History of the Christian church (Volume 5) online

ised, and ruled as a reactionist until his death in 1840.
Metternich's endeavors against all Liberal move-
ments, or, as he would say, the Revolution, did not
cease with his influence in Germany. With Alexan-
der I of Russia he entered heartily into the Holy
Alliance, and was a moving spirit in the Congress
of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, whose object was
to crush all revolutionary movements. A revolution
broke out in Spain. It was bloodily suppressed, but
the faithless Ferdinand, it was felt, was not equal to
the situation; so a French occupation of Spain was
resolved upon. It took place in 1823, and continued
for four years. In Naples a revolution to secure con-
stitutional government w^as put down with great loss
of life and merciless cruelty. The Emperor Alex-
ander I of Russia died in 1825; his successor was
Nicholas I, who put down in blood the Polish insur-
rection of 1830. Nicholas proved himself, until his
death in 1854, the strongest support of the Reaction
among the monarchs of Europe.



58 History of the Christian Church.

In England, the first effort of the French Revolu-
tion met with warm sympathy. Religious men all
over Europe, like Schleiermacher in Prus-

The Reaction . , ^^5.1 r , ^ , ^ . .

in England, sia and Wilberforce and J abez Bunting m
England, sympathized with it. But the
execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the
blood of the Terror, and the Atheistic orgies of Notre
Dame, turned the tide. The Evangelical party in
general, both within and without the Church of Eng-
land, supported the person and policy of Pitt and of
the war, until Napoleon was overthrown. The Tory
party, with a brief interval, had forty years of power.
There were few Whigs at the University of Oxford as
late as 1830. The country was governed by the
Tory party as representing great interests, the West
India slaveholding interest, the East India interest,
and the Established Church interest. Doubtless the
first occasion of the great Oxford movement was the
political rise in power of the forces opposed to Reac-
tion.

But all this array did not prevent the Revolution
making notable gains. The Revolutions in Mexico

Progress ^^^ Spanish America, in spite of Metter-
of the nich and the Holy Alliance, couM not be

Revolution. ^^^ dowu. This was largely owing to the
initiative of George Canning and the Monroe Doc-
trine enunciated by the President of the United
vStates. In Greece also, against the wish of Russia
and the English Tories, the Revolution was success-
ful. The battle of Navarino October 20, 1827, broke
forever the power of the Turk in the land of ancient
Hellas. A new kingdom joined the comity of Euro-
pean nations. In the United States the breakdown



The Reaction. 59

of the Federal party, 1 800-1 816, brought in the ex-
tension of the suffrage and the advance of the
United States to a democratic Republic.

But the year of 1830 marked an epoch in the
struggle of Reaction with European lyiberalism.
lyouis Philippe ascended the throne July
29, 1830. He was acknowledged by Eng- JjJ^ ^f .^^'^f
land, and under the guidance of able states-
men added Algeria to France, and proved that a
monarchy born of the Revolution could conduct a
stable and, on the whole, beneficent government.
The same year saw dissolved the unnatural union be-
tween Belgium and Holland. To the fright of ortho-
dox Tories, Brussels, and above all Antwerp, became
great cities. The new King Leopold, a cousin of
Queen Victoria, allayed their fears. In England the
Reform Bill of 1832 made a great stride in the same
direction. Henceforth England and France repre-
sented an entirely different scheme of political thought
from the party of the Reaction.

The party of Reaction found sure support in the
papacy. The Jesuits were restored in 1814, and from
that time largely controlled the policy of
the papacy, especially during the reign of ^,''830.7^8!"'
Gregory XVI (1831-1846). The alliance
between the throne and the altar was proclaimed and
emphasized in every country in Europe. The leaders
of the policy of Reaction were Nicholas I of Russia,
an unbending autocrat, but an honest man, and Prince
Metternich. Frederick William IV of Prussia (1840-
1858) was a lover of the fine arts and a Romanticist.
He was a brother-in-law of Nicholas I. His policy
was as absolute as that of his father, and he showed



6o History of the Christian Church,

no desire to break from the leading-strings of Metter-
nich. On the other hand, the founding and extension
of the ZoUverein, or Customs Union, made Prussia the
economic leader of Germany in the near future, and
opened her way to a political sovereignty through
her royal house. In Italy the rule of the Austrians
and of the pope grew increasingly unpopular. In
Spain a civil war raged from the death of Ferdinand
VII in 1833, between the partisans of his daughter
Isabella, aged three years, and under the regency of
her mother Christina, and those of his brother Don
Carlos, One result was the confiscation of the mo-
nastic property in Spain.

In France the government of Louis Philippe, in
spite of limited suffrage (there were but two hun-
dred and fifty thousand voters, and half of these were
ofiSceholders), and of electoral corruption, gave France
a rule under which she grew rich and powerful. But
there was a strong Republican party. The govern-
ment, through the king's pursuit of riches, the death
of his oldest son, and the Spanish marriages, weak-
ened the character and the power of the monarchy.

The Revolution broke out at Paris, February 22,

1848. Two days later Louis Philippe abdicated the

^ijg throne, universal suffrage was proclaimed.

Revolution and government workshops were opened.

° ' "* ' The latter proved a signal and costly fail-
ure. The election in April under universal suffrage
returned a Chamber with a majority of moderate Re-
publicans. There were a few Socialists, but more
Monarchists. The Socialists, seeing that they could
not control the Legislature, organized a revolt. It
was thoroughly suppressed by that true Republican,



The Reaction, 6i

General Cavaignac, June 24-26. In this he rendered
a great service to his country. Nevertheless Prince
lyouis Napoleon was elected President of the Republic
in December, 1848, by a vote of four to one to that
received by General Cavaignac.

The February Revolution at Paris woke all Europe.
In March, at Pressburg the Hungarians, and at Prague
the Bohemians, rose in revolt. On March

I he

13th the rule of Metternich came to an Revolution in
end. The same month witnessed the dec- ^"**'''«-
laration of war by Sardinia against Austria, and the
revolt of Venice in the attempt to found a Republic-
Rome, and apparently the pope, sympathized with
these efforts until the Allocution of Pius IX, April
29, 1848, pronounced against war with Austria. The
King of Sardinia was defeated at Custozza, July 25th,
and evacuated Milan, August 5, 1848.

In Austria itself events moved rapidly. The
Emperor Ferdinand abandoned Vienna May i6th, and
again on October i, 1848. Windischgratz took it for
him, November i, 1848. Ferdinand abdicated, and
Francis Joseph ascended the throne, December 2, 1848.
On February 27, 1849, the Hungarians were defeated
at Kapolona. They rallied, gained victories, and pro-
claimed the independence of Hungary, April 14, 1849.
The government at Vienna had played off the Sclavs
against the Magyars; now they call Russia to their
aid. Her iron dice were too heavy in the scales of
Mars, and the Hungarian General Gorgei capitulated,
August 14, 1849. Hungary was at the mercy of the
Reaction, Kossuth was a fugitive, and bloody execu-
tions stained the victory of the House of Hapsburg.

In Germany the revolt at Berlin had been success-



62 History of the Christian Church.

ful in securing the adhesion of the weak and irreso-
lute Frederick WilHam IV. A German Parliament

^j^^ was called to meet at Frankfort, May i8,
Revolution in 1848, and in June there was established a
Qermany. pj-Qyjsional government. The imperial
crown was offered to the King of Prussia. After
some days of consideration he rejected it, April 21,
1849. Prussia, influenced in part by Nicholas I,
joined Austria in the Reaction. By the Convention
of Olmiitz, November 25, 1850, Prussia took her place
again under the leadership of Austria. In May, 1850,
that body of weakness, the old Germanic Confedera-
tion, was restored. Two years of revolution and dis-
ruption had only made stronger the Austrian predom-
inance in Germany. Prussia could hold but a subor-
dinate place while the king lived and the policy of
Reaction prevailed. The time had not come, but was
ripening, for William I and Bismarck.

In Italy events moved decisively. At fifst Pius IX
fell in with the Liberal movement, but, November 15,

^^g 1848, Count Rossi, the Pontifical Minister
Revolution of Justice, was assassiuated on the steps
In Italy. ^^ ^^^ Chaucelleria ; November 24th the
pope fled from Rome to Gaeta. February 9, 1849,
the Roman Chambers proclaimed the fall of the tem-
poral power of the pope and the accession to power
of the Roman Republic. February i8th a Tuscan
Republic was proclaimed at Florence, and its grand-
duke went to join the pope at Gaeta. March 24, 1849,
Charles Albert was defeated by the Austrians at No-
vara, and he at once abdicated the throne of Sardinia.
He had bravely played a losing game in the fortune
of war, but he had made the house of Savoy the



The Reaction. 63

center of Italian unity. To reinstate the pope the
French Republic sent a military expedition under
General Oudinot. In thus planning to crush a sister
Republic the French Republic invited its own fate a
few years later. Principles remain, however much
statesmen and politicians violate them. The Romans
made a defense under General Garibaldi which made
glorious the name of their Republic. They repulsed
thej French troops with loss, April 30, 1849. After
two months' siege the French forced the San Pan-
crazio gate, June 30, 1849, and the city surrendered.
Garibaldi withdrew to wait in a happier hour the
realization of that ideal for which he so bravely
fought. Worthily stands his statue on the Janiculum
overlooking Rome, and commanding the gate of San
Pancrazio where he lost the day in defeat, but neither
heart nor hope.

Louis Napoleon, by a stroke of state, breaking his
oath to the Constitution, to which he had sworn with
perjured lips, made himself Emperor of p^.
the French, December 2, 1852. By a series under Louis
of blunders, both on the part of England NapoUon.
and Russia, he was able to lead in a war against
Nicholas I in behalf of Turkey. One can not help
feeling for the broken-hearted Czar, who never in-
tended to be led into war. This Crimean expedition
had the least justification of any European war of the
century after the Russian expedition of 1812. What-
ever results it had in favor of Turkey did not survive
thirty years. But this important gain was realized:
it put an end to the political influence of Russia in
Europe west of her boundaries. Nicholas had led the
forces of Reaction for thirty years in European poll-



64 History of the Christian Church.

tics. He had crushed the Hungarians, and so aided
Austria in the reduction of Italy, and had kept in the
path of the Reaction two kings of Prussia. With
Nicholas died the political power of the Reaction of
Europe. Louis Napoleon, who succeeded to the po-
litical leadership of Europe, owed his throne to the
Revolution. He was to open up a new era in Euro-
pean history by his war with Austria in 1859. His
successor in the politics of Europe, Bismarck, founded
the new German Empire on universal suffrage. The
era of Reaction was ended.

The Liberalism which led the Revolution of 1848

had much to learn. It made many mistakes, but it

has never been surpassed in enthusiasm

Summary. . , , . , - , .

and devotion. In the white heat of their
enthusiasm the peoples were fused for the mold of
national unity. It supplied the motor force for the
reorganization of Europe between 1 860-1 870. We
may smile at the extravagance and follies of its lead-
ers in their lack of experience, but they fashioned the
ideals which inspired the peoples who made the new
Europe. Mazzini and Manzoni, Manin and Garibaldi,
will ever deserve the reverence of all who have lived
in and seen the progress of united Italy. The doc-
trinaire German professors who had so little practical
experience in governmisnt, and raised up so many ob-
stacles to Bismarck, nevertheless, like the poets of the
Fatherland, laid the foundation on which Bismarck
builded. Citizens of the German Empire, strong in
its might, can never forget the men of 1848, who, with
all their lack of experience in government, 3^et saw
the vision splendid of the United Fatherland, and pre-
pared the people when the hour came for its realization.



Chapter III.

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.

It is not possible to understand the history of
Church or State in the nineteenth century without
taking into account the great literary revolution of the
age. The Romantic Movement has a sure place in the
literary history of all lands in Christendom.

Its influence on political thought, both on the side
of the Revolution and the Reaction, was most marked.
Its exponents were the leading political
philosophers of the Bourbon Restoration, influence
and it was no insignificant factor in that Rev- *>* ***® Move-

- _ , ment.

olution which m 1830 drove the Bourbons
from the throne. In the Revolution of 1848 Lamar-
tine and Victor Hugo, Thiers and Montalembert, were
conspicuous figures. In Germany there was the like
exaltation of the past and discontent with the present
which was the true seed of the Revolution of 1848. In
Italy even more clearly do Mazzini and Manzoni show
how the Romantic Moveflient awakened the conscious-
ness of the people.

Quite as important was its influence upon the his-
tory of the Christian Church. The Roman Catholic
Church in the eighteenth century lost her
hold on the intellect of Europe, and has theChuroh!
never regained it. The Revolution de-
spoiled it at once in France, and gradually in other
Roman Catholic countries, of its wealth. Political
power came back with the restoration of 1815, with

5 65



66 History of the Christian Church.

the proclaimed alliance of the altar and the throne.
To justify this restoration of power, to justify it as
the corner-stone of modern civilization, as a necessity
for the security of the social order, was the task of
writers like Chateaubriand, De Maistre, and Bonald.

These came from the center of the Romantic
Movement, and in its course it swept many unbe-
lievers, and not a few of Evangelical birth and train-
ing, into the Roman Catholic Church. Hardenberg
and John H. Newman stand for a multitude of others.

But it is as a literary movement that Romanticism

exerted its influence upon the thought and life of

The charac- Europc. To See the source and power of

teristic Fea= tj^ig influence we must discern the leading

tures of the . . r a ^ . ■» «-

Romantic characteristics of the Romantic Movement.

Movement. ^ V\x^\. it was a rcvolt. Its literature
was a literature of revolt. This is seen in the earlier
poems of Wordsworth, and in Byron and Shelley.
Notably is this true in France of Madame de Stael,
Chateaubriand, Madame Dudevant (George Sand), and
Victor Hugo. Its discontent with the present, whether
in its political conditions or literary or artistic forms,
could only be satisfied with a revolution.

2. In its revolt from the eighteenth century depre-
ciation of the Middle Ages, and of any true historic
life of men and societies and nations, it by preference
turned to those eras so long neglected and despised.
Scott led the way in Britain, Michaud in France, and
Von Raumer in Germany. The revival of Gothic
architecture came from the same source. The British
Houses of Parliament are a monument of this influence.

3. The Romantic Movement was a recall of the
emotions and fancy to conscious life and legitimate



The Romantic Movement. 67

literary expression. In the eighteenth century, emo-
tions and their expression were not good form.
Works of fantasy and the imagination with any sense
of mystery were simply ridiculous. The Romanticists
were nothing if not emotional; they reveled in the
fantastic in literature and art, and mystery was the
keyword to their moods and plots.

4. The Romantic Movement was characterized by
an intense appreciation of the beauty of nature. This
was often like a religious devotion, as in Wordsworth.
It immeasurably widened the literary horizon, and
opened new and noble sources of joy and aspiration
in the soul. Nature's life, beauty, and rhythm became
a part of our literary heritage.

5. This literary movement treasured the peculiari-
ties, past and present, of peoples and races. It valued
national and ecclesiastical legends, folk-lore, and pop-
ular ballads. These it gathered and preserved for all
time. It saw, as the eighteenth century never did,
the inner life of the people of the present and the
historic past.

6. In philosophy the Romantic Movement was the
direct opposite of the bald common-sense skepticism
of the eighteenth century .~ Kant had shown how in-
secure were the boasted solid foundations of this phi-
losophy. The philosophy of the Romanticists was the
German idealism which lay on the verge of pantheism,
and not seldom crossed it.

7. But the revolt of the Romantic Movement, more
than against anything else, was against the dry
rationalism in religion of the eighteenth century.
Whatever the Romanticists believed or did not be-
lieve, they had no use for a religion of denial and



68 History of the Christian Church.

negation. They reverenced the ages in which faith
prevailed, and the mighty creations in architecture
and plastic arts in which that faith found its expres-
sion. They could not deny the religious element in
the nature of man. Many felt it in themselves, and
sought in the Roman Catholic forms in architecture,
in liturgy, and in the religious life derived from the
Middle Ages, that satisfaction for it which too often the
rationalized and anti-artistic Evangelical Church failed
to afiford. This was but the sure revenge for its
neglect of the ages before the Reformation, and of the
craving for art in the human soul.

Let us now trace the course of the Movement in
its natural development in the different literatures of
Europe. It is not to be understood that all traits
above noticed will be seen equally in any literature or
present in any author.

In England the movement may be traced from the
publication of Bishop Percy's " Reliques of Ancient

Romantic English Poctry " in 1765. It, however, re-
Movement ceived a mighty impulse when, in Septem-
in England. ^^^^ 1798, wcrc published the '* Lyrical
Ballads" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William
Wordsworth. This book, while containing some in-
ferior poems, included also "The Ancient Mariner"
and " Lines upon Tintern Abbey," enough to make the
fortune of a literary movement at any time. Words-
worth brought to the Movement the revelation of na-
ture as a revealing God to the soul, which is his
marked contribution to English literature. He also,
like Byron and Shelley, later gave voice to the spirit
of revolt. The supreme gift of imagination and music
in words of Coleridge would ennoble any literature.



The Romantic Movement. 69

Byron and Shelley are emphatic exponents of re-
bellion against moral standards and religious creeds,
as well as political conditions. Byron died at thirty-
seven, Shelley at thirty, and Keats at twenty-six.
Byron's verse has movement and passion, and has
always been a favorite in Continental Europe. Shelley
wrote some of the most beautiful verse in English
poetry. Few poets, indeed, at his age have surpassed
the work of Keats. In Sir Walter Scott (i 770-1832),
the Movement called the Middle Ages back to life,
and powerfully affected his own and other lands.
Southey and Lockhart trod in his steps.

Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Keble,
diflfering as they do, yet represented the same literary
movement. So did the earlier poetry of Alfred Tenny-
son and of Robert Browning, though in their after
development they far outpassed the boundaries of the
Romantic Movement.

In criticism the most notable men in the Romantic
Movement in England were Thomas Carlyle, John
Ruskin, and John H. Newman. Not only these great
leaders, but all English literature of the time, felt the
new life that throbbed iji it, Macaulay seems their
opposite in history and criticism, but in his historical
ballads he is their companion in arms. The wave
reached across the Atlantic, and Emerson, Thoreau,
and Alcott, with the New England Transcendentalists,
are true children of the literary revolution.

In France the source of the Romantic Movement is
found in Jean Jacques Rousseau. From him came
that love of nature that marked so strongly the Ro-
manticists, as well as the revolt against conventional
standards in society, in literature, in politics, and re-



70 History of the Christian Church.

ligion. The Revolution had to come before there was
a way broken for the Romantic development ; for no
The Romantic ^^^^^^^y or pliilosophic traditions could be
Movement morc triumphant, or more narrow and
in France, intolerant, than the philosophy oi skepti-
cism and enlightenment on the standards of literary
taste then esteemed correct. Madame de Stael, the
first great forerunner of the Movement in France, was
at first disillusioned, and then brought to a wider
acquaintance with life through the excesses of the
Revolution and her banishment by Napoleon. Her
novels " Delphine " and "Corinne," her work on
Germany, as well as her wonderful conversational
powers, make her the first literary woman of her age,
surpassed only in the century by Madame Dudevant.
In her revolt she broke from moral standards. Her re-
lations with Narbonne, and afterward with Benjamin
Constant, who was the father of her daughter Alber-
tine, later the Duchess de Broglie, during the life of
her husband, whom she divorced in 1797, and nursed
in his last sickness in 1802, are the too familiar ac-
companiments of the Romantic Movement. In her
later years Madame de Stael returned to the Christian
faith.

Chateaubriand was one in opinion with the skep-
tical nobility by which he was surrounded. The
blood of the Terror revolted him, and he emigrated to
America, where he visited and afterwards described
the Falls of Niagara. On his return he published
" Atala " and " The Genius of Christianity." Fervid
in his professions of Christian belief, he w^as a de-
fender of absolute monarchy and of extreme papal
claims.



The Romantic Movement.



71



Alphouse de I^amartine — whose "Meditations"
were published in 1820 — Victor Hugo, De Musset,
and Beranger represent the Romantic poetry of France.
Theophile Gautier and Sainte Beuve represent its
criticism. The latter, in many respects, was the first
critic oi his time in Europe.

In fiction, Victor Hugo and Madame Dudevant are
the great names, followed at a distance by Alexander
Dumas and Eugene Sue. To this school Balzac,
perhaps the most powerful French novelist of the
century, did not belong. He did not sympathize with
the past. He belonged only to his own age and de-
scribed it with a keenness of analysis, a minuteness
of detail, and a display of morbid psychology never
excelled. Balzac became the founder of a new school
of fiction. When the school of Romantic fiction
passed, the method of Balzac remained.

In Germany the Romantic Movement reaches back
to Lessing, and comes through Goethe and Schiller
to the beginning of the century. Goethe ^^^ Romantic
had his Romantic period in his '* Sorrows of Movement in
Werther," and Schiller, following Biirger, ««'-"«"y-
preserved its power in his tragedies, by far the best in
German language.

These men went far beyond the limit of any school.
The leaders of the German Romantic Movement came
after them in more senses than one. They were
Hardenberg (Novalis), the brothers Schlegel, and
Ludwig Tieck. Three out of these four became
Roman Catholics. A poet of more value than any of
these was Ludwig Uhland, whose ballads are a treasure
in German literature. In fiction appears Jean Paul
Richter, Hofi^man, with his weird tales, and Heinrich



72 History of the Christian Church.

von Kleist. The same Movement carried over to
Rome the artists Cornelius and Overbeck. Heinrich