5. Roman Catholicism and the State, 1760-1815.
In the closing decades of the eighteenth century the
secular character of the state was becoming more clear,
and the
Enlightenment itself, which acquired particular
prestige amongst monarchs
and statesmen, seemed
almost to take the place of religion as the
fountain
of influence at royal courts. There now occurred a
series of
dramatic attacks by the modern state upon
the Roman Catholic system; and
the church, which in
any case was hardly in a condition to meet the chal-
lenge, was badly crippled by an initial
strategic blow
in the 1760's, when the Bourbon courts of France,
Spain, Naples, and Parma (following the example of
Portugal) expelled from
their European and overseas
dominions the Jesuits who had once wielded so
much
power as the confessors of kings. It was easy to raise
suspicion
against them because of their alleged views
on tyrannicide, or their
casuistry, or their recent com-
mercial
operations, or the antinational character of
their constitution; but their
impressive importance now
was due to the virtues of their educational work,
which
made Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine
of Russia
delighted to receive the exiles.
By this time the governments of Europe were exer-
cising immediate influence on papal elections, and in
1769 they
secured the elevation of Clement XIV, who
could be expected to abolish the
order, and who signed
the Brief of Suppression in 1773. The pope was
now
in the position of having to protest against a Protestant
state
and a schismatic empire that gave the Jesuits a
field in which to work;
but, though he induced the
Prussians to secularize them, he had to agree to
a
subterfuge which enabled the order itself to continue
in Russia and
even to recruit novices (in spite of its
formal suppression), its members
being needed for the
care of Catholic subjects taken over by Russia in
the
first Partition of Poland.
In 1763 an important and influential work by
Nikolaus von Hontheim combined
the teaching of the
Conciliar and Gallican movements in the program
known as “Febronianism” and made Germany a sig-
nificant field of conflict; but similar
writings in Italy,
the Netherlands, and even Austria reveal the tremen-
dous change of outlook that had been
taking place in
the Catholic world. Even Maria Theresa of Austria (the
one great ruler who had been unwilling to see the
destruction of the
Jesuits) was ready, in spite of her
piety, to take action against a
monastic movement that
had run to excess. But in 1780 she was succeeded
by
her son Joseph II—himself a sincere Christian though
in
so many ways a disciple of the philosophes—and
it is astonishing to see the speed and
consistency with
which he not only excluded the authority of the pope
and controlled a movement of ecclesiastical reform,
but established what
was virtually a national church,
in which he decided the character of the
training in
ecclesiastical seminaries, prescribed the spiritual func-
tions of the priesthood, attacked images,
etc., in
churches, and insisted on an austere type of piety quite
different from the baroque piety that he regarded as
idolatrous.
In Austria, as elsewhere, what was called Jansenism
implied Conciliar and
Gallican ideas but also a stress
on devotion and on works of charity and a
genuine
desire to raise spiritual standards. At the same time,
the
ecclesiastical work of Joseph II was a remarkable
anticipation by a
“benevolent despot” of the attempt
by the French
Revolution at an overall reconstruction
of the Church. An ecclesiastical
congress in Germany
in 1786 produced the Punctuation of Ems, a program
for which Joseph II lost his enthusiasm when he saw
that the powers it took
from the pope might serve to
aggrandize the metropolitans and bishops of
Germany
rather than the secular authority. A synod of 234 clergy
held
at Pistoia in the same year under the patronage
of Joseph's brother,
Leopold, the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, combined the tenets of the Jansenists
with
those of Gallicanism and called for the abolition of all
religious orders founded since the time of Saint Bene-
dict. But the great mass of the population refused to
follow
Joseph II in his religious policy; and the exten-
sion of this to his Belgian territory led in 1786 to a
revolt of
students at the nationalized seminary of
Louvain—a revolt which
was to prove the prelude to
a wider rebellion. And though Joseph's
brother,
Leopold, was more careful of public opinion, his reli-
gious reforms led to a popular upheaval in
Florence
in 1787.
All this was only the prelude to the cataclysm of
the French Revolution. In
view of the existing distress
and the bankruptcy of the state, it was not
easy for
the French after 1789 to treat as property dedicated
to God a
great deal of the wealth which had for so
long supported luxury and
immorality amongst the
clergy. Church property was nationalized on 2 No-
vember 1789, and then the state, which
proposed to
take the responsibility for clerical stipends, thought to
rationalize the whole system in the interests of the
taxpayer and the
public in general, dissolving religious
orders that had no utilitarian
function, rearranging
bishoprics, fixing stipends, and regulating
discipline.
The Church, under this Civil Constitution of July 1790
was
to retain its communion with Rome, but the pope,
who had not been consulted
about the reforms, was
no longer to invest bishops with their spiritual
author-
ity, and bishops and clergy were
to be selected by
popular election. The clergy were required to accept
this Civil Constitution on oath, but, though the new
system greatly
improved the financial position of the
lower clergy, half of the curés refused to conform. The
government was committed therefore to a policy of
persecution,
and the revolution was jeopardized by a
first-class religious conflict
which helped to provoke
a civil war. Early in 1798 the French invaders of
Italy
established the revolution for a short time in Rome
itself, and
in 1799 Pope Pius VI died an exile and
prisoner of France.
Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul, was deter-
mined to make capital out of the errors of the revolu-
tion, which had reorganized the Church without con-
sulting the pope and had brought on itself
the trouble
of a religious war. He determined to secure the credit
for
restoring the Church, and this in fact enabled him
to put greater pressure
on the papacy, which was
anxious for such a settlement. By his Concordat of
1801
he saved essential features of the revolutionary settle-
ment, and acquired for these the assent
of the pope,
while recognizing Catholicism as “the religion of
the
great majority of French citizens.” But when he fol-
lowed this by unilateral action in his 77
Organic Arti-
cles, which asserted Gallican
principles and the pre-
dominance of the
state over the church, the pope and
the French Catholics could do little
unless they pro-
posed to destroy the effect of
the whole settlement.
From 1806 the spread of the Napoleonic Empire
brought a conflict with the pope as a temporal prince;
because of his
spiritual primacy, he felt unable to put
his territories at the service of
the French in their war
against England. The conflict became a dramatic
one,
and in 1809 Napoleon decreed the end of the temporal
power and
declared Rome a Free Imperial City. Very
soon, Pope Pius VII was himself a
prisoner.
