e Pope as it had never done before.
Virtually he had exerted all the authority which the dogma could confer
on him. In his first important utterance, the Encyclical of November
1846, he announced that he was infallible; and the claim raised no
commotion. Later on he applied a more decisive test, and gained a more
complete success, when the bishops summoned to Rome, not as a Council
but as an audience, received from him an additional article of their
faith. But apart from the dogma of infallibility he had a strong desire
to establish certain cherished opinions of his own on a basis firm
enough to outlast his time. They were collected in the Syllabus, which
contained the essence of what he had written during many years, and was
an abridgment of the lessons which his life had taught him. He was
anxious that they should not be lost. They were part of a coherent
system. The Syllabus was not rejected; but its edge was blunted and its
point broken by the zeal which was spent in explaining it away; and the
Pope feared that it would be contested if he repudiated the soothing
interpretations. In private he said that he wished to have no
interpreter but himself. While the Jesuit preachers proclaimed that the
Syllabus bore the full sanction of infallibility, higher functionaries
of the Court pointed out that it was an informal document, without
definite official value. Probably the Pope would have been content that
these his favourite ideas should be rescued from evasion by being
incorporated in the canons of the Council. Papal infallibility was
implied rather than included among them. Whilst the authority of his
acts was not resisted, he was not eager to disparage his right by
exposing the need of a more exact definition. The opinions which Pius
IX. was anxiously promoting were not the mere fruit of his private
meditations; they belonged to the doctrines of a great party, which was
busily pursuing its own objects, and had not been always the party of
the Pope. In the days of his trouble he had employed an advocate; and
the advocate had absorbed the client. During his exile a Jesuit had
asked his approbation for a Review, to be conducted by the best talents
of the Order, and to be devoted to the papal cause; and he had warmly
embraced the idea, less, it should seem, as a prince than as a divine.
There were his sovereign rights to maintain; but there was also a
doctrinaire interest, there were reminiscences of study as well as
practi