THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Benedict XIV. and canon at St. Peter's. He was created cardinal in 1773 by Clement XIV., with
whom he did not sympathize in the
Election principal ques on connected with his
and Policy, name, that is, suppression of the Jesuit
order in 1773 (see Jesuits, II., § 8). When the conclave assembled after Clement's death, the cardinal's election was vigorously resisted from several quarters which employed even personal calumniation, and his election was reached only after the conclave had sat for four months. The Romans received him coolly. Yet though the more zealous faction hoped for immediate restoration of the Jesuit order, Pius VI. considered himself circumscribed to a policy of expectation and waiting in order not to become involved in disputes with Spain, France, and other states.
At first, the pope turned his attention to the elevation of the morality of the clergy in Rome. Before long, however, he was diverted to affairs at a
distance, first, in Germany. In that German and country the movement which was as- Austrian sociated with the work of Febronius Difficulties, (see Hontheim, Johann Nikolaus
von) had circulated extensively, though it had been placed on the Index in 1764. Meanwhile the true authorship, concealed under the pseudonym, had become known. Inasmuch as Pius VI. had correctly described, in an address dated Sept. 24, 1775, the bearings of the movement upon the Roman Church, he now commissioned the elector of Treves to constrain the author to retract, and the form of retraction was to comprehend the statement of its purely voluntary character. This experiment proved successful, for the author was a broken old man, then (1778) nearly fourscore years old. However, in other quarters there asserted itself the spirit which had prompted Hontheim, in the form of Josephinism (see Joseph II.).
But though Pius VI. perceived things clearly and was prepared to retaliate, he neither approved nor yet abruptly reversed the first procedure of Joseph II., who withdrew the Austrian cloisters from submission to the supreme control of foreign generals of monastic orders. Even when Garampi, his nuncio at Vienna, in Dec, 1781, met with a brusk rebuff from Count Kaunitz, on the score of his instructive Promemoria to the emperor — the pope still believed he could attain every purpose through personal intervention. So in the spring of 1782 he journeyed to Vienna, but every attempt to draw the emperor and his minister from the path of reform continued fruitless. The enthusiastic speeches, in turn, which the Roman Catholic population addressed to the pope on occasion of his awe-commanding appearance in Vienna, Munich, and Augsburg nowise availed to console him over the miscarriage of his attempt. This is apparent from the brief to the emperor, dated Aug. 3, 1782, with its rather patent affirmation that " those who lay their hands on the goods of the Church belong to hell." He seemed afterward more conciliatory; but in Sept., 1783, he was provoked afresh by the emperor's arbitrary course in appointing, as though he were the sole authority, a bishop for Milan. When, therefore, Joseph II. was confronted with the prospect of ex-
communication, he answered that his holiness might anyhow deign to visit the becoming punishment upon the individual who had made so bold as to misuse his name by forging a document. Without awaiting reply, the emperor next announced his visit to Rome, which came to pass in January, 1784. And at last Pius gained the point which had been so vehemently contested, namely, that the appointment to the episcopal sees in Lombardy be conceded to him. He continued the reforms in church conditions in Austria. After the Congress of Ems (see Ems, Congress of) had completed its sittings, and the electors transmitted to the emperor the Ems Proviso, Joseph II. made answer that they could reckon upon his cooperation in execution of the same. And yet they had there decidedly emphasized the sole prerogative of the archbishops in matters of reform. At all events, the pope easily became master of the Ems resolutions, as not only the bishops in Germany, but even one of the members of the Congress, the archbishop of Mainz, went over to the papal camp. In order to secure the Curia's acquiescence in the election of a coadjutor, he offered the Ems Proviso by way of exchange; wherein he was followed, down to 1789, by the other participants in the Congress. In short, they transformed the drafted resolutions into very modest petitions. In the case of the king of Prussia, Frederick William II., who had been accommodating to the pope in connection with Mainz, Pius VI. accorded him the reward of no longer thenceforth withholding from him the title of king.
Even while premonitory signs of the French Revolution were perceptible, the pope still gained a victory over Joseph's reform attempts. In what was then Austrian Belgium, the clo- Affairs in sure of the episcopal seminaries (1786) Belgium had evoked great agitation, also acand Italy, tively fomented by the papal nuncio. And though Joseph II. dismissed the nuncio from that country, this measure did not stay the outbreak of actual insurrection any more than did the repeal of the closure itself, together with a propitiatory word from the pope. For the provinces proclaimed their independence, and there stepped to the front as president the pope's thoroughly devoted cardinal-primate Frankenberg. Joseph II. died in 1790. Subsequently, church concerns in the Austrian hereditary lands were once again made thoroughly conformable to papalistic grooves, barring some slight provisional modification at the hands of Emperor Leopold II. Still more serious for Pius VI. appeared to be the trend of ecclesiastical conditions in Tuscany under the Grand Duke Leopold I. The latter, under date of Jan. 26, 1786, issued a circular to the Tuscan bishops proposing fifty-seven reforms; for instance, convocation of diocesan synods, improvement of clerical studies, segregation of suspicious relics, diminution of processions, and the like. Seven bishops assented on principle, among them Ricci of Pistoja (see Ricci, Scipione de.'), who then also submitted these points to a synod convening at Pistoja in Sept., 1786, and effected their immediate acceptance. On the other hand, a protest was raised by the bishops generally, through the chan-