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3. Loubet's Visit To Rome And The Question Of Papal Prestige
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In April 1904, Emile Loubet, the French president of the Republic, visited the king of Italy in Rome. His visit occasioned a strongly-worded note of protest from the Vatican to the governments of other Catholic nations, and as a result the French ambassador was recalled. Ten weeks later, following a dispute involving the bishops of Dijon and Laval, diplomatic relations between the French government and the Vatican were broken off altogether, not to be resumed for sixteen years, and in the following year, 1905, a law of 9 December abolished Napoleon’s Concordat and separated Church and State in France.
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References
1 The most informative are contained in Antonin Debidour, , L’Eglise catholique et l'Etat en France sous la Troisième République, II: 1889–1906 (Paris, 1909), 394–404Google Scholar, and in [Le] Livre blanc [du Saint-Siège] (Paris, 1906), 55–61, 139–43.
2 The Law of Guarantees of 13 May 1871 offered the pope sovereignty of his person but only the extra-territoriality of those of his former possessions left to him—the palaces of the Vatican and the Lateran, and the summer residence of Castel Gandolfo. Since the Law was a purely internal measure with no international or even national guarantee against repeal, it left the pope’s status at the mercy of the changing majorities of the Italian parliament.
3 Livre blanc, 57.
4 The reports of the French chargé d’affaires at the Vatican are particularly interesting in 1887. See notably Documents diplomatiques [françfais (1871–1914)], 1st series vi bis (Paris, 1938), 134–5. De Monbel to Flourens, D, no. 168, 10 Nov. 1887.
5 The matter of the loi d’abonnement of 16 April 1895 is but one example. The Abbé Landrieux, who was personally acquainted with a number of the highest Vatican officials, observed that ‘Vatican opinion is in favour of submission, and the matter of the religious orders...is made a secondary issue. The pope clings to his ideal of the Temporal Power. He counted on Germany. Disappointed, he has turned to France. He does not wish to lose this last support, and, whatever it may cost, he does not wish to break with the French government.’ Landrieux's MS. diary. Entry of 13 Nov. 1895. Three years later, the papal secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, told Cardinal Langénieux: ‘The pope has been very upset by the [French] trade treaty [of 21 November 1898] signed with Italy. This rapprochement is a disturbing set-back for the pope. The more Italy feels herself supported, the more critical is the position of the Holy See. Conversely, it is when Italy is hard-pressed that she finds it most difficult to avoid the Roman Question.’ Ibid. Entry of 3 Dec. 1898. This diary has been kindly lent by the Abbé Patrick Heidsieck.
6 Ibid. Entry of 7 March 1902.
7 Examples of clerical opinion are given in [Edmond] Renard, [Le cardinal] Mathieu (Paris, 1925), 435–6.
8 This belief had almost certainly won him the votes of those Italian cardinals anxious for a reconciliation. Landrieux, who conversed with a number of cardinals before and during the Conclave, observed: ‘They want a pope who will raise the famous prohibition, ni eletti ni elettori.... The Holy See, having no longer this bone of contention with the Quirinal, would have less need of the support of other nations, and consequently would risk less in acting towards them in a firmer and more independent fashion.’ Landrieux's MS. diary, entry of 30 July 1903. See also the extracts published by the Abbé Heidsieck in ‘Le Conclave de 1903—journal d'un conclaviste’, Etudes (Nov. 1958), 157–83.
9 Documents diplomatiques, 2nd series, iv (Paris, 1932), 235. Barrère to Delcassé, D, no. 8, 10 Jan. 1904.
10 MS. letter of Denys Cochin to a priest (possibly the R. P. de la Brière), dated 11 June but of a later year. Denys Cochin is best known as the first prominent representative of Catholic interests to be offered a place in a post-1879 French government; he was a minister of State in Briand’s government of October 1915. Of mildly royalist sympathies, he was at the time of Loubet’s visit to Rome a deputy for the eighth arrondissement of Paris and a member of the Catholic parliamentary group, Action Libérale. His letters—cited hereafter as ‘Cochin MSS.’—have been kindly lent by his grandson, Monsieur Denys Cochin. Monsieur Marc Bonnefous, at present engaged in writing a thesis on the Cochin family, kindly helped in locating those letters of interest to me.
11 Cochin MSS. Undated letter of Denys Cochin to his wife, written in April 1904; letter to a priest cited in note 10, above.
12 The details of Denys Cochin’s visit to Rome and his subsequent mission are taken, unless otherwise stated, from the letter to a priest cited in note 10, above. Renard is the only writer who speaks of this episode, apart from L. V. Méjan who takes her information from Renard (Mathieu, p. 437; Méjan, La Séparationdes Eglises et de l’Etat. L’oeuvre de Louis Méejan (Paris, 1959), 41–2). Renard’s account, which contains some slight inaccuracies, is presumably based on the papers of Cardinal Mathieu, Cochin’s intermediary with Merry del Val. The Holy See clearly had reasons for saying nothing of the mission in the Livre blanc.
13 ‘X’, ‘M. Delcassé au Vatican’, Le Figaro, 7 April 1904.
14 Both reproduced in ‘X’, ibid. 8 April 1904.
15 Reproduced in ‘M. Denys Cochin au Vatican’, ibid. 10 April 1904.
16 Reproduced in Livre blanc, 141–2.
17 Ibid. 143. Nisard to Merry del Val, 6 May 1904.
18 It is generally supposed that the text was given to Jaurès by the Prince of Monaco. Denys Cochin, who strongly disliked the Prince of Monaco, nevertheless doubted whether he was responsible—but does not disclose the name of the person he suspected. Cochin MSS. Letter to the Comtesse Greffuhle, 19 Jan. 1906.