158 KOSCIOL
Despite the Tsarist government's refusal to compromise over the treatment of
Catholics and Uniates, political pressures drove the Vatican to regulate its rela-
tions with Russia wherever possible. Not surprisingly, the Concordat of 1847,
signed on the initiative of the reforming Pius IX, soon proved to be an empty
instrument. Remonstrations by the western powers at the Conference of Paris,
where Russia was obliged to restate its adherence to religious liberty, actually
provoked the Tsarist authorities to increase their harassment of Catholics. The
suppression of the January Rising was followed by a wave of terror. On this
occasion, the Pope's initial reticence was interpreted in St. Petersburg as a sign
of weakness, whilst his belated protests inspired a vindictive response. In an
audience in December 1865, the Tsarist charge d'affaires in Rome insolently
told the Pope that 'Catholicism is equivalent to Revolution'. A formal break in
relations was unavoidable. In the ensuing period, the Catholic Church in Russia
survived a concerted attack, which did not end until the signing in 1883 of a sec-
ond Concordat as inconclusive and as unsatisfactory as the first. There was sim-
ply no means wbereby an autocratic government could be constrained to
honour its obligations. As a result, ordinary people in Poland were sorely
tempted to think that the Holy Father had abandoned them, and hence to
believe that their own brand of Catholicism was more Catholic than the Pope.
The traditional practices of the Church were defended with vigour against
all the innovatory ideas of the Age. The torrent of speculative philosophy ema-
nating from Germany was viewed in Catholic circles as a new Reformation,
and when Polish Messianism began to assume religious as well as political
overtones its propagators soon earned ecclesiastical condemnation. In this
respect, both the writings of Bronislaw Trentowski (1808-69) in Freiburg and
the activities of the adventist sect founded among Polish emigres in Paris by
Andrzej Towiafiski (1799-1878) were roundly denounced. Among many writ-
ers who entered the list in defence of conservative Catholic values, Feliks
Kozlowski (1803—82.) published a critique of Trentowski entitled Poczqtki
filozofii cbrzescijariskiej (The Beginnings of Christian philosophy, 1845).
Michat Grabowski (1804-63), dubbed 'the Primate' of Catholic publicists,
attempted to steal the thunder of the nationalist Romantics by writing histor-
ical novels of a distinctly sentimental and devotional flavour. In the company
of Bishop Ignacy Holowinski (1807-55) and of his fellow novelist, Henryk
Rzewuski, he organized the so-called 'Coterie of Saint Petersburg' - a group of
ultra-loyalist, ultra-Catholic Poles centred in the Russian capital around the
weekly Tygodnik petersburgski. Favoured both by the Tsarist authorities and
the Roman hierarchy, they nourished a distinct branch of Polish public opin-
ion which lasted throughout the nineteenth century.
None the less, the Polish clergy frequently shared the radical ideals of national
and social reformers. The low clergy in particular, who knew the privations of
the common people and the impositions of officialdom at first hand, professed
a far more fundamental brand of Catholicism than their superiors, and supplied
a steady stream of activist recruits to the political movements of their day. No