ough this "extraordinary, nearly unexampled"
act of authority, and certainly unequaled "in the history of the
Church,"[5202] the ultramontane theory, contested up to this time,
maintained in the speculative region of abstract formulae, comes down
to solid ground, into practical and lasting use. Willingly or not, "the
Pope acts as if universal bishop;" urged and constrained by the lay
power, attached to a dictatorship,[5203] he entered upon it and so
installed himself, and, ten years later, Napoleon, who had impelled him
on, regretted that he had done so. Warned by his Gallican jurists,
he saw the ecclesiastical import of his work; but it was too late to
retreat--the decisive step had been taken.--For, in fact, the Pope had
deprived all the chieftains of a great church of their thrones, "his
colleagues and co-bishops,"[5204] successors of the apostles under the
same title as himself, members "of the same order and stamped "with the
same "character," eighty-five legitimate incumbents[5205] and, still
better, as admitted by himself, blameless, worthy, persecuted
because they had obeyed him, banished from France on account of their
unwillingness to quit the Roman Church. He had ordered them to resign;
he had withdrawn apostolic powers from the thirteen who had refused to
tender their resignations; to all, even to those who refused, he had
appointed their successors. He assigned to the new titularies dioceses
of a new pattern and, to justify novelties of such gravity,[5206] he
could allege no other reasons than circumstances, the exigencies of
lay power, and the welfare of the Church. After that the Gallicans
themselves, unless accepting the risk of a schism and of separating
forever from the Holy See, were obliged to allow the Pope above and
beyond the ordinary powers exercised by him within the old limits of
canons and of custom, an extraordinary power unlimited by any canon or
by any custom,[5207] a plenary and absolute authority, a right above
all other rights, by virtue of which, in cases determined by himself, he
provided in a discretionary way for all Catholic interests, of which he
thus becomes the supreme judge, the sole interpreter and the court of
last appeal. An indestructible precedent was set up; it was the great
corner-stone in the support of the modern Church edifice; on this
definitive foundation all other stones were to be superposed, one by
one. In 1801, Pius VII., under the pressure of the reigning Napoleon