Historical Department

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1867

Historical Department.

Prophecy is History in Advance.

ENDING OF THE 1260 YEARS.

The close of the 1260 years of Papal supremacy in 1798, is a point of transcendent interest to the student of prophecy. The ending of the time, times, and a half, of Daniel, the forty-two months, or thousand two hundred and three score days of John, the termination of the predicted career of the little horn, Dan. vii, 25, the inflicting of the deadly wound, upon one of the heads of the leopard beast and his going into captivity, Rev. xiii, 3, 10, must necessarily occupy a prominent place in the prophetic field. We hear more or less allusion to this in every lecture on the prophetic periods; but all may not be so familiar with the events that clustered around, and had a bearing upon, that prophetic fulfillment. Those who are not, will be interested in the following sketch which sets forth the character of the Papacy at that period, the nature of the times, and the different steps which led to so important a revolution as the taking away of the power of the little horn “to consume and destroy it unto the end.” We quote from “Bower’s History of the Popes,” Vol. iii, p. 394. John Angelo Braschi was proclaimed pope, by the title of Pius VI, on Feb. 14, 1775. In the person of this dissolute priest, the Papacy was to suffer its greatest humiliation previous to being consumed by the spirit of the Lord’s mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of his coming. In the early years of his reign he managed by such intrigues as were common with the pretended successors of St. Peter, to secure from some of the powerful sovereigns of Europe the most fanatical subserviency, and costly and lavish offerings of pensions, ornaments, and gold. But events soon transpired calculated to modify somewhat the pope’s joy at these manifestations toward his holy see. How plainly can we see the hand of God in them, directing events according to his own purposes. The historian thus says:—

However, all the sovereigns did not exhibit the same taste as Louis XVI and the prince of Asturias. The emperor Joseph II avowed that he was disgusted with the debauchery of the pontifical family; and in his indignation he declared, that he was resolved to terminate all relation with the court of Rome, and to overthrow ultramontanism in his states. He began by permitting his subjects in Germany and Italy to speak and write upon all religious topics. He prohibited the publication of bulls, briefs, decrees or any other acts emanating from the Roman court, throughout his dominions. He subjected the monastic orders to the jurisdiction of the ordinary prelates, and interdicted all their correspondence with their foreign superiors. He suspended the reception of novices in the convents. He secularized a great number of friars and monks; declared the colleges of the missions and the seminaries withdrawn from all dependence on the court of Rome, disposed of the bishoprics, benefices, and abbeys, made the prelates take an oath of fidelity, restrained the franchises of the asylums, and regulated the external discipline of the parishes. At length he began to punish the refractory. He deprived Cardinal Migazzi, archbishop of Vienna, of his revenues, because he was the open enemy of all reforms. He drove from their sees, parishes, and colleges, the prelates, the priests, and the Jesuits, who persecuted the Abbé Ploner, director of the seminary of Brünn in Moravia, under the pretext that he was a Jansenist. He suppressed and effaced from the missals the constitution Unigenitus, and the bull In Cæna Domini; and at last, he abolished the odious tribunals of the Inquisition, and prohibited his subjects from recurring to Rome for dispensations. Those reforms excited the Pope’s wrath in the highest degree, and decided him to address his remonstrances to Joseph II, through Garampi, the papal nuncio at Vienna.

But the emperor remained unaffected, and charged his minister Kaunitz, to signify to the court of Rome, that he would not be reprimanded respecting the government of his provinces, as he did not interfere with the dogmas of popery; and the furious letters of the pope would only tend to a rupture with Rome, and the nomination of a patriarch for Austria.

That menace was like a thunderbolt to Pius VI. It mortified his pride, and elicited a determination which astonished all Europe. The pope imagined that no other mode existed to reclaim Joseph II than to visit him; and Pius immediately addressed to the emperor a brief, advising him of his determination.

The pontiff, under the pretext of worthily representing the Roman court, was desirous that his journey should resemble a triumphal march, and on his route he displayed a pompous ostentation. He departed from Rome by the gate of Popolo; and was accompanied by the principal aristocracy to the city of Otricoli, where he parted with his nephews. They returned the same evening to Rome to assist at the illumination of the basilisk, and at the fire-works which were exhibited at the castle of Angelo to their honor.

Pius, who ardently desired to appear before the emperor’s court in all the show of majesty, took care to carry with him the triple crown, and the ceremonial crosier, with his most magnificent decorations. He had made large provision of caps to gain over the prelates, and of medals to seduce the ecclesiastics. Those medals on one side had the images of Peter and Paul, and on the other his own; which made the prelates say, that it was not the personages represented that rendered the medals precious, but the metal of which they were made. The pope was delighted in receiving everywhere the most childlike honors, and in distributing relics, chaplets, and scapulars, with the people kissing his sandal, and in scattering his indulgences.

It would be difficult to form an idea of the sensation which that pontifical farce produced, if the historians who beheld the scene had not preserved the narrative of it.

In one of his letters to his friends, a Lutheran thus expressed himself.—“You cannot imagine the effect which the presence of the pope in Vienna has produced; above all, when he shows himself to the people. I have seen more than fifty thousand men joining to salute the papal chief by their frenzied shouts when he appears with his triple crown on his head, clothed in his official ornaments, surrounded by his cardinals, prelates, and the priestly dignitaries. The artful comedian bends toward the earth, then lifts up his arms towards heaven in a theatrical attitude, and seems profoundly persuaded that he sends there the wishes of an entire nation. Represent to yourself this ceremony performed by an old man of majestic height, and of a noble and handsome figure, and the immense crowd precipitated at his feet in superstitious enthusiasm at the moment when the pontiff announces his benediction. Judge how these scenes must forcibly influence weak minds, who are disposed to be seduced by exterior acts.”

Thus they affected the people of Vienna; so that during a month, the passage of the Danube was constantly obstructed by the fleet of boats on the river, and which brought to the capital of the empire myriads of visitors. The people hurried in crowds of twenty or thirty thousand persons, filled the streets which bounded on the imperial palace where the pope resided; and five times daily the pope was obliged to appear in the balcony to grant to the impatient multitude the cheap benefit of his blessing. What idolatrous simpletons!

The fanatical worship which the Austrians gave to Pius VI, was presented not only to his person, but to his vestments, and even to his sandals. Every body knows the veneration which the Romanists have for the pope’s slipper. It was the only time—or never—to make it act its part. The pope’s slipper, therefore, was carefully placed on a cushion in the audience-chamber, and an incredible number of devotees and simpletons of all classes went to kiss it, to the utter disgrace of the human species! They even did more—it was carried about as a relic into the baronial mansions of Vienna, and the princes thought it a religious duty to worship the slipper of an incestuous sodomitical priest.

Joseph II took good care of the enthusiasm of his people for Pius VI, and thought it preferable to dismiss him. He appeared to make some concessions; and permitted his subjects to apply to Rome for matrimonial dispensations in the first and second degree. He also consented that a change should not take place in the nomination of the vacant sees of Lombardy. He tolerated the historical teaching of the questions included in the bull Unigenitus—and only forbade all disputes upon the dogmas which it imposed or condemned.

Before they separated, the emperor and the pope manifested mutual signs of affection. Joseph presented to Pius VI a pectoral enriched with diamonds, valued at two hundred thousand florins. He also gave him a diploma, by the vice-chancellor of the empire, which raised his bastard Louis Braschi Onesti to the dignity of a prince of the empire, and exempted him from the fees payable in similar cases, and which were estimated at ninety thousand florins. He remembered the cardinals and the prelates, who composed the suite of the pontiff, ennobled them all, and gave them rich presents. On the day of their departure, he accompanied them to Mariabrunn, about a league from Vienna, and parted from them with apparent cordiality. But it was all a show! Scarcely had the pope quitted the Austrian territories, than the emperor resumed his projects of reform, annulled his decrees respecting the sees of Lombardy, himself named a prelate for the archbishopric of Milan; suppressed the mendicant orders who infested his dominions; seized their revenues; restrained the privileges of the papal nuncios; sanctioned anew his tolerating edicts, and took under his immediate protection the writers hostile to the court of Rome. So that on his return to the Vatican, the pope had the mortification to learn that his presence had not converted the emperor, and that his journey had produced no other result than to add ten millions to the debt of the papal treasury.

Joseph II, devoted more than ever to religious reform, wished to overthrow by one act, the obstacles which were opposed to his designs, and hastened to Italy, with the design to try a last effort to make the court of Rome concede to the utmost, or openly to declare his rupture with the papal court. He was received at Rome, as Pius had been at Vienna; but instead of breaking his lance, as he intended, he was circumvented by Cardinal Bernis, ambassador of France, and by Azara, minister of Spain, and he consented to conclude with the Roman court a species of concordat.

Pius disquieted himself no more concerning the Germanic reforms, but cast himself into all the dissoluteness of the most vulgar debauchery. Every night the Vatican became the theatre of disgusting saturnalia, in which the pope, his daughter, and the two brothers joined, similar to the orgies of Borgia. Every morning, Rome learned, through the indiscreet communications of the officers of the palace, who had been the favorites of the pope during the night, whether his bastards, his pages, or his roués in the kitchen.

The pope no longer fulfilled any of his pontifical functions. He passed whole mornings at his toilet; painted his cheeks and lips; perfumed his hands and breast; fomented himself with precious essences, like the most artful courtesan, and adorned himself with laces. Gorani states, that he became so angry with his chamberlains when he was not dressed to his fancy, that he would strike them with his fist, and that he knocked a tailor down, who had carried him a garment not well made. Pius VI was extremely arrogant and rough, which character he retained to the last. At length his turpitude rendered him an object of so much hatred and contempt to the Romans, that, at the superstitious ceremonies when he appeared, the people only answered his pretended benedictions by hooting at him. Yet the devotees of Oxford honor him as, at least, the true bishop of the apostolical succession at Rome!

A curious incident in reference to an inheritance extorted by the pope, caused great scandal throughout all Italy. Amanzio Lepri, a Milanese, and son of an ancient officer of the customs, was the possessor of a considerable fortune, which he dispensed for charitable purposes. The pope, knowing that he was very weak in mind, resolved to make use of his superstitions to deprive him of his wealth. He sent to him an old Jesuit, who knew how to impress him with doubts concerning the legitimate possession of his wealth, until Lepri became

convinced that he ought to embrace the life of a monk, and to present his immense patrimony to the pope’s favorite bastard son.

Pius feigned not to be willing that the duke of Braschi should accept the gift. Then he apparently permitted himself to be overcome by the entreaties of Amanzio Lepri; but only on the condition that he should reserve to himself an income of five hundred crowns per month. The sister-in-law of the deceived fanatic, the Marchioness Victoire Lepri, protested against that arrangement which so deeply injured her young daughter Marianne, the niece and pupil of Amanzio, and deprived her of her inheritance, and opposed the donation before the tribunal of the auditor of the chamber. He, who was a mere tool of the pope, rejected her demands, and as the reward of his baseness received a cardinal’s hat. Victoire Lepri was not repulsed, but called the case before the tribunal of Rota. This is the only jurisdiction at Rome which preserves any independence and equity in public estimation. To its organization it owes its independence, being composed of twelve auditors or judges, of whom three are Romans, and of the others, one is of Bologna, one of Ferrara, one of Venice, one of Milan, one a German, two Frenchmen, and two Spaniards. Five of these doctors were in the pay of the pope, the others were paid by the states to which they belonged. The form of their judgment was simple, and left little room for chicanery. Every thing concurred to render them respectable. Pius VI, dreading their condemnation, offered to give the marchioness two hundred thousand crowns, on the condition that she should withdraw her suit, and proposed even to marry her daughter Marianne to his nephew Romuald Onesti.

The family of Lepri refused to agree with the pope, and persisted in the resolution that the tribunal of Rota should decide the case. The judges rendered a decree favorable to the dispossessed pupil, and annulled the act of donation. The pope not defeated, extorted a will in due form from the imbecile Amanzio, in favor of his nephew, the Duke Braschi; then, when he had secured that important document, he caused him to be poisoned, that he might not be induced to change his arrangement. On the morrow, Pius convoked the tribunal of Rota, and presented the testament, that his bastard might be put into possession of the defunct man’s property; but what was his rage and astonishment, when at the moment that the judges were about to pronounce upon the validity of the right of the duke of Braschi, he saw the young Marianne herself, conducted by her mother, enter the enclosure of the tribunal, and display another will, posterior to that which the pope produced, and in which Amanzio declared that he appointed her his sole heir, that he annulled the donation made to the pontiff’s nephew, and also a will which had been obtained from him by violence, and that he left the duty to his family to avenge his death.

The tribunal of Rota pronounced a second judgment favorable to Marianne Lepri, and rejected the demand of the duke of Braschi. The obstinate pontiff did not abandon his design, he refused to obey the orders of the magistrates, decided by his sole authority that the cause should be examined anew; and in the interval employed his menaces and promises, so that the judges carried him the definite decree upon a plate of gold, which confirmed the donation of the murdered Amanzio to the infamous duke of Braschi, and also condemned his legitimate heirs to pay the expenses of the suit. That odious robbery and murder, raised the general indignation of Romans and strangers. The courts of Naples, Spain, France, Germany, the republic of Venice, the states of Modena, and the duchy of Tuscany, branded the conduct of the pope in their gazettes with the blackest ignominy.

Joseph II took occasion from it no longer to be on any terms of amity with the court of Rome. He utterly abolished the nunciatures as contrary to the ordinary prelatical jurisdiction. He passed a decree concerning the nuncios, reducing them to the level of common ambassadors; and then he assembled the famous congress of Ems. The prelates who composed that assembly adopted twenty-three very important articles which were in direct formal opposition to the ultramontane principles of the court of Rome: and which, among other things, proclaimed the independence of the monks and nuns of every foreigner; and the absolute authority of the prelates in their own dioceses for all exemptions and dispensations; the necessity of the acceptance of Roman bulls by the competent authority to render them obligatory within the empire; the abolition of the oath of vassalage prescribed to prelates by Gregory VII; the exclusive acknowledgment, as a true public right, of the German people of the decrees of the council of Basle; and the abolition of the concordat concluded with Rome at Aschaffenburg. Finally, to give the last finishing blow to the papal supremacy, Joseph demanded of Pius VI, by the congress of Ems, the convention of an œcumenical council, which the popes had been promising for two hundred years. He founded that claim upon the necessity which the people felt to abolish a multitude of superstitious usages, which compromised religion; and at the same time to revise the lying constitutions which served as a pretext for the encroachments of the court of Rome.

The troubles which then existed in the Netherlands distracted the emperor’s attention, and obliged him to defer the execution of his designs. Nevertheless, his example produced good results. The taste for reform had increased in Italy. The republics of Venice and Genoa, the kingdom of Naples, and the duchy of Modena, all labored seriously to debase the Roman court. The grand duke of Tuscany, Leopold, brother of Joseph II, distinguished himself in those assaults on the papacy. Like the emperor, he called a council at Pistoia under the presidency of the prelate of that city, the famous Scipio Ricci, nephew of the general of the Jesuits, who had the misfortune, in the eyes of the pontiff, not to hold the sentiments of the disciples of Ignatius Loyola. The pope hastened to condemn the decisions adopted by that assembly, and forbid the duke of Tuscany to regard them. Leopold, far from being intimidated by the papal censures convoked the prelates of his dominions at Florence, to adopt four new articles concerning the reformation of the Breviary and the Missal, the translation of the ritual into the vernacular tongue; the precedence of the parish priests to the monks, and the declaration that the episcopal office was of divine right. But Pius had intrigued so well, and so well had applied the resources of pontifical corruption, that the majority of the prelates declared against the design of the grand duke.

The papal minions not satisfied with that first success, strove to render their victory complete by crushing both the prince and Scipio Ricci. They despatched agitators to the city of Pistoia, raised the fanatics of the district by accusing the prelate of a wish to destroy their superstitions, and gave for proof that five years before, he had taken away a miraculous relic from the basilic of Prato. The intrepid Ricci confronted the storm, and not less pursued the execution of his generous projects of reform. He gave his attention more particularly to the convents, the disorders of which were the object of unprecedented reproach; and he proved that the scandalous disorders in the Dominican monasteries and convents, had attained the highest degree of iniquity.

It was useless for the pope to interfere and fulminate his bulls against the reformers; for the grand duke Leopold maintained all Scipio Ricci’s rules, and definitively suppressed the Inquisition in all the extent of his states.

Ferdinand IV, king of the Two Sicilies, had equally abolished the terrific tribunals of the Inquisition, and was prepared to walk in the steps of the reforming potentates. He ordered the suppression of sixty-eight convents in Sicily; and ordained that the other monasteries, in future, should not make any novel acquisition, and he placed them all under the domination of prelates. He also prohibited the ecclesiastics from obeying the rules of the Roman chancery, revoked from the pope the right to confer vacant benefices, and refused to pay any longer the shameful tribute which his predecessors had sent to Rome for homage. Pius VI protested against the attempts of that sovereign as rebellion, menaced him with his anathemas, and informed him by his nuncio, that he would not suffer a petty king to treat him as if he were a country curate. The Sicilian king, in reply, drove the legate out of his dominions, and made preparations to chastise the insolent pontiff, and to resume the possession of the duchies of Castro, and Ronciglione within the limits of the Roman territory, but to which the kings of Naples ever had claimed a title.

The grave events which then were occurring in France, suspended the effects of Ferdinand’s displeasure; and forced him to turn all his attention to the important spectacle of a nation at war with royalty.

Louis XVI, yielding to the dangerous counsels of his courtiers, committed an erroneous fault, by recalling all the ecclesiastics banished on account of their fanaticism, in taking the part of the Jesuits, in declaring himself the enemy of the philosophers, and in persecuting, to the utmost, men who were the ornament of their country. From that moment the disputes, temporarily dormant, resumed all their energy, and the monarchy again was the butt for the attacks of its most formidable adversaries. It was not a faction which absolutism had to combat, it was the whole nation, which arose to regain their forgotten rights, and who demanded of royalty a fearful account of the disasters which it had produced for fourteen centuries.

The death of Rousseau and Voltaire, to whose corpses the fanatical priests, at the instigation of the Jesuits, had refused the usual interment, filled the nobility and the monks with joy. All supposed that the party, deprived of their chiefs, could easily be crushed, and they began their operations. The prelates addressed the parliament to obtain the vigorous exaction of an antiquated decree, that the printers and distributors of books hostile to popery should be put to death. “We must punish, by the sword of the executioner,” said the fiery prelates, “the crimes of the press. The philosophers who write against the priests are more culpable than regicides, for they attack God and not man. We demand for them the same punishment, and that their right hand shall be burned.” Louis XVI united in that odious persecution against the writers. He threatened the republic of Geneva with his vengeance if they continued to print anti-papistical books. At Paris, and in the provinces he exercised great severity on the booksellers and printers, because he could not punish the authors, who had absconded.

But nothing could arrest the flight of the philosophical doctrines. The phalanx, instead of diminishing, daily increased in numbers and enterprise. Beaumarchais, Diderot, D’Albert, Condorcet, Bailly, Thomas, Vicq d’Azir, Marmontel, Champfort, and a multitude of other writers, continued their work for the renovation of the popular condition, and for their intellectual emancipation. They devoted all their time and all their wealth to write and disseminate works in which they taught the maxims of independence. They brought into execration ultramontanism and absolutism. They habituated the people to regard insurrection as a most imperious duty, and excited the nation against the two orders of nobles and priests.

In all parts were formed secret societies, expressly to achieve the triumph of liberty, and the overthrow of despotism. In each province the press clandestinely printed myriads of works on popery, the state legislation, the finances; and spread light among all classes. Every where were developed a profound disgust with past ages, and an incredible ardor for reform. The fever of revolution also seized the privileged bodies. Magistrates, members of the university, nobles of the court, and ministers became partisans of the new doctrines. It was fashionable, even in high society, to decry the institutions of a decrepit hierarchy and worm-eaten royalty.

(To be continued.)