THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
found their fitting reward in 1893, when he was created patriarch of Venice and cardinal priest of San Bernardo. There he remained until in 1903 he was elected pope to succeed Leo XIII. (q.v.). The most striking features of the new pope's reign thus far have been the official promotion of the use of the Gregorian chant throughout all churches of the Roman Catholic communion, the separation by the French government of Church and State (1905; see France), the attack upon critical tendencies in the Church (see Modernism; and cf. Los von Rom), and a serious dispute with Spain, one object of which on the part of the Spanish government is the control of the religious orders necessitated by the settlement of monks and nuns exiled from France.
Bibliography: Pie X-Actes-encycliques-motu proprio, brefs, allocutions, etc. Texte latin avec la traduction francaise en regard precedes d'une notice biographique suivi d'une table generate alphabetique, 3 vols., Paris, 1906-09; A. de Waal, Papst Pius X.; Lebensbild, Munich, 1903, Eng. transl., Life of Pope Pius X., Milwaukee, 1904; A. Marchesan, Papst Pius X. in Leben und Wort, Einsiedeln, 1906; N. Peters, Papst Pius X. und das Bibelstudien, Paderborn, 1906; A. Hoch, Papst Pius X. Ein Bild kirchlicher Reformthatigkeit, Leipsic, 1907; W. E. Schmitz [Didier], The Life of Pope Pius X., New York, 1908; B. Sentzer, Pius X., Graz, 1908; N. Hilling, Die Reformen des Papstes Pius X. aufdem Gebiet der kirchenrechtlichen Gesetzgebung, Bonn, 1909; and the literature under Modernism.
PIUS SOCIETIES : Certain religious associations, composed of clergy and laity, formed in Germany after the revolutionary disturbances of 1848, the object of which was the defense and promotion of Roman Catholicism in Germany. The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church assembled at Wiirzburg in 1848, agreed to support the Pius Societies, so called after Pius IX. (q.v.), to maintain the supremacy of the pope in Germany and to keep national education in the hands of the Church. In Oct., 1848, a meeting representing many local unions was held at Mainz in which all the Pius Societies throughout the country were incorporated in one collective union which took the name of the " Catholic Union of Germany." The object of this association was declared to be the treatment of all social and religious questions from a Roman Catholic standpoint, and especially the preservation and promotion of the Church's welfare and independence. The union was pronounced by the bishop of Limburg to be " a powerful lever for the Christian restoration of Germany." At this meeting were formed the Vincent societies for domestic missionary work, and later Boniface societies, which, together with a host of societies either new or previously in existence, became adjuncts of the Pius Societies.
The assemblies were always made occasions for commenting on the condition of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, for preaching Ultramontanism (q.v.), and inveighing against Protestantism. During the trials of the so-called Kulturkampf (see Ultramontanism) the Pius Societies at their annual meeting at Wiirzburg, 1877, resolved: "We will fight not with the sword but with the cross." This peaceful attitude gave way after 1880 to a more stormy program, including the ultramontane
policy of Pius IX., the readmittance of Roman Catholic orders, particularly the Jesuits, and the temporal supremacy of the pope. The Pius Societies do not aim at a parity of privileges among all religious bodies, but at the total catholicization of the German nation in accordance with the introduction of that future ideal when, in the words of Baron von Loe uttered in the Roman Catholic Assembly at Bonn in 1881: " Germany shall be a Catholic country and the Church the leader of the nations." (O. ZocKLERf.)
Bibliography: From the Roman Catholic side may be adduced: H. Menne, Ueber den Zweck und Nutzen der katholische Vereine Deutschlands, Osnabruck, 1848; T. Palatinus, Entstehung der Generalversammlung der Katholiken Deutschlands, Wiirzburg, 1893; H. Briick, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert, iii. 511-537, Munster, 1905. For the Protestant side read : H. Schmid, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche Deutschlands, pp. 667, 758 sqq., Munich, 1874; F. Nippold, Handbuch der neuesten Kirchengeschichte, ii. 707 sqq., Berlin, 1901.
PLACE, JOSUE DE LA. See Placeus.
PLACEMAKER'S BIBLE. See Bible Versions, B, IV., § 9.
PLACET, ple'set, or pla'set (PLACETUM RE- GIUM, REGIUM EXEQUATUR, LITTERjE PAR- EATIS): Formal state approval of measures of ecclesiastical administration, or state provision that only ecclesiastical administrative measures thus approved shall be civilly recognized and maintained.
This presupposes that both State and
Develop- Church are mutually independent. In
ment of the the case of a church governed, as the
Placet. Reformed state church came to be, by
the civil power, the placet is meaningless; and it is equally inapplicable where the State, in ecclesiastical affairs, is completely dependent on the authority of the Church, as was the case in the Middle Ages from the time of Gregory VII. The placet, therefore, first becomes a part of the machinery of the State when the latter begins to revolt from the Church and to deem itself independent. Concomitantly with the development of royal power, this occurred first in Spain, during the reign of Alfonso XL (1348). In that country, the placet had already been formulated in a series of royal ordinances when the Emperor Charles V. ascended the throne and made decisive use of this device with the aid of the Cortes. In France the placet did not arise till nearly a century later, there assuming a distinct character through the practical bearings of the French parliaments. The rule that papal bulls gained legal validity only by virtue of the royal placet was practically current in France before becoming established by legislation in 1475. In the Netherlands, while the rudiments of the placet are very old, it was only in the Spanish period that it was legislatively established (1565), its form here receiving marked influence from Spanish jurisprudence and from the French culture dominant in the Walloon portion of the country.
In so far as these developments arose prior to the Reformation, the Church, like the modern Roman Catholic communion, never acknowledged the civil placet, but, in virtue of her divine commission, asserted the prerogative of sole power to prescribe