Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/359

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RESTORATION 345

of Peter safely through storm and wave. The realization of the man- ner in which the Jesuits regarded human life induced even so mystical a mind as that of Novalis to say: "The Society of Jesus will forever remain the model of all societies which feel an organic yearning for unlimited development and lasting permanence. . . All plans must fail which h?vc not taken into full consideration every tendency oi human nature."

All these Papal acts at the close of the pontificate of Pius VII ex- pressed and served the spirit of the principle of legitimacy which un- derlay the Restoration and the alliance between throne and altar. But during the years which intervened between the Congress of Vienna and his death, the Pope saw clearly the powers which within and without the movement of Restoration were opposed to the Papacy. The philosophy of enlightenment still coursed in the veins of Europe, and the Viennese rendezvous of monarchs and diplomats had by no means stamped it out. This is proved not merely by Metternich's person and policy but also by harbingers of a spiritual return to the Church. Such men as Count Joseph de Maistre of Savoy, either lived in the atmosphere of enlightenment or utilized, as did Bishop Sailer of Germany, the real progress of the eighteenth century to for- mulate an idea of religious culture, the opponents of which protested that it has not been blessed by Rome.

The propagandists of revolution had pleaded for cosmopolitanism; but now everywhere nationalism came to the surface in its most vio- lent form, and sought, as German resolutions presented to the Con- gress of Vienna prove, to establish more firmly the old conception of die Church as a State ecclesiastical establishment. The absolutism of secular governments, to the example set by which the Papal States also succumbed, aroused precisely in these States the most spirited opposi- tion. There the Carbonaria aped the model of secret societies which had long since spread over the whole of Europe, and utilized the sym- bolism and craft terminology of charcoal burners to revive revolution- ary sentiment in favour of a united Italy and against the "priest- tyrants." Consalvi's courage and prudence managed once again, with the help of Austrian troops, to suppress this revolutionary movement against the throne and the altar. In it a poverty-stricken plebs had joined with unemployed soldiers and officers of Napoleon's disbanded


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