new sciences, when in conflict with revealed doctrine, were in fact 'erroneous'. This was 'papal infallibility' in action but, in addition, the doctrine of magisterium was also reintroduced and redefined. It was enforced by what Lester Kurtz says was the most far-reaching change-the attempt to make the Gregorian University, the most important university in the Catholic world, a major centre for Thomistic studies. Crucial appointments were made, to change the balance of power within the university, to ensure that it conformed to the new papal orthodoxy. The Curia was more concerned than ever with perpetuating old ideas, understood as still sufficient, rather than discovering new ones.69 As if all this were not enough, in 1893 Leo issued Providentissimus Deus , which aimed to contain the new scholarship regarding the Bible. This edict argued, more than thirty years after Darwin, and nearly sixty years after Strauss and Lyell, that 'a profitable understanding of sacred writings' could not be achieved by way of the 'earthly sciences'. Wisdom comes from above, reiterated the edict, and of course on these matters the pope was infallible. The papal document dismissed the charge that the Bible contained forgeries and falsehoods and pointed out that science was 'so far from the final truth that they [the scientists] are perpetually modifying and supplementing it'.70 Yet another way to stifle debate on biblical matters came in the form of a Biblical Commission, which Leoappointed in1902. Inanapostolic letter Vigilantiae , heannounced that the commission would be made up of men of learning whose duty was to interpret the divine text in a manner 'demanded by our times' and that this interpretation would henceforth 'be shielded not only from every breath of error, but also from every temerarious [reckless] opinion'.71 Leo's final attempt to stem the tide was his apostolic letter Testem benevolentiae , which denounced 'Americanism' as heresy. This extraordinary move reflected the inherent conflict between democracy and monarchy and the views of some conservative Catholics in Europe, who thought that the American Catholic elite were guilty of undermining the church through their support of 'liberals, evolutionists...and by talking forever of liberty, of respect for the individual, of initiative, of natural virtues, of sympathy for our age'.72 In Testem benevolentiae , the pope declared his 'affection' for the American people but his main aim was to 'point out certain things which are to be avoided and corrected'. He said that efforts to adapt Catholicism to the modern world were doomed to failure because 'the Catholic faith is not a philosophical theory that human beings can elaborate, but a divine deposit that is to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared'. He likewise insisted on the fundamental difference between religious authority and political authority: the church's authority came from God and could not be questioned, whereas political authority comes from the people.73 The dilemma that faced the Vatican at the end of the nineteenth century, the century of Lyell, Darwin, Strauss, Comte, Marx, Spencer, Quetelet, Maxwell and so many others, was that a strategy to keep the still-faithful within the church could never appeal to those who had already fled the fold-it could only ever be a holding action. In 1903, when Pius X ascended the papal throne, he did so believing that 'the number of enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly'. He said he was convinced that only believers could be 'on the side of order and have the power to restore calm in the midst of this upheaval'.74 He therefore took it upon himself to continue Leo's fight against modernism, and with renewed vigour. In Lamentabili , his decree of 1907, he condemned sixty-five specific propositions of modernism, including the biblical criticisms, and reasserted the doctrine of the principle of the mystery of faith. Yet more books were placed on the Index and candidates for higher orders were obliged to swear allegiance to the pope, in a form of words which required their rejection of modernist ideas. Lamentabili reasserted the role of dogma one more time, in the famous phrase: 'Faith is an act of the intellect made under the sway of the will.'75 Faithful Catholics across the world were grateful for the Vatican's closely reasoned arguments and its firm stance. By 1907, fundamental discoveries in the sciences were coming quick and fast-the electron, the quantum, the unconscious and, most of all, perhaps, the gene, which explained how Darwin's natural selection could take place. It was good to have a rock in a turbulent world. Beyond the Catholic church, however, few people were listening. While the Vatican wrestled with its own modernist crisis, the wider movement in the arts, also known as modernism, marked the final arrival of the post-romantic/post-industrial revolution/post-French Revolution and post-American Civil War sensibility. As Nietzsche had foreseen, the death of God would unleash new forces. 'Christianity resolved to find that the world was