Popes

Almost alone among the Pope's advisers, Muratori wanted to abolish days which provoked popular superstition. The bishops hardly thought that even a Pope could act against a people's wishes. While Muratori wanted to destroy days for which common people cared passionately, bishops recommended the Pope to make possible the abolition of days for which people cared little. Others, like Archbishop Vidal of Messina , wished to change nothing. And some of both sides raised the most interesting of all the questions: whether this revived demand for more working days did not show a new desire, at least in some working men, to gain a higher standard of living? Archbishop Davanzati of Trani was sure that most people would be glad and grateful for fewer feasts.

These never-ending local battles caused several Popes to give anxious consideration to the law. The first Pope of the eighteenth century, Clement XI, held an agonizing series of consistories to debate the issue, without result. Catholic governments in quest of order started little by little to disregard the rules; and even when they nominally accepted the rules, local sergeants had small patience if a murderer sat almost unprotected within their grasp. In 1701-2 the republic of Venice reserved the right to fetch suspected murderers out of church, and would not allow sanctuary for deserters from the army or for men banished.

But whatever the defence, and whatever the reluctance of Popes to depart from the 'uninterrupted' traditions of the Church, they must step by step concede. For if they refused a little, governments might take all. Therefore Popes gradually conceded until over the decades they conceded nearly all.

Popes removed the right of sanctuary from anyone whose act resulted in death or serious injury (except by accident or self-defence), forgers of papal letters, police officers who wrongly drag men out of sanctuary, men who pose as police officers to rob houses, bank clerks who embezzle funds, makers or knowing passers of forged or debased coins; 55 all homicides (except by accident or self-defence, not only those who kill with weapons in churches, and not only laymen - Clement XII, In supremo, 1735, applied only to Papal States but afterwards applied by his successor on the widest front, adding that to kill 'with weapons' including killing with sticks or stones). Benedict XIV considered the many cases where a criminal did not kill a man outright but gave him a mortal wound from which he died in the next few days or weeks. The criminal ran to church and had sanctuary because he had not killed before his victim died.

Bernini has been said to be the first artist who sought to unite in a whole the painting, the sculpture, and the structure of the building. Between 1656 and 1667 he built the greatest of his works, the piazza of St. Peter's. He designed a square to embrace 100,000 or more pilgrims before the steps of the basilica, to receive a Pope's blessing; surrounded by colonnades to protect processions or pilgrims from heat and rain, but not so high as to prevent a blessing Pope from being seen by all the crowd; incorporating the old entry to the papal palace and the royal staircase. He himself imagined the arms of the colonnades to be like the arms of Mother Church reaching out to embrace her children.

In the Lutheran north musical genius began to change the conditions of Catholic music and worship. Bach and Handel, writing for Protestant churches, learnt from the flourishing tradition of Catholic music. But they were not restricted by decrees of popes and synods, or by the feeling among heirs of the Counter-Reformation that musical innovation was somehow unCatholic or by the wishes of an Italian working population for music which they could enjoy. They had freedom to develop a tradition to its height. The flowering of Protestant church music during the first half of the eighteenth century brought to bear upon Munich and Vienna a new kind of influence.