EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE PAPAL STATES.
Education of a Roman Boy--Seldom taught his Letters--Majority of
Romans unable to Read--Popular Literature of Italy--- Newspaper of
the Roman States--Censorship of the Press--Studies in the Collegio
Romano--Rome unknown at Rome--Schools spring up under the
Republic--Extinguished on the Return of the Pope--Conversation with
three Roman Boys--Their Ideas respecting the Creator of the World,
Christ, the Virgin--Questions asked at them in the
Confessional--Religion in the Roman States--Has no
Existence--Ceremony mistaken for Devotion--Irreverence--The Six
Commands of the Church--Contrast betwixt the Cost and the Fruits of
the Papal Religion--Popular Hatred of the Papacy.
The influence of Romanism on trade, and industry, and justice, has been
less frequently a theme of discussion than its influence on knowledge.
While, therefore, I have dwelt at considerable length on the former, I
shall be very brief under the present head. I shall here adduce only a
few facts which I had occasion to see or hear during my stay in the
Papal States. The few schoolmasters which are found in Italy are not a
distinct class, as with us; they are priests, and mostly Jesuits. There
are three classes of catechisms used in the schools; the pupil beginning
with the lowest, and of course finishing off with the highest. But of
what subjects do these catechisms treat? A little history, one would
say, that the pupil may have some notion of what has been before him;
and a little geography, that he may know there are such things as land
and sea, and cities beyond, which he cannot see, shut up in Rome. With
us, the lowest amount of education that ever receives the name comprises
at least the three R's, as they are termed,--Reading, Writing, and
'Rithmetic. But these are far too mundane matters for a Jesuit to occupy
his time in expounding. The education of the Italian youth is a
thoroughly religious one, taking the term in its Roman sense. The little
catechisms I have spoken of are filled with the weightier matters of
their law,--the miracles wrought by the staff of this saint, the cloak
of that other, and the relics of a third; the exalted rank of the
Virgin, and the homage thereto appertaining; Transubstantiation, with
all the uncouth and barbarous jargon of "substances" and "accidents" in
which that mystery is wrapped up. An initiation into these matters forms
the education of the Roman boy; and after he has been locked up in
school for a certain length of time, he is turned adrift, to begin the
usual aimless life of the Italian. It does not follow, because he has
been at school, that he can read. He is seldom taught his letters;
better not, lest in after life he should come in contact with books.
And, despite the vigilance of the censorship and the Index, bad books,
such as the Bible, are finding their way into the Roman States; and it
is better, therefore, not to entrust the people with the key of
knowledge; for nothing is so useless as knowledge under an infallible
Church. The matters which the Italian youth are taught they are taught
by rote. "Ignorance is the mother of devotion,"--a maxim sometimes
quoted with a sneer, but one which embodies a profound truth as regards
that kind of devotion which is prevalent at Rome.
I have seen estimates by Gavazzi and other Italians, of the proportion
who can read in the Roman States. It is somewhere about one in a
hundred. The reader will take the statement at what it is worth. I had
no means of testing its accuracy; but all my inquiries on the subject
led me to believe that the overwhelming majority cannot read. And where
is the use of learning one's letters in a land where there are no books;
and there are none that deserve the name in Rome. The book-stalls in
Italy are heaped with the veriest rubbish: the "Book of Dreams," "Rules
for Winning at the Lottery," "The Five Dolours of the Virgin," "Tracts
on the Miracles of the Saints," "Relations," professedly given by Christ
about his sufferings, and said to have been found in his sepulchre, and
in other places equally likely. At Rome, on the streets at least, where
all other kinds of rubbish are tolerated, even this rubbish is not
suffered to exist; for there, book-stalls I saw none. There are,
however, one or two miserable book-shops where these things may be had.
There was but one newspaper (so called, I presume, because it contained
no news) published in Rome at the time of my visit,--the _Giornale di
Roma_, which, I presume, still occupies the field alone. It contains a
daily list of the arrivals and departures (foreigners, of course, for
the gates of Rome never open to the Romans), the proclamations of the
Government, the days of the lottery, and such matters. Under the foreign
head were chronicled the consecration of Catholic temples, the visits of
royal personages, a profound silence being observed on all political
facts and speculations. And this is all the Romans can know, through
legitimate channels, of what is going on beyond the walls of Rome. A
daily paper was started during the Republic, and admirably managed; but,
of course, it was suppressed on the return of the Papal Government. A
few copies of the _Times_ reach Rome every morning. They are not given
out till towards mid-day, for they must first be read; and if the
"editorials" are not to the taste of the Sacred College, they are not
given out at all. The paper, during my short stay, was stopped for
nearly a week on end; and the disappointment was the greater, that
rumours were then current in Rome that something was on the tapis in
Paris, and that the change in the constitution of France, whatever it
might be, would not be postponed till the May of 1852, as was then
believed in the north of Europe, but would be attempted in the beginning
of December 1851. The tidings of the _coup d'etat_, which met me on the
morning of the 3d December in the south of France, brought the full
realization of these rumours. In the _Giornale di Roma_ not a strayed
dog can be advertised without permission of the censor. In Brescia there
is a censorship for gravestones; and in Rome a strict watch is kept over
the English burying-ground, lest any one should write a verse of
Scripture above a heretic's grave. The expression of thought is more
dreaded than brigandage.
Those who aspire to the learned professions go to the Collegio Romano.
But let the reader mark how the Roman Church here, as everywhere else,
contrives to keep up the show of educating, and takes care all the while
to impart the smallest possible amount of knowledge,--constructs a
machinery which, through some mischievous perversion, is without
results. The Collegio Romano has a numerous staff of professors, who
prelect on theology, logic, history, mathematics, natural philosophy,
and other branches. This looks well; but observe its working. All the
lectures are delivered in Latin, which differs considerably from the
modern Italian; and as the Roman youth spend only one year in the study
of the Latin tongue before entering the Collegio Romano, the lectures
might nearly as well, so far as the run of the students is concerned, be
in Arabic. Nine-tenths of the young men leave the Collegio Romano as
learned as they entered it. The higher priesthood are educated at the
_Sapienza_, where, I believe, a thorough training in theological
dialectics is given.
It is impossible not to see that the Italians are a people of quick
perceptions, lively sensibilities, and warm and kindly dispositions; but
it is just as impossible not to see that they are deplorably untaught.
The stranger is mortified to find that he knows far more of their ruins
and of their past history than they themselves do. The peasant wanders
over the huge mounds that diversify the Seven Hills, or traverses the
Appian, or passes under the arch of Titus, without knowing or caring who
erected these structures, or having even a glimmering of the heroic
story in which they were, so to speak, the actors. When he looks back
into the past, all is night. Nowhere is Rome so little known as in Rome
itself. How different was it when the Pope received Italy! Then Italy
occupied the van of civilization. And when the Byzantine empire fell,
and the scholars of the East fled westward, carrying with them the rich
treasures of the Greek language and literature, learning had a second
morning in Italy. Famous colleges arose, to which the youth of Europe
repaired. Philosophers and poets of imperishable name shed a lustre upon
the country; but the Roman Church soon discovered that Italy was
acquiring knowledge at the expense of its Romanism, and she applied the
band to the national mind. And now that same Italy that once held aloft
the lamp of knowledge to the world is herself in darkness, and, sad
sight! is seen, with quenched orbs, groping about in the midnight.
And yet proofs are not wanting to show that, were the interdict of the
Church taken off, Italy would at once throw herself into the race, and
might soon rival the most successful of her contemporaries. Most of my
readers, I doubt not, are familiar with the name of M. Leone Levi, now
engaged on the great work of the codification of the commercial laws of
the three kingdoms, and their assimilation to the continental codes. The
fact I am now to state, and which speaks volumes as regards the efforts
of "the Church" to educate Italy, I had from this gentleman; and to
those who know him, any testimony of mine to his intelligence and
uprightness is superfluous. M. Leone Levi, an Italian Jew, was born at
Ancona, but eventually settled in England. During the Roman Republic, he
paid a visit to Italy. But such a change! He scarce knew his native
Italy,--it was so unlike the Italy he had left. In every town, and
village, and rural district, schools had sprung up since the fall of the
Pontifical Government. There were day-schools and night-schools,
week-day-schools and Sabbath-schools. The young men and young women had
forgotten their "light loves," and were busied in educating themselves,
and in educating the little boys and girls below them. The country
appeared to have resolved itself into a great educational institute. He
was inexpressibly delighted. Such a change he had never dared to hope
for in his native land. But ah! back came the Pope; and in a week,--in
one short week,--every one of these schools was closed. The Roman youth
are again handed over to the Jesuit. Italy is again sunk in its old
torpor and stagnation; and one black cloud of barbaric ignorance extends
from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic.
I sat down one day on the steps of the temple of Vesta, which, though
gray and crumbling with age, is one of the most beautiful of the ruins
of Rome. Three boys came about me to beg a few baiocchi. The youngest
boy, I found, was ten years, and the oldest fifteen. I took the
opportunity of putting a few questions to them, judging them a fair
sample of the Roman youth. My queries were pitched low enough. "Can you
tell me," I asked, "who made the world?" The question started a subject
on which they seemed never to have thought before. They stood in a muse
for some seconds; and then all three looked round them, as if they
expected to see the world's Maker, or to read His name somewhere. At
last the youngest and smartest of the three spoke briskly up,--"The
masons, Signor." It was now my turn to feel the excitement of a new
idea. Yet I thought I could see the train of thought that led to the
answer. The masons had made the baths of Caracalla; the masons had made
the Coliseum, and those other stupendous structures which in bulk rival
the hills, and seem as eternal as the earth on which they rest; and why
might not the masons have made the whole affair? I might have puzzled
the boy by asking, "But who made the masons?" My object, however, was
simply to ascertain the amount of his knowledge. I demurred to the
proposition that the masons had made the world, and desired them to try
again. They did try again, and at last the eldest of the three found his
way to the right answer,--"God." "Have you ever heard of Christ?" I
asked. "Yes." "Who is he? Can you tell me anything about him?" I could
elicit nothing under these heads. "Whose Son is he?" I then asked. "He
is Mary's Son," was the reply. "Where is Christ?" I inquired. "He is on
the Cross," replied the boy, folding his arms, and making the
representation of a crucifix. "Was Christ ever on earth?" I asked. He
did not know. "Are you aware of anything he ever did?" He had never
heard of anything that Christ had done. I saw that he was thinking of
those hideous representations which are to be seen in all the churches
of Rome, of a man hanging on a cross. That was the Christ of the boys.
Of Christ the Son of the living God,--of Christ the Saviour of
sinners,--and of his death as an atonement for human guilt,--they had
never heard. In a city swarming with professed ministers of the gospel,
these boys knew no more of Christianity than if they had been
Hottentots. I next inquired respecting Mary, and here the boys seemed
more at home. "Who is she?" "She is God's mother." "Where is she?" "She
is in that church," pointing to the church on one side of the
piazza,--the Bocca di Verita, if I mistake not,--before which criminals
are sometimes executed; "and in that," pointing to the church on the
other side of the piazza. "She is here, there, everywhere." "Was Mary
ever on earth?" "Yes," was the answer. "What did she do when here?"
"Oh," replied the little boy, "that is an antique affair: I was not here
then." "Do you go to church?" I asked the eldest boy. "Yes." "Do you
take the sacrament?" "I have taken it four times." I learned afterwards
that the priests are attempting to seize upon the rising generation in
Italy, by compelling all the children from twelve years and upwards to
go to mass. "Do you go to confession?" I next asked. "Yes, I confess."
"Do other boys and girls, your acquaintances, go to confession?" "Yes,
all go," he replied. "We meet the priest in church on Sabbath, and he
tells us when to come and confess." "Well, when you go to confess, what
does the priest ask you?" "He asks me if I steal, and do other bad
actions." "When you confess that you have done a bad action, what then?"
"The first time I do it, the priest pardons me." "If you confess it a
second time, what happens?" "The second time he beats me with a rod."
"Does the priest ask you about anything else?" I inquired. "Yes," he
rejoined; "he asks me about my father and my mother." "What does he ask
you about them?" "He asks me if they do dirty actions," said the boy.
Now, here the enormity and vileness of the confessional peeped out. Here
one can see how the confessor can look into every hearth, and into every
heart, in Rome. The priests had dragged this young boy into their den,
and taught him to play the spy on his father and mother. The hand that
fed him, the bosom that cherished him, he must learn to betray. I appeal
to the fathers and mothers of Britain, whether, than see their children
degraded to such infamous purposes, they would not an hundred times
rather see them laid in the silent grave. Yet some are labouring to
introduce the confessional among us. Should they succeed, it will be the
garrotte on the throat of English liberty.
As regards RELIGION in Italy, this is an inquiry that lies rather beyond
the limits I have marked out for myself. I may be permitted, however, a
few remarks. It appeared to me that the very idea of religion had
perished among the Italians. Not only had they lost the thing itself,
but they had lost the power of conceiving of it. Religion unquestionably
is a state of mind towards God; and devotion is a mental act resulting
from that state of mind. We cannot conceive of an automaton performing
an act of devotion, or of being religious; and yet, if religion be what
it is taken to be at Rome, there is nothing to hinder an automaton being
religious, nay, far more religious than flesh and blood, inasmuch as
timber and iron will not so soon wear out under incessant crossings and
genuflections. Religion at Rome is to kiss a crucifix; religion at Rome
is to climb Pilate's stairs; religion at Rome is to repeat by rote a
certain number of prayers before some beautiful painting or statue; or
to remain a certain number of hours on one's bare knees on the paved
floor; or to wear a hair-shirt. Of religion as a mental act,--as an act
of faith, and love, and reverence,--the Italian is not able to form
even the idea. Hence the want of decorum that shocks a stranger on
visiting the Italian churches. He finds bishops at the altar unable to
restrain their sallies of wit and their bursts of laughter. And after
this, what can he look for among the ordinary worshippers? The young man
can go through his devotions perfectly well, and make love all the while
to the young woman at his side. Young ladies can count their beads to
the Virgin, and continue their gossip on matters of dress or scandal. It
never occurs to them that this in the least deteriorates their worship.
The beads have been counted, and an Ave Maria said with each; and what
more does the Church require? Religion as a feeling of the mind, and
devotion as an act of the soul, are unknown to them. I recollect meeting
in the rural lanes leading from St John Lateran to the church of Maria
Maggiore, a small party of Roman girls, who were strangely mixing mirth
and worship,--chatting, laughing, and singing hymns to the Virgin,--just
as Scotch maidens on a harvest field might diversify their labours with
"Home, Sweet Home," or any other air. This irreverent familiarity shows
itself in other ways, after the manner of the ancient pagans, who took
strange liberties with their gods. When the drawing of the lottery is
about to take place, the Romans most devoutly supplicate the Virgin for
success; but should their number come out a blank, they may be heard
reviling her in the open street, and applying to her every conceivable
epithet of abuse.
So far as the moral code of Romanism is concerned, sinless perfection is
no difficult attainment. The commands of the Church are six; and these
six have quite thrown into the shade the ten of the decalogue. They are
the payment of tithes,--the not marrying in the prohibited seasons,--the
hearing of mass on Sundays and festivals,--the keeping of the
prescribed fasts,--confession once a-year at least,--and the taking of
the communion in Easter week. The last two are strictly enforced. On the
approach of Easter, the priest goes round and gives a ticket to every
parishioner; and if these are not returned through the confessional, a
policeman waits on the person, and tells him that he has been remiss in
his religious duties, and must submit himself to the Church's
discipline, which he, the Church's officer, has come to administer to
him in the Church's penitentiary or dungeons. Innumerable are the
methods taken by the Romans to evade confession, among which the more
common is to hire some one to confess for them. Others, though they go,
confess nothing of moment. "You all here believe in the Pope and
purgatory," I remarked to a commissario one day. "A few old women do,"
he replied. "Do _you_ not believe in them?" I asked. "I believe in one
God; but I do not believe in one priest," said he. "I hope you will say
so next time you go to confession," I observed. "I don't confess," he
replied. "How can you avoid confessing?" I enquired. "I pay an old
woman," he answered, "who can confess for me every day if she pleases."
There is not a greater contrast in the world than that which exists
betwixt the cost of the papal religion and its fruits,--betwixt the
numbers and wealth of the clergy, and the knowledge and morality of the
people. Under these heads we append below some very instructive
notices.[8]
In fine, one word will suffice to describe the religion of Rome; and
that word is ATHEISM. There may be exceptions, but as a general rule
the Romans believe in nothing. And how can it be otherwise? Of the
gospel they know absolutely nothing beyond what the priest tells them;
even that he, the priest, can change a wafer into God, and, by giving it
to people to eat, can save them from hell. This the Romans cannot
believe; and therefore their creed is a negation. In the room of
indifference, which could not be said to believe or disbelieve, because
it never thought on the subject, has now come intense hatred of the
Papacy, from the destruction of the nation's hopes under Pio Nono. He
who seven years ago heard the streets of Rome echoing to the cry that
she alone was _La Regina delle Genti_,--"sat a queen, and should see no
sorrow,"--can best form an estimate of the terrible re-action that has
followed the tumult of that hour, and can best understand how it has
happened, that now the hatred wherewith the Italians hate the Papacy is
greater than the love wherewith they loved it. Tradition, by its
fooleries,--the mass, by its monstrosity,--the priest, by his
immoralities,--and, above all, the Pope, by his perfidy and
tyranny,--have made the papal religion to stink in the nostrils of the
great mass of the Roman people. You might as well look for religion in
pandemonium itself, as in a country groaning under such a complication
of vices and miseries. Nay, there is more faith in pandemonium than in
Rome; for we are told that the devils believe and tremble; but in Rome,
generally speaking, there is faith in nothing. And for this fearful
state of matters the Papacy, beyond all question, is responsible.