p. 23 | Crux de Cruce

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 30, 1873

Crux de Cruce.

IS PIUS IX. THE LAST OF THE ROMAN PONTIFFS?—ST. MALACHY’S STRANGE PROPHECY.

Is Pius IX. the last of the Roman Pontiffs? The curious prophecy attributed to St. Malachy, archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, and who died in the arms of the “last of the fathers of the church,” as the French proudly call Bernard of Clairvaux, distinctly asserts that he is. In that alleged inspired dream, the Irish patriarch gave the number of popes that remained yet to come, giving to each of them an epigrammatic mark by which he could be concisely distinguished, and the sign he attached to the pontiff who closes his hazardous enumeration corresponds, in a remarkable degree, with the venerable Holy Father, who, perhaps at this instant, has the death rattle at the door of his chamber. That sign is the three Latin words, “Crux de Cruce,” which is interpreted by some Catholic authorities to signify the persecution of the cross from a cross—that is, that the pope suffers crucial affliction from a royal power, which has the cross for the chief emblem on its escutcheon of authority. And this, as has been said, points the finger at Victor Emanuel. In his kingly emblems, the cross surmounts everything. If we mistake not, Father Garesche, a learned Jesuit priest, in a lecture which he lately delivered not far from New York, gave this interpretation, as explicitly as fine language could make it, to the “Crux de Cruce” of the ancient metropolitan of Armagh.

The Herald does not pretend to settle the authority of St. Malachy’s prophecies. But it is as clear as the sun in the meridian that the words “Crux de Cruce” are in singular agreement with the relations between Pius IX. and the first monarch of United Italy. And, that being the case, it is an interesting and serious question. Is Pius IX. the last of the Roman pontiffs? It is a startling question. Its proper form is, Is the great Roman Catholic church sentenced to death? For, no pope, no Catholic church. Catholicity cannot survive the papacy for one second. And Catholicity is a thing of no small radius, diameter, and circumference. St. Malachy, therefore, or whoever wrote in his name, gave ground for putting a question of tremendous magnitude. A short time, however, will quite solve the curious interrogation, for it cannot be long before the holy see will have a new occupant, or cease to be the great central religious altar of more than three-fourths of the vast population of Christendom.

In the meantime, Pius IX. is, in all human probability, on his death-bed; and the noble old man—with face one of the finest Rome has witnessed for many a day—has the world watching at his couch.

Let us see who these watchers are. The king of Italy has his mind on the spot with particular anxiety of manner.

Prince Bismarck, who, by recent statutes, has made the emperor the high priest of the German people, and who ardently wishes that there may never be another supreme head of the Catholics, is attending to the Roman telegrams, to the exclusion of every other duty.

M. Thiers, [late] President of the French Republic, and, though a Protestant, a firm upholder of the papacy, is on the qui vive with all the activity of an aged statesman of genius for the first intelligence of an event which he knows will move Catholic France to floods of tears and sighs of true devotion.

Francis Joseph, of Austria, is in constant communication with his ambassador at the Vatican on the fluctuations in the health of the illustrious patient.

The Count de Chambord, who once had impassioned hopes that Pius IX. would place the crown of St. Louis on his temples, and the sword of Henry the Great in his hand, is in unfeigned grief over the apprehended dissolution of one for whose rights the royal blood in his veins was always ready to flow.

The Turk at Constantinople—the Prince of the Crescent, the successor of Mohammed—esteemed this octogenarian primate of the cross as if Rome had never inspired crusades to fight against Saladin for the recovery of Jerusalem, as if there never had been a battle of Lepanto, as if there never had been a Charles Martel and plains of Poictiers, and he is listening for the first intimation of his death, that he may honor his memory by putting crape on the standards of the Ottoman Empire.

The Czar of Russia, it is said, hated Pius IX. with a bitter hatred, and he is impatient to be informed that the pontiff has breathed his last.

Victoria, Protestant queen of a great Protestant nation, whose first kings are saints in the Roman calendar, has her tender ears open for the sad news that the Holy Father is dead. She congratulated him on the day he was fifty years a priest; she congratulated him on the day he was twenty-five years a pope; when she learns he has expired, she will give to his name, and to his virtues, and to the great office he so filled, the good private homage of her heart.

Finally, all the churches feel the most intense interest in this death-bed. Around it, it is easy and just for the imagination to conceive clustered all the great leaders of the Protestant forms of faith, anxious with the conjecture and ready to seize the hope that with Pio Nono the “scarlet woman of the Apocalypse” may die, and give up her soul forever. But in a particular position and with pre-eminent right, and, though last in the enumeration, yet the most natural in it, around this memorable death-bed stands the whole Roman fold, 300,000,000 in number. Never was sovereign pontiff so loved by Catholics as Pius IX. He was and he is to them no self-made cleric, but the very vicar of God; grand to look at; most noble in his disposition; an angel in every virtue; a second Prince of the apostles in all respects; the most outraged of all holy men, and the very ideal of their hearts and understandings. Whether the Catholic faith is true or not true, this is the way the Catholic people of all the earth have centered their fondness on Pius IX.; and sore are they within at learning that his long reign over them is at last at its end; and when they shall read that he is no more, copious will be the tears that will flow from their eyes, broken will be the sobs with which they will pronounce his name, and ardent will be the prayers that will penetrate the clouds for the sanctification of his spirit. It is a splendid mark of religious faith, and a splendid tribute to illustrious worth. Far be it from all to give it a wanton insult.

These facts give an idea of the interest that is concentrated on the sick couch or the death-bed of Pius IX.

But there is one watcher of this death-bed who is entitled to special consideration. It is the king of Italy. He has long wished for the death of the pope; for the pope kept him long out of Rome, on which he set his heart, and now that he has Rome, he is filled with uneasiness while the pope lives. Well may he wish that the mediæval prophet of Armagh, or whoever wrote in that ascetic metropolitan’s name, issued a true prophecy when he made the pope of the “Crux de Cruce” designation the last of the Sovereign Pontiffs.—N. Y. Herald.