Chapter 10 ATTEMPTS OF THE POPES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

NO pope since the year 1600 united to an energetic ambition talents worthy of seconding it. Henceforward the Holy See becomes but a power of the second order, which, scarcely capable of bold aggressions, defends itself by intrigue, and no longer attacks but by secret machinations. The reforms which separated from the Romish Church one part of Christendom, serve to deliver the remainder from the pontifical tyranny. Everywhere the civil power became confirmed; disturbances even tended either to organize and especially to enfranchise it.

The annals of the popes become more and more detached from the general history of Europe, and thus lose all their splendour and a great part of their interest. We shall therefore only have to collect into this chapter a very limited number of facts, after we shall have considered in a general point of view the influence of the Roman court in the seventeenth century over the principal courts of Europe.

In England, James I. the successor of Elizabeth had escaped, himself, his family and his parliament, from the powder plot, hatched by the Jesuits and other agents of the sovereign pontiff. A prodigal and consequently indigent king, James had seen the formation of the opposite parties of Whigs and Tories. The House of Commons, in which the Whigs governed, resisted Charles I.; Charles menaced, they insulted him; he takes arms, they compel him to fly; he perishes on a scaffold, the ignoble victim of tragical proceeding. The protector of the English republic, Cromwell, tyrannizes over it, and renders it powerful: but Cromwell dies, and Monk delivers England up to Charles II. The inconstancy and contradictions which accumulated during this new reign, disclose the indecisive influence of the Roman court; the catholics are tolerated, accused, protected, excluded from employments; five Jesuits are decapitated; the king dissolves the parliament, and signs the act of Habeas Corpus; an anti-papistical oath is enacted, and the duke of York, who refuses to take it, is, nevertheless, appointed to the rank of high admiral; soon after he succeeds Charles his brother, under the name of James II. and wearies by barbarous executions the patience of his subjects. James without friends, even among the catholics whom he loaded with favours, deserts himself, and loses without a combat his degraded sceptre. The English government re-organized itself, and William of Nassau, prince of Orange, the son-in-law of James, was called to the throne of Great Britain. William, at the same time Statholder in Holland, and king of England, governed both countries with energy, and triumphed over the conspiracies continually fomented or encouraged against him by the Holy See. Thus disturbances and crimes, the weakening of catholicity, the restoration of the civil authorities, such have been among the English of the seventeenth century the only results of the dark man?uvres of the court of Rome.

The peace of Munster, in 1648, proclaimed the independence of the united provinces. In spite of the soil, the climate, and their discord, Holland, already flourishing, and freed from the Spanish yoke, assumed a distinguished rank among the powers escaped from the dominion of the Holy See. The king of Spain, Philip III. also lost Artois, which Louis XIV. became master of, and Portugal which crowned the duke of Braganza king. Charles II. son of Philip IV. lost Franche Comte, died without children, and bequeathed his kingdom to a grandson of the king of the French. The ascendancy which the popes still possessed over Spain, so fallen herself, and who seemed to place herself under French influence, was therefore a weak resource.

In Germany, the orthodoxy of the emperors Ferdinand II. Ferdinand III. and Leopold, did not check tbe progress of heresy. After tbe despotism of-Ferdinand II. had disgusted the Germans and the North of Europe, we behold the imperial authority decline in the hands of Ferdinand III.; and Leopold, ruled for forty-seven years by his ministers, women, and confessors, the useless friend of the popes, supported himself only by the idea he inspired of his weakness.

After Henry IV. who was assassinated in 1610, the seventeenth century presents us with but two kings of France, Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Louis XIII. banished Mary de Medicis his mother, recalled her, and banished her once more; he insults her because he fears her: he does not esteem Rich-lieu whom he receives as minister and as master. The Protestants, always restless and menaced, take arms; Rochelle, their bulwark, capitulates after a long siege. Richlieu publishes an act of grace: he is too fearful of Rome and the children of Loyala, to crush as yet the followers of Calvin.312 He is more desirous of humbling the great; and terrifies them by the executions of Marillac, of Montmorency, and of Cinq-Mars; and, finishing by unworthy means what Henry IV. had not time to perfect, he established in the interior of France the monarchical power. His death, and that of Louis XIII. led to a stormy minority: the Fronde repulsed Mazarin; Mazarin wearied out the Fronde, and applied himself to ruling carelessly a frivolous people. What he most neglected was the education of the young king, that Louis XIV. who, from 1661 to 1716 reigned over the French, and for awhile gave law to Europe. The revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, divides this long reign into two parts: good services, and triumphs, immortalize the first: hypocrisy, fanatacism, vain glory, and misfortunes, filled the latter with intrigues, proscriptions, and slow calamities. Yet, whatever may have been the misfortunes of Louis XIV. the most glorious recollections of French history under its third dynasty belong to his reign. The nation whose pride he cherished pardoned the excesses of his; and so many of those who surrounded him merited the appellation of just, that he has obtained it himself; other princes on the contrary reflect their personal greatness on that which surrounds them. But his imposing authority for a long time repressed the ambition of the popes; and the influence which they exerted over the latter period of his reign, has tended much more to injure France than to benefit the Roman Court.

The wars of the Venetians against the Turks, the conspiracy of the Spaniards against Venice, in 1618, the sedition of Mazaniello in Naples, in 1640, and the enterprizes of some of the Roman pontiffs, are in this century the principal events in the annals of Italy. Never was the country more disposed to bear and to extend the dominion of the popes: but the popes failed in the address necessary to draw the full advantage from this disposition: they suffered the fine arts to languish and decay about them, while they grew and flourished elsewhere: in this century the Italians ceased to be the most enlightened people of Europe, a preeminence which they needed, to preserve any share of it, and not suffer themselves to be reduced in all respects to a state of inferiority.

The most remarkable popes of the seventeenth century were Paul V. Urban VIII. Innocent X. Alexander VII. Clement IX. Innocent XI. Alexander VIII. and Innocent XII.

The republic of Venice had punished with death, without the intervention of the ecclesiastical authority, an Augustine monk convicted of enormous crimes; a canon and an abbot were imprisoned for similar reasons; the senate forbad the encrease, without its permission, either of convents or churches; it prohibited the alienation of lands for the benefit of monks or of the clergy. These acts of independence irritated Paul V.; he excommunicated the doge and the senators, and laid an interdict on the whole republic. He required that within twenty four days the senators, revoking their decrees, should deliver into the hands of the nuncio, the canon and the abbot they had imprisoned. If, after the twenty-four days, the doge and senators persisted in their refusal for three days, the divine functions were to cease, not only in Venice, but through all the Venetian dominions; and, it was enjoined on all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, and others, under pun of suspension, and deprivation of their revenues, to publish and affix in the churches this pontifical decree, which Paul pronounced, as he said, by the authority of God, the apostles, and his own. The Capuchins, the Theatins, and the Jesuits, obeyed the interdict, which was disregarded by the rest of the Venetian clergy as it was by the people. Little attention was paid to the Theatins and Capuchins; but the Jesuits, more powerful and more culpable, were banished for ever. A protest against the anathemas of Paul was addressed by the doge to the prelates and clergy; and the senate wrote on the same head to all the cities and communes of the state. These two pieces are distinguished for their calm energy, which mingles no insult, no indication of passion, with the expression of unshaken resolution. We have omitted nothing, say the senators, to open the eyes of his holiness; but he has closed his ear to our remonstrances, as well as to the lessons of Scripture, of the holy fathers and of councils; he perseveres in not acknowleging the secular authority which God has committed to us, the independence of our republic, and the rights of our fellow-citizens. Shall we appeal to a general council? our ancestors have done it in similar circumstances; but here the injustice is so palpable that a solemn appeal would be superfluous. Our cause is too immediately that of our subjects, of our allies, of our enemies themselves, that such an excommunication should disturb for a moment the external or internal peace of our republic.

In fact, the anathema remained inefficacious within and without.313 In vain did the pope employ the Jesuits to raise or indispose the European courts against the Venetians. In Spain even, where these Jesuitical intrigues were somewhat more successful than elsewhere, the Venetian ambassador was admitted to all the ecclesiastical ceremonies, in spite of the threats of the nuncio. The governor of Milan, the dukes of Mantua and Modena, the grand duke of Tuscany, the viceroy of Naples, openly espoused the interests of the excommunicated republic. Sigismund, king of Poland, also declared that it was the cause of his kingdom; and the duke of Savoy, that it was that of every sovereign in Christendom. The court of Vienna blamed the pope's conduct, and invited Sorance, the Venetian ambassador, to a procession of the holy sacrament, in despite of the apostolic nuncio, who refused to be present at it. The nuncio Barberini did not succeed better in France when he required that entrance into the churches should be prohibited the Venetian ambassador. Priuli. Abandoned thus at all the courts, and reduced to his own spiritual and temporal resources, the sovereign pontiff resolved to levy troops against Venice: happily for this papal army, Henry IV. offered his mediation, and ended the dispute,314 on terms more favourable than Paul could have hoped for, although he had formed a 'board of war:' it was in truth a committee of priests, and a perfectly novel application of sacerdotal functions.

Paul V. conspired to disturb England also, by two briefs, in which he forbade the catholics to take the oath of allegiance to their king James I: he renewed the bull 'In caena Domini,' and inserted it in the Roman ritual, accompanied by a surplusage of anathemas.315 The pretensions of this pope gave rise to many publications on the pontifical power. The 8th of June, 1610, twenty-four days after the assassination of Henry IV. the parliament of Paris condemned to the flames a book in which the Jesuit Mariana permitted, nay advised, the attempting the lives of intractable kings. The 28th of November following, justice was done the treatise in which Bellarmin extends over the temporalities of princes the spiritual power of the popes.316

In 1614 the same parliament consigned to the flames a book, equally seditious, of the Jesuit Suarez. The court of Rome took a tender interest in these three works; that of Suarez is more frequently referred to in the correspondence kept up with the nuncio resident in France, in 1614: By what right does a parliament judge of points of doctrine? What does Suarez teach but the catholic faith? What dogma is more sacred than that of the sovereignty of popes over kings; direct sovereignty in religious matters, and not less efficacious though indirect in political ones? Even if some inaccuracies had glided into the book of father Suarez, did it not belong to the Holy See, alone, to perceive and ratify them? Such is the substance, during one entire year, of the letters written in the popes name to his nuncio Ubaldini317 However, the civil authority found defenders in two Scotch men, William Barclay and John his son; then in Anthony de Dominis, who did not spare the visible head of the church; but, especially in Edmund Richer, who combated with more calmness the ultramontane opinions, and yet was not the less the victim of his zeal for the Gallican liberties.318

Disputes with the dukes of Parma and of Savoy, the republic of Lucca, the Ligurians, and with the Swiss; attempts on the Valtaline; intrigues to support the inquisition at Naples, and to favour the Jesuits in Spain: these trifling details we shall dispense with, as generally tending but to prove the impotence of pontifical ambition from 1505 to 1621.

Urban VIII. who gave to the cardinals the title of 'Eminence,' refused to Louis XIV. that of king of Navarre. This refusal, of which there are other examples, had for its source the excommunication and deposition of John d'Albret by Julius II319 To support the sentence of Julius, the popes have been as silent as possible on this title of king of Navarre, in speaking of the kings of France, heirs to John d'Albret.

The parliament refused registering any bulls in which they noticed this omission: Urban VIII. was particularly reproached with it. This pontiff being desirous to interfere in the differences of the courts of France and Spain, on the affair of the Valteline, he had the vexation to learn that these two powers had signed the peace without his knowledge. Nevertheless he succeeded in uniting to the Holy See the duchy of Urbino, with the counties of Montefeltro and Gubbio, the lordship of Pesaro, and vicariat of Sinigaglia: these domains were given him by the duke Francis Maria, the last branch of the house of Rovere. But cardinal Richlieu kept his eyes fixed on the designs of the pontiff; he refused an audience to the nuncio Scoti, and never suffered him to be ignorant, that the court of France would not consent to a dependence on the Holy See. The parliament had a publication of an Italian Jesuit, Santarelli, burned, which ascribed to the pope the right of deposing kings, condemning them to temporal punishments and loosing their subjects from their oath of allegiance. The work of Peter de Marca, on the concord of the priesthood and the empire, appeared about this time, and so displeased the court of Rome that it refused to confirm the nomination of the author to a bishoprick. De Marca had the weakness to modify his opinions at the pleasure of this court; and in the sequel, coveting the cardinalat, he dictated, a short time before his death, a treatise to Baluze on the infallibility of the pope. Intriguing as he was learned, de Marca sacrificed his sentiments to his interests: the works of this writer are useful from the quotations and facts which they embrace.

A pope could no longer declare war but against petty princes. Urban VIII. did so with the duke of Parma, who had refused to the holy father's relatives the price of services he pretended to have rendered him. The duke is cited, excommunicated, his duchy of Castro taken possession of, which was obliged to be restored him, by treaty, after four years of disputing and fighting. But, this war, badly extinguished, recommended under Innocent X. the successor of Urban: and, because the duke of Parma could not pay soon enough the enormous interests due to the 'Mont-de-piete,' Castro was confiscated, sacked, and razed, by order of the head of the church: on the ruins of this city, a column was raised with tills inscription, "Here Castro was."320 When a terrible war in which two great states engage, two powerful princes, or two blind and numerous factions, leads to such disasters, humanity must lament it: but, when a pecuniary interest, an obscure and trifling quarrel between two petty rivals, leads to the destruction of a city, the depression of its inhabitants, and the ruin of their families, and that this useless devastation was coolly ordered by one who had conquered without danger, and almost without an effort, we are filled with more astonishment than indignation; and we could not anticipate such gratuitous severity in a prince, if this prince were not a pontiff, and this pontiff not the successor of Boniface VIII. Yet, it is astonishing that the popes could have been so ignorant of their direct interest in husbanding the Italian cities, in attaching them to the Holy See by benefits, and finally, in restoring them that degree of prosperity and influence, which would enable them to contribute to the re-establishment in Europe of the pontifical dominion. Many popes of the sixteenth century acted on this policy; and it is in consequence of its neglect by those of the fifteenth and seventeenth, that the temporal power of the Roman church seems henceforth doomed to languish and become extinct.

A revolution had placed on the throne of Portugal John of Braganza, or John IV. whose ancestors had been dispossessed by the king of Spain, Philip II. Philip IV. who languished in a disgraceful supineness, did not attempt to re-conquer the kingdom of Portugal by arms. The court of Madrid had recourse to the pope Innocent X. who refused bulls to the bishops nominated by John of Braganza, and declared he would never recognize this new monarch. John consulted the universities of his States: they replied, if the pope persisted in his refusal, they had only to dispense with his bulls.-This was also the opinion of the assembly of the French clergy, interrogated on the same point by the Portuguese ambassador. This assembly did more, it wrote to the pope, respectfully representing to him, that it was but right to grant the bulls to the prelates named by John; by which perhaps the French clergy evinced too great an interest in foreign affairs; but it shews us what its views were of canonical institution, and the right to consider it as obtained, when refused by a vain caprice. Furthermore, Innocent at this period feared France and Portugal more than Spain: he therefore dispatched the bulls, and no longer contested with John of Braganza the title of king.

Innocent even detached himself so from the court of Spain, that to support the Neapolitans who had revolted against her, he invited the duke of Guise, a descendant of the princes of Anjou, former kings of Naples, to assert his claims on this kingdom, and endeavour to conquer it; but the pope kept none of his promises which seduced the duke; and this perfidy was one of the causes which prevented his success. We shall observe, that there did not exist at this period any sort of alliance or friendship between the courts of France and of Rome. Innocent X. having commanded all the cardinals to reside in the capital of Christendom, with a prohibition to quit the territories of the Holy See, without the permission of the sovereign pontiff, the parliament of Paris annulled the decrees as unjustifiable; and cardinal Mazarin forbade the sending money from France to the Roman court. In reflecting on this last arrangement, the pope perceived he must relinquish the residence of the sacred college; but was consoled with the acquisition of the city of Albano from the duke Savelli.

But the most remarkable event of the pontificate of Innocent was, the opposition he presumed to make to the treaties of Munster and Osnabruck.-Long rivalries and bloody wars harrassed, and almost exhausted, Europe; these treaties were at length to terminate those disasters. But a bull arrives, in which the vicar of the lamb of God protests against the peace of the world, and in which he annuls, as far as in him lies, the concord of the Christian republic. They have, he said, given up ecclesiastical property to the reformed; they have permitted to the reprobate the exercise of civil employments; they have, without the permission of the Holy See, encreased the number of electors; they have preserved privileges in the states to those who have ceased to have them in the church; the church abrogates these odious articles, these rash concessions, these heretical conventions. Innocent, no doubt, suspected, that war would afford more chances to the court of Rome, and that the ecclesiastical power had nothing to gain by a peace which would restore to the secular governments more stability, activity, and interior prosperity: but he was too little acquainted with the period at which he published such a bull; he did not perceive, that the pontifical ambition, before detested, was now only ridiculed; and he compromised by a silly step, which they scarcely deigned to notice, the weak remains of the authority of his predecessors.

Not having undertaken a detailed history of all the pontifical intrigues, we shall take leave to be silent on the five propositions of Jansenius, condemned by Innocent X. and his successor Alexander VII. who ordered the signature of a formulary, long famous. These quarrels, already deplorable at the end of the seventeenth century, became so contemptible in the course of the eighteenth, that success or defeat was equally attended with dishonour. In dividing the clergy into two parties, almost equally disregarded, these wretched controversies weakened the influence of the priesthood, and consequently that of the first pontiff. From 1659, Alexander might have perceived the decline of his credit in Europe, when, after having attempted to mingle in the negociations between France and Spain, he found they had treated without him. Nevertheless he ventured three years after to displease the most powerful monarch of the age. Crequi, the ambassador of Louis XIV. at Rome, was insulted by the pontifical guard, which killed one of his pages and fired on the carriage of his lady. Obtaining no satisfaction of the pope or of his ministers, Crequi retired to the Florentine territories. Louis demanded a solemn reparation: and, not considering that adequate which he had been made wait four months for, he marched some troops against Rome, and took possession of the city and county of Avignon, which a decree of the parliament re-united to the crown the 26th of July 1663. Alexander did not let slip this opportunity of displaying against a great prince the spiritual and temporal arms, only until he had solicited in vain the support and concurrence of all the catholic states rivals of France. Then the Holy See prudently humbled itself, and the cardinal Chigi, nephew of the pope, came to make to Louis all the reparation which this monarch required. In Europe no high idea existed of the veracity of Alexander: "We have a pope," writes Renaldi, the ambassador of Florence at Rome, "we have a pope who never speaks a word of truth."321

This pontiff died in 1664, leaving his family abundantly enriched, and the Roman people loaded with nine new subsidies besides the old, which had been very scrupulously maintained.

After Clement IX. had suppressed for awhile the disputes excited by the formulary, and that the cardinal Altieri had, for the space of six years, peacefully governed the church under the name of Clement X. his uncle Odescalchi, or Innocent XI. bore with him to the chair of St Peter more energy and ambition. He felt for Louis XIV. a personal enmity which he could not dissimulate, and which burst forth on two important occasions, that of the 'regale.' and that of the right of franchise.

The 'regale' was a right which the kings of France had for many centuries enjoyed, and which consisted in receiving the revenues of the vacant sees, and in nominating to the benefices dependent on the bishop. Some churches having attempted to emancipate themselves from this law, Louis, by an edict of 1673, declared that the 'regale' applied to all the bishoprics of the kingdom. Two bishops protested against this edict; those of Pamiers and of Aleth, known by their opposition to the formulary of Alexander VII. These two prelates, refractories to the decrees of the popes, were supported by Innocent XI. in their resistance to the will and rights of their sovereign. An assembly of the clergy of France, having adhered to the king's edict, and the pope having condemned this adhesion, the heat of their disputes led minds on to an examination into the rights and pretensions of the pope himself, and the four celebrated articles of 1682 were produced.

That the ecclesiastical power does not extend to the temporals of sovereigns; that a general council is superior to a pope, as decided by the fathers of Constance; that the judgment of the pope in matters of faith is not an infallible rule, until after having received the approbation of the church; that the laws and customs of the Gallican church ought to be maintained: such is the substance of the four articles. Innocent XI. condemned them; he refused bulls to the bishops nominated by the king, and forgot nothing that might provoke a separation; already a patriarchate was spoken of in France, independent of the court of Rome.

It is of Innocent XI. that Fontaine speaks in these lines, addressed in 1688 to the Prince de Conti:

Pour nouvelles de l'Italie

Le pape empire tons les jours-

Expliquez, seigneur, ce discours

Du coté de la maladie:

Car aucun Saint-pere autrement

Ne doit empirer nullement

Celai-ci, véritablement.

N'est envers nous ni saint ni pere, &c.

In English:

As to the news from Italy,

The pope each day grows worse and worse.-

Upon the score of malady

Explain my lord this strange discourse.

In any other sense than this

So to decline would be amiss,

Yet much I fear the man you paint

Will prove to us no other father-saint.

Racine, in 1689, alluded to the same pope in these lines of the prologue of 'Esther':

Et l'enfer, couvrant tout de ses vapeurs funèbres,

Sur les yeux les plus saints ajete les tenèbres.

In English.:

"And hell with darkness spreading all the skies

"Casts its thick film o'er the most holy eyes."

Bossuet had been the principal compiler of the four articles; the court of Rome, which wished to oppose to him an adversary worthy of him, offered the cardinalat to the celebrated Arnauld, if he would write against these four maxims. Amauld replied to this proposal as to an insult: it became necessary to, he says, "have not concealed the fact, that it depended on himself alone to be clothed with the Roman purple, and, that to attain a dignity which would have so gloriously washed away all the reproaches of heresy which his enemies have dared to make against him, it would have cost him nothing but to write against the propositions of the clergy of France relative to the pope's authority."

Far from accepting these offers, he even wrote against a Flemish doctor who had treated these propositions as heretical. One of the king's ministers who read this piece, charmed with the force of its reasoning, proposed having it printed at the Louvre; but the jealousy of M. Amauld's enemies carried it against the fidelity of the minister and even the interest of the king; it might apply for defenders to an humbler rank, to the theologians of Louvain, to Gonzales general of the Jesuits, to Roccaberti the Dominican, Sfrondati the Benedictine, and to Aguirre, another Benedictine, who was rewarded with a red hat. Their writings are forgotten, but the 'Defence of the four articles,' remains among the number of Bossuet's best works. We must observe, it was not printed till 1730, a delay which can only be ascribed to the intrigues of a part of the clergy, already repentant for their firmness in 1682. A more correct edition of the work of Bos-suet, and a French translation accompanied by notes, appeared in 1745, without privilege, and as issued from the press of Amsterdam. No direction of Louis XIV. if we except those of his will, has been worse executed than the edict by which he commanded that the doctrine of the four articles should be annually taught in the schools of theology. The Jesuits have never professed them, and the idea of abrogating them has been often entertained from the year 1700 to the end of cardinal Fleury's ministry. If this abrogation has not taken place it was, that they feared the remonstrances of the Jansenists, and foresaw the credit it would give them, by constituting them sole defenders of the liberties of the Gallican church. In the matter of the franchises Louis XIV. was perhaps wrong. The other catholic monarchs had relinquished this strange privilege, by which the palaces of the ambassadors, and even their precincts, offered an asylum to malefactors from the pursuit of justice. The king of France declared that he never took the conduct of others for his rule, but on the contrary, that he meant to serve as their example. His ambassador, Lavardin, in 1687, came to Rome to assert the 'Franchises' and affected to brave the pontiff by a pompous entry. The censures thundered against Lavardin irritated Louis XIV: Avignon was once more taken; and these hasty disputes had led to a decisive rupture, if it were not possible to reconcile it with the severities exercised since 1685 against the protestants. The proscription of the Calvinists restored harmony in this delicate conjuncture between the court of France and the Holy See.

Avignon was restored to the successor of Innocent XI. Alexander VIII. who condemned equally the Four Articles of 1682. Innocent XII. after him, persevered in refusing bulls to the bishops, favourers of the four articles, and he obtained from them a letter which he accepted as a retraction. It said, in effect,322

"that

"all which might have been held decreed in 1682, on

"the ecclesiastical power, ought to be held as not de-

"creed, since they had no intention of making any

"decree, nor of doing prejudice to the churches."--

Ambiguous words and most fortuitously framed, which assuredly do not tend to confirm the four articles, but which, on the other hand, would be quite insignificant, if they did not evince a disposition to abandon them. This letter, but little creditable, was one of the effects of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, one of the evidences of the decaying character of Louis the Great,323 and one of the proofs of what we have elsewhere324 asserted, the secret inclination which, since the year 1560, biassed the French clergy towards the ultramontane system.

Happily, the other orders of the state upheld with perseverance the four maxims of the clergy, against the clergy itself, and the interests of the throne, almost forgotten by the declining monarch. Among the magistrates to whom the Gallican church owes the maintenance of her ancient doctrine, at this era, the advocate general Talon is distinguished, author of a treatise on the authority of kings in the administration of the church, one of the best works published on this subject. He professed the same principles in the exercise of his duties, and especially in a request preferred in 1688. We shall terminate this chapter by some extracts from this requisition.:

"In an assembly held on the subject matter of

"the regale, the bishops, aware that the ultramon-

"tane doctors, and the emissaries of the Court of

"Rome, omitted no care to spread through the

"kingdom the new doctrines of the pope's infalli-

"bility, and of the indirect power which Rome en-

"deavours to usurp over the temporal power of the

"king, this assembly, we say, does not pretend to

"make a decision on a doubtful point of contro-

"versy, but, to render publie and authentic testi-

"mony to an established truth, taught by all the

"fathers of the church; confirmed by all the coun-

"cils, and especially by those of Constance and

"Basle.

"We have seen however with astonishment, that

"the pope looks on this declaration as an insult

"offered to his authority; insmuch that the king,

"having nominated to the episcopacy some of those

"who were present at this assembly, and who are

"as meritorious from their piety and virtue as from

"their knowledge and learning, of which they have

"on various occasions given proof, he has refused

"the bulls, under pretence that they do not make

"profession of a sound doctrine.

"This refusal which has not the appearance of

"reason, does not fail to occasion great scandal, and

"to produce irregularities we can scarcely express.

"Who could ever suppose that the pope, whom

"we have held up to us as the model of sanctity

"and of virtue, should remain so wedded to opinions,

"and so jealous of the shadow of an imaginary au-

"thority, that he leaves the third of the churches of

"France vacant, because we are not disposed to ac-

"knowledge his infallibility?

"Those who imbue the pope with these ideas,

"do they imagine they can make us change our

"sentiments? and are they so blind, that they do

"not perceive we are no longer in those wretched

"times, when the grossest ignorance, united to the

"weakness of governments, and false prejudices,

"rendered the decrees of the pope so terrific, how-

"ever unjust they may have been; and, that these

"disputes and bickerings, far from augmenting their

"power, can only serve to excite enquiry into the

"origin of their usurpations, and diminish rather

"than encrease the veneration of the people.

"We shall say more: the bad use the popes have

"made on so many occasions of the authority of

"which they are the depositories, in prescribing no

"bounds to it but that of their will, has been the

"source of the almost innumerable evils with which

"the church has been afflicted, and the most speci-

"ous pretext for the heresies and schisms which have

"sprung up in the last century, as the theologians

"assembled by direction of Paul III. honestly con-

"fessed, and even, at present, the idea alone of

"the infallibility and indirect power, which the com-

"plaisance of the Italian doctors confers on the See

"of Rome over the * temporal* of kings, is one of

"the greatest obstacles which is opposed to the con-

"version, not of individuals alone, but, whole provin-

"ces; and we cannot too strongly impress, that

"these new opinions are no part of the doctrine of

"the universal church....

"The thunders of the Vatican have nothing terri-

"ble in them; these are transient fires which go out

"in smoke, and which do neither ill nor prejudice

"but to those who launch them.

"The refusal of the pope to grant the bulls to the

"bishops nominated by the king, causes a derange-

"ment which encreases daily, and which requires a

"prompt and efficacious remedy. The councils of

"Constance and of Basle having laboured to reduce

"to some moderation the usurpations of the court of

"Rome, and the confusion which was introduced in

"the distribution of benefices, the pragmatic sanction

"was subsequently compiled from the decrees of these

"councils. But the popes, seeing their authority

"diminished by it, exerted eveiy artifice to cause

"its abolition; and by the concordat entered into

"between Francis I. and pope Leo X., the mode of

"appointing to the vacant sees and abbeys was re-

"gulated: not only the devolution, or right of pre-

"sentation by lapse, but the reversion, was granted

"to the pope, with power to admit resignations in fa-

"vour of individuals, and many other articles; which

"were very burdensome on the ordinary collators,

"and altogether opposed to the ancient canons.

"Besides, our ancestors for a long period have re-

"monstrated against the concordat: the ordonnance

"of Orleans had restored the elections; and it would

"be very advantageous if all ecclesiastical affairs were

"arranged in the kingdom, without being obliged to

"have recourse to Rome. In the sequel, however,

"the concordat was acted on faithfully by us, and

"we cannot conceive that the pope by an invincible

"obstinacy, wishes now to compel us to deprive him

"of the advantages which the court of Rome derives

"from a treaty so advantageous to it....

"After all, those who, before the concordat, were

"elected by the clergy and people, and afterwards

"by the chapters, in presence of a king's commissioner,

"were they not ordained by the metropolitan,

"assisted by the bishops of the province, after the

"king had approved of the election? The right

"acquired by the king in the concordat, authorised

"in this case by the tacit consent of all the Gallican

"church, and confirmed by a possession of near two

"hundred years, ought so much the less be subject-

"ed to change or attack, as, during the four first ages

"of the monarchy, they did not resort to Rome to

"ask for appointments to benefices; the bishops dis-

"posed of all those which became vacant in their

"dioceses, and our monarchs almost invariably nomi-

"nated to the bishopricks; and, if they occasionally

"granted to the clergy or the people, the privilege of

"electing a pastor, they more frequently reserved the

"selection to themselves; and without the pope

"having any concern in it, those who they

"elected were immediately consecrated. What

"prevents us from following these examples, founded

"on this excellent principle, that the right, which all

"the faithful had originally in the appointment of a

"head, when it could no longer be so exercised,

"should pass into the hands of the sovereign, on

"whom the people had conferred the government of

"the state, of which the church is the nobler

"part."

"But, with respect to the pope, since he declines

"to grant to the king's nomination the concurrence

"of his authority, we may presume that he is de-

"sirous of relieving himself from a part of the painful

"burden which oppresses him; and, that his infir-

"mities not permitting his extending his pastoral vigi-

"lance overevery part of his universal church, the lapse

"which sometimes takes place in cases of negli-

"gence, even of the superior to the inferior, may

"authorize bishops to confer the imposition of hands

"on those whom the king shall nominate to the

"prelacies."