man favorable to the court, the Abbé Le Gendre; he says, "At first the declaration of the clergy was by no means applauded. Far from doing so, many attributed it to cowardice, saying that it was the effect of the servile obedience of the bishops to the will of the court. Others thought it was neither prudent nor honorable to rise with levity against the pretensions of the pope, at a moment when he was risking every thing to sustain theirs. This movement of opposition, which was almost general, gave birth to spicy writing, in which Mgr. De Harlay was the most ill-used, as he was regarded as the first inciter, and almost as the only author of all that was done in the assembly." The edict of the 30th of March ordered that the four articles should be registered in all the universities, and be taught by all the professors. If this doctrine, remarks M. Gérin, had been but generally received, it would have been hailed with rejoicing. What happened? It was opposed by the most numerous, the most learned, and the most pious portion of the clergy. The faculty of Paris was composed of seven hundred and fifty-three members, as appears from the MSS. Colbert, Mél. t. vii. Of these, one hundred and sixty-nine belonged to the Sorbonne. The "Plan for Reforming the Faculty," in 1683, (Pap. Harlay,) says, "The house of Sorbonne, with the ex ception of six or seven, have been educated in sentiments contrary to the declaration. The professors, the syndic excepted, are so opposed to it that those even who are paid by the king have not been willing to teach any of the propositions presented to his majesty in 1663, etc. The principal of the College of Plessis, and those whom he employs and protects, in his college and out of it, are absolutely one with those of Sorbonne." As to the College of Navarre, the MSS. Colbert, t. 155, tell us that its principal, Professor Guyard, was entirely devoted to Rome, etc., and others prominent, Saussay, Ligny, Vinot, were of like opinion. In 1682, none of the professors except Doctor Lefèvre taught the maxims of the kingdom.* Of St. Sulpice, St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and the Missions Etrangères, we read, "Those of St. Sulpice, of St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and of the Missions Etrangères, who have given their opinion in this affair, (of the four articles,) hold the same views as those of Sorbonne." Of the religious orders and communities, it was written in 1663, "Nothing can be hoped for of the Carmelites, Augustinians, and Franciscans, who make profession of favoring his holiness in every thing," etc. The parliament, therefore, and the grand council had, by an abuse of power, decided that each one of the mendicant orders should have but two votes in the faculty, so that thirtyfour Franciscans, thirty-eight Dominicans, thirty-three Augustinians, and nineteen Carmelites had only eight votes in the faculty. "Forty-three Cistercians and six canons regular, who are all for Rome, are to be treated as the above friars."” That, besides being the most numerous, the opponents of the articles were the most learned, is evident from the details we have given; all the professors of Sorbonne, with the exception of Pirot, all the professors of Navarre, except one, Lefèvre, taught the ultramontane opinions. The MSS. Colbert prove this also beyond the possibility of doubt. That the opponents of the declaration were also men most remarkable for their piety, is acknowledged by those who were engaged in giving information to Colbert. To show the exactness of the facts given us here, M. Gérin quotes the words of a famous anonymous book, * Projet du Réforme, Pap. De Harlay. La Tradition des Faits, that appeared in 1760, by the Gallican Abbé Chauvelin, clerical counsellor to the parliament of Paris. The abbé writes, "When it was resolved to oblige the ecclesiastics to profess the maxims of France, what difficulties stood in the way? It was necessary to extort from many of them their consent. Others opposed obstacles which all the authority of the parliament could only with difficulty remove. It became necessary to use all the zeal and light of several prelates, and of several doctors, who were favorable to the true teaching, to bring back the great number of ultramontanes in the French clergy. . . . The ecclesiastics did not cease from resistance until the parliament used its authority to restrain them.... The university and the faculty of law submitted without difficulty, but they were obliged to proceed by way of authority to make the faculty of theology obey." The facts given above, the testimony of witnesses above suspicion, of those whose interest it would have been to conceal what they say, the action of the parliament, and the petty ways adopted to coerce the professors, v. g., withholding their pay,* all evince that the maxims known as Gallican were forced upon the clergy and people of France. But not only is this the case, but so fully were the king and the bishops themselves convinced of their falsity that they retracted them. Before showing this, we will add a curious and precious document from the hands of the wily Achille de Harlay, procureur-général, addressed to Colbert on the 2d of June, 1682. After saying that the proposed visit of the parliament to the faculty would have been unfortunate, because it would have revealed to Rome the divergence between the latter and the government, he goes on to add that "of the assembly of the clergy, the greater part would change to-morrow, and willingly, if they were allowed to do so."t *P. 376, from MS. letters 10,265. Bibl. Imp. fr. Bibl. Imp. Mss. Harlay, 367, vol. v. p. 145. The act of the assembly, as we have seen, drew from the sovereign pontiff an authoritative censure. This was not all; the pope refused the bulls of consecration for those who had taken part in it, unless they made their formal submission to his decision. The king, who at heart was a sincere Catholic, opened his eyes to the danger of the church. As we have said, he withheld the minutes of the proceedings in the first instance, although he allowed a private protest to be made. Later he revoked his decree ordering the doctrine of the four articles to be taught in the French schools. Page 454 has a letter of Louis to the sovereign pontiff, in which he informs his holiness of this, September 14th, 1693A posthumous work of Daguesseau* says, "This letter of Louis XIV. to Pope Innocent was the seal put upon the accommo dation between the court of Rome and the clergy of France; and conformably to the engagement it contained, his majesty did not any longer enforce the observation of the edict of March, 1682, which obliged all who wished to obtain degrees to sustain the declaration of the clergy made that year with regard to ecclesiastical authority; ceas ing thus to impose, on this point, the obli gation existing, while the edict was in force. and leaving for the future, as before the edict, full liberty to sustain the doctrine.” Quatre Concordats, speaks of the let L'Abbé de Pradt, in his work, Les ter of Louis XIV., and says that Pius VII. had it with him—" an old scrap of paper," as Napoleon expressed it-and wished the emperor declined to do, until he could conto sign it. This, however, Napoleon sult his theologians. On their advice he refused to sign it. He did more. The abbé says, "When the archives of Rome were brought to Paris, Napoleon went one day to the Hôtel de Soubise, in which they were kept. There he obtained the letter of Louis * Vol. xiii. p. 423. XIV. He took it with him, and, on his return to the Tuileries, threw it into the fire, saying, We'll not be troubled hereafter with these ashes.'" Montholon tells us in his Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France, that Napoleon dictated to him these words concerning the book of the Abbé de Pradt, "This work is not a libel: if it contains some erroneous ideas, it contains a great number which are sound and worthy of meditation.' He afterward dictated six notes upon different points contained in the work; he takes notice in them of all that appeared to him deserving of censure; but he has not a single word to say against the story of the destruction by himself of the letter of Louis XIV."* With regard to the bishops who had taken part in the declaration, they had the good sense and virtue to submit to him whom Christ has named his vicar and the pastor of pastors. On the 14th of September, each one of them wrote to Innocent XII. in the following terms, "Prostrate at the feet of your holiness, we profess and declare that we grieve deep ly from our heart, and beyond what we can express, on account of what has been done in the assembly, so greatly offensive to your holiness and your predecessors; and therefore whatever may have been deemed (cen seri potuit) decreed against ecclesiastical power and pontifical authority, we hold, and declare that all should hold it, as not decreed. Moreover, we hold as not determined on whatever may have been deemed (censeri potuit) determined on in prejudice of the rights of churches; for our intention was not to decree any thing nor to do any thing prejudicial to the said churches." The following passages from мMSS. and works of the day add confirmation to this letter. A memoir on the liberties of the Gallican Church, composed by order of "Monseigneur Louis, Dauphin de Montholon, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 113. Paris, 1823. France, Duc de Bourgoyne, mort en 1710," says, "This court (Rome) continues always what it has begun, and often obliges us to retract or alter what we have judiciously and necessarily done against her. Nothing proves this better than the history of the assembly of 1682." Adrien Baillet, writing his Démêlé de Philippe le Bel avec Boniface VIII., tells us, "In the first variance, (between Philip and Boniface,) it was the court of Rome that gave satisfaction to that of France; in the second, (of the assembly,) it is the court of France that has just rendered satisfaction to that of Rome." Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. "Braunbom," writes, "France was so far from having broken with the pope, from the year 1690 to the year 1701, that she became, on the contrary, more papist. It is known, moreover, that Innocent XII. gained the day, in having things put again on their old footing in 1693." We have tried to give the substance of M. Gérin's work. We feel that we have given but a meagre idea of it. Still, this much is evident from what we have written, that the doctrine known as Gallican was not the doctrine of the French clergy. That it afterward became so, in great part was owing undoubtedly to the influence of the assembly of 1682, and of those who in high positions. lent their aid to its propagation among the rising generation of students. They, early imbued with these maxims, were far less to blame than the men who first broached such principles. Let us hope that the comparatively few who hold to these opinions, seeing the origin of what they profess, will understand the worthlessness of them, and unite with the universal church in professing belief in the infallibility of the See of Peter. PUTNAM'S DEFENCE. OUR readers will remember, we presume, that Putnam's Magazine for July last contained an article which attracted some attention, under the title of "Our Established Church," and to which we replied in our number for the August following; the same magazine for last month, in an article entitled "The Unestablished Church," comes out with its defence, of which we should be uncivil not to take some notice. The July article, written in an unsuccessful vein of irony, was directed against the honor both of the church and the city and State of New York, and was designed to show that the church, grasping at wealth and power, and skilfully availing herself of political passions and party divisions, had obtained from the State and city governments endowments for herself and subventions for her educational and charitable institutions out of all proportion to any granted to similar Protestant institutions. We replied that the endowments are imaginary, for the church here is unendowed; that the subventions are greatly exaggerated; that several alleged had never been made, while others said to have been made to Catholic were in fact made to Protestant institutions; and that Catholics had never received a tithe of what was requisite to place them on an equality in regard to subventions from the public with non-Catholics. The Magazine, though with exceeding ill grace, concedes nearly all that we denied, abandons its assumption that ours is the established church, confesses that it is unestablished, and disputes us, except with sneers and exclamationpoints, only in regard to two statements in our reply, one of which is of no importance, and the other is one in which it is decidedly, not to say maliciously wrong. The two points disputed we proceed to dispose of. The Magazine charged the corporation of the city with granting leases of valuable sites for Catholic institutions for a long term of years at a merely nominal rent. We replied that only one such lease had been granted since 1847, which is not technically exact, and we overlooked the fact that the lease for the site of the Catholic Orphan Asylum between Fifty-first and Fiftysecond streets bears the date of 1857; but by the Magazine's own showing, though technically a new lease, and so recorded, it was really only a change in the tenure of the old lease. Catholics had held and occupied the site under a lease from the city, and at the same rent as now, for years before 1847. So much for the first point. The Magazine charged that the State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under religious control $129,025.14, of which $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes of the Catholic Church. Not being able to find any proof of this, and regarding the unsupported statement of the writer as presumptive evidence of falsehood rather than of truth, we let the charge pass without any attempt at a specific refutation. The Magasine reiterates the statement, and refers to the report of the comptroller of the State. We have the comptroller's report before us; we have examined and reëxamined it; but we do not find the statement in it or any thing to warrant it; and it has been more than once pronounced on the highest authority, and proved to be a forgery, as the Magazine well knows or is inexcusable for not knowing. But We did not meet this statement for the first time in Putnam's Magazine. It had been previously made, and we supposed sufficiently refuted in the journals, especially in the Utica Herald, whose editor, Mr. Roberts, had been a member of the Legislature and of the committee of ways and means in 1866. Mr. Roberts under his own name, pronounced it a forgery. For honest and fair-minded men this was conclusive. the charge was embodied in an anonymous memorial, and laid on the desks of the members of the New York State Convention, held in 1867 and 1868, and was again pronounced in open debate a forgery, without a single voice being raised in its defence. The Hon. Mr. Cassidy, of the Albany Atlas and Argus, declared it false from beginning to end. The Hon. Mr. Alvord, the distinguished member from Onondaga County, did the same. The Hon. Erastus Brooks, member of the Convention from Richmond, and one of the editors of the New York Evening Express, would not go quite so far, but regarded it as an admirable example of one of the many ways of telling a lie. He exposed its disingenuous character, by showing that the $8000 stated in it to be appropriated to St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, was expressly declared in the statute making the appropriation to be for the support of soldiers under the supervision of Dr. Backus, the surgeon of the post. The soldiers were supported and taken care of in St. Mary's Hospital, as the only proper place, in the judgment of the military authorities, that could be obtained. Mr. Brooks also gave, as another instance of the disingenuousness of the statement, its omission to count $25,000, appropriated to a Protestant institution in Elmira, we suppose for a similar purpose. Mr. Alvord not only pronounced it false from beginning to end, but, statute in hand, showed from the act of the Legislature itself, which he read, that instead of appropriating for charitable purposes nearly $130,000, it appropriated only $80,000, to be divided among the several counties according to their assessed valuation. What has become of our friend, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, who sometimes writes for Putnam, and who has such delicate scruples about Protestants using forged documents against Catholics? So much has been said about the partiality of the Legislature to the Catholic Church that it may be well to look at the conditions on which it grants and distributes its aid to charitable institutions. The act of 1866, so bitterly denounced, appropriates from the State treasury $80,000 for orphan asylums, to be apportioned to the several counties according to their assessed value, and distributed to the several asylums according to the number of inmates received and cared for in them respectively, without the slightest reference to the fact whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Nothing could be fairer, and if Catholic asylums received more of the benefaction than those under the charge of non Catholics, it was simply because they received and cared for a larger number of orphans. We see no ground of complaint here against either the Legislature or the church. It is very possible that Catholics have a larger number of orphans in proportion to their population than have non-Catholics, and it See Debates in the New York State Convention, 1867 and 1868, vol. iii. pp. 2736–2744. |