59. THE OLD REGIME IN FRANCE

Prelates. By the Concordat of Bologna (1516), the king had received from the Holy See the privilege of nominating to all sees, abbacies, canonries, and inferior benefices. “By means of this patronage, the monarch was usually able to control the higher clergy, who were chosen almost invariably from the ranks of the nobility and formed a special caste even in their own order. In spite of the notorious example of men like Archbishop Dubois, they were as a class not unworthy of their sacred office, though it must be admitted that in the century preceding the Revolution they could boast of few colleagues of eminent sanctity and learning.” ¹² In 1789 there were 134 sees, of which all but five were occupied by noblemen. The abbots were for the most part laymen holding in commendam. The income of the bishoprics varied between $500,000 and $2,000, with perhaps $12,000 as an average. These prelates had the administration of at least one-fifth of the land of France, though most of this wealth was used for the traditional charitable works of the Catholic Church. There were a number of courtier prelates, like Cardinal de Rohan, who longed to bask in the radiance of Versailles, and whose scandalous escapades set tongues wagging unjustifiably in generalizations about the entire episcopate. The tithe—which actually ^{[p. 365]} amounted to about a thirteenth—was resented by the common people, and as many as four hundred thousand law suits are reported against it during one year.

12 J MacCaffery, History of the Church (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1910), I, 4.

The parochial clergy numbered between sixty thousand and seventy thousand, and was largely recruited from the third estate, or the common people. With fewer exceptions they were clergymen of irreproachable moral qualities. Most of them were respected by the peasants to whom they were bound by common social class and their zeal. The parishes were of unequal size and revenue, but while a few might receive as much as $4,000 a year in a town, most country curés had to struggle along with an income of merely $125 a year. Some members of this “spiritual proletariat” bitterly resented this inequality with the prelates, and consequently were readily induced to co-operate with the bourgeoisie against the privileged classes during the early stages of the French Revolution. This antipathy, active or passive, contributed largely to preventing a united clerical stand in regard to the evils against which the Revolution was directed. Some of the curés were readers and disseminators of the current political philosophy, and not a few were deceived by the Encyclopedists whose works they procured clandestinely.

Religious were little in favor with Gallican prelates and statesmen: between 1705 and 1784 the Commission of Regulars, deputed by the Assembly of the French Clergy, suppressed 426 religious houses, and in 1773 virtually ended their exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, despite protests from the Holy See and the international generalates. The French conduct toward the Society of Jesus was merely an extreme example of the disregard for the regular clergy.

The king was absolute in theory, but frequently a slave of a court and ministerial system which he found difficult to change, or of mistresses whom he had no inclination to give up. Since 1614 the monarchy had ceased to consult the Estates General, the French legislature. Legislation and taxation emanated from royal councils, themselves influenced by powerful pressure groups among the nobility. Though Richelieu and Mazarin had developed new and more efficient instruments of government, none of the medieval offices had been abolished. They remained as costly sinecures with overlapping jurisdiction. The parlements, the courts of France, could sometimes oppose the royal will by refusing to register a royal decree. Ultimately a determined monarch could override this opposition by a lit de justice, a personal confrontation, but this and more severe punitive measures often antagonized public opinion which cherished the parlements as champions of liberty, caste-ridden and petty as they often showed themselves. ^{[p. 366]}

In the provinces, gerrymandering was used to weaken the power of the local nobility. Thus, the noble governors had been largely superseded in practice by the fiscal powers of the bourgeois intendants. Chaotic inequalities survived in the provinces with their varying types of law, custom, and administrative machinery. The local districts also differed in dialect, attachment to the crown, and mode of taxation. Though taxation could have been comparatively light in the aggregate, it was unequally assessed and annoyingly collected. Despite it, however, trade was increasing and some peasants were even able to buy land, one-third of which had come into their possession. But if occasionally well-to-do, the country people saw fit to disguise appearances to avoid ruinous taxes. France remained in a state of “prodigal anarchy.”

The nobles clung to outmoded privileges. While exempt from royal taxation—though not from some “donatives”—they themselves continued to exact feudal dues: monopolies on commodities, fees for the use of manorial ovens, mills, etc., although they no longer performed the feudal protective services which had originally given them a sort of title to these perquisites. Perhaps seventy-five per cent of the nobles were absentee landlords, either away at court or serving in the armed forces where they alone merited officers’ commissions. There were some two hundred thousand noblemen, divided, however, by rivalry between the ancient feudal nobility “of the sword,” and the newer ministerial nobility “of the robe.” Intermarriage with the bourgeoisie took place with increasing frequency, but came too late to fuse the upper classes prior to the French Revolution. Unlike the alliance of squirearchy and upper middle class in England, France still held rival castes.

The bourgeoisie formed the dynamic element. Those in Paris were numerous and wealthy, and the group as a whole included the lawyers, bureaucrats, merchants, and a few manufacturers. They were likely to be educated in the rationalist and secularist tradition. But though they possessed wealth and intelligence, they were denied political and social equality with the nobility. In an attempt to re-enact the English Revolt of 1689 they began the more conservative phase of the Revolution in France.

The artisans, numerically less important, were nevertheless strong in the strategic city of Paris. There they forced the Revolution beyond the plans of the capitalists and lawyers who, once their own objectives had been achieved, would have displayed little disposition to extend their gains to the rest of the third estate.

The peasants were in agreement with the bourgeoisie only in opposition to the privileges of the Ancien Régime with its taille reelle  ^{[p. 367]} (landtax), taille personelle (head-tax) , vingtieme (income tax) , gabelle (salt monopoly), octroi (internal tariff), corvée (forced labor)—to say nothing more of the tithe. Aside from the removal of their tax burdens and other feudal restrictions, however, the peasants had little grievance against Church and monarchy. They were in the strict sense reformers; that is, they desired the improvement, not the overthrow, of existing institutions.

The Regent Orléans (1715-23), as next prince of the blood royal, took over the rule of France for the five-year-old Louis XV when the Grand Monarch, Louis XIV, terminated his seventy-two year reign in 1715. Philip, duke of Orléans (1674-1723), was a dabbler in philosophy and science and an immoral debauchee. With him the full panoply of the “Enlightenment” was allowed free admittance into France. Its teachings, subversive of ecclesiastical and secular authority alike, were given free rein. Though repressive measures could later be employed by Orléans’ successors, this opening wedge could never be forced completely out. At first under cover, and after 1748 semipublicly, the new theories went the rounds of salons and clubs. Morals among the court nobility were too often patterned after those of the regent. The regent’s Latitudinarianism permitted the revival of Jansenism; his sponsorship of Law’s Mississippi speculation scheme left bankruptcy and panic in its wake.

Cardinal André Fleury (1653-1743) became the real head of the government at the regent’s death, although the duke of Bourbon was nominally premier until 1726. The aged cardinal, once the king’s tutor, enjoyed his confidence and did not betray it. This cautious statesman perceived that France’s situation required peace abroad and rigid economy at home. He lacked, however, the energy or the power to pursue his objectives with sufficient tenacity to produce a radical cure. France eventually became involved in the War of Polish Succession which put Bourbons on the throne of the Two Sicilies, but increased her financial burdens. At home, the cardinal on the whole reduced expenditures and promoted trade and industry. Probably he postponed the French Revolution, but he did not permanently reverse the trend to the abyss.

“Personal rule” by King Louis XV supposedly followed the cardinal’s death in 1743. The monarch, indeed, declared himself his own prime minister as Louis XIV had done before him. But Louis XV was no “Grand Monarch” and his interest in government was but spasmodic. Even then it was usually prompted by a series of mistresses of whom Pompadour and Du Barry were the most notorious. If Louis was sound in faith and well disposed toward the Church, his gross and flagrant ^{[p. 368]} immorality created an obvious target for the critics’ shafts. The king’s benevolence to the clergy, however, was thoroughly Gallican: in 1768 a royal order raised clerical salaries from 150 to 250 livres minimum. Nor could the king prevail over the wishes of his minister Choiseul regarding the Jesuits.

Both of Fleury’s policies were entirely abandoned. France now plunged recklessly into the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War with the result that both Canada and India were lost, while debt piled up at home. The financial deficit increased with the extravagance of a frivolous court at Versailles. The Ancien Régime was by now maintained with increasing difficulty. Murmurs became audible and an attempted assassination of “Louis the Well-Beloved” in 1757 led to reprisals. The parlement of Paris, indoctrinated with religious and political Rationalism, attempted a course of legal opposition to the throne, that bore some analogy to that of the English “Long Parliament” toward King Charles I. Louis XV finally countered this by abolishing all of the twelve parlements of France in 1771—a measure which did not last. He was not unaware that his regime could not long survive, but continued to remark cynically: “After us, the deluge.” The Last Sacraments may have saved his own soul, but he left France little other salvation than revolution.

Louis XVI, twenty-year-old grandson of Louis XV, was the largely innocent heir of the sins of the Bourbon Ancien Régime. Pious, upright, and well-meaning, he would have made an exemplary private citizen—and locksmith. Not deficient in intelligence, he was weak of will. This was ill supplied by the stubborn caprice of the unpopular Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette. Unwilling to use force to shed his people’s blood, never tenacious enough to take the lead in any consistent reform policy, the king’s vacillating gestures nullified each other. Yielding to the march of events, he was swept along with the current.

Turgot (1774-76), the king’s first minister, belonged to the economic individualists known as Physiocrats. Turgot abolished the internal tolls on grain and the corvée, and repressed monopolies. The exiled parlements were recalled. But when tax reform and rigid economy were proposed, the court clique forced Turgot out.

Necker (1776-81; 1788-89), a Swiss banker, believed that business efficiency was all that France needed. Skillful manipulation did postpone a reckoning a few more years, but effected no real cure. What economies he could effect were dissipated by French espousal of the American Revolutionary cause. Necker’s efforts to cut pensions and dismiss bureaucrats forced him out as well. Before departing he published an ^{[p. 369]} unauthorized financial statement that alerted the intelligent to some of France’s peril. After his successors, Calonne and De Brienne, had merely temporized, Necker was recalled in 1788 to meet a desperate insolvency which could no longer be relieved by loans—governmental credit was nearly gone. Necker advised convocation of the Estates General, and its meeting was announced as a New Year’s gift to the nation for the memorable year of 1789. A Bourbon king had at last been forced to admit publicly that he alone was not the state.

60. SECULARIST GERMANY

The Treaty of Westphalia marked the virtual end of central government in Germany. If the Peace of Augsburg (1555) terminated the international influence of the Holy Roman Empire, that of Westphalia put an end to the German Kingdom. Until 1871 one must speak of the “Germanies” rather than of Germany. Though Austrian archdukes continued to be elected emperors and kings, their importance was derived from their hereditary lands and not from these ornamental titles. All of the German states, theoretically just provinces of the kingdom, were by now independent in the regulation of both foreign and domestic affairs. This led to the anomalous situation of political “split personalities.” Thus, the archduke of Austria was king of Hungary outside the imperial frontiers; the elector of Brandenburg was to become king of Prussia in the same sense; the elector of Saxony was often king of Poland; the elector of Hanover was king of Great Britain; the duke of Holstein was the king of Denmark; counts palatine and counts of Hesse successively were kings of Sweden; the prince of the Netherlands was the king of Spain; the count of Alsace was the king of France; and the duke of Savoy became king of Sardinia. Obviously these sovereigns were not meek subjects in their capacity as German vassals: they tended to rule all their lands with a single policy. This resulted in Germany being dragged into nearly every war. Finally, all pretense of unity collapsed before the Bonapartist conquests and pretensions, so that at last Francis II resigned the empty but venerable title of Holy Roman Emperor in 1806. Under these circumstances, no unified history of the German Church is possible. Since each of the three hundred or so German states cannot be treated, until 1870 it will be convenient to confine our efforts to the leading Catholic state, Austria, and its chief Protestant rival, Prussia.

Reform in Germany was promoted by Bishops Johann von Bicken of Mainz and Julius von Mespelbruun of Würzburg, and Abbot Gaspard  ^{[p. 370]} Hoffmann of Melk, whose monastic reform federation continued after his death in 1623. Father Bartholomew Holzhauser (1613-58) of Austria formed an association of secular clerics to train the clergy and to promote parochial community life, and this movement spread into Hungary, Poland, and Spain. Confirmed as a diocesan association in 1680 by Pope Innocent XI, it was revived during the nineteenth century by Canon Le Beurier and vigorously promoted by St. Giuseppe Sarto (Pius X) . “The parts of the Germany that remained Catholic recovered with surprising rapidity from the harm of the Thirty Years’ War. A new life spirit appeared, a healthy joy of being alive, expressed in the countless ecclesiastical and profane buildings and sculptures in the baroque style which still imprint their stamp on the scenery. There was no flaming spirituality, no ardent mysticism. Catholics of the German Baroque Age did not wrestle with problems. . . . Theirs was a thoroughly localized religion, deeply rooted, pervading all of life. It produced no great saints, but neither was it a breeding ground of Jansenism and Illuminism.” ra Other reform figures were the missionary, Philip Jenigen, S.J., Ulric Megerle (d. 1709), blunt and popular preacher, and the poet, Friedrich von Spee (d. 1635) .

The Habsburgs after the Treaty of Westphalia contented themselves with their ceremonial precedence among European rulers and the influence that came from ruling the largest German state. The German empire and kingdom became relics, and in 1663 the Diet at Regensburg became “perpetual,” that is, continued without new blood down to the formal dissolution of the empire in 1806.

Emperor Leopold I (1658-1705) , like his father and grandfather, was zealously Catholic, though entertaining some Caesaro-papistical illusions. Like other jurisdictionalist monarchs, he considered prelates his subjects in all respects, and minor disputes occurred periodically between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities.

The Balkan crusade against the Turks revealed the emperor in his best role, for his resistance to a renewed onslaught by the Porte saved the Church and Central Europe and permanently reversed the Mohammedan tide. The long war (1682-99) resulted in the complete liberation of Catholic Hungary, and beckoned the Habsburgs to seek domination of the Balkans. At first the Turks menaced Vienna itself (1683), but were repulsed by the rallying power of Pope Innocent XI and the military assistance of King John Sobieski of Poland. National rivalry was set aside ^{[p. 371]} until the city was relieved, though thereafter it paralyzed the effect of Polish aid. But the emperor was able to force the Turks to yield with Venetian naval assistance. By the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) the two-thirds of Hungary lost in 1526 at the battle of Mohacs were recovered.

‘³ Ludwig Hertling and Anselm Briggs, History of the Church (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1957), p. 435.

The War of Spanish Succession proved an unsuccessful diversion of Habsburg attention toward the West. It failed in its design of placing Leopold’s second son Charles on the Spanish throne. The war continued throughout the reign of Leopold’s elder son, Joseph I (1705-11), but concluded shortly after his demise, for the great powers would not consent to a revival of the dynastic empire of Charles V in the person of the archduke, now Emperor Charles VI.

Emperor Charles VI (1711-40) was well served against Turkey by his greatest general, Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), who recaptured Belgrade and parts of Servia from the Turks in 1718. After his death, however, these gains were in large part lost, and the Austrian southern frontier was stabilized until the occupation of Bosnia in 1878. Charles also participated in the Polish Succession War, seated his candidate on the Polish throne, but had to renounce the Two Sicilies to the Spanish Bourbons. Since Charles, like his brother Joseph, lacked male heirs, he spent his last years in securing signatures to a “Pragmatic Sanction” which guaranteed the succession of his daughter Maria Theresa to all of his dominions. His Prussian neighbor remarked cynically that a strong army would have been a better guarantee—and he knew whereof he spoke, for Austrian Silesia was soon stolen by the first Prussian blitz launched after tearing up treaties like “scraps of paper.”

Maria Theresa (1740-80) succeeded to the throne in Austria and Hungary, but as a woman was ineligible for the imperial throne. Frederick II of Prussia seized Austrian Silesia and held it through the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and Seven Years’ Wars (1756-63), while backing the Bavarian elector as Emperor Charles VII (1742-45) . Maria Theresa, however, preserved the rest of her extensive lands, and after the defeat and death of Charles VII, got her husband, Duke Francis of Lorraine, chosen as his successor (1745-65). Personally devout, the empress was led by advisors such as Kaunitz to meddle in ecclesiastical affairs. She abolished the Inquisition and nullified ecclesiastical decrees enacted without her placet. A number of monasteries were secularized and the clergy subjected to taxation. Far more serious was her blindness in allowing education in Vienna University to be tainted by rationalist and Febronian influences.

Febronianism had originated with the Jansenist professor of Louvain, Van Espen, who denied to the pope any primacy of jurisdiction. His ^{[p. 372]} doctrine was given its widest publicity after it had been incorporated in a work, De Praesenti Statu Ecclesiae, by Johann von Hontheim, auxiliary bishop of Trier, who wrote under the pen name of Febronius. This treatise proposed three means of achieving ecclesiastical reform. The first was to restrict papal jurisdiction to a “primacy of direction.” The second advocated a general council to enlighten and direct the papacy. Lastly, bishops were to invoke the aid of monarchs in reforming abuses. Clement XIII condemned Febronianism on March 14, 1764, and urged the German hierarchy to ban the book. In spite of a didactic refutation prepared by the Venetian Jesuit, Zaccharia—the AntiFebronio—new editions of Hontheim’s work continued to appear. Episcopal censures were rendered inefficacious by the refusal of the elector-archbishop of Trier, to rebuke his auxiliary. This prelate, Clemens von Wettin, a son of the king of Poland, instead joined the electors of Mainz and Cologne in presenting their gravamina to the Roman Curia in 1769. These representations revealed Febronian influence, and only in 1778 after repeated papal urging did the elector secure a half-hearted re-tractation from Hontheim, who died in communion with the Church in 1790.

Emperor Joseph (1765-90), Maria Theresa’s eldest son, though Holy Roman Emperor since his father’s death in 1765, did not attain real power until her death in 1780. This well-meaning but ill-advised ruler embarked on a series of “reforms” which threw all the Habsburg dominions into confusion. And this “Brother Sacristan” blended rationalist and Febronian errors into a new mixture known as Josephinism.

Political Josephinism, which here must receive short attention, was an arbitrary project of welding the heterogeneous Habsburg territories into one absolute, centralized monarchy, with a single law, customs, and language. Revolts in Belgium and Hungary thwarted the scheme, and it was abandoned by Joseph’s successor.

Ecclesiastical Josephinism might be summarized in a letter of the imperial chancellor Kaunitz to the papal nuncio, Monsignor Garampi: “Supremacy of the state over the Church extends to all ecclesiastical laws and practices devised and established solely by man, and whatever else the Church owes to the consent and sanction of the secular power. Consequently the state must always have the power to limit, alter, or annul its former concessions... Concrete instances were these:

1) The royal placet was required for epicopal communication with Rome.

2) Appeals to the Roman curia for faculties and marriage dispensations were branded “violations of the rights of bishops.”

3) Liturgy was ^{[p. 373]} minutely regulated, and in 1786 a German ritual demanded.

4) Episcopal oaths of allegiance were to precede oaths to the Holy See.

5) Education was largely taken from hierarchical supervision, even in regard to seminaries.

6) Contemplative orders were to be suppressed and their property nationalized.

7) Imperial censorship was decreed for all books, including religious treatises.

Pope Pius VI met these repeated affronts with patient prudence. Realizing that the cardinal-archbishop of Vienna, Migazzi, was being disregarded, the pope paid an unprecedented visit to Vienna. The people received the pontiff enthusiastically, but the chancellor practically prevented any private interview with the emperor. But Joseph II was more amenable on a return visit to Rome (1783) without Kaunitz.

The Punctuation of Ems (1786) was a manifestation of the Josephinist theory by the imperial electors of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. Along with the archbishop of Salzburg, they asserted:

(1) that they would no longer apply to the Holy See without the royal placet;

(2) that all religious should be subject to their jurisdiction;

(3) that there ought to be no international superiors-general;

(4) that there was no need for quinquennial faculties;

(5) that they would choose which papal decrees they would accept;

(6) that pallium and annate taxes would no longer be paid the curia; and

(7) that papal primacy was based on the “False Decretals.”

This declaration proved to be bluster, for when the nuncio Pacca warned the authors that acts placed in accord with the Ems Punctuation would be held null by the Holy See, they yielded (178789) . In 1789 began that Revolution which would deprive them of all their temporal possessions, their springboard for Josephinist gestures.

The Synod of Pistoia (1786) was another Josephinist manifesto, aggravated by Baianist, Jansenist, and Febronian errors. It was held under the protection of the emperor’s brother, Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, and the presidency of Bishop Scipio Ricci of Pistoia. Some two hundred clerics attended. Besides asserting the aforementioned Josephinist ideas, the synod denied papal power over indulgences and reserved sins, asserted that matrimony was a mere civil contract, advocated episcopal and parochial autonomy, declared the religious state incompatible with the care of souls, and impugned the cult of the Sacred Heart. Pius VI forced Ricci to resign in 1790, and by the bull Auctorem Fidei (1794) , furnished a detailed condemnation of the errors.

Imperial twilight. Joseph’s successor, Leopold II (1790-92), extricated the Habsburg dominions from the effects of political Josephinism, but the dregs of ecclesiastical Josephinism were to trouble the Austrian Church far into the nineteenth century. Leopold II and his son, Francis II (1792-1806), were largely preoccupied with the French Revolution, ^{[p. 374]} which slew their relative Marie Antoinette, sapped monarchical foundations, and nourished a General Bonaparte whose brilliant conquests brought the Holy Roman Empire to its official end in August, 1806.

The “Great Elector,” Frederick William (1640-88), set himself to unify his scattered territories. He secured Hohenzollern claims to Cleves in the Catholic Rhineland at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and forced the declining Polish monarchy to concede him a clear title to Prussia and the Corridor. The separate administration of his diverse lands was consolidated in a bureaucracy directed from Berlin, a city which began to prosper after harboring Huguenot refugees from the Edict of Nantes. To avoid religious dissension in his_ own lands, the elector permitted virtual freedom of conscience, though not of external cult. A mission directed by Propaganda Fidei from 1625 was thus able to continue.

Frederick I (1688-1713) secured recognition of his title of “King in Prussia” from Emperor Leopold by promising to permit the Catholics of Brandenburg to hear Mass in the Catholic embassy chapels at Berlin.

Frederick William I (1713-40) imported Belgian factory workers and hired foreign mercenaries, many of whom were Catholics. After 1719 he bargained for their services by permitting a few Catholic priests to act openly as their chaplains, though marriages performed by the latter were still regarded as null in the Prussian law.

Frederick II the Great (1740-86) entered his reign as a Deist with the religious policy: “Everyone can attain heaven in his own fashion.” Complete religious toleration was the logical conclusion of this principle, and Frederick normally did not hesitate to draw it, even in favor of Catholics. Asked to suppress Catholic schools which were beginning to open, he replied: “All religions must be tolerated, and the authorities must only see to it that none encroaches upon the other.” He insisted throughout his reign that all religions be placed on an equal footing in relation to the state and supported by their members alone. Though personally he contemned supernatural religion, Frederick was convinced that persecution was bad politics; he even harbored Jesuits after their suppression. While he permitted freedom of religion, he also allowed contempt for it. Good citizens, he felt, moreover, must not be lost in monasteries, hence only a limited number might be permitted to become clerics or religious. Communications with foreign powers, e.g., the papacy, ought to be restricted, and ecclesiastical property ought not to be ^{[p. 375]} allowed to accumulate in mortmain. Yet Frederick’s interference was less annoying and reprehensible than that of his nominally Catholic brother monarchs.

Frederick William II (1786-97) continued his uncle’s policy of toleration, and in 1794 even gave further legal guarantees for ecclesiastical property. With Frederick William III (1797-1840) a new era of Church-state relations in Prussia was to begin, once the whirlwind of the French Revolution had flooded Prussia and receded.

61. WEAKENING OF THE CATHOLIC EAST

Introduction. By the Statute of Piotkrow and the Constitution of Radom at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Poland had become an aristocratic state misruled by an assembly of magnates whose possession of the liberum veto enabled any member to obstruct progressive legislation. The monarchy correspondingly declined in power, although the Catholic Jagellon and Vasa dynasties until 1668 somewhat held in check these germs of anarchy. Thereafter, however, Poland rapidly descended to destruction at the hands of strong and aggressive neighbors, Prussia and Russia. Continuance of an oppressive serfdom, moreover, prevented any widespread popular regeneration.

Michael Wisniowiecki (1669-73) . King John II Casimir, last of the Vasas, wearied of internal revolts and unsuccessful foreign wars. In September, 1668, he abdicated and retired to the Abbey of Nevers in France. With him hereditary monarchy ceased. In 1669 the magnates chose Michael Wisniowiecki as king of Poland, chiefly because his father, Prince Jeremy, had distinguished himself in opposing Cossack insurrections. The young and quite inexperienced ruler proved unable to cope simultaneously with domestic and foreign intrigues. He died shortly after General John Sobieski had checked a Turkish invasion at Chocim.

John Sobieski (1674-96) . The successful general was elected king by acclamation. He espoused a French alliance which brought little concrete assistance to Poland, and made peace with Sweden. At the Diet of 1678-79, he submerged nationalistic interests to respond to the appeal of Innocent XI to participate in a Catholic league against the Turks, then threatening Vienna. Sobieski’s policy in this matter was truly in Poland’s own best interest, and the relief of Vienna (1683) justified his intervention. But in trying to follow up his victory in the Balkans, the king failed to receive the support that he needed from Poland and experienced friction with the Austrian command. It is possible, moreover, that Sobieski was not sufficiently alert to the equally dangerous Russian ^{[p. 376]} menace. After his military prestige had been destroyed by several reverses in Rumania, his efforts to introduce internal reforms also failed to elicit popular support. The liberum veto and factional dissension even within his own family prevented him from founding a dynasty. John Sobieski, then, was a hero king, but he was a meteor rather than a pole star.

Augustus the Strong (1697-1.733) . The contest for the Polish throne recommenced at Sobieski’s death. The nobility turned from a native candidate to a foreigner in the hope of gaining his country as an ally. One faction elected a Bourbon, François de Conti; the other chose Friederich August von Wettin, elector of Saxony. The latter embraced Catholicity and secured the throne with the backing of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. No sooner had the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) ended the Turkish War, however, than August dragged his exhausted realm into a coalition for the dismemberment of Sweden. But King Charles XII of Sweden surprised everyone by carrying the conflict to his foes’ territories. In Poland itself, Charles set up a pretender, Stanislaus Leszczynski (1704-9), and only after a devastating war did August regain his crown with the dangerous assistance of Peter the Great of Russia. Thereafter in dread of this powerful ally, the Polish monarch drew closer to Austria, while Russia and Prussia engaged in secret negotiations for the appropriation of Polish territory.

In domestic affairs, the German autocrat clashed with the Polish aristocrats. Polish nobles and Saxon guards were ranging for combat when Peter the Great pretended to arbitrate. In the Confederation of Tarnogrod (1717), he proposed limitation of the Polish army to twenty-four thousand men in order to reduce the possibilities of civil conflict. This suggestion was ratified by the notorious “Dumb Diet,” and the Polish military organization received a wound from which it never fully recovered.

In religious questions, another cause for disunity lay in the presence of large numbers of Lutherans and Orthodox within the Polish frontiers. In times past these had received many civil and religious privileges, which were resented by the Catholic majority. While the Dissidents—Lutherans and Orientals—sought to extend these concessions, rash and fanatical Catholics endeavored to abridge them, thereby giving Prussia and Russia pretext to intervene on behalf of their coreligionists. In 1717 the Dissidents were excluded from public office, and in 1724 the Torun incident attracted the attention of Europe. When a mob had destroyed the Jesuit college at Torun, some ten Protestants were summarily executed despite the intercession of the papal nuncio. Russia and Prussia ^{[p. 377]} at once directed violent propaganda against Poland, and forced the Diet to restore the Dissidents’ privileges in 1736.

King August II (1733-63), son of the preceding monarch, won the Polish crown after another disputed election which gave rise to the War of Polish Succession. This time the Polish nobility generally favored their former antiking, Stanislaus Leszczynski, whose daughter had recently married Louis XV of France. But the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian governments insisted on August II, and succeeded in installing him by 1735. The new king normally resided in Saxony and left Polish affairs to the mercy of his favorites, Brühl and Mniszech. Religious and civil strife continued scarcely unabated. The Diet, in express violation of the bull Magnae Nobis Admirationis of Benedict XIV, permitted mixed marriages in which sons would be raised indiscriminately in the father’s religion and daughters in the mother’s. But the bishops in a circular letter from Posen declared the Diet’s regulations void.

King Stanislaus II (1764-95) . At the death of August II, Catherine the Great of Russia secured the election of one of her paramours, Stanislaus Poniatowski. The new monarch, although not without talent and sympathy for his countrymen, usually proved a pawn of Russian foreign policy.

A national revival took place during the latter half of the century in the fine arts and literature, and this stimulated patriotic sentiment. Bishop Naruszewicz (1733-96) was a beloved poet, and Father Stanislaus Konarski (1700-73) outstanding as educator and reformer. Two parties of nobles were demanding reform: the Potocki who hoped for French support, and the Czartoryski seeking Russian intervention. The latter group prevailed in the 1764 Diet which restricted the liberum veto and endorsed a modest administrative reform. The clergy were able to secure a law inflicting the death penalty on a noble who would kill a peasant: this was the first breach in the outmoded feudal system. The king, a nephew of Prince Czartoryski, promoted the reform with more vigor than Catherine II desired. When the Diet of 1766 re-enacted former laws against Dissidents and demanded a reform in the army, both Russia and Prussia threatened war. From 1767 onwards, the Diet at Warsaw was muzzled by Repnin, the Russian ambassador, who also organized a group of collaborationists, the Confederation of Radom.

First Partition (1772) . With their government under alien control, Polish patriots formed the Confederation of Bar in 1768. Relying on French and Turkish assistance, they commenced a revolt. But no foreign aid was forthcoming, and the poorly armed patriots were crushed by Russian armies. To preserve the “balance of power,” Frederick II of ^{[p. 378]} Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria demanded slices of Poland when Russia annexed Polish territory adjacent to her own.

Second Partition (1792) . The patriots now redoubled their efforts. While Russia and Austria were engaged in a war with the Turks, the Four Year Diet (1788-92) pursued its own course. By May, 1791, it had adopted a new constitution providing for an hereditary monarchy under the Saxon dynasty, limited by a bicameral legislative in which the liberum veto no longer applied. But in 1792 Russia concluded peace with Turkey and turned on Poland. Prussia, unwilling to be left out, did likewise, and the two powers effected a second partition, to the exclusion of Austria, just weakened by the death of Leopold II.

Third Partition (1795). Thaddeus Kosciusko next proceeded to lead a gallant but hopeless national uprising (1794-95) . This general, trained in the American Revolution, drove out the resident Russian troops, but was defeated when Russia and Prussia counterattacked. Converging on Warsaw, the invaders extinguished the revolt. Austria was this time admitted to a share in the third and final partition. Stanislaus was given a pension and Polish independence came to an end until 1918, though Bonaparte for a time sustained a puppet “Grand Duchy of Warsaw” (1806-13) under August (III) of Saxony, king-designate of the 1791 Constitution. This ephemeral and truncated state fell with Bonaparte and Poland was repartitioned by the Congress of Vienna.

The Romanovs had emerged from the “Time of Troubles” (1605-13) on the Russian throne. Philaret Romanov, Muscovite patriarch, had proved a patriot during the Polish invasion and a national assembly in 1613 chose his son Michael as czar. Philaret, however, remained the real head of the secular government until his death in 1633. He used the prestige of the Greek Orthodox establishment to restore order and to reimpose despotism on impoverished and ignorant serfs. His grandson Alexis (1645-76) discontinued the national assembly.

Peter the Great (1682-1725) was the first of the Romanovs to make much impression on the outside world. Effective despot from 1689, this brutal, if brilliant, despot and crowned boor became intent on westernizing Russia according to impressions gained on several “semi-incognito” visits to Western Europe. Arbitrarily he ordered adoption of French manners and dress, which at least the Russian nobility thenceforward affected. He likewise imposed a complete autocracy more severe than the French model that lasted in substance until the March Revolution of 1917. He secured the Baltic provinces of Esthonia and Latvia from the declining grasp of Sweden, thereby affording Russia a Baltic port ^{[p. 379]} and a wedge into European politics. His designs on Poland have already been noted.

Peter’s immediate successors—his wife, grandson, niece, and daughter —were lesser personalities. From 1725 to 1762 court intrigue paralyzed the government and there was little territorial expansion. In 1762 the throne passed to Peter’s grandson, Peter III, but before the year was out he had been deposed and murdered by his wife, Catherine of Anhalt, who then usurped the crown.

Catherine the Great, born an insignificant German princess, had been a political protégé of Frederick II of Prussia and long continued to act in concert with his policies. Her reign was a resumption of the work of Peter the Great so that it is frequently said that Peter made Russia a European power, and Catherine raised it to a great power. Unscrupulous and grossly immoral, Catherine yet possessed considerable shrewd insight and daring statesmanship. She extended Russian dominions not only by appropriating the lioness’s share of Poland-Lithuania, but by pushing the Turks out of the Crimea and the Caucasus. Russian successes against the Turks inspired the czaress with the hope that by the capture of Constantinople Russia might reach the Mediterranean as well. Until the first World War, Russian policy was directed to this objective, and it is by no means certain that it has been renounced.

It had been hoped that the Ruthenian Union of Brest (1595) might serve as a bridge to the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with Rome. Jesuits who had participated in the Polish revival tried to penetrate into Russia as well. Support given by some Catholic politicians to the foreign invasions of Russia during the “Time of Troubles” prejudiced the Romanov national reaction against the Catholic Church, and Uniates were persecuted by Czars Michael (1613-45) and Alexis (1645-76) . Peter Mogila, Orthodox patriarch of Kiev-Radomysl from 1632, raised the decadent and somnolent schismatic theology by his Cathecism, largely sound in faith. But when the Muscovite patriarch Nikon tried to correct the liturgy in accord with the standards of Byzantine ceremonial, the Schism of Raskol (1667) took place. A considerable number of quite ignorant but fanatical “old-ritualists” formed a dissenting minority, and by 1917 one third of Russian subjects were nonconformists: Russian radical sects, Protestants, and Catholics, Latin or Ruthenian.

Secularism came in with Peter the Great. Austrian influence was at first strong at court, and Jesuits served on the embassy staff until 1719 when they were expelled, leaving two thousand converts. Propaganda Fidei eventually replaced them with Franciscans. Peter was capricious toward Catholics: in 1705 he slew five Basilian monks with his own hand ^{[p. 380]} at Polotsk in an outburst of passion. On the death of the Russian patriarch of Moscow in 1702, Peter placed the schismatic established church under the lay president of the Holy Synod, practically a minister of religion wholly dependent on the czar. Since the complete control of discipline had passed into royal hands, Peter could thump his chest and shout: “Behold your patriarch.” Henceforth the Russian state church became an ossified government bureau, all too identified with the ruling autocracy and consequently losing much of its hold upon the oppressed serfs. In 1700 some 557 Orthodox monasteries were secularized under a “department of monasteries,” and the monks pensioned and subsidized by grain and wood. Anna Ivanovna (1730 40) consented to prefectures-apostolic for foreign Catholics, but Elizabeth (1741-62) was strongly anti-Catholic and executed or imprisoned those who communicated with priests. On the other hand, Catherine II extended her protection to the Polish Jesuits, and they remained acceptable in Russian dominions until 1820 when the election of an international superior-general gave the crown a pretext to banish them. Catherine’s quasi-toleration, however, was limited to the Catholics of the Latin Rite. She persistently strove to force some eight million Ruthenian Catholics into the schismatic establishment. Down to 1917 it remained basic royal policy to uphold the principle that all native Russians ought to be Orthodox Dissidents, although Latin Catholics might enjoy a measure of toleration as to a thoroughly and permanently alien element.

62. IBERIAN DECLINE

    Retrospect. With the death of King Philip IV (1621-65) , who had staked all Spanish resources in the tradition of Philip II on Catholic and Habsburg ascendancy during the Thirty Years’ War, Spain’s predominance in the world was obviously over. Bourbon France succeeded to the leadership of Europe, and Spain herself soon came under her influence. After the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), Spain declined rapidly and visibly abroad until at the opening of the twentieth century the first “empire on which the sun never set” had been almost entirely lost. In Europe, Spain soon retired beyond the Pyrenees and sank gradually to the status of a second-rate power. The spiritual and temporal prosperity of the Spanish Church waned with Spain’s political importance, chiefly because of the close connection that had always been maintained between Church and state in the Iberian peninsula. Though the Church’s hold on the common people was as yet unshaken, the upper classes were not free from the Rationalist currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Spain had its benevolent despot, King  ^{[p. 381]} Charles III (1759-88), but on the whole there was no decisive and lasting Spanish Renaissance until General Franco’s revolt in 1936. Portugal, which had been subjected to the Spanish crown from 1580 to 1640, had regained her independence during the Thirty Years’ War, and consequently must again be treated separately in the present topic.

     King Charles II (1665-1700), son and successor of Philip IV, was feeble in mind and body. This epileptic, nicknamed Carlos el Hechizado, “the Bewitched,” had inherited a country ruined by the exactions in men and money squandered on the Thirty Years’ War, which, so far as Spain was concerned, had actually lasted from 1618 to 1659. Charles’s confessor and political advisor, the German Jesuit, Father Nithard, undertook the always unpopular policy of deflation and retrenchment. Opposition to his foreign birth nullified his proposed financial reforms. Since Charles II had no children, his illegitimate brother, Don Juan (II) , for a time entertained hopes of power. Temporarily he rallied patriotic support, and as soon as the queen mother’s regency was terminated in 1676, Don Juan staged a coup d’état. He dismissed the queen and Father Nithard, and himself assumed direction of the government. But his death in 1679 removed the last possible native Spanish successor to the sickly monarch.

    Partition schemes. A foreign heir therefore became inevitable for the still vast Spanish dominions. Fearing the combination of either Spain or Austria under a Habsburg, or of Spain and France under a Bourbon prince, the Great Powers at first sought a promising compromise candidate. After many proposals, they decided upon Joseph Ferdinand, grandson in the female line of Emperor Leopold I. Since Joseph was due to inherit merely Bavaria, a third- or fourth-rate power, it was felt that his succession to the Spanish throne would not seriously disturb the balance of power. Hence, in 1698 the Great Powers partitioned the Spanish inheritance among Joseph and others, though Charles II, insisting that his dominions should not be divided, made the seven-year-old prince heir to all his lands. But this not unreasonable solution of the dynastic problem was destroyed by the boy’s death the following year. Other partitions were next proposed by the powers, while Louis XIV of France sought to obtain the entire inheritance for his younger grandson, Philip of Anjou, a grand-nephew of Charles II. Emperor Leopold, however, claimed that the Spanish dominions ought properly to revert to Charles’s Habsburg cousins in Austria, though he tried to relieve the Powers’ apprehensions by promising to assign it to his younger son, Archduke Charles, presumably out of the line of succession to the Austrian throne. The Spanish nobility were divided and a diplomatic battle ^{[p. 382]} was waged between Cardinal Portocarrero and Ambassador Harcourt on behalf of France, and the imperial ambassador Harrach and the English envoy Stanhope in the interest of Austria. Finally, a month before his death on November 1, 1700, Charles II was induced to sign a dubiously valid will leaving his whole inheritance to Philip of Anjou.

    War of Spanish Succession. After some hesitation, Louis XIV accepted the perilous bequest on behalf of his grandson, embracing him with the significant remark, “The Pyrenees no longer exist.” Philip of Anjou proceeded to Madrid where he was proclaimed King Philip V. Perhaps a majority of Castilians received him, although the Catalans, ever jealous of their autonomy, declared for Archduke Charles. The issue depended on whether the British navy in Austrian service could keep open communications with Aragon, and whether the archduke could expel Philip from his possession of the Spanish .capital. The British fulfilled their part by seizing Gibraltar and Minorca—which they long retained—but an Allied landing in Aragon failed. The Catalans continued resistance on their own in Charles’s behalf. But in 1711 the death of the archduke’s elder brother, Emperor Joseph I, without direct heirs, brought him the imperial crown. Since the Great Powers would never allow the recreation of the empire of Charles V, they forced Charles VI to a compromise Peace of Utrecht (1713). By this Philip of Anjou was confirmed in his possession of Spain and its American colonies, though the Italian and Belgian dependencies of the Spanish crown were ceded to Emperor Charles VI. The Catalans, abandoned to Philip’s vengeance, were overwhelmed by 1714. The British retained Gibraltar and extorted the Asiento treaty which gave them commercial concessions in Latin America.

    Philip V (1700-46), first of the Bourbon monarchs of Spain, was led into an antipapal policy by his prime minister, Cardinal Alberoni. Disputing royal rights of patronage, the crown sequestered papal funds. Philip closed the papal nunciature at Madrid in 1709 on the ground that Clement XI had favored Archduke Charles. The pope refused canonical institution to royal nominees to sees, and Philip utilized a papal subsidy to attack Italy.

    Elizabeth Farnese, Philip’s second wife whom he married in 1714, somewhat improved relations with the papacy, and Alberoni was forced out of power in 1719. She, however, dragged Spain into wars in order to secure Italian thrones for her own children. The Polish Succession War gained the Two Sicilies for Charles, and the Austrian Succession contest seated Philip Junior on the throne of Parma. In 1737 a concordat with the Holy See repudiated the placet, while restricting clerical privileges. ^{[p. 383]}

    Ferdinand VI (1746-59) succeeded Philip V on his death in 1746. This monarch terminated the War of Austrian Succession and refused to be entangled in the Seven Years’ War. Chapman estimates that his economic reforms prepared the way for his successor’s prosperous reign. Ferdinand opposed the Freemasons, and in 1753 ended disputes with the Holy See over patronage. The king died childless, and was followed by his half-brother, Charles of Naples, son of Elizabeth Farnese.

Charles III (1759-88), hitherto king of the Two Sicilies, left that realm to his son, and moved to Spain. His ecclesiastical policy was regalistic; he proscribed the Jesuits and curtailed clerical rights. In alliance with his Bourbon cousins of France, Charles III belatedly joined in both the Seven Years’ War and that of the American Revolution. In the first contest, Spain’s colonial possessions lost heavily, but she was compensated for the cession of Florida by receiving Louisiana from France. During the second war, Spain regained both Florida and Minorca. At home Charles showed himself a competent enlightened despot in material things. But material prosperity was purchased at the expense of encouragement of rationalist influences.

    Charles IV (1788-1808). If Charles III was a pale reflection of Louis XIV of France, Charles IV combined the faults of the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Neither shrewd nor virtuous, the king fell under the domination of his wife, Maria Luisa, and her paramour Godoy, whom the king named prime minister (1792-1808). While the state was honeycombed with corruption and incompetence, the Church was severely attacked. Education was increasingly secularized in the higher branches, and rationalist instruction provided in institutes founded by confiscating ecclesiastical property. Godoy tried to outwit Napoleon Bonaparte by diplomatic duplicity, without preparing an adequate defense against the French armies. Bonaparte, however, lured king, queen, and premier to the French town of Bayonne where he forced them to abdicate in his favor—brother Joseph Bonaparte was then named vassal king of Spain.

    John IV (1640-56). After Portugal had been virtually a Spanish province for sixty years, John, duke of Braganza, and Portuguese patriots known as the Restaurodores seized the opportunity of Spain’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War to proclaim anew Portugal’s independence. With English and French assistance, John was able to assume the crown, though his government was not recognized by Spain. Influenced by Spain’s protests, the papacy likewise refused diplomatic recognition to John IV. This precipitated a virtual schism which lasted until 1668. During this period the popes refused to confirm nominations to episcopal ^{[p. 384]} sees by the Portuguese crown and by 1668 but one canonical prelate remained. John IV was successful in recovering Brazil from the Dutch who had seized it from the Spaniards. Despite the nominal Catholicity of Portugal, religious life there in modern times lagged behind that of Spain in its intensity and loyalty, and a certain aloofness from the Holy See was displayed by the clergy.

    Alfonso VI (1656-83), elder son of John IV, was a vicious and irresponsible tyrant who continued to alienate Portugal from the Holy See. Through the marriage of his sister Catherine to Charles II of England, that traditional alliance was strengthened—at the price of Bombay, ceded to the English. After the king’s incapacity had become intolerable, his younger brother Peter exiled him and assumed the regency. Queen Maria di Savoia, wife of the deposed ruler, obtained a decree of nullity from the Lisbon chapter on the plea of non-consummation, and was dispensed by her uncle, Cardinal Vendôme, to marry Peter. Pope Clement IX, when the case was subsequently referred to him for judgment, asserted that the cardinal had exceeded his jurisdiction, but ratified the new marriage on his own authority.

    Peter II (1667-1706) as regent and, after 1683, king of Portugal, ruled quite ably and secured recognition of Portuguese independence from Spain in 1668. This removed any obstacle to papal-royal accord in Portugal, and Clement IX hastened to recognize Peter II and fill the vacant episcopal sees. The Methuen Treaty of 1703 with England assured Portugal close commercial co-operation, and gave Portugal a share in British prosperity. Colonial profits from the Indies enabled Peter and his successors to dispense with the cortes or legislature, which did not meet from 1691 to 1820.

    John V (1706-50), Peter’s son, was an extravagant and immoral ruler whose parade of religious fervor prejudiced the cause of religion and encouraged the advance of Rationalism. Arrogantly the king insisted that the Holy See give the cardinal’s hat to the incompetent nuncio, Valente Bichi, whom Benedict XIII had seen fit to recall. When this request was refused, the king broke off diplomatic relations with Rome in 1725. Eventually Clement XII chose Bichi’s elevation to the cardinalate as the lesser evil. A concordat concerning colonial patronage was reached in 1748.

     Joseph (1750-77) was made famous only through his prime minister, Don Carvalho, marquis of Pombal, who opened the attack on the Jesuits. Pombal’s policies toward the Church paralleled those of Aranda in the Spain of Charles III. He made of Coimbra University a rationalist center which long influenced both lay and clerical alumni. A slavish imitator of ^{[p. 385]} foreign mercantilism, Pombal was far from being a great financier, and left the civil and military service with huge unpaid bills. Yet he ruled arbitrarily until 1774 when the king’s insanity enabled the queen-regent, in response to popular resentment against Pombal, to restrict his influence.

    Maria I (1777-1816), Joseph’s daughter, who married her uncle, Peter III (1777-86) , dismissed Pombal and his anticlerical measures, while retaining some of his administrative reforms. But soon after her husband’s death, the queen became mentally deranged and their son John was named regent in 1792. He strove to eradicate the ideas of the French Revolution, then invading the country, by repression. Bonaparte, however, resented Portugal’s trade with Britain and in 1807 French and Spanish troops invaded Portugal to partition it. The royal family fled to Brazil where it remained until 1820, while the country became a battleground between French and British.

Charles Stuart was slight of build, black-haired, with a patrician nose and gently cynical humor. Behind a mask of feigned indolence, he concealed great political acumen. Well aware of what had befallen his father, Charles was in any event resolved “not to go on his travels again.” He was immoral, but not the political slave of his mistresses. In times of adversity he turned to his long-suffering Catholic wife, Catherine of Braganza, whose dowry had been Bombay. Despite a velleity for Catholicity, the king never imperiled his political fortune by a courageous avowal until on his deathbed.

The “Cavalier Parliament” (1661-79), riding on the wave of Restoration popularity, re-established Anglicanism and discriminated against all dissenters, although without imposing a death penalty. Legislation regarding religion passed under the prime minister, the earl of Clarendon, is known as the “Clarendon Code.” This included: (1) the Corporation Act (1661) excluding dissenters from local office by requiring town officials to receive Anglican communion thrice annually; (2) the Uniformity Act (1662) obliging all clergymen, college fellows, and schoolmasters to use the Book of Common Prayer—now containing a commemoration of Charles I, “king and martyr”; (3) the Conventicle Act (1664) which banned nonconformist religious meetings in which four externs besides the family were present; and (4) the Five Mile Act (1665) banishing nonconformists five miles from a corporate town. Though not all of these provisions were consistently enforced, they served to expel from the Anglican establishment all nonconformists who ^{[p. 386]} had hitherto claimed to work for a change in doctrine or discipline within its body. Some two thousand clergymen thereby lost Anglican benefices, which were then often filled by mere time-servers. The Catholics shared the plight of other dissenters, although they were scarcely worse off than before.

The “Cabal” (1667-73). After the dismissal of Clarendon in 1667, royal policies were conducted through a group of ministers nicknamed the “Cabal” from their initials: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, of whom the first two were Catholics. This privileged pair, who alone enjoyed the king’s confidence, in 1670 negotiated the secret Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV of France. By its terms Charles II, in exchange for an annual subsidy from Louis of £300,000, promised to ally England with France against the Dutch, embrace Catholicity, and secure toleration for Catholics in England. In 1672 Charles tried to carry out one of his pledges by issuing a “Declaration of Indulgence” which dispensed all dissenters, including Catholics, from effects of the penal laws. But when the king yielded to popular dissatisfaction with the Dutch War to conclude a separate peace with Holland, Louis XIV, piqued, informed Ashley of the secret pact of Dover. Ashley, Protestant and Freemason, broke up by the “Cabal” by his resignation.

Whig opposition to royal absolutism was henceforth led in parliament by this Ashley, later earl of Shaftesbury. He may be regarded as founder of the Whig party which felt it necessary to curb monarchical power. Through his influence, parliament in 1673 defeated ratification of the royal Declaration of Indulgence, and instead passed the Test Act which disqualified for public office all who refused to receive Anglican communion and to denounce Catholic transubstantiation—this law barred Catholics until 1829. The king next gave his favor to Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, founder of the Tory loyalists, who was prime minister from 1673 to 1678. Patching up his differences with Louis XIV, Charles secured new subsidies which enabled him to rule independently of parliamentary grants for the rest of his life.

The “Popish Plot” (1678-81). In 1678 the Whigs exploited the testimony of a supposed ex-Jesuit, Titus Oates, who claimed to reveal a “papist plot” to murder the king and place the Catholic duke of York on the throne with the aid of French troops. Though convicted of falsehood by the king’s own cross-examination, Oates’s tale was generally believed and aroused great popular excitement. Armed bands were formed to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s birthday as a demonstration against the “papists.” The furore was heightened when Colman, Duke James’s secretary, imperiled the Catholics by indiscreet letters to Louis XIV. When Sir Edmund Godfrey, the sheriff before whom Oates had given his “evidence” was found dead, many came forward to declare that ^{[p. 387]} they had seen a Jesuit run his body through with a sword. The king weakly yielded to the popular frenzy to sacrifice the lives of some twenty or thirty priests and laymen during 1679. In 1680, William Howard, viscount Stafford, was executed, and in 1681 Blessed Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, followed him to the block—though the latter was the last man executed on a religious charge in England. Oates was eventually convicted of perjury and imprisoned, but released by William III. After attempting another denunciation in 1691, he died in 1705.

Royal reaction. Meanwhile Ashley—Dryden’s “Achitophel”—aspired to become prime minister and to exclude the Catholic duke of York from succeeding to the throne. But as often as his “Exclusion Bill” was passed by parliament (1679, 1680), the king dissolved that assembly. When the parliament of 1681 laid down the ultimatum, “no taxes without exclusion,” the king, by now subsidized anew from France, dissolved parliament and did not call another during his reign. Whig clubs were closed and Ashley considered it prudent to flee to Holland. During his last years, Charles II remained loyal to his brother’s interests, and debarred as illegitimate his son by Lucy Waters, the duke of Monmouth. Charles ended his life as political master, politely begging pardon for being “such an unconscionable time in dying.”

James, duke of York, secured the English throne despite the rising of the duke of Monmouth. James II was a conscientious, obstinate, solemn, and harsh-tempered ruler. He professed his Catholic religion, to which he had announced his conversion, ostentatiously, and dispensed Catholics from all legal disabilities, including the Test Act. The Jesuit Father Petre was included in his council, and a Benedictine presented for a degree at Cambridge. The Catholic vicariate-apostolic was restored in 1685 and subdivided into four districts, each with an episcopal vicar, in 1688.

“The Glorious Revolution.” Although Pope Innocent XI warned the king to proceed cautiously in his patronage of Catholics, King James held defiantly to his bold course. A crisis was provoked when the king ordered the Anglican prelates to read a new Declaration of Indulgence, already rejected by parliament, from their pulpits. Primate Sancroft and six other prelates refused, and when the king brought them to trial a jury acquitted them with the hearty approval of London. Yet James’s foes might have left him to end his days on the throne, had it not been for the unexpected birth of a male heir. In 1688 James’s second and Catholic wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, James, later the “Old Pretender,” “James III.” This boy took precedence of James’s daughters by his first and Protestant wife, Anne Hyde, Clarendon’s daughter. Instead of an elderly Catholic king, an indefinite Catholic ^{[p. 388]} dynasty seemed in prospect for strongly Protestant England. Accordingly “seven eminent persons” among the nobility entered into communication with James’s elder daughter Mary and her husband, William III of Holland. After hesitating during the summer of 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay on November 5, 1688. When most of the nobility, including his own daughter Anne, flocked to William’s standard, James II, unwilling to provoke civil strife, hurled the Great Seal into the Thames and sailed for France. Thus, in Belloc’s words, “the last king left England.”

Constitutional guarantees. The victorious Whigs decreed that: “King James, having endeavored to subvert the constitution of this kingdom by breaking his original contract between king and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws . . . has abdicated the government.” Next parliament adjudged the vacant crown to Mary 11 (1689-94) and William III (1689-1702) jointly. This was the seal on the “Glorious Revolution,” which permanently destroyed absolute monarchy in England, and inaugurated a century and a half of parliamentary oligarchy. For down to the Reform Bill of 1832, the landed nobles and squires, usually Anglicans and Tories, allied themselves on basic governmental principles with the commercial and industrial classes, often Whigs and Protestant dissenters. Although they might differ on secondary points and the degree of influence which they left to the crown, these alternating factions were agreed that Stuart “divine right” claims were irrevocably refuted. Parliamentary supremacy was assured by the Bill of Rights (1689) which forbade the king to dispense from the laws, levy any money save through parliament, muster troops, or tamper with justice. Soon William III discovered that his ministers worked better when they were of the same party allegiance as the majority faction in parliament. Although the process was gradual and halting, executive power within a century passed from the monarch to a ministry responsible to a majority of the legislature.

Religious toleration was granted in accord with deist ideas. The Act of Toleration of 1689 conceded liberty of conscience to all dissenters save Catholics, Unitarians, Jews, and infidels. The Uniformity, Conventicle, and Five Mile Acts were repealed, though the Corporation and Test Acts still excluded Catholics—and some conscientious non-conformistsfrom public office. All dissenters, however, had to continue to contribute to the support of the Anglican Establishment, even though they ^{[p. 389]} might personally attend some licensed chapel of their own denomination.

The penal code, however, was still in force for Catholics, and was even augmented. Catholics were forbidden to inherit land, own arms, or a horse, or send their children to be educated abroad. Priests might be imprisoned for life if discovered saying Mass, although this was not always rigidly enforced. Since the Tridentine prohibition against clandestine marriage had never been promulgated in England, Catholics were not yet hampered in regard to the civil effects of marriage. They were subjected, however, to a legal, social, and economic persecution which varied with the severity of the judge and the animosity of their neighbors on the jury. Finally, the Act of Succession of 1701 formally excluded Catholics or anyone married to Catholics from the English throne.

William III defended his throne during the War of English Succession (1689-97) . James’s Irish adherents were crushed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and Scottish resistance was intimidated by the Massacre of Glencoe (1692) . Great Britain was thenceforth a political reality. Because of his skill in foreign affairs, the king exercised considerable influence on the government, although even he found it prudent to choose his ministers from men favored by parliament.

Queen Anne (1702-14) . Since William and Mary II were childless, the second Protestant daughter of James II succeeded to the throne. She was largely dominated by the Churchills: the duke of Marlborough was a brilliant commander during the Spanish Succession War, and his wife Sarah acted as the queen’s confidante. Anne was somewhat more dependent on her ministers than William III, and was the last English monarch to date to exercise the royal veto—henceforth, though legally permissible, such action is apparently not “cricket.” In 1707 England and Scotland were legally united into the kingdom of Great Britain with a common parliament.

Jacobite restoration remained the dream of many partisans of the deposed King James II (d. 1702), or of his Catholic descendants. Though Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, had twenty-three children, none had survived. According to the Act of Succession, therefore, the British crown must pass to Sophia, electress of Hanover, and her descendants, “being Protestants.” Actually Sophia predeceased Anne, but her son George, great-grandson of James I of England, eventually succeeded to the throne. Nonetheless, Jacobites tried to avert the Hanoverian succession by negotiations with the Pretender. This encouraged ^{[p. 390]} the Stuarts to stage a rising in Scotland where “James III” landed in 1715. But the duke of Argyle dispersed the ill-organized and undecided Jacobites with comparative ease and James hurried back to the Continent. Since Catholics were identified with the Jacobite cause by the Hanoverian government, this rising of the “Old Pretender” resulted in more severe enforcement of the penal laws. Then anxiety waned only to be reawakened by a second Jacobite uprising of the “Young Pretender.” “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” son of “James III,” landed in Scotland and actually penetrated into the north of England before he was routed by the royal forces. This repulse permanently ended Stuart hopes of restoration, and the exiled male line of the Stuarts ended in 1807 with “Henry IX,” Cardinal Henry Stuart, who bequeathed the royal insignia to the de facto King George III. Catholics, freed from the Stuart albatross, might now hope for some toleration.

Parliament became even more influential when the crown passed to German monarchs. Though by no means fools, George I (1714-27) and George II (1727-60) were more interested in being absolute monarchs in Hanover than in trying to master the English language and customs. They allowed Robert Walpole, a typical Whig, to take over the royal presidency of the ministry, and to become the first of the parliamentary prime ministers (1721-42)—the title was not officially mentioned until the twentieth century. The effort of the English born George III (17601820) to recover royal prerogatives led to the American Revolution. Its outcome was not conducive to royal prestige, and soon after the first of recurring fits of insanity incapacitated the monarch.

Catholics had been burdened with a double tax in 1722, but thereafter the penal code received no additions, and its enforcement relaxed after the final Jacobite failure in 1746. As late as 1767, however, Father Maloney was sentenced to death, although the penalty was not actually imposed. The dejected “faithful remnant” of sixty thousand Catholics began to open schools and reorganize. In this work the three hundred priests were led in particular by Richard Challoner (1691-1781) , vicar-apostolic of the London district from 1740. His revision of the Douay translation of the Bible, his Meditations, his Lives of English saints and martyrs—all supplied his flock with the minimum essentials of a Catholic literature in the vernacular. He set up chapels and schools, although these could not yet be legally acknowledged as such. He held retreats in taverns, with beer steins as camouflage. Priest-hunters often gave him trouble, but he survived to see the passage of the first Catholic Relief Bill in 1778. In 1754 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Bill outlawed clandestine marriages. From this date to 1835 Catholics had to be married before  ^{[p. 391]} an Anglican minister to obtain legal recognition of their married status, and according to this criterion the marriage of the Catholic Mrs. FitzHerbert to the prince of Wales, later George IV, was valid both in the eyes of the Catholic Church and the Anglican establishment. It was not, however, recognized by king and parliament. A new period of the history of the Church in England begins with the Catholic Relief Act of 1778.

59. The Old Regime in France (1715-89)

60. Secularist Germany (1648-1790)

61. Weakening of the Catholic East (1668-1795)

62. Iberian Decline (1659-1808)

63. British Catholic Vicissitudes (1660-1778)

54. OLD REGIME in EUROPE

55. PHILOSOPHERS

56. FREEMASONS

57. PAPACY & RATIONALISM

58. JESUIT SUPPRESSION

59. OLD REGIME in FRANCE

60. SECULARIST GERMANY

61. CATHOLIC EAST

62. IBERIAN DECLINE

63. BRITISH CATHOLICISM

54. THE OLD REGIME in EUROPE (1715-89)

55. RATIONALIST DOCTRINAIRES: THE PHILOSOPHERS

56. RATIONALIST CHAMPIONS: THE FREEMASONS

57. THE PAPACY and RATIONALISM (1721-99)

58. PAPAL CHAMPIONS: JESUIT SUPPRESSION

59. THE OLD REGIME in FRANCE (1715-89)

60. SECULARIST GERMANY (1648-1790)

61. WEAKENING of the CATHOLIC EAST (1668-1795)

62. IBERIAN DECLINE (1659-1808)

63. BRITISH CATHOLIC VICISSITUDES (1660-1778)

This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2002....x....  ’ “”.