be found in
reality to signify that the Pope is infallible. There was a general
assumption that no materials existed for contention among the bishops,
and that they stood united against the world.

Cardinal Antonelli openly refrained from connecting himself with the
preparation of the Council, and surrounded himself with divines who were
not of the ruling party. He had never learned to doubt the dogma itself;
but he was keenly alive to the troubles it would bring upon him, and
thought that the Pope was preparing a repetition of the difficulties
which followed the beginning of his pontificate. He was not trusted as a
divine, or consulted on questions of theology; but he was expected to
ward off political complications, and he kept the ground with
unflinching skill.

The Pope exhorted the diplomatic corps to aid him in allaying the alarm
of the infatuated Germans. He assured one diplomatist that the _Civilta_
did not speak in his name. He told another that he would sanction no
proposition that could sow dissension among the bishops. He said to a
third, "You come to be present at a scene of pacification." He described
his object in summoning the Council to be to obtain a remedy for old
abuses and for recent errors. More than once, addressing a group of
bishops, he said that he would do nothing to raise disputes among them,
and would be content with a declaration in favour of intolerance. He
wished of course that Catholicism should have the benefit of toleration
in England and Russia, but the principle must be repudiated by a Church
holding the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The meaning of this
intimation, that persecution would do as a substitute for infallibility,
was that the most glaring obstacle to the definition would be removed if
the Inquisition was recognised as consistent with Catholicism. Indeed it
seemed that infallibility was a means to an end which could be obtained
in other ways, and that he would have been satisfied with a decree
confirming the twenty-third article of the Syllabus, and declaring that
no Pope has ever exceeded the just bounds of his authority in faith, in
politics, or in morals.[383]

Most of the bishops had allowed themselves to be reassured, when the
Bull _Multiplices inter_, regulating the procedure at the Council, was
put into circulation in the first days of December. The Pope assumed to
himself the sole initiative in proposing topics, and the exclusive
nomination of the officers of