precise date of this work cannot be ascertained, but it contains references to the decisions of the Lateran council of 1139, and there is fair authority for believing that it was completed while Pope Alexander III. was still simply professor of theology at Bologna,—in other words, prior to 1150. The labours of Gratian are said to have been rewarded with the bishopric of Chiusi, but if so he appears never to have been consecrated; at least his name is not in any authentic list of those who have occupied that see. The year of his death is unknown.
For some account of the Decretum Gratiani and its history see Canon Law. The best edition is that of Friedberg (Corpus juris canonici, Leipzig, 1879). Compare Schultze, Zur Geschichte der Litteratur über das Decret Gratians (1870), Die Glosse zum Decret Gratians (1872), and Geschichte der Quellen und Litteratur des kanonischen Rechts (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1875).
GRATRY, AUGUSTE JOSEPH ALPHONSE (1805–1872),
French author and theologian, was born at Lille on the 10th of
March 1805. He was educated at the École Polytechnique,
Paris, and, after a period of mental struggle which he has
described in Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, he was ordained priest
in 1832. After a stay at Strassburg as professor of the Petit
Séminaire, he was appointed director of the Collège Stanislas
in Paris in 1842 and, in 1847, chaplain of the École Normale
Supérieure. He became vicar-general of Orleans in 1861,
professor of ethics at the Sorbonne in 1862, and, on the death of
Barante, a member of the French Academy in 1867, where he
occupied the seat formerly held by Voltaire. Together with M.
Pététot, curé of Saint Roch, he reconstituted the Oratory of the
Immaculate Conception, a society of priests mainly devoted to
education. Gratry was one of the principal opponents of the
definition of the dogma of papal infallibility, but in this respect
he submitted to the authority of the Vatican Council. He died
at Montreux in Switzerland on the 6th of February 1872.
His chief works are: De la connaissance de Dieu, opposing Positivism (1855); La Logique (1856); Les Sources, conseils pour la conduite de l’esprit (1861–1862); La Philosophie du credo (1861); Commentaire sur l’évangile de Saint Matthieu (1863); Jésus-Christ, lettres à M. Renan (1864); Les Sophistes et la critique (in controversy with E. Vacherot) (1864); La Morale et la loi de l’histoire, setting forth his social views (1868); Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans et Mgr. l’archevêque de Malines (1869), containing a clear exposition of the historical arguments against the doctrine of papal infallibility. There is a selection of Gratry’s writings and appreciation of his style by the Abbé Pichot, in Pages choisies des Grands Écrivains series, published by Armand-Colin (1897). See also the critical study by the oratorian A. Chauvin, L’Abbé Gratry (1901); Le Père Gratry (1900), and Les Derniers Jours du Père Gratry et son testament spirituel, (1872), by Cardinal Adolphe Perraud, Gratry’s friend and disciple.
GRATTAN, HENRY (1746–1820), Irish statesman, son of
James Grattan, for many years recorder of Dublin, was born
in Dublin on the 3rd of July 1746. He early gave evidence
of exceptional gifts both of intellect and character. At
Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished career, he
began a lifelong devotion to classical literature and especially
to the great orators of antiquity. He was called to the Irish
bar in 1772, but never seriously practised the law. Like Flood,
with whom he was on terms of friendship, he cultivated his
natural genius for eloquence by study of good models, including
Bolingbroke and Junius. A visit to the English House of Lords
excited boundless admiration for Lord Chatham, of whose style
of oratory Grattan contributed an interesting description to
Baratariana (see Flood, Henry). The influence of Flood did
much to give direction to Grattan’s political aims; and it was
through no design on Grattan’s part that when Lord Charlemont
brought him into the Irish parliament in 1775, in the very session
in which Flood damaged his popularity by accepting office,
Grattan quickly superseded his friend in the leadership of the
national party. Grattan was well qualified for it. His oratorical
powers were unsurpassed among his contemporaries. He
conspicuously lacked, indeed, the grace of gesture which he so
much admired in Chatham; he had not the sustained dignity
of Pitt; his powers of close reasoning were inferior to those of
Fox and Flood. But his speeches were packed with epigram,
and expressed with rare felicity of phrase; his terse and telling
sentences were richer in profound aphorisms and maxims of
political philosophy than those of any other statesman save
Burke; he possessed the orator’s incomparable gift of conveying
his own enthusiasm to his audience and convincing them of the
loftiness of his aims.
The principal object of the national party was to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the English privy council. By virtue of Poyning’s Act, a celebrated statute of Henry VII., all proposed Irish legislation had to be submitted to the English privy council for its approval under the great seal of England before being passed by the Irish parliament. A bill so approved might be accepted or rejected, but not amended. More recent English acts had further emphasized the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the English Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy. The menacing attitude of the Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to resist the agitation no longer. It was through ranks of volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on the 16th of April 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. “I found Ireland on her knees,” Grattan exclaimed, “I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!” After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The gratitude of his countrymen to Grattan found expression in a parliamentary grant of £100,000, which had to be reduced by one half before he would consent to accept it.
One of the first acts of “Grattan’s parliament” was to prove its loyalty to England by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the navy. Grattan himself never failed in loyalty to the crown and the English connexion. He was, however, anxious for moderate parliamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favoured Catholic emancipation. It was, indeed, evident that without reform the Irish House of Commons would not be able to make much use of its newly won independence. Though now free from constitutional control it was no less subject than before to the influence of corruption, which the English government had wielded through the Irish borough owners, known as the “undertakers,” or more directly through the great executive officers. “Grattan’s parliament” had no control over the Irish executive. The lord lieutenant and his chief secretary continued to be appointed by the English ministers; their tenure of office depended on the vicissitudes of English, not Irish, party politics; the royal prerogative was exercised in Ireland on the advice of English ministers. The House of Commons was in no sense representative of the Irish people. The great majority of the people were excluded as Roman Catholics from the franchise; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the absolute disposal of single patrons, whose support was bought by a lavish distribution of peerages and pensions. It was to give stability and true independence to the new constitution that Grattan pressed for reform. Having quarrelled with Flood over “simple repeal” Grattan also differed from him on the question of maintaining the Volunteer Convention. He opposed the policy of protective duties, but supported Pitt’s famous commercial propositions in 1785 for establishing free trade between Great Britain and Ireland, which, however, had to be abandoned owing to the hostility of the English mercantile classes. In general Grattan supported the government for a time after 1782, and in particular spoke and voted for the stringent coercive legislation rendered necessary by the Whiteboy outrages in 1785; but as the years passed without Pitt’s personal favour towards parliamentary reform bearing fruit in legislation, he gravitated towards the opposition, agitated for commutation of tithes in Ireland, and supported the Whigs
