he seems to have been thoroughly initiated into his teaching by an Italian Senator, Tancredo Canonico, who was himself a leading member of the association. Until his death Canonico continued to be to the Archbishop the exponent of the new light, and not only his devoted friend, but in a manner his spiritual teacher and director. On his part, the Archbishop became the most docile and enthusiastic of pupils. He thankfully avowed himself the disciple of Towianski, and hailed his writings as a revelation of revelation' upon the acceptance of which depended the future of Italy and of Christian society. It seems something of a psychological marvel that, even when his native good sense revolted at some of the inconsistencies and puerilities of the system—notably in relation to baptism-and when by his own admission he stood aghast at the prospect of a successive plurality of lives here on earth in a series of fresh bodies, and at all that such an experience might have in store for him, the aged prelate by some process of self-persuasion brought himself not only to accept these strange doctrines, but to believe that in some way they could actually be harmonised with the Catholic faith.

It is noteworthy that as far back as 1893 Mgr. Passavalli, in one of his letters, earnestly advised Canonico to enlist the pen of Antonio Fogazzaro for the promotion of the new ideas. Those who are interested in literary origins or in the pedigree of literary types may be tempted to discover analogies between the ideals of the Servo di Dio and those of Il Santo. It may well be that in such regions of inspiration geniuses are found to run up against one another, especially at those levels where the mists of mysticism lie heavy upon the land, but even to the ordinary reader the affinities of thought and aspiration seem to be sufficiently striking and significant. It may be added that to the end of his life the Archbishop continued to be a keen politician. He was in correspondence with Cadorno, and as late as 1884 he wrote to his friend the senator to urge that a clause in the laws of the guarantees should be used for the purposes of further anti-clerical legislation.

These facts make it easily conceivable that, from 1870 onwards, Mgr. Passavalli was not one who, either from a religious or a political point of view, was at all likely to stand very high in the favour or confidence of the Holy See.

It was perhaps natural that when Père Hyacinthe came to Rome in 1872 he should find in Mgr. Passavalli a sympathetic friend and a kindred spirit. They were both opposed to the

2 This subject as well as Mgr. Passavalli's relations to Père Hyacinthe are very fully dealt with in two articles in the Civiltà Cattolica, the 20th of April and the 6th of July 1912.

Vatican Decree, both were fierce critics of the Roman Court, and both were agreed in attributing most evils in this world and the next to the machinations of the Jesuits. The Archbishop brought to the expression of his views the intense feeling and expansive speech which are characteristic of the popular Italian preacher, and it is possible that in the intimacy of their confidential colloquies he may have conveyed to the more literal Frenchman impressions which were beyond his thought, and a latitude. of meaning which a fellow-Italian would have been quick to discount. Hence the era of cordial friendship was soon to be followed by one of misunderstandings, of disavowals, of mutual recrimination, and finally of lasting estrangement.

It is only fair to say that if these two men were drawn closely together by having antipathies in common, they were held apart by points of deeper difference. Père Hyacinthe willingly fraternised and worked with the Old Catholics and other religious bodies separated from the Church. Mgr. Passavalli, on the contrary, could not be induced, even by the pressure of the German Ambassador prompted by Bismarck, to take any part in the opening of Old Catholic services in Naples or elsewhere; and in the midst of his collusion with the friends of Towianski he joined with them in protesting that there could be no other Church apart from the 'one, only, and true Catholic and Apostolic Church, which has for its head the Roman Pontiff, and with him, for its magistrature, the Episcopate."

3

There remains the question of fact. In those days of their intimate friendship at Rome in 1872, did Mgr. Passavalli bless the marriage of Père Hyacinthe? Père Hyacinthe, on his return to France, declared that he did. On the other hand, the friends. of the Archbishop, his fellow-disciples of the 'Servant of God' who were most in his confidence, and notably the editors of his correspondence, repudiate the statement as utterly inconsistent with all that they knew of the character of the Archbishop. They further maintain that it was precisely this assertion on the part of Père Hyacinthe which caused the breach between himself and Mgr. Passavalli.

A notable piece of evidence is found in the fact that some years later-1878-Mgr. Passavalli had in his hands a letter in which Père Hyacinthe seems to have disavowed the fact of the marriage. Writing to the Senator Canonico, the Archbishop says: The last letter of Padre Loyson permits me to hope that there may be soon an extraordinary intervention of Divine grace. The two things in it which have chiefly impressed me are these. He declares plainly that he did not receive from me the nuptial 3 See his letter to Melania C. in his correspondence, edited by A. Begey and A. Favero, p. 204.

blessing a thing which he asserted both orally and in writing and in the public Press. But then-possibly with a view to prevent me or others from publishing this declaration of hishe couples it with another assertion which is absolutely slanderous namely, that in former times I exhorted him to hate Rome more than ever, and had blamed him for not hating her enough. That is a manifest falsehood, but put in that way it renders quite useless his above-mentioned declaration' (Ricordi e lettere, p. 10).

From this it seems quite clear that Mgr. Passavalli not only denied having blessed the marriage, but understood that Père Hyacinthe himself had withdrawn his statement to that effect.

When this passage was published in Mgr. Passavalli's correspondence in 1911, Père Hyacinthe addressed to the editors a letter containing an acrid attack upon the Archbishop, who had already been some fourteen years in his grave. The most noteworthy part of his communication is that which refers to the alleged marriage. Père Hyacinthe maintains in it that the blessing of the marriage took place, but in saying so he makes admissions which go far to tone down and qualify his statement. He admits that it took place in a private room; that there were no witnesses except the parties concerned; that it was a sort of secret and mystic' proceeding; that it did not mean a marriage in the canonical sense of the word, and that therefore Mgr. Passavalli was able to say that a marriage had not been celebrated.*

Here, as far as the available evidence goes, the matter may be left. Whatever Mgr. Passavalli said or did in that private room in the Via Rasella in Rome in 1872, two things remain certain. First, Mgr. Passavalli denied that he had ever married the parties or had given them the nuptial blessing. Secondly, Père Hyacinthe himself admitted that canonically it was not a marriage, or one which either Church or State would recognise as such. It might be added that the parties themselves do not seem to have considered it as a real marriage, as they continued to live apart until the time when they were married in an Anglican church here in England.

It is unnecessary to repeat that, even if Mgr. Passavalli had celebrated the marriage in a public church, and with the full Roman rite, and in the presence of witnesses, his action, carried out in the teeth of the Church's law, would have been absolutely

'He [Mgr. Passavalli] had approved and even blessed my marriage, but because this blessing, however solemn it had been, was of a private and mystic kind, and did not imply exactly a canonical consecration, he was able to say that ne had not married us.'-Letter of Père Hyacinthe to MM. Begey and Favero, Revue Internationale Moderniste, Nos. 7, 8, August 1911.

unauthorised, and utterly bereft of all Church sanction and validity. In such an attempt he would not have implicated the Church, but would only have implicated himself in the censures of the Church already incurred by Père Hyacinthe.

It is difficult to conceive how any writer acquainted with the facts could have thought of invoking the case of Talleyrand as a precedent for the sanction of the Church being given to the marriage of a person in sacred orders. It happens to be a precedent in the opposite direction. It is well known that the ex-Bishop of Autun, who, during the Revolution, had abandoned the clerical profession, wished, on becoming Foreign Minister under Napoleon, to regularise his position, and petitioned Pius the Seventh for a brief of secularisation. A brief of secularisation in its normal scope and canonical meaning, granted to a cleric in holy orders, would enable him to live, and work, and dress as a layman, but it would not, without special mention to that effect, release him from his vow of celibacy or allow him to marry. It was precisely this leave to marry that Talleyrand most wished to obtain. Napoleon warmly supported his petition, and sent a special envoy to Rome to plead for the concession, and to lay before the Pope a memorandum enumerating ten historic cases collected from past ages, in which, it was alleged, a similar permission had been accorded by the Holy See. Pius the Seventh was quite willing to grant a brief of secularisation in the ordinary form, but he would not go further, and firmly refused any dispensation from vows or permission to marry. The Papal Archivist had no difficulty in showing that the argument drawn from the ten cases was worthless, as in most of them the persons secularised were not in holy orders, and in the others in which the persons were bishops-as in the notable instance of Henry of Portugal-the request for absolution from vows and faculty to contract marriage was distinctly rejected. Although the negotiations were broken off and resumed three times, the Pope remained inflexible. The refusal was the more marked as it was made just at the moment when the Holy See was under the deepest possible obligations to both Napoleon and Talleyrand for their invaluable help in the conclusion of the Concordat and the restoration of religion in France. In accordance with the Papal decision a brief was issued on the 29th of June 1802 authorising Talleyrand to live. ' in lay communion,' to 'administer civil affairs,' and 'to wear the secular dress,' but it contained not a word as to any dispensation from his vow of celibacy or any permission to marry. In order that there might be no possibility of mistake as to the purport of this omission, the French Ambassador at Rome officially notified Talleyrand that this part of his petition had

failed, while the Cardinal Legate in France informed him in writing that the permission to marry had been refused, and Pius the Seventh himself wrote to Napoleon explaining that upon this point he had been unable to depart from the age-long and invariable discipline of the Church."

Talleyrand chose to ignore all these notifications and married Madame Grand on the unblushing pretence that the brief could be construed as covering the concession which he desired." It would certainly require nothing less than the cynicism of a Talleyrand to interpret a Papal document in a sense which was precisely the opposite to that which had been carefully expounded by the Pope who issued it. As a matter of fact, the sanction of the Church was so rigorously withheld from Talleyrand's marriage that even twelve years later, when Cardinal Consalvi, at the Congress of Vienna, had to answer a letter sent to him by Madame Grand, he was strictly warned by the Roman authorities to see that he put nothing in his reply or on the address which would imply in any way that the Church recognised her position as Madame Talleyrand.

It is a far cry from Père Hyacinthe to Talleyrand, but one can easily realise how intrinsically incredible it would be that a sanction which Napoleon, in the zenith of his power, and on the morrow of the sealing of the Concordat, failed to wring from Pius the Seventh, would be bestowed by the Holy See in 1872 on a friar who was not only ex-communicate, but was actually at the moment in active hostility to its teaching and authority.

There are many to whom Père Hyacinthe's marriage may be a matter of comparative unimportance, but to whom it would seem desirable in the interests of accuracy that misleading assertions which claim for it the sanction of the Church should not be allowed to remain uncontradicted. When uttered and repeated, such statements, especially when stamped with respectable names, are apt to enter into the currency of accepted beliefs, and if allowed to pass unchallenged, can only serve to debase so far as they go the mintage of historical knowledge in public and popular circulation.

Westminster Cathedral.

J. MOYES.

The brief may be seen in Rinieri (II. 265). Most of the documents and facts are given by Theiner in his Histoire des Deux Concordats, and by B. de Lacombe in his Vie Privée de Talleyrand, and by F. Loliée in his more recent work, Talleyrand et la Société Française.

6

According to B. de Lacombe, there is no certain evidence as to the alleged religious ceremony in the Church of Epinay, but even if it had taken place, the action of the curé would have been invalid and unauthorised in the eyes of the Church.