HENRY EDWARD, CARDINAL MANNING

(1808-1892)

HE address on the two thousand six hundred and fifteenth anniversary of the foundation of Rome probably did more than any other single discourse to give Cardinal Manning his promotion, and it no doubt expresses more fully than any other the feeling which had influenced him in leaving the Church of England for that of Rome.

Manning was born at Totteridge, England, July 15th, 1808. His father, a wealthy East India merchant, educated him carefully. At Oxford where he graduated, he had Gladstone as a companion and Charles Wordsworth as a tutor. Entering the Church of England, he was made Archdeacon of Chichester in 1840. Ten years later he resigned, and leaving the Church of England was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. He was steadily advanced by the Pope, who made him Archbishop of Westminster in 1865 and Cardinal in 1875. He died January 14th, 1892. His published sermons, addresses, and other works are numerous. As a writer and public speaker, he illustrates the best traditions of the English language, in purity of diction, in directness of movement, and in strength of construction.

"ROME THE ETERNAL»

(From a Discourse Delivered before the Accademia Quiriti, in Rome, on the Two Thousand Six Hundred and Fifteenth Anniversary of the City, April 21st, 1863)

KNOW of no point of view in which the glory of Rome is more conspicuous than in its civil mission to the races of the world. When the seat of empire was translated from Rome to Constantinople, all the culture and civilization of Italy seemed to be carried away to enrich and to adorn the East. It seemed as if God had decreed to reveal to the world what his Church could do without the world, and what the world could not do without the Church. A more melancholy history than that of the Byzantine Empire is nowhere to be read. It is one long narrative of the usurpation and insolent dominion of the world over the

Church, which, becoming schismatical and isolated, fell easily under its imperial masters. With all its barbaric splendor and its imperial power, what has Constantinople accomplished for the civilization or the Christianity of the East? If the salt had kept its savor, it would not have been cast out and trodden under the foot of the Eastern Antichrist.

While this was accomplishing in the East, in the West a new world was rising, in order, unity, and fruitfulness, under the action of the Pontiffs. Even the hordes which inundated Italy were changed by them from the wildness of nature to the life of Christian civilization. From St. Leo to St. Gregory the Great, Christian Europe may be said not to exist! Rome stood alone under the rule of its Pontiffs, while as yet empires and kingdoms had no existence. Thus, little by little, and one by one, the nations which now make up the unity of Christendom were created, trained, and formed to political societies. First Lombardy, then Gaul, then Spain, then Germany, than Saxon England; then the first germs of lesser States began to appear. But to whom did they owe the laws, the principles, and the influences which made. their existence possible, coherent, and mature? It was to the Roman Pontiffs that they owed the first rudiments of their social and political order. It was the exposition of the Divine law by the lips of the Vicar of Jesus Christ that founded the Christian policy of the world.

This the Church has been able to do without the world, and even in spite of it. Nothing can be conceived more isolated, more feeble, or more encompassed with peril, than the line of the Roman Pontiffs; nevertheless, they have maintained inviolate their independence with their sacred deposit of faith and of jurisdiction, through all ages and through all conflicts, from the beginning to this hour. It seemed as if God willed to remove the first Christian emperor from Rome in the early fervor of his conversion, lest it should seem as if the sovereignty of the Church were in any way the creation of his power. God is jealous of his own kingdom and will not suffer any unconsecrated hand to be laid upon his ark, even for its support.

The "stone cut out without hands," which became a great mountain and filled the whole earth, is typical, not only of the expansion and universality of the Church, but of its mysterious and supernatural character. No human hand has accomplished its greatness. The hand of God alone could bring it to pass.

What is there in the history of the world parallel to the Rome of the Christians? The most warlike and imperial people of the world gave place to a people unarmed and without power. The pacific people arose from the Catacombs and entered upon the possession of Rome as their inheritance. The existence of Christian Rome, both in its formation, and next in its perpetuity, is a miracle of Divine power. God alone could give it to his people; God alone could preserve it to them, and them in it. What more wonderful sight than to see a Franciscan monk leading the Via Crucis in the Flavian Amphitheatre, or the Passionist missionaries conversing peacefully among the ilexes and the vaults where the wild beasts from Africa thirsted for the blood of Christians? Who has prevailed upon the world for one thousand five hundred years to fall back as Attila did from Christian Rome? Who has persuaded its will, and paralyzed its ambitions and conflicting interests? Such were my thoughts the other day when the Sovereign Pontiff, surrounded by the princes and pastors of the Church, was celebrating the festival of the Resurrection over the Confession of Saint Peter. I thought of the ages past, when in the amphitheatre of Nero, within which we stood, thousands of martyrs fell beneath the arms of the heathen. And now, the Rex Pacificus, the vicar of the prince of peace, there holds his court and offers over the tomb of the Apostle the unbloody sacrifice of our redemption. The legions of Rome have given way before a people who have never lifted a hand in war. They have taken the city of the Cæsars, and hold it to this day. The more than imperial court which surrounded the Vicar of Jesus Christ surpassed the glories of the Empire. "This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our Faith." The noblest spectacle upon earth is an unarmed man, whom all the world cannot bend by favor or by fear. Such a man is essentially above all worldly powers. And such, eminent among the inflexible, is he, the Pontiff and King, who, in the midst of the confusions and rebellions of the whole earth, bestowed that day his benediction upon the city and the world.

It is no wonder to me that Italians should believe in the primacy of Italy. Italy has, indeed, a primacy, but not that of which some have dreamed. The primacy of Italy is the presence of Rome; and the primacy of Rome is in its apostleship to the whole human race, in the science of God with which it has illuminated mankind, in its supreme and world-wide jurisdiction over

souls, in its high tribunal of appeal from all the authorities on earth, in its inflexible exposition of the moral law, in its sacred diplomacy, by which it binds the nations of Christendom into a confederacy of order and of justice,- these are its true, supreme, and - because God so has willed its inalienable and incommunicable primacy among the nations of the earth. Take these away, and Rome becomes less than Jerusalem, and Italy one among the nations, and not the first. The world does not return upon its path, nor reproduce its past. Time was when Rome wielded an irresistible power by its legions and its armies throughout the world. The nations of Europe and of the East were then barbarous or unorganized, without cohesion and without unity of will or power. Those uncivilized and dependent provinces are now kingdoms and empires, wielding each a power, in peace and in war, mature and massive as the power of Rome in its ripest season. It is a delirium of the memory for Italy to dream now of empire and of supremacy in the order of nature - that is, of war and conquest. The primacy of Italy is Christian and Catholic, or it has none. Alas for your fair land and for your noble race, if, forgetting its true greatness, it covet false glory which is not its In that hour it abdicates its mission - the greatest a people ever had—and descends from its primacy among the nations of the world. A vocation lost is prelude to a fall. This is not to increase, but to decrease before God and man.

own.

I do not remember in the history of the world any example of the permanent union of temporal splendor with spiritual fruitfulness and power. The sceptre had departed from Judah when the waters of eternal life flowed from Jerusalem throughout the world. Rome had ceased to be the seat of empire when it became the mother of Christian nations. When Constantinople became imperial, it began to fail in its witness for the faith and unity of Jesus Christ. The kingdoms and empires of Christian Europe have been faithful to the Holy See in their depression, and rebellious in their prosperity. The two nations most Catholic, most Christian, most filial in their love of the kingdom of God, are Ireland and Poland. Rome, I may say, because it is the seat of the Vicar of our crucified Lord, is supreme in the spiritual order, feeble in the natural and political. "It always bears about in the body the mortification of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in its body." Such is its normal state. Let it be recognized as the law of its existence

and of its sovereignty, lest the incantations of the tempter steal away the hearts of men with visions of unity and empire and splendor in this world. It is a severe vocation to be the crossbearers in the procession of the Vicars of our crucified Master. But to this you are called. Romans, if you would renew your courage for this conflict, lift up your eyes to the cloud of witnesses which hover above your heads; to the martyrs and confessors, the Pontiffs and Levites, the virgins and saints, who on this soil, by tears and by blood, have overcome the world and are now before the throne. Look, too, at the Catholic unity upon earth, which but the other day flew hither on the wings of faith. and love and filial devotion to surround the Vicar of Christ; look at the frontiers of the Holy Church, which are flowing outwards with ever-expanding force, conquering, and embracing the conquered in the unity of the true fold; look at the circuit of the kingdom of God, which rests upon the sunrise and the sunset, upon the farthest north and upon the islands of the southern seas. It was never yet so vast or widespreading; never did the ends of the earth lift up their heads towards the Vicar of the Incarnate Word so universally as at this hour. In the moment of its anguish and its affliction, when the world believes it to be in feebleness and decline, the Holy See is putting forth mightier powers, and reigning over wider realms than ever till now.

But if this be not enough, learn of the world, of its miseries and its anguish. Rome laid the foundations of Christian Europe on the basis of a supernatural unity; and, with all its revolutions and inundations of evil, it abides to this day. England laid the foundations of North America upon the basis of natural society; and the lifetime of one man is long enough to touch the beginning and the ending of its political unity. The unity of faith, and filial obedience to the unity of the Church in the person of its head, in ages past fused the discordant races of England, France, and Spain, and made of them kingdoms and monarchies, which endure, in their massive consolidation and unity of mind and will, unto this hour. So God has ever brought social and political unity out of the chaos of disorder. They who begin by contending against the fountain and law of unity doom themselves to division and confusion. They are wrestling with necessity; and he who contends with necessity must fail: "Whoso shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder."