UC-NRLF B 2 flDfl 15M BISHOP! 1827. iiiiiiiuifiurSt ra^» • •« £[JLATE CONCEPT DEC. 8^^ 1 8 54'. ON THE IHRONE" 'Great IN EXILE" "Great in Pri5- ^.^h vMt-'t?i^mt mm oia e.rft .IBRARY JHIVEa ITY OF CAtlfORNIA I ■ti-ST INSPIRES AND PROTECTS HIS VICAR. "''^■' ICE WHICH CHASTISES Mi.N, 'OH RAVES THEIM. LIFE OF PIUS IX. DOWN TO THE EPISCOPAL JUBILEE OP 1877. BY Eet. BERNARD O'REILLY. ^Unurn gestit ne ignorata damnetur:'' [Tkbtullian.] FIFTH EDITION, ISTEW YORK: P. F. COLLIEE, PUBLISHER, 38 Park Place. 1877. iOAN STACK Copyright, 1877, By P. F. CoLUKB. KewTork i jr. J. Uttto A Ca, Trtnten, 1« u> to Astor llM*. To His Eminence John Cardinal McClosket, Archbishop of New York. Your Eminence : No task is more difficult for tlie painter than to produce for an enlightened and devoted family a portrait of an absent father so natural and life-like that each one of his children, in gazing on the dear, familiar features, forgets both the work and the workman in the delightful illusion which seems to recall the sunny smile, the living voice, the warm heart, the life-long tenderness, and all the virtues of his worshiped parent. If, in your judgment, the all-too-imperfect sketch attempted in the following pages of One who has gloriously filled the Chair of Peter even longer than Peter himself, and whose long-suffering and greatness of soul have made him most dear and venerable to the whole earth, can recall to you, whom he has raised nearest to his own sublime dignity and bound to himself by the pledge of so close a love, some one feature of the great Father of Christendom, then ia the author not ill-satisfied with his work. He can then hope that in every Catholic home in which these chapters are read, the light of the heroic life of Pius IX. shall warm all true hearts to a firmer faith and more generous deeds, and remind all that by honoring in your person a long and spotless career of priestly excellence and episcopal devotion, Pius IX. has honored themselves, their country, and the Church of America. Begging your Eminence to accept this humble tribute of filial respect, and to bless the book and the author, he remains. Your attached and faithful -servant, B. O'Eeillt. New Tobz, July 8, 1877. 629 APPEOBATION OP HIS EMINENCE THE CARDINAL-AKCHBISHOP OF JS^EW YOEK. From Bight Beo. Dr. Foley ^ Bishop-Administrator of Chicago. 1 return you my hearty thanks for the advance sheets of your Life of our Holy Father, Pius IX. As far as I have read them, they have given me entire satisfaction. It is- the Life which is destined to live in English. Very faithfully, Thomas Foley, BisJiop of Chicago. AUTHOE'S PEEFAOE. THIS book, whateyer its merits or demerits, is the partial result of a design long cherished, the fruit of many years of conscien- tious study and careful observation. The author, while yet a school-boy — in 1831-32 — remembers being startled and shocked by an angry discussion about the insurrection just then occurring in the Papal States. One of the disputants con- tended that the discontent of the insurgents was created by a secular system of misgoyemment, "unprogressiveness," "blind repression," and ''ignorantism," so intolerable that human nature could not en- dure it. It became thenceforth a passion with the author to read every- thing that could throAv light on the state of Italy, and enable him to trace out the causes of the chronic discontent and unrest to which her populations were a prey, breaking out, as they did, periodically, into sanguinary violence and the fierce manifestations of a spirit so anti- Catholic, so anti-Christian, so unholy, that it seemed unaccountable to most people, while by others it was asserted to be the natural growth of a soil cursed by priestly government. He perfectly remembers reading in the newspapers, the period- icals, and the books of travel of that day, of the rising in the Eomagna, the Marches, and Umbria, of the appearance on the scene of the two young Bonapartes, one of whom was said to have been mortally wounded at Forli, while the survivor, in command of a company of insurgent cavalry, was said to have been saved by the generous interference of the patriotic and devoted Archbishop Mas- tai of Spoleto, soon afterward Archbishop-bishop of Imola. Then, also, Mazzini and his vast revolutionary league of "Young Italy" began to loom up before our eyes on this side of the Atlantic, in- vested by public opinion with the dread mysterious power of " The Old Man of the Mountain " in the time of the early crusades. Thus the personages who are most conspicuous in the following pages became thenceforward familiar to the writer ; they seemed to V vi AiUhors Preface. travel the same road with him, as he adyanced from boyhood to manhood and old age. He saw the Mazzinian conspiracy growing steadily in power and influence, inoculating with the deadly virus of its anti-Christian principles and its anti-Catholic passions the minds and hearts of the young and ambitious throughout the Italian Peninsula, filling tlie souls of the middle classes everywhere with an insatiable ambition of climbing into place and power over the ruins of existing institu- tions, and sedulously educating the needy, the idle, the vicious population of the cities, in the notion that the Church, the papacy, the government of priests, was the sole obstacle between them and wealth and happiness and unlimited liberty. The agitation fomented by Young Italy, and the vast network of secret societies or " sects " connected with or dependent on it, was as regular and as irresistible in its '* movements" as the tides in the ocean. And soon after 1832 the subversive and demoralizing influ- ence of these dark and dangerous associations began to receive in- credible sympathy and a mighty accession of moral force from the countenance and co-operation of the various Bible Societies and Protestant alliances for the *' conversion" of Italy. Into this movement against the ancient and sacred rights of the Holy See we behold England dragged, reluctantly at first, but af- terward unresistingly, by the evil counsels of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone. While Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, become ruler of Prance in 1848, never for one instant ceased, even when sending his army to restore Pius IX., to conspire secretly or co-operate openly with Piedmont in promoting the sacrilegious spoliations which have left the Holy Father nothing but the uncertain freedom of his prison in the Vatican. Such is the succession of events in this book. The lessons inculcated by them are eloquent enough of them- solves. Protestant writers, the avowed enemies of the Papacy, shall tell the reader that the baneful change was anything but desired by the overwhelming majority of the true " people," or anything but a blessing to them and their beautiful country ; while these same Protestants shall clearly show that the people of Italy under priestly influence and Papal rule were most happy, most enlightened, most monil, most manly and independent. Ab to the invasion of the Roman territory in September, 1870, a Author s Preface, vii letter published by Georges Seigneur, on January tlie lOtli, 1873, attempts to exonerate the Emperor Napoleon III. from all com- plicity with his ally, Victor Emmanuel. The writer of the letter affirms that the exiled emperor, in March of the preceding year, expressed himself in the following manner : **The situation forced upon the sovereign pontiff at the present moment, by events which I could not control, is a sad, a cruel, but a most convincing proof of the necessity of the temporal power for the Head of the Church. "The keenest sorrow I have experienced in my exile arises from my present inability to free the Head of the Church, who is also my son's godfather, as well as my being powerless to renew the crusade of 1849 and that of Mentana." This retraction, whatever may be its authenticity or its sincerity, is here given, lest the severe judgment pronounced in this book on the ex-emperor should be accepted by the reader without the atten- uating circumstances which may plead before living judges in favor of one who has undergone the judgment of God. July the SOth, 1877. TABLE OF CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. Birth, 7— Boyhood, 13— Early Education, 15. 1792-1809. CHAPTER II. Vocation to the Priesthood, 19 — Preparation for the Priesthood, 21 — Trials, 23 —Perseverance, 25 — Pius VII. and Giovanni Masta'i, 27. 1809-1814. CHAPTER III. Theological Studies, 29— First Labors for the Poor and the Ignorant, 30— The Crown of a Noble Ambition, 31 — A True Mother's Reward, 33. 1814-1818. CHAPTER IV. Labors among the Orphan Boys, 35 — Sent to Chili with the Delegate Apostolic, 37 — Labors in the Industrial Schools of Rome, 41 — ^Appointed Archbishop of Spoleto, 42. 1819-1827. CHAPTER V. Consecrated Archbishop of Spoleto, 43 — State of Umbria, 45 — ^What Religion has done with the People, 47 — Causes of Disaffection and Disorder, 49 — Administrative Career in Spoleto, 51 — Appointed to Imola, 55. 1827-1832. CHAPTER VI. Christian Glories of Imola, 57 — Characteristics of the People, 58 — Political Passions, 59 — Orsini's Youthful Visions of Italian Liberty, 60 — Superior Education given to the Clergy, 61 — Sisters of Charity in Imola ; and the Jesuits called to Aid in Religious Instruction, 62 — The Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd, 63 — ^Political Conspiracies, 64 — The Archbishop nearly Carried off, 65 — ^Archbishop Mastai" elevated to the Cardinalate, 66 — Hia Filial Devotion to his Mother, 67— Death of Gregory XVI., 67. 1832-1846. ix X Table of Contents, CHAPTER VII. From Imola to the Conclave, 69— Anticipations and Prognostics, 71— Conflicting Interests and Pretensions of so-called Catholic Powers, 73— Division in the College of Cardinals, 75— Political Excitement in Rome and throughout Italy at the Opening of the Conclave, 77— Causes of Disaffection and Dis- order, 79— The Cardinals hasten to Elect Mastaf, 80— His Hesitation, 80. June, 1846. CHAPTER VIII. How the Announcement waa received, 81— Letter of Pius IX. to his Brothers announcing his Elevation, and his Sense of its Dignity and Responsibilities, 82— Fears of his Sister, 83 — Wrath of the Austrian Ambassador, 84 — Hesi- tancy about appointing an Administration, 85 — Plans laid by Mazzini to Frustrate all the Intentions of Pius IX., 86— State of Umbria, 87— "The Sects," 88— Leo XII. as a Reformer, 89— Noble Deeds of Pius IX., 91— The Question of Amnesty, 94 — Amnesty Granted, 95 — Enthusiasm and Joy of the Citizens, 96 — First Papal Allocution, 97. June and July, 1846. CHAPTER IX. The Enthusiasm continues, 99— Intrigues and Plots, 100 — Galletti in the Pres- ence Chamber at the Feet of the Pope, 101 — Oath of Allegiance made by Galletti, 101— Sincere Desire of the Pope for Reform, 103— A Divided Pub- lic Opinion, 105— Why Pope Pius IX. did not play Sixtus V., 105— Alms in the Ghetto or Jews' Quarter, 106. June-July, 1846. CHAPTER X. Fdse Notions about the Backward State of Italy, 107— To what Causes Decay and Stagnation should be Traced, 108— Strategy of the Radicals, 109— Never to be Satisfied with any Concession of Pius IX., 109, 110— Great Reform in Ecclesiastical and other Institutions made by Pius IX. in Rome, 111— Sci- entific Congress in Genoa converted into a Revolutionary Convention, 112 ^Calamities that helped the Mazzinian Agitation, 113— Scarcity of Food and Riots, 114— The Pope takes Possession of St. John Lateran ; Fifty Thou- sand People present at the Ceremonial, 115— Pius IX. gives the Blessing to the Crowd, followed by a mighty Qiorus of enthusiastic Joy, 116. July-November, 1846. CHAPTER XI. EedeslasUcal Acta of Pius IX., 118— First Encyclical to the Hierarchy, fore- ^ladowlng the chief Teachings of his Pontificate, 119— Inundations at 122— Relief distributed personally by the Holy Father when he Table of Contents, xi visited the SufEerers, 123 — Great Liberality of tlie Pope towards tlie Jews, 124 — Celebration at Genoa, 135 — Growing Discontent of Austria, 136. Noyember-December, 1846. CHAPTER XII. Grand New- Year's Demonstration by tbe Clubs in boner of the Pope, 139 — A Consultative Body of influential Laymen, 138 — His Holiness resolved to improve every Branch of the Administration requiring Reform, 139 — These Measures only increase the Discontent of the Radicals, 131 — Reforms an- nounced by the Pope, 133 — Encyclical on the Famine in Ireland, 134 — National Festival ostensibly held to Celebrate the Founding of Rome, but in reality to talk Politics and excite the People, 136 — Resentment of Austria increasing, 137. January-June, 1847. CHAPTER XIIL The Pope's Popularity Unsought, 139 — Pastoral Labors in behalf of the Roman People, 141 — Pilgrimage of O'Connell to Rome undertaken in the month of May ; he Sickens and Dies at Genoa ; his Heart taken to Rome, 143 — Obsequies and Panegyric of O'Connell, 143— Efforts to restore Diplomatic Relations between Rome and England marred by Palmerston's anti-Catholic Policy, 144 — Plots and Counter-plots in Rome, 145 — Festivities of June 17th, 146 — Various Causes of Agitation and Discontent, 147 — Sanfedists, or Holy Faith Men, 148 — Creation of Roman Civic Guard decreed by the Pope, 149 — The supposed Conservative Conspiracy, 159 — Rome ruled by Mob Law, .153 — Position and Policy of the Papacy, 155 — Guizot's Efforts paralyzed by Palmerston, 157 — Strategy of the Radicals ; Austria withdraws its Forces from the Papal States, 159. 1847. CHAPTER XIV. Heroic Spirit of Pins IX., 160— He pursues steadily his Course of Reform, 161 — Opening of the Council of State, 163— Count Rossi urges Secularization of Government, 163— Roman Clubs triumph over Defeat of the Sonderbund, 167—" Down with the Jesuits ! " 168— Congratulations from America to Pius IX., 171. 1847. CHAPTER XV. New-Tear's Procession Forbidden, 173— Mazzini in Paris planning Revolutions, 175— The Tricolor Flag in Rome, 176— Petitions for a Regular Army, 177 —Pius IX. 's steady Patriotism ; Appeals to his People, 179— Increase of Discontent, 183— The Mass of the Subjects Faithful, 184— Reforms an- nounced by the Pope, 185. January, 1848. XIV Table of ConteJtts. CHAPTER XXV. Pius IX. once more in St. Peter's, 303— Hearty Welcome from the True Hearted, 804— Attempt to Plre the Quirinal, 307 — Mazzini proclaims a new Crusade ; Cruflade succeeds in its Purpose, 309— Cardinal Antonelli and Pius IX., 311. 1850. CHAPTER XXVI. 1850 a Tear of Jubilee ; Beatification of American Saints, 313— Piedmont pur- sues her anti-Catholic Policy, 315 — Solemn Definition of the Immaculate Conception, 317— Private Life of Pius IX.; his Official Duties, 323 — His Love of Students and Children, 335— The Slave Girl from New Orleans, 827 — The Plague and the French Garrison, 328 — Followers of Garibaldi taken Prisoners ; Pius IX. Consoles and Cares for them, though his Ene- mies, 828. 1850-1855. CHAPTER XXVII. Working of the New Institutions, 329— Judged by Thiers, 330— By Palmerston, 880— Baron Sauzet on Roman Legislation, 831 — The Mazzinian Gallotti's Opinion ; Administration of Roman Law, 332 — How the Rights of the Poor are tenderly cared for, 333 — What prevented the Pope's Reforms from being Effectual, 333— Duplicity and Sacrilegious Haste of Piedmont, 333 — The Ro- man Question in the Congress of Paris, 334— Cavour's Calumnies refuted by Count de Rayneval, 335— Second Encyclical on Italy, 886 — The Pope resolves to Tisit his Dominions, 337. 1850-1857. CHAPTER XXVIII. Modern Borne created amid Ruins, 830— Catholic Creations throughout the Campagna, 840 — Piedmont undoing what the Popes had done, 341 — An In- stance on the Pope's Route, 342- Monte Soratte and its Monasteries, 342— A serious Tour of Inspection ; the Pope's Journey, 844 — Work done and Improvements ordered, 844— Munificence of Pius IX., 345— Royal Visitors, 84((— The Pope in Modena and Tuscany, 846— His Return to Rome, 347— The true Mortara Case, 847— The Mazzinians impatient, 347— Orsini's At- tempt to Murder Napoleon III., 848— When and how the War of 1859 was Planned, 849— Europe mystified by Napoleon and Cavour, 350— Garibaldi's Ezecntiye Programme, 850. 1857-1859. CHAPTER XXIX. The War b^gim, 858— Solidarity between Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel, 853 —Lord Derby as a Peacemaker laughed at by Cavour, 858— Prince Napo- leon in Taseanj and the Romagna, 854— Piedmontism triumphant in the Ptpol Territory, 855— The Church Despoiled firet and Degraded afterward, Table of Contents, xv 855 — Tlie Bisliops of the Marches tell a Tale, 355 — The Jesuits Eobbed and Outraged, 357 — Father Beckx Protests, 359 — The Pope hemmed in by Rev- olutionary Forces, 360 — He Excommunicates the Invaders ; Denunciation by French Publicists and Bishops ; Bishop Dupanloup's scathing Rebuke of Napoleon, 360 — Louis Veuillot pre-eminent in the Defense of the Holy See, 364^His Journal suppressed, 366 — Crusade for the Pope, 367. 1859-1860. CHAPTER XXX. The Pontifical Army intended for Defense, 369 — The Pope Exhorted and En- couraged to form an Army, 370 — The Right to employ Foreigners, 370 — Vol- unteers of 1860, 370 — The Sons of the Crusaders, 371 — De Merode, De La Mo- riciere, 372 — Concerted Action between Napoleon and Cavour, 372 — Plans of the latter, 372 — He resolves to " do quickly," 372 — Brutal and insulting Proclamations, 373 — Bad Faith of Cavour and his Generals, 373 — La Mori- ciere unprepared for Piedmontese Aggression, 374 — ^Violation of all Right and Law by the Piedmontese, 375 — ^Perilous March, 18th September, of La Moriciere, 366 — Brave De Pimodan mortally Wounded, 376 — Fall of An- cona, 377 — ^Protest of Russia and Prussia, 378 — Complicity 'of France and England, 378— Retribution, 378 — ^Allocutions, 379 — A third Pamphlet from Napoleon, 385 — Antonelli Replies, 385 — Death of Cavour, 388. 1860-1862. CHAPTER XXXI. Guizot's Views on the Social State of Europe in 1861, 389— Baron Ricasoli urges the Holy Father to abdicate his Temporal Sovereignty, 390— The Hierarchy invited to the Canonization of 1862, 392— The Pope's Address to the Bishops, 393— Solemn Condemnation of Modern Errors, 395-398 — The Encyclical (Quanta Cura and the Sylldbus, 398-401. 1862-1865. CHAPTER XXXn. The September Convention, 402 — How Interpreted by the Parties themselves, 403 — French Army of Occupation withdrawn from Rome, 404 — The Centen- ary of the Martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, 405 — Contrast betwen the Can- onizations in Rome and the Industrial Exhibition in Paris, 409 — Artists in Rome protest that the Temporal Power is necessary, 407 — Beatification Decrees Signed, 409 — Vast Multitude of Pilgrims, Priests, and Bishops, 410 — The Allocution, 411 — Celebration, 411 — Magnificent Address of the Bishops, 415 — Touching Presentation from the Hundred Cities of Italy, 416 — Crowning Glories of the Centenary, 419. September, 1864-July, 1867. CHAPTER XXXIII. Qaribaldian Campaign against Rome, 421 — Defeat of Mentana, 421 — Pius IX. urges the Preparations for the Council, 421 — His Motive not a Definition of xvi Table of Contents. Pontifical Infallibility, but the Intellectural and Moral Well-being of Chris- tendom, 42a— The Citadel of truth to be Impregnable to Modern Assailants, 424— First Consultations about a General Council, 434— Commission of Direc- tion, 425— Measures for ascertaining the Needs of all Countries, 425— Impu- tation of Personal Pride, 425— Dawn of the " Old Catholic" Conspiracy pre- ceded the Pope's design, 426— Dollinger's Career, Position, Influence, 427 —He becomes the deadly Foe of Ultramontanes ; resolves to use the Bava- rian Govemment agidnst the Papacy, 427— Bull of Indiction or Convocation, 427 The Pope's purpose clearly Manifested, 429 — Invitation to the Orien- tals, 429— To Protestants and non-Catholics, 429— The Pope's Golden Jubi- lee of Priesthood, 430 — Dollinger begins his Crusade against the Council, 432 —The Pope made to appear the Tool of the Curia and the Jesuits, 432 — Jesuits held up as the worst Enemies of the Church and State, 434 — All this in- spired by a Calumny of *' Janus," 434— Peremptory Proofs, 435— The Dis- cns^n on Pontifical Infallibility forced upon the Council, 439 — The final UBiie«448. Septembeb, 1867-Jult, 1870. CHAPTER XXXIV. The Fptnoo-Prussian War and the Invasion of Rome, 447— The Pope's Protest before the Diplomatic Body, 448 — Encyclical on the Last Spoliation, 449 — Nat>oth will not give up to Achab the Inheritance of his Fathers, 151— How the Youth of Italy were perverted, 451 — Processes used by Jacobins, by Mazzini and Garibaldi, 454 — The Irish Bishops and Pius IX., 457 — Reaction among Catholic Youth of Italy, 459 — Noble Behavior of Roman Ladies, 460 Boman Patriciate head the Movement, 460— Fidelity in every Department of the Pontifical Service, 461. Septembeb, 1870— August, 1871. CHAPTER XXXV. "The Days of Peter" surpassed by Pius IX., 467— Celebration of August 28, 1871, 460— The Pope declines a Golden Throne and the Title of " Great," 469-471- Further Suppressions and Confiscations by thePiedmontese, 471 — The Pope nobly defends the Jesuits, 472— He denounces the '* Guarantees" t8 a Fraud, 474— How the Persecution in Germany began, 475-478— Catholic Congreeses in Germany, 479, 480— Catholic Congress for Italy, 480— Noble Men, Noble Words, and Noble Deeds, 481-483— The First American Pilgrim- •ge, 484— The Fruit of Catholic Unions, 485— The Pope praises and blesses America, 480— The American Cardinalate, 487— The Laval University given Rank among the great Catholic Universities, 487— Centenary of the See of Quebec. 48^— Atrocious Persecution in Poland, 488— How the Orthodox Greek Church makes '♦ Converrions," 489, 490. 1871-1876. COKCLUBiow.— The Episcopal Jubilee of 1877, 491-504. ArPBMDiz, 605, 606. LIFE OF Pope Pius IX. CHAPTER I. BiETH— Boyhood— Early Educatiok. 1792-1809. SINIGAGLIA, the first colony founded by the Romans in Cis- padane Gaul (or Gaul "on this side of the Po"), was called by them Sena Gallica, because it occupied the central seat of the tribe of Senonian Gauls or Celts, who had conquered Rome in the year 396 before Christ, and were finally worsted in Umbria and the neighboring provinces a century afterward. The ancient munici- pium or town, like the modern city, was situated partly on a gentle acclivity overhanging the Adriatic, and partly on the sloping shore at its foot, where the land formed one of the small natural harbors so unfrequent on that coast. This maritime position was used by its Celtic masters as a centre for their predatory excursions along both shores of the inland sea ; and its advantages were improved by their Roman successors. From the beginning of the Christian era, and all through the middle ages down to our own times, Sinigaglia continued to be a chief resort for vessels trading on these waters. And still, when the month of July comes round, an annual fair is held there which attracts not only the rural populations of the neighboring provinces, but a fleet of some two or three hundred sail laden with the varied produce of the Adriatic and Mediterra- nean seaboards. In truth, most of the coasting vessels are built there, Sinigaglia containing the largest dock-yard on the Adriatic. It is also a favorite bathing-place, thanks to its smooth and shel- tered beach, its genial climate, and most interesting environs. In this ancient and far-famed city was born, on May 13, 1792, Giovanni-Maria Giovanni-Battista Pietro Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti, destined to fill the papal chair many years longer than any one of his two hundred and sixty-one predecessors. 8 Life of Pope Pius IX, The Mastai originally were from Brescia, in Northern Lombardy, a city in which Celtic blood had forgotten its love of wild, roving adventure, without losing its martial fire or its fierce spirit of inde- pendence amid the currents of Venetian activity and commercial thrift. From Brescia Alberto Mastai had migrated toward the end of the sixteenth century, impelled southward by the desolating wars of that age. He married a wealthy heiress of Sinigaglia, and added to his own his wife's name and title, taking thenceforth rank among the Umbrian nobility as Count Mastai-Ferretti. The head of his house, in 1792, was Count Girolamo (Jerome), gonfalonier or mayor of Sinigaglia, who had married his towns- woman Caterina, daughter of Count Solazzi, a lady of uncommon beauty and virtue. Giovanni was the youngest of seven children. He was born at a time when his father's fortune but ill corresponded with his rank and official position. But Count Girolamo's life of honorable frugality enabled him to provide for his large household, while his retiring habits and proved public virtues helped him to conceal the absence of wealth beneath a generous hospitality and the substantial services rendered to his fellow citizens. The Countess Caterina made it her chief joy and exclusive occu- pation to form the minds and hearts of her children, never relaxing her motherly care till the boys were of an age to enter college, and the girls to be married. Thus the palace of the Mastai ceased not to be the home the most universally respected in the city and neighborhood of Sinigaglia, because it was the known abode of every public and private virtue. The country itself in which Giovanni first saw the light— the most eastern portion of the classic Umbria — was highly favorable to the deyelopment of robust health, intellectual culture, and eminent personal sanctity. From Rimini, where the great plain of Northern Italy terminates at the angle formed by the mountains and the sea, to Ancona— the summits of the mighty Apennine chain are distant only some thirty or forty miles from the Adriatic ; and their spurs extend in nearly parallel ridges down to the very shore, thus forming a series of val- leys perpendicular to the main direction of the central chain. These ▼alleys are drained by rivers, or torrents, rather, for the most part, all of which have an historical name, in spite of their diminutive size. This hilly and well-watered country is free from the malarial Birih. 9 fevers that reign like a lasting blight along the western side of the Peninsula ; it is also favored with a more temperate and bracing climate, and rewards the farmer with a rich and varied harvest. To the traveler passing in spring or early summer from the enchanting region around Bologna to Ancona, Loreto, or Macerata, nothing can seem more beautiful than this succession of fertile and picturesque mountain slopes and uplands covered with vast plantations of the mulberry, the olive, and the vine ; intersj^ersed with fields of maize, corn, tobacco, flax, and hemp. The rarest flowers of north and south, growing side by side in field and garden, charm the sense by their mingled colors and delicious odors. Cities, whose origin some- times antedates that of Rome herself, gem the coast line with their stately and shining edifices ; hamlets cluster among the olive and mulberry groves on the uplands ; and as one crosses some classical stream, like the Rubicon or the Metaurus, the valley that opens in- land discloses a monastery with its shining dome or tall tower nes- tling on the brink of a precipice, high above the rapid torrent in the vale beneath, and seeming the fit abode of souls raised by seclusion and contemplation above the passions and pursuits of earth. They are a thrifty race, the immemorial possessors of this land ; their toil has made every foot of that land fruitful, from the snow line along the Apennines to the sands of the Adriatic. There is not a patch of meadow, nor a slope among the hills, nor a remnant of the primeval forest that has not been intelligently turned to account by men who know the value of what nature has given them, and who know, as well, that a right use is not exhaustion or destruction. The plains of Lombardy — the immense extent of fertile upland and lowland watered by the Po and its aftiuents — have ever been and are still the garden of Europe ; the intelligence that has preserved, im- proved, and developed their immense resources, has also made of the eastern and western slopes of the Apennines a marvel of hus- bandry and productiveness. Nor has the mineral wealth of this region remained a buried and uncared-for treasure. In a later chapter full mention shall be made of the way in which the industrial arts have been cherished by the people and protected by the various governments. They are no ignorant and uncultivated race of serfs or boors, this people of Umbria and the Papal States. If the love of all that is most beautiful in outward nature is among them an hereditary in- stinct, long handed down by one generation to another in city, ham- lO Life of Pope Pius IX. let, and shepherd's cot, it is no less certain that a love of art in its every pure and ennobling form, is an inborn passion among all classes. Their churches and monasteries, from the time when Christian bishops built up modern Italy from the ruins of the old pagan civilization, have been schools where the True and the Beauti- ful were embodied in generations of living saints, before their forms were reproduced by painter and sculptor, or their principles were expounded by moralist or theorist. Not a child was born during centuries within the length and breadth of the land, whose eyes, as they opened to the loveliness of its native earth and skies, did not rest from infancy to the grave on a world no less lovely of the beau- tiful creations of artistic genius. There is not a city along these shores that has not given birth to a galaxy of men illustrious in Cliurch or State, not a hamlet among these teeming valleys and populous uplands that does not claim for its sons and daughters men and women who have left a deathless name on the lists of high art, science, statesmanship, or sanctity. TJrbino, on its lofty eyrie within a few hours' travel from Sini- gaglia, can still show amid its half-depopulated streets the home of Raphael, and almost beside it the palace where Duke Federigo di Montefeltro displayed the gentle virtues and exalted goodness that we admire in St. Louis of France. Oesena, on the northern border of Umbria — whose see was founded by a martyr-bishop in the year 92 — ^was also the birthplace of two martyr-popes, Pius VI. and Pius VII. Akin to them in generosity of spirit, in loftiness of soul, and patient endurance of ill, is that child of Sinigaglia, that Ninth Pius, whose extraordinary career is described in these pages. The year in which he was bprn was a momentous one — filled with prophetic warnings of deep change in religious and social institu- tions, no less than in the tendency of men's thoughts and aspira- tions. In France, the constitution adopted tliree years before was set aside, the king and his family dethroned and cast into prison ; the autumn was made terrible in Paris and other cities by the mas- sacre of imprisoned bisliops and priests, while their fugitive bre- thren found a hospitable welcome in England, or crossed the At- lantic to offer the aid of their ministrations to the solitary bishop just consecrated (August 15, 1790) for tlie church of the United States. Id the first month of 1793 the civilized world witnessed with min- Birth, II gled amazement and horror the trial, condemnation, and execution of Louis XVI., and tlie awful tragedy culminated in the death of his heroic queen in the following October. The French National Convention, in assuming before the world the responsibility of the September massacres, and in proclaiming a republican form of government, had offered their brotherly sympa- thy and help to all nations desirous of setting aside monarchical institutions. The convulsion that had overthrown the ancient order of things in France shook Italy to its center. The revolu- tionary and irreligious frenzy that had taken possession of the French people was contagious ; it crossed the Alps and spread from one end of the Peninsula to the other. Besides, what rendered this frenzy formidable to the neighboring nations, was the fact that the Jacobin clubs, which had been the active promoters of bloodshed and every extreme measure, had also covered the land with a net- work of kindred clubs and secret organizations, whose professed object was not only to secure the permanent reign of radicalism and irreligion in their own country, but to labor persistently to revolu- tionize the whole of Europe. The overthrow of the Church, of the papacy in particular, became the darling aim of the energetic and wide-spread proselytism which they set on foot in Italy. They were abetted in their designs not only by the political passions that had evermore divided the Italians among themselves, but by the anti-Christian philosophy of Voltaire that had taken possession of many minds, and still more by the insidious spirit of Jansenism, or Old Catholicism, represented by such men as Bishop Ricci, of Pistoja, iii Tuscany, favored as he was by his sovereign tlie Grand Duke, afterward the Emperor Leopold II. This prince, before he succeeded on the imperial throne his brother Joseph 11. , had bestowed, like him, all his efforts on ruin- ing the authority of the papal see both as a spiritual and a tem- poral power. Hence bishops and priests were encouraged to set at naught the jurisdiction of the Eoman pontiff, while in the Roman States the imperial emissaries countenanced and fostered disaffec- tion and revolt among all classes. Pius VI., who had in vain gone in person to Vienna to conciliate Joseph II., was insulted by a mock show of reverence, the very day of his departure from that capital being marked by an imperial ordinance more vexatious and oppressive than any of the preceding measures hostile to the Church. And the pontiff only returned to 12 Life of Pope Pius IX. Italy to find the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Eiccian faction more actively mischievous than ever. Such were the -seeds sown among the Catholic populations of Italy, waiting but the invasion of the French Eadical clubs of 1792 and 1793 to burst forth into full blossom— seeds which were to bear such lamentable fruit when the country was subsequently overrun by the revolutionary armies of France. From the memorable 13th of May, 1792, when Caterina Mastai- Ferretti was blessed with a seventh child, destined to bear, half a century aftei-ward, the burden of the name of Pius, not a month elapsed without the organization of some revolutionary club in the Italian States, and some revolutionary movement, within the terri- tory of the Holy See, calculated to poison the popular mind against all religion much more even than to excite disaffection toward the civil government. The rulers of France were firmly resolved to abolish the papacy ; they created causes of quarrel with the reign- ing Pope ; forced him, in February, 3 797, to cede three of his provinces, to pay an indemnity of 31,000,000 francs, and to give up to the despoiler the most precious art-treasures in Rome ; and on February 20, 1798, the helpless and heavy-hearted pontiff was hur- ried off to Florence, and thence to die in a French prison. Such were the sad circumstances amid which Giovanni Mastai passed from infancy to boyhood. One of the first acts of devotion taught him in childhood by his mother was to pray for Pius VI., threatened, oppressed, and plundered in his capital ; and then to join with the entire household in the prayers offered up in every Italian home for the imprisoned pontiff. His earliest tears of genu- ine grief were shed when the touching story of the venerable cap- tive's sufferings and death in his eighty-second year was told to the weeping Mastai family. How little could the fond mother imagine, as she taught him to lift up his innocent hands to Heaven, and to lisp his prayers for the Pope lying dead in the citadel of far-off Valence, that her darling should live, a pope, and almost a prisoner in the Vatican, even beyond that patriarchal age I And so, in the Mastai palace, as throughout all Italy, pious and pure hearts continued to plead with the divine mercy for the needs of the Church, till, by a miracle of providential interposition, the conclave was allowed to assemble in Venice, and to elect (March 14, 1800) a townsman of the martyred pontiff to bear the cross after him. Boyhood, 13 The meek and saintly Seventh Pius was, it is said, like his kins- man and immediate predecessor, united by blood as well as by near neighborhood to the Mastai and Solazzi. The new Pope found himself, at his elevation, exiled from his see and people, with no earthly aid on which to rely save Austria, whose rulers had almost consummated a schism during the lifetime of Pius VI., and Rus- sia, a schismatic power bitterly hostile to the Church of Rome from a secular tradition and a settled national policy. For the city of Cesena, then, which claimed as her own both the new Pope and his martyred friend and protector, if there was little cause for worldly joy in the distinction thus conferred on her chil- dren, there was, on the other hand, deep motives for indulging in true Christian pride : the Church had gone back to the period when the temporal sceptre of the pontiffs was but a reed, and their triple diadem a triple crown of thorns. If the tidings of the election of their fellow-countryman to the perilous honors of the pontificate excited perchance any thought of ambition in the breasts of noble mothers along his bright native shore, this time the ambition would have been like that of Christian mothers under Decius or Diocletian — the sublime desire of seeing their sons lay down their lives for Christ and his flock. Such were the sentiments that animated the Countess Caterina Mastai-Ferretti, and which were communicated to her youngest boy as to his brothers and sisters. He was a singularly handsome child, bright, affectionate, and taught from infancy to love the poor and show them every mark of respect and helpful sympathy. True- hearted ness has continued to be through life one of the most lova- ble features of the man, the priest, and the pope. Like all children born on that sunny shore, Giovanni Mastai was passionately fond of rambling through the beautiful fields, the olive groves, and reaches of forest that cover the uplands back of Sini- gaglia. A favorite companion of his in these rambles was a farmer's son named Guido, some years older than himself. One day, while Guide was occupied in angling in a brook, Giovanni, whose little hands were too weak to hold the fishing-rod, waded into the water, attempting to catch the tiny fishes as they darted from pool to pool. Guido, wholly intent on watching his line, did not perceive his companion's danger till a cry from the latter, who had slipped and fallen into deep water, aroused him. Darting instantly to the res- cue, the courageous little fellow rushed into the stream at his owe 1 4 Life of Pope Pius IX. great peril, and succeeded in bringing his friend safe to the shore. There had been more danger than either boy then knew ; they soon dried themselves in the warm sunlight, and forgot the accident in fresh boyish sports and adventures. But when Giovanni Mastai was raised to eminence, and had it in his power to bestow fortunes, he remembered his playmate and savior Guido. On this sweetness of temper and constancy in his affections was grafted by his gentle mother a tender and enlightened piety ; while his father's example, as well as her own, and the whole atmosphere of their well-ordered home, inspired a love of labor lightened by unfailing cheerfulness, and a dignity and self-respect that bespoke nobility of soul much more than of birth. The cruel exactions by which Bonaparte and his subordinates had drained the treasury of Pius VI. and exhausted the resources of his people fell heavily on Count Mastai, and reduced still more his very slender income. Nevertheless his noble companion found in her rich poverty not only the means of providing for her children and dependants, but of helping the poor. Her husband, meanwhile, devoted the time left him by his public duties to the education of his boys. It was a blessed necessity which thus compelled them and their sisters to receive their early education exclusively from their parents — all the more so, that the mischief done during these mo- mentous years to the youth of Italy by French irreligious and revo- lutionary propagandism was more wide-spread and lasting than the injuries inflicted by French occupation and oppression. Thus grew up till his eleventh year (1803) Giovanni Mastai*, shel- tered against the moral simoom that swept over Italian souls by the walls of his father's palace ; while all his precious qualities of heart and mind expanded freely amid the sunlight and genial warmth diffused by his admirable mother's cheerful and unwearied good- ness. The boy was now of the age deemed in Italy the proper one for beginning classical studies. Count Mastai was not dismayed by the additional expense the sending of his youngest boy to college must entail. He could bear any privation rather than see one who prom- ised so much, left without the educational advantages enjoyed by his elder brotliers. So to the college of Volterra Giovanni was sent. No better choice could bo made at that troublous epoch, just when Bonaparte was plotting to have his title of consul for life changed into that of emperor, and when the position of things in Early Education, 1 5 Italy partook of the uncertainty and dread that reign on board a ship during the interval between the first assault of a cyclone and its more furious return. Volterra, occupying the site of an ancient Etrurian city (Velathri), crowns with its fortifications the summit of a hill 1,602 feet above the sea level, some twenty miles from the Mediterranean and forty south-west from Florence. The bleak and hilly country around it, its remoteness from the common line of travel in those days, and its isolation on a fortified crag, made the college of Volterra a most desirable and secure retreat for a school. The college itself was under the direction of the ** Fathers of the Pious Schools," an order founded by St. Joseph Casalanz. During six years (1803-9) Giovanni Mastai', in that mountain solitude, stored his mind with the treasures of the Italian and Gre- cian literatures, growing the while, as his contemporaries affirm, in every outward grace and interior excellence. He does not appear to have been conscious of that comeliness of person that, united to his noble birth, must have made him everywhere an object of attrac- tion. The charm that made him from the first a universal favorite was his sunny disposition, the bright warm smile that bespeaks a pure and loving nature, and which, even Protestant travelers say, still plays over the wrinkled features of the octogenarian, like the golden light of sunset on some snow-clad Alp. He was truly the light of the college-hall, his face ever beaming with unalloyed hap- piness, and his laugh the merriest, and his wit the readiest with joke and pun. Boy as he was, and anxious as he needs must have been about every political change that might affect his worshipped parents and their home, he carefully listened to the echoes that reached his old eagle's nest at Volterra, from the busy and warring world below. He heard of the passage of Pius VII. through Tuscany, in the autumn of 1804, as he went perforce to crown Bonaparte emperor in Paris ; of the Italian republic, transformed by the conjurer into the king- dom of Italy, and of Napoleon's coming to Milan to be crowned "King of Italy" (an ominous title ! ), May 6th, 1805. Then the Tuscany in which the lad was pursuing his studies, after having been created by the same imperious will the kingdom of Etruria in 1801, was again obliterated as a kingdom, incorporated with Napoleon's empire, and in 1808 given to his favorite sister Eliza, with the title of grand duchess. She proved afterward a willing and unscrupulous tool to the oppressor. 1 6 Life of Pope Pitts IX. This same year brought about the most remarkable event m Giovanni's college career, and a change in his health that had well- nigh altered the whole course of his life. The grand duchess had no sooner taken 'possession of her beautiful principality than she was seized with a desire to visit the far-famed Etrurian fortress, with its unique treasures of ancient art. The College Fathers were fain to conciliate the good graces of their new sovereign, all the more so that the bitter hostility of the emperor toward the Pope was daily taking a more alarming shape. They set their house in order and forced it to wear the face of welcome. The students prepared a literary festival for their imperial guest, and the young Count Mastai was selected to preside thereat, and to deliver the most exquisite prose and verse composed for the occasion. The royal lady was charmed with the youthful poet-orator's modest grace and genuine eloquence, and recalled in after years the pleasure derived from this entertainment and the name of him who presided. He was now beginning his seventeenth year, a tall and graceful lad, with a distinguished and serious air that inspired one with respect as well as confidence. His masters and schoolmates alike admired his solid accomplishments and praised his deep piety. The whole bent of his inclination at this period disposed him to devote himself to the Church — plundered, down-trodden, and persecuted as she was, offering to such as served her no other lot than that of the early apostles. But just then appeared the first symptoms of the awful malady that threatened for years to render all his gifts useless, and to make his life a burden. To his doting mother's dismay, epilepsy shoAved itself in its most distressing form, superinduced, most probably, by an overtaxed brain and too rapid a growth, if not a little, also, by the painful impressions made on an exquisitely sensitive organiza- tion by the continual scenes of military violence witnessed in Sini- gaglia. Neither mother nor son, however, lost their firm hope of seeing the distemper as mercifully removed by the Almighty Physician as it had suddenly, and to them unaccountably, visited them. It is mentioned by some biographer tliat young Mastai, some years after- ward, was advised at Home by Pius VII. to make a pilgrimage to Loreto, and to implore the special intercession of Our Lady with her Son, in the shrine so dear to the Christian world. Mastai may have performed a second pilgrimage to Loreto at the bidding of the aged Early Education, ij venerated pontiff ; but many reasons lead one to think that, on his return to Sinigaglia with his mother, at the end of his college course, they both hastened to beseech the goodness of the Incarnate God in that holy house made famous by so many favors granted to the heart-stricken at his Mother's prayer. Certain it is that the health of the pious youth was so far restored, and his parents' confidence so strengthened, that he soon returned to Volterra, this time with the purpose of consecrating his whole life to the divine service. "When and where was this purpose formed ? We should not, in the absence of positive information on the subject, we think, be far from the truth in surmising that the resolve to fol- lowthe Crucified thenceforward, in poverty, suffering, and self-sacri- fice, came to that generous young soul while worshipping within the very walls in which a pious tradition will have it that the Eternal Word assumed our humanity and bound himself to repair all its ills. At any rate, during t'iie Ember-days of September, 1809, all Vol- terra was edified, Mastai's former fellow- students especially, at see- ing him, like another Samuel, presented to the Lord by his great- souled mother, and receiving at the hands of the bishop of the diocese the first ecclesiastical tonsure, the badge of the soul's con- secration to God alone. A few days afterward, in the beginning of October, she accoin- panied him to Rome, where her brother-in-law, Canon Mastai*, occu- pied an honorable position in the Chapter of the Vatican Basilica. To him she intrusted her boy, now unspeakably dear to her both be^ cause of the suffering that ever hung over him like a dark cloud, and because of his own unworldly ambition and undaunted spirit. 2 CHAPTER 11. Vocation to the Priesthood— Tkials—Perseveiia3s:ce— Pius VII. AND Giovanni Mastai. 1809-1814. TO appreciate to the full the generous abnegation of the Countess Mastai-Ferretti, and her boy's spirit of self-sacrifice, we should recall to mind in what circumstances they found Rome, for its pon- tiff was even then a- prisoner at Savona, on the very shore where Columbus was born. On the Feast of the Purification (Feb. 2), 1808, the French troops, in execution of a secret order of the Emperor Napoleon, had entered Rome, and made Pius VII. a prisoner in his own capital, surrounding his residence at the Quirinal Palace with a compact body of cavalry and infantry, and planting a battery of artillery beneath and against the windows of his apartments. On the 3d of April following, an imperial decree "irrevocably" incorporated the Papal States with the French empire ; the Cardinal Gabrielli, bishop of Sinigaglia, and pro-secretary of state, was exiled to his episco- pal city, all the other cardinals not natives of the Roman States being forcibly expelled ; and Cardinal Pacca, who was appointed secretary in Gabrielli's stead, found himself obliged to advise the Popo to resist to the utmost the sacrilegious usurpations and vio- lence of the French. They had organized a " Civic Guard," re- cruited from the very dregs of the population, while the irreligious press, which they established and supported in every city, used all imaginable devices to revile the Pope and his counselors, and tc bring into discredit not only "priestly rule" in general, but every- thing pertaining to the Christian religion. While Giovanni Mastai and his pious mother were performing their pilgrimage to Loreto, in September, 1808, and parent and son wore praying in the venerated sanctuary that "the shadow of the cross" might pass away from his young life, a scene of unequalled interest was taking place in the Quirinal Palace at Rome. On August the 24th a proclamation under the pontifical seal, and 18 Vocation to the Priesthood. 19 conntersigiied by Cardinal Pacca, was posted on the public edifices of Home, condemning the organization of the " Civic Guard." On September 6th, Pacca was arrested in his apartments and com- manded to leave Eome forthwith under military escort. Having calmly informed the French officers that '^in Eome he received orders of the Pope alone," and as they could not permit him to communicate with his holiness, a note was sent to Pius informing him of the dilemma in which his minister was placed. The Pope, as the great secretary affirms elsewhere, ^^was the meekest man on the face of the earth ; " but this last outrage on the freedom of the sovereign and the pontiff transformed the lamb into a lion. Pius, on receiving the written message of his devoted ser- vant, rose instantly from his seat and made his way to the cardinal's apartments. As the door opened, the Latter, as well as the French officers present, were struck with awe and amazement. The feeble. Buffering figure of the Pope seemed animated with preternatural strength, his face shone with the light of unearthly anger, and his hair stood literally on end, as he gazed round the room like one bereft of his senses. '* Who is it ? Who is it ?" were the only words he could utter. "I am the cardinal," replied Pacca seizing and kissing his mas- ter's hand. Presently the Pope recovered himself. *' Where is the officer ? " he said ; and as the Frenchman advanced respectfully, Pius addressed him in a voice of commanding majesty : *' Go and tell your general that I am weary of all these insults and outrages from one who has still the effrontery to call himself a Catholic. I am quite conscious of the end toward which all your measures are directed. They aim, by cutting me off gradually from all my counselors, to render impossible the free exercise of my min- istry and the defence of my temporal sovereignty." The holy father's words having been translated to the French officers, the Pope took the cardinal by the hand and led him to his own apartments, where he resided till the 6th of July, 1809, when both were violently borne away from Eome. During the interval the Code-Napoleon was made the law of the land ; the Pope was isolated more strictly from the Italian clergy and from the Catholic world at large ; the Masonic clubs and secret societies, which preceded and followed in every country the French domination, covered the Peninsula like a network, establishing their chief centres of activity in the Eoman States ; and every en- 20 Life of Pope Pius IX. couragement was given by the usurping authorities to the spread of revolutionary, obscene, and anti-Christian publications. On June 10th, 1809, the military governor of Eome published by sound of trumpet the imperial decree dethroning the Pope, whose arms were replaced on the Castle of St. Angelo by the French tri- colors. That very same night the celebrated bull of excommunica- tion, Quum memoranda ilia die, was nailed to the usual places in the Eternal City. Nine days later Napoleon wrote to Joachim Murat, whom he had created King of Naples : *^ I have already told you that my purpose is to push matters in Eome vigorously, and that no kind of resistance is to be tolerated. If full submission is not yielded to my decrees, no place must be respected, and under no pretext whatever must opposition be permitted. If the Pope, contrary to the spirit of his ministry and of the Gospel, preaches revolt, and is willing to profit by the immunities of his position to print circulars, let him be arrested. The season of similar scenes is past and over." This new king of Italy understood perfectly what was meant by " a free Church in a free State ! " AVhile the carriage containing the captive Pius YII. and his noble minister was driven by hurried stages toward Piedmont, a proclama- tion from him was distributed by trusty hands throughout the length and breadth of the land. The concluding paragraph is this : "In our bitter grief we shed tears of joy, blessing God the eter- nal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of all consolation, who gives us such sweet comfort. And this comes from seeing in our person the fulfilment of what was foretold by his divine Son to the prince of the apostles, Peter, whose unworthy successor we are : ' Wien thou shall be old, thou shall stretch forth thy hands; and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not.' " If the far-seeing spirit, vouchsafed of old to those prophets who kept, alive in Israel the sacred flame of divine faith and hope, had visited for a moment the anguished soul of the pontiff, as his French captors urged his flight through Poggibonzi, and within sight of the towers of Volterra, he would have beheld, in the comely and modest youth waiting for God's message there, one predestined to be his own successor in office and in suffering, and in whom the Eedeemer's prophetic utterance was to be most strikingly fulfilled. At any rate, when the young levite Mastai arrived in Rome with his mother on that sad day in October, 1809, there was little in the otmosphere of tliat city to cheer a worldly-minded man entering on Preparation for the Priesthood. 2 j an ecclesiastical career ; but to tlie spiritual minded there was in the universal desolation and suffering an incentive to the loftiest heroism in Christ's cause. The schools of Eome, like all its ecclesiastical institutions, were disorganized. Napoleon, who had gained the momentous victory of Wagram on the very day of the Pope's abduction from Rome, made no scruple or secret of using his unlimited power in "regu- lating " religious as well as political matters in his vast empire. He had determined that the Pope should be his subject, his servant, and his tool ; and he stopped at no half measures to reach his aim. No pope, or bishop, or priest was to be tolerated in future who did not bind himself by oath to maintain the principles formulated in the famous *^Four Articles" of Gallicanism, adopted in 1682 (Ap- pendix A) ; no person should ever be promoted to any dignity, papal, episcopal, or priestly, who did not take the same oath. The men who governed Italy under sucli a master were fain to vie with each other in zeal in carrying out tlie imperial purpose. Cardinals and bishops who remained faithful to their conscience were removed from their sees, exiled, imprisoned, and refused all but the bare necessaries of life. Priests who had charge of souls, or were (■in})loyed as professors in tlie universities or diocesan schools, underwent a like persecution, if they persisted in not acknowledg- ing the riuhicousness of the great emperor's acts and pretensions. Nineteen bishops in the Roman States alone had thus faced and endured the worst ; while fifty of the noblest priests of the diocese of Parma, and an equal number from that of Piacenza, were, by the express orders of Napoleon, deported to Corsica, and others were con- veyed to the slave-gangs of Toulon. And this was no exceptional treatment. The professors and priests of Rome were not, however, terrified into submission. But the weak or wretched men whose evil merits obtained for them preferments or professorships, were avoided by people and pupils alike. While it was possible to follow, without disturbance or molesta- tion, the courses of philosophy and theology, the young Abbate Mastai was most assiduous in his attendance at lectures, living, meanwhile, beneath the roof of his uncle, and completing, under his care, the instruction derived from his professors. At length Canon Mastai was called upon to choose between his conscience and the offers of a sacrilegious promotion. With him there could be no 22 Life of Pope Pius IX, hesitation. So the year 1810 saw uncle and nephew once mora at Sinigaglia, where the venerable Cardinal Antonelli, dean of the Sacred College, was the fellow-prisoner and guest of Cardinal Gabrielli till sudi time as the former was compelled to go to Paris. The city was kept in awe by a French garrison. But the presence of these men, and the unceasing exactions with which they harassed the citizens and the populations of the surrounding country, did not prevent Giovanni Mastai from pursuing, with unabated ardor, under his learned uncle, the studies begun in Rome. The examples and warm encouragement of the imprisoned cardinals added fresh zeal to his efforts. His father's generous sympathy did not fail the student, nor did the heart of the Countess Caterina stint her boy in every needed demonstration of motherly tenderness. Her love was a priceless treasure for him at that critical period in his life. For the scenes he had been compelled to witness in Rome, the emotions caused by the mighty events daily occurring ; all that he had beheld on his homeward journey of impious change, and what he daily witnessed in Sinigaglia, deeply impressed his imagin- ation and brought on worse symptoms of the old distemper. The gloom over every true Catholic home and heart in Sinigag- lia, and, indeed, throughout Italy, deepened during these years, as tidings of the inhumanity shown to the imprisoned pontiff and his faithful cardinals were circulated everywhere in spite of the utmost vigilance of the imperial police. Young Mastai had deemed it wise, at the suggestion of those dearest to him, to lay aside his clerical dress, without ceasing to cherish in his inmost soul the purpose of becoming one day God's priest. Neither bodily infirmity nor the calamity of the times could turn his will away from that goal of all his hopes. Indeed the young man deemed it a conscientious duty to employ every means of increasing his bodily vigor, and thereby of attacking by the root the distemper which was the only obstacle to these hopes. He resumed his rambles over the neighboring hills, cultivated all sorts of athletic exercises, and lived as much as possible in the open air. 1'lh r, l.y lie developed a constitution naturally robust, became a model of manly strength and grace, and thus laid the foundation of a perfect and radical cure. I ;i3 about this time that Napoleon conceived the design of binding to his cause the 61ito of the Italian youth, and decreed the formation of a ** Noble Guard," recruited from the ancient aristoc- Trials : Pius VII. in Exile, 23 racy of the land. No previous consent was asked of the young men themselves or of their families. An exact census of every noble family in the Peninsula had been taken, and lo ! one fine day an imperial decree was published, giving the names of the young Ital- ians composing this Noble Guard. The list comprised those of Giovanni Mastai and his brothers. What followed is related in the future Pope's own words : ^'My name, without my knowledge, was put among the rest. But as soon as I was informed of it, I took care to have my name struck out. Napoleon's plans were such as could not be executed." As to the oft-repeated assertion that young Mastai had embraced the military profession, or intended to do so, he calls it " an unfounded notion," saying, **I never had any idea of the sort." In the last days of January, 1811, Napoleon, who had firmly re- solved to set aside forever the papal autliority in the government of the Church, was completing at Paris, with an '^ ecclesiastical com- mission," the preliminaries necessary to the holding of a National Council. Among the churchmen who composed the commission were many servile and fawning spirits who lived only on the breath of their imperious master, and not a few good but weak men ever ready to sacrifice the most vital principles and inviolable rights of the Holy See, rather than draw on themselves and their order the wrath of the despot. These, one and all, hung on Napoleon's lips and watched every change of his countenance that they might shape their answer to his wishes. There was, however, in that deplorable assembly — the forerunner of the infamous National Council — one true man, a simple priest, the worthy head of the congregation of St. Sulpice, the venerable Mr. Emery. He was near his eightieth year, with the light of eternity already dawning on the evening of his long life of self- sacrifice. The eagle eye of the great Emperor had, on a former occasion, discovered beneath the bent form and the modest mien of the aged priest a soul far superior to the craven crowd of dignitaries around him. While he poured forth a flood of invective against the captive of Savona, and his indomitable resistance to the imperial will, and indulged in the most fearful threats against all who should dare to offer further opposition, his eye, as if fascinated, rested again and again on the saintly countenance of the Superior of St. Sulpice. At last he broke forth : '^Mr. Emery, what do you think of the authority of the Pope ?" 24 Life of Pope Pius IX. " Sire," was the reply, after glancing respectfully at the hishopg present, " I can entertain on his authority no other opinion than that expressed in the Catechism taught, by your orders, in all our churches. To the question put there. What is the Pope 9 the an- swer is : Be is the head of the Church, the vicegerent of Christ, to whom all Christians owe oiedience. Now, can a body do without its head, without him whom the divine law ordains that it should obey?" After a further development of this doctrinal fact, the Emperor, surprised, but not displeased, replied : ** Well, I do not question the spiritual authority of the Pope, since he holds that from Christ. But Christ did not give him tem- poral power. That he holds from Charlemagne ; and I, who am Charlemagne's successor, am resolved to take it from him, because he does not know how to make use of it, and because it prevents him from exercising as he ought his spiritual functions. AVhat do you say to that, Mr. Emery ? " " Sire, your majesty reverences the great Bossuet and takes pleas- ure in quoting him frequently. I cannot differ from Bossuet's re- corded opinion in his Defence of the Declaration of the Clergy. He expressly maintains that the independence and perfect freedom of the head of the Church are necessary for the free exercise of his spiritual sovereignty in its relations toward a multiplicity of king- doms and empires." Then he quoted from memory the text of Bossuet (Appendix B). Napoleon listened patiently, and replied in a calm tone, as he always did when he met with firm opposition : **I do not controvert the authority of Bossuet," he said; ''all that was quite true in his day when Europe owned the sway of many masters. It was not then befitting that the Pope should be subject to any one sovereign in particular. But what harm would you see in the Pope's being subject to me, now that Europe acknowledges no master but me ?" ** Sire," was the inspired answer, "you have read as well as my- self the history of revolutions ; what exists to-day cannot last for- ever ; and the dangers foreseen by Bossuet might again reappear in Christendom. We must not change an order so wisely established." llappy had it been for Napoleon if Providence had preserved for a few years longer the life of Mr. Emery I The calamitous National Council would have never been convened, and Pius YII., in his Retur7t of Pius Vll.from Exile. 25 complete isolation, would not liaye fallen into the snare laid by courtier churchmen for his gentle nature and unsuspecting, child- like simplicity. Emery was laid to his rest on the 28th of the ensu- ing month of April, and was thus mercifully spared the spectacle of the captive pontiff's betrayal by the very men who should have died to save him from dishonor ; he was spared also from the fearful series of calamities that came, wave after wave, to beat down the throne of "the sole master acknowledged by Europe." But the storm, raised alike by the divine wrath and the passionate vengeance of down-trodden peoples, also broke open the doors of the Pope's prison. Leaving, on January 23, 1814, France overrun by a tidal wave of armed men, the Pope was conducted under an escort, commanded by one Colonel Lagorse, toward the Italian frontier. The imperial orders were to take the least frequented roads and to preserve a strict incognito, avoiding everything that might lead to popular demonstrations. But, somehow, even in France, the very earth over which the pontiff was hurried through desert pathways seemed to be in advance conscious of his approach, and poured forth crowds upon crowds to acclaim him and crave his blessing. On passing the Rhone at Tarascon, the adjoining cities went out before him as one man — such a spectacle of love and veneration and tender sym- pathy for undeserved and heroic suffering as had never been heard of ! Colonel Lagorse, furious at seeing this genuine outpouring of the national heart in behalf of an aged and feeble old priest, drove back the worshiping crowd, exclaiming indignantly, "You rascals, how, then, would you behave if the Emperor were passing the Rhone ?" **We should make him drink !" was the reply. At this the colonel's wrath vented itself in curses and threats. " Colonel," at length said one more determined than the rest, "would you, too, like to have a drink ? " pointing ominously to the deep and rapid river. To the multitudes who lined the road, night and day, as this most triumphal progress continued, the Holy Father, in his deep emotion and unearthly prudence, could or would only say, as he blessed them : " Courage, my children ! and pray ! " And so they reached Italy, the mighty masses of the Alps proving insufficient to arrest the electric current of filial joy and exultation that thrilled the Peninsula to its center, as the tidings of the Pope's liberation and speedy arrival flashed over the land. Prince Eugene 26 Life of Pope Pius IX. Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, was foremost to pay his homage to the pontiff, whom he had formerly lent himself to annoy and oppress. Miirat, king of Naples, now in arms against Napoleon, to whom he owed everythingj met Pius on the frontier of Parma, and was as profuse in his offers of assistance as he had once been unsparing in insults and blasphemies. The high-souled Pope, disgusted, only asked that he might be protected on his journey toward his native city of Cesena — not from the violence of his Italian children, but from the uncontrolled enthusiasm of their love. With the first return of the lovely Italian spring, Pius VII. came back to the beautiful city in which he was born, and where, in the Benedictine Convent of Madonna del Monte, on its hill-top near the city, he had spent many peaceful and happy years as the sim- ple-hearted, learned, unworldly, and unambitious Padre Barnabe Chiaramonte. It was on the day of his entrance into this loved and ever-coveted abode of his early life, that the Mastai family, with all the popula- tion far and near, met Pius VII. and knelt at his feet to pay him the homage of their heart-felt reverence. The meeting between the pontiff, whom popular opinion in Italy and throughout the Catholic world surrounded with the halo of the ancient martyrs and confes- sors, and his young kinsman — whatever circumstances may have attended it — served to knit these two souls together in a mysterious and holy affection. The young man, as he knelt for the blessing and looked up into that sweet and heaven-lit face, might well be- lieve that he looked upon one to whom could be applied the pro- phetic words of Isaias : ** I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the nations there is not a man with me. ... I looked about, and there was none to help ; I sought, and there was none to give aid ; and my own arm hath saved for me, and my indignation itself hath helped mo" (Ixiii). Giovanni believed then that a healing virtue went forth from him who had suffered so much for Christ. He felt, by some divine in- stinct, that tlie hand of Pius VII. would remove every obstacle from the path on which he had set his heart. We shall see, further on, how these anticipations were fulfilled. In the first days of May, Pius learned that he could safely return to Rome. He stopped at Sinigaglia on his way, and was greeted by the noble Gonfalonier and his family. Giovanni's soul was now exclusively filled with the hope of running, in God's cause, a race Pius VII, and Giovanni Masta'i, 27 of abnegation and heroism that would liken him to his saintly countryman. In his company he departed for Kome, arriving at Ancona on May 12, amid demonstrations of unspeakable joy ; the 14th they left for Osimo, and thence they went to Loreto. How often in his weary years of exile and prison-life had Pius VII. gone back in imagination to that land of beauty and undying faith so familiar to his boyhood, and to that loved sanctuary throning on its hill-top above the Adriatic — the spot of all Italy where the Mother of the Incarnate God most delights in winning souls to her Son ! On the memorable 24th of May, 1814, Rome threw wide open her hearts and her gates to welcome Pius VII. Meanwhile, the begin- ning of that same month of May, had seen another sovereign borne toward the western coast of Italy, and landed on the island of Elba, within sight of the towers of Volterra. Giovanni Masta'i, who had often gazed from the ancient Etrurian walls at the distant island, as it lay, at sunset, like a golden cloud on the Mediterranean, might well reflect, among the tumultuous rejoicings of Eome, on the won- derful ways of God. We shall now see how his fatherly providence paved the way toward the goal of his desires for our devoted youth. CHAPTER III. Theological Studies— First Labors for the Poor and the Ignorant— The Crown of a Noble Ambition — A True Mother's Reward. 1814-1818. The momentary withdrawal of the Pope to Genoa, from March 22, 1815, to the end of July, was only a measure of prudence, as both the Grand Duchess Eliza and Murat had resolved to seize and hold Pius VII. as a hostage for the safety of Napoleon, should the latter's return to France end in putting his life in peril. When the Pope resumed the government of his States, he made the restora- tion of studies one of the chief objects of his care. No words can express the mischief done to the youth of Italy, and above all to the youth of the Papal States, by the active irreligious propagandism set on foot by the French Republicans, and afterward maintained by the imperial authorities. During the Pope's exile he had learned from the most eminent men, in Church and State, the irreparable ruin caused to society in France, in Spain and Portugal, and their colonial empire, as well as in Germany, by the suppression of the Jesuit schools. The Pope, who was a Benedictine, and nowise pre- judiced by education or the traditions of his own Order in favor of the extinct Society, could not help seeing that priests who were so highly prized in their misfortune by Frederick the Great, and by Catherine II. of Russia, must be also deserving of the esteem of the Roman pontiffs. The Jesuits were restored on August 7, 1814. Men who had. matured beneath the wintry skies and amid the bitter national pre- judices of Russia tlie intellectual accomplishments and supernatural yirtnes befitting the teachers and apostles of Christendom, now has- tened to Rome to continue the work of their predecessors, as if it had been interrupted only the day before. But a wide and deep gnlf separated the new order of things from the old, and the Roman youth of 1814 from that of 1773. The men whom Pius VII. thus 28 Theological Studies. 29-' summoned to his aid, as from among tlie dead, were not the men to be discouraged by difficulties. Of those who came up from the depths of Eussia at his bidding, there were some who, when the Society's ill fortune had reached its darkest hour, had walked joy- ously on foot all the way from the furthest extremities of France and Holland, to the heart of the Eussian empire, that they might have the happiness of wearing the livery of the calumniated Order. "When the bull of restoration was published, others were found among their brethren, who walked exultantly on foot all the way from Eussia to the city of the holy apostles. If Giovanni Mastai did not learn under such masters the lessons of theological science, he learned from them what was of still more vital importance, the precious methods by which the souls of the ignorant and the erring are reached, enlightened, and transformed, and the homes of the poor made bright. And his was a soul apt to prize such methods and to lay them well to heart. There was in the atmosphere of Eome, when the great wave of French domination had retired from Italy, not a little that resembled its moral aspect when the Christian religion began to breathe freely under Constantino. Scarcely a bishop, a priest, or a deacon could be met with in the churches that had not suffered for the faith torture, stripes, imprisonment, exile, or beggary. The aspirants to the priestly order looked up to their elders as to divine men whom suffering had stamped with a godlike character. Young Mastai had begun to attend the schools of theology in his lay dress, as well from a motive of prudence begotten by the uncer- tainties of the time as from a fear of the invidious malady that still lurked beneath the outward appearance of brilliant youth and un- impaired vigor. With the final return of the Pope from Genoa all apprehension of change was at an end ; and the young man resumed his clerical costume. Among his teachers there was one to whom he became much attached, and who exercised great influence on his after-life : this was Professor Graziosi. Among his fellow-students was also one destined to a wider fame, and who, as it is believed, contributed not a little both to Mastai's future elevation and to some of the most momentous measures of his early pontificate ; this was Father Ven- tura. The restored Jesuits, on their arrival in Eome, devoted themselves to the same labors which had endeared them so much to all classes 30 Life of Pope Pius IX, of the Roman population under Paul III. : tliey made superhuman exertions to collect wheresoever they might the neglected children of Rome, and to teach them the elements of the Christian doctrine. Sunday-schools' were organized on an extensive scale, and made attractive by singing and all the arts that captivate the young fancy. They enlisted as catechists the most zealous and distinguished among the Roman students — the nobly-born especially — and among them the Abbate Mastai' became conspicuous. The old brotherhoods and guilds devoted to the works of beneficence and mercy were set on foot and fired with a new zeal ; while other confraternities were created for the purpose of meeting the necessities of the sad change made among a believing population by the i^rotracted sway of avowed skepticism and open unbelief. In all these labors for the benefit of the poor and the laboring classes Mastai was foremost among the most zealous, his handsome person, pleasing address, and ready eloquence giving him great power over old and young alike. Indeed, his hearty devotion to his task could not but bring a blessing on himself, while making him widely and most favorably known to his ecclesiastical superiors ; so favorably, in truth, that in 1818 Monsignor Carlo Odcscalchi (afterward cardinal-vicar of Rome under Gregory XVI.) selected him as his companion and spe- cial catechist, during a missionary tour which he and the venerable Bishop Strambi, of Macerata, were about to make in Sinigaglia and the neighboring country places. The provinces along the northern coast of the Adriatic had been longest under French rule, and had been made the favorite field of revolutionary and anti-Christian zeal. In Italy, as in every country where the French arms prevailed for any length of time, the very worst elements of the population were enlisted in the cause of the invaders. When a free license for the most odious vices was not a sufficient inducement, the great words of liberty, humanity, and fraternity served as a lure to the unwary and a mask to the evil- minded. The very dregs of the population, as in France, rose into power, were placed in office, became members of the clubs, helped to oppress and to plunder the clergy, the churches, and the monas- tic establishments ; and when their evil reign came to an end, they remained behind, still conspiring in their clubs, spreading actively through the laboring and agricultural classes their principles, their passions, and subversive designs. The Crown of a Noble Ambition 3 1 One can easily understand how heartily the Abbate Mastai gaye himself to his share of this spiritual crusade. His family had always been, and were still, most popular in Sinigaglia and the country round about ; he had been himself a universal fayorite in childhood and boyhood, and not a little sympathy had followed him to Rome, when he gaye up every worldly prospect and faced seemingly insuper- able obstacles to become a priest. On his reappearance among his townsmen and neighbors, with two of the most gifted and saintly men produced by the Italy of our age, he was allotted the task of giving familiar doctrinal and moral instruction to the people, particularly of preparing the children and first communicants for the sacrament. He displayed uncommon talent ; his imposing presence, youthful mien, and singularly sweet and powerful voice, lending efficacy to great natural eloquence. But it was the Spirit of God that gave an irresistible unction to the young preacher's exhortation. The good effected by the missioners was extraordinary, and was most gratify- ing to Pius VII., who felt a deep personal interest in the spiritual welfare of his native province. But the praises bestowed by the two prelates on their youthful associate, went to the heart of Pius, and decided, once for all, the destiny of Giovanni Mastai. His delighted mother witnessed, with unutterable gratitude, during his labors around Sinigaglia, the great improvement that had taken place in his health. This had been the constant subject of her earnest pleadings at the throne of mercy for the last nine years ; and now she besought the divine goodness with increased fervor. How could such a mother's prayers remain unanswered. Monsignor Odescalchi, in reporting to the Pope the success of his mission, did not hesitate to recommend that young Mastai should be forthwith admitted to holy orders. He was, in consequence, ordained subdeacon, on December the 18th, 1818, and, at his own earnest request to the holy father, admitted successively to deaconship and priest's orders during the Lent of 1819. While pleading for this supreme favor to his revered friend and benefactor, he touched the heart of the kind old man. Is there not a divine instinct in the impulses which incline the good and pure- minded, particularly when they are in high office, to grant the prayers of such as ask for what is intended primarily for the divine honor ? Seizing affectionately the hand of the young suppliant, the august sufferer bade him be of good cheer : "We grant you what you ask, dear son," was the gentle response to his prayer, "because it is 3 2 Life of Pope Pius IX, our conviction that this disease will never again afflict you." It is said that the prediction has not yet been falsified, after a lapse of sixty years ! Be that as it m^y, the Pope, to remove all cause for undue appre- hension and nervousness during the first months after Giovanni's ordination, advised him to have a priest by his side while celebrating the holy sacrifice. From the earliest Christian ages no event in a family of believers was attended with such solemnity and pious exultation as the eleva- tion of one of its members to the priesthood, and the first celebration by him of the august mysteries commemorative of the oblation of Calvary. We leave to the reader to fancy what must have been the joy of the Countess Caterina on the day when her son received the imposition of hands with the priestly unction. But we must de- scribe the scene of the young priest's first mass. To the west of the elevation crowned by the ancient Capitol, in what was once a wooded valley sloping down to the Tiber, is a quarter known as that of "The Carpenters," Dei Falegnami, Between the wide street bearing that name, and the narrow lane of Santa Anna, to the north of it, is a block containing an industrial school, well known as the Ospizio (Asylum) Tata Giovanni, affording, in the spring of 1819, refuge and education to a little more than a hundred homeless boys. Adjoining this establishment, of which we shall say more presently, is the obscure Church of Santa Anna, that serves as a chapel to the institution. The Abbate Mastai had become acquainted with the asylum and church during his student-life in Eome, and while devoting his leisure hours to obscure works of charity. He had asked, as a privi- lege, to be allowed to instruct these little castaways in the Christian doctrine, and the lowly church in that obscure corner of Rome was the place where he had spent many an hour in bringing home to the minds and hearts of his rapt hearers the loveliness of Christ and his truth, and the liappiness of serving him faithfully. The boys had become much attached to their youthful teacher and friend, whose face, as he spoke of the Master and his life of love and labor for our Bakes, was wont to sliino as that of an angel. And he, as is the law of true goodness, loved the place and the boys the more he gave them of bis time and devotion. How often, wlien tlie lesson was ended and the orphaned ones had gone back to their usual occupations, may not the depressed but ever- A True Mothers Reward. 33 hopeful soul of the unselfish catechist have yented itself before the altar of the little church in earnest supplication that the time of waiting might be shortened to him ! It is that modest sanctuary which loving hands have been decking all the previous Holy Saturday ; and on that altar, with the dawn of the resurrection morn, 1819, Giovanni Mastai offers up the body which reposed incorrupt in the sepulchre, as it does in our taber- nacles. There are joys here below unlike anything in human expe- rience on this side of Heaven — ^because they are themselves a fore- taste of heaven — ^the brief but overwhelming presence in the Chris- tian bosom of him we are to possess and hold eternally. There are days and solemnities on which he, who even in this exile is ever so near us, floods the heart that seeks him and his interests, above all the treasures and pursuits of earth, with an ecstasy that overflows every boundary of sense, transforming the countenance, winging our words with heavenly fire, and thrilling others as with the shock of a hidden power. Surely, when these pure priestly hands brought ''the Lamb of God" to the adoring mother kneeling at that altar, and placed on her tongue the Giver in his divinest gift, she must have felt more than rewarded for her sacrifice to God of her best- loved, and for all the tender anxiety and weary watching and waiting of these years. And the noble father too, — for his were the faith and love of the true Christian — had he, like the patriarchs of old, been favored then and there with a vision of his boy-priest's destinies, he would have risen from that spot singing with Simeon in his heart of hearts : " Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, Lord, According to thy word in peace. Because my eyes liave seen thy salvation. Which thou hast prepared. Before the face of all peoples.'* He might well, turning to the mother, have added : " Behold this [child] is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted." There was sweet music, too, in that little sanctuary. Young hearts singing praises to God, on that lovely Easter morning, as Italian children can sing when moved by piety and gratitude. They were to benefit still farther by the devoted care of that young priest; most of them were to acclaim him with the enthusiastic crowd when 3 34 Lif^ of Pope Pius IX, his very name could in after years thrill all Italy to its centre ; many of them would live to see him a fugitive, and all but a prisoner within the city that once idolized him, and not a few, perhaps, would live to kneel for one more blessing from that dear hand on the fiftieth anniversary of his episcopal consecration. What viscissitudes and crosses mark the sixty years commencing with that memorable Easter-tide ! Over that glorious pathway of devotion, suffering, and triumph we have now to guide the reader. CHAPTER lY. Labors among the Orphan" Boys— Sent to Chili with the Delegate Apostolic — Labors ik the Industrial Schools OF Kome. 1819-1827. PIUS VIL, himself a devoted lover of the obscurity, poverty, and crucified life of the cloister, could not help divining in the thirst of abnegation and zeal for the spiritual welfare of the poor, so apparent in his protege, the earnest of a career fruitful in holy deeds and eminent services to the Church. This precious disposi- tion the saintly pontiff determined to encourage and foster to the utmost. He was made too happy by all that was told him of the good done at ''Tata Giovanni," not to grant his friend the opportunity of enlarging his sphere of action. He, therefore, placed Mastai", to the latter's infinite delight, at the head of the asylum itself. The reader will not regret to learn a few details about the origin of this establishment, the creation of a poor uneducated journeyman mason, all the more so that it is to be the loved theater of M^staf s labors during the next four years. Giovanni Borgi, then, lived toward the close of the last century, toiling for a small pittance at his craft as a mason around the Church of St. Peter's. He could neither read nor write, was unmarried, and spent almost the entire time left him after his daily labor in the hos- pitals tending the sick, or in some poor hovel where pined and groaned some lonely sufferer. Indeed, he was endowed with a most powerful scent in tracking the worst cases of this kind. And when he had found some wretched being all helpless and forsaken in his dire need, Giovanni was wont to spend the whole night watching, consoling, tending him, content, when daylight brought the hours of labor, to suffer the scoffs and bantering of his companions, as he nodded over his bricks and mortar. At length the good man was moved to compassion at seeing the numbers of ragged, barefooted, and hungry boys lying asleep by night 35 36 * Life of Pope Pius IX, on the steps of the great churches or huddled together in some shel- tered comer. Some of these he took to his own lodging, rented for their use the ground floor of the house, clad them, fed them, had tliem prepared for confession and communion, and then apprenticed to some honest mechanic. He was thoroughly in earnest ; the work grew on his hands, friends came to his assistance, priests and laymen became his helpers, found him money, organized a society, opened an asylum, and effected so much good, that, in 1784, Pius VI. gave the work his blessing, and thenceforth its success was assured. The Palazzo Ruggia was purchased, and afforded a daily refuge to about one hundred boys. As these little vagrants called their ben- efactor by no other name than Tata Giovanni, equivalent to the familiar English "Daddy John," the new institution became popu- larly known by that name. By degrees the temporary asylum be- came a home for these houseless wanderers, and the home soon became a school. Priests, professors, prelates, and noblemen would spend some hours every evening teaching the inmates reading, writ- ing, arithmetic, and the elementary branches of knowledge necessary to tradesmen. Then skilled mechanics volunteered to instruct them. At first the boys were sent out to work by day, returning to the asylum in the evening. Soon, however, Giovanni was enabled to have them taught their trades and do all their work in the house, and thus, from one improvement to another, the asylum became also an industrial school and workshop. The sole aim of the illiterate but enlightened founder, like that of all who perpetuated his charity, was to make of every boy there a thorough Christian and a thorough mechanic. Such was the first little flock intrusted to him who, unconscious of any ambition but that of doing the utmost for every child there, labored with a singleness of purpose that never looked beyond the walls of the institution, and never failed to make the best use of the present opportunity. The asylum and its schools were to be in after years the recipients of many lasting benefits from the young priest who won golden opinions in it. But of this in its proper time. The illustrious Cardinal Consalvi, the trusted minister of Pius VII., at the beginning of 1823 was exceedingly desirous of providing for the religious wants of the Spanish republics of South America. During the last half of the eighteenth century the attitude of Spain and Portugal toward the Holy See had been one of almost schismati- cal hostility. The salutary interference of the supreme ecclesiastical Sent to Chili with the Delegate Apostolic, 37 autliority had been either thwarted or set at naught by the home goY- emments, even when its action was the most needed ; and the colo- nial governments copied all too faithfully the conduct of their supe- riors. The whole Christian world was scandalized by the cruel pres- sure brought to bear upon Pope Clement XIV. in order to compel him not only to suppress the Society of Jesus, but to subscribe to the official calumnies against it drawn up by the joint representatiyes of the houses of Bourbon and Braganza. And this unnatural treat- ment of a heart-broken old man, was only exceeded by the uncalled for and abominable cruelty displayed toward the members of the obnoxious order in both kingdoms and their yast transatlantic colonies. What was most deplorable was that no successors were eyer giyen to these 30,000 accomplished and devoted religious, the best edu- cators of youth, and the most successful missionaries of modern times. The Indian tribes whom they had civilized by miracles of a self-sacrificing zeal, were permitted to relapse into a worse barbarism than that of their ancestors, because one of its elements was a bitter hatred of the Christian governments that robbed them of their bene- factors. And in the schools of the Spanish Peninsula anti-Catholic teachers were intruded, or most of these institutions were suppressed, while beyond the seas, to this day, no teachers, or bad teachers, have taken the place of these trusted guides in their once numerous and most flourishing schools. The Holy See, in canceling a papal act invested with none of the wonted canonical solemnities, and unaccompanied by that liberty of action without which even grave disciplinary measures are shorn of their worth, plainly told Spaniards and Portuguese, in both hemi- spheres, that the era of reparation and renovation had come. Chili, favored above her sister republics in the fact that she had been governed in succession by two noble men, the Marquises O'Higgins, father and son, had been comparatively free from the horrors of civil war, and had preserved more of the elements of sound political and religious progress. She was the first to ask the Holy See to send a special representative to concert with the gov- ernment the needful measures for harmonious action. Consalvi cast his eyes on Monsignor Muzi, afterward Bishop of Citta di Castello, as the fittest person to deal with the difficulties likely to occur in the new American republic, and gave him as audi- tor or counselor the Abbate Mastai, whose courtly manners and 38 Life of Pope Pius IX, winning address were likely to make a favorable impression on Spanish gentlemen. The great secretary and the holy father had, doubtless, ulterior views on the yoying priest in making or approving this selection ; but to the latter's mind no other prospect opened than that of a glorious missionary field beyond the seas, immense good to be done to souls, and great dangers and labors to be encountered in the ser- vice of the Master. His joy was therefore great. At these tiditigs the over-anxious mother at Sinigaglia was filled with fear of the long and perilous voyage, of the vicissitudes of a country still torn by civil strife and revolution ; and, above all she dreaded the return of the fell distemper amid the excitements attend- ant on such a journey and to such a land. She wrote to Pius YII. be- seeching him to cancel the choice made of her son ; and the venera- ble man, though extremely feeble and near his end, at once answered in a strain that consoled and reassured her. When the Abbate Mas- taK presented himself, in June, to take leave of his holiness and ask his blessing on the journey he was undertaking with such alacrity, the aged Pope received him with more than fatherly kindness. **Your lady mother," he said, "has written to the secretary to have him prevent you from undertaking this journey ; but we have sent her a letter to say that you will surely return safe from this mission." And with loving words of encouragement the old man blessed the kneeling priest, who felt as he gazed with fond veneration on the meek and suffering features, that he should never more look on his benefactor, nor hear the sound of that voice that had been to him the voice of God's angel in his hours of doubt and deepest despond- ency. Monsignor Muzi and his counselor were still in Italy, when, on August the 20th, Pius VII. closed his long career of suffer- ing amid the tears of his illustrious servants and fellow-sufferers, bis lips faintly murmuring the last words, **Savona . . . Fon- tainebleau." Was his gentle and forgiving spirit pleading for his oppressor ? He had been so eager to send to St. Helena a true priest to cheer and reconcile on his death-bed the once mighty conqueror, whose headlong anger know not pity for the fallen or delay for those he doomed to die I We must not tarry to picture the enthusiasm with which Mastai found himself, on landing at Montevideo, on the land rendered dear to Christian hearts by the labors and peaceful conquests of the eai-ly Labors in Chili and Peru. 39 Jesuit missionaries. The history written by the impartial Muzza- relli had been familiar to Mastai while almost a child, and had helped in no small degree to kindle the ardent desire conceived soon afterward of treading in the footsteps of these glorious apostles of civilization. During the brief stay which the Delegate Apostolic made on the shore of the Eio de la Plata, he and his companion had opportunities enough of witnessing the sad state of spiritual neglect and ignorance of the Indian population. Nor did Mastai allow such opportunities to pass by unheeded. Every hour that he could spare was given to the extreme needs of these poor people. This road from Montevideo to Chili and Peru, lay across the wide pampas and the bleak and dangerous passes of the Andes. The perils of their sea voyage, great as they had been, were trifling in comparison with the dangers that lay before them, at that period particularly. They had been imprisoned at Majorca by the jealous Spanish authorities because they dared to go, even on an errand of religious peace and mercy, to a country in rebellion against the crown of Spain ; they were attacked by the Barbaresque corsairs on leaving Majorca ; and were again and again assailed on the Atlantic by the most violent storms. But on the pampas, beside the incessant appre- hensions of being attacked by the hostile Indians, they had to endure the extremes of hunger and cold amid the varied climates of the inhospitable region, — having at one time, in the midst of a fearful storm to spend the night in a hut constructed of bones and still redolent of putrefaction. The glimpses obtained of the Indian populations as the travelers wound their way toward the eastern spurs of the Andes, or halted among the sparse villages in the central valleys, filled them with pity and regret ; pity for a race that had once tasted the sweet fruits of apostolic zeal, and regret at the ruin caused by the infernal policy of a Pombal and a Florida-Blanca. Great was the joy shown at Santiago on the arrival of the messen- gers sent by the common father of Christians ; deep and sincere the respect so universally shown to men who had faced and under- gone such dangers and privations to heal the religious wounds of the South American republics. But divided councils, in a country still bleeding from civil war and torn by internal dissensions, prevented the Delegate Apostolic from accomplishing the purpose so dear to the fatherly heart of the dying Pius. The mission of Monsignor Muzi comprised the whole of Spanish America. He was, however, only 40 Life of Pope Pius IX. permitted to yisit Chili and Peru, before returning witli hea^y heart from countries he yearned to benefit to the utmost in his power. During their stay, the counselor found leisure from the duties of his office to make frequent excursions into the interior provinces of both republics, tliereby possessing himself of accurate knowledge about the religious wants of Spaniards and Indians alike. Indeed, it would have been unspeakable happiness for him to spend his whole life, imitating the glorious examples set on these shores by St. Turibio of Lima, and St. Francis Solano, journeying on foot from city to city and village to village, seeking amid the wilderness the tribes once con- verted by the Jesuits, and now bereft of all missionary aid, and dis- playing toward them in his own person all the supernatural self- sacrifice of a Peter Claver. It can be readily believed that the only vision of future greatness that ever floated before the eyes of the devoted young priest, was that of the great Apostle of Cartagena (whom he was afterward to place among the Blessed), subscribing himself by solemn vow " the Slave of the Negroes forever." But few anecdotes have reached us about his doings in South America. Two noteworthy incidents will suffice, however, to show in what direction ran the current of that unselfish existence. In one of the wild valleys between the interlocking spurs of the Andes he stumbled on a hovel, in which a poor man lay at the point of death, with his wife and children weeping, hopeless and helpless, around him» It was an Indian family. They had received neither instruction nor baptism ; had never been under priestly care, and knew the Christian religion only by the traditions of their parents and the godless lives of the Spanish mountaineers and traders. The comely features of the young priest, who all of a sudden appeared by the death-bed, lighted up as they were by unearthly charity, seemed to the dying man and his family an angelic apparition. The words and acts of the stranger proved to be those of an angel. He spoke of heaven, and of him who died on the cross to open its gates to all men, with such inspired eloquence and in the near presence of death that the poor sufferer believed and was baptized. He was doing, like the first apostles, Clirist's work among the heathen, and Christ was with him giving efficacy to his every word. When the regenerated soul had taken its flight, Mastai opened the wallet containing his wardrobe, took out his best linen, clothed the catechumen in it, and thus laid him to his rest, with Christ's cross Labors in the hidustrial Schools of Rome, 4 1 aboye his grave on the hill-side. Then he instructed and baptized the widow and her orphans, shared with them his little store of money and clothing, and went on his way seeking other stray sheep of his Master's fold. While journeying with the Delegate Apostolic from the western slope of the Andes to Santiago, they had to spend the' night in a wretched inn or posada, the only refuge to be found far and near. No sooner had the host ascertained the quality of his guests than he informed them that an Englishman — *^a heretic," as he termed it — was lying ill in the house of a dangerous fever. It was a young officer of the name of Miller, who thus lay unconscious, far away from home and dear friends, with not one kind hand to smooth his pillow. There was a good Samaritan there, however, God-sent too, in the poor Englishman's dire need. Mastai, the generous Delegate Apostolic heartily approving the step, remained in the house, while his companions went on their way. He nursed the sick stranger — now his sick brother — with the tenderness and constancy of a sister or a mother, never quitting his side till he was in full convalescence. It was of no account to him to share in the splendid public reception given by the city of San- tiago and the Government to the representative of the Apostolic See. That he left with heartfelt regret a country which offered him so rich a harvest of souls, we may easily believe. On his return to Italy, in 1825, he found Leo XII. in the chair of Pius VII. The new Pope, long tried himself during the Napoleonic persecution, was a man to appreciate the priestly spirit that animated Mastai. It is not unlikely that he deemed him fitter to benefit the sadly demoralized inhabitants of Italy by such apostolic virtues as those that shone forth in him, than to run a diplomatic career affording iittle consolation to one so spiritual-minded. So, until such time as age and further labor on the home-mission had matured his qualities, he was — so the Pope judged — to be given ample scope for his zeal and the ex- ercise of his administrative abilities. In pursuance of this plan the Pope made him one of his own domestic prelates, and gave him the general direction of the vast mixed establishement of San Michele. This was at first a refuge for vagrant boys, opened in 1693 by Cardinal Odescalchi, nephew to Innocent XI. ; it became in time an industrial school, and beside it were successively erected a hospital for both sexes, an industrial school for girls, and, latest of all, a reformatory for women. 42 Life of Pope Pius IX, Monsignor MastaT, as he was thenceforth called, displayed such extraordinary intelligence, administrative talent, and zeal for the improvement of the industrial and art schools in particular, that he contributed very materially to make San Michele the pride of Eome and the real conservatory of Koman art. The reverence in which his memory was held by the inmates of Tata Giovanni was not diminished by the fresh luster acquired in his mission to America. In his new charge he found subjects enough on which to exercise his priestly qualities. Indeed they shone with a splendor that all Eome admired, and that the very best of her ministers strove to emulate. In May, 1827, Leo XII. thought the time had come for placing the Director of San Michele at the head of one of the most important dioceses in the Iloman States, with a population needing the care of a chief pastor who was above all a man of God. And so Monsignor Mastai was nominated Archbishop of Spoleto. CHAPTER V. CONSECEATED AeCHBISHOP OF SpOLETO — StATE OF UmBRIA AISTI) Causes of Disaffection^ toward Pontifical Goveri^meistt — ADMIlJflSTRATIVE CAREER IK SpOLETO — APPOINTED TO ImOLA. 1827-1832. ON May 21, 1827, Monsignor Mastai was '^preconised" or offici- ally announced by the Pope, in consistory, as Archbishop of Spoleto, and on June 3d — the feast of '^St. Peter in Chains" — ^he received episcopal consecration at the hands of Cardinal Castiglione, afterward Pope Pius VIIL As Leo XII. was himself a native of Spoleto (he had also been bishop of Sinigaglia), there was a special Bignificance in his choosing so young a prelate to minister to the wants of a diocese so very dear to him. There must be, at this dis- tance of time, a something more striking in the coincidence between the day chosen for the new archbishop's consecration and the condi- tion in which the whole Christian world beholds him, as the fiftieth anniversary of that memorable 3d of June returns to awaken such universal sympathy and devotion toward "the prisoner of the Vati- can." But the great determining motive of the reigning Pope in nominat- ing Monsignor Mastai to a position so elevated and responsible, was based on the needs of the Umbrian population, and on the belief entertained by his own counselors that the director of San Michele was the man of all most fitted to restore confidence, peace, piety, and prosperity where the French rule had destroyed them utterly. A right understanding of the state in which Central Italy had been left by imperial misrule, and of the efforts made by Pius VII. and his successors to remedy disorders which they bitterly deplored, may throw not a little light on the history we are sketching, and on the causes of the manifold evils that ignorance and prejudice are wont to attribute to priestly government, a prejudice which the very authors of the mischief and the sworn enemies of the papacy are careful to foster by systematic misrepresentation. We shall ask the reader first to visit with us the beautiful and von- 43 44 Life of Pope Pius IX, erable city of Spoleto, and while surveying from tlie surrounding hill-tops the enchanting prospect of Umbria spread out beneath our feet, it will be easy to appreciate the task appointed to the new arch- bishop, and the heroic qualities that he brought to its fulfillment. Spoleto is in the very heart of Central Italy, covering with its quaint medieval edifices the side of a lofty hill, on the crest of which, far above the city proper, frowns "La Kocca," a four-turreted for- tress built by Theodoric the Great (455-526), again and again par- tially destroyed by its temporary masters, thoroughly repaired by Pope Nicholas V. (1398-1455), heroically defended against the Piedmontese in September, 1860, by Major Myles O'Reilly and his Irish Brigade, and now a prison for criminals. Behind this hill, with its amphi- theater of churches, convents, and dwelling-houses, and connected with it by an ancient and lofty aqueduct, rises far into the cloudless sky Monte Luco, whose sides are "like a most luxuriant garden covered with box, sage, arbutus, ilex, and juniper. Delightful paths wind upward through the woods, and present new views, each more beautiful than the last. Scattered among the odoriferous thickets are a succession of chapels, and buildings which once were hermit- ages ; for a perfect Thebaid was established here in 528 by St. Isaac of Syria, and the Catholic church honors many saints who have spent a portion of their lives there. At the top of the mountain, in a wood of chestnuts, is the pilgrimage church of Madonna delle Grazie ("Our Lady of Graces"). The principal convent is that of St. Giuliano. No more beautiful or heaven-inspiring retreat could be found than the cells in this flowery mountain-forest " (Hare). Michael-Angelo, after visiting it in September, 1556, wrote that he scarcely brought the half of himself back to Eome, "because one only finds true liberty, peace, and happiness amid such scenes." Alas 1 of all these retreats that once constituted the paradise of the soul and the nursery of holy and heroic men, there is not one but has been desecrated by the present rulers of Italy, in the name of liberty, peace, and progress ! But we must not anticipate. It was precisely because the bishops of this ancient see (founded in the year 50) had industriously rebuilt the city from its ruins after each fresh destruction wrought by Goths, Huns, Lombards, and Greeks ; because they had succeeded in making these mountain soli- tudes the liomo of peace, security, and holiness, that such men as Theodoric built the lofty citadel as a protection and a refuge, while, later, Thcodelapius connected the city and its fortress with the saint- State of Unibria, 45 peopled Monte Luco, by that magnificent aqueduct spanning the intervening yalley. There is not a church or chapel in the grand old city, nor a con- vent or public edifice of any importance for miles around that had not been decorated with loving hand by some of Italy's most famous artists. Lo Spagka, Perugino's favorite pupil and Raphael's fellow- student, could not tear himself away from Spoleto, working in every sweet sanctuary where he was permitted to paint, on wall or canvass, the visions of heavenly beauty and heroic virtue that filled his soul. But convents and sanctuaries are now profaned or allowed to fall into ruin ; and the day is not far distant when the painters of Italy may seek in vain for inspiration and never find " the gleam. The light that never was on sea or land. The consecration, and the poet's dream." It would be impossible to describe in these pages, even did our subject and space permit it, the varied beauties and untold wealth of the magnificent country on which one may look down from the towers of La Rocca or the now desolate and desecrated sanctuaries of Monte Luco. Directly Avest of it, across the valley of the Tiber, lies Orvieto, perched on a huge volcanic mass, its precipitous sides falling sheer down to the plain, and presenting, amid the splendors of the evening or the morning sun, its glorious cathedral shining afar like an angelic watch-tower at the entrance of Paradise. And surely one might well take the land for another Eden, over whose bosom the industry and science of man had in more than one way added charms to God's choicest handiwork. Let us listen to one whose religion will not incline him to overpraise the results of Cath- olic civilization, of pontifical rule especially. *^0n turning the crest of the hills which shelter Bolsena, one looks down into a wide valley filled with the richest vegetation — peach-trees and almonds and figs, with vines leaping from tree to tree and chaining them together, and beneath, an unequaled luxu- riance of corn and peas and melons, every tiniest space occupied. Mountains of the most graceful forms girdle in this paradise, and, from the height whence we first gaze upon it, endless distances are seen, blue and roseate and snowy, melting into infinity of space ; while from the valley itself rises, island-like, a mass of orange-colored rock, crowned with old walls and houses and churches, from the 46 Life of Pope Pius IX, center of which is uplifted a vast cathedral, with delicate, spray-like pinnacles, and a golden and jeweled front, and this is Oryieto" (Hare). It is the «ame, whether we look to the north or to the south ; everywhere the creations of that civilizing power that formed Christ- endom from out the chaos of ruin left by the barbaric invasions ; in every comer of the land man encouraged to settle, protected and blessed in his thrift, taught to be content with what the earth was forced to yield to his husbandry, and to look beyond the bright skies above him for a rest from his labors and a reward for his virtues. What religion achieved in Spoleto, that, from the downfall of the Roman power, and even while oppressed by the protectorate of Con- stantinople, she strove to do in every corner of Italy : to build up the cities as a sure refuge for the inhabitants spared by the sword, to encourage the husbandman as he planted or garnered his crops, and the shepherd as he led his flocks along the fevered plain or the healthier hill-side ; and, above all, to teach man not to set his heart upon this earth ; but to share its fruits with the needy and to make its abode a picture of the eternal city of the skies, by brotherly love, by patience of ill, and forbearing from strife and revenge and malice. In spite of the evil passions which, age after age and uninterrupt- edly, marred all the purest intentions and noblest labors of the Church, if, at this day, one should ask what she has done with the Italian people, and wherein do they show her culture, we might turn to a writer, who, being bitterly opposed to her teaching, but bom on her soil and conversant with every class of her people, as no other man of Anglo-Saxon blood can boast of being, may be accepted as an unprejudiced witness. They are, according to him, an honest and a tmthf ul people. * ' Do not," ho says, **go forth in a spirit of antagonism to the inhabitants, and with the impression that life in Italy is to be a prolonged strug- gle against extortion and incivility. Except in the old kingdom of Naples— there is no country where it is so little necessary to look forward to such things as possible. A traveler will be cheated oftener in a week's tour in England than in a year's residence in Italy. During six whole winters spent at Rome, and years of travel in all the other parts of Italy, the author (Mr. Hare) cannot recall a Binglo act or word of an Italian— wo^ Neapolitan— of which he can justly complain ; but, on the contrary, has an overflowing recollec- What Religion has Done with the People, 47 tion of the disinterested courtesy, and the unselfish and often most undeserved kindness with which he has uniyersally been treated." — Cities of Central Italy, i. p. 14. They are a most courteous people, as the same writer goes on to prove. But they, one and all, demand to be treated with cour- tesy. "JSTothing can be obtained from an Italian by compulsion. A friendly look and a cheery word will win almost anything, but Italians will not be driven. . . . Travelers . . . . are beginning, though only beginning, to learn that the difference of caste in Italy does not give an opening for the discourtesies in which they are wont to indulge to those they consider their inferiors in the north, and they are beginning to see that Italian dukes and marquises are quite as courteous and thoughtful for their vigneroli (vine-dressers) or their pecorai (shepherds) as for their equals ; and that the Italian character is so constituted that a certain amount of friendly famil- iarity on the part of the superior never leads to disrespect in the in- ferior. " — Ibidem, They are true men, brave and moral, priests and people alike. *^ With every year which an Englishman passes in Italy, a new vail of the suspicion with which he entered it will be swept away, only it is a pity that his enjoyment should be marred at the beginning. For- eigners will find that .... Italian men are generally as cour- teous, brave, and high-minded as they are almost universally hand- some ; that the women are as kind and modest as they are utterly without affectation ; and that, though the bugbears of Protestant story-books have certainly existed, the parish priests, and even the monks as a general rule, are most devoted single-minded Christians, living amongst and for the people under their care. Cases of ec- clesiastical immorality are exceedingly rare, quite as rare, if we may judge by our newspapers, as in Protestant countries ; and, if inquired into, it will be found that most of the sensational stories told are taken out of — Boccaccio (1313-1375). Of course, much must natur- ally remain which one of a different faith may deeply regret ; but Englishmen are apt, and chiefly on religious subjects, to accept old prejudices as facts, and to judge without knowledge." — Ibid. Where the population of any country are honest, truthful, court- eous, self-respecting, brave, modest, and moral (industrious they are allowed to be, as well as ingenious and quick-witted), and where their religious teachers and guides ^'are most devoted, single-minded 48 Life of Pope Pius IX, Christians, living amongst and for the peoi^le," assuredly religion has not to blush either for priests or for people ! How happened it, then, that in the year of grace 1827 there existed in Umbria (let us say nothing of the other pontifical provinces) such disaffection toward the papal rule and such serious moral disorder, that the reigning Pope cast his eyes on a prelate of known self-sacri- ficing disposition, large-minded and large-hearted, gifted with a per- suasive eloquence, and tried by labors among the poor in both hemi- spheres, as the man best fitted to turn back the rising tide of dis- affection and rebellion ? One principal cause of this intellectual and moral disorder has already been assigned in speaking of the propagandism set on foot by the French radicals and sedulously encouraged by the military rulers of Italy under Napoleon. The cry of "Italian unity," left behind as a watchword by the retreating French imperialists, and the well- organized system of secret societies which inoculated the Italian lourgeoisie or middle class with the idea this cry conveyed, is another principal cause. It is not true, even at this hour, that the Italian aristocracy or peasantry (contadiyii) have ever been or are yet, as a class, in favor of Italian unity ; most certainly they never have been hostile to the fatherly government of the Popes. We can, here at least, anticipate by half a century, and give from the traveler already quoted one last impartial judgment on this all- important matter : ** Those who have traveled in Italy many years ago will observe how ,iri-(';ifly the character of the country has changed since its small courts liuve been swept away. With the differences of costume and of feeling, the old proverbs and stories and customs are gradually dying out. Travelers will view these changes with different eyes. That Venice and Milan should have thrown off the hated yoke of Austria and united themselves to the country to which they always wished to belong, no one can fail to rejoice, and the cursory observer may be induced by the English press, or by the statements of the na- tive mezzo ceto (middle class), who are almost entirely in its favor, to believe that tlio wi^h for a united Italy was universal. Those who stay longer, and who mako a real acquaintance with the people, will find that in mt)st of the Central States the feeling of the aristocracy and of the contadini is almost universally against the present state of things." — Ibidem, 19. Causes of Disaffectio7i and Disorder, 49 It was among this same miscliievous middle class {mezzo ceto) that the Archbishop of Spoleto was called to put forth all his zeal ; for among this class were fermenting all the political, socialistic, and anti-Christian ideas which were to reyolutionize Italy by slow but sure stages. One of the successful artifices of the baffled French infidels, when compelled to withdraw from Italy, was to represent the restored papal government as a creature of Austria. In truth, Pius VII. was much more indebted for the recovery of his States to England than to Austria ; but in France it suited the national temper to represent the overthrow of the empire and all its consequent humiliations as the effect of Austrian revenge. In Italy, too, the secular hatred of Austrian occupation would be sure to derive increased intensity from the protectorate now kept up by Austria over the Eoman States, and the right bestowed on that power by the Congress of Vienna to gar- rison Ferrara and other cities of the papal territory at the first seri- ous symptoms of revolt. Leo XII., from the beginning of his pontificate, had been desig- nated as ^^the Austrian patriarch," and rumors were most industri- ously circulated affirming that he had been elected through Austrian influence. The truth was that in the conclave one of his concur- rents, Cardinal Severoli, had been '^ excluded" by the Austrian veto, while Cardinal Castiglione (afterward Pius VIII.) was the candi- date favored by Austria. It was partly in opposition to this odious influence, and chiefly because Cardinal della Genga was a favorite with all parties — perhaps also because being stricken with an incura- ble disease the court of Vienna did not think it worth while to ex- clude him — that he was elected, to the great joy of the people, who venerated him as a saint. But there was another and more influential source of the persist- ent and systematic accusations of undue leaning toward Austria which thwarted to so great an extent all the patriotic efforts of Leo XII. and his two immediate successors. This was the little known but powerful interest created in the Papal States principally in favor of Prince Eugene Beauharnais by the Congress of Vienna. The representatives of the great powers had bestowed on the for- mer viceroy of Italy, beside immense landed estates in Lombardy, still more considerable possessions in the States of the Church made up of the confiscated property of the religious bodies, with a num- ber of magnificent monastic edifices, the pride of former ages. It 4 5o Life of Pope Pitis IX. was in reality like a permanent colony of Frencli officials, with a powerful administration and a yast patronage, kept np in tlie heart of the country they had once governed. "In every large town," says Artaud,' *'some spacious building contained the offices of the appanagio (endowment) as it was called, with a staff of collectors, clerks, overseers, land-surveyors, and higher officials ; and in almost every village was a branch of this little empire. . . . Many of the persons so employed were, moreover, foreigners, whose religion [or rather hatred of all religion,*] was in avowed opposition to that of the native population, and whose morals were neither edifying nor improving." Leo XII. had set his heart on redeeming this property, and econo- mized most rigidly in order to effect this purpose. He knew that this vast foreign administration in the midst of his States was a hot- bed of conspiracy as well as a perpetual drain on the sources of his people. And the more he economized and exerted himself to get rid of the nuisance, the more he found that they conspired and agi- tated, accusing "the Austrian patriarch" enthroned in the Quirinal of sacrificing Italy and his people to the hated "foreigners." Scarcely had Archbishop Masta'i taken possession of his see of Spo- leto than ominous signs of a near revolutionary outbreak manifested themselves ; odious assassinations occurred in several places, and Bimultaneously with them there were noisy and violent demonstra- tions gotten up by the clubs. The Archbishop of Spoleto knew that one mighty weapon of paci- fication was the confidence of all classes of his people ; and he set about winning it by the open acts of unbounded devotion to their every need. The experience acquired in Eome enabled him to provide for the poor and homeless of his flock, and to oreate institutions similar to Tata Giovanni and others, with the working of which he was well ac'iii.iintcd. It was not, however, from his own resources that he drew the nooossary means. The income of his bishopric was, at best, but inconsiderable, and when he came to Spoleto he was worse than poor. So much so, indeed, that, when he was apprised of his pro- motion, ho had noithor the money required to meet the outlay neces- sary for the Bolcinnitics attendant on his consecration, nor what was necessary to purchase the indispensable outfit of a bishop, nor even the trifling sum usually given on such occasions for clerical services ♦ Author. Administrative Career in Spoleto, 5i in the Eoman chancery. He had absolutely left himself nothing but his few books and scanty raiment. It was this very poverty, noised abroad in Eome without his knowledge, and of which the touching story had gone before him to Spoleto, that moved the hearts of his flock, and impelled them to assist him to the utmost of their means in every one of the schemes set on foot for charity or education. While thus laboring to benefit the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the orphan, as well as to found industrial schools and colleges, he found means of bringing in turn a rich blessing to the homes of all who had so generously aided him in his manifold undertakings. Spoleto and its neighborhood were sadly disturbed by factions and partisan passions, partly inherited from former times, but chiefly the offspring of the political and social changes of the last forty years. As the archbishop was a welcome guest whithersoever he went, he profited by the warm welcome extended invariably to him to heal existing strifes. Almsgiving, when performed with that Christian spirit that bespeaks a heart touched with the love of the Crucified, has its reward, not unfrequently, in that interior grace which enables the soul to forgive past injuries, to lay aside political and partisan bitterness, and to love truly where one had long hated heartily. ]J^o man can achieve such reconciliations amongst a warm-blooded race, like a man whose whole life bears the stamp of self-sacrifice and absolute devotion to the good of others. And so, with the advent of Archbishop Mastai in Spoleto, all the sweet and holy charities of neighborly intercourse began to flourish anew, and bring forth a rich crop of peace and happiness and pros- perity as well. For their chief pastor was not only the man of God who sought in all things, and above all things, the interest of their souls, but he was also the man of the world who was foremost and earnest in seeking and promoting their temporal welfare. The cul- ture of the silkworm, the establishment and improvement of the ex- cellent woolen and felt factories, that he afterward loved to patronize as Pope, he now stimulated as archbishop ; he also encouraged or advised the development given to the very important iron-works, and their attendant workshops, for agricultural and domestic utensils. In a word, there was not a family throughout his flock with whose aims, hopes, cares, and griefs the prelate did not identify himself, not an industry nor an undertaking in which he did not show a sincere and active interest. How could such a man not be beloved ? 52 Life of Pope Pius IX, This love of the people for a man of God, and the supernatural vir- tues which call it forth, were strikingly displayed on one memorable occasion. Leo XIL, who, during his pontificate, had more than once shown the court of Vienna that he was not one likely to be swayed by mere worldly policy, had ended his life of intolerable suffering in Feb- ruary, 1829, and then for a brief space Cardinal Castiglione occupied the chair of Peter. He was one of the most accomplished men in Europe, and one of the most lowly-minded. The efforts to elect him by Austrian influence in the conclave of 1823 had, as we have seen, been baffled. They were rencAved after the death of Leo XIL, and were successful this time, if, indeed, that can be called success which is the choice of the most saintly, the most learned, the most worthy, by men who are unanimous in honoring shining merit. But the cry of foreign influence, raised so often in the preceding reign, was now renewed with a fiercer and more frequent vehemence. Leo XIL had lived down the slanders with which he was assailed at his coronation. The thorough and wide-spread reforms carried out or inaugurated in Rome, the large and liberal laws enacted, the burthens of taxation so considerably lightened, the princely gener- osity displayed in succoring the populations distressed by the inun- dations of the Anio, and in pushing forward the hydraulic w^orks destined to prevent such ravages in the future, all inclined his grate- ful subjects to bestow on Leo rather the appellation of * 'Father of his Country," than the nickname of ''the Austrian Patriarch." The providential influence which such men as the Archbishop of Spoleto had acquired over the disturbed or disaffected provinces, added to the deep veneration felt for the virtues of Pius VIII. , kept the Carhonari (Appendix C) in check till the close of his pontificate (Nov. 30, 1830). But then the conspiracy, long prepared in Northern and Central Italy, burst forth in open insurrection at Modena, Bo- logna (Feb. 4, 1831), in the Marches, and at the very gates of Eome. Thus was created by the Italians themselves a necessity for that "foreign inter\'ention " against which the Popes had never ceased to battle for centuries. The detested Austrian flag crossed the frontier of the Papal States and occupied Bologna, Ferrara, and the other notorious centers of revolution ; and then the imperial forces, advanc- ing southward along both sides of the Apennines, drove the armed insurgents in confusion before them. A body of the latter, headed by one Sercognari, and numbering 4,000 men, with five pieces of cannon, had been driven from before Administrative Career in Spoleto, ^\ Civita Gastellana, and retreating soutliward through Umbria, threw themselves into Spoleto, which they determined to hold. The cry of "The Austrians," in every town and hamlet of Italy, produced, at the time, the same sensation in Italian breasts that that of *^The Sassenach " would at any time in the mountains of Kerry or Tip- perary, the irresistible impulse to join in the fray against "the foreigner." Many of the Spoletans openly joined the worsted in- surgents, and a general rising in the neighborhood became imminent. The calamity which this and a subsequent resistance to the autho- rities must have entailed on his flock was foreseen by the archbishop, and he resolved to risk his life or save his people from the horrors of a siege. While the magistrates were already preparing to leave the city, he boldly presented himself to the insurgent chief, laid before him and his officers the inevitable consequences of such a hopeless struggle as theirs, with the victorious Austrians marching down on them from the north, and the Neapolitan troops preparing to assail them from the south. He had food brought to the weary and famished men, caused the wounded and sick to be tenderly cared for in the ]3ublic institutions, promised the deluded men to obtain money to defray their homeward journey, with a free passport and pardon for their treason, and induced them to lay down their arms at his feet. Gregory XVI. was but too happy to grant the pardon promised by the archbishop, as well as the money which these poor men needed sadly. This, however, officers and men would only accept from the prelate himself, not trusting to the honesty of their leader. It was a day of sweet joy in Spoleto when these men disbanded peacefully, after having thanked their kind benefactor and pledged themselves to respect in future the peace of Italy and the happiness of their own firesides. Among the leaders in this "rising "were Louis Napoleon Bona- parte, future emperor of the French, and his brother. The latter fell, mortally wounded, at Forli ; the former advanced to Spoleto at the head of some straggling cavalry, was bought off, at the arch- bishop's suggestion, with a much needed sum of money, and left the country. Let him pass out of this history for the present ; he shall occupy a large space in it at a later date. The disturbances in Spoleto and throughout Umbria did not cease with the disbanding of these four thousand insurgents. Clubs had been organized in every city in Italy, and in the first moment of 54 Life of Pope Pius IX. alarm and discouragement, when the lawful magistrates forsook their posts, either in treason or in terror, the clubs assumed the govern- ment of the cities. It so happened at Spoleto. But as this city was near Rome, with a strongly fortified castle, a central government was established there, which took on itself to give law to the whole province. In this emergency Archbishop Mastai was requested to take on himself the administration of that portion of the Papal States, which he did with much reluctance, but to the great benefit of the popula- tion, having soon succeeded, by the ascendency of his virtue and goodness, in restoring order and tranquillity. It was only for a brief space, however, as the disturbances broke out with renewed fury in 1832, the revolutionists being this time en- couraged by the open sympathy of the English journalists and states- men, and aided still more eflBciently by French support. The gov- ernment of France, in spite of the most energetic protestations of the Holy See, did not hesitate to take possession of Ancona, and that under pretext of maintaining the papal authority, but in reality for the purpose of obtaining once more a foothold in Italy. Thus, while an Austrian army occupied the Romagna, a French force held the only papal seaport on the Adriatic, the presence of the former inflaming the national hatred to frenzy, and that of the latter hold- ing out to revolution secret hopes of aid and comfort. The visitation of this double plague was preceded, in January, by a terrible earthquake, which desolated Central Italy. As the cities throughout TJmbria are, for the most part, built, like Spoleto, in elevated positions susceptible of being fortified, the people fled in terror to the plain. Much disorder and distress was the consequence of this panic. But these accumulated miseries only served to call forth the great and fatherly qualities of the archbishop. He organ- ized relief committees, who sped from place to place with physicians, nurses, food, and raiment for the sufferers, he, the while, seeming to make himself ubiquitous, with helping hand and kind word for all who needed comfort or assistance. But worse than civil war and earthquake was the appearance of the Oiovine Italia (*' Young Italy"), which issued, fully armed and equipp 1, from the atheistical brain of Mazzini about this time. It had it.s birth in Marseilles, the head-qii:irfcrs of the Italian conspira- tors, and was a half-secret, half-open kauiio of all who hated the church of God, with a journal published in that city bearing the Appouited to Lnola, 55 name of the league, and an army of emissaries so active that the sailors of the Italian military and mercantile navy were pledged to a man to circulate Mazzini's publications and principles from one end of the peninsula to the other ! With the entrance of such a formidable organization into political life, abetted as it was by England, France, and Piedmont — though for widely different motives — it was easy for any man gifted with political sagacity to foresee and prophesy the inevitable and not far- distant overthrow of the papal government, and the utter abolition of all church establishments in the Peninsula. We do not know if the Archbishop of Spoleto, destined to be the life-long antagonist of this occult and terrible power, had any pre- sentiment of this life-struggle and of its fateful issues, as he bent him so lovingly and zealous, in the first months of 1832, to his task of binding up the wounds of his bleeding country. Certain it is that Gregory XVI. and his counselors were conscious that no man better than he could withstand, in that part of the papal dominions most threatened by the combined forces of irreligion and revolution, the rising tide of evil. In the following December he was transferred to the see of Imola, and was fortunately permitted to delay his departure for some months. He did not leave Spoleto, however, without a bitter pang, and without great opposition on the part of his flock. It was all in vain. Though deputation after deputation went to Rome appealing to the Pope and his ministers, Gregory had made up his mind that Imola imperatively needed the presence of such a man ; so to Imola Archbishop Mastai' had to go. Still his good deeds live in the memory of the Spoletans to this day. Though no statue of the good archbishop graced any of the ancient city's public squares, and though strange new names have usurped the place of old and revered ones in street and thoroughfare and public building, amid the rage for change and distinction that animates the new rulers of Umbria, the image of Mastai's fearless and boundless devotion is worshiped in every household in his for- mer diocese. To the pilgrim from Anglo-Saxon lands, when it is found that he still reverences the name of the Pope, the guides and hotel-keepers around Spoleto will tell (on the sly, and with bated voice) touching stories of the devoted archbishop's goodness ; as, for instance, how the police^ one fine morning, had persisted in carrying oif to prison 56 Life of Pope Pius IX. a poor woman who was seeking to pawn a silver-gilt branch-candle- Btick, which, she persisted in assuring them with genuine tears in her eyes, had been given her by the archbishop. Her captors, of course, would have it that she had stolen it, or that it had been given her by the plundering insurgents. And so, a gendarme was dispatched to the archiepiscopal residence with the identical can- dlestick. Yes, the prelate shamefacedly confessed, he was the sole cause of the poor woman's trouble. ^*I had no money, and thought she might pawn the article for a handsome penny and bring me the pawn-ticket, which I might redeem later. Here you have the only guilty one." Such anecdotes, and the amusing tales about the archbishop's chief steward, who was wont to lament almost daily among the mar- ket folk the reckless prodigality and improvidence of his master, survive among the contadini at least, whose hearts have been proof against the general change and ingratitude. Pass we now to Imola. CHAPTER VI. Chkistian Glokies of Imola — Characteeistics of the People — Political Passions : how counteracted by the New Archbishop — Felice Orsini — Superior Education given TO THE Clergy — Creation of Institutions of Benefi- cence : THE Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd — Politi- cal Conspiracies — The Archbishop nearly carried off — Archbishop Mastai elevated to the Cardinalate — His filial Devotion to his Mother — Death of Gregory XVI. — Love of Poverty in the dying Pope. 1832—1846. IMOLA has an ancient cathedral, called after an early martyr St. Cassianus — the story is beautifully told by Prudentius — whose relics, with those of the great St. Peter Chrysologus, a native of the city, repose within the sacred place. A strange history is that of this venerated martyr, and one which throws on the eventful life recounted in these pages a strange prophetic light. Cardinal Wiseman, in his charming " Eabiola," has still further embellished the narrative of Prudentius. But we need only the sim- ple historical facts for our purpose. Cassianus taught a school for boys at Imola, then called Forum Cornelii. Having been denounced to the local magistrates as a Christian and an enemy of their coun- try's gods, he was condemned to be stabbed to death by his own scholars. These, two hundred in number, surrounded their unre- sisting victim, and hacked him to pieces with their sharp styles of steel and their penknives. It was a long and fearful torture. The holy poet-bishop Prudentius mentions that on his way to Eome he stopped to pray at the martyr's shrine in the church erected as a memorial to him. Over the altar, beneath which his body lay, was a painting vividly representing the scene of his agony. How far the heroic constancy of the sufferer may have contributed to impress his young tormentors with the notion that the odious Christian faith was divine and indestructible, we cannot now say. 57 5S Life of Pope Pirn IX. The blood of martyrs, or, rather the invincible constancy and other godlike virtues confirmed and made fruitful by such blood, has ever been the seed of Christianity. The native country of St. Cassian did not fail to become in good season a Christian land, made pleasant by the sweet odor of the heavenly virtues practiced in town and coun- try. Who can tell how many of these two hundred boys survived their paganism and their ferocious hatred of the hunted Christians, to kneel in sorrow and in reverence at the lowly shrine whither the country far and near flocked annually to celebrate the anniversary of that tragic but glorious death ? St. Peter, archbishop of the neighboring Ravenna, and called Chrysologus ("of the golden speech"), was one of those beautiful souls that sprung up from that blessed soil in the next age. How should we not hope that another generation, in our own days, who have been taught by the godly life and golden deeds and words of Giovanni Mastai, may not all die hostile to the sacred cause in which he has suffered for well-nigh a century ? Have they not turned against the good shepherd his very deeds of fatherly love, and pierced, in presence of the whole Christian world, the heart that loved them so well ? And shall his prayer, living and dying, for them and for Italy, not avail to save both the one and the other ? In 1832 this portion of the Papal States went by the name of Romagna ; at present it is called Emilia. " The people of Emilia," says a modem traveler, " are almost invariably kind, civil, and hos- pitable to strangers. They are celebrated for their beauty, especially the women of Pesaro and Eano, while the young men of Forli are considered the noblest specimens of humanity in existence. The men have no national costume ; Avomen of the upper classes generally wear knitted vails, something like Spanish mantillas, especially in the churches. The Emilia is very richly cultivated, the partition system being adopted, by which the owner lets out the land to the conta- dino, for the benefit of his labor and implements, receiving half the produce in return." It was to this beautiful country and richly-gifted people that Archbishop Mastai came in February, 1833, heralded by the fame of his priestly virtues, his popular eloquence, and his enlightened patriotism. For there were those who industriously spread the re- port that the counsels then prevailing at the Quirinal were not friendly toward the Archbishop of Spoleto, and that he, in turn. Political Passions. 59 was of too adyanced a liberalism to brook patiently the rigorous measures in fayor with Gregory XYI. Of such dissentiment we haye no proof. What is unquestionable is the absolute and unspar- ing deyotion of Archbishop Mastai to the duties of his new office, shown by word and act, from the day of his arriyal in Imola. This is so well attested by friends and foes alike that we may well forget the babble and gossip of political fanaticism, to study a new and rich page in a life so full of lofty teachings. Imola and its diocese offered a wider field than Spoleto to the zeal of its new bishop. Its population was at least double ; and had the purpose of Gregory XVI. been to afford the impoyerished archbishop an opportunity for recruiting his finances, the change, in this respect, had been a most fayorable one. The revenues of his second see, without being anything like the salary of a first-class Protestant pas- tor in New York, were comparatively handsome. But such motiyes had not influenced the Pope in this appointment. It was a promo- tion from a less to a more honorable position — although Imola was not an archbishopric — from a difficult charge in one place, admir- ably fulfilled, to a far more difficult one in another. Imola had been the episcopal city of Cardinal Barnabe Chiaramonte, when he was elected to be Pope Pius VII. When he left his flock in that memor- able December, 1799, to meet his brother-cardinals in conclaye at Venice, his charities had made him so poor that a friend had to pay his Avay from stage to stage. We shall, at the end of this chapter, haye to chronicle of his successor something very like that charity and splendid poverty. At the arriyal of Archbishop Mastai in Imola, the whole of Northern Italy was in a fearful state of agitation. Whatever may have been the archbishop's views of Italian or papal policy, his, cer- tainly, was not the disposition to advocate repression when timely concession might have been salutary, nor to counsel penal enact- ments where a fatherly generosity and clemency, in a priestly gov- ernment, would be most likely to win back the erring. He began his administration by urging the execution of two par- allel series of measures, the one aiming at raising as high as possible the standard of education and morality among his clergy, the other destined to meet every bodily and spiritual need of his flock. A single instance of his enlightened and fatherly liberality, chosen from among so many, will enable the reader to understand how such a bishop should have been reverenced and loved alike by the bitterest 6o Life of Pope Pius IX. political antagonists and the most submissiye of his flock. It is taken from the autograph memoirs of a man entrapped during these very years into the meshes of the "Young Italy League," and hurried by the passions inspired by Mazzini's unhallowed spirit into one politi- cal crime after another, till he deemed it his duty to sacrifice several innocent lives in attempting that of a sovereign, and then perishing, unblessed and unblessing, on the scaffold. We mean Felice Orsini, the gifted, the wayward, and the supremely unfortunate. In 1834, while yet in his fifteenth year, Orsini, who lived with an uncle at Imola, had his imagination so filled with the visions of Italian liberty, that his whole time was spent in martial exercises calculated to prepare him for his intended share in the coming bat- tles for freedom. The conservatives had gotten up a counter-organi- zation among the peasantry and citizens. This was divided into bands or companies of a hundred men, called centuries, the captains being termed "centurions," a name which finally came to designate every member of this ill-starred volunteer militia. Thus the whole of that lovely and teeming land was covered with the meshes of a double network of armed political societies, hating each other with a hatred seen only in civil strife, and here incredibly intensified by the avowed hostility to religion on the one side, and the professed pur- pose, on the other, of defending it. Orsini never went out unarmed. Indeed he continually practiced in secret in shooting at a target with a pistol which was his insepar- able companion. This was strictly forbidden by the police regula- tions, and had all the more fascination for the wayward young hot- head that it was forbidden. Again and again he quarreled with the "centurions," and was only saved from imprisonment by the media- tion of his uncle, who patched up a peace between Felice and his detested enemies. His uncle had pledged himself to the magistrates that the pistol practice should cease, and kept the obnoxious weapon in his own room ; and so for some months there was quiet in his household. But in June, 1835, the uncle having had to make a jour- ney, Felice, relieved from his kinsman's vigilance, hurried to his room, and began to load the pistol. At this moment a favorite ser- vant of the family entered the room, and Felice, in his alarm, think- ing it was his uncle, attempted to thrust the weapon into his pocket, discharging it in the act, and mortally wounding the servant. It so happened that the latter had two of his nearest relatives among the " centurions," and Felice, knowing that the most serious Superior Education of the Clergy. 6i consequences would result to himself from this fatal accident, fled instantly and concealed himself among other members of his family. While the magistrates were making diligent search for the culprit, the archbishop was informed of all the circumstances of the case, and, totally indifferent to the wrath likely to be shown by the "cen- turions," he wrote to the governor of Imola directing him to have the lad, when arrested, conveyed under guard to the archiepiscopal resi- dence. He shielded him from criminal prosecution, became security for his good behavior, and, happily unconscious of what the future reserved to his protege, lavished on him kind words and kinder acts. Such acts soon find their way to the hearts and the lips of all men. But there was no lack of others like them, though exercised for a far different purpose, which bound the souls of his people to him. He was accessible to all, no matter what their rank, or age, or calling, at every hour of the night and day. He was ruled in this by the con- viction that a bishop is common father to his entire flock, and that a father's door never should be barred or bolted. There was not a case of destitution or grievous sickness that he did not desire to be acquainted with ; not a hovel so lowly or so loathsome that could keep him out, if he knew there was a soul there in need of fatherly aid or comfort. If he exhorted his priests to abnegation and self-sacrifice, all the more necessary in the social and political condition of their country, or if he refused to tolerate pride, or prevarication, or neglect in the duties of their sacred calling, he was ever the first to set the example in heroic labor and endurance, of gentleness, toleration, and forbear- ance toward the erring, and of a conscientious exactness in the per- formance of his office that all were forced to admire. His clergy, conscious of the purity of his life and his motives, zeal- ously seconded his efforts for the improvement of their class ; hence the admirable establishments that he was enabled to found for that pui-pose. In the monastery of Piratello, situated in one of those picturesque spots, such as St. Augustine chose in the autumn of 381, on the foot-hills of the Apennines, to prepare himself for baptism. Archbishop Mastai ordained that his clergy should meet every year for spiritual renovation. He never failed to be the first there, and the most edifying through all the exercises that refresh, restore, and transform the soul wearied by life's journey and life's labors. He was especially anxious to promote the study of theology and the Scriptures. The old, richly endowed institutions for clerical 62 Life of Pope Pius IX. studies had been swept away by the ruthless hand of Napoleon, and the clergy were forced to receive what education they could in lay establishments, to the great detriment of that special science with- out which t priest is no priest. This great want the archbishop soon remedied by founding a theological seminary, and providing it with a staff of professors in every way fitted for their elevated calling. This establishment he cherished like his own soul during the four- teen years of his administration. He had not forgotten the great good effected by the joint labors of Monsignori Odescalchi and Strambi, in 1818, among the populations around Sinigaglia. Well aware that his own diocesans, in city and country alike, were even more in need of religious instruction and spiritual aid, he began, from the very day of his arrival at Imola, to cast about for the men who were best fitted to do this divinest of works among Christ's people. The Jesuits were called to his aid ; but, beside insufficiency of numbers for a labor of such magnitude, it was apparent to themselves and to all, that the prejudices so care- fully fostered in the popular mind against their Order, went far to hinder the good which their unquestioned learning and virtue quali- fied them to achieve. Alas ! it was not that they had changed ; they were still the worthy successors of Ignatius and his eight com- panions, when, exactly three hundred years before, they preached the divine name so triumphantly all through that same region. They were not unworthy of being called the brethren of the great orator and missionary Paul Segneri ; but the Italy of that day was not the Italy that was thrilled and converted by Paul Segneri. The zealous archbishop had no choice but to form a select body of missionaries, as St. Charles Borromco had done long before, from the most learned and exemplary members of his own secular clergy. He shared their labors himself, so far as his other duties permitted him, taking to himself the most obscure and painful of the mission work. That ho should endeavor to endow his diocese with beneficent insti- tutions and industrial schools on the model of those he had directed in Rome and founded at Spoleto, the reader is prepared to expect. " To the care and management of the Sisters of Charity the good bishop intnistcd a conservatory of female orphans, and in the same establish- ment founded two female schools, one for girls of the poorer class, and the other for those of tlie more wealthy. He also intrusted the public hospital to the same Sisters ; and, adjoining it, he erected an asylum for the insane." — RonxB and iU Ruler, p. 19. The Good Shepherd. 63 There was one class of most needy souls that the charitable arch- bishop yearned to succor adequately through all these well-filled years of his stay in Imola. One cannot but remember with emotion the scene that took place in Galilee, at the banquet giyen to the Master by Simon the Pharisee. There is an exquisite delicacy and tender- ness in the vail which both he and the inspired historian throw over the nature of the guilt and the manner of conversion of " the wo- man who was in the city, a sinner." The Good Shepherd, as we know, again and again made the circuit of populous Galilee, with its two hundred cities and towns, on foot, unwearied by ill success, and seeking the while this lost one, and such as she. And when she steals into the banquet-ball, in the city where she is so well known, and be- neath the very gaze of the proud Pharisees, who had no saving grace for such fallen ones, how he defends her against their sneers with the arguments of an eloquence and a charity earth had not known till then ! In that land of France, so fruitful in every species of heroism, orders of men and women — some of them exclusively composed of the most noble in the land — had, all through the middle ages, arisen to take under their most tender care the most fearful forms of bodily and spiritual leprosy. An establishment of Sisters of Charity founded at Caen, in Normandy, in 1641, by the venerable Jean Eudes, put forth, in 1835, at Angers, a blessed branch, now multi- plied all over the Christian world, and devoted, like the Good Shep- herd, whose name it bears, to the care of these most needy ones of all his wide flock. The fame of the Sisterhood of Angers reached the noble Arch- bishop of Imola, despite the intervening Alps, and, although his purse was empty, and no house had been prepared or purchased for their reception, four of the heroic band set out, at his earnest prayer, and reached Imola in the summer of 1845. The Master had allowed the nameless one of the gospel to approach his feet and pour her tears upon them, and wipe them with her hair, and kiss them. Archbishop Masta'i, while stirring up his people to give these devoted disciples of the incarnate mercy a home for themselves and the stray ones they were expecting, lodged them in his own palace, as he would have lodged the Good Shepherd had he knocked at his gate, and would have no other than himself wait on them at table so long as they abode there. Let the following touching letter tell its own story. It is a more life-like portraiture of the 64 Life of Pope Pius IX. writer than any statue ever erected to him at Imola, Kome, or throughout the Catholic world that hails him father. " Very* Eeverend Mother-General : — ^Your Reverence must have already received from your dear daughters the details of their safe arrival at Imola ; hut it is proper that I should inform you my- self of this event, and that I should, at the same time, express to you the great consolation I feel at seeing myself the possessor of such a treasure as this little hand of consecrated virgins, who, a few days hence, will begin their saving mission in behalf of so many poor wanderers from the flock. I feel certain that, with the divine assistance, they will bring them back to the fold of the Prince of Shepherds, Christ Jesus. May this God of mercy be everlastingly blessed I And I beg your Eeverence to accept the assurance of my deepest gratitude. I have the consolation of having them with me in my palace. I have much reason to thank the Lord, who holds in his hands the hearts of men ; but it seems to me that he keeps the hearts of your daughters not in his hands, but in his heart. I shall not fail to render them every assistance in their need, and from that thought I return to the pleasure of assuring you once more that I am, with deep respect, " Your Maternity's attached servant, '' ifi Jean Marie, Cardinal Mastai, Archbishop-bishop. " Imola, 14th September, 1845." The date of this letter, and the title assumed by the writer, show that we have been anticipating. It may not be uninteresting to dwell a little longer on these years of incessant and fruitful labor spent at Imola. If any churchman in Italy could have appeased the fierce political passions that burned and seethed in Italian breasts, more terrible in their prophetic mutterings of evil than the fires of Etna or Vesuvius, that man was Archbishop Mastai. Just about this time the "Christian League" was formed in New York for the acknowledged purpose of *' evangelizing" Italy, and, in reality, to give aid and comfort to the Mazzinists, Radicals, Jews, and revo- lutionists of every color who were aiming at the overthrow of the papacy, under the pretext of achieving the liberation and unification of Italy. We can only remark here, in advance, that with all these occult forces spreading and gathering strength at home among the middle classes of her population, and with these powerful auxiliaries lend- The Archbishop nearly Carried off, 65 ing reYolution and radicalism the almost undivided support of pub- lic opinion, it was impossible that Italy should not be convulsed again and again, as with the throes of an earthquake. No human prudence could devise a preventive, and no human power apply it. These growing symptoms of a coming catastrophe. Archbishop Mastai had noted at Imola year after year, while churchmen and statesmen were alike perplexed as to the remedial measures to be employed amid the growing unrest. He, for one, deemed the use of the feeble and utterly inadequate repressive power in the hands of the pontifical authority, to put down discontent in the provinces or to punish the agitators, as utterly futile and insane as to attempt to shake one's fist at the waves when they fret and rise against the breakwater, or to lash them when they have demolished it. He preached peace, submission, and all the holiest Christian vir- tues to his flock ; he and his priests gave them the constant example of abnegation, disinterestedness, and devotion to all their best inter- ests. The neighboring bishops who honored him with their friend- ship, or who consulted with him about the necessities of the times, he counseled to do as he did himself. Indeed, he incurred the enmity of more than one of the powerful officials in favor of ener- getic repression, by being ever consistent with himself, and showing himself unvaryingly the man of God and the man of peace. In truth, the men who plotted, conspired, agitated, were not to be conciliated by any show of goodness or generosity. It is now an in- disputable historical fact that, among the liberals of Piedmont, the idea of a constitutional Italy, under the sole sovereignty of the house of Savoy, was at that time thoroughly shaped and adopted, and that not overmuch pains was taken to conceal the sympathy of the leaders with "Young Italy" and the other agitators. In the Eomagna, as in Tuscany, the friends and advocates of national unity were in close contact with the Piedmontese Mazzinists. These had their base of operations on the Piedmontese frontier while agitating the Papal territories, and when some imprudent or outrageous act compromised them, they were speedily and safely conveyed into Piedmont by their allies among the Romagnese. So little were these men touched by the shining priestly virtues of Archbishop Mastai, or by his well-known liberal principles and large patriotism, that one of the most notorious Piedmontese conspirators, Kibotti, had at one time resolved to carry him off with two cardinals who were visiting him in the country. 66 Life of Pope Pius IX. At the head of an armed hand Eibotti had actually penetrated intc the house by night, and was only prevented from effecting his pur- pose by 4-rchbishop Mastai's presence of mind and intrepidity. The merits of the Archbishop of Imola were such, and the seryices he had rendered to Church and State so eminent, that a still higher promotion was inevitable in his case. It came at length. The Pope announced his intention of elevating him to the cardinalate, in a secret consistory held on December the 23d, 1839, but he was not openly proclaimed cardinal till December the 14th, 1840. This honor came to the archbishop unsought for and undesired. It found him so poor that he had not wherewith to make the neces- sary outlay attendant on his elevation ; and his poor clergy, with a few friends, had to come to his assistance, thus enabling him to perform the customary journey to Eome, and to bestow the usual liberalities on the needy institutions connected with his dignity. The rank thus conferred on him made no change whatever in his household, and relations with his clergy and people, or in the simple habits of his laborious life. If any feeling of satisfaction arose in him on this occasion, it may have come from the joy manifested by his venerable mother at beholding the child of her tears and prayers raised to an eminence deserved, confessedly, by his many public and private virtues. From time immemorial it v/as the cherished dream of every Italian mother who gave a son of hers to the semce of the altar, that she might see him a cardinal of holy Church. No such ambition, though never so blameless in a mother, ani- mated Caterina Mastai when she first offered her boy to the divine service. She had her reward in his career of unblemished virtue and self-sacrifice ; and all ambition in her motherly heart was more than satisfied by hearing his praises sounded by all Italy. At any rate, it was a moment of holy exultation when she was called to Rome to preside over the festivities held in honor of Cardinal Mastai on his receiving the ring and hat from the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff. The unfeigned joy of the inmates of Tata Giovanni and San Michele, and the unpurchased acclamations of the poorer classes who had Buch good cause to love him, went to the mother's heart much more than the felicitations of the Roman nobility and clergy. It was her last and supreme triumph on earth. Her husband was not by her side to share the homage paid her by her son and the splendid assemblages met to congratulate her. Count Girolamo died on December the 1st, 1833. Two years after her return from Rome Death of Gi^egory XVL 6 J to Sinigaglia, the venerable countess closed her useful and spotless life, blessed and reyered by all Sinigaglia. While living at Imola, Cardinal Mastai made it his duty and de- light to visit his mother as often as his many labors permitted. Devotion to his sacred calling, instead of chilling in him the cur- rents of filial affection, only served to deepen and strengthen them. He had to inculcate unceasingly on those under his care the abso- lute necessity of cherishing all the home virtues, without which there is no Christian life or true manhood or womanhood : how could he fail to appreciate more fully, as his experience of life in- creased, the treasure with which he had been blessed in the love of such a mother and the ennobling example of his father ? The interval between 1841 and June, 1846, soon flew by for the cardinal-archbishop, full as his every day was of weighty cares and toil that knew not cessation. He applied himself with renewed energy to perfect the various establishments he had created, his schools of theology and biblical literature especially. The formation of a clergy superior in knowledge as in virtue to the world they had to enlighten and sanctify, continued to absorb him above every other care. It was while with his priests in the holy solitude of Piratello, for- getful of the outside world, and meditating on " the everlasting years," that he was startled by learning the death of Pope Gregory XYI., on June 1, 1846, and by the summons calling him forthwith to Eome to elect a successor to the deceased pontiff. He learned at the same time the touching circumstances accom- panying Gregory's latest hours. He had been, like Pius VII., a poor monk before his elevation to any ecclesiastical dignity, and, like Pius, devotedly attached to his lowly calling, he wished to die stripped of all the pomp and show of earthly dignity, on the monk's lowly pallet, in poverty of all things. To die thus, ''like a monk," on sackcloth and ashes, was the wish and injunction of Gregory to those around him. But as his was a most robust constitution, no one believed his end was so near, and so, placed in a poor cell, recalling the former abode of the humble Camaldolese,* Mauro Cappellari, expired suddenly one of the most learned and able men that ever filled the chair of Peter. * The Camaldolese or Camaldules, were founded in 1012, in the valley of Camaldoli, near Arezzo, by St. Romuald, a Banedictine monk. The Order is 68 Life of Pope Pius IX. Cardinal Mastai related these edifying circumstances to his as- Bembled priests, and, comforting himself with the thought that '* blessed, are the poor in spirit," he set out for Eome, traveling like Bamabe Chiaramonte, on a similar errand, at the expense of gener- ous friends. divided into moiiks and hermits — both, classes living occasionally in one mon- astery. • All who have spent any time in Eome before 1870, must remember the beautiful Camaldoli near Tusculum, looking, when seen from the neighboring hilltop, "a very neat and regular village. A row of houses, equidistant and symmetrical, united by a continuous dwarf wall, and a church with its towers in the midst, all of a dazzling whiteness. . . . The sight would certainly deceive one, but net so the ears. There is a bell that knows no sleeping. . . . Such an unceasing call to prayer and praise can only be answered by ancho- rites. And to such does this sweet abode belong. . . . It is truly a village divided by streets, in each of which are rows of houses exactly symmetrical. A small sitting-room, a sleeping-cell, a chapel completely fitted up, in case of illness, and a wood and lumber room, compose the cottage. ... A garden, which the occupant tills, but only for flowers — and a fountain." CHAPTER YH. Feom Imola to the Conclave — Anticipations and Pkognostics — Conflicting Inteeests and Pretensions oe so-called Catholic Powees — Divisions in the College of Oaedi- NALS — Political Excitement in Rome and theoughout Italy at the opening of the Conclave — The Caedinals HASTEN TO ELECT MaSTAL June, 1846. SO far these pages have dealt with the personal character of Giovanni-Maria Mastai-Ferretti as displayed in his boyhood, youth, and the early years of his priesthood ; then, the reader was made acquainted with his qualities as evidenced in the administra- tion of two important dioceses. With the management of merely secular or political matters Cardinal Mastai had nothing to do, if we except his very brief experience in South America, and the dis- charge, during a short space at Spoleto, of the functions of civil gov- ernor of Perugia. Had he been allowed to follow up the diplomatic career begun in Chili, and passed through all the degrees of the very important service once filled by the representatives of the Holy See in foreign courts, or at home in the administration of the States of the Church, there is no question but his natural talent would have enabled him to acquire that practical knowledge of statecraft, with- out which a mere churchman, though never so honest and clever, is exposed to blunder sadly in solving political problems. Had such training been allowed to Cardinal Mastai, the story of his life might have been quite different from what remains to be told, and the history of the latter half of the nineteenth century would have been considerably modified. But he was no professed and experienced politician, no well-trained statesman, who, in the early June of 1846, set his face toward Rome, where the most mo- mentous election that ever took place among the successors of the Fisherman awaited his coming. He journeyed by rapid stages along the familiar Adriatic seaboard as far as Fano, and thence he followed, across the Apennines, by Fos- 69 70 Life of Pope Pltcs IX, sombrone, Cagli, Foligno, and Spoleto, the great highway that has replaced the ancient '"' Flaminian Road." It led him, in midsummer, when the teeming earth displayed all its riches, through territories blessed with all that the hand of God could lavish of varied wealth ; and the thrift of man had improved the Creator's bounty. On either side of the mighty central range, in Urbino on the east, in Umbria on the western slope, the rich valleys and no less rich mountain-sides did seem like the paradise of G-od. At every stage of the journey ancient cities arose to greet the travelers, crowning the hilltops amid the harvest-laden plains, or creeping up their sides, row above row of ancient, picturesque dwellings, with dome and tower here and there, like ranks of a shining army helping each other heavenward. That land, so fertile and smiling so peacefully on the passer-by beneath the morning or evening sun of the lovely June weather, had been for ages under the paternal rule of its pontiff kings, and seemed to be then covered with the blessings of long peace and prosperity — so calm, so fair, so fertile, so happy it lay in its mingled light and fragrance ! And its people ? We have said a little, and but very little, of that people so favored, so wrought upon by evil counselors, so misled in the conflict of the fierce passions that swayed them. They, too, in these memorable days of early June, 1846, were agi- tated by contradictory hopes and fears. The death of Gregory XVI. had raised to an intolerable degree of tension the impatience of "Young Italy" to strike at once for the abolition of papal rule. Seditious rumors and ardently expressed hopes of change loaded every wind that blew along the Italian rivers as they went their way to join the Adriatic or the Mediterranean. But along that land of beauty there were others, and they were the greater number — the tillers of the soil — whose only prayer was for peace, who besought heaven earnestly to grant them a wise pontiff king, firm to repress disorder, gentle in dealing with the erring, and bent on lightening the burden of the children of toil. It was amongst such a mixed crowd that the Archbishop of Imola fell, as the carriage which bore him rolled into Fossombrone. This was his own country, within a few miles of Sinigaglia ; they were all proud of him, and being such as he was, he above all men was their choice for the vacant pontifical chair. The popular tradition will have it that as he tarried for a brief rest, to receive the homage of the magistrates and a few friends, a white dove suddenly lighted on the carriage, and there it persisted in perching till they were within Anticipations a7id Prognostics, 71 sight of Rome. It is a graceful fancy added to the popular veneration for the man. What is certain is, that their preference for the gentle and large-hearted archbishop vented itself in loud cries of ** There goes our next Pope ! " '^Long life to him ! " etc. AVe who have witnessed the events which have filled up his after- life may well question if, on the steep incline down which Italy was impelled, much more even by external forces than by the un- controllable passions of her dominant factions, any man could have been chosen whose acts might have arrested this downward velocity, or whose frustrated intentions could have made the righteous cause more venerable, and the cause of revolution more odious in the eyes of all future generations. Whatever be the truth of the legend, it cannot be doubted by any one acquainted with the unselfish soul of the prelate who was thus hur- rying forward to the conclave, that two interests alone were upper- most in his thoughts — the interests of the Church which had created Christian Italy, and the pacification of his native land torn by unceasing strife and divided by interests seemingly irreconcilable. Cardinal Mastai was in his fifty-fifth year ; twenty-six years had been spent in zealous labors directed toward the welfare of his countrymen. He had been a keen observer of events, had been frequently called to the field on which parties had been giving mortal battle; he had bound up the wounds of both parties, had buried their dead, and would willingly have laid down his life to bury in the same grave the real or fancied ills of which Italians complained, and about which they fought, brother against brother. He had, with the authority of his place and personal merit, advised reform, moderation, and conciliation, and had not unfrequently opposed with unflinching firmness measures which he deemed unwise, inop- portune, or unpatriotic. He was one of the electors of the future pontiff of the Church he loved as the spouse of Christ, of the future sovereign of a country he loved as his mother, with that passionate love characteristic of his race. Surely he also must have canvassed, with his own thoughts at least, the respective merits of those among his colleagues who were best able to bear the awful burden of reconciling Italy with the Roman See and the Catholic Church. That his thoughts did not deliberately dwell on the chances in his own favor — even were he ambitious of the perilous honor — ^is exceedingly probable. They did not choose, as a general rule, men so young as he for the papal 72 Life of Pope Pius IX. office ; and besides, he was untrained in tlie science of statesman- ship, more than ever indispensable amid the present political com- plications. Austria and France were persistently contending for ascendency over the Roman councils and a quasi-protectorate over all Italy; the Sardinian government at the north, and the Neapolitan at the south, were equally opposed to foreign influence of any kind ; while the former was slowly but surely maturing the schemes which the genius of Cavour was one day to execute so successfully. Not one of these so-called Catholic governments felt the slightest concern about the great religious interests involved in *'the Roman question," or sought in shaping the papacy to their own views any other purpose but their own political importance. As to Spain, she had waged open war with the three last Popes, and had again and again been on the very verge of a formal schism, England during the reign of Pius VII. had nobly upheld him and vindicated his temporal in- dependence, because in the hour of her need that independence had been sacrificed heroically in the interest of peace, rather than be exercised as a war-power on the side of a mighty conqueror. But the struggle with Bonaparte once ended, the whole current of Eng- land's Protestant sympathies ran in the direction of the Carbonari and Mazzinists. During the reign of Gregory XVI. the foreign pol- icy of the English government was steadily and uniformly directed by Palmerston in favor of Piedmont and the Italian conspirators, and against the peace and independence of the Holy See. The representatives of four Great Powers who met in Rome while Arch- bishop Masta'i was displaying in Spoleto his great qualities of heart, only did the will of Palmerston in presenting a joint note to Gregory XVI., which was an outrage on his sovereignty as a prince, and made him responsible as pontiff for the very agitations they were themselves fostering, and the reforms which such agitations rendered impossible or abortive. Russia had sustained Pius VII. because he, being the common father of Christendom, would not become the war ally of Napoleon. r. 1 1 1 when Napoleon had been crushed and Pius had re-entered Rome, ^ Ut and his successors fell back on their traditional policy of :i :sm to the Roman Church, profiting ever since by the embar- ni -iiK nt^ ;ind helplessness of the Popes to stamp out in Poland, and througliout their vast empire, the last sparks of Catholic faith and religious liberty. Co7tflicting Liter ests and Pretensions of Catholic Powers. 7 3 How could Prussia be expected to show more respect or deference to the court of Eome than the powers styling themselves "Most Christian," ''Most Catholic," or "Apostolic," while they were worrying the Holy Father with demands of concession utterly im- possible, and extinguishing within their own dominions every source of distinctive Catholic life ? And now that the little-understood and much-calumniated Gre- gory was lying in state near his grave in the Vatican, these would- be-Catholic powers were bending all the efforts of their diplomatic skill toward the sole purpose of securing the election of a creature of their own, and "excluding," by virtue of a privilege usurped but never conferred on any of them, every candidate likely to combat their own preponderating influence in Eome. Of all this Cardinal Mastai was perfectly aware, as he traveled by forced stages past Perugia and Spoleto, and down the valley of tho Tiber till the dome of St. Peter's shone before him on the distant horizon. To the mind of one who could read the signs of the times, how little all future prognostics boded of peace for the Church or for Italy ! To the heart of the true priest and man of God that he was, how full of hopeless, helpless gloom were the prospects of the next Pope, whoover that might be ! He reached Rome during the solemn devotions performed during the nine days intervening between the death of a Pope and his burial. In every church and chapel it was customary to offer up daily prayers for the soul of him who is on earth the supreme judge in all things spiritual, but who has to be judged, like the lowliest of his flock, by him "who searcheth the hearts and the loins." No sooner had Gregory been laid in his tomb than the cardinals determined to proceed to the election of his successor. A number of the most influential among them were, indeed, anxious to wait a little longer, in order to allow the foreign cardinals to arrive in Rome. This, however, was the very thing the majority were re- solved to prevent. Sixty-four days had been spent in conclave before the last Pope was chosen, and this delay was solely due to the intrigues of the rival French and Austrian cardinals, bent on carrying out the views of their respective governments and electing only a candidate favor- able to their policy. This usurped right the majority determined to set aside once and for ever, and that all the more resolutely that these powers cared little to advance Catholic interests on ordinary 74 Life of Pope Pius IX, occasions, urging arrogantly their title and claim as Catholics only when a Pqpe was to be elected. France had been defeated in every attempt to coerce the Sacred College, since the scandalous conclaye in which Clement XIV. was chosen. Italians had never forgiven the pride and tyranny dis- played by the all-powerful house of Bourbon on that lamentable occasion. The atrocious oppression exercised by Napoleon were not such as to make the true-hearted among the electors forget the humiliations of the past century ; the very feeble Catholicism of the government at the head of France, and its behavior toward Gregory XVI. on many most important affairs, went far toward confirming them in their determination not to be influenced by any of the European courts. But Austria held the keys of Italy and the Papal States, and she was not a neighbor likely to brook any slight put on her power or privileges. She had long behaved as if she had inherited all the pretended rights of France, Spain, and Portugal, and had the exclu- sive prerogative of deciding who should be Pope and who not. This was precisely what the assembled cardinals had made up their minds should never again be. It was in vain that the Austrian resident minister protested against the opening of the conclave till after the arrival of his countrymen with the special plenipotentiary always sent by the court of Vienna to be present in such circum- stances. So on the evening of June the 14th fifty-four cardinals met in that part of the Quirinal palace prepared for their reception, solemnly in- voked the light of that Spirit whom Christ had promised to his Church, and began the discussion of the personal merits of their col- leagues. They were divided into two great sections by their attitude toward reform in the Papal States, or the expediency of making certain con- cessions to modern society, so as to remove the existing grounds of hostility between the spiritual and the temporal magistrate ; these two sections might be designated respectively as the Conservatives and the Liberals. Among the former, the extreme wing were not only in favor of upholding the absolute authority of the Pope in his quality of tem- poral ruler, but they would have willingly repealed all the conces- sions and reformatory measures of the four last reigns ; their policy in spirituals would, of course, have gone to uphold to the utmost Divisions among the Cardinals, j5 the prerogatives of the Holy See ; these were known as the Reaction- ists, and common report gave Cardinal Lambruschini as a leader to this extremely conservative section. The more moderate Con- servatives were for letting things stand as they were for the time, giving the reforms granted a fair trial before granting more, but making no step backwards ; these were called the "stand-still" or *' stationary" party. A like division reigned among the Liberal or Progressist cardinals. The most advanced, numbering but a very small knot of men, had for their spokesman and representative Cardinal Micara, whose ex- treme views went so far that progress in papal politics with him meant the almost total obliteration of the Pope's temporal sovereignty and the consequent imperiling of his spiritual independence ; while the concessions he was willing to make, in order to conciliate modern State pretensions and the claims of science, were full of danger and involved the abandonment of the most cherished attributes of the Church as the supreme judge of doctrine and m6rals. He was a bold and brilliant man, and his exceeding popularity was shared by Cardinal Gizzi, who without entertaining Micara's perilous opin- ions, was in favor of radical changes in Church and State. He was a man of great ability and experience in public business, and had represented the Holy See in Switzerland during the difficult and stormy times of the Sonderbund, winning golden opinions among friends and foes alike. The really moderate Liberal party comprised so large a number of men of all the nations represented in the Sacred College, that if they could be brought to act together they could carry everything before them. To these moderate Liberals Cardinal Mastai belonged natur- ally, both by conviction, temper, and by the whole tenor of his past life. This large and influential section did not dream of sacrificing in politics a tittle of the rightful sovereignty of the Roman pontiff, or of yielding, in the mutual relations between the universal Church and civil society, one inch of the inalienable domain of revealed or defined truth. They were, one and all, convinced that Italy, as a political power, could be made to exist and to act as a unit without weakening in aught the position or prerogatives of the ruler of the Pontifical States ; they were no less convinced that Christendom or Christian society could not exist, as such, without the supreme cen- tral and doctrinal power to which alone it belonged on all social '](^ Life of Pope Pius IX. questions to lay down the law of life or to expound its true sense as coming from the Divine Author of revelation. Every man of these moderate Liberals, like Cardinal Mastai, believed that the claims of Italian patriots, wishing to have one great common political power representing them among the nations, were perfectly reconcilable with their rights and duties as citizens of the Roman States.- Every one of them also believed that no just claim or right of modem society, if it still called itself Christian, could be in antago- nism with the submission due to that Church which alone had the im- perishable and imprescriptible right to '' teach all nations, .... teaching them all things whatsoever " the Redeemer had " com- manded." In their mind the conciliation of Italy with the papacy involved no abandonment of papal prerogative, and the conciliation of the Catholic Church with the progress of modern society, with the just rights of liberty, or the demands of science, could demand no sacri- fice of Catholic principle. As was natural and unavoidable, since the first tidings of the late pontiff's death had gone abroad, every member of the Electoral Col- lege had bethought him of the man who would be fittest to fill the vacant chair and throne, and therein labor successfully to effect this urgent twofold reconciliation. But there were two men at the time in Rome, both of them Italians, of world-wide reputation, eminent for their genius and for their patriotism : the one — Gioachimo Raulica de Ventura — was Italy's greatest living orator and the head of a great religious order ; the other — Count Pellegrino Rossi — was ambassador of France, after having been long exiled on account of his political opinions and acts. From the moment of Pope Gregory's decease they had come together to consult on the necessities and perils of the situation, and both resolved on using their utmost influence with the electors to choose the Cardinal-Archbishop of Imola as the next Pope, and to choose him at once, and while the representatives of Austria were yet far away from Rome. The position held in the Church by the illustrious Theatine, as well as his transcendent reputation for eloquence, gave him access to every one of the electors, on whom he urged with a persuasiveness inspired both by religion and by patriotism the necessity of choos- ing a man like Cardinal MastaY. Where the Theatine might fail, the ambassador of France was more likely to succeed. His was an The Conclave. jj elo(iuence more polished eyen than that of the renowned preacher, ^ uniting the terseness of the lawyer's diction with the exquisite sim- plicity of diplomatic intercourse. That they were assisted in this electoral canvass even by such of the most advanced Liberals as would have under other circumstances opposed the Archbishop of Imola, we can gather from the following anecdote : On the 14th of June, and after the conclusion of the pontifical obsequies, the excited people filled the streets, some of them flocking to the residences of their favorite cardinals, the greater number re- maining around the Quirinal palace to scan the features and discuss the merits and chances of each of the electors as he passed into the conclave. The great mass of the people hoped that either Micara or Gizzi should be the choice of the college, and were loud in their ac- clamations in their favor. They had resolved to give their favorites an ovation as they rode through the streets, and were equally bent on manifesting their hatred of Lambruschini and the extreme Conser- vatives. Lambruschini, however, was not the man to quail before a mob, and was preparing to leave his residence when Micara, in disguise, and wishing to avoid any demonstration in his own favor, asked his political opponent to give him a place in his carriage. What follows is related on the authority of Legge. "As they drove together to the Quirinal, he (Micara) is said thus to have addressed his companion : * If the powers of darkness preside over the election, you will be Pope ; if the people had a voice, Fm the man ; but if Heaven have a finger in the business, it will be Ferretti.' " It seems well ascertained that Micara combated strenuously the motion of Lambruschini asking to postpone all action till the arrival of the foreign cardinals. This led materially to the subsequent choice. Another motive which helped to concentrate the votes of the majority on the Archbishop of Imola, was the sudden resolve not only to exclude all not Komans, but all who were members of a religious order. Both before the opening of the conclave, and during the first day, the people outside do not appear to have thought of Cardinal Mastai as a likely candidate. He had been but very little at Eome during the last nineteen years, and it takes less time than that to put even the most popular man out of people's minds in a large city. Within the conclave the man who first openly declared in favor of the Arch- bishop of Imola was Cardinal Altieri, one of the most influential of the moderate Liberals. Mastai had been appointed one of the yS Life of Pope Pius IX. three tellers. There were altogether four different ballots. In the first Lambruschini received fifteen votes, Delia Genga and Mattel seventeen between them, Mastai thii-teen, Mai six, and Gizzi two. This was early on the morning of the 15th of June ; in the evening took place the second ballot, when Mastai obtained seventeen votes and Lambruschini only thirteen. As a two-thirds vote was requisite to a valid election, the third ballot was held after Mass on the 16th, Lambruschini this time only polling eleven votes and his opponent twenty-seven ! These figures were ominous. Cardinal Mastai was greatly agitated by the result of the two first ballots, and spent the night in prayer, conscious of his own weak- ness, and fearful of the terrible burden he was threatened with. It was with deep emotion, therefore, that on the morning of the 16 th he resumed his task of teller, and that emotion almost overwhelmed him when the votes were counted. It now appeared certain that he would be the choice of the Electoral College. If there was no little subdued excitement within the walls of the conclave, there was uncontrollable agitation outside. News had reached Eome of "risings" in several places in the pontifical terri- tories, and of the advance of the Austrians to restore order. At the very hour of the opening of the conclave, and while the cardinals were kneeling before the altar of the Pauline chapel and chanting together the sublime hymn to the Holy Ghost, Yeni, Creator Spiri- tus ! the Austrian artillery and cavalry were pouring into Mastafs native province, and an Austrian fleet was casting anchor in the port of Ancona! The fierce wrath of the Koman multitude was rising hourly to such a pitch that it would seem nothing could long restrain it from overleaping all bounds and sweeping everything be- fore it, conclave, electors, pontifical throne and papal sovereignty. It was, in the moral world, not a little like the awful spectacle offered by the inflow of the tide along the shores of the Bay of Fundy. The tidal waves rush on with such a sudden and fearful velocity that the very animals on the beach, as the earth and air give them notice of the distant thunderous sound, fly terror-stricken to the shore, their utmost speed often proving unavailing to save them from the swift waters behind. On tlie evening of June ICth that living tide of Eoman passion roared and seethed around the walls of the Quirinal, while the pro- cessional crosses and banners of the various deputations from the parish churches were borne hither and thither on the surge. Emotioji of the Pope- Elect, 79 At each unsuccessful ballot the papers were burned, and the blue smoke escaped from a flue at a well-known spot ; it appeared at a regular hour morning and eyening, each time informing the expect- ant crowd that there was no election. On that never-to-be-forgotten evening of June 16th every eye in the dense multitude watched for the appearance of the bluish column of smoke as the critical hour drew nigh. The hour passed, and the hateful sign appeared not. People began to breath more freely, and waited in painful stillness and with unaverted gaze. At length, becoming satisfied that some decision had been arrived at, they sent up a mighty shout, half of joy, half of impatience. They will wait now without further violence. Let us see what had happened in the conclave. The hour for the fourth ballot had arrived, the votes were depos- ited with the usual formalities in a golden chalice on the altar, and in presence of the scrutators. It was Cardinal Mastai's duty to read each vote aloud after it had been examined and certified by his two colleagues. As he read, and read on, his own name came up almost continuously, reaching the former number of twenty-seven, and vote after vote bearing his name till the number thirty-seven (some say forty -^two) told the august assemblage that their work was done. Then the whole college rose in a body and made the election unani- mous. It is no friendly hand that recorded Mastai's attitude at that try- ing moment : ''His voice faltered," says Oastelar, ''and his strength failed as he discovered the result of the final vote. Tears fell from his eyes. Conscious of his constitutional weakness, he gave up the examination to another cardinal, and retiring to a place apart, covered his face with both hands." Castelar goes on to say that when pressed to accept the election, and while the multitude were waiting outside with such impatience. Cardinal Mastai', recovering his self-possession and summoning all his strength, turned toward the expectant electors and besought each of them in succession, "begged, prayed, and insisted that they should remove that cup from his lips." But they did not dare, amid the exceptional circumstances of the times, to reverse their decision. This renders intelligible what is stated about his final acceptation. "There are others more worthy than I am for the high ofiice to which your Sacred College has called me ; but as I have been long accustomed in Christ's service to yield up my own will, so now I accept that of God." 8o Life of Pope Pius IX. He then knelt before the altar, pouring forth his soul in prayer before the hidden God, who would not take away from him the bit- ter cup and the heavy cross. Had he only had a most faint concep- tion of all the accumulated and mingled bitterness of that cup, and of the long, weary road over which he should have to bear his cross, it may be doubted if ever he had risen a living man from that presence. Pius IX. ! CKUX DE CRUOE ! Whoever penned, ages before thy birth, such prophetic title for thy length of years and suffering, must have had more than mortal knowledge ! What was the agony of Peter's brief martyrdom compared with thine ? So, when thou, too, *'wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst." How glorious is the" race of kingly beneficence and fatherly love thou art planning for thy country and thy people even now, even there at that altar, where the heart of the Crucified speaks to thine I ^* But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not." If thou didst know all that ere thou saidst, ^^I accept the will of God," then the world should proclaim thee the most heroic of Peter's long line of successors. CHAPTEE VIII. How THE Announcement was beceived — Momentabt Disap- pointment OF THE LiBEKALS — FeABS — WbATH OF THE AUS- teian Ambassadob — Hesitancy about appointing an Ad- MINISTBATION — PlANS LAID BY MazZINI TO FBUSTBATE ALL THE Intentions of Pius IX. June and July, 1846. ROME knew not repose during the niglit that interyened between the acceptance of the sovereign pontificate by the Cardinal- Archbishop of Imola, and the morning of the 17th of June, when the population from far and near streamed up toward Monte Oavallo and surrounded the Quirinal. Exciting rumors, half-pacific and mostly warlike, had been in this weary interval flying about the seven hills of Rome, borne from the distant Adriatic, the Marches, the Romagna and Umbria, and increasing to fever-heat the anxiety of all classes to learn with certainty who was elected, and what charm his name might have to lay the storm that hung dark and porten- tous over the land, or to cause it to burst upon Italy with irresistible fury. Whiteside (** Italy in the Nineteenth Century"), who was present in Rome, thus describes what ensued on that morning: *^The sky was most beautiful, the piazza crowded with people, the troops drawn up in array, and all with their faces turned toward the bal- cony. At nine were heard the blows of hammers breaking down a window that is ordinarily built up. Shortly after, the Cardinal Camerlengo (high chamberlain) appeared, with the bearer of the crucifix, and announced to the people the exaltation to the papacy of the cardinal, who took the name of Pius IX. The populace shouted with joy." Nevertheless as the tidings flew all over Rome, and from Rome to the extremities of Italy, we must not picture to ourselves the joy as by any means universal at first, or the enthusiasm as very great. The man thus raised to the papal throne was not the man whose 81 82 Life of Pope Pius IX, name was on the lips and in the hearts of the Liberals ; that man was Cardinal Gizzi — for they did not dare to hope for the election of Cardinal Micara. Indeed, the popular hope at one time during the conclave assumed the form of reality, the report having got abroad that Gizzi had the largest number of votes, and the news was trans- mitted by courier to Ceccano, his native place, creating unbounded enthusiasm as it spread. The liberal party were congratulating themselves on this great triumph when the official tidings came to damp their joy. As the personal character of the new Pope and his antecedents came to be canvassed, the hopes of the party revived. Meanwhile Pius IX., ever faithful to his pure and exalted family affections, had not retired to his brief rest on the night of the elec- tion before writing with his own hand, and dispatching by special messenger the following letter, which, he trusted, would restore con- fidence not only in Sinigaglia, but in threatened Ancona and all along the Marches. Rome, June 16, at three-quarters past 11 p.m. Deae Brothers Gabriel, Joseph, ai^d Gaietako : — The blessed God, who lowers and lifts up according to his divine will and pleasure, has been pleased to raise me, his humble creature, to the most sublime dignity of this world. May his holy will be ever done ! I am fully conscious of the high and weighty responsibility attached to my charge, and I feel my great inability to fill it prop- erly. Have prayers said for me, therefore, dear brothers, and pray for me yourselves. The conclave lasted only forty-eight hours. Should the municipality of Sinigaglia wish to celebrate this event, I request you will take measures — indeed I desire it — to have the whole expense made profitable to the people, the chief magistrate and the council regulating everything. With regard to you, dear brothers, I press you to my heart in Christ Jesus, and, far from exulting at my elevation, take pity on your brother, who now gives you all his apostolic benediction. Pius PP. IX." One whose name, learning, sweet suffering features, and angelic virtues are not yet forgotten by his pupils at St. Joseph's Seminary, Fordham— the Rev. Father Tomel— a townsman and schoolmate of Giovanni Mastat, related to the author the impression made on one of the Pope's sisters by the announcement of her brother's election. She knew, with a woman's insight into character and its influence Fears. 83 in shaping eyents, how generous, how layish of self, how trustful of others, how diffident of his own light and strength, was the man thus suddenly placed in a post of the most awful responsibility and at a time when he alone before whom the storm quailed on the lake of Galilee could bid the winds of Italian passion "be still ! " Fall- ing on her knees, utterly overcome and terrified, she could only repeat with streaming eyes and clasped hands : "Oh ! what a mis- fortune ! what a misfortune ! " Mixing with the world and thoroughly acquainted with the aspi- rations of her countrymen, with the plans and designs of those whom no concession short of a radical revolution in the State and the annihilation of the Church could satisfy, the lady of the world knew what her brother's great soul would lead him to promise and undertake, and she knew, with the infallible prescience of a woman's heart, that all would be vain ! We have read of savages amid the trackless wilderness putting their ear to the ground and gathering, with a delicacy and sureness of sense that would seem preternatural, sounds and warnings imper- ceptible to the ear or eye of their civilized companions. They could thus tell of enemies approaching, though the telescope in vain scan- ned every point of the horizon in search of them, and they could almost count their numbers. Is not woman endowed by nature with some such prophetic sense as this ? We, men, have our eyes filled with dazzling visions of ambition or gain, and our ears are ever strained to catch only the loud tumult of political battle. But wo- man, seated lowly in the quiet of her home, can gather with undi- vided senses all the echoes borne on the air, and all the tremors of the earth, before the volcano is awakened. Over what is of a mere personal nature or of comparatively little importance we must hasten henceforth, so mighty are the events which fill up this pontificate, the most memorable in the history of the papacy, and connect for ever the life of Pius IX. with the latter half of the nineteenth century ! The Pope needed no friend or foe or counselor to warn him of the imperative and instant exigencies of the political position ; what he had seen in the Eomagna, before he quitted the sweet solitude of Piratello, all that he had seen and heard along his route through the Marches and Umbria, had no significance that he had not read. The very stones in Eome would have cried out to him, as he received with the first homage of his subjects and the first congratulations of 84 Life of Pope Pius IX. the Catholic world, the tidings of Austrian invasion and Mazzinian outrages, had he been deaf or blind or dumb in his new place of power. Ere he had been solemnly crowned at St. Peter's and taken posses- sion of St. John Lateran — "the mother and head of all the churches of Eome and the world " — the special Austrian envoy and his car- dinals had arrived. The representative of the "apostolic" emperor made no secret of his disgust nor of the probable consequences of his master's just resentment, all the more so that he saw the French am- bassador in high favor at the new papal court, and had more than one evidence, both in the changes already made and in those which were confidently announced, of French influence suddenly overtop- ping his own. The very things which the Pope had not done in beginning his reign, as well as the acts already accomplished, boded, so thought Count de Broglia, a revolution in the policy of the papacy, a total subversion of its temporal power, and most certainly insurrection in the Austrian provinces. There lacked not those in high dignity and of long experience in the management of public affairs, whose resentment at the threatened policy of the new government was scarcely inferior to that of the Austrian, and whose evil forebodings were uttered with a voice almost as bold. We have said "government," for Pius had deviated at the very first from the invariable custom of appointing a new Secretary of State as the head of the pontifical administration. The Liberals through- out Italy were unanimous in expressing the hope that Cardinal Gizzi would be appointed by a liberal Pope to fill the all-important position left vacant by the dreaded Lambruschini. This nomination would have gone far toward removing the feeling of disappointment at not seeing their favorite cardinal in the papal chair ; the delay which ensued caused no little agitation and increased the painful uncer- tainties that overhung the more distant parts of the Roman States. There is no doubt that the Pope wished to appoint Cardinal Gizzi to this high office, and that his hesitation to do so at once came from the almost threatening attitude of the Austrian representative and the outspoken disapproval of the Conservative cardinals. It is said that Pius IX., with that frank and distrustful simplicity which is a feature in his character, asked of the cardinals to select for him, before they left Rome, a ministry in everyway fitted to the neces- sities of tlio times. Whether or not the Sacred College was consulted Hesitancy about Appointing an Administration, 85 to this effect, we have no present means of ascertaining. After a few days of damaging suspense, it was announced that the Pope, while maturing some great administrative reforms, had resolved to carry on the government by a commission of six cardinals, three of whom were most odious to all grades of Liberals. These were Car- dinals Lambruschini, the most dreaded name of all, Bernetti, the protector of the Jesuits, and Monsignor Marini, governor of Eome. To be sure, the other three members of the commission were known for their liberal sentiments and professed patriotism, and foremost among them was Gizzi. Nothing could persuade what began to be ominously called **the people," that this new administrative scheme was not a first triumph of Austrian influence. There is no evidence of his having consulted Count Eossi on this first fatal step in his career. Besides Eossi's was not the temper to desire a compromise or half-measure so full of hesitancy, so indica- tive of an uncertain policy in the first stage of the Pope's reign, and when Italy and Christendom were watching with bated breath the first words or acts that should portend the pregnant future. We shall see presently how the ambassador of France was very soon afterward taken into the confidence Pius IX., and what was the policy agreed upon between them. But while the telegraph wires were flashing over the European continent the name of the new Pope, and bearing back to him the congratulations of the various governments, it is important that we should see how one man, enjoying the hospitality both of England and France, and high in the esteem of their statesmen, was preparing at Paris the detailed plan of an agitation destined to thwart step by step every reform be- gun by Pius IX., to frustrate his best intentions and most cherished designs for the good of his subjects. This will enable us to under- stand how, from the first days of his pontificate, a mysterious and hidden power, forming the very soul of all popular movements in Italy, was present in Eome itself, and on every point of Italian terri- tory, so shaping, directing, and controlling the popular aspirations and energies that the love of the Pope for his people and his coun- try was condemned to a fruitless, fatal, and inevitable ending. No sooner had Mazzini heard of the triumph of French influence in the conclave and the election of a Pope who promised to inaugu- rate a policy of reform and conciliation than he set to work through his trusty and numerous agents among " Young Italy " and the Car- bonari to carry out the system of agitation more clearly and boldly 86 Life of Pope Pius IX, expressed in his '^ Address to the Friends of Italy," published in Paris three months later, and when the first essays of his subordi- nates had been crowned with complete success in Rome and else- where. ''In great countries," says the arch-conspirator, ''it is by the peo- ple that we must struggle for regeneration ; in yours (Italy), it is by the sovereigns. We must absolutely put them on our side. It is an easy matter. The Pope will proceed to reform on principle and through sheer necessity; the King of Piedmont through the vision of the crown of Italy ; the Grand Duke of Tuscany through inclination and resentment ; and the King of Naples through com- pulsion ; as to the petty princes, they shall have something else beside reform to think of. " The people, still held in bondage, can only express its wants in song. Profit by the least concession to assemble the masses, were it only to make a show of gratitude. Festivals, songs, meetings, numerous relations established between men of all opinions, enable ideas to find a vent, to give the people an idea of their might, and to render it exacting. . . . "A great lord may be held back by his material interests, but he may be led by his vanity. Let him have the lead so long as he will go with you. There are few who would go to the end. "The one thing essential is that they be kept ignorant of the goal to which the great revolution tends, let us prevent them from ever seeing beyond the first stage. "In Italy the clergy are rich both in the money and in the confi- dence of the people. You must know how to make use of them in both respects, and turn their influence to good account. If you could create a Savonarola in every capital we should make giant strides. . . . " Do not attack the clergy neither in their fortunes nor in their orthodoxy. Promise them liberty and they will march in your ranks. ... In Italy the people is yet to be created, but it is ready to tear asunder the envelope which holds it. Speak often, everywhere and at length, of its misery and wants. . . . " Accept all the help which is offered you. Whoever makes one stop forward must bo yours till he quits you. A king grants a more liberal law — applaud him, and ask for the law which must follow. A minister shows a disposition toward progress — ^give him out as a model. • . . Mazztni 's Scheme of Agitation. 87 "Try to make equality penetrate tlie Church, and everything fehall succeed with us. Clerical power is personified in the Jesuits. The odium attached to that name is of itself a power in the hand of the Socialists. Make use of it ! . . . '^ Associate ! Associate ! eyerything is in that word. The secret societies give irresistible strength to the party that call upon them. Do not fear to see them split; the more there is of them the better. . . . " When a great number of associates, receiving the password with the command to spread an idea and make it public opinion, shall be able to concert a movement, they will find the old social edifice laid open on every side, and tumbling down, as if by miracle, at the first breath of Progress. " They will be astonished themselves to see flying before the sin- gle might of opinion, kings, lords, the rich, the priests, who formed the shell of the old social structure. Courage, then, and persever- ance ! '' Whatever censure we may pronounce on this man's most detestable principles, aims, and acts, there can be in the minds of all who have read his writings and studied his influence on European opinion, but one judgment as to his transcendent ability. Mazzini has molded into its present shape whatever there is of anti-Christian power in modem society, and that power now controls what was once Christendom with an influence that goes on increas- ing in the frightful ratio of accelerated motion in falling bodies. He created not only ''Young Italy," but "Young Switzerland," ''Young Germany," "Young Poland," and "Young Europe;" and in 1847 he founded "The International League of Peoples," all and each of them not only leavened with the fell revolutionary maxims faintly shadowed forth in the preceding extract, but animated as by a living soul with the hatred of Christianity and the avowed purpose of de- stroying the Catholic Church. Whoever does not understand this elementary lesson in contempo- rary history, cannot understand what has happened, and is still hap- pening, in Italy, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Spain, in France, and what is about to happen in England and Belgium as certainly as the waters of Niagara shall not reascend to the height from which they have fallen. We pray the serious-minded reader, therefore, to peruse carefully the instructions issued by Mazzini to his confederates about to begin ?^S Life of Pope Pius IX. their countGi'-campaign of reyolution, while the unsuspecting Pope is framing for Italy and the Church a plan of perfect reconciliation. AVho shall succeed — the Pope or Mazzini ? Of the innumerable acts of condescension, beneficence, and clem- ency performed by Pius IX., at the beginning of his reign, very many were in strict conformity with the examples set by his immediate predecessors; only '*the sects," and their countless organs in the European press, followed faithfully the injunction of the arch-con- spirator, publishing, applauding, celebrating the virtues of the new ruler of the Roman States, as if the pontiffs who had reigned before him had been like the former Mikados, mysterious beings living in a semi-religious, semi-royal state, far away from vulgar eyes, unap- proachable to their subjects, and inaccessible to the feelings of ordi- nary humanity. Pius IX. had known personally the four last Popes, and could not well lielp reverencing their many virtues, and admiring in every one of them a superiority of learning that he was ever the first to say he did not himself possess. Among those who have filled the chair of Peter during the last three hundred and fifty years, Leo X. is, perhaps, the only one who loved to surround himself in his private, hours with the state and refined elegances of royalty. The other pontiffs, so far as they are known to history, almost without excep- tion, when their official day was ended, retired to apartments so poorly furnished, and to a table so frugal, that a second-rate me- chanic amongst us would be astonished thereat. The most minute details about every hour of the daily life of Pius VII. are now familiar to the general reader ; his simple tastes and ^* poverty of spirit" were not a mask worn before courtiers and laid aside when they had with- drawn. His was the conscientious adherence, so far as he might, to the privation of all earthly riches and the rejection of all earthly pleasures, which he had vowed as a Benedictine monk. Even French infidels were touched by his austere and consistent self-de- nial. No less edifying was the magnanimous poverty of Gregory XVI., who never forgot his lowly Camaldolese cell in the monas- tery of San Michele at Murano, and who would have given worlds to lay aside the tiara and bury himself among his love(f Camaldoli, near Frascati. Of his laborious life and utter contempt of ease and bodily enjoyment of every kind, wo have abundant proof in the writings of those wlio enjoyed his intimacy and could appreciate his learning, his piety, his ardent wish to benefit his people, his fearless Leo XIL as a Reformer. 89 discharge of duty, and his desire to die as his Master died, ''for- saken" and bereft of all comfort. As to Pius VIII., there was but one opinion about his talents and his worth. The court amid which his brief public life passed like a flash of warm sunshine, held him to be a saint, not much addicted, therefore, to costly living. There was another one, whose pontificate was all too short, a man of courtly grace, rare business capacity, and saintly life as well ; but he was both reformer and saint, as earnest in the pursuit of sanctity as he was in his determination to leave no abuse standing in Church and State that his authority could suppress. This was Leo XII., who selected the Abbate Mastai for the South American mission, and recommended him to Cardinal Consalvi, and who took such an affec- tionate pride in training him and advancing him step by step till he placed him in the see of Spoleto. The reader who has never read the life of Leo XII. may be sur- prised to learn that he seemed the model chosen by Pius IX. when he entered upon the perilous path of reform. But there was this difference in the two men, that Pius was in the full vigor of his mature manhood, in the enjoyment of robust health ; whereas Leo had to be carried in a litter from his sick-bed to the conclave, and was so wasted by disease when the electors honored his exalted vir- tues by their choice, that he could not forbear from remonstrating : "Why will you choose a skeleton ?" he broke forth. And so over- whelmed was he by the dread of his responsibility that a miracle was performed to rescue him from the jaws of death. It is a wonderful story, but one attested by all Rome. Leo it was who, while Bishop of Sinigaglia, in 1818, called Mon- signori Odescalchi and Strambi to evangelize the poor of his diocese, and would have young Mastai accompany them as catechist. During their missionary tour he had watched and admired the supernatural virtues of Strambi, whose acts recalled the memory of the early apostles. When, soon after his elevation, his end was nigh, Leo be- thought him of having his saintly friend near him during the death agony. Strambi hastened to Rome, but only to offer up on bended knees, by the side of the dying Pope, his own life as a substitute for that of the common father, so needful to the Church in these critical times. The next morning Strambi slept sweetly the death of the saints, and Leo that same hour recovered strength enough to carry out some of his most magnificent undertakings and to begin many salutary reforms. 90 Life of Pope Pius IX. Pius IX., young and zealous, had seen his benefactor at work ; and now he deemed himself called by Providence to continue his reforms. "On the day after his election, Pius IX. had walked to the Church of St. John (Lateran) — his name being John he would thus honor his patron saint. The sight of a Pope passing through the streets of Rome on foot was novel to the Eomans, who pressed eagerly about him for his benediction. On returning to the palace (Quirinal), a beggar approached him with a petition, which the Holy Father graciously received amid the plaudits of the people. He dispensed alms in abundance, caused it to be known that on Thursdays of each week he would receive audiences, and political inquisitions were stopped. It was an act of wisdom on the part of the new pontiff thus to render himself accessible to all classes of his subjects. In addition to this, the odor of an unblemished reputation for piety, moderation, and wisdom disarmed suspicion, and invited confidence and hope." —Legge, This last writer, like all his school, not only lauds as extraordinary what was a virtue common to every Pope worthy of his office, but re- peats the atrocious and unblushing slanders heaped upon the memory of Gregory XVI. by "the sects" and their adherents outside of Italy. To these gratuitous slanders on the noble dead no answer is needed here. But if any apology were to be made for the compara- tive seclusion in which Gregory lived during the last years of his life, it should be found, not in any dread of his people, or in any disincli- nation to receive visitors, or grant audiences to his subjects, but in a growing cancerous disease, which the Pope's natural delicacy made him fear would be offensive or distressing to others. He saw to it, however, that every facility should be given by his ministers to all persons who wished to apply to him in person. In truth, just as at the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XII., the by-word "Austrian Patriarch" helped, in passing from mouth to mouth, to destroy in the popular estimation the credit which that sovereign deserved for his untiring charity, his fatherly care of the helpless, the homeless, the ignorant, and the fallen — for the patriotic generosity which made him sacrifice everything to the comfort and relief of his people in great calamities — for his enlightened statesman- ship in the religious and legislative reforms he completed, and hia noblo independence in face of the great powers who attempted to bully him— ^ven so, and still more so, was every generous act of Pius IX. construed into " something unprecedented and worthy of Noble Deeds of Pius IX, 91 all praise," by the word of command of the Mazzinian leaders. They and their dupes, or willing tools among European journalists and writers, only did what they were told. In the present year of grace 1877, how aptly might be applied to more than one distinguished statesman, writer, and editor, these words of Junius, written a century ago: ^'Is he only the Punch of the puppet-show, to speak as he is prompted by the chief juggler behind the curtain ? " There is enough of what is most praiseworthy in the deeds and utterances of Pius IX. during these first days of his pontificate : — to exalt and admire him we need not detract from what is due to some of the most yenerable characters of this or any other age. One act of his must be recorded here, as well because it is only one among many like ones that helped to win the Pope the enthusiastic love of the people, as because it affords an instance of that slow and often cruel justice of the old Roman courts of law, which amounted to downright injustice, and which so sadly needed reform. In the year 1809 Giovanni Mastai", while living with his uncle Canon Mastai at Rome, was wont to busy himself in visiting the hospitals and prisons, bringing spiritual comfort and pecuniary aid to the most suffering and desolate among the inmates. One prisoner named Gaetano, accused of some capital offense, enlisted the young visitor's sympathies. He had been convicted on insufficient or false evidence and condemned to death. The courage with which he ac - cepted his fate, and the magnanimity he displayed in preparing for it, moved Mastai powerfully, and going forthwith to the proper authorities he got the death sentence changed into imprisonment for life, as the condemned man was setting out for the place of exe- cution. He had learned afterward from the family of Gaetano that he was still living in solitary confinement in the castle of Sant- Angelo. No sooner was Pius made sovereign of Rome, than he be- thought him of Gaetano, and could not rest till he had seen him and set him at liberty. So dressing himself in a plain clerical suit, with- out any mark of his dignity, he went quietly to the castle, obtained admission, and demanded of the turnkey to be directed to Gaetano's cell. The poor prisoner, crazed and maddened by twenty-two years of hopeless endurance of wrong, repelled the intruder at first and would not listen to him. But the other pronounced the name of his mother, and the word acted like a potent spell, opening every avenue to that poor wounded heart. " Tell me of my mother ! " he gasped 92 Life of Pope Pius IX. - out : '' Say that she is in heaven, and that I can go to meet her to- morrow I " **!N"o, she is among the living," was the soothing reply, *^and I am come to you with her blessing and with hopes of free- dom." On inquiry, the visitor found that the captive had again and again, during these twenty-two years, written to the Pope to lay his case before him. His letters had been intercepted ; all knowl- edge of the outer world had been kept from him ; nay, he had heard nothing of the death of Gregory or of the election of his suc- cessor. At his dictation his kind visitor drew up a petition to Pius IX., which had scarcely been concluded when the turnkey brutally interrupted them, abusing the priest and cursing the prisoner. Going to the governor of the castle, the visitor requested him to liberate forthwith the prisoner Gaetano, declaring that he came to demand it in the name of the Pope. The governor, annoyed, be- haved as rudely as the turnkey, and demanded a written order from the Pope, and was much perplexed to see the other seat himself, and draw up an order directing that Gaetano be discharged instantly, that he be saluted with military honors on leaving the castle, and that the turnkey be dismissed on the spot, placing at the bottom of the document the signature Pius PP. IX. The bewildered Gaetano flew to his home and his mother's arms, and then sought an audience of the Pope, and after expressing his heartfelt gratitude, begged to know the name of his generous visitor. Pius, who delighted in bestowing such happiness, now asked him if he had forgotten Giovanni MastaJi Ferretti, his friend of twenty- two years ago. We pass over the remaining incidents of this touching interview. All Rome, and indeed all Italy, soon heard this tale. But thejr heard much more. Every day during the first month of his reign was marked by many such touching deeds, not new to the inhabitants of Spoleto, who had been the first recipients of his episcopal liberality, or to his diocesans at Imola, who refused to be comforted for his loss. In very truth Pius IX. was only doing daily and hourly what had been his wont to do while Archbishop and Cardinal Masta'i. Nor could he, in the beginning, understand why so much noise was made about his com- ings and goings. But there were in the prisons of Rome and the provinces many more unfortunates like Gaetano, entrapped in youth into wild schemes and illegal acts by their very love for Italy, their hatred of Austrian rule, and the belief that the Popes were only reigning by the will of Austria. There were thousands of exiles The Question of Amnesty, 93 beyond the Eoman States, and beyond the limits of Italy, condemned for crimes of rebellion, or treason, or blood. An amnesty was always one of the first acts that graced the beginning of every reign, even where the sovereign was only a temporal prince. Such an act of mercy was still more necessary and more graceful where the sovereign was a priest as well, the great visible High Priest of the Christian Church. The question of amnesty became uppermost in men's minds from the morning of the 17th of June, when Pius IX. first showed him- self to his subjects, to receive their warm greetings and to bless them with tearful eyes and a heart overflowing with a love all fatherly. It was a formidable question in the eyes of experienced statesmen, if not in the eyes of the priest and pontiff, who believed that the chief attribute and duty of his office was mercy. Gregory XVI. had granted an amnesty in 1831, but the men thus forgiven and recalled from exile had become afterward the most ardent instigators of sedi- tion, the bitterest opponents of the power that had restored them to liberty and home. It is at this juncture that Count Eossi's influence was felt in the consultations of the Quirinal. He had been induced to join Joachim Murat in 1815, when that changeling, without military genius or patriotic principle, raised the standard of revolt during *^the Hun- dred Days," and marched against Eome to possess himself of the person of Pius VII. He had raised the cry of *' Italian Nation- ality," in order to attract the unwary, the young, the enthusiastic, and Eossi, misled, had cast his lot with an unworthy and imbecile leader, and had been exiled in consequence. Who better able to plead the cause of the political prisoner and exile than one who had expiated a misguided love of country by weary years of poverty, wan- dering, and longing unfulfilled ? He counseled amnesty and for- giveness, as well as large and liberal reforms, aiming at the gradual establishment of constitutional government, and his counsels pre- vailed. Of the reforms we shall speak a little later, of this memora- ble amnesty we must now give the history. The Commission of six cardinals holds its first formal session on the first day of July. The Pope, after most serious and frequent consulta- tions with prelates of every shade of opinion, had drawn up a schedule of questions demanding the immediate attention of his government. This was submitted to the Commission, and embraced the question of amnesty and its limitations, the limitation of the public debt, the 94 Life of Pope Pius IX, expediency of retaining or discliarging the Swiss troops in the ponti- fical service, and that of appointing one or more secretaries of State. Tlie Austrian ambassador had also been consulted on this im- portant question, and suggested reserves which, in the Pope's judg- ment, must have shorn the act of all its merciful and useful results ; Buch was also the advice of the Conservative members in the Com- mission of Six. An answer to the question of amnesty admitted of no delay. There were few families who had not sons, connections, or friends deeply interested in the decision. And besides, the clubs, during the past two weeks, had received instructions from head- quarters and were exerting most industriously the various arts of agitating the public mind on a subject that came home to so many. As an act of grace and pardon is one exclusively personal to the sovereign, Pius IX. made it the special subject of his meditations. He had firmly resolved to grant an amnesty ; every instinct of his generous nature impelled him to make it as wide as possible. There was one category of offenders whom he did not intend that his clem- ency should reach or could reform — men whose profession and posi- tion made them the guides of others — clergymen and civil or military officials. These belonged to the governing classes of society, which should ever be the exemplary classes, and whose public crimes should be visited with exemplary rigor. Some of the ecclesiastics thus ex- cepted became afterward his deadliest foes — the most welcome aux- iliaries of tlie secret societies abroad, and the petted spokesmen at evangelical meetings on both sides of the Atlantic. But as Pius IX. hoped but little from such clerical reprobates, so he feared them not. The IGth of July, one month exactly after his election, was the day chosen for the performance of this act, which the sovereign pontiff deemed to be the discharge of a sacred duty. How the appearance of this amnesty thrilled Rome and Italy shall be told presently : let the heart of Pius IX. now speak for itself. ** Pius IX, to his faithful subjects, health and apostolic heuediction. ** During these days when the public rejoicing on our exaltation to the pontificate touches us to the depth of our heart, we have not been able to refrain from grieving at the thought of so many fami- lies amotig our subjects debarred from sharing in the general joy because in their saddened homes they are made to bear a portion of the punishment incurred by some one member of their household through offenses committed against social order or the rights of the Amnesty Granted, 95 sovereign. The eye of our soul could not lielp looking with pity upon a multitude of inexperienced young men lured by dazzling prospects into political disturbances, and, to our mind, to be consid- ered rather as the victims of seduction than its complices. Where- fore, since that thought first took possession of us, we have been considering whether we ought not to stretch forth a forgiving hand to our erring children, and offer peace to all who are ready to give proof of their sincere repentance. The love shown to us by our good subjects, and the many evidences of veneration they have given to the Holy See in our person, have convinced us that we can pardon with safety." The proclamation then enumerates the classes of persons to whom the amnesty extends, the conditions on which they can avail them- selves of it, and the limitations already mentioned, comprising cleri- cal offenders and others. The pontiff concludes in these touching words : '*We cherish the hope that all who may avail themselves of our clemency shall know on every occasion how to respect our rights and our honor. "VVe trust, moreover, that their hearts, softened by our forgiveness, shall lay aside their civil hatreds, which are ever wont to be the cause or the effect of political passions ; and that thus shall be drawn closer those bonds of peace by which God wills that all the children of the common father should be held together. But if our confidence should be deceived in this, we should be constrained, with a bitter pang, to remember, that if clemency is the sweetest attribute of sovereign power, justice is also its first duty." Vague rumors had been agitating the public mind for some days previous to the appearance of this document. But when people on awaking on the morning of the 16th found the official proclamation posted up in the usual public places, the whole city became of a sud- den filled with a wild delirium of joy. Farini, so habitually temper- ate in his language, scarcely finds expressions adequate to the occasion. ^^When," he says *'the tidings of this amnesty had flown all over Eome, and its soothing language had been read, it seemed as though a ray of divine love had unexpectedly come down on the Eternal City. The hosannas were endless ; the ninth Pius was hailed as a deliverer ; each citizen embraced his neighbor with brotherly affection ; thousands of torches blazed forth at dark, and, as if all that is godlike in the heart of man had, like a swollen river, overleaped its banks, the multitude rushed with one mighty impulse 96 Life of Pope Pius IX, toward the palace of the pontiff, called for him, knelt in their ren- eration before him, and received his benediction in reverent silence. No tongue is adequate to paint that feast of soul, nor do I seek de- scriptive language lest I should do dishonor to the sanctity of the occasion. Quick as thought the news and these solemnities of love and gratitude flew to the farthest confines of the State ; the record of them, which is ill retained by the forgetful heart of man, was in many cases inscribed on marble.* On the 27th the cardinals met in consistory. It was their first solemn meeting since they had assembled in conclave. The enthusiasm of the citizens had been, meanwhile, growing hourly. From the hall in which the Sacred College awaited the appearance of the sovereign pontiff, they could hear the shouts of joy resounding on every side, and in the intervals between each out- burst one might feel that the very air brought him the pulsations of the heart of Rome, as it throbbed with the excitement of the hour. The cardinals had never beheld anything similar, as their carriages drove through the crowded streets and the half-frantic populace. More than one man among them trembled as he saw what a mighty force had been let loose around the unsteady throne of Pius IX., and asked himself who could stay the waterfall in mid air, or arrest the lightning bolt as it darts from the cloud earthward ? But Pius himself was soon in their midst, with sweet smile and stately pres- ence. All listened in respectful silence to the following allocution : *' Ven"erable Brothees : As for the first time I cast my eyes from this place on your illustrious body, and while I am preparing to ad- dress you, I cannot help experiencing once more that painful agita- tion of soul which yourselves witnessed on that day when your too kind suffrages raised me to the place left vacant by Gregory XVI. of glorious memory. "The thought which beset me then comes back now, that many members of this college, known at home and abroad by their supe- rior genius and wisdom, by their knowledge of j)ublic affairs, and their many virtues, were eminently fitted to appease the regret caused by the death of the late pontiff, and to fill his place on the throne. ** Notwithstanding, you have put aside all the calculations of human prudence, and thinking only of putting an end to the widow- ♦" History of Rome/' 1815-1850, by Luigi Carlo Farini, i. 181, 183. First Papal Allocution, 97 hood of the Church, you have united minds and wills, by a divine inspiration, I doubt not, in the one purpose of consoling and assist- ing the Church ; before the conclave had lasted two entire days, you have raised me to this station, all unworthy as I am, and amid cir- cumstances so pregnant with calamity to the civil and religious world. "To be sure, we know that God sometimes displays his might through the weakest of all instruments, in order that the men he makes use of take no credit for themselves, but attribute all the honor and glory to him ; and I most certainly do adore his inscrut- able will as manifested toward myself, and trust in his power for the aid I need. But while I am most grateful to that almighty goodness which has raised me, in spite of my utter unworthiness, to this great dignity, I must also testify my gratitude to you, who have been the ministers of that will in my regard, and who have judged so favor- ably of one who is conscious only of his nothingness. "It shall be my deepest pleasure ever to show you all my sincere affection by my deeds, allowing no opportunity to pass unheeded of maintaining and protecting the dignity and rights of your order, and of proving to you how I desire to serve you. From you, I trust in your attachment to aid me constantly with your advice, your sup- port, your hearty zeal, in order that in this elevated rank my weak- ness cause no detriment to the religious or worldly interests of the commonwealth. " We must remain closely united if we would labor effectually to secure the welfare of the Church, our common mother, and main- tain unflinchingly the dignity of the Apostolic See, and the peace and harmony of the Christian fold ; thereby only, under God's bless- ing, can they increase and prosper. " Continue, then, as you have begun, to deserve well of us ; and let us together beseech the divine goodness, that after having been chosen by him, we may walk in his footsteps ; that through the intercession of Mary his mother, and of his apostles Peter and Paul, Jesus, the author of our faith and apostolate, may look down favorably on us from holy Sion, and accept these joyous trans- ports of a people devoted to his glory, thus giving a saving efficacy to all our acts and labors in favor of the Church committed to us, and of the people subject to our rule." There is in this last allusion to "the joyous transports" of the people, a something pathetic, when we look back through the tragic 98 Life of Pope Pius IX, occurrences of thirty-one years to this venerable assemblage in the Quirinal, and the delirious multitude outside, and compare the 17th of July, 1846, with the 17th of July, 1877. Were any one to doubt of the unanimity with which the College of Cardinals, as well as the Pope, desired to find the means of "re- conciling Italy with the papacy," it will be sufficient to read the testimony of contemporary Italian Liberals, who bear witness to what their own senses had seen and heard. During the two weeks which had elapsed since the election of Pius IX., the most ultra-conserva- tive of the cardinals either had always been in favor of moderate con- cession and reform, or they had been made to see and acknowledge its necessity. For Farini, then in Eome, and a close and interested observer of events, thus speaks of that portion of the Sacred College — Lambruschini, Bemetti, Marini, and others : ''I know for certain that the object of this section was to proceed gradually and with caution." They feared the effect of the large measure of mercy dealt out to conspirators in the Act of Amnesty ; they wished to limit its exten- sion at first to a small number, and when these had proved repentant, to widen the circle of mercy still more, and so on by degrees, till forgiveness secured good conduct, obedience to the laws, and cessation of disturbance in the provinces. A similar caution should regulate, they thought, every administrative and legislative reform. Thus we may consider it as unquestionable that no member of the order of cardinals stood out against concession. All agreed upon its necessity. We shall see in the next chapter the causes which ren- dered abortive every design of the most liberal as well as the most conseryatiye among the papal counselors. CHAPTER IX. The Enthusiasm cois'tinues — Ii^^teigues and Plots — Sinceee Desire of the Pope to eeform — A divided Public Opi- nion — Why Pius IX. did not play Sixtus V. — Alms in THE Ghetto. June-July, 1846. IT had ever been a custom of the Romans at the accession of a Pope to wear his colors in compliment to himself and his family. This was invariably done by officials and court followers, no matter how obscure or unpopular the sovereign-elect may have been. The mass of the people waited a little longer, till the first acts of their new master gave them the measure of his ability and disposition ; if unpopular, his colors were worn by no one, if popular, all hastened to wear them. On the evening of June 16th the Mastai colors, white and yellow, were prominent in every one of the enthusiastic gatherings and illu- minations that made Rome as brilliant as any fairy scene, and far more joyous. On the 17th the mercers of the city could scarcely supply the demands for silks and other stuffs of the pontifical white and yellow. Men and women, young and old, vied with each other in showing their attachment or their gratitude. Painters and jewelers also plied a very lucrative trade for several weeks, so great a demand was there for papal portraits of every size. These were soon to be seen everywhere, hung on the outside of palaces, decorating the parlors ©f the wealthy and the room of the poorest laborer ; in the club- houses and the theaters, and on the interior of the public coaches, as if the likeness of Pius IX. was a talisman inviting good fortune and protecting against evil. Indeed the " talisman," often set in precious stones, was conspicuous on the neck of noble Roman ladies and on the breast of their husbands and sons, no homage seeming a sufficien t sign of their veneration, and no setting too worthy of the image of him whom all seemed to bear enshrined in their hearts. lOO Life of Pope Pius IX. One who, like Pius IX., was a native of Sinigaglia, but who was most unlike him in all else — Nicolini — relates that on his return home from exile he learned from his parents, as well as from the Count Masta'i, that the palace in which the Pope was born became a place of patriotic pilgrimage, to which the restored exiles flocked not only from the Marches, but from the whole of the Romagna. With the warm demonstrativeness of Italian hearts, not satisfied with visit- ing piously every spot connected with their benefactor's early history, they bore away pieces of cement from the walls and fragments from the stones of the house. There is one man at this hour in high official station in Italy whose story deserves to find place here, because it may stand for that of many a man among those whom Pius IX. restored to home and country, and who requited him not otherwise than Giuseppe Galletti. This man was of good family, but had become, at an early age, entangled in the meshes of the Carbonari and of ^' Young Italy." As he was nearly connected by blood with one of the predecessors of the reigning pontiff, especial pains were taken to mitigate his lot and to soothe his spirit when permitted to come back to Rome. In 1845 he had been the soul of the insurrection in the Romagna, and of the dreadful conspiracy which aimed at drowning the clerical govern- ment in the blood of every priest in Italy. On the subsequent trial, resulting in a sentence of death, commuted to imprisonment for life, instructions to his subordinates were brought in evidence against him, and acknowledged by himself as authentic, which would put the more wary Mazzini to the blush. Let us hear : "Our enemies are many: first of all, the clergy, the nobility, many proprietors ; lastly, persons holding employment under gov- ernment. At the cry of liberty shall be organized in every cjty revolutionary committees, which shall seize on the most suspected persons in these classes whose liberty or survival might bring great detriment to the cause. '* As a rule, for the sentences pronounced by the committees, two sorts of persons are to be distinguished : '* 1. Those who are indifferent to the cause, but have been guilty of no extreme acts against its partisans, and are attached to govern- ment through love of quiet. As to these, it must be your endeavor to interest them. " 2. Those who, employed under government or not, have openly shown themselves our enemies, upsetting us in every way, and these, Principles of the Men thus Pardoned, loi chiefly, shall be deprived of life. The manner of arrest — without violence and by night ; put in prison and slain. ^'You must use in this the greatest prudence and secrecy, giving out immediately that they are concealed, or exiled, or imprisoned for the time being. And all that not to excite tumults and awaken horror, as happened in the Septemberings. * Their deaths to be speedy and without torment." One may well feel amazement that the clemency of Pius IX. should have been extended to the man who deliberately planned and commanded such wholesale assassinations as these. And the plan, as was judicially proven, did not remain a dead letter. Let us now see how this same Galletti behaved on being pardoned by his kind- hearted sovereign. We take the narrative from Count Goddes de Liancourt, as translated by Legge. "V/hen Galletti entered the presence-chamber he threw himself at the feet of the Pope, his voice was suffocated with emotion and refused its office. '^Pius IX. raised him up, and pressing him tenderly to his heart, said, ' I am happier than you, my dear son, the shepherd has found the lost sheep. You will not leave me again. You will love me as I love you. . . . You will henceforth reject perfidious sugges- tions, and recognize the danger of theories, no doubt generous, but impossible of application. You promise me ? ' "'I swear it,' cried Galletti, 'by this sign of our redemption,' embracing the pontifical cross. 'My mother,' he said, *was the sister of a Pope ; I conspired against my uncle in the interest of my country, as I conscientiously believed. . . . Now I love Pius IX. more than I detested his predecessor. ' " We have only to wait a little and we shall see how this oath was kept, and what fruits this new-born love for Pius IX. bore before a second autumn had passed away. Beneath the ardent expressions of gratitude which flowed so readily from these pardoned conspirators and assassins, still lived "the principles " laid down cautiously in Mazzini's manifesto, stripped of all reticence in Galletti's instruc- tions, and leveled directly against Christianity itself in the follow- ing words of another restored exile, Kicciardi : "To acquire independence needs revolution and war, to put aside * The massacres of prisoners, bisliops, priests, and nobles, in Paris, in Sep. tember, 1793. I02 Life of Pope Pius IX. all considerations originating in the progress of knowledge, civiliza- tion, industry, increase of riches and public prosperity. . . . The fatal plant bom in Judaea has only reached this high point of growth and vigor because it was watered with waves of blood. Would you have an error take root among men ? put fire and sword to it. Would you have it fall ? make it the subject of your gibes. , . . . The question is not of a popular assembly, fluctuating, uncertain, slow to deliberate ; there is need of a hand of iron, which alone can rule a people hitherto accustomed to differences of opin- ion, and, what is still more, a people corrupted, enervated, made vile by slavery. . . . Soon a new era will begin for mankind, the glorious era of a redemption far different from that announced by Christ." What "the hand of iron" means every reader acquainted with Italian contemporaneous history cannot but know. Such, then, were a few of " the principles " or practical rules, as dear as their own Bouls to every one of these men, let loose on the country from the prisons or recalled to it by the Pope's gracious act of clemency. Such were also the guiding principles of the clubs and "sects," which had been numerous till then everywhere, in spite of the vigilance of the magistrates, but which now became ubiquitous and all-powerful. Into the deep furrows which Mazzini had made in Italian soil Pius IX. had scattered broadcast, instead of the fabled dragon's teeth Bown by Jason, gracious acts of clemency and promises of reform ; and lo ! from out the laboring earth and ever-increasing din sprang an armed multitude with their " eyes and lips in a set smile, turned full " on the expectant pontiff. He vainly fancied that the words "reform" and "reconciliation" cast among them would have the effect of Jason's magic ball on the monstrous " earth-born ; " that it would rid Italy for ever of the presence of secret societies, by taking away all pretext for obscure conspiracies. "So wild was the enthusiasm," says Legge, "that the Pope, by special edict, counseled moderation, when it immediately abated. The wish of the Holy Father was a command. Great preparations had been made for continued illuminations and processions by the people, who, proverbially lovers of pageantry, were now inspired with the fervor of political excitement superadded to personal devo- tion. But the whole were abandoned, and nothing seemed to afford the Pope more gratification than this unanimous and cheerful mani- festation of loyalty. He professed himself encouraged thereby to Sincere Desire of the Pope to Reform, 103 perseyere in his great work of reform in Churcli and State. Prob- ably be did not fully estimate the difficulties of his position." Louis Philippe and his prime minister Guizot were so gratified by the Pope's sincere wish to grant all needful reforms, that the Prince de Joinville was sent to Eome to compliment his Holiness and to bring him cordial assurance of sympathy and support from the Prench gOYcrnment. At this very juncture the idea of a politi- cal league, binding together all the Italian sovereigns, and enabling Italy to act as a unit in her relations with other powers, though originating with the Pope, was first openly advocated by Gioberti, and widely and warmly discussed in the press and in the clubs. The idea, just when the Pope was beginning in detail practical reforms in all matters not needing special legislation, and while he was maturing still more important changes in the administration and judiciary, was most inopportune and calamitous. It tended to depreciate in popular estimation what he was doing, and proposed further to do, in order to point the hopes of the masses toward the fascinating vision of a united country. In the diplomatic correspondence published by the French govern- ment, as well as in Guizot's own last works, we have authentic infor- mation as to what Pius IX. really aimed at during these first months of his reign. The visit of the Prince de Joinville, the warm sym- pathy of Louis Philippe and his minister, and the Pope's personal liking for Count Eossi, all inclined him to place unreserved confi- dence in the latter. After indicating the abuses which must at once be corrected, and the steps by which the people should be trained to constitutional government, Pius, says Count Eossi, continued : "This is what I can do, and must accomplish. A Pope has no business to plunge into Utopian schemes. Would you believe it, there are peo- ple who speak of an Italian league with the Pope at the head of it ? As if such a thing were possible ! These are chimeras." "Indeed," I replied (continues Eossi), "your Holiness has other matters that demand your attention at present. You have marked out the path you intend to pursue, and better results will follow : the putting a stop to abuses, which I fear are numerous, and the introduction of regularity and order, such, I think, is the wish of your Holiness." "You are right," said the Pope; "such is my full intention. I must, in the first place, restore our finances ; but I want a little time for that." "No one," replied Count Eossi, "expects from your Holiness precipitate measures; the essential point is to let it be 104 ^{/^ of Pope Pms IX. known that they are in active operation. The confidence of the pub- lic has been gained ; they will wait with gratitude and respect." * Meanwhile the King of Naples, with most of the inferior soyereigns of Italy, had taken alarm at the commotion produced throughout the Peninsula by the liberal measures and reforming tendencies of Pius IX. Those who were connected by blood with the Lorraine-Haps- burgs, looked naturally to Vienna for support and protection. Judg- ing from the growing excitement of the Young Italy League, and the feverish agitation which pervaded every city in their respective dominions, they felt that a storm was rising which it would tax their utmost to resist. In this conjuncture a joint note was sent to the emperor, calling his serious attention to what was happening in the Roman States. This was toward the end of July. On the 30th of that month Cardinal Gizzi was appointed Secretary of State, to the great joy of the Eomans and to the no small annoy- ance of the representatives of Austrian power or feeling. Then were invented the odious terms of "Gregorians" and "Pians," designat- ing respectively the persons supposed or known to be opposed to the new administration, and its avowed friends. These nicknames, orig- inating in the clubs, only indicated the spirit which animated their members, a spirit that brooked neither opposition to its own aims, nor even moderation in such as promoted them. It drove, by its diatribes, more than one generous-minded influential person into the ranks of the ultra-Conservatives. We need not remind the reader that such a spirit was the worst enemy of Pius IX. and of Italy. No little exasperation was caused by the almost simultaneous elevation to the cardinalate of Monsignor Marini, the unpopular governor of Rome under Gregory, and who continued to hold the same office under his successor. Not far from the spot on which the glorious child-martyr St. Agnes was protected from evil by the intolerable brightness of a miraculous light, is the Piazza di Pasquino, so called because there formerly lived a tailor of that name, renowned and dreaded all over Rome for his bitter wit. Thither every morning the lovers of scan- dal resorted to hear Pasquino lampoon every unpopular personage, from the Pope to the muleteer. His little shop in course of time was occupied by a palace, at one corner of which was placed on a pedestal the mutilated trunk of an ancient statue, and to this every night the ♦ Demien Jours du r^gne de Louis Philippe. Guizot Pius IX, not Sixtus V, io5 Roman wits were wont to pin their lampoons. So that the statue became popularly known as Pasquino. No sooner had the unpopular Marini been promoted to his high dignity than Pasquino suggested on the morrow that the next best candidate for the Roman purple was the hangman. The pungency of the sarcasm might hayeleft no sting behind were it not that the most experienced and sagacious politicians saw, in the desire to conciliate the extremists of both parties, an evidence of that weakness of purpose incapable of steadily pursuing the needful course regardless of all contradiction. Sixtus V. — to whom many were wont to compare Pius IX. — in the beginning of his pontificate also set out as a reformer, and in the most discouraging circumstances. But no fear or favor could turn him from his way. He had forbidden carrying arms in Rome, and four brothers having laughed at the prohibition, and carried their arquebuses openly in the streets, were hanged within the twenty-four hours in spite of all the remonstrance from citizens and cardinals. They told him it was an evil omen to have a criminal executed be- fore the coronation ceremony ; but he made the solemn processional pageant pass almost beneath the scaffold from which the four bodies were dangling. Was it possible to Pius IX. to carry things with so high a hand as Sixtus V. ? No, most assuredly. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, though a great portion of Christendom had separated from the Holy See, it could still count on the support of all the Catholic powers in every case where its temporal independence was threat- ened, or where intestine revolt rendered the administration of his States impossible to the common father. Far different were the circumstances in which Pius IX. began his pontificate. The age had passed forever when a Pope could rely on the Christian sov- ereigns for support or encouragement. Prance and Austria con- tended for the protectorate of Italy ; and we know that to lean on either was to lean on a broken reed. Pius IX. did fearlessly proceed with the reforms and improve- ments he had entered on so conscientiously, and which shall be enu- merated in the next chapter. Before closing this, however, we must offset the terrible justice of Sixtus V. with one act which paints to the life the character of Pius, and speaks most eloquently of that all-embracing charity of the Yicar of Christ, to which every human being is an object of fatherly care. io6 Life of Pope Pius IX. As in Imola, so in Eome, Pius would go into the streets simply dressed and with few or no attendants, seeking the most neglected portions of the city for his walks or his visits, and wishing to see with his own eyes where light and air were most needed, or souls were most in want of spiritual aid. The Ghetto, the Jews' quarter, had been the scene of many a charitable excursion in his younger days ; he knew of its squalor and many pitiful discomforts, and was planning a change. One day a wretched old creature stopped him to lay before him his sore distress. Perhaps he was one of the many who yearly spend their little all in making a pilgrimage to Palestine, and after pouring out their tears, their prayers, their longings on the ruins of their once glorious temple, find their way back to die among their kind in some Christian land, where they experience but little of Christian charity. The Pope paused to listen to the story of his poor petitioner, and placed a large alms in his hand, with loying words of comfort that were ever ready. Thereupon an attendant reminded his Holi- ness that the recipient of his kindness was a Jew. *^ What does that matter?" was the quick reproof ; **it is a man." The act and the words were not forgotten. They kindled hope and love in every house and every heart of the Ghetto. It was only a beginning, however. Ere a new year dawned that down-trodden race received from their sovereign and father splendid proofs of a liberality and kindness which should suffice to immortalize a prince even in the absence of political genius and transcendent success. CHAPTER X. False Notioks about the backwaed State of Italy — To what CAUSES Decay akd Stagkatiok should be Traced — Strat- egy OF THE EaDICALS: KEVER to be satisfied with Al^Y Co^-cession" of Pius IX. — Scientific Congress ik Gei^-oa converted into a Revolutionary Convention — Calami- ties THAT AID THE MaZZINIAN AgITATION : SCARCITY OF Food, and Riots — The Pope takes Possession of St. John Lateran. JULY-NOVEMBEE, 1846. AMERICANS visiting Italy before the year 1861, and passing along the ordinary highways of travel, were but too apt to draw unfair conclusions from what they saw. Though agriculture was far from neglected, and, in most places — as along both slopes of the Apennines — most admirable in the ingenuity displayed and in the results obtained, still they were apt to disparage the old-fashioned methods and implements in use. But what struck these superficial observers most was the stagnation that pervaded the cities, and the decay that seemed to have fallen like a pall on everything once mag- nificent or beautiful. They were particularly shocked with the ap- parent absence of manufacturing industry and commercial enterprise. Their own new, peaceful, and prosperous country, inviting emi- grants to its virgin soil, its thrifty manufactures, its vast and ever- extending lines of canals and railways, with every invention that could economize time and dispense with manual labor, was the stand- ard by which civilization and prosperity in other lands were measured, and Italy's backwardness condemned. Forgetful that nearly three- quarters of a century of peace, with ample room for development over an entire continent, had enabled the United States to grow, to spread, and to advance in all the arts of peace, these hasty and ill- informed critics forgot as well that during all that time Italy — the Papal States especially — ^had been the battle-field of armies, which again and again devastated the land and robbed its inhabitants of 107 io8 Life of Pope Pius IX, the hoarded wealth of centuries, or had been upset by intestine revolutions and systematic agitations scarcely less fatal to thrift, industry, or enterprise. It had been cruel injustice, in 1789, to hold Pius VI. responsible for the absence of a large import trade in his States, when his people in reality possessed in their home-industries and native resources a superabundant supply for every need, while the American republic was just beginning to recover from the terrible effects of her long war of independence. It had been far more unjust and more cruel to attribute to the selfishness or unprogressiveness of priestly rule the heritage of disorder, ruin, poverty, and discontent which Pius YIL received from his predecessor, and which was but the direct and intended result of the atrocious French invasion and occupation. Every one knows how this manifold misery was increased a hun- dred-fold by the Napoleonic rule, and how heroically, after his re- storation, Pius strove, and strove in vain, to remedy the irremediable evil. Was not this hopeless disorder and bankruptcy bequeathed successively as an heirloom to every one of his three successors ? And were not the French the first to censure, to decry, to irritate, where they should have taken all the blame to themselves, and for very shame endeavored to encourage and stimulate the papal govern- ment in its continued effort at solid improvement ? Was the Ninth Pius to blame because the finances of the Roman States were in a seemingly hopeless disorder ? or because the public mind was so unsettled that it would not be contented with any one plan of reform — so directed by the men who created and ruled public opinion, that no possible concession could be accepted or acceptable short of the utter demolition of the existing social fabric ? All — no matter what their race or creed — ^who still cling to the truths of Revelation, and believe in the saving virtue of Christian morality, should open their eyes at length to the fact that the motive- force of revolution in the Roman States, or, indeed, in all Italy, is not so imicli legitimate discontent at existing political imperfections or ac'knowK'dged misgovcrnment, as hostility to all supernatural religion and a fierce determination to get rid of it, even by the cxtormination of its ministers and professors. lIciK (• we must bo prepared to find that while the Pope and his ministers are straining every nerve to effect all needful and beneficial changes, the clubs have been working on the mind of the masses in such a way as to make them seek something beyond these very Strategy of the Radicals — Reforms, 109 reforms tliey were clamoring for a day or two previously. The sin- cere and devoted efforts of Pius and his associates, and the hidden irresistible force that counteracted all their efforts, remind one of what is said of the terrible and destructive industry of the white ants. A man builds his home in some lovely tract of the primeval forest, planning comfort and plenty for his dear ones, and a sure shelter from heat and cold and storm. Every material in his house is the choicest the forest affords, and it is wrought with a skillful and loving hand, making everything within and without appear as beautiful as it is substantial. But lo ! while the master and his family are at their labor abroad, and while they are enjoying in fancied security the sleep that re- creates body and mind for the morrow, these invisible legions are busy on every part of the framework of that building, on every por- tion of its beautiful furniture, eating away its substance and leav- ing nothing but a shell, till an accident — the first blast from the approaching tempest — causes that home to crumble about the ears of its inmates. The Pope was not blind to the hidden and potent influence of the Young Italy League and its affiliated "sects," through the clubs, now become the usual resort of "the people," that is, of the dregs of the city populations, and of the men of the middle classes who were impatient to climb into place and power, no matter by what means. Amid the splendid pageantry of his coronation he was heard to say, while the multitude shouted with joyous acclaim, and friends expressed their congratulations, " It is only the beginning of perse- cution ! " The prevision of what he deemed inevitable did not in anywise damp his zeal in undertaking, or his ardor in carrying out, what he deemed necessary to the security of the government and the welfare of all classes. The condition of the treasury and the burdens which pressed so heavily on the laboring men were the first subjects of his attention. The French, beside having drained the country again and again of all its revenues, had left it burdened with a hopeless load of debt. Not satisfied with collecting with a pitiless rigor the revenues and taxes of the present year, they anticipated on the future, farming out to greedy monopolists every branch of revenue, trade, and industry. Against this ruinous and oppressive system Pope after Pope had 1 10 Life of Pop d Pius IX, struggled in Tain. The gigantic effort at financial reform inaugu- rated by Leo XII. had only a very doubtful and partial success ; the fierce enmity that his reforms created among the wealthy and powerful monopolists gave rise to suspicions of poisoning, which gained more or less credit with the public. It is certain that the bitter hostility of these same monopolists, and of the old officials, thwarted in their habitual prevarications or dis- placed for misconduct, was one main cause of the calamities that soon assailed the pontifical government. The Pope did not hesitate a moment to do his duty for all that. "The* import duties on cotton, woolen, and silk manufactured goods were reduced, on an average, fifty per cent. But thus far all such reductions and reforms had failed to check the annual deficit, which had been constantly increasing for the past sixteen years, and Pius was reasonably alarmed. . . . He now boldly broached the subject of an income-tax, and announced the abolition of the tax upon flour on the expiration of the existing monopoly, also a dimi- nution of the duty on salt, the very last commodity upon which duties should be levied." — Legge, The author cannot do better, on this topic, than quote his own words from another work : *' The Pope appointed commissions com- posed of eminent Italian jurists to inquire into needed reforms ; he reduced his own household expenses, abolished all pensions not granted for great public services, imposed a three-years' tax on all benefices and wealthy church corporations, reduced the taxes, char- tered railroad and telegraph companies, declared Sinigaglia and Ancona free ports of entry, stimulated home manufactures, and encouraged the formation of agricultural societies. He commanded that all the waste lands between Ostia and Porto d' Anzio should be prepared to grow rice, and that the crop should be put in and gathered at the expense of the treasury, one-half of the harvest being destined for the poor ; and the waters of Lake Nemi were diverted for the purpose of irrigating the rice fields." * As we have seen in the first chapters of this book, the Pope was bom in a province eminently distinguished from the earliest times for its successful culture of all the useful and agreeable arts. The Legations, the Marches, and Umbria have always been like a bee- hive, swarming with an active and thrifty population, and intent on ♦ "American Cycloptpdia," vol. xili., p. 661. Reforms — Noisy Demonstrations, iii making the most of all tlie gifts of nature. "Wherever Pius had been he had shown a keen interest in the local industries, making himself thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the country around, and encouraging their development to the utmost. No sooner had he been made sovereign than he exerted himself in furthering still more manufactures and industries of every kind. For the railways which he contemplated he wished to avail himself of the native ores of Italy and its splendid water-power. Thus, for instance, he had vast iron-works established at Tivoli, utilizing for his purpose the falls of the Anio, and making frequent visits to the place to stimulate both overseers and workmen. *^He also authorized the opening of reading-rooms and mechanics' clubs, founded a central normal school for the education of trades- men, patronized scientific congresses, and provided free lodging- houses for the homeless. He showed like zeal for the reform of ec- clesiastical institutions, visited in disguise or at unexpected moments the monasteries, schools, hospitals, and prisons of Eome, and went about the streets on foot without the usual guards and attend- ants. " * In all this he did not conceal that he was copying the admirable examples set him by Leo XII. His popularity, or the '^ commanded " enthusiasm of the idle multitude went on increasing, and profited by every religious celebration in the city to get up a demonstration in his honor. At the head of all these noisy outpourings of sentiment were invariably found the tools of the Young Italy clubs, and fore- most among them was one Angelo Brunetti, nicknamed Oicerua- chio, from his gift of ready and pompous speech, and whose daring, boisterous good-nature and Eoman cunning had made him the idol of the populace and a most useful agent of the clubs. It was in vain that Pius strove to repress or moderate these noisy gatherings ; he soon found that the wild beast whose cage he had broken could not be restrained from roaring when it saw him and from licking his hand in public. But any attempt to check its unwelcome affection only made it show its teeth and claws. While Eome was getting ready for the great ceremony of the Pope's taking solemn possession of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Eome, and the first in dignity of all churches in the Catholic world, Genoa was preparing to hold a ^^ scientific congress,'' com- * lUdem. 1 1 2 Life of Pope Pius IX. posed of the most distinguished men of Italy and other learned men from foreign countries. As the event proved, this assemblage was not intended for the ad- vancement of any of the purposes of science ; the name was a blind, under cover of which the revolutionists had resolved to meet and discuss the necessity and the means of immediate ** action." All, indeed, were not revolutionists. Farini, and men who, like liim, wished to see Italy rise to a position that should for ever prevent her from being overrun and despoiled by any one of her powerful neigh- bors, did not look beyond an Italy forming under its own lawful princes, and these only, a confederation, or, if that were impractica- ble, one strong constitutional government, which should be carried on for the people and through the people. Even the most moderate of these were in favor of doing away, in the Eoman States, with an administration carried on exclusively or principally by churchmen. They did not want to dethrone the Pope ; but they would have him govern by a constitution administered by laymen. It is not to be denied that this strong and numerous wing of the congress of Genoa was influenced by Piedmontese statesmen and publicists, whose avowed or secret purpose was the formation of an Italian kingdom under the Carignan-Savoy dynasty. In their opinion the reforms inaugurated by the Pope, the liberal measures which his example forced upon the other sovereigns of Italy, and the plots and agita- tion of Mazzini and his associates, must in the end forward the supre- macy of Piedmont. But the man who really though invisibly presided over this con- gress of Genoa was Mazzini. It was his followers who dared to utter the living words of national independence and a united Italy, which thrilled every soul there, and sent all these men to their homes with the firm determination so to shape and direct events and move- ments in the Peninsula that Italian liberty and unity should be the inevitable result. It was remarkable that in this congress the ominous name of Bonaparte became unblushingly conspicuous in the person of the Prince of Canino, the son and heir of Lucien Bonaparte, who had been created a prince by Pius VII. At the same time a cousin of this same Canino, Louis Napoleon, was the favored guest of Lord Pal- merston and the English nobility, while the foreign secretary was secretly preparing the revolution which soon afterward hurled Louis Philippe from his throne, in revenge of the contemplated Spanish Calamities that helped the Mazzinian Agitation, 113 marriages, and to preyent, in future, a French protectorate over Switzerland and Italy. Both the Prince of Canino and his cousin were members of the Young Italy and Young Europe leagues, pledged solemnly to further the objects of the conspirators if ever they should be placed in power. Of Canino's action in the Congress of Genoa, Legge speaks as fol- lows : '^ Courageously ignoring his not irreproachable antecedents, which had isolated him in turn from every section of his compatriots, the prince caught the prevailing ferment, insulted the memory of Gregory, sneered at the Jesuits, and ran wild in praise of the new Pontiff, in whose dethronement he was destined to become conspicu- ously instrumental." Thus the ** Scientific Congress" of Genoa was in reality a revolu- tionary convention, from which men went back to their homes bent on regenerating Italy politically ; the Eadicals pledged to make of her a republic after their own heart, without king, or pope, or church, and with one single chamber combining the functions of legislature. Judiciary, and executive. And so the coming events cast their portentous shadows over the land. It was a most fitting opportunity for Mazzini to publish boldly the manifesto partly reproduced in a preceding chapter. Its direc- tions had been acted upon most faithfully up to that hour, the suc- cess which attended them, and the impunity now enjoyed by the conspirators, encouraged their chief to give them publicity, and thereby to recommend their adoption wherever revolution was to prepare the downfall of Christianity. Unforeseen calamities came to assist the agitation thus devised, and to precipitate the movement. The scarce harvest of the year 1845, was followed in 1846 by another not much more abundant ; there was dearth in consequence and fears of a famine. These apprehen- sions were artfully exaggerated by the liberal press. The papal gov- ernment had just destroyed the monopoly in grain and flour, but it served the purpose of the agitators to make the evil-minded among the people believe that the scarcity was caused by the government. In reality there had been a good average crop in Umbria and the Marches, though it fell below the average elsewhere. The govern- ment, moreover, had thrown open its ports to the free importation of foreign bread-stuffs, and had established deposits of cheap provisions in the districts where the dearth prevailed. But the fancy of the 1 1 4 Life of Pope Pius IX. populace in the cities was inflamed by the events of the past months, and their passionate nature exploded in rioting, violence, and blood- shed. The bitter denunciations of the clubs and the invectives of the demagogic press held up the government to unqualified hatred, while sparing or praising the person and intentions of the sovereign. The Piedmontese liberal party now began to show their hand, and to discover their ultimate purpose. Massimo d'Azeglio, whoso works of fiction, all inculcating the lessons of Young Italy, had made him very popular, hastened to publish, after the first risings in Bologna and the Campagna, a work * in which he attributed these calamities of scarcity of food, and all the ills under which the Eoman States were suffering, to clerical rule, contrasting the impro- vident and despotic government of priests with the security and plenty with which Piedmont was blessed under a lay government. This publication was circulated widely, and served, wherever it was read, as a text for passionate declamation against the Holy See, the speakers or writers affecting to distinguish between the person of the pontiff and the system of which he was the head. Meanwhile Gizzi was displaying untiring energy in his endeavors to carry out the Holy Father's measures of reform ; nor was his labor pursued without serious and violent opposition. It became appar- ent, as the autumn advanced, as the doings of the Congress of Genoa became known, and Mazzini's manifesto, with the pamplilet of d'Azeglio, found their way to the reading public, that much as the Pope had done to satisfy the Liberals, still more and more must be conceded if he would have peace. Those among the Conservatives who had reasoned themselves into believing concession timely or necessary, now began to review their own reasoning. But the Pope doubted not, or acted as if he doubted not. At any rate, he resolved to put a stop to the frequent and noisy gatherings held under one pretext or another in Eome and the provinces. Mazzini's strategy was revealed to the public ; the Pope, however, disdained to notice the cowardly assassin or his plans, and found a far better reason in the very scarcity of money and dearth of provisions which had been made the pretext of sedition and bloodshed. Cardinal Gizzi, according to Mr. Petre, the English charge ^af. fairea in Rome, issued an instruction to the governors of provinces recommending them "to represent, as occasion may offer, to the * OH UUimi Can di Romagna. The Pope takes Possession of St. John Lateran. 1 1 5 populations under their charge, how seriously these frequent assem- blages must interfere with the good order and economy of families, and how much more agreeable it would be to the feelings of his Holiness if the moneys collected for future rejoicings were to be reserved for the relief of distress during the coming winter." This was in October; on the 8th of November the Pope took possession of St. John Lateran. The solemnities usual on this occasion had ever been the most splendid known to Christian Rome. The first church, built on the site of the present grand basilica, by Constantino, was dedicated by Pope St. Sylvester, on November the 9th, 324. The emperor himself — so the tradition runs — worked among the masons. It was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and was thus the first cathedral church of Eome, becoming thereby the first in dignity in the Christian world; and the adjoining palace was for a thousand years the ordinary residence of the Popes, as the school attached to it was the most renowned in Italy for sacred learning. That November morning on which Pius IX. went to be enthroned in his cathedral shone gloriously on the gorgeous pageant. For all Rome was there, and Rome seemed not to know how she could sufficiently testify to her sovereign her grateful attachment. "When the state chariot appeared," writes Whitefield, "the ac- clamations rang loud and universal. His Holiness seemed deeply affected by sounds rarely (?) heard by his predecessors. He is a man of fifty-four years of age, healthy in appearance, somewhat flushed in countenance, of an amiable aspect, with intelligence expressed on his brow. . . . "We are now before the celebrated Basilica of St. John Lateran. In this place were assembled 50,000 people at least, countless car- riages, the whole garrison of Rome, and all the persons who were engaged in the ceremonial. . . . "I passed to the piazza in front of the Basilica to witness the giving of the blessing. . . . The Pope is carried in his por- tative throne to the front window above the great portal of the church, the huge windows are removed, an awning raised, and decorations of arras and gold-wrought draperies spread around. The pontiff can plainly be seen by the multitude in the piazza as he is borne forward. ... At a signal the cannons fire, the music breaks forth, the Pope raises his hand, the troops kneel, and some of the people, in profound silence. The spectacle is most imposing ; 1 1 6 Life of Pope Pius IX. but on this occasion the shouts of thousands of grateful people gave a life to the ceremony without which it had been cold, and of the vast multitude assembled every individual exhibited the joy of his heart. The Pope raised himself and stood upright for some min- utes before the people, the triple crown on his head ; this was the signal for fresh acclamations. He gave the blessing, waving his hand in the form of a cross. A burst of enthusiasm followed, the cannons thundered, the music sounded, drums, trumpets, and peal- ing of bells joined with the people in one mighty chorus, and the pageant was over/' CHAPTER XL Ecclesiastical Acts of Pius IX. : Fiest Ekctclical to the Hierarchy foeeshadowikg the chief TEACHiifrGS of his Pontificate — In^ukdatioks in Kome — Fatherly Charity OF THE Pope — His Generosity toward the Jewish Suf- ferers — The Inundations, like the Corn Eiots, made a Grievance against the Pontifical Government — Cele- bration AT Genoa — Growing Discontent of Austria. November-December, 1846. THE close of the year 1846 was marked by two events deserving of special notice — the publication on November 9th of the Pope's first encyclical to the hierarchy of the Church, and the calamitous inundation of the Tiber, which called forth the fatherly generosity of the pontiff. Pius had very properly deferred his expected address to the mem- bers of the hierarchy till he had taken official possession of his cathedral church. The document itself was assailed with the most bitter and unjust criticism in a portion of the European press, while Catholics everjrw^here received it with veneration. To the serious student of history, to the theologian, and to the statesman this encyclical must offer, when read attentively and compared with the doctrinal acts of the long reign of Pius IX., a most striking instance of uninterrupted unity of thought and teach- ing. There is not an error condemned in the "Syllabus" that is not proscribed here ; not a truth taught by implication in this great doctrinal judgment, or affirmed explicitly in the two dogmatic con- stitutions published up to July 18, 1870, in the Council of the Vatican, that is not found in this prophetic address to the teach- ing body in the Church. Persons who may have felt, in measuring the length of his pontificate and recalling the many doctrinal ques- tions forced upon him for decision, disposed to think that Pius IX. had not been consistent with himself as the supreme teacher in 117 1 1 8 Life of Pope Pius IX. the Church, or in accord with his predecessors, will be convinced, after a comparison of his utterances one with another, and with those of other Popes, that one and the same voice ever speaks from the chair of Peter. There is something very touching in the manner in which he who now holds on earth the place of the Good Shepherd recalls to his fellow-bishops the occupations and duties of the charge so well filled at Imola and Spoleto. "During many years, venerable brothers, we endeavored after your example to fulfill as best we might the laborious and anxious duties of the episcopal office, feeding the flock intrusted to us on the hill-sides of Israel in the richest pasture grounds and near the liv- ing waters, when lo ! the death of our illustrious predecessor, Greg- ory XVL, . . . called us to the sovereign pontificate, very unexpectedly to ourselves, and by some hidden design of Provi- dence. ... If the burden of the apostolic ministry must at all times be looked upon with awe and apprehension, the difficulties and perils of the present should make it still more formidable. . . . Wherefore, the consciousness of our own weakness and of the awful weight of this supreme responsibility amid all these dangers, should have moved us to tears and discouragement, had we not placed our hope in that Saviour-God who never forsakes such as trust in him, and who displays his might by making use of the most unfit instruments in governing his Church, in order that all men may know thereby that it is he who rules and protects her. . . . '* Hence, from the first hour in which we were placed in this exalted seat of the prince of the apostles, and received the charge delivered to him by the eternal Prince of Pastors, of feeding and governing not only the "lambs" of the flock, that is, the whole Christian people, but also the "sheep," namely, the bishops, we yearned to address you in the fullness of our charity and affec- tion." The twofold idea of his pressing duty toward "the Christian people," and toward their "pastors," comprises the whole of this beautiful letter. In the first part are pointed out the dangers which threaten the fold of Christ from the various errors of the day and the associations formed to combat revelation, the Church, and civil society ; in the second ho urges on the bishops zeal, the ex- ample of a holy life, the formation of a truly pious, learned, and ^ First Encyclical, 119 exemplary priesthood, and reminds sovereigns tliat it is their duty and interest to support and defend religion if they would have sub- jects enlightened and obedient from conscientious conviction. *'In this our age a fierce and terrible war is waged against every portion of the Catholic fold by men linked in guilty fellowship, . . . who disentomb from the darkness all the most mon- strous shapes of error and industriously disseminate them. . . . These haters of truth and light, these skillful artificers of fraud, labor to extinguish in men's minds every tendency toward piety, justice, and honor, to corrupt morals, to confound all notions of divine and human right, ... to overturn from their bases the Catholic religion and civil society. . . . " ** These deadly enemies of the Christian name . . . pub- licly teach that the mysteries of our religion are fables invented by man ; that tlie doctrine of the Catholic Church is opposed to the welfare of society ; . . . they deny Christ himself, and the very existence of God ; . . . they claim exclusively to know the way to true prosperity, and to be called philosophers. . . . "They cease not to appeal to reason, and to set it above the faith inculcated by Christ, pronouncing the one to be contrary to the other. . . . Whereas both are streams from the one eternal fountain of truth. " They would have the progress and development which obtained in human things prevail also in the Catholic religion, the work of God, not to be perfected by human genius. . . . It is a religion revealed by God to man, deriving all its force from the authority of the revealer, . . . allowing human reason to inquire into the fact of revelation, and claiming the assent and obedience of reason once that fact has been ascertained. . . ." Then follow the arguments by which reason can convince itself that the Christian religion has God for its author. But this reve- lation is guarded and expounded by a living authority, indefectibly present in the Church built by Christ on Peter, and speaking "in- fallibly " through him in his successors, seated on his chair. The doctrine propounded here is almost identical in substance and expression with the chapter in the Constitution, Pastor uEternus, prefacing the decree on the "teaching office of the Eoman pontiff," and defining his infallibility. It was received without a murmur of dissent by every bishop in the Catholic world. The "secret societies" which conspire against "the Roman chair 1 20 Life of Pope Phcs IX, of the blessed Peter " are next pointed out ; ^* societies emerging from their native darkness for the ruin and desolation of the community, and again and again condemned by the Roman pontiffs. . . ." "This also is the tendency and design of the insidious Bible so- cieties, which, borrowing the arts of the heretics of old, cease not to obtrude upon all kinds of people . . . copies in vast number of. the sacred Scriptures, translated, in violation of the most religious rules of the Church, into living languages, and accompanied fre- quently with perverse and erroneous interpretations, ... to the end that, . . . the authority of the Church being set aside, every man may interpret the revealed word of the Almighty in con- formity with his own private judgment, . . . which societies, emulous of his predecessor, Gregory XVI reproveth, . . . and we desire equally to condemn." This censure of the Bible societies in connection with the '^secret societies " caused a great outcry among Protestants in Europe and America. "We have already mentioned the condemnation pronounced by Gregory. The '* Christian League's" connection with the Italian conspirators cannot now be denied. In August, 1846, the *' Evan- gelical Alliance " was inaugurated in England ; its avowed object was to combat and uproot Catholicism. Its members were very wary at first about admitting that they were in sympathy or in co-operation with the Italian Liberals, still less with Young Italy. But the reports published by their successive international conferences no longer permits any one to doubt that fact. They have been every- where in communion with secret societies, and have co-operated with them at home and abroad. They boasted in after years of the harm they had done to the cause of the Papacy in Italy, and of the conquests they had made among its populations. Was not Pius IX. well inspired when he involved them in the same condemnation? The pestilential indifference or skepticism about all religious faith and practice; the ''conspiracy against the celibacy of the clergy," set on foot in Germany, encouraged by shameless priests in Italy, and promoted by the civil power ; and then the spreading plague of ** communism " are denounced to the vigilance of the bishops. The manifold evil done by the deluge of bad books that were made everywhere the vehicle of error and immorality, and the efficient auxiliaries of the conspirators; the unbridled license of uttering through the press the most monstrous errors and of sapping the Teachings of the Encyclical, 121 foundations of domestic, civil, and religious order, are proscribed in advance of the '^ Syllabus." The bishops — in the second part — are exhorted to renewed zeal in defending every holy interest threatened by all these enemies. They are to instruct their respective flocks with untiring care, enlighten- ing and confirming them in the faith, laying bare to them the snares and artifices of the adversaries of religion, giving their hearers the example of meekness and humility of heart. ^' Do not fail in the spirit of gentleness and meekness, with fatherly warning and advice, to correct, reprove, entreat, or rebuke, in all kindness, teaching patiently those whom you find straying from the path, ... as loving words are more efficacious in correcting than authority, en- treaty more than threatening, and charity than force." This had ever been his own rule ; these were the exhortations often addressed to his priests, at Imola, and they fell from his heart on that of every bishop in the Church. The sweet virtues to be inculcated on the laity are '^ charity and peace," the avoidance of *^all dissensions, enmities, strife, and jeal- ousy;" the enforcement of "all due obedience toward sovereigns and persons in power," and all this, because it is God's will, and that its observance insures every temporal blessing. "You will, in that wisdom which distinguishes you, perceive that it will behoove you to use great zeal and care that in the clergy shine forth gravity of manners, integrity of life, holiness, and learn- ing ; that ecclesiastical discipline, where it has fallen off, may be restored to its former splendor, and where it exists, it may be strictly preserved." "Admit to the administration of holy things those only who, after strict examination and careful trial, show that they possess all virtues, and that . . . they may become to your dioceses both of use and ornament. . . ." Science, as well as spotless purity of life, is an indispensable re^ quisite in God's minister. Those who are to preach his word must be deeply penetrated with its meaning and spirit ; no effort must be spared by the bishops to have the truths of the Gospel announced "in clear and intelligible language, yet in a style full of dignity," "so that by full explanations of each one's duties all may be turned away from crime and won to piety, . . . may abstain from all vices and practice all virtues." Xoble words conclude this exhortation to the bishops: "In the midst of so many pei-plexities, difficulties, and dangers inseparable 12 2 Life of Pope Puts IX. from your charge in these times, let no fear cast you down ; but seeking strength in the Lord, and trusting to the power of his grace, bethink you how from heaven his eyes ever follow those who con- tend for the glory of his name, applauding nobly those who nobly Tcnture, aiding those who fight, and crowning those who conquer." To Catholic sovereigns and governments there is a brief and preg- nant reminder '' that power was given them not only for the govern- ment of their subjects, but especially for the defense of the Church, and that we maintain in the cause of the Church that of their king- doms and of their salvation. . . ." Then presenting himself with his fellow-bishops before the throne of grace, he beseeches the Father of Mercies, by the merits of his only Son, *'to cast over our weakness the fullness of his gifts, to make the faith flourish everywhere with truth and piety, self-denial and peace, . . . that the Church may enjoy her longed-for liberty, and that there may be but one flock and one Shepherd." In that presence he invokes as intercessors with the divine ma- jesty "the most holy Mother of God, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, our most sweet mother," "and all the saints of heaven, who are already crowned and bear the palm of victory, that they may obtain for all Christian people the treasures of the divine mercy." Such was the first solemn appeal of the chief pastor to the entire flock of Christ, bespeaking the great qualities of mind and heart which were to shine forth in his government of the Church for so many memorable years. AVe have now to see these same qualities of prince, father, and good shepherd in active operation amid the sud- den distress of liis Roman subjects. The summer of 184G had been remarkable for its excessive and protracted heat, and had melted the snow-fields of the Apennines, and caused no little damage and dismay along all the water-courses. With the autumn came heavy and continuous rains, swelling the Anio and the Tiber, and making them everywhere overflow their banks. In Rome the damage caused by the sudden inundation was frightful. It fell most heavily on the Jewish population shut up in a low, dark, and damp quarter near the river, and called the Ghetto. Thoy had been first penned up there by the austere Paul IV. (Caraflfa), whose nephews ground the despised race pitilessly, and for that and other acts of tyranny and greed were beheaded under Pius IV. Sixtus v., with whom Pius IX. was often compared during the first Inundations at Rome, 123 years of tlie latter's pontificate, did away with many of the odious restrictions placed upon the Jews. That great-souled Pope was ahove the miserable prejudices that tended to keep the Hebrew race in abject and perpetual bondage. ^^ They were," he was wont to say, "the family from whom Christ sprung;" and should be held in reyerence by all Christ's followers. It mattered not that the nation or its magistrates in an evil hour had decreed the Saviour's death. They had terribly suffered for the deed ; and their descendants should not, generation after generation, be made to pay the penalty over again. Sixtus abrogated many of the laws which weighed so heavily on them ; permitted them to practice the trades and industries with which they were most familiar, to hold free intercourse with their Christian fellow-citizens, to build houses, and have all the refining and elevating sources of instruction and entertainment that could raise them to an equality with any other class. This legislation was, unfortunately, repealed or deeply modified afterward, leaving the Jews downtrodden, disaffected, and ready (who could blame them?) to join every scheme of revolution that promised to be successful. Pius IX. inherited the large and liberal spirit of the terrible Six- tus, with the gentle and winning virtues which would have availed Sixtus but little in the "age of iron" in which he lived. No sooner had the first tidings of the disaster caused by the in- undation reached the ears of Pius IX., than he gave orders to see to it at once that all needful measures of relief should be taken by the government and the municipality. Hastening himself to the scene of danger and distress, he distributed money with unsparing hand to the poor people forced to fly from their homes by the rising waters. Committees were soon organized under his supervision which pro- vided the houseless with temporary shelter, with clothing, food, and everything else that was most needed. The Pope commanded, more- over, that an exact list of the sufferers should be made out, and that full compensation from the treasury should at once be made to them for their losses. That his conduct on this occasion should win him the admiration and love of his people was inevitable. But the gratitude of the dis- tressed Jews was unbounded ; for he had shown especial sympathy to them in their need. His fatherly care of this portion of his subjects went further than this ; he had the walls of the Ghetto razed, repealed the laws re- 124 Life of Pope Pius IX, straining the liberty of the Jews and limiting them to their former narrow and squalid quarter, and made them hope that a new era had begun for them in Kome. Their affection for their benefactor was manifested on every occasion, and was evidently sincere ; they, too, were afterward carried away in the revolutionary current set loose by Christian hands. The ravages of the inundation were by no means confined to the Jewish quarter and its immediate neighborhood. The flood covered all but the more elevated portions of the city, creating general dis- tress, and leaving behind it, when it subsided, not only the seeds of disease, but those of a discontent as unjust as it was bitter against the papal government. This discontent was carefully nursed by '' the sects " and clubs. The calamity had befallen the city at tho time when d'Azeglio's insidious pamphlet on the insurrections in the Eomagna was read with avidity in Rome, and served as a ready and fertile text for invectives against '^the priests." Just as d'Azeglio had labored to trace to clerical rule the late scarcity and the consequent disturbances, so now the orators of the clubs in- veighed against the Roman government for not having foreseen the unprecedented downfall of rain, and taken precautions against the sudden and fearful inundations that followed. All the splendid munificence and fatherly devotion to his people displayed by Pius IX., and most generously emulated by the cardi- nals, the ministers, the religious communities, and the entire body of the Roman clergy, were studiously overlooked or disparaged, for the purpose of holding up to hatred the imbecility and improvi- dence of priestly government in general. To be sure, tlie conspirators and their mouth-pieces affected to draw a marked distinction between Pius IX. and his predecessors, even between him and his ministers. But this odious distinction,- while it seemed to relieve him of all responsibility for past abuses and shortcomings, only tended to isolate him, to separate from him his best counselors and most devoted servants, leaving him the sole idol of *' the people's praise, till he became the helpless object of their hatred." And so, undismayed by the difficulties before him, and unde- terred by these too-evident alternations of popular enthusiasm and popular coldness, tho Pope continued his work of reform and im- provement to the end of the year. In the ovorll owing goodness and guileless simplicity of his heart Efforts to Lnp7'ove Spiritual Condition of Romans. I25 he had imagined that he could make practical Christians of all the ^ men of Eome, as well of those who with Ciceruacchio shouted themselves hoarse in his praise beneath the windows of the Quirinal or around his carriage in the streets, as those who had just been restored to freedom and the endearment of home by the amnesty, or who conspired at the head-quarters of ^' the sects." In mid-November a plenary indulgence was proclaimed in their favor especially, and a stirring address from the Holy Father called on them to reconcile themselves with God, and renew their souls by the reception of the sacraments whose efficacy they had experienced in youth. The pulpits of the city were occupied by the most famous preachers of Italy, and the holiest and most popular priests were called to labor in the work of spiritual renovation. But Young Italy was not a leopard that could change its spots ; and the very men whom the Pope wanted to reach and benefit belonged, one and all, body and soul, to Young Italy and the Car- bonari. Another event occurring at this time in the north of Italy helped to complicate still more the formidable difficulties which beset the pontiff. When the Scientific Congress at Genoa adjourned, it was agreed that all who favored the scheme of national independence should meet there in December to celebrate the centenary of Genoa's libera- tion from Austrian rule. The Piedmontese government had too great a stake in the movement about to be inaugurated to think for a mo- ment of forbidding the celebration, though it looked with well- grounded suspicion on the principal leaders. But Austria was the common foe, and anything which contributed to deepen and spread that feeling was sure of favor in the court of Turin. So Genoa, the Magnificent, put forth all her wealth and splendor and patriotism on the glorious occasion. Every Italian heart was stirred to its depths by the echoes of the orations delivered, and the songs sung in Genoa, even though some hearts dared not or cared not to join in the cry raised there of "Italy for the Italians." Kome was much excited ; one might have fancied that the same impulse moved both cities, so much did what was said at Eome, in the clubs, in the streets, and in the press — now become freer and bolder — resemble the utterances of the enthusiastic multitude at Genoa. Of course Austria was deeply offended, and remonstrated through its ambassador in no measured terms. The Pope was not 126 Life of Pope Pius IX, to be moved, however, and replied in a tone of firm though respect- ful independence. Some unseemly acts had been committed by the numerous and sympathetic meetings held in the Roman States, and some imprudent language had been uttered by the liberal press. A few of the most violent actors in these gatherings were arrested, and legal proceedings were begun against the offending journals ; but nothing came of it, and Austrian animosity deepened and threat- ened. It was resolved at Vienna that the slightest pretext afforded for the occupation of the pontifical fortresses in the Romagna and the Marches should be the signal for an Austrian army to cross the frontier. Meanwhile this avowed resentment of "the foreigners" only gave the clubs an opportunity of causing the "Hymn of Pius IX." to be sung with increased enthusiasm. CHAPTER XII. Gkaj^d New- Year's Demojs^steatiok by the Clubs in Honor op THE Pope — Irritation at the Delays of the Keform Com- missions — Improvements in Legislation, the Liberty of THE Press, the Post-office — Only Increase the Discon- tent OF THE Radicals — Protestations of the Pope — En- cyclical ON THE Famine in Ireland — Honors to O'Con- nell's Memory. Januaby-June, 1847. A MOST rational and most Christian custom prevailed in Rome from the last quarter of the sixteenth century, that on the evening of December 31st, at sunset, the beautiful 50th Psalm, Miserere, should be chanted as a public petition for mercy on the transgressions of the year about to close, and should be followed by a solemn Te Beum, in acknowledgment of all the blessings received from the divine goodness. This was inaugurated by St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus; and when the beautiful church of the Gesii was terminated in 1575, all that was most dis- tinguished in Rome flocked thither on the last evening of the year to join in the pious solemnity. The Popes had sanctioned the custom, and further confirmed it by going in state to the Gesii to join in the common thanksgiving. Pius IX. was too sincere in his piety not to keep up the laudable custom, and the persecutions to which the Jesuits were at that moment subjected in Switzerland made him all the more anxious to be present with his people on this occasion. He was perfectly aware that the storm raised against the Society in the Catholic cantons of the European republic was created by Young Europe and Mazzini, as had been in France the short-lived tempest excited against them in 1845 by the " Thiers interpellations." To show the Jesuits friend- ship, sympathy, countenance, or even toleration, was gall and vine- gar to the Roman Liberals of almost every color. At the end of their 127 128 Life of Pope Pius IX, scholar year in the preceding August, Pius had gone to the Eoman College directed by them, to distribute diplomas and premiums, and had been hissed by persons in the crowd. On the 31st of December, the clubs, being apprised of his determi- nation, resolved to get up a magnificent demonstration, both on the evening of December the 31st, and especially on New- Year's Day. We say demonstration — for the formidable display of popular pas- sion and numbers was simply calculated to impress the Pope with tlie conviction that the people who raised triumphal arches along the streets, and sang around the Quirinal the "Hymn of Pius IX.," and shouted Viva Pio Nono solo (Long live Pius IX. alone !) were deter- mined he should know how little they loved the Jesuits or the priests in general, though it pleased them now to sing to him and shout for him alone. Eight days afterward the French ambassador, Count Rossi, who watched with the deepest interest the progress of events and the course of public feeling in Rome, wrote to Prime Minister Guizot : ''The Pope has lost none of his popularity. My only fear is that he may not use it to good purpose, thinking that he may slumber on it as on a bed of roses. . . . The country waits, but with mani- fest impatience." The circular addressed by Cardinal Gizzi to the governors of prov- inces instructing them to call together in every locality the most in- fluential laymen and consult them on the reforms and improvements most needed there, had only served to stir up or to strengthen the general desire of a lay administration, or at least of the admission of a largo number of laymen into every department of government. The delays occasioned by the framing of these reports and their ex- amination by the ministers, the still greater delays that occurred in the labor of the commissions on legislation and government, had an irritating effect on the public, especially when the leaders of public opinion had determined beforehand that nothing short of a constitutional and parliamentary government, administered by lay- men, should satisfy them, or be accepted by the people of the Roman States. . Nevertheless the Pope persisted in his purpose of granting not only all the municipal liberties which ho deemed compatible with the peace of his States and the gradual constitutional reforms that should initiate his people into the practice of self-government, with- out touching on his own indefeasible rights as sovereign, or endan- Improvements in Legislation. 129 gering the perfect independence of his spiritual office so intimately connected with his sovereignty. This was affirmed continually not only to the representatives of France, England, and Belgium, who sympathized with the Holy Father's purpose, but to the ambassadors of the conservative pov/ers, such as Austria, Kussia, and even Prussia (at that period at least). The most distinguished members of the liberal party in Italy were also made acquainted with the Pope's schemes, and were almost unanimous in praising his courageous determination in presence of such formidable hostility. Toward the end of June, when the complications with Austria were becoming daily more threatening, and the Eadicals were clamoring loudly for concessions amounting to an abdication of the Pope's sovereignty, the government was compelled to issue a proclamation stating, in substance, the reasons for the cautious course they had to pursue in granting reforms. "His Holiness," says the Cardinal Secretary of State, "is firmly resolved to pursue his course of improving every branch of the administration requiring reform ; but he is no less resolved to proceed in this by a prudent and well-calculated gradation, and within the limits which belong essentially to the sovereignty and the temporal government of the head of the Catholic Church — a government which cannot adopt certain forms incompatible with the very existence of that sovereignty, or, at least, detrimental to the free outward and independent exercise of the supreme primacy in spirituals for which God willed that the Holy See should have a temporal principality. The Holy Father cannot forget the sacred duties which compel him to preserve intact the trust that has been confided to him." By his coronation oath he had bound himself to preserve the patrimony of the Holy See in its integrity, and to transmit his temporal sovereignty intact and inviolate to his successor; this explains the word "trust" in the last sentence quoted. The secretary then proceeds to enumerate the principal reforms contem- plated, and reproves in the following terms the impatience of the Radicals : "The Holy Father has not been able to see without deep regret i hat certain restless minds are desirous of profiting by the present state of things to promulgate and endeavor to establish doctrines and ideas totally opposed to his maxims, or to impose upon him 9 130 Life of Pope Pius IX. others quite irreconcilable with the gentle and pacific nature and the sublime character of the person who is the vicar of Christ, the minister of a God of peace, and the father of all Catholics in every part of the world; or, finally, to excite in the minds of the people by speeches and writings, desires and hopes of reforms beyond the limits which his Holiness has indicated." One may form some conception of the activity with which the Pope urged forward the ameliorations deemed most urgent, by recalling the principal among them in the order of time. On February the 9th, 1847, he issued a pardon to all persons imprisoned or undergoing criminal prosecution for the acts of violence com- mitted in the corn-riots of the preceding autumn. This new act of clemency caused unbounded joy. Almost simultaneously appeared edicts reforming in many important points the criminal and civil codes, and winning the applause of the most learned and the most liberal. In March (12th), a still more important law was published regulating the censorship of the press and the circulation of printed matter through the post-office. Though this law did not grant the almost unlimited freedom demanded by the *^ advanced Liberals" or Radicals, it *'was gratefully accepted by the large and influential section of the community who were content to move slowly, so that they did advance in the path of reform. They recognized that the censorship was useful and even necessary to a government and an excitable people newly called to liberty, and entertained no fear of its restrictions being interpreted in a narrow sense. By this law the censorship, instead of being left to the discretion of the censors of the several cities or provinces, was conducted by fixed rules. So much freedom, indeed, was allowed that the Moderates were con- vinced that the edict did not, as had been asserted, vail the design of extinguishing the liberty of the press."* So this v-ery measure of liberty, so gratefully received by the moderate Liberals, and so well Buitcd to a people and a government advancing toward constitu- tional liberty, had been denounced as a fraud aiming in reality at destroying the freedom of the press ! There was another portion of the law equally wise, that, namely, which regulated the introduction of reading matter through the post- office. When one remembers that the secret societies had for years done in Italy what was done in Spain, not only used the post-office, ♦ Legge, i. 103. Only Increase the Discontent of the Radicals, 131 but the custom-house to introduce the most obscene or blasphemous writings among the laboring classes, the restrictions enacted by the pontifical law must be deemed not only praiseworthy but impera- tively necessary. The works of Voltaire, of Balzac, and Paul de Kock were sent to Spain, in cheap editions, bearing on the title- page Imitation de Jesus- Christ, or Introduction a la Vie Devote, passed the custom-house by the guilty connivance of the officers, and were scattered broadcast at a nominal price among the people. Similar nefarious practices had been for a quarter of a century em- ployed in Italy, and by the men who were hand and glove with the apostles of the *' Christian League" and "Evangelical Alliance." From the first days of his reign Pius had shown himself friendly toward an enlightened journalism aiming at educating the popular mind on all matters that could promote their true welfare without encouraging any of the pet humanitarian notions of Eadicalism. The Contemporaneo, destined to wield so decisive an influence in upsetting the throne, as well as in thwarting the reforms of the pontiff, had been established long before the 12th of March, in the moderate liberal interest, and was generously supported by the Pope. The greater degree of freedom granted to journalists did not prompt the editors of that paper to any imprudent utterance or to propose any of the visionary schemes advocated by the "advanced." But the law on the press encouraged the latter to found in Eome and in the provinces a number of radical papers which were evidently in- spired by the same fanaticism, and which with one accord ceased not to persuade the Italian people that they could expect from their present rulers nothing but delusive promises. They echoei and re-echoed on every side the inflammatory words of Mazzini : "Nothing is left but the endeavor to agree in secret, to wrench the bars from the doors and windows of our prison, to knock down gates and gaolers, that we may breathe the fresh, life-giving air of liberty, the air of God." Not a few of our most influential journa"'s here in America, even among those devoted to religion, were carried away by the apparent patriotic and religious warmth of such words as these, believing that in abetting the cause of Mazzini and holding up to the admiration of their countrymen the cherished objects of Young Italy, they were advocating the best interests of humanity and the cause of him who made men free and brothers. There is in the American heart a generous and disinterested love 132 Life of Pope Pius IX, of liberty that ever prompts to bestow its benefits on every portion of the human race, and is ever ready to prove its sympathy for the liberty-loving by more than mere words. The American freeman, moreover, inherits with this noble instinct a reverence for religion, which he considers the very corner-stone of the social edifice, be- cause it is the very basis on which all authority resides. Far different was the freedom for which Mazzini was striving, and far beneath the pure and exalted conception of the sanction which Christianity, in the American theory, bestows on free institutions, was "the life-giving air, . . . the air of God," which Young Italy would allow none but its adepts to breathe. Fortunately for the truth of history we can complete Mazzini's vague generalities by the more definite writings of such of his sub- ordinates as Galletti and Eicciardi, while Cantalupo, a Neapolitan, enables us to see at a glance how Young Italy was to "knock down its gaolers." "1. The society (the League of Young Italy) is formed for the indispensable destruction of the governments of the Peninsula, and to shape all Italy into a single State, republican in form. . . . 30. Members who will not obey the orders of the secret society, and those who reveal its mysteries, shall be stabbed to death without re- mission. 31. The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence, ap- pointing one or two associates for its immediate execution. 32. The associate who refuses to execute the sentence shall be held as one perjured, and as such put to death on the spot. 33. If the victim should escape, he shall be pursued into every place he goes ; the guilty one shall be struck by an invisible hand, were he sheltered on the bosom of his mother or in the tabernacle of Christ. ... 54. Each tribunal shall be competent not only to judge guilty members, but to put to death all persons on whom it may pass a capital sentence." There was not a line in these diabolical documents, drawn up, one might think, in hell, under the inspiration of the arch- enemy of mankind, and of all that is gentle and beautiful in the moral world, that was not known to the sovereign pontiff and his ministers, not a murderous injunction that they had not seen carried out, year after year, in Rome and the disturbed provinces, though, as we shall see, the atrocities committed wholesale under the Roman republic of 1849 were to outstrip all preceding excesses. "Such tactics," remarks Legge, "brought their proper reward in the alienation of many whoso reputation was thus endangered, and Reforms Announced by the Pope, 133 who, earnestly aspiring after liberty, scouted more than Austrian bayonets or clerical despotism that prostitution of all honor, moral- ity, and truth which was involved in their fellowship with plotters of this cast." While the newly-created radical press was denouncing the very law which gave it birth, and the "sects" of which it was the mouth- piece were perfecting their dark plots in conformity with the spirit and letter of the above documents, Pius and his Secretary of State were giving form to their design of initiating their people into the practice of parliamentary government. On the loth of April Gizzi issued a circular to the governors of the Roman provinces announcing the creation of a High Council {Consulta), composed of delegates from all the provinces, chosen by the people, and who were to assemble in Rome at the beginning of November. This body was, in the Pope's thought, but a temporary consultative assembly, who could advise the Holy Father and the cardinals forming his natural council on all essential matters, not only of the needs of their respective localities, and the municipal, industrial, and commercial ameliorations that were most necessary and urgent, but of the legislative and constitutional changes that could be introduced without danger of revolution or disorder. Between mid- April and the iQrst days of November the popula- tions in every province would, the Pope thought, be prepared to make the most of this step in advance, and discuss in a temperate and orderly spirit the means of co-operating with the sovereign in effecting the most beneficial reforms. Meanwhile the heart of the chief pastor was as busy with the cares of every portion of his wide flock as that of the prince was with the manifold wants of his people. At the western extremity of Europe an ancient people, ever faith- ful to the See of Peter, as it had been to the creed given it by St, Patrick thirteen centuries before, was enduring the awful visita- tion of famine, with such an accompaniment of horrors as to thrill with mingled pity and indignation the whole civilized world ; with indignation at the secular misrule that left a whole people de- pendent for food on a single vegetable, and with pity for the brave old race whose inborn virtues shone with so bright a luster amid the accumulation of unremedied ills. Pius, touched to the very depths of his soul by the first sad tidings from Ireland, lost not a moment in discharging his duty toward her. 1 34 Life of Pope Plus IX, On the 25tli of March, the anniversary of the Annunciation, recall- ing the day when the Infinite Mercy became incarnate for our com- mon need ; the Pope addressed himself to the uniyersal Church, pre- scribing a solemn triduum, or public prayers during three successive days, to call down the divine protection on the sufferers, and urging every Catholic throughout the world to aid by prompt generosity in ministering relief. *' When first we learned," are the words of the Encyclical, *' that the kingdom of Ireland was afflicted by a great dearth of corn and a scarcity of other sorts of food, and that the nation was suffering from a most dreadful complication of diseases brought on by famine, we instantly applied, by every means in our power, to relieve the suf- ferers. Therefore we had prayers offered up in this city, and en- couraged the clergy and people of Rome, as well as the stranger so- journing with us, to send assistance to Ireland." Already (as the Encyclical asserts in the next paragraph) in the first days of February the Pope had a collection made in Rome, heading it himself with a large sum (a thousand scudi), and sent the amount at once to the bishops of Ireland for immediate distribution. On the 8th of February he was waited upon by a committee of gen- tlemen — ^Irish, English, and Scotch — with an address of thanks. '*Were the means at my command more ample," the Holy Father said to them in reply, '^I should not limit myself to the little I have done in a cause which has my warmest sympathy." But we return to the Encyclical : " What effort ought we not to make to raise up a nation crushed by such a disaster, when we know how great the fidelity of the Irish people and clergy is and has al- ways been, . . . how, in the most perilous times they have distin- guished themselves by their constancy in professing the faith ; how zealously the Irish priesthood has labored to spread that faith to the ends of the earth ; and, in fine, how piously and earnestly the blessed Peter, whoso dignity (to use the words of Leo the Great) is not lessened in an unworthy heir, is honored by the Irish nation and reverenced in our humble person." He concludes by urging on the hierarchy that while the entire Church is thus prostrate in prayer for Ireland before the Divine Mercy they should remember the need of the common father, liis " daily instance, the solicitude for all the churches." '* It is still before our eyes what a furious and fearful storm has arisen against the Church ; it pains the mind to recall what things the enemy hath Formation of a Council of Ministers. 135 done wickedly in the sanctuary (Psalm Ixxiii. 3), and how fraught with danger are the present designs against the Lord (Psalm ii. 2), and Ms Christ, ^^ Already Ireland's most illustrious living son, O'Connell, stricken himself to death by the utter wretchedness of his beloved country and by the failure of all his own fondly cherished dreams of national independence and prosperity, was on his way to Rome. We shall soon have to chronicle his last moments, and the splendid testimony paid to his worth by Pius IX. Let us not interrupt the natural course of events in the Eternal City. Simultaneously with the announcement of the creation of the High Council, or Consul ta, the official gazette informed the public of the formation of a council of ministers — the Secretary of State, Cardinal Gizzi, being president; Cardinal Eiario-Sforza, minister of com- merce and industry ; Cardinal Massimo, minister of public works ; Monsignor Lavinio Spada, minister of war ; Monsignor Antonelli, treasurer, and Monsignor Grassellini, governor of Rome. It was a coalition cabinet, not a promising one even in an old constitutional government where things have to right themselves without disturbance to public affairs or revolution to the State ; ifc was the very worst kind of cabinet to begin with among a people so excitable as the Romans, so inexperienced in constitutional govern- ment, and so unreasonably impatient of all delays and tentatives under the chronic excitement and distrust so scientifically nursed by the Radicals. Gizzi and Antonelli were the only ministers who bore the reputa- tion of liberality in politics ; the others were undisguised partisans of the conservative policy of the preceding reign. The list of names was read with a fierce burst of anger and disappointment by the Radicals, who now began to be designated as the Exalted, a term which they resented. Even the most moderate men could not con- ceal their dissatisfaction, nor help the forebodings of ill which all they heard and saw and felt tended to strengthen day by day. Gizzi was quite conscious of the weakness of this ministry, and of the loss of popularity to himself which must result from his accept- ing the presidency of a body, in which the majority were in open hos- tility to the principles he advocated and the measures of reform so anxiously expected by the public. Antonelli had already been minister of finance under Gregory XVI., and his business capacity was known to all ; nor was his sym- 1 36 Life of Pope Phcs IX. pathy for the wise and gradual reforms inaugurated by Pius IX. a secret to any. He came, however, of a comparatively obscure family, being a native of Sonnino, an ill-famed town at the southern extrem- ity of the papal territory, about five miles from Fossanuova, where St. Thomas Aquinas died. The village, perched on an almost inac- cessible crag, surrounded by precipices and deeply wooded ravines, was formerly a nest of freebooters, and had to be demolished to root out the pernicious brood. They returned to their rocks, however, and covered with olive trees and other fruitful culture every avail- able crevasse along the dizzy slopes. Of that bold and hardy race, and from that eagle's nest among the southern hills, came Giacomo Antonelli, destined to be the most conspicuous figure beside the long-lived pontiff in this stormy pontificate. Being of such a stock and from such a place, Antonelli had no following among the proud old Eoman nobility. He was to make his way to eminence through their crowded ranks by the sheer force of his own ability, as many a man of still more obscure parentage had done before him, in a city where the highest honors belong to the highest merit. The formation of the ministry and the creation of the Consulta had come upon the Roman public Just when the clubs had com- pleted their preparations for a grand national festival, to be held on April the IGth, in memory of the founding of Rome. This celebra- tion offered Young Italy an excellent pretext for assembling in Rome not only the Italians most renowcd in the world of science and letters, but their own most skillful and unscrupulous agents. They were carrying out with consummate ability the scheme formed at Genoa in the early autumn, perfected there in December, and now to be proclaimed with a more telling emphasis in Rome, once the capital of Italy and of the world. The idea was the independence and unity of their country. The festival "was held on the site of the baths of Titus. . . . The real purpose was to talk politics ; and the cautious d'Azeglio, the opponent of popular gatherings, so far forgot his reserve as to address the crowd — some 20,000 in number — and to refer to the idea up- permost in every mind : the expulsion of the Austrians— or, as he adroitly expressed it, ' the Goths, Huns, and other Vandals '—from Italy. His remarks elicited thunders of applause, but the newspapers which published them were suppressed. For four hours they were greedily deyoured in every coffee-house and club in Rome ; then the Resentment of Aust^'ia Increasing, 137 agenfcs of the police presented themselyes at every house where the Contemporanco was supposed to be taken in, and demanded *the supplement of speeches ; ' at the post-office, every copy was stopped. This was regarded as a concession to the Austrian minister, and inflamed the popular suspicion of Gizzi, which had been already aroused by a futile attempt to restrain the expression of public opinion in the journals of Rome, at the instigation of the Count de Lutzow, who threatened to demand his passport. * Only a few days before this significant event some papers were seized by the police on a pretended political refugee, who was in reality an Austrian spy, which contained lists of influential persons in Rome and about the papal court secretly pledged to support Austria and to oppose to the utmost the liberal reforms of the Pope. They revealed also the intrigues set on foot or encouraged by the Austrian ambassador to thwart the pontifical policy. When Count de Lutzow was spoken to on the matter he refused every explanation, and to Cardinal Gizzi's notes of inquiry or expostulation no reply whatever was given. The affair was noised abroad in Rome, and caused intense and universal excitement. The Pope thereupon sent for the Austrian ambassador, and spoke to him in dignified but firm language of his right to seek the welfare of his subjects by whatever means his judgment approved after hav- ing been advised by his own counselors ; and concluded by saying, as the ambassador knelt for the papal benediction, "I give you my blessing ; but you may write to your sovereign that if he expects to intimidate me he is greatly mistaken." The resentment of Austria, and her just alarm at the ill-concealed designs of Piedmont and the open threats of Young Italy, continued thenceforward to grow and spread like a thunder-cloud, till it burst in June over the Papal States by the invasion of the Legations and the Marches. More even than the intrigues of Young Italy this fatal step marred all the designs of Pius IX., and led to the triumph of Mazzini first, and of Piedmont afterward. The Roman correspondent of the London Times wrote on March the 27th : '* There is not the least doubt that the cabinet of Vienna is eager to grasp at the slightest pretext for an armed interven- tion. ... If such a pretext do not occur, it is but too probable that it may be created ; and any disturbances calculated to lead to * Legge, i. 115, 116. J 38 Life nf Pope Pius IX. such a result would at once betray their insidious origin. Meanwhile the Pope is menaced in Austrian notes, which haye sometimes trans- gressed the limits of policy and decorum, and the minor princes of Italy are terrified by extravagant intimations of hostile designs en- tertained against them by the national party, headed by the Pope and the house of Savoy, in order to persuade them that the only safe- guard is in the Austrian army." Amid the gathering of the storm which threatened so darkly from the Quadrilateral in the Lombardo- Venetian kingdom, the popu- larity of Cardinal Oizzi was fast dying out, in spite of the courageous and energetic support given him by the Pope, while Pius himself seemed to grow more popular than ever. One symptom, however, in these feverish fits of Eoman enthusiasm, as April faded into May, was the ominous cry, now repeated with greater frequency. Viva Pio Nono solo ! And as the Jesuits were accused, without a shadow of proof, of favoring all the Austrian intrigues, with this cry, so offensive to the Pope, was continually joined that other, "Down with the Jesuits ! " On May the 5th falls, in the Roman calendar, the feast of the Holy Pope Pius v., whose fleet, aided by those of Spain and Venice, over- threw forever the Mohammedan supremacy at Lepanto. It was the patronal festival of the reigning Pope, and the clubs, for several weeks in advance of the day itself, had set Ciceruacchio and his bat- talions of agitators to work up the Roman enthusiasm to the highest point — collecting money and making all needful dispositions for the most brilliant display yet witnessed in honor of their sovereign. The sovereign had been informed in time of these preparations, and issued a note to the citizens calling on them to show their love for his person by abstaining from the proposed festivities, and by be- stowing the moneys collected, and those they intended to devote to the celebration, in a gemeral distribution of bread and other pro- visions among the suffering poor. " Sixty gentlemen organized a combined effort among the affluent citizens, and in a few hours sixty thousand bread-tickets were distributed to the people. The funds raised not being then exhausted, the remainder was applied to the establishment of an mf ant-school for the children of the lower class." What could not such a sovereign have effected with the hearty co- operation of such a people ! What a glorious work of regeneration this people might have accomplished — peacefully, unbloodily- —under the leadership of this great fatherly soul I CHAPTER Xm. The Pope's Populaeity unsought — Pastoral Laboes ik be- half OF THE EOMAK PEOPLE — OBSEQUIES AND PaNEGYEIC OP O'COKNELL — EfFOETS TO EESTOEE DIPLOMATIC EeLATIONS BETWEEN Rome and England maeeed by Palmeeston's anti-Catholic Policy — Plots and Countee-plots in Rome DUEING THE SUMMEE — FESTIVITIES ON JUNE 16TH AND 17tH — Vaeious Causes of Agitation and Discontent — Sanfe- DiSTS, OE " Holy Faith Men " — Ceeation of Civic Guaed PEOPOSED : deceeed foe Rome by the Pope — Caedinal Gizzi Resigns : succeeded by Caedinal Feeeetti — In- ceeasing Tuebulence in Rome — The supposed Conseeva- tive Conspieacy — Rome euled by Mob Law — Invasion of the Papal States by Austeia — Exceptional Position and Policy of the Papacy — TJndeestood and supported by GUIZOT ALONE : HIS EFFORTS PARALYZED BY PaLMERSTON. Januaby-Jult, 1847. AN impression has long prevailed that Pius IX. studiously sought popularity among the masses by laying aside the reserve and stately etiquette which had regulated before his time the manners of the court of Rome and its pontiffs. It were utterly to misapprehend both the man's nature, his antecedents, and his most laudable inten- tions, to conceive of him as one going down into the street to court the good-will or the applause of the crowd. He continued, from the first day of his taking possession of the Quirinal, the priestly habits which had distinguished him in his re- lations toward his flock at San Michele, Spoleto, and Imola. It was not to win the sympathy and support of the laboring and middle classes that he went about among his people, visiting schools, hos- pitals, workshops, convents, loneliest and most squalid streets, ex- amining everything with a scrutinizing eye, not for purposes of mere curiosity, but to encourage, to console, to improve and reform. 139 I40 Life of Pope Pius IX, The applause of the multitude came to him as he went, like the Good Shepherd, unweariedly about his errand of mercy ; it was, at first, grateful to him, because it made him hope that his people understood him and would work with him, like one man, in remedy- ing the many ills which the entire community, sovereign and sub- jects, had inherited from the fatal calamities and wrongs of the past. If, in the first months of his pontificate, his heart did feel a thrill of delight at hearing himself acclaimed as the savior of his country, it was an unselfish delight, a joy rising in the heart of the patriot, priest, and pontiff at the prospect of reconciling his beloved Italy with the Church of Christ, the aspirations of the purest, loftiest patriotism with the deepest devotion of the Christian priest to the most sacred interests of Christ's immortal reliarion. When it became but too apparent that the hopes and sentiments of the people were turned by the common enemy in a wrong direc- tion, and that wicked men would use his generosity and influence to obtain their own ends, he resolved to address himself directly to the misguided crowd and to appeal to their better nature. The eloquent Father Ventura de Raulica had been called to Rome to second, with all the influence wielded by his own great talents, and by the entire Order of which he was head, the cause of rational liberty and gradual reform. The Pope desired that the preachers most renowned for their saintly life as well as their oratorical power should everywhere, on every available occasion, instruct the people in the fundamental duties and virtues of their condition, inculcat- ing on all the necessity of refraining from all that could excite politi- cal passions, from the violation of the neighborly charities of life, and the infraction of the public peace. He never ceased to repeat that with peace and order and the union of all hearts and minds, the wrongs of Italy should soon be righted. One day in January the select and crowded audience which was wont to come from every part of Rome to listen to the learned and patriotic Ventura, was filled with astonishment to see the Pope him- self suddenly ascending the pulpit steps. Had the days of Leo the Great and the still greater Gregoiy returned, when Christ's vicar found time to instruct, himself in person, the impoverished and op- pressed Romans on the Gospel truths and virtues and promises ? In very deed the times on which the Ninth Pius had fallen were, in more than one respect, more calamitous than the age when the elo- quent first Leo went forth from Rome to the banks of the Ticino to Pastoral Labors in Behalf of the Roman People, 141 stop Attila and his Huns in tlieir unresisted course of victory ; Pius had to remedy ills within the Italian Peninsula more terrible than the repeated famine that called forth Gregory's unbounded liberality, and to meet foes more powerful and less God-fearing than the rival armies of Greeks from Constantinople, or barbarians from the Khine or the Vistula. As the crowded church listened, spell-bound, to the sweet and sympathetic tones of the august preacher, every word fell deep into mind and heart. He thanked them for their repeated manifestations of loyalty and affection toward himself, for the revived reverence of Kome for the chair of Peter, which made her the head and center of the moral world, and of which he was the most unworthy occupant. They might trust him in his unbounded solicitude for their every interest, temporal and spiritual ; his deeds should be the best evi- dence of his fatherly love of them and theirs. But it was before and above all else the eternal welfare of their souls for which he was bound to care. Souls at peace with God brought peace with them to their homes, and kept peace inviolate with their neighbor. Hoav was it with their souls ? In vain would he endeavor to reform the State, or correct its abuses, if its citizens continued to cherish in their hearts the vices which, in begetting private immorality and domestic disorder, tended continually to increase the mass of public corruption and civil decay and strife. It was, in truth, Leo and Gregory once more laying down the law of heavenly love and supernatural life for these turbulent Eomans, whose very nearness to the person of the supreme pastor has always seemed to render them heedless of his teaching. On this occasion, at least, the audience assembled at S. Andrea della Valle was deeply moved, and bore away to their homes generous resolutions of self- sacrifice and self-improvement. But they were not the people whom the Pope would have liked to reach. These, too, on hearing of what was happening in the neighboring church, flocked thither to catch the words of the preacher, and as the commotion spread rapidly with the strange news, there was a great multitude outside when the Pope was leaving the sacred edifice. There was shouting, and kneeling for the papal blessing, and people rushing in a mighty stream after the carriage w^hich bore away to the Quirinal the sover- eign who yearned to waste his life in the endeavor to elevate them, the good shepherd who would give a thousand lives to save them from the approach of revolution. 142 Life of Pope Pius IX. And so Pius labored, hoped, waited, through these first months of 1847. At the end of May another and a more excited audience filled that same church of S. Andrea. O'Connell, to distract his mind from the thought of Ireland, pros- trate beneath the grip of hunger and typhus fever, as well as to express in person his gratitude to Pius IX., had undertaken a pil- grimage to Rome. On his way through France he received the affectionate homage of all that was most illustrious in Church and State ; he represented the enlightened union of religion and liberty. He had rendered his country and the Catholics of Great Britain services which many did not then appreciate, but which have been since then fully and generously acknowledged. His were not the principles that guided the aspirations, the writings, and conduct of the patriotic laymen of Italy. Nevertheless it is impossible to say what effect O'Connell's presence might have had on the liberal leaders in Eome, liad providence permitted him to reach that city alive and in the enjoyment of intellectual vigor. He sickened on touching Italian soil, and after lingering for some days at Genoa, breathed his last there on the 15th of May, not, however, before he had directed that his heart should be borne to the goal of his pilgrimage, and repose near the shrines of the holy apostles. It was a touching close to a noble career, purified and elevated by faith. He had practiced it all his life with the simple piety of a child ; it shed a hallowed luster on his last hours, and edified the beau- tiful city, once so Catholic and so heroic, and now a hot-bed of anti- Catholic conspiracies and cowardly plots of wholesale assassination. The Pope had resolved to honor the great Catholic and Liberal in the most public manner, and was anxiously looking out for his ar- rival, when the news of his alarming illness, first, and then of his death, filled him with sincere grief. The message bearing the dying request of *'The Liberator" moved Pius to tears; and he gave, forthwith, directions that on the arrival of the precious relic in Rome, solemn obsequies should be celebrated in tlie Church of S. Andrea dclla Valle. It was there that the solemn three days' devo- tions were offered up in February for suffering Ireland, the Pope himself going there to pray for his afflicted children far away, and the eloquent Ventura finding for their heroism thrilling words of sympathy and praise. Obsequies and Panegyric of O" ComielL 143 It was here tliat the Holy Father would haye a requiem sung for the Irish patriot such as is celebrated for royal personages, sending the choicest vestments from his own chapel and appointing Father Ventura to deliver the funeral oration. All that was most distinguished in Eome was present, and many of the most illustrious and moderate of Italian patriots came from afar to show their reverence for the dead, and to honor the cause of liberty in one of her most blameless champions. The preacher be- longed to that classs of patriot churchmen which at that time counted Gioberti — as yet a believer in the Papacy — and Eosmini, the founder of the Order of Charity, and Gioberti's rival in philosophi- cal science. Their cherished idea was an Italy freed, in her length and breadth, from foreign domination, and confederated under her own native princes, with the Pope as her presiding and animating power, and all her peoples enjoying the fullness of political rights with the fullness of religious liberty. It was a fascinating ideal, leading captive noble intellects and generous hearts ; and to them, as to all the lovers of this union of freedom with religion, Ventura addressed the splendid panegyric which moved all Italy, and found a response in every civilized country. The liberator of the Irish Catholics, he said, had come, at the end of a life devoted to the advocacy of fredom, and the emancipation of the peoples by peaceful and unbloody means, to do homage to Pius IX., who would be the liberator of Italy. Italians should aid the Pope and co-operate with him unitedly and fearlessly in carrying out his designs for the increase of freedom, while imitating faithfully the Christian virtues of O'Connell. Co-operation with Pius IX. the Italians interpreted in their own sense ; the preacher's magnificent eulogy only fired their souls with the resolve to have a free Italy. As to O'Connell's virtues and his deep Christian spirit, few Italian patriots were there who cared to imitate them. Conservative public opinion looked upon this funeral pageant and the thrilling utterances of the great Theatine as a political demon- stration more significant and far-reaching than the festivities in the J^aths of Titus. It was another challenge to Austria, sounding in trumpet-tones from the Capitoline Hill to the Alps. The anniversary of the Pope's election was now approaching, and a month later fell the anniversary of the Act of Amnesty. Young 144 L{f^ of Pope Pius IX, Italy determined that both should be commemorated in such a manner, as to make their associates throughout Italy and Europe understand that "the party of action" ruled Kome and the Pope. In England as well as in America the public press was loud and unanimous in praise of Pius IX. His eulogy was pronounced in the House of Commons, and the project w^as seriously entertained of having an English ambassador at the court of Eome, and a repre- sentative of the Holy See at the court of St. James. Points of eti- quette, apparently, prevented both governments from arriving at a satisfactory basis of settlement. But there were other and deeper reasons. "Whatever doubt may have existed at that time of the criminal action of Lord Palmerston in fomenting a civil and religious war in Switzerland, the fact of his having been the instigator of this cause- less feud is now questioned by none. The Catholic cantons had placed their colleges under the care of the Jesuits, believing these priests to be the safest and most enlighted guides they could select for their sons. Lord Palmerston, who had seen from his boyhood the English Jesuits of Stoneyhurst and the Irish Jesuits of Clon- gowes Wood intrusted with the education of the very flower of the Catholic youth of both islands, needed no one to tell him that the Jesuits were safe guides, enlightened teachers, honorable gentlemen, and loyal citizens. Of this he never hinted a doubt. But on the European continent the hati*ed of the secret societies had made of the name of Jesuit a watchword of religious strife and political exclusion. It was Palmerston's interest to foment political as well as religious animosities. France, Austria, and Protestant Prussia supported the Catholic cantons, or at least approved of their conduct. But Palmerston was determined that English Prot- estant influence should be supreme in Switzerland. He got up the war, directed it, and ended it, to suit his own purpose, to thwart the designs of the continental powers, and to expel from Switzerland the men whom he dared not to asperse or to molest in England or Ireland. He thereby kept in his own hand the control of the secret societies and of their ally the Protestant Propaganda. In 1847 he profited by the first informal overtures about restoring diplomatic relations with the Holy See, to send Lord Minto to Italy on a semi-official mission to the Italian States. Ostensibly the envoy was to go to Bomo and offer the Pope the support and advice of the British gov- Plots and Counter- Plots in Rome, 14S ernment in carrying out his intended reforms, which would be only a compliance with the recommendations made to Gregory XVI. in 1831-32 by the five great powers. To Home Lord Minto went as late as possible ; but he tarried in Piedmont and Tuscany, while the Kadicals in Kome were maturing their plans for compelling the Holy Father to declare war against Austria, and wresting from his grasp the control of his own govern- ment. At Turin, Genoa, and Florence Lord Minto was, on his ar- rival, beset with the leaders of the "party of action." He remained in their hands during the entire period of his stay in Italy, without even taking pains to conceal his sympathies, feted in Kome by the clubs, and lionized by Ciceruacchio, for whose little boy he composed some pretty patriotic verses. Such was the man sent, in a half-official, half-mysterious character, to advise Pius IX. how he was to carry out the impertinent recom- mendations made to him in 1832 by five powers, two of which were Protestant, one Orthodox Greek, one just created in France by an anti-Catholic revolution, and one (Austria), nominally Catholic, but wholly impregnated with the schismatic and domineering spirit of Joseph II. These were the "friends" of the pontifical government, when the midsummer of 1847 brought round the much-feared anniver- saries. Such the men from whom alone Cardinal Gizzi and his master could expect countenance, sympathy, and support in their gigantic task of reform. During May and June the most exciting rumors crossed each other in Eome, and flew from hilltop to hilltop throughout Italy. It was said, and published by the liberal press of every shade of opinion, that the "Gregorians" and the Jesuits were busily con- spiring against Pius IX. ; that he had narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a Capuchin monk, the fanatical tool of a desperate faction ; and that the French ambassador, Rossi, had barely saved the Pope's life. That Rossi was at that time weak enough to bo imposed upon by some unscrupulous intriguers, and to have given by his conduct some color to this absurd report, there is good ground to believe. He lived long enough, however, to find out that the assassins most to be feared were not monks or priests, though never so fanatical. On June the 17th upward of 20,000 men flocked to Rome from every part of the Papal States, without counting the multitudes who 146 Life of Pope Pius IX, came from the immediate neighborhood of the capital. During three nights and two days the festivities were kept up, the Jewish population, more sincere in their gratitude than the Christians, sparing no labor or expense to decorate or illuminate their dwellings. The songs composed for the occasion were from the pen of Sterbini, now the acknowledged leader of the Young Italian party in Eome. They appealed to the patriotic passions of the multitude ; but this time there was not one stanza sung in praise of Pius IX. '* Farini relates," says Legge, "that a person much conversant with affairs, who witnessed the festivities, told him that the sight of that got-up emotion — of those leaders and flags, of that multitude — im- pressed him profoundly, and made him doubtful of the upshot. He called that demonstration a revolution in jest, and prognosticated that matters would not end with jesting." The multitude participating in the processions were marshaled according to the fourteen districts into which Eome was divided, each district having its own officers and banners. "Revolution" was as plainly written, or could by the clear-sighted be as plainly read, on these banners, as it appeared on those borne by the " Sec- tions " of Paris during the Reign of Terror. The resident foreign ministers were unanimous in counseling the suppression of all such gatherings in the future ; and on June the 23d a proclamation, signed by the Secretary of State, was issued to that effect. This crowned the unpopularity of Cardinal Gizzi. Some people whispered abroad that he had been bought over by the Austrians, while others, with much more reason, said openly that the Pope no longer agreed with his prime minister. The High Council had been created in the middle of April, it was to meet in the beginning of November. This delay was fatal to the very purpose for which it had been called into existence. The members were not elected by the free votes of the citizens in their respective localities, but were chosen by the Pope from lists sub- mitted to him by the governors of the Roman provinces. This cir- cumstance in itself was calculated to excite the derision of the Radi- cals and the dissatisfaction of the moderate Liberals. They had no faith in the governors, and saw in the mode of selection no guarantee that the popular will would in aught bo consulted. A few weeks at most should have sufficed for the framing of the lists, the completing of the Pope's choice, and the convening of the High Council. Various Causes of Agitation a7id Discontent, 147 This might have appeased the public impatience, and held out the near prospect of a constitutional chamber elected by popular suf- frage. As it was, events were occurring which would render the meeting of the High Council a calamity, and all the reforms based upon its action nugatory. We are in July. Piedmont is strangely agitated. The Pope is more than ever embarrassed by the dissensions existing in his Cabi- net. The conservative members are decidedly opposed to any fur- ther concessions to the moral pressure exercised by a fanatical public opinion. And the liberal minority hesitate. The Pope alone falters not in his purpose. "If," says Guizot, "he had only had to busy himself with Eoman affairs, and with questions temporal and spiritual, these difficulties, despite their magnitude, would have not been beyond his grasp. It soon appeared, however — and the Pope confessed it — that he found ])efore him far mightier interests, and problems much deeper, and entirely beyond his ken. The evidence forced itself on him that he had to deal not only with the internal system of the Eoman States, but with the territorial and political fate of Italy. "The Austrian rule weighed still on all the Italian States, being everywhere the mainstay of the stationary party, and becoming daily more hateful to the public sentiment. The idea of national unity, monarchical or republican, arose and ascended above the horizon. Scarcely entered on the career of Roman reforms, Pius IX. saw opening before him the perspective of Italian wars and revo- lutions." The very resistance opposed to the movement only served to in- crease the velocity it had already acquired. There existed in the States of the Church an ancient volunteer organization, dating from the fifteenth century, and set on foot dur- ing the troublous period when freebooters in the pay of the petty Italian potentates were the scourge of the country. These volun- teer corps originally consisted of middle-class citizens and agricul- tural laborers, officered by nobles, all interested in defending their own homes and industry. The officers were called Centurioni, or captains of a hundred men, a denomination, as has been remarked in an early chapter, which extended to the entire militia. When the necessity which created them ceased, the officers still found it their interest to keep the men together ; they became as great a scourge as the freebooters, were proscriDed by the authorities, degenerated into 1 4 8 Life of Pope Pins IX, a secret society, and were suppressed by Sixtus V. Indeed, it toot the iron hand of that pontiff to crash them. In an evil hour Cardinal Bernetti, Secretary of State to Leo XII., reviyed them for the purpose of suppressing the Carbonari ; and, as it ever happens in such emergencies, the remedy proved as great a curse as the evil. They retaliated — it was affirmed — on their treacher ous opponents with a treachery as black, and far more odious, because committed under the pretext of vindicating order and defending re- ligion. Their deeds of violence — real or imaginary — were grossly exaggerated, and became a favorite theme for radical journalists and liberal writers of fiction. This force assumed great importance during the troubles of 1831-32, counting from 30,000 to 50,000 men, — and were nicknamed Sanfedists, or "Holy Faith Men," by their enemies. They formed, in 1846 and 1847, a dangerous element of discontent, looking with disfavor on the reforms of Pius IX., ready (their opponents affirmed) at any moment to welcome the Austrians, most cordially detested by Young Italy and " the sects," and subsequently, when the latter had their triumph, relentlessly hunted down and assassinated. It was a sad state of affairs ; and what was the Pope to do ? The cry had been raised for a national militia, a "civic guard," to be re- cruited from the middle class of the city population ; and this cry be- came louder and more persistent every day. It was argued — with a show of reason that seemed most convincing to one not thoroughly con- versant with the condition of Italy — that the formation of an armed citizen militia, recruited of men of all shades of opinion, and bound to maintain order at home, while ready to repel violence from abroad, would at once paralyze all the dangerous elements among Sanfedists and Carbonari. Petitions came pouring in from the cities of the Romagna, and were urged on the acceptance of the pontiff by Count Rossi and other moderate Liberals. The council of ministers voted against the measure, as one which was only a transparent pretext for putting the arms of the State in the hand of the revolutionists, while leaving those who had been the defenders of order to tlie mercy of their undisguised foes. Cardinal Gizzi did not conceal his opposition to a step which he qualified as an act of weakness. The Pope resolved there should be a civic guard in Rome, at least, where ho could himself superintend its organiza- tion and repress every tendency toward military excess ; later, he said, there should be a civic guard in the provinces. Creation of Civic Guard decreed by the Pope, 149 On the 5th of July appeared the decree creating it in Rome. It was a great victory for the Radicals, the greatest by far they had yet achieved. The "Sections" of the city, under the generalship of Ciceruacchio, managed to get up a half-demonstration, and many houses were illuminated. But in the clubs the members grasped each other's hand in silence or in subdued tones that bespoke intense satisfaction. One would have thought, on seeing the enthusiasm with which the Roman youth hastened to be enrolled and to devote themselves to mil- itary exercises, that some formidable invader — Brennus, or Hannibal, or Napoleon — was again crossing the Alps to crush out forever all that was left of life and greatness in Rome. Beyond the Roman States the effect of this decree was tremendous. This one act of Pius IX. was hailed everywhere as the first sure augury of national independence and unity. Nothing could repress the joy of the people in all the cities. The Grand Duke of Tuscany yielded to the wishes of his subjects, authorized the formation of a civic guard on the model of that in Rome, and beheld what he thought the entire city of Florence come forth in solemn procession to thank him and sing his praises. Thus, with a steadiness that no obstacle could discourage, and with an intelligence which turned to account every calculated result or chance occurrence, Mazzini pursued his course, calling forth in the Italian soul every latent energy, every spark of patriotic passion, banding men together in great multitudes that they might count their numbers and feel their strength, and investing the mighty force thus created with one maddening purpose : that of ridding their country from foreign domination — of being free and united ! Gizzi's last official act was to sign the decree authorizing the for- mation of the Roman civic guard. He withdrew forthwith, and was succeeded on July the 10th by Cardinal Gabriello Ferretti, a relative of the sovereign. It was an unfortunate choice — if, indeed, any choice could have proved fortunate when the word implied the power of staving off the inevitable. Cardinal Ferretti was in hearty sympathy with the Pope, as were all the members of the family, well known throughout the Marches and Romagna for their enlightened liberalism. In every position hitherto filled by the new Secretary of State, he had taken his illustrious kinsman for his model, practicing the virtues that dis- tinguished him, and, like him, endearing himself everjnvhere to the 1 5o Life of Pope Pius IX. people. When, at the beginning of the present pontificate, he was appointed governor of Pesaro, there arose at first a cry of nepotism. He was, notoriously, the only member of the Pope's family in any way advanced to a higher office. Those who had raised the cry, however, soon repented of it, when they perceived that the Pope's sole object in this appointment, was to give his native province of Pesaro and Urbino a ruler known for his conciliatory and generous disposition, and sorely needed in a country cursed with civil discord and irreligious propagandism. But with all these amiable qualities and popular antecedents, Car- dinal Ferretti was no statesman ; and if ever circumstances required preternatural forethought and energy to save the State and the sov- ereign, such were those of the Roman government on July the 10th, 1847. Cardinal Ferretti had neither. We remember, some forty years ago, of a band of armed men on Lake Erie seizing by night a suspected steamer, taking her out into Niagara River, lashing her helm, setting her on fire, putting on a full head of steam, and, after betaking themselves to their boats, set- ting her head down stream toward the Falls. The people on both sides beheld amid the darkness the awful spectacle of the burning vessel impelled toward the roaring gulf with such prodigious velocity, many asking themselves fearfully if there were no persons on the doomed craft ? Who could help, if there had chanced to be ? Was it not a like terrible spectacle that the whole civilized world — from America, from far-distant Australia, as well as from every part of Europe — beheld in Rome, when that government, created so providentially more than a thousand years before, was allowed by Christendom to be seized by guilty conspirators, and sent a helpless, blazing wreck headlong doAvn the current of Radical revolution ? The 16th of July was the anniversary of the amnesty. The Ro- mans were making active preparations for a celebration that should compensate for the forced silence of the last four weeks, and a like activity was displayed in all the other cities of the Papal States. Suddenly, on the 14th, all Rome was convulsed, as by the shock of an earthquake, with the tidings that there was a conspiracy on foot to seize the Pope and his reforming minister, and carry them off to the Austrian head-quarters. Numbers of disguised Sanfedists, it was said, had been coming into Rome for some days ; the governor of Rome, Monsignor Grassellini, was the local head of the conspirators, haying for his cliief instruments Nardoni, Freddi, and Allai, who The Supposed Consei^vative Co7tspiracy, i5l had held military command under Gregory XVI., and had been distinguished for their zeal in combating the Carbonari and the "sects." They had been also extremely active in suppressing the insurrection which had occurred in Faenza and Cesena in June ; and connected with them was one Minardi, who had the reputation of being a police spy. Whatever may have been the truth about this conspiracy, so many circumstances gave it such a color of probability in the eyes of the excited populace, that the clubs resolved to make the most of it. During the night of June 13, Ciceruacchio with a band of his trusty followers went to the Theatine monastery, called for Father Ventura, confided to him the fact of the conspiracy and the names of the per- sons mentioned above, together with the sentence of death passed against them in the clubs, and which should be unfailingly executed on the morrow. Ventura affected to disbelieve the report, or to consider as not serious their deadly menaces ; but when his informants had retired he lost not a moment in going to the Quirinal and acquainting the Holy Father and his Secretary of State with what he had heard. The threatened officials were forthwith warned of their danger, as well as Cardinal Lambruschini, who was always supposed to be the soul of the reactionary party. Grassellini was too high-minded to cower before the utmost vio- lence of a mob ; Lambruschini was forced by the Pope to get beyond the reach of danger ; Freddi, Nardoni, and Allai disappeared from Rome before daylight — Minardi alone remaining. Every detail of these proceedings were perfectly known to Ciceruacchio and his em- ployers. They had made up their minds to take the government of Rome into their own hands, and to make an example of Grassellini, if they could lay hands on him, if not, of the spy Minardi, whose hiding-place they were acquainted with. On the morning of the 14th appeared an official proclamation from the Secretary of State forbidding the intended celebration on the 17th, and this order was communicated by telegraph to the pro- vinces. This confirmed the populace in the belief that a dreadful conspiracy indeed existed, and the public indignation and alarm reached the highest pitch when the clubs caused printed lists of the accomplices to be posted up all over Rome. Before noon the city was filled with an armed multitude before whom the public fled in terror, the cardinals and principal citizens shutting themselves up 1 52 Life of Pope Pius IX. till the storm had blown over. Cardinal Ferretti made no serious attempt to quell the violence of the mob, which took upon itself to arrest all persons suspected of opposition to Pius IX. or of partiality to the Austrians. Many private residences were broken into and searched, while no magistrate appeared to check these lawless pro- ceedings. The pontifical government seemed to have abdicated in favor of Ciceruacchio. Count Kossi in a letter to his chief, M. Guizot, relates some of the riotous occurrences of these days of mob rule in Eome. On the evening of the 14th, about 6 o'clock, a crowd filled the street near S. Andrea delle Fratte, at the end of the Corso and behind the Pro- paganda. It was said that the hated Minardi was concealed in a neighboring house, and *'the people" meant to have him. Men were seen running along the roofs of the houses, as it was reported that he had escaped by the roof of that in which he lay. Then it was said that he had fled to a little chapel near at hand ; but his pursuers dared not violate the sanctuary in quest of him. **I was on foot," says Rossi ; *^ mixed up with the crowd ; it was quite a farce. There were a few hundred persons, quiet passengers, priests, and curiosity-hunters like myself. If the government had merely sent a hundred civic guards, with arms, and without much noise, and with a magistrate at their head, simply saying, * Gentle- men, retire ! ' in ten minutes the square would have been evacuated. Instead of that they allowed the cries to continue for hours, and at last endeavored to persuade the shouters that the man was not there. . . . Authority having failed, they hit upon the expedient of sending Father Ventura to preach to the people. I was present. It was a comedy to be seen nowhere but in Eome. First, a sermon in the church of S. Andrea. They ran, they listened, they applauded. 'Jesus Christ for ever ! The Pope for ever I The people of Rome for ever I Father Ventura for ever ! But we must have the man.^" At length permission was obtained to search the oratory. The prisoner was to be brought forth by Father Ventura, taken home in his carriage, and guarded by him till the Pope had decided his fate. At 11 o'clock at night a detachment of troops arrived with the Father's carriage : he went into the chapel, found no Minardi there. This announcement found the crowd incredulous at first, but they soon yielded to his solemn assurances. "Well, my chil- dren," said the good Theatine, **it is time to go home; so pray come with me ; " and away they went. Ro7ne Ruled by Mob Law, i53 ^' And these," continues Eossi, ''are the people before whom the government has given way." * The proclamation forbidding festivities in the provinces on the 16th of July was productive of more serious consequences, if, indeed, anything can be more serious than executive weakness before a mob. There were ominous movements on foot in the Austrian strongholds, and the prohibition of all public rejoicing on so great an anniversary was considered to be both an evidence of a Sanfedist conspiracy and a step backward on the part of the papal government. There were tumultuous assemblages of armed men, and blood was shed in more than one place. On the 16th July an Austrian force crossed the papal frontier, and on the morning of July the 17th, cavalry, infantry, and artillery were before Ferrara, with their cannons in position before the walls, and their gunners with lighted matches, waiting to see the gates peace- fully opened by the authorities or prepared to batter them down. Kesistance being useless, and the protestations of the governor, Car- dinal Ciacchi, proving unavailing, the Austrian general took posses- sion of the gates, and of such posts within as enabled him to quell any hostile attempt on the part of the citizens ; the citadel remaining in the possession of the pontifical troops. This event was big with the fate of the Papacy. Amid the tem- pest of anger which swept the pontifical states like a whirlwind, few men were found, even among the most decided Conservatives, who were bold enough to express other sentiments than those of indigna- tion at this uncalled for invasion. At Eome, agitated and utterly demoralized as were the lower and middle classes by the riotous proceedings of the 14th and 15th July, the news of " this outrage," as it was qualified even by the moderate, threw the entire city into a stupor, which was succeeded by a frenzy of patriotic wrath. Grassellini had given way to Monsignor Morandi, as governor of Rome. The entire body of citizens offered their ser- vices to the Pope ; petitions came pouring in from the provinces ask- ing for the organization of a civic guard in every locality, a demand which the government could not now consistently withstand ; and at the request of Rossi the French government hastened to send seven thousand stand of arms for the papal militia. It took some time, however, to convince the Holy Father that * Guizot's " Last Days of the Reign of Louis Philippe," as quoted by Legge. 1 54 Life of Pope Pius IX. France was acting in perfect good faitli. There were many reasons at the time which afforded men of calm judgment a solid motive for believing with the Pope that France and Austria had joined hands to coerce his government into a line of policy less revolutionary in its tendencies. The tone of the extract just given from Eossi's private coiTcspondence with the French premier, reigns throughout all Eossi's letters written at this period, and pervaded, there is reason to believe, his conversation with his colleagues in Eome, and with his friends in the Liberal party. He, like very many of the best minds, could not understand that the policy of a Pope, and his attitude toward foreign powers, were exceptional, and could resemble those of no other pontentate. His military forces could only be used for defensive purposes, not for ag- gressive warfare. When, therefore, there was question of an Italian armed league banded together to drive the Austrians from Italian soil, it was hard to make Italian patriots understand that the pontiff could not become one of its active members. To be sure, old Pope Julius II. would have judged and acted otherwise. But how much obloquy has not the bellicose humor of old Julius drawn down on the papacy, though his acts have been justified even by Protestant historians and statesmen? Pius IX., thank God, was no Julius ; and had he imitated such warlike pre- cedents, we know what blame he must have incurred from non- Catholics and Catholics alike. He consented to have his subjects organized as a national militia, that was his right, and, it may be, his duty in presence of unprovoked invasion ; he accepted the offer of arms from a friendly power, that was equally his right in defense of his own sovereignty and for the maintenance of law and order within his States. Beyond these and other such defensive measures the Pope never could be made to move. And here occurs, quite naturally to our purpose, the opportunity of stating what the great powers of Christendom should have done for the Pope in his extreme need, and what they did not do. This alone will explain logically the misfortunes which followed, and which, to the minds of most readers of history, form a tangle that no hand can unravel. The Church in lier relation to Christendom — ^when it was an as- semblage of sovereign States — ^as well as in her relation to each State in which she existed, was that of a parent, a mother, ruling Position and Policy of the Papacy, i55 ** by the right divine Of helplessness." Her liberty, her honor, her sacred and inviolable rights, were under the protection of every member of the community, each individual considering that his own dearest interest, his duty, his honor, were bound up in the independence and dignity of the mother of all. The Pope was but the representative of the Church, her chief pastor, the custodian of the independence and absolute liberty needful to the discharge of his own office, and of the subordinate churches in every land. His helplessness always coexisted with the temporal sovereignty which was the condition of his spiritual and official independence. This was what Christian Europe understood, while the popes en- joyed the greatest plenitude of power and influence ; this was what they themselves ever understood. They were by divine right shepherds over the entire fold of Christ, they were by force of fact bishops of Eome ; none other but the supreme head of the hierarchy could be bishops there, without schism, sacrilege, flagrant violation of the divine ordinance and im- prescriptible right. In Eome, therefore, they must have their home, they must be free, and to be free they must be sovereigns, indepen- dent in temporals as in spirituals of every earthly power. Such is the constitution of the Christian Church, as Catholics at all times and throughout the world have believed in it. On this belief all Christendom had acted ; even after the Reformation Pro- testant powers in their diplomatic intercourse with Rome had so acted, and such is the only statesmanlike view which should have been held and acted upon in the year of grace 1847. Every State which still retained the name of Catholic, even those not in religious communion with Rome but having Catholic subjects with recognized rights, all, without exception, should have come to the assistance of the sovereign of Rome, because Rome was the center of Catholic unity and government, and her pontifl should be pre- served by all Christian States, absolutely free and independent, not onl jr against the tyranny of any one foreign power, but even against tlie domination of his own people. There was at the time one statesman who felt this, and but one, and he was a Protestant, the great and large-minded Guizot. On learning the critical position in which the Pope was placed, between Austrian interference on the one hand, and the many-headed Cer- 1 56 Life of Pope Pius IX. berus of Italian passion on the other, Guizot instructed Count Rossi to offer the Holy Father the protection of France. Prince Metter- nich, who ruled at that time the policy of the Austrian government, vainly tried, through his agents at Paris, every argument to win over Louis Philippe to his views of Eoman affairs. The Pope, he thought, was yielding up himself and his government to the revolu- tionary ideas of such men as Gioberti and Lamennais, and was going to embroil all Europe in civil and religious strife. Guizot saw that a period was dawning in the social world like those mighty upheavals of which geology preserves the record, when continents are rent asunder and sink beneath the waves, leaving only a few dominant summits visible above the conquering waters, while other islands and continents are lifted up from the deep, and are soon covered with beauty, life, and order — the theater of a new dis- play of the Creator's exhaustless power and wisdom. The far-see- ing French statesman, warned by the spreading changes in men's minds, attachments, and institutions, wished to preserve against all possibility of future disaster that great central authority, the papacy, which he proclaims as " the greatest school of reverence '^ for all that is truly divine and humanizing, that ever existed here below. He was sincerely anxious to conciliate for the papacy the respect and affection of the democratic generations growing up in Italy, and in whose hands its future must lie for many a coming age. "What does the Pope desire ?" he writes, on September 17, 1847. " It is to be on good terms with his subjects ; to stop, by legitimate satisfactions, the fermentation which is eating up their strength ; and to win back for the Church and religion, in modern society, the place which belongs to them. ""We entirely approve these designs; we believe them to be ad- yantagcous alike to Italy and to France, to the king in Paris as to the Pope in Rome. We are desirous to second the Pope in his designs. "What are the dangers which threaten him ? The danger of re- maining stationary, and the danger of plunging into revolution. There are men around him who would do nothing but leave matters exactly as they are. There are others around him, as elsewhere in Europe, who would overturn everything, who want him to alter everything, at the risk of being overthrown himself, as those who urge him to such a course secretly desire. " We wish to assist the Pope in defending himself against this twofold danger, and if necessary wo shall give him eflBcient aid. We Guizot's Efforts Paralyzed by Palmer ston, i57 are neither entirely stationary nor entirely revolutionary, either at Eome or in France. AVe know by our own experience that there are social wants which must be satisfied, progress which must be admit- ted, and that the greatest interest of a goyernment is to be on good terms with its people and the times. " But France was not allowed to bestow on the Pope, at the moment he needed it most, that ^' efficient aid " or effective moral support, which, if approved and seconded by other governments, would have enabled him to reform his own States and to baffle effectually the intrigues of Piedmont, the machinations of Young Italy, and the coercive designs of Austria. Shall we say how Guizot's sympathy was rendered unavailable, as well as Louis Philippe's firm resolve to aid the Pope in his distress ? We find a clue to it in the memoirs recently published of a man who was during his lifetime the trusted friend and counselor of more than one sovereign, and whose influence seated more than one prince on a European throne, Baron Christian Frederick Stockmar.* He reveals the fact that in August, 1846, the English government were so anxious to give as a husband to the young Queen of Spain Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, that they were ready, in order to secure it, to risk a rupture and a war with France. Guizot and his master, Louis Philippe, had successfully baffled all the schemes of England, and Lord Palmerston, who was then in the British Foreign Office, was offering to the Spanish Progessists, the party of revolution, the sympathy and aid of his government in order to defeat the alli- ance favored by France. These abominable intrigues were not even disguised from the French and Spanish courts, the threat of revolu- tion being held out by Palmerston in order to terrify the Queen- mother, Maria-Cristina, into accepting a Coburg for her daughter. The menace had the contrary effect, however. ''The English and the revolution are threatening us," said the spirited woman to her minister, Sen or Mon. And without a moment's delay the young sovereign was made to accept her cousin for husband, and to give her sister to the Duke of Montpensier. Palmerston held in his hand the winds of revolution, and at his bid- ding they swept over every country of continental Europe in which he wished his policy to prevail. The ruin of the Orleans dynasty was * See Denkwurdigkeiten aus den Papieren des Freiherrn Christian Friedrich von Stockmar ; English translation, "Notabilia from the Papers of Stockmar," 1872. 1 58 Life of Pope Pius IX, then resolved upon by this uEolus of the political world. The Prince of Joinville, in command of the French fleet in the Mediterranean, and who was instructed to aid the Pope in every way in his power, wrote from Spezzia on November the 7th, 1847 : *' These unfortu- nate Spanish marriages ! we have not yet drunk to the dregs the bitterness they have stored up for us. . . . These marriages haunt me like a nightmare." Three months later, in February, 1848, Louis Philippe and his family were driven from France by the revolution, to the intense satisfaction of Lord Palmerston. So, in the autumn of 1847, at the very time when Lord Minto was surrounded at Eome and Florence by the Italian revolutionists with all the homage due to one who represented the great controller of the winds and storms, Palmerston, — the latter had well settled in his own mind that Guizot should not give "efficient aid" to the Pope in his dread dilemma. Let us now see what truth there is in the saying of Count Goddes de Liancourt : "To the glory of the British cabinet history must attest how promptly England came forward to the succor of the threatened liberties of Eome. It was her powerful protection which saved Italy in 1847."* Were any one to hesitate as to Lord Palmerston's complicity in all the plots set on foot against the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, it were only needful that he should read carefully the speeches on Italian affairs made by that statesman and Mr. Gladstone in the parliamentary session of 1863. The sentiments there expressed and manifested more openly afterward, afford a key to the instructions given to Lord Minto in 1847, and the other dispatches bearing on the Roman question. The fair diplomatic language of these official documents are to be read interlined with the subsequent and more frank utterances of the great European agitator. Gretton quotes with approbation the following words of the Italian patriot lianalli as exactly characterizing the conduct of the English foreign minister in the Minto intrigue and during the dark and tortuous negotiations which led to the foundation of the Roman republic. ** Those were tlie days of happy hallucination, amongst which I know not whether to class as the greatest hope to liberty from a Pope, or the belief that Great Britain was really desirous of seeing • " Pius IX, " by Count Qoddos de Liancourt. Strategy of the Radicals— Reforms, 1 59 us raised to the rank of one of the great powers of Europe. Bitterly indeed have we expiated our blind trust in England. . . . Solely did the goyernment profess to favor the Italian moyement, because to do so won popularity with the masses." * Great Britain, that is, Lord Palmerston, did then pretend all through this troublous epoch, and while the Pope was casting about for help and support, to be *' desirous of seeing us (Italy) raised to the rank of one of the great powers of Europe." And it was notori- ous, it was the burden of all Lord Minto's speeches, that the English government ^^ professed to favor the Italian movement, because to do so won popularity with the masses." It was no secret that such men as the British Foreign Secretary and his friend Mr. Gladstone favored Mazzini and Young Italy be- cause "the movement " which they originated and controlled tended to a united Italy, in which the temporal power of the papacy, like the hated kingdom of Naples, should be absorbed. It was not merely to "win popularity with the masses "that they fraternized with Mazzini in England and encouraged his associates abroad, it was to work the destruction of the Holy See. In September Guizot made a step further in aid of the Pope. Ho addressed a circular to the French ambassadors at the European courts urging on all the necessity of a united manifestation of reverence and support in favor of the sovereign pontiff. He pointed out the dangerous fermentation which was spreading daily through- out Italy, and expressed the desire of the French government that the reforming governments and their peoples should be encouraged and aided in effecting the necessary changes without convulsion or interruption. It was the only earnest effort made by any one government to recall Christendom to a sense of its duty, but found no sympathetic response at the moment. In good time the Austrian government was induced to withdraw its forces from the papal territory. But the armed passions this aggression had called forth remained, ready to the hand that could wield them to its own purpose. Amid all these uncertainties, plots, and counterplots the Pope pursued his course, perfecting all the measures needful for the meeting of the Consulta or High Council in November, and urging on equally important reforms in the interior of the Church. * " The Vicissitudes of Italy," by A. L. Gretton. CHAPTEE XIV. Heeoio Spieit of Pius IX. — Puksues his Eeforms— Opeis^in^q OF Council of State — Eossi urges Secularization^ of Gov- EENMEN^T — EOMAN" ClUBS TRIUMPH OVER DEFEAT OF THE SONDERBUND — CrY "DoWK WITH THE JeSUITS!" — SYMPA- THY OF America. WHAT American reader does not recall with pride tlie conduct of one of our naval oflScers during the terrible earthquake in Peru in March, 1859 ? When the first convulsions were over, and all was ruin where a city had been a moment before, the commander of the American frigate in the harbor knew that a tidal wave was at hand, and that the real danger for himself and his crew was to come. A first great wave swept landward without doing them much harm ; but the experienced commander felt that it was only the forerunner of one far more formidable. He had everything on his vessel made secure, with every man at his post of duty, silent, resolute, and watch- ful, ready to perish with their noble ship, if the worst should come, but determined to stand by her to the last. It was a sublime picture of heroism. And it is a like heroic spirit that kept Pius IX. steadfast to his purpose amid the successive agi- tations and disappointments that passed over his soul like so many waves of bitterness in the summer and autumn of 1847. We say nothing here of the reforms inaugurated by him in the pre- ceding month of April among the great monastic orders, and which were pushed forward so calmly and resolutely in spite of the political agitation. These demand a separate chapter. But while the Aus- trian occupation in the provinces assumed daily a more aggravating form, and the popular feeling surged around him with ever-increas- ing fury, he continued to make one important improvement after another in the institutions of his States. In his twofold quality of a sovereign prince and a sovereign pontiff he had undertaken measures of reform in Church and State as a conscientious duty, fcrusting to an overruling Providence to aid him, and to the hearty 160 He Pursues Steadily his Course of Reform, i6i good-will of his subjects to co-operate with him toward the accom- plishment of his double task. On the 2d of October he published a decree establishmg in the city of Eome a municipal government framed on the best models, and admirably adapted to the genius of the people, to their habits, and to the peculiar nature of the pontifical government. From time immemorial all the cities of the Papal States had possessed a munici- pal organization suited to their wants, and totally opposed to the modern notions of centralization but too often in favor even in dem- ocratic countries. But Rome had always been governed by magis- trates immediately dependent on the sovereign, and unassisted by anything like our aldermanic bodies or town-councils. The decree created a deliberative council of one hundred members, chosen from among the citizens of Rome and its immediate territory {Agro Romano) ; sixty-four of these councilors to be proprietors, thirty-four to be chosen from among the public functionaries, the liberal professions, the mercantile class, the manufacturers, and heads of trades ; and four members to represent the religious cor- porations and establishments of beneficence. Above this council was the Roman senate, or body of magistrates, composed of a "senator" and eight "conservators," all of them chosen by the council from among its own members. Their powers in Rome were to be precisely what those of existing municipal bodies were in the other cities of the Papal States. The senate had the administration of all the property and domains of the city, as well as the care of the walls, gates, aqueducts, fountains, gardens, cemeteries, slaughter-houses, etc. To it belonged the duty of providing for health, fires, inundations, the elementary schools, the support of orphans and homeless children, the promoting of trade and industry, the registration of all civil deeds, and the police of the city and suburbs. TliQ tax hitherto imposed on the Jewish population was abolished. It was a great step in advance, and the Pope did not conceal his purpose of improving this organization after he had seen it working. There was more than this : on the very next day, October the 3d, the Secretary of State issued a declaration in which in the Pope's name he laid the basis of a commercial or customs union destined to embraoe the entire Peninsula. The union then comprised the king- dom of Sardinia, Tuscany, and the grand duchy of Lucca. The hope was expressed that the King of Naples and the Duke of Modena 1 62 Life of Pope Pius IX. would soon give in their adhesion, and thus enable the sovereigns to complete and improve the scheme. This, in the Pope's mind, was to be but the preliminary to a polit- ical union embracing all the best features of Grioberti's ideal plan of a federal Italy, and conciliating the just rights of the sovereigns with those of their people, and the need of united political action and progress in all modern material improvements. These measures filled the Moderate Liberals with intense satisfac- tion ; they could not help believing in the absolute sincerity of the Pope and his unalterable determination not to stop till he had achieved all one man could do for his people and country. Need we say that the Radicals and the ultra-Liberals were not, or pretended not to be, satisfied ? It is sufficient to look over the files of the Roman journals or the Piedmontese press of October and November, 1847, to be convinced of their set purpose to misrepresent every act and intention of Pius IX. In mid-October was published the decree constituting the Consulta or High Council of State, promised in April. **Our object was," the Pope declares in the preamble, "to form a Council of State, and thus endow the pontifical government with an institution justly appreciated by the other European governments, and which in former times constituted the glory of the States of the Holy See. . . . Wo are persuaded that, when assisted by the talent and experience of persons honored with the suffrages of entire provinces, it will be easier for us to take in hand the administration of the country, and impart to it a character of utility which is the object of our solici- tude. This result we are certain to attain. . . . " We shall thus show the world through the medium of our voices and the press, as well as by our attitude, that a population inspired by religion, devoted to its prince, and gifted with good sense, knows how to appreciate a political blessing, and to express its gratitude with order and moderation. This is the only reward we ask in re- turn for our constant care of the public welfare." One paragraph is of essential importance, as indicating the various objects for whicli the council was created. "It is," the decree goes on to say, "instituted to assist the Pope in the administration ; to give its opinion on matters of government connected with the gene- ral interests of the State and those of the provinces ; on the prepara- tion of laws, their modification and all administrative regulations ; on the creation and redemption of public debts ; the imposition or opening of the Council of State, 163 reduction of taxes ; ... on the customs' tariff ; ... on the revision and reform of the present organization of district and provincial councils," etc. The 15th of November was fixed for the meeting of this body, which was only the pledge and preparation of an assembly more in conformity with modern representative assemblies. Should the members do their duty conscientiously in this their first session, there is scarcely a doubt but the Pope would create that other deliberative and elective body which he contemplated. The Pope stood pledged to the gradual introduction of constitu- tional principles and practice. These '**had the support not only of a majority of the Sacred College, but of all the most enlightened and respectable citizens of Eome and the other large towns ; whilst they were fairly in advance of the political aspirations of the whole body of the provincial population." * How happens it then, according to this most bitter opponent of tlie papacy, that measures "fairly in advance of the political aspira- tions of the whole body of the provincial population," and supported by the cardinals and all that was most respectable among the citizens of Rome, should have been rendered barren of all useful result ? "The Pope himself," continues Legge, "was . . . an object of distrust with the ultra-Liberal and Mazzinian party in Rome, who represented him as unwilling to confer that fuller liberty which they designed to employ in subverting his government. ... In their arrangements for celebrating the installation of the ConsuUa, they designed to give it the importance and external features of a sovereign body. The Roman princes had agreed to place at the dis- posal of each of the deputies one of the State carriages in which they were to repair to the Quirinal, attended by servants in full livery." Cardinal Antonelli was appointed president, and Monsignor Amici vice-president of this council. It was the first time that the great cardinal had been called upon to preside over a body charged with anything like legislative functions, for a legislative body it soon at- tempted to become. Hitherto he had been employed in financial ad- ministration : now he had to begin the apprenticeship to that stormy political career covering thirty years of incessant struggle. It was a splendid pageant, such as the Rome of the Popes alone could produce ; and it never beheld one more fascinating to the eye, * Legge, i. 186. 1 04 Life of Pope Puis IX. and got up with a more hearty purpose to impress the reigning Pope that his Rome should be thenceforth only the Rome of the people. The government had made the occasion an official fete, the notifi- cation of all the proceedings being made by the senate of Rome. The members were to go in state to the Quirinal to present their homage to the sovereign, and thence to St. Peter's Church to assist at a solemn Te Deum, The clubs and Ciceruacchio had it all their own way in preparing the decorations and the illumination for the evening. The *' Sixteen Sections " of Rome were there in more than full force, their ranks being swollen by strangers from the provinces, all of them members of the Young Italy League. The civic guard was out with its banners, and the pontifical cavalry and infantry, all forming an escort to the twenty-four deputies with their presi- dent and vice-president. It was magnificent ; but it was far more than that. It was full of prophetic foreboding, and excited irresist- ibly the imagination and the passions — the ardent hopes and the dark fears — of the multitude that swept along in the splendid show, and of the multitudes who gazed from street and window and bal- cony as the procession went and came. *' The members of the council," says Farini, "appeared before the Pope, both with manifestations of reverence and trustful in their hearts ; while with them were mingled some meddling agitators, persons that made use of public displays for displaying themselves, and that bedizened themselves in the palace with the tribunitian authority which they usurped in the streets. A cloud of displeasure darkened the serene countenance of the pontiff, who told those before him how he was gratified to see them in his presence, how he trusted in them, how he hoped favorable results from the institution of the body, and that God would not smite Italy with the tempest that was then gathering. He then touched, with serious words and mien upon the immoderate desires and the insane hopes which inflamed Bome inconsiderate minds ; after which he took leave of them cour- teously, and gave his blessing. . . ." * To the address of the Holy Father, the council, on taking posses- sion of its hall in the Vatican, hastened to reply in becoming terms. *'Your work, Holy Father," they said, "has not been undertaken to favor exclusively one order of citizens ; it embraces all your sub- • jects in a common bond of love, and that love is such that your ex- • Farini, i. 812, 818. " The Funeral of the Political Power'' i65 fample is followed by the other sovereigns of Italy, united with their subjects in the alliance of principles, passions, and interests. . . . Amongst us, the first and most venerable of all authorities takes on itself to initiate us in the progress of civilization. That authority itself directs the minds of men in a peaceable and temperate move- ment, and guides us toward the supreme end, which is the reign of truth and justice on earth." Ay, assuredly, he was in earnest for the reign of justice and truth on earth, this priest, this bishop, this Pope, into whose life a single selfish thought had never entered. Not more earnestly and more lovingly did the holy Pope Innocent I. in the fifth century labor to collect together the wretched population of Rome after its six days' pillage by Alaric, and to help them build up their homes, and restore their churches, and resume the practice of all earthly thrift and Christian virtue, than did this good shepherd in the nineteenth apply himself to create a new and happy Rome out of all the elements of the past, and a great and glorious Italy from out the chaos of discordant passions and interests. One who was, a twelvemonth thereafter, day for day, to seal with his blood his fidelity to Pius IX. and the truth of his filial devotion to Italy, wrote to his chief in Paris, after beholding the gorgeous procession and the triumphant festivities of that 15th day of Novem- ber : '*This, in my opinion, was the funeral of the political power of the clergy at Rome. Etiquette will remain more or less, but the contents of the vase will be different ; there will be still cardinals and prelates employed in the Roman government, but power will be elsewhere. The essential point for us is, that there may be no revolution — properly so called — revolution in the public squares. I persist in the hope that none will take place." * One would be loath to cast the slightest shadow of doubt on the good faith of one who knew how to brave the daggers of a crowd of assassins ; but it is impossible not to feel, on reading these words, and connecting them with Rossi's official acts and utterances at this period, that the wish was here father to the thought. These words, nevertheless, were but too true a prophecy. The Council of State had not been in session twenty-four hours, when some of its members began to show that they were under the influ- ence of the ultra-Liberals and the Mazzinians. The Moderate ♦ Guizot, "Last Days of the Reign of Louis Philippe." 1 66 Life of Pope Plus IX, Liberal party in Rome, with Rossi, d'Azeglio, and Farini as its guides and spokesmen, were still, ostensibly, the controlling power among the enlightened reformers whom the Pope and his secretary trusted and consulted Of these Farini was perhaps the only one who sincerely desired to see the Pope's temporal sovereignty strength- ened by the coming changes, because he deemed an independent, popular, and spiritual sovereignty indispensable in the Italian politi- cal system which was his ideal. Rossi wished to destroy what he called " the influence of the Jesuits " over the papal councils, for the word "clericalism" had not yet been invented; he was laboring to reduce the clerical element in the administration to the single office of Secretary of State, thereby placing the government almost ex- clusively in the hands of laymen. D'Azeglio, reserved and taci- turn, was working for Piedmont, sincerely believing that every change which gave additional power to the laity — that is, either to Liberals or to Radicals — ^was a step toward the supremacy of Pied- mont. Neither Liberals nor Radicals, he judged rightly, could long hold the government of the Roman States. Italy must have one constitutional king, and he should be the head of the house of Savoy. A few days after the loth of November, Rossi called on the Secre- tary of State, and plied the weak and irresolute minister with the arguments he had been employing to such good purpose with the Pope and Cardinal Gizzi for the last eighteen months. Speaking of the Pope's address to the deputies : '*The speech," he says, "seems to imply the idea of absolute temporal government in the hands of the clergy, leaving to the lay element no other share of influence than that of giving advice. This is too little. It might have suf- ficed a year ago : heads were not then excited ; hopes were moderate ; the rest of Italy had not been waked up. Now matters are differ- ent. Elusion is no longer possible. The Radicals are knocking at your door. You must put them down. You, the clergy, cannot do it single-handed. You need the co-operation of the laity, of all among them who are possessed of intelligence, power, and moder- ation. . . . You must satisfy them. The civic guard and the Council of State are the means, but not the end. ... If you do not strengthen your rulers by calling in laymen to fulfill the duties which have nothing to do with religious affairs and the Church, all will become impossible for you, and possible for the Radicals." ♦ ♦ "Liwt Days of the Reign of Louis Philippe," p. 866. Secularization of the Government Urged. 167 A decree soon appeared appointing a council of ministers, but on the list there was no layman, and its publication only exasperated the party who insisted on a lay government. But the more moderate saw in it a hope of better things, and were pleased with the power granted to the new ministers, who might now consider themselves ministers indeed. Rossi, however, gave the Pope and his secretary no rest till they had yielded to his representations. In an interview with the former, he pressed the urgency of a new and more liberal decree upon his atten- tion. "'^For matters purely temporal you can no longer make two castes of the clergy and laity ; you must henceforward mingle and associate them," was Rossi's remark. " The first decree {motu pro- prio) on the council of ministers was sent to me while I was ill. . . . It is not good. I recalled it for supervision. The new one will soon appear. ... I shall say that the war department may be held either by a layman or an ecclesiastic." ''That will be something, but, if your Holiness permits me to make the remark, not enough. There should be at least two other portfolios open to the laity, the interior, the finance, the police, the public works, or whatever your Holiness may please to select." ''I understand; I shall see, and do my best. I am myself quite a novice, and little skilled in these matters." * This dialogue throws a light on the Pope's situation and character, which explains subsequent events. He was so anxious to play the part of a true sovereign ! But he was, moreover, the shepherd placed over the whole flock of Christ ; and what was happening daily in Rome does not account sufficiently for the exhaustion and ill- ness mentioned here. Events were just then transpiring among the Catholic cantons of Switzerland which filled the soul of the pontiff with bitterness. The real though concealed intervention of Lord Palmerston in the internal affairs of the ancient republic has already been mentioned. Sir Robert Peel had been sent thither to encourage the Protestant cantons in their warfare on the Sonderbund, just as Lord Minto was sent to Rome to see to it that not one vestige of clerical power should remain in the reformed administration of the Papal States. Rossi, while residing in Switzerland in 1832, had been one of a com- mission employed to revise the constitution. On his report, princi- * Ibidem. 1 68 Life of Pope Pius IX. pally, were based the radical changes then made, changes which were hostile to Catholic interests, centralizing in their nature, destruc- tive of religious liberty, and rejected by the Catholic cantons. The others, however, adopted them ; and the constitution, as it stands to this day, with all the pernicious consequences it has never ceased to produce for religion and for liberty, is mainly the wdrk of that Rossi, who, in November and December, 1847, was the most influential counselor of the hapless Pope and his chief minister. There was another Italian whose influence was no less powerful for evil in that hour when the dearest interests of the Church of Switzerland were oppressed by the Radicals, and the Church in Italy was threatened by so fateful a storm : this was Vicenzo Gioberti. His work on " The Moral and Civil Supremacy of the Italians," had been severely and justly criticised by some Jesuit theologians ; and the author, a priest himself, replied in two successive works, his Prolegomeni (1845), and II Gesuita Moderno (1846), both replete with the quintessence of all the slanders ever heaped upon the Society of Jesus and its members. Such books were a godsend to the Radicals and revolutionists of every country and degree. They were translated into all the Eu- ropean languages, and cheap editions were circulated everywhere among the Catholic populations of Europe, through the vast agency of the secret societies. They were scattered broadcast over Switzer- land especially, which was the chief refuge on the continent of all political exiles and plotters. They were far more powerful auxili- aries to the Protestant Diet in its war on the Catholic cantons than the cohorts of General Dufour. Gioberti was hailed throughout Switzerland and Italy as the man who had expelled the Jesuits from Lucerne and Fribourg. In Rome, this victory of rank religious intolerance was hailed with indescrib- able enthusiasm, and Gioberti was invited by the clubs to hasten to the Eternal City and receive an ovation beneath the eyes of the Superior-General of the Jesuits, whom they were wont to designate as ''the Black Pope." On his arrival the city went wild with enthusiasm. A guard of honor was stationed before his door, and in public he was paid the homage and reverence due to sovereigns. The press, the clubs, the gatherings in the street, echoed only one sentiment — immortal honor to Gioberti, death to the Jesuits. A procession was organized with banners, music, and torchlights ; the leaders had the audacity to The Clubs — The Sonderhinid — The Jesuits, 169 pass around tlie Quirinal and to shout their cries beneath the win- dows of Pius IX. He felt outraged in his dignity as head of the Church and the natural protector of all the great religious bodies which constitute the most efficient and devoted aids of the common father in all the varied duties of the Christian ministry. No one better than he knew how utterly baseless were the slanders uttered against the Jesuits from the days of Pascal to those of Gioberti. He took occa- sion of the next meeting of the Consistory, on December the 17th, to enter his solemn protest, if not against the triumphant recep- tion given to Gioberti, at least against the indignities hurled at the Society of Jesus. '^We are unable," the allocution says, "to refrain from making mention of the bitter grief which has overwhelmed us in consequence of what happened here a few days ago. In this our city, the strong- hold and center of the Catholic religion, some half-crazy persons were found . . . who, casting aside the common sentiments of hu- manity, did not shrink — amid the loudly expressed indignation of their fellow-citizens — from rejoicing and openly triumphing over the issue of the sad intestine war that has lately broken out in Switzerland." Perhaps if left to his own true impulses the generous pontiff would have done, then and there, what Clement XIII. did when all the sovereigns of the house of Bourbon pressed him to sacrifice and defame the Jesuits — defend and praise them, covering their institute, their teaching, their labors, and their persons with the shield of his supreme spiritual authority. Timid and time-serving bishops had written to the lion-hearted old Pope, urging him to listen to the remonstrances of the Bourbon courts, in order to avoid a schism. " So long as God will be our helper," was the heroic answer, " we shall never be induced by any solicitation, private or public, to fail in our duty when the distress of the Church moves our soul, or the afflictions that have fallen on our beloved sons of the Society of Jesus appeal to us. We place our trust in him who rules the ocean and its storms." And he issued the magnificent bull ApostoUcum, clearing the Society from every stain, and proving and confirming anew its constitutions and rules. But Cardinal Ferretti was not the man to advise such a measure, and then again, it was better that Pius IX. should not have given to the Italian agitators a new pretext for violence and insurrection. 1 70 Life of Pope Pius IX. Of course, the Jesuits had no more to do with causing civil war in Switzerland, than their presence in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Missouri had with the existence of our late civil war. They were called to teach hy the Catholic cantons, acting in their sovereign ca- pacity. Their teaching was what that of their brethren is this day in New York and Washington and San Francisco, and their conduct equally loyal, peaceful, edifying, and useful. The Pope had vainly interposed to protect them. France and Austria, as has already been said, supported the right of the Catholic cantons to maintain their schools. How happened it that France and Austria and Prussia — not to speak of the Pope — were beaten and outgeneraled ? Let Mr. Legge inform us. " The General Diet declared the Sonderbund (or separate league of the Catholic cantons) illegal, decreed its dissolution and the expul- sion of the Jesuits. The Sonderbund refused. ... A congress of the five powers was proposed to mediate between the Diet and the refractory Sonderbund. England was indisposed to meddle in this quarrel, where she could not reckon on an ally in opposing the pre- tensions (!) of the Jesuits. Projects and counter-projects were pro- posed, and whilst Lord Palmerston . . . deferred the congress, and kept it waiting for the English envoy, Switzerland acted, over- powered the Catholic cantons . . . and cast out the Jesuits. . . " The policy of Lord Palmerston has at least the merit of success. • . . To him Switzerland was indebted for the preservation of her independence, when threatened by Austrian and French troops, under the pretext of protecting religion." * Meanwhile, in free America, the noble efforts made by Pius IX. to place religion and true liberty side by side at the head of progress and Italian nationality, continued to excite the warmest admiration and sympathy. A meeting was held in November, at New York, ^ which the most prominent public men took a part ; eloquent speeches were made commending the enlightened and courageous initiative of the pontiff, and expressing a deep interest in the success of his re- forms. The Catholic citizens were content to allow persons of pure American and Protestant descent to preside, and to move and second the very flattering resolutions adopted by the enthusiastic assemblage. The sentiment of the fourth resolution conveys the spirit of the meeting. ♦ Legge, i. 190, 191. CoJtgratulations from America to Pius IX, 171 " TVe present our most hearty and respectful salutations to the BOYereign pontiff for the noble part he has taken in behalf of his people; . . . knowing the difficulties with which he is sur- rounded at home, and the attacks with which he is menaced from abroad, we honor him the more for the mild firmness with which he has overcome the one, and the true spirit with which he has repelled the other." On December the 30th, just as the year was drawing to its close, Pius IX. issued a second decree on the organization of the council of ministers. The only post reserved to a cardinal was that of Secretary of State, who was to be also Minister of Foreign Affairs, and to have a prelate for Under Secretary. The other ministries were left open to laymen. It so happened that none of them were filled with laymen at the time, and this circumstance deprived the concession, so persistently urged by Eossi, of all its conciliatory grace. The Eadicals were furious. On December the 31st was issued a circular interpreting the law of censorship of the preceding March the 15th. The discussion of political subjects which might thwart the best interests of the State or interfere with pending negotiations was forbidden. This restriction, thought to be neces- sary while so many delicate questions were discussed with Austria and the governments of the Peninsula, would not have appeared un- reasonable in a country so easily excited and governed by a sound public opinion. But Eome had, just then, to think exactly in con- formity to the opinion of the clubs and of the radical press. This last "step backward," as they termed it, instead of being a preven- tive, proved to be an incentive to disorder. Eumors of insurrectionary movements in the north and south of Italy were whispered about in the neighborhood of the clubs. They wore the first mutterings of the earthquake on a volcanic soil. They had reached the ears of Pius ; did they make him more anxious as he went on the evening of the 31st to pray in the church of the Gesu for mercy on the transgressions of that year of bitter trial, and to thank the God in whose hand he was for the mingled sweets and bitterness of his own deep cup ? The Pope it was who intoned the Miserere as well as the Te Dewn, Ah ! if the true Christians, who knelt there with their high- priest before the mercy-seat, could have foreseen what the coming year held in store for them ? . . . But it was the hand of that Bame Mercy that wove the vail which hides the future from us. CHAPTER XV. New-Yeak's Peocession" Foebidden — Mazziis"! IN" Paeis plan- ning Revolutions— The Teicoloe Flag in Rome — Peti- tions FOE A Regulae Aemy— Pius IX/s Steady Pateiotism — Appeals to his People — The Mass of his Subjects Faithful. Januaey, 1848. *' ~T~\EMONSTRATIO]SrS"had become in the hands of the party JL^ of action a force as regular and as irresistible as the flow and ebb of the tide, though far more noisy and hurtful in their effects. The chief reason why the Holy Father wished to restrain or repress these continual gatherings of the people in Rome and else- where in his dominions, was, that the laboring and agricultural classes were forced by moral compulsion to leave their ordinary avo- cations in order to assemble at the bidding of the clubs. This evil had been pointed out in the preceding June by Cardinal Gizzi, at tlie special request of his sovereign. Field labor was neglected ; a small crop was put in the ground in spring, and, as the provident pontiff feared, there was a scanty harvest. There was unusual distress in the cities, and for the very same reason ; artisans and laborers of every description were frequently called away from their toil ; trade and commerce languished, for capitalists and moneyed business men were unwilling to make any venture while the present was so full of agitation and the future darkened with so many uncertainties. Hence the autumn and winter of 1847 were attended with far more distress and suffering throughout the Pontifical States than the cor- responding seasons of 1846. All this, though the clearly foreseen and inevitable result of the Mazzinian agitation, was once more used as a weapon against the government, and helped to swell the increas- ing impatience of priestly rule. Pius IX. ardently desired to see this baneful agitation cease, and ho had resolved to check it by affectionate remonstrance as well as 172 New-Years Procession Forbidden. 173 by the firm ase of his authority. Cardinal Ferretti had not dared ^ to enforce rigorously, on becoming Secretary of ^tate, the police ordinances against frequent assemblages and noisy celebrations, pub- lished by his predecessor, and which had been so distasteful to the clubs. The Pope insisted that, in view of the scarcity both of food and labor, no unusual expenses should be incurred by his people for the celebration of New- Year's Day. This, nominally, was a mark of respect to the sovereign : it was now the sovereign's wish that all expenses should be curtailed, in order to relieve the manifold needs of the poor. Unfortunately the Secretary of State and the Minister of Police allowed the preparations for New- Year's Day to go on without taking any preventive measure either of expostulation or prohibition. Night • had come, the " Sections of Kome " were in the streets with banners and blazing torches, and the Piazza del Popolo was filled with the multitude, the leaders marshaling their ranks ere they set out for the Quirinal. Excited to an unusual pitch as they were by the secret intelligence of the contemplated insurrections, they could not now be repressed in what was to all appearance a customary tribute of reverence and affection to him who was at once pontiff and sovereign, without the risk of serious disorder. This very moment, however, was that chosen by the authorities for ordering out the military, with a strict injunction to permit no part of the procession to approach the Quirinal. A scene of indescribable uproar ensued. No word of disrespect or even of blame was uttered against the sovereign ; but Ferretti, so popular before, was now denounced with fearful imprecations, as well as Monsignor Savelli, the Minister of Police. This had not been the latter's first capital blunder ; a worse had been committed some time before in throwing disfavor on the Conservative Liberal club called Circolo Romano^ and in countenancing the formation of a rival club, the Circolo Popolare, which became in time a focus of radicalism and sedition. The chief objects of the popular aversion, however, were evidently the Jesuits : it was good strategy in the leaders to hold these poor priests up to the eye of popular prejudice, as the mysterious power behind the pontifical throne, behind the College of Cardinals and the ministers, from which proceeded every inspiration hostile to liberty. 1 74 Life of Pope Pius IX, progress, science, the popular weal, and the national prosperity. It was a notorious fact, however — one familiar to every school-boy in Eome — that of all the religious orders the Jesuits were by far the least influential in the Roman court with the cardinals, and espe- cially with the ministers then in power. As it was, nevertheless, the storm of indignation vented itself on the Jesuits during that night of January the 1st, 1848, with a vio- lence that plainly told of worse deeds to come. To such a height did the anger of the multitude rise, that Prince Oorsini, the presi- dent of the senate, and the chief of the municipal magistrates, was impelled to hasten to the Pope and obtain an instant withdrawal of the troops, with the promise that the sovereign would on the morrow pass through the principal streets of the city to show his confidence in the people. A single document taken from the French State papers and quoted by Farini * will enable the reader to see what hand let loose the whirlwind of revolution over Italy, France, and Germany in the be- ginning of that same year. It is a secret letter from Delepert, the French Prefect of Police, to the Minister of the Interior, and written in January. *' I am told that Mazzini is come to Paris, in order to take coun- sel with such of his friends as are here about the means of raising money to dispatch emissaries into Tuscany, Piedmont, and to Rome and Naples, who will have instructions to second the existing move- ment and to ingratiate themselves with the patriots. They have been recommended to study the character of Ciceruacchio, the popu- lar leader in Rome, and to exert themselves to draw him into their faction, by inducing him to believe that everything will be done with a view to the greater glory of Pius IX. '*In a word, the plan of Mazzini is as follows,: To avail himself of the present excitement, turning it to account on behalf of Young Italy, which repudiates monarchy under whatsoever form ; and to effect this by raising the cry of viva for the Duke of Tuscany, for Charles Albert, and Pius IX. '* As a preliminary to his return to London from Paris, Mazzini has traversed the departments to give this matter in charge to such of his fellow-countrymen as have been represented to him as to be best adapted for it." ♦ " History of the Roman State/* i. 383. Mazzini in Paris Planning Revolutions, 175 The plans of Mazzini had been laid in Noyember and December ; his faithful emissaries were on their way long before the new year had dawned ; and Cicernacchio, till then attached to the Moderate Liberal party, was soon drawn to the party of action. The French Prefect of Police must have been very blind and deaf, and yery ill served by his subordinates, if he did not learn that the arch-conspi- rator had another purpose in Paris beside obtaining money toward fomenting revolutions in Italy. In Paris, and all through the depart- ments of France, Mazzini had been carefully laying the train for the coming explosion in February, which was to overturn the throne of Louis Philippe and neutralize Rossi's action in Eome, and that of the whole Moderate Liberal or Constitutional party. Mazzini had also been at Geneva during the war of the Sonder- bund, and had arranged with Young Switzerland, as well as Young Europe, to give before long the Prussian and Austrian governments such occupation at home as would effectually prevent them from in- terfering with the progress of radicalism in the Swiss cantons and in Italy. And so the winds were sown. See we now how Mazzini's enemies reaped the whirlwind. On the second day of January, as announced, the Pope drove through all the great thoroughfares of Rome. If his counselors had been ill-inspired in marring the celebration on New-Year's Day, it were hard to say that the concession made to the mob, and the condescension of the sovereign on the next day, were anything else than an ill-advised compromise. But there is always this to say, where a priest is sovereign, that a gracious act of condescension is ever pardonable, save where it is a positive encouragement to sedition and mob rule. The streets were filled with half -joyous, half -sullen crowds, through which the pontifical carriage and escort proceeded slowly. At one point there was a formidable array of banners and men mar- shaled in serried ranks. As the Pope advanced Ciceruacchio sud- denly approached his carriage, mounted the steps with a tricolor in his right hand, bearing the inscription "Holy Father, trust to your people." He waved the flag above the Pope's head, amid the deaf- ening shouts of the crowd. The action was so unexpected that Pius IX. did not understand what had passed. But the cries which met him, as he drove on, "Long live Pius IX. !" and "Down with the Jesuits ! " soon revealed the purpose of this new demonstration. The spectators had taken Ciceruacchio's action as the response of 176 Life of Pope Pius IX. the pontiff to tlieir offer of support and sympathy, and, at his re- quest, they dispersed quietly. The tricolor had been unfurled al- most in the face of the Roman pontiff, and had been waved in triumph above his head. It was now borne back to the clubs as the symbol of the people's power, and the pledge of their final triumph at no distant day. On January the 3d Monsignor Savelli was dismissed and Francesco Perfetti, one of the popular idols, was given the ministry of police. A still more significant appointment was that of Prince Gabrielli to the ministry of war. The joy of the Romans was unbounded. Gabrielli was a soldier by profession, and his entry into the cabinet was hailed with the greater enthusiasm that he was a layman, and that the department of war was now of all others the most important in the threatening aspect of Italian affairs. There was more than joy, however, in the feeling which lit up Roman countenances in these first days of the year of revolutions. Gioberti had returned to Turin feted like a conqueror at every stage of his homeward journey, and was heard to say in Turin that Pius IX. was ready to crown Charles Albert as "King of Northern Italy," if he should succeed in wresting Lombardy and Venice from the Austrians. There is no proof that anything which had been uttered by the Pope during the philosopher's stay in Rome could have authorized such an assertion. Be that as it may, Northern Italy was in a ferment. Not only was the Grand Duke of Tuscany arming the entire male population of his dominions, but Piedmont was bristling with bayonets. It was evident that serious military events were at hand. In Rome, the Council of State, on the 10th of January, received a memorandum signed by some of the most influential citizens, setting forth these military preparations in Northern Italy, and call- ing the serious attention of the council and the government to the fact that the Pontifical States were without an army worthy of the name. This document ended with the significant assertion, " that the nation is determined to avail itself of the right that calls in aid every kind of instrument when the question is the defense of our sovereign, our laws, our property, our liberties — of everything, in fine, that makes up the idea of country. But if amidst the efforts necessary for arming the masses, . . . prudence should be un- equal to fixing the bounds of enthusiasm, and the voice of the moderate party should become inaudible, let the fault and the Petitions for a Regidar Army, 177 punisliment lie with those who deceive goYemments and betray nations. ..." The council adopted this memorandum and urged on the govern- ment the necessity of acting on its suggestions. The upshot was that the pontifical government requested Charles Albert to send to Rome a military man of distinguished ability and experience, upon whom should devolve the task of creating an army in the Papal States. The choice of the king fell on Giovanni Durando, a Pied- montese, trained in the Spanish wars, and, like General Pepe in Naples, the ready and willing instrument of Young Italy in further- ing every revolutionary design. On the 14th of January came the tidings of the insurrection in Palermo, and two weeks afterward the news of the successful insur- rection in Naples. The Romans illuminated their houses, and the clubs and sections organized processions in which the tricolor was borne openly as the flag of that Italy which was now on every man's lips and in many good men's hearts. Cardinal Ferretti felt that his unsteady hand could no longer hold the helm, and he exchanged places with Cardinal Bofondi, governor of Ravenna. Rossi, who little imagined that the commo- tion which had shaken to its center the kingdom of Naples, and whose oscillations were felt so violently in Rome, would extend to Paris and upset the dynasty whom he served, urged Pius IX. to grant new concessions. The agitators, the French ambassador urged, should be isolated, and put down by the lay element in authority, not by ecclesiastics in office. "You are right, the. Pope said to me," thus he writes to Guizot, "this course of severity no longer suits ecclesiastics, it would appear hateful." Rossi further insisted upon prompt and decisive measures, to prevent disorder and insur- rection in Central Italy. The active measures inaugurated by the Pontiff, and urged on by him "with restless activity," as he expressed it himself, shall be presently mentioned in detail. It is to his undying honor that while the very men he had placed in authority among the magis- trates of Rome were openly leagued with the Radicals in defeating every one of his most cherished and liberal purposes, he could have obtained, by a single word, the assistance of a French army and navy to support him in carrying out his reforms against the machinations of the Mazzinians. The world has never known how magnani- mous, all through these evil days, was the patriotism of Pius IX., 178 Life of Pope Plus IX, how his confidence in the practical sense and gratitude of his people was only surpassed by his trust in divine providence. It is Guizot who reveals the resolution of the French government not to allow the Pope to be overawed by the Italian revolutionists. "On my proposition," he writes, "the king and his council re- solved that if the Pope, threatened either from within or without, asked for our support, we should give it effectually. Eegiments were designated and a commander chosen for this eventful expe- dition. Two thousand five hundred men were held disposable at Toulon, and two thousand five hundred at Port Vendres, ready to embark at the first signal for Civita Vecchia. I had with General Aupich, an officer as intelligent as he was brave, two long consulta- tions, which made me feel sure that he perfectly understood what we meant, and would regulate his conduct accordingly. On the 27th of January, 1848, all these measures were taken and announced to M. Kossi, who was authorized, if he judged it useful and proper, to announce them to the Roman government." * Cardinal Bofondi arrived in Eome on the 7th of February ; on the 10th a remarkable proclamation from the Pope appeared, bear- ing in every line and sentiment the stamp of his firm and fatherly hand. "Romans ! The pontiff, who has received from you, during the past two years, so many proofs of love and fidelity, is not insensible either to your wishes or to your apprehensions. We have not for a single hour ceased to consider how, without infringing on the rights of the Church, we may best develop and complete these civil institu- tions which we have created of our own free will, and impelled by our yearning for the happiness of our people and our sense of their noble qualities. "Even before the public voice had uttered a word on the subject, we had bestowed our attention on the reorganization of the mili- tia. . . . We have also increased the number of laymen in our council. As on the mutual friendliness toward each other of the Italian sovereigns depends the preservation of the reforms they have granted, we have cultivated friendly relations with them all. "Nothing that may contribute to the peace and dignity of our States shall be neglected by him who is your father and sovereign, . . . who has given you such unmistakable proofs of his care of * Let Demiers Jourt du lii^gne de Louis Philippe. Appeals to his People, lyc) yon, and who is ready to give you many more, if God Youchsafes to hear his prayers so far as to enable him to see your hearts, and those of all Italians, animated by the peaceful spirit of his wisdom. " Listen, then, to the fatherly voice which seeks to inspire you with confidence. Be not disturbed by the rumors spread all over the land by hidden agencies seeking to agitate the peoples of Italy, by holding up to them the bugbear of a foreign war, which they would have you trace to domestic conspiracies originating with ourselves, or to the sluggishness or unpatriotic ill-will of those in power. "What danger, after all, can threaten Italy, so long as a close bond of confidence and gratitude, unweakened by any violence, shall unite the power of nations with the wisdom of sovereigns and the sanctity of right ? But we especially, we the head and supreme pontiff of the Catholic religion, should we not have for our defense, if unjustly attacked, numerous children, who would protect their father's house in this center of Catholic unity ? Is it not a great gift of Heaven, amongst all the favors lavished on Italy, that our three millions of subjects have two hundred millions of brethren of every language and nationality ? " This is what in other times and amid the breaking up of the Roman empire saved Rome, and prevented the utter ruin of Italy. This must always be its safeguard so long as the Apostolic See stands in the heart of the Peninsula." On the same day Pius IX. issued a special proclamation to his army. "Circumstances are so very serious," it began, "and the condition of public affairs so critical, that I must appeal to the civic guard. To this body I intrust my own person and my property, the Sacred College, the life and property of all good citizens, the preser- vation of the public order and tranquillity. Thereby I give this body the strongest proof of my confidence, in return for the many instances of affectionate attachment received from it in so brief a space. "I have ordered a special commission to consider the various measures of reform undertaken or contemplated by me, and to ex- amine how far these reforms can be extended so as to make them correspond with the needs and aspirations of the present time. "It is also my intention to increase the number of members in the Council of State, and to amplify their powers. I have promised to secularize the other ministerial offices, and to make this change i8o Life of Pope Pius IX, permanent. It should have been made ere this, if the persons to whom the offices were o£Fered had not proposed conditions that were inadmissible. Nor can I ever admit them. For I will never con- sent to anything contrary to the interests of the Church or the prin- ciples of religion. "Were such conditions to be imposed on me by force, and were I to be left unsupported, yield I would not, but should place my entire trust in Providence. ** Let our citizens beware of evil-minded persons, who make a pre- tense of seeking the public good, only to overthrow established order, and to possess themselves of the wealth of others. ** A constitutional government is not a new name or a new thing in the Pontifical States. Countries that now possess it have copied it from us. We had a real House of Representatives in the college of Consistorial Advocates, and a House of Peers in the Sacred Col- lege, until the reign of Sixtus V." The substance of this proclamation was communicated first to the commanders of the civic guard by the Pope himself. '^Centle- men," said the Holy Father, "I have called you hither to ask you whether I can rely on your fidelity and co-operation ? " " Yes ; rely on us. Holy Father." *' Can I also rely on the fidelity and support of the civic guard ? " There was a deep and painful silence ; the officers hung their heads in shame. But the Pope, who 'half ex- pected this, was not shaken in his purpose. He then read them the proclamation, blessed them, and with affectionate words dismissed them. The effect of these proclamations was at first excellent : people read the words of the sovereign with respect and emotion. They knew they were the unfeigned expression of a deep fatherly love. But it was resolved to go in procession to the Quirinal to thank the Bovereign for what he had accomplished and for the further promises held out to his subjects. This was the usual way in which the Ead- icals turned every burst of genuine popular affection to their own purpose. So there was a torchlight procession in the evening. " Conspic- uous among the crowd," says Legge, " were four bodies of ecclesi- astics, ' flanked by two tricolor flags, and having the Pope's colors between them, while they all wore tricolor tassels.' The pontiff showed himself at the balcony, and intimated his wish to address the crowd. The silence was profound, and he spoke as follows : Protests Against Seditious Cries, i8i *' ^ Before the benediction of God descends upon you, on the rest of my people, and — I say it again — on all Italy, I pray you to be of one mind, and to keep the faith you have sworn to me the Pontiff.' **At these words the silence of deep feeling was broken by a sudden thunder of acclamation, ^ Yes, I swear ! ' and Pius IX. pro- ceeded : "'I warn you, however, against the raising of certain cries that are not of the people but of a few individuals, and against making any such requests to me as are incompatible with the sanctity of the Church ; for these I cannot, I may not, and I will not grant. This being understood, with my whole soul I bless you.'" * The "cries" here alluded to, as Legge remarks, "were the threats against the Jesuits, to which the streets of Rome had so often re- sounded of late, and which had deeply wounded him (the Pope)." The "requests" were the urgent demands of aggressive measures toward Austria which would directly lead to war, the utter seculari- zation of all the government ministries, leaving none but laymen even to manage ecclesiastical matters with foreign powers, and the abdication of so much of his own prerogatives as would deprive him of all real independence and freedom in the discharge of his spiritual sovereignty. To these may be added the demands made unceasingly for the suppression and expulsion of the Jesuits, as if he believed them guilty of the intrigues, ambition, and enormities imputed to them by the enemies of religion ! These were manifestly at variance with the justice and sanctity of the Church, and the purity of his own office as the supreme judge and common parent of Christians. One object of the conspirators in Rome, and throughout all the cities of the Pontifical States, was to render these "cries" and "requests" so frequent and so violent, and to make them the occa- sion of such tumult and disorder, that foreigners residing in Italy might easily conclude that these utterances represented the true sen- timent of the entire mass of the population. It is against this conclusion so industriously spread through Italy by the radical press, and so unhesitatingly adopted by the liberal and , Protestant journals on both sides of the Atlantic, that Pius IX. caused the cardinal Secretary of State to protest in a circular ad- dressed to the governors of the pontifical provinces, and dated on February the 28th : ***PiusIX.,"i. 218,219. 1 82 Life of Pope Pius IX. "The majority of the Holy Father's subjects," the circular affirmed, "have shown themselves most grateful for these benefi- cent changes, as well as worthy of enjoying them. But it is — and we deeply deplore it — but too true that some sowers of discord and disorder have stained the national honor, and have made foreign nations believe that the crimes of a few were the acts of the major- ity, whereas the latter were absolutely guiltless of them. " The heart of the Holy Father has been deeply wounded by the ingratitude of these lawless agitators, who are the enemies of all order and morality. But what fills his soul with bitterness is to learn that in some parts of the pontifical territory riotous assemblages have dared to expel certain religious communities, by threatening them with the worst violence and ordering them to quit the country. "In our age, when people praise so highly and claim as a common blessing legality, moderation, and humanity, one might expect far other deeds from the professed lovers of freedom. In his quality of sovereign and of head of the Catholic religion, his Holiness must condemn publicly outrages that disgrace our civilization, and are in such manifest opposition with that liberty in whose cause they are perpetrated." We must pause before concluding this chapter, and give some an- swer to a difficulty which must be in the minds of many readers. How could the Mazzinian conspirators have rendered abortive all the attempts at reformation made by the Pope, if the majority in Rome and throughout its dependent teritories were not bitterly hostile to a priestly government ? "With Americans it is well-nigh a foregone conclusion that the al- most totality of the Pope's subjects bore his yoke because its intoler- able weight was riveted round their necks by the hand of inexora- ble fate, and that now that it has been removed, they rejoice with unanimous delight at the recovery of unhoped-for freedom. Amer- ican writers and travelers cite in proof of this position the almost unanimity with which the people have accepted the change of rulers and voted for the king of Italy instead of the Pope. Assuredly the political experiences of the last presidential election ought to render us, well accustomed as we are to the working of free institutions and the use of the ballot-box, slow to pronounce about electoral majorities or "unanimity of suffrages." But we should show ourselves to be the slaves of blind religious and politi- cal passion in prejudging the Roman question, if we did not recall The Majority of the People not Revolutionists, 183 Low at the beginning of our late civil war a determined minority in the Free States could neutralize the opposition of the majority, and "^ excite men to an anti-slavery crusade, while an equally determined minority in the South could carry away the vast majority into war. In the beginning, with its calamities, that war is acknoAvledged' to have been the work of a knot of professed politicians on both sides, who knew exactly what they purposed, and forced the bulk of the nation, step by step, to become the instruments of their own designs. And on both sides the overwhelming majority confessed, that the government and constitution sought to be set aside were the best that ever blessed a country and a people ! There was not a city in the South, ere yet a gun had been fired in rebellion, in which all who were most enlightened and wealthy and patriotic, did not deplore the headlong passion which hurried State after State into the first fatal steps that led to separation and to bloodshed. There was not a county outside the cities, in which the immense majority of the farmers — the independent, honest, and true lovers of their country — were not devotedly attached to the Union. It is no secret, at this day, by what artifices and manoeuvres they were carried away into the general movement. Nor have the Free States forgotten, that by a like strategy was brought about the moral com- pulsion wliich arrayed their sons in defense of the national life. We have all learned by bitter experience to count our gains and our losses ; may we learn daily more and more how to cherish the spirit of true freedom, never found where there is not true charity, and the patient toleration of imperfection in all human laws, and of the manifold defects inseparable from human nature ! The ideal '^ best" in human institutions is the "practical best." It is not to be imagined for a moment that the wishes or the wants, or even the freedom, of the majority were respected or consulted in the Pontifical States by the men whose interest or whose aim it was to overturn both Church and State. Revolutions, in modern times at least, are the work of the great cities, especially when the revolutionary purpose is to destroy, not to preserve. The American revolution, like that in England, was essentially conservative ; so was our late civil war conservative on both sides in the main pur- pose. The revolution at present set in throughout Great Britain, and inaugurated by Palmerston and Gladstone's evil genius, is essen- tially subversive. It is the radical, anti-Christian, godless spirit of 184 Life of Pope Pius IX, Mazzini and Garibaldi that Gladstone has enthroned in the reforms made by him. Is this Dagon introduced into the old Catholic sanc- tuary of the British constitution to be upset and dashed to pieces by the living spirit of the place ? or is that spirit of Christian wisdom, liberty, and humanity to be driven by the usurping fiend from its hallowed dwelling-place ? We shall see ere long. It was the endeavor of Pius IX, to reform, to improve, to enlarge, and to consolidate. Such was not the purpose of Mazzini. Let it not be supposed that the independent, wealthy, enlightened, and truly Christian populations of the cities were in favor of the Kadi- cals. We know, from the extracts quoted in the earlier chapters of this work, that the rural populations were not. Are they so still, in town and country ? There are writers who affirm it unhesitatingly. But where do they obtain their information ? From every source that is hostile to the Holy See, or even to religion itself. Naturalists tell us how the delicious and wholesome flesh of the bonito becomes rank poison near some of the coral reefs of South America, where the fish feeds on certain substances. How can Protestant writers and travelers obtain any but the most unwholesome information, seeing that they seek it only at every poisoned source ? Men who will leave the beaten paths of travel, eschew the inter- ested and lying gossip of hotels and innkeepers, and seek the Italian farmer in his home, will soon find out that he and his fellows have not fought to oust the Pope ; that they would rather fight to restore his fatherly reign. And they will find the same to hold true of the city population who have not been lifted into wealth and position by the wave of radical revolution. CHAPTEE XYL Eadical Hatked of the Modekate Libeeals — Rossi Rebukes THE War Paety — Difficulty ik Feamixg a Co]S"stitu- Tioif — Its Featuees — Fiest Coi^tstitutiokal Mikistey — Wae ik Lombard y — The Pope acts oif the Defensive — His Gekeeal Peoclaims a Ceusade — The Pope peotests SOLEMNLY — Rage of Youkg Italy. Februaby-Apbil, 1848. THE insurrection in tlie kingdom of Naples had forced the king to grant his subjects a new constitution, with guarantees that it should not remain a dead letter. The commotion produced in Rome by this intelligence had not subsided when the city was elec- trified by the tidings of the catastrophe in France, which had driven into exile Louis Phili ppe and his family. Then came news of the grant of a liberal constitution by the king of Sardinia to his subjects. The Mazzinians took no further pains to conceal their triumph or to boast of the mighty forces at their disposal. They were the rulers of Rome ; they knew it, and all were soon made to feel it. The Moderate Liberal party were thrust aside, and looked upon by the triumphant Radicals with a distrust and a hatred which success only intensified instead of softening. Thenceforward Young Italy pursued the friends and advocates of constitutional liberty with a ferocity scarcely excelled by that displayed toward priestly govern- ment and its supporters. Rossi, on whom they always looked with aversion, and whose plana for defeating their ultimate purpose they knew but too well, had fallen from his position as ambassador, and could no longer prop up by his own dignity the fallen fortunes of the Moderates. He went for a time to Carrara, his native place, and then returned to Rome, loath to quit Italy, partly through love for his native land, but chiefly, it is thought, because he was made to believe his counsels might help the Pope in the crisis of Roman affairs. His stay, and 185 1 86 Life of Pope Pius IX. the confidence reposed in him by the court and by all who were not extreme Radicals or extreme Conservatives, was resented by the clubs as an insult to what they considered to be Italian ** patriotism." One can with difficulty conceive of the deadly hate vowed against Rossi from that moment, without recalling to mind that statesman's courageous rebuke to the agitators during the ferment caused in Rome by the occupation of Ferrara by the Austrians. ''What do you propose to 3^ourselves," he hesitated not to say, " by your incessant provocations against Austria ? It is not threatening you ; it confines itself to the limits which the treaties have assigned. It is a war of independence which you would invoke. Be it so. Let us calculate your forces : you have 60,000 regular troops in Pied- mont, and not a man more. " You speak of the enthusiasm of the Italian populations. I know them. Pass among them from one end of the country to the other ; see if a heart beats, if a man moves, if an arm is ready to begin the fight. '^ The Piedmontese once beaten, the Austrians may go from Reg- gie to Calabria without meeting a single Italian. I understand you ; you will apply to France. A fine result, truly, of the war of inde- pendence, to bring foreign armies again upon your soil ! The Aus- trians and the French fighting on the soil of Italy ! Is not that your sad, your eternal story ? " You would be independent ; we are so already. France is not a corporal in the service of Italy. She makes war when she pleases, and for whom she pleases. She does not place her standards or her battalions under the command of a stranger." These words were to be Rossi's death sentence. But events were hastening forward with such velocity that he forgot self amid the more anxious cares for the public welfare. The demand for a parlia- mentary government was now loudly made by the Roman press. Even the most serious-minded among the upper classes were moved by the evident necessity of further and instant concession. The commission named by the supreme pontiff had been for some time elaborating a plan suitable to the mixed nature of a government, charged on the one hand not only with the civil, but with the relig- ious administration of the Papal States, and on the other with the supreme control of the Catholic religion in every country under the Bun. Sucli a government should never have been allowed by all Christian peoples to become the plaything of revolution, or to be Difficulty in Framing a Constitution, 187 exposed in its weakness to the volcanic passions that were about to overturn everything. This was the real difficulty with the Pope — so to balance the attributions of the various bodies he was about to call into existence, that the forces utilized to promote the temporal welfare of the papal subjects should not interfere with the authority that watched over their religious interests ; and that the measure of constitutional authority vested in a lay ministry should not absorb the right, divinely given and inalienable, of feeding the universal flock of Christ. It was no small honor, a source of no trifling increase of temporal wealth and influence to the Eoman State, that it had as brethren and spiritual subjects two hundred millions of Christians spread all over the earth. Men who have never taken the time, or who will not take the pains to consider these most important and venerable relations of the Eoman State with the entire human family, inveigh blindly and passionately against Pius IX. for not abdicating his temporal sovereignty into the hands of the Radicals, or blame with equal ignorance and arrogance the Church for retaining a secular power incompatible (as they think) with the free discharge of her apostle- ship. When Prince Corsini, president of the senate, with his brother magistrates, waited on the Pope to urge the necessity of granting a constitution, the Holy Father received them with his usual gentle courtesy. He was not unprepared for the visit or the request. " Everybody knows," he said in reply, "that I have been incessantly occupied with the labor of giving the government the form claimed . . . What can be effected in one night in a secular State can- not be accomplished without mature examination in Rome. . . . I hope that in a few days the Constitution will be ready, . . • calculated to satisfy the people, and more particulary the Senate and council. . . . May the Almighty bless my desires and labors ! If religion derives any advantage therefrom, I shall cast myself at the feet of the Crucified to thank him, . . . and I shall feel deeper satisfaction as the supreme pastor than as the temporal sovereign, if these changes only help to promote the divine glory." We now hasten to recount what followed. " The promise scarcely allayed the excitement of the masses led by Sterbini and Galletti, for it was known that the commission appointed to draw up the con- stitution contained not one lay member. When it was promulgated, 1 88 Life of Pope Pius IX. March 14, this charter, or 'fundamental statute,' was seen by all acquainted with parliamentary institutions to contain irreconcilable elements. "First in order of dignity was the college of cardinals, which was irresponsible and deliberated in secret consistory ; next was a council of State, appointed by the Pope, whose province it was to frame laws and advise the sovereign on all weighty political questions. Then came the parliament proper, formed of two chambers ; the upper chamber composed of members nominated for life by the sovereign, and the chamber of deputies, composed of members elected on the basis of one deputy for every constituency of 30,000 souls. " In legislation the initiative belonged to the ministers, but a bill might be introduced by any deputy on the demand of ten of his colleagues. The legislative powers of the lower chamber were restricted to purely secular affairs. Ecclesiastical or mixed matters were reserved to the consistory."* A new ministry was announced on March the 10th, composed of Cardinal Antonelli, president of the council, and minister of foreign affairs ; Kecchi, minister of the interior ; Minghetti, minister of public works ; Pasolini, minister of commerce, and Farini, pro- minister of the interior. These were leaders in the Moderate party. Cardinal Mezzofanti was minister of public instruction ; Prince Aldobrandini was minister of war, and the notorious Galletti, minis- ter of police. The strong debt of gratitude which this man owed to Pius IX. would, it was hoped, keep him to his oath of fidelity ; his nomina- tion was also a concession to the Eadicals. It was a sad blunder. The ministry lost not a moment in announcing that their sole desire was to execute and perfect the new charter of constitutional freedom ; to call the best men to office ; to place the country in a state of defense ; to replenish the treasury through the contributions of the municipalities and religious congregations ; and to establish a firm accord with the other constitutional governments of Italy. "Although the times grew violent," says Farini, " the ministry, from the first days of its existence, discharged the political duties of government with forethought." Meanwhile there was an insurrec- tion in Berlin, the king of Prussia being forced, after three days' • The author, " American Cycloptedia," vol. xiU., p. 668. First CoiistitMtional Ministry, 189 fighting, to kiss the tricolor flag, the proscribed emblem of German unity ; the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria was forced to resign after granting his States a constitution ; the Milanese had risen against their Austrian garrison ; and Piedmont, it was asserted, was arming to drive the last foreigner beyond the Alps. It were as easy, under the increasing emotion of these events, to arrest the down- ward flow of lava from Vesuvius or Etna, as to moderate the feelings of the Roman populace. " The republic was proclaimed in Venice, and Lombardy was in full insurrection. Piedmont had declared against the Austrians, and the Pope was urged by his ministers to espouse the cause of his country and declare war. It is impossible, from the contradictory statements of the conduct of Pius IX. at this juncture, to determine exactly how far his conduct is blameworthy, if at all. Among his ministers were laymen imposed upon him by necessity, but whose counsels especially in what concerned his relations with foreign powers, or in the management of ecclesiastical affairs, he either openly rejected or secretly thwarted. He refused to declare war against Austria, but blessed his troops ere they departed for the frontier, and gave the most explicit instructions to their commander. General Durando, that his action was to be purely defensive. In spite of this, the Eoman minister of war, Aldobrandini, wrote to Durando, March 28, to act in concert with Charles Albert. At the same time the Pope urged Monsignor Corboli-Bussi to obtain from the Pied- montese government a speedy assent to the meeting in Eome of an Italian Diet for the establishment of a customs union and a national confederation. Thereby the Pope hoped to be able to act as media- tor toward Austria, and to offer peace on the part of an united Italy, on condition that Italy should be left free to govern herself. *' But while the Piedmontese cabinet were procrastinating, Aldo- brandini instructed Oorboli-Bussi to follow the head-quarters of Charles Albert, and negotiate a loan for defraying the expenses of the Eoman contingent as a condition toward their joining his forces. At the same time permission was given to the king of Naples to march an army through the Papal States on their way to join the Lombards and Piedmontese. At this juncture Count Rossi, residing ' in Eome in a private capacity, wrote : '* The national sentiment and its ardor for war are a sword, a weapon, a mighty force ; either Pius IX. must take it resolutely in hand, or the factions hostile to him will sieze it, and I go Life of Pope Pius IX. turn it against him and against the papacy." "Just then, too, the Moderate editors of the Contemporaneo joined General Durando's camp, and this journal fell into the hands of Sterbini, and became thenceforward a potent engine of the revolution. Volunteers had increased the number of the papal troops to 25,000 before the end of March. On April 25 the ministers united in beseeching the Pope to speak his will about the war, affirming that to declare against it * would most seriously compromise the temporal dominion of the Holy See.' On April 29 the declaration was made in consistory, and was decidedly opposed to war with Austria. The ministry resigned, and the city was once more filled with arms and tumult, the civic guard siding with the mob. It was suggested to the Pope, whom no threat could terrify into yielding to the popular clamor, that he should himself go to Milan and mediate a peace founded on the lib- eration of Italy. He consented, but the Austrian envoy scouted the idea, and it was abandoned. Pius was now virtually a prisoner in the Quirinal, while the dwellings of the cardinals were guarded by sentries. The press and the clubs began to discuss the necessity of an immediate alliance with the Piedmontese, and the urgency of abolishing the papal rule." * Two documents merit especial mention here : the proclamation of General Durando to his troops on April the 5th, and the consistorial allocution of April the 29th. We have already seen that Durando was a Piedmontese, wholly devoted to the cause of Italian independ- ence, in so far as it tended to promote the supremacy of the house of Savoy. He had chosen for aid-de-camp Massimo d'Azeglio, who thus gave up his direction of the Contemporaneo to wield the sword for Italy. It was everpvhere understood among the masses in Central and Northern Italy that Pius IX. sanctioned the war against Austria. His general and his ministers knew better; but they were deter- mined to confirm, so far as they might, the popular belief that tho Popo had authorized a kind of crusade against the foreigners, and they acted accordingly. Tho Pope had given the clearest and most positive orders to Durando that he shonld content himself with de- fending tho frontier of the Papal States ; but Aldobrandini, minister of war, commanded him to cross the Po, which was an act of bel- ligerency. D'Azeglio thereupon drew up the following order of the * "American CyclopaBdia," vol. xiil, p. 668. A Crusade Proclaimed in the Popes Name, 191 day, and Durando published it, believing, both of them perhaps, that they would thus force the Pope into open and formal hos- tility : *' Soldiers ! the noble land of Lombardy, in times past the glorious theater of a war of independence, when Alexander III. gave his blessing to the oath of Pontida,* is now trodden anew by heroes, whose perils and triumphs we are about to share. They, as well as we, have been blessed by the right hand of the pontiff, just as were our forefathers in that remote age. "He — holy, just, and gentle above all men as he is — has neverthe- less acknowledged the last recourse to arms to be the only one just and possible weapon against an enemy who tramples on every right and law, both divine and human. That heavenly heart of his could not but be saddened at the thought of the evils accompanying war ; could not forget that all those who are now entering into the battle- field, whatever be their fl^g, are his children. *^He sought to give time for repentance ; and the word which was to become the instrument of divine vengeance, lingered on his august lip. But the time came when gentleness must have degenerated into a guilty connivance at iniquity. That man of God, who had wept over the massacres of the 3d of January, while hoping that they were only the results of the brutal but passing excesses of a licentious soldiery, has now found reason to own that Italy, unless she can protect herself, is doomed by the Austrian government to pillage, rape, and the ferocity of a savage soldiery — to fire, to mas- sacre, to total destruction. "He has seen Radetzky make war against the cross of Christ, beat down the gates of the sanctuary, dash into it with his horse, profane the altar, and violate the ashes of our fathers with his foul band of Croats. "The holy pontiff has blessed your swords, which, when united to those under Charles Albert, are to work concurrently for the ex- termination of the enemies of God and of Italy, of the men who have outraged Piux IX. and the Church of Mantua, who have assas- * Called also the " Lombard League," fonned under the presidency of Pope Alexander III., in 1167, by Venice, Verona, Milan, Vicenza, Padua, and all the cities of Northern Italy against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. He had destroyed Milan and dispersed her inhabitants. The indomitable energy of Alexander sustained his allies till they defeated the emperor at Legnano, May 29, 1176, and in 1183 compelled him to sign the peace of Constance. 192 Life of Pope Piics IX. sinated our Lombard brothers, and by their enormities have placed themselves beyond every law. ''Such a war of civilization against barbarism is not only national but eminently Christian. It is fitting, then, soldiers, and I have determined that we shall all, as we are marching in its behalf, be decorated with the cross of Christ. All who belong to this corps of operation will carry that symbol over the heart, of the pattern which they shall see on mine. *' With this and by this we shall conquer, as our fathers did. Be this our battle-cry, ' God wills it ! ' " The wearing of the cross, like the crusaders of old, was a device that originated in the fertile brain of the notorious Barnabite monk Gavazzi, who, after having played chaplain to the ''sects" in Rome, and distinguished himself in street riots and half-sacrilegious pro- cessions, had followed the army of Durando in the quality of self- appointed chaplain-in-chief. He became, during this disastrous cam- paign, a potent instrument of disorder and sedition, the advocate and promoter of the violence and foul immorality which stained Bologna, and not the least powerful agent of the frenzied radicalism that made Rome hideous with bloodshed and anarchy. They had thus fired the national soul with the belief that Pius IX. had authorized a crusade against Austria ! The Pope's lay ministers were most desirous that this impression should be confirmed by subsequent acts of the sovereign pontiif. It was in vain that he protested on April the 10th by a brief note inserted in the official gazette. The tidings were stirring the hearts of all Italian men and women alike, and sending thousands to the field in the cause of God and Italy. No doubt Pius IX. fervently wished for the independence and greatness of his native land. The efforts he was then making to create a confederated Italy had the sanction of the best minds and noblest souls in the Peninsula. But he was the common father, and no amount of pressure could induce him to violate his conscience and his duty as such, by lending himself to an aggressive war against a Christian power. On the 25th of April the lay members of the papal cabinet presented a most urgent petition to the Holy Father urging upon his attention the fact, that it was impossible to make the Italian people believe any longer that the Roman troops had only been sent to the frontier to guard it, while their brothers were fighting beyond it to defend the common cause. "Your Holiness," The Pope Solemnly Protests. 193 they submitted, "will either allow your subjects to make war; or declare your will absolutely against making war ; or, finally, that, though desirous of peace, you cannot prevent making war." They then declared in conclusion that war was " the sole means of be- stowing on Italy, disorganized as she was, such a national and durable peace as could only proceed from the righteous recovery of our national existence." On the 29th of April the Sacred College met, and the Pope ad- dressed to them an allocution which was decisive of his fate for the present. ''Venerable Brothers," it says, *'we have more than once pro- tested in your presence against the audacity of certain persons who blush not to affirm to the injury of this Apostolic See and of our own authority, that not in one point alone we have departed from the teaching of our predecessors, nay, from the very doctrine of the Church. More than that, there are men who at this moment speak of us as if we were the chief author of the recent social commotions. . . . We have even learned that in Austria and Germany the people are taught to look upon us as one who had excited the peoples of Italy, through emissaries and by other means, to upset the estab- lished order of things. Hence, as we are informed, the popular mind in Germany is industriously embittered against the Holy See, and that, in order to weaken the attachment of the faithful to this cen- ter of unity. . . . " Inasmuch as these slanderers are unable to allege any substan- tial proof of their assertions, they asperse and pervert the acts of our early administration of this government ; and these acts it is that we wish to explain at present, hoping thereby to take away all pretext for such accusations. ''It is to your knowledge, Venerable Brothers, that toward the end of the pontificate of Pius VII. several of the European sovereigns advised him to introduce into his civil administration changes cal- culated to make it more efficient and more pleasing to the laity. Later in 1831 this advice and the desires of the sovereigns were more solemnly uttered in the " memorandum " jointly presented by the ambassadors of the powers. In this document, among other recom- mendations, was one to the effect, that there should be created a Council of State, representing the whole pontifical territory, as well as .provincial councils, broader municipal organizations, and other improvements of a progressive nature. It was also recom- 194 Life of Pope Pius IX, mended that laymen should be employed in all the functions of the civil administration and in the judiciary. These two last changes were insisted on as vitally important. Other papers pre- sented at the same same time by the ambassadors urged a wider am- nesty in favor of persons who had violated their fealty toward the sovereign." The reforms accomplished by Gregory XVI. in furtherance of these wishes, and the improvements by him promised, did not satisfy the great powers, nor produce satisfaction and tranquillity in the Papal States. "Hence," the allocution continues, "from the first day of our elevation to this place, unimpelled by any other cause than our own deep love for our subjects, we granted a large measure of amnesty to those who had rebelled against the pontifical authority, and has- tened to bestow on our people institutions deemed most favorable to their welfare. These acts were in perfect conformity with the reforms counseled by the great powers. "The execution of our designs excited so much rejoicing and brought us from our subjects and the neighboring peoples so many testimonies of gratitude and respect, that we were fain to repress their manifestations. We have done all we could by our admoni- tions and exhortations to induce all to become more firmly attached ' to Catholic truth, more faithful observers of the laws of God and of his Church, and more zealous to promote mutual concord, peace, and charity. " Would to God that our fatherly words had produced the desired effect ! But all are now familiar with the commotions that have disturbed the peoples of Italy, as well as with the troubles that have occurred elsewhere. . . . Assuredly he who would throw on us the blame of these events, as if they were the legitimate consequences of our early reforms, ought to remember that in these we did but carry out the measures repeatedly pressed on the attention of the Holy See by the European courts. . . . " The German population should not impute it to us as a crime, if wo have not been always able to restrain the joy of our subjects over the successes obtained in Northern Italy by men of Italian blood, or if some of these have gone to help their brethren in defending a cause dear to all. There is more than one European sovereign who, with military forces incomparably superior to ours, has not been able to repress revolution. . . . And yet, amid all the • He cannot Declare War against Austria, ipS passionate excitement of tlie time, our only orders to the troops sent by us to the frontier were to limit themselves to defend the integrity and inviolability of the pontifical territory. "Nevertheless, inasmuch as many urge us to declare war against Austria in union with the other Italian sovereigns, we have deemed it imperative on us to protest solemnly in your presence against a course of action so far from our purpose, since, all unworthy though we be, we hold on earth the place of him who is the author of peace and the lover of charity, embracing as we do, in fulfillment of our apostolic charge, all countries and peoples and nationalities in one undivided sentiment of fatherly love. "If there be those among our subjects who are carried away by their sympathy for the cause of their common country, how are we to chain down their patriotism ? " After protesting energetically against the notion, now spread abroad by some Mazzinian leaders, of one Italian republic, absorb- ing all existing nationalities and presided over by the Pope, the Holy Father warns all Italians against the perfidious designs and counsels of men who would detach them from the obedience due to their respective sovereigns, and thereby divide and weaken Italy in presence of the common foe. "As to ourselves," the Pope continues, "we declare in the most solemn manner that all our thoughts, our cares, our endeavors, as Koman pontiff, aim at enlarging continually the kingdom of Christ, and not at extending the boundaries of the temporal principality which Providence has bestowed on the Holy See for the sole dig- nity and free exercise of its supreme apostleship. "They are sadly mistaken who imagine that any prospect of a wider power can carry our soul away and hurry us into the tumult of arms. Assuredly it would be a supreme joy for our fatherly heart to be able by our intervention and our good offices to quench the fire of discord, to bring nearer to each other those whom war divides, and to restore peace between the belligerents." Such are the acts and utterances by which alone Pius IX. has to be judged by posterity. One can discover in this allocution the hand of Cardinal Antonelli, who, during the following twenty-nine years, maintained amid usurpations, treachery, desertions, and the calumnies of the European and American press, this same one simple thesis, that the Holy See is the center of Catholic unity, that its temporalities were the patrimony secured by Christendom to the 1 96 Life of Pope Pius IX, common parent of all Christians, and that all Christian powers and peoples had a joint interest in preserving the integrity and inviola- bility of that patrimony. Of course this act of courage, due by the Pope to his office and to Christendom, did not satisfy the clubs. In every event, they wanted to use him as a weapon to beat the Austrians with, and to be cast aside or broken, the moment the victory was achieved. No man in his senses but knows this at the present day. How much more glorious, then, is the conduct of Pius IX., under the pressure of the terrible circumstances around him, and with the clear pre- vision of the dangers to which the allocution must expose both himself and the Sacred College ? "Every face in Rome wore a scowl that night (29th of April)," says Legge. '^The city presented everywhere indications of a lurid sulphury feeling — that indefinable sort of agitation that seems always to herald an outbreak of popular violence. It was a terrible night, universally recognized as the eve of a more terrible popular crisis. Few had read, and fewer still had a correct knowledge of the contents of that fatal allocution. Yet it would be incorrect to say there was suspense ; rather ten thousand citizens retired to their homes to take what rest they might, with the dull certainty upon each heart that, whatever the phrases used, that document — which when they awoke each man might read in his own tongue — severed for ever their faith in the ruler, whom, for two years of jubilee, they had regarded as a heaven-sent pontiff " Even the passion-colored narrative of this author all through his first volume cannot so disguise the facts of history as to conceal the dark and desperate conspiracy which filled these "two years of jubilee." No reader who has followed us patiently so far but is pre- pared for the explosion of impious rage and cowardly violence that followed on the morrow, and continued to grow in loudness and undisguised ruffianism, like a chorus of famished wolves on a prairie around a fallen buffalo, fresh accessions of ravenous beasts from every wind in the heayens adding to the hideousness and ferocity of the scene* CHAPTEE XVII. The Pope as a Mediatoe— lisrsuKKECTiON" ii^ Naples — ^Neapoli- tans WITHDRAW FROM LOMBARDT — EePUBLICAIT AgITATION* IN" Rome — The Pope's Mediatioj^- defeated by Palmerstok — Mazzij^i conspiring against Charles Albert — Gayazzi preaching Sedition to the Troops — ^^ War of the King '' AND " War of the People " — Pressure on the Pope — The AUSTRIANS AT FeRRARA — HiS REFORM OF PENITENTIARIES — His Plan of a Federated Italy^Defended by Rossi. May-September, 1848. ONE other document from the pen of the Holy Father must find place here before we follow the rapid course of eyents. The efforts made by him to obtain the assent of Charles Albert to the assembling of an Italian Diet in Rome, though successful with the other sovereigns of Italy, met only with calculated delays and a final refusal from the Piedmontese king. He wished to force the Pope, whose troops were now under his command, into the alternative of declaring war against Austria, or of losing his influence in Italy, and thus pave the way to the ascendency of Piedmont. But Pius IX. was not to be balked in the path of duty either by the Machiavellian policy of Piedmont or the outrages and menaces of a Roman rabble, or by the outcries and calumnies of the European press. He was the common father ; and as such no interest or fear could induce him to declare war. But as such his office was also one of mediation, and nothing that was told him of the disfavor in which he was held by the Austrian court could make him hesitate to discharge his fatherly duty as mediator. On the 3d of May the following letter, mentioned in the last chapter, was written to the Emperor Ferdinand : "Your Majesty : — Whenever war stained with blood the soil of Christendom, it has been the wont of this Holy See to utter words of peace. Hence in the allocution of the 29th of April, while we said 197 198 Life of Pope Pius IX, that our fatherly heart shrinks from declaring war, we also mani- fested in a special manner our desire to contribute toward a peace. " Let your Majesty, then, be not oifended if we now appeal to your filial affection and your religious sentiments, and beseech you with paternal earnestness to withdraw your arms from a struggle, which cannot subdue to your empire the hearts of the Lombards and Venetians, and must bring on, as its consequence, the fatal train of calamities which attend on war, and which must be abhorrent to the soul of your Majesty. " Nor must the generous German nation take it in ill part, if we exhort them to lay resentment aside, and to change into useful rela- tions of neighborly intercourse a domination without glory or benefit, because it must be maintained exclusively by the sword. "We trust, therefore, that your people, who take an honorable pride in their own nationality, will not deem it a part of their honor to keep up a bloody contest with the Italian nation, but will honor themselves by acknowledging Italy as a sister nation. Both are daughters to us, and most dear to our heart, and each should con- fine herself to reside within her own natural boundaries, upon honorable terms, and under the divine blessing. " In the meantime we entreat the Giver of all light and the Author of every good gift to inspire your Majesty with holy counsels ; while from the inmost of our hearts we impart to you, to her Majesty the Empress, and to the whole imperial family apostolic benediction." What though the court of Vienna, blind not only to its own sacred duty as a Christian power, but to the revolution which threat- ened its existence as an empire, should treat the prayer of the vicar of Christ with contempt and derision ? We, at this distance from the events of 1848, must see in the noble attitude of Pius IX. that which alone became his office and position. Had he departed from the only policy befitting the vicegerent of the Prince of Peace, we should have condemned him as time-serving and worldly. But he sought the unity, the liberation, the peace of Italy, as became one who was both an ardent Italian patriot and the representative on earth of the Mediator. We now return to Rome. '* The allocution of April 29 had a pow- erful effect both in demoralizing the Pope's troops and in stirring up against him the worst passions. ... In Austria the allocution was derided as a now act of weakness, and the (above) letter was left unheeded. . . . The Pope was forced, to accept a ministry in InsiLrredions in Naples, 199 which Mamiani was premier and secretary of state for secular foreign affairs, Galletti being minister of police. Earini, who re- placed Corboli-Bussi at the Piedmontese head-quarters, completed the treaty conferring on the king the command of the papal troops be- yond the Po. The dissension which existed between the Pope and the Mamiani ministry broke out on June 4, on the opening of the new parliament." * An event, attributed by some writers to the influence of the allo- cution of April the 29th — the withdrawal of the Neapolitan navy from the Adriatic, and of the Neapolitan army from the sapport of Charles Albert and Durando — rendered the struggle for independence hope- less, and the position of the papal troops extremely critical. It tended to increase, as well, and beyond all conception, the difficulties inherent to the Pope's position in Eome. But who was to blame for this withdrawal ? Here, again, we discover the incomprehensible wickedness and folly of the Mazzinian conspirators. On May the 14th, the day be- fore the opening of the Neapolitan parliament, an insurrection broke out in Naples, and barricades were erected in the streets. Step by step the disorder increased, till, on the 15th, the city became a scene of slaughter, bombarded by the forts and deluged by the successive massacres committed by the insurgents (Liberals and civic guard), the soldiers, and the lazzaroni. The insurrection, nevertheless, spread in Calabria ; and Sicily, which had been in rebellion for some time, sent an armed legion to the assistance of the Calabrians. Thereupon the king issued peremptory orders for the immediate withdrawal of his forces from the north of Italy. There, too, in the meantime, the Austrians had come into collision with the Italian confederates, and worsted them. "In this state of things," says Legge, "it was inevitable that the sects, 'which always prosper in the same proportion as the cause of Italy declines,' should spring into new activity. The Giovine Italia (Young Italy) began to raise its head and to utter contemptuous phrases about 'the king's war,' with criminating reflections upon Charles Albert and his generals, as well as the gallant leaders of the volunteer papal corps, thus sow- ing, where it had not already taken root, the baneful seed of distrust, willing that the sentiment of nationality should languish rather than flourish in association with royalty." f * ** American CyclopEedia." f I., p. 319. 200 Life of Pope Pius IX, In Rome the electoral colleges were summoned for the 18th of May for the choice of deputies. The tidings from ]N"aples, on the one side, and from Lombardy, on the other, intensified the great excite- ment already existing. The Mazzinians were busy procuring the election of citizens hostile to every form of kingly government. But, fortunately, the law restricted the suffrage to the intelligent and re- sident classes who held property and paid a certain amount of taxes ; and the Moderate Liberals were active in making the best of this their last opportunity for returning order-loving deputies. Parliament met on the 5th of June. The question suggests itself : "Will *' the party of action " allow the experiment to be made in Rome more peacefully than at Naples ? Farini shall enlighten us on the causes of the ill success of this constitutional experiment in Rome. "The word republic," he says, "which rouses the heart by the recollections it evokes, was no longer pronounced in a whisper, but passed from mouth to mouth among our practiced agitators ; and this democratic method of governing, which adapts itself to the na- ture of man, ever envious of the good fortune of others — this word republic, which, among our commonalties, accustomed to live with- out rule, signifies the supremacy of disorder — ^became the very sweet- heart not only of high-minded youth, but of the greedy, of the vul- garly ambitious, and of the turbulent, to whom convulsion promises occupation, distinction, and reward ; and it came about that already much was heard in common conversation of the termination of mon- archy, and especially of the papal monarchy, without any regard to plighted faith or to prudence. . . . It is the fact that, at the end of May, it was easily perceivable that the revolution was ad- vancing by stealth, and that the minds of men were fashioning them- selves, some to accomplish it, others to let it be accomplished. . . The sectarians (secret society men) rose in spirits in the same pro- portion as sober-minded citizens flagged ; the orators of the clubs continually inflated their lungs to abuse the sovereigns, to abuse the magistrates, and to abuse moderate men ; but the people, the popu- lar virtues and strength they extolled to the skies.* In spite of much dissentiment between the Pope and his ministers, Farini, who had the confidence of the former, had the speech pre- pared by the premier, Mamiani — a large programme of the pontifical policy — adopted ; and it was delivered to the new parliament by Car- • Vol. ii. 183. The Popes Mediation Thwarted, 201 dinal Altieri. Its carefully- worded declarations allowed tne moder- ate Italians to believe that the Pope sanctioned the war for Italian independence, and produced abroad the impression that he dared not openly resist the will of the majority and act in conformity with the allocution of April the 29th. An opportunity of dispelling this error was afforded him by an address of the chambers presented on July the 10th. This address was only an echo of the Mamiani pro- gramme. The Pope in his answer declared that he could agree to its utterances only in so far as they did not yary from the funda- mental statute (creating the civil constitution then in force), and added : "If strong desires be multiplied for the greatness of the Italian nation, it is needful that the whole world should be apprised anew that war cannot be on our part the means of achieving it. Our name was blessed throughout the earth for the first accents of peace that fell from our lips ; it assuredly could not be so were those of war to proceed from us. It was to us a great surprise when we learned that the council had been invited to discuss the subject, in opposition to our public declarations, and at the moment when we had taken in hand negotiations for peace." Pius IX. had not been satisfied with the statements made in the allocution, or with the letter of mediation to the Emperor of Austria, he had also sent a special delegate, Monsignor Morichini, to Vienna, for the purpose of convincing the imperial mind of the necessity of coming to terms with the Italians. And ''the mission of Monsignor Morichini . . . had been so far successful, that the British gov- ernment had been requested by Austria to mediate between her- self and Italy on the basis of the independence of Lombardy and the Duchies, . . . and the concession to Venetia of a separate ad- ministration, with an army of her own, under the sway of an Austrian archduke. Lord Palmerston declined to accept the commission on any other condition than the absolute independence of certain Vene- tian provinces." * This was early in June. How came it to pass that the successful mediation of the Holy Father was not sufficient to arrest the pro- gress of the war, and to secure for Northern Italy so precious an installment of the long-coveted independence ? Lord Palmerston would have " the absolute independence of certain Venetian prov- ^ Legge, i. 350. 202 Life of Pope Pius IX. inces." As to Charles Albert, "the proposals of Austria were con- cealed from him until they had been rejected (by Palmerston), whilst the ferment of anger, and the unreasoning thirst for yen- gaance which agitated the whole Peninsula, would have rendered it impossible for him to consider any terms short of the complete evacuation of Italy." Thus speaks Legge. But on the very same page we are told in a note that "as late as May, Lombardy would have been willing to purchase her independ- ence by taking twenty millions sterling of the national debt of Austria, a sum smaller than she must spend in vain attempts at re- conquest." It is an unworthy artifice to palliate the dark and tortuous policy of Palmerston, in his concealing from one of the principals in the deadly feud the fair terms of compromise, by saying that " he declined to accept," and that Charles Albert could not have considered "any terms short of the complete evacuation of Italy." It is evident that the Lombards, whose independence was at stake, would have been but too glad to consider and to accept the terms of Austria. By what right did Lord Palmerston conceal the Austrian offer, or reject it, without so much as consulting the Italian belligerents ? Thus, on the very day when the papal troops under Durando had been compelled to surrender at Vicenza, the court of Vienna had sent full powers to Marshal Eadetzky to conclude an armistic with the Lombards till the English government had fulfilled its mission of peace-making. Why was the good work so nobly undertaken by the pontiff, and so happily brought to an issue, defeated by the British statesman's arbi- trary conduct ? Had the independence of Lombardy, at least, been announced in Rome as the price of the Roman blood shed and the heroic valor displayed at Vicenza, and had Venetia been given the proffered autonomy as a pledge of future freedom, how different might it have been for the Pope ! We have seen how Palmerston outgeneraled France, Austria, and Prussia in Switzerland, and, directing by his agent. Sir Robert Peel, and the very chaplain of the English embassy, the movements of tlie Radical forces under Dufour, had ended the war and rendered the proposed mediation impossible. There Palmerston was only the ex- ecutive of the Mazzinian power. In Lombardy wo find both Palmerston and Mazzini behind the scenes— the hidden power which paralyzes the soldier before battle. Mazzini Conspiring against Charles Albert 203 and after battle tears from the bravest men the fruits both of yictory and defeat. *^The Mazzinians regarded the federal conception of an ^ Italy of the North ' as fatal to the war, because too ambitious to be accepted by the majority of Italian princes and by European diplomacy, and at the same time insufficient to satisfy the demands of the populations of Italy. MoreoYcr, the Giovine Italia was opposed to the monar- chical form of government. . . . The incorporation of Lombardy into the monarchy of Piedmont afforded a pretext for hurling anathe- mas at the head of the sub- Alpine king, and fanning the flame of discontent. . . . The true reason of so much scandal, Farini observes, then as now, was this : * That Giuseppe Mazzini held his own self to be the man predestined to deliver Italy, and could not endure that any Italian compact should be concluded if he did not put to it his seal, and if the countries, armies, sovereigns, pontiffs did not bow down before the new Ids Majesty and Ms Holiness, ... He had no funds, and, except a few companies of adventurers, he had no force in the field; but he managed his own people in arms by the tricks of a sect and by his mystical idea ; no slight force this amidst the indolence of a city, as being one that dissociates the minds which ought to be striving in common toward the same point. To be powerful in obstructing the good that flows from the union of spirits means to be powerful for effecting evil ; this power Maz- zini possessed, and this abuse he made of it." * The arch-conspirator had established his head-quarters in Milan during the war, and thence governed by his agents public opinion in the Piedmontese army as well as among the papal troops. It was these agents of disorder and defeat who had accused the papal gen- eral, Ferrari, of treachery in the battle of Cornuda, on May the 8th, and who during the retreat seized three obnoxious individuals, car- ried them to Treviso, and there '* tore them to pieces, giving," says Legge, '^such license to their passions as the heart sickens to narrate ; some of these demons being insatiable until they had tasted their victims' blood." It was these men — the shame of their name and country — who, on May the 12th, instead of following their general to the attack, shouted the word 'traitor," cast away their arms, and fled ! We shall find some of them in Eome on November the loth. It was the blind fanaticism of these same men which accused the * Farini, vol. ii., pp. 304, 205, as quoted by Legge. 204 Life of Pope Pius IX, brave Durando and his heroic troops of treachery, after the capitu- lation of Vicenza, and bestowed the epithet of traitor not only on Charles Albert but on Pius IX. The former was forced by the fren- zied public opinion thus created to engage the victorious Austrians at Custozza, and to endure (July 14) the defeat he had clearly fore- seen. Europe has not forgotten how that brave kiug with his army of raw recruits was received, after Novara, as after Custozza, by the Mazzinians in Milan; how the word "traitor" was shouted all day and night by the mob around the palace in which the weary king could find no rest, and how his magnanimity withheld his soldiers from slaughtering that rabble. No rest would he take till he had gone far away from Italy, to the extremity of Europe, to die broken-hearted. We are anticipating, however. He had loved Italy "not wisely, but too well." There was another sovereign who had risked even more than Charles Albert in the cause of Italy, and who was destined to a longer and far more cruel agony, to be endured at the hands of the same impious and unreasoning wickedness. The termination of this calamitous war brought to " the sects " who controlled Eome and the pontifical government a new element of licentiousness and ferocity in the persons of the disbanded volun- teers. One cannot be surprised at the evil eminence to which the Maz- zinian principles and training had raised all such adepts, when it is recollected who were the men who consented to be the educators of these soldiers of Italian liberty. One reminiscence or two from non- Catholic authors will enable the reader to go back from effects to causes, and thus to see who are to be held responsible for the shock- ing events that remain to be mentioned. The English-speaking world has seen and heard the ex-monk Gavazzi, who has left a track of blood even on the tolerant soil of our own free America. New Yorkers, moreover, will recall to mind hoTT Archbishop Bedini was hunted from cover to cover by the con- federates of Ugo Bassi, another ex-monk, associated with Gavazzi in his missionary (!) labors in the papal army and among the citizens of Bologna and Rome. Of poor Bassi, who died most repentant, we do not wish to utter one word of censure ; we merely chronicle here what is attested by unimpeachable witnesses. While the troops under Ferrari and Durando were occupying im- portant positions in front of the Austrian lines, Farini was sent, as ** War of the King'' and *' War of the People!' 2o5 related above, to negotiate with the king of Piedmont. The papal troops were in daily conflict with the outposts, and Farini yisited the camp, as well to see how discipline was maintained as to express his sympathy with the wounded. On the evening of the 6th of May, when he and other civilians visited the camp, . . . the emissa- ries of the Milanese circoli ("circles" of Mazzinians) were there for a different purpose, and were busily exerting themselves to under- mine the confidence of the soldiers in their commanders, and shake their loyalty to their sovereign. . . . Two days later we find that the very existence of Durando's army was endangered by agents of a similar description, amongst whom were Fathers Gavazzi and Bassi, zealous preachers of sedition and active subverters of disci- pline and subordination.* *'That talk about ^the king's war,' which we have seen marring the harmony, and eventually demoralizing and working disruption in the ranks of the Roman volunteers, was not confined to the camp. In Rome, already, the man whose honor and military reputation were unimpeachable, who had received the command of a disorgan- ized body of volunteers, had been outraged and calumniated because, forsooth, he had failed with such material to accomplish prodigies impossible to an army of veterans ! This man was dragged to judg- ment before the clubs, which raised their voices, but never a finger, in that sacred cause of liberty for which he had shed his blood. The intelligence, therefore, of the surrender of Vicenza, whilst it plunged the city into the profoundest grief, furnished also an occa- sion for the exhibition of the rage and malevolence of these prating idiots, those real traitors to the cause of Italy, who confounded patriotism with self-love, and their own miserable Utopias with the freedom and greatness of their country. No stigma was too odious with these visionaries wherewith to brand the man who presumed to think of constituting Italy upon any other principle than that which they approved, and in which they or their leaders, whom, in spite of their vaunted independence, they followed with abject servility, should play a conspicuous part. The cry of ' traitor ' was perpetual- ly upon their lips. . . . ' The war of kings has terminated,' cried these visionaries, 'that of the people is about to commence ! ' They talked loudly of repudiating the terms of the capitulation, and their representatives in parliament, of whom Sterbini and Oanino were * Wrightson, " History of Modern Italy." 2o6 Life of Pope Pius IX. chief, abused the freedom of debate in coarse innuendoes against the Pope, who had styled their enterprise * an unjust and hurtful war,' in violent complaints of Durando, and in stimulating the deputies to vote larger supplies for the continuance of the war which the Pope had censured." * Mamiani's sole purpose during his tenure of office was to deprive churchmen of every external function which did not strictly belong to their spiritual ministry ; even the Pope, according to him, should give up to his lay ministers and to the constituted bodies every part of his sovereign power not essentially connected with the govern- ment of the Church. It was difficult to see how he could be really a sovereign and be thus stripped of all the prerogatives and functions of sovereignty. But Pius IX. , how much soever he could conceive that in a lay government a king might so administer through others, deemed such a state of things absolutely incompatible with the essentially dual nature of his sovereignty as ruler of the Koman States. Mamiani in his famous *' programme" had said of the Pope, "he dispenses to the world the word of God, prays, blesses, and pardons." While discussing this proposition with a minister forced upon him by mob violence, he reminded Mamiani that the new constitution was the spontaneous creation of his own sovereign will. **It is likewise tlie duty of the Pope," he declared, " to bind and to loose. If, so far as he is a sovereign, he calls into existence the two councils to co-operate with him for the purpose of protecting and promoting the public welfare or his States, yet, inasmuch as he is priest as well as prince, he needs that fullness of liberty, which may permit his priestly action to be effective. This fullness of liberty shall be his while the constitution and the law on the council of ministers, granted freely by me, remain inviolate." This fundamental statute reserved exclusively to the Pope the power of making war and peace ; and if to the functions enumerated by Mamiani the Pope had consented to add, *'and he cannot make war or peace," he would have been satisfied. But the clubs would not. On July the 17th a messenger arrived from the Legations an- nouncing til at General Prince Lichtenstein had entered Ferrara on the 14th. The Austrians, assuredly, were not to be too severely cen- sured for this invasion of the Roman territory, seeing that in spito of the soyereign pontiff's protestations, his generals and army had • Legge, li. 8, 4. Plus IX. wishes to Reform Penitentiaries, 207 been real belligerents, and could be so considered still, as peace had not been concluded. The Pope remonstrated, but in vain ; and the note sent to the European courts by his Secretary of State, Cardinal Soglia, produced no effect. On July the 19th a petition was presented to both chambers de- manding the instant arming of the people ; and, without waiting for an answer, the multitude, joined by the civic guard, rushed for arms to the Castle of Sant' Angelo. The chamber of deputies waited upon the Pope on August the 1st, with an address containing all the de- mands of the mob. On the 3d, the Austrians after having van- quished Charles Albert at Custozza, re-entered the Legations, but were driven out of Bologna by the armed citizens. The Pope sent the authorities the order to *'do all that is requisite to save the country and keep inviolate its sacred borders." Every effort of the pontiff to form a regular government failed till September the 16th, when a new ministry was announced under the leadership of Eossi. At Bologna and in the provinces the name of the new premier was hailed with favor ; but in Rome nothing could reconcile the clubs to a representative of constitutional monarchy and the advocate of a confederated Italy. It was about this time, that the fatherly heart of the pontiff, un- chilled by the ingratitude of his own subjects, unwearied by the many labors of love undertaken all in vain for his people and their common country, unfaltering in its purpose in spite of the isolation in which he was left by European governments, and undismayed by the men- acing attitude of Young Italy, conceived some of his most magnifi- cent schemes of benevolence and patriotism. Among these was the reform of the penitentiaries. The troubles of the last two years had increased enormously the proportion of crime and the number of criminals condemned to forced labor and imprisonment. He wished to lighten their penalty and bene- fit them morally by introducing the most perfect reforms adopted elsewhere. A special commission was sent for that purpose into foreign countries. And though frustrated in his design by the catastrophe that was so near at hand, he resumed his merciful task after his return from exile. The words '^ confederated Italy" have just been mentioned, and these should ever bring back to the student of history the name of Pius IX. in connection with one of the noblest undertakings ever conceived by patriot or statesman. 2o8 Life of Pope Pius IX. Gioberti had now a seat in the Piedmontese cabinet, and Rossi deemed, as well as his sovereign, that the time was favorable for pressing on the Italian courts the necessity of a federal national league. Antonio Rosmini was sent to Rome from Turin ; but sud- denly, there was a change of ministry in the latter city, and Rosmini was instructed to submit a project of a simple league for offensive and defensive purposes, without any organic federal bond. This Rosmini would not advocate, nor would the Pope entertain the proposition. He desired that Italy should form a nation bound together by or- ganic ties. It was the second time that the king of Piedmont had sacrificed this admirable project to the selfish policy of his own family. The report was industriously circulated, nevertheless, that Pius IX. had caused the scheme to fall through ; it was equally the in- terest of the Piedmontese to shift the responsibility from themselves, and that of the Roman agitators to fix it on the Pope. Rossi manfully defended the latter in the Roman Gazette of the 4th November. "In our number of September 18, we stated to our readers that the formation of the political league among the consti- tutional monarchies of Italy was ever the anxious desire of the papal government, and that we had a lively hope of seeing this great idea, of which Pius IX. had been the spontaneous author and was the con- stant promoter, soon brought into action. Still we concluded with the wish (and it was too plain that the wish was not unmixed with fear) that we might not here, too, find human passions and private interests thwarting a sacred work, and rendering the pure patriotism which inspired it of none effect. . . . Obstacles are encountered in the very quarter where, according to all reason, ready consent and earnest co-operation ought to have been found. It is there too — so unhappy are our times — that sharp words of accusation are heard against the pontiff, as if he no longer wished for the league which he was the first to imagine and to broach. And why these changes ? The answer is simple, and it is this : that the pontiff who initiated the league has not blindly followed the Piedmontese project." And elsewhere: "If we be really consulting for Italy more than anything else, it would be a more sound, sincere, and patriotic de- sign first to knit firmly the league, and meantime to leave to the contracting States leisure solidly to reconstitute their armies. "The papal project is most simple in plan ; it may be summed up in a few words. * There is a political league among the constitu- tional and independent monarchies of Italy adhering to the conven- Defended by Rossi, 209 tion. Plenipotentiaries of each independent State shall assemble at Rome without delay, in a preliminary congress, to deliberate upon the common interests, and to lay down the organic covenants of the league.' "A thing done cannot be undone. '* By this direct and plain course the goal may be reached. By any other, our distance from it must go on increasing. Italy, al- ready the victim of so many errors, would have to lament one more. "In fine, Pius IX. does not swerve from his lofty idea, anxious now as heretofore to make effectual provision, by the Italian political league, for the security, dignity, and prosperity of Italy and of its constitutional monarchies."* It must not be imagined for a moment that Pius IX., while thus bestowing his care on what he conceived to be the surest and speedi- est means of benefiting Italy, was unaware of the treacherous designs of the Piedmontese politicians, or blind, in any sense, to the extreme revolutionary measures which the Mazzinians were ripening in Rome against his government and his person. He was perfectly aware that the conspirators had undermined the very ground beneath him and that their train was carefully laid, and the moment of explosion determined in their own councils. Yet he trod the earth with as firm a step and serene a mind as if he were con- scious of no danger. It was this sublime courage that won him the admiration of his lay ministers as well as of the Sacred College. ''We, amid all these calamities," he would say to a deputation from the Council of State, ''pray more fervently to the divine majesty, beseeching him to preserve Italy from every misfortune, to enlighten her sons as to their true interests, and to cause to spring forth on her favored soil religion and peace, the only sources of real felicity." To another deputation asking him to invoke French intervention : "You speak of calling in foreign armies ; but such a measure, were it desirable or politic, requires consideration and time. And then again you say that the perils which threaten us are such as to admit of no delay. I trust to that providence which overrules all human designs, not to leave the State and all Italy without sufficient re- sou.rces in this extremity. For God disposes of means unknown to us, and which we must expect with confidence and accept with wor- shipful gratitude." * Farini, vol. ii., p. 384. 2IO Life of Pope Pius IX, To those who were not ashamed to reproach him with his child- like trust in the efficacy of his first reform measures, and his un- reasoning confidence in *'the people's" gratitude, he would reply good-naturedly that he was like unwise and doting parents, who make over their goods to their children before death, and are turned out of house and home in their old age. But there was a more apt illustration which he used to explain the difficulties of his position with respect to the clubs and Eadicals, to whom the Amnesty and the Fundamental Statute had given such unlimited power for evil. *^I am like the little shepherd-boy of the Abruzzi, who had for companion a great necromancer. The boy had seen him again and again call up the devil amid the solitude and silence of the night, and had learned the formula of incanta- tion. So he too one night tried the power of the spell. The evil one arose at his call, and the frightened child would fain have got rid of him. He had not, however, learned the spell that could lay the fiend, who thenceforward haunted and tormented him." CHAPTER XVIII. Rossi Prime Mii^^ister — He Bridles Akarchy — Devotes him- self WITH THE Pope to Reform — Fikais^ces, Telegraphs, Railways — Meeting of Cojs^spirators at Turiit — Rossi AYari^ed — Traikii^g of the Assassins — Rossi's Heroic Fortitude — The Assassination. September-November, 1848. WHEN" it was announced in Bologna that Count Rossi had undertaken to administer the government, there was great rejoicing among all the citizens, the rabble of refugees and vaga- bonds together with the clubs alone manifesting a sullen disappoint- ment. There was good reason both for the joy of one class and the wrath of the other. After the expulsion of the Austrians on August the 8th, "the re- spectable citizens had laid aside their arms and resumed their ac- customed avocations. But Bologna had become a sink into which all the rascality of Italy was confluent." " Those were the days," says Earini, ''in which mad discord brandished her torch over wretched Italy, in which Mazzini's republicans heaped vituperation on the head of the worsted Charles Albert, and paraded everywhere tlie phantom of treachery with such glee and wantonness. . . . They tried to induce Genoa to rise, and also Leghorn ; they in- flamed the public mind against all things and all governments, shouting. The People I the People ! Oover7iment ly the People ! War ly the People I They intoxicated the young, deluded the sim- ple, took the discontented into their ranks, and the desperadoes into their pay. . . . The condition of Bologna furnished matter to experiment upon. Leaders, speakers, soldiers of fortune, rushed thither and inflamed the blood, the bile, the lust, the vengeance of the armed multitudes ; they fomented all the noise, all the disorder, and all the anarchy." -The city all through the month of August was in the hands of 211 212 Life of Pope Pius IX, this sangninar}^ crowd, who pillaged and murdered indiscriminately till the govemment sent thither Cardinal Amat as commissioner of the four legations, and Signor Farini, the minister of the interior, for the purpose of quelling this awful anarchy. Farini arrived secretly on September the 2d. "The bad had increased and were still increasing," he wrote, "in the streets and open places of the city ; for two days the brigands had been slaughtering every man his enemy among the government officers. ... If the fallen gave signs of life, they reloaded their arms in the sight of the people and the soldiers, ... or else put an end to their victims with their knives. They hunted men down like wild beasts. . . . The corpses — a frightful spectacle — remained in the public streets. I saw it — saw death dealt about, and the abominable chase. . . . The citizens skulked ; the few soldiers of the line either mixed with the insurgents or were wholly without spirit, . . . the volun- teer legions and free corps a support to the rioters and not to the govemment." It was remembered by the oppressed citizens that the restoration of order was due to the energy of the Moderate Liberals, whose leaders were Farini and Kossi ; but the clubs, the volunteer and free corps did not forget, and were biding their opportunity for re- venge. No sooner had Rossi accepted a position in the ministry than he was unanimously elected deputy of the city of Bologna. General Zucchi, then minister of war, was sent a little later to repress a new outbreak of disorder threatened by the appearance of Garibaldi, the intrigues of Young Italy, and the inflammatory harangues of Gavazzi, who was exciting the masses to rise for the "people's war." This firebrand, who had been the main instrument of the agitators in Leghorn and all through Tuscany, was arrested by Zucchi and sent to Rome, where he became the idol of the rabble and shared with Ciceruacchio the leadership of the mob in all the scenes of blood and sacrilege that disgraced the Eternal City. "The 'war of the people' proclaimed by Mazzini had com- menced. With the instinct of the statesman Rossi perceived its tendencies, and determined, in Rome at least, to bridle those anar- chical proclivities which threatened to subvert the government, to perpetuate discord, and to rivet more effectually the chains by which Austria held Italy in bondage. The task was fraught wilh peril, but ho resolved with energy and firmness to assert the cause of Rossi Devotes himself to the Popes Reforms, 213 constitutional freedom against the dictation of the clubs ; whilst he proclaimed the necessity for a pacific and temporizing policy for the advancement of the cause of national unity and independence, which the much-vaunted 'war of the people' threatened to im- pede."* In the cabinet of which he was the chief, Rossi had for associates Cardinal Soglia, as secretary of foreign affairs ; Cardinal Vizzardelli, minister of public instruction; Signer Cicognani, minister of jus- tice ; Signor Eignano, minister of public works ; Signor Montanari, minister of commerce, Eossi himself being minister of the interior and of finance. Cardinal Antonelli was made governor of the pon- tifical palaces, with apartments in the Quirinal. The new ministry was looked upon with detestation by the Eadi- cals, if for no other reason, because the ministry of police had been abolished and incorporated with that of the interior, thus depriving that double-died traitor, Galletti, of a position and authority he had held so long and perverted to the very worst purposes. It was not looked upon with favor by the extreme Conservatives, who con- sidered Eossi to be a more dangerous man than an avowed Eadical. But Pius IX. had, by long intercourse, discovered in Eossi quali- ties of head and heart which compensated and corrected the aberra- tions derived from early education and the constant contact with the skepticism of Geneva and Paris. The prime minister, on his side, had a deep and sincere admiration for Pius IX., whose genius, patriotism, and heroic self-denial he thoroughly appreciated. He could only blame him for his unwillingness to declare war against Austria, and to lead in person the crusade in favor of Italian in- dependence. But he lived long enough to understand that the supreme pontiff could not do what other sovereigns had a right to do, that his principality was a peaceful one, in war against none and under the protection of all. Of weakness, of inconsistency, Eossi never accused him, for he knew him to be utterly unselfish, and guided in all things by conscience and highest principle. "With his whole heart and soul Eossi threw himself into the labor of making constitutional government a success in the Papal States, where success was rendered most difficult by the mixed nature of the government. He set about retrieving the finances, disordered, as we have seen, by the invasions of the French, and the troubles * Legge, ii. 52, 53. ■214 Life of Pope Pius IX. that ensued, and still more disordered by the expenses of the late war. The Pope gave him cordial aid ; and no less hearty was the co-operation of the Sacred College, the religions orders, and the beneficed clergy. The spontaneous offers of the latter were so generous that a single year of peaceful administration, together with the development of industry and commerce, must have restored the credit of the pontifical treasury. But Rossi's was an enlight- ened economy. He knew that the telegraph and the railway were among the most powerful instruments of trade, as well as the most needful means of civil and military administration. Telegraphic lines were immediately established, and two main lines of railway — one from Rome to Ancona, Bologna, and Ferrara, the other from Rome to Civita Vecchia — were at once placed in the hands of com- petent corporations, aided by all the means the government could command. All these and other projected improvements the indefatigable min- ister explained in the Roman Gazette of October the 2d. "May it please God," the minister said in concluding, "that our hopes be not baffled by criminal passions, wild impulses, and the unpardonable blunders which have too often baffled other reasonable and splendid hopes !" Gioberti had summoned a national conference to meet in Turin, to consider the questions relating to the national independence and unity. Prince Can in o and Sterbini, the leaders and the disgrace of the Roman democracy, had gone thither, apparently to meet the represen- tative men of Italy, in reality to further their own selfish and nefari- ous designs, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Canine's cousin and for- mer co-rebel, had just been elected to the French national assembly through the influence of the French Radicals, and Canino, who only used his ultra-Radicalism in the Roman chambers as a cloak to cover more ambitious purposes, had met in Turin special messengers from the man soon to be president of the French republic. The one point on which the Radical leaders who had gone to Turin agreed was, that Italy should have but one constituent assem- bly, and that to effect its immediate convocation all opponents and obstacles should at once be swept away by "the people." Sterbini and Canino returned by the way of Genoa, Leghorn, and Florence, concerting with "the party of action" in these cities the steps by which the Roman government should be forthwith taken out of the hands of the monarchists. From Leghorn information was sent to Rossi Warned, 2i5 Rossi that a sedition would surely break out in Rome on Noyember the 15tli, the day appointed for the meeting of the chambers. This intel- ligence was confirmed by what occurred after • the arrival of the two demagogues in the capital. They painted in the most glowing colors the glories of the democratic goyernment established m Tuscany by Guerazzi and Montanelli, exalted the genius of the latter, who had been the first to propose a single constituent assembly for all Italy, denounced the project of a confederated Italy as the dream of the Pope's absolutist brain, sought to be realized by Rossi, the tool of Louis Philippe and Guizot and the apostle of monarchism and the right diyine of priestly goyernment. The yery soil of Rome during these memorable days shook like the ground in the yicinity of the huge geysers of the Yellowstone Valley when the seething waters beneath are about to rush into mid- air : the atmosphere itself was pregnant with the intolerable mystery of coming eyil. Much more than Bologna, in early August the capital "had be- come a sink into which all the rascality of Italy was confluent." There were 20,000 armed men — soldiers of the line or carabineers, ciyic guards, and returned yolunteers — eyery one of whom, officers and men, had been tampered with and brought oyer to the designs and passions of the reyolutionists. Had the Pope gone about the streets of Rome on foot, and obseryant of the sights and sounds around him by day or by night, he must haye heard the hoarse mutterings of this seething mass of eyil passion and breathed in the yery air the odor that foreboded blood and reyolution. The true-hearted Castellani, the Venetian enyoy in Rome, had written to his goyernment as early as September : "Eyery one talks of the republican plot, its heads are pointed out, and just so much is known about it as suffices to magnify both fear and hope." Just as the 15th of Noyember was drawing nigh, a rumor was most in- dustriously circulated in the streets and public-houses, to the effect that Rossi had bound the goyernment by treaty to deliyer up to the king of Naples all the Neapolitan refugees in Rome ; it was said that the courier bearing the treaty had been intercepted, and that already some of the persons implicated had been arrested. Rossi, who yv^as abundantly warned of all these seditious rumors and plots, was not disturbed by them. He had resolyed that parlia- ment should meet on the day appointed, and that he should open it in the name of the soyereign. Determined as he was to quell eyery 2 1 6 Life of Pope Pius IX, attempt at disturbance, he held a review of the carabineers on the 14th, on the piazza in front of St. Peter's, and made the troops march through the principal streets of Rome. He little suspected that not one man of them all could be trusted. On the same day he published an admirable article in the Gazette, setting forth the policy of the administration and deprecating the fanaticism which would seek to return to the impossible past, as well as that which would destroy all existing institutions to realize an equally im- possible future. The Contemporaneo of that same day, howeyer, contained from Sterbini's murderous pen articles which were singularly clear-spoken about what was to happen on the morrow. " Rossi is commissioned," he wrote, "to make the experiment in Rome of the Metternichs and the Guizots. . . . Amidst the laughter and the contempt of the people he will fall ; but this does not absolve us, after having called him the betrayer of the cause of Italy, from calling him also the betrayer of the sovereign who has raised him to his place." What remains to be told is so horrible, such a commentary on the results of civilization in a city once the capital of the civilized world, and for eighteen centuries the residence of the chief bishop of the Christian Church, that a Catholic pen would refuse to chronicle it, or a Catholic historian would expose himself to the suspicion of enormous exaggeration, were it not that every detail here offered to the reader is carefully gleaned from Protestant authors. There was a conspiracy, then, to murder a man whose only guilt was an intense devotion to Italy, the life-long endeavor to serve her as his conscience led him, the firm purpose to overcome by sheer zeal and intelligent effort every obstacle toward her peace and gi'cat- ness, and a sincere loyalty toward the pontiff-king. The conspira- tors had resolved to slay that man not in the darkness of night, but at noon-day, beneath the gaze of the soldiers of the nation and the chosen representatives of the nation, and at the very moment when he was fulfilling one of the most solemn public duties as prime min- ister of the constitutional government he had himself labored so lov- ingly to create. They had chosen by lot three of their number to be the executors of the murderous deed, and lest one chance of life should remain to their victim, these three were to be aided or abetted by a select host of volunteers and practiced cutthroats, who should hem the victim in and close up every avenue to escape or assistance. But 'Hhe The Assassination, 217 three" were to be schooled to make sure and short work of it. One especially, Sante Constantadini, honored as the man best fitted by supremacy in crime, and skill in the practice of assassination, to strike the fatal blow, '^had been instructed by a surgeon where to strike so as to diyide the great artery of the neck. To make sure of his victim the assassin had carefully practiced on a model ; hideous to relate that model Avas a fellow-countryman, who had perished at the hand of a frenzied political assassin." * "Do not go to the council hall; death waits you there!" was the message sent to Eossi that very night by a French lady, the Countess de Menon. '^ Do not leave your own house or you shall be murdered ! " wrote the Duchess di Eignano. But Eossi busied himself during the spare leisure moments of the night in preparing his address to the chambers — a masterpiece of political wisdom, the promise and pledge of the great things which Pius IX. and himself meditated for Italian freedom and greatness. Other warnings came to him in the morning ; but the high-souled minister heeded them not, and, as noon drew near, he .drove to the Quirinal to take the commands of his sovereign. The Pope had also been warned and threatened ; and his gentle soul recoiled with horror from the thought of exposing a life so precious as that of his faithful servant. "At least," the Holy Pather said, "do not be rash or expose yourself needlessly ; you must spare our enemies a great crime, and me a sorrow that nothing could remedy." "I have no fear," was the answer, "these men are cowards and will not dare to execute their threats. Only bless me, most Holy Father, and all shall be well." And kneeling with deep emotion he received the pontifical blessing, kissed the fatherly hand, bowed himself out, and went on his way. As he was about to leave the palace Monsignor Morini gave him a last warning. " I defend the cause of the Pope," was the calm and firm reply; "and the cause of the Pope is the cause of Grod. I must and will go." The vast palace of the Cancelleria, on one side of the Campo di^ More, the great market-place of Eome, had been assigned for the meetings of the Eoman parliament. "A battalion of the civic guard was drawn up in the square. The government thought it needful to take no other precaution. ... In the court-yard crowds, com- *Legge, vol. ii., p. 67, where lie abridges from Alison and Cochrane. Wo follow him principally in this narrative of Rossi's death. 2 1 8 Life of Pope Pius IX. posed of all classes of tlie people, were assembled, eager, anxious, and impatient. FeAV amongst the thousands who there jostled one ano- ther could give an intelligent reason wherefore they had assem- bled. . . . True, the agitators of the clubs had exhorted them to assemble ; but wherefore ? . . . Conspicuous among the crowd were men with savage countenances armed with daggers, who, by their dress and the medals with which Kossi had decorated them, were recognized as volunteers who had returned from Vicenza. They stood well together, forming a line from the gate of the palace to the staircase. . . . The ferocious but suppressed impreca- tions which ever and anon they were heard to utter, quickened the already fevered excitement of the spectators. . . . "At a quarter-past twelve Rossi's carriage entered the court-yard. The minister was greeted with a volley of hisses, and the excitement was intensified by a cry for help emanating from the gallery. The at- tention of the guard was thus arrested at the moment when Eossi and Righetti, the deputy minister of finance, alighted from the carriage which they jointly occupied. With a quick and steady step, and an impassive countenance, Rossi advanced, disregarding a terrific howl raised by the volunteers, and echoed by a thousand voices. . . . "Before Righetti had descended from the carriage, Rossi was sur- rounded by the foul-mouthed wretches who had thus greeted him. . . . The ruse of the feigned cry for help from the gallery was perceived, and at the same instant was seen the flash of a poniard. Rossi staggered and fell ; Righetti rushed forward to the support of his chief, raised him in his arms, and exposed to view a gaping wound in the neck, from which the blood spirted copiously. The djring man looked around him, but was unable to articulate a word ; and the sight upon which his eyes closed was a savage look of triumph upon the faces of those fiends in the uniform of the volunteers, who pressed around him, enabling the assassin to walk off unmolested. The dying minister was carried to the apartments of Cardinal Guz- zoli, where, after a few minutes, he breathed his last." * That heroic soul did not pass to the judgment-seat before a priest from the neighboring church of San Lorenzo e Damaso had ministered to it the last sacraments of the dying. The courageous Righetti then drove through the demon crowd in the court-yard and the Piazza straight to the Quirinal to inform the sovereign pontiff, and to adopt ♦ Legge. Fiendish Triumph of the Assassins, 2 1 9 sucli immediate measures of precaution as the terrible emergency de- manded. He was covered with the blood of his friend when he arriyed in the presence. Pius IX. was speechless with grief and horror. It was some time before he could master his emotion, and all his at- tendants were equally horror-struck. **It is the death of a martyr !" he at length said, struggling with his grief. "May God receive his soul to rest ! " His next thought was to send a message of fatherly sympathy to the Countess Kossi, who had spent the morning in agony ; for she, too, with a woman's keen sense of danger to her loved ones, had forebodings of the tragedy, but was too worthy of her hus- band to prevent him from doing his duty. The shouts from the street had reached her before the arrival of the pontifical messenger. Hastening to the Cancelleria she found him a corpse to whose varying fortunes she had long ago wedded her young life. The officers and prelates who beheld the bereaved widow prostrate beside the man she idolized, were melted into tears. But even then there was just apprehension lost the murderous crowd should profane the remains of the dead and outrage the sacred feel- ings of the living. The Franciscan Father Vaures, who was much attached to Eossi, conveyed the body secretly and speedily to the neighboring church of San Lorenzo. It was embalmed without a moment's delay and buried that very night, while all Eome, or what was still pure and manly in Eome, was compelled to assist at the "devils' dance " held by the successors of the men who fought under Cincin- natus. The grave so hurriedly opened had not closed over the illus- trious dead, when the fiends who had shed his blood passed in tri- umph before her door bearing aloft the blood-stained assassin with his knife, shouting blessings on the hand that did the deed, and curses on the victim, and compelling his family to illuminate their house in honor of the event. When it was granted the pontiff to enjoy a few years of troubled repose between the reign of blood thus ushered in and the final tri- umph of Piedmontism, he compelled Eome to witness what repara- tion he could make to justice, innocence, and patriotism, immolated in Pellegrino Eossi. Solemn obsequies were performed, and a suita- ble but modest monument erected over his grave. The brief but pregnant inscription preserves his last words, with the mention of the hellish conspiracy that cut short his life. 220 Life of Pope Pius IX, Optimam miJii causam tuendam assumpsi, 3Iiserehitur Deus, CI have undertaken to defend the best of causes ; God will look with mercy on me.") And, Impiorum consilio meditata eoide occuluit, ("He fell by a conspiracy of the wicked, the yictim of a premedi- tated assassination.") For six years, until May, 1854, the murderer was at large. The republic of Garibaldi and Mazzini never attempted to bring him to justice. They knew him well, and would have rewarded him, had they dared to be consistent with themselves. In the published works of Mazzini there occur but these words in connection with this foul deed : "Pass by the assassination of Rossi." Posterity is not likely to pass it by without holding, some day, a solemn judicial inquiry on the prime movers in this dark conspiracy ; it shall then be made known why Mazzini bade "his posterity" pass by that grave and that victim. CHAPTER XIX. Eclipse of Romah Manhood — Soldieks Fkateenizing with As- sassins — Evil Eminence of Steebini and Oanino — Pius IX. KEORGANIZING THE GOVERNMENT — ThE INSURRECTION beforehand with him — istoble conduct of diplomatic Body — Courage of Antonelli and the Swiss Guard — The Quirinal Attacked — The Pope yields under Pro- test — Action of the Roman Chambers— The Swiss Guard Disarmed — The Pope resolves to leave Rome — Noble Letter of the Venetian Castellani. ROME had been dishonored by a deed as cowardly as any of those for which manhood ever blushed. How fared it with the con- stitutional bodies assembled within her walls, and with the ancient nobility, created and protected and enriched by her long line of pon- tiffs ? What mark of devotion did they show, in his dire extremity, to their living representative, the generous, the liberal, the large- minded, the advocate and promoter of Italy's aggrandisement and of his people's progress ? The Chamber of Deputies was in full attendance at the very mo- ment the crime was consummated ; it were idle now to deny that many if not most of its members were apprised beforehand of the pur- pose of the assassins. There was much confusion at the first shouts from the court-yard ; there was horror depicted on the faces of not a few when the death of the prime minister was whispered about. But the president, Sterbinetti, while the fiendish howls of triumph were still echoing in his ears, called the chamber to order, and bade the clerk call the roll. Not one deputy arose to question or to protest. "While the clerk was reading the members quitted the hall, some, it may be, through personal fear, others through curiosity. But not a single voice was raised to protest against the infamy of their chair- man, or the assassins who still thronged the door-steps. Not one man among these, the elect of the nation, rushed to the assistance of that illustrious man stricken down almost beneath their eyes. " It 221 2 2 2 Life of Pope Pius IX, was with diflBculty," says Legge, "that the servant of the murdered minister prevailed on any one among the crowd ... to assist him in removing the hody of his master." Sterbini, from his seat in the chamber, as he saw his colleagues leaving it, asked the worthy Sterbinetti : ''What is all this fuss about, Mr. President ? Continue the sitting. One would think that man was king of Eome ! " The members who did not belong to the Young Italy League heard, as they passed through the crowds in court-yard and street, muttered threats against themselves. Farini, who was a known friend of Eossi's, and an open advocate of his views of constitutional government, was particularly odious to the sanguinary multitude. ''In leaving the palace of the Cancelle- ria," he says, "one met some faces stark with an hellish joy, others pallid with alarm, many townspeople standing as if petrified, agita- tors running this way and that, carabineers the same ; one kind of men might be heard muttering imprecations on the assassin, but the generality faltered in doubtful and broken accents ; some, horrible to relate, cursed the murdered man. Yes, I have still before my eyes the livid countenance of one who, as he saw me, shouted, ' So fare the betrayers of the people ! ' " * The carabineers, incited by the example of their colonel, Calderari, fraternized with the volunteers and the murderers, mingling with the mob in the hideous procession after dark, "each soldier leaning on the arms of two of the townspeople, and helping to break open the prisons and let loose all their criminal inmates upon the commu- nity." Not one officer of those in command but lent himself to these orgies ; there is no instance on record of a single remonstrance even against this open repudiation of all military discipline and manly shame. General Zucchi, formerly minister of war, happened to be absent in Bologna, and there were no railways by which he could hasten to Rome. It was an irreparable misfortune : he was not the man to hold parley with sedition, or to hesitate in presence of danger. An officer of unshaken fidelity and unflinching courage in the place of the infamous Calderari would have rallied the carabineers to their duty, and swept that Roman rabble, that compound of mud and blood, from the city. Where were Prince Aldobrandini and General Durando ? * Quoted by Legge, ii. 69. Evil Eminence of Sterbhii and Cajiino, 223 But did not the senators, the magistrates, the nobles, who owed everything they were and everything they had to the Popes, did they not come to his aid during that dreadful day and night, and the more dreadful morrow ? No ! not one ! ^^All the great nobles," says Lsgge, '^ whether from cowardice or from the consciousness of their inability to stem the current, had retired to their estates." A noble Pole who was then in Eome stig- matized this open dereliction of duty and absence of all moral eleva- tion. "A princess," he wrote, "who has, habitually, much influ- ence over her sons, besought them on her knees, and besought them in vain, to pay the Holy Father a visit of condolence and sympa- thy. . . . All the ranks of society . . . showed them- selves on that day unworthy to possess in their midst the vicar of Christ. . . ."* Mamiani, who was certainly well aware of the existence of the conspiracy, if not thoroughly acquainted with its details, found it convenient to be absent on the 15th ; and it is no less singular than significant that, while the foreign ambassadors so nobly came to the assistance of the Holy Father and stood by him during these days of terror — the representatives of Piedmont and Great Britain were conspicuously absent. For, if Lord Minto sometimes found it convenient to put forward his confidential mission to Kome, he found it quite politic on the 15th of November and the two succeed- ing days to avoid the Quirinal and to court the Eoman mob and it leaders. Sterbini and the Prince of Oanino were foremost in the streets, the clubs, and the council chamber during these three days, inflaming the popular passion, praising the "majesty and might" of the peo- ple, and concentrating all minds and wills on one thought and one purpose — "one constituent assembly for all Italy" — which should meet immediately and proclaim the Italian republic. A speech de- livered on the 18th, resumes the unceasing declamations of that un- principled man. "I vindicate the rights of the Italian people, the true and legitimate sovereigns of this country. The constituent assembly of Italy will have to decide many questions which, in its wisdom, the people, the victorious people of Eome, has not thought fit to solve. . . . It is needless for me to address myself to de- veloping an idea — now, thank God, become that of all Italy — ^which * Rohrbaclier, Histoire de I'Eglise, 2 24 Life of Pope Pius IX, will know how to shiver both chambers and thrones, should they seek to fetter the generous and energetic impetus of this the first country in the world." ^^ Victorious people of Rome," indeed I and '^this the first coun- try in the world I " But let us see what that '^ victory " was, and how it was won. If the murder of an unarmed man at the very door of the halls of legis- lation be any part of that victory, the claim to it shall not be dis- puted. The sequel was not unworthy of such brave beginnings. When the first stupor caused by Rossi's death was over, Pius IX. did not lose a moment in reorganizing the government so as to face the crisis which stared them all in the face. Montanari, minister of commerce, was intrusted with the duty of forming a new administra- tion. Had Zucchi been in Rome he would have been the govern- ment. But Leutulus or Lenzuolo, Duke di Rignano, the head of the war department, was too deeply imbued with the policy of Mamiani, and too deep in the confidence of the plotters, to stand by his sover- eign to the death, or to risk all in braving the mob. Pius IX. had created the constituted bodies of Rome ; he resolved to behave like a constitutional sovereign and like a Pope in this ex- tremity. Come what might, he would trust himself and the peace of the city to the legally established authorities. The presidents of the upper and lower houses, together with Prince Corsini, president of the senate, were summoned to meet the Pope in council during the early morning. But morning was too late. Action should have been taken during the night, if they purposed being beforehand with insurrection. As it was, insurrection was beforehand with the sovereign and his counselors. The leaders had not slept when the rioters went home after their "devils' dance" and their pasans in honor of assassination and the dagger. They had made sure of the military and of every depot of arms and ammunition in Rome. With the dawn they were to be on foot, led by Sterbini and Oanino, demanding, in a voice that must be heard, a radical ministry and a constituent assembly for all Italy. The Pope should be compelled to sign his name to the call for a united republican Italy, With the dawn, therefore, and before the officials summoned to council could arrive, Lenzuolo di Rignano brought the information that " the people " were going to call on his Holiness with a pro- gramme of their own, and wished that the military authorities Noble Attitude of the Diplomatic Body, 22 5 sliould be allowed to join in the pacific demonstration. "VYhile tlie Pope was discussing his chances of successful resistance with a war minister in league with the mob, Prince Corsini and the presidents of both houses arrived in the Quirinal, and with them came, unbid- den, Sterbini. But a few moments before their entering the Quirinal the Pope had rejected a first ministry proposed to him under the leadership of Mamiani, and, having inquired of Eignano if the troops could be re- lied upon, was told that they only could in so far as they ^*were not ordered to act against the people." "The people" now faced him in the odious person of their most determined and brutal leader, Sterbini. Pius gave immediate orders to send out of Eome such of the aged cardinals and prelates as were most unpopular, and bethought him only of protecting from outrage and death his immediate servants and dependants. He felt instinctively that nothing would satisfy such men as Ster- bini and Canino, but the total abdication of his own sovereignty and the lending to their revolutionary projects the sanction of his su- preme religious authority. The latter nothing should compel him to do ; to any further political concessions he was determined to yield only by force and to save the lives of those around him. It soon came to that extremity. The most advanced Liberals, like Minghetti and Pasolini, were now as hateful to the Radicals as Rossi himself. They declined form- ing a ministry ; and no name seemed acceptable to the representa- tives of the clubs but that of Galletti. The very mention of the man filled Pius IX. with irrepressible repugnance. He was pre- vailed upon, however, to decline giving a decided answer till even- ing. Meanwhile the diplomatic corps, seeing the assemblage in the streets and the suspicious movements among the military, hastened by one common impulse of generosity to the Quirinal to protect the Holy Father, at the cost of their lives, if need were, against the sacrilegious violence but too plainly contemplated. It was none too soon when the representatives of France, Spain, Bavaria, Portugal, Brazil, Hol- land, and Russia reached the Quirinal.* * The names of this noble band of diplomats deserve to be mentioned here : The Duke d'Harcourt, representing France ; Count Spaur, Bavaria ; Martinez della Kosa, Spain, with his noble Secretary Gonzalez de Arnao ; Baron Venda-Cruz, with Commander Huston, Portugal; Figueiredo, Brazil ; Count Boutenieff, Rus 2 26 Life of Pope Pius IX, The insurgents had marched in serried ranks to the Cancelleria, where they were joined by all the republican deputies, and with these in their midst, as if the lawful representatives of the Eomaii people, they set out for the Quirinal. A select body of men marched in front of the deputies, serving as a guard of honor and bearing a large flag on which were inscribed the names of Galletti and Sterbini and the other members of the revolutionary ministry to be forced upon the Pope, and an inscription telling all who could read that the deputies there present were "the constituent assembly for Italy." *^ Arrived at the Quirinal," says Legge, "Galletti was the spokes- man of the mob, with whom were mingled the national guards in full uniform, but unarmed, the carabineers and the regular troops, amounting in all to some 20,000. Pius indignantly refused to treat with them. . . . Galletti in vain besought him to yield to tho popular wishes." Among the demands urged upon him by the lead- ers was an immediate declaration of war against Austria and the other oppressors of Italy. Mamiani was now present,* and this de- mand, pressed as it was upon the sovereign under every circumstance of threatened violence, could not but seem to him the culmination of Mamiani's former policy. He replied that what they asked of him was simply to abdicate ; but that he had no power to do so. The military commanders now added their entreaties to those of Galletti. Martinez della Kosa, the Spanish ambassador, unable to restrain his indignation, addressed himself to the spokesman of the insur- gents as they were about to withdraw. " Gentlemen," he said, "tell the leaders of this revolt, that if they persist in this odious pro- ject, they shall have to march over my dead body to reach the sacred person of the sovereign pontiff." . . . The Duke d'Harcourt, the French ambassador, indignant at the treachery of the military officers around Galletti, told them that their duty did not consist in being there to intimidate their sovereign, but in defending him against mob violence. The abashed but furious spokesmen went out to report their ill- success. "At these tidings," says Farini, " the tumultuous throng was maddened, and cried * to arms ! ' and in a moment the common- Bia ; Lledokerke, Holland. Panto, minister of Sardinia, was not there 1 Neither was the American minister. ♦Artaud. Courage of Antoiielli and the Swiss Guard. 227 alty, those who had come back from Yicenza, the ciyic guardsmen, the carabineers, the foot soldiers, run for arms and return to the Qui- rinah They surround it, press forward, try to get in, and, on re- sistance by the Swiss sentinels become more enraged, put fire to one of the gates, mount upon the roofs and bell-towers in the vicinity, begin to fire their pieces at the walls, gates, and windows ; when the Swiss fire in return." Of the Swiss troops in the pontifical service at the accession of Pius IX., only a single company remained at Eome as the Pope's special body-guard. They numbered a hundred men, under the com- mand of a colonel, and were part of a corps which had been admired by the Eoman troops themselves for the heroic bravery they displayed above all others in the defense of Vicenza against the Austrians. This little band, with a few soldiers of the I^oble Guards were the only defenders of the Quirinal and the sovereign pontiff, against 20,000 armed soldiers, aided by the entire populace. It was at this desperate juncture that Cardinal Antonelli displayed the indomitable courage in the defense of his sovereign and the lib- erty of the Holy See, which was to shine forth so brightly through the long dark years they had both to pass through together inseparably. He had every approach to the Quirinal barricaded in haste, the gates and doors secured, and posted his handful of Swiss to the best advan- tage. He expected from the mob led by Sterbini, Galletti, and Ca- nine only such scant mercy as had been shown to the prime minis- ter whose blood was still fresh on the streets of Eome. What gave most pain to Antonelli and his brother prelates present in the palace was, to see among the armed battalions which marched up to the Quirinal "with music and drums "the students of the university of the Sapienza, armed and led by the Prince of Canine. By some stratagem Leopold Meyer von Schauensee, the captain of the Swiss guard, was lured into a parley with the insurgents, seized and dragged to the cannon's mouth, for the purpose of blowing him to pieces and thereby of frightening his companions into surrender. As his captors were binding him to the cannon, " I know that piece," said the undaunted soldier, "it is the San Pietro. If you fire it, his- tory will record that on the 16th of November, 1848, you thereby l)ut to death an officer, who, with twenty-five grenadiers of his com- pany, retook that piece from the Austrians at Vicenza." * * Artaud, ** Lives of the Popes." 228 Life of Pope Pius IX. The cov7ards did not dare to carry out their purpose ; bu*: they re- tained the brave man prisoner, and his worthy companions were only steeled by their ignorance of his fate in their determination never to yield their sacred trust. Pius IX., while thus besieged by 20,000 men of his own troops, and all the cut-throats collected in Eome for that special occasion by the industry of Young Italy, was surrounded by the diplomatic body — who refused to quit him one instant — Cardinals Soglia and Antonelli, the secret chamberlains and officers of the palace. Father Vaures, and the Count de Malherbes. *' At this stage of the proceedings it was evident that the die was cast. From the back streets men emerged bearing aloft long lad- ders wherewith to scale the pontifical abode ; carts and wagons were dragged up and ranged within musket-shot of the windows to pro- tect the assailants ; . . . the cry was * to arms ! to arms ! ' and musketry began to bristle in the approaches from every direction ; fagots were produced and piled up against one of the condemned gates of the building, to which the mob was in the act of setting fire, when a brisk discharge of firelocks scattered the besiegers in that quarter. . . . ''The drums were now beating throughout the city, the disbanded groups of regular troops and carabineers reinforcing the hostile dis- play of assailants, and rendering it truly formidable. Random shots were aimed at the windows and duly responded to ; the outposts, one after another, taken by the people, the garrison within being too scanty to man the outworks. The belfry of San Carlino, which commands the structure, was occupied. From behind the equestrian statues of Castor and Pollux a group of sharpshooters plied their rifles, and about four o'clock Monsignor Palma (while standing at the window of his own apartment) was killed by a bullet penetrat- ing his forehead. "As if upwards of G,000 troops of all ranks were not considered enough to reduce the little garrison of a couple of dozen Swiss, two six- pounders now appeared on the scene, and were duly pointed against the main gate, and, a truce having been proclaimed, another depu- tation claimed entrance. . . . The deputation were bearers of the people's uUimatum, which was a reproduction of the five points before stated, and they now declared that they would allow liis Holi- ness one hour to consider; after which, if not adopted, they an- nounced their firm purpose to break into the Quirinal, and put to The Pope forced to grant a Radical Ministry, 229 death every inmate thereof, with the sole and single exception of his Holiness himself " * **The Poi)e, all this time/' writes the Duke d'Harcourt to his government, "showed much coolness and firmness; but as it was impossible to oppose resistance, and, besides, as he was less able and disposed than anybody to shed blood, it was necessary to do what- ever was demanded by his own troops, who besieged him in his palace." Of course, with the threat of massacring every man among his faithful defenders and servants hanging over his head — and it was no idle threat — the Pope had to yield. But, in presence of the diplomatic corps, he made his solemn protest : " Look where we stand : there is no hope in resistance ; already a prelate is slain in my very palace ; shots are aimed at it, artillery leveled. We are pressed and besieged by the insurgents. To avoid fruitless blood- shed and more heinous enormities, we give way, but, as you see, gentlemen, it is only to force ; so we protest. Let the courts, let the governments know it ; we give way to violence alone ; all we concede is invalid, is null, is void." A list of ministers was now proposed by the insurgents, but the Pope desired Cardinal Soglia to take charge of all further negotia- tions. Mamiani was named minister of foreign affairs; Galletti, minister of the interior ; Sterbini, minister of commerce ; Lunati, of finance ; Campello, of war, and Sereni, of justice. Pather Eosmini, then in Eome, was placed on the list as minister of public instruc- tion ; but, when informed of his nomination, he indignantly refused to have anything to do with the blood-stained Kadicals. The list was handed to the Pope for his signature. He per- emptorily refused, and the agitation began anew. Cries of "Sign ! sign ! " arose from the motley crowd who had now found their way into the audience-chamber, and a formidable clamor was heard out- side. Yielding to the suggestion of the statesmen near him, he signed the list, protesting once more that he did so under violence. Thereupon Galletti, with the list in his hand, proceeded to the balcony, and announced the Pope's submission to the insurgents. "The sovereign has given us a republic!" spread from rank to rank ; the armed men fired their muskets in the air and dispersed. Such was the "victory" proclaimed so boastingly by Prince • Correspondence of London Daily News, by Rev. Francis Mahony. 230 Life of Pope Pius IX. Canino. His name was not proposed as one of tlie democratic ministers, and tlie omission was long remembered against Mamiani as an unpardonable act of weakness. ^' On this Yery day," says Legge, " Cavour published an article m the^Bisorgiinento (Resurrection) of Turin, entitled * Eevolutionary Measures,' which, after dwelling on the dangers to which the spirit of revolution exposed Italy and Europe, he concluded with these prophetic words : ' One moment longer and we shall see, as a last result of these revolutionary proceedings, Louis Napoleon on the throne of France.' " The chambers met on the 18th : in the upper house, among all the princes and prelates nominated by Pius IX., not one had the manhood to raise his voice in condemnation of the crimes com- mitted during the last three days ; nay, they were not even alluded to in the proceedings ! In the Chamber of Deputies, however, to their undying honor be it said, "all the deputies from Bologna, and many others, declared that they would not sit in parliament, unless the brutal and cowardly murder was solemnly denounced, and the government petitioned to make an instant and thorough inquiry. Galletti assented, and was forward to declare that the government would testify to the council its indignation, and its determination to investigate and punish, but when, on the 20th, the council met, the ministers were mute. . . ." * Surely this silence could not surprise one so well acquainted with Italian men and affairs as the author who wrote the above sentences. None better than he knew, that in the council of ministers sat the men who had abetted the murder of Eossi, if they had not aided zealously in its consummation. On the 18th the club called the Circolo Popolare, founded and directed by Sterbini, and now the real governing power in Rome, demanded that the Swiss Guard "should be dismissed without their arms from the Quirinal." Galletti brought the proposition to the Pope, and he submitted. He was thenceforward guarded night and day by men who had sung hymns to Rossi's murderer, and had intended to murder every inmate of the Pope's own palace. "Again," says Farini, "the club desired that Galletti should be general of carabineers, and general he was. How could it be helped ? Where was authority ? Where the force that backs it ? * Legge, U. 80. The Pope Resolves to leave Rome, 231 The troops of all arms had either abetted or kept gala for the revolt. Kome was topsy-turvy ; assassination and rebellion were celebrated with triumph." The Duke d'Harcourt had concluded his account of the storming of the Quirinal on the 16th by the words : "The authority of the Pope is now absolutely null. It exists only in name, and none of his acts will be free and voluntary." The government of the universal church had, from the beginning of 1848, become exceedingly difficult ; it now became practically im- possible. Every department of government was in the hands of the revolutionists, the declared enemies not only of the Catholic Church but of Christianity itself. And, to any sagacious mind, it was quite evident that the Eadicals would not be long satisfied with the very faint shade of conservatism that tinged Mamiani's political profes- sion of faith. They wanted and would have a Eadical Italian re- public, without king or Pope, or any form of ecclesiasticism what- ever. Under these circumstances the Holy Father, who had thrown aside every illusion, and believed he could no longer benefit the So- man people by his stay, or could not seem to lend the sanction of his name to acts and usurpations for which he Avould be held responsible, acquiesced in the unanimous decision of the ambassadors of the Catholic powers that he should accept an asylum elsewhere. This determination he had already made known during the vio- lence done him in May and June. The revolutionists had not for- gotten it ; and they now watched his every word and movement with redoubled jealousy. It is certain that, on the very first sign of his intention to leave Rome, they would have murdered every one of his counselors. As it was, the ambassadors prepared everything warily for the execution of their purpose. It was the Pope's decision to go to Spain ; and a Spanish frigate was ordered to Civita Vecchia. But delays occurred, and it was found that numerous spies watched all the approaches to the Roman coast, and besides, suspicion began to be alive in Rome itself. The Duke d'Harcourt and Count Spaur, the Bavarian ambassador, took upon themselves to conduct with all possible secrecy and expedition the flight of the Holy Father to Gaeta, just beyond the Neapolitan frontier. Before entering on the detailed narrative of this event, it may re- pose the mind of the reader to contrast with the too-general pusilla- nimity of illustrious contemporary Italians in their conduct toward the Holy Father in his need, the beautiful letter of the Venetian, 232 Life of Pope Pius IX, CajBtellaiii. When Venice rose against Anstrian domination in the preceding March, her noble defender, Manin, hastened to invoke the Pope's blessing on the nnequal struggle he and his fellow- countrymen were beginning. Castellani was sent to Rome as the re- presentative of the ancient republic near the Holy See, and on the 27th of June, Pius IX., at his request, addre^ed with his own hand the following words to the Venetian government : *' May God give his blessing to Venice, and deliver her from the evils she fears, in such way as, in the infinite resources of his provi- dence, it shall to him seem good ! " With his whole heart and soul Pius IX. continued to sympathize with Manin and his heroic countrymen ; and his sending Monsignor Morichini to Vienna at the beginning of the war, was inspired by the hope of liberating Venice, or of securing her such autonomy as might lead to better things in the near future. Castellani had seen Pius too often, during his stay in Rome, and had learned to appreci- ate too well that heart so devoted to Italy not to look with horror on such men as Sterbini and GaUetti, and not to raise his voice as a sol- emn protest against the unnatural ingratitude of the Romans. This letter was written immediately after the enormities of November 16. " Most Holt Fatheb : — Amid the august sorrows with which the sacred i)erson of your Holiness is surrounded, I approach you, a sharer in all their bitterness, to place at your disposal my whole strength, whether for counsel or for action. As the representative of a people which has ever ble^ed your name, and of a government, which amidst the confusion of these times, has been mindful to combine the development of ecclesiastical rights with that of civil liberty, I am sure I hereby fulfill one of my most exalted duties. As an individual, I cherish in the depths of my soul the remembrance of the honorable reception vouchsafed me ; and I make bold to kneel at your feet, as a son who seeks to soothe the aflfliction of his father by showing the depth of his affection. " The Almighty, Most Holy Father, watches over his Vicar, and wills moreover the deliverance of Italy. His rigors, in your calam- ities and the misfortunes of our country, perhaps may cover mys- teries of profound mercy. Until these shall be accomplished may your pure spirit never desist, on account of present sufferings, from imitating him who spoke pardon from the very cross. " Afterward he rose again, and with him the world. We, too. Noble Letter of the Venetian ^ Castellani, 233 Most Holy Father, had a life of tears. Our city is become a spec- tacle both of glory and of desolation. Your affection spends itself in vain upon the brothers whose name and hopes we are defending ; and we are forgotten by those very Christians of whose faith in bar- barous ages we were the saviors. And Venice, despite all this, con- tinues to pray, to pardon, and to hope. . . . " Give us, Father of the faithful, your benediction, and may God accept my petition for the well-being of your person and the glory of your pontificate. '' G. B. Castellaih." It is the pure and touching glory which surrounds such names as those of Daniel Manin and Castellani that makes the cause of Italy so inexpressibly dear to Catholic hearts, in spite of the loathing in- spired by the mention of a Mazzini, a Sterbini, and a Oanino. I CHAPTER XX. How THE Flight was Plan^ned — Delays : Agoity of Couin:ESS Spaue — Ok THE Road to Gaeta — Reception of the Un- KKOWK at Gaeta — Coukt Spaur at Naples — King Fekdi- KAKD HASTENS TO GaETA. November 24r-26, 1848. THE negotiation of a marriage between the Prince Royal, Erancis, of Naples, with the Bavarian Princess Maria, daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph, afforded Count Spaur and his wife a pretext for making a hurried journey to Naples, and it was determined that the Pope in disguise should accompany them. The suggestion of this means of escape appears to have come from the countess her- self, and was agreed to by the ambassadors, who lent their aid to- ward its speedy execution. The French steamer Tenare was ordered to be in readiness at Civita Vecchia to take on board the Duke d'Harcourt. D'Harcourt was to take upon himself the perilous task of getting the Pope away from the Quirinal ; Count Spaur was to wait with his private carriage for the fugitive at a certain spot, in the deserted quarter beyond the Coliseum, beside the church of SS. Pietro e Mar- cellino ; and beyond Rome, near La Riccia, on the road to Albano, the countess, with her son and chaplain, was to have a coach and six swift horses in readiness. At dark on the evening of the 24th, the Duke d'Harcourt went in state to the Quirinal with outriders and torch-bearers, demanding an immediate audience of his Holiness, as if on most urgent business. Leaving his carriage and attendants at the foot of the staircase, he was ushered into the Pope's apartment, made himself sure that they should not bo overheard or interrupted, and seated himself at the Pope's table, perusing various papers as if deeply engaged in State business, the Pope meanwhile changing his dress in a neighboring room. The Cavalier Filippani, his old and faithful valet, who had 234 How the Flight was Planned, 235 followed him from Imola, aided in changing his apparel. The pon- tifical white cassock was laid aside, and the short cassock or capoche of a simple priest was put on ; and the blessed sacrament was taken from the private oratory in the little pyx, or silver-gilt box, used by Pius VI. during the whole period of his forced flight from Kome and his captivity. It had been restored to the Ninth Pius by the bishop of Valence but two days before, and now with its pre- cious contents was placed near the heart of this other fugitive, as a pledge of His present protection who Avatches over the Church and her pontiff. Over the cassock Filippani made his master put on a dark great-coat, and a broad woolen neckcloth outside his Roman collar ; a low-crowned hat completed this disguise. It was rapidly done. The Pope then returned to D'Harcourt, who threw himself on his knees with unfeigned emotion, and kissing again and again the hand extended in blessing and farewell, the true-hearted Frenchman said, "Go, Holy Father; God in his wis- dom inspires this step, and in his power he will bring it to a happy issue." Filippani wore his usual loose cloak, beneath which he concealed in a bundle the Pope's three-cornered hat and embroidered slippers, some secret and most valuable papers, the papal seals and breviary. He led the fugitive by a private passage terminating at a little door in a very obscure corner of the court-yard, before which a hack was stationed. On reaching this door, seldom or never opened, they found the key had been forgotten, and Filippani hastened back to the Pope's apartments to get it. D'Harcourt was startled and almost frightened by his apparition. But the key was soon found, and Filippani flew with it to the end of the little corridor, where the Pope was on his knees wrapt in adoration of the treasure which he bore with him. There was no little difficulty in opening the door : " the wards of the lock were rusty, and the key turned with difficulty." As they were about entering the coach the other trusty servant, who stood by the door, knelt according to custom, but rose to his feet at Filippani's sharp and whispered reprimand. Fortunately the place and the whole group were shrouded in darkness, and the numerous spies and sentries posted around had not observed the incident. Filippani from the interior of the coach directed the driver by out-of-the-way and unfrequented streets, till they had passed the lofty ruins of the Coli- seum, and near St. John Lateran, in the shadow of the strange-look- ing little church of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, found Count Spaur with 236 Life of Pope Pius IX, his chasseur, hoth armed to the teeth, and waiting impatiently for the appearance of the august pilgrim. Many delays had occurred ; and they had found it prudent to leave the hack behind at the entrance to the Via Lahicana, and to hasten on foot to the place of meeting. The Pope after a few words of greeting entered the carriage and bade farewell to Filippani, now overcome by the parting ; and away they drove, Count Spaur exhibiting at the neighboring gate of San Giovanni, the passport of the Bavarian minister going to Naples. There had been some miscalculation about time, or, rather, it was found impossible to act according to predetermined arrangements. Countess Spaur was to be at Albano from early morning on the 24th and to have a post-chaise in readiness there, the count promising to meet her punctually at three o'clock of the afternoon. We have seen that circumstances upset this arrangement. The Quirinal was so strictly guarded that they could not think of attempting to have the Pope leave by daylight. The poor lady meanwhile suffered unutterable agony. **We, who had been at Albano since morning," she says in her relation, '^passed our time in torture. I say *we,' because I was with my son and his tutor. Father Liebel. My soul had never been haunted by such frightful fancies. My poor boy, seeing me in a state that must have moved even strangers to pity, would come every now and then to ask me what was the cause of my affliction, urging me to tell him what it was that troubled me so deeply. Of course I could not allow a single word to fall from my lips that could betray the secret I had pledged myself to keep ; thus I had to dissemble with my son as I had with my dear father (in Eome). At length Max, who had gone into the church of Madonna della Stella to pray for his father and me, came back to me, beseeching me with tears in his eyes, to tell him what danger threatened his father and caused me sucli intolerable agony. I told him that the count had consented to take with him out of Rome a great personage, and that if he should fail in his purpose he would be very seriously compromised. I added, that I had known no rest, and could enjoy none, till I saw them both safe arkl sound. I concluded by exhorting him as well as his tutor — who, from my expressions, had concluded that I meant the Cardinal Secretary of State — to manifest no surprise when they recog- nized the fugitive, and to be careful to show no curiosity before him.* • Countess de Spaur, HClation du voyage de Pie IX. d Gaete, Paris, 1852. The Popes Escape : U Har court' s Agony, 237 At nine o'clock at nigiit, in the beautiful avenue of Ilexes, called ^ Galleria di Sotto (Lower Ayenue), leading from Albano to Castel Gandolfo, and where the lady had been waiting since morning, some one came to inform her that the count was expecting her at Lariccia, about a mile beyond Albano. It was very dark, and there were no lights in the carriage, in order to prevent the fugitive from being recognized. At Lariccia, the countess was startled to see her hus- band surrounded by military guards {gendarmes), and behind him a man in black leaning against the palisade by the roadside. She immediately addressed to the latter the words agreed upon : "Doc- tor, come into my carriage, come quickly 1 You have kept me wait- ing too long in the night air." One of the guards then opened the carriage door, let down the steps, and helped the doctor in, closing the door after him, bidding all a pleasant journey, and assuring them that the road was perfectly safe. The Pope sat beside the countess. Max and his tutor occupying the front seat ; the count and his chasseur jumped into the box be- hind, and the chamber-maid sat with the driver. Off the horses dashed at full speed, making the most of the precious hours of dark- ness. For two mortal hours the Duke d'Harcourt remained alone in the Pope's apartment at the Quirinal, using every device to Idll time, and allow the fugitives to get beyond danger. As he rose to leave, a prelate entered with a large mail and important papers to submit to his Holiness, then the private chaplain came to read the Breviary office with his master, and, finally, the Pope's simple supper was brought in. It was announced to the officer of the guard of honor that his Holiness had retired for the night, the guard thereupon was withdrawn, and all should have been ended without mishap, when some one of the domestic prelates not finding the Pope in his apart- ments, came rushing in exclaiming, " The Pope has gone ! the Pope has gone ! " Prince Gabrielli, who was in the secret, and was pre- sent to give countenance to the other actors in the plot, clapped his hand on the fool's mouth, saying in a whisper, "Not a word, mon- signor, or we shall all be murdered ! " D'Harcourt, on leaving the palace, took the road to Civita Vec- chia. As the post-chaise containing the Pope and his companions sped along the line of the old Appian Way, and across the Pontine Marshes over the admirable road constructed by Pius VI. before the 238 Life of Pope Pius IX, Trench republicans with Bonaparte came to arrest the improve- ments planned by pontifical generosity, how many sad thoughts must have come up unbidden in the soul of this other Pius, who had also formed so many magnificent plans for the material and social welfare of his people and of all Italy ? These same marshes, which all the patriotic genius of the ancient republic had in vain tried to drain, which had baffled the efforts of the mightiest and most en- lightened emperors, and defied the labors of the Gothic kings of Italy, as well as those of many a Pope, are still held up by ignorant or malevolent writers as one of the results of priestly rule in Eome ! Just as if the Mauvaises Terres of Nebraska, the soda plains along the Central Pacific Eailway, or the arid Colorado desert, were to be imputed to the Federal administration as one of the fruits of re- publican misrule ! But Pius IX., a fugitive across these pestilential plains, did, nevertheless, think how best he might continue the work of improvement, should Providence ever restore him to Eome. What he attempted and executed in pursuance of this resolve shall be told in its place. The generous fugitive had but little thought of personal comfort during that long night. The countess, whose nerves and courage had been sorely tried by the terrible events of the preceding week, and especially by those of the last twenty-four hours, was no sooner at a safe distance from the guards than she gave way to an uncon- trollable fit of weeping. Her veneration for the august head of the Church, whose many noble qualities she had nearly observed, led her to contrast his present helpless plight with what Catholic hearts would make him, and she burst forth into expressions of bitter grief. The good Pope consoled her with kind words and reflections, inspired by his trust in God's all-wise providence, and by the expression of his grateful appreciation of all she had done for his safety. Then they all recited together the rosary — sweet prayers to him who is father over all the children of men, and to whom Christ's vicar on earth lifts his voice in dependence and supplication like the lowliest in his wide flock, heart-cries to that loving mother who begat us all at the foot of the cross, and is never wearied beseeching for our need the tender mercy of her crucified love — and then there were psalms, breathing David's trust in him who is our rock and refuge, and prayers to the angelic spirits ever present to watch over the trav- eler, the fugitive, tlie exile, and the persecuted. And thus the night waned, and amid the darkness and the solitude a deep peace settled Reception of the Unknown at Gaeta, 239 on tlie wayfarers, and sleep came uninyited, but most welcome, to refresh the weary spirit of the pontiff. By ten o'clock on the morning of the 25th they reached the fron- tiers of Naples at Fondi ; and before noon they were at the Mola di Gaeta (now called Formia), six miles from Gaeta itself. At about a mile from the Mola the carriage was suddenly stopped and the door opened, when two gentlemen, bareheaded and deeply moved, seized each a hand of the Holy Father, kissing it again and again, and bedewing it with tears. They were the Cavalier Arnao, secretary of the Spanish legation, and Cardinal Antonelli. On see- ing the latter the Pope was also deeply moved. "I thank thee, my God! "he exclaimed, "for having preserved me my dear Cardinal Antonelli ! " It was a reunion between these two which death alone was to terminate ! On their arrival at the Mola Count Spaur started for Naples in the carriage of Senor Arnao, bearing to the king an autograph letter from his Holiness, and the latter proceeded without a moment's delay to Gaeta. The bishop, Monsignor Parisio, had been called that very morning to the death-bed of his brother, and Danielo, his very un- amiable major-duomo or steward, could not be persuaded to give hos- pitality to the travelers. Cardinal Antonelli vainly insisted, saying that the bishop would not be pleased to have "his friends" treated so inhospitably. The other replied that the bishop had left him no order about "his friends." "If you knew who we are," said the Pope, "you would be glad to give us welcome." "It is precisely because I do not know you," said the trusty Danielo, "that I cannot welcome you. Besides, a bishop's house is not a public inn," looking at the numerous retinue. " Bishop Parisio knows me perfectly," con- tinued his Holiness. " That may be," replied the testy steward, "but I do not." And thereupon he shut the door in the pontiff's face. They were forced to go to the nearest inn, a shabby little place, called the Giardinetto (Little Garden) from a flower-plot before the entrance. But their mishaps were not yet ended. While the Pope was dictating a letter to Father Liebel, Cardinal Antonelli and Arnao called on the governor of Gaeta, an old Swiss general named Grosse. In taking Seiior Arnao's carriage. Count Spaur had also taken the latter's passport, leaving him his own. Arnao presented the passport he held to the governor, who, delighted to find a gentleman able to speak his native German, began to compliment both his visitors in that language. Their excuses, however, did not satisfy the old sol- 240 Life of Pope Pius IX, dier. So General Grosse, taking them for Eoman spies, dismissed them courteously, but gave orders to the inferior magistrates to look closely after the new-comers. Scarcely had they returned to the Giardinetto, and finished their dinner, when an officer of the garrison, with a justice of the peace, demanded to see the travelers. Father Liebel thereupon locked the door of the Pope's room and put the key in his pocket, while the countess and the gentlemen present surrounded the two visitors. ''All of us," the lady relates, *'did our best to throw them off the scent, . . . The justice was about to withdraw, when the officer, who had remained silent and motionless with his hands on the back of my chair, asked my permission to say that there was a rumor about the country of our having with us two cardinals in disguise. I replied that surely he must have discovered in me one of these two cardinals, and that he must now try to find out the other among my traveling companions. . . . This made everybody laugh, and put an end to the interview." The 26th November, being Sunday, all the travelers, the Pope ex- cepted, went to hear early mass, and while in the church the officer who had visited them the day before came to tell Seiior Arnao that a French frigate had just arrived with the Duke d'Harcourt, who was very anxious to see the Bavarian ambassador. The misapprehensions of the day before were soon explained, and the governor insisted that the countess and her suite should breakfast with him. Before the repast was ready a Neapolitan fleet was signaled in the offing, and soon a frigate was in sight with the royal standard at the mast- head. This arrival was the result of Count Spaur's rapid journey to Naples. He reached that city about eleven o'clock at night, went directly to the residence of the papal nuncio, showed him the sealed letter of which ho was the bearer, and which must be forthwith pre- sented to the king. It was near midnight when they drove up to the royal palace ; and the nuncio demanded immediate admission for the Bavarian ambassador with extraordinary dispatches for his majesty. Leaving the nuncio waiting below in his carriage, Count Spaur was introduced to the king. "Sire," said the ambassador, ''pardon me for coming at such an hour; I am the bearer of very serious tidings ; your majesty will learn them from this letter of his Holiness." The king opened the letter and read : King Ferdinand hastens to Gaeta. 241 cs Sire : — The Eoman pontiff, the vicar of Christ, the soyereign of the States of the Church, has been compelled by circumstances to leave his capital, that he might not lower his own dignity and avoid sanctioning by his silence the excesses perpetrated in Eome. He is at Gaeta, but only for a short time, as he is unwilling to compro- mise in any way either your majesty or the peace of your peoples. ''Count Spaur will have the honor of presenting this letter to your majesty, and will tell you, w^hat time will not permit me to say, concerning the place to w^hich the Pope has resolved to go without delay. *' In peace of mind, and with the deepest resignation to the divine decrees, he sends to your majesty, to your royal spouse and whole family, the apostolic benediction." As the king read this letter his countenance betrayed deep feeling and his eyes filled with tears. Count Spaur, who watched him closely, shared his emotion. "Count," said the king at length, ''come back six hours hence, and you shall have my answer." Immediate orders were issued to have two frigates ready at dawn, with a regiment of the royal guards and a battalion of line infantry ; and at day-break the king and queen, with the entire royal family, the nuncio, the Bavarian minister, and a numerous retinue, em- barked for Gaeta. It was one o'clock afternoon when the king landed there. General Grosse, who had left his breakfast untasted advanced to meet the sovereign. "General," said his majesty, "where is the Pope?" " The Pope, sire ? Why, I presume he is in Eome, although we may expect him before long. " ' ' Why, " said the king, "the Pope has been in Gaeta these last twenty-four hours, and you know nothing about it ! " Amao, who was close by, thereupon advanced and ex- plained to his majesty why they had preserved so strict an incognito, telling him also where the Pope was. Unwilling to attract too much attention to his august guest, the king bade Seiior Arnao conduct his Holiness quietly and through by-lanes to the royal pavil- ion, where he and the queen would prepare for his reception. The curiosity of the crowd was thus baffled, the Pope reached the pavilion in his simple traveling garb unnoticed by the passers-by ; but at the foot of the staircase he found the king and queen waiting for him on bended knees, with the entire royal family, weeping, every one of them, to see one so great and so beloved but a short time before driven forth an exile from among his own. 242 Life of Pope Pius IX. ''Here it is," concludes the Countess Spaur, "that begins the recital of tlie numberless acts of true filial piety by which King Ferdinand of Naples endeavored to honor the sovereign pontiff during the seventeen months of his voluntary exile. One knows not which to admire and to praise most, of the pious industry of one man striving to console another and to show him heartfelt sympathy, or the magnificent hospitality of one sovereign sparing no expense to make another sovereign forget that he is not at home among his own people, or the reverence of the sincere Christian, who sees in the afflictions of the pontiff the outrage done to Christ's vicar.* * Relation du wyage de Pie IX. d Gaete, Paris, 1853. CHAPTER XXL The Baij ker of Lepaxto iif Gaeta— St. Pius V. and Pius IX. — Frakce to the Eescue — Napoleon III.'s Italian Pol- icy Foreshadowed — Napoleon III. abets Piedmontism — '* Honor thy Father and thy Mother" — Spain's Initiative — Sardinia stands Aloof — Contradictions of Gioberti — Spain repudiates Piedmontism — England for the Tem- poral Power — Pius IX. appoints a Commission of Govern- ment — Constitutionalist Hypocrisy in Kome — Radicalism STILL Triumphant — Deputation to Gaeta not received — The Gathering of the Evil Powers. November-December, 1848. IN the cathedral church of Gaeta, behind the high altar, still hangs the banner blessed by Pope Saint Pius V., and presented by him to Don John of Austria, who was about to sail to Lepanto at the head of the combined forces of Rome, Spain, Venice, Genoa, and Malta. This was the last crusade ever organized by papal Rome against the Turk, the common enemy of Christendom — all-powerful then on sea and land — ^but whose might was forever broken (October 7, 1571) near that same shore where the battle of Actium had de- cided the fortunes of the world (September 2, 31 b. c). Europe has well-nigh forgotten the glorious service rendered to herself and to civilization by the united fleets and armies of Spain and Italy in that memorable year. It was a Dominican monk seated in the chair of Peter — a saint-worthy son of that Dominick who counts canonized saints by the hundred around his throne in heaven — and a Spanish Jesuit, Saint Francis Borgia, who stirred by their eloquence both Peninsulas to join hands in driving the Moslem from the seas. The other powers looked on, withheld by their miserable political and religious dissensions from taking any share in the glo- rious strife, while the Pope, and the two great Italian republics, the illustrious military order that had made the name of Malta immor- 243 2 44 Lif^ of Pope Pius IX, tal, and the great Catholic monarchy of Spain fought together the battle of the Cross against the Crescent. It was to her who is mother of our Divine Head and mother of the whole body, that the Fifth Pius looked for victory. While John of Austria was marshal- ing his forces at Messina, the holy Pope was unceasing in his own prayers and private austerities, fasting by day, spending the whole night in pleading with the Crucified and in beseeching his immacu- late mother to be the advocate of the Christian people in their diro extremity. Every church in Eome was filled with suppliants while the issue was still doubtful, and processions filled the streets morn- ing and evening singing the litanies. Pius V. had blessed the banner, bearing the image of the Saviour between Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and given it to the commander- in-chief, with the prediction that the Queen and Help of all Chris- tians would make his host victorious. All Eome, on the very day and hour when the Turkish fleet was destroyed, heard with equal amazement and rapture, from the lips of the Pope, that Christ had triumphed over Mahomet, and that Italy and Europe were saved. When, nearly three centuries later, the Ninth Pius knelt before the altar, above which, at Gaeta, John of Austria hung up his tri- umphant banner, he bethought him that a worse foe than Islam threatened Italy and Spain and all Christian nations — the anti-Chris- tian spirit of European Eadicalism, whose army was Young Italy and the secret societies enrolled beneath the banner of Mazzini — and he formed then and there the project of combating that new foe by the spiritual arms he could wield as pontiff. From that day forth there was uninterrupted warfare between Pius I^. and every form of social error. No one attending solely or principally to the long struggle which he maintained against the diiemies leagued to overthrow the tempo- ral sovereignty, which was the guaranty of the absolute independence of the Holy See, could seize the most glorious characteristics of his pontificate. Most important as was the question of these temporali- ties, it was only secondary in the mind of the pontiff and in the esti- mation of the Church, as compared with the dangers to the whole stmcture of modern society, which he courageously set himself to denounce and ward off. In this warfare against the formidable teachings of modern social- ism and materialism, he wished, first of all, to kindle the personal friendship of every one of the faithful toward our divine Lord by 1848-1849 ^^^(i ^^77' 245 reviving the beautiful devotion of the Sacred Heart, and to increase our reverence toward his Blessed Mother, by defining solemnly the received doctrine of her preservation from original sin. By thus drawing every Christian heart closer to the Second Adam and the Second Eve, the parents of the true life, he knew he would in a manner compel them to manifest their protection over the human family, while filling the Christian soul with increased fervor for the study of revealed truth and increased knowledge and love of the Eevcaler. The flight of Pius IX. to Gaeta, no matter how the historian may consider the circumstances which led to it, or appreciate the deter- mination of the pontiff himself or the motives of those who coun- seled this step, served to make the exile an object of sympathy to the entire civilized world, and an object of tenfold veneration to the two hundred millions who owned him to be Christ's vicar on earth. Two magnificent quarto volumes were printed at Naples before that exile was ended, containing a portion of the letters and ad- dresses sent from every land to the Holy Father ; they bore the title : The Catholic Woeld to Pius IX., Sovereign Poi^tiff, 12^ Exile at Gaeta. Twenty-nine years later, the same pontiff, stripped of every ves- tige of his temporal sovereignty, and barely allowed the freedom of his own residence in the Vatican, will see the elite of that same Catholic world streaming to his feet from every shore, as if jealous of showing that no political usurpation, no revolution or change, could do aught but increase in the hearts of the millions who call him father the faith in his God-given authority and the love due to his heroic fortitude. These two facts in the history of the papacy, by a singular per- mission of providence, occur in the reign of the same Pope : surely, happening as they do, at the beginning of what is manifestly a new social era, they must throw a blaze of light on the road traveled over so far by the successors of St. Peter, as well as on that future which is evermore the child of the past. No sooner were the tidings borne to France of the outrages com- mitted in Rome against the person and authority of the Holy Father, his flight to Gaeta, and his anxiety to find for the moment a secure asylum in a Catholic country, than General Cavaignac, the president of the republic, wrote to his Holiness by an aid-de-camp, expressing the deep sympathy of the French nation, assuring him 246 Life of Pope Pius IX, that France "will be happy and proud" to give him hospitality *' which it will render worthy of itself and of your Holiness," affirms the brave soldier. This was written on December 3d ; on the 10th there were to be general elections for the choice of a new president. There was a memorable debate in the French National Assembly on the urgency of sending an expedition to Italy to restore the Holy Father and protect his authority. Montalembert's eloquence, glowing with the inspiration of a Catholic heart, stirred the representatives of the nation to do a deed of filial piety to the common father. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, at that moment a member of the Assembly and a candidate for the presidency, wishing to pander to the anti- Christian passions of the French Voltairians and Radicals, abstained from voting for the expedition, and published, on December the 2d, a letter in which he styled it "a dangerous military demonstration." On the 9th, however, he found it politic to change his views, or, at least, to persuade the Catholic electors of France that he had done BO. He wrote in the following strain to the papal nuncio at Paris : " My Lord : — I am unwilling that you should give credence to the rumors which aim at making me the abettor of the course of con- duct pursued at Eome by the Prince of Canino. For quite a long time I had no relations whatever with the eldest son of Lucien Bonaparte, and I am heartily sorry that he cannot see how the maintenance of the temporal sovereignty of the venerable head of the Church is so intimately connected with the splendor of the Catholic religion as well as with the freedom and independence of Italy." This sphinx-like utterance contributed, chiefly, as some think, but certainly in no slight measure, to the success of the writer's can- vass. It was given to the public on the eve of the election, when the Radicals and Imperialists had made up their minds to vote for Louis Napoleon. It may have lost him some of their votes, but the loss was compensated by the accession of Catholic voters obtained by this specious recantation. There are those, however, who are con- vinced that Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected to the National Assembly and to the presidency by the powerful influence of Pal- merston and Mazzini, and that Young Europe and Young Italy were satisfied to help him to his great uncle's place on the throne of France, on the express condition that he should forward the viewa of Mazzini about a united Italy and the total suppression of the papal sovereignty. Louis Napoleons Italian Policy Foreshadoived, 247 It is to be remarked that in repudiating Canino the writer of the letter Just quoted says not one word of the "intimate connection" of the Pope's temporal power with the exercise of his spiritual supremacy; he says it is '* intimately connected with the splendor {eclat) of the Catholic religion." It contributes to its worldly and external splendor, where kings and emperors rule the destinies of nations ; but, under the coming reign of the democracy to be cre- ated by the Mazzinian cohorts, there can, in his mind, be no room for a Pope-king. However, the restoration of the Pope to his place and sovereignty in Rome may be, in the war against Austria already determined on by Piedmont and Tuscany, " intimately connected with the freedom and independence of Italy," just as his name and influence were powerful at the beginning of the crusade set on foot by Durando and Gavazzi, to inflame the national enthusiasm. There shall be superabundant proof given ere the end of these chapters, that Louis Napoleon was always pledged to Mamiani's policy of a total separation of the political and the spiritual in the Pope's authority and government. The French intervention was thus resolved upon by General Cavai- gnac's government against the expressed wish and opinion of Louis Napoleon. The expedition of 3,500 French troops, with M. de Corcelles as ambassador extraordinary, was only a preliminary to a more imposing demonstration of force. The result of the presiden- tial election prevented any effective aid from being sent to the Pope till late in the following April, when Louis Napoleon anticipated the Catholic powers by occupying Oivita Vecchia and marching a corps d'armee to Rome. This was a deep scheme, intended to secure in good time the creation of a united Italy and the complete annihila- tion of the temporal power of the Holy See. The Pope was made to feel it while still at Gaeta, when, after the surrender of Rome to the French, Louis Napoleon wrote, August 18th, 1849, his famous letter to Colonel Edouard Ney, dispatched to Rome on special business: "My dear Edouard" — the 'nephew of his uncle,' said most insolently — "the republic of France did not send an army to Rome to trample on Italian liberty ; but, on the contrary, to regulate it, to preserve it from its own excesses, and to give it a solid basis, by restoring to his throne the sovereign who had put himself so boldly at the head of all useful reforms. . . . It is evidently desired to base the return of the Pope on proscription and tyranny. . . , 248 Life of Pope Pius IX, " It is thus I epitomize the temporal government of the Pope : General amnesty; the secularization of the administration ; the * Code Napoleon,^ and a Liberal government,''^ This simply meant — and all Europe understood it in that sense — that French bayonets would replace Pius IX. in a more helpless and odious condition than he was at the time of the murder of Rossi. He should only return to his people, on the shoulders of foreign soldiers, to grant them the concessions which his own con- science repelled while he was in their midst, the constitutional head of a government of progress organized by himself. It was an absurdity ! General Rostolan, to whom Ney brought the letter, with the private instructions of the writer, refused to carry out such odious orders, and sent in his resignation. He was no devout Catholic, but a brave, honest, sensible soldier. Louis Napoleon's prime minister, Odilon- Barrot, at one time repudiated the letter, at another, seemed to sub- scribe to its policy. The two French envoys, De Rayneval and De Corcelles, declared that the official publication of such a letter would cause a general war — the Catholic powers seeing in the policy it ad- vocated a spoliation of the Holy Father and the annihilation of his temporal authority, which they were determined to uphold by force of arms. Not one word of Louis Napoleon's ever retracted or explained away this obvious meaning of his letter, till the appearance of the semi-official pamphlet "Napoleon III. and Italy" sounded like the first trumpet-call to war in favor of a united Italy and the obliter- ation of the papal sovereignty in temporal matters. The complete interpretation of the imperial Carbonaro's purpose was fully given by the atrocious betrayal of General Lamoriciere and the papal army to the Sardinians, the "September convention" which culminated in handing over the defenseless pontiff to Victor Emmanuel, Sep- tember 20th, 1870, the whole consistent course of double-dealing and perfidy being crowned by a letter to Victor Emmanuel compliment- ing him on his being in possession of Rome I The Fii-st Napoleon had sacrilegiously laid hands on Pius VII., and made his own son king of Rome, when at the very height of his power and pride. Ho did not, he said, want to have the ministers of religion occupied in secular administration ; and he laughed to scorn the notion that the Pope's excommunication could make the muskets drop from the hands of his invincible legions. They did ''Honor thy Father and thy Mother T 249 drop, nevertheless, as all the world knows ; and misfortune after misfortune befell the conqueror, till, from his death-bed, at Saint Helena, he was fain to sue for pardon and comfort from the father he had not known how to protect and to honor. Louis Napoleon abetted and aided by his dark policy every measure by which Oavour wrested piecemeal from the Holy .Father every shred of the patrimony of the Church. There was not one person in the court of the Tuileries or the court of the Quirinal who did not believe, that Louis Napoleon had incurred the excommunication pronounced by Pius IX. against his spoliators. Nor did success attend a single one of the military enterprises planned by the French emperor, from the day he sent his cousin to incite the Eomagnese to revolt, till that other *' September convention" at Sedan, when 100,000 French soldiers, with their emperor, laid down their arms, and were driven into exile before the victorious and de- spised Prussian. All this is said here in advance, to enable the reader to grasp the meaning of Louis Napoleon's policy toward the Holy Father. Nor is this a new philosophy of history. It is as old as the world ; certainly as old as the Church. She occupies, as has already been stated, the position of a mother in what was once, and what ought ever to be, the Christian family of nations, just as the Pope, her head, holds toward all Christian princes and peoples the place of father. The precept, ** Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest live long in the land," is as binding on peoples and their rulers in their relation to the Pope and the Church as in the family it is binding on children, and on the whole mass of civil society with respect to the lawful magistrate. The family where there is neither obedience nor reverence, is the house half undermined by the moun- tain torrent ; the community or the nation where honor and respect are not shown to legitimate authority, is the ship with a drunken and insubordinate crew driving fast before the gale on a lee shore ; and that Christendom, that family of nations begotten and reared by Eome — what shall we say of it here ? Kemember the Bourbons, just one century ago : how they reigned in France, in Spain, at Naples, and controlled by their influence Portugal and Austria : they conspired to oppress Pope after Pope, Clement XIII., Clement XIV., Pius VI. ; it was a glorious royal tree that House of Bourbon, overshadowing the civilized world — and where are they now ? They dishonored their father, they oppressed 25o Life of Pope Pius IX, their mother ; and the long life divinely promised has been diyinely and most suddenly withdrawn. At the beginning of this same month of December, which beheld the Pope a yoluntary exile at Gaeta, and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte seated in the presidential chair of the French republic, there was also a sudden change at Vienna. Ferdinand and his counselor, Met- ternich, had ever been guided by the uncatholic policy of Joseph II. They had treated Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. with anything but filial reverence and honor. The earthquake, slight as it was, which shook the throne of Ferdinand and drove Metternich from power, was a warning. It was so understood by the young Emperor Francis Joseph, and by his enlightened mother. And they hastened to do for the exile of Gaeta what Austrian statesmen had not done for him during his necessary efforts toward internal reform ; they took counsel with the other Catholic powers, as to how they should re- store him to his capital and secure his authority there against in- ternal sedition and foreign intrigues. The initiative in this matter was taken by Spain : in a note ad- dressed on December the 21st, to France, Austria, Bavaria, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Naples, she declared that she had resolved to do all in her power "to restore the Holy Father to such a position of authority and independence as was necessary toward the discharge of his sacred oJ0&ce." The courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg were alike in favor of the restoration of the Holy Father and of securing his government against the accidents of future revolution, by placing it under the protection of all the great powers. They felt — ^with a conservative instinct which was not shared by more than one Catholic cabinet — that the Mazzinian democracy were making a crucial experiment in Rome, and that if their influence was not effectually checked there, all Italy must soon be in flames, while the revolutionary move- ment would surely propagate itself among their own peoples. ** The affairs of Rome," are the words of the Russian chancellor in a circular, "cause the government of his Majesty the Emperor great concern ; and it were a serious error to think that we take a less lively interest than the other Catholic governments in the situ- ation in which his Holiness Pope Pius IX. is at present placed. There can be no room for doubting but that the Holy Father shall receive from his Majesty the Emperor a loyal support toward the restoration of his temporal and spiritual power, and that the Russian Giobertis Contradictory Policy, 25 1 government sliall co-operate cheerfully in all tlie measures necessary to this result ; for it cherishes against the court of Eome no senti- ment of religious animosity or riyality." * Sardinia, which had held aloof during the Pope's bitter struggle with the revolutionists in Eome and throughout Central Italy, was now most anxious to prevent every government not Italian from in- terfering in the Pope's affairs. The Sardinian minister in Eome did not come forward, as we have seen, with the rest of the diplo- matic body, to protect the Pope when besieged and threatened with the last violence in his own palace. When the diplomatic body fol- lowed, soon afterward, the Holy Pather to Gaeta, Signer Panto remained in Eome. Indeed, all through the interval of the Pope's absence from his capital, the Sardinian representative continued to reside there, and to transact business with the governments which prevailed there, to the surprise and scandal of the European courts. When the Gioberti cabinet succeeded, in December, 1848, to the Eevel ministry, at Turin, the author of the Gesuita Moderno wished to employ the influence and the arms of Piedmont for the sole pur- pose of restoring the Pope, as the first necessary step toward binding together in one solid league all the constitutional thrones of Italy, and sent to Gaeta first, the Marquis of Montezemolo, and Eicardi bishop of Savona, and then, successively, Signers Berghini and Mar- tini. Just then, however, the purpose of making war on Austria in Upper Italy was uppermost in the Piedmontese mind, and the de- sign of dwarfing the power of Naples was equally the avowed policy of the Sardinian government. Besides, Gioberti's scheme, so far as it advocated forbearance from hostility with Austria, in order to secure the pontifical and the Tuscan governments, was bitterly opposed by the majority of his associates in the ministry and by the king him- self — a dissentiment which forced Gioberti to resign on the 21st of February following. It was not surprising, therefore, that, in spite of the semi-con- servative and patriotic sentiments expressed by the Piedmontese minister in his instructions to these envoys, they were either re- pulsed at Gaeta or very coldly received by the new Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, and by his master. It is no longer a secret that the idea expressed in his first glowing theories about a federated Italy under the leadership of the Holy See, that he concealed — as he * Farini, vol. iii., p. 189— quoted in Rolirbacher's ''History of the Cliurcli *' 252 Life of Pope Pius IX, himself declared in his latest works — the design "to establish in Italy a Piedmontese hegemony (or leadership), and in Europe the moral supremacy of Italy." In his Rinnovamento Civile d^ Italia (Civil Eenovation of Italy), published in 1851, a year before his death, Gioberti no longer affirms that the papacy is the natural stay of Italian regeneration, but, on the contrary, declares that it is Italy's greatest obstacle. Against such a man, his political professions, and his envoys, Pius IX. was, by instinct and enlightened conviction, on his guard. He was the parent of " Piedmontism," and this, in active league with Mazzinian Eadicalism, had determined on the absorption of the Pope's temporal power. Against this Piedmontism also, involving as it did the absorption by the house of Savoy of all the existing Italian sovereignties, and the total annihilation — as we see it since 1870 — of the Pope's civil principality, Donoso-Oortez protested in the Spanish chambers, con- tributing powerfully to the sending to Italy of a Spanish force in aid of the Holy Father. " Civilized Europe cannot, will not, consent to see enthroned, in that mad city of Kome, a new and strange dynasty, begotten of crime. And let no one here say that in this matter there are two separate questions : one a temporal question, the other entirely spiritual ; that the difficulty lies between the temporal sovereign and his subjects, that the pontiif has been respected and still sub- sists. Tavo words on this point — just two words shall suffice to make us understand the whole thing. " It is perfectly true that the spiritual power of the papacy is its principal power ; the temporal is but an accessory, but that acces- sory is one that is indispensable. The Catholic world has a right to insist upon it, that the infallible organ of its belief shall be free and independent. The Catholic world cannot know with certainty, as it needs must know, if that organ is really free and independent, unless it be sovereign. Por he alone who is sovereign depends on no other power. Hence it is that the question of sovereignty, which every- "where else is a political question, is in Eome a religious question. " Constituent assemblies may exist righfully elsewhere ; at Eome they cannot ; at Eome there can bo no constituent power outside of and apart from the constituted power. Neither Eome herself nor the Pontifical States belong to Eome, or belong to the Pope ; they belong to the Catholic world. The Catholic world has recognized in The Popey to be Free^ must he Sovereign, 253 the Pope the lawful possessor thereof, in order to his heing free and independent ; and the Pope may not strip himself of this soyereignty, this independence." * The liberal or reform ministry then in power in England did not differ substantially in opinion from Donoso-Cortez. On July 21, 1849, during the discussion in the House of Lords about the French expedition to Rome, Lord Lansdowne thus expressed himself : ** The condition of the Pope's sovereignty is especially remarkable in this, that, so far as his temporal power is concerned, he is only a sovereign of the fourth or fifth order. In his spiritual power he enjoys a sovereignty without its equal on earth. Every country which has Roman Catholic subjects has an interest in the condition of the Roman States, and should see to it, that the Pope be able to exercise his authority independently of any temporal influence that could affect his spiritual power." From Russia, from Great Britain, as well as from Spain and France, came the free and frank expression of the traditional belief of that Christendom created by the Popes, and bound to watch with a jealous and loving care over the freedom and independence of that great central civilizing authority. This is what Piedmontese statesmen either would not acknowledge or could not understand, in their unchristian ambition to override every most ancient and sacred right, that stood between them and the realization of a single Italian kingdom under their native princes. It was because while "his spiritual sovereignty was without its equal upon earth," and his temporal monarchy only "of the fourth or fifth order," that the Pope deemed himself bound in conscience to leave Rome when his own experience and the voice of the states- men around him concurred in the conviction, that his freedom and independence were at an end. The exercise of his spiritual authority could not be held subject to the sway of a sanguinary and anti-Chris- tian mob, and he fled to a spot where he could be free in governing the Church, till such time as Christendom should restore him to his necessary independence. Consistently with these principles — and the whole of Pius IX. 's public conduct is based on principle and conscience — the Pope had no sooner received a hospitable shelter from the king of Naples, than he bethought him of providing for the lawful government of his States. * Kohrbacher, book xcii., year 1848. 2 54 ^if^ of Pope Pius IX, On November the 27th he published the following protestation, which he had dictated, in his little room at the Giardinetto, to good Father Liebel on the very day of his arrival at Gaeta. **The acts of violence accomplished against us during these last days, and the manifest intention of perpetrating further excesses, . . . have compelled us to separate ourselves for a time from cur subjects and children, whom we have always loved and do still love. *' Among the motives that have forced us to this separation (and God knows painful it is to our heart !) the most important is, that we might enjoy full liberty in the exercise of the power of the Holy See, which exercise the Catholic world might reasonably presume to be no longer free, under the circumstances in which we were placed. " Bitter as the pain must be which this violence has caused us, its bitterness is immeasurably increased by the ingratitude which a class of wicked men has incurred in the eyes of Europe and the world, and still more by the guilt incurred by them before God, whose wrath, sooner or later, cannot fail to execute the penalties pro- nounced by his Church. *^In this ingratitude of our own children we confess the hand of God, who smites us and wills that we should thereby expiate our own Bins and those of our people. But, nevertheless, we cannot, without a violation of duty, refrain from protesting solemnly before the whole world . . . that we have endured unheard-of and most sacrile- gious violence. . . . We therefore declare that all acts done in consequence thereof are null and of none legal force or validity. "These truthful utterances and these protestations have been wrung from us by the wickedness of men as well as by our con- science, which has compelled us, in such circumstances, to the ful- fillment of a duty. Still, beneath the eye of God, and while we are beseeching him to turn away his wrath, we trust we may confidently begin our supplication by these words of the prophet-king : Lordy retnemher David, and all Ms meekiiess I '* In the meantime we do not wish to leave the administration of our States without a head in Rome, and do, therefore, appoint a * Commission of Government' composed of the following persons : <* Cardinal Castracane, Monsignor Roberto Roberti, the Prince of Roviano, the Prince Barberini, the Marquis Bevilacqua of Bologna, the Marquis Ricci of Macerata, Lieu tenant-General Zucchi. **In confiding to this commission the temporary direction of Rome a7id the ''Italian Constituent !* 2 55 affairs, we recommend all our subjects and children to be calm and to preserve public order. *'In fine, we will and ordain that fervent prayers be daily offered up for our poor person, for the return of peace to the world, and in particular to our States and to Eome, where our heart must always be, no matter in what part of Christ's fold we may find a shelter." On the 7th of December he issued a decree proroguing both of the Roman chambers. However, the decree of November the 27th did not reach Eome till December the 3d. What was, meanwhile, the attitude of the ministry forced upon the Pope before his flight, as well as the attitude of the chambers and the leading politicians among Constitutionalists and Eepublicans ? Mamiani, who up to this moment had not formally accepted office, took upon himself, on the 25th, the duties of minister of foreign affairs, and issued a proclamation to the city and provinces declaring that the Pope had fled from Eome, "carried away by per- nicious counsels," and exhorting all classes to maintain order. The Chamber of Deputies met at noon, and Prince Canino, in a violent speech, denounced Mamiani's plan for an Italian federation, calling upon the ministry to proclaim forthwith the "sacrosanct (most holy) constituent for Italy." The deputies, however — not one of whom, on the day of Eossi's assassination, had the courage to de- nounce the murderers, or, during the riotous proceedings of the 16th and 17th, dared to rally round the Holy Father — now approved an address to the people, declaring their "cordial agreement with the ministry which the Holy Father has placed in power," and exhorting the people " now more than ever to give signal proof of their civil courage and wisdom." On the 26th, the upper chamber met and issued a similar address. But the flag borne to the Quirinal by the insurgents of the 16th, by the side of the ministry to be imposed on the sovereign at the cannon's mouth, contained "the one thing" which ministry and chambers and people should and must thenceforth insist upon, " a single constituent assembly for Italy," Constituente Italiana, On the 26th the upper house adopted by "a very large majority," a proposition for such a constituent, stripped, in appearance, of some of its most odious features, but which was " to direct its labors to the promotion of national union and prosperity, and, above all, to decide upon the means of liberating Italy from the Austrian yoke." Such were, previous to the 3d of December, the acts of the "con- 2 56 Life of Pope Pius IX. Btituted authorities," nominally so at least, which the Holy Father had left behind him. It is clear that in their sober, second sense, and when not unmindful of what the governments of Europe and the Catholic world at large would think of their attitude toward the absent sovereign, they, carrying out the will of the clubs, did not swerve from the direction given to the public passion by the in- surrection of the 16th of November. Not a word of censure was uttered in either chamber against the murderous violence done to Pius IX., in his own residence, both as prince and as pontiff. What was the governing, or rather the ruling power in Eome behind ministry and chambers ? " The clubs," says Legge, "became the true centers of power ;" and elsewhere, "In Rome there resided a body called the Committee of all the Clubs of Italy, having rami- fications throughout the Peninsula. Now that the Absolutist party were disbanded and intimidated, and the Constitutionalists aban- doned by the Pope and hated by the Republicans — not even Mamiami himself, who had formerly been the idol of their obstreperous adu- lation, having a place in their confidence — the committee of the clubs had no obstacles to encounter." When the Constitutionalists — ^that is, the professed advocates of constitutional government — could only find such men as Mamiani to represent their opinions and to become acceptable to the clubs, both during the Pope's presence in Rome and during his absence, can it be a matter of surprise if Pius IX. at Gaeta should refuse to trust to a government, in which they could be only a helpless mi- nority, the administration of his States or the defense of his own prerogatives and the rights of the Church ? In the face of the facts above set forth — and they are only a very incomplete account of the real state of things — it is not a little startling to hear the Pope blamed for not committing his whole authority to the Mamiani-Galletti-Sterbini ministry, and to the courageous chambers which had met on November the 16th. Legge quotes in support of his fanatical denunciation of the Holy Father's ''treachery," as he terms it, the following unblushing statement of Ranalli : " Never were a ministry, a parliament, a municipality, so united in their efforts to maintain order and save the constitution of the State, each body continuing to act in the name of the Pontiff, as if he was still amongst them." * Legge, ii. 115. Deputation to Gaeta not Received, 25/ The very first act performed by the Chamber of Deputies on Sun- day eyening, December the 3d, after the receipt of the Pope's pro- clamation annulling the appointment of the Mamiani-Galletti min- istry, and appointing a " Commission of Government," was to set the proclamation aside, as being an illegal act. The next was to ap- point a deputation to wait upon the Pope ; to this the upper house added two members, and the Eoman municipality sent with them the senator Prince Corsini. At the frontier the deputation was refused permission to proceed to Gaeta, and an appeal to Cardinal Antonelli only obtained an ex- pression of regret that his Holiness was unable to receive the gen- tlemen sent to him. Even according to the bitterly anti- Catholic author who has been so frequently quoted in these pages, " already passions were excited which, had the language and proceedings of the court of Gaeta been of a conciliatory nature, it would be hard to reconcile to a toleration of the government, which was justly regarded as the greatest obsta- cle to the realization of the nation's hope." Had the Pope, therefore, accepted the invitation and stultified himself by returning forthwith to Eome, it is evident, from the con- fession of the men who censure him, that they did not conceive there was the slightest prospect of his carrying on the farce of a constitutional government, "which was justly regarded as the greatest obstacle to the nation's hope " of a united Radical Italy. Let the enemies of the papacy prophecy to us, albeit unwittingly, what would have infallibly been the condition of Rome had the fatherly heart of the pontiff yielded to this perfidious invitation, unaccompanied as it was by any allusion to the late insurrection, by one word of regret for the crimes committed or of condemnation of the men who had been their instigators and abettors. "Meanwhile, in Rome, the leaders of the insurgent party were taking measures to secure the direction of the revolution which was felt to be imminent, . . . " I have already referred to the number of boisterous demagogues — men who had nothing to lose and everything to gain — who for the last two years had been flocking to Rome from all parts of the Peninsula, from Poland, and from France ; men such as they who had already blurred the fair fame of the brave city of Bologna ; men whose lives are a mystery, and whom the large cities of Europe always dis- gorge m tens of thousands in times of civil commotion. Under the 258 Life of Pope Pius IX. pretext of finding employment for the people, the agitators of the clubs had constrained the government to maintain this scum of the populace on the wages of the State. These men, armed with hoes, might be seen each morning prowling in numbers through the streets toward the Sor di Quinto, where they had employment in road- making. Sterbini, who, as minister of public works, was responsible for this scandalous tax upon the impoverished resources of the State, held them in safe subjection to himself. "* These crowds,' says Farini, 'he distributed under chiefs whom he could trust, so that by his agency and that of Oiceruacchio, the school of revolt was brought under discipline and thorough command.' "The State derived small benefit from the labor of these vaga- bonds, who, after a pretense of work, spent the evening in disgrace- ful orgies, and, inflamed with wine, amused the dregs of the popu- lace. ... A favorite pastime was that of going round at night in cardinals' hats, and one of the kind which the Pope uses, and with much contumely and ribaldry chucking them into the Tiber." "Calderari retained his command of the carabineers. Acursi . . . was at the head of the police, and was in league with the clubs. The civic guard . . . sympathized with the sects and was unreliable for the preservation of order ; . . . every day wit- nessed an augmentation of the number of the provincial population, who were ready to support the convulsions through which their flat- terers persuaded them they would march to freedom and glory. . . . " At this juncture Garibaldi arrived in Rome, where his reputa- tion for bravery and inveterate hatred of ecclesiastical rule insured him a hearty reception." Under this man were enrolled the very 61ite in rascality of the vagabonds and cut-throats described above, and called "Garibaldi's Invincibles, a disreputable lot; . . . many of them were idlers, men of vicious habits, and of more than questionable antecedents." "To Rome Mazzini now betook himself, attracted by affinities which he did not find at Florence. . . . There he witnessed the development of his own revolutionary mysticism ; there he saw in operation those principles to the advocacy of which his life had been devoted ; the enthusiasm of a people, promoted mainly through em- issaries of his own, now ripe for deeds of daring, and wanting only a leader possessing their confidence." * ♦Legge,ii. 115,116, 177,181. Rome becomes a Pandemonium. 259 "WTiat a pandemonium Rome is doomed soon to be under the united influence of such leaders, acting upon masses of evil men thus brought together from far and near, and prepared with such infernal skill for the one well-defined purpose of the arch-conspirator, we could easily fancy, had history not put the sequel on record. From that vision of preternatural wickedness and horror we may turn to that fair Campanian shore, where the exiled pontiff bewails the anarchy which he cannot control, stirs up the governments of Christendom to save Christian Rome from the impious rule of Gari- baldi and Mazzini, and displays such marvelous zeal and intelligence in promoting the welfare of the universal Church. CHAPTER XXII. L0VELIN"ESS AND CLASSIC MEMORIES OF GaETA — "WhY PiUS IX, WISHED TO GO TO SpAIK — PASTORAL CaRES — ElEVATIOK OF Secular an^d Regular Clergy — Ekcyclical oi^ Monastic Orders — Constitutions of St. Ignatius — What a Jesuit is and is not — Encyclical to the Italian Bishops — Admirable Teachings — Socialism and Communism De- nounced — Education of the Young Clergy — The far- reaching Voice of the Pontiff — The Immaculate Con- ception — Misunderstood by Protestants — Immaculate- NESS NO Divine Attribute — The Discussion of the Doc- trine Timely. TTTE must allow the Roman revolution to run its headlong VV course, and European diplomacy to make and unmake plans for the restoration of the Holy Father to his States : after having had to witness such exhibitions of human wickedness it will be most refreshing to see how the supreme pastor of Christ's flock applied his whole heart and soul to promote the best interests of Christian truth and human morality. "When, on the morning of November the 25th, Pius IX. de- scended from the mountain village of Itri, along the terraced road leading to the bay of Gaeta, he must have been charmed with the magnificence of the prospect before him. The province itself bears the significant name of Terra di Lavoro ("Land of Labor"), as if its agricultural wealth and picturesque beauties were all the crea- tion of man's industry. In truth every inch of the arable soil, on the plains and high up on the mountain slopes, has been made to yield its utmost to the thrift of the husbandman. Even where in- accessible crag and summit defy man's approach, the teeming vege- tation of the South clothes the rock with life and color. Though bom on the fertile shore of the Adriatic, and nursed amid the varied riches of nature's bounty and the added wealth of man's unceasing and intelligent toil, though well accustomed in later years to the 260 Loveliness and Classic Memories of Gaeta, 261 lovely Umbrian districts, and the exhaustless fertility of the Lom- bard plain and the Eomagna, Pius was unprepared for the splendid vision of a new earth and a new heaven that opened out before him, as he turned from the sea-coast near Terracina into the elevated tracts around Fondi, and threaded his way from the passes of the Monte Sant Andrea, down to Itri, and thence to the enchanted shore between Gaeta and Naples. Just where the road descends through a wilderness of vineyards, olive and orange groves, and reaches of forest stretching far up the steep acclivities, to the foot- hills near the sea, halfway between Formia (Mola di Gaeta) and Gaeta itself, they pointed out to the admiring traveler, amid a beautiful vieneyard, the spot where the greatest of Eoman orators was ruthlessly slain forty-three years before the birth of Christ. The lovely bay of Gaeta was to Cicero, as to a host of Roman nobles, a center of irresistible attraction, where they had their summer homes dotting the hilltops and slopes for many a mile above and along the shining beach, and the blue sea spreading far away to the South, with its clusters of islands inclosing in a semicircle the vast ex- panse. Nineteen hundred years had passed since, near that roadside along which journeyed the fugitive pontiff, the murderous hands of the tribunes Herennius and Popilius Laenas shed the blood of the last defender of Roman liberty. Were those who sought to bestow on Italy the true freedom which is based on respect for authority, a conscientious love of law and order, and the self-sacrificing virtues begotten of religion, were they to be forever hunted down like wild beasts or denounced as criminals on that classic soil ? As Pius at noon-day rested for a moment at Formia, he could see, high up on the ridge rising abruptly to the north from the water's edge, the royal residence of Villa Caposele, the favorite abode, it was said, of the great orator ; the spot where came to him, amid the elevating influences of earth and sea and sky, many of his immortal philoso- phical and oratorical inspirations. Even the air of late November had scarcely stripped of all their glory these sunny slopes, where, in a few weeks more, lemon and orange and pomegranate, the vine and the olive, and all the profusion of southern fruit-trees and flower- ing shrubs would be bursting into bloom. For seventeen months Pius IX. was to rule the Christian world from that shore. For as he turned again toward the lofty promontory of Gaeta, six miles away to the west, and looked down from the height beyond Formia on the 262 Life of Pope Pius IX. shining towers that crested the summits above the city, and ad- mired, beneath the bright afternoon sun, the beautiful Gaeta, he little dreamed that his pilgrimage should end there. It had been his resolve to seek a refuge in Spain, both because he deemed the mass of her people more sincerely attached to the Church and devoted to the Holy See than any other in Europe, and because he hoped, during his abode among them, to bring about a perfect reconciliation between the mother-country and the Spanish republics of America. His soul yearned to kindle in Spain the bright, pure blaze of that Catholic spirit that shone forth in the days of Columbus and the great and good Isabella. He had hoped, when yet in the first fervor of his priestly zeal, to give his entire existence to the Church of Spanish America. With how little thought of any ecclesiastical preferment or temporal honor did the youthful priest leave Eome for the missions of Chili and Peru ! He had seen with his own eyes that field of heroic apostolic labor where a Turibio, a Solano, a Claver had been the models of all the apostles in the future : from the northernmost limits of Mexico to the Straits of Magellan, the ancient missions were like a harvest field into which a foreign enemy had rushed while the laborers were bent over their task. These had been ruthlessly carried away, never more to return, and there was the sickle still lying near the uncut corn, and the harvest perishing because no man was there to gar- ner it. The Church in the cities and once populous districts was like a dismantled fortress, with no watchman on her ruinous towers, and only a few defenseless wretches sheltered in some corner here and there. All her strength, her beauty, the pomp of worship, and the pride and glory of saintly deeds, had vanished like dreams of the past. Could he not stir up by his stay in Spain, and his own fervid ap- peals to the national heart, the faith that drove back the Moor for eight centuries, and the heroic piety that made the down-trodden races of Mexico and Peru forget that their apostles were of the blood of Cortez and Pizarro ? In Spain, too, he would be near France, and near Portugal. Oh I the rapture of making these countries, once " the Most Christian " and "the Most Faithful," true to tho titles bestowed on them by his predecessors — blooming afresh with faith's plenteous fruits, like the garden of God in the world's prime ! Such hopes and aspirations filled the soul of Pius IX., as he trav- Pastoral Cares, 263 eled along beneath the fortifications of Gaeta, on that November af- ternoon, and looked among the shipping in the harbor for the flag of Spain, on the frigate promised to him and so ardently wished for. Some things especially forced themselves on the mind of the su- preme pastor, as he meditated on how he could best build up what had fallen down in the house of God, and restore the strength and beauty and splendor of olden times : — the reformation of the great religious orders and the education of a superior clergy, and the renovation of piety toward the Incarnate God and his Immaculate Mother. The regular and secular clergy were the visible armies of the Lord, destined to uphold his cause, and bear his name to the ends of the earth ; they were, in the estimation of the Christian people, the twin-springs from which the world was to drink the waters of life : what if these springs were, like Jacob's well near Sichcm, choked up with the ruins of the once overhanging sanctu- ary ? or, like a fountain near a road long untraveled, all overgrown with noxious weeds or impenetrable brambles, and filled with loath- some and poisonous reptiles ? He, who was the shepherd of the whole flock, and answerable for every soul given to his care with the salvation of his own soul, would set about cleaning out the spring and deepening it, and building fair and pure receptacles for its waters, and digging channels on every side, that the healthful streams might flow forth and irrigate the whole earth. Even amid the wearying scenes and sore trials that had come upon his heart since his elevation to the pontificate, like mighty billows rolling ceaselessly on a stranded ship among the breakers, the thought of elevating the clergy to the full height of their divine mission was earliest and uppermost in his mind. We say nothing here of his frequent and unannounced visits to religious houses and institutions at hours when no visitor was expected, and in half-disguise, to as- certain if religious discipline were sacredly maintained. All Eome heard of these warnings to the careless and the indolent. Then came, in his first encyclical, as we have seen, the solemn adjuration to the bishops to choose carefully all candidates for the priesthood, to educate them thoroughly, and to keep them up to the level of their profession and duties. But the task of thoroughly renovating and perfecting that select body called the regular clergy, demanded special labor from the great high-priest. On June the 7th, 1847, he issued a circular letter to all the heads of religious bodies, exhorting them to use every effort toward a thor- 264 Life of Pope Pius IX, ougli renovation of tlieir subjects. At the same time lie instituted a congregation or committee of cardinals, with assessors and council- ors, "on the condition of the regular clergy." This committee set to work without a moment's delay, and published, with the sanction of his Holiness, an ordinance regulating the selection of novices, their training in the novitiate, and the manner of admitting them to their religious profession. It is a most admirable document, re- plete with that spiritual wisdom which never fails the Church and her chief ministers in all the measures pertaining to the general welfare. The Pope in his own letter speaks of the religious orders as these ''pious families . . . originated through an inspiration of the Divine Spirit, by men eminent in holiness and for the purpose of procuring the glory of God and the salvation of souls ; confirmed by the Apostolic See, and composing, in their manifold array, a mag- nificent society which reflects such splendor on the Church ; select bodies of auxiliary troops in the service of Christ, an ornament and a stay both to religion and the civil community. "Their calling, due to a singular grace of God, is to aim at prac- ticing the counsels of evangelical wisdom, ' counting all things to be but loss, for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ,' looking down from their divine station and with an unmoved heart on all earthly things. . . . "From tlieir first establishment they became illustrious by pro- ducing many men eminent as well from the universality of their ser- vice as from their extensive learning, their shining virtues, their splendid sanctity, and the dignity conferred by them on the highest offices in Church and State ; men inflamed with love for God and the neighbor, made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men ; who made their sole delight to consist in spending their days and nights in tlie meditation and deep study of divine things, in bearing about in their l)odies the mortification of Christ, in spreading from the rising to the setting sun the Catholic faith and doctrine ; in joyously enduring for that faith every form of suffering, torture, and death ; in bringing back uncivilized and savage peoples from darkness to the Gospel light ; ... in cultivating, protecting, and saving from decadence literature, science, and art ; in forming from childhood upwards tlie mind and heart of the young to piety and godly living, and feeding them with sound doctrine ; in fine, in bringing into tlic paths of salvation all who had strayed away." And in tliis magnificent strain the pontiff pursues the good works Encyclical on Monastic Orders. 265 accomplislied by the religious orders, recites the praises bestowed on them by the ancient fathers of the Church, and the sovereign pon- tiffs in every age, as well as the extreme watchfulness exercised to prevent disorder or decay from creeping into these institutions. He is much consoled to see such a multitude of men and women belonging to these great religious families faithful to their calling and equal to the work of edification set before them. But he is also saddened by the knowledge that there are many ''who retain no- thing but the outward show of piety." He appeals to all superiors to aid him "in carrying to a happy issue the labor necessary toward restoring to their respective societies a robust and flourishing health ; " in order ''to be able to draw from them skillful and experienced laborers in the good cause, as eminent for their piety as for their prudence, accomplished men of God trained to all manner of good works. . . . " " See to it," he says to those in office, "with a vigilance that never pauses nor slumbers, that your inferiors walk in the footsteps of their glorious ancestry, careful to observe religious discipline, avoiding all worldly pleasures, spectacles, and pursuits, all of which they have forsworn, and that they do apply themselves unceasingly to prayer, to the meditation of heavenly things, to acquiring knowledge use- ful to their own souls and helpful to those of others, according to your respective rules ; . . . that they may appear to God's people as men modest, humble, gentle, patient, upright, blameless in their lives, endowed with a burning charity and a wisdom which may win general esteem, giving no subject of offense to any man, but to all the example of a holy life, compelling their very enemies to esteem them, and to feel surprised that they can find in them nothing blameworthy." Then follow the various purposes for which the Congregation on Religious Orders has been just established and is at work. The Holy Father concludes by reminding all that his admonitions and endeavors are alike inspired by the tender affection which he bears them ; wishing in all that he says and does "to secure their existence, their usefulness, their dignity, and honor." The ordinance, published in February, 1848, applies nominally to the religious orders " in Italy and the adjacent isles ; " but it was extended to the whole of Christendom, and was meant to modify very profoundly the rules of all the existing great orders, with the exception of the Society of Jesus. Indeed, it is a phenomenon re- 266 Life of Pope Pitts IX. dounding not a little to the glory of the constitutions of St. Ignatius Loyola, and to the fidelity of his well-tried sons, that they were not considered to have degenerated from the spirit of their founder, and that his constitutions were found so efficacious to maintain in their pristine vigor hoth discipline and fervor in the pursuit of religious perfection, that on them were modeled the changes made in the other orders. From Spain and Portugal, and several of their former colonies be- yond the seas, every one of the ancient monastic establishments had been swept away. They could never live again in these countries, save as purified and renovated by suffering. The sovereign pontiff and the congregation created to assist him in this delicate labor, aimed at making the remnants of the suppressed orders so vigorous and so well adapted to the necessities of modern society, that they should withstand the corruptions of peace and prosperity, as well as the keenest trials of persecution. It was also plain to the foreseeing eye of the Holy Father, that the revolution about to sweep over Italy would carry away the monastic houses, throw — as in Spain and Portugal — their inmates helpless on a world without pity, and leave none of the religious orders in request but such as were devoted to education and charity. The constitutions of St. Ignatius seemed to have been framed with a sagacity so preternatural, that their provisions and the rules subse- quently added to complete them, were as much fitted for the needs of modern life as for the society of the sixteenth century : they train and mold and preserve the apostolic laborer amid the ancient civil- izations of Japan and China and India, as among the Guaranis of Paraguay, the Hurons and Iroquois of North America, the savages of Central Africa, the Arab tribes of Syria, or the mountaineers of Kabylia. They complete a man for the missionary work of Paris or Berlin, of London or New York ; and the more they are studied by the moralist, the statesman, the historian, or the canonist, the more it becomes evident that they were framed for all time, and for all phases of Christian civilization and civil polity. They are the masterpiece of human wisdom, if, indeed, it be not well proven that their author drew his light from a superhuman source. So long as the Jesuit is true to his training, true to the unearthly lieroism which is the aim of every rule and maxim in the divine code of his Institute, he must be St. Francis Xavier over again — in all things seeking only " to know clearly the divine will and pleasure, Constitutions of St. Ignatius. 267 and asking for strengtli to accomplish it perfectly." That such men, wherever they are, shall be supremely odious to the modern natural- ist, revolutionist, and Mazzinian, is inevitable ; it is their lot, their glory. That, wherever they are known to the Catholic heart, to the unprejudiced Christian mind, they should be loved instinctively and followed as safe guides in the road of Christian perfection, is equally inevitable. St. Ignatius chose, among the constitutions given by monastic founders to the religious families gathered around them, all the features that he deemed most admirable and most suitable to his own purpose, and incorporated them with those which he was com- manded by the Pope to draw up. There is not a line or an expres- sion in them, from first to last, that did not cost him hours of humble and tearful prayer, and protracted supplication for light from on high. Why wonder, then, if the true member of the Soci- ety of Jesus reproduces in his life the virtues and qualities which adorn the religious orders preceding St. Ignatius ? The outcry raised against the Society of Jesus, as against the dis- turbers of States, is wholly unfounded, and, therefore, most iniquit- ous. The Jesuit is not only forbidden, under the severest penalties known to the canon law, to take any part, directly or indirectly, in the management of State affairs, but the spirit of his Institute is so adverse to political and ecclesiastical ambition of every sort, so opposed to every tendency to meddle in politics or in church govern- ment, that a special vow binds every one of its professed members to prevent such meddling by every means in his power. This vow — the form being written out in duplicate and subscribed by the pro- fessed himself — obliges him never to aspire, in any manner what- ever, to any dignity in Church or State or within his own society, and to denounce to the superiors thereof any one of his brethren whom he may know to be so aspiring or intriguing. Thereby every door is closed to ambition or to fondness for med- dling in politics or in Church matters beyond the sphere of the individual's appointed duties. If there be found among Jesuits men who resemble in aught the dark plotters or ambitious controllers of statesmen and churchmen, painted as "Jesuits" by novelists, Protestants, and revolutionists, such men are as much in opposition to the spirit, the scope, the constitutions and by-laws of their society, as Judas and his lust for gain were in opposition to the spirit and aims of his Master, Christ. 268 Life of Pope Pius IX. Devoted to the Church, to the purity of her doctrine, to extend- ing her reign over the souls of all peoples, civilized and uncivilized ; devoted in a special manner to the defense of the Holy See and its prerogatives, the Jesuits are thus foremost objects of antipathy and attack to all who hate and assail the Catholic Church and her pontiffs. They came into being just when Luther was arraying one-half of Europe against the papacy ; they have, in the esteem of all not Catholics, been from their birth the most zealous and un- compromising champions of a losing cause ; in their own inmost convictions, they are but the sworn servants of Christ and his vicar on earth. It was but natural, perhaps — certainly it was inevitable — that they should be decried by their adversaries, that their mo- tives, their principles, teaching, and acts should be misconceived and misrepresented. The word "Jesuit" has been made hateful to honest and fair-minded Protestants as well by the traditional odium attaching to old but unforgotten controversies and bitter religious struggles, as by the systematic and unblushing slanders of radicals and revolutionists. But it is most natural, on the other hand, that all true Catho- lics should love and revere them. For they have ever known them — wherever they have been the genuine offspring of Loyola and Xavier — to be "men crucified to the world, and to whom the world itself is crucified,* even as their mode of life demands it ; new men, who have put off all carnal and worldly affections, and put on Christ himself, being dead to themselves that they might live to Christian holiness ; men who (in the words of Paul) * in labors, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in sweet- ness, in the Holy Ghost, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth,' show themselves to be God's ministers ; and * by the armor of justice on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report,' by good and ill fortune — in fine, strive themselves to attain the heavenly country through great journey- ings, meanwhile helping others in what way soever they may to reach the same goal, never losing sight in all things of God's great- est glory." ♦ The cross, in the old Roman world, was an object of incomprehensible loathing and horror, being reserved as an instrument of capital punishment to the worst and vilest criminals ; hence, " one crucified " was one held accursed by all, an object of universal abomination. The world is thus an abomination to the Christian ; and the Christian to the anti-Christian world. Encyclical to the Italian Bishops. 269 The term '^Jesuit," as a by-word of reproacli and a synonym of duplicity, was affixed by Pascal and the Port-Eoyal Jansenists to all true and uncompromising Catholics in the Netherlands, Germany, and France ; the Jansenists, or " Old Catholics," as they styled them- selves, kept up the term as a nickname for all who were obedient to the Holy See. It became a " party cry " for the French Voltairians, skeptics, and rev^olutionists in their successiye campaigns against Catholicism, up to 1848 ; the word '^Jesuit" meaning every Catholic faithful to his Church and whose life was consistent with his belief. We know what a fearful use was made of the nickname in Switzer- land, in Italy, in Germany, till, with the progress of the leveling anti-Christian spirit, the word ^^ clerical" has superseded it, and come, in France, to mean every man who believes in God and the immortality of the soul, be he Protestant, Jew, or Mohammedan. As the months of 1849 passed bitterly by for the pontiff in his court at Gaeta, the religious orders, the secular clergy, and church establishments of every kind had to suffer from the triumphant re- volution in Central Italy. It was evident to the mind of Pius IX., even when this forerunner of a fiercer and wider storm had blown over, that the Church throughout Italy must prepare for the return of the social whirlwind. Hence, not content with the private admonitions given during the year to prelates and superiors who needed either consolation, encour- agement, or reproof, he matured carefully an encyclical or circular letter to all the bishops of Italy, pointing out the secret sources of the manifold evils from which the land was suffering, and renewing with greater emphasis and solemnity the instructions relative to the reforms and improvements he deemed urgent among all ranks of the clergy. Italy was most dear to him, as being the land of his birth ; and the Church of Italy, privileged as it was in possessing the Central See of the Christian world, should, he thought, be a model, and shine with a surpassing splendor in learning, holiness, and the beauty of external discipline. At the distance of thirty years from the events which the Pope deplores in his eloquent letter, and from the still deeper changes which he seems to foresee, one cannot help being moved by the authoritative and almost prophetic tone in which the supreme pastor lays bare the sources of all modern social error, by his admirable refutation, in a few words, of the fallacies of so- cialism and communism, and the fervent appeal to the clergy of all 270 Life of Pope Pius IX, ranks to prepare their flocks against the coming dangers, and to gird on their own armor of proof for the inevitable combat. "Men lost to the faith/' he writes from Portici, near Naples, "the enemies of tmth, justice, and honor, . . . have conspired to ruin the believing populations of Italy by spreading among them the unrestrained liberty of thought and speech and impious deed. . . . Their satanic plan has been particularly unfolded in our dear city, the seat of our sovereign pontificate, whence they began by compelling us to flee, and then gave full rein to all their mad- ness. . , . "Although Eome and her dependent provinces have been restored to us by the arms of the Catholic powers, . . . these same ene- mies of God and man have not ceased their destroying labors. . . . The grievous circumstances of the present time urges us to exhort you more fervently than ever ... to fight the good fight with us, . . . to take with one common accord, the steps necessary toward repairing the evil already done in Italy, to forestall and ward off the dangers threatened in the near future. "Among the perfidious means employed by the enemies of the Church to render the Catholic religion hateful to Italians, one of the most odious, is . . .to spread abroad the opinion that Catholi- cism is an obstacle to the glory, the greatness, and the prosperity of the Italian nation ; and that to restore to Italy its ancient splendor, its glory in pagan times, they must silently insinuate, propagate, and establish Protestant doctrines and assemblies. . . . "But the Catholic religion, far from causing the Italic races the temporal detriment so loudly asserted, prevented them, at the down- fall of the Roman empire, from sharing in the ruin that befell Assyria, Chaldaea, Media, Persia, and Macedonia. ... On the contrary, it delivered Italy from the dark cloud of error which covered it, and amid the prevailing ruin and barbarian desolation, . . . it raised the nation to a surpassing height of glory and great- ness, . . . and placed in its midst the See of Peter, the seat of an empire wider and more solid than the old worldly Roman domination. "The Catholic faith thereby cast deeper roots in Italian soil, and became the source of numberless and most precious blessings. . . . It saved the Italians from the ancestral lust of domination, . . . leading to unceasing warfare, . . . and the enslavement of mil- lions of their fellow-men ; . . . impelled them mightily toward the practice of justice, mercy, piety to God, and beneficence to their Admirable Teachings, 271 brethren. Hence the magnificent basilicas and other monuments of the Christian ages which cover the land, the free creation of a charity oyerflowing with life, not the laborious work of enslayed multitudes. . . . "The leaders in this crusade of evil, . . . aim at upsettmg all human society, and giving it up to the criminal conceptions of socialism and communism. Despairing to make the Church their accomplice, . . . they have formed the design of inducing the Italians to embrace Protestant opinions and frequent Protestant as- semblies. . . . They know well that nothing can be more favor- able to their designs than the cardinal Protestant principle of private judgment. . . . *^ We must prevent Italy," the Holy Father continues, "the home of the central authority of Christendom, from becoming a stumbling- block to the nations. . . . Nor must you or we fear — fallen though we be on such evil times — the wiles and violence of those who conspire against the faith of Italy. . . , Christ is our counselor and our stay, without him we can do nothing, with him, everything is possible. " We must endeavor by main and might so to instruct our people in the teaching and law of the Gospel, . . . that the habit of long vicious indulgence may not prevent them from discerning the snares laid for them. . . . Let them be made to live up to the light of the Gospel truth. . . . All who have charge of souls should be filled with new zeal for this purpose, and, following the prescriptions of the Council of Trent, imprint on the minds and hearts of their hearers, by short and simple instructions, a knowl- edge of the vices that lead to eternal perdition, as well as of the virtues that conduce to salvation. "More than ever is it needful to impress them with the distinc- tive necessity of the Catholic faith. . . . Prepare them with an increase of care for the reception of the sacrament of confirmation, which bestows the grace of strength and constancy in the faith, . . . and makes the soul yearn for penance and the eucharistic bread. Call in to aid you in stirring up the people to a sense of their duties to God, the services of men skilled in giving the spiritual exer- cises of missions. . . . Suppress these public crimes which draw down the divine anger : blasphemy, . . . concubinage, . . . the violation of the repose of the Lord's day, . . . the contempt of the law of abstinence. ... 272 Life of Pope Pius IX, '* Among the snares laid by the eyil-minded for our people, are the abuses of a licentious press, scattering among them defamatory pamphlets, impious books, and daily sheets filled with falsehood, calumnies, and seductive tales. To these may be added the circu- lation of translations of the Scripture, made without authority or proper control, aiming at bringing into contempt both the word of God and the sole authority established for its guardianship. ''Counteract these by the publication of approyed translations, and a literature that can foster sound doctrine and pure moral- ity. . . . "Inculcate filial love and reverence toward the See of Peter, whose dignity is never annihilated by the unworthiness of his suc- cessors. . . . !N^o one can rebel against the Catholic faith without rejecting the authority of the Roman Church, in which resides the irreformable authority of the faith founded by the Redeemer. . . . The present enemies of God and human society employ every artifice to withdraw the people of Italy from their duty to us and obedience to this Holy See. . . . ''The perverse doctrine sought to be inculcated cloaks its purpose under the specious ideas of liberty and equality, the dangerous pass- words of socialism and communism. Their system of action is to agitate unceasingly the popular mind, to accustom the laboring and poor classes to criminal words and deeds, . . . seducing them by the vision of a condition of life far above their present state. They lead them, step by step, to possess themselves of the property of the Church, then of that belonging to the State, then of the pro- perty of private persons, thereby weakening and blotting out in men's minds the simplest notions of right and wrong, and all that lies at the foundation of civil society itself. " Let the faithful under your care be reminded that it is essential to the existence of every civil community that all its members should obey the authorities lawfully established therein ; and that no change can be made in the divine precepts left us on that subject in holy writ " Let them not forget that even among all classes of men nature has established an inequality of gifts, bodily and mental, . . . and that it never can be lawful, under any pretext of liberty and equality to invade the rights or usurp the possessions of others. . . . "The poor and the unfortunate should remember how much they owe to the Catholic religion. She preserves living and inviolate Education of the Young Clergy. 273 tlie teactiing of Christ, that what one does to the lowliest and most needy he shall hold to be done to himself. The fulfillment of the obligation of mercy is to be made, in the final judgment, the condi- tion of eternal reward or punishment. . . . Hence the acknow- ledged tenderness with which the poor are treated in Catholic coun- tries. "True and perfect liberty, as well as equality among men, has always been placed under the guardianship of the Christian law ; for he who created both the great and the lowly, and who hath an equal care of both, will judge both alike. "The present anti-Christian conspiracy, instead of benefiting the popular classes, can only make them reap a fruitful crop of unhap- piness and calamity. It is not within the scope of human genius to create new societies or communities in opposition to the essential nature of things. Their extension throughout Italy could only result in utterly destroying what now exists, in arming citizen against citizen, in multiplying usurpations and homicides, and in enriching a few men who would rise to power amid the general ruin. "To ward off from our people such evils and the machinations which produce them, we must, under God, depend on the moral worth and exemplary lives of his ministers. ... In Italy, it is sad to say, clergymen have been found, albeit, in small number, to pass over to the enemy and help to seduce our people. "We wish to take preservative measures against future ills, and repeat the warn- ing given in our first encyclical (page 118) ; bestow your utmost care in selecting candidates for the holy ministry. . . . " The Church of God derives from healthy monastic establish- ments immense benefits and great glory ; the regular clergy are your own efficient auxiliaries in your holy labors. Assure those of your respective dioceses that, amid our own sufferings, we have sympa- thized with them in their recent affliction, and that we have ex- perienced no little consolation in learning their patient courage, and constant attachment to their profession. . . . But there were others who caused us bitter grief. . . . Warn the superiors of religious houses to omit no effort in enforcing discipline, . . . in making their subordinates preserve inviolate every one of their rules, to show that they are the followers of the Crucified. . . . Let them see to it that the door of admission to their respective orders be opened to none save the most w^orthy ... in accordance with our ordinance of January the 25th of last year. 2 74 ^i/"^ of Pope Pius IX, '* We come back, once more, to the secular clergy. We recom- mend to you aboYC all things the instruction and training of the young clergy. . . . Let them have schools of their own near the sanctuary of the living God, where they may grow up in inno- cence, modesty, and priestly fervor, under well-chosen masters, who can teach them irreproachably literature, the elementary and ad- vanced sciences, but especially the knowledge of sacred literature and science. "So with the schools in which young laymen are taught — ^let everything there be in conformity with the rule of Catholic doctrine and life. ... Your wisdom must tell you that in an age so full of spiritual peril, we all need to make united and continual efforts to watch over the education of the youth of both sexes. . . . The diabolical ingenuity of God's enemies seeks evermore and by all imaginable means to pervert the minds and hearts of the young. *^We hope that . . . the sovereigns of Italy may see that the primary cause of all the evils that have befallen the country is none other than the ancient injury done to religion and the Church in the sixteenth century. . . . Hence the increasing contempt of episcopal authority, the continual and unpunished violation of the divine law, the disobedience to God and the Church leading to re- bellion against the civil power ; the spectacle of Church property seized, sequestrated and sold at public auction, followed by the teaching of socialism and communism inculcating the doctrine that all property is a usurpation and a wrong. Hence, all the restraints formerly imposed by sovereigns on the teaching and ministrations of the Church are now placed by the people on the prerogatives and power of the sovereigns themselves." Such was the fatherly voice that went forth from the pontiff's place of exile to the hierarchy of Italy, and which was soon re- echoed all over both continents. Had the temporal sovereignty of modern Rome been like any other on the face of the globe, the ques- tion of its restoration would have been one of very inferior impor- tance as compared with the mighty interests involved in the free exercise of a ministry so far-reaching as that of the Roman bishop. It is only when one takes up and reads seriously such utterances as this encyclical to the Italian bishops, or that other which Pius IX. addressed to the universal Church in November, 184G, that one grasps the significance of the charge given to Peter and his sue- The Far-reaching Voice of the Pontiff, 275 cessors, "Confirm thy brethren!" "Feed my lambs! Feed my sheep ! " There never has been an authority like this on earth ; there never has been a voice listened to with such deep reverence by Christians of every clime under the sun. The voice of the ortho- dox Greek patriarch at Constantinople is seldom raised to teach, to reprove, to warn, and when it is, its echoes die away within a little corner of the Turkish Empire, unheard by Christendom and the civilized world. That other archbishop, who sits first in the Holy Synod of the Eussian Empire, is but a paid official of the Tsar, who has no more doctrinal authority than the imperial will chooses to impart to his words and his acts. Eussian orthodoxy resembles those corpses used of old in necromancy : the voice that proceeds from the inanimate lips is not the living voice of the soul which once quickened these bloodless limbs, it is the voice of a dread spirit using the inanimate organs for its own purposes. Not so he who, wheresoever he happens to be, speaks as the suc- cessor of Peter, the shepherd of the whole flock, whom 'Hhe sheep follow because they know his voice." It is of exceeding importance to the whole Christian family, to every human being, that an authority divinely instituted to exist for all time, and to have for its subjects all living souls, should not be, like the schismatic patriarch of Constantinople, the slave of a power most hostile to the Christian faith, or, like him of St. Petersburg, or Mohilew, or Moscow, the mere passive organ of an autocrat all the more tyrannical that he is one in belief with his docile servant. The question of the restoration of Pius IX. to his principality is one of all-absorbing importance to the diplomats assembled at Gaeta ; but the great functions of the sovereign pontiff are performed mean- while as if Pius IX. were still in the Quirinal as firmly seated on his throne and as peacefully governing his people as was St. Pius V. Leave we, then, the diplomats to their cross purposes yet a while ; the Holy Father has another great duty to perform, not in favor of one portion only of the Christian world, but toward the whole Church. It has ever been the belief of Catholics that, just as the mother of the Eedeemer, while he was near her on earth, had no in- terest at heart but his — the souls whom he had come to redeem, and the Church which he was to create through his teaching and blood — even so now, that she is by his side in heaven, she seeks only his in- terests — the freedom, the extension, the glory of that same Church, and, through her ministrations, the salvation of all the redeemed. 2 76 Life of Pope Pius IX. Hence tlie conviction that she who is the second Eve, the mother of the true life, is evermore at enmity with the evil one and all who are leagued with him against her Son and the Church, his spouse. She wards off heresies and schisms ; it is hy her — such is the most ancient belief — that God crushes the serpentine head of every pesti- lential error. Placed as supreme shepherd and father over Christ's family, what more natural for Pius IX., in the very midst of the warfare that assailed himself and the Church, than to betake himself to her who is the Mother-ever-blessed of him who is head over all the children of God ? Never, since the Church left the catacombs to enjoy the peace of Constantine, did the powers of evil beset her and all human society with such a formidable array of heresies and hateful designs. The woman foretold to Eve in paradise as predestined to crush the serpent's head, she who stood by the tree on Calvary, must prove her power and her love for humanity. Now is the time to show herself to be our mother. Hence the resolution of the exiled and anxious pontiff to define the bearing of that first of all prophecies, the privilege of the mother of the Eedeemer to be like her son in his humanity, exempt from original sin, and to share his undying enmity to error and evil. The honor of the son being inseparably identified with that of his mother, such unanimous effort of Christ's family to proclaim her singular exemption from every stain of sin could not be otherwise than pleasing to him, and must draw down a special blessing on the exiled shepherd and his whole flock. The subject was uppermost in the mind of Pius IX. since his ar- rival in Gaeta, and on February 2d, 1849, he published an encyclical to the universal hierarchy declaring his purpose of defining the doctrine of the immaculate conception. He established a commission of car- dinals and eminent theologians, whose duty it was *'to examine the subject in its every aspect, and with the most extreme care, and to report their matured judgment thereon." He calls upon all arch- bishops and bishops to have public prayers offered up by their people in order to obtain abundant light from above on so weighty a discus- sion ; desires them to let him know as soon as possible what are the feelings of devotion of themselves and their people toward the im- maculatencss of their blessed mother, and how far they wish to have a decree published thereon by the Holy See. He mentions the gen- eral wish manifested throughout the Catholic world under Gregory Misunderstood by Protestants, 277 XVI., to have a definitiye judgment on tliis question. This wish was ''attested by the unceasing petitions sent to our predecessor and to ourselves, by the most illustrious prelates, distinguished metro- politan chapters, influential religious orders, particularly the glori- ous Order of Friars Preachers. . . . Moreover, men of eminent genius, piety, and learning . . . have expressed their surprise that the Church and the Apostolic See had not decreed to the blessed Virgin Mary an honor so fervently petitioned for by the faithful." A Protestant historian often mentioned in this book, betrays on this matter the same incomprehensible ignorance which distinguishes his every attempt at dealing with Catholic dogma. He speaks of the prospective definition as ''the affirmation of the divinity of the Virgin Mary," . . . "the assertion of the divinity of the Virgin, the latest and most astounding development of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, though not yet stated boldly, bids fair to reach this last stage before the system of which it is a part shall be swept away, prior to the consecration and renovation of the world, upon which it has proved so mysterious a blot. And who shall say that its promulgation — the exaltation of a creature to the heights where alone divinity can shine — shall not constitute the filling up of the measure of iniquity ? " When this earth of ours was first prepared by its beneficent Creator to be the abode of our first parents, not content with decking it out as became the dwelling-place of creatures exalted to the rank of his adopted children, he pronounced it excellent, and blessed the inno- cent pair to whom he made over its dominion. Even Protestants acknowledge that Adam and Eve might have preserved the inno- cence and holiness of their first condition, and that their posterity might have lived with them and after them, generation succeeding generation, without sin, and without forfeiting in aught the favor of their Maker or any one of the priceless gifts lavished on them. Certainly — most certainly, rather — it was the Creator's intention, that both our progenitors and their posterity should so live during the entire cycle allotted in the divine counsels to their existence ; there was thus, in the primordial plan of providence, to be on earth neither sin nor stain in the beginnings of human life, or in its earthly termination. The commission of sin was an accident, dis- turbing the divine economy, causing man to fall from his innocence ; but it was not a necessary accident. Whatever theological opinion one may entertain with regard to 2/8 Life of Pope Pius IX, the nature of the innocence and holiness in which sin found our first parents, this much is beyond controversy, that the natural perfec- tion in which they were created, or the superadded gifts of holiness and justice, involved absolutely nothing equal to " the exaltation of a creature to the heights where alone divinity can shine." Adam was not God before he fell, nor Eve a ^'divinity" in any sense in which the Christian mind understands what is proper to the divine nature. The children destined to be bom innocent of Eve innocent, were not ''exalted" or transformed into the deity by their sinless conception or their equally sinless birth. To be conceived without sin, to be bom without sin, to live without sin, was, to God's mind, to be for them the ordinary condition and law of human existence. Every child sprung from Adam was destined to be so conceived and so born. Where is there, in this primordial view of human nature and human existence, any logical connection between a stainless, sin- less conception and birth, and the possession of the attributes which constitute a being God ? There is a further step in this most rational argument. If — as it was the Creator's design — man, aided by divine grace, had thus filled the entire cycle of his earthly and probationary existence, without forfeiting the innocence and integrity of the primeval state, could not the Eternal "Word and Son, in whom and through whom man was made, not become united to our nature innocent, as all know he did to our nature fallen and stained ? The thing — it must be admitted — was possible. For if it be most worthy of the Infinite Mercy to stoop to our lost nature and take it to himself, to redeem, repair it, and raise it up, it will not seem unworthy of the Infinite Holiness to unite itself to that same nature unstained and sinless, nor less beseeming that goodness which yeameth to give itself, to honor human nature in its moral integrity by so unspeakable a union. But, had God become incarnate among a sinless race, his mother, like every daughter of the race, would have been bom without original sin (for, in the supposition, no such sin existed), she would have been immaculate, free from all stain of sin in her conception and her birth, and that by virtue of the common law regulating all human life and existence. Her immaculateness involved, could involve no exalta- tion to the rank exclusively due to the deity. Kow, in the present fallen state of man, Mary, the mother of the incarnate Son, is by grace what the other would have been by nature, by privilege and Timely Discussion of the Doctrine, 279 exception due to tlie anticipated application of the merits and power of her Son, what that other parent would have been by the common law. The common law in the one case would not have made the mother a divine being, the singular exception and privilege under the law of original sin cannot possibly involve anything approaching to a divine attribution. The Son owed to himself, to his honor and that of his mother, to preserve her from stain, and he did so, leaving her the w^hile, as he needs must leave her, a human being, neither more nor less, pure, sinless, most blessed and most exalted in being des- tined to be his mother, but only a human being nevertheless. Such was the question which occupied the mind and heart of Pius IX. not only at Graeta, amid the novel circumstances of his exile and the anxiety caused by the state of affairs in Eome, but during the two first years of his pontificate. It was, in a humanitarian age, one that lay at the very foundation of all that is most glorious in the origin and destinies of the race ; it compelled the serious- minded, the theologian, the philosopher, the statesman, to contemplate in their magnificent connection these great doctrinal facts which show man issuing from the hands of his maker crowned with glory and honor, raised to a supernatural dignity by the pure goodness of his benefactor, falling into sin through the abuse of his own native freedom, mercifully spared by the offended deity, and in the very sentence which banishes him from the earthly paradise, promised and foreshown the future restoration in which the Second Adam and the Second Eve are associated as the parents of a new life, the progenitors of a new people, and the repairers of the primordial ruin. Surely, in an age in which natural science, absorbing in its pretentiousness the theologies and philosophies of the past, aims openly at banishing the living God of our fathers from all minds and hearts, and replacing him by the blind, unintelligent, impersonal force of mere matter, it was opportune and providential that all who believe in Christ and in the preceding revelation, should be recalled to the study of the first origin of humanity and its godlike destinies throughout all time. To make the peoples of Christendom, distracted and demoralized by revolutions and the fears or hopes of coming social change, or half materialized by the doctrines and pursuits of a commercial and industrial age, lift their souls to Christ the father of the life to come, and to elevate and warm their hearts 2 So Life of Pope Pius IX, with the renewed love of him, who is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, as well as most blessed God, was worthy of the chief pas- tor of the Church. He did not propose a new doctrine, or dream of adding to the de- posit of revealed truth a single tittle that it did not already contain. He purposed in the light of the traditional belief of all Christian ages to define and decide the fact as to whether the doctrine of the immaculate conception were or not a part of revealed truth. One is amazed to read in a grave historical work on the early pon- tificate of Pius IX., not only the monstrous assertion which called forth the foregoing explanation, but such an assertion as this : "It was at Gaeta, as I have said, that the solution of the controversy which had been so long discussed by Church doctors was ' revealed ' to Pius IX." No one more than Pius himself would have been shocked by the possibility of such a 'revelation.' But to Catholics who live in Protestant lands it ought to be — ^unfortunately it is not — a 'revelation' to meet with such ignorance, real or affected, of their most cherished beliefs and most accessible doctrines, and that, too, in men who think they know our teaching far better than we do ourselves. While the Catholic world is listening with a rapt respect to the eloquent lessons of their supreme teacher, and hastening to comply with his wishes, it may be well to see what the revolutionists are doing with Rome and the States of the Church, and what the Chris- tian powers are intent on doing toward his restoration. CHAPTEE XXIII. Revolutiokart Chan"ges IK EoME — Convocation of the Romak Constituent — The Elections, how Carried — The Reign OE Wholesale Confiscation — The Reign of Wholesale Murder — Appeal for Intervention — Why the Interven- tion WAS NOT Bloodless — Louis Napoleon will be the Pope's Master. Januaky-July, 1849. "VyO one who has kept in mind the sequence of events which led -i-N to the flight of the Holy Father to Gaeta, and the condition of things in Rome at the beginning of December, but must expect to see the revolutionists precipitating the changes which they had been so long prepared for. Both chambers had been prorogued by the Pope on December the 7th, but on the 11th both met and set aside the " Commission of Government " appointed by the Pope, and by joint resolution de- creed the establishment of a supreme gmnta, or committee, to *^ dis- charge all the functions pertaining to the head of the executive power in the name of the sovereign." This executive committee was composed of the senators of Rome and Bologna, and the mayor of Ancona. General Zucchi, who was senator of Bologna, refused to serve on it, and Galletti was put in his place. The clubs openly refused to acknowledge its authority, and the Pope by a solemn pro- testation denounced it on December the 17th as a '^ sacrilegious usur- pation " of his sovereign rights, reiterating the declaration made on November the 27th, that to the " Commission of Government" ap- pointed by him alone belonged the right of governing in his absence. Mamiani still clung to the long-cherished fancy, that, while taking entirely away from the Pope the executive civil functions, he should be allowed to retain his nominal sovereignty, together with his unfet- tered spiritual supremacy. He made, at the sacrifice of the last ves- tige' of his popularity, persistent efforts to maintain this ghost of a sovereignty in favor of the absent Pope. But he was laughed to 281 282 Life of Pope Pius IX, scorn, and was deposed from his place of power by his worshipers of the preceding week. The supreme giunta, as every one anticipated, did not long uphold the pretense for which it was created, *'to discharge the executive functions in the name of the sovereign." On December the 20th they issued a proclamation pledging themselves to convoke as soon as possible a constituent assembly of the Eoman States, which should give definite and permanent form to the political institutions called for by the people. Of the '^ Commission of Government" instituted by the Pope, a quorum could not be assembled with safety, or would not be allowed to act in Eome or elsewhere within the States of the Church. Four of its members, however, Zucchi, Bevilacqua, Eicci, and Barberini, resolved to go to Gaeta for the purpose of submitting to his Holiness a plan of compromise or conciliation. They were courteously re- ceived and referred to Cardinal Antonelli. They urged **the return of the Pope to his dominions ; the handle which his absence afforded to the Eadicals for accusing him of being a reactionist ; the necessity of affirming at once that he did not wish to take back the liberties he had established by statute ; the extreme importance of having, wi th- out a moment's delay, a government conducted by persons of un- questioned authority, enjoying both the confidence of the sovereign and that of the people; and that this government should enter at once upon its duties, lest the governors of provinces and the municipal authorities should lose heart, and a general disorganiza- tion ensue. ^ Zucchi, who was the prime mover in this matter, pressed the cardinal secretary to lose no time in hastening the return of the Pope to Eome. It would be fatal to the Pope's ascendency as well as authority, he thought, if the project of getting foreign govern- ments to inteiwene between himself and his subjects was carried oat. lie was now invited by his own people to return, and could do so without any loss of dignity. Then a series of measures was sug- gested calculated to benefit the country while gratifying the national pride. Cardinal Castracane and Monsignor Eoberti, the other mem- bers of the commission, were in Eome, and great anxiety was felt by them, as well as by the few sincere lovers of constitutional freedom in the capital, as to the result of this negotiation. While it was pending, however, a new ministry was formed at Rome, in which figured Sterbini, Armellini— an old lawyer seventy Convocation of the Roman Constituent, 283 years of age, a bitter opponent of Pope and priests — and Galletti. One after the other the Council of State and the two chambers had collapsed and gone out of existence. Sterbini's administration was nothing more or less than Sterbini himself, as the organ of the clubs, and he with Galletti and the members of the giunta declared them- selves a ** provisional goyernment," published a decree on December the 29th calling a national convention, the deputies to which were to be elected by universal suffrage on January the 21st, and to meet in Eome on the 5th of February. In the provinces, meanwhile, the governors threw up their offices, and the real government was left to the ^^ Committee of Clubs" already mentioned. They hastened to fill up with their own trusty instruments every office, high and low, throughout the pontifical territory. To the proclamation convening the Eoman Constituent Assembly Pius IX. replied on January the 1st, 1849, by another solemn pro- testation, in which he reminded his subjects that all persons guilty of any acts of usurpation against the temporalities of the Holy See incur thereby, without further warning, the major or greater ex- communication. This proclamation was torn down by the popu- lace, and, a solemn procession having been formed, it was buried with every circumstance of ignominy, Ciceruacchio reciting a mock funeral oration. Then a public meeting was called, and the same Ciceruacchio * moved a resolution to the effect that the Pope be then and there excommunicated, the sentence to be sent to him with an address concluding thus: ^^When you, sir Pope, left the city by the one gate, the bible entered into it by the opposite gate, and now there is no room for you." — Legge, ii. 139. Of course this must have been the bible clandestinely introduced by the '^ colporteurs" in league with Mazzini and the sects. One ehould be sorry to think that the true bible, the record of God's word, so reverently treasured and guarded by his Church, should enter into any city borne in triumph by a foul-mouthed, blood- stained rout of assassins and lewd women, while generosity and self-sacrifice and every virtue that adorns and ennobles manhood is compelled to fly such a hell upon earth. On the 13th of January a decree was published by the Sterbini government to the following effect : * A friend suggests tliat this scamp with the unpronounceable name should be remembered as ** Kickem-Whackem." 284 Life of Pope Pius IX, '* Whereas the meetinrGLISH HIERARCHY — LEGISLATIVE Reforms of the Catholic Powers — Piedmoj^t Iitaugurates AK Era of Persecution — Preparatory Labors on the Im- maculate Conception — Proclamation of the Dogma — Splendid Hospitality of the Pope — Gratitude of the Bishops — Private Life of Pius IX. — His Poverty — His Love of Prayer — His Devotion to Business — His Affa- bility — His Heroic and Unbounded Charity. 1850-1855. THE year 1850 was a year of jubilee for the whole Catholic world, and the tidings of the Pope's return to the Eternal City, the sense of security arising from the presence of a French army, and, above all, the desire of showing reverence and sympathy to the Holy Father, attracted such crowds of pilgrims to Rome as had not been seen there in the memory of man. Every preparation was made by the papal government for the reception of these multi- tudes of strangers — cardinals, prelates, nobles of every degree, vieing with each other in lavishing on their brethren from every land the unwearied attentions and care which genuine charity alone in- spires. Nor did the Holy Father's presence ever fail to grace these assemblages when all were made to feel that Rome is not a foreign city in a strange land, but the dwelling of the common parent. The veneration, the generosity testified to him after his recent trials, were most sweet to that loving nature, after all the bitter experiences of the past four years. The summer and autumn furnished him with timely opportunities for manifesting anew his old love for the Church of America, in the beatification of the venerable Peter Claver, the apostle of New Grenada, and venerable Mariana de Paredes y Flores, "the Lily of Quito," and the first cousin and contemporaiy of St. Rose of Lima. The beatification of Peter Claver took place on July the 16th. 312 Beatification of American Saints. 313 Beside the exquisite pleasure it gave the Holy Father to snow there- by his deep and affectionate interest in the spiritual welfare of a land where he had once hoped to spend his whole life in continuing the heroic labors of Claver and his brethren, this splendid festivity, in which all Kome, and the pilgrims of all nations assembled in Eome, took an active part, was also a public mark of the sovereign pon- tiff's increased regard for the Society of Jesus. During the troublous spring and summer of 1848 he had been forced to advise the Jesuits in Eome and elsewhere in the Pontifical States to close their houses and disappear from public notice. Once at Gaeta, Pius IX. sum- moned to him Father Eoothaan, the General of the Society, and be- stowed on him and his every testimony of affection and confidence. The Pope had nominated several Jesuits to episcopal sees in both hemispheres, deeming them the fittest by their learning and virtue for the episcopal office. But Father Eoothaan pleaded so earnestly that such a door should not be opened to ambition in the great relig- ious family over which he presided, that the Holy Father revoked the nomination, and promised that in future, except in the Jesuit mis- sions among the heathen, no member of the society should be pro- moted to the episcopal office. In October Mariana de Paredes was beatified; and during this same year four metropolitan sees were erected in the United States, those, namely, of New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Another pontifical act, of September 29th, which produced very serious complications, was the re-establishment of a regular hier- archy in England. There had been on the subject a previous under- standing between Bishop Wiseman and the Eussell-Palmerston cabi- net. It had been agreed that the assent of the ministry should re- main a profound secret, and this secret Dr. Wiseman kept till his dying day, in spite of the shocking breach of good faith committed afterward by Lord Eussell. The creation of new sees with local titles had never been considered in the United States as a matter in which the Federal or State governments were called on to interfere. And this absolute freedom was one argument urged for the erection of new sees in England not interfering with the old episcopal titles preserved by the Eeformation. The commotion produced in England by what was termed 'Hhe papal aggression," was extraordinary, and threatened great danger to the Catholics. But the admirable discretion of their leaders warded off every chance of collision, and paralyzed by patience 314 Lije of Pope Pius IX. and dignified silence the fanaticism of the mob and its utmost vio- lence. One evil effect remained, hoT^eyer, after the popular passion had cooled down, and that was the more open countenance given to Pied- mont in its aggressive policy toward the Holy See, the advocacy of the cause of Young Italy by the English press, and the triumphant reception accorded to Garibaldi in 1864. We say ''more open" countenance ; for, the refusal of the Pope to acknowledge himself bound by the Fundamental Statute, and to carry on constitutional government in accordance with it, after the downfall of the republic, served as a safe pretext to Lord Palmerston for encouraging, secretly at least, not to say openly, all the schemes of Oavour and Napo- leon III. All through the next four years active preparations were made for the assembly of bishops at Eome, in which it was proposed to pro- mulgate the definition of the Immaculate Conception. Meanwhile, the Catholic sovereigns, against whom the efforts of the late revolu- tion had been especially directed, were preparing to repeal the op- pressive laws against the Church, which had been one of the Galilean legacies of the eighteenth century. In Tuscany, the grand duke — one of the best princes of the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg, who had shared the liberal ideas and the vicissitudes of Pius IX., had been exiled like him, and restored about the same time — now set aside the Leopoldine laws, which kept the Church in his dominions bound hand and foot to the State. This was the first fruit of the beautiful letter to the bishops of Italy, and the appeal it contained to the experience of Italian sovereigns. They began to perceive that there can be but little respect for the temporal authority of the prince or the magistrate, in any community in which the people are taught to hold in contempt the authority in spirituals of the religion professed by themselves. The young emperor of Austria, warned by the revolution which hastened his own accession to the throne, also repealed the most odious enactments of Joseph II., and negotiated a new concordat with the Holy See, which was formally concluded in 1855. The king of Naples, too, who had till then maintained the tyrannical laws imposed on the Church by Marquis Tanucci during the Bourbonian crusade against the Jesuits, had been inspired by the virtues and counsel of Pius IX. in his exile at Gaeta, to give religion its full authority and the sovereign pontiff untrammeled liberty in dealing Piedmont Pursues a7i Anti- Catholic Policy, 3i5 with all orders of the clergy. On June the 9th, 1855, Ferdinand II. began a series of legislative reforms contemplating the perfect enfranchisement of the Church, and a parallel reform of lay legisla- tion. Wurtemberg, in 1857, adopted many of the wisest measures of the Austrian concordat ; and Portugal, in 1859, concluded one of her own, which annulled most of the schismatical and anti-Christian laws of Pombal. The stay of the Pope in the kingdon of Naples, his known liberal disposition, and the ill fortune that he had met with, seemed to haye stirred up Catholic faith and piety everywhere. The South Ameri- can States had been most unanimous in forwarding to the Holy Father expressions of reverence and sympathy and substantial aid in his need. In Central America Guatemala had gone further; ef- fective measures were agreed upon between the papal government and President Carrera for the settlement of all religious matters. A concordat was concluded on October the 7th, 1852, which gave that beautiful, but sadly neglected country, the well-founded hope of see- ing the Holy See exercising its full reforming authority among the clergy, restoring education, discipline, and piety, all totally uncared for during several generations. And so the heart of the good shepherd overflowed with joy at the brightening prospects of religion, much as he felt that his own political future was seriously threatened. There is no room to doubt it — had Piedmont been willing to forego the criminal ambi- tion which made her abjure every law of conscience and moral rectitude — in carrying out her designs, Italy, within the lifetime of Pius IX., would have seen every one of her native States blessed with peace, freedom, prosperity, and the revival of religion and national greatness. As it is, she is great only by the permission of Germany. Step by step, without the slightest regard to the conventions between the sovereigns of Piedmont and the Holy See, and in open and pro- fessed violence of its supreme authority in all matters of Church dis- cipline, Count Cavour and the democratic ministries which succeeded each other in Turin, set aside all acknowledged ecclesiastical law, secularized Church property, suppressed the religious orders, abol- ished the immunities of the clergy ; took upon themselves to legis- late in matters which strictly belonged to Church authority alone, rendered the exercise of the pontifical authority all but impossible, and the free ministrations of the clergy a matter of exceeding diffi- culty. It was in vain that the sovereign pontiff protested : the king, 3i6 Life of Pope Pius IX. now a constitutional monarch, left the government in the hands of his ministers, and gave himself entirely up to his unholy pleasures ; and his ministers, when they were not avowedly members of the Young Italy democracy, and sworn to promote its objects, were con- tent to allow them to use the terrible power of the public press in misrepresenting the public acts of the Holy Father and in blackening his private character and the persons of his ministers. Thus the plans, the principles, the influence of Piedmont from the north were extending daily, and rendering the task of governing his States and completing his reforms more and more difficult to Pius IX. The year 1854 was drawing to Its close, and the entire Catholic family spread over both hemispheres felt the most intense interest in the approaching solemnities in Eome. Every man, woman, and child within its pale had in the doctrinal judgment about to be pro- nounced the same personal interest, as if the mother who bore them were to be declared free from all stain of guilt by the united voice of Christian ages. In every household it was felt that the honor of God's incarnate Son was to be supremely vindicated in the stainless honor of his mother. The aim and hope of the chief pastor of Christ's wide flock were clearly and touch ingly expressed in the dogmatic bull itself : " We hope from the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that the Church, our holy mother, being delivered from all dangers and made victorious over all errors, shall flourish throughout the whole earth, shall bring back to the road of truth all souls that are- straying from it, so that there shall be but one fold and one shepherd." The war between Eussia, on the one side, and Turkey, England, and France, on the other, was about to break out, threatening to enkindle a general conflagration in Europe ; and many States were sorely troubled by intestine dissensions. The father of Christendom, to whose soul the supernatural and invisible world was more of an over-present reality than the world of sense, was fain to unite all his children in solemn supplication and penance, in order to draw down on Christ's family the special assistance of the new Adam and the new Eve, and to obtain special light from on high as the bishops of every land were about to proceed to Eome. On the 1st of August the encyclical Apostolicm nostrm caritatis proclaimed a universal jubilee of prayers, good works, and penitential satisfaction in furtherance of these puq^oses. Pius IX. wished to have pure hearts and pure hands raised on high in prayer, in order to propitiate the divine mercy. Solemnity of the Immaculate Conceptioft, 317 From the 20tli to the 24tli November all the bishops assembled in Rome met daily to discuss, paragraph by paragraph, the solemn dogmatic bull defining the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the cardinals holding their own private sessions, in which the acts of the bishops were discussed and revised, under the presidence of the Pope himself. This preliminary discussion being ended, the Pope assembled the Sacred College on December the 1st, delivered a short allocution, and then took the votes of all the cardinals present on the subject before them. There was perfect unanimity, and on December the 8th, the Basilica of St. Peter's was decorated with a splendor it had never known till now, and for such a ceremony as had never been witnessed beneath its lofty dome. Upwards of two hundred bishops of every land were in attendance. There were Catholics and Protes- tants from both hemispheres, the former drawn to Rome by the piety imbibed from childhood toward the Mother of the Redeemer, the others attracted by the mere desire to witness a magnificent func- tion. Rome was crowded. The procession started from the Sixtine Chapel, and proceeded through the vast aisles of St. Peter's to the apse behind the high altar, the pontifical throne having been prepared in the centre of the apse, and the seats for the Sacred College and the archbishops and bishops on both sides. Afer the chanting of the gospel. Cardi- nal Macchi, dean of the Sacred College, made the formal petition demanding the definition or final judgment of the Holy See on the exemption of the ever- Blessed Mary, Mother of God, from the guilt and stain of original sin. The sovereign pontiff returned a favorable answer, and bade all present invoke anew the light of the Holy Spirit. The hymn Ve7ii Creator, ^'Come, Creator Spirit," was intoned, Pope, cardinals, bishops, and the immense audience throughout the basilica, kneel- ing all together and joining in the majestic chant. The hymn over, the Pope sang the versicle and prayer, and standing on his throne amid a stillness so deep that not a breath was heard, he uttered in tones clear, full, and impressive these words of the decree : "After having offered up unceasingly our humble prayers to God the Father, through his Son, together Avith fasts and solemn suppli- cations throughout the Church, in order that he should vouchsafe to guide and strengthen our thoughts by the virtue of his Holy Spirit ; having implored the aid of the entire court of heaven, and ^ 1 8 Life of Pope Pitis IX. o having especially invoked by our sighs and prayers that Spirit Com- forter whose breath has come upon us ; to the honor of the holy and undivided Trinity, to the honor and glory of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and the spread of the Christian religion, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own . . ." Here the speaker's voice seemed to fail him, his eyes filled with tears. But recovering himself, he proceeded in a louder and firmer tone : *' We declare, affirm, and define that the doctrine which says that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved and exempted from all stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Saviour of all mankind, is a doctrine revealed of God, and which, for this reason, all Christians are bound to believe firmly and with confidence. . . ." The last words of the decree had scarcely fallen on the ears of the rapt audience when the cannon of Castle St. Angelo thundered forth the tidings to the Eternal City, and all the church bells of Eome rang forth a joyous peal. It was a moment never to be for- gotten even by those who shared not in the belief of the multitude there, whose grateful feelings vented themselves in subdued but heartfelt thanksgiving. How the entire Catholic world celebrated this event cannot be de- scribed here. On December the 10th, the splendid Basilica of St. Paul, " outside the walls," burned July 15th, 1823, and restored under Gregory XVI. and Pius IX., was dedicated anew in presence of the assembled bishops. The Pope took a singular pleasure, while pre- lates and missionaries from the remotest and most barbarous coun- tries were present, in preaching himself on this unique occasion, and in holding up to the admiration and imitation of all the great ''apostle of the nations;" ''this chosen vessel, the brightest light of the Christian law, the most illustrious herald of the gospel, who, while still in the flesh, was lifted up in spirit to Paradise. The deep searcher of the divine counsels, the wise teacher of nations, bearing and contemning for Christ's dear love, on sea and land, so many labors, dangers, difficulties, and sufferings ; who preached the Holy Xame to kings and peoples, confuting the synagogue, con- founding pagan philosophy, striking down idolatry from its seat of power, becoming all things to all men, by his admirable actions, and his admirable writings, shed splendor on the Church while extend- The Pope Stcpremely Happy, 319 mg her reign, and consummated all by the fruitful witness of his own blood." Pius IX. had deemed himself supremely happy had the Master called him to his rest and reward after such glorious celebrations as these. It was so clear to the eye of his soul, that the bitter persecu- tions through which the Church was passing, only helped to mani- fest her divinity and vitality ! "During a long period of time," said Bishop Dupanloup, *'the powers of earth had reserved for themselves the triumph of public pageants. . . . Keligion has now had hers, and the nineteenth century has beheld a renewal of the popular festivities of the ages of faith. "The celebration of December the 8th thus crowns the expecta- tion of past centuries, sheds a blessing on the present one, claims the gratitude of generations unborn, and shall leave behind an im- perishable remembrance. It satisfies all and wounds no one ; it is the first doctrinal definition undisturbed by any opposition at the moment it was pronounced ; it is the first which leaves no heresy behind. It will leave the Catholic world unanimous, just as it found it. It confirms everything and overthrows nothing ; it draws closer than ever the ties which bind the Church of France to Eome, which unite the East to the West, the successor of Peter with the bishops of the whole world ; it sets forth power and unity, energy and faith, expansion and charity. It is for the present hour an irresistible evidence of vitality, coming after so many ruthless storms. That Church which people believed to be prostrated by fifty years of persecution and outrage, stands forth mightier and freer than ever ; and this undying spouse of the living God, whom many affirmed to be exhausted by that half-century of indifference and neglect, shows herself to be as powerful as in the days of old, by performing without apparent effort and with the simple majesty natural to her, a new and solemn act of highest sovereignty." * The two hundred bishops present were the guests of his Holiness during Jheir stay in Eome, and no man ever better understood the duties of hospitality than Pius IX. Excessively sparing as he is m all that pertains to his own immediate sustenance, he is more than munificent in entertaining those who come to him from afar, the faithful laborers in the divine Master's vineyard, the persecuted * Dupanloup, (Euvres clioisies, vol. ii,, p. 123. 320 Life of Pope Pius IX, shepherds of a worried flock, the anointed of the Lord often bear- ing the scars of the battles of faith. His whole heart goes out to them. They are to him the very person of Christ, to be received with all reverence, charity, and tenderness, and to be cared for as would be the Good Shepherd himself, did he stand and knock at the gates of the pontifical palace. As the august assemblage was about to break up at the conclusion of the solemnities, the senior bishop present, the venerable Cardinal De Bonald, Archbishop of Lyons, rose to thank his Holiness in the name of his brethren. "Let your Holiuess permit me," he said, "to return thanks for the honorable and magnificent hospitality granted to the bishops who have come hither to pay the homage of their respect and devotion. I make free to say that they were not undeserving of all this kindness ; for they have accepted your de- cisions with unreserved submission. Yes, Holy Father, in your authority we reverence that of Christ himself, and in your words we hear the words of the life eternal. Before the decrees pronounced by you for the entire Catholic world, we bow our heads, as before the oracle of him who promised to abide evermore with his Church. Our gratitude shall be proved by the prayers which we shall not cease to offer up for your happiness, the success of your apostolic labors, and the tranquillity of your States." While these venerable pilgrims are returning to their respective flocks on every land beneath the heavens, it may not be inappropri- ate to pause and retire with Pius IX. from the noise and pomp and fatigue of these grand religious pageants, to repose with him in the subdued light of his privacy, and see how the habits of the priest and the man correspond with the public acts and utterances of the pontiff and the sovereign. AVe have been, like the early emigrants over our western plains, long toiling through savage and desolate tracts, where the worst perils do not come from the wild beast, but from the ferocity and treachery of wilder man. We have been camping, for the brief space of one night and morning, beneath the shelter of kindly trees, on the border of a lovely lake amid the hills, whose unruffled bosom reflected, undimmed, the bright stars of the night and all the magnificence of heaven when lit up by the dawn. There is still a long and exciting road before us ; pause we then, while the sun is high in the firmament, and let us explore the secret charms of our resting-place. "The small portion of the Vatican," says Hare, "which is inhab- Private Life of Pius IX. 321 ited by the Pope is never seen except by tliose who are admitted to a special audience. The rooms of the aged pontiff are furnished with a simplicity which would be inconceivable in the abode of any other sovereign prince." "Pius IX., " says another writer, "sleeps in one of the smallest of the eleven thousand rooms at his command. A narrow, humble bed, without curtains or drapery — something similar to those used in seminaries for school-boys — a sofa, two or three common chairs, and a writing-table, are all the articles of furniture — few and simple enough for a Capuchin. There is not even a rug by the bedside to cover the floor of red tile, not in the best repair. ^ Take care how you step, there is a brick loose,' said the Pope to a Turinese eccle- siastic who was admitted to his presence the other day, when he was confined to bed, and whose eyesight he knew was not as good as his own. Winter and summer alike the Pope gets up soon after five o'clock, seldom or never later than half-past, and after he has finished dressing remains about an hour and a half alone, passing his time in prayer and meditation." Giovanni Mastai, while as yet a student in theology, had learned the golden spiritual rule of St. Ignatius Loyola, to devote a full hour every morning, after dressing, to meditation on some of the mys- teries of Christ's life, passion, and death, or on some of the divine truths pertaining to the soul's account in eternity. This practice of meditation, so necessary to every person ambitious of rising to any degree of spiritual perfection or of achieving anything remarkable for the divine honor, was never omitted by the Pope from these first years of his beautiful priestly springtide. It formed his soul to heroic enterprise while on his way to South America, and amid the privations and perils of his journeyings there. It was the secret spring which fed his superhuman charity and devotion at Spoleto as well as at Imola. He had also most admirable examples in the two saintly men with whom he preluded in 1818, at Sinigaglia, the apos- tolic labors of his future career. When Cardinal Odescalchi laid aside his dignity and all prospects of worldly honor to become a poor Jesuit, his former protege, now archbishop of Imola, would have the lowly religious come to him, and teach his priests and himself in their sweet retreat at Piratello how to pray and meditate like Christ, and how to suffer with Christ, and he would have the once cardinal, but now humble priest, preach to the people of Imola — for Father Odescalchi 's very appearance was 32 2 Life of Pope Pius IX. a living lesson from the '^ Imitation of Christ." But it was for his own soul's advancement in self-denial and all the industries of inte- rior life that the archbishop was anxious to learn from so admirable a practitioner. Even to this day Pius IX. never omits, no matter what may have been the labors of the past twenty-four hours, to prepare most care- fully, before retiring for the night, the subject of the next morning's meditation. And when morning comes, he will brook no breaking in on that sacred hour given wholly to sweet communion with the divine majesty and the invisible court of heaven. When, at the end of the full hour, he withdraws from that dear presence, he sits down to call himself to a severe account for the manner in which he has demeaned himself while conversing face to face with the King of kings, and the practical resolutions he has formed for his own ad- vancement during the coming day. Thence — thus refreshed and purified and strengthened — he goes to the altar to offer up the mystic sacrifice and his own life in union with the Divine Victim sacramentally present there. This is habitu- ally in a little chapel near his private apartments. One of his chap- lains celebrates mass after him, the Pope remaining meanwhile in devout thanksgiving before the altar. Another pious habit, akin to that of daily mental prayer or medi- tation, and learned from the same source, is that of withdrawing after his noon-day meal for one half-hour to the same little chapel, there to examine his soul in presence of the Great Judge on the way he has discharged during the day the weighty duties of his high office, and on the most pressing needs of every portion of his im- mense flock. Let the biblical scholar remember the patriarch's wrestling the live-long night with one whom he thought an angel, and from whom, when revealed to him with the early dawn, he obtained the blessing which saved him from his brother's wrath and sworn revenge. No one better than Pius IX. knows, that in prayer the soul must wrestle with him who will have us importune him in our need. Christ's vicar is skilled in this spiritual exercise, which obtains so many graces for the dear souls of his wide family. What wonder then, tliat, being such as he is, and coming daily forth from the divine presence filled with the thought of God, and inflamed with zeal for the interests dearest to him — the interests of truth and immortal souls, and the welfare of his church — that he His Official Duties, 323 should be so fearless in denouncing error and iniquity, in reproving evil-doers, whether they be emperors, kings, presidents, or prime ministers, or the dark conspirators who are ever plotting the destruc- tion of order and morality ? At half-past eight o'clock Pius IX. breakfasts on a cup of black coffee and a piece of dry bread. Immediately afterward he enters his study and begins the laborious duties of his official life. The study is a " small one-windowed room," overlooking the square in front of St. Peter's. The room has for all furniture a very common carpet, some chairs covered with crimson cloth, a large writing-table, on which are bundles of papers, a crucifix, a statuette of the Immac- ulate Mother, a time-piece, and an ink-stand. The Pope sits in a straight-backed chair, while the Cardinal Secretary of State, Mon- signor Mercurelli, charged with the correspondence with royal per- sonages, and Monsignor Nocella, his latin secretary, come in succes- sion to fulfill their respective functions. Every document received or sent is read in presence of his Holiness, who sits with his good goose-quill in hand, marking on every letter or petition in a few dis- tinctly written words, what is his pleasure. It is a long and wearisome task — ^but only the beginning. When his early mail has been disposed of, the hour has arrived for official audiences. Then come the semi-public audiences to visitors, pil- grims, etc. With this daily duty, so interesting to the crowds who come from afar to have his blessing and a few kind words to each, terminates the morning round of occupations. What is known as the Pope's cercoU, '^ circles," are next held in a small room adjoining the large library. The cardinals, bishops, and specially invited clergymen and laymen- all come at the appointed hour and form a semicircle round the Pope, all being seated. If his Holiness has anything very interesting to communicate, he does so briefly and pleasantly. There is a kind word for every one present — a question to each foreigner about his own country — every word enlivened by the Pope's pleasant humor and ready wit; and his questions and remarks betraying a most retentive memory concerning persons and places the most widely asunder. This ends at two o'clock, when the Pope is served his frugal and solitary dinner in a small room adjoining the bedroom and study, and furnished with a like simplicity. There is soup, with three dishes, of which he never tastes more than two ; of fried meats or spiced dishes he never partakes ; drinks — ^lately, and by command of his 324 Lif<^ of Pope Pius IX. physician — a very little foreign wine. One of the private chaplaina in attendance reads a passage from Scripture, a portion of some pious book ; and then if his private secretaries have anything of special interest, they are admitted. When the cloth is removed the Pope remains alone for ten or fifteen minutes, dozing with his elbows on the table and his head between both hands. He then re- tires for a half-hour's meditation to the private chapel. The remainder of the afternoon is devoted to appointed audiences of the various pontifical ministers and officials, each of whom has a fixed hour for the transaction of business. There is not a minute in his day that has not its allotted purpose. The " divine office," or breviary, is punctually recited with one of his domestic chaplains. At half-past eight there is what scarcely can be called a supper — a slight refection consisting of one dish and a little wine and water. The Pope then retires to his study, and the remaining hour till ten o'clock is spent in strict seclusion, examination of conscience, and preparation of the subject of meditation for the next morning. Before the occupation of Eome by the Piedmontese, the Holy Father had an hour for visiting the hospitals or the poorest quarters of Rome, or for a good healthy walk in the least frequented roads. ** To students he is as affable and familiar as he was in his bishop- ric of Imola, or while yet a simple priest. In the early part of the autumn of 1856 he had a number of the students of every ecclesias- tical college in Rome to dine with him. . . . Such is the special kindness which he feels toward the students of the Irish college, more of their body enjoyed that distinction than of any other. '* One afternoon I was returning from a ramble over the charming Pincian Hill, . . . when I saw a figure clad in a white cloth soutane, with a cap and belt of the same color, and wearing a wide- brimmed crimson hat adorned with a gold cord. . . . At each Bide walked two persons dressed as the students of the Apollinari college. ... I did not hesitate about forming part of the cor- tege ... for nearly two miles along the Plaminian Way, which the prevalence of a strong wind had rendered more than usually dusty. Clad in the simple dress ... his figure appeared stout and robust, but by no means unduly full for a man of his age (then sixty-seven). He walked vigorously and well, freely using his arms. . . . As ho was descending the hill he met a group of students of the Propaganda, amongst whom I instantly recognized one of the dark faces which I had previously seen in the Pauline His Love of Shcderds and Children, 325 chapel. The Pope at once stopped and conyersed with them for a few moments. In the same way he spoke to children who had been enjoying themselves in innocent sport, but who, on being addressed by the Holy Father, evinced toward him respect, not bashfulness. . . . Every human being whom he met on his way knelt to receive his blessing. There was no exception whatever — old as well as young, rich as well as poor, the rude driver of the quaint-looking market-cart as well as the noble equestrian — all knelt as he ap- proached, and with an utter disregard of the place in which they knelt. " There was nothing in that face to awe or to repel, but every- thing to attract. . . . There is in the face of Pius IX. much that would recall to the memory the sweet countenance of another most benevolent priest, the illustrious and lamented Father Matthew. Nor is the resemblance merely external ; for in considerateness and kindness of manner to all persons, without distinction of rank ; in compassion and tenderness for the poor and the suffering, and in un- failing gentleness to youth, there is much similarity of character and disposition between these two great and good men. In their bound- less charity — the desire to convert their every earthly possession into the means of relieving others — I can see a still stranger and more touching resemblance." * It must not be imagined that the divine instinct which prompted the heroic acts of devotion and charity mentioned in the early chap- ters of this work found the soul of Pius IX. less obedient to its im- pulses, than when he was a missionary amid the Andes, or a zealous bishop at Spoleto and Imola. Where the love of prayer constantly feeds in the soul the heavenly springs of charity, they fail not, diminish not with age, but rather overflow more abundantly. There are privileged souls, which never lose, during the longest life, that freshness and trustfulness which incline them ever toward seeing the good side of human nature, or which, when they see the wretched side, impel them irresistibly to pity and to relieve. When he was ruler of Rome and its territory, he never moved abroad without having one or two of his almoners by his side with well- filled bags, which were sure to be emptied ere his return. Since Oc- tober, 1870, he stirs no more abroad ; the Ghetto and the poor of the Trastavere watch no longer for the white-robed figure, and the radi" * "Eome and its Ruler," 2d ed., London, 1859, pp. 125, 126, 127. 326 Life of Pope Pius IX. ant countenance of their father and benefactor ; they watch no mora for the hand that was never lifted but to bless, and which was eyer open, like the broad bosom of a glorious river, to give plenty and joy as it went on its way. There were, too, in the good old times, some of the Noble Guard with their sovereign as he went on his frequent walks or his errands of purest beneficence, and they were with him not to protect him from dangers that had no existence, but solely for the purpose of collecting every letter, every petition for aid, for justice, or for mercy, presented to him by his children. And not one ever failed to receive his prompt attention ; no case of injustice ever came to his notice without being promptly redressed, no dis- tressed creature ever appealed in vain to him, who was, if in naught else, at least in mercy and goodness, Christ's representative on earth ! Still, even now the post-office brings him many a petition from far and near, and the doors of the Vatican, as of old, are never closed, by night or by day, to any human being who needs the bounty or the care, the soothing voice, or the healing, merciful hand of Pius IX. ! The personal income of the Pope, in his palmiest days, never ex- ceeded five thousand dollars a year ; yet, from 1846 to 1850, he spent in works of charity and beneficence upwards of one million and a half of dollars — this enormous sum having been supplied by the vol- untary donations of Catholics from every land, Since he has been deprived of his temporal sovereignty he has steadily and consistently refused the revenue granted or promised by the Italian parliament, and has relied exclusively on the alms sent him by his children throughout the world. With these he provides for the immense ad- ministration required by the affairs of the universal Church, and dispenses with an unstinted generosity aid to every suffering church and institution throughout Italy, support to the thousands of help- less nuns and priests driven from their homes and cast homeless and penniless on the world, while his almsgiving to the obscure poor and needy is far more abundant than in 1846 or 1849. The money poured in on him by the loving piety of the faithful of both worlds is poured back on others unceasingly. Thus wo see the earth, from the glaciers of its great mountain- chains and its lakes in the uplands, pouring down its streams without ceasing into the ocean. And, all the while, all over the ocean's vast expanse God's winds with their invisible hands are collecting the vapors from the deep and freighting with them the clouds — the The Slave- Girl from New Orleans. 327 ships of the air — impelling these toward the east and the west, where the precious waters are discharged anew on mountain-chain, upland and lowland, forest and plowed field. So is it with the charity of Christ's faithful, and the exhaustless generosity of him who is Christ's vicar. Needing little or nothing for himself, and never bestowing on his family either undeserved honor or gratuitous emoluments, Pius IX. found means to perfect all the struggling institutions of his States, whether these were devoted to religious or to secular purposes, and to create others on every side with princely munificence. There is not an object of real necessity or acknowledged utility to his people that he did not encourage with the same impartial and intelligent zeal. In the work of a contemporary writer, taken all too early from his country's need and confidence, from literature and journalism which he had honored by his success and his virtues, from the British Par- liament where all respected talents which party could neither sway nor purchase, we have the touching and well-known story of the American slave-girl brought to Rome by her Catholic masters. Though the contact of Roman soil enfranchised all who touched it, this poor African wished to remain a slave ; and besides, there was the color of her race, which even in liberty-loving lands excludes freedman and freedwoman from the dearest courtesies and charities of social intercourse. Yet in Rome, the home of the common father of all humanity, color never yet has been aught else but a special claim on the affection, the respect, and the courtesy of all. It was in 1856, and the family to which she belonged were re- turning to New Orleans. Marguerite had been confirmed while in Rome, and had only one wish ere she departed, that she might be placed somewhere on the Pope's passage, where one fatherly look might be given her, with a blessing pronounced especially on herself. And the wish was made known to the Pope. "Next day a papal dragoon was seen riding up and down the Via Condotti, making inquiries at various places for Mademoiselle Mar- guerite, for whom he had a letter of audience with the first sovereign in the world." After an infinity of trouble the letter safely reached its destination, and at the appointed hour Marguerite found herself VR the reception hall of the Vatican, amid the crowd of the well-born who were about to leave Rome after the Easter festivals. The poor shrinking African girl naturally fancied that she must wait till all 3 2 8 Life of Pope Pius IX. the great folk present had been presented to the Holy Father. But lo ! the first name called out by the chamberlain in waiting is ** Mademoiselle Marguerite ! " And she is ushered, trembling and amazed, into the presence of Pius IX. '^ A voice of touching sweet- ness and gentleness soon inspired her with confidence. My child, there are many great people waiting, but I wish to speak to you the first. Though you are the least upon earth, you may he the greatest in the sight of God, He then conversed with her for twenty minutes. He asked her about her condition, her fellow- slaves, her hardships. / have many hardships, she replied ; hut since I tvas confi,rmed I have learned to accept them as the will of God, He exhorted her to persevere, and to do good in the condition in which she was placed ; and he then gave her his blessing. He blessed her, and blessed 'all those about her ; ' so that this poor slave carried with her from that memorable interview greater courage . . . to bear up against her yoke of suffering and humiliation." * We shall not be surprised to hear of the Pope's doing in his old age what he had done as a priest in his early youth — seek out in the cholera hospitals the worst cases of infection, and attend to them with his characteristic tenderness. He had read of his favorite, Peter Claver, finding a poor negro slave stricken with a most hideous leprosy and left to die uncared for in a lonely out-house. The holy missionary wrapped his cloak around him, lifted him tenderly in hia arms, and carried him, with loving words of comfort, to the Leprosy Hospital, wherejie forgot everything else in the world till he had prepared that precious soul for heaven. So is it related of Pius IX. that he found a poor plague-stricken Jewess one day, and never quitted her, lavishing on her every care his charity could suggest, till she expired, while he was lifting up her head to ease it in its agony. When the plague attacked the soldiers of the French garrison, he could find no rest till he was in their midst ; and how they blessed him ! When later the poor deluded followers of Garibaldi had been wounded and taken prisoners in an attempt on Rome, he went among them to console and care for them, leaving this merciful labor to no other hands than his own. Did he win their hearts ? Let us not ask, but pass on. • John Francis Magnlie, ** Rome and its Ruler." CHAPTER XXVII. Working of the New Institutions — Judged by Thiers — By Palmeeston — Baeon Sauzet on Eoman Legislation — The Mazzinian Galeotti's Opinion — Administeation of Eo- MAN Law — How the Rights of the Pooe aee tenderly CAEED FOE — WhAT PeEVENTED THE PoPE'S ReFOEMS FEOH BEING Effectual — Inceedible Duplicity and Saceile- Gious Haste of Piedmont — The Roman Question in the CONGEESS OF PaEIS — CaVOUE'S CALUMNIES REFUTED BY Count de Rayneval — Second Encyclical on Italy — The Pope eesolves to Visit his Dominions. 1850-1857. IN September, 1849, as we have seen, the Holy Father had pub- lished a decree {motu proprio) reorganizing the goyernment of the Pontifical States in such a way as to make the institutions there- by established most efficient in remedying the disorders consequent on the late revolution, and admirably suited to the needs of the country and the character of the people, as a preparation toward real constitutional government. The two chief political bodies thus cre- ated were the Council of State and the Council of Finance. The latter managed so admirably the successive yearly budgets, that in presenting the project for that of 1857, the expenses only ex- ceeded the receipts by half a million dollars. The French official Moniteur remarked thereon, December 2, 1856: ''If one only re- members that the pontifical government has had to take up and cash forty millions of worthless paper currency bequeathed by the repub- lic, one cannot help feeling astonished that at the end of seven years of financial management there only remains a deficit of half a million of dollars. By persevering in this path the government and the council must within a very short period arrive at a perfect financial equilibrium." Meanwhile the French republican government had named a com- 329 330 Life of Pope Pitts IX, mission of fifteen eminent statesmen to examine and report on the political wisdom and practical value of the institutions granted to his States hy Pius IX. The report was drawn up, signed, and pre- sented hy the inveterate foe of the Holy See, M. Thiers, on Octoher the 13th, 1849. "Your commission," it is said in the report, "has maturely examined this act (the motu proprio), ... in order to see if the counsels which France believed herself authorized to offer, had borne such fruits as to prevent her regretting having inter- vened in Eoman affairs. "Well, by a large majority (of twelve in fif- teen) your commission declares that it sees in the motu proprio a first boon of such real value, that nothing but unjust pretensions could overlook its importance. We shall discuss this act in its every detail. But limiting ourselves at present to consider the principle on which is based the pontifical concession, we say that it grants all desirable provincial and municipal liberties. As to political liber- ties, consisting in the power of deciding on the public business of a country in one of the two assemblies and in union with the executive — as in England, for instance — it is very true that the motit proprio does not grant this sort of political liberty, or only grants it in the rudimentary form of a council without deliberative voice. " This is a question of immense gravity, which the Holy Father alone can solve, and which he and the Christian world are interested in not leaving to chance. That on this point he should have chosen to be prudent, that after his recent experience he should have preferred not to reopen a career of agitation among a people who have shown themselves so unprepared for parliamentary liberty, is what we do not know that we have either the right or the cause to deem blameworthy." In 1856 Lord Palmerston said of this same act : " We all know that, on his restoration to his States, in 1849, the Pope published an ordinance called motu proprio, by which he declared his intention to bestow institutions, not indeed on the large proportions of a con- stitutional government, but based nevertheless on popular election, and which, if they had only been carried out, must have given his subjects such satisfaction as to render unnecessary the intervention of a foreign army." But they had been carried out, as we have seen by the financial results just stated, and by others to be explained presently ; and these results would have been even much more satisfactory had Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon and Count Cavour given the Holy opinions of Baron SauzeL 331 Father the honest and open support of their respective governments^ instead of thwarting his best efforts by dishonest intrigue, dark con- spiracy, and open misrepresentation. Certain it is that the communal, municipal, and provincial liber- ties of the Roman States were founded on a legislation acknowledged to be the most admirable in existence, and on a practice and customs going back to the remotest period of Italian civilization. Baron Sauzet, who was president of the Chamber of Deputies in the reign of Louis Philippe, and who is not suspected of being too favorable to the papacy, thus wrote, in 1860, of the system of legis- lation which prevailed in the States of the Church, and on which, as on a basis as solid as the Apennines, Pius IX. was endeavoring to build the improvements demanded by modern society : " Criminal procedure and penal legislation have been regulated by the codes of Gregory XVI., which are a true progress, and in which delays and not severity have been censured. '* The old Roman law has remained as the basis of the civil legis- lation of Rome. Certain dispositions thereof have been adapted by the Popes to the needs of various ages and peoples. ''Except these special points of great delicacy, on which every Christian society must allow religious authority alone to legislate, the Roman legislation of to-day is the old Roman law of Justinian, mod- ified in some points by the ordinance of 1834. ''The changes made since that year are few, and pains have been taken to codify them, so as to impart to them a perfect, scientific lucidity, and to render them available to practitioners. This labor, carefully prepared by the Council of State, is at present in the hands of a commission composed of the most eminent and learned jurists in Rome. . . . " In Rome they are very far from the legislative confusion which obtains in England, and which heaps up over each other the statutes of preceding epochs, continually making new laws and never ab- rogating the old, maintaining together the charters of the Planta- genets, the edicts of Elizabeth, and the ordinances of Queen Vic- toria. The Romans have not made of legal knowledge a problema- tic science, whose secrets are held and sold by a few privileged sooth- sayers, whose dark depths it would exhaust the largest fortune to explore, and to the possession of which the longest lives do not suf- fice. *' Rome, then> possesses a regular legislation, performing its func- 332 Life of Pope Pius IX, tions with regularity, based on foundations laid by equity itself, and surrounded by the reverence of ages." * This eminent man scouts the idea of imposing on the Romans, as Louis Napoleon intended, the Code Napoleon. Galeotti, who had been minister of justice under Mazzini, says of the institutions of the Papal States : " In the pontifical government there are many parts deserving of praise ; it contains many ancient institutions which are of unquestioned excellence, and there are others of more modem date which the other provinces of Italy might well envy. . . . One may say confidently that there is no other government in Italy in which the abstract principle of discussion and delibera- tion has been so long established and so generally practiced." Elsewhere, speaking of the judicature, the same author says : "The tribunal of the Rota is the best and the most respected of the ancient institutions in Rome ; some slight changes would make it the best in all Europe. . . . The mode of procedure followed in it is excellent, and might serve as a model in every country where people would not have the administration of justice reduced to the art of simply terminating lawsuits." "Law expenses," says Monsignor Eevre, "are very moderate, the proceedings are very rapid, and the rules of the judiciary are among the very best of the kind. Besides the poor are never taxed by the courts, while they are always supplied with counsel. In Rome itself, the pious confraternity of St. Yvo (the patron saint of lawyers) takes on itself gratuitously the cases of all poor people, when they appear to have right on their side." The arch-confraternity of San Girolamo della Carita also undertakes the defense of prisoners and poor persons, especially widows. "It has the administration of a legacy left by Felice Amadori, a noble Florentine, wlio died in the year 1639. . . . The principal objects of their solicitude are persons confined in prison; these they visit, comfort, clothe, and frequently liberate, either by paying the fine imposed on them as a penalty of their offense, or by arranging matters with their credi- tors. . . . With a wise charity, they endeavor to simplify and shorten causes ; and they employ a solicitor, who assists in arranging disputes, and thus putting an end to litigation. . • . This con- traternity embraces the flower of the Roman prelacy, the patrician order, and the priesthood." f * Rome dtfoant V Europe, p. 178. f "Rome and its Rulers.** Piedmont Neutralizes Papal Reforms, 333 We shall presently see tlie Holy Father foregoing, seemingly, every other care, even those of his vast spiritual administration, to examine, himself in person, the material and social condition of every part of his States. In the meantime, one cannot help asking, why did not the institutions granted in Gaeta, and enlarged since the Pope's return, satisfy his people ? Why did not the wise improvements made in the admirahle system of legislation praised by Italians and foreigners alike, convince the Eomans or the most influential among them, that they had but little, if anything, to envy in the institu- tions of other lands, while in their own they had a sovereign most desirous of . bestowing, in addition to all their priceless inherited blessings, whatever was beneficial in modern industry, and commer- cial freedom ? The answer is a plain one : Mazzinism and Piedmontism never ceased inculcating on the Koman mind that the whole system of law and government was worthless, vicious, antiquated and illiberal, because it was a ''clerical system;" while Piedmont, by sweeping away whatever past ages had given itself of priestly privilege, pre- rogative, power, or influence, was ever challenging the praises of Europe, the admiration of Young, Italy, and the imitation of the other States of the Peninsula. It is not easy to convey to the reader any adequate conception of the radical change effected by such men as Cavour in the ancient Catholic constitution of Savoy and Piedmont, and that without any- thing like preparation or transition. A memorandum sent by the court of Eome to all the European governments in 1856, and accompanied with a long array of over- whelming documentary evidence, sets forth with a masterly ability the persecutions which the Church had to endure in the kingdom of Sardinia during the eight preceding years ; the incredible duplicity with which the Sardinian government persisted in sending plenipo- tentiary after plenipotentiary to the Holy See, to negotiate new con- cordats, while it refused in the most solemn manner to hold itself bound by any concordat whatever; profiting by the pretense of negotiating to keep up in Eome, with the conspirators and the dis- affected subjects of the Holy Eather, the most criminal and odious intrigues against his authority, while in Piedmont and the island of Sardinia every remnant of ecclesiastical liberty, every distinctive Catholic institution, was swept away in spite of all the forms of jus- 334 Life of Pope Pius IX. tice and in violation of the most sacred principles of international law.* It was a clever stroke of policy which induced Piedmont to join England and France during the Crimean war. It obtained for her a place in the conference of Paris, which met in March, 1856. It was the first time that Turkey or Piedmont had been admitted to a seat in a European Congress. And Cavour, who since Novem- ber, 1852, controlled the Turinese parliament and ministry, had achieved a great political triumph in securing the open counte- nance of the two great western powers for the prosecution of all his designs in favor of Italian unity and Piedmontese supremacy. Peace was concluded with Russia on March the 28th, and the legitimate labor of the conference seemed to be ended. But on April the 8th a special session was held, at which Count Cavour presented a note on the condition of the Roman States, which was a solemn arraignment of the pontifical government. This was sup- ported by Count Walewski, the French plenipotentiary, and by Lord Clarendon, the British minister. The Russian and Austrian repre- sentatives declined discussing the matter, as not within the scope of their instructions, and Baron Manteuffel gave a very guarded answer. On April the 16th a supplementary note was addressed to the French and British plenipotentiaries by Count Cavour. It regrets the re- fusal of the other powers to discuss Italian affairs, reiterates the former accusations against the Roman and Neapolitan governments, and declares that the popular irritation, which had been somewhat calmed by the hope of redress from the powers, " must now burst forth more violently than ever ; . . . that the Italians will surely enlist with a southern ardor in the ranks of the revolutionary and subversive party, and that Italy will become once more a focus of conspiracy and disorder. . . . This awakening of revolution- ary passions in the countries bordering on Piedmont . . . must expose it to dangers of exceeding gravity. . . . But this is not the only danger with which Sardinia is threatened ; a worse peril comes from the means employed by Austria to repress revolutionary fervor in Italy." It was a threat held out against Austria in the face of Europe, and ♦ See Exposfi eorroibori d« doeuments sur les soins incessant par lesqueU 8a Saintete ffest efforeee de porter remade aux maux que soujfre VEglise Catholiqus dans le Roj^aume de Sardaigne, Cavour Refuted by De RaynevaL 335 with the seeming acquiescence of England and France. It is not to be forgotten, however, that the question was introduced by Count Walewski, the president of the conference. Lord Clarendon's propo- sition, more clearly eyen than Count Cavour's, proposed 'Hhe com- plete secularization of the pontifical government and the organization of an administrative system in harmony with the spirit of the age, and aiming at the happiness of the people." In conformity with Cavour's plan, the Legations were first to be organized under a lay government with a national army. This dismemberment of the papal territory was not put forward in vain. It was an idea cast into the Italian mind to fructify there. Unfortunately for Cavour and his calumnies, the French govern- ment had instructed its ambassador in Rome, the Count de Eayneval, to make the most searching inquiry into the whole framework of the pontifical government, the reforms made by Pius IX., the neces- sity of a further secularization of the administration, the condition of the papal finances, the state of agriculture, commerce, and in- dustry ; the causes of dissatisfaction existing among the people of Rome and the provinces, and their real wishes in regard to a change of rulers, etc. The inquiry was made with a thoroughness, an intelligence, and a fair-mindedness beyond all praise ; and on May the 14th, eight days after the last philippic of Count Cavour against the Holy See, M. De Rayneval sent his report to Count Walewski. Nothing was heard of it till March, 1857, when the London Daily News published an English translation. It next appeared, translated from the English, in the Independance Beige of Brussels, and was thence borrowed by the French press. It was impossible to give a more direct and tri- umphant refutation of the unblushing assertions of Cavour and the hackneyed accusations of the entire Liberal press of Europe. '(See ''Rome and its Ruler.") The imperial government of France had its own reasons for with- holding this remarkable State paper from the public. A copy, how- ever, had been sent to Lord Clarendon, and thus found its way to the English public, and back again to the continental press. Lord Clarendon lost no time in reproving Count Cavour for the bad faith displayed in his proceedings at the conference, and the sanction which the British plenipotentiary had thereby been induced to givo to what was simply a tissue of misrepresentations. To these — and that before Count de Rayneval's dispatch had been 33^ Life of Pope Pius IX. made public — the Holy Father replied by a second encyclical to the bishops of Italy on August the 10th, 1856. It is in such authentic documents that posterity will study and admire the great soul of Pius IX., and that lofty spirit of faith and courage which enabled him to see providence permitting for a while the triumph of the wicked, in order to purify and exalt the good, and moving the earth, in his appointed time, to free his Church from the domination of the oppressor. While praising the heroic constancy of the archbishops, bishops, and priests, so violently persecuted in Piedmont and Sardinia for conscience' sake, the sovereign pontiff repeats his condemnation of the various laws enacted by the Turinese legislature against the Church and her imprescriptible rights, and his censure of various errors denounced and proscribed in preceding allocutions. One error in particular meets the Holy Father's reprobation, while, on the other hand, he gives an admirable and authoritative explanation of the saying, " Out of the Church there is no salvation." "On this occasion," the encyclical says, "we must once more recall and stigmatize the serious error into which certain Catholics have fallen. " They believe that one can attain eternal life by living (volunta- rily) in error, far away from the true faith and Catholic unity. This is formally in opposition to Catholic teaching. We know — and you know — that persons who are in invincible ignorance of our holy faith, who are careful to follow the natural law and its dictates, graven as they are by God in the hearts of all, and who lead an hon- orable and righteous life, can, with the aid of the divine light and grace, acquire eternal life. For God perfectly sees, searches, knows the spirits of men, their souls, thoughts, and habits ; and in his supreme goodness and boundless mercy he permits no one to suffer eternal chastisement who has not been guilty of voluntary transgres- sion. " But we are also acquainted with the Catholic axiom, that out of the Church there is no salvation ; that is, that no one can obtain eternal salvation while remaining rebellious to the authority and de- cisions of the Church, while persisting obstinately in remaining separated from her unity and from the communion of the Roman pontiff, the successor of that Peter to whom our Lord intrusted the keeping of liis vineyard. . . , " Far be it, however, from the children of the Church to become True Charity and True Patriotism, 337 the enemies of such as are not united to us by the ties of religious faith and charity. On the contrary, they are bound to render such persons all the services prompted by Christian charity, wheneyet they find them in poverty, in sickness, and in distress of any kind ; they should assist them in every way, laboring chiefly to dispel the darkness in which they live, to bring them to the Church, their loving mother, whose arms are ever opened wide to embrace them. . . ." The exhortations given in the letter from Gaeta are here briefly and earnestly repeated. So many persons of all orders, and of both sexes, have suffered for the faith during these sad years ! There is a heartfelt tribute of praise for all who have been true to God and their conscience. And then, "In the midst of our accumulated bitterness, and of the storm raised against us, we must not be cast down. ... Is not Christ our light and our strength ? . . . Know we not that the gates of hell shall never prevail against his Church ? She has ever been and shall ever continue to be preserved without stain beneath the sheltering arms of Christ, who is her builder, and who was yesterday, and to-day, and the same for- ever, " But the Pope had resolved to leave nothing undone that he could do, in order to know to the fullest extent, and in every detail, what was the condition of every part of his dominions, what the griev- ances, real or imaginary, of every class of his subjects therein, what the resources developed and undeveloped, and the needs and aspirations of every one of his children, so far as his own personal observation could ascertain, and his utmost devotion could supply a remedy to every ill, and aid in perfecting what was good. He was nearly a septuagenarian, and expected to be soon called to his dread account ; his every minute and energy thenceforward should be given more than ever to the one supreme purpose of saving by sheer generosity, in the discharge of his double office of pontiff and prince, every soul confided to him. So, in the beginning of May, 1857, just when, unexpectedly to him, all Europe was thrown into a ferment by the publication of Count de Raynevars dispatch, the heroic old man set out from Rome, resolved not to return thither till he had, so far as one in his position could, seen and heard every one of his subjects. He had made a public vow some time previously to visit the sanctuary of Loreto, in order there to recommend the perils of his people and the 22 338 Life of Pope Pius IX. dearest interests of religion to the Immaculate Mother of Christ, and to beseech her visible protection amid the growing tempest. On the 4th of May the Holy Father set out from Rome, having with him, beside the ministers whose presence was not indispensable in Rome, a select body of prelates and lay officers whose duty should be, during the journey, to collect the most accurate information about the wants of the people and the improvements of every kind needed in each locality. Among the prelates were Monsignori De Merode, Talbot, Prince Hohenlohe, Borromeo, and Berardi, every one of them distinguished alike for high birth and great ability, and representing the great European nationalities. CHAPTER XXVIII. Modern?- Rome Created amid Ruins — Catholic Creations THROUGHOUT THE CaMPAGNA — PlEDMOKT UNDOING WHAT THE Popes had done — An Instance on the Pope's Route — Monte Soratte and its Monasteries — The Pope's Journey A Serious Tour of Inspection — Work done and Improve- ments ORDERED— Munificence of Pius IX. — Royal Visi- tors — The Pope in Modena and Tuscany — His Return TO Rome — The true Mortara Case — The Mazzinians Im- patient — Orsini's Attempt to Murder Napoleon III. — When and How the War of 1859 was Planned — Europe Mystified by Napoleon and Cayour — Garibaldi's Execu- tive Programme. 1857-1859. THE Rome of our days, as is well known, was built up at first by the Popes amid the ruins left behind by time and the barba- rians. The region around the city, the Agro Romano y or the Cam- pagna in its narrowest sense, was necessarily allowed to remain what the destroyers had left it, a wilderness of ruin ; which gradually be- came an uncultivated, uninhabited waste, scarred by the long lines of the ancient paved roads or crumbling aqueducts, dotted by frag- ments of pagan temples, patrician villas and tombs, and the conical huts of the modern shepherds. In the time of St. Augustine and St. Jerome this abandoned and untenanted tract had become a hot- bed of malarial diseases. During the next three or four centuries, while Greek and Goth and Hun and Frank and Saracen swept over it together or successively, no farmer would have dared to cul- tivate its most lovely portions, even had they been free from the scourge of fever, for the worse scourge of human rapacity always hung over it. And so it went on increasing in desolation and sick- " liness, till it became as hopelessly a desert as the plain of Egyptian Thebes or the sandy expanse of the Sahara. The half -educated traveler who crosses it from Civita Vecchia fco 339 340 Life of Pope Pius IX. Rome, or who looks down upon it from some of the hills near the city, will find in its silence and desolafceness a ready argument against the priestly rule of the Popes, and the unthriftiness of Catho- lic populations in general. Not so the man, be his religion what it may, who has well read the story of the past. Many a Pope before Pius IX. had tried, and tried in vain, to re- claim the Campagna, as well as to drain the Pontine Marshes. And Pius IX. was too earnest in seeking to repair and to improve, not to have endeavored to reclaim this wilderness from fever and unpro- ductiveness. As he and his cortege sped, on that lovely 4th of May, northward along the valley of the Tiber toward the distant Sabine mountains, the malarial season had already set in, though the Campagna was still most beautiful to look upon, with its rank vegetation, and its profusion of wild flowers, every mound they met on their way cover- ing some city more ancient than Rome itself, and the hillsides covered with flowering arbusts and vines, ancient tombs rifled of their dead and their treasures long ago peeping out amid the red tufa, the hilltops crested with the remains of Sabine or Pelasgian structure? — ^the silent witnesses of mighty races and civilizations long passed away. Whatever there is of life and thrift and beauty and happiness in the towns and cities that rise up before the pilgrims, from Farfa and Casamari to the distant Loreto on the populous Adriatic shore, is chiefly due, under God's bounty, to the fostering care of the Roman pontiffs. It was the first time since that memorable mid-June of 1846 that the present sovereign of the Roman States had been able to retrace his steps along that well-known road. How little had the arch- bishop-bishop of Imola imagined, as he then hastened to the obse- quies of Gregory XVI., that on himself should soon devolve the responsibility of continuing the fatherly rule of this long line of peaceful sovereigns, and the terrible sorrow of seeing his beneficent authority usurped by a power as anti-Catholic in its aims as the fiercest Arian emperors of old, as anti-Christian as Hun or Moham- medan, as untruthful and unprincipled as the worst Greek who ever disgraced the throne of Constantino. But Pius IX., as beautiful city after beautiful city arose before him on his way, and sent forth to greet him clergy and people in their best holiday attire and with words of reverential and loving The Creations of Catholic Genius, 341 welcome, only thought how lie could repair in his own day all the omissions of the past, and satisfy, in accomplishing his own cher- ished designs, the lawful yearnings of every soul among these mul- titudes. There were, among the deep valleys of the Sabine mountains, as among the savage solitudes of the more distant Apennines, monastic establishments, first planted there long ages ago by St. Benedict or his disciples, or some religious exile, like Athanasius, forced to fly from the fell fury of Arianism. These pioneers of Christian civiliza- tion and supernatural sanctity, in an age when might was the only law, and violence ruled Europe as well as Asia, had gone away into the most inaccessible wilds, and sought a peaceful refuge where human habitation had never been, and where human cupidity had no motive to venture. Thus grew up Subiaco and Farfar and Casa- mari and Monte Cassino and Grotta Ferrata and Trisulti and Fos- sanuova, like Monte Luco near Spoleto. Monastic industry trans- formed the very rock into forms of lasting beauty ; monastic holiness covered with every flower of heaven the crags and precipices which repelled not only the robber, but even the wild beast. And soon around the monastery farmers fleeing from the ravaged lowlands, or goatherds tempted thither with their flocks, sought a refuge beneath the sheltering arms of piety, and built themselves there a home. Thus the hermit's cell among the most frightful crags became a centre for a new civilization. Little dreamed Pius IX., as he sought to revive in these far-famed abodes of ancient learning and world-renowned holiness the pristine spirit of fervor, the equal thirst for the culture of science and of sanctity, that within his own lifetime an Italian sovereign and Italian statesmen would glory in driving forth the peaceful inmates of these monasteries — homeless, penniless, helpless — into the world from which they had withdrawn forever. Near Civita Castellana, the Falerium Vetus of the Eomans, occu- pying the site of a Pelasgian stronghold, is Monte Soratte (the Soracte of the Latins), 2,270 feet above the lower Campagna. It forms, in its isolation, the most conspicuous object between Eome and the mountains, its very summit being crowned with the monas- tery of St. Sylvester, Pope — the friend of Constantino the Great. There it stands, "perched on the highest points of the perpendicu- lar crags, its walls one with their precipices. . . . It is a sub- lime position, removed from and above everythins: else. Hawks 342 Life of Pope Pius IX, circle around its huge cliffs, and are the only sign of life. . . , To these solitudes came Constantine to seek for Sylvester the hermit, whom he found here in a cave, and led away to raise to the papal throne, walking before him as he rode upon his mule, as is repre- sented in the ancient frescoes of the Quattro Incoronati. The ora- tory of St. Sylvester was inclosed in a monastery founded in 746 by Carloman, son of Charles Martel, and uncle of Charlemagne, and though later buildings have succeeded upon the same spot, and the existing edifice is externally of 1500, it incloses much of the church of Carloman and the more ancient hermitage of St. Sylvester. "The walls of the church are covered with medieval frescoes, fading, but still very beautiful. On the right of the entrance is S. Buenaventura ; then come S. Anne, the Virgin, S, Eoch, and S. Se- bastian, but all have been much injured by the goatherds, who used to shelter their flocks here when the church was utterly deserted. The beautiful old high altar is richly carved in stone taken from the mountain itself. Beneath the lofty tribune is the cell of Sylvester, half cut in the mountain. It incloses the sloping mass of rock which formed the bed of his hermitage, and his stone seat. Here is also the altar on which, first Sylvester himself, and afterward Greg- ory the Great, said mass. Behind the convent is its little garden, where legend tells that S. Sylvester would sow one day his turnips for the meal of the morrow, and that they were miraculously brought to perfection during the night. There is a grand view from this over all the wide-spreading country, but especially into the gorges of the Sabina, and the monks described the beautiful effect when each of the countless villages, which can be seen from hence, lights its bonfire on the eve of the Ascension. ** A carriage can ascend the mountain as far as S. Oreste, and here we left it and followed a footpath. It is about two miles to the top. Most of the convents are in ruins. By the pilgrim's road, which winds through an avenue of ancient ilexes and elms, we reached the gates of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The long drive, and the steep walk in the great heat, had made us faint with hunger and thirst. The monks came out with wine, and slices of Bologna sausage, and delicious coarse bread, to a room at the gate — ^for ladies are not allowed to enter the walls — and never was refreshment more accept- able. There are only thirteen monks now, who live an active life of charity, and whoso advice and instruction are widely sought by the country people around. There is little fear of their suppression, as Mo7iastic Poverty arid Charity, 343 they have scarcely any finances, and tlieir Inimble dwellings on the bare crag could not be sold for anything, and would be useless to the present government. *^ Those we saw were a grand group ; one, a tall and commanding figure, with handsome face and flashing eyes, told us of the peace and blessing he received from his solitary life here, and of the ever- growing interest of the place and all its associations ; another, of a coarse common expression, spoke in murmuring tones, and was skep- tical about all histories, which he wound up always by E tradizione, * such is the tradition ; ' a third was an old venerable man of eighty- six, who had passed his life in these solitudes, a life so evidently given up to prayer that his spirit seemed only half to belong to earth. " We spoke to him of the change which was coming over the monastic life, but he did not murmur. Only when we talked of the great poverty of the people from the present taxation, and of their reduced means of helping them, he lamented a little. He said the people came to him every day, and they asked why they had such sufferings to bear ; that they had been quite happy before, and had never wished or sought for any change ; and that he urged them to patience and prayer, and to the faith that though outward events might change, and earthly comforts be swept away, God, who led his children by mysterious teaching which we could not fathom, was himself always the same. " The three monks went with us to the top, accompanied us on our return as far as Santa Maria delle Grazie, and as we turned to descend the mountain-path, the old monk of eighty-six, standing at the head of the steps, stretched out his hands and most solemnly blessed us : ' May the blessed Saviour keep and guide you, and may his holy angels walk with you in all your ways ! ' " Such is the testimony of Hare, and his account of these mountain- sanctuaries which he visited in 1874. The reader may thus anti- cipate the baneful changes that mark the reign of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi. A railroad, one of the fulfilled dreams of Pius IX. 's princely solicitude, now connects Eome with the scenes here described. It throws out a branch at Orte, the main trunk skirting the southern border of Umbria to Orvieto, and thence to Florence, the branch turning away from the Tiber, and climbing by rapid gradients to Narni and Spoleto and Foligno, where it again divides, sending one 344 L^f^ of Pope Pius IX. arm across the Apennines to Ancona and the other by Perugia and Arezzo to Florence. It is no exaggeration to say that the journey from first to last was one continuous oyation. There was no need of official artifices to call the people from their homes to greet their sovereign. All the calumnies uttered by the press of the reyolution, all the blood shed and the wrongs inflicted by its leaders, had only made Pius IX. the more dear to the hearts of his people. But as he approached his former diocese of Spoleto the reception assumed a most touching character. The evidences of a love and veneration which time and distance had not weakened were multiplied at every step. The rules of State etiquette had to be laid aside ; for all, young and old, wished to see their former good shepherd, and he would see them and con- verse with them. He seemed never to forget a face once familiar or a name known in former years. The members of the clergy whom he had ordained, or who had begun their training under him, were special objects of his regard. And thus the pilgrimage continued to Loreto. But we are not to suppose that the Pope allowed his time in each locality to be spent in idle pageantry, or in official receptions and speech-making. Every- where the authorities were encouraged or commanded to make known to the sovereign in person what most needed reform and improve- ment. Xo person, high or low, who had a complaint to make or a petition to offer, was rebuked or sent away on pretext of stress of oc- cupation or want of time. The Holy Father would persist in stay- ing in every place till all had an opportunity of addressing him, and till his officers had inspected and seen everything within the scope of their instructions. "Up to the month of June," says Maguire, "no less than 30,000 petitions had been received by the Pope in the course of his tour, and many thousands in addition were presented to him before he returned to Rome. Certainly there has been nothing hidden by the people from the eyes of their sovereign. "To those in prison the Pope has exhibited his characteristic clemency, by granting six months* * grace ' to all save the worst characters, whose liberation would have been a great evil to the com- munity. To political prisoners he has been equally compassionate. To the middle of June, he had liberated or ' graced ' twenty-four of this class of offenders. To four, who were exiles, he granted per- mission to return to Rome ; to throe he has remitted part of their His Cle7nency and Practical Wisdom, 345 pnnislinient ; and seventeen lie has entirely liberated. Preyious to his leaving Eome, the Holy Father had given freedom to two men, who were, to say the least, among the most prominent of the Re- publican party, namely, Sterbinetti (the infamous president of the Council of Deputies at the time of Rossi's murder) and Galeotti (one of Mazzini's ministers)." * So anxious was the Holy Father to make this personal inspection of his States one of the utmost practical utility, that in 1855 he sent one of his most enlightened young prelates, Monsignor (now cardi- nal) Berardi, to England for the purpose of making a thorough study of all that concerns the civil administration of that coun- try. '^Prisons, hospitals, docks, revenue, finance, police, and even the condition of the lowest criminal classes — everything (says Sir George Bowyer) engaged his acute and active mind." With such persons by his side, Pius IX. tried to hear everything and to see everything, so that no evil should be left unremedied, and nothing faulty unreformed. From the lamented author of ''Rome and its Ruler," who was on the spot and obtained his information from official sources, we can gather some of the most prominent results of this tour of inspec- tion, which many of Pius IX. 's detractors took pains to represent as a journey undertaken for mere personal ostentation. The port of Pesaro was to be almost entirely reconstructed, the Holy Father contributing $80,000 from his own resources ; the port of Sinigaglia was also materially improved and a new sanitary office built ; the cities of Ancona and Oivita Vecchia were to be enlarged ; at Bologna the high street was enlarged and beautified, and the beautiful fagade of the cathedral was to be completed, the Pope con- tributing for his share $5,000 for fifteen years. At Perugia new prisons were to be constructed, the condition of the prisoners to be improved in every way ; and a generous yearly contribution was given toward preserving the splendid native collections of art. Ravenna, in all her long neglect and decay, was not forgotten; Pjus IX. wished to revive something of the ancient commercial prosperity of the place, and promised $4,000 annually for ten years toward im- proving the port. At Ferrara many improvements were ordered, and $9,000 were contributed toward the completion of the Pamfilic Canal ; he also established a commission of engineers for the purpose * " Rome and its Ruler," c. xli. 34^ Life of Pope Pius IX. of devising a plan for turning the river Keno into the Po, and thus saving a large tract of fertile country from periodical inundation. At Eecanati a relief fund for poor sailors was established ; at Com- macchio a grant was given for an artesian well ; at Ascoli, for a • bridge ; at Pesaro, Macerata, Imola, Camerino, and other places generous sums were given for the improvement of the public roads ; telegraphic stations were ordered in every place of importance. "There is not," says Maguire, "a prison, an hospital, or a school which has not been inspected, either by himself personally or by his orders ; and it was the first duty of Monsignor de Merode, on his arrival in every city or town, to visit its prison, thoroughly examine into all its details, and specially report upon it. Monsignor Talbot aided in effecting many valuable reforms in the charitable, educa- tional, and industrial institutions of the Papal States." At Perugia the Holy Father received the visit of the Archduke Charles of Tuscany, sent by his father, Leopold, to compliment the vicar of Christ; at Pesaro he received the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who did not then dream of a Mexican empire and its tragic downfall, forsaken and betrayed by Napoleon III. ; at Bologna, the Grand Duke of Tuscany and his entire family, and the Dukes of Parma and Modena came to offer their homage. He could not refuse the pressing invitation to visit Tuscany and Modena, the sovereigns honoring themselves in presence of their subjects by showing the Holy Father in public the reverence which recalled the legends of the middle ages. "He introduced us himself into Florence," says Pius IX., speaking of the Grand Duke Leopold, "walking by our side, and accompanied us to every Tuscan city which we visited. . . All the archbishops and bishops of his States, all the clergy, the cor- porate bodies, the magistrates, the nobles, showed tlieir delight by testifying their devotion to us in a thousand ways. Not only in Florence, but wherever we went in Tuscany, the people from town and country, far and near, came forth to greet us, acclaiming the chief pontiff of the Church with such ardent affection, showing such an intense desire of seeing him, doing him reverence, receiv- ing his benediction, that our fatherly heart was moved to its very depth." He returned to Rome on September the 5th, and marked his return by a princely distribution of alms and food to the poor, ransomed a number of debtors, and performed several graceful acta of clemency. The Truth in the Mortara Case. 347 The Romans, on their side, were anxious to give their sovereign a family feast. On the 8th was uncovered and blessed by the sovereign pontiff the splendid monument erected on the Piazza di Spagna, in commemoration of the definition of December the 8th, 1854. There was a brilliant illumination in the evening, and Pius IX. felt grateful, amid all the signs of coming trouble, that his Immaculate Mother's birth-day had been thus celebrated in his honor. In ^N'ovember, 1857, happened the affair of the boy Edgar Mor- tara, which furnished a rich theme to the anti-Catholic press of Pied- mont and France, as well as to the Protestant press and pulpit of the entire English-speaking world. It was a very simple question when examined calmly and equitably by reasonable and impartial men. An ancient law of the Eoman States, enacted in reality for the protection of Israelites in their home worship and the religious free- dom of their families, forbade every Jewish family from having Christian servants. The reason was this. Christian servants, be- side the danger to their own faith from the influence exercised by wealthy masters, were continually tempted to bestow baptism on the children of the latter when in imminent danger of death. The penalty was, when such baptism had been administered by a Chris- tian servant, that the child thus baptized should, in case of re- covery, be taken away from the parents and reared in the Christian faith. This was the penalty, well known to the Jews, and imposed for the infraction of a law intended to protect themselves from intrusion into their own family circle. Edgar Mortara, living with his Jewish parents in Bologna, had, several years before, been baptized, while at the point of death, by a Christian servant-girl named Anna Morisi, kept by his parents in open violation of the law. The boy had recovered, and in November, 1857, was in his seventh year. Another child of the Mortaras about this time was also at death's door, and Anna Morisi was urged by a female friend to baptize it, but she refused, giving as a reason that she had baptized the boy Edgar under like circumstances, and that he was now brought up a Jew. The fact having been reported to the magistrates, the boy was taken away from his father's house and placed in the House of Cat- echumens in Rome, where he was to be educated as a Cliristian. This act, performed in fulfillment of what the pontifical authoritiea 34^ Life of Pope Pius IX, deemed a just law, set the whole religious world ablaze. The parents meanwhile were allowed every access to the boy ; he was educated thoroughly in accordance with his station and prospects : manifested as he grew up no disposition to return to the Jewish faith, but would be free to do so at his majority. We are not to suppose that Mazzini, or ISTapoleon IIL, or Cayour, had forgotten to conspire while Pius IX. was visiting his States and planning new schemes for their happiness. In 1857 the Piedmontese ambassador in Paris, De Villamarina, wrote to Count Cavour : " ]N"apoleon needs time to bring to a favor- able issue his projects in favor of Italy. Allow me, therefore, to express my most earnest hope that Italians will not compromise by untimely movements the future which Sardinia has been able to prepare for them on the battle-field as well as by her success in the Congress of Paris. At the present moment we must be prudent, patient, and wait for events. We must show the emperor that we have much confidence in his personal policy, and that we will not create any embarrassment for him. . . . Napoleon and time are for us and for Italy." * The attempt on the life of the emperor by Felice Orsini, on Jan- uary the 14th, 1858, was only part of a vast plan of assassination in which Victor Emmanuel was also to be cut off. Count Walewski, the French minister of foreign affairs, who, as well as his associates, was entirely ignorant of the emperor's designs, wrote to the Euro- pean courts to demand the inauguration of a system of repression. But French courtiers, who shared the emperor's secret sympathies, were heard to say, '^ So long as there are Austrians in Italy, there will be assassination plots in Paris. We must help Cavour." Then was published — with a manifest intention of preparing the public mind — ^the letter addressed to the emperor by Felice Orsini, just before his execution, and in which Napoleon was urged to deliver Italy. This letter, with a sort of political testament of the wretched cul- prit, was sent by the emperor to the court of Turin, and published officially there on April the 1st. In May Napoleon proposed a plan of alliance with Piedmont, together with a project of marriage be- tween Prince Napoleon Jerome Bonaparte, and a daughter of Victor Emmanuel. In June Dr. Conneau, the emperor's confidant, went to Turin and agreed with Cavour that he should secretly meet * Bex)m de» Deux Monde s, June 1, 1876, p. 649. Napoleon III. Conspires with Cavour, 349 Napoleon III. afc Plombieres during the bathing season. On July ^ tlie 20th an officer of the imperial household received at the Plom- bieres station the mysterious traveler, whose identity no one guessed at first. The visit was a brief one ; but the conditions of an alliance were at once settled : "War with Austria, the establishment of a king- dom of Italy, and the cession to France of lN"ice and Savoy. At the same time the March ese Pepoli was sent to Berlin to flatter the Crown Prince (the present Emperor of Germany), to rekindle the ambition of Prussia to overshadow Austria, to separate her from that power, and to draw her into a close alliance with Prance and Piedmont. The Prussian prime minister at that time was the Prince of Hohenzollern, a blood relation of Pepoli as well as of Napoleon III. To the overtures made to him by the French and Piedmontese ambassadors he replied cautiously, giving them no positive assurance of good- will in their schemes. But with the beginning of 1859 came a startling series of occur- rences which filled all Europe with alarm. On New- Year's Day Napoleon III., on receiving the diplomatic body, expressed to the Austrian ambassador 'Miis regret that his relations with the Aus- trian government were not so friendly as in the past." And on the very same day, and almost at the same hour, Pius IX., perfectly aware of the double game played at Paris and Turin, replied to the felici- tations of General De Goyon, then in command of the French troops, that he ^^ was praying for the preservation of peace, and beseeching the almighty disposer of events to establish here below one universal empire, that of justice and truth." Napoleon III. had, however, the tact of making his allies say what he could not or would not himself ; and on January the 10th, Vic- tor Emmanuel, in opening the Piedmontese chambers, startled his audience by these words, put in his mouth by Cavour : " The hori- zon amid which this new year is dawning is not perfectly cloudl^s. . . . Fortified by our experience of the past, let us meet boldly the eventualities of the future. That future shall be prosperous, because our policy reposes on justice and on our love for liberty and country. That country, though circumscribed by narrow limits, has increased in worth in the councils of Europe, because it is great by the ideas it represents and the sympathies which it inspires. Our situation has indeed its own dangers ; for, while we may respect ex- isting treaties, we cannot be insensible to the cry of agony which is sent up to us from every part of Italy." 2,So Life of Pope Pius IX. On the 3d of February Lord Derby, then prime minister, gave, in the House of Lords, the true interpretation of this speech and a key to the whole situation. "Northern Italy is a volcano that slum- bers. . . . The words pronounced by the king of Sardinia, have, naturally, a great significance. I still hope that Sardinia will listen to wiser counsels. . . . It is impossible to suppose that Sardinia, comparatively feeble in presence of Austria, should be dis- posed to begin a struggle with any prospect of success, or for any cause whatever, were it not that she relied on foreign assistance, and the only country from which that can come, is France." Napoleon III. opened the French chambers four days afterward (February 7), and by specious circumlocutions seemed to deny all dan- ger of hostilities. But on February the 4th a semi-official pamphlet, entitled Napoleon IIL et Vltalie, had thrown public opinion in France and throughout the civilized world into great perturbation. This pamphlet reiterated the position taken by the writer of the famous letter to Colonel Ney. It was an act of accusation drawn up against the government of the Popes with such skill, that every intel- ligent person who read it could only see in it, under the fair ideal of a confederated Italy with the national capital at Eome, the kingdom of Italy which has since become a reality. *^ While receiving this accession of moral influence," the imperial pamphleteer affirmed, "while finding himself invested with a kind of moral protectorship over all Italy, bestowed on him by the reverence of all its people, the Pope can, without abasement, lessen his tempo- ral power and lighten his political responsibility. He can, without risk to himself, organize under himself a serious control, a secular administration, a civil legislation, a regular and independent magis-^ tracy. All that he loses in prerogatives he gains in importance." The Pope, with whom, as we have seen, originated the true idea of a national Italian league, was not evSn consulted about this new dignity and accession of importance to be conferred upon him "by the reverence of all the peoples of Italy." But Providence permitted that the men who were to be the not very reverential agents of this political and moral renovation of the papacy, should speak out in spite of Napoleon, or Victor Emmanuel, or of Victor Emmanuel's master, Cavour. On Marcli the 7th Garibaldi addressed to all the provinces of Italy the following secret instructions, intended, of course, for the local circles and clubs : Garibaldi s Programme, 35 1 '* The Presidency deems it its duty, under the present aspect of affairs in Italy, to communicate the following secret instructions : " 1. As soon as hostilities have begun between Piedmont and Aus- tria, you shall rise in insurrection at the cry of Long live Italy and Victor Emmanuel I Out with the Austrians ! '^ 2. If, in your city, an insurrection be impossible, then all young men able to bear arms shall leave the city, and shall go to the nearest city in which the insurrection has been successful. . . . Among these neighboring cities you shall choose the nearest to Pied- mont, at which all the Italian forces are to concentrate. '^ 6. Wherever the insurrection is successful, the man who is highest in public confidence shall assume the supreme civil and military authority in the name of Victor Emmanuel, with the title of provi- sional commissary. '^ 9. He shall appoint a council of war, to judge and punish within the twenty-four hours all attempts against the national cause, or against the life and property of peaceful citizens. He shall have no regard to class or rank. " 12. He shall maintain the severest and most inexorable discipline, applying to every person, no matter who he may be, the dispositions of military law in time of war. " 13. He shall send to King Victor Emmanuel a correct statement of the arms, ammunition, and moneys found in each province, and shall await the king's orders thereon. " Turin, March tlie 7th, 1859." Assuredly there is no need of a prophetic insight into men's secret souls or into the contingencies of the future depending on men's free agency, to foresee and predict with certainty, what must be, in the near future, the fate of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, when France and Piedmont join hands to eifect Italian unity, and employ to aid them in their purpose the armies of " sectarians " organized in every Italian territory, garrisoning, in a manner, for Garibaldi, every Italian city. CHAPTEK XXIX. The Wae Beguk — Solidaeity between Gabibaldi and Victor Emmanuel — Lord Derby as a Peacemaker laughed at by Cavour — Prince Napoleon in Tuscany and the Eomagna — PlEDMONTISM TRIUMPHANT IN THE PaPAL TERRITORY — The Church Despoiled first, and Degraded afterward — The Bishops of the Marches Protest — The Jesuits Stripped and Outraged in the Name of Piedmont — Fa- ther Beckx Protests — The Pope hemmed in by the Eev- olutionary Eorces — He Excommunicates the Invaders — Denunciation by French Publicists and Bishops — Bishop Dupanloup's scathing Rebuke of Napoleon — Louis Veuil- LOT PRE-EMINENT IN THE DEFENSE OF THE HOLY SeE — HiS Journal Suppressed — The Spirit of the old Crusaders ABROAD. 1859-1860. ON the 27tli of April the Austrian general, yielding unwisely to a series of well-calculated provocations, invaded the Piedmon- tese territory. This act was far worse for Austria than a crushing defeat on the battle-field. On May the 3d Napoleon declared war against Austria ; on the 12th he arrived at Genoa, commanded at the battle of Magenta on June the 4th, and at that of Solferino on the 24th of the same month. Perhaps the reader, before following further the course of events, would like to feel an absolute certainty concerning the bond uniting Cavour and his king with Garibaldi, and the agencies controlled by the latter. Let us dispose at once of every doubt on this head. The memoirs of Cavour have now been published, as well as a life written by an intimate friend and relative of the statesman. One who re- sumes all the information contained in these and in other sources on the causes which led to the Italian war of 1859 thus writes : "If the skillful and provident patriot had succeeded in effecting a great alliance without which nothing was possible, he was also un- 352 Solidarity between Garibaldi and Cavour, 353 willing to be indebted to bis allies for everything. 'Woe to ns/ he wrote to La Marmora, * if our triumph should be won by the French alone ! ' . . . By the side of the Piedmontese army, in spite of the anger of diplomats, he busied himself in creating, under the name of ' Hunters of the Alps,' several battalions to serve as a nucleus for all the Lombard and Tuscan youths who were pouring into Turin, and, being a bold man, he did not hesitate to give the com- mand of these battalions to Garibaldi. One morning during that winter of 1858-59, and before dawn, a strange visitor asked for ad- mission at the door of the prime minister. The servant, a little frightened, brought in the message to his master. 'Who is this stranger ? ' asked Cavour. ' It is a man with a broad-brimmed hat, with a stout stick in his hand, and refuses to give his name ; he pre- tends that you are expecting him.' It was Garibaldi, who had come to have an understanding with Cavour, by putting himself under the command of Victor Emmanuel. . . . Evidently Cavour alone could make use of all these elements and risk the result ; he saw in this plan a way to bind together all the national forces, to rally to himself or to neutralize the republicans, by only casting aside the untrac table partisans of Mazzini. ... He was thus disposing of Piedmont and Italy." * The Conservative English ministry, over which presided Lords Derby and Malmesbury, was sincere in its efforts at conciliating Austria and Piedmont before the war had as yet broken out, and even before Napoleon HI. had openly shown his hand. '* The English cabinet saw in him, what he really was, the great agitator, the unceasing provoker of Austria, the most dangerous enemy of peace. Cavour, on his side, would listen patiently, sometimes un- easily, but with his mind made up neither to yield to England nor to estrange her. When he deemed it needful, and if pressed too hard, he rebelled against this schooling. To an English diplomat, who told him that public opinion in London accused him of dis- turbing the peace of Europe, he replied with spirit : ' Very well ! But I think that England is above all others responsible for the troubled condition of Italy. It is English statesmen, English par- liamentary orators, English diplomats and writers who have been at work for years stirring up the political passions in our Peninsula. * Charles de Mazade in La Mevue dea Deux Mondes, July loth, 1876, pp. 368, 869. 23 354 Life of Pope Pius IX, Is it not England that encouraged Sardinia to oppose to the unlawful preponderance of Austria the propagandism of moral influences ? ' " * We have been anxious to give a key to the complication of events filling the last twenty years of Italian history, rather than to detail occurrences themselves. The command of the troops destined to attack the Austrian army by a flank movement from the south-east, was intrusted to Prince Napoleon Jerome, now married to the Prin- cess Clotilde of Savoy. No permission was asked by this man — who, to vices from which Garibaldi was free, united all Garibaldi's jacobin- ism, without a particle of his bravery or his military talent — of the sovereigns of the neutral territories to march his army through them. "With such a man to give Garibaldi's subordinates countenance and aid, the programme prepared at Turin in February, and com- municated to the clubs of conspirators from one end of Italy to tha other, was, of course, carried out to the letter. On the very day that Marshal Kadetzky crossed the Mincio, April the 27th, Tuscany *^ arose," and a provisional government was established in the name of Victor Emmanuel. On May the 1st Parma followed the example, Bologna and Eerrara had to wait till the Austrian garrisons had retired, when they too arose against the pontifical government, Bologna on June the 12th, and Ferrara two days later. The whole of the Romagna thus fell into the hands of Piedmont, and from that moment became in reality an integral part of it. The terrible impression made on the unwarlike Napoleon III. by the great battle of Solferino, and the fear, real or pretended, of an invasion of the Rhenish provinces by Prussia, brought the war to a sudden close, and saved for the moment the other pontifical provinces from the horrors of insurrection, and the sacrileges which followed close in the train of Garibaldi or of Piedmontese occupation. In Lombardy, Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the Romagna, now become the possession of Victor Emmanuel, or rather of the "sects" which governed them for him, the usurpers made haste to abolish every law and institution considered till then exclusively Catholic, and held sacred by the reverence of so many ages. It cannot be disguised — much as the avowal must pain every Catholic heart that loves not only the honor of the Church, but the good name of all who have ever received her baptism, and sat at her table and partaken of her bread — the sole purpose of the men who * iWd«m, p. 869. Liberalizing Processes used by Piedmont 355 everywliere accepted or sought the government of the annexed pro- vinces seemed to be to dishonor and vilify that Church in the esti- mation of the Italian people. We have sometimes heard of the perversity of sons, who, coveting a widowed mother's property, and impatient of her longevity still more than of her rule, misrepresented and calumniated her, denounced her to the tribunals as insane, or criminal, or incapable of managing her own estate. This is a mon- strosity in the moral world; but it will go further. It is when an iniquitous sentence has deprived that mother of her most sacred rights, of her possessions and her liberty, that her unnatural chil- dren will employ all their industry to blacken and defame the parent whom they have sacrificed to their unholy passions. In Piedmont, during the ten years elapsed between 1849 and 1859, the Church had been gradually stripped of every vestige of inde- pendence and legitimate authority. The legislation inaugurated by Cavour, and often carried by his associate ministers to a pitch of tyranny highly censured by their more politic and far-seeing chief, aimed at binding the Church hand and foot, and leaving her in the education of her priesthood, her function of teaching, and the very administration of the sacraments, the powerless slave of the civil magistrate. Bismark, in Germany, had not even the merit of originality in the Falk laws or in the persecuting measures enforced against bishops and priests who dared to have a conscience of their own. The code of liberal Piedmont, the code actually in force in the '' kingdom of Italy," served as a tempting model to "the man of blood and iron." Church property became the property of the State ; the bishop and the priest were declared to be, in effect. State officials, and, as such, were to be trained as the State directed, in such schools and universities as the State approved, under such professors as it chose, learning what these were instructed to teach, neither more nor less, and bound under the severest penalties to fulfill their appointed duties in the church or the parish designated by the sole authority of the State, just as the soldier had to go through his drill and mount guard, or incur the rigors of military law ! Every privilege and immunity, even in the Papal States, attached from the origin of Christianity to the priestly character, and deemed by Pagan as well as by Jewish legislation due to the sacredness of the priestly office, was swept away. The priest could be taken from the altar and compelled by the new law to put off his clerical dress o 56 Life of Pope Pius IX. and put on tlie military uniform, and march in the ranks to slaugh- ter his fellow-men, or shoot down, during a riot, the members of his own congregation. This is literally true. But it is not the worst. The priest, that is the Church, was forbidden to hold property, to alienate or dispose of such as it possessed. It was proposed even to forbid almsgiving, lest the poor should continue to love and to bless the giver. Nay, the Church had bound the mass of the people to herself by creating institutions of beneficence and charity, as well as schools and uni- versities. Just as all superintendence and control of education was taken from her by the new laws introduced into the Romagna by our old acquaintance Massimo d' Azeglio, the Piedmontese Commissary General, even so the control and superintendence of charities or beneficent establishments of all kinds was forbidden the clergy. The bishops who remonstrated or resisted were either fined or im- prisoned, or banished the country. There were many who fared even worse. The religious orders, the communities of men and women, were, it may be anticipated, suppressed, and their members turned adrift into a society in which all the evil passions of humanity seemed to be holding perpetual carnival. Nor was this the worst of all. In the magnificent remonstrance sent on November the 21st, 1860, to the Piedmontese governor by the archbishops and bishops of the Marches, there are details which his- tory must record. '^ Our souls, cruelly wounded and torn, are filled with grief and desolation by the thought of the spiritual ruin which threatens our children, our fiocks, purchased by the blood of the Lamb without spot. Nevertheless, after all the contradictions, the trials, the obstacles we have had to encounter — not one spark of charity, of zeal, of pastoral and fatherly solicitude has been quenched in our souls — we solemnly affirm it, with our anointed hands on our hearts, and, with the help of God's grace, these sentiments shall never depart from us through fault of ours. "We scarcely believe our own eyes, or the testimony of our own ears, when we see and hear the excesses, the abominations, the dis- orders, witnessed in the chief cities of our respective dioceses, to the shame and horror of the beholders, to the great detriment of religion, of decency, and public morality, since the ordinances against which we protest deprive us of all power to protect religion and morality, or to repress the prevailing crimes and licentiousness. " The public sale, at nominal pnces, of mutilated translations of The Bishops of the Romagna tell a Tale, 357 the Bible, of pamphlets of every description saturated with poisonous errors or infamous obscenities, is permitted in the cities which a few months ago had never heard the names of these scandalous produc- tions ; . . . the impunity with which the most horrible blasphe- mies are uttered in public, and the worse utterance of expressions and sentiments that breathe a hellish wickedness ; the exposition, the public sale, and the diffusion of statuettes, pictures, and engravings which brutally outrage piety, purity, the commonest decency ; the representation on our theaters, of pieces and scenes in which are turned into ridicule the Church — Christ's immaculate spouse — the vicar of Christ, the ministers of religion, and everything held dear to piety and faith ; in fine, the fearful licentiousness of public man- ners, the odious devices resorted to for perverting the innocent and the young, the evident wish and aim to make immorality, obscenity, uncleanness triumph among all classes ; such are, your Excellency, the rapid and faint outlines of the scandalous state of things created in the Marches by the legislation and discipline so precipitately in- troduced by the Piedmontese government. . . . We appeal to your Excellency, . . . could we remain silent and indifferent specta- tors of this immense calamity without violating our most sacred duty ? ' It is deplorable that so many Protestants, sincerely devoted to what they believe to be the best interests of revealed religion, and so careful in their homes and their lives of true purity and modesty, should encourage and pay out of their pockets these unscrupulous agents of the Bible Societies, who care not by what unholy means or in what foul company they get themselves and their books into Catholic lands. Your Garibaldis and Gavazzis and Achillis are but sorry patrons and auxiliaries for the spread of what you think true religion ! "VYe can anticipate by a few months, and quote, along with the noble words of these bishops, another document from a man no less eminent or venerable, though not enjoying the episcopal dignity. Cavour had been sorely disappointed by the sudden termination of the war, and Garibaldi had been taken away from the newly ob- tained territories, where he literary rioted in sacrilege and profana- tion of all that was most holy. But he was encouraged by Cavour to embark (May the 6th) on his expedition to Sicily. We know how, protected by the flags of Sardinia, France, and England, he ran hia race of easy victory, aided by the admirably organized treason of the clubs and sects. 358 Life of Pope Pius IX. One of his first acts, on taking possession of Palermo, and assum- ing the title and powers of Dictator, was to suppress the Jesuits and Eedemptorists, to confiscate their property and proscribe their per- sons. What was done in Sicily was also done at Naples, when it fell into the power of the Garibaldians, and became the rule wherever the revolution prevailed. But let the venerable Father Beckx, the general of the Society of Jesus, tell the story of his wrongs in his solemn protestation of October the 24th, 1860. '^ The society," says the general to the King of Sardinia, "has lost in Lombardy three residences and colleges ; in the duchy of Modena, six ; in the Pontifical States, eleven ; in the kingdom of Naples, nine- teen ; and in Sicily, fifteen. Everywhere the society has been liter- ally stripped of all its property, movable and immovable. Its mem- bers, to the number of 1,500, were driven forth from their houses and from the cities ; they were led by an armed force, like so many malefactors, from province to province, cast into the public prisons, ill-treated and outraged in the most horrible manner ; they were even prevented from finding a refuge in pious families, while in several places no consideration was had to the extreme old age of many among them, nor to the infirmity and weakness of others. "All these acts were perpetrated against men who were accused of not one illegal or criminal act, without any judicial process, without allowing any justification to be recorded ; in one word, all this was consummated in the most despotic and savage manner. "If such acts had been accomplished in a popular riot, by men blinded by passion, we might perhaps bear them in silence ; but as all such acts have been done in the name of the Sardinian laws ; as the provisional governments established in Modena and in the Pontifical States, as well as the Dictator of Sicily himself, have claimed to be supported by the Sardinian government ; and as your majesty's name is still invoked to sanction these iniquitous measures, . . . I can no longer remain a silent spectator of such enormous injustice, but, in my quality of supreme head of the Order, I feel myself strictly bound to ask for justice and satisfaction, and to pro- test before God and man, lest the resignation inspired by religious meekness and forbearance should appear to be a weakness which might be construed either into an acknowledgment of guilt or a re- linquishment of our rights. " I protest solemnly, and in the best form I can think of, against the su2)pression of our houses and colleges, against these proscriptions, Courageous Protest of Father Beckx. 359 banishments, and imprisonments, against tlie acts of violence and outrage committed against the brethren bound to me by religious ties. "I protest before all Catholics, in the name of the rights of the Church sacrilegiously violated. "I protest in the name of the benefactors and founders of our houses and colleges, whose will and expressed intentions in founding these good works for the interest alike of the living and the dead, are thus nullified. " I protest in the name of the sacred rights of property, contemned and trampled under foot by brutal force, "I protest in the name of citizenship and inviolability of indi- vidual persons, of whose rights no one may be deprived without being accused in form, and arraigned and judged. ^'I protest in the name of humanity, whose rights have been so shamefully outraged in the persons of so many aged men, sick, infirm, and helpless, driven from their peaceful seclusion, left without any assistance, cast on the highways without any means of subsistence." This noble and indignant protest is inserted here because the monstrous iniquity which it denounces is to be presently consum- mated in Rome itself by the Italian Parliament, and will be but too faithfully imitated in other lands ; and because the rights to which it appeals are the sacred and immovable basis of every Christian, every well-ordered society. What was the attitude of the sovereign pontiff while the social order, confirmed and consecrated by so many centuries of Christian civilization, Avas thus swept away before his eyes, the circle of de- struction narrowing continually around Rome and its immediate ter- ritory ? He and his counselors and immediate subjects could not but feel like emigrants encamped for a night on our vast western prairies, when a July sun has parched every living thing and shriv- eled up the earth itsell The wild western Indian had attacked them in vain during the day, and has now in the darkness fired the prairie, with the hope of making them flee, half-armed and divided, to the nearest hills, where he is lying in ambush for them. They have but one resource ; they have mowed down the long grass on every side, to leave the approaching flames no food around their camp, and patient, brave-hearted, trustful in God, they lie down behind their circle of wagons, to watch the waves of fire as they come roaring toward them from the four w'nds of heaven. o 60 Life of Pope Pius IX, Shall yonder narrow circle of bare ground stop the advance of that fearful tempest of flame ? Or is it to give the weary watchers only the respite of a moment from inevitable fate ? Pius IX. knew that he alone who created these terrible elementary forces, could arrest the fell progress of revolution. The men in whom he trusted, under God, were either helpless themselves, or already enveloped in the wide destruction, or in league with the evil he fain would conjure. The French flag remained still in Lombardy, to prevent Austria from interfering, and to allow Piedmont to secure her possession of the usurped provinces. The French fleet was in the Neapolitan waters only to encourage Garibaldi, and the tramp of the French soldier was still heard on the walls of Rome, to tell the revolution that it must not be too rapid in its work. The French army in Rome was but a Piedmontese garrison in disguise. In June and September, 1859, the voice of the supreme pastor was heard denouncing the usurpers, and proclaiming them and their abettors excommunicated. And from France, whose soldiers were compelled to sustain the evil cause in Italy, came noble words of de- nunciation re-echoing the Holy Father's protest ; Montalembert and Veuillot branding with the stigma of indelible infamy the hypocrisy of Napoleon III., and drawing on themselves the wrath of his gov- ernment ; and French bishops, the worthy brethren of those of the Marches, warning the Catholic Avorld that, in the violated sovereignty and threatened independence of the Roman pontiff, it was the most sacred liberties of Christendom which were threatened, the dearest and most venerable rights on earth which were trampled upon. From every part of Europe and America the episcopal body united in this solemn protestation, and the voice of the pastors was but that of their flocks. But, be it said to his deathless honor, in that magnificent concert of episcopal voices no one equaled in eloquence and energy that of the illustrious Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans. On the 30th of Sep- tember, 1859, he wrote : " People say that to touch the sovereign is not to touch the pon- tiff. Certainly, his temporal power is not a divine institution ; who does not know this ? But it is a providential institution ; and who is ignorant of the fact ? Doubtless during three centuries the Popes only possessed independence enough to die martyrs ; but they assuredly had a right to another sort of independence, and Provi- dence, which does not always use miracles for its purpose, ended by Dupa7tloup Rebukes Napoleon, 361 founding on the most lawful soyereignty in Europe the freedom, the independence necessary to the Church. "History proves it beyond the possibility of denial ; all eminent intellects have confessed it, all true statesmen know it. . . . Yes ; that the Church may be free, that we may be free, the Pope must hefree and independent. " That independence must be sovereign, *^ The Pope must be free, and he must he evidently so, " The Pope must be free in Ms own interior as well as in Ms exterior government. " This must be so for the sake of his own dignity in the govern- ment of the Church, as well as for the security of our own consciences. " This must be so in order to secure the common parent of all the faithful that neutrality which is indispensable to him amid the frequent wars between Christian powers. " The Pope must not only be free in his own conscience, in his own interior, but it must be evident to all that he is so ; he must show himself to be so, in order that all may know and believe it, and that no doubt or suspicion be possible on this subject. . . . "But, say the Italian revolutionists, we do not propose to do away with the papal sovereignty ; we merely wish to limit and re- strain it. "And why so, I ask you, in my turn, if thereby you also dimin- ish and debase the honor of the Catholic religion, its dignity and independence ? " Why do so, if thereby you lower and degrade the most Italian sovereignty of the whole Peninsula ? "Why, more especially, do so now, in presence of all these un- chained evil passions, and thereby give against the Holy See a sentence of incapacity, and thus, in the eyes of Christendom, insult that unarmed and oppressed majesty ? "You say, he will only lose the Eomagna and the Legations. But allow me to ask you by what right you take them ? And why not take all the rest, if you please ? Why in your dreams of Italian unity, should other Italian cities fare otherwise than Bologna and Ferrara ? "Why have you not made up your minds to take everything out- side Eome with the garden of the Vatican ? You have said this, you know. "But why leave him even Eome? . . . Why should not 362 Life of Pope Pius IX. Diocletian and the Catacombs be the best of all governments for the Church ? "Where are you going ? How far will your detestable principles lead you ? At least tell us clearly. . . . **Is this a cleyer calculation of yours? And, not daring to do more at present, or unable to do more, are you waiting for time and the yiolence of events to accomplish the rest ? But who, think you, is to be deceived by you ? '^Must we say, with the highest organ of the English press, that in the present lusiness France is aggressive and insidious 9 No ! no ! I do not admit that our country is willing to play the part designed for her. Such calculations are not suited to French gen- erosity. For my part, I protest with my whole soul against the perfidious intentions that we are supposed to entertain. "But in concluding I must protest still more solemnly. As a de- voted son of the Holy Roman Church, the mother and teacher of all others, I protest against the revolutionary impiety which ignores her rights and would fain steal her patrimony. "I protest in the name of good sense and honor, indignant at beholding an Italian sovereign power become the accomplice of in- surrection and revolt, and at the conjuration of all these blind un- reasoning passions against the principles proclaimed and professed throughout the world by all great statesmen and politicians. "I protest in the name of common decency and European law against this profanation of all that is most august, against the brutal passions which have inspired acts of inconceivable cowardice. "And, if I must speak out, I protest in the name of good faith against this restless and ill-disguised ambition, these evasive answers, that disloyal policy, of which we have the saddening spectacle be- neath our eyes." Napoleon III. had a stormy time of it, and must have felt keenly the lash of such eloquence as Dupanloup's or Montalembei*t's. He had put forward the idea of a European Congress, which would meet at Paris early in 1860 to settle the Italian, or rather, the Roman question. On the 22d of December the London Times began to pub- lish a pamphlet entitled, "The Pope and the Congress," evidently inspired by the French emperor, if not written by him (as every- body believed). It sustained a double thesis : first, that the Pope must be independent, and to be so, he must be an independent sov- ereign ; in this the author might seem to sustain or favor Catholic Encyclical on Napoleons Policy, 363 principles ; but, secondly, lie maintained that this question of sov- ereignty could only be decided in the coming congress, and that the congress could not possibly do otherwise than sanction the facts ac- complished in Italy. The only sovereignty which can be guaranteed to the Pope is one which must be as limited as possible both in ter- ritory and in the administration of its civil functions. This simply meant that the congress should guarantee the Pope the possession of the Vatican and the freedom of its garden. On January the 1st, Pius IX., who knew perfectly who had written the pamphlet and who had inspired the writer, said to the French commander in Rome, General de Goyon : "We pray God to enlight- en the chief of your army and your nation, that he may walk safely in the slippery path, and acknowledge also the falsity of certain principles expressed in a lately published pamphlet, which may be qualified as a remarkalle monument of hypocrisy , and a vile tissue of contradictions." The blow was a hard one. But, on the very day before, the man for whom it was intended, and who felt it, Justified the pontiff's se- vere judgment by writing him a letter, which affirmed every one of the odious conclusions of the hypocritical pamphlet, urging the Holy Father to give up the occupied provinces, as it seemed certain the congress would not or could not restore them. The letter, how- ever, though addressed to the Pope, was published in the official Moniteur, and drew from his Holiness the encyclical NuUis certis verbis of January the 19th. It is a comparatively short document, intended to give the whole Catholic world an account of the Pope's personal efforts made to urge Napoleon III. to plead in the coming congress the cause of the Holy See, and of the emperor's tergiversations. The Holy Father, in his letter to the emperor of December the 2d, 1859, recalled the fact that the Roman pontiffs were not a dynasty, who received their possessions as an heir-loom, and could feel at liberty to dispose of them or abdicate their sovereign right over them. Each Pope re- ceives the Pontifical States, the patrimony of the Church, as a sacred trust, which his coronation oath binds him to keep and to transmit in its integrity. Besides, any cession of territory made after rebellion would be a stimulant toward insurrection in the remaining provinces. Then, again, any cession or abdication would be a betrayal of the rights of the other dispossessed sovereigns of Italy ; it would be a violation of principle. He had also, he said, reminded his majesty 364 Life of Pope Pius IX, of tlie perfect knowledge which he (Napoleon) must have had of the men who organized rebellion in Bologna, Eavenna, and other cities, and of the source from which they drew money and men ; and of the small minority of papal subjects who were in favor of seces- sion. As the emperor had reminded the Pope of the frequent out- breaks which had taken place in the pontifical territories, *^ I recalled his attention to the fact that to give up my soyereignty for that rea- son, would be rather yielding to an argument which proyed too much, because in many parts of Europe, and elsewhere, there occur insurrections, and no one dreams of finding in their occurrence a lawful argument against the sovereign rights of the powers. I also reminded him that he had addressed to me, before the Italian war, a letter differing very materially from his last, and which gave as much comfort as the other had caused pain. . . . Finally, in that spirit of fatherly charity which compels me to watch over the spiritual welfare of all, I bade him remember that we must all be judged one day at the same tribunal, and that each one of us should strenuously endeavor to deserve mercy rather than justice." Meanwhile Louis Veuillot, who daily felt more and more that a crisis was fast approaching in the affairs of the Holy See, resolved that nothing which his journal and powerful pen could effect toward warning the government and rousing Catholic public opinion, should be omitted by his associates or himself. About New- Year's time, as an answer to " The Pope and the Con- gress," and the anti-Catholic commentaries of the entire Voltairian and imperialist press, Veuillot drew up an address to the Holy Fa- ther, which he invited all good Catholics to sign. This was pub- lished in the Univers, '*Most Holy Father," it said, ''though entirely convinced that the sentiment and genius of France shall triumph over the spirit of error which is now threatening your temporal sovereignty, we wish nevertheless to comfort your heart by the expression of our devotion. "All that is said against your rights and your government has in nowise shaken either our respect for your rights or our confidence in the love and wisdom which guide your autliority. Your rights are not derived from men, you have not acquired them by violence or in- justice, you do not maintain them through motives of ambition, you do not exercise them with liarshness. You are of all earthly sover- eigns the most lawful and the most meek. Ingratitude and rebellion can create no titles for dispossessing you and hating you. VeuilMs Beautiful Address, 365 "What your people has to endure cannot be traced to you as its author, but to the people themselves and to their seducers, to these madmen become peryerts, to these rebels become traitors, who con- spire against you after having been pardoned, and who use as a weapon against you, all the evil done by themselves after you had re- paired it. ** As to us, your children of France, we believe that your author- ity can only be defined by yourself, and we claim for you all the rights which you claim for yourself. We believe that the reforms to be made can only be good, effective, and lawful, in so far as they shall have been made freely by you. Who, after all, will love justice more ardently than you, will respect more deeply than you the right of all peoples, will more tenderly cherish the poor than yourself, and will bear more constantly in mind the account which all sovereigns shall render to God ? '*In defending the cause of your independence, it is our own and that of the entire Christian people that we defend. You are the light and the bulwark of souls. Your independence saves human freedom. If the Pope were no longer king, the cross would be soon torn from every kingly crown, and nothing would be left to save the world from being brought back again to the worship of idols. Hu- manity would adore idols of mud, and would be crushed beneath idols of flesh. '*0 Father, King, spotless and immortal Victim, let youi anguish-burdened thought rest on us for one moment ! On ouj knees, full of faith — full of love — we ask you to bestow the blessing which strengthens men's souls. Let it forever remove far from us the incomparable shame of betraying you ! " This noble address, coming after the pastoral letters of the arch- bishops and bishops, stirred to its inmost depths the Catholic heart of France. The imperial government felt instinctively that a moral force was gathering strength throughout the country every day, which had for its elements not the violent passions of the skeptical middle classes of the nation, but the deepest and holiest convictions of all that was noblest and best in the land. Veuillot received an official warning from the minister of the in- terior, Billault ; another had been given some time previously ; a third official warning entailed the suppression of the paper. The high-souled chief editor, as well as the members of his staff, had but one care and one thought, and that was to do their duty toward 366 Life of Pope Pius IX, the Holy Father and the Church, fearless of every personal conse- quence. On the 28th of January, late in the evening, and after the country edition of the paper had already been mailed, a special messenger brought to the office a copy of the last encyclical. To publish it without the previous permission of the government, would constitute a flagrant violation of one of the worst Napoleonic laws. Louis Veuillot had no sooner received the papal letter than he said to his associates, " This is our death-warrant ; our paper will not be living to-morrow night." "We felt," continued the chivalrous journalist, "rather a sentiment of deep joy to have found so glorious an op- portunity of perishing, and we set about translating the encyclical, in order to have it inserted in the morning edition, before any pro- hibition could be sent to us, and to prevent the paper from being seized in the printing room." The decree of suppression did not fail to appear in the Moniteur on the 29th, but not till the plain story told in the encyclical had found its way into every Catholic home in Paris, and far beyond the limits of the great city. The great journalist and the paper which his genius had raised so high, had had many warm opponents among Catholics ; but this suppression made friends of former foes. While steps were taken to fill the place left empty by the Univers, Veuillot and his associates wrote and published, on February the 2d, a letter to the Holy Father, which deserves, as well as the names of its signers, to find a conspicuous place in the records of this glorious pontificate. " Most Holy Fathee : — After the blow which has fallen on them, the first need and the greatest consolation experienced by the editors of the Univers, is to kneel at your feet. Our journal exists no long- er, but our hearts shall continue to be more than ever animated by the zeal, which, thank God, never ceased to inspire our labors. Sons of the holy Roman Church, we are happy to be stricken down for having given publicity to the words of your Holiness. An encycli- cal of Pius IX. had called the Univers into life ; it is for an ency- clical of Pius IX. that it is now deprived of life. God and Pius IX. be thanked for both of these I Our work belonged indeed to you. Most Holy Father ; now our hearts, our labors, our persons, are for- ever yours. "Most Holy Father, we crave your indulgence for our past errors Suppression of the Univers — Crusade. 367 tLey were committed in no wickedness of heart and with no evil in- tention. AYe beseech you to add to this a blessing for the future, in order that, should we be ever able to rise to life again, we may with the same lofty purpose accomplish more praiseworthy deeds. We are resolved to remain united, so far as that is possible. Should we be compelled to separate, each one shall labor apart in the spirit which guides our common efforts. If your Holiness should call any one of us to a special field of labor, he would forthwith obey as to the voice of God. ''At the feet of your Holiness, your most humble, most grateful, and ever-faithful sons, *' Louis Veuillot ; Du Lac ; Eugei^e Veuillot ; Coquille; Aubin"eau; Eupert; J. Chan- TREL ; De la Eoche-Heron ; The Coukt db LA Tour, member of the Legislative Body; The Coukt de Maumigij^^y ; Abbe Corket ; Barrier; Tacoket." The affectionate and fatherly answer came before the end of the month, not in the cold courtly phrase of princely correspondence, but uttered with the generous effusion that yearned to assure every man of that noble band, that he was most specially dear to the heart of the pontiff. As Veuillot had asked, the blessing sent so promptly and so warmly did recall to life the Univers, and it remained a power for good after Napoleon had passed away, and the empire he had created had vanished, at Sedan, like a dissolving view. Catholic Christendom, so powerfully moved by the sacrilegious course of the Italian revolutionists, by the treachery of imperial France and liberal England, and still more by the words of the Holy Father, the eloquent denunciations of the whole body of the episcopacy, and such thrilling words and acts as those just recorded of Louis Veuillot, resolved not to forsake the cause of the Church. Modern Eome was the creation of the western nations ; it was the home built up for the common parent, to secure his independence and his freedom ; and threatened as that home now was by an anti- Christian crusade, a counter-crusade occurred spontaneously to every Catholic mind. Not only in France and Belgium, where the Univers had ever been a power, and where the self-sacrificing devotion of its editors had created a real enthusiasm, but in Canada, France's old colony. 368 Life of Pope Pius IX. and now fast growing into a nation, the best families nrged their sons to fly to the defense of the Holy Sea. Ireland, too, ever devoted to the chair of Peter, ever prompt to emulate the generous examples of other peoples, would not be behind France or Belgium in pro- tecting one so especially dear to her as Pius IX. So the spirit which awoke in Western Europe at the voice of Peter the Hermit and the call of Urban IL was now abroad again. CHAPTER XXX. The Pontifical Aemy intended for Defense — The Pope ex- horted AND ENCOURAGED TO FORM AN ArMT — RiGHT TO EMPLOY Foreigners — The Volunteers of 1860 — "The Sons of the Crusaders" — De Merode, De La Moricierb — Concerted Action between Napoleon and Cavour — Plans of the Latter — He resolyes to "Do Quickly" — Brutal and Insulting Proclamations — Bad Faith of Cayour and his Generals — La Moriciere unprepared FOR PiEDMONTESE AGGRESSION — He MARCHES TO THE ADRIA- TIC — Battle of Castel-Fidardo — Bombardment and Fall OF Ancona — Protest of Prussia and Russia — Complicity of France and England — Retribution — ^Allocutions — A Third Pamphlet from Napoleon — ^Antonelli Replies — Death of Cayour. 1860-1863. WHEN it is said that the spirit which fired the Christians of western Europe in the days of St. Bernard and Peter the Her- mit, was abroad in the beginning of 1860, we must not imagine that it entered the mind of those who encouraged this moyement of Catho- lic generosity, or of those who took an active part in it, to make an aggressive war on the Piedmontese government. The sole purpose which animated the chivalrous youth of all Catholic countries in urging them to enter the pontifical service, was to help in providing the Holy Father with an army sufficient to maintain the tranquillity of his States, and to defend them against the piratical attacks of such men as Garibaldi. It is extremely important to give a clear statement of the ac- knowledged right in virtue of which the pontifical government accepted these volunteer services, and of that which the youth of Christendom exercised in offering them. This will enable the reader to appreciate the tragic but glorious events related in this chapter. One of the points settled in the congress of the Catholic powers, 369 370 Life of Pope Piits IX, held at Gaeta, was, that on the Holy Father's heing restored to his capital, he should be encouraged and aided in every way, in the for- mation of an army, which should in future dispense him from calling in the assistance of any foreign power. This was to be a common object of solicitude for all the Catholic governments, and, while it aimed at securing the States of the Church from internal disturbance and protecting them against the raids of the outside "sects" and agitators, it would also put an end to the jealousy created by a pro- tectorate exercised by any one power. Up to that moment (1849) it had been considered the unquestion- able right of every sovereign power in Europe, to enlist in its armies all who chose to take service therein. And the right had been exer- cised by every country in Christendom. Nay, even in that same year, France had her foreign legion in Africa, while in the very army with which Garibaldi invaded Sicily, and which was still (in 1860) busy at its work of rapine and sacrilege in Naples and its vicinity, there was not only a "Hungarian legion," but Frenchmen and ban- ditti of almost every European nationality. Conscription, or forced enlistment, had never been admitted by the Popes as a means of raising or recruiting an army ; and the Romans had till then manifested but little disposition toward form- ing a native standing army. Besides, the right claimed by every nation in the world to employ the services of foreign troops, seemed far less open to objection in the case of the sovereign pontiff, who was the common parent, and whose States were the patrimony of the entire Christian society, and who had, therefore, a claim on the ser- vices of all nations to defend his independence. This was as much an unquestioned fact in the jurisprudence of Christendom, as the legality of Magna Charta or the laws of Alfred the Great was undisputed in England. Ever since 1850, England had unceasingly complained of the pres- ence of the French troops in Rome, and of the Austrian troops in the Legations ; and both France and Austria had urged the Holy Father to hasten the completion of a sufficient and effective military force, encouraging even their own best officers to aid in forwarding this purpose. Before the war of 1859 had broken out, there existed a large body of pontifical troops composed in great part of foreigners. The appeal made in the beginning of 18G0, to the youth of all Catholic countries, was stimulated by the threat of withdrawing the French army of occupation. No Catholics Foreigners in Rome, 371 They did not consider themselves foreigners, therefore, these braye men who in the spring and summer of 1860 hastened to Eome from every part of the Christian world ; and surely they were no merce- naries. Every country gave its very best. One has only to read the long lists of French, Belgian, Austrian, German, and Irish names, which fill up the roll of those who fought under La Moriciere and Pimodan and O'Eeilly, to feel that the best blood of the old Catholic races pulsated in these brave hearts. The pontifical minister of war, De Merode, was worthy to be looked up to by all these men. A lineal descendant of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, his family was allied with nearly every royal house in Europe, his cousin being at that moment the wife of a prince of Victor Emmanuel's family. He had served as a volunteer in Africa, under De La Moriciere, whose heroic qualities, lofty principles, and unstained honor, he, as well as the entire French army and nation, had learned to admire. The conqueror of Abd-el-Kader, the paci- fier of Africa, had been exiled by Louis Napoleon ; for his was not the spirit to bend to such tortuous policy as was in favor with the new ruler of France. But He Merode sought his old commander, and drew him from his retirement to serve the vicar of Christ, and help protect his temporal sovereignty from imminent peril. And to Eome He La Moriciere went, with the best wishes and prayers of French marshals and generals, his former pupils in the art of war, his associates in many a campaign, and his steadfast friends and admirers. For they were all proud of him. And not even St. Louis, when he sailed for Palestine, could look with greater pride on the roll of honor formed by his followers. They too — these generous young men, some of them still in their teens, were nearly every one of them sons of the old crusaders — the proud sons of noble mothers who sent them forth joyously to guard the home and the person of the Pope. This book does not aim at relating military evolutions. There exists in the report of the heroic commander-in-chief a complete and thrilling story of the little army and its brief career. No one has ever dared to question a single assertion in that simple and straight- forward tale of one who was the soul of honor and truth. There was surely need of brave men and true to defend from worse than military invasion, and the desolation which it usually brings with it, the possessions of the Holy See. Without speaking of Gari- baldi and the murderous bands which followed his standard, there 372 Life of Pope Pius IX, were all around the frontiers of Umbria clouds of robbers and assas- sins whose sole business it was to keep the pontifical provinces in a state of perpetual alarm and disorder, by their incursions and deeds of blood and violence. We need only say that at the head of these bands were such commanders as our old acquaintance Zambianchi,* Masi, and Nicotera, doing their devil's work under the protection of the white cross of Savo}^ On the 9th of August iN'apoleon III., now sovereign of Savoy, visited that province, and had an interview at Chambery with Gen- erals Fanti, the Piedmontese minister of war, and Cialdini. It is said that Napoleon combined with them the destruction of the papal army under La Moriciere, and sent them away with the words. Fate presto! ''Do quickly." There is no authentic proof of this. But after his interview with the generals he was more than once heard to say to those around him : " If Piedmont believes this to be necessary in order to save her- self and to save Italy from great danger, be it so ; but she must act on her own responsibility ; let her remember that if she be attacked by Austria, France cannot defend her." But Cavour cared little about what Napoleon had said ; he knew his man well, and was per- fectly aware that the pamphlet, "The Pope and the Congress," meant as surely "the Romagna and the Marches are yours," as the pamphlet "Napoleon III. and Italy" meant "prepare for war with Austria, and occupy the Romagna and the Marches. " So far as Cavour and Piedmont were concerned in the drama about to be enacted, this was the part assumed by the prime minis- ter : He was resolved, in order to save appearances in presence of Europe, to prevent Garibaldi from marching on Rome from Naples, and thus bringing on a collision with the imperial troops garrison- ing Rome. He therefore resolved to march the Piedmontese army under Fanti and Cialdini through Umbria and the Commarca to the frontier of Naples, and thus take the leadership of the revolutionary movement out of the hands of Garibaldi. At the same time he would crush the pontifical army just in a state of formation ; and he knew that for this he would have the thanks of Napoleon, whose ambassa- dor, the Duke de Gramont, had been taking pains to represent the little army as a nursery of "legitimism," and the pilgrimages made to Rome since January, as so many legitimist demonstrations. ■ — — — » See page 287. King Victor EmmaiiueVs Conscience, 373 He did not greatly apprehend an attack from Austria : but he nevertheless wrote to General La Marmora to do all he could to keep the attention of the Austrian generals fixed on the Piedmonteso forces in Lombardy, relieved Fanti of the ministry of war, and Persano of that of marine, taking both of them on himself in addi- tion to that of the interior, gave them directions to be ready to act at a moment's notice by sea and land in order to strike La Moriciere, who was to be driven into Ancona, while he was himself to bully Antonelli and deceive him with diplomatic feints. He wrote to Persano : " Cialdini is about to enter the Marches and to proceed rapidly toward Ancona ; but he does not think he can take that place without energetic assistance from our fleet. Tell me what you think is necessary to assure success, and how you intend to secure it." There is a brutal ultimatum from Cavour to Cardinal Antonelli. The King of Sardinia cannot see without deep concern ^Hhe forma- tion of bodies of foreign mercenary troops for the service of the pontifical government. These organizations, formed in opposition to the customs of civilized government, of men of every language and nationality and religion, deeply wounds the public conscience in Italy and throughout Europe. . . . The conscience of King Victor Emmanuel cannot allow him to remain the passive spectator of the sanguinary repression by which the arms of mercenary stran- gers might drown in Italian blood all manifestation of national feel- ing. ... I have therefore the honor to invite your Eminence to order forthwith the disarming of these bodies. . . ." Just the day before, the Duke de Gramont assured the pontifical government that they had no one to fear but Garibaldi. And, without waiting for an answer from Cardinal Antonelli, Cavour published in the next edition of the oflBcial Gazette of Turin, a pro- clamation of the king to his army telling them that they were going to invade ''the Marches and Umbria, to restore public order in desolated cities, and to enable the population to express their wishes, , . . to teach by their example the forgiveness of injuries and Christian tolerance," etc. Cialdini had not waited for the royal proclamation to cross the frontier and to put forth his manifesto: "Soldiers! I am leading you against a horde of foreign drunkards, whom the lust of gold and the hope of plunder has brought to our country. Eight, disperse inexorably these miserable cut-throats \ let them feel in your blows 374 Lif^ of Pope Pius IX, the wrath of a people who will have their nationality and indepen dence I " This was on the 10th and 11th of September. On the 16th the Duke de Gramont telegraphed to the French consul at Ancona : '* The emperor has written to the King of Sardinia, that if the Pied- montese troops set foot on the pontifical territory, he shall be forced to oppose it. Orders have already been given to embark troops at Toulon, and these re-enforcements are to come here without delay. The imperial government will not tolerate the criminal aggression of the Piedmontese government." In transmitting the dispatch the operator had said that the emperor would ''oppose it by force," in- stead of '' be forced to oppose it." The sense, taken with the context, was manifestly the same, and there was a little diplomatic squabble about it gotten up by the Duke de Gramont. Meanwhile the Pied- montese forces were moving on swiftly and relentlessly toward the unsuspecting papal army. The "bands" led by Zambianchi, Masi, Nicotera, and their peers, had passed the papal frontier simulta- neously, in advance of the royal troops. General de La Moriciere telegraphed for information on these movements, and was informed (about the 8th September) that Piedmont would not allow these bands to create disturbance, and that the Piedmontese troops which would follow them, would not attack the papal soldiers. "I was contending with these uncertainties," says de La Moriciere in his report, "when, during the afternoon of the 10th, the arrival of Captain Farini, aid-de-camp to General Fanti, relieved me from all doubt. . . . The general, by order of the King of Piedmont, informed me that his troops should take possession of the Marches and Umbria in the following cases : "1. If troops under my command in any city of these provinces should have to use force to repress any manifestation in the national sense; " 2. If I gave order to my troops to march on a city in which such a manifestation occurred ; "3. If such a manifestation having occurred, and having been repressed by my orders, I did not forthwith withdraw my troops from the city. . . . "Captain Farini having told me that he was acquainted with the contents of this dispatch, I observed to him that the proposition made to me simply demanded that I should evacuate without a struggle the provinces I had been sent to defend ; that this simply La Mor icier e Starts for Aitcona, 3^5 meant shame and disgrace for me ; and the King of Piedmont might have spared himself the trouble of sending such a missive. . . ," General Fanti telegraphed almost immediately to his aid-de-camp to return without waiting for an answer from the pontifical govern- ment ! The rest is soon told. The reader is prepared for the catastrophe which followed so speedily on this atrocious violation of all right and law, and even international courtesy. The pontifical army not only was not on a war footing, but was only very partially organized, armed, and equipped. The Irish brigade, among others, had not even havresacks or cartouche-boxes. Three hundred men of this brigade were thrown into the Eocca of Spoleto, the artillery of the place being in charge of a French officer. Captain de Baye, Major O'Eeilly having the chief command ; and with a warm farewell to him and his brave boys, La Moriciere left them at dawn on the 12th, and with about three battalions and one company of the Irish bri- gade, he set out for Macerata by the shortest road through Foligno, Camerino, and Tolentino. His purpose was to arrive at Ancona before the Piedmontese ; and it was precisely into Ancona that the Piedmontese wished to decoy him and his unprepared little army, in order to crush them at one blow. At Foligno La Moriciere was joined by his lieutenant. Marquis de Pimodan, and both fully aware that there was treachery abroad, has- tened to do what brave soldiers always do, to face overwhelming odds in the discharge of duty. On arriving at Macerata, the general- in-chief received from Cardinal Antonelli a copy of De Gramont's dispatch to the French consul at Ancona, and from Ancona itself he received a communication, written by a person in authority at Trieste, assuring him that *Hhe Austrian fleet would cruise to the south of Ancona to prevent its being blockaded ; and that the squadron was a considerable one and well commanded." All these informations were communicated to the pontifical troops, who received them with evident satisfaction. Nevertheless the Piedmontese army was pushing forward with irresistible numbers and energy, carrying before them every strong- hold in Umbria and the Marches. On the 17th O'Keilly was beset in Spoleto by General Brignone with a powerful force and a numer- ous artillery, while the Eocca of Spoleto had to defend it two old iron cannon mounted on half -rotten carriages. For twelve entire hours the little band of Irishmen, half -armed as they were, kept at 376 Life of Pope Pius IX, bay a whole corps of the regular Piedmontese army, and only capitu- lated when resistance was hopeless and honor had been amply yin- dicated. On the very same day General de La Moriciere was at Loreto with 2,000 infantry, and De Pimodan, with 2,600 : they found themselves almost entirely hemmed in by the Piedmontese ; they were without provisions and without money to buy them, the army treasure-chest having been earned off by mistake to Ancona. From Castel-Pidardo, occupying the crest of a group of lofty hills to the left of the road to Ancona, to Loreto the way was, purposely, left open by the Pied- montese. They wanted to press the pontifical troops northward toward the great fortress, like hunters in the African wilds driv- ing their game toward the apex of a long double line of inclosure, where escape must be impossible. From Sinigaglia, on the other side of Ancona, the Piedmontese had already swept everything before them. On the 18th of September La Moriciere began his perilous march, the enemy pressing on his rear and threatening his line of march from the high hills above. De Pimodan's corps was in advance, and with him the hundred men of the brigade of St. Patrick, who did good service in getting the artillery across the ford at the confluence of the rivers Musone and Aspio, in hauling the pieces up the steep acclivities beyond, and in protecting them throughout that disastrous day. The raw recruits had never been under fire before, and, hemmed in as they found themselves by the sea on their right and the enemy's overwhelming numbers and rifled artillery on the heights above their left, they were ready for a panic. The oldest and bravest troops could have had but few chances in their favor under such circumstances. As it was, the heroic commander-in-chief and his principal officers only thought of saving their honor and sparing the lives of the men they commanded. The brave De Pimodan, who had to dislodge the left wing of the Piedmontese from two strong positions, had infused his own spirit into his men. He was wounded early in the day, but continued to give his orders and lead his men. But in the very crisis of the bat- tle he fell mortally wounded, and as they bore him dying down toward the river, his commander-in-chief could only press his hand and say a few loving farewell words. This was the greatest misfor- tune of all. For the wooded hills and the farm-houses were now Fall of Ancona — Recrim inations — Rctributio7i, 377 swarming with the victorious Piedmontese, and the disordered bat- talions had to thread their way through what seemed a labyrinth of flame. The bulk of the pontifical army was separated from the comman- der-in-chief and retreated to Loreto, while he with a little more than 400 men endeavored to cut his way through to Ancona. Three- fourths of these were, however, shot down or taken prisoners, and La Moriciere had only eighty men around his flag, with Captain Delpech, when, at half-past five o'clock in the afternoon, he entered Ancona, bombarded at that moment by the Piedmontese fleet. It was a horrible outrage ; for no time had been given to non-bel- ligerents to withdraw, and these suffered more in the beginning than the feeble garrison itself. The revolutionary committee had been careful to send out of the city all the provisions available for the troops. The forces shut up in Lore to capitulated on the 27 th of September, and on the 28th, after ten days of fierce bombardment, being completely surrounded by the enemy, and the defensive works being breached on every side. La Moriciere demanded to capitulate. History has recorded, that the behavior of the Piedmontese toward the illustrious soldier and his brave men, was just as dastardly as could be expected from the spirit displayed by their proclamations and acts at the beginning of this inglorious campaign. European public opinion did not fail to utter some unpalatable truths on Cavour and his king, and their generals. The London Times reproached the Piedmontese premier with not being able to "understand that a frank and honorable line of action is not incom- patible with patriotism." Manin, from his exile in Paris, said bit- terly that " no victory deserves to be weighed in the balance against the contempt of self." The Revue des Deux Mondes could not withhold the expression of its anger caused by such unprecedented baseness and bad faith. "It is not Garibaldi and his volunteers," it said, "that General de La Moriciere had to fight ; the odds would in that case not have been so unequal ; but it is the regular army of Piedmont he had before him, an army six times more numerous than his own. Nor is it the mere attack of a revolutionary party which is now directed against the temporal power of the papacy ; it is a government incomparably more powerful than the Pope's, which decrees arbitrarily, itself alone, and in the face of the other nations of the world, the suppres- sion of this power, and which accomplishes that suppression by the 378 Life of Pope Pins IX. resistless force of its arms, and under the eyes of our garrison in Rome!" The two great western powers — France and England — were the ahettors of this spoliation, of this unprovoked and iniquitous war, made on that venerable sovereignty which had been the central force in the creation of western Christendom. Even before the fall of Ancona became known, Russia and Prussia both withdrew their am- bassadors from Turin ; France did so a little later ; but England still maintained Sir John Hudson at Turin, as Cavour's confidant and chief counselor, while Sir Henry Elliot continued to reside at Naples at Garibaldi's head-quarters. To the energetic protestations of the Prussian prime minister, Yon Schleinitz, Cavour made answer in words that were prophetic : "I regret that the court of Berlin should judge so severely the conduct of the king and his government. I am conscious of acting in con- formity with the interests of my sovereign and my country. I might reply successfully to what M. Von Schleinitz says ; but, be that as it may, / console myself with the thought that on the present occasion I am setting an example which Prussia, within a short time, prolahly, will he happy to follow" * Yes, Prussia, now that solemn treaties are only made to be broken, and international law only binds the weak, will grow at the expense of her weaker neighbors. A decade — ^just a decade — from that mem- orable 28th of September, 1860, when the Pope's temporal sovereignty disappeared with the flag that was lowered on the cmmbling walls of Ancona, the imperial power of France will be as sorely bestead in Sedan. With the supremacy of France fell that of England. To- day, within the second decade, after this shameful betrayai of all right, what weight have England and France in the councils of con- tinental Europe ? Russia and Prussia alone decide on peace and war, and Austria, who looked calmly from her splendid fortresses of the Quadrilateral on the triumphant march of the crowned brigand, Victor Emmanuel, and kept her fleet idle in the waters of Trieste, within sound of the cannon of Ancona, shall see her flag disappear from every inch of Italian soil, her German territory crippled, and her shadowy imperial existence tolerated by Prussia and Russia, till the Turkish question is settled on the basis of the new European law inaugurated by Cavour. Two solemn acts of Pius IX. in connection with this "new depar- * Charles de Mazade, La Revue des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1876, p. 421. Allocution of Pius IX, 379 ture " in international jurisprudence and public morality must be mentioned here. While his soldiers were dying in defense of his independence at Ancona, he was preparing one of those consistorial allocutions, which, although addressed to the College of Cardinals, are especially des- tined for the governments of Christendom in their relations with the Holy See. This was delivered on the 28th of September, the very day when Ancona surrendered to the Piedmontese army and fleet. The allocution briefly but eloquently enumerates the succes- sive acts of aggression committed by the Piedmontese government : *'the impudent letter" of Oavour, sent as a preface justifying the subsequent violation of territory and all its accompanying blood- shed ; '^Hhe lying accusations, the multiplied calumnies and insults" put forward as a pretext for the invasion ; ^^the singular malignity with which the Piedmontese government dared to call the pontifi- cal soldiers mercenaries, when so many of them, both Italians and foreigners, were of noble lineage, bearing illustrious names, and had resolved to serve in our troops without pay, and for the sole love of our holy religion." *'Our government could have had no intimation of the enemy's purpose. . . . The general and chief commanding our forces could not have entertained the thought of having to contend with the soldiers of Piedmont. . . . AYhile we must bestow merited praise on that general, on his ofiicers, and on his men, ... we can scarcely restrain our tears as we remember all those brave soldiers, these noble young men especially, who had been impelled by faith and their own generous hearts to fly to the defense of the temporal power of the Roman Church, and who have met with their death in this cruel and unjust invasion. We are deeply moved by the grief of their families ; and would to God it were in our power by any word of ours to dry up the source of their tears ! " Then follows a withering rebuke of the impudence and the hypocrisy of the invaders, who pretended to come "as the restorers of moral order," and the preachers of tolerance and charity; an energetic denunciation of the principle of "non-intervention," which is of such recent origin, and on the practical meaning of which the conduct of Piedmont is so strange a commentary. Cavour next went through the farce of an election in the annexed provinces, and in October dictated to his king a proclamation in answer to the papal allocution, as well as to the unfavorable judg- 38o Life of Pope Pius IX. ments pronounced on liis acts by tlie European press. The fall of Gaeta, the annexation of the kingdom of Naples to Piedmont, and the last official acts of the government of Victor Emmanuel declar- ing the conquered pontifical provinces a part of his kingdom, to- gether with the atrocious outrages everywhere committed on all persons who dared to remain loyal to the Holy See, or faithful to the sacred laws of the Church — all that drew from the Holy Father the famous allocution of March 18th, 1861, which is, perhaps, the most splendid, and, taken in connection with the Syllabus, the most far-reaching doctrinal act of his pontificate. In Italy, in England, in France, in some parts of Germany, and even in our impulsive and unreflecting America, though the manner in which Piedmont had done its work of "unification" was mildly censured, the infidel, the anti-Christian, and the Protestant press ap- plauded the consummation. The utter ruin of the papacy had been effected, they thought, by the hands of its own children ; the whole framework of the politico-ecclesiastical society of Italy was swept away ; the old canon law was a thing of the past ; the union of Church and State a system as dead as the theocracy of the ancient Egyptians, and the complete supremacy of the civil power in educa- tion, law, public morality, and external discipline, something like a century plant, growing slowly and maturing age after age through a long cycle of change and social experience, till the flower all at once bursts its sheath, and reveals its unsuspected glories to the eyes of a wondering earth, filling all lands with its perfume and its fame. This, they said, was progress, this was modern civilization. The upsetting, not of time-honored institutions only, but of all the prin- ciples hitherto considered fundamental and unchangeable in legis- lation, in public and private morality, in philosophy, in natural religion even, in the essential notions of right and justice regu- lating the transactions of man with man and of nation with nation, the sacredness of treaties, the binding solemnities of an oath, the reverence for the awful name of the Godhead, all that, and much more than that, was set aside by the "regenerators" of Italy, as belonging only to the past, as not binding either on the pres- ent or on the future. No wonder that the Roman pontiff, the supreme arbiter for so many ages in all questions of public and private right, the official guardian of morality, the custodian and interpreter of the revealed law of God, the teacher of churches and of nations, should have recoiled with horror from the thought of ^^ Modern Progress and Civilization^ 381 anything like conciliation or compromise with the men who, after having robbed him and desolated the flock committed to his care, challenged him to accept their ruthless changes and pitiless destruc- tion as true progress, and their principles, or rather their utter con- tempt of principle, as civilization. But let us meditate the words themselves of this memorable allocution, Jamdudum cernimus : '' Venerable Beothers : — For a long space of time we are made the beholders of a lamentable struggle, begotten of the incompati- bility of antagonistic principles, between truth and error, between virtue and vice, between light and darkness, which, especially in our age, agitates and convulses society. Some there are who main- tain what they call the notions of modern civilization ; while others defend the rights of justice and of our holy religion. The former call upon the Eoman pontiff to effect a reconciliation and an alli- ance between himself and progress, liberalism — the new civilization. The latter are laudably anxious that the unchangeable and unfail- ing principles of eternal justice shall be preserved in their inviolable integrity. They desire that the saving power of our divine religion be upheld in its fullness, for it is that religion alone which mani- fests the glory of the Godhead, and affords efficacious remedies for all the ills under which humanity is suffering. It is the only rule which forms man to all virtues here below, and leads him to eternal felicity. "But this opposition is denied by the advocates of modem civil- ization, who proclaim themselves to be the true and sincere friends of religion. We would fain believe them ; but the sad events which occur daily under the eyes of all bear witness to the contrary. Thero is on earth but one true and holy religion, founded and established by Christ himself ; the fruitful parent and nurse of all virtue, the enemy of every vice, the liberator of souls, the source of all true happiness, and that religion is called Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman. . . . '^With respect to such as invite us, for the good of religion, to join hands with modern civilization, we ask them, whether it be pos- sible for him whom Christ has instituted his vicar on earth, for the purpose of maintaining his heavenly doctrine in its purity, of feeding and fortifying therewith Christ's lambs and sheep, to ally himself conscientiously and without scandal to all men, with that modem civilization which begets such deplorable evils, such detestable opin- ions, so many errors and principles opposed to the Catholic religion and its teaching ? 382 Life of Pope Pius IX. " "Without recalling other facts, is it not, for instance, notorious that the most solemn concordats validly concluded between the Apostolic See and soyereigns are completely set aside, as has been re- cently done at Naples ? "We here complain, and reclaim, and pro- test with all our might against this last act, as we haye already pro- tested against so m.any other yiolations and outrages of the same nature [committed by the Piedmontese goyernment. — Author,'] '* This modern ciyilization professes on the one hand to fay or eyery form of worship not Catholic, . . . and, on the other, it denounces religious communities, the congregations founded to di- rect Catholic schools, ecclesiastics of every rank, even those who are invested with the highest dignities, many of whom are at this mo- ment in exile or in prison, and distinguished laymen, who, in their devotion to our person and the Holy See, dare to defend the cause of religion and justice. "This civilization lavishes its assistance on non-Catholic institu- tions and persons, while it strips the Catholic Church of her lawful possessions, and uses all industry and zeal to undermine her salutary influence. It allows full scope to the men who by their word and their pen assail the Church and her defenders ; it inspires, feeds, and foments licentiousness, while using an excessive reserve in repressing the violent and odious attacks made on all who publish good books, and displays toward these the utmost rigor whenever they chance to transgress in the slightest degree the limits of moderation. "Is it to such a civilization as this that the Eoman pontiff could ever extend the right hand of fellowship ? Is it with such a civil- ization that he could contract any league of alliance or amity ? Let us only call things by their proper names, and it must appear evident that the Holy See is always consistent with itself. It has ever been the protector and support of true civilization. History can show in the most convincing manner that at every epoch the Holy See has been the bearer of the true principles of humanity, order, and wisdom to the most distant and barbarous countries. " But inasmuch as people will have us understand by civilization a system organized for the express purpose of weakening and eventu- ally destroying the Cliurch of Christ, it is certain that neither the Holy See nor the Roman pontiff can ever bo reconciled to such a civilization. . . . "With what degree of good faith can the disturbers of the public peace and the abettors of revolution lift up their voices to proclaim Persecution of the Church, 383 that they have in yain endeavored to be reconciled with the Roman pontiff ? He derives all his power from the principles of everlasting righteousness ; how could he ever forsake them to weaken the cause of our holy faith, and to expose Italy thereby to lose, together with her peculiar glory of nineteen centuries, the privilege of being the center and seat of Catholic truth ? ** Nor can it be said truthfully that, so far as the temporal power IS concerned, the Holy See has been deaf to those who asked for a more liberal administration. . . . '*In more recent times, as you are aware, when we were tendered advice about our temporal government, we were not slow to profit by it ; rejecting, however, what had no regard to the civil adminis- tration, and what tended to obtain our assent to the spoliations already accomplished. But it is idle to speak of advice accepted favorably and of promises sincerely given by us to execute them, when it is notorious, that those who direct these usurpations openly say, that what they want is not reform but revolution, and a com- plete separation from the lawful sovereign. Those who filled the world with their outcries were not our own people, but the very authors and counselors of these criminal assaults. ... " The war made on the Eoman pontiff aims not only at depriving him and the Holy See of their civil power, but at lowering, weaken- ing, and, if possible, destroying utterly the salutary energy of the Catholic religion. . . . " How many dioceses in Italy are left without bishops, because these are not permitted to govern lawfully, while these advocates of modern civilization rejoice that Christian populations are deprived of their guides, usurp their possessions and employ them to the very worst purposes ! How many bishops are at this moment in exile ? How many — we say it in the bitterness of our soul — how many apostates, are now preaching not in the name of God, but in that of Satan, trusting to the impunity allowed them by a fatal policy to disturb con- sciences, to urge the weak to prevaricate and confirm the fallen in their unblushing profession of error, endeavoring to rend asunder the seam- less robe of Christ, and proposing to establish a national church. . . "Now, after having thus outraged the religion they invite hypo- critically to become reconciled with the civilization in vogue, they presume to ask us with a like hypocrisy to become reconciled with Italy. That is to say, at the very time when almost totally stripped of our temporalities, we have to meet the heavy charges incumbent 384 Life of Pope Pius IX. on the prince and the pontiff through the alms sent us by the chil- dren of the Catholic Church ; at the vxry moment when we are made, without motive, a target for envy and hatred, by the very men who counsel this kind of reconciliation, they would have us also de- clare openly that we give up to the usurpers, as their freehold pro- perty, the provinces wrested from the Pontifical States ! '*This daring and unheard-of proposition simply means that the Apostolic See, which has always been, and shall ever continue to be, the bulwark of truth and justice, ought to sanction this principle, that a thing taken perforce from its owner may be peacefully retained by the unjust aggressor ; it means also a sanction of this erroneous maxim that a triumphant wrong is not an infraction of the sacred- ness of right. But this proposition is repugnant to the words so solemnly uttered of late in an illustrious senate chamber : ' The Roman pontiff is the representative of the highest moral power in human society.' Hence it follows that the pontiff can in nowise consent to the spoliation wrought by these Vandals, without shaking to its foundations the moral law of which he is acknowledged to be the form and the image. " Whoever, led by fear or by error, would be disposed to counsel the disturbers of civil society in conformity with their desires, ought to be firmly convinced — especially in our day — that nothing short of the total destruction of the principle of authority, of all religious restraint, of all rule of right and justice, can satisfy these men. And — ^unfortunately for civil society — these disturbers have suc- ceeded by their speeches and writings in perverting the conscience of mankind, in blunting men's moral sense, and diminishing their in- born horror of iniquity. They do their utmost to persuade the world that the rights claimed by honest folk are but an unrighteous pre- tension which must be set aside. " In the midst of this growing darkness ... we place our trust in the most clement Father of mercies. . . . He it is who sheds on Catholic nations the spirit of prayer, and who in- spires non-Catholic peoples with that righteous sense which enables them to pronounce an equitable judgment on these events. This wonderful union of prayers throughout the Catholic world, these unanimous manifestations of love toward us, expressed in so many different ways, are such as to have no parallel in the past, and are an evidence for the right-minded of the necessity of being in union with this chair of the blessed Peter. . , . A New Diplomatic Campaign, 385 " Wherefore, while our soul is oppressed with grief, and we lift our hands in supplication to God on high, we are only fullSlling the duty of our supreme apostleship by speaking out, by teaching, and by combating whatsoever God and his Church teach and combat, in order that * we may consummate our course and the ministry of the word which we received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.' " Napoleon, who had hypocritically suspended open diplomatic inter- course with the court of Turin, continued to negotiate secretly with Cavour, through Prince Napoleon Jerome, the question of Rome and what remained of the temporal power. He was prepared to withdraw his troops from that city and what remained of the papal territory, binding Piedmont to respect the sovereignty and the independence of the Holy See, allowing the Pope to recruit an army which should only serve for defensive purposes. On these conditions the emperor was ready to acknowledge the new kingdom of Italy. Of course Cavour and Prince Napoleon and the emperor himself all perfectly under- stood that this meant giving up the Holy Father to the will of his enemies. To prepare public opinion in France and Europe for this culmina- tion in the Cavour-Bonaparte policy, a new pamphlet, entitled La France, Rome, et Vltalie, signed this time by Arthur de la Gueron- niere, appeared on the 7th day of March. Its real authorship was a secret to no one. The Pope's magnificent allocution was an indi- rect reply to this new declaration of war, this plan of a final intel- lectual campaign in which the temporal sovereignty was to win or lose forever in the public opinion of Christendom. This drew from Cardinal Antonelli a letter to the papal minister in Paris, which is perhaps the most admirable document ever signed by the great secretary. " The chief purpose of this production (the pamphlet) is to throw on the Holy Father and on his government the responsibility of the condition to which Italy, and the Pontifical States in particular, have been reduced." With a lucidity, a logic, a subdued eloquence beyond all praise, the writer attacks, one after the other, every position assumed by the pamphleteer, and exposes tri- umphantly the treachery, the baseness, the duplicity of the chief adversaries of the Holy See in this long battle with Piedmontism abetted by Louis Napoleon. One point made by the writer must not be omitted here, as it serves to throw further light on the bad faith which marked through- 386 Life of Pope Pius IX, out the proceedings of Cavour and his imperial ally. The author of the pamphlet accused the Pope bitterly of having rejected the plan of an Italian confederacy in 1859, when proposed by the Em- peror Napoleon. "The official proposition of such a confederacy," writes the car- dinal, ''and of its presidency, came only after the preliminaries of Villafranca and of the treaty of Zurich, and the Holy Father showed himself disposed to accept it, as soon as its basis had been defined. The author, nevertheless, says that it was then too late ; he does not, in saying so, seem to perceive that he seriously insults his own sov- ereign, as if he and the other powers had proposed, as the basis of a solemn treaty and the great means of conciliation, a thing which was at that moment neither possible nor opportune. Be that as it may, it was only then that the proposition was made by the person authorized to do so ; and it is unjust to pretend that his Holiness had taken any action thereon before it was laid before him. Since, there- fore, the thing fell through independently of his refusal, how can he, without a positive act of calumny, be accused of obstinacy on this point ? " ''Let us," the cardinal says elsewhere, " reduce to their simplest terms all these heads of accusation. Putting aside the unfounded assertions, the manifest cal^imnies, the matters foreign to the case, which helped to fill up the pamphlet, the obstinacy which it imputes to the Holy Father amounts to his having declined an abdication which his conscience condemned, to his having deferred some reforms promised till the revolted provinces had returned to their allegiance ; to his having proposed to recruit an army for himself, instead of ac- cepting the troops offered to him ; to his having preferred the volun- tary offerings of the faithful to subsidies furnished by governments who are not all nor always equally disposed to be friendly. And these acts of firmness, of noble disinterestedness, which must appear most praiseworthy to the unprejudiced mind, which have appeared and do still appear worthy of the admiration of Protestants, seem on the other hand to the Catholic author of the pamphlet to be so blameworthy, that he could not find more bitter words of censure were he to write against those who are alone responsible for the sad disorders of the present time. " But this is precisely what is of a nature to surprise us. The im- perial government of France had given advice to his Holiness ; it had also given advice to the Piedmontese government. Now if the Holy Did Napoleon make a Friend of Italy? 387 Father must be accused of not having followed such advice, the Piedmontese government does not appear to have been more docile. . , . His Holiness did not deem it expedient to do some things desired by the French government ; but Piedmont did a great many things which the French government had publicly declared it was opposed to. The imperial government forbade the violation of the neutrality of the Pontifical States ; and to this the Piedmontese gov- ernment responded by occupying the Eomagna. The imperial gov- ernment disapproved annexation ; and the Piedmontese government only answered by accomplishing annexation. The imperial govern- ment forbade, in threatening language, the invasion of the Marches and Umbria ; and the Piedmontese government responded by pour- ing grapeshot into the little pontifical army, by bombarding Ancona from sea and land, and by refusing to observe any of the laws of war acknowledged by all civilized nations. . . . '^The author of the pamphlet allows his pen the crudest license against the Holy See, but has not one single word of blame for the Piedmontese government ! . . . Who can explain such an attitude ? '^ The explanation is a very natural one, and is given on the last page, where the author tells us that the emporor of the French can- not sacrifice Italy to iJie court of Rome nor give up tlie papacy to the revolution ; which means that the court of Rome must be sacrificed to the exigencies of the Peninsula, that the temporal dominion of the Holy See must be done away with, because it is in the way of the unification of Italy, and that this suppression is to prevent the papacy or the spiritual power from falling beneath the blows of the revolution." Eventually the court of Rome was sacrificed to Italian unity, and the papacy, or so much of it as can be subject to the despotism of human masters, was given up to the revolution impersonated by Piedmont. The emperor who thus sacrificed conscience, right, justice, the most venerable institutions the world had ever seen, to Italy, thought that he was creating for France a powerful friend at her very gates, and for himself and his dynasty a grateful and steadfast friend in the day of need. The day of need came sooner than either Napoleon or Victor Emmanuel fancied, but the emperor found nei- ther ally nor friendship nor gratitude ; while France knows, to her bitter cost, that to heap benefits on ignoble natures is to make for one's self the worst of enemies. 388 Life of Pope Phcs IX. "We have not the heart to pursue further the revolutionary career of Piedmont. We shall see the iniquity consummated in its time. The first " Italian " parliament met in Turin in February ; Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy on March the 14th. The "kingdom of Italy" was recognized by Great Britain on the 31st day of that month, and by France on the 2'4th of June. But Cavour did not live to have that satisfaction ; he died on the 6th of June. " To the end he remained what he was, what he had wished to be. He had given instructions that at the proper time they should call in the rector of the Madonna degli Angeli (^Our Lady of Angels '), Friar Giacomo, with whom he had made a compact some seven years before about such an eventuality, and, faithful to his agreement, the friar came. . . . Cavour remained alone with the priest for half an hour, and when the latter was gone he called Fa- rini and said : ' My niece has had Fra Giacomo to come to me ; I must prepare myself for the dread passage to eternity ; I have made my confession and have received absolution. I wish all to know, I want the good people of Turin to know that I die like a good Christian. I am at peace with myself. I have never wronged any one. . . .' One of the last words of Cavour was addressed to Fra Giacomo, who was reciting by the bedside the prayers for the de- parting soul : ' Frate, Frate,^ said he in pressing the other's hand, * liber chiesa in liber o stato.^^^ * On that death-bed repentance, the peace of that soul with itself, when the tremendous judgment was so nigh, and the boast of the dying persecutor of God's Church and her pontiif that he had ** never wronged any one," — on that statesman's career of rapine, duplicity, blood, and sacrilege, which ended early on that moraing in June, with the triumphant boast that he had left *' a free church in a free State," — the All-Knowing and All-Righteous has pronounced his adorable sentence. Let him disappear from these pages. To the august parent who would have been so happy to send to that chamber of death sweet words of love and forgiveness, Cavour did not send one single word of regret. Pius IX. was destined to look down on the death of many more of the leaders in wrong-doing before his aged eyes might close to a world so full for him of the bitter agony of the cross, not un- mixed, however, with its blissful consciousness of triumph. • Reme des Deux Sondes, l^ Janvier, 1877, p. 203. CHAPTER XXXI. GuizoT oiq- THE Social State of Eukope akd the Italian Policy — The Pope is in^vited to Abdicate his Temporal Soyer- eigkty — Persecutio^ts 11^ the Kikgdom of Italy — Ik New Greitada and Mexico — The Great Canonization of June, 1862 — The Pope's Address to the Bishops — Solemn Con- demnation OF Modern Errors — The Italian Parliament considers the Assemblage a Political One — The *' Sylla- bus OF Errors " — What it Means — Misapprehensions and Misrepresentations. 1862-1865. IN this same year, 1861, a man who had gained by the superiority of his genius and the elevation of his character the very first rank among European publicists, the illustrious Guizot, published a book entitled '^The Church and Christian Society in 1861. '* Placed at the head of the Protestant Church in France, his opinions on the papacy, and the war then waged so furiously against it, had great weight with persons of his own communion. We have already seen how sincerely he wished, while prime minister under Louis Philippe, to give the most efficient aid to the Holy Father in his work of ad- ministrative reform. It is most interesting to hear his judgment on the results of the policy followed by France, England, and Pied- mont in forwarding the work of revolutionism. "European societies," he says, "are deeply troubled; institutions and beliefs, laws and influences, the State and the relations of all its members, all things are now called in question ; almost everywhere the ancient social structure is falling to pieces or shaken, and no one can see on what solid foundation is to be built the new edifice ; every- where confusion, incoherence, and hesitancy pervade men's minds, and pass thence or threaten to pass into events ; governments and peoples are equally weary and restless ; the present affords no secu- rity, the future holds forth no light ; despite the indisputable ad- vance in enlightment and social knowledge, we are living in darkness 389 390 Life of Pope Pitts IX. and amid ruins." * In another passage the venerable author pro- tests against men in power who look with '* a complacent adhesion or a blind indifference on a course of policy alternately hrutal and hypo- critical, which compromises instead of promoting the good cause in Italy, and throws Christian society into grief and perturbation, the certain prelude of an anarchy which would at one time rule supreme and at another be chained down by some unforeseen power." f No sooner had the new kingdom of Italy been recognized by France than Baron Eicasoli, who had become prime minister, wrote in the king's name both to Cardinal Antonelli and the Pope, urging them to give up the sovereignty of Eome and thereby enable him to perfect the ideal design of his predecessor, by allowing the Church to be free in the new Italian free State. The letter to the Holy Father ended with the following appeal : "It is in your power. Holy Father, to renew once more the face of the earth ; you can raise the Apostolic See to a height unknown for ages. *' If you wish to be greater than earthly sovereigns, cast away from you this wretched kingship which brings you down to their level. Italy shall bestow upon you a firm seat, an entire liberty, a new greatness. She reveres in you the pontiff, but she will not stop in her progress for the prince ; she intends to remain Catholic, but she purposes to be a free and independent nation. If you but hearken to the prayers of that daughter so singularly loved of you, you shall gain over souls more power than you can lose as a prince, and from the Vatican, as you lift your hand to bless Rome and the world, you shall behold the nations restored to their rights bow down be- fore you, their defender and protector." Unfortunately for Eicasoli and his promises, the persecution against bishops and priests, and the atrocious policy of assassination organized against loyal and faithful laymen, continued to rage with greater fierceness, not only in Naples and Sicily, but wherever the cross of Savoy floated. Garibaldi only consented to suspend his intention of beginning an armed crusade against Eome by the promises and prospects held out to him by the Piedmontese ministry in the name of Napoleon III., as well as Victor Emmanuel, that Eome should become the capital of Italy with the briefest possible delay. • Guizot, ViCglUe et la Societe CTiretienne en 1801, p. 266. f im., p. 108. Persecution in Mexico a7id New Grenada* 391 But the impatient chief could not brook these delays. Even then his letters and discourses were full of one sentiment, which he meant to transform soon into a fact : " Rome or Death ! " " Do not be deceived by those whose interest is to deceive you. Among these are the priests, and especially the high-priest of Rome and his cardi- nals, these fabricators and venders of superstition, these panders to tyrannical governments." The proclamations and the acts of Garibaldi were the inevitable accompaniment to which the Piedmontese ministers and Napoleon IIL's secretaries and ambassadors always sang their persuasive strains in the pontifical ear. In the republics of the western world, during this time, lived statesmen trained in the school of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and who show^ed themselves apt scholars in the art of setting up " a free Church in a free State." General Mosquera in New Grenada, and Benito Juarez in Mexico, stopped at no halfway measures in their methods of reconciling civil and religious liberty. In Mexico the entire property of the Church, spared till then by the violence of successive revolutions and the greed of political parties, was swept away into the State treasury, and every bishop who dared to resist or protest was banished from the country or imprisoned. In New Grenada, the bnital Dictator, unmindful of the death in exile of his own saintly brother, the Archbishop of Bogota, pursued a course of relentless persecution toward the Church, and both the regular and secular clergy. To these manifold causes of grief and anxiety for the Holy Father, was added, in the spring of 1861, the breaking out of the civil war in the United States, For to no portion of his wide flock did Pius IX. ever look with a deeper and more fatherly interest than to the young churches of the great western republic. They were like trees of his own plant- ing, he had seen grow and put forth the fairest blossoms, and, as he rejoiced in the near prospective of a fruitful harvest, lo ! the whirl- wind had come ! How he prayed for peace during these dark and stormy years, and with what a tender sympathy he looked forward to a cessation of hostilities and to a renewal of the brotherly relations between North and South, which political passion had so deeply dis- turbed ! The last great solemnities of beatification in 1850, had been espe- cially interesting for the American Church, since the holy personages who were the subject of them — Peter Claverand Mariana de Paredes — were American saints, A similar celebration had been proposed 392 Life of Pope Pius IX, for 18G2, and the great feast of Pentecost, June the 8th, was chosen as the day most favorable for the purpose. On the 18th of January, Cardinal Caterini addressed, in the name of the Holy Father, an invitation to the entire episcopal body. "His Holiness," the circular said, "in conformity with the exam- ples set by his predecessors, would fain have called together in Eome the bishops of Italy, to obtain their deliberate judgment in a matter of such great importance, as well as to add to the solemnity of the occasion. But considering the calamities which weigh on the larger portion of Italy, and which do not permit the shepherds to leave their flocks, he has for once departed from the received custom. *' Wherefore the Holy Father has honored me with his commands to invite to this celebration not only the bishops of Italy, but those of the whole world, with the assurance that it would afford him a very great satisfaction to see all who can come at the consistory (in the month of May) as well as at the canonization." As a preliminary step a secret consistory was held, in which his Holiness expressed the wish to add to the catalogue of canonized saints the names of three members of the Society of Jesus, and twenty-three members of the Order of St. Francis who had been cruelly crucified in Japan in 1622. The heroic sufferings of the sovereign pontiff, the spoliations of which he had been the victim, the open threats of Garibaldi and Young Italy to have Eome before another year had passed, and the treacherous policy, more than ever openly avowed in the senate chamber by the French ministers and Prince Napoleon, made Rome the goal of Catholic hearts, and the Holy Father an object of per- sonal devotion to every son and daughter of the Church in every land. Magnificent as had been the spectacle presented by the capital of the Christian world in December, 1854, it was far surpassed by the Bolemnitics of June, 1862. The official annoyances, the jeers and insults to which bishops, priests, and laymen were subjected at the frontiers of the now kingdom of Italy, and on their way to Rome, were a not very pleasant foretaste of the higher and larger freedom promised to the sovereign pontiff and the Church when Rome should belong to free Italy. On May the 22d was held a semi-public consistory at which twen-. ty-three cardinals and one hundred and twenty-five bishops voted Ca7ionization of yune the 8th, 1862. 393 for the canonization. Three days afterward came a touching ad- dress of the Umhrian bishops to the Pope, in which they declared their adhesion to every act performed by their brethren and their chief. There was a multitude of priests in Kome come to testify their veneration to the persecuted Pope, much more than to gratify their pious curiosity. The Holy Father called them all together in the Sixtine chapel on June the 6th, and made to them one of those simple and heartfelt discourses, every word of which goes straight to the soul of each hearer like the well-sped arrow to its mark. "On seeing you here we not only feel the burden of our grief lightened, but we almost forget it. This is due to him who is the sole author of peace and concord, who makes his Church ^care- ful to keep the unity of spirit in the bond of peace,' in order that all the faithful may form but ' one body and one spirit.' This unity con-" stitutes the honor of the Church, the glory of her members, and an object of fear for their enemies ; for in this unity she appears to them like an army in battle array. . . . Eemain bound to this Aposto- lic See, the center of unity, by the threefold tie of prayer and charity and doctrine. Prayer pierces the heavens and obtains the possession of all good and the deliverance from all evil ; charity makes us grow in all things in him who is our head, Christ Jesus ; and doctrine enables us to keep entire the deposit of faith. . . . We are in stormy times, and the chair of Peter is bitterly assailed. But it is 80 firmly seated that heretical wickedness can never taint it, nor hea- thenish misbelief undermine it. All the daring assaults of incredu- lity and impiety shall be dashed to spray upon this rock and vanish like dreams of the past. " When you go back to your homes teach this truth to your flocks. You have drunk here at the well-spring of unity ; tell them that the stream cut off from its source must fail and run dry ; that all who fight the good fight shall be crowned ; and that in our day all must hold fast to the unity of the Church and uphold it." On the 8th came the splendid ceremonial of the canonization. It was no idle or empty pomp, this supreme honor rendered to twenty- six noble confessors of Christ, who, at Nagasaki, upwards of two cen- turies before, had sealed their witness with their blood, the heroic children in the faith of that divine man, Francis Xavier, who first brought the name of Christ to a land where torrents of blood and ages of persecution have not been able to extinguish the flame kin- dled by its apostle. It was, also, the anniversary of the day when 394 ^^f^ ^f P^P^ /^/^^ IX. the divine Spirit came down on the apostles and disciples in the up- per chamber at Jerusalem, and the little band went forth to conquer a world to Christ. He who presided over the august assemblage hoped, and not in vain, that the hearts and tongues of all who were there would be touched with the heavenly fire. On the next day, the 9th, there was a public consistory, at which an address signed by two hundred and sixty-five bishops was read to the Holy Father by Cardinal Mattel, the dean of the sacred college. Among these were fifty-five French bishops, whose presence there was a mute protest against the policy of their government and the impious teachings of the Voltairian press. The Holy Father had signified his wish that, in the present cir- cumstances of the Holy See, the assembled prelates should give him their opinion as to the necessity of the temporal sovereignty for the perfect independence of the head of the universal Church. The an- swer was most unanimous and explicit, greatly comforting the pontiff, beset as he was by the importunities of France and alarmed by the undisguised resolution of the Piedmontese. The words of the ad- dress were not less cheering when the bishops spoke of his supreme doctrinal authority. " Long may you live. Holy Father," they said, **to rule the Catholic Church ! Proceed, as you do now, to defend it with your power, to guide it with your pnidence, to adorn it with your virtues. Go before us, as the good shepherd, by your example ; feed the sheep and the lambs with food from heaven ; refresh them with the waters of supernal wisdom. You are the teacher of sound doctrine, the center of unity, the unfailing light kindled for all peoples by the divine wisdom. You are the Eock, the foundation of the Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. When you speak, we hear Peter's voice ; when you decide, we obey the authority of Christ." The answer of the sovereign pontiff is contained in the allocution Maxima quidem IcBtitia, the first half of which resumes all the doc- trinal decisions and dogmatic teaching of his pontificate up to that date. It is of special interest and importance, because it is a solemn authoritative condemnation of the socialism, rationalism, and mate- rialism of the nineteenth century, the syllabus or catalogue of errone- ous propositions afterward sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to the archbishops and bishops of the entire Church being chiefly taken from this great public utterance of the chief pastor in presence of nearly three hundred bishops. Condemnation of Modern Errors, 395 This memorable discourse or allocution is thus a sort of prepara- tion for the complete body of doctrine which it was the purpose of the council of the Vatican to draw up and promulgate once for all. It may be as well, therefore, to give the reader a satisfactory idea of what that famous Syllabus is, since its scope and the doctrines which it proscribes, as well as those which it teaches by implication, have been so sadly misunderstood and so shamefully misrepresented by men as eminent as Gladstone. We have seen, in the account given in the preceding chapter of the allocution Jamdudum cernimus, what conception the revolu- tionists of Italy and all who share their naturalism have of '^prog- ress" and "modern civilization," how indignantly the supreme pastor rejects the hideous shams these men would have him accept for true progress and the true civilization so glorified by the Church. We shall find presently these monstrous misconceptions again pil- loried in the Syllalus, Let us now glance at the noble and preg- nant lesson given by Pius IX. in that great assemblage of bishops. " We felt our soul penetrated with a deep joy, when, yesterday, it was given us to bestow the honors due to saints on twenty-seven heroes of our holy faith, and to behold you all by our side, you who, eminent for your piety and many other virtues, and associated with our solicitude in these calamitous times, fight so bravely for the house of Israel, and are for us a supreme joy and stay. Would to God that no cause of sadness and grief from the outside world might come to temper this overflowing joy ! But how is it possible not to feel overburdened with sorrow and anxiety when one sees both the Church and civil society given over as a prey to every species of evil, to the immense detriment of men's souls ! "You are not ignorant of the implacable war declared against everything Catholic by men who conspire together to misrepresent what they do not know, to undermine the foundations of our holy religion and of all civil society, ... to pervert minds and hearts by filling them with pernicious errors and thereby choking up in them all the seeds of Catholic doctrine. They never tire in bring- ing to light the most monstrous aberrations of past ages, again and again exposed and refuted by the most judicious ecclesiastical writ- ers, and condemned by the solemn judgment of the Church. To make them more attractive to the popular eye they clothe them with a new form, deck them with fresh graces of expression, and then spread them everywhere with untiring industry. 39^ Life of Pope Plus IX, '' Thereby all the sciences are tainted and perverted, and made the vehicles of a deadly intellectual poison, and stimulants to unrestrain- ed licentiousness and the most criminal passions. Thus the entire social and religious orders are upset, the notions of justice, trutli, right, honor, and religion are weakened and obliterated, and the teachings and commandments of Christ are derided and scoffed at. *' You cannot but be aware of the fact that these men perempto- rily deny the union which God has been pleased to establish between the natural and supernatural orders ; that they alter, corrupt, and destroy the proper, true, and lawful character of divine revelation, as well as the authority, constitution, and power of the Church. '^ Their intellectual temerity impels them to deny boldly every truth and law and power and right which derives from God ; they blush not even to affirm that the scientific knowledge of philosophy and morals, as well as the laws of civil society, should be entirely withdrawn from any connection with divine revelation and from the control of Church authority. They maintain that the Church is not a society truly so-called and. perfect, or gifted with full freedom ; that she cannot claim to rest on the peculiar and permanent rights with which she was invested by her divine founder ; but that it be- longs to the civil power to define and declare what are the rights of the Church and within what limits she can exercise them. "Hence they wrongly conclude that the civil power may take cog- nizance of what purely concerns religion, morality, and the spiritual government of souls, and even prevent bishops and their faithful people from holding a free intercourse with the Eoman pontiff, who has been divinely established as the supreme pastor of the whole Church. . . , They even presume to proclaim openly before the masses that the Eoman pontiff and the ministers of the Church should be excluded from all temporal rights and power." Then follows an enumeration of various errors directly opposed to the necessity of revelation, to the divine origin and veracity of the books of the Bible, to the very existence of Christ himself, or of the divine law ; and to the providential government of God. Human reason is supreme and all sufficient ; and man has a primordial right to dispose freely of his faculties and himself. Thus by degrees rationalism and naturalism come to the negation of God himself, and to the affirmation of a gross pantheism and materialism. The second part treats of the specific assaults committed ''on the Church and civil society." The Holy Father points with expressions The Italian Parliament Protests. 397 of deep sorrow to the absence of the bishops of Italy who were forbid- den to appear at the solemnities, as well as of the Portuguese bish- ops. Then there is a grateful acknowledgment of the unanimity with which the entire Catholic hierarchy has sustained the pontiff in his troubles, of their admirable zeal in unvailing the perfidious de- signs of the enemies of the Holy See. "The sad subjects we have just exposed to you," the Holy Father continues, '^ afford a grievous spectacle. We cannot but be daily impressed with the conviction that all these impious doctrines, all these perverse and insane machinations, corrupt and debauch hourly more and more the Christian people, lead them farther on the road to ruin, assail and weaken the Catholic Church, her venerable rights and laws, as well as her ministers ; they propagate vice and crime, and disturb profoundly civil society itself. ''"Wherefore, attending solely to the discharge of our apostolic office, ... we raise our voice in this august assemblage, we re- probate, proscribe, and condemn the errors above enumerated as con- trary and absolutely opposed not only to Catholic faith and doctrine, to divine and ecclesiastical law, but moreover to the natural and eternal law and justice, and to right reason. *'As to you, venerable brothers, who are the salt of the earth, the guardians and shepherds of Christ's flock, we exhort you, we conjure you with increased earnestness, ... to keep away those in your charge from this poisonous intellectual food ; to refute and combat by word and pen these monstrous perversities. You know how incomparably dear are the interests here involved, those of our holy faith, of the Catholic Church and her doctrine, of the salvation of all peoples, of the peace and tranquillity of human society. Where- fore, in so far as you can, never cease to warn your people against this dreadful contagion ; let them keep their eyes and their hands from bad books and bad newspapers. Instruct them unceasingly in the precepts of our holy religion ; and bid them avoid these teachers of iniquity, as they would fly from the bite of a serpent. " Courage, venerable brothers ; amid all these revolutions and consummated wrongs let nothing shake your constancy. . . . We cannot help assuring you once more how sweet is the consola- tion we feel as we look upon you all, you bound to us and to this chair of Peter by the strong ties of faith and reverence and filial piety, never cease, in union with your brother bishops and your faith- ful peoples, to minister to us, in our agony and bitterness of soul. 39^ Life of Pope Pius IX, all manner of relief and comfort. On this solemn occasion we de« clare with our whole heart and strength how ardent are our grati- tude and our love toward yourselves and your people. We beseech you once more, when you are restored to your respective dioceses, re- peat in our name to your flocks these sentiments of our heart, and give them, with the assurance of our fatherly tenderness, the apostolic benediction." Beset and threatened as Pius IX. then was, and having passed his seventieth year, who among these bishops and priests and pil- grims, come to him from the ends of the earth, could, in all human probability, ever hope to look upon him again amid the splendors of such a solemnity ? And yet Pius IX. was reserved to many more years of arduous struggles and still more splendid triumphs ! Italy and the Christian world were so moved, so deeply impressed by this display of faith, of increased reverence and love for the despoiled pontiff, that the Italian parliament felt itself called upon to go in a body to King Victor Emmanuel and protest solemnly in the face of all Europe against this multitude of '^bishops, nearly all strangers to Italy, who, assembled in Eome for a religious solemnity, have uttered against our country outrageous insults, still further aggravated by their denial of our national riglits and by the intro- duction among us of foreign violence." The remainder of this phi- lippic was distinguished by an equal truthfulness and like amenities. "We return to the Syllabus, On the 8th of December, 1864 — a memorable anniversary for Pius IX. — was issued the encyclical Quanta cur a, in which he renewed the condemnation pronounced on the errors proscribed so solemnly in the public consistory of June 9, 18G2, adding to them such new and monstrous assertions as had most startled Christendom in the interval, as well as other opinions condemned by preceding pontiffs. This encyclical also announced a jubilee for the ensuing year 1865. But together with this apostolic letter was sent a catalogue (or, in Greek, syllalus) of erroneous propositions condemned on various occasions by Pius IX. In this catalogue, or list, the various errors were classed systematically by the Roman theologians under the heads of "Pantheism, Naturalism, Rationalism, Socialism, Com- munism," etc. This " Syllabus of Errors " was communicated to the hierarchy in a brief note of Cardinal Antonelli. At first this condemnation produced no sensation or excitement save in Paris and Turin, where Misrepresentations of the Syllabus, 399 many of the most remarkable propositions censured in the encycli- cal, or more conspicuously held up to animadyersion in the SyUabus itself, were extracted textually from official documents, semi-official organs in the public press, or the most popular and anti-Catholic journals. Of course, there was a great outcry in both cities, and this was re-echoed by the provincial press of both countries. As usual, there was a misapprehension both of the meaning of the pro- positions in the Latin text and of the scope of the censure pro- nounced. To every proposition was appended a reference indicating the encyclical or the allocution in which the specific error was con- demned, together with the year and the day of the month, so that the bishops for whose guidance this catalogue was drawn up, and the theologians who were to use it in their lectures, might go back to the original text of the Holy Father — as to the minutes of a sol- emn judgment — and find out the true sense and scope of that judg- ment from the circumstances and the context. It was the interest of the Italian and French infidel press to repre- sent the Holy Father as condemning modern ideas in particular, modern progress, modern science, modern social institutions, liberty and liberalism, enlightenment and civilization. This, however, could only be done by ignoring the context and the circumstances under which the doctrine condemned was put forth by its author and condemned by the Holy See. We have seen above what kind of progress, civilization, liberty, and liberalism it was which Pius IX. denounced and stigmatized, when propounded for his approval and acceptance by the men who had despoiled himself, plundered the Church, and usurped even the right to dictate to the priest to whom he should or should not give absolution. The same discernments should have been made in the propositions bearing on education, on religious toleration, on the distinction be- tween the natural and supernatural orders, on the dependence of reason on faith, on the limits within which science, like reason her- self, was supreme. There is not in the entire eighty propositions contained in this list one, which, apart from mere sectarian prejudice, every enlightened and fair-minded man would hesitate to condemn in the sense under- stood by its author and in that meant by the sovereign pontiff, the supreme judge of doctrine in the Church. As it was, however, these documents, coming as they did after a long and ineffectual diplomatic campaign, ending by the convention 400 Life of Pope Phis IX. of September the loth, 1864, found the French goTemment much irritated against the Holy Father and Cardinal Antonelli. The con- vention of September between the French and Italian governments had fixed a day for the withdrawal of the imperial troops from Kome. Napoleon and his ministers felt toward the Holy See the animosity and the disposition to misjudge and misrepresent that a lawyer feels toward a client w^hose cause he has agreed to betray ; while the Italian government entertained the same dispositions, but intensified by the consciousness of the wrongs already committed, and still more so by the further wrongs it contemplated. So it was, humanly speaking, impossible that either government or its abettors on the continent of Europe, in Great Britain, or in the United States, could be expected to feel otherwise than very sore at solemn doctrinal condemnations which stigmatized their own cher- ished principles and recent acts. There was an attempt toward getting up in France a systematic persecution against every member of the clergy who dared to pub- lish either the encyclical or the Syllahus ; but the attempt was but a halting one, and turned to the discredit of a government already bankrupt in public opinion. In the Kingdom of Italy there was no liberty for bishop or priest, save to do the will of the revolu- tion. Bishop Dupanloup undertook to show up the egregious ignorance of the journalists and others who had been translating and com- menting on the inculpated documents. He pointed out no less than seventy mistranslations and misconceptions ; for Mr. Gladstone had not yet taken it on himself to disgrace his scholarship and his statesmanship by following in the wake of the Siecle, the Journal des DcbatSy and the Bavarian Jansenists. Statesmen who have anmviolable respect for the great principles which underlie social order, authority, liberty, and security ; Chris- tian parents who love the purity and peace and felicity of their homes ; men of science and true progress who know that the truths of the moral world are as immutable and well defined in their nature as the colors of the spectrum, and who see and say that this intellectual light — though never so simple in its nature — makes a spiritual world as marvelous, beautiful, and diversified as that created and embellished by the light of the sun ; all these can take up paragraph after paragraph, proposition after proposition in the Syllabus, and find that the truth which lies at the opposite pole Its Real Significance and Worth, 401 of each error proscribed, is one as necessary to this same modern society of ours as the sun is to vegetable and animal life. Before long, when the world has grown wiser by the bitter expe- rience arising from the failure of certain theories now in vogue, the next generation will bless the man who dared to hold on high the banner of God's truth, as a rallying-point for all who still clung to revelation. They will then remember the words of St. Augustine : " Truth may be obscured for a time, but it cannot be put down. Iniquity may flourish for a time ; but last long it cannot." Ocmiltari potest ad tempus Veritas j vinci non potest, Florere potest ad tempus iniquitasj permanere non potest, — Enar ratio in Psalmum Ixi, CHAPTER XXXII. The " September Convention" — How Interpreted by the Parties themselves, and by the Revolution — The Cen- tenary OF THE Martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul — Con- trast between the Canonizations in Rome and the Industrial Exhibition in Paris — The Artists in Rome protest that the temporal power is necessary — prep- ARATIONS FOR THE Centenary — Vast Multitude of Pil- grims — Concourse of Priests and Bishops — The Allocu- tions—The Celebration — The magnificent Address of the Bishops — Touching Presentation from the "Hun- dred Cities of Italy" — The Crowning Glories of the Centenary. September, 1864-Jxjly, 1867. BEFORE we have done with the year 1864, it may be well to mention the famous " September Convention," so called be- cause concluded at Paris on the 15th of September between the im- perial and Piedmontese governments. It was, at first, kept very secret ; but the stipulations leaked out one after the other, according as either government found it necessary to satisfy public opinion. By the first article *' Italy binds herself not to attack the present territory of the Holy Father, and to prevent by force, if need be, all attacks on it from without." By the second, France binds herself '* to withdraw her troops gradually, and according as the army of the Holy Father will be organized. The evacuation must be com- pleted within the space of two years." By the third "the Italian government renounces all right of protesting against the formation of a papal army, even though composed of foreign Catholic volun- teers, and sufficient for the maintenance of the authority of the Holy Father, for the tranquillity of the interior and the frontier line of his States." Specious as were the dispositions of this agreement, no one be- lieyed that Italy would fulfill her part of it, although France should 403 The '' Moral Forces'' Reserved by Piedmont. 403 withdraw her troops. The French foreign minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, in communicating the tidings of its ratification to the court of Turin, claimed to have thereby rendered a service to Italy ; while Kigra, the Italian plenipotentiary, wrote to his government that this convention * was not intended to mar the national aspirations ; ' more than that, his associate, Marchese Pepoli, said openly, at a public banquet in Milan : *' The treaty of September the 15th is in nowise opposed to any part of the national programme ; it breaks the last link of the chain which bound France to our enemies." The capital of the new kingdom of Italy was transferred from Turin to Florence. There was a little diplomatic duel about the meaning of certain expres- sions in the dispatches of the plenipotentiaries. Cavaliere Nigra had declared "that Italy reserved to herself, in carrying out the national aspirations, to employ the moral forces of civilization and progress." Garibaldi, who reserved to himself to interpret in his own way all such agreements, wrote immediately : " With Bonaparte the only convention we can make, is to rid our country of his loathsome presence, not in two years, but in two hours." Cardinal Antonelli, in a circular of November the 19th to the rep- resentatives of the Holy See at foreign courts, exposed in his masterly way the vain artifice of such a convention. There is no need of many words, according to him, to explain what is meant by the " moral means " relied on by the Piedmontese government. All through 1865 and 1866 the Holy Father omitted no effort or sacrifice to do his part in organizing an army, and carrying out every imaginable improvement within the little territory left him by the revolution. Attempts were made by him to remedy some portion of the evils from which the dioceses of the kingdom of Italy were suf- fering. In more than one-half of them the bishops were either dead, or exiled, or imprisoned, or so hampered in the exercise of their sacred office that they could not, without the most serious risks, fulfill its duties. The Holy Father, in his earnest desire to provide for the needs of so many souls long deprived of the sacraments, wrote to King Victor Emmanuel, begging him to waive all political questions for the moment, and to aid the Holy See in remedying this inveterate and ever-increasing evil. Signer Xaverio Vegezzi was thereupon sent to Kome, and a satisfactory plan was agreed upon for the nomination of bishops to the vacant sees and the return of those in exile ; but the counselors of Victor Emmanuel refused to ratify the plan, and the result was an increase of severity and cruelty to- 404 Life of Pope Pius IX. ward the clergy, and the enactment of new ecclesiastical laws by the Italian parliament worthy of the days of Edward IV. or Queen Eliza- beth, but far more anti-Christian. The war of 18G6 between Prussia and Austria resulted, in Italy, in giving Venetia to Victor Emmanuel, although the forces of the latter had suffered defeat on sea and land. This success induced the Italian government to allow the exiled bishops to return to their sees, while expressing in a note to the Italian ministers abroad that "the Eoman question" must soon solve itself. **The sovereignty of the Eoman pontiff is ... in the condition of all other sovereign- ties ; it must ask from itself and find in itself the reasons of its ex- istence and duration. Italy has promised to France and Europe not to interfere between the Pope and the Romans. . . . Italy must keep her promise, and await from the efficiency of the national principle which she represents the inevitable triumph of her right." The French "army of occupation" was withdrawn from Rome on December the 6th, 1866, a little army of some 12,000 men having been organized under French protection, of which a select body of 1,200 men, called "the Antibes Legion," was exclusively composed of Frenchmen, and officered by men who were allowed to retain their rank in the French army. When the general, Count de Montebello, came with his staff to take leave of the Holy Father, the latter could not refrain from say- ing : " We must not deceive ourselves ; the revolution will certainly come to Rome ; this has been openly announced again and again. An Italian official of high rank has declared that Italy was now cre- ated, but not completed. Italy would feel herself defeated if there could remain here a little comer of earth governed by order, justice, and tranquillity ! " On his side Garibaldi had made his proclamation. "Friends," he said, "so long as the priests' cassocks have not been put down our country cannot be free. Do not go to mass, for if you do you will place yourselves within reach of pernicious priestly influence. , . . This year shall not pass, I trust, till Rome shall have been freed from their odious yoke." The " National Roman Committee " scarcely allowed the French flag to disappear in the Campagna when they issued their own proc- lamation as a signal to the government of Florence that it had an ally within the walls of Rome steadily preparing to surrender it to Victor Emmanuel. " The triumph is certain," were the concluding The Silver Limng to the Storm- Cloud, 4o5 words; '^the days of clerical despotism are fatally numbered; your committee shall not leave you without occasions for acting, or with- out direction." Mazzini, finally, who was in downright opposition to Italian mon- archy of any kind, put forth one of his most stirring utterances. **Rome must not give herself up like a second-class and discrowned city to a monarchy already condemned, to a monarchy incapable of any great action, which condescended to accept Venice as an alms from the foreigner. Eome cannot be a dependency of Florence. She must arise from her sepulchre, not in the name of her past, but in that of her future existence." At Christmas-tide the Holy Father, while receiving the felicitations of the pontifical army, warned the officers and men that there was danger ahead ; that a Colonel Montanucci, belonging to Garibaldi's volunteers, and an old Roman conspirator, had been arrested while plotting treason in Eome, and that papers had been found on him fixing a near date for a revolution within the city. To the Sacred College, who came to offer their New-Year's homage, the Holy Father said that the divine bread which he and they daily received must strengthen them for the approaching trial. "It was only a few days ago that we learned the martyrdom endured for the faith by several priests in Corea. Let this recent example of a glori- ous witness to Christ animate us to be ready at any moment to give our lives in defense of right and justice." But the year then dawning was to be for the Holy Father, the Sacred College, for Rome, and the entire Christian world, by far the most memorable that Pius IX. had yet beheld. In June came round the eighteenth centenary of the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. According to St. Jerome * St. Peter suffered two years after the death of the great Roman philosopher Seneca, who was executed by order of Nero in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian era ; elsewhere in the same workf Jerome affirms that both SS. Peter and Paul were put to death in the fourteenth year of Nero's reign, which would correspond with the year 68, if the years were reckoned from the 13 th day of October, the date of Nero's accession, but coincides with the year 67 Avhen reckoned from the beginning of January. In the same work Jerome affirms that " Peter went to Rome in the sec- * S. Hieron., Be Viris lllustribus, vol. ii., Ed. Vallarsii, pp. 835-837. f Ibidem, p. 813. 4o6 Life of Pope Pins IX. ond year of the Emperor Claudius, . . . and occupied there the priestly chair for twenty-five years." The year of his arrival was the forty-second of our era. On the 8th of December, 1866, just after the departure of the French troops, the Holy Father invited by circular all the bishops of the Catholic world to visit Rome for the celebration of the cen- tenary and the canonization of several saintly personages. These were the martyr Joshaph at, archbishop of Polotsk ; Pedro de Arbues, an Augustinian friar ; the martjrrs of Gorcum, Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists, Lionardo di Porto Maurizio, Maria Fran- cesca, a Neapolitan of the third Order of St. Peter of Alcantara, and Germaine Cousin, of the diocese of Toulouse. On the 10th of the preceding December the Holy Father had the inexpressible happiness of celebrating with extraordinary solemnity the beatification of the Franciscan monk Benedict of Urbino, who had died (1625) in odor of sanctity at Fossombrone, within a few miles of Sinigaglia, leaving the whole of the Adriatic seaboard and Umbria embalmed by the fragrance of his life of supernatural abne- gation. Pius IX., while yet a child, had heard and read of this man of noble birth and splendid talents, before whom opened out every ave- nue to worldly fame and happiness, becoming an humble Capuchin, hiding himself away in the obscurity of the cloister, and setting all his ambition on becoming the crucified disciple of a crucified Master. It was no idle pageantry to which the successor of St. Peter thus in- vited the bishops and populations of Italy and the Christian world. The revolution aimed at killing all that was spiritual and supernatu- ral in the souls and lives of men ; he would profit by every opportu- nity to call together the children of God and to hold up to their ad- miration these heavenly men and women who are the brightest and purest glory of the race. Napoleon III. had convened the Old World and the New to the industrial exhibition of Paris, in the spring of that same year ; sov- ereigns, emperors, and kings, warriors, statesmen, and scientists, all that was foremost in position and fame and influence was invited to admire in the beautiful capital of France the marvelous products of those arts and industries which had been fostered by the genius of Christian civilization. It was to be Napoleon's last triumph. Pius IX., on the contrary, had to lay before men's minds, in the city of the holy apostles, triumphs and glories of a far higher and Address of the Artists Resident in Rome. 407 moi:e lasting nature. It was holiness that had created art in Italy and covered the land with forms of exquisite beauty ; it was the men and women who had shone all oyer Italy like apparitions of heavenly goodness and purity who had inspired the pen of poet, the brush of painter, and the sculptor's chisel. It was in these great celebrations of spiritual heroism, amid the Christian splendors of Eome, that artists had ever caught both their ideal conceptions and the very colors with which they embellished their canvas. Wherever the re- volution had passed, they had seen it profane and soil and destroy all that Christian art had created. Between their joy at the ap- proaching centenary and the fears begotten by the threats of Garibaldi and the prophecies of Mazzini, the body of artists in Rome resolved that, if the city in which the Popes had nursed Art so tenderly and rewarded her labors with more than royal munificence, should pass into the hands of the revolution, they should leave a testimony be- hind them of their gratitude to the fatherly sovereignty about to expire. '^Most Holy Father," they said in their address, ^^ religion, policy, and mere human wisdom have protested in favor of the temporal power of the papacy. '^ The Arts come, in their turn, to lay their homage at the feet of your Holiness, and to proclaim to the world that this power is to them indispensable. Their voice must be heard and listened to. For, when the tide of generations recedes, the Arts remain as the irrefutable witnesses of the power and splendor of the civilization amid which these generations have lived. The sovereigns who encourage and develop them acquire immortal renown ; those who neglect or oppress them meet only with the contempt of pos- terity. ''What royal dynasty has, in this respect, deserved so well of civ- ilization and humanity as that of the sovereign pontiffs ? They have been the watchful guardians of the masterpieces bequeathed to us by antiquity. They have given these a home in their own pal- aces, to show that religion adopts and ennobles all that is truly beau- tiful. It is the sovereign pontiffs who, by opening new avenues for modern art, have brought it to the point of perfection embodied in the masterpieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo. They alone sup- port in Rome that unique assemblage of all that is beautiful in every order, that splendid intellectual galaxy in whose light the artists of every land are formed. 4o8 Life of Pope Plus IX, " Holy Father, the little spot of earth which the revolution hag not yet taken from, you, is the only place in which the Arts find tho inspiration that is for them the breath of life, and the quiet without which that life cannot expand. " The soul of the true artist is filled with unspeakable apprehen- sion by the possibility of seeing these masterpieces destroyed or scat- tered abroad, these treasures plundered, all that wealth annihilated ; and especially by that of seeing the ungraceful and meager forms of modern utilitarianism usurp the place held by the manners, the habits, the face of all things in this privileged land of beauty, all consecrated by the admiration of ages. *' Alas, Holy Father, what is happening in the rest of Italy affords but too firm a ground for such apprehensions. The genius of de- struction is abroad there, and proceeds to sweep away pitilessly what was the glory of ancient Italy. The spoliation and suppression of the religious orders are one of the most deadly blows ever aimed at the existence of the fine arts. Saddened by these forebodings, fear- ful of what the future may bring forth, the artists resident in Kome come to the feet of your Holiness to give utterance to their deep con- viction that the splendor, the greatness, the very existence of the fine arts in Europe, are inseparably connected with the maintenance of the beneficent power of the sovereign pontiffs. "Were it not that the rival passions which divide Europe are of themselves fatally blind to consequences, the reign of your Holiness would suffice to render this truth evident to all. For, while else- where national wealth is wasted in frivolous undertakings or in pre- paring instruments of destruction, the modest revenues inherited by your Holiness are ever employed in continuing gloriously the noble labor of your predecessors. '* On the one hand, you have drawn from obscurity the beginnings of Christian art, tliereby affording it new and precious data ; on tho other, you have adorned Rome and the Vatican with works which furnish a new and brilliant page to the grand history of art embodied in the Vatican itself. While elsewhere reigned trouble and agita- tion, here artists were able, beneath the blessed sway of your Holi- ness, to enjoy a kindly welcome, an unrestrained liberty, and the peaceful contemplation of these venerable structures and sites, pre- eer\'ed so happily by the pontifical government from the sad altera- tions blindly wrought in other cities by the troublous life of modem communities. The Paris Exposition and the Roman Centenary. 409 ^' May the Almighty One hear our prayer, and persuade both sov- ereigns and nations that their honor and glory shall be measured in coming ages on the degree of protection they will accord to the tem- poral power of the papacy, which has ever been the unwearied pro- moter of the development of all the noblest faculties in man, and which alone can continue to be the custodian of the works of art originated by itself, and by it so faithfully treasured for the benefit of all peoples ! " Yes, Eome was and is for all peoples ''the city of soul." To him who happened to reign there till then, no native of other lands was a foreigner. No suffering, no glory of the remotest tribe of earth, failed to find sympathy and a record there. On the 22d of February the Holy Father signed decrees relating to the beatification of several holy persons, among whom was the venerable Clement-Maria Hofbauer, a Redemptorist. On the 26th he went in state to the Roman College, and had a de- cree of the Congregation of Rites read before him, bearing on the canonization of two hundred and five Japanese Christians — priests, catechists, laymen, women, and children — put to death in hatred of the faith from 1617 to 1632. June came at length — such a June as Rome had never witnessed. In Paris, too, during the first weeks of that month the king of Prus- sia, with Count Bismark, and the emperor of Russia, with his chan- cellor, graced the imperial court and the exhibition by their pres- ence. And on the 25th of that same month a large portion of Cochin China was annexed to the French empire. Amid all these triumphs of industry and the military successes abroad, with the mightiest monarchs of Europe coming to contemplate his greatness, how could Napoleon III. dream that even then, while decking out Versailles for his royal guests, there were those who could read the handwriting on the wall of the banqueting-room ? On the 11th and 12th there were consistories held at Rome, in presence of the bishops, for the preparation of the acts of canoniza- tion. The 16th was the anniversary of the Pope's election, and all assembled to congratulate the Holy Father. In his answer to the address read by Cardinal Patrizi, the Pope, among other memorable things, said : " Modern society is ardent in the pursuit of two things, progress and unity. It fails to reach either, because its motive prin- ciples are selfishness and pride. Pride is the worst enemy of prog- ress, and selfishness, by destroying charity, the bond of souls, there- 4IO Life of Pope Pms IX. bj renders union impossible. Now it is the sovereign pontiff whom God has established to direct and to enlighten society, to point out evil and to indicate the proper remedy. This induced me some years ago to publish the Syllabus. I now confirm that solemn act in your presence. It is to be henceforth the rule of your teaching. We have to contend unceasingly with the enemies who beset us. Placed on the mountain-top, like Moses, I lift up my hands to God in prayer for the triumph of his Church. ... I ask of you, my brother-bishops, to support my arms, for they grow weary. Take courage ! The Church must triumph ; I leave this hope in your hearts ; not as a hope merely, but as a prophecy." Never had Eome held such a multitude, not only of bishops, but of priests. To the latter, the Pope resolved to deliver a solemn allocu- tion. But their numbers were so great that they filled the immense consistorial hall, the passages, the noble staircase, and the outside court. He came to the hall in unusual state, to testify his affection for this faithful and fervent concourse of clerical pilgrims. The throne was raised higher than usual, to give this novel audience a better opportunity of seeing and hearing the supreme pastor. As he entered, preceded by the Noble Guard and his household prelates, a shout of joyous acclamation burst forth simultaneously from these thousands of priests, who could not restrain the expression of their love and veneration. The Holy Father was visibly moved, and, gathering enthusiasm from the atmosphere of love which surrounded him, his voice seemed to reach every corner of the hall and passages, and to thrill with its tones even those who could not distinguish the words. Ho thanked them for the deep consolation afforded by such a mag- nificent assemblage. They were the tribe in Israel whose special in- heritance was the Lord; they stood between him and his people evermore, offering with prayer and supplication the spotless victim of the new law. Let them look well to the ministry intrusted to them, shining in presence of all men by the dignity of their bear- ing, the innocence of their life, by integrity and charity, and the golden ornaments of every virtue. ** You, who are the interpreters of the word of God, you must preach it unweariedly to the wise and the unwise ; preach to them Christ and him crucified, not in the loftiness of speech but in the knowledge of the spirit ; never ceasing to recall into the right road all who stray and to confirm them in sound doctrine. "Dispensers of the divine mysteries and of the manifold grace of Public Allocution to the Bishops. 411 God, deal it ont to the faithful people, to the sick especially, in order that no help may fail them in their last struggle with the Evil One. ''Do not refuse to the little ones of the flock the milk which they need ; be it your dearest care to teach them, to train them, to form them. " Be the faithful and devoted helpmates of your respective bishops ; obeying them in all things, zealous to heal in your parishes whatever is ailing, to bind up what is broken, to raise up what is fallen, to seek what is lost, in order that in all things God may be honored through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lift up your souls and bethink you of the immeasurable height of glory prepared by him for all true and faithful laborers. . . ." A public consistory was held on the 26th. There were then five hundred bishops in Eome. No such number had ever met in one place in Italy or in any place in the West. But this was the Cen- tennial Feast of Catholicity, and from the remotest regions of the known world priests and bishops had flocked to Rome, to kneel at the tomb of its first great bishop, the eighteen-hundredth anniver- sary of whose martyrdom they were going to celebrate on the very spot three days afterward ; they had come, also, to venerate Peter in the person of his venerable and glorious successor, whose protracted witnessing to Christ's truth had now lasted so long. And though no N'ero ruled in Rome, as in the days of Peter and Paul, there was a spirit abroad, and thundering at the very gates of Rome, as fell as the fury of the old Pagan world which the Apostles had defied. The population of Rome had more than doubled within the last ten days. Surely this mighty inflow of the learned, the pious, the high-placed in the Church, and the high-born in every Christian land, was a proof that the Church founded by Peter was not failing after eighteen centuries, that the Mighty Mother was not soon to ful- fill the prayers or the prophecies of her enemies, and to die widowed, childless, forsaken, and unwept. The usual consistorial hall was utterly inadequate to hold the crowd of dignified and devout listeners. The meeting was held in the vast room above the vestibule of St. Peter's. The first ceremony was the bestowing of the cardinal's hat on the Archbishop of Seville, Luis de la Lastra y Cuesta. Then, there was a formal petition for the beatification of Marie Rivier, the foundress of the French Presen- tation Nuns, after which the Pope delivered the expected allocution. 4 1 2 Life of Pope Phis IX. After expressing his heartfelt sentiments of gratitude and admira- tion for the readiness with which the members of the episcopate had responded to his invitation, the Pope proceeded : ** Nothing ever has so fulfilled my desires, nothing has afforded such deep satisfaction, as to find myself in your midst on this occa- sion. Everything on which the eye rests in these solemnities is elo- quent of the unity of the Catholic Church, of the immovable foun- dation of that unity, of the carefulness and pride we should employ in guarding it. Yes, all here proclaims that admirable unity, by which, as tlirough a mysterious channel, all the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit flow into the mystic body of Christ, calling forth in every one of its members these acts of faith and charity which excite the wonder of all mankind. ** What has brought you here ? To decree the honors of sanctity to these heroes of the Church, the greater number of whom bore away the palm of victory in their glorious witness for Christ. Of these some died in defending the primacy of this Apostolic See, which is the center of truth and unity ; others gave their lives in defense of the integrity and unity of the faith ; others again shed their blood in the endeavor to bring back schismatics to the one fold. Is it not providential that such heroism should be commemorated and hon- ored at the very moment when the Catholic faith and the authority of this Holy See are the object of such furious and implacable con- spiracies ? "We are also here to celebrate with solemn rites the memory of that auspicious day, eighteen hundred years ago, when Peter and Paul consecrated by their glorious witnessing and their precious blood this impregnable stronghold of Catholic unity. . . . ** What can be more reasonable than that our joyous commemora- tion of this triumphant death of the Prince of the Apostles should be graced by your presence ? For he belongs to the entire Catholic world. . . . It is also most important that the enemies of relig- ion should conclude from what they witness here, how mighty is the energy, how unfailing the life of that Catholic Church so bitterly hated by them ; how little wisdom they display in matching their power and their little temporary triumphs over her against that in- comparable union of living forces which Christ's creative power has bound around this central rock. **More than ever is it needful in our age that all men should see and understand that the only strong and lasting tie between men's llie Virtue which issues from Peter s Tofub. 413 Bouls is in the reign over all of the same Spirit of God. Besides what can make a more abiding impression on Catholic nations, what can draw them more powerfully and bind them more closely in obedi- ence to this apostolic chair, and to us, than to see how much their pastors cherish the rights and duties of Catholic unity, to see them journeying from the farthest lands, despite every inconvenience and obstacle, and hastening toward Eome and the apostolic chair in order to revere in our humble person the successor of Peter and the vicar of Christ? . . . '^ We have been always convinced, whenever we beheld you ap- proaching Peter in the person of his successor, or even entering this city impregnated with his blood, that a special virtue should go forth thence to each one of you. Yes, from this tomb where Peter's ashes repose, amid the veneration of +he Christian world, a hidden power, a salutary energy emanates, which instills into the souls of the chief pastors the desire of great undertakings and of vast designs, inspiring that fearlessness and magnanimity which enables them to put down the impudent boldness of their assailants. . . . '' No, there cannot be offered to the eyes of men and angels a more magnificent spectacle than what one beholds in such a concourse of pilgrims as this. You, who come from the ends of the earth to this the home of your father, you remind us not only of that pilgrimage which leads us all to the eternal home, but you recall the journey of the chosen people from Egypt to the promised land; the twelve tribes marching together, each under its chief, bearing its own name, having its own appropriate place in the camp ; every family there was obedient to its parents, every company of warriors hearkened to the voice of its captain, and the entire multitude to the divinely ap- pointed leader. And yet all these tribes were but one people, ador- ing the same God, worshiping at the same altar, ruled by the same laws, having one pontiff, Aaron, and one leader, Moses ; one people enjoying common rights in the perils and labors of warfare, as well as in the results of victory, dwelling beneath the same tents, and fed by the same miraculous bread, and yearning all for the same end of their pilgrimage. . . . " Nothing is to us the subject of such ardent longing as to see both ourselves and the universal Church deriving from this precious union the most salutary advantage. It has long been a serious mat- ter of thought for us, one, indeed, communicated to several of the episcopal body, ... to hold an oecumenical council, . . . 4 1 4 Life of Pope Pius IX. in which, with the divine assistance, our united counsels and solici- tude should devise the needful and efficent remedies for the evils that afflict the Church." This was, to the immense majority, the first intimation of the de- sign long entertained by the Holy Father, and which, two years afterward, was realized in the general council of the Vatican. The announcement, coming at the conclusion of the papal address, in- creased to an extraordinary degree the emotion and enthusiasm of bishops, priests, and laymen. So that, ere the 29th of June had dawned on the Eternal City, the pious fervor of the vast multitude of pilgrims seemed to have reached a height beyond which it could not go. There was a first illumination on the eve — the 28th. And yet these were only the preparations for the grand solemnity itself. Every scrap of territory still left to the Holy Father poured its population into Kome with the first streak of dawn. This time the Roman people felt no jealousy of the concourse of strangers ; their faith and their experience taught them that they were bro- thers, the children of the same great mother, and their presence, they knew, brought wealth to Rome as well as honor. Before the solemn pontifical mass the ceremony of canonization took place ; the Holy Father himself celebrated the Holy Sacrifice and preached the homily at the gospel — a model in its way for preachers at High Mass on solemn occasions — short, solid, and soul- stirring. There were three choirs, numbering four hundred voices, filling the vast basilica with music, such as is not often heard on this side of heaven. Tlie solemn afternoon service was scarcely less im- pressive or interesting than that of the forenoon, and at night, St. Peter's and all Rome was a blaze of light. The next day, the 30th, being the proper feast of St. Paul, there was held in his most beautiful basilica ** beyond the walls," a cele- bration almost as magnificent as that in St. Peter's ; and on the 1st of July the bishops, before leaving Rome, presented an address to the Iloly Father, in answer to the allocution of the 2Gth of June, as well as to express their gratitude for his many kindnesses to themselves. No extract can give even a faint conception of this most eloquent and pregnant piece of ecclesiastical doctrine and piety, the incompar- ablv bciuififiil oxpression of the faith and veneration of the united