Secularized Germany and the Vatican [pp. 107-122]

I 12 SECULARIZEZD GERMANY AND THE VA TIZCAN. [Oct.,
backward we see the two great powers-the empire of the church
and the empire of the false prophet-locked in deadly strife, the
heretical dominions falling one after another beneath the power
of Islam, the Catholic dominions preserving their freedom and at
last braking down the long-dreaded and once irresistible foe;
we see dissensions break'out hither and thither, and provinces
and kingdoms agglomerate and dissever; but the great outlines
and landmarks remain ever unchanged, and to go back a century
is well-nigh equivalent to going back a millennium. Less than a
hundred years ago the heir of St. Louis was still seated on the
throne of Capet, to all appearance without possibility of subversion. Less than a hundred years ago German archbishops were
petty sovereigns in their own right and made treaties with
Great Britain to supply the British government with men for
foreign service. Less than a hundred years ago the Red Sea was
closed to all "infidel" travellers, and the most tremendous penalties, both in this world and the next, were denounced by the
Sublime Porte against any Turkish officer who should allow a
Christian vessel to approach the port of Suez-" the privileged
route," as the sultan expressed it, "of the holy pilgrimage of
Mecca." Less than a hundred years ago England was not in
dread of every accidental change amongst foreign nations for fear
of her magnificent and suicidal empire of Hindostan; while Russia
was a more or less insignificant and more rather than less barbaric power, confining herself pretty much to annoying her
neighbors in the East of Europe, and interfering little or not at all
in the general comity of nations. But, above all, two great institutions bore every mark of the most venerable antiquity-the
pope still retained the oldest sovereignty in Europe, and still
obtained recognition as the mediator amongst Catholic princes;
the Holy Roman Empire remained the venerable structure
founded a thousand years before by Charlemagne and Leo.
To study the organization of this latter community, and to
trace the fate of its various elements during the century now passing away, is to read the very anatomy of history in its innermost
operations. For the ancient empire of Germany was a kind of
political sacrament. It expressed the spiritual authority ruling
through the temporal power; and the process to which it has
been subjected in the crucible of the Revolution has been of
separation and reconstitution of the two authorities independently
of each other.
The contrast between the great empire of Germany which
came to a close in I8o6 and that which arose in its place sixty