In a consistorial allocution of 5th November, 1855, Pius IX. gave expression to the joy which it afforded him to have obtained, after so much tedious negotiation, such happy results. The following year, on the 17th of March, he addressed a brief to the bishops of the Austrian Empire, exhorting them to avail themselves of the spiritual independence which they had once more won, in order to guard their dioceses against the ravages of rationalism and indifference. (M58) Meanwhile, new difficulties arose in Spain and Spanish America. The government of Isabella II., regretting the good to which it had so recently been a party, commenced a new war against the church. Notwithstanding the Concordat, it exposed for sale such ecclesiastical property as was not yet sold, forbade religious communities of women to receive novices, and forcibly removed several bishops from their dioceses. The excesses were such that Pius IX. was obliged to recall his representative from Madrid. There were similar persecutions in the South American Republics and in Mexico. The congress of Mexico forbade monastic vows, banished the Archbishop of Mexico, and imprisoned the Bishop of Michoacan. Germany, at the same time, was not without its troubles. A learned theologian of the diocese of Cologne, Dr. Anthony Gunther, had allowed himself to drift from the sure ways of tradition, imperceptibly gliding into rationalism, and confounding reason and faith. His ideas had partisans in several countries of Germany. The vigilant eye of Pius IX. discovered in them germs of heresy, which it was important to check before they attained development. Gunther, on being condemned, accepted humbly the judgment of the Holy See. But there was a long contest with some of his partisans who were less pious than himself.