About the middle of the 18th century a violent tempest began to collect throughout Catholic Europe against the papacy. The educated classes of these countries were very largely pervaded by a disbelief in the entire doctrinal system of the Catholic Church, and regarded the papacy as the chief obstacle to the progress of enlightenment and culture among the masses of the population. The .Jesuits were viewed as the worst outgrowth of the papal system, and became as such the objects of intense hatred. In 1759 Pombal excluded them from Portugal and confiscated their property ; and when the jiope interceded for them all connection with lioinc was broken off. Tlie example of Portugal was followed by the Bourbon courts of France, Spain, Parma, and Naples, all of which expel- led the Jesuits, and ridiculed the threats of excom- munication with which the pope threatened some of them. When the jiapal chair became vacant, in 1769, the combined influence of these courts secured the elec- tion of cardinal (langanelli as pope Clement XIV (1769- 1774), who, after some hesitation, yielded to their urgent demands for the abolition of the Jesuits, which he an- nounced by the brief called Domimis ac Redemptor noster, on Aug. 16, 1773, and represented as a step which was required by the peace of the Church. About the same
PAPACY
633
PAPACY
time a German bishop, Nicholas of Hontheim, resumed the work of the (iallicaii Assembly of 1082. Under the name of Justinus Febronius he published a book (1703), in which the superiority of general councils over the popes, and the divine and independent rights of the bish- ops, were defended with great vigor and scholarship. The book created an immense sensation, but the author re- canted on his death-bed (1778). Soon after (1780), the archbishops of JIayence, Treves, Cologne, and Salzburg agreed at Ems upon the so-called Emser Punctatiun, winch demanded the establishment of an independent national Church of Catholic Germany. But as the majority of the German bishops sided with the pope against the archbishops, this attempt likewise proved a complete failure. The same fate awaited the radical measures by which the emperor Joseph II of Austria en- deavored to disconnect the Koman Catholic Church of his dominions from the pope, and to convert it into a strict- ly national agency for the education of the masses of the population. Although pope Pius VI (1774-1799), by a personal visit, in vain endeavored to make an im- pression upon the emperor, public opinion, as well as the bishops, opposed the eiforts for reform, and the em- peror lived long enough to see their failure.
The French Revolution of 1789 threatened the papacy ■with as great territorial losses as the Reformation of the 16th century. For a time France appeared to be lost to the papacy. Christianity itself was abolished by the National Convention, and though the Directory (1795- 1799) again permitted the exercise of Christian wor- ship, French armies proclaimed in Rome the Roman republic, and carried pope Pius VI as a ]trisoner to France, where he died. His successor, Pius VII (1800- 1823), was the first pope for many centuries whose election did not take place in the city of Rome. A concordat concluded with Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801 restored to the pope his ecclesiastical and temporal power; but when he revived all the old hierarchical claims of the papacy, the emperor again (1808) occu- pied the papal territory, and revoked the donation of his predecessor Charlemagne (1809); and when he was excommunicated by the pope, he carried the latter as a prisoner to Fontainebleau. — The downfall of the Na- poleonic rule and the Congress of Vienna put an end to the endangered position of the papacy. The ruling monarchs of Europe, the emperors of Austria and Rus- sia, and the king of Prussia, desired the co-ojieration of the papacy for the suppression of liberal ideas. Al- though the protest of the papal delegate, Consalvi, against the work of the Congress of Vienna was smiled at by the diplomatists, the governments of Europe gen- erally, even those of the Protestant states, not only con- sented to the restoration of the temporal power of the popes, but regulated the affairs of the Catholic Church in the several states by means of Concordats (([. v.), which, though proceeding from the assumption that the secular governments were at least a co-ordinate, and not, as the mediceval popes claimed, a subordinate power, conceded to the papacy a far-reaching influence, and even a vigorous support in ecclesiastical and edu- cational matters. The concessions thus made were skilfully used by Pius VII and his successors, Leo XII (1823-1829), Piiis VIII (1829-1830), and Gregory XVI (1831-1840), to extend again the spiritual influence of the Church upon the Catholic population of Europe, and to recover part of the lost ground. Immediately after his return to Rome (1814) Pius VII restored the order of the Jesuits, who were once more, as in the days before their suppression, the boldest champions of all the claims of the papac}', especially in the Catholic countries, and the violent opposers of liberal institutions. The most notable success which was won during the first half of the 19th century by the papacy was the great decline and almost complete extinction of the (Jallican and F^piscopalian tendencies among the bishops and clergj'. Even governments which might have been expected to oppose with aU their might the