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bello, quanto c santo!" This journey of a Pope to Canossa has been described scene by scene, honour by honour, and also defeat by de- feat. Vienna and the masses which assembled from all parts of the Empire paid homage to the Sovereign Pontiff on each of the thirty days he remained. Before the Hofburg, where he resided in the chambers of Maria Theresa as the guest of the Emperor, thousands thronged incessantly; and up and down the Danube pilgrim boats were thick as stars. The Emperor, too, showed him every courtesy and honour. On Maundy Thursday he received the Blessed Sacrament from the Pope's hand. But as soon as negotiations were inaugurated, Joseph remained the absolute monarch. Kaunitz, who in his own home had insulted the Pope, whom he had insisted must visit him first, acted the liberal, and reduced to naught the few concessions his master seemed willing to make. Some emancipated intellectuals in- dicted pamphlets against the Papacy, and signs were pasted on walls making scorn of Pius. He had accomplished practically nothing when he embraced the Emperor and took his departure in front of the Church of Maria Brunn. Two hours after this touching scene, the monastery established on this site was dissolved; and three days later, there followed one hundred fifty dissolutions in the Netherlands as well as others in Austria and Bohemia. When the Pope rode home- ward through Bavaria and the Tyrol, the people paid him renewed homage, but this was no consolation for the spirit which ruled those in the government. The Roman cardinals were dissatisfied with the Pope. Copies of Febronius* book and of the Viennese pamphlets were sold throughout Rome, One day the Pope went to kneel on the prie-dieu in his chapel and found there a sheet of paper on which this was written: "What Gregory the Seventh, the greatest of all priests, once founded, Pius VI, the least of all priests, has destroyed again." Underneath the Pope wrote: "Christ's kingdom is not of this world. He who distributes the crowns of Heaven docs not rob those of earth/'
Relations between Vienna and the Vatican became still more diffi- cult. The Emperor retorted to a threat of the ban with the remark that the shameless person who had dared to sign such a document with the Pope's name merited punishment. When Joseph himself came to Rome, French and Spanish diplomats restrained him from letting
AWAY
