Expectations of the papacy.  Eventually, the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, from all regions of the world, who took part in this Council, were seven hundred and four.

Rome had seen very plainly that Science was not only rapidly undermining the dogmas of the papacy, but was gathering great political power.  She recognized that all over Europe there was a fast-spreading secession among persons of education, and that its true focus was North Germany.

She looked, therefore, with deep interest on the Prusso-Austrian War, giving to Austria whatever encouragement she could.  The battle of Sadowa was a bitter disappointment to her.

With satisfaction again she looked upon the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian War, not doubting that its issue would be favorable to France, and therefore favorable to her.  Here, again, she was doomed to disappointment at Sedan.

Having now no further hope, for many years to come, from external war, she resolved to see what could be done by internal insurrection, and the present movement in the German Empire is the result of her machinations.

Had Austria or had France succeeded, Protestantism would have been overthrown along with Prussia.

But, while these military movements were being carried on, a movement of a different, an intellectual kind, was engaged in.  Its principle was, to restore the worn-out mediaeval doctrines and practices, carrying them to an extreme, no matter what the consequences might be.

Encyclical letter and syllabus.  Not only was it asserted that the papacy has a divine right to participate in the government of all countries, coordinately with their temporal authorities, but that the supremacy of Rome in this matter must be recognized; and that in any question between them the temporal authority must conform itself to her order.

And, since the endangering of her position had been mainly brought about by the progress of science, she presumed to define its boundaries, and prescribe limits to its authority.  Still more, she undertook to denounce modern civilization.

These measures were contemplated soon after the return of his Holiness from Gaeta in 1848, and were undertaken by the advice of the Jesuits, who, lingering in the hope that God would work the impossible, supposed that the papacy, in its old age, might be reinvigorated.  The organ of the Curia proclaimed the absolute independence of the Church as regards the state; the dependence of the bishops on the pope; of the diocesan clergy on the bishops; the obligation of the Protestants to abandon their atheism, and return to the fold; the absolute condemnation of all kinds of toleration.  In December, 1854, in an assembly of bishops, the pope had proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception.  Ten years subsequently he put forth the celebrated Encyclical Letter and the Syllabus.