had their effect upon the general course of Roman Catholic history. The license of the revolutionary era furnished a persuasive plea in behalf of constituted authority. The arbitrariness which Napoleon mixed with his patronage of the Church was suited to make many of the clergy to feel that they might be as comfortable under a papal master at Rome, as under a Cæsar at Paris, who restrained the hand of the foreign ecclesiastic only that he might himself exercise a more unlimited control. From both sources, the license and the imperial despotism,- Ultramontanism derived aid and incentives. The former served in particular to ease its way into the French Church. Indeed, it may be said with no small measure of truth that the excesses of the Revolution prepared for the Vatican Council, as the dogmatic excesses of that council are preparing for a new revolution. In making this latter statement we do not presume upon the gift of prophecy. We simply express a conviction which is enforced by the study of French history. We find it impossible to believe that this people will be permanently content to swallow down Ultramontane mysteries without stopping to inquire into their nature. The maxim of Hobbes, which prescribes that dogmas should be taken whole, as sick people take pills, does not fully suit the genius of the French people.

CHIEF EVENTS IN AUSTRIA, ITALY, AND SPAIN.

Up to the French Revolution, Austrian rule extended over a wide circuit, including a portion of the Nether

lands and Lombardy as well as the more central regions of German Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and

Transylvania. Parma was added at the peace of

Vienna in 1738. At the same time, owing to the extinction of the Medici heirs, Tuscany became an Austrian dependency, or at least an affiliated kingdom, its ruler being taken from the royal house of Austria. During the wars of 1740-48 Silesia was surrendered to Prussia. Parma and a portion of Lombardy were also lost. In the partition of Poland (1773-1795) Austria, along with Russia and Prussia, obtained a share of that hapless country. Bukowina, on the eastern border, was secured in 1775, and a portion of Bavaria in 1779. Many changes of boundary occurred during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods; but after all her humiliations, Austria suffered in the end very little if any retrenchment of her wide limits. While the Netherlands and some other districts were surrendered, a gain was made of the Venetian territories. A vast and continuous tract of country from Milan on the west to the borders of Russia on the east was held from the time of the settlement which followed the overthrow of Napoleon.

In the first half of the eighteenth century Austria was essentially a medieval State or conglomeration of States. Nobles, clergy, and Emperor were the great factors. The burgher class had a very limited share in the government. The peasants were generally but little above the rank of serfs, and in some quarters fell actually into that rank. Nobles and clergy were the principal landholders. The higher clergy were a kind of preferred branch of the aristocracy, and were drawn.

largely from the nobility. In their privileges and functions the nobles presented a distinct image of the old feudal system. The general cast of the government was that of a feudal monarchy. The will of the sovereign, restricted by no definite or comprehensive constitution, was variously limited by local claims and prerogatives. Each province had its own peculiarities of administration and judicial procedure.

Soon after the accession of Maria Theresa, in 1740, a movement was started toward centralization and uniformity in government. The estates were but rarely consulted, and an increasing circle of affairs was brought under the direct supervision of the crown. Under Joseph II., who was admitted to the standing of associate ruler in 1765, and took the full sovereignty in 1780, the movement toward uniform and consolidated rule was urged forward with great vigor. Having scant respect for traditional usages, and being strongly imbued with an idealizing temper, Joseph II. was bent upon securing a homogeneous realm. The type of government toward which he aimed was a bureaucratic absolutism. His rule tended to suppress local and class privileges in favor of the unrestricted sway of the sovereign. But while thus arrogating power, he had a generous intent as to its use. He wished to lift up the lower ranks and to carry forward the people as a whole in the path of intellectual and industrial progAccordingly, we find him abolishing serfdom, enlarging the system of public education, and reforming the jurisprudence. In manifold ways he showed that he wished to use absolute authority as a servant of the public weal. He miscalculated, however, the inertia

ress.

of the mass which he undertook to manage. His excessive haste to conform everything to a chosen model called out resentments that embittered his last days, and caused his successors to restore much of the old régime.

The imperial title, as is well known, was not hereditary with the Austrian rulers of the eighteenth century. They wore that title in virtue of an election by the German princes to the headship of the empire which had been inaugurated in medieval times as the successor to the old Roman dominion. It was first in 1804 that the name of Emperor was used as a title of the hereditary sovereign of Austria. Two years later this became the sole meaning of the name in Germany. The interference of Napoleon, and the consequent formation of the Confederacy of the Rhine (1806), under his protection, brought the "Holy Roman Empire" to an end. A preliminary to this transformation had been accomplished shortly before in the secularization of those ecclesiastical States or principalities which had formed so conspicuous a factor in the Germanic system during the preceding centuries. Only one of the ecclesiastical princes, the former Archbishop of Mayence, retained a temporal rule after 1803, and with him it lasted only till 1810.

The political movement which took place under Maria Theresa and Joseph II. had its ecclesiastical counterpart. Their conception of monarchical rule. naturally made them reluctant to divide their authority with the dignitaries of the Church. The position. of the two monarchs was indeed far from being identical. Maria Theresa was deeply interested to maintain

the supremacy of the Romish faith, and could not easily tolerate the notion of a rupture with the Holy See. Her son, on the other hand, had no disposition to serve specifically as the champion of that faith, and cared little for connection with Rome save as it might be conducive to his political advantage. Ultramontane critics have sometimes been inclined to set him down as a rank unbeliever. No doubt he was more or less conversant with the scepticism which was then spreading through France and Germany. But it does not appear that he took time to reconstruct his own beliefs in conformity with its dictates, or that he was interested to make the attempt. He ran into no such license of free thinking as did his famous contemporary, Frederic II. of Prussia. He retained in a general way the inherited creed, though he was not indignant at dissent therefrom. The intolerant zeal of his mother was something with which he early lost all sympathy. Notwithstanding this contrast in the sovereigns, however, there were some points of similarity in their ecclesiastical policies. Maria Theresa in fact accomplished not a little toward providing the foundation for the radical measures of Joseph II. She both raised barriers against papal interference and laid a vigorous hand upon the affairs of the Church within the realm. We find under her rule a refusal of recognition to a bull of Clement XIII. (1764), as also a formal assertion of the principle that without the previous consent of the government no papal bulls could be published within the territories of Austria (1767). Under her rule likewise the action of papal nuncios was restricted, judicial prerogatives of ecclesiastics over laymen were cancelled,