THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 944, 5 August 1871, Page 2

THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS.

[special correspondent op the times.] Yesterday afternoon, I was so fortunate as to meet Mons. Petit, the Secretary of the late Archbishop, who had only escaped from the prison in which he had been confined with the unfortunate Prelate the day before. M. Petit did not himself see the execution, though he saw the procession pass and heard the firing. Out of 16 priests and 38 gendarmes confined in the prison, 26 were shot, and the fate of the remainder had been decided upon, when an attempt to escape made by the criminal prisoners, who were the original occupants of the gaol, succeeded, and with the help of one of the gaolers the whole body made an attack upon the Insurgent guard, who, in fact, did not wait for it, but abandoned their post as soon as they perceived that all their prisoners were at liberty. The priests sucpeeded in changing their clerical costume, but not in sufficiently disguising themselves, for M. Petit saw four Of his companions shot at the first barricade they reached ; he therefore fled back to his prison, and, finding a common prison shirt, he reduced his costume to that garment, and took refuge in a bed in the hospital ward. The prison was not guarded, but those who casually passed through it supposed him to be a sick prisoner not worth notice ; and here he remained until Sunday evening, when his suspense was put an end to by the arrival of the soldiery. In the Ohapelle Ardente of the Madeleine lies the body of the cu>'6 of that church, who was shot by the side of the Archbishop, and a stream of persons, mostly women, with saddened, awestruck faces, passed through it all yesterday afternoon. Archbishop Darboy had passed a life of trouble and difficulties compared with which the course of any English Prelate is happy and serene. Up to the age of 43 he had been engaged in parochial work,

and in teaching philosophy dogmatic theology in the provincial Seminary where he had himself been educated. What his difficulties there were we can only infer from the melancholy tone in which he reminded the Vatican Council that, the authority of the Church having been already repudiated by the Congress, the Senate, family life, philosophy, the College, and the school, it was not likely the concentration of that authority in the person of the Pope would meet with a better reception. However, in 1846, Georges Darboys was invited by Archbishop Affre to Paris, and invested with office and honor. The Revolution of February, 1848, was his first taste of public life ; and, considering that all the clergy of France had been most carefully taught in the Seminaries that Louis Philippe was ■ an usurper, and that his expulsion was a necessary step to the restoration of Divine Right, they might probably see a gleam of sunshine in that storm. The storm did not, however, pass over. In June, the champions of Order and the temporary possessors of power came into inevitable conflict with the population, and three hundred barricades rose as if by enchantment, so arranged that the eastern half of the capital might command the strong points and public edifices. In the midst of the firing, the Archbishop of Paris mounted to the top of a barricade with some symbol of peace, and was able to speak a few words. He was heard, recognized, and shot. In the beautiful sacristy or vestry of Notre Dame they exhibit a ghastly relic in a highly ornamented case, a portion of the vertebrae of the Archbishop's neck, with the bullet still fixed in it. From his successor, Archbishop Sibour, M. Darboy enjoyed increasing confidence and favor, and was charged with the important duty of religious inspection in the Colleges of the metropolitan diocese. He was alao made editor of the Mqnitenr Gafholigue. So far his career, with the exception of the fate of his patron, was one that could be understood from an English point of view. M. Darboy was a popular and rising ecclesiastic, a man of address, in good society, and well before the world. Before long he had to rise above this happy level. In 1854, he went with Archbishop Sibour to Rome to take part — that is, such part as was allowed to mere bishops and clergy — in the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This proceeding, it is well known, did not entail the slightest difficulty with political Powers, and M. Darboy grew in favor with the Emperor as well as with his Church, receiving those various accessions of honor which Frenchmen of all kinds and opinions seem equally to appreciate. But there came a second martyrdom to disturb the equable flow of this social, political, and ecclesiastical progress. Archbishop Sibour, M. Darboy's second patron, was assassinated in church by a renegade and scandalous priest, whom he had been compelled to deprive, and people noted the singularity of two such catastrophes in succession. When M. Darboy himself finally succeeded to the See of Paris the sky was thick with trouble, and the Gallican Church felt with pain that its present necessity was to stand l>y the Emperor while he stood by it, and be also true to itself without widening its old and scarcely-healed breach with Rome. M. Darboy, with one or two other prelates of his Church, endeavored to define their position as regarded the claim of Papal Infallibility? Thirtiioy di 4 with an ability and learning which provoked sojiie-rather violent strictures from the less perplexed and less trammeled champions of the Papacy, in Protestant England. Archbishop Darboy went to Rome in the winter of 1869, under a burden of difficulties which might well claim our pity, if pity was within the compass and terms of the great question debated there. He was, indeed, a Papist, but he was also the champion of that Gallicanism which ha 3 been often described as worse, because more inconsistent, more treacherous, and more dangerous, than the honest Protestanism of this country. His own character, as well as what was due to France and her soldiers at Rome, compelled the Pope and his Coiut to treat Archbishop Darboy with kindness and honor. He was the representative Frenchman at Rome. But, as such, and with his published opinions, he became, as a matter of course, the head of that " Opposition" which promised such great results, whatever it has done. The history and work of the Council have yet to be written ; so also have the history and work of the Opposition. It met day after day, month after month, at the lodgings of the Archbishop of Paris. It was he who had to put into simple and congruous form the divergent remonstrances of many national churches. He had to harmonise schools of thought, and traditions cherished because distinct. He had to negotiate with the Pope and his Ministers. He wrote remonstrances ; he made speeches ; he protested against the modes of procedure ; he voted at last against the Dogma ; he led a numerous body to his Holiness for one more final protest and warning, and then, with them, left Rome, that so far he might be quit of the matter. Critics, within or without his Communion, had already observed that he would have to swallow the Dogma, and that the day must come when he Would have to preach and maintain for truth what he had denounced as falsehood. It was an easy prophecy, and could not fail to be realised. The Archbishop in due time had to give in his adhesion, in such terms as he could. It was a necessity of his case, and, indeed, of his principles. At least, it was not in order to be made a Cardinal, or even to keep his See. The whole matter is one for candid and intelligent consideration, and not for hostile remark "or for idle cynicism. The Archbishop thought the Dogma not borne put by the universal teaching of his Church and the decreed 6i old Councils ; he also thought it inoppor* tune. He thought it better left to opinion, and even to debate. When it could be no longer helped he had to make the best of the case, and he did so, with a humility at once ingenious and ingenuous. It is just ten months since he left Rome on his return. While there, it was some* tiroes said, and perhaps felt, that Arohbishops of Paris ought to be listened to, for they were a doomed race, and wore the crown of martyrdom as well as the mitre. He is now the third who, in a quarter of century, within the reign of Pius IX., has fallen a victim to French crime. Peace and honor to Archbishop Darboy's memory ! Let his worst foes suspend and reconsider their judgment upon his words and actions under circumstances of extreme perplexity. It can have fallen to the lot of few men .to make a final appeal on the moat momentous of questions to a Pope, a Council,

and a Commune, within a short twelvemonth. It seems almost necessary to the greatness of such a destiny, and perhaps is a happy release from further complications, that the appeal in all cases was equally unsuccessful. The question was the compatibility of Liberty and Faith ; the Pope would leave the question unanswered ; the Council would only hear of Faith, the Commune only of Liberty — that is, their own liberty to do what they pleased. The question that agitated the Archbishop's mind, as it has the mind of religious France for cftnturies, was not Liberty or Faith, but — How do they stand to one another ? How are they to be associated, and become the stronger and purer for one another's company? How can they who are perfectly free be yet bound by a belief? How can they who are so bound yet be free ? It is promised, indeed, that the truth shall make men free. But what is the truth, and what is the freedom ? The Archbishop, a philosopher and a theologian, a Seminarist, a parish priest, a professor, the right-hand man of successive Archbishops, an Imperial courtier, a universal favorite, sometimes called clever, sometimes vacillating, sometimes weak, sometimes ambitious, had always in his hearing those two voices, Liberty and Faith. It is the very nature of the French mind to be engaged in a sort of life-play between antagonistic forces. The ruder or more violent natures there, as elsewhere, can find, not repose, but a uniform direction in entire devotion to this or that ideal ; but the Gallican Church represents the never-ending struggle, or, as itself believes, the happy compromise, of Liberty and Faith. Unfortunately, it is not able to claim the crowning proof of success. The political and social history of France since the establishment of what are called the Gallican Liberties only proves that France is not much better than France has been for two thousand years. With flickering tongues and ready pen, with rapier points and sharp edges, with chassepot bullets and petroleum shells, the eternal warfare has gone on and will go on still in unexpected forms, possibly with unexampled horrors. France will always be France. She finds no rest in institutions, no anchorage in traditions, and is only in her element when the winds meet from all parts of heaven, and she is in the very midst. It was in this element that the late Archbishop acquired his powers and earned his Martyrdom. " Liberty and Faith" was always on his lips or his pen. How he fared on his visit to Rome, seventeen years ago, on what must be called a melancholy and disastrous mission, it is not stated. On that occasion, indeed, there was small room for either Liberty or Faith, for where that which is propounded is simply inconceivable there is not the opportunity of either belief or unbelief. But when last year his turn came to speak for his Church and his nation, what he asked was that every man and every State should be supposed to receive the teaching of Heaven in a free, reasonable, and natural manner, not in a way to supersede altogether the use of reason and reflection- Upon such a point it is not fair to any man to describe his phase and mode of thought, but as Archbishop Darboy has been for several years the object of opprobrium from English as well as French pens, and stigmatised as more dangerous even than many a condemned heretic or avowed schismatic, we may accept the testimony of bigots and fanatics to the reasonable character of his Faith. The sort of people he had to deal with in his own country and his own See is manifest now if it never was before. The majority of them believe in nothing but themselves, and that portion of their own natures which the senses can recognise. When the Archbishop was asked to permit Protestant Bibles and other books to be sold, and Protestant lectures to be delivered at the Great Exhibition he joyfully consented, declaring that, though he could not accept Protestant doctrines, anything would be welcome which would rouse the Parisians from their Pagan state and teach them the immortality of the soul. It is not hard to understand what a body like the Commune would think of such liberality. At the Vatican Council the Archbishop urged all the analogies of civil life against

the proposed exaggeration of authority, unity, and belief. His people, at least, were not slaves. They had not the hollow unity of men without opinions or wills. Their strongest instinct was against tyranny of any kind. They thought, acted, and felt as nature and society led them, and could not be stamped into any form authority might impose. The Church, he said, had its own unity, its own vitality, and its own necessity of life. These could not be changed, or put into a newform. It was a free agent, he said ; free when it was taught, free when it believed ; and to be governed as a community of free men. Thus did he protest against the great crime about to be done in the name of authority. Full of presentiments as he was, he could hardly anticipate that before the end of a twelvemonth he would have to protest against another crime done in "the name of Liberty,; that he would have to deliver in the face of assassins the same testimony as in the midst of a Council, in the presence of a Pope. "Do not profane the word ' Liberty,' " he said to his executioners ; "itisto us alone it belongs, for we shall die for Liberty and Faith." Will these words fall to the ground ! They used to say that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, and we cannot help thinking these words — " Liberty and Faith " — will be heard as a cry from the ground by many who have refused to hear them before. They are not really incompatible, but rather twin forces necessary for mutual aid and common protection. France will have to make this discovery in the political sphere, perhaps in a higher.