"The Papal Power", from BQR for July, 1860

The Papal Power

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for July, 1860.]

In the brief remarks we made on these volumes in the Review for January, 1854, we aimed simply to express our dissent from the author's theory, adopted from Fenelon, that the power exercised over temporal princes by the supreme pontiffs in the middle ages was not inherent in the papacy by divine constitution, but was a power conferred on the popes by the concession of sovereigns, public opinion, and what at the time was the public law, the jus publicum, of Christendom. As to the merits of the work beyond the advocacy of this theory, which we did not, do not, and cannot accept, we offered no judgment, indicated no opinion. Having had recently occasion to consult it anew, and to examine it with more care than we had previously done, we have been struck with the wide and patient historical research it indicates, and the vast amount of most valuable historical information it contains. We have nowhere else found the origin of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See more fully explained or more satisfactorily defended, and it would be difficult to find in the same compass so much light thrown on the relations during a great part of mediaeval history of the church and the empire.  The author is a man of extensive and solid learning, and his work, though defending what we regard as an untenable theory, has evidently been honestly and conscientiously written, and is one which should be in every scholar's library.

The reperusal of these volumes has made us think better of the author personally, and more favorably of the animus of his work. His theory is virtually Gallican, and amounts to the same thing as the four articles imposed on the French clergy, in 1682, by Louis XIV. or his minister Colbert, but we are satisfied that his intention was not so much to defend Gallicanism as it was to defend the popes in their mediaeval relations with the temporal power from the charge of usurpation, so confidently and so intemperately brought against them by partisans of the Gallican school, as well as by non-Catholics, by showing that they held legally the power they claimed, though only jure humano, not jure divino. His aim was to vindicate the character of the papacy in its relations with temporal sovereigns without assuming the high ground of Bellarmine and Suarez, and to indicate a ground on which he imagined all parties might meet and shake hands as friends and brothers. His aim was laudable, and in the estimation of a very considerable number of Catholics, and Catholics highly respectable for position, learning, and ability, he has fully accomplished it, for we hardly see a work produced since its publication in explanation of the history of the papacy in the middle ages that does not adopt his theory. Nor is his theory without its side of truth. The historical facts, we believe, are in the main correctly given by the author, and certainly the popes held the power they claimed and exercised in the way and by the tenor he alleges. The jus publicum certainly did clothe them with the power they exercised. It recognized the Holy Father as supreme judge in all controversies between sovereign and sovereign, and between a sovereign and his subjects. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt. Why then object to Mr. Gosselin's theory, evidently sustained by the historical facts in the case? And why not accept it, since it effectually frees the supreme pontiffs from the charge of usurping power, or encroaching on the rights of temporal princes?

We have never refused to accept the theory because it asserts that the popes held their power over temporal princes by the jus publicum, or jure humano, for that we believe; but we have objected to it because it denies that they, in any respect, held or hold it jure divino. We object to it not in what it asserts, but in what it denies. We hold that in point of fact, the popes held the power in question both jure humano and jure divino; but we never find them appealing in their public acts to their human title, and it is a fact that militates not a little against Mr. Gosselin's denial of their divine right, that when a pope deposed a sovereign and absolved his subjects, he invariably professed to do it jure divino, by virtue of the authority which he inherits as the successor of Peter, or the power delegated to him by Almighty God as his vicar, or the supreme pastor of his church. We have found in our historical reading, no exception to this fact. It is always with the sword of Peter and Paul he smites the offending sovereign. Nothing is more certain, in our judgment, than that the popes did claim and profess to exercise the deposing power as a power vested in them by the divine constitution of the papacy. Mr. Gosselin's theory, then, does not meet the exigencies of the case, and fails, after all, of its main purpose, to vindicate the popes from the charge of usurpation, if it be a fact, as he maintains, that they held the power only by a human title, for there can be no greater usurpation than to claim a divine where one has only a human title.

In some respects it would be a great convenience to be able to adopt Mr. Gosselin's theory throughout. It would save us from the obligation, and even the odium of asserting the supremacy of the spiritual order, against which our age wages such universal and relentless war; and would enable us to quiet the fears and soothe the susceptibilities of the temporal power, which seeks always to emancipate itself from the law of God. Far from us, however, the thought, that any such consideration weighed with the learned author, or that it weighs with any of those who adopt his theory. But after all, truth is truth, and remains the same whether we assert it or deny it. The spiritual order is none the less supreme because men refuse to acknowledge its supremacy. It is supreme in the very essence and constitution of things, and God himself cannot make it otherwise. This fact, we apprehend, has not been sufficiently meditated by Mr. Gosselin and others who adopt his theory. They apparently do not see that the power in question grows out of the natural relation of the two orders, and must be inherent in the pope as representative of the spiritual order, unless expressly or by necessary implication reserved in the divine commission given him. Mr. Gosselin and his school seem to make no account of the natural relation of the two orders, and to proceed on the assumption that nothing can be claimed for the pope not expressly granted; that all power held and exercised by a pope, not so granted, is either usurped or held simply jure humano. According to them, all the powers of the pope must be conferred by positive legislation expressly enumerating and granting them, and therefore he has no spiritual power not so conferred; we, on the other hand, maintain that he has all spiritual power not denied him, that is, he represents the spiritual authority in its plenitude, unless there is some express or necessarily implied limitation in the divine commission. The two rules are very different, and very different conclusions will be arrived at from the same historical facts, as we adopt the one or the other. Which is the one the Catholic ought to adopt?

We suppose all Catholics, and indeed all men who have ordinary sense and fairness, will concede us that the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal is not simply arbitrary or merely conventional, but is a real distinction, founded and defined in the very nature and constitution of things. The spiritual is the creator of the temporal, and is therefore its sovereign lord and proprietor,—its superior, not in rank and dignity alone, but in power, office, authority. Under no possible point of view can the spiritual and the temporal have between them the relation of equality, or be two coordinate and mutually independent orders. In like manner as the creature is subject to the creator, is the temporal subject to the spiritual, and bound at all times and in all things to do its will. This natural relation of the two orders not God himself can alter, for he cannot alter the natural relation between himself as creator and contingent existences as his creatures. He can create or not create as seems to him good; but he cannot create creatures and not be their creator, or not have over them the intrinsic and indestructible rights of creator. The spiritual in itself is God, and the temporal is only his creature, and hence we say the temporal is the creature of the spiritual, and the temporal order is absolutely subjected to the spiritual, as the creature to the creator. If this be so, the spiritual is sovereign lord and master of the temporal, what we mean when we assert the supremacy of the spiritual.

All Catholics, again, will concede us that our Lord has instituted the church as the representative of the spiritual order on earth. The church is the kingdom of God set up in this world, to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of God and of his Christ. The pope has been instituted by our Lord himself the visible head of this church, and he possesses in its plenitude all the authority of the church herself. He has the sacerdocy in its plenitude, and all spiritual jurisdiction takes its rise in him, even that of bishops, which he can enlarge, contract, or take away. He then in himself, as chief of the spiritual society, is the immediate representative of the spiritual order in the government of men and nations and is the vicar of Christ, the vicegerent of God on earth. We know the old questions about the superiority of the council to the pope, about the pope being bound by the canons and all that; but all these questions are obsolete, since the concordat conceded by Pius VII. to the first consul, in 1801, in which the Holy Father gave them a practical answer once for all. He then showed that he possesses all ecclesiastical power in its plenitude, and the old-fashioned Gallicanism expired with the last prelate of the now almost forgotten "La petite Église."  We assume then, that the pope, successor of St. Peter, and chief of the spiritual society, is really the vicar of Jesus Christ, and really represents, by divine appointment, the authority of the spiritual order on earth, so far as God has given it any representative at all.

But, if the pope represents the authority of that order at all, he must be held to represent it in its plenitude, so far as his power is not expressly or by necessary implication restricted. It is necessarily restricted by the authority of him who makes him his representative. Our Lord does not make the pope God, does not divest himself of his own power, and become himself subject to his own representative; but he does constitute the pope his vicar, and therefore gives him authority to do whatever he may himself do unless he states to the contrary, or imposes on his power a limitation. Does our Lord impose such limitation? when? where? and what? He gave him plenary apostolic power, we must concede, for in commissioning the apostles he said: "All power is given me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore." Here is no restriction expressed, and no reserve except to himself. The fair inference, then, is that under God, as the vicar of Christ, the pope represents the spiritual power in its plenitude, that is, the plenitude of spiritual authority, or has all spiritual authority which Christ does not reserve to himself. As this authority by virtue of the fact that it is spiritual is supreme over the temporal, the pope, as representative of the spiritual order, must stand in the same relation to the emperor or representative of the temporal, that the spiritual order itself does in the essence and reality of things to the temporal order, therefore as his sovereign lord and master. The power then claimed and exercised over sovereigns in the middle ages, though very properly recognized by the jus publicum, is inherent in the spiritual order, and therefore, in the papacy as the divinely constituted representative of that order. This conclusion follows necessarily from the fact that the papacy is the divinely constituted representative of the spiritual order on earth, and the fact that the power in question, undeniably the inherent right of the spiritual order, is nowhere excepted from the powers conferred by our Lord on his vicar.

We complain of M. Gosselin and his school, that they nowhere take any notice of this reasoning, which seems to us conclusive. They forget that the presumptions are in favor of the pope, and that we are bound to claim for him, since he is conceded to represent the authority of the spiritual, all the authority of the spiritual order not denied him. He is in possession, and the onus probandi is on the side that asserts this or that limitation of his authority. That the power in question belongs to the spiritual order, it is not necessary to prove to any enlightened Catholic. We have already shown the absolute supremacy of the spiritual order, and no man who believes in the spiritual order at all, no man1 who is not a political atheist, can deny it. The law of God is universal and binds all classes, ranks, and conditions of men. The prince is as much bound to obey God as the subject, and as much bound to obey him in his public as in his private acts; the people are as much bound to conform to the law of God in their collective as in their individual capacity. No man has the right to transgress a single precept of the law of God; and however much we may talk in these days of the sovereignty of the people, there are few Americans even, so far gone in their democracy, as to contend that the will of the people, simply because it is their will, is the highest or supreme law either for individuals or the state. It we hold that our rulers are responsible to them in the political order, we hold, at least the majority of us hold, that the people themselves are responsible to God for all their acts. Very few of us have fallen so low as to maintain openly, avowedly, that the people are ultimate, and that there is no law above them which they are bound to observe, or that their will is to be obeyed when it commands us to do what is repugnant to natural or eternal justice. All the ancient lawgivers, indeed all nations, civilized or barbarous, recognize religion as the basis of society, and accept the assertion of St. Paul, non est potestas nisi a Deo, hold that God is the only source of power, and assert the supremacy of the divine law, therefore, necessarily the absolute supremacy of the spiritual order. Themistocles told the Athenians that he had a secret by which he could secure to them the supremacy of all Greece. They appointed Aristides to hear his secret and report on it. He heard it, and reported that nothing could be more advantageous to the state, but at the same time nothing could be more unjust. He therefore advised the Athenians to reject it. They did so, and all the world has honored both him and them for their love of justice. The natural reason, we may say, the natural instincts of all men assert the supremacy of the spiritual order, and the very men who clamor against the exercise of the power we claim for the pope, do it on the ground that it is unjust, contrary to right, thereby evincing their persuasion that the spiritual order—for justice, right, pertain to that order—is supreme. All the world, all at least that retains any consciousness of the validity of our nature, repeats from age to age, Fiat justitia, ruat caelum, and every true man says with the apostles Peter and John, even to the magistrates, si justum est in conspectu Dei, vos potius audire quam Deum, judicate, or that, WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN.

Now we do not pretend that God must necessarily give the authority of the spiritual order a human representative; we do not pretend that he could not limit the power of the representative to any degree he judged proper; nor do we doubt his power to unite the spiritual and temporal representatives in one and the same person, as under the patriarchal order, where the patriarch was at once priest and king, or supreme spiritual and supreme temporal ruler at one and the same time. But we do maintain that, if he chooses to distinguish the two powers and give each a separate representative, he must give the supremacy to the representative of the spiritual because otherwise, the representative would not represent the spiritual at all, since the spiritual by its own nature is supreme, and the temporal by its own nature is everywhere and always inferior and subordinate to the spiritual.

Much of the confusion on the subject, as we have heretofore shown, grows out of the shallow philosophy of the gallicanizing Catholics, which confounds the representative with the order represented. The church is not, under the point of view it must be considered in this argument, the spiritual order itself, but its representative; the state represents, but is not itself the temporal order. The pope is not Christ, but his vicar, or as we say his representative. He represents up to a certain point at least, the authority of our Lord, which wherever it is, and by whomsoever represented, is, in the nature of the case supreme. Moreover, our Gallican friends also either fail to distinguish the two orders, or at least to recognize for each a distinct and separate representative. In their view the pope represents a certain portion of the spiritual authority, and the emperor or prince a certain other portion. Their doctrine, if we understand it, is that the church and state are two mutually equal and independent powers. But to be mutually equal or independent in the face of each other, both must be equally representatives of the spiritual, for the temporal never is and never can be in any respect whatever independent in the face of the spiritual. Gallicans, in fact, if they did but know it, make the prince a spiritual person as well as the pope, and indeed they actually call him episcopus externus, and regard him as clothed with a certain spiritual character and a certain spiritual authority. Though they hold marriage to be a sacrament, they yet hold that the temporal sovereign can establish an impedimentum dirimens. All this, and much more like it, proves either that they do not recognize the natural supremacy of the spiritual, or that they do not hold that God has under the Christian law given to each order its separate representative, any more than he did under the patriarchs.

But it will be seen that, though we assert for the pope supreme authority, it is spiritual authority, not temporal, authority over, not in the temporal order. We believe the two orders are distinct, and that it has pleased God to give each a separate representative; we, therefore, agree that the state is independent in its own order, and that the church exercises over it only a spiritual authority. But for the state to be independent in its own order it is not necessary that it should be independent out of it. The state is independent in face of all powers in its own order, and has supreme authority so long as it confines itself to that order; but it is not independent, and has not supreme authority, nor any authority at all, in face of another and a superior order as is the spiritual. I am a man, the equal as a man of every other man, and no man has, or can have, any right in his own name to command me. Under the law of nature all men are equal, and no man has or can have dominion in another. Hence the church condemns the slave trade, and interdicts every one who reduces or aids in reducing a free man to slavery. One man may, indeed, have a right to the services of another, but he can have it only by virtue of benefits conferred, or as the redress of wrongs received. The southern states have in relation to the northern or any other states, the political right to authorize slavery; but when the question comes up as a question between them and the spiritual power, or between the slave holder and his slaves, that is, as an ethical question, the case may be different. The state has no right to authorize any in justice, and the master has no right to exact the services of any one who is not his debtor, either for advances made to him for his benefit, or for injuries received from him. I may compel the payment of a debt honestly my due, but I cannot exact the services of another simply because he is of different complexion from myself, because I want them, or find them agreeable, convenient, useful, or profitable to me. The temporal is free and independent in face of the temporal. In matter of justice or natural rights, man measures man the world over, and one sovereign state is the equal of another. As a temporal power, the pope has no authority out of his own states, and stands only on an equality with other sovereigns. He has no authority, even as the vicar of our Lord, over temporal sovereigns in temporalities for temporal ends, or in the respect that they are pure temporalities. He has only authority in what pertains to the spiritual order, and judges sovereigns not in relation to the wisdom, prudence, policy, or expediency of their acts, but only in relation to their obligations to God, and the bearing of their acts on the rights and interests of the spiritual order. This rule subjects the prince in spirituals, but leaves him his autonomy, his freedom, his independence in temporals.

But it is precisely here where the controversy begins. The two orders, though distinct, are not, and cannot be separated. Philip the Fair, the founder of the Gallican school and of modern political atheism, did not avowedly claim for the prince authority in spirituals, or deny that the pope, under God, is supreme as to the spirituality. He pretended that in his war on Boniface VIII., he was only vindicating the freedom and independence of the prince in temporalities. On the other hand, Boniface, in censuring and resisting him, expressly asserted that he only defended the legitimate authority of the sovereign pontiff in spirituals. Philip the Fair knew that the two orders are distinct, and that each has its separate representative; but he forgot, or did not choose to remember, that the two orders, though distinct, are not separate, and that their separation would be the annihilation of the temporal. Man is distinct from God, as the creature is distinct from the creator; but he is not separate from God, for it is in him we live, and move, and have our being, vivimus, et movemur, et sumus. Man exists only as joined to God by the creative act, a persistent, and not merely a transient or transitory act, and hence his separation from God would be his destruction, his annihilation. Separate him from God, and he ceases to exist, sinks back into the original nothingness from which the creative energy of God produced him. So the temporal order, separated from the spiritual, ceases to exist. Physically separated, it loses its very physical existence; morally separated, it loses its moral existence. This lies in the nature of things, and not even God himself can alter it, for the temporal is his creature, and he can sustain his creature only as united to him. It is overlooking this fact that has led some Catholics even, to deny the divine right of the authority claimed and exercised by Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other great popes over temporal sovereigns, and to maintain either that they usurped it, or that they held it only jure humano, by virtue of the concession of the prince, and the jus publicum of the time.

Every temporal act on some side touches, and must touch the spiritual, for there is no act that is morally indifferent, at least on the side of the actor. The spiritual authority must have the right to take cognizance of the spirituality wherever it is, and hence it extends, in some sort, to all the acts of every rational creature, as was dogmatically defined by pope Boniface VIII. in the bull Unam sanctam. The pope, then, as supreme representative of the spiritual authority, has, and must have, supreme authority in relation to all temporals on their spiritual side, that is, in the respect that they are subordinated to the spiritual order, devoted to a spiritual purpose, or to be referred to a spiritual end. Nothing is more clearly within my right as a father than the education of my children, the selection of masters to teach them, and the determination of the school and the branches in which I wish them instructed. Yet this very right I hold, not from, but in subordination to the church. I nave no right to bring up my children without any religious education, to educate them in a false religion, or to send them to schools, which, for spiritual reasons, the spiritual authority interdicts.

Nothing is clearer than that treason is a temporal matter, and within the jurisdiction of the temporal authority. Our older writers, indeed, recognize treason against God as well as treason against the state, but in our younger writers, treason against God is dropped, or made no account of. Yet treason against the state is still recognized, and to some extent regarded as a crime, and all who recognize it as a crime place it within the jurisdiction of the temporal sovereign. But suppose a sovereign, as in England, under Elizabeth, if not under Victoria, should define treason to be the denial of the supremacy in his own dominions of the temporal prince in spirituals as well as temporals, and the open profession and practice of the Catholic religion, would he remain within the limits of the temporal order, and in no sense encroach on the rights of the spiritual. Nearly three hundred Catholic priests, to say nothing of the laity that suffered, in the single reign of Elizabeth of England were put to death by the common hangman, hung, drawn, and quartered, ostensibly for treason against the queen's majesty, but really for exercising their functions as Catholic priests, and therefore were really martyrs to the Catholic faith. Are we to accept the definition of treason which makes the profession of the Catholic religion treason, Catholics, by the very fact that they are Catholics, traitors, and authorizes the state to be a persecutor? Is there here no place for the supremacy of the spiritual to assert itself, to fulminate the persecuting sovereign, and release Catholics from their allegiance to him; nay, even to forbid their compliance or obedience? The prince is bound to protect and defend the true religion, but he has no right to prohibit it, or to interfere with its free exercise, even in case he rejects it for himself, and prefers to support a false religion.

Property, again, by its own nature, pertains to the temporal order, and comes within the province of the temporal power. But the state does not create the right to property, and its chief right as its chief duty in regard to it, is to protect the proprietor in the free and full enjoyment of his property. The right to hold property is prior to civil society, and is one of those rights called the natural rights of man, which civil society is instituted to protect. My right to my property is spiritual. My protection in the enjoyment of it is the duty of the temporal power. Now, when the state, under the pretence of its independence in temporals, .attempts to deprive me of this right, and treats me as if I held my property only as its grant revocable at its will, it strikes a blow at the sacredness of all rights, and goes beyond the mere temporality, and aims a death-blow at the spiritual. Has the spiritual no authority here to interfere, more especially when the church is the proprietor despoiled? My right of property involves my right to use, to give, grant, devise, bequeathe property to whom, and for such purposes, not defined to be immoral, irreligious, or superstitious by the supreme spiritual authority, as I choose, and the state, so far from having the right to restrain me by mortmain laws, or any other laws and enactments, is bound to provide for carrying out my intentions. If I dispose of my property for eleemosynary or religious purposes, the state must see that it is held sacred to the purposes I designate, and can divert it to no other purpose whatever. If I give it to the church for God and the poor, it is, so far as the temporal power is concerned, church property, and subject to her management and disposal alone. It is consecrated to a spiritual use, and cannot be diverted to secular uses without sacrilege, any more than could the corban among the Hebrews, or the devotum among the Romans. Property so given, is withdrawn from the management and control of the state, which has nothing to do with it but to protect the spiritual proprietor in the free and full use and enjoyment of it according to the intention of the donor.

We are here only stating in substance the recognized principles of the common law in force in the United States, as argued by Mr. Webster in the famous Dartmouth College case. Gallican and Anglican prejudices have prevented the statute law from distinctly recognizing the church as proprietor, and some notions derived from the feudal law as to the right of eminent domain have dictated in several instances certain restrictions on gifts inter vivos and the testamentary right of individuals, but generally the law with us recognizes the sacredness of property given, devised, or bequeathed for Catholic purposes, and extends to it the protection it extends to all property given for eleemosynary purposes. It is a mistake to say that in this country the law simply lets us alone. It does more, it protects us. It punishes the violation of the right of property in case of the Catholic Church the same that it does in case of any one of the sects, and allows no one to molest or disturb us in the free and full exercise of our religion whether in public or in private. Godless, as our state is called, it recognizes that it is its duty to protect religion, and to secure to all the freedom necessary to its unrestricted profession and practice. Even the recent laws in New York, Connecticut, and some other states respecting the holding of property devoted to Catholic uses, although inspired by sympathies that we do not approve, and pervaded by a laical spirit that is justly reprehensible, still recognize the property as held for Catholic uses, and profess to protect it for those uses. They are very far from confiscating our church property, or professing to divert it from its legitimate ends. It is possible that our laws afford a better protection to church property than even some of our prelates have supposed; better, indeed, than is afforded even in those Catholic countries where, by virtue of concordats, the state recognizes the church as a proprietor, because these laws all proceed on the assumption of the inviolability of property, and the obligation of civil society to respect it, and to protect the proprietor in its use. But this by the way.

Property given to the church, whether given by individuals or the state is given to God, and is therefore rendered spiritual in its character, and necessarily placed by right under the control of the spiritual society. It can no longer be managed, disposed of, or used by secular society, without the consent of the spiritual authority. It is not a fief of the temporal suzerain, and the church in holding it does not become his vassal or liegeman. The Franconian and Swabian emperors of Germany, and after them, Philip the Fair, king of France, denied this. The German emperors regarded the sees of bishops as fiefs of the empire, and therefore claimed as suzerain the right of investiture; Philip the Fair, under direction of the legists of the time, claimed the supreme right over the entire property of the church in his realm, as pertaining in like manner as lay property to the temporality of his kingdom. Hence, with the former, the quarrel with the pope about investitures, and of Boniface VIII. with the latter, as to the right of the church, if we may so speak, to manage her own temporalities. It is this union of spirituality and temporality that creates the difficulty, and renders the mutual equality and independence of the two powers impracticable.  The one or the other must be supreme, or there will be a perpetual conflict of rights. If the two powers are assumed to be mutually equal and independent, the prince by virtue of the human element of the church, and the temporal side of even spiritual things, can stretch his authority so as to leave nothing to the spiritual authority but simple dogma, and perhaps the administration of the sacraments, as has actually been done in most countries whether Catholic or non-Catholic. If neither is supreme, the state has as much right to define its own powers, and to say where the temporal ends and the spiritual begins, as the church has to define her powers and to say where the spiritual ends and the temporal begins. Hence nothing but a conflict of powers. The only remedy is in taking a common-sense view of the case, and recognizing the natural supremacy of the spiritual. The civil authority is independent in its own order, but its own order is dependent and subordinated in all things to a superior order, namely, the spiritual, represented on earth by the Roman pontiff or vicar of Jesus Christ.

It will be seen, also, that in this we assert for the papacy not a temporal but simply a spiritual supremacy. That nothing different was claimed for the popes or that they, as a matter of fact, did not in some cases exercise a direct temporal supremacy, we will not assert. It was in feudal times a very general opinion or doctrine of theologians and canonists that the pope by virtue of his office as head of the church was the suzerain or lord paramount of all the states and empires of the world. This opinion or doctrine is not the one we defend; and with regard to all cases in which the pope exercised a suzerainty or temporal supremacy over temporal princes, either to invest or to deprive them for purely temporal reasons, if such cases there were, we think M. Gosselin's theory offers a very satisfactory explanation. Certain it is, that several European states were at one time the fiefs of the Holy See, and their sovereigns vassals of the pope; but we have always supposed this was by virtue of a mutual arrangement between those states and the pope, by which they placed themselves under the protection of the Holy See, not by virtue of the inherent rights and powers of the papacy. There is nothing in the fact that the pope is spiritual sovereign, to hinder him from being the suzerain of as many states as choose to vest the high dominion in him.

The relation of the emperor of Germany to the pope was of a different nature, and grew neither out of the pope's spiritual supremacy, nor out of his alleged temporal supremacy, except in the states of the church. Doubtless, there was between the papacy and the German empire, the same relation which always and everywhere exists between .the spiritual power and the temporal, but there was also another and a peculiar relation, a relation between the emperor and the pope as temporal sovereign of Rome. The pope raised Charlemagne, patrician of Rome, to the imperial dignity, and associated him with himself as coadjutor in the temporal government of the states of the church. The emperor as such, was, strictly speaking, an officer of the papal government, and therefore the pope as sovereign, had naturally the right to elect and crown him. This position as coadjutor of the pope in the government of the pope's temporal subjects, the Frankish emperors seem to have for the most part respected; but the Franconian and Swabian emperors were not satisfied with it, and labored to change it for that of sovereigns of Rome, as was Augustus or Constantine, though with indifferent success. If the pope was forced to concede electors, he retained the right of bestowing or withholding the imperial crown, and never conceded that he was bound to crown the candidate presented. It would be idle to pretend that an emperor crowned by the pope had no political authority in Rome, and equally idle to pretend that he was, except by usurpation, the sovereign of Rome, or the successor of Augustus. In Rome he was not the sovereign, but the coadjutor of the sovereign, and sworn protector and defender of the Holy See against the violence of its enemies, especially heretics and infidels.

Neither do we derive the temporal sovereignty of the pope in the states of the church from his office as representative of the spiritual order. We have never pretended and are far from pretending, that temporal sovereignty, strictly so called, is in any case inherent in the vicar of Christ, that is to say, a temporal authority in temporals, or power to govern temporals in the respect that they are purely temporal, and for temporal ends. The pope may have such power, as may bishops and simple priests, but it falls under the category of temporal power in general, and is not included in the grant of apostolic or sacerdotal power. Hence, under a certain aspect and up to a certain point, Louis Napoleon and others are right in asserting that, in the present complication of Italian affairs, the political question is distinguishable from the religious question. The pope has, as we have endeavored to show, a universal spiritual authority over temporals in the respect that they have spiritual relations, but his authority as temporal sovereign of the Roman states, is quite distinguishable from this spiritual authority, and is in its own nature as temporal as that of Francis Joseph as emperor of Austria, or as that of Victor Emmanuel as king of Sardinia.

Yet there is a peculiarity in the case which we have all along had in mind. Though the sovereignty in its own nature is temporal, yet the right of the pope to govern is not purely temporal. These states are not precisely the domain of the pope, for he is, after all, their administrator rather than their sovereign. He is not elected sovereign of those states, but is elected bishop of Rome, and therefore pope, or supreme visible head of the church, and it is because he is pope that he exercises the right of sovereignty over them. They are states of the church; the sovereignty is vested in the Holy See, and therefore is a right of the spiritual society, and invested with the spiritual character which attaches to all the rights or goods of the church. Here is the reason why, though we can distinguish, we cannot practically separate the political from the religious question in the recent act of wresting Æmilia, or Romagna from the Holy See, and annexing it to the kingdom of Sardinia. There is in the act not simply a political crime punishable by the civil authority, but a sin against the church, the sin designated in all times under the name of sacrilege, not only because it despoils the Holy See of its goods, but because it appropriates to profane uses what was devoted to sacred uses. The church, by her divine constitution, it may be conceded, was not invested with the right of sovereignty over these states, nor any right to appropriate the government of them to herself. But when they came legitimately into her possession, and she became, whether by the act of the people, or the concession of princes, or as first occupant of the vacant throne, their legitimate sovereign, the right of sovereignty over them ceased to be a laical right, and became a right of the spiritual society, and of the pope as supreme chief of that society. It then could not be attacked without attacking not merely a temporal, but also a spiritual right, and incurring the guilt of sacrilege. The pope in his capacity as temporal ruler has and can have no authority even to alienate them, and can alienate them only as spiritual head of the church, and then only for spiritual reasons, for the interests of religion, of which he is supreme judge. Under every point of view then, the political question is complicated with the spiritual.

Treating the question solely from the political point of view, were we at liberty to do so, we could see much in the policy of Count Cavour, to which we should not object. As a European statesman, we should regard the political union of all Italy under a federal or a consolidated government, monarchical or republican, as a desideratum. But that union is impracticable so long as the North and South are separated by the papal government. It is possible only by all Italy coming on the one hand, under the supreme temporal authority of the Holy Father, or by dispossessing the Holy See on the other, and establishing a laical government for the whole peninsula. We may talk as we please, except on one or the other of these conditions, the union is impracticable, and Italy must remain divided, and therefore too weak to suffice for itself against either Austria or France, and the intrigues, either of Russia or of Great Britain. The thing is so, and we cannot help it. The several states of the peninsula, the papal as well as the others, are obliged to depend on the alliances they are able to form out of Italy. The pope when his temporal power was greatest, could maintain the exercise of even his spiritual independence only by playing off one state or empire against another, the Franks against the Longobards, the Italian republics, and subsequently Sicily and Naples against the emperor, and the emperor against the republics, Naples, Sicily, and the Italian nobles, France against Germany, and Germany against France. To protect himself against the Hohenstaufen, he invested Charles of Anjou, a French prince, with the Neapolitan kingdom, and soon had to call on Rodolph of Habsburg to protect him against Charles, his own creature and vassal. In more recent times he has preserved his states only by the mutual jealousies of the great powers, while he has seldom been able to conduct the affairs of his government as an independent prince, and owing to her divisions, Italy has sunk to a "geographical expression." The first alternative, the union of all Italy as a federal state under the effective presidency of the pope, or its union as a monarchy with the pope for sovereign, would in our judgment be the best for Italy herself and for European society. But that is impracticable; the popes, themselves, have never desired it, and the powers will never consent to it. What remains? If the present state of things is not to continue, nothing remains but the second alternative, the dispossession of the Holy See and the establishment of a laical government, monarchical or republican, for the whole peninsula. This is alike the policy of Count Cavour and of Mazzini, only the former would have a monarchical, the latter a republican government. Each, however, aims at getting rid of the papal government, and at establishing Italian unity. As a mere statesman, governed by political reasons alone, we should not hesitate for a moment to adopt what is apparently the policy of Count Cavour, and favor the annexation of the whole of Italy to Piedmont, under a constitutional monarchy, if the thing were possible, without a violation of vested rights.

But it has been our purpose in the whole of this article to show that politics cannot be wholly separated from religion, and that the interests of the temporal order cannot be advanced in opposition to those of the spiritual order. The Sardinian government has no more right to annex the papal states, or any portion of them, to Piedmont, without the papal consent, than we have to appropriate our neighbor's purse without his permission, and the pope cannot give his consent, unless, in his judgment, the interests of religion and the welfare of souls demand it, which apparently he judges not to be the case. Violence may be used, but violence is always criminal, and against the pope is sacrilegious. There are, no doubt, many Catholics who, for themselves, think the interests of religion would be promoted by the pope's ceasing to be a temporal sovereign, and by his permitting all Italy to become united under Victor Emmanuel, who would, in that case, change his title from king of Sardinia to king of Italy; but the pope is the divinely appointed judge in the case, and his judgment in all spiritual matters must be ours. It has always been the policy of the popes to keep every great power as far from Rome as possible, in order to preserve their spiritual independence and freedom of action in the government of the church and the administration of ecclesiastical affairs. We know from history the position of the pope placed in the immediate neighborhood of a great power. How often have the German emperors interfered with the freedom of election, and pretended to depose and to create popes to suit themselves? Who forgets the terrible evils of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, of those in the thirteenth, when Charles of Anjou interposed and forced the election of a French pope, Martin IV., wholly devoted to his interests, and used as his creature? Would we renew those evils?  Do we want a new "Sicilian Vespers," and a new "Babylonian Captivity?"  Were Sardinia to gain all Italy, where is the pope to reside? At Rome, to be claimed and treated as a subject of the king? How much better oil would he be than when the powerful counts of Tusculum held him a prisoner in his palace, put him to death when he did not comply with their wishes, or placed a boy twelve years old on the papal throne? Looking to the interests of the church, and regarding, as we ought to regard, religious interests as paramount to all others, we cannot view the union of all Italy under a consolidated government as at all desirable, unless the pope himself be its supreme chief.

We are not—waiving the question of right—sorry to see the Duchies annexed to Sardinia, for we do not think it likely to prove injurious to either temporal or spiritual interests, that Sardinia should be strong enough to make her alliance worth counting. Waiving the original sin of Napoleon III. in making an unprovoked and therefore an unjust war on Austria, his error in policy has been in consenting to the union of Romagna to Sardinia. The best practicable policy under the circumstances, alike for the temporal interests of Italy and the spiritual interests of the church, it seems to us, would be to leave the pope in possession of all his estates, Austria in possession of Venetia, and placing the two Sicilies under a Bonapartist prince, and giving all the rest to Sardinia. The pope, Austria, and Sardinia would be strong enough to match France and Naples, and France and Naples would be strong enough to resist Austria and Sardinia, even backed by British influence ; and this, we apprehend, will prove in the end the settlement of the Italian question. Sardinia to-day is antipapal and anti-Austrian, but she is not likely to remain permanently either. France has enabled her to annex Lombardy; British diplomacy has aided her to annex the Duchies and Romagna; but France has taken from her Savoy and Nice, and will resist her further expansion, and she will yet need the alliance of both Austria and the pope to protect her against French ambition on the side of Naples, which, we have no doubt, unless England is prepared to fight for Sicily, will revert to a Murat, and thus become as much an appanage of France as Venetia is of Austria.  In that case, Sardinia will restore Romagna to the Holy See, become reconciled with the pope, and resume her position as a Catholic power.  Her interest then will unite her to Austria.

The king of Sardinia had incurred the major excommunication, decreed by the canons against all who invade the papal territory, or undertake to despoil the Holy See of any of its possessions, and the pope could do no less than pronounce it. The excommunication, though at present it only exasperates the Piedmontese authorities, will ultimately have its effect. The Piedmontese are neither heretics nor infidels; they are Catholic, and will remain Catholic. It is not in them to be any thing else. But they are Italians; that is to say, they can, without difficulty, be inconsistent with themselves. They can, with a firm Catholic faith under their impulsive nature, say and do an infinity of things in direct hostility to what their faith requires of them, hold the pope to be the vicar of Jesus Christ, and yet insult, abuse, or even assassinate him. If they were Germans, Englishmen, or Americans, we should never expect to find them returning to their obedience, for Englishmen, Americans, and Germans aim to be self-consistent, and when they do not choose to square their practice with their theory, they square their theory with their practice. The government may, for a time, remain under the papal excommunication, but gradually the fact of the excommunication, in spite of the precautions of the government, will become known to the Sardinian clergy and people, and the government will find itself losing the confidence of the nation. In the meantime changes will go on, and new moves on the political chess-board will demand new combinations, and a new ministry will seek to be relieved from ecclesiastical censures. A compromise of some sort will be effected, and peace will be made.

The present condition of parties in Piedmont will not long continue, for after all, under the Piedmont constitution, there is some freedom of thought, some freedom of discussion—publicity, political life. Count Cavour has committed a grand blunder in excluding from the parliament the old conservative party, for he will find a worse enemy in the advanced liberals he has admitted. The radicals are strong, and will give him trouble, and in order to sustain the monarchy and public order against them, he will need the support of the party now excluded. As the liberals or radicals, whose hero is Garibaldi, and whose oracle is Mazzini, become more violent, Cavour will be obliged to become more conservative, and to seek his support in the Catholic instincts and religious convictions of the people. We should be sorry to find constitutionalism failing in Sardinia. It has made a bad beginning, it is true, for Count Cavour, who is unquestionably one of the ablest ministers of state in Europe, coupled constitutionalism in Sardinia with the creation of Italian unity, and thus brought it into conflict with the papacy, which otherwise would have favored it. We are aware that in Sardinia, as elsewhere, there is a party, respectable alike for its numbers and its social position, opposed to all political innovations, with no confidence in constitutionalism, and sincerely attached to absolutism. The members of this party are attached to the church, and generally contrive to make it appear that it is in her name, or her interest, that they oppose political changes. But Count Cavour should have known that these men are always the friends of the established order, and are precisely those on whom he must rely, not to introduce constitutionalism, but to sustain it, after it has been introduced. Men who love religion, who reverence the church, and who really have a conscience, respect vested rights; and if they oppose innovations, it is not only because they are averse to changes, but because changes and innovations in the established order are seldom attempted without violence to existing rights. Count Cavour might well disregard the vis inertiae of the conservative party, but he went further and offended their sense of justice and religion, and made them active against him. He must, if he wishes to have his memory honored or his work remain, exert himself to repair his blunder, and make it the interest and the duty of that party to give him its support. His great error is in attaching more importance to the national than to the constitutional question, and in aiming to make Italy one, rather than Sardinia really free, prosperous, and happy under the new constitution. He has been more ambitious of governing a large state than a constitutional state. This has been the source of all his crimes, blunders, and sacrilege. It is this that has caused his tergiversations, his falsehoods, diplomatic lies, and his contempt of the laws of nations and the rights of his neighbors; and it is this that will yet, if he does not take care, make his name execrated by his countrymen as long as it remains unforgotten. He might have consolidated the constitutionalism of Carlo Alberto without offending either the pope or Austria, or disturbing the consciences of any portion of the subjects of his king. At present he stands before the world as a great, bad man.

After all, honesty is the best policy. Even in politics a firm adherence to right is the true policy for states and empires, and only such changes and reforms as are in accordance with the rights of individuals and nations are ever really advantageous. Those made against right, against justice, and in defiance of legitimate authority, always carry along with them a curse that more than neutralizes all the good they are able to effect. It is the misfortune of most reformers that they create a false issue before the public, and make themselves enemies where they might have friends, by seeking to introduce their reforms against instead of in accordance with authority. They violate a principle, the maintenance of which is of the last necessity for public order, public freedom, and national prosperity. No doubt there were in the sixteenth century great and crying abuses, though not so great as in some preceding centuries, but by attempting to reform them in defiance of authority, and in violation of vested rights, the reformers only brought a curse on themselves, and created new evils of another sort more fatal than those they sought to redress. This will always be the case, for there is a moral governor of the universe, who always sooner or later avenges his outraged laws. Aside from the papal government and the Austrian in the hereditary states, we cannot point to a single continental government in Europe whose title has been honestly acquired or maintained without violence or iniquity. Hence in no state has the government the affection of its subjects, or can sustain itself except by force of arms. The penalty of the original sin is visited upon them, and the transgressions of the fathers descend upon the children to the third and fourth generation. The whole history of the world proves that no nation can forsake God, or what is the same thing, violate right, trample on justice, and practise iniquity, with impunity.

We do not see how any Catholic can have any opinion with regard to the papal states except that expressed by the pope himself. We do not feel ourselves bound by all the arguments or reasonings we find in many of the recent pastorals of the bishops, whether at home or abroad. We cannot believe it necessary to maintain when defending Catholicity from all responsibility as to the alleged abuses of the temporal government of the pope, that the pope as temporal sovereign is the same to us as any other sovereign, and when the question is as to supporting that government against those who would secularize it, to maintain that it is indispensable to the spiritual independence of the head of the church, and therefore to the very existence of the Catholic religion. That the temporal government of the pope serves the interests of religion we are bound to believe, because the Holy Father who is the judge has so declared, but that the church would fail, or the pope be unable to discharge his functions as vicar of Christ, were he to cease to be a temporal prince, we do not believe. Our Lord founded his church on Peter, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Our trouble is not there. The pope can maintain his spiritual independence in some way; if in no other, by taking refuge again in the catacombs, or by suffering martyrdom, as did his predecessors for over three hundred years, from St. Peter downward to St. Sylvester. The renewal of the martyr ages would, perhaps, not be very injurious to the church or the salvation of souls. The church has lost ground by being too much mixed up with a worldly policy, by her children relying too much on the friendship of princes and states, and not depending enough on the naked truth to sustain them.

But we fear for those who wish to secularize the papal states, and to carry out what they regard as a wise and profound policy without regard to right or justice. Nothing is better settled than that we may not do evil that good may come. Were we fully convinced of the desirableness of Count Cavour's policy in itself considered, we should still condemn the course he and his master Victor Emmanuel have taken, because it is a course they have neither a moral nor a political right to take. No man has the moral right to seek even a good end by immoral means, or to promote the interests of his own country at the expense of the rights of another. It is not so much the simple annexation of Romagna by Victor Emmanuel to his own dominions without the consent of the pope, as it is the violation of right, and the sacrilege involved, that is the evil. If the annexation had been made with the free concurrence of the supreme pontiff, we should have had nothing to say. We hold that a scrupulous respect for international right is of the highest interest to all sovereigns, to the strong as well as to the weak, for the strong to-day may be the weak to-morrow. The violation of the rights of the Holy See by Victor Emmanuel is a blow struck at the sacredness of his own, and already has France made him feel it in compelling him to cede to her Savoy and Nice. If he respects not the rights of others, how can he expect others to respect his?  Iniquity propagates itself. When Austria recovers from her temporary embarrassment, and France, perhaps, is engaged in a death-struggle with Great Britain, or is embarrassed by an imbecile regency, what is to prevent the Austrian army not only from restoring the grand dukes, but from re-annexing Piedmont to Lombardy, and reestablishing the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom? The plebiscite relied on is a two-edged sword, and may take away to-morrow what it gives to-day. If the people either of their own motion or as stirred up by foreign emissaries have the right to withdraw themselves from their legitimate sovereign and give themselves to another, and that other his enemy, which would in old times have been called rebellion and treason, what guaranty has Victor Emmanuel that his old or his new subjects will obey him any longer than it suits their caprice? No crown is safe, no throne is secure, and all established order, all legitimate government becomes impracticable, if the new doctrine of imperial France and Sardinia is to prevail. It is democracy in its worst form, in its bad, without its good.

Here is the terrible evil of the recent acts of the Sardinian government, sanctioned or acquiesced in by his most serene majesty, the emperor of the French. In them a blow is struck at all government, and therefore at society itself, for society is impossible without government. The cause of the pope is the cause of all sovereigns, of all legitimate government, whether monarchical or republican, of society, of the human race; and we regret that we are too old to bind on a knapsack, shoulder a musket, and march to his defence as a soldier under the brave Lamoriciere. All Greece armed to avenge on Paris the rape of Helen; all the Catholic world should arm to avenge the rape of Æmilia, and vindicate the cause of political justice. We see now what the world has lost by the changes which have rendered impracticable the exercise of the inherent supremacy of the papacy over temporal sovereigns, that while the judicial power remains, the executive power is crippled. The present is precisely one of those cases when the vicar of our Lord has need to intervene with the full spiritual authority to vindicate outraged humanity, and the laws of God set at naught. It is because such cases as the present are constantly occurring, when the last refuge of violated truth, and justice, and humanity, is the papacy, that we have felt it not inopportune, nor unnecessary to recall to the minds of the faithful, the supremacy of the spiritual order, and therefore of the pope as its representative on earth.  It has been the forgetfulness of that supremacy that has emboldened professedly Catholic sovereigns to despoil the Holy See, and to defy the censures of the church. Gallicanism and Gosselinism have prepared the way for what we see, and made even some Catholics doubt the propriety of excommunicating a king, especially a king who pretends to head the movement for political freedom and national independence. It would without asserting the power we have claimed for the pope be difficult to justify the excommunication of Victor Emmanuel and his counsellors, aiders, and abettors. It is because we hold the pope has that power from God, that we approve the spiritual censures with which he brands the despoilers of the Holy See.

However, it is not for us componere lites between Catholics, any more than it is to foretell what is to be the final solution of the present Italian and Roman questions. We place ourselves on the side of the pope and assert, as in duty bound, the supremacy of the spiritual order; we defend the excommunication, and we do so in the interest alike of religion and politics, and without abating in the least our confidence in constitutionalism, or our sympathy with the Sardinian movement, so far as it is a movement in favor of constitutional government, or abandoning our hopes for the brave Piedmontese, who are now suffering for the faults of their rulers. We go as far as the Holy Father goes, but no further. We condemn the stirring up by Sardinian agents of the revolution in Romagna, and the annexation of that portion of the States of the Church to Sardinia, but we do not condemn the constitution given to his kingdom by Carlo Alberto, or feel that we are called upon to swing round to the side of despotism, or to seek to reestablish Austrian prepotence in the Italian peninsula. We trust Victor Emmanuel, who, though not much of a man, if what we hear be true, is yet a Catholic in his faith, will return to his senses, learn that he can do all the good to his subjects that he is prepared to do, without incurring any ecclesiastical censure, and make up his mind to be reconciled to the church. The pope has spoken, but we do not think it our duty to throw in our impertinent voice to aid in making the breach wider than it is.  No Catholic can defend the king, no Catholic should wish to do it, but we should all pray for peace between him and the Holy Father.