146 Bavarian Concordat [1814-7

Baden and his selection by his clergy, he was not made a Bishop, but, on the contrary, the diocese was suppressed. From that time Wessenberg ceased to play a part in ecclesiastical politics. His disgrace in Rome caused the plan of a German Concordat to be abandoned. Metternich then proposed as a possible compromise that separate Concordats should be drawn up on a common basis, as no single Prince would be so blind as to make greater concessions to the Curia than the other German sovereigns.

Bavaria was the first to demand her own separate national Church. Since the dissolution of the Empire the Bavarian territorial alterations with the consequent new subdivision of bishoprics had necessitated an understanding with Rome. The attempt, however, had repeatedly failed. From 1524 until the beginning of the nineteenth century Bavaria had been steadily reactionary in domestic affairs, though predisposed to a State Church. The most important purely German Catholic State passed as being the stronghold of the Counter-reformation. It was transformed in the days of Napoleon by a foreigner of great abilities, the Savoyard Count Montgelas. This Voltairian statesman secularised and reformed so rutblessly that he lost Tyrol. At the Congress of Vienna Bavaria had successfully laboured for the exclusion of ecclesiastical affairs from the competence of the Diet. Montgelas wanted a Bavarian Concordat with the Papacy after the Napoleonic example, but he overrated the decadence of Papal power and was blind to the reviving Ultramontane feeling in the Catholic world. When, in 1814, he resumed negotiations for a Concordat, Pius VII replied to his overtures by demanding the abolition of all Bavaria's ecclesiastical reforms, viz., the equal treatment of Churches, secular control of schools, and recognition of mixed marriages. The Crown Prince, Marshal Wrede, the King's daughter, Caroline Augusta, who was a friend of the Jesuits and was now married to the Emperor Francis, Metternich, and all Church influences, combined against Montgelas; and in February, 1817, he was suddenly dismissed.

It remained all important for the Curia to influence the attitude of the German Protestant Princes by exacting from Bavaria the greatest possible concessions. The plan succeeded, owing not a little to the mismanagement of Hiiffelin, the Bavarian Minister in Rome. Ilaffelin was a priest, who had formerly belonged to the freethinking Uluminati, and was now created a Cardinal in recognition of his accommodating conduct. The Zelanti of the Congregazione degli affari ecclesiastici framed the Bavarian Concordat on the principle that not the ecclesiastical laws of the country but Canon Law alone should obtain in Bavaria. In return for the grant of two archbishoprics and six bishoprics to be filled by the King's nomination, Bavaria conceded the right of the Bishops to supervise schools and morals and to demand from the State the suppression of pernicious books; new monasteries might be founded and Canon Law was to take precedence of Bavarian State Law. It was the most complete

1815-8] Difficulties with Bavaria. — Prussia 147

submission made by a modern State. At the same time the Curia received the promise that the Concordat should become part of the Constitution of the kingdom. This was settled in 1817, consequently before the French Concordat was, against the wish of the Pope, brought before the French Chambers and rejected.

The Bavarian Constitution established equality for the three religious denominations, religious freedom and liberty of conscience, State control over education and over the administration of Church property, taxation of all citizens. All these provisions were contrary to Canon Law, but they already existed in the religious edict of 1809. In 1818, the Constitution and the Concordat were simultaneously promulgated. The treaty with Rome excited much indignation, and the King himself repented of his concessions. As yet the Pope had not confirmed the episcopal appointments, which the King had made only on the strength of a papal indult, which granted him that right for ever. Rumour spoke already of a schism, because Catholics were forbidden by the Pope to take the unconditional oath to the Constitution. In these circumstances Consalvi resumed the direction of the difficult negotiations. He saved the chief clauses of the Concordat by obtaining a statement from the King, to the effect that the Constitutional oath referred only to civil life, not to Divine laws or Catholic doctrine. But an edict was promulgated which " interpreted " the Concordat by repudiating its intentions and reaffirming the previous conditions of ecclesiastical affairs. The antagonism between spiritual and secular authority remained latent for the moment. The Concordat, still in force in Bavaria, secures for the Church her independence and provides for public worship and the maintenance of the clergy at the expense of the State. The Jesuits are excluded from the country.

Prussia, like the whole of Protestant Germany, had been regarded since the Peace of Westphalia as a mission country. The chiefs of the mission were the Bishops, and, in case of the complete secularisation of a bishopric, it was governed by an apostolic vicar. Prussia was not forced to regulate the ecclesiastical conditions of her Catholic subjects until she had absorbed the ecclesiastical States on the Rhine and in Westphalia. The Catholics complained that for twenty-five years the western bishoprics had been left vacant, that the episcopate had nearly died out, that the Catholic Church in the Prussian State had been completely wrecked by the course of political events, so that, with the exception of the faith itself, everything had to be entirely reconstructed. It was fortunate that the great historian Niebuhr was appointed Prussian Minister to the Holy See. Niebuhr occupied a singular position. He was a sincere Christian, inclined towards mysticism. In the Catholic Church, as he understood it, the Temporal Power was doomed. But his Conservative creed taught him to respect what existed. He expected from Governments civil reforms; he held that the State

148 Hanover. — The States of the Upper Rhine [1815-29

should leave the Church in freedom, and should not attempt ecclesiastical reforms. He quoted Lessing, " who had expressed his disgust at Febronius and his doings." He knew that the attempt to liberate the episcopate and the Church in accordance with the ideas of Wessenberg would enlist the sympathy of very few Catholics, and be looked upon with indifference by Protestants. On the Rhine and in Westphalia it would only make Catholics disaffected. Niebuhr wished for adequate provision for the support of the clergy, for Catholic schools, universities, and seminaries for the education of priests. He claimed for the Bishops the right to exercise ecclesiastical censure. Should the Bishops exercise this right in an injudicious or tyrannical manner, the Church, not the State, would suffer. Mixed marriages already formed the subject of debate with Rome. Niebuhr proposed that marriages between Catholics should be legal in the eye of the State, when contracted according to Canon Law, and that as regards declarations of nullity and separation Canon Law should decide. This compromise proved a failure. It was only after years of bitter strife and long negotiations that the convention between Prussia and the Curia, described in a later chapter, was arrived at. The examples of France and Bavaria had been sufficient warning against a Concordat. The election of the Bishops was left to the Chapters, who were enjoined by Papal brief to propose only worthy persons for the King's approval. The Pope gratefully accepted the endowments offered by the State, and gave his consent to the new diocesan areas. Hardenberg's presence in Rome (1821) settled the remaining difficulties with Prussia.

Hanover made Erastian claims, which caused the negotiations for a Concordat with that kingdom to be abandoned. It was only in 1824, under Leo XII, that Consalvi's concessions were reluctantly accepted. The Hanoverian Government thereby kept the right of veto on Bishops chosen for her two Catholic sees.

Consalvi and the Pope had a worse experience in dealing with the Commission of Frankfort in 1819, which was entrusted with the ecclesiastical affairs of the smaller German States of the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine, headed by Baden and Wurttemberg. It was proposed that the parish priests and Bishops should present three candidates for a bishopric, of whom the sovereign should select one. The Metropolitan was to accept him, in spite of Papal objections, if such were considered unfounded, or if the Pope's disapproval was not made known within the limited time. This proposal was rejected in Rome as treasonable to the Church. The Pope declined to invest Protestant Princes with a kind of patronage over Catholic Churches which he had refused to Napoleon. In these circumstances nothing was attained except a fresh distribution of the dioceses. The five new episcopal sees were only filled under Leo XII, 1827-9.

The influence of Metternich, who, from 1819, became in ecclesiastical

1815-30j The Netherlands. — Switzerland 149

matters more friendly to the Curia, brought about in Baden a turn of events highly favourable to Rome ; the Grand Duchy accepted conditions similar to those existing in Prussia. The conditions were offered as an ultimatum to the other States, and finally accepted.

Through these four treaties, with Bavaria, Prussia, Hanover, and the ecclesiastical Province of the Upper Rhine, the Catholic Church in Germany, excluding the mission country administered by the Propaganda, was reorganised and endowed. Consalvi did not arrive at asimilar result either with Switzerland or with the Netherlands. The Pope and the Belgian Bishops in 1815 had condemned the Constitution of the Netherlands on the ground that liberty of religious worship and of the Press was not acceptable to Catholics. The Constitution, however, was carried against them. The request of the Netherlands, that the Concordat of 1801 existing in Belgium should be extended to Holland, was refused by the Curia in 1818, on the ground that there was no reason to renew such concessions. Negotiations which lasted for nine years ended in 1827 with the extension of that Concordat to the Netherlands, but excluding from it the right of the State to select Bishops, which was refused to a non-Catholic King. At the same time, a Bull sanctioned a revision of diocesan areas. The Government delayed the execution of the Treaty, and the Revolution of 1830 rendered it inoperative in Belgium. With the support of the Belgian Liberal Catholics, who adopted the doctrines of Lamennais, the Catholic Church in Belgium, after 1830, was separated from the State, but kept its privileges. The Bishops were nominated by the Pope and chose their parish priests independently of the Government.

The negotiations relating to a bishopric of Luzern were wrecked by jealousies in the Swiss Confederation and by the pretensions of oligarchical magistrates to supervise, not only the administration of Church property, but also the education of the clergy in the seminaries, and their correspondence with Rome. The King of Sardinia had to overcome conscientious difficulties, before he finally consented to meet the wishes of Geneva and to add a few parishes of the bishopric of Chambery, situated in his territory, to the bishopric of Freiburg. Every Swiss Canton legislated independently, in Church matters as in others. In these negotiations no hierarchical pretension was in theory sacrificed to the State. The conflicting claims tacitly survived. The Zelanti, however, brought the serious charge against Consalvi that he was a mere opportunist, and had, for the sake of a modus vivendi, not pressed claims he might have established. The Pope was aged and infirm : the conviction of statesmen, that after him negotiations would become still more difficult, facilitated the task of Consalvi; and even the reactionary pontificate of Leo XII was compelled to uphold the policy which he had inaugurated.

The era of the Concordats was also that of the Congresses. The reactionary Powers succeeded in subduing by military force the revolutions

150 Consalvi and the revolutionary movements [1820-3

in Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont. The necessity, as Gentz put it to Chateaubriand, of opposing the alliance of European Powers to the progress of disorganisation and to the common danger of conspiracies, also governed Metternich's policy towards Home. The position of Consalvi never proved more difficult than during the revolution at Naples, which spread to the Papal enclaves, Benevento and Ponte-Corvo, and threatened the Patrimony itself. The Spanish Constitution of 1812 had been proclaimed in Naples, and had found supporters in Rome, even among the Cardinals. The Sanfedists hoped to rid themselves by a Counter-revolution of the system called by them the tyranny of Consalvi. They wished to establish a constitution which recognised no other denomination than the Roman Catholic religion. The elections were to be carried out with religious ceremonies, and secular priests were to be eligible as deputies. Proclamations and posters in this sense were to be seen side by side with manifestos of the Carbonari proclaiming death to the priests and calling for a republic. But the Austrians put the revolution down in a couple of weeks. During this crisis, which threatened him in a twofold manner, Consalvi showed extraordinary moderation and presence of mind.

In the States of the Church the " sects " were so leniently treated that even murderers escaped their just punishment. Consalvi resolutely stopped the cruel inquisitorial methods followed by the Cardinals San Severino and Rusconi in the Romagna. He informed Prince Metternich that order had been restored in Rome and in the provinces. He asserted, for the Pope, the right of absolute neutrality and did his utmost to prevent the Austrians from marching into Papal territory and occupying Ancona; but he was unsuccessful. At Laibach and Verona the Papal Nuncio, Cardinal Spina, upheld this policy of non-intervention, to which Consalvi remained faithful, even when in Spain and Portugal an anti-Roman movement threatened schism and was supported by part of the clergy. The convents were suppressed; some of the revenues of the Curia were curtailed and others abolished ; the Nuncio in Madrid received his passports; the Patriarchate in Portugal was arbitrarily reduced to Metropolitan rank, and Church property was confiscated. Nevertheless in 1823, after the French occupation of Spain, the Curia refused to inflict ecclesiastical censures. As in 1821 with regard to Naples, so now Consalvi unhesitatingly declared that ineffective threats would compromise the Pope and even expose him to ridicule.

Until the rising in Naples was put down, Pius VII refrained from renewing expressly against the Carbonari his former condemnation of the Freemasons. When, at Troppau in 1821, the three Powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, demanded of the Italian Courts the gradual introduction of indispensable reforms, Consalvi rejected this interference in internal affairs of the States of the Church as incompatible with Papal