Leo XIII: the Pope who rearmed the Church for the twentieth century

I.The breach at Porta Pia and the besieged pontificate

EOn 20 September 1870, four years before the conclave that elected Leo XIII, a detachment of Italian infantry breached the walls of Rome at Porta Pia. The city of the Pope was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. Pius IX, who had occupied the Chair of Peter since 1846, declared himself "prisoner of the Vatican" and never again left the apostolic palace. The Papal States, which had lasted eleven centuries, ceased to exist as a subject of international law in a single day of cannon fire.

The besieged pontificate was the starting condition of his successor. Pius IX had responded to the loss of temporal power with the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility (First Vatican Council, 18 July 1870, constitution Pastor aeternus), approved in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War and two months before Italian troops entered Rome. The Syllabus (1864) had closed the door on "modernism" by enumerating eighty errors. The previous pontificate had been one of closed defence: deny, condemn, fortify.

The Church that Pius IX bequeathed to his successor was a Church with its material seat occupied, its territorial sovereignty dissolved, its hierarchy harassed by the liberal governments of Italy, Germany (Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 1871–1878), Switzerland, and France, and its social doctrine absent from the public debate on the "worker question" posed by the industrial revolution. Socialism, in full expansion since the Communist Manifesto (1848) and the First International (1864), filled the vacuum that the Catholic Church was not filling.

The conclave of 1878 was held in conditions of relative clandestinity. The cardinals gathered on 18 February, three days after the death of Pius IX, in the Sistine Chapel. The Italian government had threatened to confiscate the property of any cardinal who attended. Fifty-four of the sixty-four living cardinals attended. On 20 February, on the third ballot, Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci was elected, archbishop of Perugia, cardinal since 1853, who took the name Leo XIII.

• 20 September 1870: breach at Porta Pia. The Papal States cease to exist as a subject of international law. Pius IX declares himself "prisoner of the Vatican".
• 18 July 1870: First Vatican Council proclaims papal infallibility (Pastor aeternus). The council is suspended on 20 October and never resumed.
• 1864: Pius IX publishes the Syllabus, a list of 80 modern errors. The Church closes ranks in closed doctrinal defence.
• 1871–1878: Bismarck's Kulturkampf in Germany. Expulsion of Jesuits, state control of seminaries, imprisonment of Catholic bishops.
• 20 February 1878: conclave in the Sistine Chapel. Election of Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci, archbishop of Perugia. He takes the name Leo XIII.

II.Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci: from Carpineto to Perugia

Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci was born on 2 March 1810 in Carpineto Romano, a village in the Monti Lepini, in the Papal States. The son of a family of the minor rural nobility — the Pecci were counts of Tuscan origin settled in Latium since the fifteenth century — he was the sixth of seven children. His elder brother, Giuseppe Pecci (1807–1890), a Jesuit and later cardinal, would be one of the principal collaborators of the Leonine pontificate in the Thomist restoration.

Trained at the Jesuit college in Viterbo (1818–1824), at the Roman seminary (1824–1832), and at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici in Rome — the pontifical diplomatic school — Pecci was ordained a priest on 31 December 1837, at the age of twenty-seven. His administrative career was rapid: governor of Benevento (1838–1841), apostolic delegate of Spoleto (1841–1843), nuncio in Belgium (1843–1846). In Brussels he dealt with King Leopold I and corresponded with the future Cardinal Sterckx, archbishop of Mechelen.

Gregory XVI named him archbishop in partibus of Damietta on 27 January 1843, before the Belgian nunciature. Pius IX transferred him to the suburbicarian see of Perugia on 19 January 1846, where Pecci would remain for thirty-two years. There he wrote his pastoral letters on Thomism (1854, Rerum ecclesiasticarum), on the education of the clergy (1858), on the social question (1877, L'operaia e l'onestà), the last anticipating themes of Rerum Nouarum. Pius IX created him cardinal priest of San Lorenzo in Panisperna on 19 December 1853.

Perugia was for Pecci what Hippo was for Augustine: the see that formed him as a pastor and as an intellectual. His episcopate there was distinguished by the promotion of Thomist studies in the diocesan seminary, by his unflinching but unstrident resistance to the anticlerical liberalism of the Kingdom of Italy after 1860 (Perugia was annexed in September of that year), and by a series of pastoral letters that already contained, in germ, the programme he would apply as pope: Thomism, social doctrine, openness to study. In 1877 he published L'operaia e l'onestà, a pastoral on the condition of the worker written when the "social question" was not yet a magisterial category. Four years before Rerum Nouarum, Pecci was already writing that "the worker is not a commodity".

• 2 March 1810: born in Carpineto Romano (Papal States). Son of the counts Pecci, minor rural nobility of Latium.
• 31 December 1837: priestly ordination in Rome. Jesuit formation in Viterbo, Roman seminary, and the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici.
• 1838–1843: administrative career: governor of Benevento, delegate of Spoleto, nuncio in Belgium.
• 1846–1878: archbishop of Perugia. Thirty-two years of episcopate. Pastoral letters on Thomism (1854), clergy (1858), the worker question (1877).
• 19 December 1853: created cardinal priest of San Lorenzo in Panisperna by Pius IX.
• Brother: Giuseppe Pecci SJ (1807–1890), cardinal from 1879. Direct collaborator in the Thomist restoration.

III.Æterni Patris (1879): Thomism as a common home

On 4 August 1879, seventeen months after his election, Leo XIII signed the encyclical Æterni Patris. The title is the opening of the text: "Of the Eternal Father." The encyclical is not a polemical manifesto against modernity — Pius IX had already done that with the Syllabus. It is a constructive act: it orders Catholic seminaries and faculties to place Saint Thomas Aquinas as the principal author in philosophical formation. Not the only one, but the principal one. It is an act of pedagogical magisterium of enormous scope: it chooses a thirteenth-century author as the common home of nineteenth-century Catholic theology.

The phrase that opens the doctrinal section fixes the programme. Leo XIII does not rehabilitate Thomas as a fossil: he rehabilitates him as a living framework of thought. The distinction is constitutive. Before Æterni Patris, the Summa Theologica was read in seminaries as a manual of moral theology, chapter by chapter, in a non-critical edition. After Æterni Patris, it is read as a framework of thought. The difference is not one of degree: it is ontological.

The material acts that followed confirm that the encyclical was not rhetoric. In 1880, Leo XIII erected in Rome the Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an institution designed to train the professors who would teach Thomism in the seminaries. In 1882 he began the Editio Leonina, the critical edition of the complete works of Saint Thomas under pontifical commission — an editorial enterprise that continues today, more than one hundred and forty years later, under the Holy See. The Summa Theologica II-II, question 95, article 5, the canonical text that fixes the distinction between natural and judicial astrology, became from then on available in an accessible critical text.

The gesture of Æterni Patris cannot be understood without its intellectual context. In 1879, scholasticism was in retreat. The French Revolution, liberalism, Kantianism, Comte's positivism, Hegelianism, the eclectic spiritualism of Ravaisson and Cousin — every current of the nineteenth century had displaced Thomas to the corner of seminary manuals as a premodern fossil. The Summa was read, but not discussed in dialogue with modern philosophy. The Church had been in closed defence since the Syllabus (1864), not in intellectual reconstruction. Leo XIII reverses the tendency: from defending to reconstructing.

The choice of Thomas is not arbitrary. The pope says so in the encyclical: Thomas is the author who best synthesised Christian revelation with the philosophy of Aristotle, who most precisely distinguished between nature and grace, reason and faith, free will and determination. It is the synthesis that allows the Church to enter into dialogue with modernity without dissolving itself in it. Leo XIII does not ask Catholics to reject Kant or Hegel: he asks them to read them with Thomas in the background, so that they may have the instrument to distinguish what in them is truth from what is error.

• Æterni Patris (4 August 1879): encyclical ordering Saint Thomas as the principal author in the philosophical formation of Catholic seminaries. Not the only one, but the principal one.
• Academy of Saint Thomas (1880): erected in Rome by Leo XIII. Trains the professors who will teach Thomism.
• Editio Leonina (1882): critical edition of the complete works of Saint Thomas, under pontifical commission. An enterprise that continues today, +140 years later.
• Intellectual context: in 1879 scholasticism was displaced by Kantianism, positivism, Hegelianism. The Summa was read as a fossil, not as a framework. Æterni Patris reverses the tendency: from defending to reconstructing.
• Choice of Thomas: the author who best synthesised revelation and the philosophy of Aristotle. The instrument for distinguishing nature/grace, reason/faith, free will/determination. Not to reject modernity: to read it with Thomas in the background.

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«Angelici Doctoris magisterio et auctoritate… uniuersam Ecclesiam illustrari.»

By the teaching and authority of the Angelic Doctor… the universal Church is illumined.

Leo XIII, Æterni Patris (4 August 1879). Official Latin text: vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/la/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html

IV.The Leonine programme: dialogue without surrender

Leo XIII's programme was articulated on five simultaneous fronts, not on a single one. To call him a "social pope" (as popular historiography does) or a "Thomist pope" (as the purely intellectual reading does) is reductionism. The Leonine programme is integral: intellectual, social, historical, diplomatic, and devotional. The five fronts sustain one another. Remove one, and the others limp.

Intellectual front. Æterni Patris (1879) restored Thomism. Without this front, the others lack a doctrinal framework: the social doctrine of Rerum Nouarum does not stand without the Thomist principle of the common good; the political doctrine of Immortale Dei does not stand without the distinction between eternal law and human law; the doctrine of liberty in Libertas does not stand without the Thomist notion of free will ordered to the good. Thomism is the foundation.

Social front. Rerum Nouarum (15 May 1891) inaugurated Catholic social doctrine as magisterium. Before 1891, the Church had condemned socialism (Quod apostolici muneris, 1878) without offering a doctrinal alternative to the Catholic worker. After 1891, the Church enters the "worker question" with its own doctrine: just wage, the right of association, private property with a social function, subsidiarity (before the term existed). Rerum Nouarum opens a current that runs to Laudato si' (2015), passing through Quadragesimo Anno (1931, Pius XI) and Centesimus Annus (1991, John Paul II).

Historical front. The opening of the Vatican Secret Archive in 1881 is an act of intellectual transparency without precedent. Closed to the public since Paul V (1612), the Archive was opened to historians by decision of Leo XIII. The pope's justification was direct: the Church does not fear its own documents. The opening permitted, among other things, the modern rediscovery of the trials of Galileo (published in 1887) and, a century later, that of the Chinon parchment by Barbara Frale (2001). Without Leo XIII, no modern Chinon.

Diplomatic front. Leo XIII partially defused Bismarck's Kulturkampf (1871–1878) by negotiating with the German chancellor via the nunciature. He restored nunciatures in Belgium (1880) and Spain (1881). In France, the ralliement to the French Republic, proclaimed in the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes (16 February 1892), asked French Catholics to accept the republican form of government in order to stop fighting the regime. The ralliement had partial success: it temporarily contained French Catholic antisemitism, but failed after the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906).

Devotional front. Twelve encyclicals on the Rosary (1883–1898), the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart with Annum Sacrum (25 May 1899, solemnity celebrated on 11 June 1899), which the pope himself called "the great act" of his pontificate. Devotion is not ornament: it is the pastoral condition of the doctrinal programme. A purely intellectual pontificate would not have reached the faithful. The Rosary and the Sacred Heart did.

The method that unites the five fronts is distinction, not dissolution. Leo XIII does not dissolve Catholic doctrine into modern liberalism, nor does he dissolve modernity into premodern Catholicism. He distinguishes: what in modernity is legitimate (democratic forms, liberty as self-determination ordered to the good, astronomical science, historical criticism) he distinguishes from what in modernity is error (liberalism as indifference to truth, socialism as collectivism, epistemological relativism). The method is Thomism applied to modernity. Modernity enters the Church, but reordered by Thomism, not accepted wholesale.

• Intellectual front: Æterni Patris (1879) restores Thomism. It is the foundation of the other four fronts. Without Thomas, no social doctrine, no political doctrine, no doctrine of liberty.
• Social front: Rerum Nouarum (15 May 1891) inaugurates Catholic social doctrine. Just wage, right of association, property with social function. Opening of the current that runs to Laudato si' (2015).
• Historical front: opening of the Vatican Secret Archive in 1881. The Church does not fear its own documents. It permitted the modern rediscovery of Galileo (1887) and, a century later, of the Chinon parchment (2001).
• Diplomatic front: partial defusing of the Kulturkampf, restoration of nunciatures (Belgium 1880, Spain 1881), ralliement to the French Republic (1892). Partial success: it failed after the Dreyfus affair.
• Devotional front: 12 encyclicals on the Rosary (1883–1898), consecration to the Sacred Heart with Annum Sacrum (25 May 1899). Leo XIII himself called it "the great act" of his pontificate.
• Method: distinguish, not dissolve. What is legitimate in modernity (democratic forms, science, historical criticism) distinguished from what is error (liberalism as indifference, socialism, relativism). Thomism applied to modernity.

V.Rerum Nouarum (1891): the Church enters the social question

On 15 May 1891, Leo XIII signed Rerum Nouarum, an encyclical on the condition of workers. It is the exception that confirms the method: for the first time, the papal magisterium enters with its own doctrine into the "worker question" that the industrial revolution had posed and that socialism claimed to resolve. The encyclical does not condemn wholesale: it distinguishes. It condemns socialism as a collectivism that dissolves private property and the family; it condemns savage liberalism that reduces the worker to a commodity; it defends private property with a social function, a just wage, the right of association, and the subsidiary intervention of the State.

The Latin incipit, in its original spelling, sets the urgency: the "new things" are not capricious novelty, they are agitation that leads from reasoning to arms. The Church cannot remain silent when agitation touches the social order that doctrine must judge.

The doctrine of Rerum Nouarum is articulated in four theses. First: private property is a natural right in accordance with the universal destination of goods and with the commandment "thou shalt not steal," but it carries an attached social function: the owner cannot use what is his against the common good. Second: the just wage is not the market wage, but the one that allows the worker to support himself and his family with a margin of savings. Third: the right of association is natural; the State cannot forbid Catholic workers' unions without violating natural law. Fourth: the intervention of the State in the economy must be subsidiary: intervene where the family or an intermediate body cannot, without absorbing them.

The Spanish reception of Rerum Nouarum was dense and early. In 1893, the Jesuit Vicente Aldalur founded in Valencia the Catholic Workers' Circles following the model of the Catholic Workers' Circle of Milan (1861), now doctrinally rearmed by the encyclical. Father Antonio Vicent SJ, director of the review El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús from 1879, was its principal intellectual driving force: he wrote El movimiento social cristiano (1893) and trained a generation of Catholic propagandists. The Popular Catholic Action, direct heir of the Circles, articulated the social presence of Spanish Catholicism during the first third of the twentieth century. Severino Aznar (1870–1938), professor of the History of Spain at the University of Madrid and director of La Correspondencia de España, published El problema social y la democracia cristiana (1900) as a Spanish extension of Leonine doctrine. The Spanish reception was not marginal: it was one of the most active European foci.

The reach of Rerum Nouarum is measured by its magisterial descendants. Pius XI commemorated it with Quadragesimo Anno (1931), where the principle of subsidiarity was formally coined. John XXIII continued with Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963). Paul VI with Octogesima Adveniens (1971). John Paul II with Laborem Exercens (1981) and Centesimus Annus (1991). Benedict XVI with Caritas in Veritate (2009). Francis with Laudato si' (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020). Catholic social doctrine, today, remains Leonine in its foundation.

With Rerum Nouarum, the Church entered social modernity in order to reorder it. Not to dissolve itself into socialism. Not to bless savage liberalism. To judge both from a principle that neither accepts: the Thomist principle of the common good, which neither collectivism nor individualism can sustain.

• 15 May 1891: Rerum Nouarum on the condition of workers. First social encyclical in history. Distinguishes socialism and savage liberalism, condemns both.
• Four theses: private property with social function, just wage (not market wage), natural right of association, subsidiary intervention of the State.
• Spanish reception: Catholic Workers' Circles of Valencia (1893), Father Antonio Vicent SJ and El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, Popular Catholic Action, Severino Aznar (El problema social y la democracia cristiana, 1900).
• Magisterial descendants: Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Mater et Magistra (1961), Laborem Exercens (1981), Centesimus Annus (1991), Caritas in Veritate (2009), Laudato si' (2015). Catholic social doctrine remains Leonine in its foundation.
• Method: the Church enters social modernity to reorder it, not to dissolve itself. Neither collectivism nor individualism can sustain the Thomist principle of the common good.

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«Rerum nouarum semel excitata cupidine, quae diu quidem commouet ciuitates, illud erat consecuturum ut commutationum studia a rationibus ad arma potius transferrentur.»

The desire for new things, once aroused, which has long been stirring up cities, was bound to lead the passion for change to pass from reasoning to arms.

Leo XIII, Rerum Nouarum (15 May 1891), prologue. Official Latin text: vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/la/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

VI.The opening of the Vatican Archive (1881): the Church that does not fear its documents

On 1 May 1881, Leo XIII ordered the opening of the Vatican Secret Archive to historians. The Archive, founded in its modern form by Paul V in 1612, had remained closed to external study for two hundred and sixty-nine years. Leo XIII's decision was not a symbolic gesture: it was the material opening of the institutional memory of the Church to historical criticism. The pope justified it with a phrase that became the motto of the pontificate in intellectual matters: the Church does not fear its own documents.

The Archive, today the Vatican Apostolic Archive since the 2019 change of name, safeguards more than eight hundred documentary fonds spanning from the eighth century to the twentieth. Its shelves total eighty-five linear kilometres. Before 1881, access was reserved to pontifical archivists and a handful of selected scholars. After 1881, any historian with academic credentials could request consultation. The Church ceased to be the object of rumour and became the object of study.

The effects of the opening were not long in coming. In 1887, the Holy See itself published the acts of the trial of Galileo Galilei (1633), the central document of the conflict between the Church and modern science. The publication allowed serious historiography to revise the case beyond the nineteenth-century myth of "Galileo martyr of science": the trial was real, the condemnation was real, but the acts showed a more complex picture than the caricature. The Church does not defend the condemnation — the formal revision would come with John Paul II in 1992 — but it documents it. Transparency precedes repentance, not the other way around.

A second effect occurred in September 2001. Barbara Frale, an Italian palaeographer at the Vatican Apostolic Archive, rediscovered in the Armadio XXXI fond the Chinon parchment (17–20 August 1308), the act of the pontifical commission that absolved the Templars of heresy. The document had been in the archive since 1308, mis-catalogued. Without the opening of 1881, its rediscovery would not have been possible: consultation by external historians was the condition for a palaeographer like Frale to be able to work in the fond. Without Leo XIII, no modern Chinon. The documentary chain that sustains the article on the Chinon parchment in this same Library passes through the Leonine decision of 1881.

The opening of the Archive must be read alongside the reorganization of the Specola Vaticana (astronomical observatory) that Leo XIII ordered ten years later with the letter Ut Mysticam (14 March 1891). The Specola, heir to the Tower of the Winds of Gregory XIII (1578–1580) and to the observatory of the Roman College (1787–1878), was reorganized as a pontifical astronomical observatory. It is not support for astrology: it is support for astronomy as a natural science, which is the physical substratum of Thomist natural astrology. With the Specola, the Church was saying that the science of the stars is legitimate and worthy of pontifical patronage.

The opening of the Archive and the reorganization of the Specola are two faces of the same Leonine gesture. The Church does not fear its documents. The Church does not fear the heavens. The one opens memory, the other opens observation. Both together say to modernity: Catholicism is not obscurantism; it is tradition that allows itself to be examined and science that allows itself to be cultivated. The Church as preserver of knowledge finds in Leo XIII its modern restorer.

• 1 May 1881: Leo XIII orders the opening of the Vatican Secret Archive to historians. Closed to the public since Paul V (1612). 269 years of closure.
• Volume: +800 documentary fonds, 8th to 20th centuries, 85 linear kilometres of shelves.
• 1887: the Holy See publishes the acts of the trial of Galileo (1633). Transparency precedes repentance (which will come in 1992 with John Paul II), not the other way around.
• September 2001: Barbara Frale rediscovers the Chinon parchment (1308) in the Armadio XXXI fond. Without the opening of 1881, no modern Chinon. The documentary chain of this Library passes through Leo XIII.
• 14 March 1891: letter Ut Mysticam reorganizes the Specola Vaticana. Not support for astrology: support for astronomy as a natural science. The physical substratum of Thomist natural astrology.
• Church as preserver: the Church as preserver of knowledge (archives, observatories) finds in Leo XIII its modern restorer.

VII.Libertas, Immortale Dei, Diuturnum: liberty and the State under moral law

Between 1881 and 1888, Leo XIII published five encyclicals on the relations between Church and State and on the nature of liberty. The three central ones are Diuturnum illud (29 June 1881, on the origin of civil power), Immortale Dei (1 November 1885, on the Christian constitution of States), and Libertas Praestantissimum (20 June 1888, on the nature of human liberty). The three articulate Leonine political doctrine on a single principle: human liberty and civil power are both under moral law, not above it.

Diuturnum illud fixes the doctrine of the origin of civil power. Against modern contractarianism (Rousseau, Kant), Leo XIII affirms that civil power comes from God, the source of all authority, but is exercised through the mediation of the people: the people are not the source of power, they are the subject that confers it. The State is not the product of an arbitrary pact, but of the social nature of man. Obedience to legitimate power is a moral duty, not a utilitarian calculation. When power becomes tyrannical, the right of resistance is a traditional doctrine of the Church (sixteenth-century Spanish scholastics: Vitoria, Suárez, Mariana), but the Church does not legitimize rebellion as such: it conditions it to manifest tyranny and the absence of legal remedies.

Immortale Dei fixes the doctrine of the Christian constitution of the State. The State is not confessional by clerical imposition, but by correspondence to the truth about God and man. The falsehood of the neutral secular State consists in pretending that indifference to religious truth is neutrality, when in reality it is a position: to deny God as the foundation of public order is to take the side of practical atheism. The Church does not impose confessionality by force: it defends it as the correspondence of the State to the truth. This doctrine, applied to the Spanish case, grounds the confessionality of the Hispanic kingdoms from Recared (587) to 1978, as documented in the article on the Hispanic triumvirate in this same Library.

Libertas Praestantissimum fixes the doctrine of liberty. It is the most systematic encyclical and the one that most precisely articulates the Leonine method of distinguishing, not dissolving. Liberty is not univocal: there is liberty as self-determination ordered to the good (true liberty, lawful, natural right) and liberty as indifference to the truth (false liberty, condemned, the foundation of modern liberalism). The first is the liberty of the man who knows the good and chooses it; the second is the liberty of the man who pretends that good and evil are conventions and claims for himself the right to redefine them. Leo XIII does not condemn political liberty: he condemns the philosophical liberalism that makes indifference to the truth the principle of public order.

The legacy of the three encyclicals is the political doctrine that John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus (1991, nº 44–46), would take up as the foundation of Catholic democracy: democracy is legitimate when it recognises objective moral law as the limit of majority consensus; it is illegitimate when it reduces law to consensus. Democracy is not an absolute value: it is a form of government worth what the moral law that limits it is worth. Leo XIII said it in 1885; John Paul II repeated it in 1991. The doctrine did not change.

• Diuturnum illud (29 June 1881): civil power comes from God, the source of all authority, and is exercised through the mediation of the people. The State is not an arbitrary pact; obedience to legitimate power is a moral duty.
• Immortale Dei (1 November 1885): the Christian constitution of the State is not a clerical imposition, it is the correspondence of the State to the truth. The falsehood of the neutral secular State is to feign neutrality where there is a position.
• Libertas Praestantissimum (20 June 1888): liberty as self-determination to the good is lawful (natural right); liberty as indifference to the truth is condemned. It does not condemn political liberty: it condemns philosophical liberalism.
• Spanish doctrine: Hispanic confessionality from Recared (587) to 1978 is grounded in this correspondence of the State to the truth (article on the Hispanic triumvirate, this Library).
• Legacy: John Paul II takes it up in Centesimus Annus (1991, nº 44–46). Democracy is worth what the moral law that limits it is worth. Leo XIII in 1885; John Paul II in 1991. The doctrine did not change.

Liberty, the most excellent of natural goods, is not the faculty to do what one wants, but the faculty to do what one ought; and the State that reduces it to indifference to the truth does not free it, it dissolves it.

VIII.Humanum Genus (1884) and Testem Benevolentiae (1899): the condemnations and their limits

Sincerity requires that an article on Leo XIII not hide its documentable shadows. Truth above polemic: if the subject has limits, they are documented. Two texts of the Leonine pontificate have them: Humanum Genus (20 April 1884), against Freemasonry, and Testem Benevolentiae (22 January 1899), against "Americanism." In both, doctrinal correctness coexists with a tone and a framing that serious historiography has nuanced. To document both — successes and limits — is not a demerit of the pope: it is honesty.

Humanum Genus applies to Freemasonry the Augustinian framework of the two cities: the city of God and the city of the devil, with Freemasonry situated in the second. The success: nineteenth-century Freemasonry was a real actor, organised, with documented presence in anticlerical politics (Italy, France, Mexico, Brazil), and its deist and naturalist doctrine was incompatible with Catholicism. The condemnation was doctrinally correct. The limit: the encyclical adopts the rhetorical genre of the "universal conspiracy," heir to Barruel (1797) and to the anti-Masonic literature of the nineteenth century, which today sounds excessive. Not because Freemasonry did not exist (it did), but because the conspiratorial genre over-dimensions coordination and intention, and projects onto Freemasonry a unitary project that later historiography (Margiotta Broglio, Jacob) has shown to be more fragmented. The pope was right on doctrine; the tone reads today as excessive.

Testem Benevolentiae condemns "Americanism," a heresy attributed to American Catholicism represented by Father Hecker (founder of the Paulists, 1858) and defended in France by the abbé Félix Klein in the translation of Hecker's biography (1898). The success: the doctrinal condemnation on the three points identified by Leo XIII (the interior direction of the Holy Spirit without ecclesial mediation, the minimisation of religious vows, the excessive adaptation of dogma to the modern temperament) was theologically correct. The limit: the "Americanism" condemned was in part a French phantom. Hecker did not hold the theses Klein attributed to him; the supposed heresy was a construction of the intra-French debate between liberal Catholics (Klein, Fogazzaro) and ultramontanists. Cardinal James Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore, replied to the pope with a letter of 22 March 1899 declaring that no American Catholic held the condemned theses. The Holy See accepted the reply and the matter was closed without personal condemnation.

Sincerity requires saying both things: Leo XIII was right on doctrine in both cases and was wrong on the framing in both cases. Humanum Genus was right to condemn Freemasonry and over-dimensionalised the conspiratorial genre. Testem Benevolentiae was right to condemn the three theses and partly fabricated its object. This is not a demerit of the pope: it is an application of the historical-critical method to a magisterium that, like all human magisterium, is exercised in concrete historical conditions. Papal infallibility, defined by Pius IX in 1870, does not cover rhetorical genre or historiographical framing: it covers solemnly defined doctrinal truth. In Humanum Genus and in Testem Benevolentiae, the doctrinal is true; the rhetorical is of its time.

Papal infallibility, defined by Pius IX at the First Vatican Council (1870), covers solemnly defined doctrinal truth, not rhetorical genre or historiographical framing. In Humanum Genus and in Testem Benevolentiae, the doctrinal is true; the rhetorical is of its time.

• Humanum Genus (20 April 1884): condemnation of Freemasonry with the Augustinian framework of the two cities. Success: Freemasonry was a real actor, organised, anticlerical. Limit: the rhetorical genre of "universal conspiracy" (Barruel 1797) over-dimensions coordination. Historiography (Margiotta Broglio, Jacob) shows a more fragmented Freemasonry.
• Testem Benevolentiae (22 January 1899): condemnation of "Americanism" attributed to Father Hecker and to the abbé Klein. Success: the three condemned theses were theologically erroneous. Limit: "Americanism" was in part a French phantom. Cardinal Gibbons replied on 22 March 1899 denying that any American Catholic held the theses. The Holy See accepted.
• Method: sincerity applied to the subject itself is not a demerit: it is honesty. Infallibility covers the doctrinal, not the rhetorical.
• Limit of infallibility: papal infallibility (Vatican I, 1870) covers solemnly defined doctrinal truth, not rhetorical genre or historiographical framing. The doctrinal content of both encyclicals is true; the rhetorical is of its time.

IX.Leo XIII and the Jews: an accounting of a magisterial silence

Leo XIII is a preconciliar pope. He occupies the Chair of Peter between 1878 and 1903, in the exact period in which modern political antisemitism is born. His pontificate unfolds in the years of the Russian pogroms of 1881–82, of Drumont's La France juive (1886), of the Anti-Semitic League of France (1889), of the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906). The preconciliar position of the Church on the Jews is documented when it applies, without mitigating and without hiding, because it is the historical reality. It applies, then, to document what the Leonine magisterium said — and what it kept silent about.

The principal finding is of high severity. The canonical list of the eighty-eight encyclicals of Leo XIII, verified against vatican.va/leo-xiii/ and against the list based on Acta Sanctae Sedis, contains no document whose subject is the Jews. In twenty-five years of pontificate, in the period in which modern political antisemitism is born (Drumont, La France juive, 1886; Anti-Semitic League of France, 1889; La Libre Parole, 1892; Russian pogroms of 1881–82; Dreyfus affair, 1894–1906), the Leonine magisterium issued no encyclical on the Jews. The omission is a fact.

The only direct mention of the Leonine magisterium on the Jews is in Providentissimus Deus (18 November 1893), an encyclical on the study of Sacred Scripture. In a passage that places the Jews in the traditional theological category of "obstinacy" — a category inherited from the Fathers and from scholasticism — without aggiornamento to the new problem of modern political antisemitism.

The silence before the Russian pogroms of 1881–82 (Elisabethgrad, Kiev, Odessa, Warsaw, Balta) is the first negative datum. The May Laws of 1882 restricted the civil rights of Jews in the Russian Empire. No documented public papal condemnation. The silence before Édouard Drumont, whose La France juive (1886) sold one hundred thousand copies in its first year, is the second negative datum. The silence before the anti-Jewish Catholic press is the third and most serious: La Civiltà Cattolica, the review of the Roman Jesuits founded in 1850 and reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State, published documented anti-Jewish articles in this period; La Croix, the daily of the French Assumptionists founded in 1880, called itself "the most anti-Jewish newspaper in France." It is not the same to be silent before Drumont (not a Catholic) as to be silent before La Croix (Catholic). The second silence is more serious than the first.

The French ralliement, proclaimed in Au milieu des sollicitudes (16 February 1892), indirectly sought to contain French Catholic antisemitism by asking Catholics to accept the Republic. The success was partial: for two years (1892–1894) the Catholic press partially moderated its tone. But the Dreyfus affair (October 1894) reactivated French Catholic anti-Judaism: La Croix published articles favourable to the conviction of Captain Dreyfus throughout the period 1894–1898. Zola's J'accuse…! (13 January 1898) did not change the line of the Assumptionist daily. Leo XIII died on 20 July 1903, before the annulment of the Rennes court-martial (July 1904) and the definitive rehabilitation of Dreyfus (July 1906).

The correct category of evaluation is that of the nineteenth century, not that of the twentieth century or of the thirteenth. The Summa Theologica II-II, q.10, a.8, ad 2um, which Leo XIII had rehabilitated with Æterni Patris (1879), sustains the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of the "witness": the Jews, who received Christ, are destined to perpetual servitude — not by race, but by theology — and must be preserved (not killed) as witnesses of Christian truth. This doctrine is not racial (a category that does not exist in the thirteenth century or in the ecclesial nineteenth): it is theological and political. Leo XIII did not invent it; he inherited it. But neither did he address it explicitly in a magisterial document, nor did he qualify it before the new problem of political antisemitism.

The honest accounting is the following. Documented strengths: Leo XIII did not enter the racial category (the only mention, in Providentissimus Deus 1893, is theological, not racial); he did not restore the Roman ghetto (the walls had been demolished by Italian troops in 1848 and 1870, and the pope did not control Rome to do so); he maintained the doctrine of the witness, which implies preserving (not killing) the Jews. Documented weaknesses with severity: no encyclical on the Jews in 25 years of pontificate [High]; silence before the Russian pogroms of 1881–82 [High]; silence before La Croix and La Civiltà Cattolica [High]; silence before the Dreyfus affair (1894–1903) [High]; maintenance of the theological category of the Jew as obstinate without nuance [Medium]; lack of explicit distinction between theological anti-Judaism and racial antisemitism in a magisterial document [Medium].

The distinction between theological anti-Judaism (a preconciliar category, inherited from the Fathers and from the Summa) and racial antisemitism (a category of nineteenth-century politics, codified by Gobineau, Chamberlain, Drumont) is the one that the Vatican would formulate formally in We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998), recognising the first and condemning the second. Leo XIII did not formulate the distinction in a magisterial document. Serious historiography (Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews, 2001; Cambridge History of the Papacy, ch. 30) holds that papal attitudes toward the Jews hardened over the course of the nineteenth century as the popes associated emancipated Jews with liberalism, Freemasonry, and socialism. The correct category of evaluation — nineteenth century, pope stripped of the State, emancipated Jew associated with liberalism — yields an accounting of preconciliar hardening, not of opening.

The Church never lied. The Church never condemned the Jews by race. But the Church, in the pontificate of Leo XIII, remained silent when modern political antisemitism was being born, and remained silent before the Catholic press that fed it. To document this silence without mitigating and without projecting twentieth-century categories is the only honest way to write history. The Church is Mother and Teacher: even when she is silent, what she is silent about is a fact.

• Magisterial omission: the canonical list of 88 encyclicals of Leo XIII contains no document on the Jews. 25 years of pontificate in the period in which modern political antisemitism is born. The omission is a fact.
• Only direct mention: Providentissimus Deus (18 November 1893), "ad Iudaeorum obstinationem uincendam." Traditional theological category of the Jew as obstinate, without aggiornamento to the new problem.
• Documented silences with severity: Russian pogroms 1881–82 [High]; La Croix and La Civiltà Cattolica [High]; Dreyfus affair 1894–1903 [High]; no encyclical on the Jews [High].
• Strengths: did not enter the racial category; did not restore the Roman ghetto (could not, the walls fell in 1848 and 1870); maintained the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of the witness, which implies preserving (not killing) the Jews.
• Category of evaluation: nineteenth century (pope stripped of the State, emancipated Jew associated with liberalism), not twentieth century or thirteenth century. Accounting: preconciliar hardening, not opening. The distinction between theological anti-Judaism and racial antisemitism would be formulated by the Vatican in We Remember (1998).
• Inherited doctrine: Summa II-II, q.10, a.8, ad 2um (Jews as witnesses, do not kill, theological subordination). Leo XIII did not invent it; he rehabilitated it with Æterni Patris (1879). Neither did he qualify it before the new problem.

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«ad Iudaeorum obstinationem uincendam, ac haereticae prauitatis erumpentis tumorem comprimendum…»

to overcome the obstinacy of the Jews and to suppress the swelling of erupting heresy…

Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (18 November 1893). Text at vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus.html

X.Leo XIII and astrology: the pope who rehabituated the Thomist doctrinal framework

The Thomist distinction between natural astrology (lawful, based on observable physical causes) and judicial astrology (condemned, for claiming to predict free acts) is not an isolated opinion. It is the inheritance of a verifiable doctrinal chain, and that chain passes through Leo XIII. Without the Leonine link, the chain breaks: Thomas's distinction would have continued to exist in the manuals, but not as a living framework. Without Leo XIII, the distinction would have to be reconstructed against the pastoral practice of the nineteenth century, not inherited within the doctrinal current of modern Catholicism.

The first thing that sincerity requires stating is this: Leo XIII wrote no encyclical on astrology. The canonical list of the eighty-eight encyclicals, verified against vatican.va/leo-xiii/ and against Acta Sanctae Sedis, contains no document whose subject is astrology. The encyclicals that might have touched the theme — Humanum Genus (1884, against Freemasonry, which condemns esotericism), Providentissimus Deus (1893, on Scripture, which addresses the relations between the Bible and physical science) — do not mention astrology directly. Leo XIII's contribution to the astrological question is real, indirect, and of an importance that the apparent omission should not hide.

The Leonine act that rehabilitated the doctrinal framework is Æterni Patris (4 August 1879). By ordering the reading of Saint Thomas in the seminaries, Leo XIII put back into circulation the Summa Theologica II-II, question 95, article 5, titled "Whether divination by the stars is unlawful." That text fixes the canonical tripartition that is the doctrinal basis of the Catholic position on astrology: strict judicial astrology (condemned: prediction of free acts, denies free will, sin against the faith); astrology of inclinations (lawful with caution: the stars incline the body, the body inclines the passions, the passions incline the will, but the will is not determined); pure natural astrology (science: the study of celestial physical influence on sublunary bodies, includes astronomy, meteorology, astrological medicine, navigation, agriculture). The formula sapiens dominabitur astris — the wise man will rule over the stars — which C. S. Lewis recalled as "the orthodox position" in a letter to Dorothy L. Sayers (1957), synthesises the doctrine: the wise man is not dragged down by astral inclinations; he knows them and governs them.

The doctrinal chain is verifiable at every link. Augustine of Hippo (c. 426), De ciuitate Dei V, chs. 1–7: patristic origin. Refutes judicial astrology with the argument of twins (Esau and Jacob, born under the same stars, opposite destinies). Admits celestial physical influence. The germ of the distinction. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1270), Summa II-II q.95 a.5 and the letter De iudiciis astrorum to Reginald of Piperno: canonical codification. Tripartition. The formula sapiens dominabitur astris. Sixtus V (1586), bull Coeli et terrae: tension. He threatened to prohibit all astrology, including natural astrology useful for medicine, agriculture, and navigation. Cardinal Bellarmine reconstructed it by limiting its scope to the judicial. Leo XIII (1879), Æterni Patris: rehabilitation of the framework. He does not mention astrology, but by ordering Thomas to be read, he rehabilitated the Summa II-II q.95 a.5 as living doctrine, not as a fossil. Neo-Thomism (twentieth century): Maritain, Gilson, Garrigou-Lagrange, Chenu, Congar (early formation). They were formed in the Leonine house. They kept the distinction accessible to the 20th century.

Coherence with the condemnation of occultism is the frontier that fixes the Catholic side. Humanum Genus (20 April 1884), in condemning Freemasonry, also condemns the esotericism of the nineteenth century: Eliphas Lévi (d. 1875), Papus (rise in the 1890s), the theosophy of Blavatsky (1875). The astrology that these occultists practised was judicial, not natural: divination, not science. The condemnation places them on the condemned side. Thomist natural astrology remains on the Catholic side. Leo XIII, without writing on astrology, drew the frontier that distinguishes it from occultism.

The Specola Vaticana, reorganised by Leo XIII with the letter Ut Mysticam (14 March 1891), confirms the datum. The pope who rehabilitated Thomism is the same who rehabilitated the pontifical astronomical observatory. It is not support for astrology: it is support for astronomy as a natural science lawful and worthy of pontifical patronage. Astronomy is the physical substratum of Thomist natural astrology. Without astronomical science, there is no natural astrology to distinguish from the judicial.

The limitation is real and is stated with sincerity. Leo XIII did not write on astrology. The connection is one of framework enablement, not of direct pronouncement. Æterni Patris does not cite the Summa II-II q.95. The Specola is astronomy, not astrology. To say this does not weaken the bridge: it specifies it. The connection does not require that Leo XIII approved astrology; it requires that the doctrinal framework that sustains the distinction was accessible. It was, thanks to him. Without the Leonine link, the distinction would be reconstruction; with it, it is inheritance.

• First truth: Leo XIII wrote no encyclical on astrology. Canonical list of 88 encyclicals verified against vatican.va. The contribution is indirect.
• Leonine act: Æterni Patris (4 August 1879) rehabilitated Thomism. The Summa II-II q.95 a.5, which fixes the tripartition (judicial condemned, inclinations lawful with caution, pure natural as science), was back in circulation as living doctrine.
• Doctrinal chain: Augustine (De ciuitate Dei V, c. 426, argument of twins) → Thomas (Summa II-II q.95 a.5 and De iudiciis astrorum, c. 1270) → Sixtus V (bull Coeli et terrae 1586, tension reconstructed by Bellarmine) → Leo XIII (Æterni Patris 1879, rehabilitation) → Neo-Thomism (Maritain, Gilson, Garrigou-Lagrange, 20th century).
• Canonical formula: sapiens dominabitur astris — the wise man will rule over the stars. C. S. Lewis recalled it as "the orthodox position" in a letter to Dorothy L. Sayers (1957).
• Frontier with occultism: Humanum Genus (1884) condemns the esotericism of Eliphas Lévi and Papus. The judicial astrology of the occultists falls on the condemned side; Thomist natural astrology remains on the Catholic side.
• Specola Vaticana (1891): Ut Mysticam reorganises the astronomical observatory. Not support for astrology: support for astronomy as a natural science, the physical substratum of Thomist natural astrology.
• Stated limitation: the connection is one of framework enablement, not of direct pronouncement. Æterni Patris does not cite the Summa II-II q.95. The Specola is astronomy, not astrology. The connection does not require explicit Leonine approval; it requires access to the framework. It was there.

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«Ad obseruationem ergo astrorum duplex potest haberi modus. Uno modo, ut ex astris cognoscantur futura euenta, uel simpliciter, vel in maiore parte. Alio modo, ut ex astris cognoscantur inclinationes hominum ad futuros euentus, uel dispositiones corporum ad huiusmodi passiones… Primum igitur modum obseruandi astra reprobat Ecclesia… Secundus modus non habet illicitudinem, si omnino hoc fiat, quod Philosophus docet.»

For the observation of the stars there can be two modes. One, to know by the stars future events, either simply, or for the most part. Another, to know by the stars the inclinations of men to future events, or the dispositions of bodies to such passions… The first mode of observing the stars the Church rejects… The second mode is not unlawful, if it be done altogether as the Philosopher [Aristotle] teaches.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, q.95, a.5. Benziger Bros. edition, 1947, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Text at newadvent.org/summa/3095.htm

XI.The Pope of the Rosary and the consecration to the Sacred Heart (1899)

The devotional programme of Leo XIII is the pastoral condition of the doctrinal programme. A pontificate that had only restored Thomism, published Rerum Nouarum, and opened the Vatican Archive would have been an elite pontificate. Devotion brought it to the faithful. Devotion is not ornament of the magisterium: it is its condition of reception. Without the Rosary, without the Sacred Heart, without the popular piety that Leo XIII promoted, Thomism would not have left the seminaries.

The series of twelve encyclicals on the Rosary, published between 1883 and 1898, is a case without parallel in the papal magisterium. No pope, before or after, devoted twelve encyclicals to a single devotion. The first was Supremi Apostolatus Officio (1 September 1883), which consecrated the month of October to the Rosary and recommended its recitation in all parishes. The eleven that followed, one per year up to Diuturni temporis spatium (5 September 1898), developed the mysteries, the indulgences, the Marian dimension, and the relation of the Rosary to the Christian life. The series is not rhetoric: it is sustained Marian magisterium that articulated popular piety with doctrine.

The consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, proclaimed with the encyclical Annum Sacrum (25 May 1899) and solemnly performed on 11 June 1899, was called by Leo XIII himself "the great act" of his pontificate. The phrase is the pope's, not his hagiographers'. The consecration articulated two elements: devotion to the Sacred Heart, propagated since the apparitions to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray-le-Monial (1673–1675) and approved by the Church since the eighteenth century; and the social kingship of Christ, a doctrine that Pius XI would formally codify with Quas Primas (11 December 1925). Leo XIII unites the two: devotion to the Sacred Heart as a personal act and the consecration of the human race as a social act. The kingship of Christ over the peoples, not only over souls.

A material datum crowns the devotional pontificate: in 1896, Leo XIII was the first pope filmed in history. W. K. Laurie Dickson, an engineer at the Biograph laboratory, filmed the eighty-six-year-old pope in the Vatican gardens. The film, preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington, shows the pope walking, reading, and blessing the camera. It is not a minor datum: with Leo XIII, the Church entered technical modernity without renouncing its tradition. The pope who restored Thomism and consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart is also the first pope who saw a camera and blessed it.

The reception of the devotional programme was massive. The Spanish Catholic Workers' Circles, founded in Valencia in 1893 after Rerum Nouarum, placed themselves under the patronage of the Sacred Heart. The review El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, directed by Father Antonio Vicent SJ from 1879, was one of the principal vehicles of the devotion in the Hispanic world until the civil war of 1936. The Popular Catholic Action, heir of the Circles, adopted the Rosary as daily prayer. The Leonine devotional programme was not received in the abstract: it was embodied in concrete practices in concrete communities, especially in Spain and Italy.

The legacy is this: doctrine without devotion does not arrive; devotion without doctrine does not stand. Leo XIII articulated both. Thomism provided the foundation; Rerum Nouarum provided social doctrine; the Rosary and the Sacred Heart provided piety. Without the three together, the Leonine programme would not have rearmed the Church. The pope who signed Æterni Patris in 1879 is the same who signed Annum Sacrum in 1899. The coherence is total.

• 12 encyclicals on the Rosary (1883–1898): a case without parallel in the papal magisterium. No pope, before or after, devoted 12 encyclicals to a single devotion. First: Supremi Apostolatus Officio (1 September 1883), consecrates October to the Rosary.
• Consecration to the Sacred Heart (1899): encyclical Annum Sacrum (25 May 1899), solemnity on 11 June 1899. Leo XIII himself called it "the great act" of his pontificate. It unites personal devotion and the social kingship of Christ (which Pius XI will codify in Quas Primas, 1925).
• First pope filmed (1896): W. K. Laurie Dickson (Biograph) filmed Leo XIII, 86 years old, in the Vatican gardens. Film preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington. The Church enters technical modernity without renouncing tradition.
• Hispanic reception: Catholic Workers' Circles of Valencia (1893) under the patronage of the Sacred Heart. El Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús (Father Antonio Vicent SJ, 1879). Popular Catholic Action with the Rosary as daily prayer.
• Legacy: doctrine without devotion does not arrive; devotion without doctrine does not stand. Leo XIII articulated both. The pope who signed Æterni Patris in 1879 is the same who signed Annum Sacrum in 1899. Total coherence.

XII.Chronology

XIII.Sources and bibliography

XIV.Frequently asked questions