Pope

Pope (Gr. pappas, Lat. papa, 'father') at first used of all bishops, from the 5th century gradually appropriated in the West to the Bishop of Rome, though still used of priests of the Greek Church, the Bishop of Rome, and supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In this article an historic sketch will be given of the papacy as an institution. While the empire remained pagan the history of the bishops of Rome is obscure. Tradition confirmed by the faith of the church represents St Peter as the first Bishop of Rome. His immediate successors must have been recognised by Christians as the heads of Christ's church in the imperial city. Rome, the mistress of the world, was regarded by all men with reverence; all men came thither. So among Christians its bishop held a position of special dignity, and his judgment in ecclesiastical controversies was regarded as weighty. The heresy of Novatian, irregularly ordained Bishop of Rome during the lifetime of Cornelius (251), illustrated the importance of ecclesiastical unity, and so in the end tended to exalt the Bishop of Rome as the visible head of the church.

Under Constantine the empire became Christian, and Rome ceased to be the sole imperial city. The first of these changes vastly increased the dignity of its bishop; the second separated Latin from Eastern Christendom; the heresies of the speculative East found no acceptance in the West; the Bishop of Rome became the champion of orthodoxy, and was recognised by the Council of Sardica (347) as having appellate jurisdiction. Before the end of the 4th century Siricius, in publishing his decretal on clerical celibacy, assumed that the law of the Roman Church was binding everywhere. A great increase in power may be dated from the reign of Innocent I. (402–417), who claimed, as the successor of St Peter, superiority over western Christendom. The weakness of the western empire, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, and the reverence which they paid to all things Christian, combined to make Innocent the most powerful person in the Christian city which rose upon the ashes of pagan Rome. Leo I. (440–461) maintained the claim of his see to the patriarchate of the West, while in Rome and Italy his fearlessness and prudence during the invasions of the Huns and Vandals gave him commanding influence. In 476 the empire of the west came to an end; the sole emperor of the Romans reigned at Constantinople. As long as he left Italy alone the papal power was the stronger for his absence. Amid the political disintegration of the West the church remained a stable bond of union; its centre was Rome, and the head of Rome was the pope, who became more and more regarded as the leader and defender of the people. Though Theodoric the Ostrogoth, while master of Italy, abstained from interference with the bishops of Rome until shortly before his death, some trouble arose from disputed elections. The election anciently lay with the clergy and people of the city, but as the interference of the laity led to violence, Symmachus decreed (498) that thenceforward the election should be decided by the votes of the Roman clergy. The reconquest of Italy by the generals of Justinian impaired the papal power, for he treated the pope like a rebellious servant. As the imperial power waned in Italy before the invasion of the Lombards, the pope again became pre-eminent. Neglected by her emperor, Rome found a protector in Gregory the Great (590–604), who was forced by the sufferings of the people to deal with the Lombards as a temporal prince. Yet his work was chiefly spiritual. Under him the right to the patriarchate of the West was firmly established; his holiness, his writings, and his reforms were universally admired; he exercised ecclesiastical discipline over the bishops of other lands, and he resented the indignity put upon his see by the assumption of the title 'Universal Bishop' by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Under him the Arian invaders of Italy, the Lombards, were converted to Catholicism; so, too, were the Arian Visigoths of Spain; while the heathen English first received the gospel from missionaries whom he sent out. Gregory completed the work of Innocent and Leo, and was the greatest of the three founders of the papacy of the middle ages.

During the 7th century the popes were much troubled by the eastern emperors, who were still lords of Rome and some parts of Italy. The emperors caused elections to the papacy to be submitted to themselves for confirmation, tried to force the popes to concur in their heresy concerning the will of Christ, and treated them as mere officers of their state. Martin I. (649–654), a strenuous opponent of the Monothelete heresy, was seized, carried off to Constantinople, and, after suffering ill-usage, died in exile. Even when the emperors again became orthodox they still humiliated the popes. Meanwhile the papal power was growing in western lands: the English turned from Columban usages, and professed obedience to Rome (664); the Burgundians and Frieslanders received the gospel; and early in the 8th century Boniface won over a large part of Germany to the faith, acting on a commission from Gregory II. (715–731). In Gregory's time the Emperor Leo III. forbade the worship and even the use of images throughout his empire, whence he and his successors who adopted the same policy are called Iconoclasts (image-breakers). Gregory refused to obey his decree, and was upheld by the Italians and the West generally. The imperial governor in Italy, called the exarch, sought to compel the pope to obey his master, and the Italians rose in the pope's defence. The Lombards took advantage of the confusion to conquer the exarchate. They threatened the lands of the church; no help was to be had from the emperor; Italy was virtually severed from the empire. In his distress, Gregory III. (731-741) appealed for help to the Catholic Franks. Twice Pepin brought an army of Franks to the pope's relief, and routed the Lombards; he won back from them all that had belonged to the exarchate in Northern Italy, and bestowed it on the Roman see (754). This was the beginning of the temporal power of the popes. In return Pepin accepted from the pope the title of Patrician of the Romans, an acknowledgment of his rights in Rome, and of his duty as the defender of the church. He had already received the papal sanction for the deposition of the Frankish king and his own coronation; the pope's action in this matter formed a precedent not forgotten by his successors. Pepin's son, Charles (Charlemagne), again routed the Lombards, and renewed his father's donation. At another visit he declared Leo III. (795-816) guiltless of certain crimes with which he was charged, and on Christmas Day, 800, Leo crowned him emperor. It was contrary to the feelings of the age that the church should lack an imperial protector; the breach with the eastern empire was complete, and the imperial throne at Constantinople was held to be occupied unlawfully. While Leo had allowed his cause to be judged by a temporal prince, and had accepted him as master of Rome and emperor, he had assumed as God's vicar the right to bestow the imperial crown, which carried with it the lordship of the world.

During the struggles that preceded the break-up of the Frankish empire the popes generally favoured the princes of the West (or Gallic) Franks, rather than of the East (or German) Franks. The rise of separate nations threw political power into the hands of the great churchmen of the new states. The pontificate of Nicolas I. (858-867) was marked by the successful assertion of the authority of Rome in correcting the vices of princes, and compelling the submission of the most powerful prelates of the West, such as the Archbishop of Ravenna, certain German bishops who upheld their king in his evil ways, and even Hincmar of Rheims. His chief weapon against the bishops was a series of early decretals, now known to have been forgeries not emanating from Rome. The lofty policy of Nicolas was pursued, though with less success, by Hadrian II. (867-872). Meanwhile a dispute begun in the time of Nicolas was leading the Greek Church towards schism. During the papacy of John VIII. (872-882) the Saracens established themselves in Southern Italy and threatened Rome, and the courageous pope sought help on all sides against them and his Christian enemies. The anarchy in Italy which followed the extinction of the Carolingian empire had the worst effects on the papacy. Things were darkest in the first half of the 10th century. Competitors for power treated the popes as their tools, and elections to the papacy were decided either by the nobles of Rome, or the mob, or any foreign power which chanced to be master of the city. No reverence was paid to the papal office, and several of those raised to it were men of fierce and unholy lives. Pressed by enemies, John XII. sent for help to Otto the Great, king of Germany, and, by crowning him emperor in 962, revived the empire; he acknowledged Otto as his sovereign, and the Romans swore to elect no pope without the emperor's consent. Though Otto, his son, and his grandson did something towards restoring to the papacy its proper dignity, the attempt to regenerate it failed; and, after the death of Otto III., it was again degraded by falling under the control of the counts of Tusculum.

The emperor Henry III. regenerated the papacy by releasing it from the control of the Roman nobles, and conferring it on German churchmen of high character. One of these, Leo IX. (1049-55), commanded the respect of Christendom by his revival of ecclesiastical discipline. He was taken prisoner when attempting to check the Norman invaders of Italy, but the Normans reverenced their captive, and after his death acknowledged the pope as the feudal lord of their conquests, Sicily and Southern Italy. Under the guidance of Hildebrand (see GREGORY VII.) the papacy advanced rapidly in power and repute. By a decree of Nicolas II. (1059-61) in 1059 the right of election was vested in the cardinals. After a severe struggle clerical celibacy was enforced, and the clergy thus separated from worldly ties became devoted to the interests of their order and its earthly head. Simony was strictly repressed. A further advance was made when Gregory VII. (1073-86) forbade churchmen to receive investiture of their benefices from lay hands. This touched the sovereignty of lay princes. He was opposed by the Emperor Henry IV. (q.v.). The principle at stake was the church's independence of the lay power, its dependence on its own visible head, and its consequent salvation from feudal bonds and abuses. Gregory asserted the highest claims, and deposed the emperor, who made a humiliating submission at Canossa in 1077. Pope and emperor each found support, the pope in the discontent of the Germans and in the Normans. War broke out, an antipope and rivals to the emperor were set up. The struggle lasted beyond the lives of Gregory and Henry IV., and was decided in 1122 by the Concordat of Worms, which, though a compromise, was a substantial victory for the papacy. During the struggle the Crusades brought a vast increase of power to the pope, for they made him the head of Christendom in arms and the director of its forces. Though disturbed for a few years by a schism, the result of Roman faction, the reign of Innocent II. (1130-43) was a time of greatness. The religious orders had from the first rise of western monasticism been strong upholders of the papacy, and each order as it was founded laid its new-born zeal at the disposal of Rome. Innocent gained much from the support of St Bernard, backed by all the strength of the Cistercian order. Under Hadrian IV. (1154-59), a native of St Albans, named Nicolas Brakespear, the only Englishman who has been raised to the papal chair, the papacy entered on a struggle with the Emperor Frederick I., who was determined fully to enforce his imperial rights. In theory pope and emperor supplied each the complement of the other's power, the one being God's vicegerent in spiritual, the other in worldly things; but the limits dividing their spheres of action were undefinable, and when both were strong they were almost forced into hostility. Among the definite causes of dispute was the sovereignty of the pope over certain parts of Italy which had been bequeathed to the papacy by the Countess Matilda of Tuscany (died 1115). The popes were upheld by a league of the Lombard cities, which carried on a long war with the emperor; he was defeated, and in 1177 submitted to Alexander III.

The papal authority reached its greatest height under Innocent III. (1198-1216), who ruled as the head of a vast spiritual empire, founded on the reverence of mankind for righteousness. He was master in Italy. His strife with two emperors ended in the success of his ward, Frederick II., inheritor of the Sicilian throne, whom he crowned emperor. By excommunication he forced the king of France to put away his paramour; he deposed John of England, and compelled him to become his vassal. The kings of many nations submitted to his rebukes. The Latin conquest of Constantinople brought the East for a while under the papal obedience, and a crusading army began to extirpate the heretics of Languedoc. More important than all was the foundation of the orders of St Dominic and St Francis, which gave the pope well-organised and generally devoted forces in every land. Innocent was the first pope that exercised full dominion over the States of the Church. Their position as temporal sovereigns brought his successors into collision with Frederick II., who, already king of Sicily and Naples, wished to gain Central Italy. Had he done so he would have made the papacy dependent on himself. Gregory IX. (1227-41) and Innocent IV. (1243-54) resisted him by every means, spiritual and temporal, at their disposal. The Italian cities of the Guelfic or papal party were their strongest allies. Innocent declared the emperor deposed, and found allies against him in Germany. The papal resources were strained; money was extorted from foreign countries, especially from England, and the papacy lost in repute by its demands. The struggle was continued against Frederick's house until it was extinguished. All danger of subjection to the empire was past; but the papacy owed its final success to Charles of Anjou, who was invested with the kingship of Sicily and Naples. This gave France an interest in Italy, and led to the subjection of the papacy to the French king. The imperial power having fallen, Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) sought to take the emperor's place as head of Europe. His aims were secular and his temper violent. National monarchies were being built up in England and France by strong kings. The claims of Boniface were subversive of their domestic policy; they refused to admit them, and he quarrelled with both kings. The Italian partisans of Philip IV. of France seized him; he was brutally treated, and died soon afterwards.

Philip procured the election of a Frenchman, Clement V. (1305-16), who resided at Avignon in Provence, afterwards sold to the papacy. There the papal court remained for about seventy years, a period called the 'Babylonish Captivity,' during which the popes were much under the influence of their powerful neighbour of France. A long struggle with the Emperor Louis IV., in which the popes were successful, injured the reputation of the papacy. During its course men began to criticise the character and claims of the papacy. It was attacked on ecclesiastical grounds by the 'Spiritual Franciscans,' and by scholars like Ockham, and on political by the imperial legists. The court at Avignon was luxurious and venal. Little revenue came from the States of the Church, which fell into disorder during the pope's absence, and large sums were raised from national churches and by corrupt means. Fearing to lose all authority in Italy, Gregory XI. returned to Rome in 1378, but died there immediately afterwards. Urban VI. was elected, but the French cardinals, supported by the king of France and the Angevin queen of Naples, rebelled, and elected Clement VII. During the schism which ensued the obedience of Europe was divided between rival popes. In order to heal the schism the cardinals revived the long disused authority of a general council. The Council of Pisa (1409) failed of its object. The reformation as well as the reunion of the church was largely desired. In England Wyclif urged apostolic poverty as the only cure for abuses. His teaching was of little practical importance, save that it helped forward the revolt of Bohemia, where the Slavs regarded the Latin liturgy as a badge of German superiority. Many orthodox churchmen desired to see the abuses of the papal court reformed and the churches of the several countries preserved from undue papal interference. By the Council of Constance the schism was closed, and Martin V. (1417-31) was elected pope; the council proved unequal to deal with reform. Martin's wise administration raised the papacy from its low estate; he regained its possessions, and made its power widely felt. The Bohemian war made another council inevitable; it met at Basel in 1432, it attacked Eugenius IV. (1431-47), raised up an antipope, and ended in contempt. Meanwhile the Greeks, hoping for help against the Turks, submitted to the holy see. In another respect the papacy was specially affected by the troubles of the Greeks. It readily adopted the learning and culture brought by the Greeks to Italy. The genius of Nicolas V. (1447-55) conceived a new ideal. The 15th century was an age of splendour; its magnificence was conspicuous in the lives not merely of princes, but even of nobles, merchants, and bankers. As the papacy outstripped all earthly powers in greatness, so in the mind of the pontiff was Rome its seat to impose on the imagination of all the world by an exterior grandeur which should outshine that of the city of any earthly potentate. But his was no vulgar ideal of mere magnificence; Rome to him was to be the protectress of the arts, the home of learning, the central point of culture in the Christian world; and all this was but to typify and render sensible the supremacy of religion.

Under Pius II. (1458-63) the pope again appeared as the natural head of the forces of Christendom united in arms against the infidel. Pius died when actually setting out on a crusade, and his plans failed, but they gave the papacy renewed importance in the eyes of Europe. His successors, inheriting generally the views of Nicolas V. in regard to Rome as the material expression of papal greatness, did not inherit the loftiness of his spirit. Whilst pursuing the idea of surrounding the papal dignity with pre-eminent splendour, some, like Paul II. (1464-71), betrayed a sympathy for the pagan renaissance which is unmistakable, and which cannot fail to have diminished the veneration due to the head of the church. Other popes, like Alexander VI. (1492-1503) or Julius II. (1503-13), were bent on founding in the Italian states principedoms either for their relatives or for the papal chair. This is specially true of Alexander (Borgia), whose earlier life had been immoral, and who as pope caused scandal by his undisguised love of worldly pleasures; whilst his son Cæsar, an able, unscrupulous man, made matters worse by his crimes.

Meantime the idea of reform had not slept—witness the activity of such a man as Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa; but efforts like his were inspired by individual minds of a specially lofty turn, and at most had the countenance of supreme authority; however widespread, they were local and were not that general 'reformation in head and members' which had been so loudly and so earnestly called for. The inevitable day of reckoning came, but in a guise which none expected. In place of reform the Protestant Reformation effected a ruthless breach with the past, and instead of the enforcement of the law of the church that law itself was repudiated. Events now convinced, but too late, the most unwilling minds that what priests and bishops, regulars and seculars, theologians and zealous laymen had pressed for had been indeed the need of the time. Rome itself furnished a lamentable illustration of the ruin that had come upon the church. Clement VII. (1523-34), though he had his own political aims, was as a man not unworthy of his office, and by character the least able to bear the brunt of the storm; yet it was he who witnessed Rome ruthlessly sacked (1527), and that by the troops of Charles V., who during the first half of the 16th century was the mainstay of the Catholic cause, and by his dignity as then emperor-elect the recognised protector of the Roman Church. The impression made by this event on all religious minds is well expressed in the measured but weighty words of Cardinal Sadoletto. 'If those,' he writes, 'had done their duty on whom the obligation chiefly rested (I speak not of the pontiff whose virtues, mildness, and uprightness are known not as great merely but as admirable), the priesthood would still be venerated as of old, and not now exposed to injury and contempt. I say what I feel, and God and man are my witnesses, that this best of pontiffs desired to cure these corrupt morals; but the thing needed the knife, not a salve, and his nature and kindly spirit shrank from strong measures.'

From this point the history of the papacy to the close of the 18th century falls naturally into three divisions. From 1530 to the early years of the 17th century there takes place a reconstitution of the papacy on the basis of Catholic reform; next follows a century of normal activity on the new basis thus formed; thirdly, a century of decline in influence, the term of which is marked by the conclave in Venice which resulted in the election of Pope Pius VII.

(1) No time was lost in setting about the work which now all recognised as the imperative need. The papacy was not prominent in the work of reform; but the countenance given by Rome to men like Contarini, Pole, and Ghiberti is sufficient evidence that the popes themselves did not intend to be behindhand. The pontificate of Paul III. (1534-50) witnessed two events of considerable importance to the future of the church—the institution of the Jesuits, and the commencement of the Council of Trent. In 1534 Ignatius of Loyola pronounced his vows in the presence of the pope, and thus laid the foundations of a society of men specially devoted to the service of the holy see, with which its fortunes have subsequently been intimately associated. The ideal conceived by Ignatius was that of an order governed by 'a general whom all should be bound to obey under vow, who should be perpetual, possessed of absolute authority, subject entirely to the pope, but not liable to be restrained by any chapters of the order.' Paul III., on September 27, 1540, by the bull Regimen militantis, gave the papal approval to the 'form of life' designed by the founder. The Council of Trent, whatever be the import of its dogmatic definitions, is essentially a council of disciplinary reform; but in this place it requires notice as being a council of which, though held at a distance from Rome, the control and effective action really vested in the pope. After long negotiations the council convoked by Paul III. met at Trent in December 1545. As early as 1542 the papal legates had reached that city; but the war between France and Germany which then broke out made the further delay inevitable. It is worth remarking, as showing the influence already possessed by the newly-founded Society of Jesus, that two of its members came to the council as papal theologians. On April 28, 1552, the sittings of the fathers were suspended for two years. On November 29, 1560, the then pope, Pius IV., convoked it for the following Easter. The decree of reformation of morals and government, consisting of eighteen chapters, was adopted in the 23d session. It con- tained a number of important provisions on the residence of bishops and parish priests, upon the qualifications for the priesthood, and for the erection of seminaries for clerical training. In the 25th session was passed a series of regulations for the regular clergy and nuns. The decrees of the council were formally confirmed by Pius IV. in 1564. By its declarations on dogmatic theology the council gave prominence to the differences existing between Catholics and non-Catholics, and thus more sharply divided Christendom into the spiritual subjects and the enemies of the papacy. The cause of Catholic reform dominated the policy of Paul IV. (1555-59), and from his time the constitution of the Roman see in its modern aspect progressed practically without a check. In this period, too, falls the establishment of administrative bodies called 'sacred congregations,' which henceforth are the recognised and usual organs for the exercise of papal power in the government of the church. Lesser objects were not neglected. If modern Rome has been for so long the city in Europe which has attracted and deserved to attract the curiosity and admiration of all men, this is largely due to the continuation during this period of the works begun under the inspiration of Nicolas V. It is often forgotten that St Peter's itself was not completed till 1626.

(2) By the beginning of the 17th century the papacy as an institution had reconstituted itself in accordance with the circumstances induced by the Protestant Reformation. Its history in this second period shows no such stirring events as had marked the preceding age. But for its future the transfer of the weight of political power from the House of Austria to that of France was of decisive importance. The full consequences of the change were not, of course, perceived immediately, but it is certain it was recognised in Rome as momentous, and was not viewed with satisfaction.

(3) The conclave which assembled in Rome in the year 1700 determined the history of the papacy in the third period. Among the cardinals the one who enjoyed the most respect was the Dominican Cardinal Orsini, the head of a body of cardinals whose views are sufficiently indicated by the name given to them—the Zelanti. He was a man of illustrious family, dominated by a sense of duty in all things great and small, of slender intellectual capacity indeed, but endowed with a rare gift of discerning merit and capacity in others; free from petty jealousy, he knew how to gather round him men of ability, and how to use them when he had them. But the change in the balance of power effected during the 17th century determined the election of Cardinal Albani, to whom was given the whole weight of the influence of France. As Clement XI. (1700-21) he was in the most important acts of his reign inspired by Louis XIV. To outward appearance, in the first half of the 18th century, the position of the papacy in its relations with princes and peoples remained as it had been before. To some extent also it is certain that Benedict XIV. (1740-58), by a charm of character which impressed even one so keenly alive to the weak side of humanity as Walpole, staved off the evil day. But before his death the signs of disintegration were unmistakable. Throughout Europe luxury and an accompanying dissoluteness of manners had increased to shamelessness, whilst the school of infidelity in France was now fully organised and confident of victory. The full effect, moreover, of the displacement of the imperial House of Austria as the political prop of the church in favour of France now made itself manifest, and the Jansenist troubles of the 17th century bore bitter fruit. The whole church of France had become involved in the quarrel. On the one side the bishops nominated by the king insisted, as in duty bound, upon the acceptance of the bull Unigenitus issued by Clement XI. in 1713, whilst on the other a large body of the clergy and a not less large body of the laity resisted a bull involving assent to a lengthy series of abstract theological propositions. Of the violence of these theological quarrels it is now almost impossible to form an idea, and more than one cool observer believed schism in France to be imminent. Thus, whilst the papacy needed every aid to stem the rising tide of infidelity, it found those on whose help it should have been able to depend involved in internecine conflict. The second half of the 18th century was for the papacy a slow agony, the successive stages of which do not call for notice here. By the suppression of the Jesuits the papacy not merely deprived itself of an able body of strenuous defenders, but cast by the very act dismay among the ranks of many devoted to the church. Moreover, the manner of the fall of the Society of Jesus was not calculated to lessen the weight of responsibility, or it may be said the odium, attaching to so grave an act. It fell with dignity, and the cruelties inflicted upon many of its members called forth in unlikely quarters sympathy for the victims. It was natural that onlookers should be more impressed by these more recent occurrences than by the long chain of events which had brought the holy see to view the suppression of the Order as inevitable.

Even the faithful House of Austria now fell away, and the Emperor Joseph II. assumed to himself and exercised functions which the popes had ever claimed as pertaining to the supreme ecclesiastical power. The fruitless journey of Pius VI. (1775-99) to confer with Joseph II. at Vienna in 1782 is the outward evidence of the humiliation of the papacy. Before long the Revolution which broke forth in France swept away king and priest and all established institutions in church and state, involving Catholic Europe in disorder. An outbreak in Rome, fomented by the agents of the French ambassador, forced the pope from Rome as a prisoner (1798); and, after his removal from one place of confinement to another, Pius VI. died at Valence on 29th August 1799, Napoleon having, two years before, in anticipation of his death, given orders that no successor should be elected, and that the papacy should be abolished.

A few words must still be given to the present and fourth period of the modern age of the papacy. Through the instrumentality of schismatic Russia the conclave of cardinals met in the monastery of St Giorgio Maggiore at Venice on the 1st of December 1799. The conclave lasted for nearly four months. Just as the conclave of 1700 was decisive as regards the fortunes of the papacy in the 18th century, so was this of 1800 as regards the 19th century. The possible candidates were numerous; the choice finally rested on the Benedictine cardinal, Chiaramonti. Nothing better illustrates the confusion of ecclesiastical ideas in the 18th century, or a chief source of the weakness of the church, induced by universal suspicion, than an accidental expression used by a member of the conclave, Cardinal Langini, in his private diary. Explaining the objections felt by some in the conclave to Chiaramonti, he notes under 12th March 1800, only two days before the election, 'Chiaramonti, as a Benedictine, being suspected of Janusism.'

No one who reviews the history of the 19th century can doubt that events have justified the choice of the cardinals. After enduring shocks which to human eyes seemed to threaten its very existence, the papacy has become once more a factor of the greatest potency in the civilised world. That this is so is largely the result of the personal character of Chiaramonti, the new pope, who as Pius VII. (1800-23) combined a conciliatory temper with an unconquerable inflexibility when vital principles were involved. The history of his relations with Napoleon I. is sufficient of itself to explain how he, destitute apparently of all human help, won for himself the respect of those who would naturally have been the first to contest his spiritual authority. In the space of his pontificate he was able to restore the papacy to the position which it had held a hundred years before. Under him began that restoration of Catholic life and Catholic aim which has attracted some of the ablest intellects and most statesmanlike minds of the century to the service of the church; and under him and his successors was accumulated a reserve of Catholic strength which is one of the most interesting and remarkable features of the 19th century.

The successors of Pius VII. by the personal purity of their lives contributed greatly to advance this Catholic revival. The reigns of Leo XII. (1823-29), Pius VIII. (1829-30), and Gregory XVI. (1831-46) witnessed an increase of zeal on the part of the Roman Catholic clergy everywhere, and a marked development of the spirit of loyalty to the holy see both in them and in the ranks of the Catholic laity. In France the exertions of Montalembert, Lamennais, and others firmly established a new school, which, whilst professing enlightened liberal doctrines, was founded on the principle that complete and loyal submission to the teachings and direction of Rome was the first duty of every Catholic. In England the passing of the act for Catholic emancipation in 1829 gave liberty, and with it new life, to Roman Catholics.

Pius IX. (1846-78) was chosen to succeed Gregory XVI. He had generally been credited with advanced liberal views, and had exerted himself during the civil disturbances under his predecessor to secure some mitigation of the punishments meted out to the political prisoners. He began his rule with a proclamation of general amnesty for such offenders, and for the first two years he maintained a policy of liberal political reform. At the end of that time he had practically become a prisoner in the hands of the revolutionary party, and on November 24, 1848, he escaped in disguise from Rome to Gaeta. Here he remained till in April 1850 he was brought back to Rome by the French troops. On September 29, 1850, he took the important step, as regards the English Catholics, of establishing a hierarchy of bishops in communion with the Roman see. On December 8, 1854, he issued the bull Ineffabilis Deus, by which the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared to be a dogma of the Christian faith. Ten years later (December 1864) he published the famous encyclical Quanta cura, together with the Syllabus, or catalogue of errors of the day which called for special condemnation. Romagna, a portion of the pontifical states, was occupied by the Sardinian troops in 1860, and in September of the same year, after a stubborn resistance made by the pope's troops at Ancona, most of the States of the Church were annexed to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. From that time till 1870 Pius IX. was maintained in Rome by a French garrison. On the 18th of July of that year (1870) the Vatican Council, which the pope had assembled at Rome, decreed the dogma of Papal Infallibility part of the faith of the church. Upon the outbreak of the war between France and Prussia the French garrison was withdrawn from Rome, and on the news of the defeat of the French the Sardinian troops moved upon Rome. After a slight show of resistance Victor Emmanuel's army entered the city on the 21st September 1870, and from that time the temporal power of the pope has ceased to exist. Pius IX. for the rest of his life remained in the Vatican, refusing to recognise what had been done. The position in which he was thus placed as a virtual prisoner in his palace aroused the sympathy of the Catholic world at large.

Leo XIII. (1878), who was chosen as his successor, has since continued to maintain towards the kingdom of Italy the attitude taken up by Pius IX. Although shut up in the Vatican palace, Pope Leo has possessed himself of an influence which has made itself felt, and has won for himself the respect of European powers. In Germany his wise diplomacy brought about a mitigation of the anti-Catholic 'May Laws.' In a question of disputed rights over the Caroline Islands his arbitration was sought by Germany and Spain, and his award accepted as final. The state of Ireland caused him to despatch thither a special envoy to study on the spot and report to him the nature of the agrarian difficulties which had arisen there, and the attitude of the Catholic clergy towards the grave questions involved in the struggle between the landlords and tenants. As a result of this mission, in May 1888 the pontiff issued a circular to the bishops of Ireland in which he condemned as immoral boycotting and the Plan of Campaign. In June 1891 the pope published an encyclical, addressed to the Catholic bishops, dealing with the principles which should govern the consideration of the questions involved in struggles between capital and labour.

See Anastasius, Liber Pontificalis sive Vitæ nonnullorum Pontiff. ap. Rev. Ital. SS. iii.; Baronius (Pagi), Ann. Eccl. i.-xlii.; Theiner, Cont. Baronii Ann.; Milman's Latin Christianity; Bryce's Holy Roman Empire; Creighton's History of the Papacy during the Reformation; Ranke's History of the Popes; Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (1886-95; trans. 1892-98); Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1859-72; trans. 1895-98); and various collections of documents, such as the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum (ed. Jaffé and Potthast). See also the articles BULL, ENCYCLICAL, INFALLIBILITY, ITALY, NORMANS, REFORMATION, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH; and the separate articles on the chief of the popes, as given in the following list, in which the order and dates of accession are taken from P. B. Gams's Series Episcoporum, the names of the antipopes being given in italics.