreme authority of the Head of the 
 Church. Christendom was the one commonwealth of God, or 
 a federation of states under the Head of the Church. 
 
 In each state, again, the bishops judged in the same manner, 
 and even guided the home policy of the nation ; while, in smaller 
 spheres, the priests exercised the same jurisdiction in their respec- 
 tive parishes. Christendom was, in fact, a vast organism, “ one 
 body and the people enjoyed liberty and a feeling of security, 
 arising from a sense of law and justice. But now all this organiza- 
 tion and this jurisdiction are despised. As long as men honoured 
 their common Father and Mother, there were not wars and broils, 
 and taxes and burdens ; and they lived long in the land which 
 the Lord God had given them. 
 
 But kings became jealous of a power over them, which rebuked 
 them for oppression, and stopped them from carrying out their 
 schemes of injustice. Every powerful man hated this supremacy 
 of the Pope, and the consequent jurisdiction of bishop and priest ; 
 for he felt the restraint whenever he attempted to do a wrong ; 
 therefore men determined to get rid of it ; “ The kings of the 
 earth stood up, and the princes met together (and said of the 
 rulers of Christ’s Church) : let us break their bonds asunder, and 
 let us cast away their yoke from us.” Arnoldo da Brescia’s 
 theorizing against the supreme authority of the Pope was con- 
 demned by Pope Innocent II. in 1139; but the Ghibellines ad- 
 hered to his errors. The Council of Constance (1414) anathema- 
 tized similar notions of Wicliffe, who was backed by John of 
 Gaunt. More than a century later Luther persuaded men to love 
 darkness rather than light, and the confusion of Satan more than 
 the organization of the Church of God. And national churches 
 were made, in order to break up and limit the Pope’s primacy and 
 power. But a national church can never condemn its national 
 government, even when that government is oppressive, lawless, or 
 unjust. It must always be subservient and an instrument of the 
 ruler, to defend his acts, however bad. A national church is a 
 licence for national wrong, and an apotheosis of the falsehoods of 
 a government. 
 
 For the same reason, religious education has been supplanted 
 by secular instruction, lest persons should be led to look for a 
 
29 
 
 Church which is One, Holy, Catholic, and founded by the Apostles. 
 What has been the effect ? The foundations of morality have 
 been undermined; and Communism, Socialism, and the Inter- 
 national have grown up. 
 
 Have we, then, gained by refusing to honour the common Fa- 
 ther of Christendom ? Unjust wars have multiplied, and the taxa- 
 tion of every nation has become intolerable. Small states have 
 been swallowed up by large ones ; law and justice are despised ; 
 and every nation is arming and fortifying. These are called the 
 days of civilization ; and yet there are wars, and factions, and 
 piracy, and murder, and concubinage, and adulteries, and every 
 injustice. 
 
 What is the condition of each country ? We see more than a 
 million of paupers in England, who are treated as criminals ; and 
 poor workmen ground down and oppressed ; and a labour ques- 
 tion looming darkly in the future. We hear, from detectives, of 
 swinish debauchery in the upper and middle classes. We see an 
 utter disregard of law, and a total loss of the sense of justice ; 
 while the English papers are teeming with leading articles on 
 “ English Ruffianism.” The Saturday Review said, the other day : 
 — “ It is undeniable, in the face of this evidence, that there is a 
 deeply-rooted spirit of brutality among the lower classes of the 
 population. . . . There is a vast amount of obscure ferocity 
 
 and violence.” Then it speaks of the American bowie-knife and 
 the Italian stiletto, and adds that “ the tone of some of our public 
 men in recent years has afforded a dangerous encouragement to 
 defiance of law and order.” But these brutal outrages and mur- 
 ders and street fights, are nothing to the unrighteous wars, or 
 murder by wholesale, which the newspapers applaud. Is not this 
 the old malady of the world appearing again ? Why should we 
 not fly to the same cure, the same cistern of living water, the same 
 Pool of Siloam, instead of hewing out for ourselves cisterns which 
 are leaky and which will not hold water ? Cardinal Antonelli 
 wrote that the object of the Vatican Council was “to restore to 
 the world that peace and prosperity which can only be found in 
 the perfect keeping of the Divine law.” In four Encyclicals and 
 Allocutions [Nov. 9, 1846 ; Dec. 9, 1854 ; June 9, 1862, and Dec. 
 8, 1864] the present Pontiff expressed his desire again freely to 
 exercise “ that salutary influence which the Catholic Church, ac- 
 cording to the institution and command of her Divine Author, 
 should freely exercise even to the end of the world, not only over 
 private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign 
 princes.” In a Letter Apostolic of June 29, 1868, he deplored “the 
 great evils with which civil society itself is afflicted,” and the fact 
 that “ the supreme authority of the Holy See has been assailed 
 and trodden under foot.” Therefore he summoned the Vatican 
 
30 
 
 Council, being, to use the Holy Father’s words, “ grievously af- 
 flicted at the most sad condition both of sacred and of civil af- 
 fairs. . . . Every effort must be made (he continued) that, by 
 
 God’s good help, all evils may be removed from the Church and 
 from civil society. . . . For no one can deny that the power 
 
 of the Catholic Church and of her doctrine not only regards 
 men’s eternal salvation, but also benefits the temporal welfare of 
 the people ; and that it promotes their true prosperity, order, and 
 tranquillity, and also the progress and solidity of human sciences 
 — as the annals of sacred and profane history, by conspicuous 
 facts, clearly show, and constantly and evidently prove.” And in 
 the allocution to the assembled hierarchy, in the first session, on 
 Dec. 2, 1869, the Holy Father said: — “The matter of which we 
 have to treat is most important — namely, the discovery of remedies 
 for so many ills which in these days disturb both Christian and 
 civil society.” 
 
 That is the view which the Holy Father has taken of society, 
 and of the remedy which is necessary to heal its woes. Let me 
 now, on the contrary, read you a sentence from a recent review — 
 the October number of the “ Contemporary Review.” The words are 
 as follows : “ At no time since the bloody reign of Mary has such a 
 scheme (as converting the people of England to the Church of their 
 forefathers) been possible. But if it had been possible in the seven- 
 teenth or eighteenth centuries, it would still have become 
 impossible in the nineteenth, when Rome has substituted for the 
 proud boast of semper eadem , a policy of violence and change in 
 faith ; when she has refurbished and paraded anew every rusty 
 tool she was fondly thought to have disused ; when no one can 
 become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental 
 freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of 
 another ; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought 
 and ancient history.” This review has been written by a very 
 eminent statesman ; how came such words to be thrust in, out of 
 place ? They must have been slipped in — shall we say, by the occult 
 influence of the printer’s devil ? The Church of Rome has not 
 “ substituted a change of faith ” for her ancient semper eadem; 
 because she is the eternal Church, the teacher of the truth of the 
 Eternal God, which, therefore, cannot change. She has not re- 
 sorted to “ a policy of violence,” for, as I have shown, she has 
 ever laboured to establish and secure peace and good-will. 
 
 The “rusty tools” he speaks of, are the weapons with which 
 Jesus Christ has provided His Church, bidding her to make war 
 upon ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil; but they are not “rusty 
 tools,” for they have come thence “ where moth and rust do not 
 corrupt,” and belong to her against whom the gates of Hell shall 
 not prevail, 
 
3 1 
 
 It is, moreover, false to assert that converts to her “ must re- 
 nounce their moral and mental freedom, and place their civil 
 loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.” My civil loyalty is 
 greater and more steadfast now than before ; because it was a 
 sentiment, it is now a religious duty. But does not Protestantism 
 cut at the root of loyalty ? Is Protestantism not a revolt against 
 authority, and the proclamation of a self-willed independence of 
 all authority ? 
 
 “ Renounce our moral and mental freedom !” In arriving at 
 the truth and embracing it, we renounce our mental freedom ! 
 Then if we continue to wander amid errors we exercise our mental 
 freedom ! If he believes the Daily News , or Telegraph , or Rey- 
 nolds\ is he mentally free ; while if I feel myself constrained to 
 acknowledge the force of demonstration, say in Euclid’s proposi- 
 tions, do I thereby renounce my mental freedom ? In order to be 
 mentally free must I persist in declining to allow that two and two 
 make four, although I may give credence to the gossip of the day, 
 and be free. Why, then, if I do not renounce my mental freedom 
 in becoming the servant of mathematical truth, should I renounce 
 my freedom in becoming the servant of the God of Truth and 
 accepting His teaching, and believing revelation — in short, in 
 becoming a faithful Christian ? 
 
 “Ancient history” I have not repudiated; to ancient history 
 I have this evening appealed. But I have repudiated modern 
 thought, if the great leader of the liberal party means by modern 
 thought the mischievous ideas of 1789, and, by fervour in religion, 
 a little harmless artistic taste. I belong to the Church of God ; 
 not to the synagogue of Satan. I look to the Church to remove 
 now, as she did in the early centuries, the evils of modern thought 
 by the remedial agency of her plenitude of authority. For the 
 world is now as it was after the ages of “ planting ” and “ watering.” 
 The upper and middle classes are like the luxurious inhabitants 
 of the Roman empire; while the poorer classes resemble their 
 Gothic, German, and Frankish ancestors, who w T ere mingled in 
 the old R.oman Empire. I am speaking in Ireland, where every 
 word of respect and affection for the Holy Father and the Catholic 
 Church is sure to meet with - a ready and enthusiastic response ; 
 and I fear not to assert that the Divine remedy which proved 
 successful in former centuries is that which is now needed to heal 
 our woes. 
 

APPENDIX. 
 
 Pope Innocent III., in a discourse, in full consistory, before the 
 ambassadors of Philip 'of Suabia, who was candidate for the empire, 
 against Otho, Duke of Saxony, used these words : “ To princes is 
 given a power on earth, but priests have a power in heaven ; the in- 
 fluence of the former is over bodies alone, but the latter exert in- 
 fluence over souls as well as bodies. Wherefore, in as far as a soul is 
 more worthy than the body, in so far is the priesthood superior to 
 royalty .... The power of every prince is confined to his province ; 
 and the power of every king is limited to his kingdom ; but Peter 
 surpasses them all in the extent and fulness of his power, because 
 he is the Vicar of Him of whom is the earth and the fulness 
 thereof, the world, and all the inhabitants of it.” 
 
 In a letter to the Emperor Alexis Comnena, Innocent III. 
 wrote : “ Moreover, you should know that e God made two lights 
 in the firmament of heaven/ a greater light and a lesser light ; 
 *• the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the 
 night/ Both of them were great lights, but one was greater than 
 the other ; because that, by the word ‘ heaven’ is prophetically 
 designated the Church, in accordance with the words of the Truth: 
 /The kingdom of heaven is like to a father of a family, who in the 
 morning conducted labourers into his vineyard.’ By ‘ day ’ the 
 spiritual power is denoted ; and by ‘ night ’ the carnal power, ac- 
 cording to the prophetic testimony : ‘ Day unto day uttereth the 
 Word, and night to night declare th knowledge.’ For the firma- 
 ment of heaven, therefore — that is, the firmament of the Universal 
 Church — God made two great lights ; that is, He instituted two 
 great dignities, which are the pontifical authority and the regal 
 power ; but that which rules the day, or spiritual things, is greater ; 
 and that which rules in carnal things is lesser. So that as the sun 
 is to the moon, so is the difference between the pontiffs and kings. 
 [Decretal, lib. i., tit. xxxiii., cap. vi.] 
 
 From the Bull “ Unam Sanctam ” of Pope Boniface VIII., 
 
 A.D. 1302. 
 
 “ By the words of the Gospel we are taught that there are 
 in the Church, and in her power, two swords, namely, the spiritual 
 and the temporal .... Both of them are in the power of the 
 Church — the spiritual sword and the material sword. The latter 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 however is drawn for the Church, while the former is unsheathed 
 by the Church. The former is in the hand of the priest ; the lat- 
 ter is held in the hand of kings and soldiers, attending on the 
 commands, and restrained by the patience of the priest. Now 
 it is necessary that the one sword should be under the other 
 sword, and that the temporal authority should be subordinate to 
 the spiritual power; for the Apostle says, ‘There is no power ex- 
 cept it be from God ; but all things that exist are ordered by God/ 
 But they would not be ordered unless the one sword were under 
 the other sword, and were subordinate through the supremacy of 
 the other .... Yet we must allow, without doubt, that the spi- 
 ritual power is superior, both in dignity and excellence, to any 
 earthly power, in so far as spiritual things excel temporal things. 
 This is clearly shown, also, in the giving, and blessing, and sancti- 
 fication of tithes, and in the conferring of the royal power on the 
 king (at his coronation), and in the direction of earthly affairs ; 
 for, according to the testimony of the Truth, it is for the spiritual 
 power to institute the earthly power, and to judge it, too, if it be 
 blameworthy; because it is thus that Jeremiah's prophecy con- 
 cerning the Church and ecclesiastical power is fulfilled : ‘ Lo, I 
 have set thee this day over nations and kingdoms/ &c. There- 
 fore, if the earthly power transgresses, it is to be judged by the 
 spiritual power ; but if a lesser spiritual power should err, it is to 
 be judged by its own superior ; but if the supreme spiritual power 
 should err, it must be judged by God — it cannot be judged by 
 man, as the Apostle teaches: ‘The spiritual man judges all 
 things, but he himself is judged by no man/ For this authority 
 (although it has been given to a man, and is exercised by man) is 
 not a human authority, but divine, in that it was given to Peter 
 himself and to his successors, and firmly secured on Him whom 
 he had confessed, by these words of our Lord Jesus to St. Peter : 
 4 Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth/ &c. ; and, ‘ Whosoever 
 therefore resisteth the power/ thus ordained by God, ‘ resisteth the 
 ordination of God/ ” 
 
 The doctrines thus set forth were carried fully into practice when 
 Constantine came to the throne; and were maintained, for many 
 centuries, with the assent and approval of the whole of Christendom. 
 Thus we learn from Gosselin, for example : — - 
 
 “For many centuries after the tenth, all the Catholic kingdoms 
 of Europe constituted a sort of commonwealth, of which the Pope 
 was the recognised head. In that capacity he decided both in 
 councils and by himself, as supreme arbiter and judge in contests 
 arising between princes and their subjects, or between princes 
 among themselves ; he cited sovereigns before his tribunal, and not 
 only inflicted, on scandalous princes, spiritual censures, but even 
 
35 
 
 deprived of their rank those who persisted obstinately in their dis- 
 orders.” 
 
 Again, Count Joseph de Maistre asserts in the most emphatic 
 manner [Du Pape] : — 
 
 “ We find that the Popes did effectively repress monarchs and 
 protect the people ; they allayed quarrels by a prudent intervention; 
 they admonished sovereigns and subjects of their duties ; and they 
 struck with anathemas those great crimes which they found them- 
 selves unable to prevent.” 
 
 We may also find royal and imperial examples of the same ; 
 for example, Edgar, King of England, in a discourse to St. Dunstan, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury (a.d. 969), said : — 
 
 “ It is time to rise against the transgressors of the law of God ; 
 the sword of Constantine is in my hand ; the sword of St. Peter is 
 in yours ; let us take hands, and join sword to sword, and expel the 
 lepers from the camp, and cleanse the sanctuary of the Lord. The 
 royal power shall never be wanting to you to expel scandalous 
 sinners from the Church, and to protect the just” — [Labbe. Concil. 
 tom. ix., p. 697.] 
 
 In the Capitularies of Charlemagne, published in 805, at the 
 Diet of Thionville, much the same is found. 
 
 Michaud, who tries to explain away the jurisdiction of the 
 Popes, does much, on the contrary, unwittingly, to prove it divine. 
 For he says : — “ Is it not more natural to suppose that, in what- 
 ever great things they accomplished, the Popes merely obeyed 
 the impulse of Christendom ? During the Middle Ages — the epoch 
 of their power — they rather obeyed than created that impulse. 
 Their supreme power was forced on them by their position, not by 
 their own will.” 
 
 This view agrees with the three following propositions, which 
 have been effectively proved by Gosselin : — 
 
 “(1.) The power of Popes and Councils over sovereigns during 
 the Middle Ages, however extraordinary it may appear to 11s at 
 present, was introduced naturally, and in some manner inevitably , 
 by the state of society and the exigencies of the times. (2.) The 
 Popes and Councils, when claiming and exercising this power, 
 merely followed principles then authorized by universal consent. 
 (3.) The universal consent, which attributed this power to them, 
 was not founded on error, or on usurpation, but on the then ex- 
 isting constitutional law.” [Gosselin ; s Power of the Pope in the 
 Middle Ages, part ii., chap, i.] 
 
 The Protestant Sismondi bears this testimony : — “ In the midst 
 of the struggle concerning territorial jurisdictions, the Pope stood 
 alone as the defender of the people and the peacemaker between 
 feudatories.” 
 
 So Voltaire says of that Pope who of all Popes has been 
 
3 ^ 
 
 the most abused : — “ The man who, perhaps of all men, most 
 merited the gratitude of the whole human race, was Pope Alex- 
 ander III. It was he who, in a council of the twelfth century, 
 abolished slavery so far as he was able to do so. . . . He re- 
 
 vised the rights of the people in every country, and repressed 
 crime and immorality in rulers.” 
 
 Leibnitz [De Actorum Publicorum Usu] wrote : — “ It must be 
 admitted that the vigilance of the Popes in enforcing the canons, 
 and upholding ecclesiastical discipline, was productive, from time 
 to time, of excellent consequences ; and that, by using their in- 
 fluence with kings, in season and out of season, either by re- 
 monstrances, which the authority of their office entitled them to 
 make, or by the threat of ecclesiastical censures, they prevented 
 many disorders.” Again: “ The arguments of Bellarmine — which 
 prove from the position that the Popes have a jurisdiction in spiri- 
 tuals, that they also have a jurisdiction, at least indirect, over tem- 
 poral things — appeared cogent even to Plobbes. . . . It matters little 
 whether the Popes had this primacy by right divine or by a human 
 right, so long as it is established that, during many centuries, they 
 exercised a very extended power throughout the West, not only 
 with universal consent, but with universal approbation. There are 
 many Protestants even who have thought that it would be well 
 still to leave this power in the hands of the Pope, and that it 
 would prove useful in reforming abuses, &c. [Op : tom. iv., pars, iii.] 
 It is no wonder that Leibnitz added [Opera, tom. v. 65] : “ I am 
 of opinion that there should be established, at Rome itself, a high 
 tribunal for judging the quarrels of princes ; and that the Pope 
 should be the president of it.” Although a Protestant, yet 
 Leibnitz had the intellect to see that much ; and the courage to 
 confess it. 
 
 Chancellor Kent [ Commentaries on A mei'ican Law , vol. i., lec- 
 ture i., p. 9 ; and see also the Preface to the third American edition 
 of Wheaton’s International Law ] alludes in the following terms to 
 the exercise of this very function by the Pope. 
 
 “ There were five institutions existing about the period of the 
 eleventh century, which made a deep impression upon Europe, and 
 contributed, in a very essential degree, to improve the law of 
 
 nations Of all these causes, the most weight is to be 
 
 attributed to the intimate alliance of the Great Powers as one 
 
 Christian community The history of Europe, during 
 
 the early periods of modern history, abounds with interesting and 
 strong cases, to show the authority of the Church over turbulent 
 princes and fierce warriors, and the effect of that authority in 
 ameliorating manners, checking violence, and introducing a system 
 of morals which inculcated peace, moderation, and justice.” 
 
 Wheaton says : “ The influence of the Papal authority, though 
 
37 
 
 sometimes abused, was then felt as a blessing to mankind : it 
 rescued Europe from total barbarism ; it afforded the only asylum 
 and shelter from feudal oppression/’ [. Hist . Law of Nations, p. 33.] 
 And the Rev. John Lord, in his introductory essay to the 
 Chronicles of Sir John Froissart, writes : 
 
 “ Moreover, the Papacy was a great central power, needed to 
 control the princes of Europe, and settle the difficulties which arose 
 between them. The Popes, whatever may have been their personal 
 character, were conservators of the peace. They preserved unity 
 amid anarchy, and restained the impulses of passionate kings.” 
 Again : “ The Papacy, in the best ages, is thought by many profound 
 historians to have been democratic in its sympathies. It guarded 
 the interests of the people; it preserved them, from the violence of 
 their oppressors ; it furnished a retreat, in monasteries, for the con- 
 templative, the suffering, the afflicted, and the poor.” 
 
 Pitt, in resisting the torrent of the French Revolution and" after- 
 wards the military despotism of Napoleon, which threatened to 
 crush all Europe, looked to the Pope as the only real antagonist 
 of the principles of the Revolution, and, therefore, the only main- 
 stay of society. In this he was approved by Burke, by Windham, 
 by Lord Moira, and others. A letter of Cardinal Zelada, secre- 
 tary of state to Pope Pius VI., dated August 5, 1793, proves that 
 the King of England had assured the Pontiff, through Lord Hood, 
 that Great Britain was ready to protect the States of the Church 
 against Napoleon. In 1794, Pitt opened negotiations with the 
 Vatican. In May of that year, he suggested, through Mgr. De 
 Conzie, Bishop of Arras, that the Pope should put himself at the 
 head of a European league against the atheistic democracy of 
 France. u On more than one occasion,” said Pitt, “ I have seen 
 the Continental courts draw back before the divergences of opinion 
 and of religion which separate us. I think that a common bond 
 ought to unite us all. The Pope alone can be this centre.” 
 Again : “ We are too much divided by personal interests or by 
 political views. Rome alone can raise an impartial voice, and one 
 free from all exterior pre-occupations. Rome, then, ought to 
 speak according to the measure of her duties, and not merely of 
 her good wishes, which no one doubts.” 
 
 Pitt, in fact, very plainly saw that the only adequate antidote 
 to the revolutionary ideas, was the Catholic Church and her 
 doctrines. He therefore ordered the English ambassadors at all 
 the courts of Europe, to press the sovereigns to whom they were 
 accredited, to recognise the Pontiff as their Supreme Head and 
 the bond of union between nations. He proposed thus to make 
 a league of sovereigns, or federation of states under the Church, to 
 resist the torrent of the Revolution. He thought that Russia and 
 Prussia would follow the lead of England in joining the Pope, and 
 

 that Austria, Italy, South Germany, and Spain, would, as a matter 
 of course, remember their ancient allegiance to the Holy Father; 
 and he believed that their intrigues and conflicting interests, 
 would, in the hour of supreme danger, give way before such a 
 spiritual leadership. 
 
 In furtherance of this purpose, Pitt offered to receive a Papal 
 Legate at St. James's, and to send an ambassador to Rome and 
 a fleet to Civita Vecchia. 
 
 Guizot says : “ The Christian Church had, in a manner, assailed 
 barbarism on all points, to civilize by subduing it. In Spain, it was the 
 Church herself that commenced the revival of civilization. There, 
 instead of the old German assemblies, the assembly which takes 
 the helm is the Council of Toledo ; and though distinguished 
 laymen assisted in it, the bishops were the ruling spirit. Open 
 the code of the Visigoths ; it is not a barbarian code : it was mani- 
 festly digested by the philosophers of the day, namely, by the 
 clergy. It is replete with general principles, and with theories 
 utterly unknown to barbarian customs. The Visigoth code, in a 
 word, bears the impress of a learned, a social, and a systematic 
 character. It is manifestly the work of the same clergy which 
 guided the Councils of Toledo, and had so powerful an influence 
 on the government of the country." [Guizot, Hist, de la Civ. en 
 Europe, 3rd Lecture.] 
 
 ‘‘The Church had, moreover, mooted all the great questions 
 which concern man. She was solicitous about all the problems of 
 his nature, about all the chances of his destiny. Hence her in- 
 fluence on modern civilization has been immense, greater perhaps 
 than has ever been imagined by her most ardent adversaries, or 
 her most zealous advocates." [Ibid., 5th Lecture.] 
 
 “ As temporal prince, the Pope is equal to any other prince ; 
 but if to this we add his title of Supreme Head of Christendom, 
 he has no equal." [Burke's Speeches.] 
 
 “ In the fall of Rome their (<?./., the clergy’s) influence upon the 
 barbarians wore down the asperities of conquest, and saved the 
 provincials half the shock of that tremendous Revolution." [Hal- 
 lam’s State of Europe during the Middle Ages, vol. ii., p. 150.] 
 
 “ Religion alone made a bridge, as it were, across the chaos, 
 and has linked the two periods of ancient and modern civilization." 
 [Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 291.] 
 
39 
 
 The following Petition was humbly presented to the Holy 
 Father in the beginning of the year 1873 : — 
 
 PETITION TO THE MOST HOLY FATHER PIUS IX, 
 
 We, laymen of the United Kingdom of England, approach the 
 throne of you, most Holy Father, Supreme Guide of the Christian 
 World, and Father of the Family of Christ on Earth, to implore 
 you to take into consideration the calamities which now afflict 
 nations, and the evils which now, more than ever, oppress indi- 
 viduals (and especially the poor) in this age of vaunted civilization. 
 We are persuaded that these evils are due, in part, to special 
 judgments of God for the crimes of nations and men ; and are, in 
 part, the necessary results of departures from the Laws of God ; — 
 that is to say, they are caused by a disregard of the Law of 
 J ustice, and of the Law of Charity. 
 
 We, therefore, pray you, Holy Father, to promulgate specifically 
 those laws which should bind nations in their conduct towards 
 each other, in order that the present antagonisms, bloodshed, 
 and anarchy may cease. We pray you also to promulgate laws 
 regarding discipline and the penances which are fitting to be- im- 
 posed on individuals, as helps in their struggle against the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil, and as expiations for the crimes which 
 they may commit. Moreover, we pray you that you would bring 
 again into full life that judicial power which has been exercised, 
 more or less, for eighteen centuries, by the Holy Father — the 
 Supreme Judge of the actions of nations and of men — and by the 
 Hierarchy of the Church on Earth; that Judicial Power which 
 was instituted by our Lord himself, which has once rescued the 
 world from Paganism, and which may again raise it from barbarism 
 and bloodshed in its international relations, and from the crimes 
 which deface the private lives of men. 
 
 And your petitioners will ever pray, &c. 
 
 ROBERT MONTAGU, M.P, 
 (and others.) 
 
JOSEPH DOLLARD, PRINTER, DAME-STREET, DUBLIN.