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Leader (1850-1860), 17th December 1853, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1217, Untitled Article

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      all treaties , obligations , and other inconvenient usages , abolish the Placet , and re-establish the absolute Hegemony of the Holy See . The legal validity of the right of patronage which the Government of Carlsruhe has asserted over the whole extent of its territory is , besides , recognised by important authorities within the Church itself . Thus , the ecclesiastic who became afterwards Bishop of Mayence ( although reserving , in theory , to the Holy See the right of waiving all treaties at the

      fitting opportunity ) , nevertheless , declared formally , in a report which is before us , that , speaking within the terms of the recognised legality , the treaty must be interpreted in favour of the Government of Baden . That ecclesiastic said , in so many words : "It was tacitlg reserved by the treaty of 1804 . that the Government of Baden should appropriate to itself the rights of patronage in the other provinces , also , from the moment when it had extended its rights of sovereignty over those provinces . "

      Against the Curialists who claim an unconditional autonomy , the State in Baden stands , therefore , according to formal legality , on a perfectiy legitimate ground . The State has certain rights and titles , and the Church is legally subordinate to the State , Indeed , the administration of the Catholic Church was always directed in Baden , in the name of the Grand Duke , by a Council subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior , and called , at first , " Section of the Catholic Church , " later , " Superior Council of the Catholic Church . "

      Since the proclamation of the Constitution ( 1818 ) the Chambers have also legally exercised their share of control by regulating the budget , and by expressing their opinionsupm the internal tendencies of the Church . We have given the salient points of the course by which the State in Baden acquired its prerogatives against the Roman Church . We now proceed to add a succinct and summary history of the conflicts between the two . We are too far removed from the feelings and opinions of either to incur the charge of partiality to the one or to the other .

      After the restoration of the Bourbons in France , and after the re-establishment of the Order Of Jesuits by Pius VII . ( 1814 ) , the Papal Church gathered up again the broken threads of its organisation . It sought , in a word , to reintegrate itself in the possession of all the influence it owned before the revolution . To attain that end , the admirers of Ravaillac and of JNlarirtna recommended themselves to the thrones , as allies against the spirit of doubt , of liberty , and of progress . While with one hand they were offering

      this alliance to the thrones , with the other these Escobars held a poniard to destroy the existence of certain states , for the advantage of Catholicismin majorem Jgnatii gloriam . One of those states " which they doomed to dismemberment was the Duchy of Baden , where , by the suppression of important ecclesiastical powers , by a Protestant dynasty , by the influence of France , by the Code Napoleon , by the sub-division of the soil , &c , the Mediaovalism was seriously endangered .

      At that epoch ( 1814 ) there existed still in Germany very remarkable traces of certain endeavours after emancipation , which , in the eighteenth century , had been initiated within the aristocratic spheres of the Catholic Hierarchy . Many bishops still adhered to episcopal tendencies , to Conservativc-Liberal principles , to a species of reformed Toryism , expressed in the " Punctation of Ems" in 1785 . It was a liberalism almost imperceptible , but which did seem something , compared with the cadaverous doctrines of the disciples of Laynez and Bobadilla . Two representatives of that cream

      ot the mitred liberal aristocracy in Germany "W'ero the Baron do Dal berg ( under Napoleon Prince-Primas of the Khcinbund ) and the Baron do WKSHKNiiKna , chief of tho Josephinist school , both administering , successively , the dioceses of Buden . Wessonberg , placed on the list of prohibited priests becauso of bin opinions , was not even recognised by the Pope- in his episcopal functions , which he occupied iti the teeth of the anathema of tho Holy Father . Tho Grand Duke protected him against tho thunders of Kome , and against tho rage of tho Pnpal Nuncio sit Lucerne .

      It might have boon imagined that the Staro would find an ally iu a priest who had drawn upon himself 8 a weight of ecclesiastical wrath , and who was nothing , save through the grace of a wcciilar power . Not ut all . The Catholic priest , the most liberal to all 'ippenrance , is still Komish enough to bo tho zealous defe nder of hierarclnal pretensions . It may well be that he has small relish for the honour of kissing the sh pp er of art infallible Pope . But it by no menus lollowa that ho has any repugnance to sec the pro-* ftno Icissinjr hi 8 OWI 1 #

      Have wo not seen the Archbishop of Paris attacked i » y the Veuillots and the Gauiues as fiercely uh if ho wore tho Director of Hell incarnate ? Was it not B » pposed that this great Galilean , this modern

      Bossuet , this admirer of Pagan classicism , would be for ever the irreconcileable enemy of the men of obscurity . Ah ! if it be a questipn of opposing the secular power , the most touching accord is reestablished . The Classicists , who read Homer , Virgil , and Cicero , without thinking themselves condemned to the claws of the f f f , and the poor fools who are wretched because "the earth revolves , "—all unite again in concord and harmony . We find the Archbishop of Paris sending succour to his " dear brother of Freiburg , " as readily as the Jesuit Bishop of Posen and Count Waidburg-Zeil the knight-errant , of German Loyolism . Ah ! if the thing to be done is to subject the State to the Altar , then at once is reared a Latin cross which stretches its arms from the Seine to the Danube and the Vistula , with the City of the Seven Hills for its base .

      A similar phenomenon was displayed in 1814 . Wessenberg , anathematised by the Chief of Christendom , Wessenberg the Josephinist , the protege of the Grand Duke , sustained against the Government of Baden a struggle for more than ten years to wrest from the State the rights of patronage which he claimed to belong to the Church . In turning over the documents referring to this contest of 1815 , 1812 , 1821 , 1827 , 1828 , we are struck with the haughty language of a priest who had no other resources

      than his pride . Certainly , the language of Wessenberg fell short of the insolence of the now living Archbishep of Freiburg . The contest raised by Wessenberg was a petty display of rebellious impudence he confined himself to a reclamation of specific rights , and alleged some reasons for his demands , while the Archbishop of 1853 plants himself broadly on the pontificial and canonical ground , declaring " his surprise that he should be called upon to obey the laws of the State . " ( These are the very words of the Archbishop of Fribourg . )

      But to understand thoroughly the bearing of these relatively unimportant conflicts , which were kept up between the Archiepiscopate and the Government from 1814 till about 1830 , we must for a moment recur to the political events of that epoch . The Grand Duchy was originally formed , under Napoleon , by the agglomeration of the ancient Margraviat , with the provinces formerly belonging to Bavaria and to Austria , and with the territories of some petty , secular , and ecclesiastical governments which were dissolved and mediatised . By this means the Master of the Knights of St . John , the Prince-Abbe de St : Blasien and others lost their rierhts of

      the middle ages . After the resurrection of the legitimate thrones in 1814 , all those ancient petty sovereigns , all that ci-devant immediate Nobilitw of the German Empire , all that secularised Clericalism merged in a common League with Austro-Bavarian tendencies- Their object was to regain their ancient independence , or at least to give the preponderance to the Catholic Powers , by dissolving the small states " infected with Liberalism . " The cement of that League were some men affiliated to the vows of that politicoreligious Corporation whose handle is at Home , and whose point is everywhere . Austria and Bavaria Austria

      were to be the saviours of the future . In flourished , at that time , tho Kedemptorists , a militant order of Jesuitism . In Bavaria the ' black-robed P . P . looked forward to a speedy return to the good old times of Charles Theodore , the grand persecutor of the Illuminati , whose Court swarmed with abbe ' s and confessors , with tonsured and frocked crusaders of every hue and cut . The aristocratieo-clerieal conspiracy , powerful in the possession of vast seigneurial lands , influential by its relations with the high circles of Governments , and with the Catholic and legitimate Courts in particular , sought to dismember and divide the Duchy of Baden among tho Catholic

      Powers . * It was this perilous moment that Wossenberg , the protdge of the Government of Baden , chose to create difficulties for tho State , by demanding riglits which , according to the ecclesiastical authority above cited , belonged exclusively to the State . To resist the designs of the Papists and the Aristocrats , the Grand Ducal Government did not appeal to public opinion . At that date tho country had no constitution : the people could not make

      their voice heard . The proclamation of a charter would then have sufficed to hold the conspirators in check . But the miserable dwarfish dynasty of linden stuck to its own absolute sovereignty with tho desperation of the biggest thoroughbred despot living . It snuffed tho spirit of revolt everywhere ; its terrors wore ridiculous . Tho reports of its scoreL police kept strict account of the colour of tho houses ; uid of the Hhajxj of handkerchiefs of its subjects , because under tho disguises of colour and of form niii'ht lurk symbols of Freemasonry ! This is

      authentic . Kather than trust for support to those classes of the people which professed anti-clerical opinions , the Court of Carlsruhe sought to win over a party from the League—the territorial Seigneurs ( Standes-und Grundherren ) . There were political and religious measures which conduced to that end . In religion , the Government conferred on the territorial aristocracy the right of presentation to the parishes . It thought by such concessions to detach some members from the League , forgetting , it seems , that these Seigneurs , for the most part Catholics , were but the tools of the higher Roman clergy , and that , consequently , to give them the right of presentation to the parishes , it was holding out the hand to Uitramontanism .

      That furnace of intrigues was not to be extinguished by timid concessions and wavering measures . The Duchy continued to be menaced by the plots of the friends of Austria and Bavaria . In more than one year it was even constantly apprehended that the JBavarian forces would enter into Baden , and proceed to the dismemberment of the Duchy . It was not the Papists who had least contributed to provoke Bavaria to these attacks . Tn the thick of these anxieties about the fate of

      his country and of his throne , biit only upon Ins bed of death , the Grand Duke Charles resolved at last to proclaim a Constitution ( 1818 ) , one of the first paragraphs of which , directed against the " Austrians " and the " Romanists , " confirms solemnly the indivisibility and inalienability , of the Grand Duchy in . all its parts . By this charter the projects of the conspiracy were outwitted . The Constitution strengthened and united all the provinces of the State , by interesting the whole people in its

      existence . After the people had received through the Constitution the gift of political life , the intriguers of Sacerdotalism in Baden , although still from time to time menacing the very existence of the State , necessarily addressed their attacks rather to the" spiritual domain . The Ultramontane leaders , by making themselves the interpreters of the doctrines of Mailer and of Gorres sought to gain for " lay coadjutors" some personages in exalted positions . Among the Protestants at the head of the social scale , Crypto-Catholicism ,. as among the Catholics ,

      Crypto-Jesuitism , made proselytes . In the families of the haute noblesse of the south of Germany , the tutor of the children and the clergyman of the castle were usually in the confidence of the " " Blacks . " The political activity of the order is , it i 3 well known , singularly facilitated by the rules of the Society , which permit the members to take no part in religious exercises , and not even to observe the most sacred usages of the Church , if they deem it better to abstain . So the Jesuit threw off his scholastic cassock , put his casuistry in his pocket , dressed like a man of the world , affected a taste for Art and Belles Lettrca , was conspicuous for savovr

      vivre . By these manoeuvres the Society glided to the steps of the throne , insinuated itself everywhere , made unheard-of efforts to place in the chairs of tho colleges and universities j ) rofessor 9 initiated in the depths of the " Ratio et Institutio studiorum Societatis Jesu . " The peasant was plied by the Propaganda of flying-sheets and popular almanacks . The Society eluded the laws of the state by indirect purchase of estates , which it administered by secretly affiliated agents , and enlarged by legacies torn from tho agonies of deathbeds . Tho young Theologians wore attracted to the Collegium . liomanum of Kome ; a new generation of Papists was roared up .

      All this was done , if not with the connivance at least with the indifference of the Grand Ducal Government , and against the openly expressed opimonB of the enlightened part of the population . I he Government winked at it ; for , after all , it would rather cherish Ultramontaniam than govern according to the wislics of its subjects . Its chief endeavour was to Kct rid of those troublesome paragraphs of a Con-Btitution which it had granted in the hour of danger . It even entered—documents from the secret archives of Carlsruhe , opened by the Provisional Government of 1840 attest the fact—it entered into relation with the Absolutist Courts ; it even sent members of the Grand Diicul family to . St . Petersburg to consult tho highest authority oa tho best method of getting rid of u Constitution .

      lu theso efforts it had no other allies than the brothers of St . Francis Xavier , who in 1825 actually tried to provoke an agitation among the peasants for the abolition of the Constitution . These friends of tho throne , however , were not too disinterested , as we shall be able to prove in a retrospective review of events ninco 1830 . fKrrata in tho tlrnb artiolo . t-Iu th <> hoooimI column , lino 31 " in opposition . " road " in support ;; " lino 88 , ' Toutonio , " rt ' ad " (/ oMita . "—In tlui third column , hue it , territory , " read " lathorland . " -Lino -IB , " eleventh oontury . " read " olirlitconth century . " -Lino 54 > . " ineapablu ot Imposing rvHtr ' uAUnvi " road '' incapable of reslnliiiK tho restrictions w ' liieli wero imposed . " - -Lino < H > , " roluiuhiK , " mad "re-HtrlotinK- "J

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      * Ity u w'cret treaty concluded between Austiin « nd Bavaria , in 1814 , tho Palatinate of linden and tho Mainaiid Taubevkreis , belonging to tho Duchy of Hadeo , wore to lan . se to tho Crown of Havana . Singularly unough , it »« precisely in tho Timber-ground that tho recent troubles were instigated by tho Papists .

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      December 17 > 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 1217

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 17, 1853, page 1217, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2017/page/17/